591: What the Top 1% of Ecom Founders Revealed at Sellers Summit 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 do a full recap of Seller Summit 2025. While it’s still fresh in our minds, we’re breaking down the biggest takeaways, behind the scenes moments and the strategies that had everyone talking. And just a quick heads up, the full recordings for every session from Seller Summit 2025 are now available at sellersummit.com. So if you missed the event,

00:29
you can still catch all the valuable content online.

00:38
Welcome back to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast. We just had Seller Summit 2025 last week and I thought what I would do today is Tony and I will highlight some of the greatest parts of the event and what people learned. Yeah, I always say like this was our best year yet, but I do feel like this year stood out. I don’t know. I’ve received a lot of feedback from attendees. Obviously,

01:06
I feel like when attendees give us feedback, it’s probably a little biased because most people don’t complain to your face. I had a couple of people that I ran into after the event and I must have looked pretty haggard because they didn’t recognize me in the elevator. I asked, how was the event? They’re like, oh, it was great. They’re like, how was the event for you? I was like, I think this is our best year. Then after I said that, realized who I was. They clearly didn’t know who I was, which is

01:32
I’m like perfect. I don’t want you to tell me like you know who I am. I want you to tell me like I’m a fellow attendee because I am a fellow attendee. I know for me this year, I had a bunch of people come up to me and say, hey, how come next year’s tickets aren’t for sale yet? Yes. Why isn’t it up yet? I’m like, whoa. So I’ve received some panicky texts actually, like from people that I know personally who were at Seller Summit and they were saying,

02:00
I’ve been talking to my, everyone kind of makes friend groups while they’re there. They get their community and their networking. And I had a text the other day from somebody who said, hey, people are really nervous that you didn’t announce tickets yet. I was like, don’t be nervous. It’s just a very detailed process to secure hotels. All that has to be worked out. And we don’t like to blow everything out of the water when stuff is still like in mid negotiation for sure.

02:28
Yeah, I think last year we sold tickets and we had no idea where it was. So that’s what we wanted to avoid. This year we know exactly where it is. We’re just finalizing the dates and so the tickets will be on sale. Don’t worry. Actually, by the time this podcast gets released, you will be able to buy a ticket, I think. Yes. So I don’t want to make too many… Steve’s like looking at me like, you will? The checkout page is up, right? Yeah, the checkout page is up actually, but we’re making some changes to the sales page.

02:58
Anyway, let’s get to the fun stuff. You know what’s funny is I was very worried about this Seller Summit. Very worried. Mainly because at the time, the tariffs were at 145%. So this is actually the first year where we literally had three sessions to address tariffs. And what’s hilarious about it is as soon as the Seller Summit ended on Monday, they had talks and it dropped back down to 30%, which

03:27
Doesn’t make it a non-issue, but it certainly mitigated a lot of things. Yeah. One of the things I think was interesting about this year’s Seller Summit is that there, would say in general, the mood of the attendees that week was stressed. A lot of people had containers that were sitting in China. A lot of people were at the point of, in fact, I had a longtime attendee and good friend of ours sit in the mastermind with me and say, I don’t know if I’ll have a business in a year.

03:57
Right? So I felt like a lot of people came into seller summit this year with that apprehension and sort of down on e-commerce in general, as well as people who didn’t attend this year, like long time attendees, because their business was in such flux. And to me, like, this is when you need to be here. This is when you need to be talking to other sellers. This is when you need to be networking and learning from some of the best of the best, because there always are things you can do in your business to keep it going.

04:26
Yeah, so we had Annette talk about sourcing from the United States, which was a hot topic. And then we had Jim talk about ways to mitigate the tariffs. And then he actually specializes in sourcing from Vietnam also, which is a place that many people are going to. And they have been going to for a long time. I will say about Jim, I want to interrupt really quick. I did not know him before Seller Summit. I know he was an acquaintance of yours.

04:54
Absolutely fantastic. Like I cannot wait to watch his session. I wasn’t in his session, but I cannot wait to watch it Super nice guy, but also knows his stuff. I had dinner with him one night Cannot wait to hear that session. It’s I really looking forward to it. No, absolutely I mean all the sessions were great. I sat in on his and I sat in on Annette’s also So for Annette’s in case you guys are interested in sourcing textiles from the United States It’s actually quite viable

05:22
And when you take into account like the lead times of manufacturing, which are like three weeks versus like three months, it can actually make a huge difference to your cashflow. Yeah. And then in another session, which we didn’t record, was secret was, yeah, because I didn’t want it recorded. We were just talking about all the black hat ways to get stuff in without actually having to pay the tariff.

05:47
Why you need to be there in person because every once in a while we have these little secret round tables that uh We can’t we just can’t record. So yes you and Ming Mercer. another seller summit attendee basically Opened the book on all these other things that you can do. Well, okay So, you know It was grey hat and black hat and just all the sketchy things that you could do at your own risk in case you desperate Let’s just say absolutely at your own risk. We don’t endorse any correct

06:16
That’s why it wasn’t recorded. We don’t endorse these things. This is what’s happening right now. And this is how you can actually avoid terrorists altogether. And I got a lot of feedback on that from people who were like, Stephen Ming just like told us everything that was going. mean, they were like very excited. I think they felt like they got like the secret room. And so that was actually that actually ended up being a pretty popular little part of Seller Summit. Yeah, no, I was going to say is like the terrorists aren’t

06:46
over. So just to be clear, so he dropped it down to 30%, but that’s also in addition to the old Trump tariffs, which in a lot of cases puts people at around close to 50%. And then who knows what’s going to happen at the end of 90 days, right? If there’s no deal that happens. Trump said they won’t 145 % won’t come back, but it’s going to be significantly higher. So we’re not out of the woods yet. Let’s just say. Okay, should we talk about your talk? Because I missed it.

07:15
We can’t talk about my talk. So I gave a talk on how to, as an e-commerce brand, build your YouTube channel from zero. So saying that you have no YouTube presence at all to getting to monetization. And I presented a case study with one of my clients who went from zero to monetization in about three and a half months. And

07:36
I mean, obviously people had good feedback for the session. You who knows when they get the anonymous survey, if they’ll think it’s as good as it was. But what I personally liked about the talk was that it wasn’t, and I said this in the talk, it’s not a Ferrari and money gun type of talk, right? We’re not talking about being a YouTube influencer with 2 million followers in six months. It’s truly about why, number one, why you should have a YouTube channel for your e-commerce store. And I think I built a pretty strong case for that.

08:03
And then I walk people through step by step exactly how to do it from, you know, processes with your team. If you have a team creating the content, what you should create content about. And then basically the different types of monetization that you can leverage on YouTube, because obviously the number one goal would be to sell your own products. Right. So how do you do that in organic way? How does YouTube help you leverage that with their product feed? Right. That connects into Shopify. But then there’s other monetization ways as well. And I actually showed

08:32
people, fashion e-commerce person who has subscriptions, right? So she’s not only selling her products, she’s actually selling subscriptions as well. So there’s a bunch of different ways to monetize. And then I referenced our good friend Jake from Creator Hooks, because we didn’t really get into the nitty gritty of YouTube itself, like thumbnails and titles and things like that, although I did show them how bad our thumbnails were at the beginning, which…

08:57
Kellan was in that session, which made me super nervous because he’s one of our students with a half a million YouTube followers. He’s like, when you showed that thumbnail slide, I was worried those were your current thumbnails. I was like, no, no, no, that was that was a mistakes we made in the beginning slide. But basically reference Jake’s talk as well from twenty twenty four, where he gives a lot of pointers, which you can sign up for his newsletter at creator hooks dot com. So definitely if you’re thinking about that, sign up for his newsletter. And think there was a slide I just saw like you were referencing, Kevin also.

09:26
I referenced Kevin as well because I think the biggest hurdle people have with anything in their business is the longevity and keeping going when things aren’t great. And Kevin’s a perfect example of this. He’s been building his YouTube channel for about 18 months. This past month or in April, he had a video hit, right? And now all of a sudden it’s catapulted his channel. It’s funny as the week, actually the day I was giving the talk, we had a video hit on the e-commerce channel.

09:52
Oh, nice. Completely organic. So it was kind of cool to see like that. I didn’t notice it until after the talk, but I also referenced our good friend Eric from Beardbrand because I think the other issue people have is no one makes good videos when they start. Beardbrand now has two million followers. It’s a great YouTube channel, but I found one of Eric’s very first Beardbrand videos, which was quite awful. Poor lighting, poor audio. I mean, it’s still Eric, right? It’s still the brand. It’s a great brand video because

10:22
their representatives, but it was good for people to see like, hey, this is 11 years ago with 10,000 followers. This is today with two million. So everyone’s going to start out in the beginning. know, so anyway, I thought it was a fun talk. I was kind of nervous to give it since it was more of a case study and not something I’m like fully an expert in yet. But honestly, I think if you’re not on YouTube as an e-commerce brand missing a huge opportunity right now or just being out there, period. mean, really making sales is about being likable.

10:51
and standing out and basically putting a face to the actual brand. So whether you decide to do YouTube or TikTok or whatnot, it doesn’t matter. Speaking of TikTok. Yeah. Well, I didn’t get to watch Tiffany’s talk because I was giving. Oh, yeah, you put me up against Tiffany. I’m still mad at that, by the way. So Tiffany, mean, if you guys know Tiffany Avinosky, Imelou’s boutique, she is crushing it on TikTok, about a million dollars a month in revenue.

11:19
And she actually brought her entire team that manages TikTok to give, and each of them, it was kind of cool. So she started the talk with some general TikTok best practices, and then each person on her team, her affiliate manager, her ads person, and then her coupon and discount person all talked about their specific roles and how they did it. Really interesting what’s going on on the back end of TikTok. How to contact influencers, how to…

11:48
how to, they gave us some tricks, not tricks, because I mean, you figure this out when you’re doing it, but like how to actually decide what influencers are worth working with, all the different things you can do by increasing their commission, increasing the discount they offer. So there’s so many things you can do in the TikTok dashboard. And it was really interesting to hear it from the people who are literally doing it every single day to generate that million dollar a month revenue. Yeah. And then it was actually fortunate because we also had a sponsor Bullseye that offers just to do it all for you.

12:17
Yes. If you don’t want to learn any of stuff. Tiffany’s team is not for hire. A couple of people asked and Tiffany was nervous about putting them on stage for that reason because she’s like, I don’t want to end up poach my team. was like, I wouldn’t either. They’ve done a really good job. What’s funny is I asked Paul, so how much you pay them? And he is like, I don’t know. And I was like, OK, well, I was going to pay them double. And he’s like, well, I pay him a dollar an hour. I was like, OK. Yeah. So Bullseye is a company that does all that for you.

12:47
super knowledgeable about TikTok. I think once again, it’s like that in YouTube to me. Like if you’re not leveraging that right now, it’s definitely something you should explore for your brand, really important. I mean, I think they were showing us the stats in Tiffany’s talk. Like basically everyone’s on TikTok. It’s not, it used to be like it was just the younger generation. That’s not the case anymore. It’s pretty much all ages, all demographics are consuming content on TikTok.

13:14
I missed that one because I was giving mine. I was actually worried no one was going to come to mine, but fortunately, the room was full of mine It the minimum requirements for you to give a talk. Yes, it met my final… Yes. That’s an inside joke. I talked about all the different ways that I automate my business. What’s nice is back in the old days, I used to say, that just requires a little bit of code. Well, actually now it doesn’t require any code at all.

13:43
you can automate a ton of things in your business, just by using AI and some off the shelf tools that require no programming or coding skills whatsoever. And I literally videoed in my office all the things that we automate and then I literally just taught the audience how to automate all that stuff on your own. Yeah. I heard really great things about your talk and I got a personal complaint from Paul letting me know that

14:11
half the reason why they decided to bring their whole team was to hear your talk. And then I put you guys at the same time, which I did not know that. yeah, they actually, Paul texted me on Monday. He’s like, can I just get like the bootleg copy of Steve’s recording? I like, I don’t have it yet. Well, it’s funny. know, a summit, seller summit wouldn’t be the same without AI talks. So we all split it up into different categories of AI. So I talked about automation and I got into the nitty gritty, like literally how to do it.

14:41
Ritu gave an excellent talk about how to use AI creatives and imagery and then also how to optimize Amazon listings. So she took a more Amazon bent and just the overall creatives. then Bernie’s, didn’t attend. Were you at Bernie’s? I missed the first part of Bernie’s, but once again, his whole premise was basically like, do you create a billion dollar business with no employees leveraging automation’s AI?

15:07
And he actually, so Bernie and I joked afterwards, like you can’t let a bunch of e-commerce entrepreneurs like free in your session. So at the end of his talk, he had them do an exercise where they broke up into groups based on like the type of business and come up with a billion dollar business idea. And then you presented it from the stage. So I know. So the problem was he let him talk to each other. Right. So it immediately descended into like, but people didn’t want to like break up.

15:36
the conversations when it came time to present. So actually the person who presented was Ivan, who is Isabella Ritz’s husband. Yeah, He yeah. So he basically came up with an idea for a charter school taught by AI agents. And basically it was a great presentation. He talked about how he would, you know, basically be able to do it with just like three, like co-founder and two other people and basically revolutionize our education system in the United States. And of course,

16:05
Like I don’t, met Ivan at seller summit for the first time, but the funny thing about him is he’s actually a really great presenter. So he started his pitch with who’s happy with their kids public school education right now. Right? Like, everyone’s like, no, no, you know, and then he pitches his idea for this, you know, charter school program and all these different things. So anyway, it was a really fun exercise. People really got into it. Um, and Bernie just is such a wealth of knowledge. Like every time I talk to him, I’m like, do you

16:33
know everything about everything and not like in a conceited way. He’s the most humble down to earth person, but he can basically we were at dinner and having a conversation about the Roman Empire and it’s, you know, similarities to like what’s happening with technology today and the changing of our culture and like all these things. Right. So he always delivers a fantastic talk and just such a brilliant business mind. Yep. I think I mean, it wasn’t that talk.

17:00
but I talked to Bernie about it beforehand. He was gonna give more like a high level overview of just automation and that sort of thing. So it worked all three talks worked well together. Yeah, for sure. And then along the same vein of starting a YouTube channel and doing TikTok shop, we had Sally Wilson. If you guys listen to this podcast, she’s been on twice. She came on to talk about how she built a community.

17:25
I think it’s actually very important these days, especially for repeat business. Sally sells cross-stitch supplies and cross-stitch kits. And she’s built this community where once she grabs a customer, they ended up just keep buying over and over and over again because they belong to a community that she’s created. She’s held live events and whatnot. And she just basically taught the audience her entire community building strategy. Yeah. I loved her. She was very fascinating.

17:53
And so interesting about the live event component to the whole business, because I have many people that ask me about that, mainly because we run events, right? So I think that’s super interesting. I also know of at least three people that immediately set up a Facebook group after her talk. Oh, is that right? Yes, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like you got to put some it’s not just you can’t just set up the group. People will not come. There’s a whole strategy, which, of course, she talked about.

18:20
But yeah, she was very inspiring for people and people were taking action literally that same day Setting up groups. It was hilarious is after the talk There’s a bunch of people that went up on stage to take pictures with her and I was like, do you know these people like are they fans of your? Your business and she was like no, I I had never heard of them before so Okay, never met them before. Yeah total side note, but

18:46
Annette and I joke that she measures how successful her talk is and how many hugs she gets afterwards. this year, I just got a report from her this morning. It was a 14 hug talk. So she exceeded her hug percentage last year by like 150 percent or something like that. So, yes, I it’s funny because our our speakers are e-commerce sellers, right? There are people in the trenches doing the same things that we are. Yet sometimes they get.

19:14
they get mobbed, right, by the audience, which I always think is really fun.

19:20
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 on how to get started in ecommerce 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 attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

19:49
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.

20:00
Speaking of mobbed, Neil Patel gave one of the keynotes at the event and I actually had never seen him speak before. Me either. But he’s really good. He’s good and he’s funny. Yes. He’s got this dry sense of humor, very smooth and he actually incorporated stuff that happened. So for example, Charles actually before he spoke said, hey Neil, know, I hired your company and I was disappointed with such and such and such.

20:31
Usually you might say, hey, I’ll take care of this offline because I’m about to go on stage. But he just whips out his phone, texts the VP and said, OK, I want you to take extra special care of Charles, blah, blah. He took care of it right on the spot. And we were literally walking him up on onto the stage. And then during his talk, he incorporated elements of that interaction into his speech in real time. Yeah. So his talk was interesting because I don’t think we.

20:59
had a ton of conversation. mean, he knew what the event was about, obviously. He knew what we talking about. But his talk managed to incorporate just about everything that we taught at Seller Summit in one talk. It was such a great overview of one, the state of e-commerce. He had so many great statistics in that talk about who’s doing what online, which I found fascinating. Also, his ability to do math in his head was really cool. I’m like, he’s Asian, so. He’s a numbers guy, He’s a numbers guy, yeah.

21:25
knows his stuff, but also at the same time, one of the most genuine, personable people, sometimes when you get speakers like Neil who are very, very in demand, they’re not super personable with the audience. They want to be ushered off to the back and no contact. He was literally all the way up to he walked on stage taking pictures, talking to people, talking to Charles. And then basically we had to delay the event because- Yes.

21:54
He had a line of like 40, and he basically talked to every single person, answered their questions. mean, really fantastic guy. I was beyond thrilled with his presence there. And I was excited for our attendees to get to learn from him and meet him in person. Yeah, what was funny is he was mobbed and we had to delay it because no one was going to go to the sessions after. Yes. The sessions were empty. I was like, just give him five more minutes.

22:23
Neil’s got the Chick-fil-A drive-through equivalent line out in the hallway. Speaking of one of those sessions, our friends from Quiet Light, unfortunately had to come right after Neil. Right. So I walked into the room and I was like, oh, no, everybody’s still in the hallway. But they’re so professional. Like, I love that team. They got started. I sat in that talk. I’ve never been able to sit in a Quiet Light talk before because I’ve always either been in the other room or running around.

22:53
And I’ve always thought my next move would be to buy some kind of business. And I learned so much in that 50 minute talk about like just real practical. And the talk was for people who are selling their business, not for people who want to buy, but just like learning everything that goes into it, what you need to have in order, all the things that they did a cool thing where it’s like all these things that people don’t think about, right? That will trip you up at the end and mistakes people make.

23:22
that basically can cause deals to fall through, right? So deals that are like basically done and then the seller does this one or two thing that just basically the buyer’s like, nope, I’m out. They did such a good job and I sat with Ian at dinner and I was like, I learned so much today. Like I feel like I’ve been so educated on doing this. I don’t have a business to sell, but like when I buy, like I would obviously totally use Quiet Light anyway, but.

23:49
just the amount of knowledge and then the fact that like they’re so available the whole event to like answer any question, look at your business. I know a couple of our attendees are very interested in selling their business. And in fact, I just texted someone Chuck’s email this morning about connecting with him even further. such an informative talk. And I think the other thing is if even if you’re in the beginning stages of your business, there’s a lot of mistakes people make when they’re starting.

24:17
that come back to bite them in the butt basically later on because they don’t set things up the correct way and they’re not doing things in a way that makes your business easier to sell. So even if you’re in those beginning stages of your business, it’s really important to know this information. What I appreciate about his talk was that he gave a very candid state of M &A. Yes. Right? Is it a good time to sell? Is a good time to buy? And I feel like most brokerages would not be so straightforward and honest about it. Yeah.

24:47
for sure. So one talk that I missed that I really wanted to attend was Andrea’s meta ads talk, because I gave the meta ads talk last year and I was just curious how our strategies coincide. Were you at that one? I was. It was a great talk. Andrea, what I love about Andrea, she doesn’t hold anything back in her talks. She’s basically showing you dashboards real time.

25:10
obviously blurring out client info, but you know, she’s giving you the down and dirty and basically focusing on the metrics that really matter with ads. And she even shared one of her super, I forget what she called it, super secret hack that she has for getting the virality on ads that you see. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen these ads on Facebook, but like they’re ads, but they have like a thousand comments.

25:35
And it doesn’t, you’re like, why in the world does this ad have a thousand comments? And she showed the trick to make that happen in her session, which I knew that, I didn’t know it was a trick. I just thought everyone did it, but they don’t. And so it was really interesting as well as just talking about all the things that you should be looking for and measuring outside of what the normal like Facebook gurus talk about. Nice. Well, I’ll have to catch that one on video cause I’m very curious.

26:00
Along the same lines, I miss Brett’s talk also. He talked about shoppable YouTube ads. So we already talked about how social selling is the next big thing or is currently the big thing. And in YouTube, you can actually have your products alongside your videos and where people can instantly check out. I really wanted to go to that talk. I was given the black hat talk in the room next door. Were you at Brett’s? I was, I was actually front and center. And I’m in Brett’s talk almost every year.

26:30
We always joke. So this year I said, you I had little time cards for him to hold up and he said, I think I’m going to have time for Q &A this year. said, Brett, let’s not kid yourself. You have so much information that you give people. You never have time for Q &A. You get that at the roundtable, right? So sure enough, once again, he didn’t have time for Q &A except for we have roundtable. So technically he does. So one, I was fat. I didn’t want to do my roundtable. I wanted to sit at Brett’s roundtable because

26:57
He mentioned a couple things. So I don’t know if you know this, but YouTube has the affiliate program very similar to TikToks. It does, but it’s not popular. I have not tried it. OK, but like that’s the thing. It’s not popular yet. Right. So like that alone to me, like just the information he gave on that was worth going to that talk for because I didn’t even know that was an option.

27:20
And then he talked a lot, which I love that he does, is he talked a lot about the types of ads that work on YouTube. And then he does this really cool thing, he does it most years when he talks about this kind of stuff, is like, why did this ad perform well? Why didn’t this ad perform? And so basically you just yell it out from the audience. And so basically seeing the types of content that perform well versus the stuff that does not, as well as like, a lot of these ads were not high production ads.

27:47
So knowing that as a e-commerce seller with maybe a very small team, two or three people, you can probably start leveraging this. And he used, I think it’s a brand that he works with, Arctic Coolers. If you’ve ever seen any of their ads, go check them out actually, go check out their YouTube channel. They’re actually a great example of someone who’s really doing it well and crushing it. And they’re like a direct competitor to Yeti, right? Which Yeti’s got the crazy brand affinity.

28:16
They and what I really liked about his example is that Arctic Coolers like slams Yeti in basically every ad, but so subtly that you you unless you’re like a big yeti, I’m a big yeti person. So it’s like, that was that was nice. That was a nice little dig. Right. So he gave a lot of examples of basically the types of content on YouTube that does work when it comes to advertising. Nice. One talk I can’t remember which. Oh, no, no, I was overlapping with Brett, but I did get a chance to attend Jeff Oxford’s talk.

28:46
And he covered SEO, but we all know that Google is hurting because AI is taking over. However, one of the key takeaways was that all of your efforts on SEO are going to go towards AI because guess where OpenAI gets all their ranking stuff? It’s from Bing, right? And likewise. And so he talked about how SEO is changing, how to rank not only in SEO or Google search engines, but also how to rank in the AI search engines.

29:14
And the timing was great because the week before, ChatGPT announced shopping directly within ChatGPT. And then Shopify had an announcement that you can now check out directly from ChatGPT. So imagine typing in, hey, what’s the best, in your case, like what’s the best handbag or whatever. And then just being able to click a button, automatically check out and have the order go directly to the Shopify store. Very powerful.

29:42
Well, and this is where I feel like too, the YouTube makes a difference too, right? Because it’s also a search engine, right? So just having your brand out there in as many places as possible, I think is really effective. It was fun to see Jeff. I didn’t get to sit in his talk, but I was a little worried because I was like, everyone’s so down on SEO. It’s like, I hope he has some positive news to report for our attendees. No, it was a great talk. I mean, he tied in the AI perfectly. Yeah.

30:10
And one of the things that I think is Jeff’s superpower is that he takes complex things and makes them very easy to understand. And he and I were actually talking about this at dinner one night and he said, know, the most favorite talk I ever did was at the first content mastermind where he took basically a full SEO overview of how Google actually works and broke it down into this like very easy to understand presentation. And I was like, you know, that is actually one of the most favorite talks I’ve ever listened to.

30:36
because you took something that no one gets, no one understands, it’s such a mystery, and you made it to where when I walked out of there, I was like, I feel like I have a pretty decent understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes. Jeff always does a good job. Yeah. Yeah, that’s why we always have him back. Same with Chris Schaeffer. I was just about to talk about Chris Schaeffer. I missed his talk, but you were at it right now. Yes. I love Chris because it’s like, I feel like if we just…

31:02
did like a round wheel and said, we’re gonna spin it and whatever comes up, you have to give a presentation on, you could get up and do it. He has so much experience and he talked about content and how content, once again, another content talk, but so important for brand building and basically talked about all the different ways that you need to leverage content to build your brand and basically how they all connect with each other, right? So.

31:26
It’s not just about email, it’s not just about social, it’s not just about ads, it’s about this full kind of robust content plan to get your brand top of mind for people. And he just, knows it inside out, backwards, forwards. I don’t think you can stump him on a question. And he’s another one those people that will talk to you till two in the morning, you know, and just, he’ll analyze your business, he’ll give you ideas, he’ll, know, whatever you need, he’s always someone that’s available for people.

31:56
Yeah, I’m gonna definitely check out his talk. I was just kind of curious, because the title of his talk was the ultimate content shortcut. And I was presuming that it was a system on how to create content at scale. It was basically, and I guess I’m not explaining it very well, but it was basically like, you want content from all these places, but how do you do it in a way that actually, you know, a solopreneur could basically run on their own. So, but basically talking about how it all works together, because I mean, in his

32:25
mind, which I do agree with, you do need everything working together to really elevate the brand. And so he talked about ways to do that in a pretty streamlined fashion. And then I also want to mention Isabella, Isabella Ritz, first time speaker at Seller Summit. She did a fantastic job. She talked about proven strategies for discovering and validating untapped Amazon product opportunities. It was an important talk because because of the tariffs,

32:55
Everyone was kind of at a standstill, right? And I know for my business, my periods of greatest growth came during times of uncertainty. So just because there’s tariffs and whatnot doesn’t mean that you stop launching product. And what’s cool about Isabella’s talk, I sat through the whole thing, was that she uses AI now to research product ideas, how to improve them. And then she merges that with real data that you’re getting from Jungle Scout or Helium 10 and whatnot. And she has this system.

33:25
for basically discovering and launching products. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, first of all, I had never met her before either. Absolutely adored her wealth of knowledge. I had at least two people come up to me. It might have been more and tell me that her talk was worth their ticket. Nice. They learned so much, which I always love to hear. I also had a couple people say that about Andrea’s talk, which we have people say that about your Facebook or your meta ads talk last year. Right. So I do think that one talk can be worth

33:53
worth your ticket just because you get something that revolutionizes your business. A perfect example of this is our friend Kelly, who went to your ads talk last year and basically qualified for a mastermind this year, right? After being in business for seven months, right? Just by leveraging what she learned at your, I mean, she leveraged everything she learned at Seller Summit, but she implemented, she basically took your talk last year and did every single thing you said to do, which I’m like, no one does every single thing.

34:20
But she did and is six figure plus business already. after less than a year. Nice. I also want to talk about Klaviyo. Now normally, I’m not excited about talks given by service providers, but Klaviyo just released a ton of new features that essentially make it like a salesforce.com for e-commerce. Yeah.

34:48
there weren’t a lot of people there who actually knew about these features. So we had Elvis Greer from Klaviyo give a talk on how to leverage all these cool new features. And I think we did a prior episode on all the new features. maybe I’ll link to that in the show notes, but it’s one thing to hear about them. It’s another thing to actually learn how to execute and actually use those features. Yeah. they, so they did a nice overview of all the things that you have access to now in Klaviyo. And then the other thing they did, which I thought was really great and

35:18
Klaviyo is so good about this every year, but they had basically product team people, right? And I don’t know what they’re called, products success, or they have a catchy name. But basically they took questions for a good portion of their presentation, and then obviously they had a booth and were available like the whole time for people to bring their computer. But what I love about them is that Klaviyo never shies away from a complaint.

35:45
Kind of like Neil was like, let me get on this right away. Like, I will fix this and make your experience better. We had someone in the Klaviyo talk basically say like, I hate your interface. Oh, really? It’s so difficult. I can’t find reports. And she’s like, and you know, one of the Klaviyo team members was like, okay, give me some specifics. I will talk to our development. Like they were like, we’re taking this feedback back to the team, right?

36:10
And I know that they do this because we used to bug Joe from Joe McCarthy from Klaviyo all the time about stuff. And then these features finally get implemented after I complain for long enough. But I love that they’re willing to hear feedback that’s not always glowing and do something about it or show you how to fix it or work with you on it.

36:29
So many times I feel like brands are like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, right? They don’t wanna listen to stuff where people aren’t thrilled. And for the most part, everyone really enjoys and likes using Klaviyo, but it can be clunky at times, right? And especially if you’re not in it every day, I use Klaviyo every day. I don’t find it clunky at all, but I can see how someone who logs in once a week could get frustrated with certain features. So I love that they’re willing to like one answer any question you have and they have the people on site to answer those questions.

36:56
and then they take that information back to their team and make Clavio better. I mean, I personally think Clavio is pretty easy to use, but they did add a whole bunch of new features and those all have new menu items that can be intimidating, And I think with any tool, right, if you’re not in it every day, it’s difficult. It’s difficult to remember where you click and what to do. And speaking of someone else who’s willing to answer any question above and beyond, Pam Kale, RPC, she was mobbed.

37:27
Yeah, she’s always mobbed. She’s always mobbed. And this year she was mobbed more because of the tariff situation. Yes. But she’s another one that is just… And she’ll even say, I don’t care if you use me. Right? I don’t care if you use my services. I just want to help you get the best deal, get the best, you know, get the fastest shipping times. Like she works so hard for people. And I know personally of people that she has helped that aren’t her customers. Right?

37:50
So love that she was there. I think she snuck in your black hat. I was thinking about pulling her up, but I didn’t want her talking about the black hat stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Just because. But she’s such a great resource. you know, she eats, sleeps, breathes freight forwarding, which to me is like so boring, but she absolutely loves it. And, you know, once again, another year of her.

38:17
Someone else who’s going to be very sad this morning, Stephen Weigler, because the nuggets did not look good last night. They might be out by the time this airs. One of the things that he does that’s so awesome is he sends out a calendly. I never know how to say that word. His calendar, basically. And you can book 30 minute sessions with him all throughout Seller Summit for free legal advice. And I think his rates like 500 bucks an hour or something like that. mean, every attorney’s rates that.

38:46
And he basically will sit with you and answer any questions you have. And he does it throughout the entire event. In fact, this year he had someone book over lunch and he left lunch to come have the meeting. So we ended up bringing his lunch downstairs. We’re like, you’re not missing lunch. Like you need to eat something. So we brought his lunch down to his booth and just so generous with his time and information.

39:09
I wanted to say hi to him the whole time, but he was literally book solid. I want to say the entire thing. can’t get to him. It’s like, I feel like I have to see him on the first day because as soon as people find out like what they can learn from him, you can’t talk to him after that. Yeah. I also wanted to give a shout out to Capec. Yes. And usually I don’t allow any funding sponsors at the show. And in fact, I said no to them immediately. Oh, yeah. She was telling everybody B was was

39:36
that gave her a nice story to tell people because she’s like, Steve even didn’t want us here in the beginning. I was like, well, that feels harsh. Well, it’s actually true. It’s true, though. was true. Because there’s been a lot of predatory lending companies, right? What’s nice about CapEx, and I want to see if I can try to explain this in 30 seconds or less, but basically there is very little risk in getting a loan from CapEx because you’re basically putting your inventory up on the line as collateral, not money.

40:06
And that does two things. One, it incentivizes CapEx to actually make sure you succeed because they don’t want to be stuck with a bunch of inventory at all. Yeah. And, and two, uh, because you guys are working together, that actually allows you to be more successful because they essentially become your partner because the collateral is not the money itself. It’s the inventory. It’s in both parties, best interest to do well. And that’s why once they explained that to me, I was like,

40:35
I really liked this model a lot. Yeah. And they were another, in fact, B is a seller summit alumni and came as an attendee a couple of years ago and was like, we need to sponsor this event and went back to her team. And it’s interesting because I remember her from 2024. And once again, I couldn’t get to her. I didn’t actually get to talk to her until the last night after the event was over. I saw her at the Mexican restaurant that’s attached to the hotel. And I was like, I didn’t even get to talk to you. I was like, you were so busy the whole time.

41:05
just talking to people and that was really nice too, because we do have attendees that are looking for solutions for those types of things. And it was nice that they were there to give people an option. And then of course, I want to mention our final keynote speaker who closed it out, Liz Saunders. She did an incredible job.

41:30
Liz is someone who actually helped us run the first couple sellers. Yeah. She was our registration and sponsor liaison back in the day. And then she started her own company. Well, she first out started out as an Amazon seller. Yep. And she had a good amount of success with that, but then she decided to go and launch her own company called Fluencer Fruit. And I want to say she was one of the very first Amazon influencer software companies, right?

41:59
I want to say she might be the first. have had some copycats, but yeah, she I think was probably first to market. And then she had a good, a successful exit with that company. And her talk was just about how the people that she’s met has really shaped her, her success over the years. And you never know who you’re going to meet at any event.

42:22
And Seller Summit was, believe, where she met Greg, where she became chief of staff of Jungle Scout, which again was a sponsor of the show this year as well. And I think that the good what I mean, obviously, I was very excited to have Liz on stage. She’s a longtime friend and I’ve known her since the very beginning. Yes. And we sort of started an e-commerce together was that, you know, she said the road to success is not straight. Right. It’s often curved and you know, you have to just take each curve.

42:52
and leverage that for the next step. And her life is a great example of that, of all the different things and how each thing that she did in her life led her to where she got, to where she built this company and exited. And from selling on Amazon to helping us run Seller Summit, all these different things. And I think for a lot of people in the audience, they’re on that windy road right now and success feels far away.

43:18
Right. Or this their goals feel far because things are not going how they want it to go. And this moment, especially a week ago when the tariffs were. Yeah. Like especially, you know, when everything was completely different seven days ago. But I think that really resonated with people because I think a lot of people this year came into seller summit really down. Right. Yeah. Looking for answers. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think her talk was a great way to close out the event because well, one, we’ve heard for

43:46
many years, people are in masterminds all year round with people they met at Seller Summit. People have found business partners at Seller Summit. People have made lifelong friendships at Seller Summit. So I think it was a great reminder to people that it might feel like you’re not where you’re supposed to be in this moment, but you never know who you’re gonna meet, what’s around the next curve, and you’ve gotta keep going.

44:11
And she did a great job and it was really fun. Her parents are live in the area. So they came to hear talk and and of course her husband is an AV guy. So she got to bring her own camera crew. So she has it. Listen, she’s going to leverage that talk in a million different ways. And I hope she does. She’s actually going viral on TikTok right now. I don’t know if you know this. No, I didn’t know that. Yeah. Her son just the content she’s creating. She’s making she’s if you’re not following her, I don’t know. I think just look for Liz Saunders on TikTok. OK.

44:40
But yeah, she’s making some really creative content. And one of the things that she talked about in her talk, but she talks about this a lot if you just have conversations with her, is having that playground. So something that you’re doing totally for fun that’s in your niche, but not totally. So right now she’s basically, says TikTok’s my playground, right? And so she’s just creating all sorts of content on TikTok. And she’s had a couple go, she has one right now with three million plus views. Wow. Yeah.

45:09
So anyway, it’s really cool just to like know that as an entrepreneur, you have to still keep that creative side open. You still have to be like trying, even though it has nothing to do with what she’s building right now and the project she’s working on, it’s fun to see like, you know, other things happening. And I think as entrepreneurs, we need to have that outlet or that funding that we can do that, you know, we learn stuff in the process, but it doesn’t necessarily directly connect to our business. Yeah. And,

45:37
Right now, we record everything every single year. Except for the secret session. Except for the secret session this year. That’s correct. The black hat session. You’ll have to come live for that session next time. But the recordings are being edited right now, and they should be available for sale in a couple of weeks. Of course, if you’re an attendee, you get access to all the recordings for free. Well, you can buy the recordings right now. They just won’t be delivered. Oh, that’s correct. Yes. Sorry. Yeah.

46:04
They won’t be delivered for another couple of weeks, but yes, you can grab the recordings now over at SellersSummit.com and just click on the big virtual pass button.

46:15
Hope you enjoyed this episode. Would love to meet you all in person someday at my event. For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejob.com slash episode 591. Once again, the Seller’s Summit 2025 recordings are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifequithejob.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.