540: Game-Changing Tips And Strategies From Sellers Summit 2024 With Toni Herrbach

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You’re listening to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into what strategies are working and what strategies are not with their businesses. Now Tony and I just got back from our annual e-commerce conference we run together called the Seller Summit. So in this episode, we discuss the game changing tips and strategies that we learned from the event. But before we begin, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, it’s actually available on Amazon at 38 % off right now.

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My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that doesn’t require you to work yourself to death. Plus you can still grab my free bonus workshop on how to sell print on demand and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube and podcasting when you grab the book over at mywifequitterjob.com slash book. So go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash book, fill out the form and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now onto the show.

00:58
Welcome to the My Wife Quarter job podcast. Tony and I just got back from Seller Summit 2024. And what we’re going to do today is we’re going to give you a recap of all the events that happened last week. It was, I thought it was my favorite year yet. I don’t know about you. You know, it’s tough because I, last year was really special for me because I released the book and it was just magical. That video you put together to me last year. I still think about it sometimes.

01:23
You have it. cry. I still think about it, but I did not cry. You can watch it every night before you go to bed just to reminisce. But this year was probably a close second. So if you stop just thinking about yourself, I think this year our speakers knocked it out of the park for sure. I agree. Actually, this is the first year where I think every single talk was good. I shouldn’t say that.

01:51
I shouldn’t say that, but not say that we’re not going to go back and talk about the ones that weren’t in previous years. Although what was the what was the one nailed it? There was a guy many, many years ago, it’s like one of our first or second summits, and we we invited someone that we didn’t know terribly well, and his talk was adequate. But when he got done, he’s like, dude, I crushed that talk. I like, I was like, I.

02:22
But this year, I think everybody crushed the dog. I think it’s because our criteria for speakers has just improved over the eight years that we’ve done this to the point where I think we got it down now. Hopefully. Fingers crossed. Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, I don’t know how we can get better. I literally like was on the way home driving. I was like, how are we going to find speakers to top this past year’s speak? Like, that’s how good I thought the speakers were. I’m already stressing out about improving on our speaker lineup.

02:51
Okay, see, I don’t usually stress out until like leading up to the event. I’m trying to enjoy this period now because the event is the most stressful thing that I do all year. I know it’s not the case for you, but for me, it’s very stressful. So I like to decompress a little bit right after the event. And you got sick. I mean, you weren’t sick. You just lost your voice this year for the first time it’s ever happened. So this is what happened. I made the rookie move of blowing out my voice kind of at the opening party.

03:21
Okay. And then it wasn’t that great even for the keynote, but by the second day it was completely gone. And in fact, I’m still not fully recovered. You can probably hear a little bit of my voice, but yeah, rookie move, rookie move. Yeah, it’s like, it’s not your first conference, Steve. It’s not my first conference. So a couple of things that we did different this year, which can we talk about the highlights first and then we’ll go into like the sessions?

03:50
Yeah, do that for me. Okay. So a couple of things that I thought we really got right. One, we had a photographer this year, which I saw the photos this morning. I think you saw them last night. Yeah. Shout out to Francesca. Yes. Holy cow. Like, why haven’t we been doing this? First of all, it’s like feeling like you’re back there, right? Because you get to see all the photos of things that were going on. Speakers are sponsors. It just felt very

04:17
I don’t know, warm. I had to say warm and fuzzy, but it totally was warm and fuzzy when I was looking through the photos. And she did an amazing job. I felt like she just captured people’s personalities so well in her photos. So that’ll be really, I think she’s putting together a little bit of a slideshow. think we’re going to put together something as well. Yeah, a little short film. Yes. So that was, I think, a really awesome thing to do just for our own memories and things like that, as well as for our attendees, because it’s a great way for them to remember all the people that they met.

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The next thing we did, which I think was a game changer, was we had the closing party at the hotel, which we have not done for five years. It’s been longer than that, right? The last time we did it was in 2019 when were in Miami and we had it on the rooftop of the hotel. That’s right. That’s right. So five years and…

05:09
Typically it’s because we can’t get that space on the last evening. It’s like booked, they have to flip it for another group, but this year it was able to work out that way. And people, I got so much feedback from people that they loved having it at the hotel and we had it at the rooftop terrace. So beautiful views, you get to look at the ocean, you get to look at the bay or whatever the canals are over there. And I think that actually was a big bonus. You know the compliment that I kept getting?

05:38
which is not really under my control at all, was that all the attendees were just super open about everything. Yes. And very welcoming. And they were just telling me they’ve been to a lot of events and ours is one of the only ones where they felt very comfortable. And then they said, hey, Steve, you did a great job building this community. I’m thinking to myself. I hope you did not take credit for that. Yeah, I’m thinking to myself.

06:07
You know, maybe it’s just the nature of my content and how it’s like kind of family first that attracts those type of people, perhaps. I don’t know. What’s your explanation? I don’t know. Maybe you have a business partner that’s literally been cultivating that for eight years. But I don’t know. It is probably your content. No, but I mean, there are 50 percent new people this year. Yes. 50 percent of people. What was really funny is there were people there that had never heard of you. Yes. Which was kind of funny.

06:36
I mean, Jen and I find that funny. You probably don’t find it as as humorous as we do. No, I don’t care. But we got this. got the same feedback that I was nervous with 50 percent new people. That could be a disaster. Right. Because you don’t know anything about these people. You don’t know if they’re going to like embrace the culture that we’ve created. And not only did they embrace the culture, they literally I think about Brian, the new the new guy. I know I don’t know how to say your last name, Brian. So sorry about that.

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but came from Pennsylvania, literally made the video in the Facebook group, was at the mastermind. Like by day two, he was best friends with everybody at the conference. And I got feedback from him specifically saying, you know, it’s so friendly, it’s so warm, everyone’s willing to talk about their businesses. So yeah, very, very good. I think that was a highlight for me. And Brian is just a very outgoing guy too. So by the end, I think he met everyone.

07:32
Yes, I’m pretty, I know he did not go to bed the last night because he didn’t have a hotel room. So he stayed up all night because he had an early flight, which I was not going to be a part of that group, but good for them for making it all night. I really enjoyed my mastermind group this year as well. I think we really helped a lot of the people in that group, at least in my group. That’s how it felt. How was the content group? The content group was awesome. In fact, we.

08:00
We had people begging to get into that up until the last minute, which was really nice, right? Because I think people see the writing on the wall with Amazon becoming harder and harder and the margins are slimmer. And so I think people were like, hey, I need to learn about content. I need to learn about building a brand. The variety of people in that group was really nice. A lot of different people doing different things, but overall very eager to work on that brand building thing.

08:29
Yes, that was actually one of the main themes of the event. Yes. I would say almost half of the of the sessions were content focused, right? I mean, really, the only way to build a brand is to get people exposure to your name over and over and over again. And really, the only way to do that is with content today. Amazon’s not going to do that for you. Yeah, I think that the perception for people is that if you go to the content thing, you don’t

08:55
qualify for the masterminds, right? Because our e-commerce masterminds have revenue requirements, but that’s actually not the case at all. We had people from the million dollar masterminds ask to transfer their ticket to the content masterminds. Most of the people in that group were already doing million plus, right? So I think there’s a misconception that that’s sort of like the, well, if you don’t qualify, you can just join the content one, but that’s not the case at all. There were a couple people in the group that…

09:21
were not in e-commerce yet, but they were building content with other businesses and wanting to move into e-commerce, but very successful in their current business. So that group is definitely a room full of very, very intelligent people that just haven’t cracked the content game yet. Actually, a question I get asked is, should I start with content first and then sell a product? And ideally the answer is yes. Cause once you have that audience, you can pretty much sell anything.

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It’s really just a question of how much runway that you have is what I always say. What do you tell people when they ask you that? I say something very similar. I think personally, I would much rather start on content because I feel like the audience tells you what they want. And we’ve seen that from many of our friends in e-commerce. Like one of our speakers last year, Alicia, had a content site with fitness and I think it was like yoga or something like that. basically she was able to launch her water bottle brand.

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due to her audience size, right? And her building that audience. One of our friends, Laurie from Passionate Pending Pinchers, built a brand and then was able to launch menu plan boxes and planners. And then I’m blanking on her name. I think it’s Alexis. She’s the travel girl. She was- Oh yeah, Alex, yeah. Yeah, Alex. She built that whole travel site and then went into e-commerce launching a line of travel products. All these things are very competitive, right? Planners are competitive, travel products, water bottles.

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but they were able to generate seven figures because they had that audience loyalty. So I think if you do have time to build that audience, it’s a great way to go. Yep, but you know what’s funny is I would do the opposite. I would sell products first. Because I want to see money coming in. The problem with content is, and this is when I started my content, I always went into it going, okay, it’s going to take a couple of years for things to get going. It just depends on how soon you need the money.

11:18
There’s just some people out there that need some quick wins. Yeah. And others, you know, are more patient and willing to stick it through. So just really depends on your personality. Yeah, for sure. So I didn’t actually get to go to all the sessions, but I think between the both of us, we we got to see all the sessions. How did yours go, first of all? Well, I just want to say before we say we get started on that, I was for the first time ever was able to go to.

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every session slot, right? Like we have two running simultaneously, so you can’t be at two at the same time. But I was able to attend every session because we had adequate registration staff this year. So I was very happy about that. I finally got to sit in in sessions and I was just really blown away by the speakers. Do you have a favorite session? I’m not gonna say that publicly. Let’s see. So the first session I attended was my own.

12:12
Which, you know, I did a bang up job. No, it was funny because I gave a talk on email marketing and you you get on that stage and there’s lights going at the stage. So you can’t really see out. You can only see the people in like the first two rows. And I look down and the entire Klaviyo team is sitting in the front row. Oh, that’s hilarious. And I was like, OK, because my whole talk I use, you we use Klaviyo. My clients use Klaviyo. So.

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I was like, either I’m doing a great job or I’m really screwing this up. But there’s probably not gonna be a lot of middle ground here. So I actually started my talk saying, hey, I’ve got all of the Klaviyo team in the front row. So if I’m teaching you something that’s wrong, I want them to call me out and then you can visit their booth and they’ll show you the right way to do it. That’s too funny. So yeah, so my talk, I thought it went well.

13:02
I felt like, you know, just provided value for people. think email marketing is so important and you know, most of the people at Seller Summit that are already selling should be doing it. So just good to always reinforce things that are really core business strategies in my opinion. What did you cover specifically? I mean, just highlight. Yeah. So this year I covered the importance of your flows, right? Because to me, that’s how you, that’s like the most bang for your buck. You set them up one time and then they just run and you just monitor them, right? You might make small updates here and there, but

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really easy to get them set up and get going. And then I talked about the importance of segmentation, personalization, and education. So basically segmenting your audience so that the right people are getting the right email. So you’re not just blanket sending to everybody. The people that are interested in certain things are getting emails about those things and not things they’re not interested in. It helps your overall email account health and increases your conversion rate and things like that.

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The personalization part, I mean, that’s what Klaviyo’s strength is, right? Just the data, understanding what your customers, more about your customers. So personalizing things as simple as using their names and then, know, location-based things that they already bought. you you probably know in your company if you sell shorts, people also wanna buy sandals, right? They’re summer clothes shopping. So making sure that you have personalized experience for those customers. And then…

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the education piece, is I think that overall most companies do a terrible job about educating people about their products. So, you they do a great job of blasting out sales and promos, but they don’t just talk about like the great things that their product does, whether it’s, you know, manufactured in the United States or patents, right? Like it’s a better built product or more sophisticated or the features it has.

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People just don’t talk about that in their email marketing and it’s a great way to send emails to people without just pushing through sales. had a question for you. Yep. So with segmentation, it naturally means that you have to send out more emails. You have to actually draft more specific emails. So how do you balance the blast versus, you know, writing maybe three or four times the emails for different segments?

15:10
Well, the nice thing about segmentation is that a lot of that can be automated. So if someone buys X, you can segment them and then they automatically, so I do a lot of my segmentation in the funnel, in the flows. So if someone buys X and they’re automatically directed to email A, if they don’t buy X, they get email B. So a lot of that segmentation happens in like the post purchase flow or in VIP or those types of flows. So yes, you do have to write more emails on the front end.

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but those emails perform so much better, it’s worth the extra time. And the core of the email is the same, you’re actually just using some dynamic codes like provided by Klaviyo, you don’t have to figure this out, right? To insert in there to give people the right information. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course

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on how to get started in e-commerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text-based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be obtained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

16:37
Cool. Let’s see, the next talk that I went to was Mina’s talk on the three pillars of Amazon success. I think we tried to balance the sessions, Amazon versus D2C, although it was maybe slightly more skewed D2C, but we still had a bunch of good Amazon talks. I thought, and I hope Mina doesn’t hear this, but I I thought his session was amazing this year, much better than his session last year. Don’t you want him to hear that talk?

17:05
I hear that feedback. Well, I know, but that implies that last year, you know, it wasn’t as good, right? That’s why. But yeah, this year was fantastic. He did a great job. I think last year got into the weeds too much with the spreadsheets. This one was very actionable. And I think everyone left with with a game plan to improve their Amazon sales. Yeah. And another thing that Trivium did, which I thought was so genius. if you are a sponsor listening to this, is they actually did audits for people before the summit.

17:34
And then they actually printed them out in these nice little bound notebooks and basically had them spread out on their table. So people would walk by and like see their business name and stop, which great for marketing for them, right? But also providing those attendees a ton of value by doing that free audit. And then they actually, for most of the attendees stopped by and grabbed their pamphlet, you know, then actually walking through it with the attendee and sharing with them their observations and feedback. And this pamphlet

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I mean it was a book. It was a book, yeah, pamphlets are, booklets the better word. Yeah, and I thought it was ingenious, their strategy. So literally they just went through the brands from the app and then just did a whole prep session on how they can improve PPC just all across the board. And it was just a great value. Talk about paying it forward. Yes. That’s the way you get clients. Yeah. The funny thing about that was that I saw other sponsors sort of like,

18:30
eyeing over, you know, like, wait, what did they do? So definitely pick that up for your sponsor playbook next year. And speaking of playbook session that I was bummed to have missed was Kristin Levine and her DIY PR playbook. I was actually trying to fix a couple of problems. That was the one I didn’t get to hear the either of those sessions fully at that time period. But that was a standing room only session. Yes. Yes, I didn’t get to I got the tail end of that.

19:00
because I think something happened or I needed to talk to somebody. But standing room only, I walked in and I was like, whoa. And then I missed the part where she made fun of me. She told me that she had made fun of me in her talk. I just missed that one part. I came in towards the end. But I heard lots of people talking during lunch that that was such a valuable session. They got so much out of it. Kristin’s been in PR for 25, 30 years. So definitely a huge value add for people. And something

19:30
that we have actually never had a PR session before. So this is kind of exciting. It was, it was. And clearly there’s huge demand for it. Just given that everyone was there. Getting PR has been really good for our store over the years. And I’m just thinking about our Today Show appearance where we got like seven XD orders just in like 12 seconds. And we’ve been in a bunch of magazines. It’s great for social proof on your website as well. Our friends at Quiet Light, Elaine.

19:58
gave a talk on how to get top dollar for your business in two to three years. And this is a talk, they’ve done a couple talks like this over the past several years for us. And I think the important part of this is when you decide you wanna sell your business, you’re probably a year behind what you need to be doing. And I think there’s so many little, I remember when Mike Jackness sold Colorit and he gave a talk about the process, like at the next seller summit. And…

20:24
there were all these things that I would have had no idea that you had to do or keep track of. One of the things that he, I think it was him that struggled with was the return accounting, right? How many returns they had. There was something in that that would have never crossed my mind as being something that was a very important factor in the deal. And so I think going to that session, whether you’re not even thinking about selling right now is really good because what…

20:49
that session always does is teaches you how to get your crud together before you wanna sell. Because once you decide you wanna sell, if you don’t have all that in a good space, you’re gonna delay the process by a year or even longer. Actually, there was a number of people at the event who were thinking about exiting in like three or four years actually. Yeah. And then I have to just shout out Chris Schaefer, one of our OGs.

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every year shows up at Seller Summit, runs a mastermind, literally would like move tables for us if we needed to. Coming in now from Columbia, South America. So used to be a hop, skip, and a jump for him, not anymore. And he talked about basically content and how big brands leverage organic content. I mean, I just can’t say enough good things about him. His talks always deliver. They’re very practical.

21:46
I feel like that’s one of those talks where everyone is frantically taking notes, taking pictures, and he just does such a good job. And he’s done so many different things in e-commerce and content that I feel like he’s a great person to give that talk, because he’s always on top of the trends and what’s happening and really gave people a very practical strategy they could use to work on their organic content. I’m bummed I missed that one. I was in the other room. But I was at Angela’s talk.

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which was how to grow your e-commerce business with just organic Instagram. She was a hit. I heard, I heard it was She talks like a boss. I can’t describe what, no she’s I see that about her. No, she’s got that like presence. Yeah, she’s got a lot of confidence and like she openly made fun of me on stage also. She retired her husband. Okay. So she was gonna register my husband quit his job.

22:43
And he just gave an overall strategy about how she grew her Instagram account. she runs a seven figure business and she hardly spends any money on ads whatsoever. It’s literally just all organic Instagram. And she laid out the playbook. So what I thought was funny is we had a few technical difficulties throughout the event and I was in Chris’s or I was in whatever talk and you were with Angela’s talk.

23:09
and you texted me and you said, Angela is the Riz. And I thought something was broken in the room. Like, and I’m like, literally like, what does Riz mean? What does Riz mean? And then I finally came back to you I was like, what’s wrong? And you were like, that means like, great, get with the times or whatever. I know that’s how my kids talk these days. that’s why Riz stands for charisma, by the way. I am not.

23:36
So I thought something was broken. Yeah, no, she just came out like a boss. That’s the only way to describe it. So then one of our technical difficulties meant that I got to advance slides for people in the back of the room. so thankfully, Brett Curry, once again, another Seller Summit longtime friend and alumni.

24:01
I had his talk and I was so thankful that it was Brett because he’s a very understanding guy and I was like, if I don’t get the cues right to advance your slides, because he was talking about like paid ads and Google performance max, stuff that I have very little knowledge of, like Chris Schafer’s I could have done pretty easily because I do a lot of the stuff Chris Schafer’s. So when he’s talking, I’m like totally like in sync with Brett Curry. I’m like, I have no idea what you’re even talking about right now. Like this is so foreign to me. So.

24:29
But as usual, Brett gave a very practical down to earth, basically the things that were working and then talking about the things that actually aren’t working anymore and things that I think probably in years past, we probably even did talks about them, right? Or things that you should be doing. And what I like about Brett is he’s always really honest about the state of paid ads, right? He never tries to sugarcoat anything for people.

24:55
And this year he had several examples in his talk of ads that were working. And to me, when you can show examples of things, it just becomes so clear to people. And one of the companies that he works with, they sell a hair color. And these are for people that wanna have like orange hair or purple hair or pink hair, right? So it’s like he showed these videos that were converting really well. And when you watch those videos, it was just so obvious why they were performing well, but just to see them,

25:24
And then he went through and talked about why those were doing well. So he basically showed you examples and then broke down all the components of why it performed. And then he showed ones that weren’t performing and broke down all the components of those of why they probably weren’t having as good of results. So I actually thought that was an excellent talk. Definitely a very advanced talk for people.

25:47
But even if you want to hire this out, you should have a really good understanding of what a company needs to do for you. And this is definitely the talk to listen to. I am looking forward to watching the recording of that one because I do run a lot of Google ads and Google is just honestly fighting for its life right now, I think. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Making all these changes. So I did want to bring up Annette’s talk because people literally came up and hugged her after hers. She covered profit first.

26:16
And the title of her talk was you made a product now make a profit. And, uh, I don’t know how many of you guys out there listening have read Mike McCallowitz is profit first book, but she is actually a certified profit first consultant. unfortunately I didn’t get to attend the talk, but she gave a similar one during office hours from my class and everyone just loved it. It’s basically a method so that you can guarantee yourself that you’re going to make a profit at the end of the day. Yep.

26:44
And we were joking with her at the end of the event that she measured her success, her talk success in hugs. So she had a four hug talk. And Dana Jean-Zima and I were like, nope, we will never measure our talks in hugs. But good for Annette. Good for Annette. And I heard a lot of people coming out of that session just basically saying it was a game changer.

27:09
in a way to think about your business. I am always shocked to learn how many people don’t pay themselves in their business. To me, like I couldn’t afford to just never pay myself, like, and just keep working. Like, I’m like, what are you all doing? You know, you don’t have to feed anybody or whatever. But anyway, I thought that was a great talk. And Annette always brings such great energy. And she’s one of the reasons why the culture of Seller Summit is amazing. Right. People like Annette, people like her, people like Natalie, people like Mike Barnhill.

27:38
People that show up. like Dana. Dana, yeah. I will say Lars, but Lars definitely doesn’t contribute to the culture, but he does contribute to the knowledge. But no, a lot of our longtime attendees, Brett, Chris Schaefer, right? They’re showing up every year. They’re talking to people, encouraging them, giving them really great business advice, all on their own time, right? They’re coming here. Eric Bandholz, these people are really great about being a part of the community.

28:08
Yep, absolutely. I have to mention Ritu’s talk. I think out of all the talks, I think I got the most practical, actionable stuff out of hers. She gave a talk on AI and just the way her and Bernie’s mind works, they’re always trying to automate little things. Like Bernie and I, we’re like brothers from another mother, right? Because we’re both electrical engineers and we love automation. then Ritu works with Bernie and Ritu just

28:38
started talking about the exact ways that she uses AI to automate stuff. Like for example, did you know that you can get ChatUbd to create a script that you can enter into your Gmail to pull out all emails of a certain type so that you can easily search through them? No. Like usually I go through my Gmail and I’m like looking for that email that someone sent. You can just have AI find the email for you by asking ChatUbd to write a little script.

29:07
Little tips like that that I didn’t even know to do. I’ve started implementing in my businesses now. I had people coming out of that session like basically game changer for their business, just completely blown away. Once again, Ritu and Bernie, another great example of fellow e-commerce friends that are just so willing to give back to the community and share all. mean, Bernie is like the godfather of, you know.

29:35
He sells electronic products, which are like the worst things to sell. He sold on all the different platforms, but always willing to sit down and chat about it. And I really appreciate both of them for they led masterminds this year and both of them gave talks at Seller Summit. Actually, Bernie’s talk was very good, too. So the title of his talk was how to basically fight back against Chinese sellers when you’re actually sourcing from like the same factories, essentially. Yeah, because he’s in the electronics space, which is

30:06
More competitive probably than like the garment industry. I’ve always actually wanted to start an electronics business. He said, don’t do it. But there’s a lot of strategies that he talked about in his talk that I probably wouldn’t have thought of doing. And these are the things that you have to do in order to compete. The best part about Bernie’s talk was that

30:29
in the middle of the session, the little plug to his computer that was provided by the AV company malfunctioned he whipped out his own branded plug and swapped it out. So like if you could not get a better commercial than that. Yes, the Chinese branded cable failed in the middle of his talk and he just happened to have one of his own branded ones. It was hilarious. I know that was that was awesome. So another longtime friend of Seller Summit, Spencer Hawes.

30:57
actually long time content creator, I feel like Spencer’s done a little bit of everything, gave a talk about basically what’s working and what’s not for ranking. And I think everybody hates Google right now, everybody’s mad about SEO. And he actually presented his case study for that he did last year where they published 987 blog posts in a year.

31:22
and the exact strategies that they used to do it. Obviously he didn’t write all those 900 plus posts himself. And once again, like this is why I think the talks this year were so great is like you were saying with Ritu, like very practical things that you can do. Like Spencer was like, well, hey, I can’t write all this myself. So here’s the exact process I went through to get writers. Here’s exactly how I.

31:44
taught them how to do it. Here’s how I checked to make sure they weren’t using AI. Like just went through the step-by-step process and showing screenshots of his traffic, showing screenshots of his revenue from ad network, basically just going through everything, teaching people, if you wanna do this, if you wanna try something similar, you have all the tools you need after that session. It was basically an SOP for content creation at scale. And this can be applied to anything. It could be applied to YouTube channel.

32:12
can be applied to shorts, reels, TikToks, or Amazon influencer videos as well. He uses the same exact process for all of his content. Yeah. And then I would say probably the favorite speaker at Seller Summit year after year is Tiffany Avinofsky. Yes. Because Tiffany is like a little miniature freight train coming through the conference. She’s what, like five feet tall and 100 pounds, but like, man, that girl packs it in.

32:41
She gave a talk on TikTok Shop and you know, think she was actually, she came up to me Wednesday night and she was like, I’m really nervous about my talk tomorrow. And I was like, stop, just don’t even come to me with that Tiffany. And she said, I’ve been talking to everybody and they’re all really down on TikTok Shop. She’s like, I don’t think anyone’s gonna wanna come. And I was like, whether or not they wanna do TikTok Shop, they’re gonna come to see you on stage so it doesn’t matter. Cause you’re gonna do something, say something, pull something that’s gonna, you know, blow people’s mind.

33:11
But what her session was packed, obviously, and she talked really about the strategy of, you know, how you sell on TikTok, how you use affiliates. She had her team there. So people, you know, her team actually ran the roundtable, too. So people could get like because one of her team members manages affiliates exclusively. One of her team managers manages ads. Right. So you could talk to individual people on her team about how each thing worked. And what I always love about Tiffany is she’s one not afraid to mess up.

33:40
And two, she shows like exact examples. So she had multiple videos, TikToks that were working, TikToks that weren’t working. She showed her monthly revenue for the past year, went through it month by month. Like this is why this month was down. We ran out of inventory. This is the month I got banned because I called someone a bad word in the comments. You know, and just going through exactly the strategies that they had this month, in the month of May, they are on target to do a million dollars on TikTok shop. Wow. In a month? In a month.

34:09
So not including their Shopify, their retail store, the live selling, like just on TikTok shop, they are on track. And I actually checked it yesterday. They’re still on track to do a million dollars in the month of May. That is nuts. You know, I don’t know if you can teach her speaking skills because she just pulls stuff out of nowhere. That is hilarious. will. So she showed they sell they sell apparel and they sell a lot of denim.

34:37
And one of the things about selling on TikTok is you have to be deep in inventory because all it takes is either one of your affiliates videos to go viral or your video to go viral and you will sell out very quickly. So they’re deep in denim. They primarily sell denim on TikTok shop. And she was going through all the videos that have performed really well. Well, all of the videos that have performed really well are definitely focused in on a specific body part on her.

35:04
And so she kept going through the videos and the audience is like in hysterics, right? Because she’s like, what do think it is? Why do you think everyone’s like, why is this video doing well? You know, and it’s like the same shot, you know, different tank top. And then finally, she’s like, whether you got them or you bought them, you better use them. I mean, and everyone is just dying laughing and, know, but she definitely gave a good good examples of like why things work, why things don’t, how to get people.

35:32
engaged on TikTok, which the crazy thing is, is that then we had Eugenia talk about organic TikTok, which literally it was like the two of them got together and were like, okay, you talk about this, you talk about that, but they’d never met before. But the talks literally, it’s like, if I was, if you’re, if you have the recordings, watch Eugenia’s talk first and learn about TikTok principles and then watch Tiffany’s talk and take those principles and then use them for your shop. Yes.

36:01
Eugenia has, I don’t know, six million subscribers or something crazy like that on TikTok. And she’s like, I want to say the opposite in personality to Tiffany. The opposite opposite personality of Tiffany. She’s a mathematician. Yes. You know, I can relate to her actually. She’s a mathematician, but she’s gotten down the TikTok success down to a science. Yes. Yes. And she once again gave people very practical, actionable steps.

36:30
to create content for TikTok and another seller summit first, we had a dog on the stage. We had Huxley. her cute little dog that does her TikTok channel with her. So Huxley was there. He presented for the first couple of minutes and then he went and sat with his dog dad and watched the rest of the presentation. But once again, I feel like I spend a lot of time on TikTok researching and trying to figure things out.

36:59
I could stop all of that and just apply what I’ve learned from her. Like the talk was so well done and just really practical strategies to succeed on TikTok. I mean, all these talks go hand in hand. I was thinking about Jake’s talk. He talked about headline and thumbnail hacks for YouTube. And Jake is someone who I’ve just followed for a very long time. He’s actually helped me out a lot with my channel. His newsletter is one of the few newsletters that I actually read religiously every single week.

37:29
I love him, he’s such a great, he has a mind to do this, right? If you say, I wanna make a video about XYZ, he will come up with five very great subtitles, subject lines for email, whatever it is, right? His mind just works that way and he works really quickly. What I liked is he went and showed like,

37:52
this line worked, this line didn’t, this worked, this didn’t, and then broke down why it worked and why it didn’t. And sometimes you don’t exactly know, but he gave his best guess about it. And so that’s what I always, and Jake does this every time he presents, right? It’s just very practical. And for people who have not created either video content and are working on titles or even email content, working on subject lines, this talk was really good because it just kind of makes you change how you think about,

38:20
subject lines and titles. mean, the tunnel and tunnel is everything in YouTube. Yeah. Literally once I started doing these things, my channel started taking off. Yeah. It is literally like 85 % of the equation. Yeah. So anyway, he always has a great talk. He didn’t bring a dog, so I was disappointed. Uh, but had a really great talk and I could tell people were like once again, frantically taking notes and actually he and I now have a, uh, an inside joke, but I’ll share it with everybody. So

38:49
Everyone wanted his slides, right? Because they were so good with examples and he had a QR code on his last slide for people to scan and get the slides. Well, all of a sudden I hear this like rumbling in the crowd, the QR code didn’t work. He couldn’t figure out why. I was like, no problem, Jake, email me your slides. I’ll put it in the app. You guys can grab it. Well, so then I was talking to him at lunch or after lunch or whenever and he’s like, yeah, I figured out what was wrong with the QR code. And I said, what was wrong? And he goes, well, I used one of those free QR code generators.

39:19
but it only allows you to use the QR code for two weeks or 13 days and then you have to pay. And he didn’t know that. So he was on day 14 of the 13 day trial. the link broke the link, right? And I was like, you know what? When I made the seller summit, like the slides that played during the break, I had QR codes for all our sponsors and things like that. And I used a free QR code generator. And after like the fourth or fifth QR code, I was like,

39:45
I wonder when they’re going to start charging me for the QR code. So I dug into the terms of service and sure enough, it was a 13 day trial, which would have expired on the Wednesday of seller summit. Hilarious. And I was like, I signed up. So we like literally Googled it, signed up for the same thing. And then of course he didn’t realize it till seller summit, but I realized it. was like, well, I realized it. I said the worst part about it was I was making these slides in Canva and Canva actually has a free QR code generator in Canva.

40:11
So anyway, now Jake knows he can use real QR codes from now on, but anyway, that’s become our joke about not being able to give See, this is one of those things that I would never, a QR code is literally just a URL that you scan in there. So they must be redirecting it. Yes, yeah. It’s like basically makes you a bitly. It’s not a bitly, but yeah. But yeah, was, and what’s crazy, just like side note about my irritation with this.

40:37
is that, know, so it’s like, okay, 14 day free trial, sure, I’ll just upgrade. What is it, like seven bucks a month? Oh no, it’s like 40 bucks a month and you have to pay annually. Wow. Like such, I’m like, this is, it’s literally a URL, right? And then- There’s a lot of tools like this, by the way, out there that it just bothers me to no end. Yeah. Anyway, I a little- I wanna make sure we don’t miss anyone. I did not get a chance to attend Andrea’s talk, but you were there, right? It was, once she actually like got, she had a little fan.

41:07
club in the front, one girl asked if she could be their best friend. I was like, sit down. But anyway, great. Once again, she talked about how to have a million dollar launch. And I don’t think the title was misleading, but what I liked about what she did was she actually talked about, she’s like, you don’t get to a million dollar launch on launch day. This takes a ton of prep. And these are all the things that you need to have to get there. And she basically took it.

41:30
from like, I think nine months out to launch day and everything that needed to be done, all the tools she used, the most important components. And it was really helpful. mean, people were taking mad notes in that lesson and she did a great job and she’s also not accepting best friends, just FYI. So Jungle Scout came in and did a pretty good talk, just kind of outlining what Amazon’s new fees are and how to find new products to sell.

41:56
One of the ways to combat all this is to continue to launch new products. And Jungle Scout basically went over the latest and greatest in niche research. Which everybody always wants, like that’s a staple. Yeah, it is. And then Brandon. Yes, Brandon’s always a hit. So I didn’t get to see that talk, but I saw him at dinner where he was literally like basically giving his presentation a second time and showing how he like was using AI to generate images, to test, to then add this, to add…

42:25
Like two minutes at dinner with him and I’m already like, you’re so much smarter than me. He just, he gets it, right? Like, and I think what Brandon does really well is he makes things all seem very doable for people, right? Like nothing seems like, well, that’s great for you, but that I could never figure that out. And then also, isn’t he also a seller? Like he’s a seller, Andy has the tools. So he’s got like all the different perspectives of things and is always testing and trying and.

42:54
Like I love that he’s just willing to share basically everything with people. Yeah, his wife I believe is an eight figure seller and so they base the tools that they sell off of actual data from their own Amazon accounts. Which is rare actually. Yeah, no I know which I think is why he’s always such a hit. Like we needed to get him in there because he just, people walk out of there once again with their minds blown.

43:21
And then finally I gave a talk on Facebook ads. Oh, that’s right. I forgot you gave it. I ended up redoing my entire talk. Yes, I know. Night before on Wednesday night because one of the members of my mastermind had not run any Facebook ads and it just so happens that her product is perfect. Perfect for Facebook ads. So I redid my presentation and I created some ads for her and I’m very curious when she starts running them, how they’ll perform.

43:51
Yeah, got a lot of people that weren’t her were very impressed that you redid your talk to include her. So you got big sums up from a lot of people for doing that. And I have to give a quick shout out to our friend, Steve Weigler, even though his nuggets did not make it to the Western Conference finals. He gave 30 minute legal sessions for like the entire event.

44:19
Which was crazy to me. Like, I don’t know how much he costs an hour, probably like 500 bucks, typical attorney. More than that, probably. I don’t know. But like the fact that like he just basically you signed up in advance and same with Liz from Fluencer Fruit. Basically, I think she filmed 32 product videos for people on Wednesday and Thursday. So UGC content for your Amazon listing. So a lot of our sponsors did carbon six, had a white paper for people. Yeah, like just

44:49
everybody had really great freebies for the attendees. Highbeam had an offer, I think it’s like 4.5 % on checking accounts. I’m moving all of my accounts over to Highbeam. Yeah. Because you can get high interest on your working capital. Like it’s different than moving it into like a fund or something because it’s instant. Yeah. And so imagine getting interest on the money that you’re using to run your business. It’s like a no brainer. Yeah.

45:19
So I love that our sponsors all pretty much came with like, we’re giving this to your attendees. So I always think that’s great because I think the attendees really make out with that. And once again, Pam from RPC taking photos just. And it was funny because we had the guys from Chanable there and I actually had no idea what they did. Wait, really? I didn’t. didn’t.

45:47
There’s a going you don’t run ads. I don’t run ads, right? don’t run ads, yeah. So they showed me the dashboard and it, you know, allows you to pull in from multiple, you know, sales sources. And like I was literally pulling people to their booth because I was like people that I knew were like selling on Shopify and Amazon and Etsy, right? And doing all these different platforms. The only thing they don’t integrate with is comment sold. I was like, listen, if you can get on comment sold, I could get you a ton more people.

46:16
But yeah, it was great because we had a lot of new sponsors there and were able to, you know, meet some new brands and just be able to give more more free offers to our attendees. Huge shout out to Klaviyo, who one, did not did not skewer me after my presentation, but also fed everybody tacos on Wednesday night. We had a mariachi band. Yeah, crazy. It was people loved it. I had so many people were like, you have to do this next year. I’m like, Klaviyo, hit up Joe.

46:46
But anyway, it’s just nice when the sponsors that are there can actually sit down with you and your computer and like help you with things right then and there, help you fix things, find things, show you how things work. And that’s the one thing that I love about the sponsors at Seller Summit is that they always send the right people.

47:06
Yep. then speaking of which, I always enjoy the Katita trivia. Yes. So every year what Katita does is they collect a bunch of statistics about Amazon. And then we have a little contest where we give away prizes at the end. I want to know how bad my score is every year. Lisa won’t tell me. I only got one right. I was going say, I think I got two, maybe. Yeah. I got everything wrong.

47:32
on Amazon. It’s amazing when you listen to that Amazon data too and then you think about how much they charge you for selling on Amazon. this year we had a tie, which I don’t think we’ve ever had before. And it was high stakes drama because Lisa was like, well, do we want to spin the wheel to like see who gets, it was a $300 Amazon gift card, which is, that’s a lot of money.

47:56
And the one winner wanted to spin the wheel to see who won it. And the other winner wanted to split the gift card. And it was like this stalemate for like when you’re on stage, like 10 seconds feels like an hour and a half. Right. And so you had lost your voice. So I took executive authority and I was like, sell or something. We’ll give the other gift card out. And everyone’s like erupting and cheering. You get a gift card. You get a gift card. You get a gift card. But anyway.

48:26
Course, Lisa’s like, you’re amazing. I was like, well, I didn’t really know what else to do. But I, you know, worked out great. I love that everyone plays. And what’s really funny is when, you know, they ask the question, you have an app, you answer the question on your phone, and then the answer pops up and the collective groan or gasp from the audience on some of these Amazon facts is pretty hilarious. One thing that shocked me just the fact that stands out in my mind.

48:54
is supposedly 30 % of sellers are sourcing from the US or made in the USA. I was like, there’s no way. I know. I think I put like 2 % or whatever the lowest one was. too, yeah. And then a final shout out to Linwerks, inventory management company. These days you have to be selling on all different channels and managing your inventory is really difficult unless you have a tool. Yeah. And we had, oh, don’t forget about Carbon 6 who

49:19
hosted our registration table this year. they had cookies for everybody when they showed up, which was awesome. And they raffled away, I don’t remember what it was, but they had a great raffle and also provided attendees with a lot of data. And then our friends at Helium 10, which is another product research tool. And once again, being able to sit at the booth, talk to people, understand how the tool works, learn how to better use it. Because you know what happens with people? They buy tools.

49:48
and then they don’t ever leverage them appropriately, right? They’re using like one fourth of the capability of what it can do. And so I love that like, you know, everyone’s sitting there with their computers open and learning how to maximize, because you’re spending money on this. You should know how to get the most money, your most value for your dollar. What I like is they brought someone from Healing 10 is actually a seven figure seller. Oh, awesome. So she knew everything about, I mean, she’s a user and she’s a seller. Yeah. And then

50:17
you know, our friend Pam. I mean, another OG. She had her OG t-shirt on at Seller Summit. Literally just logistics wonder. Always has great swag at the table and will talk your ear off about logistics. I don’t know anything about logistics. Don’t care anything about logistics, but Pam makes it interesting and simplifies it. And actually there were a lot of people there who have been using Pam because we’ve referred them, but they had never met her before.

50:45
So they actually got to meet her in person and they’re always a great addition. Very happy to have them with us for eight years. But overall, I thought it was a great event. Yeah. So what’s funny is this happens every year leading up to the event. I’m always stressed out. like, Tony, I think this is last year. Yeah, every year. Every year for the last five years. Every year for every year. Has it been every year? Yes, it has. But then I get to event and I have such a good time. I’m like, all right, fine.

51:15
Let’s do another year. do another year. The community is what makes the event. The people that attend are what makes the event great. The fact that our speakers, our sponsors and our attendees all hang out together, that there’s no like separation. It’s not like the sponsors run off at the end of the day, right? Like everybody is really there to help other people out. And I think that’s the thing that makes our summit special when it comes to e-commerce events. Most e-commerce events are very closed and very secretive.

51:45
And I heard multiple times from people this year, people that are in the industry, they are attending 10 to 15 to 20 events a year. And the consistent feedback we get is, I love how open everybody is at this event. I love how welcoming everybody is at this event. And to me, that means we won. Because if people can come learn things and feel welcomed by a group of people that are just like them, what else could you possibly ask for?

52:13
And then the recordings for all the sessions that we talked about will be available in a couple of weeks. And if you want to get the recordings, you can get them at the sellersummit.com website.

52:26
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now tickets for Seller Summit 2025 have not been announced yet, but I’ll be sure to let you know as soon as we’ve secured the venue and the date and time. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 540. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.