Episode Summary
In this Prime Talk Podcast Video Sponsored by GETIDA, Augustas Kligys discusses how he is educating Amazon sellers worldwide. Augustas is the founder and CEO of Orange Klik. He shares the journey that led him into eCommerce.
The Amazon world is an ever-changing dynamic industry. And it can oftentimes be difficult for Amazon sellers to keep up with all these changes. There are many summits and conferences out there where sellers can learn the newest and most innovative strategies or the new rules of the game. But even then, which conference or event do you choose? Yoni Mazor of Prime Talk discusses one of the conferences available to sellers out there created by Orange Klik.
In today’s episode, Prime Talk is joined by Augustus Kligys, the founder and CEO of Orange Klik, a leading educational platform for Amazon sellers around the world. Orange Klik has organized over 400 interviews with Amazon industry experts as part of their virtual summits or for their YouTube channel. They feature content designed to educate as well as inform Amazon sellers from all over the world.
Augustus Kligys shares his incredible journey from being one of the first digital nomads exploring the world to the creation of his unique brand Orange Klik. So if you’re an Amazon seller who needs inspiration and motivation, or if you want to break into a new marketplace and grow your business, then this episode is for you!
Learn more about Orange Klik!
Learn more about GETIDA’s Amazon reimbursement solution software
Find the Full Transcript Below
Yoni Mazor 0:06
Hi, everybody, welcome to another episode of Prime Talk. Today I’m really happy to have a special guest. I’m having Augustus Kligys. Did I say it correctly?
Augustus Kligys 0:15
Yeah, more or less Augustus Kligys. Thank you for trying.
Yoni Mazor 0:20
Augustus Kligys. I just call him Augustus. I know. It’s also my pleasure to speak to him. Augustus is pretty much the founder and CEO of Orange Klik, which is a leading educational platform for Amazon sellers. And he’s also the founder of AMZ Summits. AMZ Summits is a global database of Amazon conferences and meetups all over the world. So if you’re looking to kind of find the next Amazon conference, you know, anywhere in the world, you just go hit up AMZ summit, and voila, it’s just right there. And I love it because you know, I use it for myself. I want to know what’s out there. I go there and I check it out and it cost me a lot of money by the way. So thank you for that, Augustus, because I find these events I try to go and sponsor or at least participate and it costs money, but it’s an awesome list. Augustus Welcome to the show.
Augustus Kligys 1:06
Thank you very much, Yoni. It’s a pleasure to be speaking to you.
Yoni Mazor 1:11
Awesome. Where am I finding you right now? Where are you located?
Augustus Kligys 1:14
Right at the moment, I’m in the south of Spain, it’s quite hot and I had to turn on the air conditioning for this interview.
Yoni Mazor 1:22
Awesome. Here we are having one of the last days of the sun out here in New Jersey, it’s about to hit the fall and is going to get probably colder, but where it’s been exactly just to be more accurate. Which part of Spain was it called over there?
Augustus Kligys 1:34
We can say not far from Malaga. But yeah, it’s very south not far from Gibraltar like maybe fe few hours from Gibraltar and…
Yoni Mazor 1:45
Sounds wonderful. Sounds like a place I want to be one day. Gibraltar especially I know the big cliff and rock. It’s pretty cool. Okay, so listen today without further ado, we’re gonna be focusing on you and your story. You know, just you’re going to share with us: Who are you? Where are you from? Where did you go to school? How did you begin your professional career? And what led you into e-commerce. So without further ado, let’s get right into it.
2:08
Oh, it’s too much you want to know Yoni. Where are you from? Oh Yoni.
Yoni Mazor 2:15
My story is I, you know, I think you’re gonna interview for my story. Because Augustus has his own podcasting show so anybody wants to learn about me? You should check out that episode.
Augustus Kligys 2:25
Yeah, maybe, maybe for me it myself is not so interesting. What I was doing. Like, I don’t so much believe in schools or well, the school was school, but kind of I don’t…we have a kid and we, we practice unschooling, so I, how to say? The person can skip school, and I would…I think it would be much more beneficial for that person if they educate at home and do things they can do without sitting obligatory during the classes. But
Yoni Mazor 3:02
So you’re saying for your own child, your own kid, are you doing homeschooling?
Augustus Kligys 3:05
Yeah, yeah, we’re doing that.
Yoni Mazor 3:06
This because of Corona or this is before the Corona?
Augustus Kligys 3:08
This is before. It’s our decision before he was born. So yeah, so kind of I’m not giving…it was nice times of course at school. It was in Vilnius, in the capital of Lithuania, I’m from…
Yoni Mazor 3:20
Hold on, hold on. Let’s go back and forward back. Let’s back it up. So you were born and raised in which country? Lithuania right? And from which city? Vilnius, that’s the capital city. I think. In English we say an America is Vilnius or Vilna?
Augustus Kligys 3:35
Well no, Vilna is more maybe well actually I don’t know what’s the English name, but I would say it’s Vilnius. Vilnai is usually in Poland. They call this town …
Yoni Mazor 3:45
Got it. Coming from my country and so we say Vilna, so I thought maybe it’s also in English, but I, you’re probably right. So it’s Vilnius in Lithuania. So okay, born and raised there?
Augustus Kligys 3:55
Yeah, basically, I’m from the capital city, you know, the boy from the capital and I studied there all kinds of…all the school years and then…
Yoni Mazor 4:06
University as well?
Augustus Kligys 4:07
Yeah, computer science four years bachelor. And then I went to Denmark to study Master degree of computer science. But to be honest, during the sixth year of computer science studies, I was not really happy. I was just studying because, you know, 20 years ago, computer science or mathematics…Well, computers were like something on the wave. And it was IT I think, was just rising. And it was something where everybody wanted to study. And I just followed this kind of mainstream.
Yoni Mazor 4:36
And when Denmark? Copenhagen?
Augustus Kligys 4:38
No, it was Aaolburg, opposite side of Denmark, north of Denmark. Yeah. Aaolburg. Yes.
Yoni Mazor 4:43
Got it. Okay, so you finished your studies in Denmark and where’d you head up next?
KO 4:47
Oh, then I ended up not knowing what I want to do. Professor offered to do a Ph.D. but I was not really feeling like I want to do a Ph.D. at university. So I worked a little bit at university for a few more months and then I just traveled and I was like a digital nomad from then.
Yoni Mazor 5:08
And what year was this if I can ask? The year that you have basically left university and became a digital nomad?
Augustus Kligys 5:14
I finished school I think in like 90, the school, 90, maybe six. And then in 97, I started to travel by hitchhiking in, in my country and in surrounding countries.
Yoni Mazor 5:26
But you said digital nomads. 97 you will say that was the early beginning of the digital nomad era?
Augustus Kligys 5:32
Okay. 97 is when I was interested, I got passion of traveling. And for me traveling was everything. So then plus six years 2002 I finished Master degree and in 2003 kind of I finished working at university. This is what I did after my studies and from 2003 kind of I started to travel. 2004 I went to Africa for half a year. And during that time…
Yoni Mazor 5:56
Where did you go in Africa? That sounds exciting.
Augustus Kligys 5:59
It was from Ethiopia to…Are we going to talk about traveling?
Yoni Mazor 6:03
We’re gonna talk about you and your story. And just have context of all the stations that brought you into where you are now. Yeah.
Augustus Kligys 6:10
Alright, so yeah, I traveled from Ethiopia to South Africa, and East Africa basically.
Yoni Mazor 6:16
You walked it? You bussed it? Or you airplaned it?
Augustus Kligys 6:19
Half buses, half hitchhiking and then I lived in South Africa for four months and three months in Cape Town, doing voluntary work as a white person basically working as a volunteer in the municipality. And at that time, 2004 there were still a lot of like white people in municipality. And we were living in, you know, a house with a lot of protection. But then for one month, with my Slovakian friend, we moved to a township, which is where only black people live or colored people live 1 million people population in that area. And it’s the most dangerous place in the whole South Africa. But we enjoyed so much we..
Yoni Mazor 7:03
Which municipality is this? Johannesburg, Cape Town?
Augustus Kligys 7:05
Cape Town.
Yoni Mazor 7:06
Cape Town. So you went there? What were you doing there with the community?
Augustus Kligys 7:11
Well, we worked the first three months at the environmental department of municipalities. So we were traveling through all the beaches of Cape Town, and we could see all these white people beaches, black people beaches, at that time already was 10 years democracy, but you could still see this kind of how it was in the past. And you could still see that black people still tend to go to where they used to go during apartheid and white people where they used to go during apartheid as well. So yeah, we’re doing some kind of environmental thing. It was just opportunity for me to explore the world. And I applied for some, you know, program for volunteering, they accepted me and in that project, of course, the idea was maybe to use my kind of computer knowledge and databases, so I think I was working on programming something also related to databases of plants or animals. I don’t exactly remember…
Yoni Mazor 8:17
But this is what 2003? 2004ish? Yeah. Okay. Seems like forever, right? In the e-commerce days, but um, okay, so you’re saying there’s countries you travel was Ethiopia, South Africa, what’s in between? Which other countries?
Augustus Kligys 8:31
Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, I just crossed with the bus and then
Yoni Mazor 8:35
Okay, so from this list of countries, what was your I guess your most, I don’t wanna say favorite, favorite is not a good choice to say about cultures like that. It just might. What was the, I guess, the most surprising country for you from the list?
Augustus Kligys 8:50
I think I don’t say…I would not say I liked very much South Africa, but is the most diverse. It’s very interesting. Like I would compare it to in Latin America to Belize, which is very mixed.
Yoni Mazor 9:06
You’ve been there also?
Augustus Kligys 9:06
Yeah, in Belize, I was, and also in Australia, I would compare to Australia a little bit because Australia is also a mix of different cultures. And South Africa is just a mix of, you know, different cultures and ethnicities.
Yoni Mazor 9:19
Yeah, we’re gonna dive in a little bit the history, but then we’re gonna go back into the business world, but South Africa, I guess, as far as I’m aware, the origins was from British but also Dutch, right. There was a Dutch influence from the Netherlands, I mean, and also English, that makes into some sort of superiority of the white population. You know, and they control that since I guess Inception was in the 40s 50s. It detached from the British Empire?
Augustus Kligys 9:47
Yeah, it was like for 50 years until 94. When Nelson Mandela started to be a president.
Yoni Mazor 9:54
He got released from jail, and then he got elected and then it changed and they started to basically break down Apartheid and integrate the whole country. Okay, so you found that longer travels to be a very, very interesting point of view for you at that intersection. Okay 2004 What was your next station? Where do you go next?
Augustus Kligys 10:12
Well, I didn’t have much money left after Africa and I had to go back to Europe so basically asked if there are any projects in the university in Denmark and I joined there again to work a little bit so ended up like working a little bit in Denmark and then traveling, working a little bit in Denmark, and then traveling.
Yoni Mazor 10:30
So Denmark for a little while was your hub, your mainstay?
Augustus Kligys 10:33
Yeah, a few times, few times. But during this years, also I met my wife and we, we both shared the same dream to travel the world. So actually 2006 we, we just decided to go to travel and we went to…
Yoni Mazor 10:50
Your wife is Danish, or?
Augustus Kligys 10:51
She is German.
Yoni Mazor 10:54
But she was also in Denmark? You met her in Denmark?
Augustus Kligys 10:55
No, she was in Spain.
Yoni Mazor 10:57
Where did you guys meet? Where did you guys meet?
Yoni Mazor 10:59
Spain,in Spain.
Yoni Mazor 11:00
So during your time in Denmark, you also had…you were visiting Spain?
Augustus Kligys 11:04
It was after my time in Denmark, like after my studies and my first big…
Yoni Mazor 11:11
Let’s make it easier, what year was that when you met your wife? 2003. So this is before even your travels into South Africa. That’s when you kind of met her you kind of only knew her. Alright, let’s jump back to 2006. You said you and your future wife were on she was already your wife you decided to travel?
Augustus Kligys 11:28
Yeah, we traveled for…basically we lived “lived on the road”. Living on the road for maybe four or five years. That means that we sometimes traveled, sometimes we just stay in one country for six months, for example, like we stayed in Ecuador, we stayed in Belize. We stayed in Mexico in different parts. Also..
Yoni Mazor 11:49
So hardcore digital nomad thing, but how did you and your, your partner, you know, made an income?
Augustus Kligys 11:56
So our way of travelling was very low cost, we were spending like $12 a day. So basically, we needed like $400 per month for both of us to survive. So we had some income which we saved. When they worked in Denmark, my wife also she worked a little bit in Germany so well, she’s not really proud what she studied. So she’s not even doing but she worked when she was a student who worked, you know, for also at university, helping professors. So it was just side jobs. But later, yeah, when we traveled, I also started to do kind of programming. It was my passion. Out of this computer science studies, doing websites was my most interesting part. For me. This is not what we learned at university. But this is what I started doing just because I understood I was computer literate, you know, you knew how to do things with computer and internet. So I started to do websites, then some friend asked me to help with his website, his idea. And we started to cooperating and doing partnership with my friend. We built kind of a few affiliate websites, according to his, like he was idea guy I was implementer. And then yeah, basically four or five years, I was just, we were building this website with him.
Yoni Mazor 13:18
So is it fair to say that you have kind of more of a passion towards the front end? For construction websites? So the user user experience?
Augustus Kligys 13:26
No, actually, I like to review user experience, but I’m really bad kind of in, I struggled to find the good combination of colors and everything. But what I like is, what I liked in the past. Now I don’t do programming, but to program some logic and some automation or some you know, yeah, these logics, which you have to…when you click a button, what happens when you click this button? Or if there is a selection, so…
Yoni Mazor 13:51
The chain reaction. Yeah, it’s more back end logic. You know, the chain reaction. When you click a button, we understand what’s going on. Got it. Okay. So you and your wife have traveled the world low budget, you need like $5,000 a year. So you’re able to do it remotely, do some coding and website development. See this for five years? I guess this was 2016 uh 2006 until what 2011? Or 12? What was the time line?
14:14
Yeah, more or less about 2011. We, at that time we were in Australia, and then we just again had no money because we went to Australia after Asia. Australia was…
Yoni Mazor 14:25
Australia you can’t survive for $5,000 a year I would assume?
Augustus Kligys 14:28
At that time already, our kind of costs were much higher because you know, you start low but you raise your kind of lifestyle. Yeah. So we, at some point in the middle of this years, we were in Europe for a few months. And then we decided to go before Australia to go to India and in India our goal was just to live for half a year and rent a house. We didn’t really travel in India, we just enjoyed living in warm countries. And kind of eating nice food and for me important was to have good internet which we had in the house and for like 100 bucks having a huge house with fast internet. It was really nice luxury life.
Yoni Mazor 15:14
You were living a good life. But tell me, quick question how many languages you speak so far?
Augustus Kligys 15:21
So I speak…fluent? Well, I could conversate easily in five.
Yoni Mazor 15:28
Let’s count. Russian, Lithuanian, English…
Augustus Kligys 15:29
Lithuanian is my mother tongue. Russian I learned at school and then English and then German and Spanish. I can also conversate yeah.
Yoni Mazor 15:39
So there’s five or six. I’m counting. Let’s count on one more time we’ve got the Russian, Lithuanian, English, Spanish, German, five. Okay, interesting. Very good. All right, that’s probably useful, but at that time, I thought maybe you’re gonna throw some coding languages in there. So it’s good. No visual ASICs and no JavaScript and no dotnet or anything like that. Okay. Alright, so let’s take me to the year okay, five, six years, India, Australia. Where do we land now? What’s the next step for you? What’s the next station?
Augustus Kligys 16:12
So yeah, this is where maybe things change. We kind of were a bit tired of wandering around, and we decided to go to Europe. So we ended up staying in Germany and my wife is German. So it was kind of connection. We stayed near Dresden, it’s Eastern Germany. And there we kind of started to live. We rented apartment and we got pregnant. And then I was son today actually, yesterday was eight years old.
Yoni Mazor 16:43
Congratulations. So what year was that? 2012?
Augustus Kligys 16:45
Yeah, ‘12 is when he was born. And basically, we lived in Germany, but still kind of one day.. We lived in Germany for two years, our child was one year old. And then one day, one weekend, actually, we got signals, you know, sometimes you get this feeling from somewhere, from higher something. And both me and my wife separately got the signal that we have to go, we went to go to kind of to live in Spain. And at that time, we just, it was difficult decision. But because we didn’t really have like, didn’t see financially how we can make it and but we ended up in 2013.
Yoni Mazor 17:24
Do you mind sharing the signals? What were the kind of signals you’re getting?
Augustus Kligys
17:26
You know this intuition, let’s say intuition or feeling you know, yeah. So this kind of signals so and then you see, start seeing signs like you start, let’s say, it was I think Saturday, we got like, both kind of feeling about Spain. And then you start getting signs about Spain, like someone on Monday, right sends you an email, some old friend from Spain, then on Tuesday, you go to the shop in Germany, and you hear like Spanish music. So this kind of, you know, signals come and after three months, we…
Yoni Mazor 17:58
Yeah, there’s another way to look at it, maybe you’re noticing the signals of Spain you’re getting attracted to it. It’s another way to let’s see it because if I go to the supermarket, I’m getting signals from all over the world, you know, for Mexican food, Italian food, to you know, whatever food today, Japanese food, but it’s why you’re heart to kind of be like you said intuition a guy that gets attracted to and say, You know what, I feel like I feel comfortable and this kind of environment. And let me go try to live there or at least taste of it in person for a while. So you guys made the move 2012, 2013 to Spain?
Augustus Kligys 18:32
Yeah. ‘13 I think yeah, we went to Spain, but actually, we thought we will stay for long, but we ended up just less than one year. And then we went back again to live for two, three years in our countries, in Germany and Lithuania. So we really liked staying in Spain, but I think at that time was difficult also financially. And I was programming so I was like, full time web developer. So I was programming and you know, get
Yoni Mazor 19:02
You doing freelance or your own company?
Augustus Kligys 19:04
Freelancing, freelance, so it was a bit hard, you know, it’s very unstable income, and you are paid per hour. So whenever we decided to move to Spain and traveling by car, it means I cannot work but it costs a lot of money to travel, you know, 3000 kilometers and staying everywhere on the way and so at the end, yeah, it was quite difficult financially this traveling and…
Yoni Mazor 19:31
Yeah, freelancing. Okay, so what’s the next step for you? What was where did you settle? And what do you do, you know, for income after 2000 and, you were already bouncing into 2015-16?
Augustus Kligys 19:43
Yeah. 15-16 so those years we were in Lithuania and Germany and this is where Amazon journey started for me. Well, not Amazon selling but becoming kind of a face or person who does interviews in the industry and in 2016, exactly 4 years ago, I in September 2016, I launched my first virtual summit.
Yoni Mazor 20:09
So, so let’s step back a little bit since 2016. It’s all gonna go well, this is you know that we drove all the stations to get to these moments and I want to make sure we get this right. So 2016 you basically dive into the e-commerce slash Amazon world. And what brought you into it? If you mind touching that for a moment? What was the attraction? What was the thread that you pull that got you in there? What was the direction?
Augustus Kligys 20:32
So two things what happened in 2015, like one year before I jumped into this industry officially, I was introduced to Amazon FBA selling business model. And it’s very interes
