Hi everybody, Jonathan here. Today on the channel, we have Zui. Zui basically did coaching with me last time. But I'm not going to claim any of his success because the people who are successful, like they do the work, they know what it takes. So let me just tell you something about Zui. Zui is from Myanmar. He generated over 500K in six months. And this is USD as well. He runs print on demand store as well as a e-commerce store as well. And he sells to the Burmese market. He has once stopped doing the Burmese market and then the other one selling worldwide as well. So if you think about it, despite military censorship, what's happening in situation in Myanmar as well, this is some guy who is like, he put in the work, he got the result and that's why he's successful. Despite how many odds. So you as someone watching right now, I don't see how you have any excuse not to be successful just like him. So that's basically a brief about Zui.  Okay, let me let Zui introduce himself and then yeah. Okay, go ahead Zui. Thanks so much bro. Thanks so much. Yeah, like I met you like last year, right? Last year around April or May, we have like two sessions or like two hours. At the time, I didn't know anything about this e-commerce thing. You know, I came to you and I was asking bro, like, do you know how, how, how should I run ads?  I remember you were saying, bro, you know who commerce, bro, I don't know. From there, after meeting you for like one or two months, I feel like an online store here. And yeah, then after that, like after six months, I make around like 400, 500K. Yeah. So, but one thing about the unique about Myanmar, right, is that people here, the way how they buy is very different.  Okay, so Myanmar people, they don't know how, most of the people, they don't know how to buy on their website. Okay, let's say if you, you have an ad and let's, let's say if click, if you click it, then if you bring them to the website, they will just cancel it, like they will just close it.  Then, then whatever is it, they will never transfer the money in advance, and you have to do it on cash or delivery. Yeah, that's a little bit high risk. Sometimes let's say if we go and deliver it, they won't take it, they're like, oh, I don't know it, I didn't order it, you know, they will just cancel the order to you, then you have to bring back the order, then we package it and do other things, but it's more complicated than other countries, but one good thing is that, okay, then you'll be asking yourself, right, if it's very complicated, why are you still doing, right? So the thing is that the, although it's very complicated, the ROAS is crazily good, like crazily good, so like average for like, for the, for like, of six months, my average ROAS is around eight, seven to eight average, but some product is, can go up to like maybe 15 or 20. So, so yeah, that is the reason why I like keep putting you doing, yeah. So do you have any questions? Yeah, sure. So like for your case, like you know that the ROAS is good and stuff, right? What's stopping you from like getting to the next like one to meal, right? Because like if it's super profitable, like why aren't you just jacking up at spend and just like scale? Or is it, do you have a fulfillment problem? What's the issue? Yeah. So one problem is that, okay, so first in the beginnings that are in the beginning, one of the problems is that I'm having the cash flow problem, you know, like because, okay, because of doing cash on delivery, okay, cash on delivery, sometimes we have to wait around two weeks to a month to get back the money. So I can't steal as much as I want. That's the one thing. And because of another thing is that because of I have, I have to like collect the orders manually. So you know, I have eight people working from nine to 11 just to collect the orders. So sometimes, but if I scale too much, they can't keep up with the message because there's too many messages coming in. Okay. Sometimes 500, 600 messages coming in. So there is a problem that I can't scale. And mainly it's because of the cash flow problem. Yeah. Okay. Understood. So if normal eCom is like, you run campaign straight to conversion, right? I'm guessing you run to Messenger. And then is there a Messenger bot or is it fully manual? Someone is coming in? Fully manual. Fully manual because people here, they are familiar with using a Messenger bot. So like they would just start clicking and playing around there. So I've tried, I've tried, I've tried using the Messenger bot. It doesn't really work. So we do manual. And another thing is most of my like 20%, 15 to 20% of my sales come from that on phone. So then we collect the orders from phone as well. Okay. How does, how does Messenger go from phone? So they, okay, Zui, I'm interested in buying XXX. Then what did you give them the option to call? Is it all? No, no, no. So what I did was that in, in my, my ad copy, all right. Okay. Like to order, like click message now, message now, or maybe, and I left the phone number so that they can call them because most of around like people who are above 30 to 40, they just, like ordering. They like, they just left the order from the phone. So we have to order it. And what happened is that after that, my people will go to the Shopify, then they will key in the order manually. Okay. Understood. Is there, what's the call? Because you said, I remember telling you specifically when we were coaching, I said, if you can crack the Burmese market, because there's who else is more smart, intelligent slash how working at this craft, right?  So I was like, how is the competition in Burmese market now? And you know, tell me more about that. Okay. So that's, okay. From what I, as far as I know, right, there's no Burmese that who knows how to do in here, but, but there's a one Vietnamese company who knows how to do it. Okay. So they have a general store and they were just selling all the crappy stuff, bro.  But then they were selling without the warranty. They just scam people who keep scamming, scamming. So, okay, bro, you won't believe that some of the items you can get for one or two dollars, they're selling around 30 to 40 bucks here, bro.  Then what, what I did was that I started selling my store with 30, 30 days warranty, you know, like money, money back. And they just love it because in here, nobody has sell a product with a, with that guarantee. So yeah, this is like, that guarantee is what makes my store successful, I guess. Okay. Why, why are people, why are merchants so dishonest? I mean, to stay in business, you gotta be, you should be able to deliver the product, right? So why, how is this Vietnamese company still able to operate in the market if they are not? It's more like the enforcement of the rules and regulation problem, I guess.   Yeah. Okay. Maybe next time, I'll do it again. That's why when I came in, they were like, they were so shocked, you know, they were like, what? They were even commenting on my page. Like, so I can take what I can test the product, if I don't, I can give back, you sure? Yeah, you can do that. You can do that. I'll run you straight away.  Yeah, that's what's happening. Okay, you're talking about like scaling ads, right? There's one problem here, bro. One problem is that, you know, when you, you know, business manager, but let's say if you scale, you can see exactly what voice we're doing and do it. You know, because of my running ads on message, I can't do that. Yes. So what I have to do is you won't believe this, okay? So every morning, my accountant, well, what does she do? She will calculate every sale, every sales, every product sales with the focus. Then I have to see, I have to calculate the respect manually just to check if whether it's doing well or not. That's the thing there. Okay, but that's how you get your 7 to 8 times, basically. Yeah. More like, okay, some products are doing really well. Like, yeah, exactly, exactly. Like, there's one product, bro. Every time the rest, it's more than 10. It's around 15, 12. Sometimes it can be 20, you know. Maybe I cracked the code, I guess, like what you say. Yeah. Okay, if let it, if as easy as like what other countries, like, okay, everyone will come in and do the same thing. Yes.  Yeah, that's what happened, bro. I understand, I understand. So right now, your fulfillment products coming from China, I guess, right? So that's the fastest way manufacturing coming from China. How does that, how do you talk to your suppliers?  Yeah. Very good question. Okay, so, okay, man, I mean, look like Chinese, but I'm not Chinese, but I don't speak Chinese at all. Okay, so, so what happened is that I have some time I go to the, you know, 1688.com and I went there. I use Google Translate to talk to everyone, bro. It's a bit of hard work, man. You know, go there, Google Translate, talk to them. Then I'll bring, like, talk to them on a WeChat. Because of WeChat, WeChat has a translation, the function that they will talk to me in Chinese, then I'll talk to them in English. This is how I do business. And then I will transfer money. There are some agents who can transfer money to them. Then they will just transfer to them. And I'll, I'll pay, I pay in your MyChat. And they will send money to the, all the supplier. After the supplier will send the money, the staff to the border. And from the border, it will come to my city. So it takes around sometimes two to three weeks to come here, right here. And after that, after that, it takes around maybe like another two weeks to sell off all that stuff. You know, sometimes three weeks, sometimes a month. Yeah, that's the thing. Not only, not only do you have to do the, like, you also have to know how to forecast the thing. Yeah, that's the one problem that I, like, I have a lot of, a lot of issue with, because sometimes some of them I overstock it, then I, you know, the stock looking at you every day, man, it's like, like, yeah, sometimes some of a month, I just have, doesn't have anything to sell. And then people will be so bored, like, Hey bro, what are you doing? Why didn't you order enough? Yeah, I'm sure there's a warehouse now, right? So are you ordering in bulk and then shipping over? Or are you still like one by one? How's the? Oh, in bulk, in bulk. So, so this is how it goes. So I'll just go to 1688, then I'll look for the, like, like products. Then let's see if there's a product that I like, I'll just give it to my designer and copywriter. Yeah, it would test it out for like three days. To test it out, I'll see the result. Okay, let's say it's good. The reverse is good. Then there's a lot of orders, then I'll find them in bulk. I'll try to forecast it. Okay, then I'll try in bulk. Then, yeah, this is what I have to do. So are the shipping lines like established? Like how long does that take? Oh, no, no, no, we didn't use a shipping, bro. We used, we used a land freight. Correct. I mean, it still takes time, right? So how long does that take normally for, from factory to customer? Oh, around, could be from four weeks to six weeks, bro. So like, once I know that, so if let's say it is a new product, I would just test it out, then I won't scale it. But once it's here, I will start at the scale. I only scale it when the product is here, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like for the first a few, a few weeks, like when the product is not around it, I'll just, you know, like running at a little bit slower, like not a little bit slower, like with the smaller budget, smaller budget, then after wait, wait, wait. Once the product is here, after I test it out, then I'll start scaling. Yeah, that's what we do. Understood, understood. So actually it's like, when you, in a sense, drop ship first, right? You fall to six weeks. And then once you come in warehouse, then I'm guessing a few days, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's good. That's good. For a country like Myanmar, right? If you think you're telling me, it's like if you are like number one or number two now, and middle class is rising, right? Middle class wealth is rising and stuff like that. Yeah, 54 million people. So what's next for this, your business, and how do you plan to grow this? Yeah, I was planning to like scale it like to the moon, like before that military takeover. Sorry, say again, your audio. I mean, I was trying to scale my shop like to the moon before the military takeover. But now things are a little bit different. Like we didn't expect this, you know. So another thing is that we didn't expect they would ban Facebook and Instagram. That's one of our main issue. And they banned all the mobile data. Because most of my customers, they don't have Wi-Fi. They use only mobile data to order from us. So if you are asking me what's my plan in the short term, I still have around like 100K inventory. So I'm trying to clear it off right now. So maybe it will take around one or two months. Then after that, I may have to see how it goes. You know, but I can't scale too much. But what I can do is I can do it in a very small scale, you know. But it will take, how do you call it? I'll be all right. But the sales won't be like as much as last time. But yeah, or you know, still making around maybe four to five days a day. Understood. Okay. So if, what's the call? If Facebook and Google, I'm sorry, Facebook, Instagram, I ban, right? I understand most of the traffic is coming from mobile anyways. Is there any other traffic channel that you can tap on? I was looking at two things. One in Google. But most of the people, they don't use Google. That's a problem. What do they use then? If they're not using? Facebook growth. Facebook is our Google man. That's why it's very unique, man. If let's say like you're having a cough and you want to know the refined medicine, they will find on Facebook and they won't even use Google growth. Trust me, man, that's the true growth. So whatever.  But still like Google, TikTok is I think pretty, it's the next thing I guess in here, I guess, I guess. Isn't it weird that they ban Facebook and Instagram but not TikTok? No, TikTok is from China, bro. So you know, because they believe that one of the previous government with them, they believe that they pay Facebook to, you know, spread the propaganda. Oh, okay, okay. And another thing is, now these day one, let's say they, when they arrange a protest, they arrange on Facebook. So all the news are spreading on Facebook. So it's just been Facebook growth. That's a thing. Okay. So it's just a small business need to go to another traffic source, it's not entirely down, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So what happened is one thing is that, okay, one Facebook is banned. Most of the people are like, let's say 70 to 60 to 70% of people, they know that they can use VPN to bypass the ban and, you know, use Facebook. So most of the people are using, okay, only 30% is down. Okay, I'm still fine with it. Okay, I'm still fine. The part I'm not fine with it is when they ban their mobile data. But they can ban it for so long, bro, because it's causing a lot of economics problems here. Yeah. So once they reopen it, or they give back the internet, I think I'll be fine again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The ban part is still okay because we can use the VPN to bypass it. But the part isn't the internet part and that's a big issue. Okay. At this point, I'm right. I know obviously you are under a lot of stress because that's if business is down, you need to pay payroll and employee stuff like that, right? Yeah. Yeah. So what was the question? Oh, sorry, my question is how are you structuring your team now? Okay, so yeah. Before that, I have 21 people including me, okay, 21 staff. So eight people will be in a customer service and around five people will be the delivery team because they have to like pack, pick and pack, pick and pack. Yeah. Customer service just to clarify is the guy messenger, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, okay. Got it. So customer, okay, what we call it, we just call it customer service. So what they have is that, okay, let me go in detail with it. It's very fun. So it's around, we have to work from nine to 11. So two shifts. One team will be, one shift will be four people. Three will be collecting order orders. One will be manually typing orders through the Shopify. Okay. So every shift has four people. So this is what it is. So we have eight and we have five people for picking pack, and driver, two accountants, and five creatives around this. So like we have around 20 people now. Like we have to, it's not sec, how do you call it? You just stop the work for a while. Temporary, yeah. Temporary. Okay, we will hybrid. So now I have around eight to nine people working with me. Okay, understood. Why are there two accountants? Why is that two? Okay, okay, bro. The one thing about is that, okay, let's say if you do an online, because we have two accountants, okay, one thing is, let's say, like you use Shopify, right? Then the one we have a payout, man, we exactly know where we're getting the payout from. Okay. Yeah. Okay. But in here, we're using, sometimes we're doing, we're using other 3PL to fulfill some of our orders. Bro, let's say 200 orders, you have to manually check it, bro. Let's say the payouts for 200 orders, then they have to check it, man. My chief accountants, like they're like, she is like working for like 10 to, like eight, like 10 to 11 hours a day. I'm like, she's like, oh, bro, you got to hire someone for me, man. She's dead. Yeah, that's okay. I have two. Like one is main senior accountant and one is junior. Yeah. Okay, understood. And so like the customer service rep, because they are customer facing, right? I'm guessing you built like an SOP or like a document saying, okay, what can you say, what can you not say? Is it how do you transition from a conversation of a guy's interested in the product, do you want to buy on a sale? So at first, I don't know all these SOP and anything. Okay, I know that you have to have an SOP. I thought, as long as you can talk, then you'll be out with my man. And then, then I found out that, you know, my, my, okay, so I started with five people. Okay. When there was five people with my closing rate was pretty good. It's around like 60 to 70%. So it was like 10 messages coming, six of these sales. I'm happy with that. Then I started to scale my shop. Then I started to hire all these customer service. The first five people, they were not customer service.  Then after hiring the customer service, I found out that, oh, so what's going on, man? My sales are dropping. Then when I started measuring, I found out that the closing rate dropped to around 20 to 30%. Oh, no, they're not doing properly. Then I started to check. Then I found out that, you know, they're not closing the sales properly, man. Are they not asking for the sales?  They were like, oh, it's let's say $10. That's it, man. You can't do that, man. You get that, oh, $10 away. Where would you like us to stand labor and all this? They have to try to close it. They don't try, they didn't make effort to close it.  So I have like, I did a presentation talking that, you know, you have to tell this, tell that, then after that, they become good at it, bro. Then I hire one of the consultant who is doing the SOP and like systemization, then she has, you know, she came over the document, bro. Okay, that's very good. Is that, I mean, because it's a sales related role, right? Is there a commission when people close or no? I did, I like, okay, this is the thing, bro. Okay, because my store was only six months old, I planned to give, I planned, like, I was planning to give, but the thing is once, before I managed to implement it, the coop happened, bro, then we literally took over the country. Okay. But that you, okay, in my mind, like, I know that I did give them commission, but I didn't give it. Okay, you do it later on, obviously. Later on, later on, but because I was busy with other stuff. So, but yeah. Understood. Understood. I guess I think, interesting question I've never heard this before, but there's, if the person who is the driver, right, going there, then cash or delivery collect, right? How, is there an issue with honesty or stuff like that? You know what I mean? Yeah, very good question, bro. Like, okay, so this is the thing, right? So, because we're not going, going everything online, like, you know, Jiddo, we have a lot, we can, we could have a lot of issues with the cash. People can just simply, you know, scam, not scam, okay, probably remind me to tell, tell me about scams, bro. Like, I'm very good. So what happened is that, yeah, we do, like, we didn't have, but we try to protect, protect it before it happens, bro. So that's why we have two accountants because of that, because these two accountants will be checking every day, bro.  That wasn't a problem. But if I wasn't very careful, like, other store, man, they have it a lot, man. It's like a usual thing. The driver is scared, like, taking money away and everything. But here, then I become very good with my driver.  That's good. That's good. Okay, so I mean, I know this is the main business, right? You also said you did around 100k plus in the standard e-commerce model, print on demand, obviously, don't have to tell me anything about that, whatever you're actually doing there. But why is it that in my mind, if this is a cash cow, the first one, the Burmese one, why did you open another one, a separate one that is like worldwide selling to global as well? Very good question. So, I didn't have plan at first, bro. I didn't plan to do anything like print on demand. I always wanted to drop ship. Okay, but I was like, okay, this is making so much, so good of Roes, man. But you know, the Roes is like 8, 10 every day. I'm not even interested in working on drop shipping. But some people are like, oh man, they were so happy that they having four or five Roes, they're like, oh bro, I have having five Roes, man. But yeah, but the thing is that because of a military coup, military coup, it happens. So before the coup, the dollar, the exchange rate, it's around like $1,300 jet per dollar. Now it's around $1,600 per dollar. Okay. There's a big increase. Just like that, the money value is gone, man. There's the one thing. And because of coup, people are not buying like last time. They're very conscious about their spending. And you know, the best part is military restrict withdrawing money, bro. You know how much we can withdraw in a week? $100? Around $70, bro. Okay. So, man, people don't have cash anymore, man. Like, okay, I was like, I can't rely on, rely on my like this, this shop anymore, bro. Like, I must have a backup. Let's see something happen. Like, now if you are only in dollar, man, you're good, man.  That's why I started drop shipping, bro. I mean, doing the print on demand because of that, bro. Understood. So, I mean, if that second business, the worldwide one, your POD, right, is generating cash and then you're accepting USD, for example, it goes into still a Burmese bank account. Is it? Or are you? I was really lucky, man. My mom has a Singapore account, bro. Singapore bank account. No Singapore bank account. Singapore company, bro. I was super lucky. So, I'm like, you know, leaching her account. I was like, mom, mom, please help me. That's why I'm planning to come back to Singapore just to open some account, bro. Like, you know, okay. Yeah, yeah. Protect, like, at the de-risk, per se. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I'm planning. Okay. Okay. That's really smart. I was really lucky, man. If my mom didn't open a company account there, man, I just don't know what to do anymore, bro. I'll be stuck here. But yeah, everything will be fine, bro. Everything will be fine. Yeah, understood. Okay. Because I know now, like, the products that you're selling, right, I don't see the Burmese market becoming more competitive. Like, I don't see it becoming, like, you still have a very long runway, right? You are like, Facebook ads in like 2008, something like that, right? Yeah, exactly. Bro, CPM is now is like less than a dollar, bro. So I'm so super happy, man. Yeah, so I mean, if you are the business owner, for example, right, you have a big customer list, right? Is that, do you still do email marketing? If that's the case? Or people don't use email? Oh, yeah, yeah. Very good question.  People don't hear, they don't use email at all, man. So when they, some, even they use, they have email, they won't even go and check it, bro. Even they check it, they won't even click on your ads, man. So there is no such thing as email marketing here, bro. And SMS, almost the same thing, bro, almost the same thing. So what you do is, the only one thing you can do is telemarketing. But telemarketing is very tiring, man. And I'm selling stuff like my AOV is only around, like around 20 to 30. And there's no point calling on them on the phone. And then CPM is cheap, man. So I just blast all my money off. Okay. If you're running Messenger, you have a, you know, many chat, like that Messenger, right? So you are using that? Okay. I tried. I tried. Okay. I've learned everything about, like all the courses and I've learned. Okay. I created the flow for like two weeks or I come over to it and I started blasting, bro, man. Very sad, bro. They just don't know how to use it, man. They are like. Very, imagine that you are saying that, oh, please type yes. They didn't even understand what's going on, bro. They were like, oh my God. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. So it's the user that doesn't know. Okay, bro. Like we, do you know that we just, we got our internet, like, okay, 10 years before this, right? We didn't even have an internet, bro. Like in 2000, we only got internet in 2010. Okay. Like, like Wi-Fi and everything. And then we only have fast Wi-Fi. Okay. Like before 2015, there's no such thing as fast Wi-Fi, bro. Like, which means you can't even watch the YouTube video, bro. You have to wait to watch a YouTube video. So people are just still learning, we are still in the learning phase, which is also very good. It's a very good opportunity for us, bro. You know what I'm saying? So because of that, we can use messenger board. Okay. I tried, but most of the users doesn't understand. Okay. Probably it is because of my store and my audience, I guess. Okay. Most of my audience, the customers are around 30 to 40, 40 years old. So they don't know about all these things. If later, I have a store who sell aiming to like 20 years old, I think they will understand, I guess. Understood. Understood. Are young people buying? No, not at all. For me, I'm selling kitchen stuff, bro. So, rare. Like, most of the people are around 30 years old, bro. Okay. Understood. Understood. If now like the team is, let's say the best case scenario, right? The internet thing solves, right? You can grow your team and stuff like that. Are you going to continue expanding this? What is the next step for you basically? I don't ask something just now, but I think your answer was more like short term, right? So, but in the long term, you as a three entrepreneur, like what? In the long term, probably, probably, how could I say it? I'm going to diversify a little bit, I would say, because I'm, because I only have one store here, man, then those are aiming around, aiming at all the people around 30 to 40s and who are not living in the city in the urban areas, bro. Now, because of that, they want the internet is gone, man, my shop is gone, man. I was thinking about going into supplement because, you know, supplement, man, bro, whatever happened, you still have to take supplement if you're having a health problem, you know, the point. So, I'm thinking of starting another store very soon, but with a different audience and, you know, like try to, try to, how would I say, diversify, bro, because the, man, the rest of the thing is it's very almost the same, man, you run ads, take order, collect orders, you do the fulfillment, you collect cash, that's it, bro. So, you just have to, you know, branch out, man.  Imagine, Singapore suddenly banned Facebook and no internet, bro. You can't even imagine that, bro. Man, we thought that they would never do that, bro.  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, if you're listening right now, right? Okay. Okay, let me, let me tell you the story. Two months, okay, around the military took over around in February, around December and, okay, like November, December, we heard that they're going to take over, okay. We already heard that, but I thought they won't do it, you know. We heard the news that, okay, the military is going to take over the country. But we thought that, nah, they're not going to do that. They're not going to do that. It's not going to happen. So, if you're listening right now, right, if you heard something bad, just prepare for it, man. Prepare cash, prepare everything, bro. Like, if the best case scenario didn't happen, man, it's okay, man. Man, now many people go in bankrupt, like, doesn't have money to even eat or rent, bro, because they didn't prepare. Okay, I was lucky, man. I didn't prepare. But I didn't prepare, okay. But I was lucky, you know what happened? They took over in February. I buy a lot of things because of the Chinese New Year's Day, bro. Because of Chinese, I'm like, okay, I'm going to buy a lot of things. I bought it. I managed to sell everything out, bro. Oh, my God, I was super lucky, man. But next time, man, get prepared for everything, man. Like, even your country is very developed and everything, just prepare, man. You're already broke. Yeah, I think I have a quote for you next time. Create a poster, like, prepare, man. Yeah, prepare, man. No, maybe I should have a print on demand here, bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, just prepare, dude. Just prepare. It's just... Oh, my God. But yeah, and then you're talking about, just now I was talking about you were talking about, like, people that you're not, like, am I not afraid of people scaring, like, like, taking the money and scaring me? Honestly, that's the honest problem. Okay, like, my stuff, they don't do that. Because I become very close to them. Okay, because of people, oh, man, this is a very good scam. Okay, so what they do is that people, when they want something, they will message you. Sometimes you know what they did. They will comment on the ad. They will leave their phone numbers and they say, oh, I want this, please call me. The scammer will act like us and say, oh, bro, I'm from this shop. You know, I'm going to deliver your stuff. Can you send me the money to this account there, which is the account? Then the guy thought, oh, okay, this is, then they will send the money to the scammer. And they will block us. Then the customer will be waiting and waiting. Then will come a message. I will store in that, hey, where's my stuff? And I was like, what stuff, bro? Yeah, you didn't buy from us, basically. No, I transfer the money. You're like, no, no, you didn't transfer that. Bro, so many cases like that, man. So what we have to do is every hour in our ads, we have to write, please don't leave any of your numbers. Okay. Let's say if you have to transfer money, only you have to transfer to this account. Then I'll put my account numbers there. If somebody has to transfer to other accounts, please don't transfer. Yeah, there's a scam, man. There's a scam that's going on in the e-commerce business here. Yeah, I understood. It's, how do I say this? Everywhere it's tough, right? So it's just, it's how you do the challenges. I guess what am I about you, right?  Like, you are super positive. And like, I think that's awesome. Because it's like, hey, like you could be complaining, right?    Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, what's your, not secret? Okay, I guess so, so. I mean, you, John, then you know how to ask really good questions, man. Like, okay, let me tell them. So when I started my store, right? Okay. So before that, I was running agency.  I hated with passion, bro. Let's say, the people say, if you have- Okay, well, people, I don't think people understand the concept context yet. So you give them context, right? So you're servicing what are clients in Myanmar, etc. Yeah, tell me. Yeah. Yeah. So I was giving, so before I started Econ, okay. Like, I don't even know what, what this, all this drop shipping, I know, I heard about drop shipping, but I didn't know that it can make a lot of money. So I was just doing, I running Facebook ads for my clients last year. Then I have an agency, like I have around five to six clients. Okay, but one thing about agency is that, you know, is it called, you have to be a little bit thick skin, bro. You know, the clients will be complaining every day, every day, you have to, but for me, when the clients complain, I get angry. So I like for me for me. So I'm like, it makes me, it makes me so much stress, man. Then what happened is that I started my... Oh, by the way, what niche was that? What industry for your agency? I was running for all the ads I was doing for the, all the Gold Shop, one of the biggest Gold Shop here. And I was running for like, you know, Ankatatsu, Ankatatsu, the cheesecake. No idea. So sorry. It's from Australia, like it was Japan. Okay. I don't remember. Okay. I was running some for funnatures. Financial. A lot, a lot, a lot. Okay. I was running for it. Then after that, I started selling online. I just tested out one product. I was so bored at home, man. At the time, the COVID was going on, man. Like, I can't even go out from the home. I was so bored. I was like, okay, I'm going to do AliExpress, take a product, then I just boost it online. Then suddenly it makes me 1000, like 1000 in the first year. I'm like, oh, wow. 1000. Then I started counting the money. Okay. That's it. If I do 1000 here, the lead is will be 30,000. Okay. 30,000. Oh my God. There's a lot of money, more money that I can make from the e-com, than the agency. So like, oh no. Okay.  I quit. End of this month, I'm quitting. I'm sorry, man. I'm doing something else. They were like, oh, okay. Then I started doing the e-com, then I started selling. Remember I was telling you I only have five people? Yeah. Then at one point out of that, I said, I'm going to start scaling. Then I hire, like within three days, I hire like eight people. A lot, bro. Then you know what happened? In that week, the government imposed lockdown, bro. Like full lockdown. Like, oh man, I was so scared, bro. Lockdown. You said lockdown. Lockdown. Why are you scared of lockdown though? Because you're selling online. COVID lockdown. You mean, you're asking me why am I scared? Oh, okay. Scared of COVID, not scared of. No, no, no. Okay. No, no, no. I'm not scared of, okay. Because, okay. The thing is at the time, the government started to impose full lockdown. Then people are so afraid, bro. Because in here, let's say we deliver the stuff. We don't leave on the house, bro. We have to go and the delivery guy have to go and talk to them. Oh, okay, okay. I got it. I got it. Sorry, sorry. So you get the point. Because you still have to collect the cash, bro. We don't know how COVID is. You know, we thought like we can easily get transmitted. Okay, so just hire people. Just buy a lot of inventory. Then full lockdown. Bro. Then my debt is around like almost like, like 300 to 400K at the time. I'm dead, man. I'm dead. Wait, 200, 400K, what? Like USD. USD. USD. I was also saying, no, no, no. 200, 200, 300, 300. Around 50 to 60K. Okay, okay, good job. Make a mistake. I was so scared, man. You know, first thing came into my mind. I was like, bro, I'm dead. I mean, I shouldn't have done it. Because from what I thought, right, is that people are going to stop buying. Imagine people won't even allow the delivery guy who came into their house to assign it. I thought I'm dead. Bro, I learned something, man. No matter what's happening in the world, people stay going to buy. Trust me, man. Trust me. Like, I thought nobody's going to buy, bro. Oh my God, that everyone in the whole country, they stop running ads because they thought nobody's going to buy. Yeah. That probably I was the only one who is running ads in the country, bro. Wow. Wow. The CPM is so low and everyone's at home doing nothing.  I'm like, holy shit, man. I was like, you know what I did? I brought back all my, I called all my team and said, all right, we're going to live together in the house and we're going to deliver the things. So you know all the 21, like I was saying, at that time I have like 15 people, 15 people living together and delivering things. So my, everyone is living with me. So I give them food, I give them shelter and they start selling, bro. Then I found out that, okay, so whatever happened, people are going to buy. So I started selling. Then probably I was the only one doing a lot of money during COVID, you know, every business was suffering. You were basically number one in Myanmar, basically. Okay. Ecom, when it comes to Ecom, maybe I'll be a top five guys, but yeah, I was making money. Then, yeah, I was pretty, I knew that, okay, I can stick it. For me, it's bro, as long as I'm making money, I'm happy, man. That's the thing. So then after that, that the coup happened, people don't know what it's going to buy, but bro. So the question is that, the question you are, how do I stay positive, right? So one thing is, you know, NLP? Yeah, Neural Linguistic. I am a, like, I went to the NLP courses, bro. So I have, like, I'm like, I'm a certified NLP master coach, they say. So I know how, then another one thing is that I have a coach, a life coach. Okay. I'm paying around 1000 a month just to coach me. Okay. So he, like something, whenever I'm depressed, I will go and talk to him. So yeah, so another thing is bro, another thing is, like, let's say something bad is happening in your country. Okay. This is my advice, man. Delete your Facebook. Don't ever read news on Facebook. It will, like demoralize, how do you call it? It will make you depressed, bro. So your aim is not to listen to news, man. Your aim is just to make money, bro. Trust me, trust me, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.  Like you can see the old man, some of them are like not making money. I understand that I feel their pain, but you still have to make money and donate back to them, you know, give back to them. So if you, let's say, now most of the people, what they're doing, they reading the news, they get depressed, then they stop working, bro, we can't do that. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. So how do I stay positive? Man, I'm making a lot of money, bro. Not a lot, man. As long as I know that I'm making around 1000 in like, like for me, it's minimum is okay. Let's say I make one around 500 to 1000 a day, I'm happy, but that's the standard that I set during this time, during this time. Last time was a little bit higher, of course. I understand. You're like, not many people have the same attitude as you, right? Like, I don't know, your childhood very rough. Like, what's the, how, how did you develop this? You know what I mean? Oh my God, bro, you really know how to question it, man. Okay. Okay. So I guess I have a very good story on this. Okay. So what happened was, before this thing happened, right? I studied in Australia, you know, then my mom keep like, I thought you studied in Singapore, Singapore and Australia. So I studied in Singapore for five years, like from secondary to diploma degree. I went to Australia. So in Australia, my mom, you know, we didn't take any loans. My mom, me cashed to study in Australia. Yeah. So it's around like 40, like, I can't remember, man. She spent around, I think 200K. I'm like, what a waste, man. Anyway, and during the time, right? Man, I thought I was rich, man. Like, serious. I thought our families were rich. My mom didn't tell me anything.  Then whenever I say I don't cash, she's just giving 10,000, bro. Yeah. Oh, okay. I thought I'm rich, man. I'm spending money like there's no tomorrow every day, bro. Yeah. I'll give you back your money. No, no, no. After that, I went back, then my family has a construction business, bro. And there is, there was a policy change that we almost bankrupt, man. We almost, okay. Then our, the time, during the time with the dollar rate, we was almost like in debt for like a million to one million dollars. And this was what, this is like 2015, how long ago? Yeah, 16, around 16, that was like, oh man, let me tell you, man, nothing wasn't having so much debt, man. So much debt that you know that you can't pay back, bro. Yeah. Like let's say if you're, some people like they are in debt, but they know that they can, they're doing some business, that's like, yeah, it's fine. Yeah. For me, we're in debt because, oh man, every day I'll be like, I don't know what to do. Man, that's a pain. That's a pain. I was so scared of the pain that I have to work really hard, bro. So like, then the thing is that debt is not even created by me. It's not even at my fault, man. Because of my family, I work hard. Then, oh, okay. Because of that, I was like, okay, I have to sell my condos because we do constructions, okay. So that we have units to sell. I was like, okay, I have to sell. I don't know how to sell. And instead, I started learning on Google. I found out about copywriting and digital marketing. Then, you know, when I see the word copywriting, I thought it's about literally copying once it's written. You know, I didn't understand that it's about the copywriting is about like creating, you know, copywriting. I thought it's copying from others.  Trust me. Don't repeat English, not your personal language. So it's like, yeah. I don't even know what a copy is. Then from that, I tried, I started learning copywriting. Then we started to sell a few units. Then now we have paper all the day. Happy, bro. That's the day. Thanks, bro. That's why I work. One of the reasons I work hard is that so afraid of the pain and the debt, bro. It's just too scary, bro. I just tell you this, I work with a lot of founders, right? Be it on coaching or even like agencies. It's like the people who are successful, they have, it's a common trait that I see across people. It's like, if you give it a challenge and a task and usually there's a, usually there's like a life-changing event happened before and then you have an internal change in your mindset, ability and trust in yourself. Then you go and like take a chance and bet on yourself. Then you make it happen. And then those are the people who are normally successful. That's normally the case. And for your, that one bankruptcy is like super extreme. We didn't go bankrupt, but it's close. Almost very close, very close. And another one thing is, oh wait, trust me. Another one thing, do you really want to be successful? Like if later you want to be very, like you have a very good push, very like pressure. You know what you should do?  Oh my God. That was like, I don't know. Is the best thing or the worst thing happened to me, man? So, okay, I fall in love with a girl here. I didn't know that she's richer. So I thought she was a normal girl. Man, after like dating for like six months, I just found a holy shit, man. She's just super rich, man. Because of that, you know, her family side doesn't like me. You're like, oh man, why are you dating a guy poor then? I wanted to prove them so wrong, you know, every day, bro. Every day, I have like a push and pull. Then I wrote down some of the names that we looked down on me. Okay, it was very unhealthy, very toxic, but it works bro. Yeah, because it motivates you, right? It's like, don't even motivate yourself. It's already here, you know, I get it. I get it. I know, I know. Like probably that's why, you know, sometimes you have to create some of the fake scenario just to be, you know, motivate you, man. Yeah, that's, that's sorry. That's like Kobe Bryant. Have you watched basketball? It's like, yeah, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan, they always did that. They always have created a fake scenario just to motivate us. No, but that's, yeah, that's what very successful people do. Yeah, so you at least got something right here. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, bro, yeah. Okay, I want to ask you just one more thing about your team, right? So we talk a lot about your logistics already. What about the marketing team? Because different language, different country, right? A lot of people are very used to US market. How is that different? Like, it's the copywriter slash media by, you know, the person running the ads blah, blah, blah. How is that different for you? I think probably the copywriting that create marketing part is the easiest part, bro. Yeah. Because the first thing is that, you know, like, people here, they just copying straight from Ali Baba, Ali Express, they just copy paste it, then they just sell, they don't even do any design, bro. Like, they don't, they don't even care, they just do it. Then some of the, even ads are even in Chinese, like people say, trust me, they don't understand in Chinese, they say vibe, which means it's a very, very good opportunity for me. So, okay, the copywriting, okay, let, I'll, I'll separate in two parts, copywriting parts, okay? Copywriting parts, right? Because we don't, okay, usually, usually, okay, it's the ads and a copy, a long copy in the website, right? You know, the Facebook ads will be here, then you click it, you go to the website, it will be long copy. For us, it's different. Every, all the things will be on here. So our copy, the Facebook ads copy will be longer, because everything would have to be there. We don't, we don't, we don't use website. That's the one thing. Another thing is that, man, most of the people, like, very lucky, still lucky for me, right? It's like, what'd you say, man? It's like, me is like, drop shipping in 2008, man. Drop shipping in 2008. Because of that, people here, most of you, it doesn't know about copywriting, right? They don't even know that there's such thing as copywriting, bro. So, so what, for us, it's very lucky. I know how every language has copy, right? Chinese. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. But most of our people doesn't know, bro. Like, trust me, they don't know. They don't know. Let's say there's a copywriter here. I have to train them for like a week, like literally each day. Like, okay, this is the thing, this is the thing. Because of that, like, probably our, because of our copy, we are crushing it here, bro. Yeah, that's one thing. And another thing, how about the design? Design team, what's the difference? What's the difference? I guess you're running ads, right? Are you running ads or someone else is already taking over?  Yeah, because if you have a very big team, I'm guessing that someone is taking over. No, you're still running. I mean, yes, yes, someone is taking over. So I'm not running ads by myself anymore. So I taught the guy how to run ads. They just do that. They just run ads every day. So yeah, the design part is almost very similar, bro. It's just that we don't need to do the funnel, you know, website funnel, we just have to do a one good message. So we create like one product, we create three angles. It's standard lab, bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just try to scale it. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I think it's, I've taken a lot of your time already. Is there any last words you want to say to the audience? Because I know they've got a lot of value from you. I can learn a lot of stuff from this conversation. I have so. Thanks, bro. Okay. You can learn how to run ads, what ads to use on Shopify, all these things on YouTube. But if you have to learn one thing from me, my one thing is that whatever is happening, whatever is going on, you just have to sell, bro. Don't care about other people just sell. Make money for yourself first. That's the one thing. Because without the cash flow, you're going to have a lot of problems. You will be more depressed to handle other things, bro. If you have cash flow, at least you will feel, you know, you can handle other, you have more energy to handle other stuff. That's one thing. Another thing is that man, things, the worst thing can happen to you in a few days, man, even in split second, bro. You just have to get ready for everything. That's the thing. And another thing is that so whatever happens, right? So this is what I like. From now, I do this exercise every once in a while. I will write down all the worst that can happen in the country. Like that can affect my business. Let's say this, this, and that. Then I will have what to do if something happens. So at least you happen to be like, okay, I'm ready for it. That's the one thing you have to do. Another thing is and be positive, man, not COVID, but whatever happens, man, there's opportunity, bro. If like, how did it? If you can do it, anybody can. No, no, no. It's more like, the harder it is, the lesser people are working on it. Okay. The harder it is, it's okay. The harder it is, the greater the return, like the reward is, bro. So don't give up, man. You know, just forget it. You know, you will be fine. There's one thing is it just in your mind, bro. And you might just be happy about it. Okay. Grateful. Grateful. Yeah. Okay. Ken, thank you so much for me. So guys, the video end here. I'd like to thank you for your time. Yep. Okay.


Wonderful. We're live now on Facebook. I'm Natasha Rapazzo. I'm coming at July from Dallas, Texas and I'm here with my wonderful colleague Nancy Mencius who's coming to us live from Greece. Nancy, how are you today? I'm great and I'm so happy to be with you and to talk about BlackRock today. Yes, we are talking about BlackRock as anyone who follows us on any social media knows that we are going hard at BlackRock. We've been targeting them since the beginning of the year and I wonder if you could just explain to anyone who's joining us what BlackRock is and why we are targeting them. Yeah, so BlackRock is kind of new on the scene for us. They are the top investor and weapon manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics. They are also the largest asset manager in the world. So without getting wonky around Wall Street, so they control about $5 trillion in assets and BlackRock has been described as the world's largest shadow bank and they own the iShares franchise of investment funds as well as other investment vehicles. So just a little background. So iShares is one of the fastest growing investment vehicles in the world during the first quarter of 2018, shareholders were updated. BlackRock highlighted that the iShares franchise is how their business is booming. So one of their iShares funds is exclusively dedicated to the fence spending. In other words, they are funding exclusively on weapons of war. That's what I find really interesting is that they call themselves socially responsible yet they have millions of dollars invested in weapons manufacturers. So why are they allowed to call themselves socially responsible? How can they keep doing this and getting away with it? Oh my goodness. So this is a real sort of being urbanized. So in a public statement, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink announced that he was going to start holding, I'm sorry I don't mean to laugh, but he was going to start holding companies. They invest and accountable for being responsible corporate citizens. His statement made huge waves in the investment and business world. However, a statement for accountability rings hollow while BlackRock continues to profit off of the most morally corrupt companies in the world. So just to highlight how much BlackRock has invested in weapon manufacturers, let's look at their investments in the top five. They have over seven billion in Boeing, three billion General Dynamics, five billion in Lockheed Martin, three billion in Northrop Common, and four billion in Raytheon. That's really not socially responsible is how I would put it. Right. So we've been going after them since like February. What would you call our long-term goal? What's the goal with BlackRock? What are we going to get them to do? Well, that's a really good question. So BlackRock, we're asking them that they must divest from and stop investing in companies that sell weapons used in war and violence around the world and even here at home. BlackRock must divest from defense contractors that also profit from child detention. And what BlackRock does, they provide a pathway to invest in defense contractors that profit from child detention and weapon manufacturers that produce tools and weapons for war and violence in Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and countless other areas where the U.S. is active in conflict. And the result of all this is the loss of innocent lives and turmoil around the world. So the sale of U.S. weapons to oppressive regimes like Saudi Arabia is a shining example of how the products made by these companies are not responsible, socially responsible or beneficial to the global community. So we've been really, I feel like bothering BlackRock a lot. We've been outside their offices. We've been at their shareholders meeting. I've gone to the office in Dallas four times. The last time I was there, they were like, how did you get up here? We told security not to let you up here. They know my face. They know my name. And it's probably the same for you because you've been to the BlackRock in San Francisco, I think four times. You organized the protest outside the shareholders meeting. So tell everyone watching a little bit about these actions we're doing outside their office and what we're accomplishing by delivering these petitions and being really, really bothersome. Yeah. So you're right. We've been outside of their office. We started in, I think in the end of March and we had demonstrations in LA, San Francisco, Dallas, like you said, New York and Princeton, New Jersey. They have a big complex there. So not only is it important to have an online campaign presence and we'll talk a little bit about that later, but it's also important to have that outside presence. And Code Pink, we're known for showing up and getting in their faces. So having that street heat and that outside presence is just as important. So BlackRock on the surface, it paints itself as this ideal investment firm. It's invested in its stakeholders. They say they provide non-toxic work environment and create shared values. But underneath all that public relations at PR, BlackRock washes over its responsible investing and sustainable platforms. And it continues to invest in weapon manufacturers. Have you had any interesting experiences when you've been outside of BlackRock office? Do you have any fond memories of engagement with an employee? Yeah. So definitely. So I could just kind of give an example. When we had our protests on March 26, security showed up at all our protests. And I think they showed up at yours too. So in LA, BlackRock, they put up a security barricade around this 40-story building to avoid like these three fierce peace activists. It was so silly. And in San Francisco, we had, it wasn't security, it turns out.  And he shook our hand and he was very nice. But for some reason, they have their finger on the pulse. And I wouldn't be surprised if they're listening today. But they're on the up and up and they know what we're doing and what our next move is, which is kind of scary. But they have, on their website, they have listed a Washington, D.C. office. And we were hoping to do a protest outside of their D.C. office. But they moved it when we contacted them for the new address. BlackRock responded, we don't give it out.  I agree with you. When you talk to them at the office, they kind of like shoo me away. They're like polite and respectful. But then when I went, this was like the third time I went, they were like, okay, we'll take this letter, we'll read it. We go downstairs, do our protest. We have the cops called on us from BlackRock. They're talking to the people at the front desk. They're like, there are these three women downstairs. We don't know what they're going to do. We don't know what they're planning. I was like, I'm just going to stand here and hand out this postcard. I'm not planning anything bad. They're like a little scared. And they shouldn't be scared. They should just dive us from war and we'll leave them alone. I know. We asked for a meeting with them with Larry Fink or even, you know, even his like assistant or someone at the front does just someone to meet with us to talk about it. You know, just a couple of weeks ago, I delivered a letter just like you did to San Francisco and Mr. Villa, who was the VP, he came out and he was really nice and accepted my letter. And he didn't like the fact that I was on Facebook live. So we kind of huff and puff and took my letter and left. Well, then the week after I went and I delivered the petition with over 3,000 signatures and then he was really receptive and nice. And he, but he was eager to just sort of shoe me out of the building like he was talking to me, but talking and walking me out the door at the same time, which is an art in itself. So yeah, it's been really interesting, but I don't understand why they don't want to just sit down and talk to us. If they would just sit down and talk to us, we wouldn't have to go bother them every week like we do or sometimes twice a month like we just have. Right, right. Not just this guy, but this lovely postcard we have. It's directed to Larry Fink. I've been handing them out in Dallas. I go to the train station to hand them out to people. And I just actually last time I went, I just like left a few scattered like in the front of the office as a little like wink to the BlackRock employees. But we have this wonderful postcard campaign going on. Do you want to talk a little bit about this and Mr. Larry Fink? Yeah, absolutely. So we're kind of ripping a page out of the Rainforest Action Network Action Book and we've launched a postcard campaign and the postcards go directly to Mr. Fink's house because that's what we're about. We're about getting in their faces and it's requesting that he and BlackRock divest from the war. And the postcards have been a real hit. It's been amazing. We have members of our group in Code Pink who are talking about having postcard writing campaigns. So now that we have his address, we can just have these kind of kitchen table postcard parties and just mail them off to him. Actually we've already done some of that. So some of them have probably already reached his residence. I hope he's reading them. And if anyone watching wants to get their own postcards, they can go to codefink.org slash Larry Fink. The whole letter to Mr. Fink is there. You can send that out and send it to him or contact anyone at Code Pink.  There are many of them. You can get involved. You can do an action. And let's talk about the wanted poster that's like sitting right behind your shoulder. Wanted for Larry Fink. Where have we been putting those up because those have made it around town, haven't they? Yeah, well the posters are really great. And we have this amazing designer in Canada who put it all together. And it just as Larry Fink wanted CEO BlackRock for investing in millions in the war machine, complicit in environmental destruction and holding shares in gun companies. And they've been in Palo Alto. They've been in Dallas. They've been in San Francisco, LA and all over New York. I'm in Greece right now doing humanitarian work. And I understand BlackRock has an office in Athens. So I plan to deliver one of these fabulous posters to the Athens Greece office sometime soon.  It is. That's amazing. I didn't know they had an office in Greece. I'm so happy that you're going to bug them even there. So we've been targeting a lot of different people because it's not just BlackRock. It's people that have ties to BlackRock because if you work with BlackRock that means you're also investing in war. That's just how it works. So who are the latest targets on our campaign? Because this is a long campaign. We have long-term goals. We're targeting lots of people to get everyone to dive us for more. Yeah. Well, so to really, well, one of the tactics to create change is to reach out to possible shareholders. So we have two shareholders, a BlackRock that we are right now actively engaging in. So we have Thriveint, which is a Christian, specifically Lutheran investment firm. And we've sent them a letter explaining our BlackRock campaign and why BlackRock's values differ from Thriveint and the Lutherans. And then we're also looking at Amalgamated Bank. Amalgamated is probably one of the most progressive banks in the U.S. It's dedicated to ethical values and responsibility. On their website, they even have a statement about not lending or investing in weapon manufacturers. So they're totally in line with our values at Code Pink and with our Divest from the War Machine campaign. And what's interesting is Amalgamated is a certified B Corp. And so they can really influence change by continuing to use its collective voice as a force for good. And right now, it's exciting because we are in talks with Amalgamated and things are looking really good and really possible for them to dive us from the War Machine. That's really exciting. I hope that, I think they're a very movable target. So if anyone is just now joining us on wonderful Facebook Live, I'm Natasha. I'm here with my colleague Nancy. We're talking BlackRock and divesting from war. Yes. If you follow us on Facebook, you know right now we are talking a lot about Larry Fing, CEO of BlackRock and how he's actually going to be awarded a Humanitarian Award by the International Rescue Committee IRC for short. Nancy, I'm confused by that. You're confused by that. Let's talk about it. Why is he getting a Humanitarian Award? Why? Yeah, so Larry Fink is the CEO of BlackRock and IRC for some of you who don't know is the International Rescue Committee and they do incredible work to support migrants and refugees. I'm currently here in Greece working at a refugee camp and I get to see firsthand the work that they are doing in one of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. I mean, they do fantastic work and so we're concerned over Larry Fink receiving IRCs, John C. Whitehead Humanitarian Award. It's really maddening because Larry Fink continues to profit from war, weapons and violence and we're asking IRC to reconsider honoring this war profiteer with a Humanitarian Award. So the two leading contributors to the global refugee crisis are climate change and war. And so rewarding Larry Fink for profits from weapons and violence while the IRC is seeking to assist people impacted by wars really undermines the value of their work and it's just it's really maddening especially to see them working here with war refugees in Greece. So that's all I have to say. It's just maddening. It really is. It's really sad that he's going to get, he might get this award. Not really doing anything for a humanitarian cause just having money basically but we are having, we have a letter right now that we're sending to the IRC asking them to rescind this award. You can go to code pink dot org slash IRC. I'll put the link in the comments below but send a letter to the IRC, tell them to consider rescinding this award not honoring Larry Fink. They should divest from war just like we talked about and so talk about how war is a huge cause of the migrant crisis. Let's talk about how BlackRock is invested in general dynamics who is currently profiting off child detention going on at the border right now. Yeah, oh my gosh. So we just keep piling on piling on when you start pulling back the layers of this stinky onion. So just a reminder that BlackRock has stakes in weapon companies such as General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. General Dynamics is a prime example of a company profiting from those who are suffering. This military contractor, some of you may remember them from Iraq, from the Iraq war. They've taken a government contract to provide social services to migrant children. How that U.S. detention counts. So when you think about someone providing social services to migrants, what do you think of? You think of a church, you think of a NGO, of a nonprofit. You don't think of a war prophet here. So General Dynamics has provided weapons to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraq, Turkey and has directly benefited from the U.S. invasion on Iraq. BlackRock owns more than 60 million shares of General Dynamics stocks. And BlackRock is directly profiting from General Dynamics actions as part of the border militarization. Crazy. It is so crazy.  It's worse and worse. It's why they have to divest. Just to say no to taking money from terrible people. You would think it's so easy. Well, maybe we should talk about the online campaign and how successful that's been. Talk about it. If you're watching now, you are obviously a follower on Facebook and you are seeing our beautiful shareables about Larry Fink and BlackRock and how they're connected to LB, connected to General Dynamics, these weapons manufacturers. That's me posting them all. We target them. We tag them. We're in their Facebook comments. We're in their Twitter mentions. They are annoyed at us in real life when we go to their office and online. As a social media manager, I'm sure whoever runs their social media is getting lots of notifications from us and I'm very proud about that. I think we have really great tactics online to get involved if there isn't a BlackRock office near you or if you just can't make it out to do an action, there is think.org slash BlackRock. We'll show you all the ways you can get involved just by sending a letter to Larry Fink, sending a letter to the IRC to tell them to rescind their award to him. Just collecting those signatures is really important for us when we deliver those petitions to the people in the office. When I gave the petition of our Larry Fink petition to the BlackRock employee in Dallas, he was surprised that we had over 3,000 signatures. There are 73 pages worth of signatures that I gave this guy and I said, I hope you read them all. I don't know if he did. I couldn't even read through all of them before I delivered it because there's a lot of action behind this and there's a lot of people who want to get engaged. If you're watching, you haven't signed these petitions yet. You haven't shared that Facebook link. You haven't retweeted that tweet. You can go do it. It's so easy and it's all on our website. I just wanted to just break the break in a little bit and talk about why has the online campaign been so successful? What is it? What do you think it is? It's been amazing what has happened with the online campaign around BlackRock. I think people are surprised that this company that they maybe haven't heard of before has billions in weapons manufacturers and has their hands in child attention and the slaughter going on in Gaza and Palestine right now. You read about that. You want to do something about it and maybe you can't go out to a BlackRock office near you and you can share this and inform some of your friends, some of your family. Social engagement is an easy way to get involved and you can do it all on Code Pink. Right. You really can. That's our online strategy, but this is a long-term campaign. Even if they divest for more, there's still so much for us to do with them. There's so many more steps. So many more steps to take. What is our next big step, Nancy, as the campaign manager for this? What's the next big thing? Right. Well, just to let you know BlackRock employees that are listening in, our next big step is try to get some small wins such as building relationships with BlackRock shareholders who can influence change from within. One thing I did not mention is, along with amalgamated and thriving, there is another shareholder we're working with and hopefully that'll be our ticket into the next shareholders meeting to help influence change and help also get BlackRock to divest from war. We're also going to continue to have an outside presence at the BlackRock offices.  So, we'll definitely do that. I find that that's pretty successful. Maybe we could do something creative, like have a teach-in inside of one of the BlackRock offices. And then the postcard campaign is really kind of, it's really really risky. So, actually sending the postcards to his house is really putting it out there, putting the campaign out there. So, if anyone is interested in receiving a pack of postcards, they can contact Kirsten at CodePink.org. And then we're going to continue to educate the International Rescue Committee's donors on this year's John C. Whitehead Humanitarian Awardee, Larry Fink, and continue to call on the IRC to resend his award. We have a lot of... Yeah, those are some of the steps that come to mind quickly. But yeah, do you have any ideas for next steps for the online campaign? I think it's pretty fresh and it's doing really well. You know, I think we should keep doing more webinars like this, and then we should keep tweeting at as many people as possible. Everyone who's watching, you can go on tweet at BlackRock, just at BlackRock, super simple handle. Let them know you're watching, let them know you're learning about what they're doing, because they can't hide anymore, we're calling them out. And I will post the links to all the ways you can get involved in the comments below, and I'll post it in the bio of this video. Nancy, is there anything else you want to add about BlackRock or just what you're doing with Code Pink? Well, I really think BlackRock must divest from and stop investing in companies that sell weapons used in war and violence around the world and at home. BlackRock must divest from defense contractors that profit from child detention facilities. And yeah, just go to codepink.org slash BlackRock. Definitely check out divest from the war machine website as well. There's a lot of great resources on that page, but yeah, this has been really great. It has been great. It's so good to have this conversation with you. Thank you everyone who's watching. Don't forget to go to codepink.org slash BlackRock. Take action. Get out there. Keep fighting for peace. Peace. Bye, everyone.


Next question is from Matt Ammo. How do stimulants affect the anabolic process in recovery? Oh, what a great question, because this is one of the answers that irritates people because it depends. If, so stimulants, what do they do to the body, right? They stimulate the central nervous system. Classic stimulant would be caffeine. You take caffeine, it produces an increase in catecholamine production. It makes you feel more alert, more energized. In a healthy state, if you're healthy, it's not gonna negatively affect hormones like testosterone, might actually improve insulin sensitivity in some people. It could fuel good workouts, reduce your, increase your pain tolerance so your workouts can be a little bit harder, might have some brain health properties. And so in that case, if you're healthy, nothing wrong with stimulants. The problem becomes or happens when your health is in the wrong, it's the wrong kind of health to throw stimulants at.  It could cause cortisol to come up even higher, although temporarily you probably feel good from that extra cortisol. It is not a good thing to throw on that fire. It's like gasoline on the fire. And when I work with clients who are in this state of being one of the first things I do is I wean them off of stimulants because the stimulants are making everything worse. So it really does depend. It's a problem for a lot of people. I mean myself included in terms of like what that provides. I know how I feel after I'll have a stimulant or have some coffee. And what I've noticed is obviously the trends within our industry is to really cater to that into going into the workout. So it becomes ritualized where I have to have my pre-workout. I have to have this and then it's not working as much. So I have to add more and I keep adding more and more. And then you start having real negative results from that. And so you can really put yourself in a position where it's like I'm so reliant on this to produce these workouts for me but now I'm just adding more stress and more things that are really like taking me in a downward progression. I really don't think this was a big deal just 20 years ago. We now we live in the Starbucks generation and the pre-workout generation. Like 20 plus years ago, I mean it was coffee every now and then. And then there was probably a very small percentage of those people that even were probably drinking in that regular basis. And I would probably argue that it wasn't a lot of the fitness people that were. There was also the perception that coffee wasn't healthy which kind of prevented people from over there. Coffee-cigarettes combo. Yeah, exactly. So it really wasn't in the health and fitness space like it is.  And I think this is becoming more and more of a conversation that I've had to have in just the last five years than I had to have in the previous 15 years. And I don't think it would have been that big of a deal except for it's just become so accepted now. It's become so accepted to start your day off with your pot of coffee at home.   But yeah, I know it can. And to your original points, it does depend. It does depend on who I'm talking. Somebody who uses stimulants judiciously and intermittently, probably not a big deal. I try not to, I mean, I can't tell you it's probably been, I wanna say a month maybe or so since the last time I grabbed a pre-workout before but I have coffee on a very regular basis almost every day in the morning. But I'm aware of that, right? That I wanna intermittently use something that strong so I get the effects from it and then I don't get the adverse effects from having too much of it. What's the scientific term for adrenal fatigue? HPA axis dysfunction. Yeah, that's what the hypothalamus, the pituitary and the adrenals are just not communicating well and if your hormones are off, stimulants are not a good idea, both in men and in women. It can cause more problems, not directly necessarily. So it's not like the caffeine or the stimulant itself is causing a lowering of testosterone or issues with estrogen or progesterone necessarily, although in women there may be some estrogen issues but that's disputable. It's really through the indirect effect of increasing the stress in the body. So you're already stressed, then you add stimulant on top of that, it's lifting it up even higher so now the stress level is even higher through chemicals and then because of that, now things start to feel bad.  Oh yeah.  Withdraw. Yeah, because your body's adapted to having some of the stimulus. So here's a recommendation, cut your stimulant use, if you need to reduce it or need to go off for a second, cut your stimulant use down by a quarter and then once that feels okay, cut it down by another quarter until you're down to zero. Going cold turkey can be really, I know people who do it, but it can be real nasty. I've focused on drinking water too, that's a big priority for me. And honestly, if you're somebody who's wondering, like how do I know if I'm somebody who's being affected by this? I think it's just a good practice for anybody to wing on and off all the time. I just think that anything that you are doing in your life that you find yourself doing every single day, even if it's just two coffees, right? Like just two coffees a day or maybe you don't even do coffee, you just do pre-workouts every time before you work out. I mean, I think there's a healthy relationship with the ability to be able to just say, I'm not gonna use that for two weeks or three weeks. So forget just what it may be doing for muscle building. I think the psychological ability to do that, I think is important. Yeah, if you feel like you need it, like I have to have it. Right. Then you might want to visit it. That's your sign right there. It's like the conversation I used to have with clients that would refuse to drink wine. And I'd be like, listen, they refuse to eliminate wine. Yeah, refuse to eliminate wine in their diet.  It's just like, well, you might want to look into that a little bit. You know what I'm saying? Like if you think that you have to have your wine every single, and I'm not saying that you can't have things like that and enjoy it. I'm totally for somebody. I had a glass of wine last weekend. I'm not against having a glass of wine. But if you've become so dependent on any substance every single day, you've got to start questioning that about you. And nobody can do that better than yourself. And so you need to evaluate that and ask yourself if you claim that you need a pre-workout every single time you work out, there's probably a little bit of a problem there.