Interview with Andy Huang

Nick: I’m here with Andy Huang and were sitting down to talk to him about what he thinks his feelings are on bold people or what not cause he’s a pretty bold person himself. Andy tell the audience a little bit about what you do.

Andy: Hey everybody this is Andy Huang and I own an advertising agency that specialize in search marketing.

Nick: Specifically what type of search marketing?

Andy: We focus on ppc search, content network ads, pretty much all the different global product that is available to purchase advertising we specialize in from mobile ads, content ads, to search ads all the way to TV ads. I’m actually working on a couple of infomercial projects this month debuting some new product category that’s going to be aired through the Google TV network.

Nick: Very cool. So how’d you get into that?

Andy: This is a really long story but about a couple of years ago when the other business that I have in manufacturing we were planning to be acquired by another manufacturing overseas. So during that period of time I started to look for a different opportunity to see what I’m going to do next after I sell a business. I’ve been a stock options trader for about 16 years now and at that point I analyze a lot of different companies and one company actually made it to my radar and that’s Google and I was looking at their income statements and I was just blown away by the amount of the revenues and profits that they are able to generate. This company has grown double digits every single quarter after the stock became public and I was really intrigued by what they were doing. So I wanted to learn more about how to participate in this phenomenal growth with Google. So I went online and I found a gentleman by the name of Simon Leung. At that time he was working at Google as the lead search ad words optimizer at Google. So I said to myself hey you know what if I’m going to find somebody who could tell me a little bit more about this opportunity Simon's the person. So long story short I tried to contact him through the internet but with every internet marketer everything is set up with auto responders. You never get a respond from him and then what happened was I found out he was speaking in September of 2007 in an internet marketing event. So I flew to the event just to meet him. So when I got to the event he was speaking on stage and as soon as he step off the stage I went up to him and kind of told him my big ideas and how we should team up. So ever since then as they say it’s been history. So this is how I got into the business.

Nick: That’s cool. So anytime you start a new business there’s always some hurdles you have to overcome. Where there any you encountered?

Andy: Oh definitely. There’s definitely a lot of learning curve. I was fortunate that this is the third company I have setup so I went through a lot of start-up process in the past. I just kind of learned how to really build a business from the ground up. So there are things that, challenges and obstacles that I have to get through but with I think the key that really helped me to build my business is relationship. I reached out to all the different people and the resource that I can find to help me build my business and then I was able to kind of maintain a good relationship with pretty much everybody that I came to business with and that these are the people that are there to support me when I start.

Nick: Very cool. So were there any big hurdles to overcome.

Andy: Definitely.

Nick: And how’d you handle them? More specifically like when you hit that hurdle was it and obstacle, did you see it as an obstacle or like an end all be all or how’d you get over that. Most businesses had like some sort of small hurdle they have to overcome and if you don’t go over the first one you’ll not be able to get over the last one. So how’d you handle, what was the mental process?

Andy: Right. Well you know when I started this business. This has to work because I sold the other business and I had a little money left and I said this is the next big thing and I really wanted to do this. In the initial setup phases is where it’s the most difficult because you’re brand new. Nobody knows who you are and then I was really fortunate like I said before I build a lot of positive relationships with all the different people that I worked with in the past. These are the guys who really supported me to overcome the hurdle and I really treasure being able to have that kind of support from all the different vendors, the customers I have worked in the past. They are able to kind of support me during the initial phases of this business.

Nick: Right. Totally. So you’re a bold guy. You get what you want. You go after like what you did with this business. How would you describe someone that was bold in your eyes?

Andy: I think somebody when you mention somebody who’s bold; the first thing that comes to my mind is somebody who is willing to take a risk who is willing to take action and somebody who is willing to take challenges. so I think maybe I have a couple of characteristic of something like that cause from my investment experience you have to risk in order to reap the reward that you are projecting and that’s one of the things that I differentiate from everybody else. I have that confidence that I’m willing to take the risk and just believe in what I truly believe that’s going to be successful and sticking with it.

Nick: Totally yeah. I can definitely vibe with that. So if someone described you as bold what would they be describing? Your thoughts, basically your ideas, your personality, your physical attributes or the whole package.

Andy: I think they would probably describe me as my ideas as my philosophies. Over the years I’ve just been trading and also doing product sourcing and doing trade shows. A lot of times you really have to risk certain stuff. You really have to just go out there and just do it without really knowing what could happen but if you put a plan together and really analyze a number you really go in to take your chances when you know you’re going to be 90 or 95%. Just go with your gut feeling.

Nick: I have a theory that people have a secret sauce that they apply to every single way. It’s a way that they approach a problem. What would you say your secret sauce is?

Andy: I think I have two secret sauces. It’s a combination of both. I do a lot of research to find members to analyze them so I use numbers to validate my thoughts just to make sure that this is something that could be measured by a certain type of matrix and the second thing is I leverage the relationship I have. Sometimes I could not find the right answers I’m looking for looking of these numbers. Then I reach out to another expert who could really help me figuring out what’s the proper path, the proper actions to take. So it’s the combination of relationship as well as measuring, analyzing specific numbers for the market and looking at different matrix to kind of help me get through some of the decision process that I have to make.

Nick: Got you. That is a really admirable way of approaching problems. I really like that. How did you learn that way? Did you read any influential books or anything like that?

Andy: Yeah definitely. I got a lot of different trainings ever since I was 16. I signed up for a network marketing company...

Nick: Which one?

Andy: I started with herbalife. I was 16. Didn’t really make any money with it because I was way too young. None of my friends in high school needed to lose weight. I think I said this is a couple of my presentations as well that I actually gained weight while I was doing herbalife cause I had to buy all this different weight loss products and I still have to eat stuff. So I ended up eating consuming my own weight loss product while eating. So I put on about 15 pounds while I was doing herbalife. These guys had remarkable training. They have local training. They have a lot of support and my upline was very influential to me. He actually gave me the book think and grow rich and also the magic of thinking big and then these are pretty much the initial books that I read when I was 16. It really changed my mentality to realize that I could have more potential as I kind of grow into my life and I was in school. I think one of the other book that really got me intrigued in life was the art of war. How to do strategies and how to apply them into business. So I think these three books are the most influential books that I encourage everybody to read that. That has definitely propelled my life to a different level.

Nick: Awesome. So basically you’ve dabbled in both financial markets and internet markets.

Andy: Correct.

Nick: Could you share some advice on the viewers on how they could get started and let’s say financial first and well talk about internet in a minute.

Andy: Well you can pretty much do a hybrid. What I’m doing right now is more of a hybrid strategy where I’m looking for opportunities on the financial side. So one of the example I can give our viewers is that I’ve been doing the iPad niches probably about three months ago. Setting stages because I already know who is building the iPad from the supply chain side and I know apple committed x amount of dollars to purchase x amount of iPads that they’re going to be successful. so while everybody else is just waiting for the product to be launched we are already marketing this product on the internet, dominating different search terms just to kind of support the iPad launch and another thing I could away to the view is that last week Samsung and apple signed a three year contract to purchase 240 million dollars of purchase orders for just their touch screen panels. So panel itself is less than a $100. So apple is that confident that they are going to buy what? 2.4 million pieces of the panel. that means that they would have to sell the iPad at least $500 each and they’re looking at a billion dollars in revenue for the next three years just on the iPad alone. So if you could kind of trace that type of numbers and this is a market that is worth billions. If apple is that confident hey I’m with them. these are some of the things that I used to do that I’m doing now is that I take the financial data and look at what all the big dogs are doing cause all the public trading companies when they announce their earnings everything is there. When they have their conference call, their meetings everybody could tap in.

Nick: ...to get the records. So how would one go about finding those things?

Andy: Yahoo finance. You go to yahoo finance. You go to Google finance. All the data for all these public companies are there. You can listen in to their earning conference call and they will tell you what are some of the new things that they’re doing for the next quarter. When you listen in to these conference calls you’ll be like wow. I didn’t know that apple was doing iAd. What’s iAd? It’s another platform that apple is launching. When you listen to these calls they’re given information away for us to really tap into the niche and to really be able to leverage.

Nick: You’ve got first mover advantage.

Andy: Exactly and a lot of people don’t know that but all the information is already there. so instead of doing keyword search try to do the industry search first because there is no search volume on something that is coming out three months later but if you listen to these conference calls you know it’s already in the pipeline for development then you can really be the first person in the internet marketing to really take over a specific market and then be able to profit including leverage. The growth potential that it has on any public trading companies opportunity that you want to...

Nick: Right. So what’s your monetization plan if you don’t mind sharing on the iPad?

Andy: For the iPad itself I have a couple of monetization strategies and I’ll be trading the apple stock options that’s one of the things I could get in really quick and then I’m also doing accessory sales because when anything that comes out accessories is going to be built around it.

Nick: Right exactly.

Andy: So we’re doing like the cases, the keyboards and then covers. It’s an endless opportunity.

Nick: So basically what you do is you know that something is going to hit big on the stock market. so you buy the options on that and you also know that there’s going to be accessory items, complimentary items and then you hop in there and realize that I can compete here and I can setup before everyone else does.

Andy: Exactly and there’s going to be a lot of stuff building around iPad itself and if you just kind of look at any ecommerce shopping platform for accessories that’s related to iPhone. You see a ton of accessories for iPhone and you know that iPad is going to have similar accessories. So why not just kind of take advantage before the launch and really build that out and when product becomes available switch out to an affiliate link and start marketing products. That way we do our affiliate processes a little bit different. We try to concentrate on the demographic were trying to target. So I’ll give you an example on some of the stuff that we build for iPhones is that we narrowed it down to specific demographic. If we wanted to target women who wants to decorate their own iPhones. This is the way that we market it. So all the product that we promote are going to be, all the blinged out stuff that’s suitable for a girl. If somebody who is an Ed Hardy fan that we build campaigns around promoting Ed Hardy cases for the iPhones. So you want to be very specific in terms what market segment, what demographic you want to target. Same thing with the iPad. iPad could be a good business tool that a lot of businessmen can use in the future so were building campaigns around iPads for business.

Nick: I like it. So we’ve taken enough of your time. What’s one last tip you would leave the viewers with.

Andy: You just have to take action. I think a lot of time a lot of the people I have talked to they have a bunch of different good ideas and then it’s on their head. They never write it down. They never really plan it and nothing happens. so one of the thing that really changed my life is I was taking an investment course and the trainer or actually the speaker that was teaching the class says you’ve got to have a plan whenever you do your investment strategy or when you do your business. You’ve got to write down your plan. So when you look at it did your plan actually fail you or was it that you failed to really plan?

Nick: Execute the plan.

Andy: Execute the plan. So if you did not have a sound plan or come up with a sound plan then you need to really go back and start writing everything down and plan for your own success because if everything is in your head then you’re going to fail because you're going to forget. You’re going to get distracted and nothing is going to get done.

Nick: Awesome. Well thanks.

Andy: Great.