640: I Just Spoke at Shopify HQ. Here’s What’s Actually Working in Ecommerce Right Now

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, I’m recording live from Shopify HQ in New York City after attending the Merchant Mastery event with my co-host Tony. We cover a wide range of topics, including why unpolished UGC content is outperforming produced ads, how to build a brand story that ties all of your marketing together, and why generic products are slowly dying.

00:25
But before I begin, I just want to take a second to mention that I have a free e-commerce community that I’m incredibly proud of and would love for you to be a part of. It is a place where real sellers come together to share wins, troubleshoot problems, and support each other through the ups and downs of building an online business. You can join completely free over at mywifequitterjob.com slash community, and I would love to see you there. That is mywifequitterjob.com slash community, and now on to the show.

00:58
Welcome to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast New York edition. Tony and I are in Soho. We are attending the Merchant Mastery event, which is actually at Shopify headquarters. And this is the first time I was there. Pretty cool. Yeah, I’m excited because I go to New York a lot. You haven’t been in 30 years. I have not been in 30 years. So I’m taking you for pizza. Yes. as we’re recording. So this is going to be a shorter episode because Steve’s got pizza on the brain. He’s going to go to… For those of you who are New Yorkers, we’re going to Bleecker Street. So those of you who know, you know.

01:28
And I only eat pizza once a year because I’m low carb. So this better be good pizza. It’s going to definitely not be low carb pizza. But anyway. That’s OK. So I’m excited about this event. I came about halfway through the day today. You’ve been here all day. Yes. You were texting me when I was on the plane telling me how great the attendees are. The attendees are fantastic. And maybe I’m just, you know, biased because it’s pretty much the same attendees that come to Seller Summit. I mean, they’re not the same people, but the same type of vibe.

01:56
Yeah. And it’s the same type of vibe of the students in my class too. So I was thrilled to chat with everybody. Yeah. So I got to meet a bunch of people this afternoon, talked a little bit with Scott. So for those of you who don’t know, this event is run by Scott Cunningham. He actually spoke at Seller Summit on telling a brand story, which was, I think, one of the most favorite talks. Probably, I would say so. Yeah. um So this is part of his community. And I want to talk a little bit about

02:24
what makes events great. And you gave away it all in the beginning. It’s the people. Oh yes, yes, yes. And every time we talk to anybody, every time you and I go to events, what we hear from people is the sessions are gonna be probably good or bad. People either love or hate the sessions, but it’s the networking and the people part that either makes the event one of your favorites or uh one that you probably wouldn’t return to. Yep. And…

02:51
I want to say that one of the things that I think Scott has done well, which you were telling me about on the way here, was that everyone is in this community together before the event. Yes. And they’re on calls like every week or sometimes twice a week. And they’ve been on calls with each other twice a week for like an entire year. So by the time they get here, even though they’ve never seen each other in person, they’re all like buddies. ah Because I sat at a table, I didn’t realize that they all had a year long relationship. And I was just trying to…

03:21
There are all these inside jokes and whatnot. But what’s interesting about this event was everyone is so open. I just asked a simple question and then they just told me the revenue and profit numbers without even thinking about it. Yeah, well, and when we were talking to Sharona this afternoon, she was sharing more things and she’s actually a former Sellers Summit alumni. Yes, correct. Pre-pandemic. um Anyway, she’s in the apparel space and she was telling us how…

03:49
ah You know, it’s hard to find other apparel people because everyone tells you when you take the courses or you listen to the free webinars not to go into apparel, which is actually pretty good advice. ah But she has a background in fashion design and so she is in apparel. And so she was saying how it’s hard to find people who are doing the same thing she’s doing. And I think that’s why the community becomes so important, right? Because even if you can find one or two other people that are doing something similar to you or having similar struggles.

04:18
it makes your whole business journey so much easier because you have people that you can talk to. And we were talking to, I think it was Ray, the skincare. Oh, yes. Yeah, Ray. Yeah. Yeah. So he was talking about some of the issues with his products. And I think if you just have those people to like bounce ideas off of, by the way, Ray sells skincare and Steve is- I’m the target demographic. Steve was like, show me your product immediately. I did. It’s a dark spot remover.

04:47
And at first I wasn’t that interested. I was just asking to be polite. But as soon he said it was a dark spot, I was like, oh, I’m on it. Show me the product right now. I’m going to buy it. was like watching someone throw a fishing pole and just reel Steve in. As soon as he said that, was like, oh, Steve’s But I asked him if it worked. Yes. And then he hesitated for just a second. I know. I know. He’s got to be more direct. And he’s like, no, the reviews are all really good. But he has perfect skin. Well, I was going to say, it works for this guy. But he also could have been 22.

05:12
It’s correct. He’s an Asian guy. You can never tell how old those Asian They hide their age so well. But anyway, think like the community part. So one of the things that I think Scott does a really good job at is, so this event is for only people in his community? That’s correct. Okay. So we’re telling you all about it and then surprise, you can’t come. That’s correct. So I’m someone for everybody, just FYI. No, but I think that’s what makes events better. Even if it’s

05:42
Like this one is obviously limited to his community, but if you want to go to an event or you’re thinking about attending something, and we heard, it’s so funny, whenever we tell people we have an event, we get all of the eventee, like people, we’re like event therapists, they’re like, well, I went to this event and they start telling us how bad it was or how great it was.

06:00
And I think one of the best things you can do is if there is any sort of community around the event, whether it’s a pop-up community, right? So whether it’s like the month before the event, they have a Facebook group or a Discord or Circle, whatever, you have to join that community and you have to be active. To not do that is a huge mistake of your financial investment of going to the event. And then even post-event, you should join the community and keep up, which is why we have a Discord group now for Seller Summit.

06:27
What I found interesting, and I know you kind of came late, was the range of products were all pretty cool. So traditionally, let’s say you go to like an Amazon event, people are just kind of buying something in Alibaba and just kind of putting it up. uh Not the case. Not the case here. So I was sitting next to Mary who sells, uh so old fashioned is my favorite drink, right? But I will never make it at home because it’s a pain in the butt.

06:56
Who has like bitters lying around? Maybe you do. do not. I do know people who do, but I do not. So she sells like uh a cocktail tea bag. So inside will be everything that you need to make an old-fashioned and then you just take your favorite whiskey and you just kind of dip it and then it’s an old-fashioned or you leave it in there. It’s an old-fashioned. Well, and that’s what I think about just a few people that I got to meet this afternoon and then also just people we meet throughout the years at Seller Summit.

07:25
is that the people who are, I don’t wanna call them inventors because they don’t necessarily, they didn’t necessarily invent the product. Some of them did. But like we talked to this team towards the end of the day today and they have this, I don’t wanna call it a game. I don’t think game is correct. It’s basically this, oh my gosh, I don’t have my phone on me. We’ll have to put it in the show notes what the name of this thing is. Basically there’s like these series of cards and you pull a card and each card has like things on each side of the card.

07:55
So like bottom top, both sides. And it’s like a place or an event or a description. And you basically build a story from the cards and it’s to help people with their writing. Right. So you basically pull from these six decks, I think it’s six, and you build the story and then you can write the story. So I was like, it’s like a real life prompt. Right. Yes. It’s it’s and it’s really cool. So.

08:22
We’ll talk about this in a minute. Another thing they were doing is filming UGC. So Scott and I were in the UGC for this card play. And basically they had Scott, you know, they pulled cards and Scott picked and he built this whole story. And within like five minutes, he had built this really cool story about a city that had a stadium and there was something violent happening in the stadium. there, you know, there’s all in like.

08:48
it wasn’t hard to do, right? So if you think you have like that creative side and you want to like explore it, this was a really cool way to do it. um And they’re doing really, really well. are. Yes. And they did they tell you about their Dungeons and Dragons product? They started to and then I think we had to film. So what’s funny is uh actually all the products are catered to me. Maybe some old, I think I can’t remember what her name was. I’ll remember it later, but she sells a magnetic pill holder.

09:17
And these days, I like you should see I’m carrying my supplements with me now and I have I’m all kind of disorganized in this tube and it’s the worst and I Might actually buy her product because it’s this magnetic one and then each individual Day is a magnetic thing that you can just stick on your fridge and that’s so

09:38
Have you ever wondered how much your business is actually worth? Now I sold one of my businesses through Quiet Light and honestly, just getting that initial valuation changed everything for me. Not because of that number itself, but because of what came with it. My advisor walked me through exactly what buyers would be looking for, how I needed to restructure my accounting, what documentation I was missing, the gaps in my financials that might kill a deal before it even starts, and stuff that I really had no idea that mattered when it came to selling a business.

10:06
And here’s the thing, I wasn’t even ready to sell yet, but knowing what I needed to fix meant that I could actually start preparing and I now had a roadmap. Everyone at Quietlight has built or sold businesses themselves. So my advisor told me what needed to change. It was actually coming from real experience sitting across from buyers. And by the time I was ready, everything was positioned right and we attracted serious buyers. So if you’ve been thinking about selling someday, even if that day feels way far off, just getting a free valuation from Quietlight

10:36
will make a huge difference. You’ll learn what you need to fix right now so you’re not scrambling later. And if you’re interested, go over to quietlight.com. Well, there was another guy who was, I thought it was for dogs, but he said golf. I don’t hear well in like loud spaces. And he, was like this tiny little cup. And I was like, that is not big enough for any dog. And then I realized it’s for golfing and you put like a shot in it, right? I thought you put your, a shot of liquor.

11:05
It wasn’t for your golf tees? I thought it was for golf tees. I could be wrong. No, you’re probably right. But what was really cool about this event so far is that, okay, I think it’s totally fine. And we know lots of people. The first person that comes to mind is Dana Jean-Zemes, right? Like she sold um drug testing kits. I don’t think Dana was super passionate about drug testing, right? But she built a successful business doing that. I don’t think you have to be like gung-ho all in about something.

11:35
But I do think it’s really cool when like most of the people in the space are really excited about their products, right? Like when they show it to you, you know that they actually use it, that they’re actually… That’s actually something unique about this event. Yeah. I would say almost half the people brought their products to show off. uh was sitting next to… I gotta get you better with names, but she sells… Do you know what this is? Do you know what a shot ski is? It’s something I thought you would know. I had no idea what it was.

12:05
But it’s basically a wooden ski board and then shot glasses. everyone takes it off and does. You did know what it was. Well, I was like, maybe they’re all, most people here are Canadian. I’m like, it’s very possible this is something very wholesome in Canada. She’s from New York. Okay. Well, of course it’s a shot ski then. Yeah. I had no idea what it was. It’s all over TikTok. Oh, is that what it is? I mean, people doing it is all over TikTok. Right. And then the idea is then she does personalized ones and then you hang it up on the wall. I want one.

12:33
Right. Okay, introduce me to her. She does very well. Okay. But uh she was so passionate. She was probably the most passionate person that I’ve spoken to in a She was giving everybody shots the whole week. But yeah, that was the vibe I was getting at this event. Yeah. The other thing that was cool is because it’s a brand focused event, there was no generic products and we were all talking about like what our motes were and

13:00
Personalization was actually one of the things that we discussed at our table and I do personalization. So we’re all comparing notes and uh Matt I think came up to me he does personalized cutting boards and he went up to me and said hey Steve I’m thinking about because of vibe coding he’s thinking about creating this elaborate thing where you can take the cutting board personalize and have the image put on it so can see what the preview looks like.

13:26
And I was just trying to talk him out of doing that because that’s something that was exciting for me. But there’s all these like little corner cases and if it doesn’t look exactly like the way it is. And but I told him just keep it simple. Just put the personalization on there. when you were going to do that. I did do it. You did. It was a fun project which we never ever decided to implement. So anyway I think that’s what’s really cool is that when you’re at an event and

13:53
One, there’s like a lot of connection between the attendees. I think like this place, people were just like very friendly coming up. I showed up with all my crap. And so I have my suitcase with me and Mary comes up to me. She’s like, can I borrow that bag? I’m like, sure. You didn’t even know she was. didn’t know she was. It was just like, so anyway, I think that’s really important when you’re like evaluating like, where am I going to go? Where am I going to invest my time and money? I think the other thing that I think is I’m so happy to see because I feel like

14:22
there’s so much garbage out there right now is they’re talking about the storytelling and the brand building. And we talked it was so one big thing that we talked about at Seller Summit was Chuck from Quiet Light talked about your moat and how your moat really determines your multiplier, right? For your business. And if you don’t have the moat, I mean, like he gave us, we talked about this in the last podcast, like a quiz, like which business had the best multiplier. And I was like, totally wrong. ah But it was really the one that had the best moat.

14:50
when everything else was factored in. But the moat was really strong on the one that was. Yeah, I think what was unusual is that this is a Shopify first event. Obviously it’s at Shopify headquarters. Most of these people aren’t even selling on Amazon. Yeah. Right? Which is unusual. I know you missed the sessions this morning, but we can talk about those a little bit. 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,

15:20
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15:50
One of the first sessions was Scott going through the exercise of creating your brand story. uh He created this app that allows you to pull out, it’s like a questionnaire where you go through it and it asks you questions and then it puts together your brand story and what your value props are. And this is something that I do with the students in my class because people, like the first instinct when I ask a question is like, I don’t.

16:18
I don’t know what’s great about my product. I don’t know what’s special about my product. Like, I can’t think of any stories behind it. And it’s just an exercise of like extracting all that information out. And that’s essentially what the GPT does that he wrote. Actually, if you have a seller’s summit virtual pass, you have access to that. yes, that’s correct. Because Scott spoke at Seller Summit. fact, that could be yours if you have a virtual pass. But once you have that…

16:43
brand story, which is essentially your value propositions and the story that’s gonna set you apart. From there, you can use that same copy in your meta ads, in your email marketing copy and whatnot. So one of the things that I’ve started doing with one of my clients is before we do any sort of like product launch or promotion, we basically kind of, and we talked actually, it was the lesson that you were uh traveling. We talked about, we create these marketing briefs.

17:12
for our products and in that is a story about this product specific. And so whenever we go to run any sort of promotion or any sort of, whether it’s a launch or a re refresh, we tie that in. And so everything is aligned, right? Our ad copy, our email copy, our social media, copy on the sales page, follow up email, like whatever we’re doing with that product, it’s all.

17:37
Perfect, right? It’s all, everything, the message is this, this told differently, but then the same way, right? And I think that’s something that when I was doing it in the lesson, I did, I used Kelly Dream, one of your students, and it’s really not hard to do. The hard part is like creating, like once you get the facts down, right? Like the main stuff, you can use AI to help.

18:02
build it out, right? You’re not gonna just, don’t think you’re gonna be yourself in like a Word document for 30 pages. Like you basically just need to like brain dump in there and refine it. And then once you do that, you can create, whether you’re using like Claude or ChatGBT, uh you can create all these basically automations that will do it for you again and again and again. And so like, while the first part takes the chunk of your time, the rest of it is…

18:29
really fast and then everything is just so much more cohesive and better. I think that the next talk was about uh ranking an AI search, which is something that I am very passionate about. That’s what I’ve been working on. Their strategy, I guess, is a little different than mine. So it was essentially the same. uh Try to answer every possible question that a customer has.

18:56
But I guess the difference in strategy here is they’re using blogging to do that. So they have AI to help research all the possible questions. And then they were writing separate blog posts that answer each question individually. Each question got its own blog post? Each question had its own page. I guess it’s a blog post. A dedicated piece of content. A dedicated piece of content just per question. And I think what their strategy is you end up with a whole bunch of different blog posts answering specific questions. What do you think about that?

19:27
I mean, it’s everything’s, it’s like the wild, wild west right now. What I found luck doing is putting every possible Q and A on the category page. And that’s worked well for me. Hold on. want to talk me through this. Well, every possible question that a customer could have, I put that on my category page. And my rationale for doing that is I want people to find me. And when they click, I want them to land on a page with

19:56
products, right? The disadvantage of doing it the blog post way is that if they click, they end up on the blog post and then you have to take them from the blog post to your store somehow. Okay. So that’s the extra step. So I don’t know what works better. Like I said, it’s the Wild Wild West. I just know that I’ve had good results doing it that way and they’ve had good results doing it their way. So hold on. I just got to go back to this because I’m working on, I’m assuming we’re talking about collection pages.

20:22
Same thing? Yes, collection pages are category pages. In Shopify it’s called collection, so that’s what you’re using. um So let’s just use Bumblebee as an example. So is there like a standard handkerchief? Okay, so for example, we have a ladies handkerchiefs page, a wedding handkerchiefs page, and like a baptisms. Okay, let’s do baptism. That’s probably the easiest. So baptisms, I’ll just go up to Claude and say, or chat to BT, whatever you want, and say, me all the possible questions that people ask about.

20:52
baptism gifts. Okay. Right. Because baptism handkerchiefs doesn’t have a whole lot of Right. Search volume. And then it’ll write this whole thing out and then I’ll extract those and have it use FAQ schema markup. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a language that search engines and AI can understand better. And you have that on your collection page. Correct. And do you have it at the top or is it the bottom? It’s at the bottom because you don’t want to push all your products below the fold. Okay. I’m going to do that tomorrow.

21:22
Right. mean, essentially it’s the same strategy except they’re just taking each question. Yeah. And maybe their way might be better for SEO because that’s the way it used to work before, right? Each page was a specific topic. And so I guess there’s just trade-offs. With mine… Why couldn’t you do both? You can do both. If you have resources, obviously most people have limited resources. I’m just not a big fan these days of driving traffic to a blog page.

21:50
The only reason I would have a blog today is to make sure my brand is mentioned somehow. And maybe that’s like a better use case. Okay. What other sessions did I miss? I mean, there aren’t a whole lot actually. feel like I showed up for the fun part. So. the next session was about shipping. I’m pretty forwarding. You would think that it’s a dry topic, but it’s actually not that dry. Actually. I learned a couple things. I was given by Barack. He’s a long time friend.

22:20
He runs a company called Force Get. So what was funny about all this is last year, tariffs were all the rage and everyone was trying to find alternative factories in like the US so they wouldn’t have to worry about tariffs. Well, now that the tariffs got struck down and the recent 10 % tariffs also got struck down, everyone’s back to China, right?

22:46
And then what also happened as a result of the tariffs was everyone was using DDP shipping, which is where the supplier handles all the shipping end to end. Problem with that was that you can’t get tariff refunds if you went that method. But it’s a trade-off because I use that method to avoid paying certain tariffs, right? So I guess it’s a wash. But he was saying that, I don’t know how in-depth we want to get in here, but

23:16
There’s different ways that you can get quoted for shipping. There’s EXW, which means you handle all the shipping from the factory to your warehouse. There’s FOB, which means they pay for the shipping to the port, you cover shipping from the port. And then there’s DDP where they just handle everything. So what I learned was that a lot of these suppliers, if you have them handle your shipping for you, they pad everything pretty heavily actually, so they make money on the shipping.

23:46
And so if you can, always choose EXW and have your freight forward or handle everything. And that way you have a clear picture of your true cost of goods. Because oftentimes when they quote you FOB or DDP, they kind of hide the cost of goods in there and pad in the shipping costs. Anyway, he does it for a living. So I’m taking his word for it. mean, I feel like that kind of reminds me of JK’s talk at Sellers where

24:15
Even if you can take away like two little tips that will help decrease your costs. Yeah. Like it’s worth. Oh, and the other thing, em he kind of reinforced this. I already knew this was happening, but what a supplier will do if you’ve used them for a long time, they raise their prices every year. And unless you go and look outside of the supplier, could be getting really ripped off because they keep adding on the costs and they know that once you’re with them and you have a steady supplier.

24:44
they can get away with raising prices because the cost of switching or the pain of switching, I should say, is too high. So one other takeaway was you always need to have two suppliers. So at least you can go back and forth between the two when you’re haggling. Oh, and the other thing he said too was, and I don’t do this, I probably should, every three months you should negotiate with FedEx and UPS.

25:10
I do it once a year, but he does it every three months. Which is pretty nuts because they’ve been raising prices dramatically. Actually, one of my most recent YouTube videos was about this. I saw it today. Because USPS added like a fuel surcharge. UPS and FedEx raised by like 6 % or something like that. I don’t know. It’s getting out of hand and they’re not getting more reliable either. Yeah. And then after that, I thought this was cool. The UGC part. Yeah.

25:39
So I mentioned before, like probably half the attendees brought their products and then they all just started filming videos for each other. Okay, that, right? That was is when I showed up. I was like, I came for the best. Well, I came and they were working on some prompts and then they started doing the UGC, which here’s what’s really cool. And when I was talking to the people that have the story prompting uh card deck, not a deck, I’m doing a terrible job. This is actually a really cool product.

26:07
They said they have trouble getting UGC, right? Because they go to this like one big con a year. But like if you’ve ever been to one of these like game cons or something like that, or even like a Comic Con, it’s like your booze are packed. Like you can’t really film. you could get like B-roll content, but you can’t get UGC type content at a place like that. And so they were saying that they really struggled with like getting that type of content. And so I was like, this is a perfect place because you have all these people that will make content for each other.

26:36
right and you can prep them, right? Like you can give them information. mean, didn’t really get, Scott and I didn’t get prepped at all to do the game. Like we just- No, you guys are good. I was kind of listening in. But I think both of you, like Scott’s a really good talker and you’re a good talker too. So was actually really good. Cause I think I would have stumbled. Cause you actually created a story right on the fly. Yeah. So anyway, I think that that alone, Steve was like, could we do this at Teller Summit? I was like, we could totally do this at Teller Summit.

27:06
um Because I think that would be awesome, right? For people to be able to even, even if you can get a couple pieces of UGC and once you start to see how well it performs, especially on social, you’re gonna be incentivized. I was telling the people that did this card, the cards, was like, just like, where do you live? Like go pull someone off the street. I was like. I don’t know about that. They’re in Canada. Everyone’s very friendly there. That’s true. Yeah. I’m like, you’re about, can’t pull people off the street here for sure.

27:36
uh But yeah, I think that is really valuable and I think that is something that we’re not doing, like not me, but like I think people do not take advantage of that. And one of the reasons is, and I was talking to the game people about this, is they said they have, they called it something that was like millennial something. And I was like.

27:56
I’m a Gen Xer, so I don’t like what is this disease you have as a millennial? And it’s basically like they don’t want to put it out if it’s not perfect, like perfectly edited. Oh, I miss that part. it was when I was yelling at them. Oh, okay. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. It’s like, are you yelling at people? You know, what’s ironic is like the worse, the less professional looks, the better it’ll perform. And that’s what I was telling them. I said, listen, I understand because we talk about this story a lot. When we first launched Profitable Audience, I was like, what do we call me? Take Tony?

28:26
That’s correct. Yeah, I made the first set of three videos at least five times I think it might have been more like I didn’t even use it. We don’t even use them They were so terrible. They were so bad because in my mind I felt like things needed to be absolute like I would have died if I would have thought we are filming in a hotel Like you’re sitting on like I don’t even know what some sort of like I would be like this is unacceptable We have to have like a backdrop and it has to look perfect and all this stuff

28:54
And what you and I both have realized and the feedback we’ve received over the years is just the authenticity. And today with AI, to have something that’s so obviously authentic is exploding, right? And so the less produced, the more genuine, the more organic feel to it is gonna perform better. So I think a lot of people who have that, and we see people in the class all the time with this, like, I don’t wanna publish the video, it’s not quite right, you know?

29:23
No, just put it out there. I don’t want to say the worst stuff because it’s really the content, right? If the content’s good, it will perform. And so, but that was what they were saying is they struggle because they’ve got millennial something and they want everything to be like perfectly produced. I’m like, we’re just Gen X, we ship it. Like… So what was interesting about this is you missed the table conversation earlier, but I think, who was I chatting with? I think I was chatting with Barb.

29:50
or no, Shining with Mary. And she said that there’s this one ad which ultimately became her best performing ad. She wasn’t even going to run with it. But her group on the zoom call is like, no, you got to just try that one. You just got to try that one. And she resisted. And they gave her a hard time about it. And finally, she said, okay, forget it, I’m just gonna try it. And it turned out to be your best ad, even though she was not happy with that video. So lesson learned, you never know what’s gonna hit. Yeah.

30:18
And I would say it’s better to generate more content and see what works than to spend all of your time on one piece of like perfect content and then it doesn’t hit. So here’s the other thing that I’ve noticed. As I mentioned before, everyone at this event had interesting products and that should probably be a criteria now when you decide what you want to sell. Like how tick-talkable is the product, right? Because if you’re selling something boring,

30:46
And who did I chat with recently? Was selling like office products, just kind of like generic office products. Oh, yeah. And you can’t really, I mean, you probably could tell a story about it, but the product itself is inherently not that interesting. I feel like almost all the products here were either unique or different in a certain way or very tick tockable. that shots key. Yeah. Very tick tockable, right? A bunch of people using it to take shots. Yeah.

31:17
Like she’s killing it on ads. Yeah. And I think like when I talk to people, so I have kids that are like in their 30s. So they have a lot of friends that are like late 20s, early 30s. People in that age demographic are trying to find interesting products to buy. Like they don’t want to just buy any lamp, right? They would rather hunt down the cool, perfect, you know, whatever their style is product versus just, you know,

31:47
going on Amazon and buying like, I need a lamp, you know, order. ah And I think that’s very common in like the, from our age, I feel like it’s a little less common. I’m more of like, I don’t know, I’m not like- Don’t lump me in the same age bracket. We’re the same age. We’re both Gen X. ah No, but I think like, you and I are much more efficient in our purchasing. Like if we need like-

32:11
There are things that you and I both care a lot about and that we will like, like we were like tonight, the Knicks should have been playing, but they’re not. So we’ve been talking all week, like, are we going to go to a Knicks game? We’re like, that’s something that’s important to us, right? So like, but for I think the younger group of people, they’re very into like meaningful products, right? They would much rather spend even a little bit more money to have something that’s unique or meaningful versus just- Or higher quality. Or higher quality, yeah.

32:39
And something that has a story about it, right? Something that actually… I mean, I noticed you stopped buying those knockoff bags and you’re buying name brand bags now, right? So that says something right there. I am. No, but I do think if you’re still in that product research phase, it’s like new things to consider. The days of just throwing anything up, I think are…

33:02
So I just had a video go viral. It got like 1.3 million Oh, I’ve got some tea on that video for you. Oh, do you? Okay. Well, it happened in like three days and tons of thousands of comments. And a lot of them, I actually tried to go through as many as I could just to see what they were talking about. But people are tired of the alphabet soup brands on Amazon. And so if you guys aren’t familiar with the term, you’ll notice that there’s like an array of 10 identical products on Amazon for a given search term.

33:30
And if you look at the company, it’s all just like this random jumble of letters because it’s these Chinese factories just throwing up the same stuff across. Like they might own 10 seller accounts and they’re just trying to flood the listings. People are tired of that now. They want differentiated products. Yeah. So your what’s the T? Your T. So your post got shared in like every Amazon Facebook group on the internet. Really? Yes. Okay. So from Amazon seller groups.

34:00
to it was shared in every Amazon influencer group. And Liz told me that she had to refrain from like, cause the feedback was mixed, we’ll just say. So at first she felt like she needed to get in there and like defend you. We were talking about how this was like, so Liz and I, I just came from recording with Liz and we were talking about how sometimes as like type A, but like.

34:27
mostly female, see this, is like we feel the need to over explain ourselves about things. And so Liz is like, and I stopped myself and I was like, it doesn’t matter. Steve can fend for himself. Because apparently it was shared multiple times in multiple groups over and over and over again, which is, hey, but that’s part of the virality, right? The sharing That’s what happens. Like I got a lot of uh messages.

34:53
They weren’t hate messages. I wouldn’t say they were hate messages, but they were like, you don’t know what the heck you’re talking about. I mean, that’s why I tried to quote as many stats as I could in that video, right? I mean, you can’t refute stats, but. You can, but you shouldn’t. You can, you can, but yeah, I had a feeling that it was getting shared around. Yeah. Cause I had people on my street texting me, go, Hey, I just, you just came up with my YouTube feed. I didn’t even know you had a channel.

35:20
funny today in the shop of I think we’re talking about lady she’s like I know you she’s like you are with him I was like oh well unfortunately so yeah so to wrap it up because I know it’s pizza time yep let’s just wrap up events I think if you’re gonna go to an event and I think you should I love events you don’t love them as much as I do um it’s not that I just don’t feel like I can get out as much right now yeah

35:50
So I mean, I go to like two, maybe three events at most every year. have found so last year, think. is you’re on the tail end of your kid journey. They’re all old. You’re a grandma. Yeah. So you’re like practically an empty nester. I’m practically an empty nester. They just don’t leave the nest, but they all have their own little families. No. So I think I think you should attend an event for sure.

36:13
And I think for one reason is that connection part, right? I think especially in today’s world where like so many people are virtual and I mean, we run virtual classes. Like I’m a big fan of all of that, but there’s something about meeting people in person. I’m very excited. We spun off an Orlando group from Seller Summit. So if you’re in Orlando, you can hit us up. I’m not in charge of it, but I will connect you with the person in charge. But I think finding an event where it’s like the right type of people for you.

36:40
So you’ve got to go someplace where I feel like here everyone has found their tribe. Two, I think you have to be a part of a community. Whether you have a free community, right? I do. Yes. Mywifequitterjob.com slash community if you guys want to join. The only prerequisite is you just have to have a store or a website up. That’s it.

37:00
So, and I think the community aspect, like I’ve been in Scott’s community now for about a month and pre-seller summit, didn’t really get a chance to spend a lot of time in there, but I’ve tried to like go in there a couple of times a week. holy cow, it’s so active. Oh yeah, I know. But like the amount of information being shared is, and his is paid, so obviously, you know, that comes with different things, but.

37:22
There are groups out there that are really outstanding. so, I mean, the free one is really good. And the more people that get in it, the better it gets, right? So the more activity. So I think you got to find a group and get connected. And then I think the third takeaway that I have just from today is like, let’s quote Scott Volcker, like taking action, right? Like old school Scott Volcker. So Sharona asked me about Scott. Oh, really? It’s like, hey, what’s Scott doing? he still in his Nobody knows. No, Scott’s retired. And she’s like, why? He was doing so well. I was like,

37:51
It’s because he’s old. We still have Chris. We still have Chris. Chris is the mastermind anyway. Chris Schaeffer, the brains behind it all. No, but I think that watching people today, like when Scott was like, it’s time to film the UGC, and people were just ripping, all of a sudden all these packages appeared out of nowhere. People were unboxing their products, filming. Everyone had, okay, we’re wearing these little mics. People had all sorts of versions of these. They’re not expensive.

38:21
um Definitely worth investing in to film content. Most people were just filming with their, in fact, everybody was filming with their phone, right? I don’t think anyone wasn’t. um And so starting to create that content, whether you’re creating content of your product, whether you’re creating content with yourself, right? Because you’re the product or service that you’re selling. And then shipping it out in like raw form, right? Like quit trying to overproduce this, the unpolished content.

38:50
performs better most of the time anyway. And so I think watching these people like take action and like get going with this was like probably the highlight of my day to day. So here’s my criteria for an event. At least this is my own personal criteria. It’s got to be small. No, that’s not one of the It’s got to be small and intimate. So you can actually get a chance to speak with everyone. Two, I think the people attending have to be open.

39:19
And this is probably the hardest one. You’re not going to able to tell unless you go to an event. But like I said, like when I sat down, people were just telling me the revenue numbers. I did not even ask. Oh yeah, like even the conversations couple ones I had, was like, oh Or they just started telling me their problems. I did not ask, you know, I didn’t ask, but it’s, you know, it’s refreshing when people are just so open. And then three, I think the event can’t just be a, a session vomit. I don’t know if that’s the right term, but just like a ton of a fire hose of information.

39:49
uh It needs to teach and then you need to have time or a place to talk with the speaker to actually implement. That’s my criteria. You got anything to add on your end? I think that’s good. So I think because of AI and all the stuff that’s being flooding the internet with content and everything, I think it’s going to pendulum back towards community. And I think events are here to stay. Hope you enjoyed this episode.

40:16
Just a quick reminder that the virtual pass is still available for Seller Summit 2026 if you want to catch all the sessions. Go to sellersummit.com. And for more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 639. And once again, 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.