587: More Efficiency, Less Waste: How To Streamline Your Business In 2025

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, Tony and I dive into how to make your business run leaner by auditing your expenses and cutting out the fat. From hidden subscriptions to inefficient workflows, we’ll show you what we’re doing to plug the leaks. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over at sellersummit.com and the prices are now going to go up every two weeks.

00:29
until the event starts. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level advice, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods,

00:57
and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. I personally hate large events, so the seller’s summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. If you are an e-commerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers.

01:25
The Seller’s Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th. Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

01:44
Welcome to the MyWifeQuitterJob podcast. Today’s episode has been inspired by doge, not in the political aspect, but doging the stuff that I work on right now, like cutting off the fat and really becoming a more efficient business. I feel like you are one of the most efficient businesses I know, so I can’t even imagine what you could cut.

02:12
You know what’s funny is there’s always junk behind the scenes that nobody knows about. Yeah. Right. I think I mentioned this to you last week. Bumblebee Linens has been running on software that is dated 2012 or 13 or something like that. And that software is not supported anymore. And the tools that allow me to run it aren’t supporting more. So if this one PC dies in the office, then we can’t create our monogram designs.

02:42
The whole business will collapse. I guess that’s not considered doge, but there’s all these subscriptions also that I had been signed up for. And you know how much I hate subscriptions. It’s because of this. It gets out of hand, right? You forget about them. Well, here’s here’s the thing like this this one precious computer. I feel like we should steal the Declaration of Independence. This computer is like the holy grail of your entire business. I think that anything where

03:10
When you think about how to doze your business, we’ll just say anything where it’s like, have to fix this, we have to get rid of it, we have to change something about it so that we can continue on. It might not always just be about cutting something, it could be about improving something so that you aren’t at single point of failure kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, I guess the people- What’s that? Which would be you right now. Yeah.

03:39
You know, what’s funny is when you’re like, I’m not in Bumblebee Linens day to day. I pretty much manage the marketing gens in their day to day. Uh, but, but lately, you know, ever since we launched our, our print side of our business, I’ve been going in a lot more. I would say at least, at least twice a week minimum. And every time I go in, there’s things that I notice like, Hey, you know, why are we doing it this way?

04:07
Or not not to say that it’s wrong, you know, it’s the way we’ve always done it and whatnot but even stuff that I’ve written that are being implemented so for example

04:20
What I’ve been working on this past week is when an order comes in, needs to be like a monogram order or a personalized order. It needs to be converted into this file that a machine can understand. And so I wrote this code that literally just takes it from the website, runs all the tools automatically, and then outputs this file. What I didn’t realize, and hence that one machine, if it goes down, we’re dead because it’s using that software that’s obsolete now. Anyway.

04:50
So I discover as I’m trying to make this up to date so that it’s future proof and we can put on any machine and whatnot, I discovered that maybe 20 % of the time it dies. And then someone has to just manually enter in the personalization. Okay. But you didn’t know this. No, I didn’t know this because I’m not running it day to day. Right. Right. Or our VA’s are running it or sometimes our employees are running it. Right.

05:20
The other thing that I discovered that is that we have to rename each file manually before it goes to the machine because the machine can only display so many characters of the name and you know what the personalization is on the machine because you can’t read the file name. Gotcha. So needs to be manually renamed to something so that you can recognize what it is once it gets on the machine. Stupid stuff like that takes hours every day.

05:49
So how did you doge it? What’d you do? Oh, well, now I’ve automated all the code with your stuff, right? So that’s, I literally have been spending probably five hours a day redoing all this stuff using free software. Okay. Thank God for open source software. Because that one tool that we were using to automate everything before, they started charging some insane

06:19
amount of money, like $300 a month or something like that for it, which is ridiculous for what it does. Yeah. And then there’s this free solution out there. So I think that’s why you don’t like monthly programs, monthly subscriptions, because you start and I’ll talk. This is my biggest doge of the year. Very proud of this one. Actually, you start like we’ll say like 12 years ago, right? Because we’ll use myself as an example.

06:49
and you find this tool that does exactly what you want, right? And you’re like, oh, it’s just a yearly subscription, right? I pay once a year. Seems like a good deal, right? Because especially if you don’t have your ability to spend five hours a day coding using open source software, you know, you’re like, okay, this solves my problem for a hundred bucks a year, 200 bucks a year, whatever, right? But then as time goes on, it’s like, well, now it’s $149 a year. Well, now it’s 199 a year or

07:19
Well, this doesn’t really do everything you need to do anymore. You need to get this additional add-on, right? And that’s only $47, right? But then at the end of the day, you’re like, I’m spending 50 bucks a month, right? When you start looking at everything adding together. And so one of the tools, and I still like this tool, is Beaver Builder. And it was a page builder back in the day before it was, like back in the day, it was really hard to build good looking pages on WordPress if you did not code.

07:49
And so Beaver Builder, I don’t want to say made it easy, because I actually thought Beaver Builder was pretty tough to learn. However, once you learned it, you could make really great pages. But then 15 years go by, right? And WordPress rolls out all sorts of, you know, integrated page builders that are free or very low cost, one time fee, right? You buy a theme, something like that. And I was under the impression that I, in order to keep all those pages, I’m going to have hundreds of pages on my site built with Beaver Builder, right?

08:18
And I was under the impression that in order to keep all those pages, and some of them are like decent traffic pages, I had to keep renewing my subscription to Beaver Builder. So every year I was paying like the 147 bucks or whatever it was. Well, then we were on office hours this, you know, the last couple of months and I made a comment about it where we were talking about the subscriptions and how they really add up. And Kevin said, he looked it up as we were talking. He’s like, you, you’ll still keep all your pages. You just don’t get any of the updates.

08:48
And I was like, oh, so I don’t, because I wasn’t, I hadn’t been using it for probably five years, right? Building pages with it. So I canceled it like two weeks ago, like it was my renewal time and I like removed the auto renew and all that stuff. And it felt, it’s like, you know, a hundred bucks, right? It’s not a lot of money, but it felt so good. Cause I felt like I was hostage to it. Cause I wasn’t going to pay someone to build a hundred pages on my site. I don’t have time to redo a hundred pages. You know what I mean? Like,

09:16
That was just too big. It was easier just to pay the yearly ransom and keep moving. I don’t think Beaver Builder is bad company. They’re a good company, but didn’t need them anymore. That felt so good because every year I dreaded that renewal because I’m like, don’t even use this anymore, but I have to keep paying it. That was my big one from a couple of weeks ago. Here’s the problem with

09:39
tools like Beaver Builder. If you ever want to even make the slightest edit to the page, the builder’s code is so ugly, you need the tool to do it, right? Yes, exactly. That felt really good. I want to add a caveat because we’ll probably talk about some other stuff that we cut. Sometimes it truly is just worth paying for a subscription. I will give an example of this. tool that I think until something better comes out,

10:07
you cannot beat this is Canva. Canva has revolutionized graphic design and digital product creation. And it’s like 12 bucks a month, something like that. Yes, all of your assets can be stored in Canva, but you can also export everything in Canva and put them in Google Drive or Dropbox or on your own machine, whatever.

10:33
But that’s what like I think it’s okay at times to pay for things because they add such a value to what you’re doing. And like the time versus money thing is just you can’t put a comparison on it. Like and I know you used Photoshop for a really, really long time with like a one time fee. But I still do. Yeah. Yeah. But once again, you can’t update your Photoshop because you’re using the 2009 version or whatever. I don’t remember what version I have, but it’s the last one before they. Yeah.

11:03
So I think that like, I know when people listen to this and get all cut happy and be like, I’m not paying for Canva anymore. I’m gonna go back to Microsoft Paint. know, like sometimes it’s worth it to spend a little money because you can’t, the technology of the software is better than like hiring someone. I mean, I pay for lots of stuff still just to be clear. Yeah. It was just a matter of going through. Here’s the saddest part. There’s this one software that we’re using for Bumblebee that they discontinued.

11:32
However, it is like the most complicated copy protection ever. Like you can’t just install on a machine, it’s got to get activated on a server which no longer exists. Right? So I was thinking to myself, like normally I would just pay for this, but this is like driving me towards piracy. Right? Because we rely on the software to generate the designs.

12:00
And so I took a little miniature hacking class. It’s actually not that complicated, but just all these little things that companies do, I don’t know. It’s just all these costs can add up. I was using this other subscription that I didn’t even know was active on one of my social media accounts. And I don’t actually check, maybe I should do a better job of this, but I don’t check my credit card statements that often.

12:33
And then before you know it, I’m paying for a whole bunch of subscriptions that I’m not even using. So I did this a couple of months ago. Same thing. Like I don’t we should we now let me just say this is not a good practice. We should be checking our credit card statements every month like a cursory like look over, you know, does everything look right? Did anyone steal my identity kind of thing? Now, I don’t do it because I get notifications of charges like over 25 bucks on my phone. It’s mainly to keep my kids from going nuts. So at Target.

13:03
But I get the notification. So as long as I see a notification come through and I’m like, oh yeah, you know, that’s mine. I don’t really, you know, when the bill comes, it’s like if it’s reasonable bill, I’m like, okay, that looks good. It’s probably about right. It’s what I pay every month kind of thing. You know what I mean? But then when you take a look and I always end up doing this at the end of the year when I’m working on my taxes, right? And I’m looking for things. And then I was like, are you kidding me? Like last year I found that I had been paying for like a Google workspace.

13:32
for a business and account I didn’t own, like I wasn’t doing anymore. So I had paid 20 or $19 a month or something like, only 20 bucks a month, for an entire year and a half since I was like, I’m not going to use that, but I forgot to turn it off, cancel it. So that’s like 400 bucks just sitting there. Same thing with, I used online jobs pH to hire. Oh yeah, I forgot to cancel that.

14:00
That’s 70 bucks. I went an extra four months. That one hurt because that one was just complete brain fog. When I saw that, I saw the charge and I was like, I’m still paying for this and I have not even logged onto the site in four months. That was four months of paying for that. What I try to do and if you are-

14:27
Here’s the other thing is when you sign up for a free trial and it’s one that puts your credit card in and then you forget to cancel, that’s the same thing, which I usually like the free trials where you don’t have to put a credit card in because then when I forget to cancel, it cost me money. I just set Google calendars now for everything. I have a domain that I’m probably going to let expire. I have a Google calendar for July 17th.

14:55
to remind me to go in there and make the final decision of, I’m not keeping this anymore. But that’s I started one of the things I was gonna say. I have tons of domains that I never will use probably that I’m just paying for every So why are domains the hardest thing to get rid of? Because it’s like real estate. It is, but I don’t know anybody personally who’s making money off of domains. I know people do.

15:21
But like, I know a lot of people personally who make a lot of money off of real estate. Yeah. Domains are tough, although I’ve been the past. Ever since, you know, ever since 2020, I’ve gotten a lot stricter. Like I’ve let a lot more things like, OK, I’m not going to keep this. I’ve let a ton of domains go. You know, I just have been more harsh, I guess, with the cutting. Whereas before I’m like, it’s like 10 bucks a month. I don’t care.

15:50
I’ve gotten a lot tighter with the purse strings. Here’s the other thing I started doing. I think every company should do this to a certain point. Every piece of software that you use that needs to be installed on a PC, for example, I now archive that exact version. OK, what does that mean? So for example, if I’m using Camtasia or Adobe Photoshop, CS, whatever, I archive the installer for that specific version.

16:20
Because like I there’s this this is this recently just happened with Bumblebee I updated the version of software all of a sudden all of my automation stopped working Okay Right or just the way we started doing things changed and it just stopped working and there was no way to revert that Version back to the old one. Yeah, unless you had it and I mean one could argue. Yeah, you should be upgrading anyway, but

16:50
More than half the time, I would even say like 90 % of the time for me at least, upgrading is almost never a good idea. I feel like there’s a pain threshold with upgrading and I’ll use Camtasia because I was just in it right before we started recording the podcast. When I opened it up on my computer, I realized that I was like, oh, I have Camtasia 2024 on this computer.

17:18
I thought I only had Camtasia 18 or whatever, you know? But the problem was, and I don’t remember if you remember this, it was probably about a year ago when we were doing office hours and every time I would try to open, Camtasia would crash on me. Like every single time. And it got to the point where I had to re-record like probably three different office hours, like alone because it crashed and didn’t record the live version of it. And so at that point I had spent, you know,

17:46
probably two hours of my time re-recording and every single time I went to use Camtasia, it would crash on me. I lost editing, like I lost editing work. So it was not, wasn’t just the office hour stuff, but it was starting to be a problem. And I did all the troubleshooting and everything and it just wasn’t working right anymore. And at that point I was like, you know what? I have to upgrade to 2024. because this is causing me too much pain to, you know.

18:14
continue to deal with it and just be like, I don’t have to pay any money.

18:44
Now this course is free and can be attained 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.

19:01
I’ve never ever had that problem and it’s probably because you have 10,000 tabs open on your browser leading to memory loss and then Camtasia didn’t have enough memory and then it crashed. Okay, yes. That’s what you said when it was happening, but I did all the things and I actually have it on a computer that I don’t use for very… I usually only use it for recording stuff. So I had even done all of the remove stuff from the computer, pulled everything off into hard drives. I had done all the troubleshooting and then…

19:29
I think there comes a point where when you’ve done all the troubleshooting and you’re still having issues and it’s a really old piece of software, sometimes you do have to upgrade. Here’s another one that might get doged. That’s like typical Mac mentality, by the way. It is Mac mentality. That never happens to me, actually. If I have something that’s working rock solid, it never just stops working.

19:50
on my machine, When I went in all the forums, I was not alone, let’s just say. It probably isn’t maxing. Here’s something that I’m debating, Dojing, and maybe you can help me. I still pay for Jungle Scout. It’s like 500 bucks a year, which that’s a lot of money. it’s 500 bucks a year. I don’t know what plan I have or anything like that.

20:17
Like, I mean, can access everything, right? But I don’t really, like, I’m not gonna sell on Amazon anytime in the next, you know, couple of years. Do I use it for like Amazon influencer stuff? Occasionally, but I really just use Fluencer Fruit, right? Like Fluencer Fruit’s pretty robust. I don’t really need, you know, Jungle Scout. I find myself using Jungle Scout the most when I get…

20:43
Come across a random product on like Amazon or tik-tok and I just want to see if it’s actually Like I use it for my own personal gossip, right? Like I don’t use it in any way for business right now. So it’s like Do I axe it? It seems like an easy no-brainer axe to me really but it just feels I Don’t know, you know, I guess worst case you could use mine. If you know, it’s like it’s like computer specific. It’s a browser. It’s not

21:12
Mine’s in my browser. in your browser, but you got to log in. Oh, I have to log in. Can I log into your browser? I suppose you could. don’t know. Mess up your search history, mess up your algorithm. Yeah, that one’s probably going to get the doge. Yeah, I think you should ask that one. Here’s the other thing that I’ve been kind of doging. And this is probably really annoying to people who work for me.

21:42
But I try to figure out exactly what they’re doing. And then I’ll walk in and I’ll just say, just let me just follow you for a day and see what you’re doing. I bet they love that. I usually do this while Jen’s gone. And then I’m like, OK, why the heck are we doing this way? Why are you using paper? Why is your desk covered and posted? Why are we doing this all manually like that? And then.

22:11
Oftentimes, here’s what my prediction is. Because of AI and everything, I’m predicting in two years, everyone will be able to code these stupid things to automate stuff the way you want. And arguably, you should start doing it now. And this is just like an exercise. There’s a lot of waste. There’s a lot of wasted movements in any business. And a lot of times, automating it actually isn’t that big of a deal.

22:40
And it might take you a little bit. just, so the perfect example is one I already just gave, right? With the automatic monograms, like with the typing and everything. Like when an order comes in, no human should ever have to touch that file before it gets to the machine. Stupid stuff like that. And I wouldn’t even pay for any SaaS apps. Here’s another prediction that I have. You know all those apps in the Shopify app store?

23:07
I was just looking at it the other day because some student asked me about some silly functionality. I can’t remember what it was. Some very basic functionality, something to do with like sales and promotions and whatnot. And she was like, I’m thinking about paying for this app. It’s $50 a month so I can do this like one specific sale. And I’m thinking to myself, $50 a month to be able $600 a year to be able to run one specific type of sale.

23:36
And she wasn’t equipped to do this, but literally you could just go to Claude and say, I want to write a Shopify app that allows me to do this one specific type of sale. And it would give you the liquid code that you could just cut and paste into your theme. Speaking of Shopify apps, my client’s getting ready to doge something, which is this is a big one actually. So we’ve talked about rewards programs in the past. You built your own.

24:06
Yes. And when we talk about accessing things, it’s not because we don’t recommend them. I also want to put that out there. Like I like Jungle Scout. I like the company. I like the work they do. It’s just a matter of is it right for my business right now? And the answer is probably no. So we’ve been using the smile dot I.O. loyalty program. It’s very expensive. How much is it actually?

24:28
So I was about to look it up because the problem with a lot of these apps is not just that they are monthly. It’s like, it’s monthly and you can sign up for, um, know, ons. Yes. $19. So the starter plan in smile is $49 a month. Okay. Um, it does up to 500 monthly orders. like the solid a lot, your store is not very big if you’re in, um,

25:00
you know, starter mode. So growth is $200 a month, which is 2500 monthly orders, which is still like, I mean, that’s a lot, but it’s not really that much. It’s not as much as you think it, you know, right with $20 per additional hundred orders, right. And it’s got, you know, more tiers, whatever, or more, you know, that you can integrate with. The plus program is a thousand dollars a month.

25:30
Woo. Right. So I mean, that’s you better be making a lot of money from your loyalty program. So we just are what we’re going to switch to. It’s like Aptol, A P P S T L E, which is like their top tier, I think is like under 200 a month. Right. That does everything that the thousand dollar a month plan does on Smile. And so that’s the other thing to think about is it might.

25:59
be that you have to use some sort of subscription to do what you need to do. But you you might have signed up for one. Here’s the other thing. A lot of these people increase their prices over time, which I get it. Like they’re trying to earn a living. But like new people come on the market. And you’re right with the ability to like code stuff. Like people are developing things a lot quicker. There’s a lot more competition. Use that to your advantage to find a better deal on a product that usually I mean, usually you can find something that does more for less money.

26:28
I’m not trying to smash smile.io. think it’s a great company. Yeah. But the software they have is so easy to code. I, I seriously told me. I mean, it’s so basic. Yeah. So basic. It was a camera is less than a week project for me. Yeah. Um, to do, and I didn’t even code most of it. Like I had chat, you’d out back back when I was using chat, you’d be to do it. Yeah. Uh, from my own website. Yeah. Um, there was something else I was going to say. Oh yeah.

26:57
Almost all these companies, start out cheap or free. Yes. And then something happens where they decide to triple their prices. Like stamp.io was the perfect example. It was free. It was a review program. Everyone loved it. I was promoting it and whatnot. And then they started gouging people with pricing and they held the reviews hostage if you tried to switch. So that’s why I have no problems trashing that company publicly actually.

27:28
They wouldn’t release the reviews. this is just a trend, I think, with any service. Yeah. Right. I bet Smile.io wasn’t that expensive when you guys first joined. Right. I think it was pretty. I mean, I remember like back when I was in e-commerce, like thinking that that was a pretty affordable program. No, not anymore. Not anymore. And you think like, oh, that’s, you know, thousand dollars. That’s seventy five hundred orders. Yes, it’s a lot of orders every month. But.

27:54
Every single thing eats into your margins, right? Every single thing. And if you can’t show that you’re, and here’s the other thing, if you’re not, this is the other reason why you need to doge something. You have something that you’re paying for, but you’re not using it to its fullest potential. So this is where I see people making a mistake a lot in e-commerce. They’re paying for an affiliate program, like a Shopify affiliate integration, like Affiliate.ly. Affiliate.ly is a good program, right? This is not a trash on them at all.

28:22
But if you don’t have someone emailing your, like if you don’t have either someone’s job or some part of someone’s job is to manage that and to be putting creatives in there, to be putting the copy, like reevaluate, like maybe you just pause it for now, right? Like you don’t have, like until you’re ready to like make the fact that, and I feel at least not expensive, it’s like 10, 15, $19 a month, whatever, it’s in that like sort of doesn’t matter price range.

28:49
But it does matter if you’re not making any money from your affiliates, right? If you’re not actively using that tool, it’s like jungle Scott, I’m not using it right now. I need to let it go. But it’s sort of that like, when we get to the affiliate program, well, okay, when you get to it, but you’re not do it. So quit paying for it until you can dedicate the resources to say, hey, we need to spend five hours a week on our affiliate program. I’m considered dozing my email marketing for my wife quit.

29:19
Not for Bumblebee linens, but for MyWifeQuit. Because at a base level, I have three or four autoresponders, maybe a little more than that, but one main big one. And I broadcast for the most part. So why am I paying all this money for something that’s really basic when there’s actually free solutions out there? There are little, I actually haven’t experimented.

29:45
recently. Remember when we were going to do Go Brand Win? I didn’t build it. It was free and I just tailored it to our thing. It wasn’t bad. It worked. It did work. Yes. And it was a dollar to send 10,000 emails. Yes, I remember that. It was very cheap. Yeah. So here’s the moral of the story. I think there’s almost always an open source solution out there that you should search for first. Take Bumblebee Linens.

30:15
It’s built on an open source shopping cart. And today there’s still a bunch of really good open source shopping carts. WooCommerce is probably the most popular one that’s free. And just think, how many people are on Shopify plus right now paying $2,000 a month? And mine probably has much more functionality than Shopify plus, I would guess at this point. And so that’s a lot of money. Here’s the other thing to think about because

30:45
I know when people listen to this, they tell me, they get frustrated with you, right? Because you’re like, well, I just coded this up. I just did X, Y, Z, right? Which I understand, because I am not someone who can just go code something up and make it work. However, what I have found, and this is a good example with Shopify, and I love Shopify. So, I mean, I’ve paid for Shopify for a very long time. But if you can do something where you…

31:14
You don’t know how to do all these things, right? But you can pay someone a thousand dollars, let’s just say, to set it up for you using software or tools that are free. And then, you know, you have to, you know, have maintenance every once in a while. I mean, what are most even the small stores, what are they paying per month on Shopify? I mean, I think when I was selling, I was paying 100, 200 bucks a month when you added everything in. Oh, when you add in the plugins, you mean? Yeah. Yeah.

31:42
Like a base plan at Shopify is like $39 a month now. So you realize that after a year or two, you’ve basically paid for the investment that you made in the beginning. And that’s something that I think people should think about. It’s like, well, is it worth it to just pay monthly forever and ever and I can never leave? Or should I pay a one-time fee, have someone set something up for me and then basically just worry about maintenance every once

32:11
I mean, that’s always the dilemma. I think that most people have because I fall into this trap too. Like I have apps where I’m paying monthly where I could save 20 % if I paid upfront for a year. But I’m always like, still want the option to cancel. But then I end up using that same software for years. Yeah, the monthly yearly.

32:37
That one always gets me because like I want to do the yearly but then there’s that little bit of me that’s like what if I hate it and I’m like what if I hate it I’ve literally been talking about it for two years. I don’t hate it.

32:50
I think the point here is you have to go through all the things you’re paying for and which ones are labeled each one as whether it’s mission critical, like you can’t live without like usually I’ll go through and I’ll sign a number from one to 10 like how badly do I need this? Yeah. Versus what I’m paying. Like if it’s super cheap. Usually I’ll let it slide. Like I’m paying for some stupid stuff. That’s like five bucks a month. But yeah, I’m willing to let that slide. But if it’s something really stupid, that

33:17
Here’s the problem. I guess it’s hard for someone to tell who’s less technical to to understand what’s stupid or not, you know in terms of how hard it is to To actually implement it yourself But take like that discount example that I gave you earlier Like I want to run like a buy one get one free or something like that That wasn’t the exact thing but it was something a little more complicated like buy something you get something else cheaper, whatever That is a very stupid feature to implement. Yeah

33:47
That’s a very simple feature to implement and you shouldn’t be paying any tool 50 bucks a month to do that. Right. Just get it over with, hire developer to make that part of your store and just call it a day. Yeah. And here’s the other thing I’ve just noticed after teaching my class. A lot of people think short term, right? They’re like, Oh, you know, I’m just going to try this for a year. So I don’t want to invest in all that stuff.

34:15
But that’s not the right attitude. Like you have to go into this thinking that you’re gonna run it for like three or five years. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think I think it’s good rather than doing it yearly like I tend to do is to actually probably go through every quarter. And because if you haven’t used something in three months and it’s not because it’s seasonal. Right. Like you just haven’t used it in three months. It might be time to put it on the chopping block.

34:44
And then, you know, maybe you think, okay, three months, now add it to six, now make it six months, right? like, tell yourself in six months, if I haven’t used it, like it’s gone, right? Like no questions asked. But then, you know, if it motivates you to start using it, then obviously you can keep it. But I think the amount of money people waste on…

35:09
It’s almost always tools you don’t end up using versus tools that are like, it’s just easier not to have this. No, usually the tools that you’re using are pretty good, like Canva. If you use it every day, it’s a great deal. But if you’re like, you know what, I’ve never made a graphic in Canva, then why are you still paying $11 a month? Not worth it. Did you know that Jungle Scott has a lifetime plan now? I forgot to tell you about this.

35:38
since we’re talking about it. It’s like 800 bucks and you never have to pay again. So that might be worth it for you since you’re already paying. It’s helpful to know. I would always rather own something outright than pay a subscription. Even if it’s like a little subscription. I’m like subscription phobic because I don’t check. I think maybe that’s my problem. don’t check my credit card statements enough. Well, and here’s the thing, like with lifetime,

36:03
I think sometimes people get nervous like, oh, lifetime. Well, what if they’re not in business in five years? Well, if they’re not in business in five years, I guarantee you still paid less paying the lifetime than you have paying monthly. Right. You you’ve gotten your money’s worth after five years for sure. Yeah. So my last one where I can’t put it on the chopping block is my Google Drive storage. That I get. That’s really hard to do.

36:32
It’s it but this is one where it’s like it’s the time over money thing, right? Like I’m at 80 % right now on my current plan. So I’m gonna have to upgrade right to the next tier. But if you don’t have a way for you to me to what because I went through this whole exercise. Okay. Most of the time your drive is filled up because of images. Yes, emails like everyone like if they attach an image or whatever that’s all stored in there and it just all adds up.

37:02
Sometimes there’s like short movies in there. You can write a, you can just go up to ChatGBT or Claw and say, hey, write me a Google script, Google Drive script that goes through, finds all of the photos or anything over like a megabyte, lists the file names, and then deletes them if you want. Like gives you a list and then asks you if you want to delete it. My problem is I don’t want to delete everything. Like my Google Drive is

37:31
filled up because of photos and videos, right? In your emails or just in the drive In general. Okay. Well then that, yeah. Then that’s, yeah. But I also have four hard drives behind me, right, that I could move everything to that have already been paid for and are just sitting there living their best life, dusty on my desk. But that’s one of those things where it’s like the process of doing that is just so overwhelming to me that I’m like, I know that I’ll just pay for more storage.

38:00
I’m like that too. mean, for storage, it’s like unlimited. Just like when my VA just told me like her storage had filled up with her with all my videos, not the videos themselves, but like the edits, you know what saying? Like the edit file with the videos. And she’s like, should I start deleting them? Because chances are, we’re not going to revisit them, right? Especially the edited parts. It’s one thing to store the final version, it’s the other to store like the raw off which I was like, no, let’s just keep all of it.

38:29
And so just bought her a new drive, even though I’m probably never, ever going to look at that raw footage ever again. Yeah. It’s just I think this is a good exercise for people because there’s probably so much in honestly, like this says this extends past business, right? Like how many subscriptions are you there’s I always see these ads on like TikTok where it’s like, I bet we can tell you how much you’re wasting on your subscriptions. And it’s like, yeah, I’m sure you can.

38:57
Like I’m sure I’m wasting a ton of money on subscriptions. But I think, you know, start with your business because I think there’s, I think in business too, you get a little like swipe happy with the credit card because you’re like, oh, this is gonna transform my business. Oh, this is gonna, we’re gonna have affiliates and we’re gonna have rewards programs and we’re gonna do, I’m gonna find 15 more products on Amazon to sell with my jungle scout. Like you have all these big ideas and the reality is most people are like grinding away on one thing day after day. And so there’s no point in keeping.

39:26
those expenses when you don’t need them. Yeah. And I think we’re bringing up this topic in this episode because I feel like we’re heading towards a downturn if we’re not in one already. Yeah. Lots of companies, especially in the Amazon space are hurting big time. Yeah. Like the companies. I can tell because we run an event. Yeah. And so, you know, it pays to buckle down and doze a little bit. Yeah. Hope you enjoyed this episode. We’re likely headed to leaner times.

39:55
So it’s time to buckle down and do some cost cutting. For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejobe.com slash episode 587. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you wanna hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store,

40:24
Head on over to my wife, quitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.