00:01
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. Now the other day, a student asked me how I felt about Amazon Buy With Prime and whether to add it to your Shopify store. So in this episode, I give you the unfiltered truth about what Buy With Prime actually does behind the scenes and why it might be hurting your business more than helping it. You’ll learn how this seemingly helpful feature could be quietly siphoning your customer data and handing it over to Amazon.

00:30
But before we begin, I want to let you know that the recordings are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over at Sellersummit.com. If you missed the event, this is your chance to catch every keynote, every session, and every strategy that was shared on stage. These recordings are packed with actionable insights from 7-figure sellers and ecommerce experts, so don’t miss out.

00:57
Welcome to the MyWifeCouterJob podcast. Today’s episode is a little different because I need to warn you about something that’s quietly undermining your business. Amazon is stealing your customers and you’re the one handing them over. You built your brand, you paid for the traffic, you earned that sale, but somehow Amazon got it. Well, here’s what no one is telling you. While you’re busy scaling your Shopify store, Amazon is quietly slipping into your checkout flow with a feature that looks helpful.

01:25
but it’s actually a data siphoning Trojan horse. It’s called Bywith Prime. And yes, it offers faster shipping. And yes, it can boost your conversion rate. But the customer you just paid to acquire, you don’t own them. You don’t get the real email, you can’t retarget them, and you can’t build loyalty. Amazon owns the data and Amazon owns the customer. And you, you just get the bill. And if you think Bywith Prime is helping your business, you are not seeing the bigger picture.

01:53
Because Amazon doesn’t just want to help your store, they want to be your store. So in this video, I’m going to show you exactly how it’s happening and what you need to do right now before it’s too late. Let’s break it down. Buy with Prime is Amazon’s move to extend its reach outside of amazon.com. It lets you, the brand owner, add a little Prime badge to your product pages. Shoppers can then click the Buy with Prime button, breeze through checkout using their Amazon account, and get access to that sweet two-day Prime shipping.

02:23
Sounds amazing, right? You don’t have to handle inventory. You don’t have to handle fulfillment. You don’t even have to earn their trust because Amazon does all that for you. And Amazon claims that it works. They say that brands see a 25 % increase in conversions just by placing the Buy With Prime badge on the page. But here’s what they don’t tell you. That conversion, it might be the last time you ever hear from that customer again. Because the moment they click that Prime button, it’s no longer your checkout.

02:53
It’s no longer your funnel and it’s definitely not your customer anymore. Sure, Amazon says that you’ll get 25 % more sales with Buy With Prime and it sounds great, right? But let me ask you this, can you email that customer again? Nope. When someone checks out using Buy With Prime, Amazon gives you a masked email, something like abc123atmarketplace.amazon.com. That’s not their real address. You can’t send them a thank you note. You can’t check in on their order.

03:22
And you definitely can’t upsell or launch new product campaigns. And this matters a lot. Email is how DTC brands survive. It is your direct line to the customer. You don’t have to pay for ads and every email can drive revenue. Think abandoned cart reminders, restock alerts, VIP early access deals, sales, coupons. It all starts with an email. No email equals no relationship. Just a one-time transaction you’ll probably never see again.

03:53
And if you think you’ll retarget Buy With Prime customers again later with ads, think again. Buy With Prime moves the customer off of your site and onto Amazon servers. That means your tracking pixels on Facebook, Google, TikTok, they’re never going to fire. No retargeting, no lookalike audiences, no attribution, no follow-up. And here’s why that’s a massive problem. I run a seven-figure store called Bumblebee Linen’s, and we sell personalized handkerchiefs for weddings. Now you’d think,

04:22
that we wouldn’t get that much repeat business. I mean, sure, the divorce rates are on 50%, so maybe there’s a second chance market, but here are my real numbers. Only 12 % of our customers come back and buy again, but that 12%, they generate 36 % of our total revenue. And we’re in a niche with low repeat customer rates. For most stores, the numbers are way higher, which means that if you can’t follow up, if you can’t retarget or email again,

04:51
You are leaving a huge chunk of money on the table. And this is not a fluke. This is how running a successful brand works. Your first sale is just the beginning. The real profit comes after the first order if you can get them to come back. But with Buy with Prime, that door slams shut. No data, no contact, no chance to build loyalty. So sure, Amazon might help you close the sale, but they’re stealing the relationship. And without that, you’re not building your business.

05:20
you’re actually building theirs. Now let’s switch gears a little bit and talk numbers because Buy With Prime might look like a conversion booster, but under the hood, it’s actually a profit killer. Here’s what you’re actually paying for with every order. First off, Amazon takes a 3 % cut of the order subtotal just for using the Buy With Prime service. This is their platform fee, basically a toll just to get access to their checkout and the Prime badge. Then there’s the Amazon fulfillment fee.

05:49
This is what you pay Amazon to pick, pack and ship your product using their warehouses. Now the exact cost depends on the size and weight of your item, but for most standard size products, it’s around five to six bucks per unit. And that’s just today’s rate because Amazon keeps raising prices. In fact, fulfillment fees have nearly doubled since 2020, a 96 % increase. But it doesn’t stop there. Since Amazon controls the checkout, they also charge a payment processing fee of 2.4 %

06:19
plus 30 cents per transaction, which is similar to what Stripe or Shopify payments charges. Now 2.4 % might not sound like much, but for comparison, I only pay 2.1 % to process credit cards on my store. So even that adds up fast. By the way, if you’re interested in learning how to start a brand without Amazon, make sure you sign up for my free six-day e-commerce mini course below. It’s 100 % free and I guarantee you’ll learn a lot. Let’s break down all those fees on a $50 product.

06:49
your buy with Prime fee is about $1.50. FBA fulfillment is around $5.38. Payment processing is around $1.50. That is $8.38 in fees for a $50 product just to fulfill and process a single order. And that’s before you factor in your product costs, your ad spend, your team, your rent, all the things you need to actually run a business. If you’re operating on a 30 to 40 % margin, like most DTC brands, buy with Prime

07:18
is eating up 25 to 30 % of your profit every time. And what do you get in exchange? No email address, no retargeting, no brand loyalty, no second sale. You’re literally paying Amazon to take your customer and your margin. It’s like hiring a middleman to show up at your own checkout, close the sale, and walk away with the customer data while charging you for that privilege. So yeah, your conversion rate might go up, but if you’re losing money on every order, what exactly are you celebrating?

07:48
Now at this point, some of you might be thinking, all right, I lose a little margin, maybe some data, but if it helps me grow, isn’t it worth it? Well, here’s the part that no one’s talking about. Amazon is not just helping you, they’re studying you. Every time a customer checks out with Buy with Prime, Amazon learns what’s selling on your store, what kind of customer buys it, what price points convert best, and which products are selling fast away from the Amazon marketplace.

08:16
They’re collecting data on your product market fit, your positioning and your brand story. And they’re doing it without taking any inventory risks themselves. And that should terrify you because this isn’t speculation. Amazon has a long track record of spotting wing products and then launching their own versions. One of my friends used to sell emu oil and she built a solid business that is until Amazon stepped in, launched their own emu oil and undercut her price by 30%.

08:45
And to make things worse, Amazon started running ads for their product right on her product listing. And needless to say, her revenue tanked almost overnight. This isn’t just happening in niche products either. Not long ago, I was shopping for garbage bags. And as I’m shopping for GLAD bags, which is what I typically buy, up pops Amazon’s own branded version of bags at 30 % cheaper. Now let’s be honest, I’m just going to throw them away anyway, so I actually bought Amazon’s version.

09:14
And this kind of thing happens way more often than you think. Amazon has done it to luggage companies, battery brands, fashion labels. Even household goods with millions in revenue have gotten cloned and crushed. And now, if you use Buy With Prime, you’re handing them the blueprint voluntarily. Buy With Prime isn’t just a checkout button. It’s surveillance software disguised as a growth hack. You’re feeding the algorithm with your best data on your dime. And if you think Amazon’s not planning to use it,

09:43
you haven’t really been paying attention. Because Amazon doesn’t just want to support e-commerce brands, they want to replace them. Now look, I’m not saying you should never use Buy With Prime. There are situations where it makes sense, but if you’re going to use it, you need to be strategic and not blind. Buy With Prime can work well for impulse buy products, especially those under $30. If you’re selling something quick and giftable, and you’re trying to convert cold traffic, people who have never heard of your brand, the Prime badge can

10:13
absolutely lift conversions. And if you’re already fulfilling through Amazon FBA and your margins can handle the fees, it can be a useful short-term tool. But here’s when it becomes a problem. If your business relies on repeat purchases, email marketing, or loyalty flows, Buy with Prime breaks that engine. You don’t get the real email, you can’t retarget, and you lose the chance to build a real relationship. And it’s not just the customer data. It is the entire Shopify ecosystem.

10:42
Your discount codes, they’re not gonna work. Your subscription plugin, it’s not compatible. Any post purchase upsell or cross sell apps you have will be completely bypassed. Buy with Prime is a black box. It takes your customer out of Shopify’s checkout flow and then breaks the tech stack you spent years optimizing. And let’s be honest here, you can’t build a sustainable DTC brand on one-off sales. In my own business, only 12 % of customers are repeat buyers

11:10
but they generate 36 % of my total revenue. Our top 10 % of customers generate nearly 50 % of our overall sales. That is where the profit is. That’s where the scale happens. So if you’re gonna use ByWith Prime, use it surgically. Use it on cold traffic, on low margin, one and done products, where customer retention doesn’t matter. But when it comes to your core products, your VIP customers, and anything you’re trying to grow long-term, keep that checkout in-house. Own the customer.

11:40
own the data and own your future. Because if you hand Amazon the keys to your checkout, don’t be surprised when they drive off with your business. So yeah, buy with Prime might boost your conversions in the short term, but you have to factor in the risks. Whenever it comes to business, I always ask myself, what are you really building? You didn’t start a DTC brand just to hand your customers over to Amazon. You started it to build something you own, something lasting, something that grows with every sale,

12:10
not resets to zero. I’ve been running my seven figure e-commerce store for 18 years now, and Amazon is only a small fraction of our sales on purpose. Don’t trade short-term wins for long-term control. Don’t give away your most valuable asset, your customer, just to get a couple more checkouts today. Because Amazon isn’t here to help your brand win. They’re here to replace you the second you become profitable enough to matter. So use Buy With Prime if you must, but do it with your eyes wide open.

12:40
And remember, in e-commerce, whoever owns a customer owns the future.

13:10
go to SellersSummit.com. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife, QuitHerJob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, I sit down with Isabella Ritz, founder of Ritz Momentum and one of the sharpest minds in e-commerce to break down exactly how to find high margin profitable products that actually sell. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that the recordings for Seller Summit 2025 are now available over at sellersummit.com. The Seller Summit

00:29
is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. The talks this year were incredible with tons of actionable advice and behind the scenes insights from every speaker. If you want to catch the recordings, head over to sellersummit.com. Now onto the show.

00:54
Welcome to the My Wife Quoter Job podcast. Today I am thrilled to have Isabella Ritz on the show. Now Isabella is the founder of Ritz Momentum, where she helps Amazon sellers find and validate profitable products to sell. She’s very well known in the Amazon community and she just spoke at my annual e-commerce conference called the Seller Summit, where attendees really raved about her talk. So in this episode, we are going to break down Isabella’s strategies on how to find and validate profitable products to sell online.

01:23
without spending any money upfront on inventory. And with that, welcome to the show Isabella, how are you doing today? Thank you very much. Thank you for having me at the event. I had so much fun. And when I saw that, I believe Tony put me first right after your speech to talk, I’m like, oh my God, that’s a lot of pressure, but I’m glad everyone had fun. And I am very happy to share today everything you want to know. That’s great.

01:52
We put you against Tony, I think. And I think that might have worked to Tony’s disadvantage because, you know, a lot of people did attend a 10 year session. So with rave reviews. Great. I’m glad that I made other people happy, but I really wanted to be at her talk because I’m like, well, last time when I was at your event, her talk was the most impressive for me. And she was talking about all these crazy funnels that

02:22
pretty much every single business, not just Amazon sellers supposed to do like if you’re not doing funnels, follow ups, sending out the emails to those that clicked and didn’t approach you like you’re losing you’re losing so much money on the table. Oh, definitely 30 % of my businesses email. So. So Isabella, many of my listeners probably do not know who you are. So how did you get into e commerce? And actually, are you currently selling on Amazon today?

02:52
I do sell on Amazon today and I want to say it’s very contagious. Like the moment you stop selling, it’s, it feels like you’re missing something. And I know it because we exited three brands in 2021. And then mine, and I will get back to the story, how I started and the brand we’re selling right now, it’s a Japanese brand. We started because it was out of principle. We.

03:18
We had one client, he came to the agency and he said, find the product for me to sell. We did find the product that was extremely advantageous and he didn’t have a huge budget. He had like probably like 20 to 25,000 to launch his brand on Amazon. And then he said, you guys found a shit show. It’s not the product that I will be able to sell. And this product doesn’t have any opportunities. And I got so pissed. And I said, whatever, I will launch this product myself.

03:48
And I did and it became bestseller and would you have time like during Q4 this product is making like 60 to $80,000 a month. And then it’s like, it does have consistent sales because it’s a niche niche product. But at the same time, like, okay, so now we have to create a brand around this product. So we created a brand around this product. This it’s mid six figure right now. So we’re

04:14
I don’t know if I want to grow it to eight figures or something, but this probably will be like low one, low seven figure brand. But this is how this is to the point that selling on Amazon is contagious. And this is something that you just want to continue doing it. I got into the Amazon space back in 2015 when I moved from Russia to live in United States. And I just

04:43
I was already serial entrepreneur, so I knew I’m going to do some type of the business, but I didn’t have language. I didn’t know culture. I didn’t know anything. And I was just Googling like, what should I do in United States? What kind of business should I do in United States? And everybody was talking about Amazon. And if you will look at the space right now, a lot of sellers started back in 2015, 2016. just, it was a boom. And I was probably one of these people that was in the

05:12
wave of this 2015. And I did start and I think I was super lucky because a lot of products I was launching, they’ve been just very intuitive, no validation, generic, didn’t even slap my log on it. It was just let me launch a product. first product was… Back in the day, it was like that, right? Just throw it up. Yeah. Yeah. And I launched Silicon Wineglass and I made…

05:39
$14,000 on top of my investment month one. I still don’t know how it happened, but it happened. I was very happy about it. And this is where I realized, Amazon works. guess I just will stick with this. And I just continued with a lot of mistakes after then this product became unavailable for me to sell because someone patented. I didn’t know at the moment that patents are territorial.

06:05
And this patent was filed in UK, not in United States, but you live, learn. If we would know better, we would do better. I’m curious, that client who got angry, did you show them the product that they could have launched? Oh, no, I didn’t. Because I was proven to myself. I’m like, no, I’m good. But if you would ever reach out, I will make sure to punch him in the face by seeing. I know it seriously. So the last we mentioned that I actually started, I think, in

06:35
2016 or no, 2014. I can’t remember, around the same time you did. It was a lot easier back then. But just in the last couple years, Amazon’s been squeezing both sellers and buyers more than ever before. So I want your opinion real quick before we get started. What do you think about selling on Amazon specifically today and how have your strategies adapted as a result? Because obviously you can’t just buy something unbranded and throw it up anymore. No, you definitely cannot. Some people still do and some people still

07:04
doing it successfully. I think it’s just the lack of first time mover. Like I will try first time and let’s see how it works. For some people it still works, but I don’t see much success in it. I never believed in cheap products. It’s just the nature of my personality. I never believed in low ticket prices. Even this, my silicone wine glass, was selling at $39.99 back in the days and it was set up for, and I was, my cost of goods was

07:34
five bucks, I believe, or something like this. So I stick with the theory that we have to sell high ticket products, products that actually have margin. And if you’re based on consumers’ demand, consumers’ avatar, shoppers’ experience, and you develop the product the way your buyers are ready to pay higher price,

08:02
you will be successful. like, don’t go out after the BSRs and like all this craziness, just going after margins. And I do agree Amazon is squeezing everybody. And I just believe that we have to be not in the crowd of people that are talking and squealing, but we have to be on the side where we can win. So

08:26
if it’s an opportunity for us to win, how we can have it as an opportunity. Where is the opportunity here where everybody suffers? So you’re just finding it and you’re bringing it to the market. So how do you define high end? Like, can you just throw some numbers? Like, what do you consider a high ticket item? So let’s just go with another example. We did have a client coming to us to sell blades. most of the blade blades is kind of plate.

08:56
but at the same time it’s in between plate and the bowl and it does have a keyword, blades. So it’s kind of deep plate. The average price for this product, I believe is $39. If I not mixing out, we launched his product at $89. And it happened because we’ve been learning customer demand.

09:25
and what are they ready to pay for? So people didn’t like that this product is breakable, is not dishwasher safe, and like a lot of other features and benefits that other sellers were not able to provide. So we really developed the product the way where customer will be happy to pay higher price because this product has an opportunity. And the reason this product has an opportunity, again, we find out about it because of the customer feedback.

09:55
This product has been purchased primarily as a gift. So when we’re given a gift, we want to look good. If I am given the gift, that means I want something that is more expensive and at the same time people will use for a long time. So, and when you do this discovery of the product, this is where you’re able to find out if people are willing to pay higher price. So if I’m selling vitamin C,

10:23
I have doubt someone would want to pay $20 for product that you can buy at $6. There’s just no opportunity for this. But there are a lot of products where it’s a huge opportunity to sell at the higher price because of different reasons people are purchasing this product. So in your plate example, though, I am kind of curious, and you don’t have to reveal the actual plate, but to charge two and a half times more than the market, it sounds like it was a completely different

10:53
I’m just curious. didn’t see this guy continue selling. I don’t know why, but when he launched it was a hundred thousand dollars launch. Wow. It was huge. It was like amazing. And but like just I’m just trying to get an idea though. Was it did it look completely different than all the listings out there? It

11:22
didn’t it didn’t look completely different. I think my husband actually just heard me and I think I was gonna go get it. I will not be surprised if he’ll bring this blade and I actually hear his I think he’s taking this blade. Okay. It did look different at the time. I didn’t analyze this listing for this market for a while but we made it wider. We made it a little bit deeper and we literally went through the supplier and created the sample with completely different design.

11:49
And we didn’t just test the design against each other. We tested pricing structure as well. So would you purchase this product that looked like this as $39 or will you purchase this product that, oh, I actually, yeah, I’m about to show you guys. It’s right here. So, will you purchase this product that is like handmade and hand painted on a different way?

12:18
That’s pretty cool. Thank you. Yeah, that’s great. I wish my wife was here to help me out with these podcasts too. Yeah. Well, you never know. thought he’s in his headphones, but he wasn’t. But yeah, this is like how we really structured the product. And this one, we use it for like over two years. Dishwasher safe, never broke one and you know, sometimes things break. So you just develop the product the way your customer is asking for. And then you sell it at the price.

12:48
I’m glad you brought the plate up as an example, because that is an item that I would think would be saturated. So what I want to do next is talk about your process for finding a good product. And I know you rely heavily on AI these days. So just walk me through your process. I would love to hear it. Yeah, this AI process. Because of the AI process, everything changes literally every day. So if in the past I was just

13:18
Not even in the past, a year ago, I was taking the data sets from Smart Scout and I was uploading these data sets into GPT, which was also with the HubAVI and I was going through this data faster, help me find the product that has these requirements, ABCD. And I was going through like a lot of products at the time. Right now, I’m structuring prompts for the clients. So for example, and this is the starting point.

13:48
Right? So we, for example, we have a client X that has 40,000 budget for lunch. He has cost of goods. doesn’t want to sell in certain categories. And I want to find a product for him that he’ll be selling at, I don’t know, $89 with a cost of goods of 15, 20. So now I’m structuring the prompt with the requirements. Find for me the…

14:16
not saturated niche products that I will be able to upgrade and redesign on the way like my customers would want to purchase with the approximate revenue per month. And I’m doing it without deep search first. And then if I’m finding out some certain ideas, I’m adding also deep search, so I will be able to get some links to make sure AI is not giving me like, hey, you can sell a book at $2,000.

14:45
but just because I decided to. So, and then we’re adding some deep research into that and we’re going through the process. It’s it’s coming out these days to the structuring correct prompt based on what you want. It’s not like, Hey, find the product without electronics that they want to sell $20,000 a day. So it’s not, it’s like you’re really going into very deep prompting, but you save yourself so much time.

15:14
And then you’re already going from there. Before we get into the prompts, what are your requirements actually that you’re feeding in? Requirements really depends. like we have clients like Charles is one of them, right? yeah, Charles is a in my class for people listening. Yeah, so he’s, he’s great. But he said, I don’t really care about over saturated or heavy products. And he’s an experienced seller, right? So he wants profitable

15:44
revenue driven, profit driven product. And he doesn’t care if it’s oversized. So we found product for him that is a little bit oversized, but he can make seven figure of just this product per month. So would I recommend this type of the product to the new seller or not really experienced seller? Never, ever, ever. But he is capable to handle this type of the product. So and that’s why we are

16:14
that like the process, the process is being tailored for every single client individually. So it’s not like it’s a recipe for everybody. Of course, is lot of variables for each individual seller. And sometimes we’re finding products that are maxed out at 10 to $12,000. But we know that this customer will be able to handle this product and they will not fail. Let’s target a complete beginner.

16:41
Okay, so complete beginner comes to you and let’s say they have 10, $10,000 or something like that. Or we can walk through your plate example, whichever you feel more comfortable with. Yeah, can go through the plate example. Yeah. Because that person’s not even selling that plate anymore. So it’s probably not a big deal. So how did you? So for this one, first of we found an advantageous keyword at the time. That was 20, I would say 2022. Okay. I think so.

17:10
So this keyword’s very, very advantageous now. And at the time it’s been only, I would say seven or five, it was below 10 competitors. I remember that for sure. So we had a very low amount of competitors for this keyword. And sometimes products are being ranked for the different keywords. And we were trying to find how many actual sellers with this product are on Amazon. And it’s still,

17:39
It’s been below 10. What is your threshold for that? Like, let’s say there was 50, would that still been okay? It depends on the search volume of the aggregate. It’s supposed to be the aggregate of the search volume. So what is the potential for us to reach, right? Because I don’t want to create a demand for the product. I want the product to be in demand and I want to sell something people are searching for.

18:07
So what would be your threshold for the ratio of demand versus number of sellers? Just trying to get an idea. I will be looking, for example, like at least $100,000 a year with a very low purchase rate slash conversion rate. Like if you’re going on Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer, you’re able to see their conversion rate, and I want this conversion rate to be below 1.5%.

18:32
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.

19:01
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

19:13
That’s what I’m want you want a low conversion rate because that means people are not selling this very well or there’s a lot of okay. Correct. Because that means market is not satisfied with the offer. And market is leaving Amazon to look for this product somewhere else. Okay. And it was a tool. It for my god. I think it was viral to viral viral. I don’t watch

19:41
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

20:04
It’s very sad that like I don’t have access and I don’t know if they’re there yet. mean, the Amazon tool space is super competitive. wouldn’t be surprised if they ran out of money. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And you were able to pull if people are purchasing this product off Amazon more than they’re purchasing it on Amazon. Oh, okay. Nice. Yeah. So now it’s not really available, but now you’re able to see if this product has been advertised and promoted by influencers, which is a bigger deal.

20:33
Because now if I have this product, if I have any seller that launched this product with the high margins and higher revenue because of TikTok video or because of Instagram video, like you are the one of those that is buying toothbrush with toothpaste. That’s my wife. I saw this page.

20:57
That means I can create, I can hire influencer that will create for me the viral video for this stupid blades. And if someone created this demand and not demand like the sales, we can create the same cash flow, right? Right. So this is where we’ll be looking at. And if this again, if this purchase rate coming back to the purchase rate, the purchase rate is low, that means market is not satisfied. So let me find out what market doesn’t like about the product.

21:26
So I will recreate the product the way the market will be happy and my conversion rate will be way higher. Right. Okay. So walk me through that process. How do you discover what the market actually wants? These days is actually super easy. In the past, if you remember what we were doing, like we’ve been reading reviews for days and taking notes and like it was a huge

21:54
It was a lot of work and a lot of it was time consuming. Now I’m using Voke AI. There is some other tool that is doing the same thing, but Voke AI is really the best. That’s voc.ai for anyone listening. Yes. Thank you. And you are going into the customer reviews, think. Customer reviews or marketing insights, like it’s on the left side.

22:19
And you’re pulling ASINs with a high amount of reviews. They just have to be very relevant to the product you’re planning to sell and redevelop. Your scraping these reviews takes up to 90 seconds and you can scrape 15,000, 20,000 reviews, whatever you want. And you’re able to see all the customer feedback. And again, and it’s already EI’d, right? And we’re still super lazy. So what I’m doing, I’m just downloading all these reports.

22:47
uploading them to chat GPT and asking GPT to create customer persona because that’s a big deal. A lot of people still don’t do it. Please, when you go after the product, develop your customer persona first. So you have to know who your product will be talking to because we’re not going after anymore. Oh, my product is temporary. Dishwasher safe, something safe, something safe. We have to go after the benefits for the customer. So no need to.

23:17
hand wash, ready-to-go plate or ready-to-go bag or something like this. It’s supposed to be with the benefits for the customer. Then after you develop customer persona, you are reverse engineering the product. How can I do this product better? You’re reverse engineering the product after you did that. Now,

23:40
you are developing the product the best way your customer would want to purchase this specific primary customer persona. You can have three customer personas. You can have two of them. You can have one of them go after the first one first. And then when you did the reverse engineering, can ask chat GPT depends on the product. You can ask to create a mockup. It doesn’t mean GPT will do a really good job. So in this process, when you reverse engineer, first you’re asking to create the

24:10
perfect design task for your graphic or product designer. So you’re not going straight to, create a mock-up. No, it’s not going to work. Now you’re asking to create like very, very detailed, specific description of the product you’re planning to develop. And only then you’re asking Chad GPT, or you can go to Paul, you can go to Majorne to create the product based on the specific requirements.

24:39
And now you’re going through the like a refined process. One of the easiest way to do it is to simplify it first and then start adding feature after feature because GPT is still not at the point where you can just go after a complicated product. So that plate example that you’re holding up, I don’t think vogue.ai was around in 2022. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t.

25:06
But what were the criteria to make that particular plate that you showed me better compared to the competition, just as an example for the listeners? For this one, it was reading. We read through so many reviews back in those days. And we just read what customers want. And we’ve been doing the designs from scratch, which we still do a lot. But how did you change that particular plate to make it so that you could charge two and a half times more?

25:33
This one, this particular one was based on the sizing, size, like this diameter, height and color. So apparently this product has been purchased a lot design wise because people want to fit it in their interiors. Okay. And this one was one of those. And this one we developed, if you look at different patterns, but they match. So it’s set of

26:02
four with completely different patterns on each of them, but at the same time, they have a match in between every single one of them. I see. And then the other ones at the time were smaller and they were a different color and that’s why people didn’t like them as much. They still buy them. It’s just their conversion rate was very way lower. And I’m just curious, since this product’s not being sold anymore, what did you boost the conversion rate to on that particular one?

26:30
That was a great, very well developed listing. that was pure PPC campaign launch. That was a wine reviews, PPC, high converting listing and product. Like I do believe that you have three primary components is product, conversion and traffic. If conversion traffic are not in place, like you can fix those, but if

26:58
you have a very bad product, cannot fix the product. Right. And if you have three components, then it’s just working out. How did you decide on 89.99 versus whatever was being sold before, which was 20 something? I think at this moment, the highest price for similar product, not for the blades, but for similar products was something like $70. And we’re like, let’s see if 89.99 is going to work. Interesting.

27:26
We just tested with PickFu or with the product Pinyin. I don’t remember which one of them. We tested the price and this price worked. Okay. So PickFu for everyone listening is a polling platform where you can upload images and get feedback from real people who are unbiased. regarding that plate, so $89.99. The thing is, it’s like the way I shop on Amazon, I never buy the cheapest thing anymore.

27:55
because just my assumption is it’s just this cheap thing from China. these days, whenever I advise any student of mine to sell anything, I always have them target the high end because chasing the low margins, especially since Amazon is squeezing everybody, makes it a lot more difficult. I do remember in your presentation at Sellers that anything you’d generally advise people don’t use anything that requires a mold, right? Yeah. So does that imply that,

28:24
anything plastic is kind of just not in the cards, especially if you’re a beginner. I would say complicated mold is not something I would be going after. But for example, this is clay, right? So you don’t really need mold for this because people it’s a handmade product. I am not really against the mold. It’s just for the beginners. It’s a little a little bit overwhelming. Right. That’s why I am

28:53
probably just recommending going after clay, after wood, after glass. And metal doesn’t need a mold. Metal doesn’t need a mold because you just cut it. Yeah, so I would just probably go after materials that don’t… Sewing, things that don’t really require… Chinese will tell you that like, yeah, you still need the mold, sure. But it’s not actually mold. It’s just some shapes that they’re creating.

29:24
The world of molds is actually kind of complicated for anyone listening here too. There’s different grades of molds that you can buy that last a certain number of runs. And once the mold is in the factory, like it’s really hard to move molds as well. So I tend to agree with you on that. thank you. So I think, okay, so up until this point, we’ve already used voke.ai to figure out how to change the product. And then…

29:50
What I heard you say is you then kind of feed that information into chat GPT and you actually have chat GP make a mock-up for you? Yeah, these days with you. We don’t usually finalize mock-up with chat GPT, but we usually have a direction for our designer to go after. And this is how we’re able to simplify.

30:11
speed up the process and not make it so expensive for our customer that are coming and paying us these days. Because in the past, we were doing, designer was going after sketch. Then we were checking if the sketch will be able to sell. And then we were doing the mockups and testing mockups and et cetera. So now with GPT, we can have this basic mockups, test them against competitors.

30:37
with BigFoo or even simulate those polls inside of the ChatGPT. I was going over like, on seller summit, I was showing how you can simulate the poll when you guys, we will come back for like 10 minutes before when I was talking at this podcast. You can take your customer persona that you created with Voc.ai and then you ask ChatGPT to create, to simulate the poll based on the

31:05
I mean, based on the 100 similar personas. So simulate 100 seras that we just created with you. You means ChatGPT. And test these three designs against each other. Make sure you provide me comments so I will be able to improve the design I want. And if you do it right, ChatGPT will actually tell you if your design is losing against your competitors. And then, of course, after you

31:34
achieved certain amount of improvements, then you’re going to pick for your actual spending money and investing into your final polls. So just to be clear here, you’re having chat GPT or whatever image generation tool that you want, create a mock up. And then you’re literally pulling the product image from Amazon. And you’re having chat GPT just kind of run an AI sort of poll telling you based on your avatar, which one they would buy. Yeah, I’ve actually never done that before.

32:02
for how does that compare to actually a real PickFu poll with people? It fluctuates. Again, it really depends on your process, depending how you structure the question, and if you’re not priming ChatGPT to vote for your product, right? So you shouldn’t be doing that. But it’s very close. Some polls, GPT is pretty much the same as PickFu. Because ChatGPT, feel these days, just tells me what I want to hear.

32:33
I mean, that’s why you have to ask him right away. I guess the difference also is in chat GPT, you’re feeding in your customer persona on pick food. I don’t think you can filter down to that level. Like you can’t have it. You can do it by age and, and gender and whatnot, but it’s not as granular, right? Is that, is that why you start out with chat GPT first? We actually started with chat GPT because people were complaining that they don’t want to spend that much on

33:02
polls and I’m like, make sense. Yeah. You have to. And I’m like, okay, let’s do this. And I was just thinking how I can simplify it for them and make it cheaper. Like let’s do just polling first. And then when you’re getting closer, you will go and invest into a peak form. And that’s why peak was not paying me great commissions anymore because people are going through chat. Okay. No, that totally makes sense.

33:30
And then once you’ve gone through that process and you find it and you think that you have something, is that when you actually look for suppliers and make that final thing or do you start that process even earlier? We look at potential cost of goods at the moment we’re making the decision to move with the product. So we like, for example, for our clients, we never ever provide a report for the product.

33:57
unless we shopped a little bit on Alibaba and just asked our sourcing agent, listen, what is the ballpark? Just give me the ballpark. So if I understand like, okay, we’ll be able to fit into the budget and be profitable, then yeah, let’s move on with this product because no matter how badly on a good way we will improve the product, we will still be able to sell profitable. Okay, so based on sourcing agents that you’ve worked with, they give you a ballpark.

34:25
And it just sounds like from talking to you so far, you’re shooting for five to six X margins. Is that accurate? I mean, from cost of goods, would say four. Four, Because we, and it’s also cost of goods or landed cost. And these days it’s also confusing because now we have tariffs that we don’t know if we’ll have because maybe we will be get refunded for these tariffs because now people can apply and refund. It’s just a lot, you know.

34:53
Uh, at seller’s time and you’ve been like, Hey, Trump just said, Oh, now we have this. So it’s just, it’s very confusing right now. We’re trying to aim at like. Four. Four X. Okay. Yeah. Four from cost of goods and, uh, From landed costs of goods or no from cost of goods. Okay. From cost of goods because,

35:18
not because of the tariffs, like I would say landed cost, but because of the tariffs, I can’t even tell you if it’s four and when people will be listening to the podcast, they will tell me, oh, you said five or six, but in your reality, I have 15 % margin after all my tariffs I’m paying. So that’s, that’s why I see you have PTSD like I do. Like when I say something publicly, people call me on it. But things Yeah, The funny story about the same publicly, I did my first

35:48
podcast in US with Bradley Sutton back in 2018. I was still not sure in English what means margin and what means profits. When Bradley asked me what margins are you looking at? I said 100%.

36:11
And then Kevin King listened to this podcast. can you imagine, I would not even imagine that Kevin King would listen to this podcast. And then Kevin called on this Bradley. He’s like, who is this lady? She’s talking about a hundred percent margins. Like what BS is that? And Bradley like, know, I know. And then when I met,

36:33
Couple years later, I met Kevin King and like we spoke and my English was already better and I’m still working on my English. Of course, I know I’m making like grammar mistakes and I’m foreign your guys. So, and Kevin said, yeah, I actually called Bradley on that. I’m like, Kevin margins and profits for me a little bit confusing at the time. So I learned my lesson. Now when I’m speaking in public, I’m trying to be as cautious as possible. 100 % margin sign me up.

37:02
Sign me up. So Isabelle, I want to switch gears a little bit and just kind of talk about what you do with your customers. So it sounds like your primary service is helping people find profitable products to sell on Amazon. Is that accurate? validate? And develop. And develop. Okay. So does that imply that you actually help them find the suppliers and make everything as well? Yes. That’s how.

37:27
I’m showing you this stuff. That’s why I have it in my house because we’ve been checking the samples and my family just keep using it. And so what is your target customer, if I may ask for your agency? For my agency, first, it’s supposed to be right mindset. people can’t come to us and say, Hey, I just want money to flow into my bank account tonight. want 100 % margins, right?

37:56
Yeah, 100 % margin. This person is supposed to be as reasonable as possible. So we have to understand that business is a risk. Race momentum is mitigating the risk. We’re not eliminating the risk. We’re helping you out to reduce your risk and improve the quality of your life while you’re working with product research, validation and development because it’s a complicated process.

38:24
People that understand that they will become break even, not profitable, break even in about six to eight months from the start. That’s the expectation that’s supposed to set. And every single business is about investment. So you’re not going into business waiting for the cash back. You’re going into business as an adventure, your venture, your future opportunity, because you want to escape nine to five or start something new. It is not.

38:53
a cash back and so the cash back on spot. So that’s kind of it’s all comes out to mindset. So that’s good. You set the proper expectations before you begin. I guess that’s to your advantage too, because then people don’t get mad at you like the like that other person. Yeah, like, oh, you develop the shit show. like, no, we did not. One thing actually, I forgot to ask you about is you help with the launch as well. Right? What is your go to launch strategy these days?

39:23
We don’t really help with lunch because we, do believe that every single one of us, uh, means expert. We have our expertise and we have our strength and I do refer to people that will help lunch. Okay. And it doesn’t mean we disappear. We are there to help. So we also work on listings, but only for lists, primarily on listings for the product we develop, because we understand how to present this product.

39:51
to the audience, I would love to keep it in house and I want to continue doing it for our customers. But when it comes to like, here’s your lunch, we refer to the best PPC guys that can only imagine and to influencers and we do provide the strategy. We have it in our blueprint, but I don’t hold the hand there because my strength is product research validation. Well, that’s what I do.

40:21
You mentioned earlier that when you’re talking about customer personas to choose two or three of them, but in the final listing, you kind of have to tailor the copy and choose one, right? So are you just kind of testing the different avatars? That’s have variations. Okay. Oh, okay. I see. So you sell the same product under multiple listings with different copy? that what I’m For example, let’s say,

40:46
one child and nobody is going to sell socks right now. Okay. So it’s just an example. So one child likes Mickey Mouse and another one likes, uh, dinosaurus and another one like woodland themed something. But, and for example, for Mickey Mouse, we’ll have 50 % of audience and for two others, we’ll have 25 and 15, something like this or 25, 25. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to sell a product that has only 25 % out of a hundred.

41:15
of my target audience, because at least I will still make some money. will just develop this product as the second choice or some customers. They’re coming to us and we are, usually develop two to three variations just because we need to test ideas against each other and against competitors. And if we develop the ideas that really good enough and they’re going with like 49 51 or 30 70, we still have this split where customers want to buy this product. They really like it.

41:44
So we just recommend our clients to create this product as the second variation because there’s still the audience for that one. That makes sense. And the key takeaway of the audience is sell socks. Isabel, you heard it here first, sell socks. No. I’m just kidding. But that makes total sense. So as you’re doing your research and you find out different avatars, you’re to want to think about variations that you can make to tailor the product to each individual avatar. Is that accurate?

42:14
Okay. is accurate. also have to think what is like, uh, how you’re going to treat this brand because if it’s going to be just one product you launch and that’s it, or how you’re going to expand on how you’re planning to work around it. Right. Because if it will go deeper, can you create community around it? Right. Will this community purchase it? Will this community come to your meeting, meetup? Will they pay you for memberships to learn more about the problem you’re solving? Because this one is clearly.

42:42
cooking community of whatever kitchen you can. It can be for lo mein or it can be for pasta or it can be for some bowls, healthy bowls and yada yada yada, right? Well, that’s great, Isabella. If anyone wants to hire you for your services, where can they find you online? They have to text you. They have to text me? You’re doing it against me.

43:10
I have Isabella’s cell also. I will be posting it right beneath this episode in case you… So I’m pretty open guys. My phone number is 904-609-4748. Feel free to text and I will just join you to my WhatsApp chat and I will link you to my sales team and they will start the discovery. And I learned this tip from Perry Belcher when I heard him, like I’m part of his mastermind and one day he just like…

43:40
He sent out his text, his phone number and I’m like, and I checked my contact. I’m like, that’s his phone number. I’m like, Perry, what are you doing? He said, yeah, why should I hide from people? This is my phone number. Like, you know what? I will just start giving people my phone number. So yeah, 904-609-4748 just text me guys. his cell phone number is actually in every email that he sends. Did you? Yeah. Yes. He’s crazy. Yeah. And I’m like, you’re like, he’s like, yeah, I have it in the pocket. I’m like, Perry, you’re just crazy.

44:10
Well, Azul, thank you so much for coming on the show and I’m sure the listeners will get a lot out of what you had to say. Yeah, thank you so much for having me and it’s always fun to chat with you. Thank you.

44:37
Once again, the recordings for Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife quitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.

I Need Your Help

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00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, Tony and I do a full recap of Seller Summit 2025. While it’s still fresh in our minds, we’re breaking down the biggest takeaways, behind the scenes moments and the strategies that had everyone talking. And just a quick heads up, the full recordings for every session from Seller Summit 2025 are now available at sellersummit.com. So if you missed the event,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

19:20
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

19:49
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

46:15
Hope you enjoyed this episode. Would love to meet you all in person someday at my event. For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejob.com slash episode 591. Once again, the Seller’s Summit 2025 recordings are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifequithejob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.

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. Now in this episode, I’m diving into something that might surprise you. Why people who don’t seem particularly smart or qualified are building multi-million dollar businesses. Success isn’t about being a genius. It’s not even about having the perfect plan. A lot of the time, it comes down to taking action, embracing risk, and thinking differently. Enjoy the show.

00:33
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today’s episode is a little bit different. It’s a personal story that perfectly illustrates just how unpredictable the path to success can be. So about 20 years ago, I went back home to visit my mom over the summer and I happened to run into an old classmate of mine from high school. And back in the day, this classmate of mine wasn’t known to be the brightest guy in school. I remember one time, a group of us were discussing our SAT scores and he blurted out that he got a 700 on the test.

01:03
And when we asked him whether he got a $700k in verbal or a $700k in math, he just said, yup. Anyway, I naturally assumed that he was working in some dead-end job making minimum wage, but I was shocked to learn that he owned multiple apartment buildings and his own construction company. This guy was loaded. And even though I was doing okay, making about $100k as an electrical engineer at the time, I was a popper by comparison. And at that point, I remember thinking to myself, what the hell is this guy’s secret?

01:31
How did he start a successful construction company? Because it was dumb as rocks in high school. And this threw me for a loop because my whole worldview at the time was that you had to be smart to make big money. But the truth is, the richest people in the world aren’t necessarily smarter than you or me. And in fact, according to a Swedish study, the top 5 % of earners in the world are slightly less intelligent than those just below them on the economic ladder. So let’s start with reason number one.

01:58
Many smart people rationalize that they don’t need much money to live. They already have a decent paying job, go on a yearly vacation, own a car, and can afford to go out to eat every now and then. So why rock the boat? In fact, this was my exact thought process back when I worked my day job as an electrical engineer. Back then, I thought that the only people who cared about getting rich in business had to sacrifice their social lives, their family, and devote their entire future towards the pursuit of wealth.

02:25
And this is one of many excuses that I had to not start a business or try to make money outside of my day job. And the result was that for nearly a decade, I lived a listless life without purpose. I basically woke up in the morning, went to work, came home, had dinner, watched TV, rinse and repeat. Now I had money to provide for myself, but I was living life like a zombie with the exact same daily routine. Now it only after my wife became pregnant with our first child, did I realize a fundamental truth. In order to have freedom,

02:54
to spend time with who you want and not have to go to an office for eight hours a day, making money is important. Like it or not, you need money to improve your life, which in my case was spending time with my newborn child. Once I had a purpose for the money, I was able to unlock my full earning potential. So the first question I encourage all of you to ask yourself is, is if you weren’t limited by money, what would you be doing? Now my answer to this question was to be present with my kids every day.

03:22
and have the freedom to coach their sports teams and help them out with school. Now your definition of winning might be different, but the goal for most people is to get to the point where money is no longer the limiting factor in the decisions that you make. However, to win, you’re going to have to put yourself out there. You’re going to have to take some risks and actually try. Which leads me to reason number two, why many smart people can’t get rich. Even if you have a purpose, you’d be surprised how many smart people I know

03:49
aren’t willing to try to start a business or go out on their own because they are afraid of looking stupid. Now I used to have this mentality in high school. When I grew up, I was regarded as one of the smartest kids in school. In order to maintain that reputation, I didn’t want to fail. I couldn’t fail. So what ended up happening was that I often stuck to easy things that I knew I was good at rather than push myself to my limits. I was reluctant to try anything new because I didn’t want to fail and ruin my image. But for dumb people,

04:17
They don’t care because they are already being underestimated. Now remember my high school friend who I thought was dumb as rocks? Well, dumb people have two huge advantages over smart people. First off, being constantly underestimated puts a chip on your shoulder to prove everybody wrong. And that can be a powerful motivator. Second, you’ve got nothing to lose because who really cares if you fail? People have already written you off. You’re like the eighth seed in the NBA playoffs. Nobody expects you to win. You’ve got nothing but potential upside.

04:47
Smart people on the other hand, have the opposite problem. They have nothing but downside because everybody expects them to be wildly successful in everything they do, which is impossible. If a smart person tries something outside of their comfort zone and then fails, then their reputation as a smart person is at risk. Now the path of least resistance for a smart person is to follow the traditional path. You go to school, you get your job, you spend the next 40 years in an office and then you retire.

05:14
Now I used to think that my job provided everything that I needed. And for most people it can be, but if you want to achieve financial freedom and do whatever you want, you can’t follow common wisdom and expect to get uncommon results. You have to do something different. Now the other thing I noticed about dumb people is that they tend to underestimate risk, whereas smart people tend to overestimate risk. Now I’ve mentioned this in the past, but the most problematic students in my Profitable Online Store course are engineers. Whenever I try to teach an engineer,

05:44
how to start an e-commerce business, they are always running mental simulations in their heads to predict the probability of failure. They want all the answers before they start. And I’m not criticizing engineers because I am one, but the problem with trying to overanalyze everything is that that turns you into a pessimist. You start thinking about everything that could go wrong instead of the opposite, thinking about everything that could go right if you succeed. By the way, if you’re interested in learning how to start your own e-commerce store, make sure you sign up for my free six-day e-commerce mini course below.

06:13
Now for this behavior, I blame Darwinism and evolution. Back in the stone ages, it was all about survival and being cautious otherwise you could die. And being smart was valuable because you could calculate all the things that could potentially go wrong and avoid the risk that could get you killed. But today, no one’s gonna die from making a wrong business decision and being your own boss isn’t about life or death. Maybe you lose some money or some of your dignity. Maybe you have to move back in with your parents for a while, but taking risks to make money.

06:42
assuming you’re not doing anything illegal is unlikely to end in anything that you can’t recover from. But what about dumb people? Most dumb people are completely ignorant of all the things that could go wrong. Meanwhile, smart people are busy analyzing all the potential pitfalls and it stops them from ever getting started. One time, and acquaintance come to me for help to start an e-commerce store and the problem was that he had no money. Heck, he didn’t even have enough money to buy a sample of the product that he wanted to sell. So what did he do?

07:12
He took pre-orders for his product, collected money from customers, and then bought a bulk shipment of products from Alibaba, sight unseen. So many things could have gone wrong. He could have been shipped junk from Alibaba. The shipment could have arrived late. It might not even have arrived at all. The product might not have functioned as he intended. But luckily, everything turned out fine, and he ended up making multiple six figures in profit in his first year of business. Here’s the thing. As a smart person,

07:39
You’re probably very good at imagining all the things that can go wrong. But the reality is that people are terrible at calculating the probability of those events actually occurring. The worst case scenario almost never happens. And you spent all this time worrying that it keeps you from taking actions that could change your life and lead to something amazing. Now I still struggle with this today and I constantly have to remind myself of my overarching goal. I want to make money so I can do whatever I want and hang out with whoever I want without worrying about the money.

08:09
and I never want to spend 40 hours a week in an office. Which leads me to the next limiting belief of smart people. They never think that they know enough to be successful. Now there’s an interesting aspect about people that I’ve learned over the years that is just so counterintuitive that I still don’t really understand why it happens and it’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where people with low ability or knowledge in a particular area tend to overestimate their competence.

08:37
People who are less skilled or knowledgeable mistakenly believe that they’re more competent than they are due to a lack of insight into their own limitations. But the opposite is true of smart people. Smart people rarely think that they are the expert in any given field and therein lies the problem. The reason smart people struggle to make money is because they get hung up on the fact that they know that they don’t know enough to succeed. For example, I have a friend who’s an amazing engineer.

09:03
And he’s either built or been the lead developer for many famous apps that we all use today on our phones. He clearly has the skills to start a very successful company, but he’s terrified about the business aspects of running his own company. Now, because the relative gap between his extensive knowledge of engineering versus his lack of knowledge for business is just so large that he’s discouraged from taking action. Meanwhile, a dumb person who has very little engineering or business experience usually thinks to himself, I don’t really know anything.

09:32
but how hard could this possibly be? And then what happens is that the dumb person takes action and gets into the ring while the smart person is busy second guessing himself on the sidelines. Now in general, things really end up as badly as we think they will. And there’s so many external factors outside of just knowledge and strategy that the dumb person stumbles upon success because he tried. So bottom line, if you take anything away from this video, here’s what I want you to remember.

09:59
When I first started my business and I followed a bunch of experts and gurus to learn, I was under the impression that all these successful people knew what they were doing from the start, that they never made mistakes. But I’ve come to learn from interviewing over 500 successful entrepreneurs in my podcast, that almost everyone had no clue what they were doing in the beginning. They didn’t have a concrete plan. And if they did, it never went as expected. Most successful people are just going with the flow and solving problems as they arise. And the main reason why they are successful

10:29
is because they are too dumb to quit. Hey, the reason I started an online store selling handkerchiefs was because I thought to myself, how hard could this possibly be? You just buy stuff at a low price and sell it at a high price. Simple, right? Well, I overestimated my abilities early on and didn’t understand all the subtleties of selling online. I didn’t understand everything that could go wrong. And the first three months after I opened were horrible. I didn’t make any sales. Hell, I don’t even like handkerchiefs, but I stuck with it.

10:58
because I wanted my wife to stay at home with the kids. And believe me, I was teased by my friends all the time for having a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford and selling handkerchiefs for a living. For most of my first year in business, I felt like an idiot. I felt like I was wasting my time until things started to actually work. After we made six figures in our first year and then seven figures years later, all of a sudden I look like a genius, which I am not. I just kept with it until it worked.

11:27
The same goes with my YouTube channel, my blog, my podcast, and everything that I’ve ever done in life. Remember, you can’t win if you don’t start, and you can’t lose if you don’t quit. This is all you need to know. The goes with my YouTube channel, my blog, my podcast, and everything that I’ve ever done in life. Remember, you can’t win if you don’t start, and you can’t lose if you don’t quit. This is all you need to know.

11:52
Hope you enjoyed this episode and that it gave you a fresh perspective on what’s really possible regardless of credentials or experience. more information and resources, go to mywifequithejob.com slash episode 590. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifequithejob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, Tony and I reflect on YouTube’s 20 year anniversary and why not doing video is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in 2025. We share personal regrets, real success stories from our students and the exact strategies we’re using to grow new channels from scratch. Whether you’re selling physical products, digital courses, or just building a brand, hopefully this episode will be a wake up call. But before we begin,

00:30
I wanted to let you know that this is the last call for tickets for Seller Summit 2025 over at sellersummit.com. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level advice, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business.

01:00
entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. I personally hate large events, so the seller’s summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. If you are an e-commerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year,

01:27
We also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller’s Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th. Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellerssummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

01:50
Welcome back to the My Wife, Put Her Job podcast. Today we’re going to talk about YouTube’s 20 year anniversary where over I think a trillion videos have been uploaded. No, 20 trillion videos have been uploaded. Which is crazy. And yours could be one of the 20 trillion. One in 20 trillion. I think I have like 500 videos uploaded or something crazy like that at this point. Maybe more than that actually. I haven’t looked. So it’s 2025. So it’s the 20th. So that means…

02:21
2005 was the start of YouTube. I guess so, yes. Your math is correct, Tony. Congratulations. Right, I had to think about it for second. Well, because I think I put my first video on YouTube in 2008 or nine, and I will say this until the day that I die, not continuing with YouTube is one of my biggest business regrets.

02:44
that I have because when I started doing it in 2008 or nine, like people, wasn’t like it is today obviously, right? And pretty much anything you put up on YouTube got a decent amount of traction. it wasn’t, you didn’t have to play the game that I think you have to play with all, you know, content creation these days. It’s like if you just put up something that was interesting or you taught people something, people watched it. And…

03:10
to this day, I’m like, why didn’t I keep going? Why didn’t I keep posting in my pajamas? Like, big mistake. I mean, it’s evolved so much. Like, back in the day, your subscribers meant a lot more. Yeah. So if you had like a huge subscriber base and you would put out a video, it would probably do well no matter what. But, and people were just putting out these short little clips, right? Right, right. In a lot of cases, and they were doing well. Now it’s all about watch time and

03:39
And I like it better because it’s merit based, right? Your subscribers don’t matter as much. If you put out something good, it’ll do well. And I think TikTok helped to transform this model. agree. And actually we have the perfect example of this that we just learned about last week. I know we talk about Kevin a lot on the podcast, but Kevin is a student in our courses and he has been just churning away at YouTube for probably, I want to say we’re like 18 months.

04:07
Yeah, it’s been a year and half, I want to say. And putting out content consistently has dabbled in the long form, which we’ve been encouraging him to. And a couple of weeks ago, he had a long form piece of content go viral. And just to show you like the impact of that for him, it doubled his subscribers.

04:30
and it put him, I forget what it did for his watch time, but I want to say it doubled or even more his watch time from this one video that he put out a couple weeks ago. That’s exactly the pattern that I saw with my channel. I was getting 1,000 views or less for probably a year. Then I remember there’s one video that got like

04:56
20,000 views and I was like, oh my God, what’s going on here? And then I remember when I hit 100,000 views, like that next video hit a million views. So I think it’s almost like YouTube needs you to prove yourself first to show that you’re gonna be consistent. And during that time, as long as you’re consistent, one of those videos is gonna pop. And then once one pops, it’s almost like YouTube gives you this momentum.

05:26
where all your subsequent videos will do well. So I think the first question is, and we’re gonna talk primarily about physical products, but let’s talk a little bit about the digital side, because I think, first of all, if you are selling any sort of digital product, course, membership, coaching, you should be on YouTube, right? This is an absolute no-brainer. You have to be on YouTube, I would say. Or you have to show your face somehow. You have to be on some sort of video platform. Yeah.

05:54
To me, if you’re not doing this, it’s a big mistake. I know who talks about this is Tay from Financial Tortoise. He talks about the same thing when he got started. The first, I think he said year to 18 months, it was like 100 views, 500 views, 1,000. Step one is how do you keep going when, like Kevin, right? You’re getting 100 views and you feel like you’re putting so much time. Kevin’s videos are good.

06:23
Right. He does great editing, really good content. If he talks about like computer and technical stuff. So it’s not my cup of tea, but like it’s good content, right. That you can learn from. So how do you keep going when you’re on like month nine and you’re still getting a hundred views, a hundred and thirty views? I mean, this is my mindset for everything. And I don’t know if we’ve repeated enough on this podcast, but don’t do anything unless I’m going to like do it. And I give myself a five year time frame.

06:52
Yeah. Like if I can’t get it any traction in five years, then something’s wrong, I think. Well, five years is we’ve talked. Now, I know we’ve had this conversation. Well, so let’s not do five years. Let’s say three years. Let’s just say three years. Right. I think anyone can do something for three years. You disagree? Maybe not in this day and age when Gen Z feel like yes, if you’re a Gen X or you can. But then I feel like it might lose its momentum for.

07:22
the Gen Zers, I don’t know. You know what I hate? It’s like all these stories have spoiled it for everyone. Like there’s of course there’s gonna be outliers, right? That get successful within like two months or three months or six months. But those are the only stories you hear out there, pretty much. And so everyone thinks that it’s gonna happen fast, but I would guarantee you that 99 % of the people out there takes a long time for stuff to happen.

07:47
So it’s so interesting that you say that because I think it was last night you were messaging me or it might’ve been sometime this week and you’re like, know, we’re, I’m doing a talk on YouTube at Seller Summit and I’m using one of my clients as a case study for e-commerce and you were like, well, what’s the big, you know, like you wanted like a big, you know, showboat moment. And I was like, we don’t have one. We have slow and steady growth. have email list growth. We have sales, we have subscribe. You know, it’s like,

08:14
But nothing has we have not had a home run. We actually haven’t had a video go viral. We just have slow and steady growth every single week. OK, so let’s put this in perspective, because I looked at the channel before I emailed you. And you’ve only been at this for what, three months, three a half months? yeah, right, three and a half months, right? You already have videos consistently doing one to two thousand views. Yes, I definitely did not have that in my first three months.

08:43
I was lucky to break a thousand. Yeah. Well, we had a real like a real strategy. And obviously, I’m not going to give away my talk. But so you’re still time to buy a ticket. Come here. Wednesday, May 7th. I’ll let you on all the secrets. We had a real strategy to the growth. And I will say I am very pleased with how the channel is coming for a variety of reasons.

09:10
But I think the biggest one and moving into e-commerce a little bit, I think this is one of the best ways to help people bond with your brand, right? Now we have the founder of the company who has, it’s a curriculum company. So she’s written a lot of the curriculum. Like she’s very involved, not as much today, but still very involved in what is published. And so I think, and I actually was looking through the comments earlier.

09:38
this morning and it’s like people really, really identify with her, right? And they really, so it’s like it takes what, mean curriculum, right? It’s very competitive. There’s a lot of curriculum out there that you can buy for your kids if you’re homeschooler. But like how do you set yourself apart from all the competitors? This is a really, I don’t wanna say easy because it’s not easy but it’s a simple way to do it, right? Because all you’re doing is getting on camera.

10:06
See, I would argue that if you’re selling curriculum, you have to have content. So prior to this YouTube channel, which is only three and a half months old, how was she selling her curriculum? Through blog posts. Blog posts, okay. So just written, no video at all? No video. She had some video. So whenever she launched a product, there was usually a video of like how to use this product. So if you purchased the product, you got that video in like a post purchase flow. But really that was the only video content out there. And then we did challenges, right? So it’s like,

10:35
a homeschool planning bootcamp, a chore challenge, things like that. So there was some sporadic video content, but it wasn’t that consistent weekly content that’s getting put out today. You know what’s funny about that is no one reads anymore. No one in, I should rephrase that, no one in the younger generation reads anymore. Like my kids, like if you have them read something, they inevitably miss like these little details because they just scan the thing. But you put a video in front of them and they watch the whole thing. I’m the opposite. I much prefer reading.

11:05
Me too. Than watching a video. So yeah, it’s great that she decided to start the channel because I mean, at some point, I think the whole blogging method is not nearly going to be as effective. Right. And I would say the good news is if you are an e-commerce brand and you have a blog or a content site that you’ve been building, I mean, a lot of people that have been in the e-commerce world for several years have a blog, right? They have some type of content that they’ve been using.

11:35
So when we started the channel, we basically took some of the most popular blog posts and turned them into, using Claude, turned them into scripts. So most of the content on her channel, because she does have the blog, is based in content from the blog. So I would say that’s another benefit if you’re in e-commerce and you do have some content that you’ve already created.

12:02
It even makes it easier to turn that content, especially today with all the AI tools, it makes it really easy to turn that content into video. Actually, when I started my channel, I did it like the super lazy way and I literally just read my blog posts. But I mean, it got me started. It got me on this consistent clip. And then I slowly made modifications first to the intro to make it more enticing. And then later I would cut the content down to make it less verbose.

12:31
but it’s a process, like whatever it takes for you to get started is what you gotta do. Well, and I think that’s a really key point is that it’s more important to get started and put out beginner type content, right? Probably not your best content because no one’s gonna be watching you initially anyway, like you’re not gonna have a lot of views. So it’s better to get all the kinks out early and sort of find your footing and figure out how you’re gonna have a brand voice on video.

13:00
as opposed to what I see some people do is they spend so much time planning and they come up with this elaborate package to put out there and it’s actually not what the brand needs. And then you’re fumbling, you’re trying to redo and figure it out. I would say just start putting the content out there and see what resonates with people. Yeah, mean, totally. It’s easier said than done. So I’m about to launch

13:30
a YouTube channel for Bumblebee linens. And I had dragged on about this for probably two or three years, I would say. It’s been a while. For doing it, mainly because I didn’t think that I should be the one on camera. But finally, I was just like, okay, I got to be the one on camera or and you suggested I remember hiring someone. Yes, I did. Right to be the face of the brand. And I was against that because I mean, just I think of what happened to Ezra, like the face of his brand.

13:59
She died. Passed away suddenly, actually. He was scrambling to find someone else. I don’t I was available. I was available for middle-aged makeup. What are you talking about? I think just to find someone reliable that will stay with your company for a long time, it’s just a risky thing, in my opinion. A perfect, yes, you’re right. Ezra had that experience. I look at someone like Tiffany Ivanovsky who

14:27
has tried for years to find people who can do live selling. So similar, a face on a video. And she has run into a lot of issues with that. The main one being once people learn how to live sell and get good at it, they want to sell their own stuff. They don’t want to get… And I think she’s offered fairly lucrative packages to people. They’re getting paid an hourly plus they’re getting some commission.

14:55
But what happens is people think, oh, this is so easy. And don’t realize, especially today, all the risk. And dealing with now tariffs and all the uncertainty and even things like shipping container. It’s like there’s just so much stuff I think people think, oh, this is so easy. Look at me making videos. But she’s had that happen several times where she’s basically raised, trained up people. And then they leave and think they can do it themselves better. Yeah.

15:25
Which is a risk if you hire someone to do that for any, you know, even making your content, right? Well, the only reason I bring this up is because I’m pretty much starting on ground zero again with Bumble Bee Linens. Like my wife, Critter Jai, was well established. I have this flow. It kind of works like clockwork. But Bumble Bee Linens, though, I need I pretty much started from scratch and I needed a method. And so what I decided to do was tell this like reach out to customers and tell their stories since we sell

15:54
commemorative handkerchiefs and linens. Like I want to hear the stories behind those products, like how people got together, know, stories of friendship and whatnot. And so that’s the route that I’m taking. And this is so much easier now because I can take like a form that a customer fills out about their story and turn it and fill in all the little blanks and whatnot and make it sound really good with AI. And this is something that I probably would not have been able to do until AI came out.

16:24
True. So I would say, this is actually, this is a great question for you because there’s probably a lot of people, like you’re a middle-aged man selling lace handkerchiefs, right? It sounds so terrible. It does sound terrible. a white van luring children. That’s what it sounds like. You could have made me sell candy. Hey little girl, you want some candy? He has puppies and ice cream in the back of the van. But no, like I think there’s a lot of people out there who have

16:53
successful e-commerce stores that are looking for another channel, looking for another avenue to build their brand, but they’re like, hey, I’m a middle-aged guy selling hair accessories, or something that you just feel like doesn’t match. So you came up with this angle of storytelling. What would you say to people? Because I know that was one of the biggest struggles for you, and you and I talked about this all the time. It’s like you were like, I don’t want to be the face of Bumblebee.

17:20
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be obtained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

17:49
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

18:01
You know what’s funny about this is I’ve been doing a lot of research lately for e-commerce brands doing short form content. And there are middle-aged people out there selling effectively. It’s not all Gen Z is basically what I’m trying to say. And you know, I’m starting to talk like my kids now, but I actually find a lot of the Gen Z content cringy. Right? It’s like the selling content cringy. Like just a short form, like

18:29
how they gush over the whole makeup. That does not appeal to someone my age. Incidentally, for our products, people who are buying it are my age. I would say women over the age of 40. I don’t think that that Gen Z stuff will relate to them. I don’t think it works. I don’t think it works for everybody. Another example of this is Paul Ivanovsky, Tiffany’s husband.

18:58
So back when they first started making video about their products, right? Selling online, selling live, which is a little bit different than creating YouTube content, but still the same like middle-aged man selling women’s clothing, right? So he had a, I mean, this is brilliant, right? This, mean, I don’t wanna give Paul a lot of credit, because I know Tiffany is definitely the backbone of that business, but, and Paul will take it and run if he hears me say these things, but.

19:26
He got on live video and put the clothes on. He was trying on dresses and shirts and cardigans. It was fun and it was funny. People tuned in. I would tune in just like it was like, I could watch an episode of Friends or I could watch Paul try on a dress. I’m watching Paul try on a dress. Obviously, Paul’s got a great personality.

19:54
But the other thing that Paul figured out really quickly, which I think this is important, right? Find your angle is that Paul realized that a lot of women that were shopping were lonely, right? They’re up late at night because they’re going live at like 1030 at night, right? So these women are lonely. They don’t have anything to do. They are replacing Netflix for these people, right? And so when Paul sees their name up and he’s like, Rachel, beautiful, how are you doing? Right. Complimenting them, calling them by their name.

20:23
Some of these women probably haven’t been called by their name, right? Like he, I mean, seriously though, like it was such a genius idea, right? To basically become this person’s like companion virtually, right? And I mean, I’ve seen their numbers and some of those customers have spent, like, I’m like, do they have another house for all this clothes? Right? Like where are they storing? Cause they have customers that have spent six figures.

20:50
and their clothing is not expensive, right? But that angle worked, right? He found an angle for the business where he could be the, I mean, they both are the face of the brand, obviously, but where he could go on and do that and it worked. So I think sometimes you just have to think out of the box like you with the stories, right? It makes sense and it’s something that would appeal to the demographic of who buys your products. Well, so the way I’m approaching it is we’re going to have three different types of content. One is going to be a story. I don’t know which one’s going to work.

21:20
Yeah, but another one is just gonna be like life running a business as a husband and wife and those are probably gonna be mainly be shorts. Those are the ones I gonna do the best. I agree because they’re gonna be off the cuff. I’ll bring something up. Yeah, I’ll something stupid The only question really is whether you know, she’s actually gonna be really mad at me which could could happen. Yes, we’ll have a calendar day Steve sleeps on the couch

21:47
But I think it’s gonna be a combination of both. There’s gonna be some people who wanna hear the stories. There’s gonna be some people who wanna see behind the scenes. So you just gotta throw things out there and see what works. And Paul, wearing women’s clothing is what worked. the other problem that I think people have aside from feeling like I can’t be the face of my brand, which I think you just have to get creative with that. The problem that my client had was the technology problem, right? And she just couldn’t.

22:16
I mean, and I like some people just don’t, you know, I’m the same way. Like when I film video, I have Brian set everything up for me. I mean, can I do it myself? Yes. Do I want to? No. And is that a hurdle for me? Absolutely. So like that’s the way I’ve overcome the hurdle. Right. He’s my tech guy. And that was her problem. Right. Like she was just like, I don’t know what kind of camera I need. I don’t know this. And I sent her all of our YouTube lessons. Right. Like which I feel like our YouTube lessons in profitable audience are

22:45
10 out of 10. If you know nothing about YouTube, you could go through those 20 lessons and you could absolutely start a YouTube channel tomorrow. Bench watch, start the channel. It has equipment, outlining, how to film, everything. She was like, I can’t. There was this huge hurdle for her. So she hired someone to basically come into her house and set up a studio and set up a…

23:11
So it doesn’t ever move, like it’s in her office, it’s, you the camera’s set up, everything is, so all she has to do is go in and turn it on. And that was her hurdle. So yes, it costs money to have someone come in your house and set up a studio, obviously, but it was worth it because that was what kept her from making, because we’ve been talking about this for over a year, right? And it just wasn’t happening. She didn’t know, she didn’t have this, blah, blah, blah.

23:36
And then as soon as our friend is our friend, Leslie Samuel, I don’t think he does this for everybody. So don’t don’t message him. He went up there and basically gave her like a two day boot camp in YouTube. He’s a YouTube expert and then set everything up for him, basically told her this is exactly what you need to do. Here’s how you and then showed her how to use a eye to help her with scripts. like basically, I think he just taught her everything we teach in the course, but she didn’t have to watch the videos. Right.

24:04
That’s another option for you. There are people that will do this for you. If you have children, they will do it for you for free. I don’t think tech is the hurdle for most people though. I really don’t think tech is It was a hurdle for a lot of people in our course. Are you kidding me? I think just the act of filming is the biggest hurdle. Like being on camera and then editing is the other big hurdle. Editing is one of those things where

24:34
I don’t think we have a great answer on this. You edit yourself until you want to pay someone else to edit for you. That’s kind of the solution. That is the solution. Yeah. Yeah. Or you just don’t edit like our friend Rob Berger, who still does not edit. he has 200. Actually, he’s catching up to me. think he’s at 300,000 views right now. So I would say we always joke about the Rob Berger method of no editing. I would say it’s a little harder if you’re a brand, like if you are selling a physical product.

25:03
I think you might need slightly more edit work than what he does, which is nothing. You know, I was thinking about this because I want a low energy way of doing our short form. So I don’t think we’re going to edit those. Like one question would be like, what do you do? Do enjoy working with your spouse in this business? And we’ll just give our answers off the cut. I don’t think that requires much editing. Oh, it will once you hear her answer. Well, no, that’s the beauty of it, right?

25:34
You’ll have to edit out all the F-bombs.

25:40
I think to an extent, yes. I actually think that if you’re struggling with an angle, the behind the scenes, real life, that content is very popular right now. I would say it’s definitely trending. I think that type of content is a great way to talk about your business even if you don’t fit your customer avatar.

26:06
I think that people get very interested in like the inner workings of small businesses. I mean, I’m just following the model of some other companies and what they do also is they’ll call out customers in their videos too. Just like what you said with Paul, except not in a live environment. Yeah. They’ll just bring up an order and this our products are perfect for this, right? Because if it’s someone who is like, you know, has a special message and provided you get their permission, of course you call out their personalization and you know,

26:36
You talk about, this such and such has embroidered a handkerchief for her wedding. Best of luck. I hope everything goes well. Shout out. That works really well. There’s a lot of videos on this one store that I watch where those videos are the ones that perform the best. Or someone just had a baby. Or maybe even someone passed away, actually, and they embroidered something. Those stories do the best. Are you doing the Pope’s hankies?

27:06
Did you get that order? No? No? No, unfortunately not. You’ve had some famous clients, but I won’t name any names, but I wasn’t sure how famous we were getting you over there at Bumblebee. We did have Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I know. She was a client of ours. I like the call-out idea. That works because if people see that they got called out, they share that with everybody they know because they’re excited about it and it helps.

27:35
you know, sort of boost the virality of the video itself. Not just that, but people will buy because they want to get called out. Yes. I think that’s the idea. that they will get. Yeah, it’s that whole concept of like, which I still to this day find absolutely absurd is on like lives and stuff like that where you can send, basically you’re paying people to say your name on a live, right? Which I think is absolutely crazy, but it’s a big deal, right?

28:04
But yeah, it’s the same concept. You’re just not asking people to pay you in that way. They’re buying from you. I speaking of lives, I follow this guy. He covers like Warriors basketball live after every game. And people are literally tipping him like 100 bucks, 20 bucks just so they answer his. He answers their question. Yeah. And it’s always some stupid question like, do you think Steph shots were lucky in the Houston game? I don’t know. But you know.

28:34
Someone will pay that amount of money just for the attention. Yes. Capitalize on people’s need to have attention. The crazy world we live in, I wouldn’t even pay a dollar for that. No, I wouldn’t either. I remember back in the day, you could call into the radio. That’s really dating myself. It was free. You could call in and ask questions I used to dedicate songs to girls I liked. Yes, song request. goes out to you, Justine.

29:04
It was always like a heart song. I think anything that shows, if you have an interesting process, so you have an embroider machine, I think that’s interesting. I realized last year we went to the Yingling Bottling Factory in Pennsylvania with my sis, we did a tour. I could have watched that bottle machine all day long.

29:31
It was just fascinating to watch them come off the line and everything, all the little things that have to happen for it to be bottled and packaged up. But I think if you have any production or something like that that’s really interesting, making that type of content, really, and people will watch that forever and ever and ever.

29:51
They will and you know what’s funny is we were eating at this faux restaurant once and there was this camera on the fish tank, live streaming the fish tank all day long. And I was like, what’s up with that? He’s like, oh, you know, get money from this. I’m like, what? You just set up a camera on your fish tank? He’s like, yeah, people like the fish. Yeah. So our friend, don’t get it. I don’t get it either because we were, this was a couple of months ago and she’s like,

30:21
have you heard about the eagles? And I was like, of course I watched the Super Bowl, right? And she’s like, no, no, no, the eagles, their eggs are about to hatch. She had like on a separate screen on her computer was like watching eagle eggs that were getting ready to hatch. And she was committed to these like eagle eglets, right? I think that’s what they’re called. And I was like, no, I haven’t heard of the eagles that are.

30:47
about to have baby, I don’t know. But it’s true, people remember when that giraffe was pregnant and like millions of people were waiting for this thing to have a baby. I’m like, that was I don’t understand, but it definitely works. And I would say if it works, try it and see if it works for your business. So my wife buys a lot of stuff from video and she’ll buy stuff just because she likes the creator. Yes. I mean, yeah.

31:16
Like I remember one time she bought this makeup that she didn’t like 100 % like, she just wanted to support the creator. And that’s what it’s come to, I think, in today’s day and age. This is why you can’t just list your products on a store, because, and you know, maybe these tariffs will turn the tide because there’s always these Chinese knockoffs. Maybe that’ll be mitigated going forward, but you still need to stand out somehow. And oftentimes the way you stand out has nothing to do with your packaging or

31:47
know, images or ads or your website anymore. It’s really from people wanting to know who the owner of the store is and what they stand for, what their personality is like. Yeah. Okay. So next, changing gears just a little bit, but I don’t want to not talk about this. One of our goals for my client’s channel is to get emails from the videos. Okay. Because I think, I think in general, especially for something like curriculum, which people do

32:16
think about, right? They don’t just buy, it’s not like an impulse buy, right? There are definitely products out there that are impulse buys and I think you can probably do anything, right? Or the price point is right. So we wanna get emails from people. Is that your strategy for Bumblebee? Like do you have an email strategy or what are you thinking when it comes to that component? I’m not sure, like I don’t wanna put multiple calls to actions in the videos. Right. However,

32:44
I think our products kind of fall under that impulse buy. They do, yeah, for sure. So like having a link directly to the site might make sense. The other thing I was thinking was including a form where you could just tell a story, period, right? And that would get email addresses as well. I’m torn because, mean, we haven’t launched this all yet. And so I think depending on what happens is going to change the trajectory of what I actually do. What do you think, actually?

33:14
Yeah, I feel like for you, could probably do a link right to the store. That makes sense. I mean, that’s what Eric Bandholz does. Yeah. And we do link to products all the time in videos because usually the video does talk about a product in some way. It’s not the main part of the video, but there’s a reference. We still use a lot of lead magnets. So like I think there’s a video that just came out or it’s coming out. It’s about like teaching your kid to read, right? Phonics, which is a hot topic.

33:43
This is surprisingly surprising to you. But a lot of people freak out when their kids aren’t reading right at kindergarten. And it’s like, oh, what’s wrong with my kid? Blah, blah, blah. So it’s a whole video on like, hey, this is actually the true statistics on kids reading and what it means if they read later or whatever. And we obviously have a reading curriculum that we’re selling, but it’s actually not here yet. Right. So we’ve been seeding it with this reading content. We’ve been starting to put reading content on YouTube. So we have a lead magnet.

34:12
that’s basically like a sight word game that you can play with your kids. So we try to come up with ideas that correlate with the video so that, you if you want to learn more, if you want to test your kid, if you want to see where they are, like, you know, download the lead magnet. And obviously that directly gets people on the email list because that’s how they get the download. But that’s been our main strategy. I think for curriculum, that has to be the way you go. Right. People aren’t just going to buy a curriculum after they see one video, right?

34:42
Absolutely not. I they buy a hanky, but yeah. I would question their parenting skills. Do some research. And just for the record, people get worried when their kids aren’t reading by age three, right? Yes. I think it’s at one. If they’re not doing multiplication tables by age two and a half, something’s wrong. Yes, exactly. Yes. We have all the all the warning signs. Our video has bright red flashing lights. So that’s been our main

35:12
our main mechanism for getting emails. And it’s worked, I would say it’s worked okay. I don’t really have a lot to compare it to, right? Because I don’t, I actually don’t only know one other curriculum company that’s making a lot of YouTube content and they don’t seem to be asking for emails at all. So I’m not quite sure, like they have a large following and things like that, but I don’t really have a bar to measure it with. But.

35:39
To me, feels like the people that are getting on the list are eventually making purchases. So to me, it’s a win, right? We’re getting the right people on the list and eventually they’re making a purchase decision. I will say that one of the areas I think we need to improve in is we separate people who come from YouTube versus people that come from an ad or finding us through search or referral type thing. I think we need to do a better job talking to the YouTube people in a different way.

36:09
Because when we got started, we kind of just cloned a bunch of things and it wasn’t we didn’t really do like a full like this is a YouTube customer. And I do think if you’re going to take all the time to do that, that’s definitely something that you should think about doing is talking to those people a little bit differently, because they might have found a lot of their traffic actually comes from YouTube recommended videos. Right. So, yeah, which is interesting to me. Like that was actually a pretty surprising statistic.

36:38
So to me, they probably follow other homeschoolers or other curriculum type companies and got the video recommended. And so they might not know at all who this company is. So we need to do a better job of letting them know like the credentials and why you should buy from them and why their curriculum is different and better. Yeah.

37:00
I think I would have a lot more problems marketing a religion. Maybe it’s because I’m not in that industry, but I wouldn’t be able to… You kind of have to be a little bit more straight-laced, right? I want to buy a curriculum from someone who’s competent. Yeah. And I think that is important, making people aware that credentialed people are writing this curriculum, right? It’s not just bunch of people in the basement putting together…

37:27
Correct. Stuff from a high. can’t act like a goofball like what I plan on acting like for my videos to a certain extent. No. And so the last thing I’m to say on this, which is sort of like, this is not a way to get emails, but it’s a way we use the emails is, and this is actually a great way to get your watch time up, is doing webinars on YouTube. Now there’s a bunch of negatives to this, right? Because

37:54
like you’re not using a webinar software, it’s public on YouTube. I mean, we’re running it public on YouTube, but what I saw when we did this was the watch time went up pretty dramatically overall for the account, not only that, YouTube favors live streaming, right? So it looks good to YouTube. And then as well, the average watch time went up. So the average time of most of our videos are between 10 and 13 minutes.

38:23
Well, the webinar was an hour, right? There were, think, about 100 people on the webinar live. was about basically homeschooling through high school. But the average view time on that webinar was in like the 15 to 20 minute, the view time, whereas her average view time normally is like four and a half minutes, right? So the view time went up pretty significantly because of the webinar. So boosted the overall average as well. So that’s another thing that you could think about doing

38:53
if you have any type of product that needs an instruction. I think about actually the person who came to mind with this is Meg, who sells hermit crab food or something like that. That’s something where you could do a webinar on how to set up a hermit crab tank. You could do a whole instructional and you would get people watching a lot longer because they would be learning about the environment and what they need and like

39:23
you know, use this, don’t use that. And then obviously talking about your own products in there. But anything where you need to give an instruction on something, I think you can figure out a way to make a free webinar, right? And just, and then you get people that come into the webinar because it’s live. So it’s available on YouTube. So people that don’t know that you exist, right, can find you as well. I mean, I do live webinars on YouTube. That’s the only way that I do them. And what my buddies have told me is in general, if you’re live,

39:52
You can do it to the public, but as soon as it’s over, you make it unlisted. Because the metrics for someone coming into a live video, especially in the beginning, when you’re waiting for people to come in and whatnot, the drop off rate is huge. So I would say if you’re going to do it, go live and then make it private later. Not private, but unlisted later. Yeah. Is that what you guys are doing? She actually didn’t get the drop off at all. Afterwards? Yeah.

40:21
I mean, people are still watching this video and I think it’s the topic, right? Homeschooling in high school. People are very intimidated about homeschooling in high school or it’s where you, it’s actually where you see people drop off homeschooling, right? They homeschool up until high school and they put their kid in high school because they wanted to do athletics or something like that. I thought, and I thought about making it unlisted afterwards, but we’re still getting a lot of traction on it. So I’m like, huh, maybe. I can see why that is because my wife was watching this,

40:51
live presentation on how to get your kid into Princeton or an Ivy League school. with that big of a topic with such wide interests, you’re probably willing to slog through a webinar, even if it was previously live. Yeah. And I think that the information, it’s pretty evergreen. I mean, at some point it’ll probably go and I’ll probably put it to unlisted. But for right now, we’re just still seeing people on it. So it’s kind of like, oh, I don’t really want to.

41:19
The reason why I put mine unlisted is because I give the same presentation like a month later. It’s never the exact same. It’s altered depending on what the environment is like. But I don’t want people mixing the old with the new. So are you guys planning on giving this one again? Probably not for a year. Oh, not for a year. Oh, I see. see. OK. one definite advantage that we have is that the owner of this company is also a speaker. She speaks at conventions.

41:48
And so I actually, after, this was sort of a test, right? Because I was like, this is either gonna be really great and people are gonna be excited about it or it’s gonna be an absolute bust, right? And it’s just people don’t have the attention span. And I wasn’t sure where we would fall, but because it worked so well, I said, you you have all these talks that are already done, right? because she does, she speaks at like probably 10 conventions a year and it’s the same talks, right? At almost every convention. Because it’s a different audience, it’s all geographical.

42:17
And I said, we need to do at least one webinar every two months, right? On one of the topics that you talk about, because you already have it. You don’t have to do anything. You just have to prepare. Right. Everything’s already done. She’s already given this talk 10 times. So and she’s like, well, do you think that will cannibalize me speaking at conventions? I’m like, these conventions are big enough to cannibalize. 100 % agree with that. Right. Like, I mean, I get I get the concern and that would be something to think about. But I’m like, but if you’re speaking like right this week, she’s speaking in like.

42:45
Podunk, or something, I don’t know, some tiny Massachusetts town. I’m like, I don’t think those people are gonna be like, well, I’m not subscribing to your YouTube channel, you know, or vice versa, you I heard her in Massachusetts. Okay, well, those 22 people will be fine. So yeah. You can also tell her that there’s some people that come to my same exact workshop like eight times in a row, and they tell me that they learn something new each time they come.

43:10
I honestly, so the first time I saw that with you, I thought that was absolutely insane. And then the more webinars I’ve done over the years, I’m like, you know what, that’s actually true. Like, feel like, because like when I watch a webinar, I have all intentions of like paying attention, but it never fails that like someone comes to the door or, you know, I have to take a phone call or like I miss something, right? Or I have to leave early. And so I do think that like people will watch if you are a good,

43:39
content creator or a good presenter, and she is, you will watch the same content a couple of times to get things that you’ve missed, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So you’ve got nothing to worry. She’s got nothing to be worried about there. But anyway, the key point in all of this is if you’re not doing video for your e-commerce store, and especially if you’re trying to sell anything digital, I would say it’s required now for anything digital.

44:07
some sort of video content, YouTube long form is still the best in my opinion. And then short form is good too to kind of supplement it. Yeah, I think you need to think about it as if you want people to become loyal to your brand, right? If you want people to build that know, like and trust factor with you, then video content is the quickest way to build that for your company.

44:38
Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you wanna hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife quitherjob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. this episode, Tony and I break down how tariffs and trade wars are quietly reshaping global commerce and what that means for your business and your wallet. From rising costs to supply chain chaos, we unpack the billion dollar consequences no one’s talking about. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that this is the last call for tickets for Seller Summit 2025 over at sellersummit.com.

00:29
The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level advice, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet.

01:00
I personally hate large events, so the Seller’s Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past 8 years. If you are an ecommerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller’s Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th.

01:29
Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

01:43
to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast. I go on a week vacation with my daughter to tour colleges and I come back and I feel like the whole world, all hell is broken loose. Yeah, you missed a crazy week. did miss a crazy week and I discovered that my daughter likes the East Coast, which makes me very sad because I want her to stay in California. Listen, you didn’t have to take her on a

02:09
tour of the East Coast, you could have just said, this is the only thing that exists over here in California. That’s where all the Ivies are. Now she just has to get in. That’s right. Which is the hard part. So I figured today we we talk about tariffs, trade war and what’s going on on TikTok with all the Chinese vendors and everything. Is it so is it just me? I feel like I can’t keep up.

02:37
I feel like every time that I try to like check the news or, you know, get into a TikTok algorithm, the information is changing, like the tariffs and then there’s not tariffs and there’s tariffs on this and then there’s like, it’s like to me, there’s not even like a true, like what’s actually happening. That’s actually the topic of one of my next YouTube videos, because you’re right, it changes like every week. And like I was literally gone a week and

03:07
You know, it’s on, it’s off, tariffs are on, off. Oh no, there’s some exclusions and whatnot. It actually already made the script for that. And who knows, it might be obsolete by the time I publish it. But it actually, you got to take some time to compile all the information because it’s changing. Yeah. So here’s my first question. Because I and I also doesn’t help that all of our friends are sellers, not all of our friends, but a good amount of our friends have e-commerce stores. And so they’re all posting on Facebook. They’re frustrated, understandably so.

03:36
fully can empathize with them. But so if you have a container on the sea currently, right? So your container was shipped, let’s just say last month. Are you paying the new tariffs or are you under the old like, is there a grandfathering period? How is that working? There was a clause where if your if your goods were already on the water before the reciprocal tariffs, they didn’t apply.

04:01
That was an old statement that was made. I’m not sure about the new reciprocal ones like the 125 % one or the 140 % one. The first set, there was an exemption. I’m not 100 % sure about the latter ones because I couldn’t find any written documents on that one. Yeah. And then my next… So I’m in full on tariff TikTok right now.

04:26
OK, with all the Chinese suppliers, which is it’s kind of interesting since I’ve actually been to China, which is like I’m seeing them walk through stuff and I was like, oh, this is legit. Like they’re really in China. Like this isn’t a this isn’t an AI generated scene. This is legitimate, like factories and stuff like that. But I saw this one guy on TikTok, which to me sort of embodied what I’ve been thinking about everything is, you know, because we’re doing reciprocal tariffs, right, which means we pay, they pay.

04:56
kind of thing. this guy is in he’s in China and he’s like, let me show you everything that I have in my home that was made in America. And he opens up both of his hands and they’re empty. Right. And then he’s like, what in your house is from China? And I was like, I don’t know everything, everything except for the people. So it seems to me that like. Are we exporting a lot of stuff to China? I I heard about the whole Boeing thing that just got China just canceled the Boeing order.

05:26
But I mean, it’s mainly like soybeans and some other stuff from from what I understand. Yeah, I do know this and I can only speak for the textiles, the textile factories. I think they’re hurting big time because right now we actually have an outstanding order where we put 30 percent down and we’re just going to delay it. Right. Yeah. And I know other people who are actually people in the class.

05:55
they’re not placing their orders right now. And, and there’s all these like leaked tick tocks from Chinese factories. saying everything’s empty. You know, um, you know, the, the, the workers have no work. Uh, they, or there was this another tick tock and these get taken down instantly, right? I guess by the Chinese government, there’s this one factory full of down jackets, cause the person who ordered them just canceled the order altogether. Yeah. And we have a mutual friend.

06:24
Brandon who ordered a container of shoes and I think his margins are only like 50 % or something like that. With 125 % tariff, what’s he going to do? Is he going to take it and lose money or break even or lose money? Or is he going to just refuse the shipment altogether and just lose all the money he invested into it? Yes, it feels like there’s no winning in that situation. Right.

06:54
But the factories are hurting. I’m almost positive. And even the messages from our vendors have sounded a little more urgent. Like place your order now. I’m like, I’m not gonna place order now. Right. So they’re hurting. And I’m pretty sure that the other countries like we, didn’t realize this, but I think we consume like a third of the world’s goods or something crazy like that. I’m sure we do. That feels low. So you cut that out.

07:21
Yeah, drastically reduce it. And then all these factories who’ve invested all this money in machinery, like the machinery has got to run. Right, right. There’s lots of issues when you shut the machinery down. And you know, they’re probably still paying bills on that. And so it’s got to keep going. Yeah. And so it’s a big game of chicken right now. Yeah. Yeah. I personally think we’re in a better position because the last time Trump came into office, we already kind of found

07:49
vendors in India and even the US and Europe, different parts of Europe. it costs more, but we’re shifting production and our stuff’s easy. Like we’re probably like a special case because we’re basically selling pieces of fabric, right? Right. But I imagine for someone where, you know, only China can make their product, it’s tough. You can’t just shift production really quickly either. Well, that’s the thing that I think is so fascinating is that

08:18
It’s not like if, well, all of a sudden it becomes unaffordable or not, it’s cost prohibitive to import from Asia, right, because of the tariffs. It’s not like you can just throw up a factory in Wyoming, right? Like there’s all sorts of things that go into that. And the other thing that I think is in this, I don’t want to get political, but like, have you ever lived next to a factory? I have not. So I live next to a paper plant.

08:48
Um, it’s just, it’s everything smells. It’s disgusting. um, like there’s a lot of, like, I don’t think people really want to live next to some of these production facilities, right? Like a lot of them are dirty, you know, the, the environmental impact is huge and it’s not like you can just throw up a plant.

09:08
and then get it staffed, Like you’ve got to, people have to relocate. There’s just like a whole big, it’s not like this can be solved in like 30 days. This is like a one to two year like process if you want to start manufacturing something somewhere else. I mean minimum. Like I think the Tesla factory took three years, something like that, the one in Austin. Yeah. So it’s like, well, even if you’re like, fine, that’s fine. We’re going to manufacture, you’re going to manufacture your own linens, right?

09:38
Well, that doesn’t you can’t just like all of a sudden put up a factory in your backyard. You know, it’s it’s much more complex than that, which I think makes things even more complicated for people. Although you were able to move some of your suppliers or you moved to different areas. Right. Like how realistic is that for other people like for you textiles? There’s definitely I feel like a bigger. Yeah. I mean, every country does them. It’s just right.

10:05
to varying degrees and we don’t even do anything fancy. It’s not like we’re making clothing or dresses or, you I mean, it’s literally a piece of fabric with lace around it. Right. So for us, it’s easier. And the last time this happened, you know, we were like, okay, let’s just make sure we have alternative sources in case stuff goes down. So we’re okay. I think, I mean, you know, it’s going to hit our margins, right? But our margins are pretty high anyways, so we’ll just make less money. But you know,

10:35
Even if we were to pay the 125 or 40, whatever percent it is right now, it wouldn’t affect us that much because of margins. I’m just thinking about the people who have like 50 % margins or 60 % margins. Like essentially, if you double the cost of the good, then you’re not going to be profitable. Right. And so here’s the thing, like these tariffs just hit so sudden without warning.

11:05
that you can’t even prepare. You can’t all of sudden charge double for what you’re selling, right? Right. Yeah. And you didn’t have time to like. So we say sudden. mean, I do feel like Trump campaigned on tariff. So like I think you could argue that you knew it was coming. I think we’re talking about 60. Well, right. No, no, I’m not like saying that. But like even even if you knew in November, that’s not enough time to change anything. Right. Like you probably already have stuff in production.

11:34
You know, like I know the timelines that we had, it was 60 to 90 days from like deciding. So even if you want could pivot, you can’t pivot that quickly. Oh, yeah, for sure. You can’t. So where I see this being hugely problematic is that so for you, for some of my clients, if this was me back, you know, when I have my e-commerce store.

11:59
You have you already have a customer base, right? So you can kind of leverage the fact that you have a customer base to continue to stay in business. But if you’re trying to launch a business, right, and all of a sudden your margins get chopped, right? So you are already probably I think when we when you first start out, your margins probably aren’t as great as they can be because you’re new and you don’t know what you’re doing. And and then you have to pay advertising costs, right? Because there’s no way you can just start a business and not spend money to get customers. Right. So

12:29
You’re spending money on people. That’s not true anymore, actually. Well, people are just launching on TikTok and so right. Right. But TikTok, mean, TikTok’s not cheap. Like if you’re using affiliates and coupon codes and things like that. just mean organic. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But I don’t think that’s everybody. Yeah. I think you have to understand TikTok to be able to do that well. And so I’m like, how do you even get started in e-commerce today? Because.

12:58
I was thinking it’s easier now. It’s easier to start than it is to have already had something running and have this thrust upon you. Interesting. I think the opposite, but maybe I’m not thinking about Well, I’m giving a workshop this afternoon, right? Right. And every time I do these workshops, I find a new product. Right. So this time, instead of going to China, I just clicked on India and the US.

13:25
Because when you’re first starting out, you have the option to shift your production right away from the start. Yeah. Right? Whereas if you already have stuff and you’ve already worked with this vendor for years designing something, then you’re in trouble. So, oh yeah, yeah. Our vendors had mold, stuff like that. We weren’t going to switch. So if you’re brand new, I wouldn’t say it’s easier, but like you have options. It’s much more flexible. Yeah. It’s not like you’re locked in. That’s a good point. Yeah, didn’t. I wasn’t really. I was thinking about it just in the like hard cost to launch.

13:54
Because it’s not like these tariffs affect only one person. They affect everyone. Yeah. And it’s just a matter of time before they run out of that inventory. And then everyone’s going to have to jack up the price. So if you’re starting out now, you have more flexibility over vendors and the playing field’s level, essentially. Yeah, I can I can see that. So. If you were thinking about like, OK, I guess the next question is if you have an existing business.

14:22
How do you jack up your prices without sending your people into a complete frenzy, your customers? So what I’ve seen so far, and I’m not sure if, actually you probably have noticed, I’ve been getting a lot of emails from stores that have said, hey, the prices are going up, this is your last chance to buy. Yes, I’ve seen that. And whatnot. What can you do as an existing vendor? You just have to…

14:51
What we’re doing is we’re actually going to be increasing the prices just gradually. You know how you go to your favorite restaurant and you notice your portion sizes are smaller but the plate is getting bigger? Yes. It happens gradually, over a year or so, a couple of years. That’s how we’re going to do it. You’re doing the boil the frog technique? Yes. Slowly increasing There’s different schools of thought though. Some people will say just rip the bandaid off.

15:21
Yeah. But we have enough skews. Like we have like 600 skews or something like that at this point. Yeah. Where, you raise them kind of gradually in different categories. I don’t think people really notice. Interesting. So you’re doing a slow, slow roll. Slow roll across different categories. one thing I’ve noticed that the auto manufacturers are doing is they’re they’re actually dropping their prices. Have you seen this?

15:50
No, I didn’t see that. So robbing or maintaining? Well, it’s dropping in the marketing sense, right? So I know Ford recently rolled this out and Hyundai is doing something similar is they’re doing employee pricing. So basically they’re charging you the price that if you were a Ford employee, you would pay to buy a car from. OK, Hyundai is a special case because they manufacture their cars, I believe.

16:19
in the US, right? Yeah, I think in Kentucky or one of those places. Yeah. So of course they can afford to do that and that’s a good marketing strategy for them. Yeah. So it’s interesting because I think some like the card manufacturers are are trying to get creative, right? Like with oh, but like it’s interesting because I read an article about it and it was like, yes, Ford is giving employee pricing, but they’ve upped their interest rate. Right. So like they got rid of their

16:47
2 % finance, know, it’s like, they’re gonna make it up on the other end, you know, to some extent. So they’re not like truly just giving things away. And I noticed that Hyundai, like not only are they doing some like employee pricing type stuff, they’re giving like, if you buy one of their electric cars, you’re getting the free, they’re like during a free installation of the power pack, whatever that you need in your house.

17:12
So there, you know, I think some people are trying to capitalize, since everyone’s talking about how expensive things are going to be, I think some companies are trying to come in and like, oh no, look at us, we’re still gonna give you a good deal, right? So I think that’s another way people are doing it and they’re gonna make it up on the other side, right? Which if you’re a car manufacturer, you can do that because you tend to finance everybody.

17:35
Yeah, I know here because my sister-in-law just bought a car. I mean, they’re jacking up prices not on the sticker, but what the actual price is when you actually try to buy the car. Yes. So it’s like one price. then when you I yeah, it’s like an extra six thousand dollars of who knows what. Yes. Of some markup that they make up. But the MSRP stays the same. Yes. Yeah. Because Toyota manufactures a lot of their cars in Mexico, I believe. Mm

18:03
And Mexico, there’s a 90 day reprieve on the tariffs right now. Right. So it’s really just China really. And the textiles and. And I think there’s a reprieve on the electronics now, right, that Trump just imposed. Yes, which I find interesting. Can we talk about like all the TikToks? You mentioned you’re on like the. Yes, yes. So if you guys aren’t on TikTok and I know

18:32
a lot you guys listening probably aren’t on it. What Chinese manufacturers have been doing to fight back is they’ve been like talking about how all these luxury vendors like Ferragamo, Hermes, Gucci and all them do in fact manufacture all their bags or a large percentage of their bags in China, whether they’re sent to Europe afterwards to just get rebadged. And what they’re doing is they’re offering these links to buy these bags direct.

19:01
at like 10 % of the cost. and they’re actually so I’ve I fought I’m in luxury bag TikTok. I don’t own any luxury bags. Let’s be clear. Steve’s gonna make it sound like I do. You do you have a Kate Spade bag. That’s not no and Hermes bag is $35,000 and they don’t even let you buy it if you want it. You have to like get their good graces to purchase something. Do you consider Gucci or Coach a luxury bag? Coach I would not say Gucci.

19:31
probably is like on the border, right? So. Okay, Miss Toomey, do you consider Toomey a luxury bag? No, absolutely not. Wow. Oh my God. No. Okay, well go on. Anyway. I’ll let people in the comments like. Yeah, come at me. Come at me today. But what I think is interesting is that they especially so like Hermes, I feel like is the one that they’re really going after, which is so interesting because Hermes has like worked really hard to build this like. Yes.

20:02
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20:31
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20:42
absolute like gated brand, right? Like if you have the privilege to purchase an Hermes, right? Like it’s like a big deal. So they basically are showing like people stitching together these bags, right? And I mean, I don’t know if they’re Hermes bags or not, cause I’m not like an authenticator, but they look like the bags, right? They’re the same. And he’s like talking about the palladium hardware and he’s talking about the type of leather and he’s showing all the different things and they’re showing people stitching it. And you’re like,

21:12
Oh, yeah, those are those are made in China. Right. And then they’re obviously promoting the link to purchase the the fake. Right. The the dupe. But to me, it’s like it’s a great strategy. Right. Like if you can take down some luxury brands like there, it’s like going to send this. like a domino effect to me of like how

21:36
people are gonna start reacting to what’s going on. And they’re also doing it with furniture. Have you seen the furniture? Yes, I have seen the furniture one. Yeah. I actually think this is the dumbest strategy ever personally. Interesting. OK. And I’ll tell you why. Like, let’s say I am a business owner. Right. Yeah. And I make stuff over there. Like, let’s say I’m Hermes and I see China is doing all this stuff. I am never, ever going to give my business to China ever again. You say that, but where are you going? India.

22:07
It’s not like so India is probably poised to be the next China right now. Yeah, because they were the first to say, hey, you know, we’re not retaliating. Let’s negotiate. Yeah. And there’s other places to do this. I mean, it’s going to be painful. But like they basically just pissed off all the luxury brand manufacturers. Yes, they did. And they just pissed off anyone who’s even thinking about making anything in China now. Yeah. So I definitely was like, whoa, this is but to me, this feels like you cornered like the lion.

22:36
Right? like we, we made these decisions and China is like, you want to mess with us? Like we’re coming after like, they just want to blow everything up. Like figuratively speaking. Right? Sure. But I mean, it’s dumb in the long run. Yeah. I think overall it’s dumb. And I also dumb. I’ll let you finish. Well, no, I also wonder, who are these people making the content? Is it truly that because they’ll say, like, in my factory, I’m like, that’s not your factory. Right. Like, that’s not the factory owner.

23:07
having these conversations. So like who’s giving permission for this content to be put out there? Yeah, I don’t know. You know I mean? sanctioned by the government to a certain extent. Yeah, for sure. OK, so this is why I think it’s also dumb. And granted, like these fakes have been around for years. You go to China, like every street corner you can get them. Right. The people who are buying these Hermes bags, the Birkin bags, they’re not going to carry the fake. Right. Right. The whole point of it is status. Right.

23:36
And if you’re someone of status and you want to show it off, you’re not going to carry a fake. No. Right? So the people who are buying these cheap knockoff bags are people who probably wouldn’t buy the real thing anyway. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Right? So it doesn’t really technically hurt the big brand outside of causing this huge commotion that’s pissing off every person. Basically, they’re just telling the world that if you give us your IP, we’re just going to copy it and sell it for pennies on the dollar.

24:06
But also I feel like they’ve already been doing that. They have but not overtly, right? Right, yeah. I mean how many Asian brands, Chinese brands are on Amazon right now selling and undercutting? I mean that’s the whole strategy right now, right? Is they put 15 Chinese sellers on one product, right? And put the other person out of business. They’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s just now they’re flaunting it. Okay, so they’ve been doing it for a long time but through the Amazon channel,

24:34
where it’s like less overt. Now it’s all over social media. And now like you’re gonna think twice before ever using China as a manufacturer again, because they’re just gonna knock you off. Like it’s overt now, right? Whereas before if you’re selling on Amazon, you might not be aware that all this stuff is happening. And here’s the thing before also, like you could easily police this if you want. And China was pretty good. Like if you went through the measures of trademarking and-

25:02
Copywriting or whatever in China they could they would actually shut down the factory But it seems like they’re removing that restriction now, right? And so what large companies gonna want to manufacture in China with these risks ever again? Yeah, no, I think I think it’s Like to me it just feels so chaotic Right now and it’s like okay. We can’t stay in this level of chaos long term Can we I don’t think so, but maybe maybe we can maybe this is just like the new

25:32
the new world we live in, right? It’s just absolute chaos. And how are they getting away with this? Actually, so so they’re not using the Gucci or Louis Vuitton, right? But if you click on it, it’s the exact same like it’s like you’re buying a dupe in China, right? Yeah, yeah. How can they get away with this on TikTok shop? Why? It’s like blatant trademark and copyright violations that so I don’t know. Have you clicked on any of the links?

26:01
I have. Okay. I haven’t clicked on links because I was like, I don’t know. So it’s being sold directly through TikTok shop. Yes. Okay. So some of the ones that I have seen have not been so the I’m not in that side of TikTok. I’m in the side where it’s like click on our like bio and there’s a QR code and the QR code takes you somewhere else. Like it takes you off of TikTok. So that’s what I’ve been seeing. And they’re like, don’t

26:27
Don’t DM us because we get so many messages. Make sure you just use the QR code to go. So they’re not doing it directly on TikTok, the ones that are primarily in my feed, which makes more sense to me. I can’t believe they can get away with that on TikTok Shop. This is just an aside, but if you’re on TikTok, how do you scan a QR code? I know. They were like, screenshot it and do this. And I was like, what? It’s too much for me. Yeah. But yes, on TikTok Shop.

26:57
Okay, that’s blatant. that to me, that feels like it will be taken down sooner rather than later. I mean, it’s already been, you know, three, a week, pretty much. Yeah. I usually it doesn’t take this long to take things down. And it tick tocks a Chinese owned company. Right. So maybe they’re not allowed to have to talk in China. They have to use a VPN to get on it. No, no, no, no, no. I’m saying like it’s still controlled by. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. So maybe they’re just a little lax on taking it down.

27:27
Yeah, I could see that. Like, oh, what? I didn’t see anything. No, we’re on it. We’re on it. We’re researching. So who knows where this is going to go? I mean, I just know there’s a lot of colleagues who have shipments or they need the shipments and they need the inventory. Yeah. Right. So what do you do right now? I don’t think we can last that long. I certainly don’t think that China can last that long either. Yeah. So I don’t know what’s going to happen.

27:57
Is there any benefit as a seller to just laying low right now, waiting it out, not really doing anything? Is that like a safer bet or is that more of a risky, like you need to start having another plan and taking action right now? Okay, so I mean, I can tell you what we’re doing, but I mean, I can’t speak for other people. Here’s the thing, like there’s no visibility on what’s gonna happen in the future. Right.

28:24
And when there’s no visibility, you can’t really plan for it. So let’s say you shift all your production to India, for example. Right. Well, let’s say the trade talks with India fall apart. I don’t think they’re going to, but let’s say they do fall apart. Trump issues 125 % tariffs on India. All that work that you just did. Right. Could be potentially undone. Yeah. Right. And for us, like for a small vendor, it’s not as big of a deal. Right. But for someone like Nike, let’s say.

28:50
or Louis Vuitton and they’re investing in factories in these other countries like they all did in Mexico, like they all did in Vietnam actually. Vietnam was the largest investment that Chinese factories have made. And now Vietnam has like a 40, I can’t remember the numbers, it’s like 46%, which instantly obliterates their investments there. Yeah. So how do you plan? In order for things to go back to normal, Trump has to

29:19
gives some sort of roadmap, right? Okay, the tariffs are set. This is a long-term thing. Not this like, oh, you get a 90-day reprieve off the tariffs, because you have no idea what’s gonna happen in 90 days, right? You’re not gonna switch vendors every 90 days. Yeah, that’s really not even possible. This is my fear, and this is just my own personal, like this is not based off anything. My fear is that companies like Nike, big manufacturers, right?

29:48
we don’t compete with in any way, right? They’ll find the loopholes, the tax breaks, the incentives, right? Like there will be provisions made for them to like be able to stay in business, but it’s the little stores, right? It’s the million to $5 million stores that are gonna get just crushed because they don’t have the cash reserves, right? Like they don’t have…

30:15
They don’t have the ability to one get like the breaks maybe that will be given to other companies or they just don’t have the, you know, customer base and the to withstand it. I actually feel the complete opposite way. Interesting. OK. And the reason why is like you’re as a small business owner, like I’m agile, like I got like very few expenses. Yeah. Right. Whereas if you’re a large company like Nike, you got to make factories. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

30:45
huge capital outlay and all that. So it’s a huge risk. So when you’re agile, and you can make these changes, it’s to me, it’s not as big of a deal. And all those breaks that you’re talking about, I actually have a video coming out, actually, I’m doing office hours today, and all the ways to avoid tariffs. Yeah. And they’re available to everyone. It’s not like if you’re a large company, you know, right, you can take advantage of these and the small companies can’t.

31:12
It’s just like the larger guys have more resources to do some of these things. Right. That I’m talking about, but it’s available for everyone. You can’t like discriminate based on size. Well, you can possibly discriminate on is by industry. like right now, semiconductors and electronics have gotten. But something’s going to have to be done about textiles for some of the larger factories. Yeah. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it will trickle down to stuff that we do. Right. Whatever happens. Yeah. I think.

31:41
I know that you guys are agile like Bumblebee, but I think that not all, not that you’re a small brand, but smaller brands, know, not a lot of them are already strapped and tight. You know what I mean? Like you have a business model that is actually has a lot of cushion in there. But some people don’t, some people don’t have that level of margin to work with, to be as flexible. I guess what I’m trying to say is,

32:09
We’re not making like huge capital investments on machinery and people and infrastructure. Right? If a product doesn’t work, we just don’t make it or we stop selling it and move on to something else. We’re a different vendor. So I think the larger companies have a lot more at stake here. No, for sure. Right. Then the little guys. You know, it’s so funny. So this workshop that I’m giving this afternoon, like

32:39
I’ve changed a lot of the content. So before it was an example, how to source from China. Now the examples are a comparison of sourcing from China versus the US versus India. And so I chose a product and I’m running the numbers for all of them. And what’s funny about it is that even with the tariffs, China is still cheaper than the US by a factor of two. Oh, yeah, I believe it. Right.

33:08
And India, it just kind of depends because you can’t find like the exact same thing in India. You’re probably gonna have to do some talking. Like you can get a base price, but it just ends up being slightly cheaper with the current tariff. And I see how this lecture plays out, but it’s just interesting because there’s options for us. Yeah. And that’s why I think that the U S is in a better position.

33:36
because we have the option of sourcing from different places. Whereas if you’re a Chinese factory that’s dependent on US demand, and all of sudden that demand goes away, you can’t manufacture that. You can’t go to other countries and say, hey, can you buy my 100,000 lightsabers? Because the US isn’t buying them anymore. And the US buys so much junk compared to other countries. Yes.

34:02
I don’t think there’s any other place like the US is willing to buy all this junk. That this is my system. No, I totally agree. Like it’s just there’s a lot of stuff. Right. Yeah. So it sounds like you’re pretty like you think this is a great time for people to get into e-commerce. No, no, no, no, no. I’m not saying that for sure. You’re like, no, I’m not saying that for sure. And I’m saying that it doesn’t affect. It’s not as negative as

34:32
as you think. And if you’re starting from scratch, you actually have options because you, you know, you don’t have any ties to any existing factories. In terms of like the best time to start. Here’s how I see it also. AI is replacing jobs right now. I mean, you should see the Silicon Valley. Like, I’ve been chatting with coworkers, they’re not hiring new engineers anymore. Yeah. And a lot of these companies, and I’ll use the example here.

35:01
There’s people in different countries like the Philippines or where the labor is cheaper operating robots in the US remotely. Right. And there’s this whole wave of robots or AI that’s building all our stuff already. Yeah. Right. So the way I see it, like no one’s job is safe. Yeah. Like you to think that if you’re an engineer or whatnot, your job was safe. Right. Because you’re one of very few people that can do

35:31
to do these things. I honestly think thanks to AI, nothing is safe. it doesn’t have to be e-commerce, but you have to be doing something on the side just in case. Because this is only going to get worse. Just wait till Tesla releases their fleet of self-driving cars. And this is already happening across in Waymo, right? Waymo is in all these major cities now. It’s going to Japan, and that’s going to replace all of the Ubers. Right?

35:59
All the Ubers and lifts, Uber eats, maybe DoorDash at some point. So if that gig economy is gone, what are you going to do now? You got to have something on the side. Doesn’t have to be e-commerce. It’s got to be something. I don’t know. How do you feel about that? No, I agree with you. I think I was working on office hours yesterday and I was I was just using AI to I want to talk about lead magnets, right? Because I think that’s

36:28
I think now more than ever, you need to try to be building an audience, right? Getting people on a list so that you can talk to them, even if you don’t quite know what you want to do yet, right? Like just getting the right demographic on a list. So I was like, you know, I wonder how far I can use AI with a lead magnet, right? Like, I’m like, that’s kind of been my little hobby lately is like, what can AI do that that I didn’t think it could do, right? Or like, how far can I take this? So.

36:55
It basically built the entire lead magnet for me, but then not only that, it told me how to implement it and what tools I needed, and then it showed me how to set it up in ConvertKit or Kit, right? Like it basically, I mean, we’re not too far away from it literally doing the whole thing, like where I don’t have to be a part of it at all, right? So when I started playing around with that yesterday, I was like, this is really fascinating because the deeper I get into it, the more I realized that like,

37:22
I think you and I were talking about how graphic designers are going to be obsolete, right? And first I was like, I don’t know, like totally. But the more I like dig in, Canvas about to release some crazy things next week. Like the more I see this stuff, I think, you know, it’s amazing what we’re going to be able to do with with not a lot of people. Right. We without the level of expertise that you thought was like absolutely required in the past. Photographers, graphic designers, writers.

37:52
Yeah. Photographers, models. Yeah. I mean, H &M is already using AI models to model their clothes. I mean, so where does it stop? I mean, these are already thousands of jobs, if not millions of jobs being displaced. Yeah. Already, right? So what is there left? You got to start something on your own. And granted, like the best people, like we mentioned in the last episode, they’re always going to have jobs, right? Yeah. Best people are going to But what about the remaining 80 %? Yeah. Or the remaining 90 %?

38:20
You need to have some sort of income on the side. Again, it doesn’t have to be e-commerce. I don’t think this environment is that great period because there’s just so much uncertainty. Like you need predictability to do stuff, right? Yeah. But that’s the way I feel right now. And I think like since we were talking about e-commerce for most of this episode, it’s not as dire as you think because when you’re first starting out, you have flexibility. It’s mainly the people who are more entrenched.

38:48
who are going to have these, who are seeing all these problems right now.

39:17
go to SellersSummit.com and if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to MyWifeQuitherJob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

18:44
Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, Tony and I dive into the latest AI image generation announcements from OpenAI and Google and how they are completely disrupting marketing agencies, graphic design, and e-commerce overall. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over at sellersummit.com and the prices are now going to go up every two weeks until the event starts. The Seller Summit,

00:29
is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level advice, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet.

00:59
I personally hate large events, so the Seller’s Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past 8 years. If you are an ecommerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller’s Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th.

01:28
Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

01:42
Welcome back to the My Wife, Quit or Job podcast. Today we’re talking about AI and specifically the latest releases that just happened with OpenAI and ChachiBT 4.0. I personally think it’s going to disrupt a lot of industries and I’m both excited and scared at the same time. Well, you’re not in the industry, so why be scared? Well, okay. So the reason why I’m excited is because

02:11
Now, as a business, I can greatly lower my budget for graphic design and that sort of thing. On the other hand, I have friends that do graphic design for a living, so that’s why I’m scared. I would like to just talk about this before we talk about all the ways that you’re using it. We were just chatting before we started recording and I said that I haven’t had this much luck and you told me it was user error.

02:38
I was looking at your prompts. There’s five words, right? Well, I had much more prompts before that. Okay. With the new AI tools with image generation, people are saying that this is going to put graphic designers out of business. But if you’re not a graphic designer, part of me feels like some of… If you’re a good graphic designer, one thing you bring to the table is the ability to convey emotion in your…

03:08
designs, right, to evoke feelings from people. And I’m just not sure that AI is, if you don’t have the ability as the importer, then I don’t know if AI is gonna give it back to you. Well, okay, so let’s just take a typical use case here. Let’s say you see a Facebook ad from the Facebook ads library that you really like. You would upload that to ChatGBT and say, hey, I want you to use this style with this product.

03:37
And then here are the value props, here are the whatever. I’ve been featured in these magazines, just put out something in this style and it will do it. And it does a pretty good job. So that’s how I’ve been using it. Yeah. And what’s nice is it literally, so we’ve been featured in Brides magazine, Martha Stewart weddings and real simple. I said, that was one of the things I wanted to insert in the ad. So it actually went out and grabbed those logos and put them on the ad. And then, know how

04:07
I’m not a graphic designer, obviously, but you know how graphic designers, know, they use different size fonts and whatever to make it look good. Yeah. ChachiBD did the same thing. And it looks just like the style of that other ad. Yeah. Except it was for my product. Now I did have to tweak a couple of things because like some of the text value props that I gave it were a little too long. So they were just kind of off center and like the call to action button wasn’t the color that I wanted. And you can iterate. Right. The problem right now is.

04:36
is because it just kind of got released, everyone’s using it right now. So unfortunately right now it literally takes like five minutes an image, which tries my patience right now. feel like it took even longer when I was working through stuff. But so let’s just say you get this graphic and there’s some text that needs to be shifting, there’s updates. Like what is the format of the graphic that, because all I did was go through it in ChatGPT. Like what if you want to make edits, then how do you do that?

05:03
I mean, the easiest way right now is to tell chat GBT to just edit it. Yeah. Right. But I didn’t have the patience for that right now. So I just threw it in the Photoshop and adjusted the things manually. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, right now it’s slow because everyone’s using it. But once all the server, remember when chat GBT was like super slow when it first came out? Yes. It gets better. They’ll add servers and whatnot. And if it gets as fast as mid journey, like mid journey is like 30 seconds. Once it gets to that point,

05:32
I don’t think this is going to be a problem just giving additional prompts to get what you want. Also, Google Flash 2.0 is super fast. You can just take that Chat GPT ad, move it into Google now and say, want the model to be crying or I want the model to be smiling. And it’ll update that in like 30 seconds. I guess I feel like this is really good if you know what you want.

06:03
Yeah, I mean, isn’t everything in life better when you know what you want? Well, here’s the thing. I feel like a lot of people, and I see this a lot with e-commerce and a profitable audience, is that a lot of times people don’t really have a firm grasp of what they want. They have this very abstract level idea. That’s where I think the art-based people can help take very…

06:31
abstract concepts and make them come to life. So I feel like this is as good as the person using it, right? If you’re, I don’t think there’s any like, if you, I think if you’re not great at this, then you’re not going to get the results you want. I agree with that. But on the flip side, you can ask ChachiBT, give me some examples of great ad campaigns over the years for this type of product. And it’ll show you

06:59
Of course, if you’re going into this with no research and nothing, yeah, you’re gonna get crap in, crap out, right? But it’s really easy to find good examples of good ads, for example, that you can emulate. let’s say you have Canva, like even the free version of Canva, you can do a search for e-commerce templates, right? And then just feed those into ChatGPT and have it do all the work. Yeah. So I guess my concern

07:28
I think if you’re a good graphic designer, you’re fine. I agree. If you’re a mediocre, if you’re doing this on the side, you’re probably in trouble. I guess the one issue that I’ve noticed recently is my client started a YouTube channel, they’re using Claude specifically to basically turn blog content into scripts. The content’s pretty much already existing. It’s turning out some pretty good stuff for the most part. The other day, she

07:58
put in some content and she asked for a statistic. She was making a video on how to teach your kids to read. And because she’s coming out, the company is coming out with a reading curriculum and she asked for a hook and it was like the back and forth that people do. And Claude said, the hook was something like 80 % of parents are frustrated teaching their kids to read. And so she said, wow, that’s so interesting. Where did you get that statistic?

08:27
And Claude said, you caught me. I made it up. Well, that’s well known, Tony. You can’t trust any stat that comes out of course. But that’s that’s where I feel like I feel like how often is AI going to deceive you? Like, oh, these colors look good together when they don’t look good together. Like if you don’t have an eye for things, I feel like AI will get away with a lot of stuff, just like if she would have just taken that statistic as like, oh, 80 percent of parents, you know.

08:55
I mean, that was the wrong approach. If she wanted real statistics, she would have used a different version that actually does the deep research on it. Well, she didn’t ask for a statistic. It came up with it in the hook. This was part of the hook. Then she was like, huh, this seems high because she has the knowledge of this. If you don’t have any knowledge, I feel like you can be led astray pretty quickly. This is why I think the industry is in trouble. Sure, there’s people who are

09:25
ignorant, you know, who don’t know anything. Of course, there’s always going to be business for them. Right. But who employs most of these graphic designers that make a living doing this? It’s large corporations or bigger businesses who do know what they’re doing because they’re already making money to a certain extent. Right. Yeah. And I mean, this is just the beginning. mean, it’s going to take time for this to happen, and it’s only going to get better. Yeah. Like I just take mid journey, for example, like

09:53
When that first came out, I signed up and then I canceled because it was okay, but it was just kind of fun, a fun tool. Now I’m paying for it every month because it actually, up until the chat GPT came out, I thought mid-journey was the best and it’s, still is the best for certain applications. And again, of course you have to take the time to learn how to use these tools. And so I guess, yeah, from your perspective, if someone’s not willing to learn how to do this correctly, then of course.

10:22
you can pay someone and there’s always going to be people like that. I also feel like one of the things that I dislike about AI is I feel like it flooded the market with people who don’t really know anything but are using AI to create content, make videos, whatever. A lot of the information is wrong, misleading. I feel like the better AI gets, the more fake people we get trying to do these things, which I think

10:51
We heard, I don’t remember who told us this, we were at a conference a couple years ago and they were talking about understanding how to use AI as like the next skill, right? Being able to put in the right prompts, being able to talk to it correctly. And when I heard that, I was like, yeah, that makes total sense, right? But then over the past couple of years, especially when we do webinars or we’re talking about AI use cases,

11:17
And we share prompts like I shared a prompt at my talk last week. You share prompts and webinars. People are like, give me the prompt. Give me the prompt. Like people are like dying for that information. They want they want to learn how to do this better, because usually, like you said, garbage in garbage out. If you’re not putting the right prompts in, you’re probably not getting the best information. Yeah, I mean, that’s correct.

11:43
You know what I started doing now is once I get ChatGPT in a good place with what I wanted to do, I say, hey, take this conversation and then turn it into a prompt that I can ask you from now on. So I have to go through all this again. That’s smart though. And it works to a certain extent. Yeah. Here’s my long-term worry for all this. So

12:10
There was a friend who posted something on Facebook recently where they said that they just laid off 95 % of their engineering team because of AI. Really? So what’s going to happen going forward with artists and everything is as soon as you see there’s no jobs and no work in this field, less people are going to go into it. And at that point, know, chat, GBT and AI, it’s just derivative works.

12:40
off of what if humans have done. And if humans aren’t doing anything new and novel anymore, at some point it’s gonna get stagnant. It’s gonna take years to get to that point, but I think it’s just gonna pendulum back and forth.

12:52
Right? Like it’s going to get to this point where chat GPT or AI doesn’t know anything new because no one’s putting out any content on the blog anymore. Right? Right. And then at this point, every human who’s creating new stuff, they’re not going to want AI crawling their stuff. So they’re going to create these silos now of data where they charge AI for it. And this pendulum is just going to kind of swing back and forth. We’re right now on this disruption phase. Right. And it’ll probably take, I don’t know.

13:20
years for to get to that point. I don’t know, I’m already very frustrated to be honest with you on TikTok and YouTube. Like whenever I get a piece of AI video, I just stop watching. Like I can’t stand it. What type of AI content are you seeing on TikTok and YouTube? It’s mostly sports for me. Okay, yeah. But every now and then I get a like a personal development one. You know what saying?

13:49
I don’t get those, but tell me more. Maybe it’s because that’s my niche and I browse competitors and whatnot. It’s basically teaching you how to, if you’re stuck in a rut or whatnot, the mindset you have to get. I’m not going to watch an AI video for that. Although there are YouTube channels like Motiversity where they have millions of subs and it is all AI generated. Who am I to know what works in that department? My question would be,

14:19
For personal development, once again, it’s sort of the pendulum, right? The AI can have the information right now because there’s millions of pieces of information on personal development on the web. But in 10 years, where is that information going to be?

14:36
I mean, to be honest with you, think personal development information was way saturated like 10 years ago, right? I mean, it’s the same stuff. I feel like there’s new stuff. There’s new stuff, but I watch personal development stuff based on the person who’s giving it because that person needs credibility. Correct. Right? And so if I see a robot or an AI person doing it, it means nothing to me. I would never take personal development.

15:04
from a robot other than you. You’re the only robot I take personal development. Because it’s just some kid probably. Correct. Just a script kitty. Yep. Pumping all this stuff out. Yeah. Yeah. So one thing that I’m glad about and this is, so I go back and forth, right? Because I don’t want to put people out of jobs. Obviously, I have a lot of friends who are graphic designers too.

15:33
Also, I feel like there’s a lot of jobs being done that are so useless. For example, we ran a giveaway and in the giveaway, one of the entries was like, what content do you want to see on YouTube? What content do want me to create? We got over thousand entries. Whoever set up the contest, wasn’t me, decided not to make that a multiple choice, but rather a fill in the blank, which is great until you have to parse the data. Then it’s like,

16:03
You could have 15 of the exact same answer, because it’s nuanced in a sentence, it’s not like, you know, coming together. So the company paid somebody like, I don’t know, 25 bucks, 30 bucks an hour to like organize this data for several hours. And I was like, you did what? Like what? And then they didn’t really organize it in the correct way. It was like this whole big mess, right? Waste of money.

16:24
I took the spreadsheet, uploaded it to ChatGBT and I was like, organize this by category and frequency, right? So like how many times you had the word high school or whatever. And then like ChatGBT gave me like draft one. And then I was like, okay, now organ, like then I kept parsing it down realizing like, okay, let’s look for these keywords and these keywords. And within 10 minutes, I had, you know, a thousand pieces of information organized pretty well. Like I think it could probably be a little bit better.

16:52
I spent 10 minutes doing this with not- I didn’t really know how to do it. I’d never done this before. I’d never asked for a spreadsheet organization from Chagy Pt. versus the three and a half hours someone else did it where they didn’t even really organize it in the right way. I think those types of uses to me are really exciting because that’s just busy work. That’s not skilled labor, I guess. In my first job out of college,

17:22
I was doing board design and there was one lady, her only job was to take a data sheet for like a chip, draw a picture of it so someone could place it in a schematic tool. That was her job. And it was something that anyone could have done or like any software program, like if they just took the time to write it, could have done so.

17:51
You’re right. mean, there’s lots of stuff like that. And I guess I’m not worried for the graphic designers and artists who are the best in their field. There’s always room for people who are the best in their field. Same with engineering and whatnot. But I mean, the vast majority, like 80%, are not the top, right?

18:13
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

18:42
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.

18:53
I would say the people who are in trouble are the people who learned Canva. They weren’t actually trained graphic designers. They’re self-taught. They’re definitely creative. They have an eye for design, but they rely on tools to implement ideas. when you work with a true graphic designer creative director, they’re going to do a lot more for you than just put together an image. They’re going to talk about

19:21
For example, with product photos. You have regular product photos, which I feel like AI can probably assist with pretty well. Then you have lifestyle type photos where it’s like, what do you really need and want in these photos that will sell the product? That’s right. What pages do you pick out of a book to show? You know how you can look inside or see that? Those types of things, feel like will still be important for humans to have a component in.

19:50
Yeah, I mean, again, you can take something that you like and I’ve done this experiment, not with images, but with words. I’ll have something and I’ll say, hey, using cash for tisings life force eight principle, you know, give me some tag lines, like tell me which life force eight to use and then just give me some really catchy hooks for this product. Yeah. And does a really good job. So presumably, you know, with photography also, you could take something you like and it’s really easy now to just

20:19
put your product in there instead of the one that’s being displayed in the advertisement. And again, it does take creativity to get that initial idea. once those ideas dry up, meaning you just can’t find them on the public domain, it’ll be harder to do. So I’m curious as to when you say, show me the top performing ads or whatever, where is AI getting that data? Yeah. So right now, actually, it’s

20:49
It’s from the web. Okay. Right? So it’ll do web searches and whatnot. And if that once that dries up, that prompt won’t work anymore. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s what I feel like. I feel like that’s it. And the other thing is if this is why we’re like all of our blogging friends have quit blogging, basically. Yeah. I mean, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much. And it’s like.

21:16
That’s where the information comes from. So if the information is now just regurgitated old information and then regurgitated information, at some point, the information sort of becomes useless. Yeah, actually, I read some article recently that the next version of ChatGPT, which I guess is five, there’s not enough info. It’s already crawled all the information. Yeah. And it’s actually at the point now where it’s crawling regurgitated information.

21:46
which actually has a negative effect on the quality of the LLM. maybe we’re already at that point. Like who’s publishing, like the whole blogosphere, like the people who just blog for a living, that’s pretty much dead. And so where are people getting information from now? Who’s still putting out information, like the big mainstream publications at this point? Because those are the only ones that can rank in Google search.

22:15
But think about what happens when Google goes away. Like Google starts already dying. I can’t remember the exact stat. You’ll have to look it up after the fact. But the amount of people starting their searches with ChatGPD now is really high. I mean, it’s just gaining ground at an exponential rate. And I remember this happening back in the day when I was in college when Google overtook Yahoo in what seemed like just a year. And the same thing’s happening. Yeah.

22:45
I don’t know. I feel like we’re like old people now. This is probably how our great grandparents felt when the car was invented. Think about it. One day there’s one car on the street and everyone else is still on the horse. Then two years later, everybody has a car. Then it’s like, how do you adapt to life with cars when your roads are built for horses? You have all these new problems that come up because

23:15
the technology change so quickly, right? And ever since that point in our history, the changes have been quicker and quicker and quicker. Like it’s hard for me to believe that like I went to all of school until college without the internet.

23:33
That’s true. I didn’t. You’re not that much older than me. When I was in 11th grade, think it was like… The internet existed, but not for regular people with… The people who had computers in their home were people like your family. I remember my dad got the first computer. I was probably 16. Wow. Okay.

24:02
We didn’t have the ability to Google stuff for school or- Yes, was Yahoo back then and Excite and Lycos. I am like, we had to go to the library. Then you had to look stuff up on Microfish or whatever. You think about, we’re old, but we’re not so old. My kids, they’ve been to libraries, but they have no concept of what it’s like to have to get a book to do a paper.

24:32
Yeah, I know. You know what I mean? And like, go pull old magazines or publications. It’s like, no, you just open your like not even a computer. You open your handheld phone like your tiny little technology piece like that. It’s great. So you think about like that progression to now this. It’s just getting faster and faster and faster. I mean, this is the last skilled generation. Just think of how many students are. I feel like my writing skills have gotten worse because of chat to be because now it’s just so easy.

25:02
for me to just spit out garbage, like just dump my brain onto this thing and have it make it sound better, right? It’s- Yeah, so then are we gonna get dumber? Like seriously. Even coding actually, I’m not getting any, I’m getting worse at coding probably because now I can just tell it what I want. I know conceptually what I want in the, but then I’m having AI do most of heavy lifting. Yeah. Although I have noticed, so I, know, I spoke at that event last week and there were some great talks, great speakers.

25:32
Every single one of used AI for their talk title because you could see the same words throughout all that. If it’s like you say, I’m speaking at an event that’s for people who have pets and they’re influencers and they showcase their pets, you put all that information in there, it’s spitting out very similar. Obviously, the talk titles are different based on what they’re talking about, but it’s like the adjectives and adverbs and things like that that AI uses is

26:00
Like, okay, if you’re talking about pets, you use these six words. If you’re talking about this, use these six words, right? So we were looking at the schedule in the speaker lounge laughing that like everybody had to have put their talk title through chat GPT because they were also similar. Yeah. All right. Should we shift gears now that we’ve established that we’re old? You’re getting older too. I know. So how are people using this right now?

26:25
I’ve actually fundamentally shifted my class now. Like there’s an AI section in there. And I don’t think that any new shop owner really needs to pay for photography at all. Really? Because you can take a photo on your phone, and let’s say it doesn’t look that good. You can just have AI touch it up, put it in different environments and whatnot. If you sell apparel, you can just literally have a model wear that apparel, right?

26:53
And if sometimes AI screws that up, so if you want something more robust, you can pay for a tool that’s super cheap where you take a picture of yourself in the pose or whatever that you want with your product. And you can tell these new tools, like you can mask out, you know, what your product is, and it just changes everything else around it. Like you can replace yourself with a supermodel. Right. And then you can animate a photo for an ad.

27:22
You just upload the photo, tell it what you want to do, and it does a scarily good job. Now, you talked about this in Office Hours a couple weeks ago. What’s the tool that you’re using for this? Kling. Kling, okay. It was impressive when your examples were very impressive. Yes. That was in a different environment too. That was like a cartoon that I animated, I think, for Office Hours. Yes, but just in general. But for real humans, it’s-

27:51
does an amazing job, kind of scarily so. I animated an old family photo just for fun, just for fun. And my dad who passed away a while back, it animated him and I was freaking out. Yeah, have you seen those things on TikTok where they animate people that have already passed away? I’m not on that TikTok, but.

28:17
I don’t know how I got on it, but like it’s basically all like people like famous people, actors and stuff like that. But like, know, Robin Williams and Chadwick Boseman and people who like, uh, John Belushi, like all those, like they show them like as an age progression to how the old they would be today if they were still alive. Um, it’s, it’s kind of scary. Yeah. Yeah. So you don’t have to take photos.

28:45
provided you’re willing to go through the headaches of using AI right now, which it’s not that bad. I mean, it takes a while to get an image you exactly want. But you don’t need to hire models. So maybe like the whole modeling industry is going to decline also. H &M just recently announced that they’re going to be using AI models. It’s a big press release, I think like a week ago or two weeks ago. So I mean, it’s already happening. H &M is a pretty big company, right?

29:14
in the apparel space.

29:17
So that can’t be good for society. Right. It might be good for the models. Maybe they’ll start eating now. They don’t have to be 82 pounds. then product descriptions, everything. I you can already there’s this tool that I just recently came across that I haven’t gotten a chance to try yet, but I looked at the demos. If you see a website, you can literally use it to clone it.

29:48
Every single page, everything. Like it’ll crawl the page of the website and it’ll give you the code. So you can just literally clone that exact website on your server. I hate AI sometimes. So where’s the innovation? Well, no, that’s what I’m saying. Like right now it’s all freely available on the web, right? You, you clone someone’s web. Like if you like a cool feature, you can just clone that feature.

30:14
Yes, and I think that’s great. I think it will give another level of the playing field thing, just like I felt like the internet leveled the playing field for people. Then video content leveled the playing field. For musicians, all these people putting their content out on YouTube or on TikTok or whatever and getting discovered and being able to make a living as an artist through not having to go through traditional record label type thing.

30:45
But also, I think about the people that I’ve admired or followed, it’s usually because they’ve kind of been innovative in the space. They’ve come up with something very different or unique. Their value proposition is different than everybody else’s, which is why I like them. Kind of like your book, right? In the entrepreneur world, the message is almost always hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, right? Work your 90-hour weeks. And then you came out with a book that was like, hey, you don’t really have to be that way.

31:14
Put your family first, you can have a balanced life, it is possible. So it’s like, are we losing all the innovation because everyone’s just like, oh, I like that site, me, like no one’s gonna be different anymore. Everyone’s just gonna be versions of something else. Yeah, I mean, that’s the phase we’re in right now until all that dries up. It’s annoying. Well, once that all dries up and everything else is the same, then people will be encouraged to innovate again and they’re gonna lock that stuff behind a paywall, right?

31:43
because what’s the incentive of doing it? Like right now, I actually haven’t been putting out blog posts because what’s funny is, what’s been happening with my blog is I’ll put out a blog post, which is a derivative of a script that I hand wrote on YouTube. And it’s actually, I think it’s had a detrimental effect on my blog. Really? Yeah, like I haven’t kept up with all the Google updates lately, but maybe that’s just an artifact of just everything declining in the Google space in general.

32:13
I see no reason to do that now. If for some reason there was a way for me to get compensated for it or if it led to traffic, I might do it again, but definitely not if AI is just going to steal it and I’m not going to get anything out of it. That’s what’s going to happen here. I think that’s what’s going to happen with people that are still putting out content. That’s going to decline.

32:43
I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get to that point, but I would imagine at least a few years for that to happen. Before the world ends, before we go into absolute decline, you shared some ways that you’re using AI to streamline, make your business more efficient. I think the photo thing is actually really interesting. I’ll be curious to see how that all rolls out.

33:11
I truly think some people are terrible photographers. I don’t know. Maybe AI can fix the worst of the worst. I agree. I absolutely agree. Even if you take a bad shot, you can have AI change the shot. One of the ideas that I like, which obviously this puts people out of business, is the illustration side only because I work

33:38
with a company that does tons of illustrations and it’s not just a price issue, Like illustrators are expensive, they are hand drawing things. I mean, I don’t have that skill, I can’t draw anything. But the bigger issue that we bump into all the time is time, right? It takes them a ridiculous amount of hours to draw this content. So it’s like, well, if that could speed up production, right, by probably months.

34:05
I mean, that’s a huge advantage in a business, right? Not just financially, but like on the timeline for product development. That’s huge. Yeah. I mean, no question, if you’re a business owner, this is a huge benefit. Yeah. I mean, I’m actually looking forward to robots. And I know I shouldn’t be, but in the back of my mind, I’m thinking how cool would it be for us to be able to fulfill and ship orders without the robot on the weekends without having us.

34:33
having to be there or do anything. When I worked with Valpak years ago, they have a state-of-the-art facility around Tampa, Florida. Basically, it’s almost entirely run by robots. I think there’s maybe one or two people on the floor where they’re printing, stuffing, envelopes. There’s these little robot things that go all around and they’ve got the magnet tracks or whatever. It’s pretty impressive.

35:04
what they’re doing and I’m sure like obviously cost savings and things like that are huge, but also did put a bunch of people out of work as well. You would think that with robots that you have less margin for error, right? There’s probably a much greater chance that a human is going to mess up an order fulfillment over a robot. Here’s where I feel like

35:31
then it goes full circle, right? So like a robot’s probably not gonna make a mistake that a human’s gonna make, but you’re still dealing with humans on the first side of this, right? So like the people that put their zip code in wrong to their order or something, like something that a human might catch the error, because it’s like very gross, a grossly obvious error, but then a robot would probably just process something through without catching it. So it’s like you kind of go back and forth, right? Because at some point, whenever the human’s involved, the error rate is gonna go up significantly. So even if they’re the customer.

36:02
Yeah, but then the robot will learn. There was a recent report that came out, I think Waymo put it out, that said the likelihood of an accident is significantly lower. It was something like 80 % lower when the robot is driving the car versus the human. Well, yeah, because they’re not on their phone. I think Waymo has millions of miles at this point. I can’t remember what the exact numbers were. I just saw the article in passing. But yeah, I mean, it does a better job.

36:31
than humans. Have you been in one of those cars yet? I were in Vegas. The reason why I haven’t, maybe I’ll do so because it started out in SF, but it’s more expensive right now than to get a regular Uber. Oh, is it? Yes. It makes sense. Which is why I haven’t done it yet. I’ve just had a cheapness.

36:54
I still am little afraid to do that, but I don’t know. It’s probably safer than driving with my kids. What else is on the line for disruption? Engineers, like my fellow engineers here, are hurting. I’m glad I got out of that industry to a certain extent because the number of CS majors has not declined coming out of universities.

37:22
but the amount of jobs has greatly declined. Which means that a lot of these people are gonna be looking for jobs that just aren’t there. But on the flip side, a lot of the innovation is coming from these engineers as well. if there’s no jobs, people aren’t gonna become engineers and then who’s gonna advance the AI industry later on? So how are you, since you actually…

37:48
You’re a good case study for this, right? Because you guys create designs at Bumblebee, right? So are you using AI to brainstorm ideas? I know you’re banking on it’s National Donut Day and all that kind of stuff, how is AI doing for that side, the creation side of it? Yeah, so right now I’m not using it for products. I’m mainly using it for social media ideas.

38:16
And one thing that I’ve been using AI for is so one thing that we have on the horizon is we’re to be publishing stories, you know, of the people who actually embroider the handkerchiefs, since it’s always for some special occasion. Right. So I’ve gone through and we have like 17 years of database data of people personalizing handkerchiefs. So I took that database and I just fed it in chat, GVT. And then I had it highlight ones that are just kind of out of the ordinary. Yeah.

38:44
So anyone who’s written something that’s kind of funky or whatnot, like there’s a story behind that, right? And that story is very interesting to be told. That’s a pretty good application. Anything where it has to parse lots of data is like generally a pretty good application for AI. But you’re not using it for any of the artwork right now. So for the artwork, like if we tell someone’s story, we don’t use their name or their likeness, and we’re using AI to generate, you know, mock-up people.

39:14
and fictitious names to tell the stories. What about on products that you sell? I don’t know what it’s called. It’s not heat pressing, but you can put. Oh, yes. That’s a good point. Are you using like, create a menorah because it’s Hanukkah or create, are you using AI to come up with designs for that? Because that’s been a new part of your business. It’s doing pretty well. That’s correct. We are not doing that yet.

39:43
Mainly because the text wasn’t very good until recently. So, because a lot of times, let’s say you have an Easter design, right? Because that’s coming up. You want to say happy Easter or whatnot, and it just totally screws up the writing. And it’s really hard to modify the writing. Like you have to go through work, you have to manually erase it and put font, whatever. But now with the new ChatGPT stuff, you’re right.

40:11
we can just create designs on the fly, which leads me to think that Etsy now is going to be like this flood of AI generated junk. I mean, I feel like Etsy was already getting junky. So now it’s just going to get worse. Well, it was junky because when they let Chinese sellers back in in 2022, that turned into junk. Yeah. I mean, Etsy is basically a poor man’s Amazon now or Tmoo even. Yeah.

40:39
Speaking of Chinese sellers and AI, so our friend Andrea just launched a new product and they’re doing this standard run ads, all that sort of thing. But one of the things that they did is they did like a huge influencer seating.

40:57
with the product and they mailed it to a lot of people with no expectation. I think that’s the big catch here, right? Whenever you’re doing anything with influencers, you can’t be like, I’m sending you this one free thing, please post six posts and whatever. They send it out and it’s in the crafting type space. Several of the influencers posted about the product. They’ve made a sale or two, but more importantly, other influencers have seen the seeding and are reaching out for the product.

41:28
And this is where I feel like you have to stay away from AI because I know people are trying to streamline and a lot of people are like one owner businesses, like they don’t have a team. But I think when you’re thinking about like on the influencer and relationship side of things, have, this is where your advantages over those Chinese sellers, right? The Chinese sellers are not gonna understand even if they speak English or can translate, they don’t understand like how to work with these people, right?

41:57
So she’s really winning this game right now by the interaction she’s having with the influencers and getting more influencers on board. And I think that’s something if you’re thinking about how to streamline and things like that, that’s something I would always keep very personal because, know, from what I learned from TikTok last week was that like influencers are driving the majority of the sales on TikTok shop, right? We’ll be talking about that on Seller Summit. Actually, I’m really excited about that panel.

42:25
I don’t if you saw my email this morning, but it’s going to be amazing. I think that side, like certain things I think you’ve got to stay away from AI to do. And that’s definitely one of them, because I think the relationship matters with people. And that’s where, once again, you’re fighting against sellers that are in China or have big teams or are using all sorts of AI to create all sorts of, right, like flooding the internet with content, right? But you still have an advantage.

42:53
in certain areas and you’ve got to be able to, you got to leverage that where you can. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I hope I didn’t bring everyone down or we didn’t get it. I like we did. This was, I it’s exciting and it’s just scary at the same time because I know people who are getting disrupted, right? Yeah. And if we’re not careful, we could get disrupted. Yeah. Right. So that’s why, like, even if you don’t have any interest in this stuff, you should probably get interested in it and learn it because

43:24
Otherwise, you could be left in the wayside. Not a great way to end it, huh, Tony? But go play around with this stuff. Figure out ways you can use it in your everyday life. I think it’s pretty fascinating in general.

43:43
Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you haven’t used any of these tools yet, I highly recommend that you give it a try. For more information and resources, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 586. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. 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 sellersummit.com.

44:12
And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife, quitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, Tony and I are going to break down the latest features that our favorite email marketing tool just announced that looked to be a game changer for e-commerce. Here’s the latest and greatest in the world of online selling. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over at sellersummit.com. And the prices are now going to go up every two weeks.

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

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

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

01:44
Welcome back to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Last week, Tony and I, had the privilege of attending Klaviyo’s launch event for their new features. And normally we don’t create podcasts about this stuff, but I was blown away by all the new functionality that Klaviyo had to introduce. So I felt compelled that we had to do an episode about this. Yeah, it’s, it’s pretty exciting. I have to say I was, I actually watched it twice. So

02:13
because there was so much to digest just watching it one go round. Yeah, I watched it this morning also and I had Chachi BT take the transcript and summarize it so I wouldn’t forget anything. what are these new features and why is it such a big deal? Klaviyo just introduced their CRM. I think it’s called Klaviyo Data Platform.

02:38
And it’s basically going to be like the one tool that you absolutely need to practically do everything with your online store. Yeah. And that’s the best way to put it. Yeah. And I think, I think this is a big, like this is a big deal, right? Because one of the things that they hammered pretty hard during all the presentations, but one thing that I was like, as a struggle for me in e-commerce is that

03:05
you have all this information coming from all these different places. And it’s very hard to get all the information to match up. And they told a story about one of their customers who hired somebody and paid them a lot of money to build like some sort of custom dashboard so that they could like aggregate the data. And after they got it built, it just didn’t do the job well, right? didn’t work right.

03:30
And I thought, and this is something we deal with, you know, with some of my e-commerce clients every single day, right? Is all the data is in different places and it’s hard to get. you know, we’re paying people to do this, right? To compile it and get it in one place. And so this is really exciting, I think, for business owners, especially if you are running a small team and you don’t have lots of people to pass these tasks off to. Yeah. For example, like in my store, I have

03:58
these little dashboards for a bunch of different things that Jen wants to see. And the data is there, but it’d be nice to just have everything in one place. And we’re be talking about how they allow you to interact with that data. So first and foremost, unlimited data storage. Klaviyo will have all the data for your store, access to your Shopify database, all your customers and everything. Yeah, and I mean, think the other thing to think about is that already Klaviyo integrates with

04:27
so many tools, right? So they already have a lot of these integrations built in, which is nice because I think, I don’t think I’ve ever come across something where I couldn’t integrate it with Klaviyo, like a tool that I wanted to use in Shopify. So the fact that they have all that integration already and then sort of building this out is pretty exciting. So they have data for all of your customers, which pages that they’ve browsed, what they’ve purchased, the frequency that they’ve purchased. And because all that data is there,

04:56
That’s where it gets really exciting. I don’t know where you want to start with this. mean, there’s a lot of new features that they announced. I think the one that I’m most excited about is the AI forecast. So remember, they have data for everything, right? So they know what the customer is most likely to buy next. They know the lifetime value. They know how to communicate, how they like to communicate with you, whether it be through email, SMS or push.

05:26
And so now with these new AI features that Klaviyo has introduced, they can automatically suggest the best action for a specific customer based on their historical data and automatically create segments for you to send emails or SMS to them. So this is very exciting because one of the things that Klaviyo already has and they’ve had for a while is

05:53
AI within segment creation where you say, want a list of people who do X, Y, Z, right? And they build that out for you. But this takes this to like an entirely other level. And the exciting part for me is I’ve worked in that, you know, their AI tools already. And I feel like especially when it comes to building out these segments and lists of people, it does a really good job. Like the data they give you back, the way they tell you to do things is

06:21
almost always correct. There’s very few times where I’m like, oh, that wasn’t exactly what I wanted. And if it is, it’s because I put it in wrong, right? I asked for the wrong thing. So I’m very excited to see the level that this will go, basically, as far as what AI is going to do. Because just the fact that they were showing some of the flows or how the customer journey pans out. it’s like, the AI doesn’t just stop at, create me a segment of people who’ve done X, Y, Z. It’s like,

06:51
after they receive the first email, then AI is gonna say, send an email only to people who’ve taken these three actions and include this information in the email based on the actions they’ve taken, which, I mean, it’s gonna put me out of a job. I wanna see how, what level this goes because I was thinking, hey, create me a segment of everyone who’s most likely to purchase a personalized apron, like in the next month. Yeah.

07:18
and it’ll automatically create a segment. Prior to that, you’d have to know exactly what you’re looking for, right? Bought an before, haven’t bought in six months or whatever. But this one, based on all the data points, right? Let’s say they were looking, they just happen to be browsing on your site for aprons in like two weeks ago, they would automatically be added to this segment. Yeah, so I think that’s really exciting and something that’s going to save people a lot of time.

07:46
The other thing that I think it’s going to do is give people better results with their email. So, I mean, we can say right now, hey, let’s create a segment of people that are most likely to do X, Y, Z, right, based on information that we have. So, for example, one of my clients, most of her products are based out in age groups, right? So there’s like five to eight year olds

08:15
group because it’s curriculum, right? And then there’s a nine to 12 and a 13 to 16, right? So but, you know, if someone buys something in the middle age group, right, the nine to 12, we don’t know exactly like, is there a kid nine or is there a kid 12? Right. Like, we don’t know that because we don’t don’t ask. And obviously, it’s hard to ask information about people’s kids like that. People get very rightfully How old is your little boy? Yes. Rightfully so. People get.

08:43
protective of that information. Knowing that, on average, when you look at the data as a whole, we’ve got millions of customers, right? You look at the data as a whole and you know that people who buy in this age bracket, on average, in two years, buy in the next age bracket. Or they take this and you start being able to have this lots and lots of data when Klaviyo can take that and really give it to you in a very digestible

09:12
way as opposed to you. I mean, I just think about like, have you ever like downloaded something on a spreadsheet and it’s like 22,000 lines of information and it’s just like my computer just like farts out on it. It’s like, no, we’re not doing this. So like the thing that’s exciting to me is to be able to get all that data and have Klaviyo be the one that deals with it as opposed to me on a spreadsheet trying to like figure this all out and spending hours and hours. No, exactly. Like

09:41
I personally hate creating segments by hand in Clayview. Just the fact that you can have AI create the segment for you based on what you want. Huge game changer. I can’t wait to see how well this works. And I think the fact that it’s going to be able to deliver smarter recommendations. mean, their recommendation tool that you can just insert that in the bottom of emails, or it doesn’t have be at the bottom, you can insert it anywhere. It already does a pretty good job. So to be able to get even more granular with the information, especially if you are in a

10:11
a vertical like clothing, right? If there’s a shopper and they only buy pastels, they’re never going to see a pair of camo green leggings, right? Or if you sell, like think about our friend Tiffany, right? She sells shoes, pants, purses, whatever. One of the things that they pointed out, like people who buy this thing are way more likely to buy a purse, right? And they know that because they have

10:39
let’s just say 20,000 people who have bought pants and of those 20,000 people, know, 32 % of them also buy a purse. So it’s clearly like there’s a customer type. So instead of you trying to like parse through and go, okay, I wonder what maybe this happens, you know, it’s already going to just be given to you. And not only that, all in an automated form. like, it’s like, Klaviyo is basically going to say, hey, people that buy these pants also buy purses. So send them an email. Oh, click here and it’ll be set up for you basically, which

11:09
When I was looking at their slides or their screen grabs of it, I was like, if this works like it looks like it does, this is incredible. I agree. I think that was the single most important feature. But let’s move on because once you know what segments that you want to email to, they actually introduce another feature that I’m really looking forward to, which is their new campaign builder. Yes.

11:36
And you have to remember now that Klaviyo does SMS, email, push, and if you just happen to have an app, they do in-app messaging as well. in the past, and I don’t know how many people listening actually use Klaviyo, but if you use a traditional EMS, you usually get like an autoresponder, right? Where you can send a sequence of emails. And within Klaviyo already in the past, you could send autoresponder sequence.

12:03
where you could take people off or put people on based on certain criteria or the actions that they’ve created. So for example, like if you had this flow, like an abandoned cart flow, for example, that was three emails. If someone purchased after the first email, you would not send them the abandoned cart email for a second, third. That’s already been there. Now you can do something like that with just regular campaigns. Yes. And I’m just trying to, why don’t you talk about like some of the use cases for that?

12:32
That’s what I think is really nice. I think we’ve bugged our friend Joe at Klaviyo for many years. One of the features that Klaviyo never had was the recent unopens. You had to do that all manually, which is actually a bit of a pain. They just recently launched that within their campaigns, pretty normal standard stuff. Now with this campaign, it’s basically like a flow, but it’s a campaign.

12:59
you send out an email, let’s just say you’re having a, I don’t know, Mother’s Day sale, Mother’s Day is in a couple months, and you’re gonna send it out a week before Mother’s Day or two weeks before Mother’s Day, whatever your timeline is, but then you wanna resend to unopens. But do you really wanna resend to all your unopens? Probably not, because typically, if you resend to all of your unopens, some of those people just don’t really open a lot of the emails anyway, so immediately that email’s gonna perform a little less than,

13:28
you know, you’d like it to. So what you can do is resend it to people who’ve done like specific behaviors, right? So it’s not just unopens. It could be resend to people who didn’t open it, but they visited the site within 30 days. They have already purchased $500 or more from my store. Like you can put all these conditions in it in this basically automated flow. And also, Klaviyo has this little thing called the Action Center.

13:58
where it gives you the recommendation of the best practice. So based on all of their data and all the brands and everything else, they’ll tell you like, I might think, well, oh, I should send it to these people. Well, Klavia is gonna say, hey, based on all the data from your store and all the data from stores in your vertical, like all their whole data set that they have and go, this is actually what you should do. This is who you should send it to.

14:21
which to me is a game changer because one, it takes the guesswork out of it for us as far as like, we can test it, right? We can see what happens, blah, blah, blah. But also like, just tell me what to do. If you know what works, I’ll do it. I was thinking for me, particularly, we typically run three day sales or three or four day sales and we email multiple times during that period.

14:47
So it would be nice instead of sending like three or four separate emails out about that sale, you have it in this nice campaign builder where you can automatically exclude people. Yes. Right. Who’ve purchased or for example, if someone hasn’t responded or opened an email, maybe send them a text instead. Yes. And that was nice too. Like you can set up, if you do use Klaviyo for SMS, you can basically, you know, email these people based on that, text these people based on that.

15:16
email these people, right? So it creates this whole chain of events that, which I think the other thing that’s nice about that is consistency of messaging, right? So being able to know that the people that are getting the text have already received an email that says this. So I’m gonna text them and say something different, or I’m gonna piggyback on what they already got. And I think being able to sort of be very cohesive with the messaging is actually really important.

15:46
I actually think most brands don’t focus on this enough, but just that consistency with the messaging and the things that you say, especially during a promotion or a launch or anything like that, is actually really valuable. And to be able to have that all like now in a sequence is a really nice feature. I mean, I was just thinking for me, just organizing all the campaigns. Like right now I have campaigns that say first day,

16:11
middle of the promotion, last day of the promotion. Yes, I like AM, 2 PM, 6 PM, last day, last. Yes. The problem with me is, and this is my own fault, but I try to name things consistently. Last day of the sale, it should be the date, whatever the sale is, last chance AM, then whatever for PM. Sometimes I change the verbiage just.

16:38
because I’m human and I’m not thinking at the time, right? So then it’s like, you know, I changed something. So then when you go in and look for something to clone or recreate, it’s like, wait, that’s not last chance. It’s LC, because for some reason I decided to abbreviate this week. so just the consistency of it, I think is gonna be really nice. Yeah, I mean, I ideally just wanna be able to clone my entire sales sequence and set it and forget it instead of, again, having to draft four five different emails.

17:06
I think the nice thing about that little action center that they’ve created is that when they give you a recommendation, you basically just click it and it sets it up for you. It’s like, we think you should send a campaign to people who like pink leggings or whatever it is. You’re like, do too. Click and it basically builds you this template. For people who are not big on using the

17:32
the coding and things like that in Klavia, which they do make it pretty easy to just drop and insert things. There’s still some, you know, technical degree there. It’s already embedded in those emails. So all you’re doing is going in and tweaking it. Right. They already have your brand logo. They’ve already got your templates. So basically, when you say, yes, do this, it’s creating everything for you. And there’s very little work that you need to be doing after that step. Yeah. So this next feature.

18:02
that they introduced is actually something that I was in the middle of writing for my store, which is a self-service and support hub. So, Klavia is actually now going to do customer service for you. You know that right now, a lot of stores are my friends, they’re using a separate app for customer support. But you know, Klavia already knows all your orders, right? They know who’s buying and all that stuff. They have all the information. They have addresses and whatnot.

18:31
So why not manage order tracking and returns management? Why not have like an AI chat bot to answer the most commonly asked questions? Why not have like a live chat if AI can’t answer the question, hand it off to a real human? They’ve added all of that.

18:50
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.

19:19
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

19:31
I feel like this could be an entire podcast on its own is that customer support should be a sales channel for your business. Most people view it as a rescue boat. Rescue the lost order, rescue the person who can’t figure out how to place an order on the website, whatever it is. It really should be its own sales channel. think because once someone… Obviously, there’s a lot of people who message support who have like,

20:00
literally probably the top one is where’s my order, right? Which can be pretty much answered with AI, probably 95 % of the time. But then there are people, like I would think for your business with the personalization, like people probably have questions about that, right? People wanna know like, what actually can I personalize or how, know, what kind of thread do you use or you know, whatever the questions would be, is it gonna get here in time, things like that.

20:27
But what an opportunity to give people a great customer experience there and then upsell them on other things, right? So the next thing you know, they’re not just buying the personalized handkerchief, they’ve also got the matching apron and pillowcase, right? That you just have an opportunity there. And to remove some of the friction as far as like, where’s my order, things like that, where that can all be done through AI, to then allow your customer service person or people to actually do bigger work.

20:57
I think is going to be a game changer for companies. Here’s the thing about our customer service. If we can get someone communicating with our customer service rep, it’s almost 90 % of conversion. Yeah. Like we can always sell them something. Yeah. So it’s in your best interest to actually have that conversation with somebody. I still think phone conversations are the best, but chat is like the second best. And this actually, seeing this feature actually reminded me, I had this really elaborate

21:26
a Facebook Messenger platform where I was actually semi-automating customer service. But Facebook deprecated that a long time ago and it was on my list to add another live chat, but I actually hadn’t done it before. Hence, I was going to incorporate all these features into the site already. I was really looking forward to writing my own AI-powered chatbot also. I might just use Klaviyo’s now.

21:51
Yeah, I mean. it’s already there and they have all the information. It looks really nice. The screenshots that they showed us, it was just really nicely integrated with the site already. It was almost like it was a part of the Shopify store, in fact. Yes. Right. So, yeah. Well, no, but I think the other thing that people probably don’t think about is that it looks really nice. looks like a seamless experience for the customer. But also, like, they go in, they ask, you know, where’s my order?

22:20
I actually had this to me yesterday. I used the wrong credit card for something. I used an old credit card that actually had been canceled and I knew the order was gonna get declined. At some point it was a grocery order. So I was like, I need to get in here and fix it. So I got on with an AI chat bot. I got the answer that I needed. Basically it wasn’t the answer I wanted, but basically like we can’t do anything. have to cancel your order and reorder. And I’m like, fine. But got through the whole process. But I think about the fact that like, if it is all integrated in Klaviyo,

22:49
and they have all of the customer information and with their AI features, they’re telling you stuff about the customer inside that as you know, as if you, you escalate it to the human, right? Then you have all this information about the customer. If you’re in another customer service platform that is not connected, you can still get that information about the customer, but you’ve got to log into Shopify or Klaviyo. You’ve got to pull the information.

23:15
you can see like when you log into, if you pull up someone’s customer profile on Klaviyo, you know what emails they’ve received, what emails they’ve clicked on, what they’ve purchased. And now that’s all going, what it looks like it’s all going to be within that customer service platform. Like what an advantage to when someone actually gets to a human to have all that data. And you’re like, oh, this person always buys like embroidered pillowcases. We should probably show them this new line as we’re talking to them. You know what I mean? Like it’s all just given to the people that are working

23:44
which I think is gonna be a great sales channel for companies. Yeah, I mean, right now the way we do it is we have another tool that handles all that, right? Right. But why not just have it in one place? Yeah. And not have to open some other tool in order to get the same information. And then expect your customer service person, which typically in most stores is like a lower paid employee. It’s not a sales person for sure.

24:11
But then you’re just handing that person all this data that they can use. They’re not having to go find it or dig it out or understand. It all appears to be in the platform already when they’re talking to them. I mean, this is how I see it being used also. When we get a phone call, she can just pull up this information in Klaviyo. And maybe Klaviyo can say, hey, this person is very likely to order another handkerchief. And then she could just make that suggestion on the fly.

24:40
Klaviyo has all the data once again. And as you don’t like humans having to think about things, so this is like a huge. Oh yeah, definitely. The other cool feature that I saw when they were showing the screenshots was it appeared like after you went through customer support, they had like a little survey at the end where it was like, and this was, they were doing a clothing store as their example. And it was like, which of these,

25:07
is your favorite color for leggings, right? And then they showed the example and the person put like pink or whatever. And then it was like, they asked another question based on the favorite color. There were like three real simple, like multiple choice questions. But then based on their responses, it created profile properties for that person in Klaviyo and then suggested the emails that they get that like, you know, so one person, you’re sending the same email to 500 people.

25:35
But one person’s getting the pink leggings and one person’s getting the black leggings based on the profile. And it’s basically all automated. Yeah. Yeah. You know, one, uh, the other day a student asked me how to get Google analytics set up and get all the granular data. And what I told her was like, I can show you how to set all that up. But to be honest with you, I rarely look at Google analytics at all anymore, ever since they made the shift because it’s

26:03
It’s like not intuitive and it’s not easy to use. No, I can’t find anything in there. I hate it. But now with all these new Klaviyo features, and they showed a screenshot of this, but now you can get like a comprehensive customer timeline. One of Google’s restrictions is they couldn’t use real names due to privacy reasons. But on Klaviyo, like let’s say I want to pull you up. I can see every email open, every SMS click, every purchase, every website visit, every return.

26:32
every shipment, where the shipment is in transit. It’s just a much nicer way to track things than like a Google Analytics. Well, and I think that’s what they called it, what the unified customer view. Yeah. And basically, and I would assume that you would have to be using Klaviyo SMS to get this fully. Of course. Well, unless it integrates, like I said, Klaviyo integrates with pretty much every other tool since it’s pretty much become the standard.

27:00
Yeah. So you could probably get click data if you’re on like Postscript, for example. But I think being able to see and they showed a graph of like a customer timeline and basically, you know, I forget what they call them, like the champions were like the top customers and, you know, then they had like names for each level of customer. But being able to see all that information and like, are they more likely to open a text and email? Like, what are they doing? What are they interacting the best with? And then once again,

27:29
making those like take action recommendations based on what people are doing. I think that’s probably my favorite feature is that Klaviyo basically tells you what to do. So instead of you sort of over analyzing and testing, and I think you should still be testing, obviously, but you’re not just like throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks Klaviyo is actually taking the data and giving you really good ideas. Have you ever gone to the dentist and

27:55
They go up to you and they say, hey Steve, how was your vacation three months ago? And you’re like, what, what? How did you know I went on a vacation? How’d you remember? Because I obviously told them that Oh yeah, because they put it in your little notes when they’re cleaning your teeth. Yes. Yes. Can you imagine now that if you’re on live chat with somebody and you already have the customer up, right? Right. Because I would imagine that as soon as someone does a live chat, it automatically brings up whatever their profile is. And you have notes on that person. Like our best customers, we have notes. Yes. know what they’re doing.

28:24
And you can automatically say stuff like, how’s your kid? know, how’s high school? They just started high school. Yes. That makes a huge difference. Yeah. I think the the level of customer loyalty that you get from that. I it’s funny that you brought up the dentist because my favorite hygienist stopped working to be home with her kids. What a jerk. But like one of the reasons why I like to going is that like she we could like pick up.

28:51
where we left off in our conversations, was kind of like, oh, well, how was this? And I know it’s all in their little dashboard, right, of notes. Like, oh, she, like, I think it was when Instacart came out. And so we had this whole conversation about Instacart one time. And the next time she’s like, I’m using Instacart, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, how do you remember that we had a conversation about Instacart? Anyway, made me super loyal to the dentist because it just, it felt good, right? It feels good to.

29:17
have people remember you. How are you able to have conversations with your hygienist? Like she’s got the stuff in your mouth, right? It’s always a one-sided conversation. Oh, can stop me from talking. You know that.

29:31
The other thing that’s nice is I’ve actually wanted to offload email marketing to someone outside of Jen. And I’m very curious about all the AI features in terms of what subject lines, what type of emails to create and whatnot. You mentioned earlier that it might put you out of a job. Yeah. That’s my best case scenario. Not to put you out of a job. that’s your best case because then you’ll have to hire me.

30:00
That’s not your best-case scenario. As I was watching this and thinking through everything, part of me was like, know what? I feel like this is where I don’t hate AI because we’ve had a lot of conversations about AI and people just creating entire websites and YouTube channels and just all AI-generated and even some of the dangers where they’re basically

30:26
doing the deep fake stuff, right? Where it’s like, you can’t even tell. So I think AI can, it can be awful, right? It can be used for pretty negative things. And you and I just did a Google search like two weeks ago and Google gave us the wrong, AI gave us the wrong information about Google. Do you remember that? So. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it’s like, there’s a lot of negative about AI, but I feel like when I watched this, I was like, okay, this is how AI really should be used, right? This is where I think it’s helpful and

30:56
pushing forward and using technology to make things better for everybody. Because here’s the thing, it doesn’t just make things better for the company owner or the marketing person. It makes things better for the customer. We all get a million emails every day. If you’re on a bunch of SMS lists, you get tons of texts, marketing texts, things like that. But how awesome is it to get an email that actually makes sense to you? And it’s actually something you care about.

31:26
I used this example at seller summit last year when I was doing the email talk. I bought a bunch of paint at Lowe’s and then Lowe’s sent me an ad for paint, an email about paint. And I was like, you should have sent me an ad for paint brushes, right? You should have sent me an ad. You know what I bought. I don’t need to buy more paint. I need to buy painter’s tape and all the things that go along with it. It was like a huge missed opportunity. So I think the better…

31:51
AI gets of sending the customers things that they really like. Like, don’t send me an email with a dress that I’ll never buy. But if you know that I’ve looked at something and you’re sending me an email telling me that the price dropped or that it’s back in stock or that they have this color that I actually buy everything else in this color, my journey has gotten so much better when it comes to the whole buying experience. I think the most egregious error that I had a company make was when I bought a pair of shoes and they sent me emails about women’s clothing.

32:21
Maybe they know something that I don’t. My personal pet peeve is when you buy something and the next day you get an email from that company with that exact product and it’s now 25 % off. I feel like with all of this AI integration, that can be avoided really easily.

32:48
You can exclude people who purchase, I mean you can already do this, but I feel like this is gonna make it even more intuitive and it’s gonna be even easier. Excluding people who’ve already bought, excluding people who’ve bought that exact product in the last 48 hours. Don’t send a sale email to that. All those things where as a human, that can be, you can forget or it can slip or you can forget to add them. There’s like lots of opportunity for error. And I think this actually makes things so much better for everybody, right? The customer.

33:18
the store, the marketing person. And I think also, don’t people want emails in their inbox that are relevant? I do. I don’t want a bunch of garbage. So I think it provides a much better experience for the shopper. Yeah. And one thing that I think Klaviyo is really trying to do is prevent people from just blasting their entire list. Yes. And so there’s one seller summit talk, I want to say

33:47
a couple years ago, where they talked about how you have different segments of customers that are in different stages of the purchasing journey. So like you have people who will buy from you no matter what they buy in bulk and they buy a lot. Then you have customers that buy often, but they don’t spend that much money. Then of course you have people who bought like buy occasionally and then there’s people who haven’t purchased at all. And it’s important to understand who those people are because you’re going to want to send messages

34:16
differently to those people. Like for example, for your best customers, I know it’s ironic that you’re punishing your best customers, but we don’t send out coupons to our best customers because we know they’re going to buy anyway. We reward them in other ways, like with loyalty points or something like that because a coupon is not going to, I mean, they’re to buy no matter what. Whereas someone who hasn’t bought at all, maybe you just want to give them a bigger coupon to get them to buy for the very first time.

34:45
I’ve seen that that works, right? If you are talking differently to different types of customers, it really does make a huge difference in your return on investment, basically. I think another thing that was important that they talked about, and fortunately, it doesn’t apply to you or me, but I know what applies to a lot of companies is they also have done a lot with people who operate on a subscription basis, right?

35:14
So basically that subscribe and save model, which I think that to me, we talk about this with like the course and stuff of like subscription versus one time and you how does that work? But I think when you have a subscription based business or even a component of your business that’s subscription based, understanding when people fall off is like a game changer for your business.

35:40
because you have to figure out like, okay, when do people stop using it, stop subscribing and how do we keep them longer, right? What do we need to do? How do we need to talk to them? What types of people drop off at what point? Is it based on the type of product they’re ordering? You know, there’s all these different factors, right? And from what I saw in the presentation, it feels like there’s a lot of AI tools that Klaviyo is using to help subscription-based companies understand

36:08
their customers better and keep them longer. And I wanna say they had an example on the screen and I wanted to say like it was like a 54 % boost in retention for implementing some of these AI strategies of how you talk to people, which could be, that could be game changing for a business, right? To be able to keep people for that much longer. So I think if you do have a subscription-based business, which neither you or I do,

36:38
This is actually a very valuable product now for you. I mean, I wish I had a subscription base. I know, me too. Hanky the month club. I don’t think it’s going to work. No, probably not. Then also, if you happen to have an app, we have a mutual friend who has an app. You can actually incorporate all this stuff into an app now as well, whereas you could not do that before.

37:07
And then probably my favorite part of the know what this is going to be. Oh, you do? OK. They have an API where you can connect Klaviyo to any website. I’m not on Shopify. Right. So anytime I need to integrate something, I pretty much need an API to do it. And this probably doesn’t apply to a lot of people listening to this. But let’s say you want to integrate. Let’s say you didn’t choose Shopify, for example.

37:36
And you’re on GoDaddy for some crazy reason, because they got you on their site and you have a store on there. You could integrate Klaviyo GoDaddy with code, whereas you wouldn’t be able to do that before. Of course, if you’re on GoDaddy, you’re in trouble anyway. Right, there’s bigger problems on that. You got bigger problems. But the point is that you can integrate with any platform, even if there isn’t native support for it. Well, doesn’t that also mean, and I am not a developer, that

38:04
people can build apps for Klaviyo too. Like it works both ways. So it Yeah, that’s interesting actually. Because there’s no Klaviyo app store as far as I know. yes, it opens up. So I think, I mean, I always like it when tools open up their API because I feel like it opens the marketplace for things. But I also don’t understand it enough to know like the dangers and the

38:33
pros and the cons of anything. So I just know that it makes you happy, so I’m happy. Well, here’s one thing that they talked about that we didn’t actually mention here, is that you can put together sequences to gather information about a customer. So, for example, let’s say you sell body wash in SMS, you can ask them, hey, you know, what’s your favorite scent? What type of skin do you have? And then each time they answer in a sequence, yeah,

39:01
you can gather data about that person and store it in their customer profile. I can’t stress enough how much knowing things about your customer makes them happy, makes the customer happier. Let’s just say, let’s talk about shampoo. You sell shampoo, right? You sell shampoo for oily hair and thin hair and curly hair because most shampoo manufacturers have a bottle for every hair type, right? Well, if you have limp

39:30
straight hair, right, that always looks greasy, you don’t want a product that’s like for thick, luscious hair, right? Because not only are you not gonna buy it, you’re now ticked off because you don’t have thick, luscious hair. So if you only get like the content that is related to you, or if, you know, I remember one time, like probably 10 years ago, I got an email for like,

39:54
plus size fashion, like size 22, like 22X and up, right? Which is like, you’re not familiar with like sizing, like 22X is like you’re getting two seats on an airplane, right? So like, I was like offended. I was like, yeah, I’ve gained like five pounds, but calm down, you know? So it, but immediately like I had a negative reaction to the brand, right? Cause I’m like, my feelings got hurt. So I think if you like being able to like take people through that survey process,

40:24
and get more information about them. then, you know, if they feel like they got a big butt and they don’t like it, you’re not gonna send them stuff that makes them look like they have a bigger butt, right? Like whatever it is, you’re not playing on people’s insecurities, you’re playing on the things that they like. And so they just feel much more accepted and they have much more positive view of your brand. Yeah. I mean, all I can say here is I’m really excited about these features because

40:52
You know how I don’t like to pay for SaaS apps. Yes. So right now I have different ones that do a whole bunch of different things, right? And it’s piecemeal. got to log into each one. Yes. It’d be nice to just only have to log into one tool for practically everything. And that’s essentially what Klaviyo has done with these new set of features. They’ve created a salesforce.com for e-commerce.

41:16
Maybe that’s the best analogy. I’ve only used Salesforce a couple of times. I like I haven’t used it, that’s what it feels like. I used to want it back in the day when I used to work too. Basically, it’s just you have all the data about every customer and you basically make your decisions off of all that. I feel like it’s like Klaviyo using AI for good as opposed for evil As opposed to spamming like Google and YouTube. I feel like at the end of the day,

41:46
It’s making the experience better for every single person. It’s making the experience better for your company by giving you more opportunities to generate revenue. It’s making the experience better for your marketing team, giving them the information to make better marketing decisions. And most of all, it’s giving your customers a significantly better experience by tailoring every piece of communication in a personalized way to your customer.

42:13
Hope you enjoyed this episode. These new features make it super easy to send targeted emails and texts to your customers. And I’m super excited. For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejob.com slash episode 582. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. 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.

42:43
go to SellersSummit.com. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife, QuitHerJob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, Tony and I are going to break down the sessions and the curriculum we’re covering for Seller Summit this year on May 6th, 2025. Tickets are now on sale over at sellersummit.com and the prices are now going to go up every two weeks until the event starts. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online.

00:29
Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level advice, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. I personally hate large events, so the seller’s summit is always small and intimate.

00:58
Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. If you are an e-commerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller’s Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th. Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellerssummit.com and grab your ticket.

01:28
Now onto the show.

01:36
Welcome to the My Wife, Quit or Job podcast. It’s exciting times. Seller Summit is coming up in two months and we’ve been putting together the curriculum and I’m super excited about this year. Yeah, me too. have some… Every year, I hate to say we have great speakers this year. We don’t have great speakers every year, but this year I’m even more excited for what’s happening. Yeah, I I always get…

02:04
the jitters actually leading up to the event because it doesn’t start coming together fully until maybe two or three months before the event and things are just starting to come together right now. So I get the jitters too, but here’s the thing. So I’m going to a conference tomorrow, right? I’m leaving for, I don’t even know the name of the conference. It’s a newsletter conference, right? About email. And we got the schedule yesterday.

02:32
Oh, really? That’s hilarious. Like not just like the schedule, but like I signed up for this not even knowing what the sessions were. Like they had the speakers listed, but they didn’t even have sessions listed until I think the email came yesterday afternoon and it came sometime yet. like the week of the conference is when I got the information. And I feel like that’s pretty standard for conferences, which is crazy to me because we usually have everything settled about.

03:00
two months before, but that to me causes stress. Like I want it even further out than that. Well, mean, it’s just, it’s not top of mind in the speakers until it gets close, right? Yes. Then they start panicking and putting together. For example, I actually still don’t know. Like we have a you’re not on here. What’s going on? here because I’m not a hundred percent sure what I’m going to talk about. I usually just try to fill in the blanks of what’s missing. Yes. So I usually put myself kind of last or figure out.

03:29
I mean, there’s a number of things I can talk about, but they are kind of all over the place, the topics that I would cover. So whatever is not filled is what I’ll cover basically. So let’s dive in. So people, if you haven’t heard of Seller Summit, first of all, shame on you. It’s surprising to me, we’ve been around for so long. We’re on year eight, conference eight. We’ve been around a little long enough because of the pandemic and stuff like that. There are people that still don’t know that like someone’s

03:57
told us that they thought we were invite only. Do remember that a couple weeks ago? Yes. Yeah. I was like, we were never invite only. That wasn’t even a thing the first year. So anyway, we’re not invite only. Everybody’s welcome to attend. The other question that we get is, do I have to already be selling? No, you don’t. Most of the people that attend are already selling. They already have a brand. Correct. But we absolutely welcome beginners.

04:24
The other thing to think about is because I think our friend Charles was talking about this on office hours last week that sometimes the sessions like are the sessions going to be too difficult, right? Am I not going to understand anything? And my theory on this is you always want to go to sessions that are a little bit further along than you are to help you grow in your business journey. To me, if you’re going the beginning stuff to me can be learned on the Internet.

04:51
Right. That can be learned from YouTube videos, from signing up for a course, but it’s those deep dive, like the deeper strategies, the ones that like the true top pros are using to me that you want to go to an event and learn about because you’re learning about like the absolute cutting edge things that people are doing right now in e-commerce. And so to go there and hear it and be able to like be at the beginning of your business journey and be able to implement some of these things that other people

05:18
don’t know for 10 years is a huge advantage, especially when it’s getting so competitive right now. And the other thing is we’re one of the very few conferences, I want to say, that covers both Amazon and selling on your own store. I would say the bulk of the events, at least in my circles that I hear about, are pure Amazon. Yes. And we both know that Amazon has gotten super competitive since last year. Yeah.

05:44
If you’re selling only on Amazon, you’ve got to be thinking about diversifying to other channels, including your own online store. Yeah. And most Amazon folks that we talk to want to diversify, right? That it’s on their list of things to do. But it gets really overwhelming because Amazon can also take a lot of time. It’s so funny because we always talk about back in the day. But back in the day, you could pretty much throw stuff up on Amazon and put it on autopilot and work five. It was like truly the five hour work week or four hour work week, right?

06:12
It’s not really the case anymore. It’s gotten so competitive and with all of the overseas sellers, primarily Chinese sellers, with 20 listings of the same product and things like that, you have to be far more involved in the business or be paying people to be far more involved. So thinking about your own brand is really important. Yeah, and then actually my favorite part of the event is if you actually already have a business that makes over 250K or $1 million,

06:39
We actually run a mastermind on the very first day. And this is where we put together companies that are at a similar level. We make sure they don’t compete. And then we kind of get together in a room in groups of 10. We cater in food and we just basically help each other with our businesses, kind of hot seat style. And this has traditionally been one of the favorite aspects of the event. And again, in order to qualify for the mastermind,

07:05
you do have to have a business. However, we did start offering a different mastermind on We’ll get to that a minute. Let’s finish up the e-comm mastermind side of things. I’ve had people tell me this has changed their life, which I feel like is a very strong statement from somebody. We’ve heard this over and over again that just the mastermind itself was just revolutionary in their business. It’s not

07:35
It’s not just about the mentor. We always put a mentor in the mastermind to sort of basically keep track of time, make sure everybody stays on topic, things like that. But it’s the other people in the group that can really help you and help you grow and like kind of move to that next phase in your business. And what I found is interesting is there’s a lot of like mastermind spin-offs where people meet at seller summit, right? They’re in a mastermind together and then they actually continue this for years.

08:05
Meeting and you know on a monthly basis or every other month basis to continue You know the strategy sessions and things like that plus the relationships. I mean, it’s honestly a lonely process running any business So to be able to meet other people who are at your level Doing the same things is actually really refreshing my businesses didn’t start taking off until I started forming virtual masterminds actually. Yes

08:31
And I think the important thing to note in this, because we’ve gone to some other events that try to do something similar with a little less structure, but we are very picky about who we put together in a room. So we try our absolute best never to put competitors together because especially if you’re only selling on Amazon, you really don’t want to be in a room with someone who’s selling the exact same types of things.

08:55
And we also, because a lot of people who are in the mastermind have been coming to the mastermind for a couple of years, and we also haven’t filled out a pretty extensive questionnaire, I try to match the personalities, because I do think that’s really important. If you know certain people are more introverted or more extroverted, you wanna match them with people that can sort of handle their temperaments.

09:19
And so everybody goes in that room, hopefully getting the absolute best experience that they possibly can. And obviously we don’t know every single person that goes to a mastermind. So there’s always wild cards, you never know. But we try, we spend probably the bulk of the conference planning on these masterminds and getting the right people in the same room together with the right mentors. Also the mentor matters a lot, like who gets placed with who.

09:43
And you might think that if you sign up for the mastermind, you don’t have that much to offer. But after running these masterminds for eight years now, everyone has something to contribute. Everyone does things in their own way. And you might not think that that’s an efficient way of doing things, but you’d be surprised that the way you do something is just way different. Or you’ll have someone in your group that just does things differently that exactly fits your business. It happens every single year. Yeah.

10:11
So what we found after running these e-commerce masterminds for, we didn’t do it the very first year, but we’d started at the second year. So after the second year, we found that there were people who were newer in their selling journey and maybe they already had a store, but they were only doing 100K or there’s even been several people who hadn’t even started yet. They had a product idea, right? And they’re like, well, what about me, right? I want that same opportunity to strategize and network on a deeper level.

10:38
And so a couple of years ago, we came up with the content mastermind because you and I both believe very strongly that content is critical when creating a brand these days. Like you cannot do that without that content creation. And so we created a secondary mastermind for people who don’t meet that revenue threshold. Although you can meet the revenue threshold and join the content mastermind because we have that happen every single year as well. We had several million dollar sellers in our content mastermind last year.

11:08
And we focus primarily on the content side of things. So we’re not talking about product sourcing or, know, one year in one of my masterminds, EECOM, it was all about shipping. Everyone wanted to talk about shipping and reducing shipping costs and how to, the strategy for that, right? We don’t talk about that. We talk about things like YouTube, TikTok, email marketing. That’s really the focus of the content mastermind. And that to me has been, so I’ve been running that for, this is the third, the fourth year.

11:36
2002, 2003, Is it the fourth year? Wow. Yeah. this will be the fourth year of the content, I think fourth year of the content mastermind. And it’s been really fun because the diversity of opinion in there and what people are doing. one year I remember there was a group, they did like kids, it was like for autistic kids, right? So was like toys and puzzles and things, but primarily geared towards kids with like learning disabilities and autism.

12:02
and they were doing like webinars and videos and they just had a crazy, you know, content strategy and they were in there and they were helping like everybody in the room. So we always get such interesting people in there really sharing their strategies. Last year we had a couple people that were like diversifying into real estate. So they were basically taking their profits and one of them, one of our friends Ming, she was actually buying commercial buildings and then using them to create like…

12:29
fulfillment centers and where like there’s just like all these different things that are going on and You know, so there were several other people in that room that were interested in doing something like that basically getting a building so they could work in it but rent it out and like what are the tax Implications and it got like super in the weeds with that kind of stuff but very interesting content and I think that’s really fun, especially with the rise of video and the importance of video usually video is a heavy heavy topic like that’s

12:59
you know, probably 60 % of the conversation in that content mastermind these days. I mean, here’s how I see it. If you’re only on Amazon right now and you want to sell more on your website, you want to create your own brand, which is where everyone should be going. You need some sort of content component. Yeah. Today. It’s not like, you know, five or six years ago where everything was much easier. These days, you you got to build a brand in order to be in this for the long game. Yeah.

13:27
So, and last year we had one attendee who had, I think he was trying to get a patent. He had a business idea, he was trying to get the patent and he actually got tons of feedback on like his strategy and his launch strategy and actually changed some of his strategy based on the feedback from other sellers in the room. So you just never know where you’re gonna end up in the content mastermind as far as like the direction, but I do think the information in there is really, really valuable. And.

13:54
It’s funny because last year we had several people, million dollar sellers sign up for the Content Mastermind. So I reached out to them and I said, hey, did you sign up for the wrong mastermind? Did you mean to sign up for the e-comm one? And they were all, no, absolutely not. Like I wanna be in here. The other thing I’ve noticed is sometimes we have business owners and they sign up for the e-comm mastermind and they send their right hand, they sign up for the e-comm one and they send their right hand to the content mastermind.

14:22
And so they sort of divide and conquer. So it’s a really fun group. I think we only have one seat left in the content mastermind. Oh, is that right? Yes. OK, I didn’t check the. We actually might not have any seats because we sold some tickets this morning and I didn’t check to see what bucket they were in. OK. But worst case scenario, we might divide it up and make two content masterminds. Although I don’t like doing that for the content group. But we’ll see. We’ll see where it goes. Yeah.

14:48
The other thing I also want to mention is for some reason I get a whole bunch of legal questions or everyone often has a lot of legal questions. So I just want to give a shout out to Steve Weigler. He’s a lawyer that helps out with the event and he’ll just sit down and talk with you for free like a lawyer that bills out for hundreds of dollars an hour will answer all of your legal IP protection questions at the event. So if you’re worried about getting knocked off or

15:15
if you want to go after someone in China, he’s actually done it all. Yeah, he’s he’s great. And he’s so generous with his time. Typically, what he does is sends out a like a calendar before the event where you can actually block a 30 minute free consult with him during Sellers, which I think is a fantastic like honestly, that’s the price of your ticket. Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah. I mean, and what’s interesting is we know lots of people who work with him outside of Sellers Summit and, know,

15:45
It was that session that he did with them at seller summit that usually sells them on working with him because he’s so generous with helping people In fact, he’s even done like I know he’s done people’s prenups. He’s done all sorts of stuff. Like I mean, he’s an e-commerce attorney for sure But like I know he’s helped people with lots of different things in fact, our friend Kelly is working with him right now on some some intellectual property stuff and

16:11
Yeah, he just he knows his stuff and he what I like about Steve is he’s like the nicest guy like he’s so nice But like when you get him on like the e-commerce subject, he’s a bulldog, right? Like he’s like we will take him down, you know, and you’re like what happened to nice Steve? Anyway, he’s great. I love having him there. He’s such a valuable resource and Really helpful for the attendees. Here’s the other thing that usually happens. So Clavio sponsors the event practically every year

16:41
And most e-commerce store owners are using Klaviyo as one of their primary email marketing or just marketing engines period. So Klaviyo usually sends out someone to help answer all Klaviyo questions as well. So and I don’t know, I always have some Klaviyo questions or or they’ll cover some strategy that I’m not doing. So they’ll be there also to answer questions and I guess give you a consult. Yes, you can get a consult from Klaviyo. What what I love about Klaviyo is they don’t send booth babes.

17:11
two conferences in general. Have we ever gotten a booth day before? don’t know if we’ve ever gotten a booth day. But we also specifically tell people, please don’t send us your PR person. Send us your product people. so Klaviyo, had, I remember, do you remember Jessica from last year? She had like shorter hair. She rocked it. Like she was like sitting down with people, like opening the account. The funniest part about Klaviyo last year was that I was doing a talk on email.

17:38
And it’s all Klaviyo based, obviously for e-commerce. And as I was like up on the stage getting miked up, I see the entire Klaviyo team walk in and sit in the front row. And I was like, ah!

17:50
I was so nervous. was like, I just got like 10 times more nervous than I normally do because I’m thinking like, I hope they agree with everything I’m teaching people or I’m in big trouble because every single slide is like Klaviyo based only because that’s what I use for e-commerce brands. And yeah, that was nerve wracking to say the least. I didn’t realize that. That’s hilarious. I’m sure they’ll do the same. Yes. Well, well, let’s let’s talk about a couple of sessions. Sure. Yeah. That you want to talk about yours. Yeah, because I’m not I’m not.

18:19
fully talking about email this year, because Klaviyo skeeved me out last year. Actually, no, I think Klaviyo is going to give a basically Klaviyo how-to little session. With their new features, which at the time of this recording, I’m sure most of you guys have not heard about them. Tony and I got invited to their launch event where they launched a slew of amazing features, which we’ll be covering on this podcast. Yes, we will absolutely be covering.

18:46
probably in the next couple of weeks, but they will be basically showing you how to do all the things. Usually, I think it’s gonna be very similar to the talk that I gave last year as far as the Klaviyo features that you probably aren’t using that are available to you and can really revolutionize your business, especially in your email marketing.

19:07
And I’m more than happy to let Klaviyo tell you because they will give you some of the times when I create flows and things like that, I’m always worried that it’s like this the best way to set it up. You never know. Right. Like I think it’s the best way, but it might just be the way that I do it. And so I like that they’re there and can basically second check or double check everything that you do. So because Klaviyo is going to handle the bulk of email, I’m actually going to talk about how to use email and YouTube together to grow your brand.

19:36
I am in the throes of YouTube launching right now for one of my clients and we are seeing some really good success and interesting stats for this. And I think if you are an e-commerce business and you already are selling, right? So this is primarily for people that already have an email list. It doesn’t have to be big. Let’s just say you’ve got 5,000 people on your email list. You’re in a position to launch a YouTube channel. And I think this is…

20:05
going to be a game changer for e-commerce brands that are able to do this well. So I’m going to talk about what we’re doing and how we’re growing it, how we launched it specifically, and how we then use email to basically seal the deal. So the goal for this is really you get them in with YouTube and you seal the deal with email or ads. I’m not going to cover the ads, but you can seal the deal with ads as well. But I think this is going to be a really great session.

20:31
and something that I think is really within reach of most of the brands that come to Seller Summit.

21:00
all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be obtained 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.

21:19
Actually, if you’re talking about ads, Brett this year is going to be covering all things YouTube ads. Shoppable ads and all the different, because TikTok shop revolutionized this, I want to say, or they’ve done it well, where you can just shop directly within the platform. YouTube has something similar as well. Brett’s going to basically talk about the shoppable advertising landscape. He knows so much and he’s great. His roundtable is always packed.

21:49
always wants to answer every question and he runs an agency and I feel like once again, getting 30 minutes with Brett is worth the price of admission. I’ve seen him, open up your computer, let’s look at the backend, what are you doing, what’s set up, why isn’t it working for you? I’m excited to have him back. He’s such a great presenter and he usually brings some of his family, so it’s always fun to see them too.

22:17
The next speaker I just want to highlight is Sally Wilson. She is one of the favorites, one of my favorite students that’s ever taken my class. She’s doing extremely well. She doesn’t really sell on Amazon at all. Instead, the way she sells is she’s built this community. Her store is called Caterpillar Cross Stitch, where she sells cross cross stitch kits and supplies and the community that she’s built. she’s actually even run an event for her store, which is pretty unheard of.

22:47
Oh, that’s amazing. She’s going to teach everyone in the audience how she’s done exactly that with her brand. Will she also teach you how to finish a cross stitch that you started in 1994? The reason why I’ve been trying to get Sally to come for many years now, she’s in the UK, so it’s a trek. She’s going to make the trip this year and I’m super excited. That’s very exciting. I’m excited for this. A couple of years ago, we had Alicia.

23:13
talk about community and that was one of the favorite sessions at that year’s Seller Summit. I’m excited to have another speaker come and talk about using that community to grow your brand. I think this is one of those underutilized marketing tactics in e-commerce because it’s not easy. It is hard to grow community. If you know how to do it, it’s-

23:40
It’s something that you can teach yourself how to do, right? Like you don’t have to have any special skills. It just requires the dedication to do it, which I know is something that you have never liked to do to the community. That is like your least favorite thing. is because it takes so much effort to do. But if you can do it right, mean, that basically future proofs your business. Well, that’s thing to think about, right? Is that, yes, it does take a lot of effort. But if you have a strong community,

24:09
It doesn’t matter what the economy’s doing. It doesn’t matter what’s happening. It doesn’t matter if you have to raise your prices. I see this all the time in Tiffany’s community where if they have to raise the prices, there’s gonna be the two or three people that start complaining and whining, and then there’s gonna be the hundreds of people who pile on and defend you no matter what. I’ve seen in communities where people will…

24:32
talk about something and the audience will be like, do you have an affiliate link? Can I buy this directly from you? How do I make you the most money? Like when you get that community going, people are begging to give you money. So it doesn’t even feel like you have to ask. It just feels like, oh, well, once you’ve done the work, it just, then it becomes on autopilot. And it’s just about maintaining the community, which is significantly easier. Yep. So moving on.

25:00
We’re in an interesting period right now with Trump as president. Tariffs, all these changes for importing. So I’ve invited two speakers to come talk this year about how to find suppliers outside of China. So we have Annette, who’s going to be covering Made in the USA. Believe it or not, we still make stuff here in the US. And I’ve actually recently shifted one of my product lines to manufacturing in the US.

25:29
So Annette’s going to cover that, specifically in terms of textiles. And then I’ve invited my buddy Jim Kenimer, he runs Cosmos Sourcing, and he’s going to cover Mexico and Vietnam as well. Because we always hear about China, China, China. And, you know, I mean, that’s where a lot of the tariffs are going to be targeting. Plus, it’s gotten more expensive over the years. So there’s other countries out there that are less spoken about. People know

25:59
less about how to source from there. And that’s why having these two resources, and Annette, is going to really help out. And I think it’ll be interesting, especially with Annette, how do you source in America without just losing all your profit margin? What’s the strategy? How do you do it? So I know that will be a very popular session. Both of them will be very popular because people really want to find alternatives.

26:25
We brought Andrea back. Was that a good idea? I love Andrea. Andrea is one of our last year. People were asking not only could she could they hire her, but could they be her? Could she be their best friend? She always delivers a great session. And this year she’s going to talk about meta ads, which is really we don’t ever let Andrew talk about meta ads. which is weird. Because I did the meta ads last year. She should have done it. That is her thing.

26:52
She has consistently driven some ridiculous ROIs on meta ads for the last seven years. Through all of the changes, through all of the updates, through everything that’s happened. Here’s where I think Andrea really shines, is she understands Facebook audiences and all the strategies behind that, but she also understands how to pivot. For example,

27:21
one of her clients last year, just the ads just went in the toilet on Black Friday, which is, you think of a worst time for your ads to go in the toilet, right? And it’s like, so what do you do? And if you work with an ad agency, typically they’re like, we’re doing everything we can, and it’s just like, give us more money. And Andrea basically did a deep dive into why there were issues and basically within three or four weeks turned it around and figured, and I don’t know what she did exactly, but she’s gonna share this stuff.

27:50
with you guys at Seller Summit, but basically to the point where after Christmas, this client had their best December and January of their entire business life. Amazing. Yeah. So just the ability to go in and go, OK, we have a problem, which everyone runs into this, right? Something happens with Facebook. And then figuring it out and restructuring what you’re doing to make things work again. So yeah.

28:16
It’s to be a good never heard her speak. She’s extremely detail oriented and practical. Yes, very practical. She is like Miss No Fluff. Yeah, she’s like Miss No Fluff. Yeah. Yeah. The only fluff you’re going to get is a Harry Potter story or two. Well, what I like about her talk last year is you could just sit there and exactly implement what she was teaching at the actual session itself. Yeah. She had little…

28:40
flow charts and all sorts of stuff that told you exactly what to do. It was all timeline-based, so you could just implement it. Very, very smart. Excited to have her back. She’s almost an OG. She’s been to every year but the first year. She didn’t go the first year? No, because she wasn’t in e-commerce back then. That’s right. Took her a year to believe in us. Chris Shaver’s coming back. He is an OG.

29:10
I feel like Chris is like, just talk about whatever you want, Chris. That’s true because he always does a good job. He knows so much about so many things. I feel like this is what happens when you don’t have children. You get to know everything about everything. Steve and I are limited. That’s true, especially these days because the kids are older now. I feel like Chris Schafer has done it all. He’s sold on Amazon, he’s sold on Etsy, he’s sold on Shopify.

29:39
He’s built communities, he’s had websites, he’s done affiliate marketing, right? He’s done all the different things and he’s gonna basically this year talk about how to build that audience and sell on your own terms, right? So you don’t have to play the Amazon game 100 % of the time. You can have a whole nother department in your business where you are selling directly to your consumers and…

30:02
How do you leverage SEO, social media, all those things to build this truly lasting brand? I’m always excited for him. He always does a great talk. Yeah. He he hits a home run every year. I don’t know how that’s possible, but he does. He does. He’s just a great speaker too. Yeah. And he’s helped out a bunch of other companies because he’s actually, I want to say a fractional CMO for several companies also. Yes. In addition to the brands that he runs. Yeah. And so he just has a wide breadth of knowledge.

30:32
We should do a game when you’re at seller summit like stump Chris Schaefer. I don’t think anyone can. I noticed whenever he opens up the Q &A, he’s like, oh, yes, I did this back in 2023. Oh, yes, I did this in my own business. Oh, yes, I did this for a client. He just has a huge knowledge base for e-commerce. He’s such a, not only that, he will talk to you before the sessions, after the sessions, in the bathroom. He’s been cornered in the bathroom before. He’s told me with questions.

31:02
I’m just always willing to give information to people and I love that he’s back again for another year. I’m really excited for Ritu’s talk. So last year we invited Ritu to come talk about AI. Yes. And she blew me away. Like I use AI in a lot of ways. Yeah. But she blew me away in the different ways that she uses AI to basically boost Amazon businesses. Yes.

31:28
Although this year, I’m not exactly sure what direction she’s going to take with AI, but I do know that she and Bernie have a technical background. And so they use it for a lot of ways to automate various tasks with your e-commerce business. So I actually don’t know the details of her talk. I just know it’s going to be good based on what she did last year. And what I know is that last year she had, I want to say the most popular talk at Seller Summit. Possibly. Yeah. I got the most feedback from her talk.

31:58
more people were like, this is game changing, revolutionary, just like mind blown information. And she once again has that Chris Schaefer, you know, presentation vibe of just very relaxed, knows her stuff, can answer any question and also very willing to help always around during the whole event. So you can ask questions, which kind of brings us a little bit. I don’t want to get too off topic, but the round tables, which I think are

32:28
You like the mastermind, that’s your favorite. The round tables for me are probably one of, they’re a pain in the butt to logistically for me, but for attendee value, 10 out of 10, because basically what our speakers do is they not only agree to speak for us, which is amazing, but they agree to run a round table, which is usually another hour out of their schedules where we have literally round tables set up all throughout the conference venue and

32:55
The speakers, basically they get like a little placard that says, hey, this is where, know, Ritu’s sitting and you can go to their table and ask them absolutely any question you want. If there was something you didn’t understand in their talk, you can ask them that. You can ask them about, you know, something that did you want it to go deeper in? Because obviously when you get on stage, you can only go so deep with information. So that’s your chance to get a deep dive about information with our speakers or just ask them about other things that you know they’re an expert in.

33:25
and they didn’t maybe cover that on stage. So this is always a favorite part of Seller Summit. And people, feel like it’s really hard to get people away from those tables at the end of the time. Like that is one of the biggest challenges is getting people to go back to their seats for the closing keynote. So I think last year someone plopped down next to Brett Curry and literally had him look at their Google ads.

33:51
Yeah, like right right there in front. Yeah, and so it was like a free consult session Yeah, here’s here’s how i’ve always felt about going to events a speaker goes up and they speak for however long And then they take like maybe one or two questions. Yep, and that’s it So the round table is a way to make sure that your question gets answered by the speaker So yeah, that’s so in all most almost all of our speakers do a round table And then also the round table is a great time to talk to um

34:20
the Klaviyo guys, Steve Weigler, our friends from Quiet Light. If you’ve ever thought about selling or buying a business, we actually have a lot of attendees who bought their business and that’s how they got started in e-commerce. They are so knowledgeable. Once again, they don’t send, I mean, they have booth babes, but they’re not booth babes at Quiet Light. You know, I’m talking to you, Chuck. They are so knowledgeable. I know our friend Liz.

34:49
when she started her business, she built that business to sell. And so from day one, she had a quiet light advisor to, how do I even set up my business the right way so that when I wanna exit, I’m not like, we hear horror stories of people who wanna exit and everything’s such a cluster that it becomes so much more difficult than it probably needed to be. And so whether you’re in the, think I wanna sell, I’m interested in buying another business or acquiring a business.

35:16
They are the best to talk to and the roundtables are a great time to get uninterrupted free consultations really is what it is. It’s free consults for you guys. And another person who is so generous with our knowledge is Pam from RPC. I don’t even know what to say about Pam because we love her so much.

35:39
And she once again, I’ve seen her at seller summit. People are like, I have a container. It is stuck in Pam’s like click, click, click, click, click. Now we have your container kind of thing. And actually, I heard a story about Pam just yesterday where one of one of our seller summit attendees had an issue with their container was stuck in port and they couldn’t get a chassis. I’m going to mess this story up because I don’t know what all these terms mean. And they had a different freight forwarder.

36:09
And the freight forwarder was basically ghosting them, like was not helping them. The container was stuck and Pam literally took over mid forwarding and had the container delivered within like three days. Like it was like some insane amount of time. So she just knew exactly who to call. You know, and I’ve heard like when other people say, oh, we can’t get this for a week, Pam will have it to the next day. Right. Like, so they do a great job. And once again, she’s a seller, some of OG. is.

36:38
Yeah, the round tables and just you will always see Pam. She’s always hanging around. love that she’s wearing a fluorescent pink or fluorescent yellow pink or yellow jacket. She’s so adorable. And she is there to help you no matter. And she’ll even say, even if you don’t use me, I want to help you. And so I love that everybody that attends Seller Summit is so willing to give of their time and their knowledge. And Pam is absolutely no exception to that.

37:06
Okay, I think we have a couple more to talk about. So there’s actually more talks than what we’re talking about because not everyone has submitted their topics yet, including myself. I have no idea what I’m covering just yet. But I invited Jeff Oxford back because you know, we’ve been kind of poo-pooing Google on this podcast. But despite the fact that we’ve been poo-pooing Google in the e-commerce world at least, it’s different than the blogging world.

37:33
E-commerce, ranking in search is still a big deal. so Jeff is going to talk about all the changes in SEO and how to still get your e-commerce store to rank in 2025. And if it doesn’t work out, then we’ll just put Jeff in a dunking booth with a big Google t-shirt on and everyone can just throw bean bags at the dunk booth and dunk Jeff. No.

37:55
Jeff is another one of those who just does such a great job of explaining things and breaking things down into a very understandable. SEO is complicated and there are so many different components to it. I feel like every time I have a conversation with Jeff, everything just makes sense at the end. He’s a great speaker, usually has a great case study when he talks to help you understand how in your business things would work if you follow the strategy.

38:24
So I’m excited to have him back. He came a couple of years ago, did a great job. once again, get your free SEO session at the round table. Get your SEO consult. He’ll do the same exact thing. He’ll open up your website. He’ll take a look. He’ll run it through all his fancy tools. yeah, I love having Jeff. He’s probably the only guy I trust for SEO because SEO traditionally is a pretty scammy industry. Yes. But Jeff.

38:50
is one of those ones that I trust and he specializes in e-commerce stores. can’t think of, actually, you know what? I can’t think of any other SEO that I’ve encountered that specializes in e-commerce. Yeah. So he’ll be there. That’s exciting. Yeah. And we have more speakers that Steve hasn’t put up on the site yet, but they’re coming. That’s correct. Actually, there’s two that I haven’t actually put up on the site, but I did put up Tiffany’s. So everyone’s been asking us about TikTok shop, TikTok shop, TikTok shop.

39:20
Tiffany is probably the person that we know personally that does the best on TikTok shop. Yes. I don’t know what her numbers are. I don’t know if you’re allowed to reveal them, but it’s a lot of money. She’ll reveal them, Mad Seller. That’s what I love about Tiffany is that there’s never any smoke and mirrors. Whatever she’s legally allowed to show you for the site’s terms of service, she will tell you. I remember last year she’s like, I only made $500,000 this month or something like that. She was all mad about it.

39:50
but she shows basically everything. She is another one of the, I want to say fan favorites at Seller Summit. She has such great energy. She’s so entertaining. Even if you don’t care about TikTok shop, usually her session, you have to fight to find a seat because even if you don’t want to sell on TikTok, you just want to listen to Tiffany for 40 minutes because she does such a great job and she’s so entertaining. Whatever she’s, she’s always working on something absolutely crazy and people want to know about it.

40:19
It’s like a mixture of a teaching session plus stand-up comedy. Yes. Is the way I see it. And the woman has so much energy. Yes. It’s nuts. Yes. For such a tiny little person, she has so much energy and always, yeah, she’s once again, one of our favorite speakers at Seller Summit because she just, she’s so entertaining, but also, you know, a lot of, after I think her live selling a couple of years ago, so a couple of years ago, she did live selling.

40:46
And we had many sellers try life selling after her talk. Including my wife. Yes, including Jen. So anyway, she’s always fun to have and you’ll learn something about TikTok, know, part of me is like, I don’t know how you can’t sell on TikTok these days. Like it’s very lucrative. It’s a great revenue channel. So we’ll see.

41:12
We’ll see how it goes. mean, a lot of stuff is up in the air and I’m sure like some of these talks might change slightly depending on what the administration does. But we’ll see. mean, I’m excited for the lineup. There’s a bunch more talks that we didn’t get a chance to talk about. Maybe we’ll cover that in a future episode. But yeah, if you guys are interested in coming to a small intimate event, full of networking, full of learning, come to sellersummit.com.

41:41
That’s the URL sellerssummit.com.

41:46
Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any questions about the event, send me an email at steve at sellers summit.com. For more information and resources, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 581. Once again, tickets to the seller summit 2025 are now on sale over at seller summit.com. 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 seller summit.com.

42:15
And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife, quitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, I invited my good friend Nick Loper from Side Hustle Nation back on the show to give you some realistic side hustle ideas that you can start right now with very little money. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over at sellersummit.com. The Seller Summit.

00:25
is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level advice, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet.

00:55
I personally hate large events, so the Seller’s Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past 8 years. If you are an ecommerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller’s Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th.

01:24
Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

01:38
Welcome to the My Wife Could a Job podcast. In this episode, I have my good buddy Nick Loper from Side Also Nation back on the show. And today we’re going to give you a bunch of million dollar business ideas for you to take. Awesome. It’s become a tradition. I think this is our third round of business idea giveaways. If you like this format, make sure to go back and check out the other two. We’ll link up those episodes in the show notes for this episode. Now I want to pitch you an idea that came to mind recently. This is

02:07
a household item that I can almost guarantee you have several of in your house that experts recommend you replace probably more often than you do. This item, experts say, can contain up to 16 different species of fungi, and up to 10 % of the weight of this item is now dust mites and their waste. Do you have a guess of what this is? Is it a water filter?

02:34
This is neither of those. This is your pillow on your bed. Oh, no way. OK. So the idea that I want to pitch is pillows as a service, a pillow subscription service. You would take some quiz, determine are you a back sleeper? Are you a side sleeper? OK, what density? What thickness is going to be perfect for you? And then we’re just going to ship you a new one of those every three to six months, whatever the cadence is that turns out to be like optimal for cleaning.

03:02
this thing and having a less gross sleeping experience. kind of like that. So is it the pillow or the pillowcase or both? I think it’s the pillow itself that, you know, obviously, you know, wash your pillowcase as often as you care to. But like the pillow itself collects all of this nasty stuff that just is difficult to get rid of. Interesting. I kind of like that idea. I’m very particular about my pillow, though. Yeah.

03:29
That’s I like a personalize it. But once you once you find one that you like, it’s like, OK, I’ll just keep getting that one. I like that idea, actually. I never thought of that because come to think of it, one of my buddies cannot sleep at night. And then he started, well, changing his sheets like three times a week. And that actually fixed it. Interesting. So this is similar, I think. Yeah, we spend, you know, we’re supposed to spend, you know, eight hours a day sleeping. So you spend a lot of time, a third of your hours on top of this thing.

04:00
and you start to think about like, oh, this is kind of gross dead skin cells and everything else is going on in there. like, yeah, we should probably replace this more often than we do. I can’t remember the last time I got a new pillow. You know why I like recording these episodes with you, Nick, is we have completely different ideas. So mine are kind of very e-commerce focused, selling focused. Yeah, well, there’s an e-commerce angle to this, right? No, no, there is. is. is. So my idea was

04:27
Because right now I run an e-commerce store and a lot of us don’t want to be doing customer service, meaning like answering phones and whatnot. And you know how AI is all the rage right now. And so a lot of stores are having these chat bots, just being like the first line of defense. it’s really easy to just train your chat bot to know your products. And so I was thinking of service. And again, you have to figure out how to do all this stuff, which is not surprisingly not that complicated.

04:57
train them up, and then offer it as a service to just create one of these bots, customer service bot for an online store or any store that just knows the products and can answer simple questions. And so this would be a process of feeding in all the product details and… Exactly. Kind of like the frequently asked questions, basically like the database of knowledge. And you could probably feed in chat transcripts from like the previous 10 years of human customer support representatives.

05:26
and say, well, how did they respond to this? I mean, the least techie way to do this is to literally just create a spreadsheet of all the products, product descriptions, and everything, and then just send them into an AI bot and train it just for that store as a service. Yeah. OK. And then targeting, the question is, would you just send cold pitches to people on Shopify, do random product searches, see what stores show up?

05:54
So what I would do is I would just go through the Shopify database of stores and just start reaching out to them through their contact forms. There’s a lot of demand for this, I know, because I’m a member of all these forums and people are asking how to do it. And then there’s like ridiculously overpriced services that offer more than this, obviously. But at the base level, it’s a very simple thing that an individual can do for other companies.

06:20
OK, so you go sell it as a service and the pitch being, we’re going to save you so many human hours of customer support time, or that first line of defense, right? If we can reduce the number of inquiries, and you see this on so many tech support, where it’s like, check out our knowledge base, or check out our frequently asked questions. Do you still want to submit a ticket? Did this question, did your question get answered? Sometimes it’s not even clear that you’re going to get, that a human is going to read your question.

06:50
Yeah, and oftentimes, like if you look at our most commonly asked questions is where’s my order and or what should I buy? Like I’m looking for this. What should I buy? And you can answer that question really easily with an AI bot because that knows your products. So. OK, yeah, that’s that’s interesting. I help people on their decision make not just, you know, tech support, troubleshooting triage, but like actually on the front end of, well, this is my situation. Help point me in the right direction.

07:19
Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, OK. I’ve got one that I’ll throw out. This is probably under the umbrella of smart home automation. But I’m going call it the second guess remover. Because how many times have you pulled out of the house, and it’s not until you turn the corner out of the neighborhood that you start to think, did I close the garage door? And now that you’ve planted that seed of doubt, your wife is like, I think we did, but I’m not really sure.

07:48
Why don’t we just go back and check? And so the second guess remover is, you know, maybe it’s an app on your phone. Maybe it’s some way to either remotely close it with some smart device or it just, you know, some way to double check like, yes, in fact, we did close it. And you turn around and nine times out of 10, of course you closed it because you always do. But one time, the one time I can remember where we didn’t actually close it was when we were starting our 13 hour drive from California back up to Washington. And we turned around and we’re like,

08:17
oh crap, we were gonna be gone for a couple weeks, and this thing was wide open. So it’s like that, for that reason, we always do turn around and go check. How did you know that it was open? It was just that seed of doubt, like, we better turn around and we better go check. Yeah, so actually, I haven’t talked about this publicly, but our house got broken into a couple weeks back. And so now we’ve got like cameras everywhere. So I guess that would accomplish the same thing as this.

08:44
Yeah, if you had the camera pointed at the garage, you could check. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I like that idea. I do that all the time, actually. I second guess myself all the time. It’s bad. It’s bad. Yeah. It is like, of course you closed it, because that’s just part of like the pulling out of the driveway process. But sometimes it’s like, did I hit the button? I don’t know. Another one, while we’re on the topic of theft deterrent in this ballpark, a neighbor of ours has

09:13
You know how people have the yard signs like this home protected by Xfinity monitoring or ADT or even like simply safe. You see all the stuff. This guy went a different route and his sign said something like this home protected by a trigger happy second amendment voter or something. I was like, hey, that’s a bold move. I don’t know if this guy is armed or not, but it’s enough if I’m a prospective criminal to be like, I’m going go to the next house.

09:44
I think that would work in 49 out of the 50 states in California that would not fly. You don’t think so? I don’t think so. But you’re right. mean, yeah, they might think twice. I mean, it’s all about being less appealing than the next house. Right, right. Try to make it broken into. Right. Yeah. Make it just again. How can I make myself less of an easy mark, less of an easy target? So my next idea also has to do with shopping. But this is a trend that’s been happening.

10:14
all over Asia. I’m not sure if you watch TikTok or any of those, but there are these people. So there’s this one lady who’s who’s famous for this amid all over the news. She made thirteen point seven million dollars in seven days live selling on the Chinese version of TikTok. And she’s just taken other people’s products. I thought TikTok was the Chinese version of TikTok. There’s like a doying is a doying is a Chinese version. The Chinese version of TikTok has educational videos and stuff, not the stuff that we have in America.

10:45
but it was just this lady holding up stuff, you know, then just holding up for like three seconds and then sliding it over. And so basically there’s a lot of e-commerce stores that want exposure to this audience. So you can offer live selling services. And again, you don’t need an audience to do this on TikTok, is the beauty of it. But if you just go on, it’s a consistency thing and you go on, sell.

11:14
There’s a whole career of people doing this now, but they’re not doing it on a mass market trying to recruit other companies to list their goods. So this would be, I’m the micro influencer selling random stuff? So basically you send me your product and you reach out and then you will just live sell on Facebook, TikTok, just stream all at once. And you just be like a virtual salesman, kind of like an affiliate.

11:44
in a different way. Like remember we had affiliates in the web world where you click on a link. Yeah. This is literally like the home shopping network. OK. But if you don’t have any following like who’s who’s that’s beauty of it. You don’t need a following on these platforms as long as the your selling style is appealing over time you will you know these platforms like TikTok will find people that watch you. OK. So are you sending your wedding linens to

12:11
people doing this kind of thing? can see if we can move funny about all this, the reason why I came up with this is I like, I was going to do this for our own products. Yeah. But like who wants to see a middle-aged Chinese guy selling wedding linens, right? I would want to find someone probably female for our products, probably, you know, in the demographic that we’re looking toward for doing this. And so what’s funny is a lot of these ideas that I’ve come up with here today are things that I actually need.

12:40
for myself and I know stores are looking for this.

12:45
Interesting and so and tick-tock affiliates have already been big. It just hasn’t been organized as much We’ve heard from some ecom sellers that they’ve had some pretty good success going after micro influencers in their niche and even People kind of doing product reviews and pointing towards a tick-tock shop Yeah I think the problem is you have to go out and find these people Whereas if there’s someone, know, who’s very eloquent and and good on camera and you go to the store

13:15
More often than not, they’ll be like, hey, sure. Because it’s all on consignment anyways, right? You don’t have to pay the person until they make a sale. OK, all performance-based where you kind of set a target, the cost of acquisition. Yeah, pretty much. OK. All right, that’s new to me. I don’t spend any time on TikTok or these other ones. I don’t really know. Let’s see, what’s next on my list here? Oh, we have.

13:43
We have one. you have solar panels on your house? We do not. OK. This is something that we’ve been trying to figure out and contemplate, even though we live in the gloomy Northwest. We have a south-facing roof and very simple roof structure where it’s like, OK, this would be good. And it kind of pains me every summer when it does get hot out. It’s almost this greenhouse where it’s like, we’re just soaking up all this juice and just absorbing it. We’re not doing anything with it. How could we harvest this in some way?

14:13
But the world of solar sales is pretty opaque and sometimes a little bit shady and people making all kinds of promises about, well, this tax rebate. And then you can claim the depreciation on top of this. And other people are like, yeah, that’s not a thing. Who told you that? so the idea here is the local consultant person who can kind of play matchmaker, analyze your

14:43
your situation and your needs. And they might tell you, look, this is just not a fit for you. But we’ve got relationships with the local vendors, the local installers, and figure out, what is a realistic and good price for this type of install? And we also just had a few months ago the bomb cyclone 2024. This was like a mass power outage event where half a million people or something out of power. And we were down five days or something in the dark. And I had to toss all the

15:12
food out of the fridge. Thankfully, no property damage in this storm. it was like, you got everybody thinking about like, well, what is my home energy backup plan? Like, is this a battery system? Is this a generator system? What makes the most sense? And this was a once in a generation event. So was like, well, maybe if I just allocate what I would have spent on a battery towards a hotel room and restocking the freezer, like, could survive the next several storms and it would still be coming out ahead. But it’s something that a lot of people were thinking about.

15:43
In response to that so it’s kind of the the home energy backup consultant I know on a previous one of these we talked about the you pitched the zombie apocalypse consultant. Yeah, it’s like in that same Same thing, you know since we’re talking about solar there was this article that I was reading where like within like the first couple years the Effectiveness of your solar panels degrades dramatically because dirt gets accumulated on this

16:10
So how about like a service where you just go around and clean people’s solar panels? Yeah, we can boost the efficiency. we can get you back. Yeah. I mean, that wasn’t one of the ones I had on my list, but your idea made me think of that. Yeah, put it down. All right. Here’s one that literally I just thought of the other day as I was eating at a restaurant. So I was ordering from a Chinese restaurant for Chinese New Year, which just passed. And I noticed that the company that I was ordering from

16:39
was offering to pay $3 per photo of their food so they could populate the app with like authentic pictures of their food. And these photos are meant to be casual, so they come across as authentic, right? Not like a stage shot. And so I was thinking my business idea is to just go around to these restaurants, there’s this need, and offer to just take organic pictures of their food. And maybe in the beginning you just do it exchange for a free meal,

17:08
kicks, but maybe over time you could turn this into, you know, a real business because restaurants want people taking pictures and making videos of their food and posting them, whether it be on the app or are on their own accounts. they’re trying to incentivize like a crowd sourced image gallery basically like, of course we’re to have our, you know, fancy professional product photographer come in and take these shots. But you know, it looks

17:36
more it looks more legit it looks more official if it’s you know just random customers posting pictures of their food yeah if it’s a customer like holding up the plate or the food or eating it or whatever okay instead of like a stock photo and so they were willing to pay three dollars per photo wow and of course we did this yeah take some pictures yeah you just take a picture of the food that you just got like eating it so clearly there’s a demand here and maybe you can do this on a mass scale

18:01
And it only takes one to get a toehold. And then you start going to the neighborhood or the restaurant down the street. Like, did you know these guys must be onto something? They’re paying $3 a picture to get these different things. Is just to populate Yelp? Or where they putting these things? So the one that I used, I can’t remember the service. There’s a whole bunch of these delivery services that they have. maybe like DoorDash. We didn’t use DoorDash, but DoorDash could be one of those, right? It’s one thing to see like

18:29
photos of just the food, it’s another to see real people enjoying the food. OK. OK. And so maybe that’s a way to, I don’t know the economics behind it, but if they’re willing to pay $3 a photo, clearly there’s a demand for this. Yeah, so that helps. Maybe that helps their average order value. That helps their conversion rate in these apps or something. Yeah, conversion rate, probably, yeah. Huh. Interesting. Yeah.

18:53
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six-day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text-based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

19:22
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

19:33
I’ve got one that is related to software price increases. I think you and me both share a frugality gene. so whenever some tool that I’m using jacks up the price, it pains me a little bit. And it pains me that the switching cost is so high, it pains me that I feel kind of powerless to do anything about it. And so it makes me want to research alternatives, better, faster, cheaper alternatives. The one that really hit me was

20:03
lead pages recently where to their credit, they had not increased the rate in 10 years. And so was like, I understand this is due for a rate, but it was such a shock because it almost doubled. I was like, really? Like, hey, I’ve been a customer for 10 years. Is this what you’re going to do to me? And I spent the whole day researching alternatives and trying to migrate over to optimized press for 25 % of the price. So the service that I want to pitch is the software migration service.

20:30
And it doesn’t have to be lead pages. could be anywhere you see people complaining about a price increase. It could be people looking for filling the blank product alternative, like Zapier did this a couple of years ago, where they really increased their rates. anytime you see people complaining about that, there may be an opportunity to be like, hey, I’m a specialist in migrating from this thing to this thing. And maybe you build some tool to help you do it. I don’t know. There’s probably a way to do it.

20:59
And the thing is, a lot of these are kind of proprietary closed off software systems. Like maybe it’s a little more challenging than that. But if you get good at it, I imagine you can knock these out pretty quickly. You know, it’s funny that you mentioned Zapier because I can’t remember how many years ago when Zapier doubled their prices, I moved everything over to Make. Yeah, me too. Oh, you did? It wasn’t called Make. Make acquired the company. can’t remember what it was called. was like IntegraMat first. IntegraMat. That’s what it was.

21:29
But yeah, because in the challenges, there’s a learning curve. It’s like, well, I already know how SafeHear works. Do I really want to do this? Is worth the time? It’s like, well, if I’m going to have this for another five or 10 years, then yeah, it adds up every month, but totally. Yeah. I like that. You would have to specialize in something, but yeah, that’d be really easy to do because people tend to complain on Reddit, right? Right. And you could say, hey, I just use this to migrate. And it’s like your own service. Yeah.

21:58
I love it. I like that one. like that one. Can I go again while we’re on the topic of Reddit? as you know, the world of SEO has kind of been turned upside down in the last year, year and a half or so with Google really prioritizing both AI search results, but also sites like Reddit and Quora, kind of these user-generated content type of sites. I’ve actually met somebody doing this, but they’re providing Reddit marketing services where we’ll create these different

22:29
accounts and we’ll kind of build up their Reddit credibility. So it’s not like they’re just coming in and spamming links, but they’re kind of like strategically and intentionally highlighting your brand in kind of an organic Reddit approved way in a lot of cases where you could start. Well, if Reddit is all of sudden siphoning off a bunch of my traffic, like how can I get in front of that traffic in a way that at least from the outside looking in appears to be authentic and playing by those rules?

22:57
Those gamification services started happening almost immediately after. Have you been approached by the Reddit services? Not by anybody serious, that I can tell. I mean, I’ve been approached, and I always thought it was spammy. the people who approached me. But yeah, there are companies paying lots of money for this service. absolutely. Because basically, it’s a ghost writing.

23:25
service where they’re taking your content, your ideas and putting it up there. And like you’re probably not going to get the same traffic, the same traffic value, but it’s a way to get your message. Our mutual friend Spencer Hawes, think, tried one of these services. Oh, okay. And he had some good results. I know you probably had him on this podcast at some point. Yeah. I’ll have to catch up with Spencer for sure. Yeah. Okay. So my next idea.

23:52
has to do with the fact that we recently moved my mom into our neighborhood and she was moving from a gigantic house to a little teeny tiny house because you know housing is so expensive over here. Anyway, she had to get rid of a lot of stuff and you if you go to these estate sale people it’s all like a super sketchy industry. Like you have, they can’t give you prices on anything and they just kind of give you this check and they don’t even give you like an itemized

24:21
list of what was sold and for how much they just kind of hand you this check at the very end, which I found really sketchy. We interviewed a whole bunch of these services, but so I was thinking there’s a lot of people moving, right? And they need to get rid of their stuff. So why not just put like an above board, uh, sort of selling service where you’ll offer to just eBay all of their stuff. And it’s completely transparent. You show them the auctions, you just go in, you take photos,

24:48
For some reason, I could not find a service that was willing to come to my mom’s house, take a full inventory, and just list everything on eBay. Oh, OK. No, I like this. It taps into the trend of empty nester, baby boomers downsizing. a typical, what’s it a state sale fees? They take 40%, 50 % of everything they sell? Yeah, they pretty much take half. But it’s the lack of transparency that bugged me.

25:16
Like they can’t make any promises and they don’t even give you the itemized list of everything. At least the ones that I interviewed in Maryland. And I could not find a place that was just willing to eBay everything and come to the house. Like you can bring all your stuff to them and they’ll eBay. I found those services. Okay. I met a guy a couple of years ago who was doing something similar. It wasn’t, maybe some of it was eBay, but another segment of his business was like a dedicated.

25:43
like auction site, like almost a dedicated estate sale type of sites. Like I’ll manage the whole thing for you, partnered with local real estate agents who kind of knew the customers as they were selling their house and knew they were going to need to get rid of some of this stuff. And it was all on consignment. It was all on performance. well, whatever sells, we’ll take a cut and we’ll pass on the rest. Yeah. I mean, the key for me was transparency. Yeah. Right. I like to see the auctions and whatnot and sure, you can take your cut.

26:10
But at least in Maryland, the estate sale people that I went through, it just felt like kind of dirty to me. So I think there’s a need. Yeah, I really like this one. And then do that realtor partner angle or start with friends and family who are going through this process, get a few reps under your belt and figure out how to streamline that process and then provide that. Because it’s kind of the anti-positioning. It’s like you position it as, you know, we’re

26:40
transparent, where the homeowner advocate, there’s different ways. It’s like when you see cruelty free on a shampoo or any other product or something, you’re like, now I automatically assume that every other thing is filled with cruelty. And you’re like, well, that’s an interesting anti-positioning. Yeah, just the fact that you can see the auctions that they’re conducting and what the actual selling price is, that’d be good enough for me. OK, cool, cool, cool.

27:09
Um, what else do I have? Do you have a aura ring? No, I do not. Yeah, me neither. And the reason I don’t is I believe the sleep score is largely irrelevant where it’s like, I’m going to wake up today and I got to be the best version of myself. You know, whether I slept well or whether I slept poorly, I still got to show up. I got to be a dad. I got to do all the things. I got to go crush the day. And so it’s like,

27:38
Maybe there’s an opportunity for the aura ring that just shoots back, 98, 99, all the time. It’s like, nailed it last night. You might feel tired, but no, the data says you did great. You might as well go out and crush your day. Something that’s been on my mind is like, sleep is getting a lot of attention lately with recognizing how important it is for brain recovery.

28:06
you know, all sorts of different health consequences. And it’s like, yes, do all the things to make sure you try and get the best night’s sleep possible. But it’s kind of silly, like, oh, I’m not going to do what I plan to do because I only got a 73. Like, well, really? Like, you still have to go do your day. So this is like a positive reinforcement type of ordering. Yeah, I like that. It doesn’t even have to be connected to any data. Like, it just has like fake looking Bluetooth or something.

28:36
I’d consider getting the aura ring because I know what you eat has a lot to do with how well you sleep. So by just eating certain things and then taking the score, you can narrow it. Because I know, for example, if I eat something super greasy, like Chinese food, example, like the night before, I don’t sleep that well. And it’s taken me years to figure that out. Whereas maybe something like that ring could have told me. So maybe more like an application specific type of ring. Where you enter in what you ate.

29:04
and then you get the data to see if there’s any correlations. Some of those simple things, and maybe it’s just like a reminder in the morning, like Carpe Diem. It could be something simple, like a simple push notification, like, hey, today’s the day. Go get it. You’re not getting any younger. We had some guys on the show years ago. That was their app. I think it was called We Croak. And it was just like a daily death reminder. was kind of like the memento mori thing. It was like, hey, just.

29:33
just to, know, I don’t know, 127 PM, hey, just a heads up, you’re gonna die someday. it’s like, well, shoot, I better go get after it. Nice, nice. So this next idea is, I hope Tony doesn’t get mad at me, but what was funny about this next idea is I got it from her during Seller Summit. So Seller Summit is the annual e-commerce conference that I run. And hilariously, at the last event,

29:59
she was actually helping some attendees optimize their dating profiles. Because there these guys that they come to Seller Summit every year and they’re still single. we just struck up this conversation like, yeah, how do I improve my dating efficiency? So Tony looked at their profile and they’re like, OK, you need to change this, this, this, this, right? So now, with a whole bunch of these AI image tools and whatnot, and AI just in general to help with the copy,

30:29
you can easily put together a profile that at least gets your foot in the door, and then it’s up to you to screw up the date or whatnot. But so Tony was doing these, helping people with their dating profiles for at least two or three people at the event. And I was like, Tony, should do this business, her next side hustle. Exactly, exactly. And there’s all these AI tools that can touch up your existing photos to make you look better from an existing photo that you upload too. Yeah. So. Yeah, no, I had a friend who recently did

30:58
an AI LinkedIn headshot. They fed in a bunch of existing pictures like, hey, this was a lot faster and cheaper than hiring a photographer. Yeah. I mean, of course, you know, once people all start doing this, you’re not going to be able to believe anyone’s profile, but you know, at least it gets you in the door. know, I mean, how many of these dating profiles are, you know, completely honest and truthful to begin with? That’s true. That’s true. But it’s very easy to screw up one of these two because certain people are looking for certain things, right?

31:27
Yeah, my brother’s role was, know, anybody who had, you know, anything Seahawks related was like an automatic out. He’s like, I do not care about football. Anybody who’s like, you know, holding a beer was like automatic out. He’s like, is he sober? And it was just, you know, it’s kind of interesting. Like everybody has their own different filters and criteria where for somebody else who have been like, hey, know, you’re drinking beer and watching football. It sounds like my kind of guy. My kind of person. Exactly. Exactly. But the conference shows that a lot of people need help in this department. So there’s clearly a demand for.

31:57
Yeah, think that taps into some other trends too of people postponing a lot of major life decisions, getting married later in life, having kids later in life, the loneliness epidemic. This is a real thing, help people find their partner. That taps into a big, big market. That is until AI becomes that partner, but that’s a topic for different episode. That’s another episode. I just aired a

32:24
recently was like I interviewed my AI self like Robo Nick, know, just prompted chat GPT to respond as me. And it did it surprisingly well. It’s like, hey, that’s, that’s kind of the answer I would have given. And you know, it only made up a few facts, which were a little weird, but it did surprisingly well. like, are you published you publish on your podcast? No, I haven’t tried that yet. That sounds like a very interesting episode. Yeah, I mean, because you’ve got, know, this 10 year body of work out on the internet, too, where you know, it absolutely could respond to Steve.

32:54
Link that episode up. I want to listen to that one. right, I’ll send that one. That sounds like a great idea, by the way. Yeah, love it. All right, what’s next? Is it my turn? It’s your turn. I got a couple more, too. Next one for me is in the world of content creation. And I’m calling this I’m feeling lucky for podcast editing. And so what we’ve learned over 10, almost 12 years of podcast editing, is

33:24
at least as much about what you don’t say as what you say, like what you don’t air. And so my job as the host is to cut the fluff, cut the stuff that doesn’t add to the conversation or like, you went off this tangent, really go anywhere or that question kind of landed with a dud, like, okay, fine. And so my job after recording has been to go through the transcript and find those little sections, just to try and tighten that up. And maybe we’ll record for an hour and try and find the best.

33:53
50 minutes and maybe there’s a sliding scale on this, you know, I’m feeling lucky editor. I think this is going to rely on AI. You feed in the transcript, you feed in examples of past episodes that you really like. And my thought is this is going to make suggestions on where to trim the fat. could you cut out of this and not lose the overall message and takeaways, but just make it a tighter listening experience? I’ve been waiting for a tool like that.

34:22
as long as I’ve been podcasting. I think the closest thing that I’ve used for that is a tool called Opus Clip. Have you tried that tool? No, this is like the, we’ll make AI shorts for you. Yeah, it’ll make shorts for you, but it actually does a reasonably good job of picking out like something that you can just cut to the front, you know, to get that hook and the attention. Okay. But something like that more along the lines of what you just described, I would definitely pay for it.

34:52
No questions asked. Because it’s like the time, that’s the time consuming. This is where I love being a podcast guest, where I just show up and as soon as a recording is done, my work is over. But as the host, it’s like, well, now I got to review this whole transcript to figure this out. And thankfully, we have an editing service to help perform those actual cuts. if there was even just a starting point, maybe that’s what it is. It’s like, OK, we want to end the sliding scale. It’s like, I want to.

35:20
How strict did you want it to be? Like, okay, it’s only going to keep the best 15 minutes. I think that would be really, really hard. But if you’re just, want to trim 10%, uh, you know, give me the bottom 10 % of this episode and maybe it will make suggestions on that. So all these ideas that I’ve given you are just ones that I’ve come up with as a result of things that have happened in my life. So as I mentioned before, my mom just moved in our neighborhood and you know, as you get older, you want to spend more time with your parents, right? And what I’ve discovered just hanging out with my mom a lot more.

35:50
is that she has all these stories to tell that you don’t know about that you probably wouldn’t have asked when you were younger, right? And so there was this service that we used a while back where the company basically just emails your mom or your parent a list of questions and then they compile their answers in a book for you, right? But I was thinking of taking that one step further. So this is a book that sits on my shelf that I treasure now because it’s all stories. what service did you use for that? I forgot what it was called.

36:20
but I can find out for your listeners if they want. The problem with that service though was like the parent or whatever has to do a lot of writing. It’s actually quite burdensome for them, especially if English isn’t their first language. So what I was thinking about doing was taking that one step further. All you have to do is come up with the questions ahead of time and then you just take a film crew and you just go interview that person. That way you have it on video. I think that would be much more valuable than

36:48
the book, I love the book, don’t get me wrong. But it was just kind of hard to make sure it got written in. Whereas with video, if you send a film crew there, you know, there’s no, you know, it’s just off the cuff. And it’s actually your parents speaking, which is a valuable keepsake for anyone to have. Yeah, and then they can turn it into like a documentary style. Yes. Yeah. And maybe that could be an extra service. You turn it into you do the editing and you turn into a documentary.

37:16
I think this would be really cool because you’re exactly right. I looked into some of these, you know, parent story capture services and you’re exactly right. It’s like it really it’s not. I mean, it’s a gift. That’s what we’re looking at for Christmas gifts. But it’s like, is just a lot of work. Like how all of a sudden every month it was a lot of work. All these questions. And, know, for what real benefit? Like you already know these stories. This is more of a gift for us. But it was really challenging. And it kind of first came to mind with

37:48
my grandpa on my dad’s side. listen to the hardcore history, like 18 hour saga of World War II in the Pacific. And I know we served there, know, quartermaster or something in Northern Australia. That’s like all I know. But it’s like, what else, you know, what was your level of involvement here? Like, did you see combat? What was it like being shipped off at 20 years old across the world? Like, all that kind of stuff, you know, is

38:15
is gone now. And I think this is a really powerful one to potentially capture some of that for future generations. And this is instantly why I interviewed my mom for the podcast. It wasn’t for my listeners. You know, it was more so I could have her on the episode so you could do the same thing just audio wise to just over zoom. It’d be, you know, kind of informal. And if you’re good at asking questions and getting extra information out like me and you are, for example, we could turn this into a service.

38:44
It was on SNL, like where the son is interviewing the dad and then they, you know, get super vulnerable, you know, because they just have these conversations because all of sudden you put mics in front of their faces and then they turn to the camera and do like a Squarespace ad read and it’s… I haven’t seen that episode. I’ll have check it out. I think it was a fun one. Okay, so that’s kind of the…

39:10
end of life or approaching end of life, how do we capture some of these stories? You know, it’s like the movie Coco, know, and Hector is fading away like, oh, he’s being forgotten, right? How do we, how do we remember the people who came before us? I think that’s a really cool idea. And like that, you know, professional filmmaking, so like to rent out even freelance professionals to do this for a day, it’s, it’s not gonna be cheap, but it’s not gonna be like over the moon expensive. Yeah. Then the one I have,

39:37
is the opposite of that, not end of life, but beginning of life. I’m going to call this the digital baby service. This is we’re going to secure your kids’ domain name. We’re going to claim their social media handles. We’re going to register their Gmail account. And for this, we’re going to charge you, I don’t know, $100 a year. It’s going to be a decent margin because basically, all this stuff is free except for the domain, which maybe costs $10.

40:06
12 bucks a year to renew, but we’re just going to secure this for you so you don’t have to worry about it. And so when your kid becomes old enough that they care about this, you know, all of a sudden we have that locked down for you. Is this something that I did when the kids are born? I would better go register their domain names just in case, you know, we wouldn’t want anybody else to have that. So it’s something that would probably be there might be a market for that as a service. Yeah, actually, there’s a lot of things that you could do.

40:36
But yeah, it would be a service where you just lock down the names for any relevant service that you might not be able to think about, right? That you might not have necessarily thought of, besides the obvious ones. So yeah, I like that idea. I like that idea. Kind of along those same lines, my next idea is a little bit more, well, it more caters to like the personalities of the younger folks these days. So I kind of got this idea after reading an article

41:06
about how people are paying money to rent venues for social media. So for example, a lot of these, these make money online guys literally rent a jet set. So it looks like you’re on a private jet when you’re really not. Okay. And I think that’s such a, like a reflection of where society has been going, but you could profit from it by just creating a bunch of these sets, whether it be a private jet or

41:36
a luxury hotel suite or a botanical garden or just something cool where it’s literally just the set for Instagramming or doing lives from. Wow. And then just rent that time out to people. I might have a problem with this one, but I thought of it because people are paying for these services. Yeah, I think there’s probably something to that. And yeah, you have a warehouse space where you have like

42:00
four or five of these set up and people come in or you your two hour block, you know, they come in and knock out a bunch of reels or not much videos and you’re set. And this is very pervasive in China actually. So if you see like a TikTok video of a factory of someone like, you know, making stuff, chances are it’s fake. Like literally it’s just like a table and just like the backdrop of it with this machine, like rotating the same products over and over again. Okay. So

42:29
I’ve been just seeing a lot more of those, you know, debunked. Because, you know, people want to look like they’re successful or doing these things. maybe it’s just like a sad reflection of where we’re going. you know, there’s a market there for renting out these services. Yeah, this was a speculation for, for years or certain influencers like, oh, you know, they’re standing in front of the rented Lamborghini. They don’t really own that. Like, that’s not really their life. That’s like, this

42:58
I don’t know, I guess maybe a certain demographic that appeals to it’s like, who cares? It’s the younger folks. Because we’re old and crotchety now. Get off my lawn. No, but this is cool. And I do love me a rental business. We’ve talked about the photo booth business. We’ve talked about renting mobility scooters. We had a guy renting out reusable moving boxes or plastic storage bins, basically.

43:28
Here’s another example of something. Hey, build it once or build that set once and get paid for it over and over again. Yep. Cool. What do you got? You got a couple more? I’ve got, I think, one more. And this is around a personal pain point of mine. And I’m curious to get your take on this as a prolific YouTuber these days. What I struggle with is the scripting.

43:56
That’s kind of the bottleneck for me. And we’ve got this huge body of content. We’ve seen, in my mind, people stating very obvious things like, hey, have you ever thought about this as a side hustle? Really? That is getting 100,000 views? That’s the most basic idea ever. But it’s all in this scripting. So some sort of video scripting service or

44:23
you know, maybe it’s an AI or maybe it’s a human where it’s like, just, just tell me what to record. Like do it in my voice, you know, load it up. I could fire up the teleprompter or I could just do the voiceover and we’ll lay over some other imagery, but just that’s like the big a bottleneck in producing more video content for me. If you find such a service, I would sign up in a heartbeat. Uh, you’re absolutely right. The scripting is where it’s the most time consuming. I’ve got it down now where I can script something.

44:53
with the help of AI in about 90 minutes for a 10 minute video. That’s still 90 minutes though. But it’s to hear that it’s not instant for you. Well, if you think about it this way, I used to spend a lot more time on a blog post. I used to spend like three or four hours on a blog post. And what I like about YouTube scripting is it doesn’t have to be grammatically correct, nor does it have to have the proper punctuation either.

45:21
And so that’s why it’s faster for me. But yes, I’ve tried so many things, Nick, training AI to talk like me. And we have enough body of work between the two of us now that it’s pretty easy to do that. But I don’t think it’s just hard to find that replacement from what I’ve seen. What’s a typical process for you going from something that you maybe have written about? It could be years ago, but it’s still relevant to turn that into a video version.

45:52
there’s different, there’s a different formula, right? You can just read off the blog posts and have that be compelling. You know, what’s funny is that’s how I started my YouTube channel. Yeah. I just read the posts and you’re right. That doesn’t work. Well, I can corroborate that. Uh, so what you, can just feed it into chat, GPT or Claude. Yeah. And I have a prompt for this because I do less of this now, but I had a process for this where you give it a prompt.

46:20
And since we have enough workout that you can say in the voice of Nick Loper or Steve Chu. And it comes out with something that you can modify into a script. And then you also have to make changes to it. So it’s not, it still takes time, but it makes things much faster. Because there’s a whole big difference between SEO written blog than there is a compelling YouTube video.

46:46
Well, speaking of YouTube, you’re closing in on half a million subscribers over on the My Wife Quit Her Job channel. What kind of videos do you find do well? Like help me out on the YouTube. I can’t. it’s been a struggle. It’s been a struggle, Nick. So I teach e-commerce and what I found is that if I just go and teach e-commerce on that channel, it gets like no views. Right.

47:12
Because that’s not what people want. The common folk does not want e-commerce strategies, which is unfortunately my specialty. mean, that’s what I like creating content about. So the struggle is mixing that content, my teaching content, with something that the mainstream viewer actually wants to see. So it’s basically dumbing down the content, maybe that’s not the right word, making it more appealing to the masses. That’s the secret.

47:40
Any videos that have done particularly well for you? I mean, I have a whole bunch of videos that have gotten over a million views that that when I published them at the time were topics that were in the news too. So recency helps to what people are searching for and wanting to look about, you know, read about. And right now, if you think about it, I feel like the world is in chaos right now. At least the U.S. is in chaos. There’s tons of topics that people are searching for right now.

48:06
And you use like a TubeBuddy or a vidIQ to? I use vidIQ. Okay. To come up with, you know, what’s the metric you’re looking for? Like minimum search volume or minimum score there? I don’t actually even look at search volume anymore. I mean, I do as a last step. should say, I shouldn’t say I don’t look at it at all. Okay. But I’m just trying to create topics that I know I can do a good job writing a good hook for. And then keyword research is actually secondary. It didn’t start out that way, but now that’s how I do it. Okay.

48:36
Yeah. Hook first. Okay. I got one more that I got one more idea. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. For the audience before we go. Um, this is something that once again, I got from talking to with my mom because we hang out a lot more now. She lives right down the street. This is what I call like a forgotten skills online course series. So my mom, you know, back in the old days, she was telling about all these skills that she had to do from first principles. Like there’s a lot of things we take for granted now, right? That, that everything’s machine made and whatnot.

49:06
But back in the day, they did stuff by hand. so we’re talking about skills like Asian calligraphy, Morse code, how to read a map. I don’t know. I don’t think my kids know how to read a map, right? Because it’s a skill that you don’t need anymore because you have GPS and whatnot. Metalworking, old school photography where you’re developing photos with the chemicals and everything. Just a way to document and teach all those old school things and put them in one place.

49:37
I mean, what’s the point of learning Morse code at this point? You try to signal, send to somebody a telegram? Well, so the idea is there’s a bunch of people out there that, like for me, as an example, who would want to just learn these things from first principles. My personality is such that I don’t like depending on services handling everything for you. Because once something goes down, you’re in trouble.

50:07
So I actually would like to learn these things from first principles and I can’t be the only one out there. Fair enough. How to read a map I’m on board with. Metalworking has not been relevant to my life ever since like metalworking merit. Well, are just examples for me, right? Like Asian calligraphy, know, artistic things that are not as big of a deal now, but they’re still beautiful. I think the art should be carried on.

50:35
to future generations, that sort of thing. That’s fair. And even would be more relevant, it’s just like fixing stuff around the house and not being like powerless to just throw your hands up in the air. Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. And we had a light go out this weekend and I do what I know how to do. Well, I’ll replace the bulb. And then that didn’t do it. And so then I’m like, hey, dad, what does it mean if you replace the bulb and the light still doesn’t work? He’s like, well, maybe your switch went bad.

51:04
Okay, how do I test that? Well, we got to take it apart. You got to use this little multimeter thing, which he had, which we don’t have. So he brought it over. It’s funny you say that. Look what I got right on my desk. Fancy.

51:19
All right, those are all the ideas that I’ve got. You got anything else? I think that’s pretty much it. Yeah, we’ve covered a lot in this episode, actually.

51:29
Hope you enjoyed this episode. All of these side hustles are great ideas that you can start right now with very little money. For more information and resources, go to mywifequitherjob.com slash episode 579. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. 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 sellersummit.com.

51:58
And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife, quitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.