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I Just Sold My House
There's one house a real estate agent won't sell cheap. Their own.
Last week, I sold my house. In only in 3 days. And it got me thinking if I accepted the offer too quickly. In 2005, two economists at the University of Chicago, Steven Levitt (the Freakonomics guy) and Chad Syverson, went looking for a strange kind of house sale: the kind where the agent is also the owner. They pulled nearly 100,000 home sales from the Chicago suburbs. About 3,300 of those houses belonged to agents. They compared each one to similar houses on the same block.
When agents sold their own house, they waited 9.5 days longer and got about 3.7% more. On a typical house, that's about $7,700.
Same job. Same suburbs. Same kind of houses. So why would an agent fight for an extra $7,700 on their own house and not on yours?
The reason is boring. On your house, an extra $10,000 puts about $150 in the agent's pocket. Waiting another week for a better offer isn't worth $150, so the agent takes the quick sale. On their own house, nearly all of the $10,000 is theirs, so they wait.
Amazon just launched its own version of that real estate agent.
It's called Full-Funnel Campaigns. It was announced on September 29 and it's open to every advertiser in the US. It puts sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV into one campaign. Amazon's own announcement says you provide the budget, the products and the creative, "and Amazon's AI handles the rest."
Amazon gets paid on every dollar you spend, whether those sales make you money or not. And it knows more about its own auction than you ever will.
Other sellers I talk to got suspicious the minute it showed up in their accounts. I run my ads on rules I can read. I didn't write them (someone much smarter did), but when a bid moves, I can see why. A Full-Funnel campaign asks me to give that up.
I'm not saying Full-Funnel is going to be a bad thing for your account. Just be aware of whose incentives are whose.
When someone else is spending your money and gets paid no matter how it goes, they're spending it for themselves first.
The IVS
Big thanks to Roger Vi for dropping a wild tip this week. Roger is an 8-figure seller and a leader in the Titan Network. Give him a follow! If you want to reach out, here’s his e-mail: [email protected].
Three Moves That Added $1 Million+ in Cash and 0% Interest Capital to My Business
Most sellers go looking for money when they need it. That's the worst time to ask, because you take whatever is fastest and you pay for it. This year I lined up my options before I needed them. Three moves added $1 million+ in cash and 0% interest capital to my business. None of them were my ideas. All three came from conversations with other sellers in the Titan Network.
Move 1: The R&D tax credit ($40K to $70K). If you develop products and pay expenses to do it, including your own wage, look into this. It's a dollar-for-dollar credit, not a deduction, and you can go back two years. I'm not an accountant, so I asked two of them, plus ChatGPT, Claude and Google. I got $40,000+ and my estimate is most 7+ figure sellers can claim $40,000-$70,000 depending on their state. Most business owners I talk to have never claimed it.
Move 2: 0% interest intro-rate business credit cards ($305K). If your credit is good, this is the cheapest capital you'll find. I applied for five cards in one round and got $154,000, mostly with 12-month 0% intro periods. Seven months later a second round took it to $240,000 and added another 12 months. That capital allowed me to increase net profits by $65,000+. There's a method to it: which cards to go after, which to avoid, and the timing of each application. Multiple sellers in the Titan Network did this before me.
Move 3: One conversation with my supplier ($670K). Last year, I asked my supplier if they would ship my orders without me paying for them right away. I didn’t just ask. I presented a win-win opportunity. I showed them a 12-month forecast and what better payment terms would let both of us do. In the end, they were more than excited to proceed, and that one conversation put $480,000+ of inventory on 60-90 day payment terms this year so far. With the ability to order more inventory, I added $190,000+ in net profit to the business. The most effective way to do this is in person, in China.
One warning. 0% interest runs out and terms come due, so none of this is a win without a plan to pay it back. All three moves together cost me under $9,000 for the $1 million+ in capital.
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Amazon News Week 42/52
Amazon's new Full-Funnel Campaigns combine sponsored ads, display, video and streaming TV in one campaign, and Amazon allocates the budget across them for US advertisers. |
Amazon Ads launched Review Requests in beta, letting advertisers invite verified purchasers to review products and pay only when a shopper leaves a rating or review. |
TikTok's new Buy Direct lets shoppers check out inside TikTok while the brand stays Merchant of Record, without opening a TikTok Shop. |
From November 1, 2026, EU customs declarations for import distance sales must carry product identifiers, and missing data can halt orders shipped directly to EU consumers. |
The Deep Dive (Premium Content)
Not American? Here's the way into TikTok Shop US
In last week’s IVS, Scott Needham talked about just how BIG the Amazon halo effect is from sales on TikTok. It got me thinking and acting. I paid a cross-border CPA $500 and talked to a TikTok expert and figured out how to get on TikTok shop as a non-American…
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7 Things You Should Know Before Moving Here
Half my Lego Room. Yes that is me in the photo with the fish I caught.
Last week I made a new friend off a LEGO Star Wars collector group.
John was asking for advice on shipping sets to Costa Rica. Where are you moving to? I asked. Turns out about twenty minutes from me. Him, his wife and two kids, landing for good. He is Lego John now when I refer to him to Marsha. I already have a LEGO problem and he is going to make it worse. That is how you find your people in a small place. If you are into something niche, there is no club for it here. You bump into each other online and then realize you are neighbors.
He asked me what it is really like living in Costa Rica and why do people leave? He said he spent a few weeks here, trying to cook at home and make it seem like life not a vacation to make sure its right for them. Here is roughly what I told him, because I get this question a lot:
1) Kids get to be kids longer. My buddies 14-year-old son back in Toronto is a grown man in a child's body. Mine still are not into girls, do not care about shoes, and last week my youngest Chase talked me out of getting him $100 Nikes for the $40 no-name cleats. "You think someone's going to make fun of me for my cleats?" They will not. Nobody here cares. (Flashbacks to spotting fake Vuarnet shirts in my childhood.)
2) Everything takes longer, and the bad luck comes in streaks. A contractor rips you off, somebody breaks into the car, a small accident, paperwork that takes three trips. If you get six of those in your first year you might hate it. The people I have watched leave went home over money, divorce, or a teenager who wanted a real North American high school.
3) Know whether you are running to something or running from something. This place magnifies whatever you bring. If the marriage was shaky at home, it will be shakier here with no office to escape to. If you were broke there, you will be broke here with worse roads. The families who stay came for something specific. The ones who leave were mostly hoping the beach would fix a problem that got on the plane with them.
4) Do not try to run a business here. Run your business from here.
5) Tell people you are here for good. Those of us who have been around a while have watched too many one-year families ask a hundred questions and then disappear. When I meet someone now I quietly wait until year two before I invest. It sounds cold. It is self-preservation.
6) Watch your meat. Some of the markets are sketchy. Automercado delivers if you want the expensive gringo stuff.
7) Summers empty out. Half the town travels for July and August. We take the boys to sleepover camp in Canada for a few weeks ourselves. Others summer in Europe and you will feel broke compared to them lol.
Lego John's response to all of this was "we are coming from one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S., we are good." Fair enough. Welcome to the neighbourhood.
The thing I keep coming back to is that none of my warnings mattered to him. He already knew why he was coming: more time with his kids before they stop wanting it. That is the only reason that holds up here. The rest is just logistics.
Claude Code's /effort Dial: Run Your Amazon Money Work on High, Everything Else on Low
Claude Code has a dial called /effort, and Thariq, who works on Claude Code at Anthropic, published his rule of thumb for it. Low for quick back and forth: brainstorming, sketching, easy changes. Medium for regular build work. High for fixing bugs and chasing edge cases. Max for handing off something hard, end to end.
The line from the article that matters for us: "Higher effort is best for tasks with lots of hidden edge cases." Amazon money work is nothing but hidden edge cases. Two SKUs sharing one FNSKU so the same stock gets counted twice. A fee that changed halfway through the month. A reimbursement paid on a different line than the claim. So here's how I'd split it.
- Low: title variations, a supplier email rewrite, a quick read of a search term report.
- Medium: building your weekly sales report.
- High: anything where a wrong number costs you money, like reconciling reimbursements, checking FBA fees per SKU, or sanity checking bid changes before they go live.
- Max: hand it a full job like auditing every fee line across a year of settlement reports.
Type /effort high in Claude Code to switch. Higher effort burns more tokens, so drop back to low when you're done.
Your Aeroplan Points Start Expiring Again November 30
Air Canada paused Aeroplan points expiry for years. That pause ends November 30, 2026. After that, any account with no activity in the last 18 months loses its points.
If you've been flying WestJet or a US airline for the last year and a half, that could be you.
If it's close, reset the clock before the 30th. Earning or redeeming a single point counts, and so does donating, transferring or converting points. A small purchase through the Aeroplan eStore does it, or donate a few points to charity.
You're exempt if you're the primary holder of a TD, Amex or CIBC Aeroplan card, or you have Aeroplan Elite status. And if your points do expire, fly Air Canada within 6 months and they reinstate all of them.
Holding WestJet points too? Same rule, on a 24-month clock.
It's a one-minute check. Do it tonight.
People without habits often have the least amount of freedom.
James Clear
BEER! Now that I have your attention… you probably would like the Facebook community.
This week in the Facebook group: Aaron asks about connecting Claude to Amazon
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