642: Why Everything You Know About Ecommerce Is About To Break

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 are talking about agentic shopping. And honestly, I’m kind of having a midlife e-commerce crisis right now. We get into Amazon scraping your website and selling your products without permission, why your meta and Google ads might not matter much longer, and what you should actually be doing to make sure AI recommends your store over your competitors.

00:27
It’s a weird time in e-commerce right now and we’re just trying to figure it all out together. But before we begin, I just wanted 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 at mywifequitterjob.com slash community and I would love to see you there. That’s mywifequitterjob.com slash community.

00:56
Now on to the show.

01:04
Welcome back to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about agentic shopping. it’s weird right now. I’m kind of having a midlife e-commerce crisis right now because I’m not sure what’s going to happen next. There’s been talks of like AI doing the shopping. uh I’m going have to be making shifts. Like who knows what’s going to happen to like ads in like the next two to three years. Like there’s a whole bunch of stuff up in the air.

01:32
right now. On one hand, it’s fun. On the other hand, you know, we got a business to run here we got to know which direction to take. Yeah, I often wonder because I think we talked about this on a previous podcast about was it Amazon blocking the link? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And results. Yeah. So I feel like one of the concerns I have and I don’t have my own e-commerce store anymore, but it’s like you invest time into something and then something shifts and changes and all that time is wasted.

02:02
So here’s what got me thinking about this, right? It’s like more and more people are using AI to shop. And then a whole swath of articles came out about like agentic shopping. Like this is where you just have like open claw or a claw do the shopping for you. And right now, like the way I get my business is like word of mouth, email, SMS, but for like new customers, I’m paying for meta ads, paying for Google ads, doing a little bit of social media. But for the most part, like humans need to see the ad.

02:32
Right? They click on it. But if it’s like an agent or an AI agent, they’re not going to be clicking on any ads. Right? No, they’re just going to be comparing the data. Right. So which which makes like ranking in AI crucial if you believe that’s going to be the future. You just mentioned uh when we talked about how Amazon blocked all the agents from calling it. Do you know what they did next? That was like really kind of sleazy, I think.

02:58
Who knows? They’ve done a lot of silly things in the past couple of weeks. They have this program called Buy For Me where they literally just started scraping websites. I think Amazon and these other Chinese agents took my website down one night because they were just crawling so much. So I had to block all of China. But Amazon will scrape your site and will list your products on Amazon where when you click on it,

03:26
it takes them to your website. Now you might think that’s a good thing, right? But it got widespread backlash because it was getting the products wrong. oh You know what I mean? So people were buying from Amazon, getting sent to an external site where, actually, I don’t even know if they were getting sent to an external site. I think Amazon actually makes the purchase on the person’s behalf. And then when they get something,

03:53
that’s incorrect that doesn’t match the listing on Amazon because Amazon’s scraping stuff, right? So it’s not going to be up to date. People are getting wrong orders and the brand was getting blamed for it. Not matching Amazon’s. Right. And subsequent, probably poor reviews. Right. Well, the thing is, that’s the funny thing. Like the reviews, like those listings on Amazon don’t get reviews. But suppose your own website. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Now you’re dealing because I think about, you know, for the e-commerce site.

04:21
We have a customer service person that basically sees all the reviews before they get published. now you’ve increased their workload, right? Because if the problem really isn’t your problem, that you shipped them the right item, but Amazon just listed the wrong item. Now you’ve got customer service nightmares. And for people who are solopreneurs or maybe have one or two people helping them, you can’t handle the increased workload of Amazon making mistakes.

04:48
Plus they could leave a bad review on you for Trustpilot or other things that you don’t have control over. Google, right? The Google shopping review, whatever that’s called. Anyway, the point is, like the discovery is so important because Amazon lost it, I read an article recently that Amazon lost like 10 percentage points in the last couple of years for discovery. Like people used to always start their journey on Amazon. People are not doing that anymore. They’re starting on AI and they’re starting on social media like TikTok.

05:17
So I had a sneak peek of our TikTok talk for Seller Summit. I don’t know if you got a chance to peek at the presentation yet. But um that was sort of one of the points of the talk is basically like people find you on TikTok, right? They see a video, whether it’s your own video or an influencer’s video, right? They don’t necessarily buy immediately on TikTok. They will then go find you somewhere else.

05:45
Right. But TikTok and I think Tiffany is talking about this a little bit too, like sort of the halo effect of that content creation. But yeah, people people are using TikTok. I mean, my kids use it as a search engine. Yeah. See, I haven’t seen that yet. And I’ve tried using it as a search engine, actually. I don’t think the search engine is very good. I don’t have you. I don’t think it’s good for what you and I are probably doing. I think it’s great for what my kids are looking for. Right. What are they looking for?

06:14
like Tmoo type stuff. Oh, okay, okay. You know what I mean? Like, oh, I need like a gold necklace. I mean, one of my kids is going to prom, right? So she wanted this gold necklace for prom. So she totally searched on TikTok, but then she bought on Amazon. Yeah, actually, what concerned me less is about any time humans are in play. What concerns me more is when AI does the shopping. Right. And I was thinking to myself, like, there’s a lot of things that I would just wouldn’t mind having AI shop for.

06:41
Like the necessities. Engagement rings. know, anniversary gifts. Yeah, anniversary Just go buy something. So it’s interesting you say that because I have not used AI in that way. And the only thing that I have firsthand knowledge of is people using AI to buy travel. And I’ve heard a lot of bad things, right?

07:09
Which I personally would never have AI book a plane ticket for me. I’m just too paranoid, right? I want to know what if you had it find to do all the research all the way up until the buy button and then you just approve it. So, yes, but I like to me, I need that like final. I wouldn’t just like say, hey, and I’ve heard of people that are basically like, hey, plan that dinner, get everything and they end up, you know, booked at some terrible place or something like that. So I’ve heard like a few experiences like that.

07:38
I haven’t heard anybody just doing straight up shopping yet that way. Well, this is what I was thinking. Like, let’s say this is something I don’t care about. Like I need an outfit for Seller Summit, right? So I have it go out and then make me like these portfolios of outfits. And then I just click the final approval button. Yes. Right. No one’s clicking any ads. No humans are clicking ads. AI is going on and putting these things together. And so as an e-commerce store owner,

08:06
Like how do you make sure that like if you sell clothes, how do you make sure your shirt ends up in that outfit? Right? Yeah. So how do you, so that’s the debate right now, right? Because I’m spending all this money on ads, but if no humans are looking at it, then those ads, mean, this could disrupt meta. could disrupt Google. And so a lot of things are happening, I guess. I mean, we already talked about Amazon, uh, how they’re trying to become the hub of all of e-commerce.

08:35
So they’re scraping all the products, putting together their own AI, which is called Rufus. Have you used Rufus? No, but it actually got brought up yesterday on a call that I had because it’s impacting the influencer marketing side of Amazon. In what way? In a negative way. I’ve heard statistics coming out from Amazon.

09:00
But if you do some research on it, there was a time where Rufus just popped up. It was like a pop-up window. Now it’s this teeny tiny button in the upper left that you actually have to click on to get it. And I read that there’s a huge backlash when Rufus was a pop-up, because people did not want it. there was a statistic, like 31 % of the time, it provides inaccurate information about the product.

09:27
Interesting, but you would think that it’s only scraping from the product itself. It’s yeah from Amazon products, but that was a stat that I obviously that was an Amazon stat. Amazon stat was something like 300 million people used it. It generated 12 billion dollars in revenue, which in the grand scheme of things is a very small number. Yeah. So I so I had an experience with ads because I’m I know you think I’m a big shopper, but I’m not a big shopper. I don’t buy a lot of things other than groceries. I’m a big grocery shopper.

09:59
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.

10:27
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

10:57
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. Why is there a box outside of your door every morning? I don’t know. It’s paper towels and toilet paper and stuff. So I kept getting this ad for, don’t know if you’ve seen this ad, it’s for these little charms. And they’re the flags of countries. And basically you can order

11:26
the flags for countries you visited, whatever, and that you can get a bracelet or necklace or keychain. I saw this in my ad for probably six months. Makes sense why I would see it because most of the videos that I watch are travel related. Most of the reels, most of the TikToks are like, here’s how you spend a week in Slovenia, whatever. I kept getting fed this ad.

11:49
You know, maybe like a month ago, I clicked on it because I was like, oh, I actually think that would be kind of fun to have like a keychain with all the countries I visited. Right. Because I love to travel. So I clicked on the ad, didn’t buy at the time. And then, of course, I got retargeted, you know, for the next couple of weeks. And I ended up buying the the little charms because and they actually I was pleasantly surprised because I was like, this is like a tick tock product. I’m a little worried. um But anyway, I got it. It’s great. I love it. I got to put it together. But.

12:16
to me, that’s still an integral part of like a shopping experience, like an experience online, right? Oh no question. Yeah. So I wonder, I would say, I think Google will be more affected than Meta, right? If you just think about like a shopper behavior, because Meta, the ads typically just interrupt your scrolling, right? You’re scrolling, you’re looking at your friend’s vacation photos, you’re looking at the birthday party, whatever, and you see an ad and then you keep scrolling.

12:46
you know, and you keep going. Whereas like when I see ads on Google, it’s typically because I’ve typed something in. Right. And I’ve asked Google a question and I’m getting responses. Some organic, some are paid. And so to me, that’s where the true disruption is going to come versus the just continually like putting something in front of people. I think it’ll disrupt everything. But I think the bigger disruption comes when people have more intent. The.

13:12
Seeing the ads in your feed are more of just an awareness play, in my opinion. So there’s a lot of articles that have been saying like social media will die because if you look at it, there’s a whole bunch of AI generated social media posts now and there’s a whole bunch of bots on social media now. So let’s say the number of bots exceeds humans by like 10 to one. Yeah.

13:40
Are humans going to use social media as much knowing that everything is like AI generated? Because before when social media came out, it was all about human connection, right? Right. For me, at least now it’s it’s less so of that. I mean, my feed is still my TikTok feeds horrible, actually. Yeah. My Instagram feed still OK, because it’s it’s my friends and whatnot. Yeah. But if that changes, then social media could have a big decline also, and it could affect Facebook as well, because it’s so easy to generate content now.

14:11
I wonder because I also feel like we have this like weird perspective, right? You and I are old. We grew up before social media, right? Like we both remember a time when there wasn’t any of this and our kids do not remember a time when there wasn’t social media, right? So like my kids, not all of them, but like my younger kids, their entire life revolves around social media, right? And sometimes,

14:37
It’s funny because sometimes they’ll talk about somebody that I’ve like an actual person that they know and they’ll and I was like, oh, did you go to school with them? Oh, no, no. I met him on Snapchat. Right. Or I met him because they were like in the same proximity to each other or they were at the same concert or something like that. So I wonder for us, because we use social media so differently than the younger generation does. I wonder if there’s also going to be this shift because do based on like where you are in the generational spectrum. uh

15:07
Because I can’t imagine my kids getting off social media. Things change in social media quickly. True. I was all in on Friendster. And then Facebook came out. I had a MySpace page you wouldn’t believe.

15:26
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 obtained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

15:55
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. So back to like what to do as an e-commerce store. So Google has this, what they call UCP. It’s a universal commerce protocol which allows agents to buy from your store without like having to click on the web. Shopify has an agentic storefront that’s tapping the chat GBT. So all these companies are going all in on

16:25
AI purchases, right? And then that’s why I’m worried. Like where am I gonna put my time? So it’s a given that ranking in AI is important. So does that mean I start doing Reddit marketing? Does that mean I start going all out on like some sort of media blitz, hire like a PR person and try to get in as many publications as possible? It’s kind of unclear to me at least. Do you think this means that certain things like

16:55
I think we talked about this before, of podcasts having their ups and downs, right? Where everyone was super into podcasts and now it’s not as effective as it used to be. But I feel like is that one of those things where, because I was just talking to somebody this morning and I said, I think you need to go on PR blitz, right? You need to be at the events, you need to be on podcast, you need to be talking about this to get yourself out there in as many ways as possible. Yeah, I don’t know the answer. It’s tiring doing all that stuff, but yeah.

17:23
No, I agree, but what are the other options? There’s other articles. I’ve done a lot of research on this also because I’m putting together a keynote for Seller Summit right now. A lot of people are turning back to retail, like brick and mortar. I don’t see that in my kids because my daughter loves going to the mall, but the selection isn’t great. What she does now is she does all the shopping on her phone.

17:53
Then she just goes to the mall to actually try it on, I guess. This is clothing, obviously, this switch. She loves going to the mall too. It’s like this hybrid. I thought malls were going to die. Now, my kids love going to the mall too. Our mall is so popular now that you have to pay for parking, which pisses me off. What? You have to pay to go to the mall. Oh, you got a fancy mall. That’s a fancy mall thing. Yes. It’s a hassle because

18:21
You have this turnstile and of course the traffic in and out of the mall sucks now. yes. Yeah. Anyway, I malls have made a resurgence, but they have. Yes. That’s a whole nother Because maybe people want to be looking at stuff in person again or it’s a place to hang out. I don’t know. I think it’s a combination of two. And I also wonder like how much I come back to this a lot, like how much of some of this is like a post pandemic? I don’t know. Wave.

18:48
Right. We’re like because I feel like for a while no one could do anything. Right. Everyone was stuck in their house. They couldn’t go out. They couldn’t shop. You know, online shopping boomed. Right. And then, you know, obviously that’s not the case anymore. And so I feel like certain things are booming back. But like before the pandemic, like I used to take my kids for driving lessons in the mall parking lot because it was so empty. Because I can’t remember the last time the mall was empty around here. Yeah. I mean, you know, that’s just, you know, obviously we live in different.

19:16
coast so it be locational too but. I don’t even remember the pandemic now. I feel like it’s like way in the past. It’s like this little blip in my life. I feel like those years disappeared though. Because it was a long time ago if you think about it we’re in 2026 now right? was six years ago. Yeah exactly. So I wonder if those effects are overblown. I think it’s just I don’t know people are just tired and they want.

19:44
they crave like physical stuff again. Yeah. So I think one of the problems that I see with this is that if you have had an e-commerce store for a long time, right, and we know a lot of people who’ve done this, tend to have had, you have a lot of, not everybody, but you have a decent amount of SKUs, right? Yeah. And you have a lot of listings, and this is what I’m seeing right now because we’re doing a major site redesign, and so our code is really bad on the old site, just.

20:11
because we had to basically band-aid together pages and things like that. Also the information on those pages is not great. It was great for 2018, right, or 2020, but now the information, so I can see why AI gets it wrong for products, right? If you have older listings and things like that that you haven’t, I don’t know, done a really good job of updating or even focused on that sort of thing,

20:41
I feel like that’s a huge project. It’s actually not that bad, ironically, if you use AI to generate those things that AI needs to figure out what your product is. True. I went through this exercise last year, actually, when I was revamping my search to be agentic search. I rewrote product descriptions for over 1,000 products. uh It was actually a pain in the butt because you actually have to…

21:11
The closest analogy I had to it was like reading my book 20 times before I had to publish it. So I was reading these product descriptions because you can’t have anything wrong about it. Right. Right. So I was literally read the product descriptions that were AI generated for thousand products to make sure everything was OK. Yeah. And then put it live. So it took a while. Well worth it, though. So so one of the questions I have and maybe it’s different because you sell handkerchiefs, but how do you get

21:39
Because I feel like one of the biggest issues I have with AI in general is that it’s too generic, right? It doesn’t do a great job of giving you that special factor, right? That sets you apart. And some of the times I feel like the output is just, is too high in the sky. So how do you, for listings, I feel like it actually matters that you have that differentiated. Does it? Because if you’re just trying to rank an AI, then yes, you need to,

22:09
point out the differentiators of your product. But the writing doesn’t have to be, it can just be vanilla, right? So one thing that I did with my site was I started gathering statistics and sending out surveys. And I mean, these surveys, maybe 100 people, you know, take part in them, but you can say like 91 % of people prefer this, you know, whatever, and AI digs that stuff. Interesting. And it’s not like a, I mean, it’s a real statistic, of course, but it’s-

22:38
It’s kind of bogus. significant. Right, exactly. It’s a kind of bogus thing that AI picks up on, right? Yeah. Or I just checked the databases and I said, we ship out our products on time like 98 points something percent of the time, whatever. And that was really easy because I use that to monitor our employees, right? We this system. So another stat like that. Just put it on there, right? Yeah. I don’t know. So then…

23:08
I guess my next question is you were saying, it can be really vanilla if AI is reading it, but then what happens when humans read it? Humans don’t read. Well, that’s actually very true. The whole point is I think AI is going to do a lot of shopping now and it won’t make the purchase, but it’ll gather all the information for you. You just have to click that final buy button. I don’t know. On the flip side, there’s

23:35
There’s always two sides to everything, right? Like the Amazon CEO came out and said, AI shopping agents aren’t good right now. But once they are, would you use one? Yeah, I know. It’s funny that Amazon would say that, right? Yeah. But I would totally use AI for shopping. Would you? I mean, you’re more of a shopper than I am. Let’s be clear. I knew that was going to come into play at some point. Especially for clothing. Like I want nothing to do with clothing because it’s just not my thing.

24:04
No, I would not have AI. Really? Okay. You know what? Okay. Recently, Jen is going to sell her something also. She’s just looking at outfits. She started using this service where you take a picture of yourself and then AI puts together outfits for you and you just approve. Would you use a service like that? I feel like that’s what Stitch Fix did back in the day. Right? Sure, but this time you get to see yourself in the outfits. Yes. Right? I feel like

24:34
Yes, I think people will use it. I just feel like it’s probably missing that little What do mean? So, I don’t know like it’s like weird stuff, right? Like I can like there’s just certain things that I hate in clothing, right? Okay, so and I would obviously type I would obviously provide as much information as I could but then like if I but also there’s probably Preferences that I don’t know that I don’t like until I see it. You know what I mean?

25:03
Okay, so if I recall, the way you shop is you buy a bunch of stuff you tried on, you return what you don’t like, right? How is this any different? Like you’re presented with a feed of yourself wearing all these outfits. You proven you hit buy, buy, buy. You get sent a bunch of stuff and you return the stuff that you don’t like. Right? Yeah, I mean, I think so. Right. And so in that case, a human is not looking at ads.

25:30
A human is just getting this curated stuff that AI has curated. And AI doesn’t look at ads. doesn’t do it. It does searches. But a lot of times what it gets is whatever shows up. Right. So does that make optimizing for AI like the future? Meaning like 100 percent outside of maybe some social media? Except for yes, I would say yes, except.

25:57
I also think optimizing to be a brand. Okay, so let’s talk about that because I was thinking about this too and I’ve always been a huge proponent of brand and everything, right? I guess by having a strong brand that makes AI more likely to mention you, right? But if again, if a human isn’t doing the shopping for you, I mean, there’s a lot of generic stuff that I buy also. Yeah, so I think that depends, right? Like there’s definitely generic stuff that

26:27
We all purchase every single day, right? There’s things that we literally do not care who manufactured. But like at the end of the day, I am a bounty paper towel loyalist, right? Like do not give me any other paper towel. I don’t care. All you Viva people out there who try to tell me it’s better, I’m not listening to you anymore. Like I am a bounty paper. I will pay more for bounty. I don’t care. End of Hey, this commercial’s really worked on you, huh? They did. The quicker I bet you’re the type of

26:58
No, but like I just like that’s just like I like the paper towels that they have. Same thing is like I’m a I’m a PNG user. Right. Like PNG has got me. I like Tide. I like Bounty. Like I like whatever their whatever other bounce, whatever they have. um So I think if same thing with Yeti. Right. It does like I have friends you met I’m Sandy and Fete that are like.

27:23
If it’s not Yeti, they’re not drinking out of it. They’re not putting their cool. They’re not putting their picnic lunch in it. Like if Yeti, they have a Yeti blanket. OK, like a blanket. Yeti is not known for blankets. They’re known for coolers. Right. But they bought it because it’s Yeti. So I think having that brand loyalty is like I’m not arguing with that. I’m not arguing at all. I agree with you 100 percent. Yeah. The question is, it’s going to be harder to establish that brand loyalty.

27:52
if AI is doing all the shopping. Right. Like if you’re not familiar with Yeti in the first place and you’re trying to establish a brand, let’s say you’ve been in the press a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if AI is doing the if AI is presenting you with products, AI does not really care about brand unless that brand has been mentioned a lot and it just happens to rank high in AI. Yeah. Same with like uh so. So I use one thing I use AI to and not to book, but basically to get to the booking point is for travel.

28:21
Right. OK. Right. But I will tell AI when I get started, like I only I only will look at Marriott brands. Right. Do not do not tell me to book a Hyatt. Don’t tell me to book a Hilton. Like I have my loyalty at Marriott. Same thing with like I want to see Delta flights first. Now, I don’t necessarily will always. I mean, I try to fly Delta as much as I can. But like, obviously, if it means I have to take two connections, I will fly a different airline. But.

28:45
And I know and there’s a lot of people in that boat, right? Like, you know, other people are like, it’s usually based on where you live to like if you’re next to somebody’s hub, you know, you’re probably going to do that. So I think the brand, the branding, the brand loyalty, that actually is a way to I don’t want to say combat this because I don’t think you should come back. I think you should work with it. Right. I think you should do this. But I think that is a way to sort of continue to gain market share. Right. And build your business is that

29:15
if people like your brand, they’re gonna put that into AI. Like I wanna see dresses, but I only wanna see Kate Spade. um Or I only wanna see these three brands. And Jen might be that way too, right? Because also I think if you have a brand that you like, especially in clothing, right? What’s that shirt, untuck it, right? They’re a really popular shirt. You know, I actually liked the concept and then I walked in and I was like, whoa, okay.

29:44
I don’t like the concept that much. Why, does Brian wear untuck it? No, he wears, what’s the one on Amazon? Oh, there’s an Amazon brand for it? No, there’s a brand on Amazon, they sell t-shirts. You’re not talking about True Classic, right? True Classics. I will only buy him True Classic t-shirts now. If he wants a t-shirt that’s a nicer, not a work shirt, but a nice t-shirt, I will only buy the True Classics because I know the size, I know how they fit.

30:13
They hold up pretty well. um So I think being a brand, having that brand awareness is actually gonna be. I don’t disagree with you at I’m just worried about the future of discovery though. Yeah. What are you guys doing? Well, right now we’re just trying to clean up our listings. So, um But that’s a part of it. Yeah. So cleaning up the listings and then once we get to the new website,

30:43
that will be the next focus. But right now we have, you know, 250 listings that can’t. I mean, I still think the future is content. Yeah. Right. Because that’s what we still have the website where we just got a new social media person who is making some really fantastic reels. And really, that’s what we’re seeing is all about just hopping on the trend. Right. know, it’s funny, Charles,

31:13
emailed me a while ago and he was like, remember like you were going to make these love stories for Bumblebee linens and I, of which I have 10 already edited ready to go and I never released them. And the reason why is like, once you start that, it’s like this other task that you need to do on a weekly basis. And I kept thinking to myself, can I get away with not doing it? And so far the answer has been yes. I’ve gotten away with not doing social media for Bumblebee linens pretty much at all.

31:43
Right. Just by doing the agentic stuff and all these little things that I’ve been doing over the years to tweak everything. Yeah. And we’re already like, if you you were to type in like, who’s the leading provider of wedding handkerchiefs, we would show up unquestionably. Right. Yeah. So the question is, like, I hate I hate social media. I mean, I do it ironically for a living, right? Because I YouTube videos. But for something that I don’t

32:11
Not that I don’t stand behind my products, but I just don’t want to be creating content about the stuff that we sell. What’s your take on that? I think it’s still possible to build a brand off social media. think it’s Yeah, I think people like I mean, I know we’ve had this conversation so many times over the years. Like, I think people like following their favorite. I know they do media like I I’m a sucker for a behind the scenes video. I’m a sucker. Like, in fact,

32:39
I think I told you this, we went to the Yangling factory like a year and a half ago in Pennsylvania. sister, love to go to like how it’s made type stuff. And so they always plan these really fun like outings. So we went to the Mack Truck Museum and we went to the Yangling Bottling Factory, right? Two things that I did not care anything about when we went, right? But I was like, I always love to learn. It’ll be interesting. First of all, I could have spent two more days in the Mack Truck Museum.

33:05
And you know, I’m not into any of that, right? But I was like so fascinated with everything that goes into trucking, right? And like how they manufacture their trucks and how they’re doing like clean technology, right? And you know, all that stuff. And then also the history, right? Fascinating. The bottling company, I will watch bottles come off that line and be packed all day long.

33:26
Like, give me a lawn chair. just want to and watch it. Your favorite show growing up was Laverne and Shirley. know, right? No, but like, I just think people love knowing more about the brands they care about. No, I 100 % agree. Like, and to know that, you know, like when we went to the Ducati factory in Italy a couple of years ago, like just to learn and like watch people literally assemble motorcycles, like in person.

33:51
Fascinating, right? Because you’re like, these are the people that assembled my motorcycle two years earlier or whatever, you know? um So I just think people love that. I think people would love I tell you this all the time. People would love to see. Oh, no, no questions. No question. I’d watch an embroidery machine all day long. Right. And here’s why, because here’s what a lot of people do on social media. Right. They use it as an escape. Right. You’re you need to just escape everything else in your life. So you just open up Instagram, you open up TikTok and you doom scroll.

34:21
And you will doom scroll and watch like I watch these little travel video like these travel flags, right? I watch them beyond bracelets and keychains and like to the point where I was like, I need to have this a couple of months in. Right. Took a while, but that didn’t take that long when you think about like a normal sales cycle. um But I think people want to know about your company. And honestly, I think it builds the loyalty right that then allows you to they’re searching for handkerchiefs. They only want to see what Bumblebee has. They don’t care about other brands.

34:50
I’m not disagreeing with you at all. I just don’t think a middle-aged Chinese guy should be doing this. Yeah, I don’t know. But but then you see examples of this working. Paul Ivanovsky. Yeah, I know. No question. Right. Literally started M.L.U.S. by selling putting on dresses, women’s dresses on lives, selling them to middle-aged women. And people thought he was fantastic. Right.

35:15
Another example that I can think of current day is have you seen the baddie in the Ben’s guy who works at the Mercedes Benz dealership? Okay, it’s a Mercedes. have different feeds. I am very much in a marketing feed. Yeah, he works at a Mercedes Benz dealership. He’s a sales guy, right? In Georgia. And he like he started creating these tick tocks or reels or whatever. don’t know where they started where he’s like, um listen, girly pop.

35:43
got dumped, I’ve got your solution, roll up in a G-Wagon and he’s like literally getting out of the G-Wagon. He’s like custom seats, done. Like he just does all like, and he’s literally like he’s millions of followers, right? Like people go to this dealership to buy a Mercedes from this guy, right? Women, all women, right? Because he’s just like, and most people listening probably have seen him before because he’s very popular. But, you know, I just think like,

36:11
I know I’m never going to convince you to- No, no, no, I’m not disagreeing with you on anything. No, and I teach this stuff in the course, right? I guess it just depends on your motive. My dream is always to do as little work as possible while being satisfied with what you’re making. Right now, it’s pretty hands off. Okay, but you didn’t start there. Correct, did not start there.

36:38
But I’m a big fan of doing a lot of work upfront that can last for long time. So that’s why I’d been investing a lot of time in ranking an AI search. Right. Because that’s something that’s like ranking in Google. It’s going to last a long time. Hopefully. I don’t know. kind of in this midlife ecom crisis, right? Because I don’t know what’s going on. it because I focus a lot of efforts on ads. But like if AI shopping, you know, if it really gains traction.

37:07
I’m going to need another way than paying for ads. And I’m sure Google and Meadow will figure things out too on their end. They’re not going to let their cash cow die. But if anything, the way you advertise is going to fundamentally change. Like as soon as Google search goes away, how are their ads going to work exactly? I might have to learn a whole new way of optimizing these ads, which I guess for me would be worth it. But who knows whether they’re going to work well. And I do have this arsenal of

37:37
content for Bumblebee that I could release and I could start. I think if my daughter has any interest in the business, like she’d be like perfect for making the social media content for all this stuff. So there’s a plan for it. I mean, that’s what we did. We basically hired the owner’s daughter to do social media because she gets the audience. She gets the products like, um I mean, not everybody has that luxury, right? Sure. Of one having a kid.

38:04
Well, no, I’m just saying like I’m always if anyone’s listening to me, like my philosophy has always been do as little work as possible for because scaling something to like 100 million dollars just sounds like a nightmare to me. Well, and I don’t know. That’s the other thing. Like, I don’t think oh we actually I had a call yesterday and we talked about, you know, most people don’t need to get to 100 million dollars. 100 million dollars make you infinitely more happy than 10. They won’t. I guarantee you it won’t for anyone listening.

38:33
Yeah. So anyway, everyone has a number, right? Where they’re like, if I can get to this, you know, a lot of a lot of my everyday problems are solved. um But I think if you’re in the beginning stages of e-commerce and you’re, you know, a year in two years in and your content is the way to go. Content is the way to go. One hundred percent. And we saw this. You know, it’s so funny. We just wrapped up a video challenge in a profitable audience and we saw, you know, I feel like just us watching our um

39:02
Students make videos and the one that stands out to me the most was Mimi’s with the pink sunglasses and Just like you know, she was creating this video about why pink sunglasses are actually better for your eyes, right? like as she’s an optometrist and You know like to me it I just like felt far more loyal to everybody that made videos at the end of the the month, right? Cuz I was like, oh I get what you’re doing now. It makes sense Like I’m I’ve bought in right and and these are like people who have never made video. These are not polished video makers, right? These are like

39:32
people that are new at it. So I do think that it gives that connection point that’s really hard to get any other 100%. Yeah. Yeah. But I also think there is something to be said about working really hard up front and then not, I don’t want say coasting, but like letting your work pay off. Right. um It’s kind of like you building all these apps. Sure. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And for people listening to this, I mean, everyone’s going to have different personality for the people who just want to scale, scale, scale.

40:02
I’ve interviewed probably 600 people on this podcast. Most of them are miserable. Like when I turn, when I hit the stop button, like they’re like, it’s, like this constant, constant moving of the goal posts when you’re like that. So you really just got to figure out what, how much you need, which hopefully won’t change. Like I, maybe it’s cause we’re old that I’m talking to most, most young people don’t, don’t feel this way. I don’t, I don’t think, but, uh, maybe. Yeah.

40:31
do what needs to get done to achieve that goal and then just leave some room in your life to explore other things. Like I actually enjoy doing the content from my wife, Quid. It’s actually not a chore at all, but I have the system down now where I can really literally get it all done in half a day. know? Well, that’s what I think is so fantastic. Like to me, AI has its pros and cons, right?

40:57
And to me, that’s one of the big pros, right, is you’ve used AI to create a system for um content creation, right? So you’re still creating the content. It’s still you talking. You’re not trying to clone yourself or anything like that, which some people are doing. But you’ve used AI to do everything else, like a lot of the heavy lifting. And so now for you, I think you find it much more enjoyable because you’re not doing all the tedious work that you were doing before you could use AI to do it. Sure.

41:25
And that’s how I feel about e-comm also. I use AI to automate all the tedious stuff out and I want as little employees as possible. I can’t wait for the Tesla robots to come out. But yeah, we are at a crossroads. mean, if AI search, sorry, not AI search, AI shopping takes place, then there’s going be a lot of changes across the board. Hope you enjoyed this episode.

41:53
Things are changing quickly and I will keep you posted as things change. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 642. And once again, if you are 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.