630: OpenAI Pulls Back. TikTok Reverses Course. Ecommerce Just Got Messy

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, Tony and I break down a series of sudden moves that caught a lot of sellers off guard this past week. Several major platforms quietly changed direction and the ripple effects could impact how products are discovered, sold, and fulfilled going forward. Enjoy the episode. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com.

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And if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most events that are filled with high-level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical, step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants. Also, I hate large events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate.

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We cap attendance at around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We’ve sold out every single year for the past nine years and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And if you’re doing over 250K or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for high level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be. So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now on to the show.

01:30
Welcome to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast. Today we’re going to be covering like all the latest news in e-commerce and online business. And as of right now today, it came out that e-commerce just hit 16.6 % of all sales, which sounds low, but it’s actually like at an all time high right now. More more people are shopping online. Well, I don’t know about you, but the Amazon truck in my neighborhood is a staple.

01:57
I don’t know if you have the, I’m sure you guys do have the electric delivery. Oh yeah, yeah, of course. And I’ll be walking the dogs or whatever and it’s just like, I hear them, you know, all through the, I mean, it’s just, feel like, I mean, I’m surprised that that seems low to me. Actually, let me tell you a story about Amazon. This just happened to my wife. I don’t know if you’ve shot, you’ve probably shopped on Amazon lately. I’ve noticed that they’ve started placing the add to cart button right above the buy now button on certain products. Oh.

02:26
So Jen accidentally ordered three of the same thing because she accidentally clicked the buy now button. Oh, instead of add to cart. Which is literally underneath the add to cart button. And so she adds to cart and she buys now, like she buys now a couple of times by accident. And then she notices that it’s not in her cart at checkout, so she adds it again. But the buy now is like a one click checkout. Yes, yes. So she ends up placing two separate orders.

02:55
individual orders, adding to cart, going to checkout and then placing that third order because you didn’t think the other ones went through. now you have three grand pianos. And so now we have this three three things and they’re not eligible for returns for some reason. Yeah, they’re small items. And so you actually have to go through live chat to get the refund and then you don’t have to return it. Anyway, it’s this whole hassle. Well, I think we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but

03:23
uh I have prime TV. guess everybody who has prime has prime TV. Yeah. But I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but it seems like every time I watch something on prime TV, the ah the by the Amazon ad in the corner of your screen where you can literally take your remote control and buy now is is on there. Like I feel like six months ago, I saw it occasionally. Now it’s every single commercial break or at it’s not really commercial, I guess ads.

03:52
uh It has one of those add to cart. Have you ever bought anything? No, I haven’t but I’m tempted to just because I want to see the process like can you completely check out on your television? Do you have to add it to the cart and then you have to go to your phone? I’m assuming you probably do everything on your TV. You don’t have to do anything else. sure I mean if you can click on one button by accident Yeah, and buy a whole bunch of things and yes, you can check out from your TV Yeah, for sure, which is scary because that means your kids can just check out on your TV

04:20
That is concerning, right? I my kids are all older, so that wouldn’t happen, but or they would and they would know they were doing it. But yeah, I could see one of my grandkids just all of a sudden getting 50 uh K-pop plus dollars. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, I just thought of that because when I heard that e-commerce was at its all time high, it’s like tactics like these this, you know. Well, here’s the other thing. They make it so easy to shop.

04:48
Whereas I don’t see, I don’t shop in stores. So I’m not the best person to talk about this, but when I do go to a store, it’s often very frustrating. Like you can’t find, I mean, the one store I do go to is Home Depot, right? It’s rare that you can find someone that can help you. know, it’s always, you know, someone’s on their lunch break or this person, you have to wait for them to page somebody else. The lines are long, right? If you have to return, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to return anything anywhere in a store, but like the lines are long, the parking lots are crowded. To me, it’s like, it’s not even worth.

05:17
I’ll have Home Depot, if I know what I need, I’ll have Home Depot deliver it. It’s like, don’t even want that experience anymore because I feel like the in-person shopping experience, unless you’re shopping really high end, is not fantastic. Doesn’t Brian go there every day? Isn’t he know Home Depot better than employees? right now. Okay, right. I was about to say. Yes, but sometimes I tag along on the weekends. here’s a big shock to me. Well, maybe it wasn’t that huge of a shock, but

05:46
OpenAI basically just canceled their agentic integration for purchasing. So the idea was that you do a search on OpenAI or a query and the products come up and then you buy right there on the platform without having to go to the website. They decided to back down on that, back off from that. And I understand why actually, because I was reading about it. Like a long time ago, Facebook tried to do this.

06:15
And I actually signed up for it. I was kind of excited about it where you can just check out right there. the the for me, we sell personalized items. And Facebook did like a horrible job with personalized items or any little add ons that you could make on a product. And I think just the intricacies of product feeds, options and all that stuff, major pain in the butt for people. Plus, it’s like this other interface they have to worry about to write where orders are coming from.

06:43
And that’s what I found with the Facebook Instagram experience. Because back in the day, like you could click off to the website, they discontinued that and forced you to use Facebook checkout. And we got a couple orders that ended up being a major pain in the butt, so I just turned it off entirely. And like that whole Facebook shop on there, it kind of died as a result. I heard that OpenAI released this thing, and I heard only double digits worth of stores actually signed up for it.

07:14
Interesting in all of Shopify, right? It was available to all the Shopify people. the fact that people weren’t signing up to it, I think that’s part of the reason why they decided to just shelve it. Interesting. I feel like that might come back. It’s supposed I mean, they didn’t shelve it for good. Right. They’ve just backed off from it because, you know, they got other things to worry about, I guess, like a fight with Anthropic and Google and all this other stuff that’s going on.

07:42
But I was a little shocked that more people, like I signed up for the beta since I’m not on Shopify and I never got any notifications. And then Etsy was already live with it too. And I guess that didn’t get very good adoption either. Well, we’ll see what happens with that. I feel like that might make another round. But it is such a major pain. Yeah, but I mean, at some point I think they’re gonna work out the kinks, right?

08:09
Well, mean, Facebook didn’t work out to kinks. Like, just think of all the different shipping options that you might offer or… uh Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. If it’s more of a pain than it’s worth. Like, to click on a website too, then you get like all the other information, I believe, as well. Right. I don’t know. We’ll see. I don’t know. I feel like if an app like Comment Sold can figure it out and how to integrate with Shopify, then I don’t know. Maybe.

08:38
It’s totally different concept, but I feel like there’s other things that are able to figure the integrations out. I think where this is all going is Google put out this new protocol, which I’m going to integrate with my site, which essentially allows like an AI agent to go and shop at your store, not from a browser, you know, program programmatically. And so maybe what will happen is all the AIs will adopt that and not have to browse

09:08
like on a browser to actually buy your products. I don’t know. Maybe. Did you know like right now, when an AI, like if you have an AI fill out a form, the way it works is it takes a photo of the form, fills it out each time, takes another snapshot to make sure it’s correct. And so that’s why it just takes forever for Oh, I did not know that. Yeah. Okay. Maybe that’s changed as of now, but that’s what I read somewhere. Yeah.

09:36
Okay, so that was something that was just kind of shocking to me that that happened so early. We’ve been talking about this internally with one of my clients for the past month about, we need to be, this is on the radar, let’s be ready, this, that, the other, and now I guess it’s off the radar. I think what’s more important is showing up in AI search, right? Yes. I mean, that’s the most important part about I we have a talk about that at Seller Summit. I hope we do too. Do we?

10:04
We do, of course. Jeff Oxford. I’m actually going to touch upon it, too. Jeff is going to do, obviously, most of the heavy lifting. But I’m going to talk about it in my talk. And then I’m going to code a Shopify app that allows you to do what I did, essentially. Nice. I haven’t written the talk yet. that’s part of my That’s part of my talk. So two kind of semi-talks on ranking and AI search, which is very important today. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

10:31
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11:00
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 Quiet Light 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 Quiet Light

11:29
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. It’s funny, I think I was talking to somebody yesterday in one of my communities and she was saying that she got super, she is like a, I think she’s a programmer. I’m not quite sure what her day job is, but she watched some stuff on vibe coding and over the weekend, vibe coded a bunch of stuff for her webs.

11:57
She’s like, oh, it was so easy. I just sat down and you know, and a half an hour, know, half an afternoon and got it done. I was like, yeah, I mean. Okay, so Tony, I have to I’m going to talk about it here. And I wish like I had the bandwidth to give multiple talks at Seller Summit this year. Yeah, but I have been using Claude code for content. And so now I have this like set of agents and sub agents where I have it researched the topic for me.

12:27
and then draft out like the scripts for my YouTube channel and then automatically generate the TikToks and the Instagram reels and the LinkedIn posts and then auto posts the social part. And I have this like really long file that reflects how the content is in my personality and the way I write by training it with like, I have probably like hundreds and hundreds of pages of scripts, YouTube scripts that I fed in.

12:56
Yeah. So it understood my voice and now it is drastically sped up everything. Interesting. And it’s actually not that hard to set up. I’m going to try to give a lesson in the class, but it might be kind of like a long lesson, but once you get this set up, saves a tremendous amount of time. Oh, I only imagine. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s funny that I came up with this because like I’ve been using Cloud Code to code, right? Right. But the fact that there’s code in the name,

13:25
I think scares people into thinking like, oh my God, I got a code, right? But it’s not really like that. It’s kind of like you tell it what you want and it does it. It’s like the spouse we wish we all had, For anything. And I’m not even joking. And most people that I’ve encountered, even in the Silicon Valley, they’re just using Claude or ChatGBT based on the interface, right? Like the web page.

13:54
And that’s the most inefficient way to do it because it doesn’t really remember all the little details of what you need. So by setting all this stuff up in Claude code or Claude cowork, I chose to use Claude code and not cowork. Anything that you do, like anytime I make a script now, it gets better because it’s trained on everything new that I’m working on. And so over time, like I’ll have this

14:23
you know, incredible agent where I hopefully have to do very minimal work to get to get stuff out. Yeah, I think I think this is where this is a whole nother podcast. But I think one of the things that I’ve noticed is that people that seem to hate AI or think it’s terrible or don’t like their results don’t really understand the how to work and really maximize the value. This new ad agency that we’re working with, they have em they’ve built this internally. Right. But it basically scrapes

14:52
all of your content, social, video, blog posts, products, wherever you are on the web. It also records all your phone calls with them. so it takes, which I think is crazy because I was using it the other day and it quoted me in the response. I was like, Tony Hervach says, this is weird because you just quoted Gary V above this. So I don’t know if this is this should not be in the same paragraph. But uh

15:20
It’s very interesting because we’re getting really good results from it because it has all of that information, right? It has conversations, it has videos, it has scripts, has blog, you know, it has all the things in there. 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 e-commerce that you should all check out.

15:48
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. 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. That means you gotta be more careful about what you say. No cursing, right?

16:17
curse on work calls. Tony gives f-bombs. But no, it does make, because there was one time where, yeah, there was one time it quoted me and I was like, I don’t know if I want that to be forever in AI. But uh yeah, think the fact that they

16:37
record the calls is like the most interesting, because a lot of people can feed in all their information, right? Also scrapes comments on social media and that kind of stuff, which I think is fantastic. But the recording of the calls, think that’s where it’s done, where then now the agent really gets the voice, especially of, not of me, but from me and other people on the calls, it gets the like company idea, right? Of like all those things. But then when they talk to the founder, they’re getting her voice.

17:04
which I think is really important and it’s much better than anything we’ve used outside of that. You know what, I’m gonna talk to Chris Schaeffer. So Chris Schaeffer is giving a talk on the one man content show. Machine or whatever. Machine, yeah. I wonder if he’s gonna be talking about cloud code. I’ll talk to him right after this, but there’s gonna be a talk at Seller Summit about this. Yeah, okay. What else do we have? Okay, one thing, so I got all excited about this.

17:33
six months to a year ago, which was using AI avatars to give testimonials for ads. that? I think it was like last year. Yeah. Is it last year? Yeah. And so there was all these services that were popping up. And what you would do is you would take real testimonials that you’ve gotten, choose an AI avatar that looks really realistic because it’s not you training your own face. It’s like they’re preset avatars that they’ve already trained to recite these testimonials and then you can use them on ads. Yeah. Well,

18:03
New York just passed a law that does not allow AI avatars, especially in testimonials and ads. And I think California had something similar too. I think that’s good. I agree. I think that’s a good thing too. I mean, I think all this stuff is really cool, but I don’t know. I feel like for testimonials, it kind of it reminds me of like to roll back when.

18:27
You know, there were a lot of like bloggers and influencers that were just like reviewing every single product under the sun and just like it was like testimonial to say, but it was like, you’re not really a user of this product. Right. And so it got to the point where you couldn’t really rely on content creators to recommend products because it felt like, you know, if they were just a review machine, you know, it’s like, well, how do I know that you actually really love this and not aren’t getting, you know, I mean, obviously you have to disclose if you get paid, but.

18:54
I don’t know, I feel like the AI is very similar. Although they are using real reviews, it still feels, I don’t know, feels a little sleazy. It does, but if you think about it, what you just said, like half the, I’d say all the creators who are paid, like, I mean, most of them probably don’t really like the product to begin with. actually, one of my upcoming YouTube videos is kind of about this, but the distrust factor,

19:24
for brands is at an all time high. Because of AI, uh every creator under the sun is saying like whatever product is like the best thing that they’ve ever used. And it’s just getting tiring. Like I don’t trust any of that stuff I see anymore. Yeah, so actually this is not about AI but like piggybacking on that is that is why founder content is such a hot commodity right now.

19:50
Yep. And I don’t know, I spent I literally was up till 2am last week, which I could not afford to be up till 2am watching the fast food wars. Did you see any of this? No, we have completely different feeds. No, this. What the This made national news. Oh, you’re talking about the burger? Yes. Yeah, I did. Yeah, that was a burger product. They did it on purpose. There’s a lot of debate whether McDonald’s did that on purpose.

20:15
purpose or not, if you haven’t seen this Google McDonald’s CEO eats a hamburger, basically this was the kickoff video where, you know, he introducing their new hamburger and this man clearly does not eat at McDonald’s ever, right? And he takes, he talks about the product, like the burger as if it’s like a piece of fabric or like a commodity, right? And.

20:37
And he calls it a burger product. He doesn’t just call it a burger. It was so bad. And then he takes this bite and it’s like, I don’t actually think he got any of the burger in his mouth. Right. It’s like the smallest bite I’ve ever seen. It’s like when you ask your kid to eat like a vegetable and they take like just a nibble of the top. um So what was amazing about this is all the other CEOs made videos. in some of them are like the A &W Root Beer guy literally

21:06
looks nothing like the McDonald’s guy dressed up like him and literally did it word for word with his own products. And he’s like, we don’t really call it a burger product around here. We just call it a burger. know, like it was so fantastic. The Wendy’s guy was awesome. He’s like, we cook our burgers fresh. It shows them on the grill. And then he goes and he’s like, we need to wash it down with a frosty. And he’s like, because our machines always work. Yeah.

21:32
Like the amount of shade thrown, also like the amount of like, like there were restaurants I didn’t know existed, right? Cause it’s like, I founded this fried chicken place that doesn’t exist in the South, right? So I don’t know about it. It’s probably out by you. um But I think that founder content, like that’s, I think that’s really a big way to combat some of the AI problems, right? Where like people are like platforms are.

21:58
moving away from like accepting that. was just telling you earlier, my son’s TikTok got demonetized because he’s making AI videos, but they’re like animated, right? So it’s not, he’s not pretending to be a real person. He’s making animation, but he can’t monetize it because it’s AI. So I think this founder content, if you do sell something, anything, digital, physical, um everyone wants to know how they can make faceless content, but like the founder content is what’s really hitting because it’s a way to come.

22:27
combat the this is fake, these reviews are paid. It’s like, well, of course, you know, except for the McDonald’s founder, everyone should love their products uh and should at least be able to talk about them. I think it’s why uh our friend Meg, who sells the hermit crab stuff is her videos are doing really well on TikTok, right? Like they’re getting engagement even for like not a huge account because she’s literally packing snail poop or whatever it is. I don’t know. Like, it’s gross.

22:55
But I think that’s what resonates with people right now. And it also resonates with the platforms, right? So they are giving priority to that type of content and pushing it out to people because it is not AI. Yeah. I mean, just the whole distrust factor with influencers. I mean, influencers still work, obviously. I mean, it’s the foundation of TikTok shop, but I think there’s a growing fatigue for some these. Unless the product in itself,

23:23
is the reason to buy it, like when you demonstrate it online. Okay. The other thing that’s going on is Amazon has just been cracking down like crazy on listings with I don’t want to say false claims, but any claim at all that is unsubstantiated. So you have to be really careful now what you say. Like they’re taking things down for like best whatever or even relief of a certain symptom.

23:53
Interesting. Right. And so, yeah, if you have a listing and it could be like a year old or two years old and it’s been running fine, all of sudden gets suspended. Wow. And uh just be on the lookout for that. And if it’s already happened to you, obviously you’re already on the lookout. But I might preemptively go back to my listings and take a look just to make sure. I wonder, do you think this will help like legit third party sellers?

24:21
versus some of these like, you know, I don’t want to I don’t want to say Chinese suppliers, but that’s really what it is. um You know, putting I mean, we talked a long time ago with someone from Seller Summit that was like, yeah, they they make like 10 different brands. They put all this stuff up. m Do you think that’ll help? Maybe not. I don’t know. I think it’ll be neutral because I mean, maybe they won’t get away with some of the stuff. Yeah. But.

24:50
The way it is now, people are just copying listing copy. Like if they look at the number one of the top five people, and they’ll just kind of copy the guts of their listing. That’s what I don’t like about any marketplace actually. There’s just like rampant copying and one-up-smanship. Because that’s really all you can do to differentiate yourself and your photos, which are now easily copyable too.

25:16
Which I think is why being a brand just gets so much more valuable every day. I 100 % agree. You know what’s funny? Someone asked me about e-commerce versus content the other day and I almost feel like selling physical products is a more secure position today, right? Because you’re not going to get knocked off by a flood of AI. It’s actually something physical and that’s something that I probably wouldn’t have said last year even.

25:45
I think it’s true if you have your own store. don’t think it’s true. I mean, we know a lot of people that only sell on Amazon, and that’s where I think I don’t. To me, that’s not safe at all. And I don’t know if you follow like like the jobs report, but like we all said, it’s not good. And again, it doesn’t have to be e-commerce, obviously, but just any side hustle at all. Yeah, like I’d get on that. Oh, yeah. I just telling you, I was helping my son with his side hustle yesterday. um

26:15
Yeah, it’s you know, it’s interesting to me and I’m not debating the jobs report. It’s not it’s gloomy But why why are all the restaurants packed? Like have you noticed a good question? Yeah, like and I did I have a theory but Usually like and I’m old enough to remember like 2009 right where it was like massive downturn in the economy and Restaurants were not packed right restaurants were closing and there’s still restaurants closing for sure

26:44
But like when I’m out and about and last week I was traveling so I was out almost every meal, like every dinner I was in a different restaurant in a city I don’t live in. you know, every restaurant, every table was full. People waiting outside on, you know, a Tuesday. Right. Which is, you know, probably not a normal restaurant. I don’t know. um I really think this is still a lingering post pandemic thing. Well, I had read somewhere that like the top five percent spent almost all the money.

27:14
In the US? The top 5 % aren’t eating a Chipotle. Well, no, I mean, they do. Yeah. Maybe it was like top 10 % spend like almost all the money. fancy restaurants. was in like Chili’s, you know. Yeah, I know. I know. But I know a lot of the restaurant industry is hurting because there’s only so many times that like the wealthy can go out to eat, right? Three times a day. But maybe that’s not the case for like

27:42
Was it like a chili? Chili’s has a great deal. It’s actually pretty inexpensive to eat there. Yeah, chili’s is great. I told my daughter she’s got some job security. uh even uh my other kid works at like, it’s not Chipotle, but it’s like a Chipotle and they’re busy all the time. So anyway, I don’t know. That’s one thing where I always feel like that’s one thing you can cut really quickly and really decrease your spending, right? As you just make your food at home. it’s so even with the…

28:08
grocery prices being high, it’s still significantly cheaper. Maybe not with the chili’s deal, but outside of that, like you can make dinner for much less than you can eat out with. yeah, for sure. Especially like, I don’t know if you’ve been through Chick-fil-A lately. It’s like I had to buy Chick-fil-A for everybody when we were stuck traveling. It was four people and it was like fifty five dollars and it wasn’t like extravagant. Chick-fil-A is expensive. Yeah, but even McDonald’s is expensive these days, you know. um

28:36
But yeah, that’s one thing that I thought was interesting is that restaurants still seem crowded. But well, I mean, just uh there is a stat. Forty four percent more people are buying secondhand than a year ago. I mean, the economy is is hurting. mean, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t see it that much in the news, but like I can just tell by, for example, like the employees that we have, you know, things are getting tighter and whatnot. So I’ve and I’ve heard that from a couple of people where their spouse works in an industry where

29:06
You know, it’s it’s not like a guaranteed 40 hours a week and their their time is being cut. Right. Well, I miss the time to start the furniture flipping business. Right. That’s your thing. I would never do that. But yeah. No. But like like to your point about side hustles, like this is the time to really be, I think, digging into something like that and seeing what you can come up with. Yeah. In other news, Tick Tock

29:35
rescinded their requirement to use fulfilled by TikTok. Thank goodness. Thank God I got that YouTube video out in time because literally the week later they made that announcement. Because in that video I was like, this is a bold move, but they might be able to pull it off, Forcing everyone. Well, I guess it turns out that they could not pull it off. It’s funny because- tons of backlash. Yes, I just, before they rescinded it, I just told somebody, ah, this is probably not the best time to get on TikTok to sell. Let’s, let’s-

30:05
You know, not if it’s fulfilled by TikTok, like that we don’t want to mess with that. um So, yeah, we’ll see. But on the flip side, and this is coming straight from Ian Page’s mouth, the bullseye sellers, he’s in he’s an agency that specialize in TikTok. If you’re not on TikTok shop, like your leash is super short. Like if you’re fulfilling yourself and you make a mistake, you’re going to get banned. Yeah. Right. Or if you don’t fulfill on time, like. Yeah.

30:33
your seller score is very important. And that was the reason that they wanted people on Fulfilled by TikTok. So think about it this way, you have a video that goes viral and all of a sudden you’re used to selling maybe like 100 units a day and all of a sudden it’s like a thousand units. And all of a sudden you can’t do it. And that actually makes TikTok look bad. It makes you look bad. So. Well, and especially if you think about how people buy on TikTok, right? It’s usually an impulse purchase. And so there’s

31:01
I mean, I think it was Ritu that talked about this last year in her talk at Seller Summit, how she saw the suitcase and she was like, this is amazing. And she bought it and it never showed up. Right. And so like she didn’t know anything about the brand. She didn’t know anything about the company. But, you know, now she’ll probably she probably will hesitate before she buys on TikTok again. Right. Because the order that she, you know, legitimate order paid money didn’t get the product. So I can see why they are strict. It’s kind of like with, you know, when uh

31:29
was it seller fulfilled prime? Right, same stringent rules because Amazon has a reputation. Yeah, I mean, Ian’s going to be talking about this, but I suspect because if you do fulfilled by TikTok, it’s a lot of perks like they’ll make you more visible. There’s a badge that you get also. Yeah. So essentially, I think even though they’re not technically forcing everyone on there. Yeah, they’re kind of forcing people on there.

31:58
It’s like going non-prime versus prime, right? Huge difference. Yeah. So and then for our final topic for today, let’s talk about the tariffs. I hate talking about the tariffs. Remember, there was one episode we recorded where it was literally the day that it was announced that it got struck down. Yeah. And we did like a two minute bit on how it was great and everything.

32:24
I don’t if you remember that part. do. I do. But I feel like I don’t want to talk about the tariffs because every in five minutes, this will be outdated. Yes. Actually, that’s true, because literally after we started cheering, it was literally seven hours later. Yeah. Like Trump did something else. I just wanted to just kind of explain what’s going on, especially with the refunds and whatnot, in case you guys are curious. So what got struck down specifically were the IEPA tariffs. These were like the emergency ones that he issued.

32:54
like the crazy one where you held the board, like every country, those all got struck down. And what most people didn’t realize was that for China in particular, that was just like a part of the tariffs. Like China already had these 301 tariffs that have been around since Trump’s first administration. Those did not get struck down at all. Right. And I did a YouTube video on this.

33:22
which I think became obsolete like a week later also because of the stupid tariff topic. this was like before he instituted that additional 15 % tariff or whatnot. So what ended up happening is those got struck down. And then he used like a different loophole or a different rule to issue another 15%. And so what got struck down specifically was about 20 % worth of tariffs on China. And then he added an extra 15 on

33:52
for some other rule, which will probably get struck down too. But what he’s trying to do is he’s trying to add on to those Section 301 tariffs, which have been around for, I don’t know, over four years now. Getting it onto there requires research, and I think this intermediate tariff is just buying time for him to get that going. Now, in terms of the refunds, I mean, this is probably gonna go again. I don’t think anyone’s gonna get any refunds.

34:22
I really, or if someone gets refunds, it’ll be like the large companies maybe. I don’t think the little guys are gonna get their refunds. um So what often happens or what a whole bunch of people did during the tariff period is they use DDP, which stands for delivery duty paid. that’s essentially when the supplier is the importer of record, right? Not you to save money on the tariffs, because there was some other stuff going on.

34:52
they would get the refund, not you, in that case. Because they’re the importer of record. And I guess the question is, and this is what makes this whole thing weird, do we wanna refund the suppliers in China? With a lot of this tariff money? And the large corporations, there’s like 2,000 of that have filed huge lawsuits, which will get tied up. But then recently last week, some court ruling ordered that

35:21
the tariffs be refunded, but there’s no provision, like the Supreme Court didn’t give any provisions for the refund. So I just think it’s a big mess. Yeah. It’s just going to get messier. Yeah. But I mean, if you want even a chance of getting refunds, you need to fill out, you need to get an account. Maybe I’ll link it beneath this podcast, but you need to create an account with the Customs and Border Control. And that’s how they would refund you.

35:51
should a refund ever to occur. But as of this recording, I don’t know anyone who’s gotten anything yet. Yeah. Well, I mean, I was going say good news, bad news, but it’s just news. Yeah, I guess so. mean, I’ll be here’s the good news, actually. The good news is that since those tariffs got struck down, India and Vietnam are like the best places to source from now.

36:18
The China tariffs are still there. Almost all the 301 tariffs China pays. It’s on China, not those other countries. And it was a crap shoot actually when I invited people to talk about sourcing at Seller Summit. But yes, as long as this holds through for another month, um Jim Keminerer is gonna be talking about sourcing from Vietnam at Seller Summit. I’m using him right now, actually. And I think he’s, I don’t know if he’s gonna be talking about

36:49
a case study that we’re kind of doing together right now. the prices are actually a little lower than China. And you don’t have to pay like the you still have to pay the 15 thing that Trump just issued. uh But it’s cheaper than China and you pay less tariffs than China. The communication and the speed of sourcing is a little slower, but it’s probably worth a look if you’re sourcing from China right now, because Vietnam is so close to China.

37:19
Yeah, literally China just ships all the raw materials and they actually the Chinese vendors, they actually own factories in Vietnam, a lot of them. And so it’s almost like getting the same product for less and avoiding the tariffs. Well, that’ll be an interesting talk. I know the tariffs are always a hot topic at Seller Summit because at least for the past couple of years. Well, just one year. Last year was the most miserable uh time for e-commerce, I want to say, right?

37:47
Especially around the seller summit time. So the seller summit last year was in May, right? And that’s when like the tariffs got to 120 % or something. people that couldn’t get their stuff. Right. So, yeah, this year at least people might be happier. Actually, I think one of my slides on like the keynote last year was I had a friend who paid those 120 % tariffs because he sells bobbleheads to the Warriors and a whole bunch of teams. Yeah, you don’t have a choice. And you don’t have a choice. You have to deliver or you ruin that.

38:16
that relationship. Yeah, right. So this year will be a lot better because the terrorists are way more under control, I think. Yeah. And well, at least for now. Yeah, crossing my fingers that nothing will change in like the next month. For sure. But yeah, yeah. Oh, and yeah, free Amazon PPC. Seller Summit. Oh, yeah. Free managed Amazon PPC for three months if you guys decide to come.

38:44
The amount of emails I’ve received about that. Oh, is that right? Yes, people are, well, I mean, we sold out one of the masterminds right after we announced that. So, um yeah, I think people are very excited. Because that’s what, I don’t know what you said it was worth, because I’ve never paid for It’s probably worth around 10 grand, it was my estimate. I don’t know how much they charge, but like I have used managed services in the past. Yeah. Yeah, and that’s how much, it’s about three grand a month. Yeah.

39:12
Yeah. So good deal pays for your ticket. Yep. So, all right. Yeah. We’ll see in Fort Lauderdale.

39:38
If you want to 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 SellersSummit.com.