Welcome back friend!
Get Lost
We built a new home for Selling From the Beach, and we want you to go wander around in it.
Many websites are vending machines. You walk up, it shows you one thing, a pop-up slides in asking for your email before you've read a sentence, a timer tells you the deal ends in nine minutes, and the entire job of the page is to move you from the door to the checkout as fast as possible.
We’re tired of it.
So we built the opposite. It's an island. Each part of the island is something we actually care about. Amazon. DTC. Taxes. The lifestyle stuff, the mindset stuff, the travel. You click into whatever you're curious about and you go down the rabbit hole.
There are things hidden in it, too. Tools, guides, the odd surprise you only find if you go looking. (There's an ocean monster on the map that surfaces somewhere if you sit still long enough.)
No pop-ups. No countdown. Build for people who would rather take a longcut.
It isn't for everyone, and it's not trying to be. It's built for the kind of person who opted out of the default and would rather take the long way and end up with something real. That's the whole point. Make a place, not a page. Somewhere you visit because you want to, not because a timer scared you into it.
We don't know that we’ve nailed it. Some stuff is still under construction. It might be slow on your phone. Go find out. Spend five minutes getting lost (bring sunscreen).
Then hit reply and tell me what you actually think. What you loved, what felt off, what's broken, what you'd tear down. Pura Vida!
The IVS
Big thanks to our good buddy Brett Bohannon for supplying this week’s IVS. Brett has been helping Amazon sellers with AI for some time. He’s one of the smartest operators in the space and actually delivers usefull stuff people need. You can find him at Helm or his Substack.
An Actually Useful Workflow
I’ve found that sellers are drowning under an ocean of AI strategy & prompts. And in many cases, what they really need are repeatable workflows that tell the AI what evidence to check, what guardrails to respect, and what kind of recommendation to return. I put together a free Amazon Operator Skills Pack with five plug-and-play workflows for diagnosing sales drops, wasted ad spend, catalog issues, listing conversion problems, and competitive keyword gaps.
To use it, fill out the operator guardrails, paste the agent instructions into ChatGPT, Claude, or Codex, choose one skill, and run it against your Amazon exports or notes. You can grab it free from Helm here.
Did an extremely good-looking friend forward you this newsletter?
Get the next one, here!
The Deep Dive (Premium Content)
A prompt that turns Claude into an autonomous worker
I don’t know about you, but I get pretty tired of Claude continually checking in. Forcing ME to move the project forward. Now that’s over. With this prompt, you paste one block of text. Claude figures out what it's allowed to touch, picks an improvement, makes it, verifies it actually worked, writes itself a note, and starts over. No daemon, no setup, no babysitting. Just a prompt.
Here’s the kicker for how Claude knows how to stop: The North Star. The North Star is your end-goal. A one or two sentence line that explains what a completed project would look like. It’s what you want to get at the end.
Want the full Deep Dive?
It goes out in the newsletter. Subscribe free, share it with one friend, and every Deep Dive unlocks.
Costa Rica Is Beautiful But It Wins Every Argument
Found this guy next to my sandal this week.
Costa Rica is one of the most beautiful places in the world, but it also has a way of humbling you. You can have a perfect plan for the day, a clean house, a quick errand, a beach afternoon and Costa Rica will quietly remind you that nature gets the final say.
The rain is probably the best example. You can check the weather, look at the sky, convince yourself you have time, and then ten minutes later the whole world is sideways rain. This weekend boys were out on bike ride and 10 minutes later downpour. It doesn’t just rain here, the roof gets loud, the roads fill up, the plans change, and everyone just kind of accepts it or waits it out.
The jungle and plants are the same way. You can trim it, cut it back, and make everything look perfect. Then you turn around and it is already growing again. Bread is in the fridge. Leave your guard down and the ants have found it. The place is alive in a way that is beautiful, but also relentless.
Even a simple drive can become a reminder that you are not in charge. Google Maps might say 20 minutes, but Google Maps does not always account for potholes, cows on the road, construction, one-lane bridges, heavy rain, slow trucks, or roads that look like shortcuts but feel like a personal challenge.
And then there are the little things: geckos living rent-free in the house, humidity attacking anything you thought was safely stored, and monkeys deciding that 5:30am sunrise is a perfectly reasonable time to start yelling.
That is part of the truth of living here. It is not just the postcard version. It is not only beaches, sunsets, fruit, and pura vida. It is also mud, heat, bugs, rain, dust, rust, and plans that need to stay flexible.
But somehow, that is also the charm. Costa Rica has a way of pulling you out of your own schedule and reminding you that life does not need to run perfectly to be good. The same rain that cancels your plan makes everything green. The same jungle that keeps growing back is the reason the place feels so alive. The same messy road might still end at one of the most beautiful beaches you have ever seen. And it forces you to stop and accept it. Slow down a little bit and realize I don’t really need to rush right now.
Costa Rica is beautiful, but it also wins every argument. And most days, that is not such a bad thing.
Amazon removes critical review responses
We can’t message Amazon customers who leave a negative review anymore. And if you’re anything like me, you’re already message-banned from proactively messaging customers. 😅
Effective immediately. But… it barely worked anyway. It had a templated message, low response, most 1-star reviewers ignored it. Losing it costs us almost nothing.
So no, I don't really care about the feature.
I care about what it tells us.
This is the latest move in a multi-year strategy and is a great reminder. No customer emails. Messaging locked to Amazon's templates. Insert marketing is iffy. Review requests only through Amazon's button, on Amazon's terms. And now you can't even reach someone who's unhappy. 🫠
You see the pattern?
You don't own your customers. You never did. You get money, but not the customer.
The only customer you own is one sitting on a list YOU control.
I hope you’re doing something like this: insert in every box that drives to a registration or warranty page on YOUR site. Compliant. No review bribes, no diverting the order. Just "register your product, get the bonus guide and the extended warranty." Something like that.
Do that, and when Amazon takes the next thing away (they will), you still have a line to the people who bought from you.
The feature going away isn’t the problem. Thinking these people were your customers is.
These are the things that get you upgraded
Check this out: A former hotel general manager who spent years working the front desk laid out who really gets bumped to the better room.
His list of what matters:
• The rate you paid
• How you booked
• Length of stay
• Loyalty status
• Your demeanor
…But he said the number one factor, by a mile, is kindness.
Be kind and flexible with the person behind the desk, and your odds of an upgrade go up exponentially. Show up rude, wave a booking from some discount site in their face, and demand a perk? You're getting the room by the elevator.
He genuinely loved making someone's stay. Most desk people do. Give them a reason to do it for you.
Next time you check in, lead with kindness. Worst case, you're a nice person. Best case, you're watching the sunset from a suite.
Wealth has little to do with your income or investment returns and lots to do with your savings rate.
Morgan Housel
BIG BUTTS! 🍑 Now that I have your attention… you probably would like the Facebook community.
If you’re liking this newsletter so far, here's where we share more stuff like it:
- 🤓 Just getting started? Check out the Free Amazon FBA Course
- 👀 Need an ASIN Audit? The ASIN AUDIT OS
- 💸 Need less stuff on your plate? Top 10 Automations/VA Tasks
- 👔 Need an Accountant? Accounting Services
- 📧 Want some 1-on-1 time? Rob & Max
- 📣Interested in sponsoring the newsletter? E-mail [email protected]
To your success,
Rob & Max