Val Selby [00:00:06]:
Hey, this is Val Selby and after over 20 years online, I can track where my mindset has blocked me. If procrastination, impostor syndrome and a lack of focus have been blocking your biz, then Val Full Volume is here to help you see choices you are making. Get ready to use your expertise to collaborate like a pro as you create the business of your dreams. Now is the time to make changes and live your best life. Let's get to it!  

Val Selby [00:00:39]:
Hello, everyone. Val here from Val Full Volume. And as you can see, how exciting. You don't have to just listen to me today. I know you're here for it and you love it, but it's been a while since I've had a guest. And what an awesome first back to guesting having you on here, Amy. I'm so happy about that. Because Amy and I have actually met in person. So and we do live close together, so you'd think we'd meet more in person. We were just talking about pot recording.

Val Selby [00:01:09]:
But she's also been online for a long time, so there's going to be who knows what nuggets flying out of our mouths as we talk back and forth? Thank you for being here, Amy.

Amy Harrop [00:01:19]:
Thanks, Val. Thanks so much for having me. It's really glad to be here. It's really fun to get a chance to talk to you, especially, you know, like you said, it's easy to just sort of get burrowed in when we work from home even though there's people around us. So I appreciate this opportunity.

Val Selby [00:01:33]:
Yeah. Yeah. And for you guys listening, Amy and I actually live close enough, but then my daughter actually lives even closer to Amy. So I just have to make a priority that that's not an excuse not to meet up with her anymore because we could at least meet up for freaking 10 minutes for a hug and a coffee. 

Amy Harrop [00:01:49]:
Yes. Yes. I'm putting it out there.

Val Selby [00:01:55]:
It can be that easy. Amy, would you tell my listeners about you and about your business? Whatever you wanna talk about.

Amy Harrop [00:02:03]:
Sure. My name is Amy Harrop. Actually, my first full name is Amaryllis, but it's a little bit of a mouthful. So I tend to go by Amy Harrop professionally, and that's usually where you'll find me online. My business that I founded is Succeed With Content. And I've been involved in the online content creation space for, I'd say, a good 12 years. I sort of rebranded my business about 2 years ago. It's taken about 2 years to completely mostly rebrand it.

Amy Harrop [00:02:33]:
So you can now find me at SucceedWithContent.com. And I'm super excited. Even though it hasn't officially came through, I applied and now will have, I think starting in January, a trademark for Succeed With Content. So now I can put my little trademark thing on the website. So I'm very excited about that.

Val Selby [00:02:51]:
Nice. Yep. Funky girls' names unite because my real name's Valera, not Valerie. I love it now. It was a little different coin, of course. But, oh, you just absolutely because the rebranding's been happening. The switchover's been happening since I took over Bundle Bash completely on my own, and my brain has been telling me, oh my god.

Val Selby [00:03:19]:
This should have all been done by now. And for you to be in a similar spot, I don't - misery loves company, and I am so happy to hear that.

Amy Harrop [00:03:30]:
Yeah. You're right. Because I know you've been rebranding. Yeah. It's taken me 2 years. And there's still, like, lots of little things where I'm like, I'm not gonna go into all of my old content and rebrand every little piece that has my name and change it to Succeed With Content. But we are kind of as we go along, we're making sure, you know, the sales pages are rebranded and, well, that's mostly done. But, you know, if we're putting more the content out there again to people, we're trying to go through and make sure it's updated.

Amy Harrop [00:03:57]:
But, yeah, it's been very long. It's taken a really long time. Don't feel bad.

Val Selby [00:04:00]:
Yeah. You, you had even more products. So that's, like, blowing my mind and just knowing how every time we would find something, all of a sudden, there'd be the tripwire or something that would be attached, and it's like, oh, crap. That didn't get done. You know? And it wouldn't be my voice.

Val Selby [00:04:19]:
It wouldn't be the logo, and everything's so different now from what it was 2 years ago that it's like, oh, people are gonna be lost. Like, where the hell am I?

Amy Harrop [00:04:30]:
You'll get there eventually. I mean, I think I'm about 90% there. I like to say I'm done because I'm not actively - it's more now, like, if I come across something, I'm like, okay, I need to update that. But I'm not actively going through. I've done all the, fingers crossed, all the big pieces and stuff. So.

Val Selby [00:04:46]:
Yeah. Yeah. Same. Same. We're there as well. So what got you into working online? Do you even remember?

Amy Harrop [00:04:52]:
I have a degree in film production. I went to film school many years ago in San Francisco State. And when I got out, I moved down to Los Angeles and I worked in the film industry for a little bit. And I didn't really like working in the film industry. I mean, I think, you know, we've now seen the Me Too stuff come out. And I can say working in the film industry at the time, while I met some cool people, wasn't the most pleasant experience. And I was just like, I don't really like this. I like movies and stuff, but I don't really like working in the industry.

Amy Harrop [00:05:21]:
So I got out of the industry and I kinda kicked around and did a lot of different things. I have a lot of sales experience. I got into teaching. I've spent 3 years as a high school English teacher teaching college level AP English and sort of the upper level. Again, parts of it I like. I really didn't like the ceiling on the earning potential and just kind of the long hours and a lot of work. You know, a lot of teachers as a kind of a side note right now are leaving the industry because of that. But I only spent, like, 3 years in some other stuff.

Amy Harrop [00:05:53]:
Yeah. So then I got involved with wanting to sort of leave working for other people. And this is when I live in Southern California, and I started selling used books online with it through Amazon.

Val Selby [00:06:04]:
Mhmm.

Amy Harrop [00:06:04]:
And that was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it because the used book sort of subculture is very interesting and it's fun. But, again, it's not very scalable because you really still have to go out and get books and things like that. And it also is very much like, Southern California was a great place to do that because there was lots of estate sales. There was lots of, like, celebrities, wealthy homes, and things. Where I live now, Northern Idaho, it probably wouldn't go so well.

Val Selby [00:06:31]:
Mhmm.

Amy Harrop [00:06:31]:
So at the time, I was thinking, well, I like being online. I like having my own little business, but I need to do something different. And that's sort of when Amazon had also recently released, I believe, the first Kindle, and they were looking for people to publish. So, you know, it used to be that if you wanted to publish a book, you had to go find an agent. You had to write a proposal and go find an agent or send your stuff to a publishing company where it would sit in the slush pile. And so now when Amazon started the Kindle and the KDP program, they, allowed anybody to publish. You didn't need a gatekeeper, which is good and bad, you know?

Val Selby [00:07:08]:
Right.

Amy Harrop [00:07:08]:
In some ways. But I thought, well, you know, it'd be great if not only could I publish online, but also maybe if I could put together some stuff to help other people. And that's sort of what happened is I did a product on helping people with that. It was called Kindle Kickstart Promotion, and it was sort of about free ways you could do that. And, you know, before that too, I had spent a good year buying a lot of things online, looking at a lot of things. I had joined the Warrior Forum community when it, you know, was back in those days when it was, like, kind of a community and got to know some of the vendors and stuff. And I thought, well, okay.

Amy Harrop [00:07:42]:
I'm gonna do this. So I did, and it was received well. And I thought it just sort of ended up using a lot of my skill set with teaching and training and sales. And so that was just sort of the beginning, and I kinda took off and running. So I don't know if that's a very long winded way, but that's how I got involved into evolving to what I currently do.

Val Selby [00:08:04]:
It's amazing how many people I have talked to that have come in through the teaching industry, and I definitely just wanna pick their brain at times because especially those that have been in a long time. Right? It's like, okay. You've got, like, different ideas of organizing, getting your daily stuff together, putting the classes together. I'm like, yes. I'm gonna pick your brain. But getting them to transition to online sometimes is tough. They associate it as brand new.

Val Selby [00:08:32]:
Like, it's totally different. It's like, no. No. No. We're just gonna smoothly move you on with what you're already doing. We just have to do it in a different format. This is the easy part. As it's not.

Val Selby [00:08:45]:
Right? Easy for us after all of these years. So I know that you've got your hand in quite a few different things. I would bet that has to do topics, I should say. I bet that has to do with your love of the books and where all that is. It's kind of the eclectic, I like things. I like to learn things. What right now is your favorite thing to be teaching training on, helping people with?

Amy Harrop [00:09:13]:
Well, sort of what I've been focusing on the last year is how do we use and integrate some of these AI tools. You know? And that has become, I know, very much a buzzword. And what I've been developing on this last year is putting together some products with what are basically bots which help people create and accomplish tasks. You know, it's sort of a middle ground between having, like, a high end software, which I've developed software before, and I do have some software. But this is sort of more of a middle ground where it's having, like, a developing helper for people so they can create content or publish content, but making it where it's a little more interactive. Because at least for right now, in terms of written content, I have found that some of the tools out there that promise to be, like, completely push button just don't give you the greatest output, really.

Val Selby [00:10:09]:
Yeah.

Amy Harrop [00:10:09]:
You know? They really don't. So I'm trying to kinda have more of that middle ground. So I've come up with a tool that help people create or pull, content so they could publish public domain to make it more unique, so they could publish like, include, like, study guides or supplemental material, like author history and things like that. Because if you're publishing public domain, you need to have it unique. Like, on Amazon is really the only platform that accepts it. I've come out with a study or a bot that helps people create card deck content. So if they wanna develop a card deck or a digital card deck, which are very popular now, it'll help them like, if they wanna do maybe an oracle deck or a deck that's a bit more picture heavy, it'll help them come up with the card meanings. And then it also can come up with art prompts as well if they wanna, you know, use an artist or use a tool to help create their art too.

Amy Harrop [00:10:58]:
So that's kind of what I've been working on more this year. It's been fun. I mean, I think as you probably would agree with me, I think the marketplace and what's going on has sort of changed a lot, you know, over the last, oh, I don't know, really, I guess, since COVID. But even since then, I think things are changing. And so keeping up for it or having creating a space for it, you know, has been something that's also changing, I think, even the last couple of years, you know, as far as that goes.

Val Selby [00:11:27]:
Mhmm. Yeah. It was definitely already changing and then that was just like smack dab. Boom. We are changing now.

Val Selby [00:11:37]:
For you guys listening, I have a really good friend and she has used the Oracle bot that you were talking about. Do you call it a bot? What do you call it?

Amy Harrop [00:11:46]:
Well, the tool was called Easy AI Digital Card Decks because it was really focused - I've had other card deck products previously where I talked a lot about doing print on demand. And in this one, although I included a bit in the upsell, it was really just more focused on doing the digital decks because those are the easiest.

Val Selby [00:12:02]:
Yep. Yep. So I'll have the link down below because I know from talking to her what she's been putting together that this has helped her a lot. So when you're saying bot because, I mean, I'm in AI, but the whole idea of bots and custom chats and now gems for Gemini, is your bot specific to a certain AI platform?

Amy Harrop [00:12:26]:
Well, you're right. They have now, like, Gemini, and they have, custom GPTs. I'm using an intermediary tool where I plug into the back end of the API. And, currently, the one I'm using is the ChatGPT-4o Mini, which is really good and also very cost effective.

Val Selby [00:12:46]:
Mhmm.

Amy Harrop [00:12:47]:
So the tool I'm using allows you to sort of plug into different APIs. So you can use, like, clouds, or I don't know if Gemini actually has an API that they're making available on that end. So it's basically great for me, like, as a non developer because the tool, offers this interface where I can plug into the 8 different APIs, and then I can help put together the bot and run the bot. So it's something, as a non programmer, I can have so people then can see the front end of the bot and just have it work through the prompt. And you can take the prompts yourself too. I provide prompts. So if people don't wanna use the bot, they can go outside and just run those prompts through Gemini or Claude or ChatGPT if they don't wanna use it. So yeah.

Amy Harrop [00:13:30]:
I know the bot term is kind of vague because there's a lot of different things out there. I've just kind of been using that terminology. But it's basically, yeah, like a format where you would say, like, hey, I want this, and then the bot will ask you the questions to help you develop whatever the content is.

Val Selby [00:13:46]:
Mhmm. I think calling it a bot is fine because my brain does, like, wrap around, okay, so we've got the chat box and we've got that, and it's doing its own thing. I just wanted to double check. So if somebody is using your stuff, they don't have to have, like, the paid ChatGPT or the paid anything. Right? That's wonderful. I know so many of you out there are just like, oh, I don't even know how to dig into AI.

Val Selby [00:14:15]:
And unless you're nerds like some of us, which I don't know how, unless you're total nerd like I have, and I've been, like, losing time on using Gemini when I'm playing with it. It's for research. You know, this is the easier way to get it in there and to get using it and to learn to use it. And then you're gonna probably end up being a nerd because you're like, oh my gosh. The things I can do. I know you mentioned that you could bring your prompts in.

Val Selby [00:14:45]:
However, I bet it's way different using the prompts through your platform. 

Amy Harrop [00:14:52]:
I think it's better just because it's, like, more like the parameters. Like, it's more focused. Like so if you bring them outside, because I do test them. I don't test them with every single one of them, but I often will test them, like, with ChatGPT. You get good results, but I think it's a little bit better because of the bot's more, like, programmed just to think about that and not to be, like, oh, let me bring in a bunch of other random stuff, you know, which sometimes they do. Those LLM's, large language models as I call them, they bring in, like, other random stuff as well.

Val Selby [00:15:21]:
Exactly. Yeah. I used my first custom ChatGPT, and I don't have a paid version, so I don't use it. Gemini and I connected, and ChatGPT and I did it. It's like 2 different aliens that landed in my head. And when I used it, I was so happy because it's kinda like what you're talking about because it let it down to exactly where I wanted it to go. So, yeah, I will be hitting your AI tools and just going and seeing and just playing with them because it's fun. 

Amy Harrop [00:15:55]:
It is. It is fun. It is fun.

Val Selby [00:15:57]:
It's fun to have that brainstorming back and forth and instant no matter what time of the day or night.

Amy Harrop [00:16:04]:
Yeah. I mean, I don't think we're at the point, and hopefully, we won't be, where these tools would replicate the creativity or the genius of people who are creative geniuses. You know? I'm not looking for, you know, some tool to be, like, a better writer than, like, you know, like Jane Austen or Hemingway or whatever. I mean, they can write the style of it. But I think for a lot of us, where our communication tools and skill set's kind of in the mid range, where we're not geniuses, it can be really helpful, especially, you know, with informative writing and business writing. And as you said, brainstorming and tools and processes and just being more efficient, I think it can help with that as well, you know, because unless you're a genius, you know, it's there's probably some room for improvement there.

Val Selby [00:16:50]:
Right. Well, and even when you are a genius, can you convey your genius? I mean, how many people do I know that are, like, so smart they can't get words out of their mouth, whether they're texting, writing, you know, any of that. It's just - it's like Sheldon. It's like Sheldon from my Big Bang Theory. You know? And it's like they're super duper genius, but conveying it is a totally different, different story and getting it out there. I had an idea and then I dropped it.

Val Selby [00:17:22]:
Oh, I had somebody ask me when I was working with them, and they wanted to know, because I know everybody wants specifics, and we don't have parameters on AI really for, you know, what's okay, what's not okay, how much AI. And they were asking me, well, you know, how much do you edit? And I'm like, I can't even go into how much do I edit because I'm doing so much editing when I'm working with AI and getting it to figure out that I'm like, it's a constant edit.

Amy Harrop [00:17:51]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I also think too, again, depends what your platform is, what you're doing. I think sort of the issue with AI is what ended up happening is a lot of these companies who've developed it, what they did is they went and they scraped every other people's stuff.

Val Selby [00:18:09]:
Mhmm.

Amy Harrop [00:18:09]:
They didn't ask permission, and they went and they scraped a lot of writers, a lot of people are, you know, artists, visual artists, and stuff like that.

Val Selby [00:18:17]:
Yep.

Amy Harrop [00:18:17]:
So I will say while I enjoy using AI tools and developing them and things like that, definitely, it's also somewhat inherently problematic because they sort of developed and released all this stuff without getting permission. And so it's sort of like now they're trying to, as the saying goes, like, they're trying to bar the you know, close the barn after the horse has left.

Val Selby [00:18:41]:
Yep.

Amy Harrop [00:18:41]:
But I know, like, the EU is trying to put some stuff into place too. So I guess it's kind of like, well, what do we wanna do? Some people are purists and saying, no. I'm not gonna have anything to do with AI. But, again, I think if you're in the sort of market maybe that we're in where we're wanting to create content that people could connect with and buy, we may not be in that sort of purest place. I certainly am not because I am not a literary writer. I am not, like, a university professor. You know, I'm wanting to create tools and solutions for people, and we can do that a lot with these tools. But I also think it's important maybe just to recognize, like, these magic AI tools, which are fantastic, did not just sort of come out of the ether.

Amy Harrop [00:19:28]:
They would not have been able to be there if they hadn't gone and taken other people's stuff. I think it's important to recognize that. You know? Anyways.

Val Selby [00:19:37]:
Yeah. No. It's definitely, definitely slippery. I mean, especially because any of us that have been online, it's our information from I mean, who knows what website way back in the day that we would not even be using right now. But, yeah, they're in the way back machine pulling information. Right?

Amy Harrop [00:19:53]:
Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Val Selby [00:19:57]:
So I know, I mean, like I said, I know that you've got a bunch of stuff that you love, love to be touching on. What are you doing with affiliate marketing at this time? Because I know, for me, that's been something that's changed a lot.

Amy Harrop [00:20:10]:
Well, I mean, I think some of the players have changed a bit. I still do affiliate marketing. I mean, it's definitely part of my business plan. I sometimes feel a little bit like I'm just trying to catch up because I feel like people who want me to promote their stuff a lot of the times kind of throw stuff out. And it's like, well, if you wanna wait till later to promote, you can. But if you wanna get in early, then sometimes you're sort of scrambling a bit because you're like, okay. Well, I gotta get something out there for that. I mean, I think if you're a product creator, it's - affiliate marketing is kind of part of your piece because you're not gonna be able to provide solutions to everybody for everything, A.

Amy Harrop [00:20:49]:
And, B, your affiliates are often, you know, product creators as well. So they may have stuff that you wanna promote. You know? And then you don't wanna have it, I guess, go down to some sort of cesspool where everybody is just doing that sort of product creation circle jerk as they tend to call it.

Val Selby [00:21:07]:
Yep. 

Amy Harrop [00:21:08]:
But I do think it is sort of part of that if you wanna be in that sort of biosphere of asking people to promote your stuff. Now there is some people who don't promote other people's stuff very much, and they still get affiliates. So I think there are several paths to take down there. But, yeah, I mean, I do have affiliate marketing as part of my business plan, and it's definitely an important part of my business plan. But I do think it's kind of more because I do create a lot of products and put stuff out there. It's just more like a complimentary supplementary to what I'm doing as well. It's not like the focus.

Val Selby [00:21:47]:
Right. Yeah. And when we created Bundle Bash, affiliate marketing was a huge part of our business plan with, you know, running the events and all of that. So when PayPal shut my account down and won't even talk about it, you know, It's been almost 2 years ago. That's when rebranding I mean, there was just a whole bunch of stuff all at once. Perfect storm. But it changed, it absolutely destroyed how I could affiliate market, and be an affiliate because PayPal is the easiest. It is honestly the easiest.

Val Selby [00:22:17]:
I get it. Because you can just mass pay out. It's so easy. You grab your CSV. You go over there. Boom. It's all done for you, and it's beautiful. I miss it so much.

Val Selby [00:22:26]:
I miss it so much. But I had to really change because I had really only just embraced the affiliate marketing. So then to have to take that off the table, my brain is just like, now what? I'm finding so many people don't even understand what affiliate marketing is. And I think that that's part of the issue that, you know, you were just talking about. We've got these people that have amazing things. We want to market them, and they're gonna launch in 2 days, and they just gave their information to the affiliates, and they're launching in 2 days.

Amy Harrop [00:22:59]:
Yeah. I've kind of just given up. I mean, there's lots of things to talk to. I used to give affiliates or newer people more pointers about things. And now I just don't. Because there's just so many people that just put stuff out, and I'm just like, no. I'm not I'm not gonna do that.

Amy Harrop [00:23:13]:
Yeah. As far as PayPal, yeah. I mean, that's terrible. I know you've talked about that, how you've lost that. I do think in terms of direct sales, I think fewer people are using PayPal to buy stuff. So I don't think there shouldn't be any reason why you couldn't get paid not with PayPal. But like you said, it is kind of a little bit more work because you do have to work a little bit with the vendors, and you have to get alternate stuff. But I think you can now.

Amy Harrop [00:23:37]:
I mean, maybe earlier, 5 or 10 years ago would've been very difficult, but I think it's doable now just because I don't think PayPal has quite the hold. And like you said, they have shut down a lot of people's accounts as well. You know? So.

Val Selby [00:23:49]:
Yep. I know for me, one big thing has been it's forced me to be in communication better. You know? Like, I put that post in the group and said, alright. You know? This is what I'm looking for, and you were on there. You know? It's like there are plenty of other options. It's just opening my damn mouth and talking to people again, 1 on 1. Like, how can we make this work? You know, I wanna do your products. Is this an option? Versus the ease that we had for so long of going and clicking the button and joining everybody's program. And everybody's got 600 affiliates, and 3 people are actually marketing for them.

Amy Harrop [00:24:29]:
Yeah. I know. And then it's different too because at the vendor level, you can take alternate payments, but it can be difficult at the affiliate level. You know? Like, at the vendor level, like, you can use authorize.net if you don't have PayPal. I use Stripe and PayPal. And I've definitely seen more an increase in people using credit cards through Stripe than just using PayPal. So yeah. So I think there's different ways around it.

Amy Harrop [00:24:54]:
And as far as affiliates go, yeah. I mean, I think you and I both been in this industry a long time. And so there's definitely people who, you know, you have relationships with. You'll look at their stuff. But it also has changed. I mean, there were people who I used to promote, you know, 7 years ago, 8 years ago, 10 years ago, who don't really put out any products anymore, or they've moved out. And then there's been new people who've come in and so forth. So, you know, there's always that sort of calibration of that type of thing, I think, too.

Val Selby [00:25:24]:
Yep. Alright. So we've talked about stuff, but I don't wanna overwhelm you guys listening. For sure. Because we have talked about a few things. I like to keep it keep it a little too atopic sometimes. My listeners are going, no. She doesn't.

Val Selby [00:25:38]:
Is there anything that you would like to leave my listeners with? Any last thought?

Amy Harrop [00:25:49]:
Well, I will say that it's a really great time to build up an income stream with publishing and creating and selling content. There are a lot of people online, but there's also a lot of niches online, and there's a lot of tools that make it available that make it faster and easier. I think sometimes people get very overwhelmed. So I think being consistent, starting small, and doing repeatable actions that you can build on is really important. And I think that a lot of success with people who are already successful, a lot of it is just showing up and doing the work. It's not, you know, like, oh, they have something that you don't have or whatever. I mean, we all have our own skills and abilities, but I think if you can say, okay.

Amy Harrop [00:26:37]:
I'm gonna commit, you know, a half hour a day or I'm gonna commit 3 hours a week, you can start making some real progress. You know?

Val Selby [00:26:45]:
Yeah. I agree. I agree. Thank you so much for being here, Amy, and sharing. Everyone, succeed With Content. It'll be down there in the show notes so that you can grab it and go check out her stuff, check out her bots, play around, get addicted to all that stuff like I am. Thanks so much for being here, Amy. I appreciate your time.

Amy Harrop [00:27:07]:
Well, thank you, Val. My appreciation as well. It was a lot of fun. Thank you so much.