00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, I am joined by Chris Schaeffer, a longtime friend of the show who always brings a fresh, no fluff perspective on what is working right now. Chris is known for getting his hands dirty, testing strategies himself and sharing insights from the trenches. With AI, TikTok shop and social media reshaping the game, we are breaking down exactly how to build a content strategy that drives growth in 2025 and beyond.

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But before we begin, want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. And if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most conferences that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical, step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses.

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no corporate execs, and no consultants. Also, I hate big events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people, so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We have sold out every single year for the past nine years, and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and if you’re doing over 250K or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for higher level sellers.

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Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be. So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Once again, that’s sellersummit.com. Now onto the show.

01:44
Welcome to the My Wife, Good or Jot podcast. Today I am thrilled to have Chris Schaeffer back on the show. Chris is someone who I’ve known for almost a decade now. He’s helped run the Seller Summit for as long as I can remember, I think the first year. He just spoke at the 2025 Seller Summit a couple months ago. And if you don’t know Chris, I he’s actually been on the podcast a couple of times. He consults for dozens of companies. He’s got a bunch of his own brands as well. And what I always like about him,

02:13
is that he’s opinionated and he brings his own unique perspective on what’s working in e-commerce. He’s also the type of guy that gets his hands dirty. He actually does the real work. And right now in the midst of AI, TikTok, shop, social media, content I would say is pretty much becoming a requirement to run an e-commerce business. in this episode, we’re gonna talk about how to formulate a content strategy for your brand. What’s going on, Chris?

02:43
You give me all these compliments, you bring me on the show, and then you’re like, yeah, he gets his hands dirty. Are there people who don’t actually do this stuff? Well, I’m thinking about your old buddy Scott. I always felt like you did all the work, and he was the hype man. That’s not true. does a heck of a lot. But I happen to have done a lot more on the e-commerce side of stuff, which is why we’re here.

03:12
Yes. That’s why we’re having and I making fun of Scott. No, no shade to Scott. I know he does a lot of work, but you know, when you guys were together, it’s much more fun to pick on him. Uh, especially when he’s not here. Anytime you can get that chest. If you guys don’t know who Scott is, he’s talking about Scott Volcker, who was the original host of the amazing seller podcast, which was the most popular Amazon podcast on the planet at the time. Yeah. You know, I, know you and Scott recently stopped brand creators. How are you spending your time now?

03:41
that you’re not spending all that time creating content for that business? The thing that I’m very confused about is how I should have more time and somehow have less. I managed to fill that time with a whole bunch of new clients and a whole bunch of other things to do. uh So I’m doing a lot more client work than I was even last year, which is great. um But yeah, I mean, it’s just…

04:10
problem solving, right? That’s realistically how I get hauled into things. I think you and I talked about this a little bit at Seller Summit. We have a client that we’ve had since 2015. We started with them just doing Amazon consulting because I heard the owner on a podcast went to buy the product on Amazon, saw that it wasn’t there and wrote an email and was like, hey, you should probably sell your stuff on Amazon because that’s where I went to look for it. And I got an email back five minutes later that was like, hey, do you know how to do that? And that has turned into now a

04:39
uh Ten year long contract where I’m running essentially everything for the business with the help of AI and a little bit of human content creation So but you’re not an employee, right? You’re a consultant and an owner now and an owner right part owner, right? Right. Right. Wait, how do you get your clients? I’ve always wondered is it just word of mouth or For the most part, I mean Way back in the day. We did some outreach like 2013 2014

05:08
But a lot of it since then has come from doing some work for somebody and then leveling up inside of that contract. And I think one of the things that we did, if you’re looking at this from an agency perspective or you wanna do some consulting, and I know Alex Hermosy talks about this all the time, create an offer that’s irresistible, right? The irresistible offer, an offer they can’t say no to. The way we did that on the consulting side was by using commission or above board.

05:34
So when we initially brought in a lot of our clients, instead of charging a monthly retainer, we would charge a commission on the additional sales that we brought in. Whether that was additional revenue through email marketing, additional revenue through content creation, or launching a new channel for somebody like taking them over to Amazon and say, all right, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna take the total amount of money that we make somewhere like Amazon, we’re gonna subtract your product costs, and then we take a percentage of the profit of that. No one says no to that.

06:03
Because if you don’t do anything, it’s not a problem. Yeah. And it a lot of pressure on you. Yeah. Which I like. And then that over time turned into, Hey, what do you know about like email marketing? What do you know about content creation? What do you know about running ads? And with a lot of that kind of stuff, once you have that trust built and you’re like, Hey, here’s, here’s what we’re going to do on a monthly basis. We can either do it the way that we did before, or we can do it as a flat monthly contract. And what we’ve found is.

06:33
most people at that point will go to the monthly contract because they realize how much they’re paying you on commission. So we were able to kind of really ramp those numbers up, especially with something like Amazon. If you go from zero to a half a million dollars in the first year, which we did for that client, 10, 15 % of that starts to add up. So you go, hey, let’s just make this eight grand a month and we’ll lump everything in. It becomes a lot more appealing of an offer. Right, but not in the beginning. In the beginning when you had to prove yourself.

07:02
Performance is what matters. Okay. Yeah, I like that model. I like that model So I know you work with a number of brands. It sounds like you’ve expanded your client pool With given what’s everything that’s going on with AI? uh Zero click, know less clicks to your website. Where are you advising them to focus their efforts on the marketing end? Are you having them do video written content tick-tock IG? I know you’re gonna say it depends

07:29
So let’s pick an example and build a strategy around it for the audience. It depends. ah No, I think if you guys are listening to this, I have a giant sign mounted on the wall behind me. That’s as it depends. uh It doesn’t really depend because if people are selling and most of the people that listen to your podcast are in the e-commerce world or want to get into the e-commerce world, there’s really two or three places to focus on.

07:59
Written content for the longest time was the starting point. But with how terrible Google is these days, like quite frankly, Google is kind of a shit show. um I don’t know that I would start there. It is something you still want to have as part of the content mix. And I actually spent the last week building a fully automated content flow for somebody. So all they have to do is type in a keyword and it generates blog posts and the images and all of the stuff in their brand voice.

08:29
because that’s so easy to do now, content, written content specifically has become kind of a diamond dozen. It’s still something that you should mix in, but focusing, I think on the video side is going to be the last bastion for that. And I’m a fan of longer form video, at least to start with, because we can chop it down into other things. If you shoot a 60 second TikTok, you can’t really use that for other stuff.

08:58
Steve, you know this, but YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world behind Google itself, right? And so focusing somewhere like YouTube and then figuring out how to repurpose that content other places where you don’t get as much long-term value out of it, I think probably makes the most sense for people. The reason that I like YouTube is at least as of recording this podcast, it’s still evergreen, right? So I know you have a YouTube channel. uh

09:26
If you look at your views in any given month, unless you have some sort of a freak video takeoff on something, you’re gonna have a huge chunk of your views for that month from your catalog of content. And people will watch the content that you put out all year round and far into the future. And if you actually look at when stuff is published in your YouTube feed, a lot of times when you refresh that homepage on YouTube, you’ll see two, three, four, five year old videos pop up because it’s something that YouTube thinks you are interested in.

09:55
even though it’s older content. You don’t really get that anywhere else. You don’t get that on Instagram, right? You post something on Instagram. If it doesn’t go viral right away, no one will ever see it again, except for the one weird person who looks at every single post that you put up on Instagram. TikTok is a little more like Instagram than it is like YouTube, but it seems to be changing a little bit. I know you’ve played around with TikTok a little bit. What is your experience with kind of the back catalog on TikTok? Yeah, I’m back all in on TikTok.

10:24
I would say a video can last a couple weeks, maybe a month if it’s like really good, but then it drops off. And you’re right, YouTube is just like the good old Google search days, right? You do something once, you get traffic forever, that’s what I love about it. And that’s why I view my YouTube channel as a stock that can only rise. Every video that I add to it will increase the traffic over time.

10:52
but it’s not true for like TikTok and Instagram in general. Yeah, and I think that’s one of the biggest things that people miss out on is they’re creating content in the wrong places. And we’ve heard since 2008 that we need to be on social media. You have to be on Instagram, right? If you listen to somebody like Gary V, he’s like, post a hundred times a day on Instagram, right? Terrible Gary V impression, but you understand where I’m going with that. And the problem with that for most e-commerce businesses,

11:21
is they don’t have a dedicated content team. So even if you’re leveraging AI to chop up those things and maybe even to post it, if you’re real fancy, you still have to have content to pull from. And if you’re running a one, two, or even a five person e-commerce businesses, which is probably most people listening to this, you don’t have the time to do that. And I don’t know, also run the business, like find new products, source your products, go back and forth with the manufacturer about when they’re actually going to give you your stuff, deal with customer surveys.

11:51
deal with the website stuff. Like you don’t have time to do all of that. And people get spread really, really thin and try to post on Instagram and Tik Tok and Snapchat threads and all of these different places instead of spending the time, energy and effort one place. And so somebody was to ask me which place they should focus on. It would be, and we don’t have to say, you know, long form content. It doesn’t have to be an hour long, but 10 to 12 minute videos on YouTube tend to lead to the best results.

12:21
Not only can you get more eyeballs faster somewhere like a YouTube, not only do get the evergreen benefit, but you also get to see really quickly what’s working and what’s not. Take the stuff that’s working, chop that up, and then put that somewhere like your Instagram, your TikTok, wherever. All right, so walk me through this because whenever I talk about YouTube to someone who has an e-commerce brand, creating a 10 to 12 minute video sounds very intimidating. So let’s walk through

12:51
creating the ideas for that content and how to make it less intimidating. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they try to create content about their product instead of thinking about who their product serves, right? The niche, the niche, the nacho, however you wanna classify it. um That I think is the key to understanding and creating good content.

13:21
Right, so if we look at somebody like Black Rifle Coffee, if you go look at their Instagram, you go look at their YouTube, they don’t create coffee content. Who are their customers? Right, it’s really hard to make a 12 minute video about how to French press coffee, because unless you’re sitting there boiling the water for eight of those minutes, it’s really not a 12 minute long process. Black Rifle Coffee does this really well. They don’t create coffee content.

13:47
They create content for first responders. They create content for military people. They create content for their actual audience. So the first thing before we even sit down and get into the content creation stages, we need to take a step back and say, who do we serve? Who is actually using my products? And what are the kinds of things that people would want to see? Right? So we do have to take that step back and first find a niche. And I know the logical question that’s going to come out of this is what’s a niche?

14:16
The definition that I like to use is it’s a group of people who identify as something or say that they love something. So if you were to say, I am a fisherman or I love fishing, that would be a niche. Right. And if you think about your product, you’re not selling a water bottle. mean, literally you are, but if you’re selling water bottles, who is buying them? Are they using it for camping? Okay. Your niche is camping. Are they using it to go on long runs? Maybe your niches runners or people who are doing stuff outside.

14:45
but you need to take the step back and figure that out first. If you can figure that out, it becomes very easy to find those content ideas if you leverage the platform. So something like YouTube is great for this. What’s YouTube’s goal, Steve? Keep you on longer watching videos. Watching Google is the, Google is the only platform who considers it a win. If you don’t go back to Google, I know you’ll be familiar with this term.

15:15
pogo sticking, right? It was something that Google specifically looks at as a metric. What that means is if you click on one of those blue links in Google, you go to that website and then you hit the back button and click on another link, they consider that a loss, right? They consider that something that’s not a good outcome because you had to come back to the platform. Every other platform on the planet, whether we’re talking about YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, is designed to keep you on that website as long as possible. How do they do that?

15:43
The word that everybody hates to hear, the algorithm, right? But the algorithm doesn’t need to be a scary thing. And this is something I think once you wrap your head around it, it makes it a lot less scary. So everybody hears the word algorithm, they’re like, oh, the algorithm hates me. Whatever. We need to start replacing that word in our vocabulary with the audience. YouTube’s goal with their algorithm is to be a proxy for your audience.

16:12
If you create content that the people you are trying to serve, whether they’re fishermen or coffee lovers or whatever, are looking for, YouTube will show it to people. And it’s one of the reasons I love YouTube. You can have a four-year-old YouTube video that finally takes off because YouTube found the right audience for it, finally. We can use that algorithm, whether it’s YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, in our favor. We just have to act like our customers. It’s the reason I’m a huge fan of test accounts.

16:41
And I know this is something I talked about at Seller Summit and it’s one of my favorite tricks for figuring out, finally to answer your question, Steve, how to create the content that our audience is already looking for. We waste a ton of time trying to brainstorm and think about the things that our audience might look for. Why? If we can use something like YouTube to just show us what our audience is already not just looking for, but consuming on that platform, that’ll shortcut that process for us.

17:09
And so if you’re thinking about starting to create some content, my number one recommendation would be to start a test account. Basically create a new Gmail address or a new YouTube account with whatever email that you’d like to use. You go in, you can start with your main keyword, phishing, and just start watching some of the videos that YouTube suggests. If you know some of the big creators in the space, that’s usually a better place to start because

17:37
They’ll know immediately that you know about the niche versus just having a passive interest in bass fishing. But when you watch as few as three to five videos, they start to get an idea for who you are and tailor the algorithm to you. And if you continuously consume the content that peaks your interest in that space, they will show you the exact content that is already performing well. And then all you have to do is figure out how to create your version of that. So obviously we’re not just gonna rip off somebody’s video.

18:07
but we’re gonna sit down, we’re gonna look at the titles that pop up. And you say, okay, that’s a really cool bucket. The 15 fishing lures everybody needs to use. uh How to catch more fish for $5. Whatever the things are that you start to see coming up over and over again, jot down some of those title ideas and then go into the content planning process to say, how would I approach this topic? Because we know that this video is already working. We know that this title and this.

18:34
idea generally is already working to go to our niche, how can we create our own version of it? I’ll have to go watch Black Rifle Coffee’s channel, but are there videos like 10 to 12 minutes? Some of them are, some of them aren’t. Their Instagram is also really interesting because their Instagram is all just like weird, what’s the like meme videos about the military. But the other good example of this

19:04
And it always gets a laugh when I bring it up because it’s the nerds know uh Linus Tech Tips. Are you familiar with Linus Tech Tips on YouTube at all? Steve, you know they’re not a media company anymore, right?

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.

19:50
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. I think they sell their own stuff and they do a lot of affiliates, right? So in 2020, they made 23 % of their revenue from ads, 13 % from e-commerce, 12 % from sponsored videos, 24 % from in video sponsors.

20:18
and 23 % from affiliates. Last year, 55 % of their revenue came from Ecom. They’re not creating content about screwdrivers, right? They sell a really cool, what’s the word that I’m looking for? The like screwdrivers, like a ratcheting screwdriver. They sell IT guy apparel. They sell a lot of those kinds of things. That’s not the content they’re creating. They’re creating content for the audience. Now they had the benefit of starting.

20:47
as a YouTube channel. And so they knew that’s how they had to create the content. But because that is the audience that they have attracted, they then built the products around it. We can do the same thing in reverse. If you have the products, you just have to figure out the content that people are already consuming and then do that. think if you guys, even if you’re not into Linus Tech Tips or technology at all, go check out the channel. They’ve done six figures, Steve, on a single live stream. And they do just a Friday show and it wasn’t them promoting.

21:17
It wasn’t them doing anything other than what they normally do. They have their show, you know, it’s tech news of the week, whatever. And they say, oh, here’s the special for this week. Go check it out. Right. That’s their pitch. It’s not like, it’s not rocket surgery. They’re not going through a whole giant marketing funnel. They’re like, Hey, if you like our stuff, if you like our content, maybe you’ll like our products too. And because, especially with something like YouTube, you build trust fast. Steve, do you know if I use the word parasocial relationship?

21:47
Does that mean anything to you? It actually doesn’t. does that mean? you have probably had a lot of people come up to you and say, man, I feel like I know you from the podcast. I feel like I know you from the YouTube channel. My favorite experience with that was in 2015 or 2016 with Scott. We were sitting in a restaurant and somebody walked up and said, I know your voice, right? Which is probably not the right way to approach someone, but still sticks in my mind. So I remember who that person is.

22:15
But when you consume content from somebody, you’re consuming content in different areas of your life. So podcasts are a great example of this. You’re listening to podcasts when you’re at the gym, you’re listening to podcasts in your car, maybe you’re listening to podcasts when you’re in the bathroom, right? In those private intimate moments, it’s just you and that other person. The same thing applies with YouTube content, whether you’re sitting there watching it or you’re listening to it. And I actually listen to a lot more YouTube content than I watch.

22:43
because I’ll turn on an hour long video and throw my headphones in and walk to the gym or walk to the store or do whatever I need to do. But because it’s just you and that other person’s voice, you actually build a really deep connection with that person because they’re literally sitting there talking to you for 12 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour at a time. And so above seeing something funny on Instagram, you build that relationship with people very quickly.

23:10
And so then when you recommend something or you say, Hey, go check out my stuff. They have that relationship with you. And instead of you having to build out the giant marketing funnel or do any of the things that we should still do on the back end. All you have to do is say, Hey, go check out our screwdriver or Hey, go check out our coffee or Hey, go check this out. And you will get a huge number of people to do that because they’ve built no like and trust with you through the content that they’ve consumed.

23:37
I think most people listening understand the theory on why it works. You take a channel like Linus Tech Tips, their production value is incredible now. So yeah, if I were to go, I haven’t seen that really videos actually, but if I were to watch it now and say, okay, I want to start a YouTube channel. It’s pretty intimidating. Right? You have a brand and let’s, let’s just call it a water bottles or something like that. It seems like production value is a huge hurdle.

24:07
like in your mind at least. Do you see e-commerce channels where it’s just like a talking head and do well? As long as they’re creating niche based content, yes. And so I think the thing that most people misunderstand is that they think because many channels that do well on YouTube have high production, that you have to have high production to do very well on YouTube.

24:36
That’s not the case, right? You look at somebody like Mr. Beast and you’re like, okay, I need to edit my videos like that. Like I need like 48 people to work on it. And the answer is no. The content is what speaks to people, not the production of the content itself. So I think Scott is actually a good example of this. I don’t know if you’ve checked out any of the content on the channel he’s doing with his son right now. I have not actually, maybe I should. But almost all of their videos are shot with an iPhone and

25:06
the road, or no, it’s the DJI Bluetooth mic. Yeah, the light, I have them right here on my desk actually, these light ones, right? Yeah, that exact set, almost everything that they’ve done is done using that. And in fact, they did a 24 hour content challenge back in August where they wanted to do 52 videos, shot, edited, thumbnails done, so they would have one video a week for the next year.

25:36
in 24 hours. They did every single one of those videos with that setup. And you can’t tell the difference between that and $4,000 camera. So there’s no reason not to get started that way. You can always up the production value later. But what people are really concerned about is the quality of the content. So if you do something like build the research channel to get all of the ideas, then you just go, how do I do this with an iPhone? And

26:03
not have to hire a camera person and 14 editors and build a server in my house, right? You just have to figure out your way to do it. The biggest hurdle for people is normally recording that first video. And I think this is where people make a lot of mistakes. And I love using my fiance as the example of this. She’s probably gonna yell at me because she’s gonna hear me say her name and a whole bunch of mean things. ah But I can always tell when she’s recording a video. Because I’ll hear

26:32
eight and a half minutes of her talking and then a whole bunch of Spanish profanity. Right? Because people get really bogged down in, need to say every word perfectly. I need to be able to not have to do any editing. And if they say um or uh, or they mispronounce a word, instead of just taking a breath and keep on going, they’ll stop and start the video from the beginning.

27:01
Cause they want one nice long take. That’s nice if you can do it, but it’s not mandatory. People like ums and uhs because it’s how real people talk, right? If you mess up a word, just fix it. I’m sure I’ve said something incorrectly or pronounced something incorrectly through the course of the 25 minutes we’ve been talking so far, but I’ve done it enough now that it doesn’t stop me from moving on and messing up a word is not the end of the.

27:30
Right? You just pronounce it correctly or make a joke out of it or do something and then you keep moving. And I think the easiest way to get trained with that is by doing it live. I’m a huge fan of either doing live content or what I call one shot content. So you’re never hitting pause. You’re never hitting stop. You’re never starting over. If you’re too scared to get on alive, that’s fine. Just keep the camera rolling, take a breath and start where you screwed up. If you do it that way,

28:00
you force yourself to create the content, it still comes off naturally. And yeah, you might have to go in and trim out a few sections where you’re just rolling your eyes at the camera or screaming 15 Venezuelan profanities, but you get it done. And the thing that I think stops most people isn’t even the production value, it’s just getting through the first recording of the thing. I would agree with that. uh Tony and I, teach a class on that. it’s almost always psychological for people.

28:31
Are you allowed to talk about your clients? have you helped? Do they have YouTube channels? Do any of your clients have YouTube channels? Yeah, I can’t share any of them publicly, but I can tell you. So we’re in five different spaces on YouTube right now. Okay. One of them is doing it with just a podcast. Oh, the only video content they’re creating is their long form podcast. Some of them are shooting shorter form videos and

29:00
part of my team is about to go out to one of our newer clients to shoot the first few videos. And they’re gonna use exactly that strategy, right? We have the test channel built so we know the ideas that we think will resonate with the audience, because YouTube is telling us, here’s what’s working in that space. ah She’s great on camera anyway, but even if she wasn’t, it’s all right, let’s just do this in one take. Get as much of it out as you can. If you screw up, we’ll stop, we’ll take a second.

29:29
and then just start from where we left off. Steve, do you still script your videos? I do, I do. They’re loosely scripted though. They’re not like word for word. uh Sometimes it’s like the intro can be word for word because that’s the most important part. But the guts of it can be bullet points, sentences. I know you and I have had this conversation a little bit in the past and I thought I remembered that. I’m a huge fan of either no cards or

29:59
literally pen and paper with the bullet pointed outline of what you’re going to talk about. If you’re going to script something, the intro or the hook is usually the place to try to get it word for word, right? So here’s what we’re going to do today uh or you know, whatever the reason is that they’re going to stay to the end of the video. That’s what would be referred to as the hook that you want to think about a little bit. But if you know anything about your niche, you should be able to talk

30:28
pretty well off the cuff about the different fishing lures or the different ways to brew coffee, that as long as you have that bullet pointed out, you can fill in the rest of that. And that’s the other big trap that I see a lot of people make. They will say, okay, I need to get this word for word. And that was something that I noticed with Michelle. She went through, I think, 20 takes of the same video and there was just a word that she could not pronounce. She says it all day every day.

30:56
but every time she got to that word, she screwed up. It’s in the script, so she needs to read it, in her mind. Just put a different word in, right? And when you are sitting there trying to read the script, one, it doesn’t come off as naturally, and two, you’re kind of a prisoner to that exact structure and it feels less natural. So if you can script less and bullet point more, that gives you more authenticity and it also makes you feel less like you’re screwing up.

31:25
Because as long as you’re making your way through the bullet points, someone will understand it. And I don’t know if you feel this way, but one of my rules, uh like if I’m giving uh a talk at a conference, like at Seller Summit, if I hate it, people will generally like it. Like, no one’s gonna understand this, it’s not gonna make any sense, because for the vast majority of people, you know substantially more than your audience about your product and about your niche, right?

31:54
And so the things you think are silly or repetitive or don’t need to be filled in are exactly the kinds of, or the things that you hate talking about are exactly the kinds of things that your audience needs to hear. And so if you get done with a video and you’re like, who would watch this? At least for me, as long as it’s not who would watch this because you’re getting hit on the head by a flying bird or like who would watch this because the camera’s upside down. It’s, I don’t think this serves any value. A lot of times those are the videos that do the best.

32:23
because they appeal to the broadest number of people. It’s things you think because you know a lot about the space that everybody knows. But most people don’t know those things. You know, I think it would really help the audience listening to this. If you could record your wife screwing up and cursing, and then I’ll post it. I think that’d be really helpful for that and your, you know, your relationship. Yeah, I think it would definitely build a lot of know, like, and trust between the two of us.

32:53
I have couple questions for you though. Regarding the brands that have YouTube channels, you mentioned a podcast. That’s actually quite interesting. I never would have thought to create a podcast to promote an e-commerce brand. That sounds pretty easy. All you’re doing is talking about the space. Right? And so if we go back to the Linus Tech Tips example, their Friday live show is their podcast. They just put it out in an audio format afterwards.

33:23
Now, they’ve filled in medium and long form content throughout the week. But as long as you’re speaking to that same audience, anything you do in that space works. And in the case of that client, he is terrible on recorded video, but can talk off the cuff for hours about the niche. And so if you can get him on camera, either by himself or with a guest, and it’s being recorded.

33:52
It comes out really well and it’s very high quality content for the audience. He tried to do some shorter form stuff, you know, less than an hour long and absolutely hated it. Ironically, some of those videos have done much better than any of the podcast episodes because that’s what YouTube tends to favor. But it’s that easy and their entire business was built off of the podcast and YouTube channel that is just the recording of the podcast.

34:18
reason why I’m asking all these questions is because these are all reservations that I had. uh You know, I mentioned this at Sello Summit, hasn’t launched yet, it’s probably gonna launch either end of this month or next month, but a Bumblebee Linens YouTube channel. And for me at least, it’s all low energy, right? Like if I have to go on set, film, know, uh move around or whatever, it’s probably not gonna happen. And that’s just me and my mental hurdles and the production quality. uh people listening,

34:48
I’m starting to tell the we sell wedding handkerchiefs, right? And there’s always a story behind the handkerchief how these couples got together and that sort of thing and all I’m doing is just telling those stories and I’m telling them by AI generating, you know cartoon likenesses of them and I’m usually changing their names unless they give me permission to use their names these first couple they want to remain anonymous and whatnot and That’s gonna be it telling stories because everyone loves a good story. But the way I’m doing it is

35:18
Like I’m literally just behind a green screen talking, because I can do that in my office. And then I can generate the images to generate the scenery behind the story, because I can’t get all those photos from a customer, right? At best, I could probably just get a photo of the couple together. And that’s how I just kind of rationalized the ability to maintain this forever. Do your clients have these same reservations? Like I can’t be the only one.

35:45
Everyone does. actually, because I spoke about content at Seller Summit, I had a lot of these conversations. And Steve, you told me before we got on that you watched my Seller Summit session yesterday. um I actually used you and what the idea that you had for the Bumbabee Linens channel to answer a question during that session. eh Because a lot of people are afraid to be in front of the camera. Or they don’t want to have to sit down and record.

36:12
And so one of the questions I get all the time is like, I do a faceless YouTube channel? And the answer is yes. Like you’re a prime example of that. And I think the main thing that people screw up with that is they miss the storytelling element. Stories will always sell better than anything else. If you have the ability to jump in front of a camera and create content about your niche, you can create the story, right? That’s what you’re doing through the arc of the video anyway, when you’re showing off the 15 different fishing lures that everybody needs to have in their town.

36:41
or whatever the topic of the video is, you’re going through the journey with people. But you can also do that without jumping in front of the camera. We had a conversation with one of our newer clients, actually last week, uh and they’re in the cooking space, right? The food and cooking space. And they were talking about an idea that they had for bringing in some additional revenue through subscription. And it was all about trying to go out and

37:11
find like classic versions of stuff and share that with people. And I said, I like that idea, but it’s really about the story behind the thing. It’s not about the thing. Like no one cares about the, it’s cool to see the 150 year old popcorn maker or whatever it is, but the story behind that specific piece is much more important. And that’s the thing that people would resonate with. And yes, if you created a YouTube video about the 150 year old popcorn maker,

37:41
you’d get some views on YouTube. But if you tell the story of that specific piece and tie in the history of it, you get way more views. Somebody who does this really well is uh Max Miller, I think is his name on YouTube. So there’s a million history YouTube channels out there and there’s a million recipe channels out there. The problem with cooking on YouTube is that

38:11
unless you have high production value in this specific case, like it looks really good, right? You don’t want potato quality camera stuff when you’re showing off food and the food is the hero of that. And most people just want the recipe. So if you look at a lot of the food channels on YouTube, you’ll see that they’ll do like 15 sauces I could never live without, right? It’s not the recipe itself. They’ll have a video about a topic and then maybe link off to a recipe.

38:40
History channels, they’ll cover 15 videos on Napoleon or whatever it is. What Max Miller does is it’s a history of food channel. So he gets to tell the story behind a dish. I think his last video as of the time of recording, this is all about spotted dick, which is that weird English pudding that no one actually knows what it is. um It’s an English dessert with currants or raisins in it. um But he starts…

39:08
basically starts cooking the recipe at the beginning. And then through the whole middle of the video, he’s sitting there telling the story of how this came to be a thing. And then at the end it’s done and he can try it. So he’s not actually cooking the recipe on camera. It’s about the history of the dish. And so he’s able to hook in an entirely different audience than he would have been able to otherwise. And instead of people skipping through the video, because they don’t need to watch you chopping carrots for the hundredth time, they consume that entire piece of content and build that relationship.

39:38
So I think the storytelling aspect of this, whether you’re doing it yourself or what you’re talking about doing with Bumblebee Linens, I think is what people really need to start to wrap their head around. It’s not about you, it’s not about the niche, it’s about the story, right? And if you can figure out a way to keep people engaged, the content creation portion of that becomes easy. Yeah, I mean, I don’t think any of this stuff is really easy and it is all in your head. Like this Bumblebee Linens channel was actually supposed to launch earlier this month.

40:07
But I went back, I actually have 12 videos stored in the bank. I went back and just watched them after not even thinking about it for like two weeks. And I was thinking to myself, ah I don’t like the way these turned out. And so I’m making tweaks and whatnot. It probably doesn’t even matter. Maybe I’m just doing things. Steve, you’re falling victim to the second trap that I hear people fall into all the time when it comes to content creation, right? Especially in the e-commerce world.

40:35
The first trap is the only content they ever create is content about their products, right? We’re not focusing on the products, we’re focusing on the people, we’re focusing on the niche. The second thing, and it’s a question I get every year at least 10 times, somewhere like Seller Summit, is how many videos should I have before I launch? Or how many blog posts should I write before I create my website, right? And the answer is if you have one that’s done, put it up and you’ll start to see the results from it. You will never be happy with

41:04
the first video you create, you will never be happy with the hundredth video that you will create. You will be when you finally hit publish on it and you go, okay, that’s cool. A year from now, you’re gonna look back at that and go, that was terrible. Why did anyone watch that? I guarantee you, you still do that with your content on this channel. You look back at videos you shot six months ago and you’re like, I actually don’t even watch the old entire time, how did anyone watch this video? Right?

41:33
you have to get over the fear, and I think you said it perfectly, this is all in your head, right? You have to get over the fear of the constant tweaking and just publish. If you can get it 80 % to where you want it to be, that’s good enough to publish because it’s not about you, it’s about the content and who the content can serve. And one thing that you will find, and comment sections on social media are generally assessable, but.

42:02
you will find both positive and negative critiques of what you’re doing and that will help you improve the future content. Right? Maybe in the case of something like the Bumblebee Linens channel, you’ll get a few comments that are like, oh, I tell, can tell you used cling one for this or whatever, right? Like if they’re a giant AI nerd ah and then you’re like, oh yeah, maybe I should change the model that I’m using. Maybe I should change the thing that I’m doing and you can start to build from there. But if you never publish, you’re going to be stuck in that constant cycle of

42:32
tweaking and making it a little bit better, one more edit. And so that’s kind of why I like the rule of if it gets to a point where I kind of hate it, that’s usually when it’s done. um Or it’s like, don’t want to watch this anymore. I know I can make it better. I know I could tweak it a little bit more, but I’m done with it. Let me move on to the next thing. If you publish that, you’ll start to get the feedback. And the feedback is the thing that matters more than you getting it perfect.

43:01
Because if you wait another, let’s say you wait another three weeks to launch that channel, Steve, how much do you think the, and I don’t know what your tech stack is, what tools you’re using to make these, ah but how much do you think the AI assistance that you’re working with right now will change in that three to four week period? How much better will it get? It’s got nothing to do with that. It’s probably mainly the fact that it’s a middle-aged Chinese dude hawking hankies or talking about this stuff, because my wife doesn’t want to do it.

43:30
If this is my other channel, the My Wife Quit channel, no problem. I’ll polish whatever, right? I just think I have a complex because my brand, like my face isn’t reflective of the type of person who would start this brand, which Tony says will work to my favor actually, in the end, we’ll see. The other thing is I’m launching a huge contest to launch it. And I’m going to be posting one per day for the first week and then thereafter. And since I, I always like to have a buffer also, just the way I work. Like for my other channel, I’ve got like

43:59
five videos in the bank. That way I’m not pressured to create from week to week. Like I can take a week off. So that’s how I operate. And you’re right, I think for most people, I would tell them to just publish right away. But for someone with my personality, the pressure of having to create again, consistently, makes me anxious. That’s why I like live. Like if you are going to be the face of your channel and…

44:27
you can get on and do it live, then you don’t even get into the editing process. Like there’s nothing else that’s involved in that other than hitting the button. And when you hit done, you’re done and the content is there. Yes, you have to come create more content later, but you’ve gotten it done. And I’m a huge advocate of done is better than perfect because it will never be perfect. Yeah. And so if you can get it to a place that’s not hot garbage and it’s good quality content, get it up.

44:54
Don’t wait for next Thursday, don’t wait for Christmas, don’t wait till you have 15 in the can. If you have two or three, get them up. Now, in your specific case, because you like to, so are you batch creating these or are you sitting down I just film like five in one sitting. Yeah. How long is that taking you? It’s quick. The hard part is coming up with the idea and the story. The filming is super quick. Like I’m really good at filming.

45:22
Like if it’s a 10 minute video, I’m done. It’s a weird humble brag. So good at filming. Like the film I used to suck at it, but now that with the toilet prompter, it’s easy. Like that, that’s not the hard part. You know, I remember having this conversation with you or Scott. can’t remember. It was either. I think it was two years ago and you guys were making most of your content live on YouTube. And I was saying, I think that hurt you guys because live video on YouTube doesn’t do as well.

45:52
Well, so do you know the rest of that workflow, though? Yeah, you broke it apart and then republished it, right? Yeah. But still, yeah. You get the live and you get the algorithmic side of that, right? And so what we found was, and the concern that people had with that kind of a workflow was they’d say, oh, if they came for the live, why would they watch the video in

46:17
two and a half years of creating content that way. I think we had one person who was like, I swear I’ve seen this video before. And it was somebody who was on every single lot, you know, like the top commenter on our live streams. And yet they were still watching the content because we would structure it so that it was, know, whatever the main topic of the week was, which then got cut into the podcast and then three or four videos that we would release throughout the following week. And

46:45
As long as you can transition through those things, which we could do in a live environment because it’s just us talking like we are right now, you can move into the next thing. No one really notices the difference. And then when you go into edit it, you can cut that up and use it short form. YouTube didn’t seem to, didn’t really seem to care. They never flagged us for duplicate content. Like nothing showed up in our content ID.

47:12
but it may limit your reach. Did any of those ever hit like a million views? Or? No, but nothing on that channel necessarily would have given the niche. Even the top, like the top long-term videos in that niche were between 80 and 100,000. And you know, like four five years old in a lot of cases. So for us, if we were getting 10 or 15,000 on one of those repurposed videos, that was huge.

47:41
I think that’s other thing, especially if you have the e-commerce business on the backside of this, you don’t need to get 100,000 views on a video. Like the ad revenue that you get is nice, but every single person who watches your video is a potential customer because the only people clicking on a fishing lure video are people who are looking to buy fishing lures anyway, right? And so even if you only got 500, a thousand views on a lot of those videos, those people,

48:11
are the most likely people to become your customers anyway. So if we’re looking at this from a pure content perspective, if we were starting with content first, like Linus Tech Tips, we would wanna have as broad of a reach as possible. But we don’t have to worry about that if we’re monetizing primarily with the e-commerce side of it. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. I can see that. And I think you’ve probably experienced something like that on this channel. um Like you’ve had some videos that have done very, very well, but

48:41
A lot of those people are not really my wife, create your job listeners or people who would care about the other stuff that you would want to watch. That’s always the case. But I do notice that whenever I have something go viral, uh tons of email subs uh and you’re just casting a wider, you know, I had this talk with people in my YouTube mastermind group because I was like, should I be creating focused content?

49:09
where I know that people are really interested in the stuff they have to say or should I cast a wider net? And the consensus was always cast that wider net. That’s interesting. guess it depends on… It depends, there you go Steve. I finally squeezed one. It’s waiting, it’s been 50 minutes, you haven’t said it yet. It depends on how wide that net goes. So we’re thinking about something like Bumblebee linens. It would be weird for you to start talking about…

49:38
Well, maybe not. I was going to say baby stuff, if you were only selling wedding handkerchiefs, it’s kind of weird for you to go beyond like wedding related content. Yeah, we actually don’t. I mean, it’s not. It’s actually not a wedding thing. We actually have stories of friendship. have. Yeah, yeah. We sell more than that now. But yeah. So you can go. You can go wider with that. For my wife, quit her job. You probably don’t want to be talking about AI. But unless.

50:08
unless it’s linked back to e-commerce or leaving your business, you’re not going to create a video about the new Claude update unless there’s a specific way to tie it back. There’s probably more people interested in the new Claude update than there is in how to use it for e-commerce. And so you don’t want to go that way, but as wide as you can in the niche. Does that make sense? So we don’t have to create kayak bass fishing content.

50:37
we can create fishing content. And that’s literally a wider net than the kayak bass fishing equipment that we sell. But if they’re interested in fishing, there’s a good overlap. Obviously everybody who’s interested in kayak bass fishing is interested in fishing. We don’t wanna go to hunting wild elk in Alaska, even if there’s a broader audience there. Does that make sense? Yeah, I was thinking more along the lines.

51:04
This is like a huge skill that I’ve been struggling to like, if I have, I have content on the My Wife Quit channel that is very specific and very actionable for people who’s selling, who are selling, but I’ve just been practicing tying it to, it’s hard to describe this on the podcast, but I’ve been just trying to tie it to more people who might not even be running stores who just want to make money and just framing the content around it.

51:33
This is why I’ve been scripting a little bit more lately because the ability to tie to a broader audience is just a skill that just takes a lot of practice to do. For example, if I had a video on effective ways to email market, if I were to produce that video, like five effective ways to email, they would get no views, right? But if I could somehow target it towards, uh I don’t know, something political or even wider than that.

52:02
and then tie an email marketing aspects into it to make money, then it would get a lot more. Yeah. I think that’s a good example because the thing that people miss with email marketing is people just assume it doesn’t work. So instead of saying, you know, this email marketing flow that will change your e-commerce business as the title, it would be the number one return on investment marketing strategy you need to pay attention to this year. Right? Right. Something like that. That’s broader. Correct. Email.

52:31
even in 2025 is the highest return on investment marketing activity that an e-commerce business can do. Somewhere between 36 to one and 72 to one, depending on which survey that you look at, right? So every dollar you put in, you get 36 or $72 back out. By broadening it out and saying, this is the thing you need to pay attention to. Only marketers are going to watch it anyway, or people who are interested in performance marketing, but you get out of the email bubble.

52:59
even though that’s the thing that you’re teaching. Does that make sense? So you are casting a broader net than people who are already on board with the email train. And the only thing you have to do there is make that transition or make the explanation at the beginning of here’s why, right? It’s 36 to one or 72 to one, which is way more than you’re ever gonna get out of running ads or even TikTok affiliate, know, any of those kinds of things. Here’s how to implement it, if that’s the video that you’re gonna create. So you can cast that broader net.

53:28
just by slightly changing the title. And I think this is probably a struggle that a lot of people have for those of you listening. Keyword research I think is overrated. uh Like in that case, like the keyword would have been email marketing and maybe it has some sort of search volume. But I think wrapping it in something that’s much more enticing and broader based will almost always do better, at least in my experience. The reason for that, especially somewhere like YouTube is even though that YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet,

53:58
the vast majority, think it’s 60 to 70%, it might even be higher than that, I have to go look, of all of the traffic, all of the views on YouTube don’t come from search. They come from suggestions. And it’s because people go to that YouTube homepage, and unless you’re trying to figure out how to fix your inline water heater, you’re probably not searching on YouTube, right? You might get to YouTube through a search, or you’re like,

54:24
dang it, they’re just not showing me that channel that I wanted to find. You go type in the name of the channel or something like that. But the vast majority of views come from that recommendations feed. And so if they have an algorithm that’s tuned for cool marketing tips, you’re gonna show up there. And by using that slightly broader title and not sticking to the keyword research, you can actually attract more people through the thing that YouTube is getting the most views from anyway, which is the recommendations and suggestions.

54:54
So if we look at the My Wife Quit Her Job channel, right, like two months ago, Trump’s tariffs hit me hard, but China, they’re collapsing, right? You didn’t do a bunch of keyword research on that. You said, what is the topic? How do I make it appeal to my audience? You’re like, I got hit hard by the tariffs. Here’s the bigger picture. You’re not like, why Trump’s tariffs are terrible for China, right? That would be the keyword research version of that versus here’s.

55:22
uh a much broader appeal just thinking about the topic. Does that make sense? Yeah. Well, someone’s been watching my channel. didn’t. I’m flattered, Chris. I’m flattered. I watch almost everything you put out. Usually the ones that don’t have many views just, uh, just, uh Hey, Chris, uh, I know you never have anything to promote, but, um, if anyone wants your services or, uh, are you, are you taking on new clients? We are not, uh, we are full, but

55:52
If you have a question, come to Seller Summit. We’ll hang out. We’ll chat through it. Look at these guys helping promote Seller Summit. Yeah, Chris is- I’m assuming there’s going to be another Seller Summit, but- uh There is another Seller Summit. There is another Seller Summit next year. Yeah. I think that’s the best place, And uh not to patch you on the back too hard on your own show, but it is one of my favorite places to go every year because of the way that you set that event up. Even if somebody’s coming in new.

56:22
or they have a $25 million a year business, they get to learn not just from the speakers, but from everybody else that’s there. And so events like that are great specifically for that reason. If you find me at Seller Summit, you have a question, we’ll find a time, sit down, we can build out an email workflow or we can build out an automation or we can just talk about how to do Facebook ads. That’s as valuable to anybody uh as any conference that I’ve ever.

56:52
been to. So you guys do a killer job with that. think the social events that you guys do are great. uh And just the ability to actually learn from everybody because everybody has something to teach and that environment gives people the ability to do that. So that’s why I keep coming back. mean, I’m one of the few OGs I think that has been you are definitely an OG. Yeah. They didn’t have to print stickers for me this year, though. So they had they had a sheet of them. ah But I think if you want to get a hold of me, uh Chris at brand creators.com

57:22
Oh, it’s still, the email still goes through. Okay. Yeah, it comes right to me. And that’s probably better than my actual email because I miss two thirds of what comes into my actual email because I’ve had it since 2006. So that’ll come right to me. If you have a question, shoot it that way. If it’s something I can help you with, maybe I’ll shoot you a loom video, whatever that is. I’ll send that back to you. Or if you’re saying, Hey, you know, I need specific help with ads or I need somewhere to look for content creation. I’ll point you in the right direction.

57:51
And if there’s something I can help you with directly, I’ll let you know that way as well. Chris, man, thanks for coming on the show again. And hopefully I’ll see you again next year at Seller Summit. Oh, I’ll see you next year.

58:03
Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’re not creating content for your business, you’ll eventually get left behind. For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejob.com slash episode 605. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2026 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.

58:33
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 the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, we’re gonna get real about what it’s like selling on Amazon right now. Everyone loves to brag about screenshots and seven figure revenue numbers, but the truth is, selling at scale in 2025 is messy. Fees are higher, competition is tougher, and if you’re not careful, Amazon will eat your margins alive. That is why I brought on Bernie Thompson. He’s in the trenches, running a big Amazon business,

00:29
and instead of drowning in the chaos, he’s been using AI to take back control. We’ll talk about how he’s automating the grind, making smarter decisions, and actually staying profitable in a space where most people are just spinning their wheels. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. And if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most e-commerce conferences that are filled with high-level fluff and inspirational stories,

00:57
Seller Summit is all about tactical, step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches. People who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs, no consultants. Also, I hate big events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room.

01:23
We’ve sold out every single year for the past nine years, and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and if you’re doing over 250K or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for higher level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be, so if you want in, go over to SellersSummit.com and grab your ticket. That’s SellersSummit.com. Now onto the show.

01:54
limited shelf space and you basically had to convince some gatekeepers, some uh basically buyers for the retailer that your product was worthy or you didn’t get any sales at all. uh so we’ve then been through this period here with Amazon’s somewhat infinite shelf, although the reality is you can bury a body on page three and no one will ever find it. So it’s not truly an infinite shelf if you’re trying to

02:24
sell stuff. But then, with AI, you know, it’s somewhat frightening in a way. I mean, you see today and you kind of expect this probably will continue that there’s, you have a conversation about what you’re looking for and you get back one, maybe three product recommendations. So it really kind of amps up the pressure of how do I become one of those three? It’s nice to be number three there on your search team. I’d like to be number one though.

02:53
um Yeah, and so I mean, I’ll be honest, first of all, we don’t know, we don’t know how to influence the LLMs. ah But then within that don’t know, we do know some things. mean, so one of the things that’s fortunate for us uh is, we’ve always had this mindset that uh part of our mission is, well, actually, our whole mission as a company, Plugable, is around compatibility. So

03:18
What is compatibility? Well, it is a bit about the products and how we design them. But a lot of it’s about information. Does this work with that? How does this work together? And so we’ve always been a content marketing company that’s put out a ton of content, tons of articles, tons of videos, tons of Q &As about how do our products work with other products? What are the quirks? What are the benefits? uh And so our strategy for winning at uh kind

03:47
uh AISCO or LLMCO is basically to put out more great content that connects things, that ties things together, that tells the whole story, that talks not just about the technology, but talks about use cases. It talks not just about use cases, but talks about the people and exactly how they’re using them. uh And I think we’re partially succeeding at that, but our kind of ambition is to put out just a lot more content than we even are today.

04:17
What is your medium of choice? it written or video or both? Yeah, it’s gotta be both. um you know, we actually just celebrated a huge milestone for the company. We crossed 50,000 YouTube subscribers. Wow. You’re probably way above that, Steve. That’s awesome. Yeah. But for us, we’re really excited about that. It’s a good threshold.

04:40
And so that’s a nice, you know, kind of baked in audience. You know, as long as we’re putting out content that is interesting and informative and we can, you know, kind of keep winning back that audience. That gives us a base of awareness and traffic. but obviously written is important too. I mean, kind of the cool thing about, you know, multimodal LLMs is it truly is both. I mean, if, if we, you know, say something in a video that used to be kind of buried content as far as search engines go.

05:10
But for the LLMs, they’re gonna unearth that. They’re gonna break that video into tokens. Not only will they have the words, but they’ll have the context of that I’m there plugging something in when I’m saying the words and the LLM will actually extract that context. So yeah, it’s really everything. Nice. And so that explains it actually. Yeah. I’ve been doing a lot of AI optimization lately with my site.

05:40
So one of the things is just citing facts about your sales and whatnot and so we’ve sold over a million handkerchiefs So I put that on the site and instantly it got picked up by AI and now I’m known as like the highest volume handkerchief seller on the internet. Yes, and then recently I also uh scanned all my product descriptions into a Date of place database a face database and now my search is so much better. Awesome. That has improved sales dramatically anyway

06:10
My question for you is I just was on your site and I noticed all your links go to Amazon still for purchase. But you do still take sales on your own website. I was just curious, how come you’re not using buy with prime so that you actually get their emails? Yeah, no, that’s a that’s a great question. So so first off, we we do have the Amazon buy box often prominently, but we can control that skew by skew. So we actually have have our line segmented by

06:40
what uh target sales channel we expect that product to succeed in. So we actually have a whole bunch of products that we are not targeting Amazon on. That are more business focused, that we sell through the IT channel. So when you go to those products on our site, we’re capable of shifting, you’ll kind of, like we have this complex buy box that uh can direct you to Amazon, it can direct you to, uh you know, B &H photo, it can direct you to

07:09
our distributors, or it can direct you to Shopify, and we can control that. Okay. I would expect no less. Yeah. It’s a spreadsheet-based configuration of it, and then we’ve got some Python code that pushes metadata up to Shopify, and then some liquid markup on Shopify that then uses that metadata to do the rendering.

07:34
oh Just curious and I don’t want to talk too much about this but like what is your criteria for what gets pushed to Shopify versus one of your partners like Amazon or B &H? Yeah, so, you know at launch, so generally at launch we’re shooting for Amazon success, although not always like today if we’re launching a USB cable We’re not shooting for Amazon success. There’s a thousand Chinese brands You know doing a USB cable and and we’re not gonna beat them unless it’s something

08:02
really magically unique, it’s certification, something like that. But otherwise, if it’s one of our core products, like a higher ASP type product, we’ll shoot for Amazon success and we’ll send it to Amazon. But then after that, it’s pretty much how the product behaves. If we’re able to achieve some search running for some significant keywords on Amazon and a significant BSR,

08:30
ah We will then say that it’s an Amazon-focused product and make sure that we’re monitoring and maintaining those ranks or building on them. Other products do not succeed on Amazon. They get swamped by all the Chinese brand competition, ah and then we’ll actually officially designate those as not Amazon-focused. uh That’s often when the buy box will be shifted to one of our other partners or just generally the distribution because we want to be

09:00
I mean, Amazon has to be a special case because of their high market share. But really what we’d like to have is a mindset of, you know, equally sending traffic to all of our partners. And so we generally, you know, try to shift to that mindset once we let go of, you know, Amazon. So is this change the result of? Well, let me ask you this. What is the Amazon landscape like right now for large sellers? uh

09:28
I read a report recently that said that it’s less competitive on Amazon than ever before because a lot of sellers are dropping out and you’re obviously one of the survivors. Has it gotten easier for you then? No. So what’s happened is actually there’s been a consolidation among the Chinese brands. So in our particular space, you’ve had a few Chinese brands break away from the larger pack, basically anchor you green uh basis.

09:54
are the big three in the USB space, cables, chargers, adapters, and then to some degree, docs, although that’s where we’ve maintained our leadership. uh so what’s happened is you have less of a… Five years ago, a lot of the searches on Amazon looked like this rotating set of five-character brands, just constantly changing all five-character, all from China. uh That has shifted.

10:24
in the last few years. It is now more consistently Anchor or You Green or somebody else. I think what you and I, I’ve actually been curious if that is something like that is not just the strength of those Chinese brands, but actually something where, know, once a champion has been crowned, whether there’s a little bit less. uh I mean, it’s

10:50
As you know, investment in China is directed but not in a uh purely top-down or kind of singular kind of way. It’s more that at the federal level, there’s the five-year kind of goals and then each of the local jurisdictions encourage companies in their area. There’s a little bit of like

11:15
I don’t know whether it’s explicit or implicit specialization. Areas tend to specialize in types of products. then at the company level, they have to be very scrappy. They have to win incentives from the local government, but they also have to win in the market. And they’ve got this hyper-competitive Chinese marketplace internally to the country that they’ve got to compete in that’s just brutal. And the survivors of that tend to be very strong companies that can succeed globally.

11:45
And uh so actually one of the interesting things about Anchor is I don’t think they’ve ever been very successful inside China. They were early enough that they succeeded outside China first, whereas a lot of these other Chinese brands, actually succeeded inside China first and then became tough and fast and great at what they do and then they succeeded externally.

12:11
So I don’t know all the dynamics. It definitely feels like I’m looking in a window into something that I don’t quite understand. But there’s definitely been a winnowing of the Chinese brands in our space to the strong leaders. just because an article says that there’s less sellers doesn’t mean like the competition’s less. You’re saying it’s because of consolidation among the brands. I feel like the fees and whatnot keeps going up.

12:40
How are you coping with that? And are you coping with that primarily with AI systems and making everything more streamlined? What have you done? Yeah, mean, the tariffs are a much larger potential effect than the Amazon fees on a percentage basis. uh You know, at our levels of markup in electronics, is, you know, we probably electronics already had kind of compressed uh margins relative to some categories. And then that means that the tariffs have a disproportionate effect.

13:11
And also for us, we’re at higher ASPs. So some of those things where somebody’s fulfillment costs went up by 50 cents, that’s the whole game on a $10 product. But on a $100 product, it’s something that’s a little bump. ah So frankly, I don’t know that I’ve felt the fee increases that much. The biggest fee increase for us actually occurred uh a few years ago. It was a category specific thing where

13:39
within electronics, the stuff we were mostly successful in moved from 8 % to 15 % sales commission. And that was brutal. was a $1.5 million shift from our profits to Amazon. uh But that occurred, gosh, back in like 2018 or 2019. These later fulfillment changes and some of the, a lot of the kind of punitive fees, the overstock, understock,

14:09
you know, long-term storage kind of stuff. uh You know, they’re guiding you to have a hyper-efficient business that’s well-run, which is actually hard to do, but we’ve had to be there already. I we have amazing systems, so, like, especially some of that stocking stuff, it really hasn’t bothered us because we were already there in terms of our…

14:32
Inventory levels and stuff. I that makes sense I mean electronics is so cutthroat and the margins are lower You you have to have those systems in place to begin with to even compete is what it’s yes. That’s right. Okay Well, let’s talk about the tariffs We had a short conversation before I hit the record button You have been largely free of tariffs thus far whereas I just placed a large shipment and our tariffs are at 55 % right? Yeah

14:57
No, it’s crazy. It’s one of the things that is tough about the tariffs is, and this includes the first set that were done in 2018, you have these wildly different rates depending on the category, is HS code. Well, these HS codes, they were set up decades ago. I I think most of our products, like the parent category of our electronics products are like nuclear materials or something.

15:26
You actually look up the chain of HS codes. It’s something ridiculous. these categorizations are not something that are clear and brilliant and match the modern world. And so then that contributes to one of these problems that if you have wildly different rates between different types of products, there’s a lot of room for gamesmanship. But basically, in our case, what’s happened here in 2025 is

15:54
there was an exemption that was announced right after, like I think on April 11th. So in April 2nd, this big set of tariff announcements came out. And then there was a series of backing off of those. And one of those was basically people realized, hey, our iPhones are gonna triple in cost if we actually do what we say we’re gonna do here. And so there was an exemption put in.

16:20
for phones and computers and a lot of peripherals. It’s got a name, right? Yeah, you know, it’s got a name and it’s a bunch of digits, you know, something, something, something. I call it the Tim Cook exemption. I don’t know if that’s the official name or not, but that’s what I call it. So it’s for all electronics, it sounds like, right? Because you don’t sell phones or anything like that. No, but it’s it’s we it’s it’s a weird line. It’s not all electronic. So chargers and cables, it’s not.

16:48
on those. And so, you know, we’re paying 55 % for the ones that we still have out of China on those. And unfortunately, the lower you go in ASP, the harder it is to get out of China. a lot of those low ASP items, we don’t sell a lot of them because we’re already kind of facing such competitive pressure from the Chinese brands on low ASP. But we keep the skews because it’s important for the kind of cohesiveness of our product line.

17:17
Yeah, and so we’re paying 55 % tariffs. So in about half of the cases, we’re discontinuing the SKUs. We may still be selling some inventory, but once the inventory is gone, we’re done. And then about half the SKUs, we’re just going to pay the 55 % tariff and continue. And then we have this larger set of SKUs, especially like the laptop docking stations, that right now are under this exemption. And so we’re essentially uh

17:46
you know, paying zero and we got out of China uh over the last eight years. So the combination of being out of China and being under this exemption for the moment is giving us a 0 % rate. But based on all the discussion, of course, we don’t expect that to continue. And so we’re kind of in this limbo. So I think that exemption expires in like less than a month, right? Or something has to happen less than a month, I believe.

18:14
So that exemption is similar to the uh pharmaceutical exemption where they put the exemption in place and said, we’re going to do this review of this category and then we’re going to come out with category specific tariffs and a strategy. So actually we don’t have a timeline on the electronic stuff. There’s been some, we now all have to go to true social for our.

18:40
for our business planning and the rumors out of Truth Social is that, yeah, they may come out with their electronics kind of strategy here in the coming months.

19:35
So how do you plan for that just internally? It’s maddening. I have to place purchase orders today for goods that I’m going to receive four months from now in terms of importation. And that’s like two tariff policy change cycles. Or more. uh

19:58
So, and it’s scary, you know, I mean, you know my business, Steve, right? I mean, I’m placing millions of dollars of purchase orders a month and it makes a big difference to me whether that tariff rate is zero or 25 or 50%. And yeah, it’s fascinating. think that all businesses, one of the kind of magic things that’s happened here during this time for the US consumer is all of the confusion.

20:27
and the lack of certainty has actually caused businesses to not raise prices unless they’re actually paying the tariffs. is what Richard told me last week. I was shocked by that. So you’re not seeing price increases. In electronics, as a category, but there are lot of exemptions, but as a category, prices actually went down. uh 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.

20:55
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21:23
Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

21:29
to kind of hide it by just increasing a product here and there. uh You’re right though, prices across the board don’t seem to have hit. Like I know inflation just kind of ticked up recently. Do you anticipate all these prices shooting up in the holidays as a result? do, ah but I’ve been wrong before. Yeah, but yeah, no, it really feels like there’s a, uh know, that the uncertainty has been holding back the flood. ah

21:59
And then also a little bit of the, you know, I don’t know what the pressure, right? You know, the visibility, like especially at the large company level, you know, if you’re a Walmart or an Apple or an Amazon, I mean, you’re literally getting media and political pressure and attention on your pricing. So, yeah, so I think what’s happened basically is that people are probably mostly

22:28
pricing in the tariffs they’re already paying. And I think so the amount of tariffs, I was trying to get the numbers before the call. So one way to look at it is how much tariff revenue is the government collecting? And so in Q2, the US government raised $64 billion of tariff revenue, which is up from 17 billion uh last year at the same time. So basically like a fourfold increase or so. ah

22:58
And so, you know, prices will go up by that much for sure. And it’s just a matter of kind of these delays. uh you know, and then of course, this next set that’s being discussed, because it affects not just China, but our friends and allies and the whole world, I collectively, it’s a much larger tax increase on imports. So, uh

23:25
Yeah, these things will come through with price increases and because it’s been delayed, kind of expected to come in a uncomfortable kind of breaking of the dam where prices go up fast at some point. You mentioned your smaller SKUs that you have to pay 55 % towards. oh You’re basically just selling those because they’re complements or maybe upsells to what you already sell. And others you’ve just delisted on Amazon, right?

23:54
ah Yes. Do you feel like it’s leveled the playing field though in a way or are you just not going to ever be able to compete against the Chinese manufacturers for those types of products? Yeah, so the problem with tariffs as your one mechanism of competition is they can be avoided. And one big mechanism of avoidance uh has been closed, which is the de minimis uh importation of goods.

24:23
which was used a lot for order by order shipments, parcels with China Post and stuff. But it was also used a different way. It was used by a significant number of Chinese companies and also some US and Western companies to import in bulk into Canada and Mexico and then come in in small under $800 batches into the US. So both of those have been closed, which is great. mean, that’s just a totally positive thing to close those loopholes.

24:53
But the trouble is that uh this is basically kind like a volunteer tax tariffs. When you have your goods go and clear, you submit some paperwork. And on that paperwork, you say how much the goods are worth. So if you’re a US company and a US person, uh the government has the right to audit those going way back in time.

25:17
And I actually, unfortunately, I see a lot of friends right now talking. I watch the discussions online and they’re using kind of gray strategies to get their declared cost of goods down and things like that. And unfortunately, a set of those people are going to get into trouble where they’re going to at some point in a year or two get an audit. They’re going to go back all the years and they’re going to get a bill that’s going to destroy their business. ah But if you’re if you’re a Chinese company or any actually foreign company.

25:45
uh You have very little at stake there. You’re not going to get thrown in jail. uh You can get a bill, but you can also just disappear as a company and come back in a new form. may get a particular shipment uh held and lost. uh So that’s definitely at risk for anybody, regardless of where they are. But that’s just one shipment or one set of shipments. So basically what the aggregate pattern that we clearly see, even based on the 2018 tariffs.

26:15
is that overseas companies are very aggressive about using strategies to avoid tariffs. Mis-declaring HS code, mis-declaring value of goods, there’s some legal ways. mean, as you know, Steve, if you’re a company in China, you can legally declare a lower value of goods than a US company importing the same good because we have to declare exactly what we pay to the other supplier.

26:43
But the supplier themselves, they just have to declare all of their input costs to the physical goods. And there’s a lot of things that you can take off of that legally, including your own profit. You can just profit shift. so already from a legal perspective, it’s a lower. And then once you get to big tariff numbers, like 55%, if you can just pay 20 % less, 30 % less, that’s the whole ball game.

27:11
electronics electronics is a single digit net margin industry. So that’s the whole ball game. I would imagine that the larger guys have to comply right? Like the anchors and the you greens. No, not necessarily. mean, I think I think, you know, it comes down to company culture. Like I think those are two great examples. I don’t want to talk too specifically about them. But I think I’ll just I’ll just talk positively about anchor. I anchor

27:40
has not always been perfect. Like for example, they got hit with a million dollar VAT bill in the UK a few years ago because they grew for years in the UK with a 20 % advantage because they weren’t paying VAT. But then it caught up to them all at once because they’re a big, now a big global, reachable, identifiable company. But generally, Anchor is a pretty good company in terms of ethics. But don’t assume anything about the rest of the brands.

28:09
And sometimes you can just see it. I just look at the pricing on the same product. That’s not manufacturing magic. That’s paperwork magic. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. uh I know you’ve been doing a lot with AI and you’re a coder or an engineer. what have been your most impactful automations or agents or what? Like, I’m just curious how you’re using it. Yeah. You know, I think the most impactful thing, and I think you’ve

28:37
I got to hear you speak at your conference, Steve, and I was just so impressed with all the automation that you’ve done for your business. uh So it’s probably similar to you that the most impactful automation is the creation of code. ah That if I want a little script to automate this or that, ah it is easily five times faster than it was in the past, maybe 10 times faster. I can sit down in a uh AI-centric

29:06
code editor like Cursor have a framework for my scripts, how they run, uh run on a schedule on a particular server, and I have whole bunch of different tasks. And I can add a task that goes and connects with an API, it grabs the data, and shoves it into my database. That can be done in 30 minutes, like five minutes to the first code, and then 25 minutes to fix the problem or two in that generated code.

29:35
And suddenly I’ve connected to an API and I’ve got the data in my database and I’m ready to go to the next step. Something like that would have easily taken me, I don’t know, like four or eight hours before because I personally would have had to go understand that API and kind of figure a bunch of stuff out. And now that’s given to me as boilerplate code by the LLM. So that’s probably the number one area for me and kind of to your question. I think for the business, it’s actually strategy.

30:05
uh It’s actually all of my executive team brainstorming back and forth with AI using the reasoning models, the more advanced ones. I have my whole team on the OpenAI paid plan. uh So we’re able to have only company-visible GPTs that are matched one-to-one with roles inside the company. And we load them up with all of our SOPs and documents and knowledge about how we do that. And now any of our team members can

30:35
ask questions kind of at the SOP level or at the strategy level about how do I fix this? How do I do this? And uh yeah, so it’s kind of both sides. uh Somebody once told me that the text generation of LLMs feels like the right brain creative side of AI, but what’s the left brain logical side of AI? Because the creative side is a little unreliable, like it hallucinates and it

31:05
Sometimes you can’t trust it. Well, it’s code generation. That is rendering this logical thing that once it’s working will execute again and again. No hallucination because it’s created code. I love thinking about that interplay between the creative and the logical and how do you harness AI to do both things for your business. For the people listening, most of them aren’t technical.

31:34
And I’ve actually been struggling with this with my son. Like he wants to create this app. uh But he’s not really a coder. Is most of the employees at your company who do this, are they coders or even non coders using AI to create tools in your company? um Yeah, a lot of them are people who have always wanted to learn coding, but you know, maybe didn’t get a degree, didn’t

32:01
they didn’t get there kind of as, or at least they were really dabblers before. And then also executives who have coded in the past who do know about coding, but they haven’t been doing it day to day. And so they’re dabblers in a different way. They actually know quite a bit, but in the old world, previous to LLMs, if you weren’t coding every day, you’d forget everything. If you got all the syntax, you’d forget all the interfaces.

32:29
So that’s me. That’s me. I feel like it’s such an unlock for my productivity. But on the side of the dabblers, you just need to be careful about the framework. The two biggies for us are SQL and Apps Script. We’re a Google workspace shop. So Apps Script is a powerful way to automate anything related to Gmail and spreadsheets. And so

32:56
And they almost by design are these little standalone scripts that run in one of the Google apps. So that’s a really great area for a non-programmer to go ask the LLM to go automate something for them. And then when they deploy it, just paste the script in, if something goes wrong, the effects of that are limited, and it just works. And the same with SQL. uh

33:23
I have my finance team is taking that raw data that I might have pulled out of an API, and then they take it from there. And they’ll roll that data up with a series of joins, and you’ll get that into a combined inventory sheet or a combined run rate sheet. We use BigQuery to Google Sheets. There’s a feature called Connected Sheets that lets us pull data from databases and spreadsheets. We use that all the time. Marketing team, same kind of stuff.

33:53
pulling data, transforming data. And so SQL is this, yeah, I guess this is one of the tricks of LLM programming is really constraining it. You’re giving it a strong set of limitations in how and what it can do, then it’ll be much more likely to give you what you want. And I love LLMs generating SQL because it’s a really good example of that. So for the people listening, uh

34:23
App Script sounds like a great way to just get started. What are some scripts that your employees have been using just with their Google tools that has saved them? Yeah. Let’s see. So some of it is um connecting with BigQuery and then saying, OK, we want to transform this data and then put it in a spreadsheet. um Some of it is like an API like uh

34:49
In the Amazon world, there’s this API that’s been around forever called Kipa, and it gives you this history of what’s happened with a product statistically on Amazon based on them scraping the page. So you can literally call Kipa from Apps Script and then just fill in the rows with the results from that uh API call. And that’s probably a good meta example. uh

35:13
Mostly I’m going from API into database, but it’s very easy with Apps Script to go from API into spreadsheet. It’s interesting. I go the opposite direction. Most of it is grabbing stuff from my database and then formatting it away for my wife and the rest of the people. So I’m doing the opposite, I guess. The only reason I didn’t emphasize that is because Connected Sheets does that pretty well. With Connected Sheets, if you’re on the

35:42
the higher Google plan, the corporate plan, you get that feature. And then you can just give a SQL query and it’ll do the query from the database, transform it and put it in your spreadsheet. And so we don’t need to use Apps Script for that, we can use SQL. Oh, nice. I hope we didn’t go over the listener’s heads. See, what’s funny about all this is like, I’m actually encouraging people in my class to try coding. And so one thing that I’ve been working with my son on

36:11
Not quite yet, but there’s this tool called replet. Yeah, I don’t if you’ve used it before but it’s like an easy way for you to just Have AI built in and you can deploy a full-blown app with technically not Even knowing how to code and then there’s like tools like lovable which are really good at creating like front ends for stuff and I really think that this is where the world’s going and you really don’t need to Know how to code you just need to be able to explain things very well

36:40
I think, on paper. It’s just a test of communication, really. Yep. And what’s communication? It’s conceptual clarity and having the words. ah So a lot of what we need to do to be successful with LLMs is actually to be widely read ourselves so that we know what’s possible, we know the concepts, and we know what words to use, whether we’re talking to a human being or talking to an LLM to say, hey, I want this.

37:08
I actually agree with you. I think that if you’re a good boss, you’re probably going to be a good app creator. Because you can’t just go to employee and say, hey, do this. Right? You need like one of my pet peeves when I used to work. And my job as an engineer, someone will come to me and say, it’s broken. Right? And I’d be like, well, what’s broken? And it’s like, well, I’m getting this blank screen. I’m like, well, what did you do? You know, you know, I’m saying like, you need a lot of detail in order to help.

37:35
And that’s the same skills that you would need to create some sort of app. You need to get very detailed on exactly what you want. So it’s really not really coding anymore. It’s just an exercise in, in communication is the way I see it. love that. And I love, first of all, I love that you said that when you used to work, you know, cause now you’re not working, know, a day job is what I meant. still work just for the record. But the other thing I loved about what you said there is managing. really do think that, um, making good use of

38:04
of LLMs today and then expanding on that, you know, as we’re heading here a year or two from now, you know, using all of these, you know, semi-free agentic employees that you have at your beck and call, it’s a management problem. And, you know, in management, you described really well kind of the challenge of delegation and delegating, or one of the challenges of delegation, you know, which is describing what you want effectively. You know, the other

38:32
There’s a bunch of other aspects that are hard about delegation. One of those that’s really hard is that when you delegate to somebody, they’re not going to do it the same way you would. And they’re probably not going to do it to your quality standards, at least not initially. all of us who’ve managed people, managing is hard. We started out being very frustrated by that process. Like, oh, I could hand off this task, but

38:59
It’s going to take them twice as long and they’re going to do a terrible job, right? But that’s what you learn as a manager is I got to do it. It’s the only way ultimately to get scale in the long term. And I see so many people in my circle struggling with that right now with LLMs, where they’re going, if I ask an LLM to do this, it’s going to give me back some slop. It’s not going to be as good as what I do. It’s not going to be as crafted as what I do.

39:29
I’m expert at this. Why would I ask something that isn’t going to do as good a job as me to go do this? Well, it’s the same reason why in an organization you got to delegate because that’s the only way to get scale. ah You know, it’s the only way to multiply your value. so uh I think basically you and then sorry to expand on that a little bit more. You know, in organizations, you always have a certain set of people who are interested in management and then a certain set of people who are not.

39:59
The people who are not, who want to remain individual contributors, they are experts, they are proud of their work, they are proud of their craft. And the scary thing is that this LLM, this AI era is not well aligned with that. And I’m kind of worried for those people, those friends. I agree. The other thing I wanted to kind of add to that is uh I used to think that I was doing coding well with the LLMs.

40:28
but then I talked to one of my buddies in industry who I just had lunch with, and they have this like 10 page SOP that they feed in so that the code comes out exactly how they want. And so really what I’m trying to say here is if you’re not getting what you want out of the LLM, chances are the problem is you and not the LLM itself, right? Yeah, yeah, those coding.

40:54
There’s kind two styles of vibe coding right now. One is where you’re just cutting and pasting back and forth with the, you know, with your LLM of choice. But the other is where you’re using one of these AI tools. Like I’ve been using cursor replets, another one. uh Amazon just launched theirs out of AWS last week at Kiro. ah There was just a billion dollar deal that happened and fell apart between OpenAI and a company called Windsurf, which does a similar type of product. And what these products do is they are

41:22
Actually, several of them are branches of Visual Studio Code, Microsoft’s kind of ubiquitous development environment for software developers. And they embed AI in a way where, I was talking earlier about the importance of constraining your problem, putting guardrails around the LLM. They do it systematically like you’re describing, Steve. Cursor calls it cursor rules. Yeah, so for this big project that I’ve been doing in cursor the last few months, I have, I don’t know, maybe like

41:51
thousand lines of readable English statements of, doing this in Google Cloud, we’re using BigQuery as our database. Whenever we process an item, we log a metric, the Google Cloud metrics. Whenever we have to have something that we can’t do synchronously, to use a term you would know, but we can’t do right away, we use a Google Pub Sub to queue up a message and then pass that to the other system. Basically, it’s an architectural description.

42:21
of how to do this piece of software. And it just is, it’s groundbreaking because it’s simple, but it’s groundbreaking because if you don’t do that, the LLM over time will do all kinds of different choices. uh It’s not really hallucination. It’s often working code, but one time it’ll decide to use this database. The next time it’ll decide to use a different database and you’ll end up with a disaster of an application.

42:47
You know, kind of that architectural step and describing and constraining what the LLM does. You know, it’s a really key part as soon as your uh project is bigger than a single script uh and it’s, you’ll be maintaining it over more time and it’s not just a one-shot automation. Which is just like having an employee, really, right? Unless you give guidelines, the employee is just going to do whatever it takes to get the job done. Yep. So,

43:15
And this is really just for the listeners out there. Like if you’re having problems getting chat, GBT or whatever to do what you want, it’s probably your problem that you’re not explaining it well enough. And I’ve seen enough of like my buddies who are, you know, working now and what they’re working with to make me realize that I’m not doing a good job of it either. So blame yourself first is I guess the the moral of the story here. Isn’t that always the rule? And it’s just a question I think

43:45
I was thinking about this the other day, how LLMs are replacing jobs and whatnot, but I think it’s going to shift now towards, as you mentioned earlier, people who can communicate ideas and organize architectures better. That’s where the next level of jobs are going to be, I think. Yeah. And everyone will be a manager. uh Everyone will have a team reporting to them. And many times that team is going to be uh a set of AI or AI agents.

44:14
And it’s a very different world. It’s not this is not easy. know, humans are remarkably flexible, remarkably adaptive. There will be plenty of work to do moving forward. But the degree to which this work looks so different is jarring. We’ll see how goes. So my kids are applying to college right now, or one of my kids is applying and we’re trying to figure out what like the most future proof major is going to be, because I don’t I feel like it’s not CS or

44:44
or engineering anymore. It’s going to be more of the soft skills or I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. I’m a little scared. Yeah, no, it is scary, especially for also kids in college. Yeah, in one hand, I think the broad based education so that you can you have a lot of concepts in your head and you have a lot of the words for those concepts. And that’s a skill that actually traditionally a four year college degree was really focused on that actually going

45:14
Back in time, maybe a bit more focus on that. Maybe that’ll come back around on that sort of broad-based education. But yeah, in terms of specific skill areas, on one hand, if you go really deep in certain areas, the rewards are huge. Like, I mean, this crazy competition right now for hardcore AI, foundational AI developers, mean, hundreds of millions of dollars are getting thrown around at individuals. Insane.

45:42
And yet I know a bunch of really great programmers who’ve been out of work. as we think about our kids, how do we help our kids navigate this divergence uh where some things and some skills get supervalued and then so many other ones get devalued? It’s part of the disruption which is so scary.

46:10
But I you know, think we need you know, we need to navigate it and I I don’t know I feel like I’m doing a bad job But I feel this urgency to help the people around me navigate this because it’s not easy I think it’s all gonna come down to relationships in the end people skills and then everyone’s gonna be able to create apps and hopefully it’ll just be based on your creativity your relationships and your ability to Organize something and make something come to you Bernie. Thank you so much for coming back on the show

46:40
I’m always thrilled to see you at Seller Summit. We just announced Seller Summit next year. Would love for you to be a part of that as well. But once again, thanks a lot for coming on the show. always love to come on and talk with you, Steve. In one hand, I think the broad-based education so that you can, you have a lot of concepts in your head and you have a lot of the words for those concepts. And that’s a skill that actually traditionally a four-year college degree was really focused on that.

47:09
back in time, maybe a bit more focus on that. Maybe that’ll come back around on that sort of broad-based education. But yeah, in terms of specific skill areas, on one hand, if you go really deep in certain areas, the rewards are huge. Like, I mean, this crazy competition right now for hardcore AI, foundational AI developers, mean, hundreds of millions of dollars are getting thrown around at individuals. Insane.

47:37
And yet I know a bunch of really great programmers who’ve been out of work. as we think about our kids, how do we help our kids navigate this divergence uh where some things and some skills get supervalued and then so many other ones get devalued? It’s part of the disruption which is so scary. uh

48:05
But I you know, think we need you know, we need to navigate it and I I don’t know I feel like I’m doing a bad job But I feel this urgency to help the people around me navigate this because it’s not easy I think it’s all gonna come down to relationships in the end people skills and then everyone’s gonna be able to create apps and hopefully it’ll just be based on your creativity your relationships and your ability to Organize something and make something come to you Bernie. Thank you so much for coming back on the show

48:34
I’m always thrilled to see you at Seller Summit. We just announced Seller Summit next year. Would love for you to be a part of that as well. once again, thanks a lot for coming on the show. I always love to come on talk with you, Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you are not implementing AI into your workflow, you are leaving massive productivity gains on the table. For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejob.com slash episode 604.

49:02
Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2026 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. 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 the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. In this episode, I’m joined by a very special guest, Jim Kenimer. Jim has spent years on the ground in Vietnam, working directly with factories, suppliers, and entrepreneurs. And while most sellers are fixated on China, Jim has been quietly helping entrepreneurs discover a sourcing ecosystem that is often cheaper, more flexible, and surprisingly overlooked. We’ll dive into what makes Vietnam such an attractive alternative

00:30
The biggest mistake sellers make when sourcing there and why blindly sticking with China might be costing you more than you think. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at Sellersummit.com. And if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most e-commerce conferences that are filled with high-level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical, step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches.

00:59
people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants. Also, I hate big events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We’ve sold out every single year for the past nine years, and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

01:27
And if you’re doing over 250K or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for high-level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever going to be. So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Enjoy the show.

01:48
Welcome to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast. Today, I’m thrilled to have Jim Candomer back on the show. Jim is the founder of Cosmosourcing and sourcinghub.io, and he’s helped hundreds of clients source more than $100 million worth of products from Vietnam, Mexico, and Southeast Asia. And products that he has sourced have ended up in almost every major retailer for clients from over 30 countries. He also recently spoke at my annual e-commerce conference, The Seller Summit. I invited him on the show today.

02:18
to talk about the current sourcing situation and the latest with tariffs, because I still feel like things change like every single month. We actually just got a shipment in ourselves. Every day. Yeah, every day. Yeah. And with that, welcome to the show, Hey, great. Thank you. It’s pleasure to be here. So I actually have an odd question for you to start. And I know this is really random, but I think I was talking to another speaker at Seller Summit. And I overheard that you get most of the traffic to Cosmos sourcing.

02:46
through AI, like chatbots? Most, but yeah, we’re getting a huge surge in traffic on AI chatbots. Come up apparently pretty highly recommended by ChatGPT. Do you have a strategy for doing that? Just curious. I mean, I’m looking into it. Kind of honestly, having organically, like we have our blog, kind of have a couple blogs now, but Cosmos Orson is the main one and guess it’s just good information. But yes, definitely we’re seeing pretty good conversion rate with our

03:16
Like we’re only getting about thousand visitors a month referral from chat to EBT, but from those, the conversion rate to just meetings and eventually sales has been pretty high, much, higher than Google who get about 50,000 over 50,000 from Google and probably twice as many, but the conversion rates obviously lower to getting meeting and ultimately sells. So yeah, it’s definitely been kind of. Experience you haven’t. Yeah. Trying to figure out why, to be honest. Well, I mean, is blogging still a.

03:44
an essential part of your strategy for. Yeah, it’s definitely kind of the main one. I mean, I get blogging and referrals from previous clients word of mouth. It’s probably still number one, but blogging definitely kind of the new new clients definitely kind of get out there and then, yeah, referrals from clients and then referrals from other people are definitely then. Yeah, I’ve been trying to expand more on LinkedIn and start a YouTube channel that I’ve been.

04:08
procrastinating way too much on. Well, it is easy to procrastinate on that actually. I know. I’ve actually like recorded like three different versions of the same video and I’m just, every time I look at it, like, I don’t want people to see this. He’s the script. I don’t know. I’m too self-conscious about this stuff. So what I like about you is, you you work with a whole bunch of clients and sourcing. what is the current situation with the tariffs? What are your clients thinking? How are they adapting?

04:37
Yeah, for sure. I mean, we work with lot of clients like kind of our tagline has been anywhere but China. But Vietnam still is kind of our bread and butter for sourcing. We got a team based there. But yeah, I mean, definitely there’s a huge influx of clients who are looking to move outside of China, look at alternative sourcing destinations. But at the same time, right now, people just want certainty and there’s not certainty in tariffs. I mean, we got letters that have been agreed on by one side sent to people about tariffs. So maybe it’ll say a 20 percent like Vietnam and

05:05
Theory has a deal at 20 % but nothing’s been signed or fully agreed on by both parties. That should go in fact off to August 1st. So yeah. Pretty soon it’s going to expire, right? Is it the 12th the 1st? So it’s 10 % still now, but on August 1st it’s going to jump up to 20 % on theory based on Trump’s comments, which has so far been a single post on True Social. So we got literally people making millions, tens of millions of dollars in purchase.

05:32
agreements based on a single truth social post that Is pretty uncertain. So yeah, we’re kind of still waiting for the official official announcement, but no one’s on the other side’s objected to it. So it’s Just so there’s still seems to be at least among your clients a Need to go away from China, even though I think feel things feel like they’ve settled somewhat with China right at 55 Yeah, I think that’s gonna be locked in for the short to medium term 55 % and I think

06:02
Yeah, literally yesterday or the day before Trump made comments about the tariffs might be set anywhere from 15 to 50 percent, which he did at AI Summit just off the cuff, by the way. So, yeah, we’re going to kind of see some more settling. But yeah, it’s definitely been a lot of uncertainty. People have been really like we work a lot of clients here are looking at factories or getting quotes from factories, contacts, doing introductions and all that. But they’re just don’t want to pull the trigger until they know.

06:31
everything set in stone because if they place purchase order today, it’s going to take two, three months before the products ready to ship and goes through customs and then they don’t know that the 10 % or 20 % that’s in place now is going to be what they pay in the future. there’s all that is it right now with Vietnam actually, it’s 10 % right now. you said today today? Yeah, on August 1, it will be 20%. It’ll be 20. And then how long is that gonna last? It’s indefinite right now or this indefinite? Yeah, I mean, 20.

07:00
for the short medium term. But yeah, mean, yeah, as far as yeah, it will be definitely kind of locked in at 20%. But just with the way the trade agreements are, there’s nothing locked in. Sure. I mean, given that a lot of the Chinese factories moved their operations to Vietnam in the past decade, I mean, is it really doing anything? A little bit. Yeah, one of the big things too that the True Social Post has a 40 %

07:30
Tariff for goods that go from China into Vietnam, which we’re trying to figure out what exactly is costangly trans-German as a whole is illegal. So now we’re Just doing a 40 % tariff. So we’re yeah, I mean there’s a little bit uncertainty but a lot of that people kind of eluded that if a Substantial amount of raw materials even if the finished goods is made in Vietnam would get taxed at 40 % So yeah, that’s potential that say you source the metal components from China

07:57
ship to Vietnam, made it to a finished good, then the metal component would be taxed at 40 % and then the rest of the product would be taxed at the regular 20 % for instance. But yeah, what’s happening? Is that what you’re seeing? That’s what will happen when it goes into effect. But okay, still trying to get all that clarity on that because I always thought the rules were the materials are okay. And then yeah, as long as you’re transforming it and building something with it, right?

08:26
Yeah, no, that’s that’s how it normally works. But yeah, with that trans shipment, it’s honestly kind of unclear what he’s alluding to because yeah, I trans shipment is also a trans shipment. Normally is when you have a product go from one country, say China into Vietnam and then ship out of Vietnam, clear as a country of origin, which is illegal in that regard. Every word says country of origin is China. Yeah. So yeah. But now in that

08:52
thing explicitly highlighted out that 40 % transshipment tariff, which is less than 55 % from China. So it has a lot of people confused about what exactly it means. just talking to experts, like was talking to a lawyer based in Vietnam about that. And we were just trying to figure it out ourselves. And yeah, as far as we can tell, that’s more or less probably alludes to the materials getting taxed separately if they were to originate or components. Okay. What made the most logical interpretation?

09:22
I guess we’ll say most logical interpretation of that. So the answers I want to get out of today’s episode is why would I go to Vietnam? Like, what are they good at? And then is it realistic for like a little guy to source from there? Like what are the moqs? And I we’re speaking in broad terms because there’s so many different products, but for sure, like just set some expectations for like the volumes and what? Yeah, I mean, Vietnam as a whole does have higher moqs and they do kind of expect

09:51
first time buyers place larger MOQs right off the bat, which has turned off a lot of our clients and more potential clients. So for like clothing, for instance, most apparel projects, you’re looking at about probably about a thousand MOQs. that’s not too bad. Yes, not too bad. Yeah. So a thousand t-shirts, for instance. Yeah. We actually did have a list of manufacturers that did a little MOQs that we maintained in-house, but since the trade war demands gone up and almost all of them as manufacturers raised their MOQs, which were like, we were from 100 to 300.

10:21
up to really a thousand. So MOQs have been going up a lot more in Vietnam. Yeah, furniture, typically we say a container load worth of furniture, which depending on size can be anywhere from 100 to 300, 400 units. So why would I go to Vietnam over China right now? Just strictly manufacturing the types of products. Yeah, I think apparel and textiles, cut and sew items in general are better in Vietnam flat out without tariffs being factored in. It’s their most developed industry.

10:50
As a whole so I mean yeah from our estimation there’s over 6,000 factories that employs over two million people in that industry So it’s pretty advanced it kind of competes at all level So everything from high technical gear jackets about our wear to cheap t-shirts and everything in between are really good a lot of bags back Let’s say I were to move my like handkerchiefs and napkins over there what give me an idea of? Like how much cheaper would be and what like the moq’s would be is it like based on rolls of fabric or?

11:19
Yeah, a lot of is based on rolls of fabric because yeah, fabric rolls come from anywhere, a thousand, ten thousand square meters. So yeah, when you if they have a lot of factories where suppliers do have their own in-house warehouses. So we get a common fabric and just buy from what they have in stock. But most of the time, though, we’re ordering new rolls of fabric specifically for the production. So, yeah, you would probably have a memo queue of a thousand or so. And there’s been a few cases where we buy the roll of fabric and then do a smaller. You just start out and keep it on hand for the second order.

11:49
Okay. so I’m just actually I’m asking you now for selfish reasons. Yeah, go for it. We actually just got a shipment and the tariffs are at 55 and that was, you know, quadruple what it used to be. Yeah. And you know, we were just kind of doing the math and obviously we’re gonna have to raise prices and whatnot. it’s not gonna be a huge deal. But if I go to Vietnam, what price breaks can I expect just even outside of the tariffs or the price is pretty much the same? Prices are relatively comparable.

12:16
without tariffs factored in, especially for cutting sew items. So there’s quite a few suppliers. I mean, we can definitely check for handkerchiefs because you do that you do embroidery in states or do you do it in China? the embroidery here. Yeah, that’s what I thinking. So yeah, just do the raw handkerchiefs, which is we just basically need a fabric cut and an edge sewn on maybe at the it’s a very simple project. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it depends on where the honestly what’s the simpler things like that. A lot of times the majority of the costs will be in the materials.

12:46
And is it cotton or what’s the material? Yeah, 100 % cotton. also sell linen napkins too. Those are a little bit more involved because they have like a hemstitch border. And we also sell aprons. Yeah. Which are pretty easy too. It’s just like three pieces of fabric sewn together. Yeah, for sure. Because yeah, with that, I mean, the majority of costs would probably be still in the fabric and a lot of that fabric it still is sourced from China. But we can definitely talk and in that case, you’re never going to a majority of the value. Because yeah, Vietnam’s starting to crack down a little bit on

13:16
July 1st, they kind of announced some major reforms and they’re not giving an export certificate unless they can verify it. 40 % of the value was made in the country. Are they enforcing that? They’re starting to, yeah. Customs, I hate dealing with Vietnamese customs, but we get stuff held up all the time. So really it sounds like the primary reason is not cost, it’s just the tariff at this point. For a lot of goods, mean, wooden goods…

13:43
are another one that’s probably the biggest advantage in Vietnam without really factoring tariffs just because Vietnam is a tropical country. They have a huge amount of plantations, wood plantations, so they can source all their wood locally. And it’s part of Aishan, so a lot of times we get wood from Cambodia or Thailand as well. And it’s free trade between those countries. So, yeah, those are one of big ones. And then Vietnam is trying to move up a lot in the supply chain. So it really depends on the products. Like we’re doing some silicon and plastic injection molding, and I will say that does come up.

14:12
more expensive than in China, because we do work a lot of clients who are sourcing from China already. But then you’ve got the factors, tariff and the trade uncertainty. So a lot of those people, it will be worth it a lot of times, even to it as backup supplier to Oh, because of the tariffs, like uncertainty of the tariffs. see. Okay, so we got apparel, text, anything textile related wooden products. And then perhaps plastic product. Yeah.

14:40
Yeah, we did about silicone molding a lot of wire goods on metal, stamp metal goods. of the big things are moving in and electronic manufacturing is probably their fastest growing industry. Which literally a few years ago, we were struggling to find anything at all in last few years, literally within like less than two years, we’ve been finding some good prices and starting to do a lot more OEM electronic projects. So it sounds like maybe 70 % of the people that buy stuff or source stuff for like Amazon, whatever could in fact go to Vietnam.

15:10
Is that probably maybe about that? Maybe 50%. I don’t want to like overestimate that, but yeah, you got textiles, plastics and wooden goods and metal, right? I mean, that’s like almost everything. Oh, for sure. And yeah, we are. I mean, our majority of clients are Amazon FBA sellers. OK, yeah. So yeah, it’s definitely. Yeah, a lot of good products there. Plus toys, too. Even you can throw those in there. And as far as you know, 20 % right now is the current situation.

15:39
Yeah, in August 1st. Yeah, which is a lot of people that are thinking that the deal might change I hate to say it but yeah, we’ll see. They’re hoping lower actually because right now Vietnam is 20 % and you know, we’ve been Vietnam has been one the most proactive countries in terms of negotiating deals and getting things going and making concessions to Then Indonesia got 19 Philippines got 19. Thailand got 36 % so Yeah, they’re kind of really hoping to get

16:09
They have a chance to kind of renegotiate and get under 20%. But at the time it’s going to be 20%. And I’m not, kind of think they should just settle and get everything locked in. So walk me through like what to expect. And obviously it’s going to be different from supplier to supplier, but right now for our Chinese suppliers, it’s so easy. We just draw what we on a piece of paper. hand it to them. They send us a sample and then we’re like, okay, good. Then we, you know, just document everything and we just place a bulk order. Is the process as smooth? mean, for a simple product like a handkerchief.

16:37
Yeah, it should be that smooth. Like we’ve worked on some pretty basic line drawings or pencil drawings for some products, but it really depends on the product category. Like we did a set of luggage, soft shell luggage for instance, and you just had pencil drawings and dimensions and we were able to get a couple of factories to work with that. But a lot of other products, like talking about silicone or shoes or whatnot, you really need like full 3D stock files, whatnot with them. Because yeah, with Viet China, a lot of the factories have designers in house and can do

17:05
shop drawings and that’s not really that common in Vietnam. They kind of rely on the clients to provide the tech packs and product specs and step files and DWG files and whatnot. For clothing and everything too, Yeah, for pretty much anything. I see. And so we work with a of third-party designers to get that in those cases. yeah, the factories kind of rely on that. But yeah, like I said, simple products like an ink chip you get away with.

17:30
really actually so that’s a big difference too because we don’t ever do tech packs for our aprons we just work with the designers that they have in-house at the supplier yeah right to mix and match stuff and make changes so you’re saying that the vietnamese factory would not have most of them have well but not all and it’s not as common as china i see yeah china we just work with ideas and then work with the factories a lot more to do the finish goes like basically what you’re doing

17:59
Vietnam I mean where this case is where well like shoes for instance We’ll get pretty detailed drawings, but work with them to do the patterns the actual patterns for the machinery same with some clothings So they’ll do the last step the made for manufacturing step, but they won’t do that conceptualizing stuff as much Right. Yeah, and then in terms of getting stuff out of there. Is it pretty straightforward like just being exporting? Yeah Okay, it’s the same as China really. I mean we’re for freight borders and they owe to you all that. Yeah, we okay, but yes

18:29
more or less the same. Yeah, shipping and all that is pretty commoditized and standardized internationally. So it’s same standards.

18:38
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19:07
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.

19:18
All right, so that’s Vietnam. seems like it’s pretty viable over China. Yeah, I actually was looking into Mexico at some point too. And I actually found that the prices were just way higher. Yeah, I know you do a lot of sourcing from Mexico, what’s your experience there? Yeah, I know stuff, the higher price. Yeah, I spent two months in Mexico this winter, and we looked a lot of maximum manufacturing. We’re just benchmarking projects from China and Vietnam and Mexico and Mexico was consistently one and a half to two times more expensive, much more limited on what they can do as well.

19:48
So yeah, it was and that’s without tariffs back then. Yeah. With tariffs now. Actually, what are the tariffs right now with Mexico? 30 % at the moment. Oh my God. Ouch. OK. Yeah. So does that, you know, put it out of contention for? Yeah. I haven’t really taken on too many Mexico projects recently, unfortunately. It just seems so convenient, though, because they’re so close and everybody wants Mexico to work. It’s just yeah. I mean, the supply is in there. The man’s there. The supply chain isn’t. Yeah, I mean,

20:18
people that move production to Mexico are going to be the large companies who are setting up their own production facilities in Mexico because it’s easy to do that, but there’s just not the contract manufacturers that folks like you and me can reach out to and just start a project. They’re just not set up for that. Okay. Yeah. All right. So in your experience right now, Mexico doesn’t seem that attractive, both from a cost perspective as well as a tariff perspective. Yeah. But from a logistics perspective, it’s great. Oh yeah. From a logistics perspective, it’s incredible.

20:46
Is Section 321 no longer a thing? Like if you get a warehouse right on the border and they just slip into the US postal system, in theory, there’s no tariff, right? Yeah, theory. Yeah, aspect. I that’s not even de minimis anymore if they’re literally slipping it into the US postal system, right? Yeah. Well, mean, that’s, yeah, it’s still a little bit of a thing, but it’s harder to do. I don’t do too much with that, to be honest. Okay.

21:16
So you also cover Southeast Asia. What are some of the main countries that you have experience with there? Yeah, I think Thailand and Indonesia are the second, second and third best countries to source from. Malaysia has a few pockets of stuff. Like we do some metal goods from Malaysia as well. But Thailand has some pretty decent advanced manufacturing. We’re starting to do some appliances there. Like a tankless hot water heater, for instance, is one of our projects and we found a supplier for that.

21:41
Okay, that sounds really complex. So what is Thailand? Like, why would you go to Thailand versus Vietnam? I really depends on the product category. But I think, like I kind of mentioned the appliances, and they do have a little bit more advanced manufacturing facilities for that, then they have more developed in plastic injection and some injection molding. But right now with 36 % tariffs, it is a little bit more of a challenge. But is it better than China? Probably not, right? I mean, if I was going to do a client, I’d probably go to China, right? Yeah, probably. Yeah, definitely. Well, it

22:11
Financially a price point, yeah. Yeah, it really depends on product because we still do most of our electronics out of China. It’s just too easy to do. Yeah. So what is the advantage of Thailand then? Like why did your client decide to go to Thailand? They wanted more diversity in supply chain was the main reason. And they’re a pretty substantial client in terms of volume. yeah, I mean, they’re in the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in purchasing a year for products. So in that case, they just really, really want to have more options.

22:40
Where at all so they’re willing to even not so much lose money, but pay more from Thailand just to have a second option Okay, makes sense. But for like a Amazon seller that does like seven figures and whatnot. Would we be even considering Thailand? It’s worth looking into but it’s not the best. Yeah 36 % terrorists. That’s there’s a lot of tears plus more expensive It’s more expensive than Vietnam and China. Yeah, but not much. So but yeah, and it’s more limited on what you can do there

23:08
And it sounds like they’re good for electronics and plastic molding. Yeah. And we do a lot of some metal goods from Malaysia too. Indonesia is kind of, think Indonesia is probably going to be the next big in our manufacturing base in Southeast Asia in terms of just cheap basic commodities that FBA sellers could potentially buy from. What would Indonesia, just give me an idea of what the price points would be for Indonesia. Yeah. mean, Indonesia has, yeah, it really depends on the product. Like we’re doing a lot more shoes there.

23:37
Sorry move some shoe production there and they’ve been pretty competitive on pricing And we did some industrial wooden goods. That was actually some for instance proud of Indonesia and that’s been relatively reasonably good price by industrial wooden goods I’m talking like kind of palace and what is bulls and some? Wilber handles and stuff some high-density wood So if we normalize, let’s say on apparel, right is Indonesia gonna be cheaper than Vietnam for example, it’s going to be fairly comparable

24:05
Comparable is not the apparel industry is not as developed so it’s gonna be more limited on what they can do I see so they specialize in what you wooden products you said and yeah, I mean they specialize in a few things, but yeah, Mean, what are they so wooden what else? Yeah, I mean wooden goods apparel. They do some apparel. There’s doing um, sorry to do more me electronic manufacturing But it’s still pretty undeveloped in that regard doing a lot of shoes like we do some work boots from Indonesia Not too long ago. I’m still told work boots

24:34
Those were pretty reasonably priced. Okay. I’m just trying to get an idea of where when I would go to a certain country and why. Yeah, right. For sure. Like it seems like China can do all these things. And it sounds like Vietnam is an obvious number two because they do pretty much everything. Yeah. always care for Vietnam. Like we always look at benchmarking and just okay. And then Thailand seems probably not a good solution right now, especially with higher tariffs. I mean, if you’re American. But yeah, I mean, you still don’t have tariffs.

25:04
if you’re Australia or European. So what would be a reason to go to Indonesia then over Vietnam, for example? Yeah, I mean, right now the tariffs are pretty comparable. 19 percent. And that was a formal letter that was sent to Indonesia, which is only one percent less than Vietnam. But yeah, I mean, right now, I think the big thing is just diversity and just exploring options and getting as many contacts as you can just because really the trade war just keeps changing. I see. Yeah. OK. Yeah.

25:33
So really people are just diversifying just a lot of people are because Trump might just change their mind one day and then it’s not like you can shift your manufacturing super quickly on that. No, not at all. But once you kind of do the groundwork, you’re two steps ahead of everybody else. I see. What what are you seeing right now? Like right now, prices have been relatively stable. Are you going to see this? Do you foresee a huge wave of inflation coming this holiday season? Yeah, I mean,

26:01
It’s really depends because I mean a lot of people are eating profits right now because they know that if they raise their prices are going to lose demand and so they’re trying to keep the man stable, but just eating their profit, but it really depends on how much sellers are willing to eat or lose profit right now. But I mean, you’re looking at some benchmarks with like Walmart and products like a year on year and there’s a handful of products that are up 50 % returns of pricing. And I mean, that’s more or less mostly due to.

26:31
the tariffs. But I mean, the real thing is, mean, tariffs, takes like three to six months from the tariffs to be implemented to actually hitting the consumers because you know, that’s how long it takes for the products to go from production import into the supply chain. mean, we had enough stuff to last us till the beginning of next year. And in preparation for all this stuff, we actually stopped supplying our Amazon and just only supplying from our own store. Yes, that’s our main cash cow. But we did just place a new shipment and

27:00
There’s no way that I can’t avoid raising prices. Oh, I know. Yeah, I mean, many people like, yeah, I mean, two million dollars in tariffs. Like, yeah, that client I was talking to, know, mean, he’s close to but yeah, I mean, they pay two million tariffs and he says he’s literally making zero profit at the moment over last three months. Probably even lost money. You might then admit to losing money. what’s the rationale for that, though? I don’t his he’s in a price sensitive target with competitors and he

27:28
Is afraid that if he raises his prices, then they’re going to go to the competitors and going to lose market share. So he’s right now just wants to maintain his market share. I see. And then interesting. Yeah, he’s assuming those competitors are also getting hit with tariffs, but he I guess he’s hoping they blink first and then there is prices they come to him and he gains market share. But it’s yeah, just spree friendship really. All right. So kind of established, at least I have from this conversation, that it seems like Vietnam is the way to go, if not just for developers.

27:58
diversification. right now, tariff relief. Yeah. So how does one go about finding a Vietnamese supplier? No, I know, on Alibaba, it actually has a whole bunch of Vietnamese. Yeah. Yeah. But the big thing is, like, not every supplier is on there only a small fraction less than 20 % are on Alibaba. I mean, there’s still a resource like Yellow Pages, you can actually Google suppliers pretty well in Vietnam, since Google is not blocked in Vietnam. But yeah, I mean, there’s resources like

28:26
If you have a chance to visit Vietnam, go to trade shows. I think that’s the single best thing clients can do. And we have a lot of clients that visit trade shows and then we set up factory visits for them after. are the main trade shows that are over there that happen? Yeah, you got Vifa, got Global Sources has a big trade show. That’s the best general trade show. Yeah. Oh, I didn’t know that. I thought they were just in Hong Kong. No, they got a new one in Vietnam. They started two years ago. I was at the inaugural one, actually. Okay. Yeah. And then, yeah, so they, yeah, they kind of had 600 vendors at that.

28:56
the first trade show and they’re up, I think they’re up to 800 to 1000 now. And yeah, this is a general trade show. most trade shows tend to focus on product categories like BIFAs, like home goods, all right. Yeah. Home goods and furniture. And then there’s ones that are specialized in clothing, another one for shoes. So if you have a specific niche that you’re in, definitely kind of figure out the one that’s your niche and go there. You mentioned the yellow pages. Were you joking or what? No, the yellow pages are for some reason, very active in Vietnam.

29:23
pretty good. Really like yellow pages, like the old school. Yeah, that’d be interesting. We just get contacts from there. You still have to do your legwork. Like once you get the names, them up. So we’ll go on like, yeah, we use them. Just get names, but we’ll go through like 50 100 contacts on yellow pages, look them up on their website and Google and import yeti or whatever on our system and we’ll narrow it down to like 20 or 30 that we think are legit or suitable for clients or even fewer.

29:52
But just from broad, because yeah, they kind of keep it pretty broad. Like you were just looking more clothing factory or just this clothing factory, but it’s not going to specify, oh, these make specifically recycled, you know, T-shirts out of recycled materials type stuff. It’s got to be specified. What about approaching them? Is it any different than a Chinese vendor? You have to follow up with them because like if you’re on Alibabi, put an RFQ out and they come to you. The big difference with Vietnam, you have to be the one who initiates that conversation and kind of follow up with them.

30:22
do really get their contact. They just don’t chase after you. So it’s kind of the opposite in that regard. And so India kind of, yeah, like India, a lot like India, honestly, it’s pretty similar outside of China. just China has that hyper competitive factories where they’re kind of jumping over each other, get business because they competing against everybody. Well, yeah, Vietnam got to go after them. So, but I mean, it’s relatively easy. mean, yeah, we’ve had clients that had poor response rates, but

30:51
We work with a lot of clients to get better RFQs or kind of really on punch up because a lot of time people are like, oh, I just want to buy 50 raw off that. And we’re like, you can do sample order a few orders and then, but you really got to lead in with you want to buy a thousand eventually once everything works out. So we got to lead in with that. And you know, we coach them and we get much better responses rates. And then we are obviously right. Our RFQs when we work with clients too. Right. But yeah, you have to really kind of chase them, follow up with them and make sure your RFQ is appealing.

31:19
But we have good relationship and pre-beta factories with hundreds of factories too already. I know in China we get them on WeChat as soon as we can and then all communication is done through messaging. Nothing is blocked over there, right? So what is the platform of choice for communication? Yeah, WhatsApp or Zalo are the two big ones. Okay. Yeah. All right. So there’s no gotchas or any real differences. Is English easy to communicate with?

31:48
I mean, our team is all local Vietnamese, so they’ll talk to factory Vietnamese. But once we do introductions with clients, they’ll be in English. But yeah, half the time they’ll have English speakers on any factor of export. Okay. Vision will have an English speaker on their sales staff. Handles the face-to-face stuff. then honestly, Google, everybody uses translation apps. So you’re talking all the time. And you’re honestly might be speaking to a Vietnamese native speaker who barely speaks English, but they’re translating everything in works fine. Right.

32:17
Right, okay. All right, so in that regard, it’s pretty straightforward. placing orders and everything pretty much the same? Yeah, it’s effectively the same. transfers. Yeah, mostly wire transfers. For smaller orders, we’ll use other services, but yeah, once you’re at a certain level, definitely kind of do wire transfer and make sure everything’s legit, but yeah. Okay, so it sounds like it’s a pretty good viable alternative that… Yeah, for a lot of people. At least for me, we should be looking at you. Yeah, definitely. Well, okay, let’s go that route.

32:46
What is it? Who is Who is it not for? Yeah, I mean, like I said, kind of you got to really be specific on the products that they do focus on, like kind of talked about the apparel, textiles, clothing, bags, backpacks, all that furniture is all good. But there’s a lot of times with complex projects or very specific products or actually private labels, probably the hardest one to source. So anybody that just wants to have a pre-made product, slap their logo on, it’s very hard to do because

33:15
None the factories really maintain existing products or develop products. They just rely on the clients to make it for them. And I mean, just stuff like, I don’t know, this late of water bottles, for instance, people are really just like, oh, I want this like have very specific things that they want and don’t want to, you know, put the time and develop it. They just spectre factory just by have an option of all these for them to buy and then put a label on. Yeah, just that’s not an option that doesn’t happen. Well, that’s actually a good thing in my eyes.

33:42
Cause then they’re not going to list their own stuff on Amazon against you, right? Is that, yeah, not going to what we haven’t really had as much. Yeah. No real issues with yeah. Factory’s kind of circumventing that because yeah, they’re really manufacturing focused. They’re not sophisticated on the sales aspect and setting up, you know, counterfeit sales. What about, what about IP theft? It’s in theory easier to enforce in Vietnam than China, but obviously you still have to have a lawyer and everything. But yeah, we have internet and internet agreement set up.

34:12
that we can set up with factories that really protect it. So it’s not been as big an issue and there’s more channels to legally enforce it. They’re not going to automatically favor the factory. So I mean, we talked to lawyers, we haven’t had to really follow up with anything, but yeah, there’s all law offices, Western law offices that have representation of Vietnam that can follow through if needed or any type of those. So the likelihood of a factory copying your stuff and then going forward and selling it on Amazon is much more rare than… Correct.

34:42
Yeah, China. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It sounds very attractive right now, at least right this second as we’re Yeah, know. Everything changes so quickly. Yes. Do you do a lot with India or no, I’ve looked at India a lot. And it’s just, it’s a huge country in each province and areas different. And he’s like the whole mindset of how to do business with him is total shift.

35:06
Interesting. And so but in Vietnam, are there different regions that specialize in different? Oh, I Vietnam’s a lot smaller. Yeah. I mean, there’s really three main regions of Vietnam. And really, in the end, you can reduce it just north and south Vietnam. Central Vietnam would be the third region. but yeah, mean, northern Vietnam, around Hanoi, the capital, just near China. So you get a lot of I want to say transshipment, but a lot more cooperation with China. It was worried to do a lot of electronic manufacturing, lot of lighting.

35:35
some stuff like that just because you do still get components like anytime you do lighting like all the LED components, for instance, come from China. There’s as far as I know, none outside of China. Right. But we’ll still do the the finishing and the casing and whatnot from Vietnam. And then, yes, other Vietnam, there’s a lot. Yeah, about 55 percent of the production capacity of the country is around Ho Chi Minh City. And that’s where we do a lot of our furniture, a lot of our clothing, a lot of textiles like we actually put our office in Ben Duong province, which is actually

36:05
just merged with Ho Chi Minh City on July 1st. So now it’s Ho Chi Minh City. But yeah, we specifically put it out there just because it’s super close to the largest industrial area in the country. yeah, we’re like right near all the factories. Okay. And then in terms of trends, do you see, I always felt like Vietnam was just getting more more saturated and companies are moving to Pakistan, Bangladesh. Do you work with any of those countries? No.

36:35
No, it’s hard to find reliable manufacturers there. And a lot of what they’re moving, I’m gonna say is a cheap, as I would say cheaper in large volume products are moving those countries just cause they can get more scale, more workers. I, yeah, Vietnam’s trying to add more sophistication to their production. China essentially. Yeah. They want to be the next China. And a lot of the newer factories are pretty modern, pretty advanced with like, we’re like a cotton sew factory, but they actually have cameras at each station. It says check QC, not just each.

37:05
Supply chain, but literally each pattern so they can actually check you see live and have more computer control automation kind of built in So we’re seeing a lot more factories in that regard like a lot of the plastic congestion volumes to look at injection moldings That’s moving to Vietnam Those machines just need one guy to operate. So it’s there I mean they’re made in Korea or Germany or wherever and they’re Yeah, really automated nowadays make a product So I want to ask you this Do you see manufacturing coming back?

37:34
to the United States based on what you’re seeing? It depends on what level. The thing that I think America should focus on is the high level stuff. Like we make airplanes here, we make cars here, we make high value goods here. And I really feel like that should be the focus of explaining that maybe at ship owning or a few other things, but just stuff like t-shirts and tennis shoes, there’s no reason we need to make that here. It’s not gonna come back, right? Yeah, that’s not going to come back.

38:02
I just don’t understand why you would even want it because it’s a great job, you know? Yeah. OK. Yeah. I mean, microchips and stuff like obviously we’re doing. Yeah, I would definitely focus on some key industries, but I wouldn’t say just bring back all manufacturing here at every level because yeah, in a day like I know there are a few teacher manufacturers and we benchmark prices, but really get a teacher from a factory for like 30 bucks in the United States versus literally one or two dollars from Vietnam.

38:31
Wait that much in the. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, that’s nuts. Yeah, I know. Yeah. And as far as you can tell, they’re more advanced, right? And their factories, like the equipment, everything getting more advanced and like a lot of old factory building new wings and new factories, but all the new factories are quite advanced nowadays. And there’s a lot more investment into factories because it’s getting a little bit harder to hire people. So the factory owners know that. So they’re going definitely kind of adding more automation as much as they can.

39:01
Okay. Let’s talk about Cosmo really quick. Let’s say someone listening and wants to source from Vietnam. What is the process? So they reach out to Cosmo and then what happens? You guys hop on a call. Yeah, we hop on a call. We kind of talked about their product, their MOQs, their product and whatnot. Just make sure they’re a good fit for Vietnam or elsewhere. And then, yeah, they’re a fit. definitely kind of…

39:27
pitch them. But yeah, the way our services work is fully transparent. So we get direct contacts with the factories. We do direct introductions. We try to get as many quotes as we can. So we get about two to six quotes per product category. And we charge a flat rate instead of commission, but this allows us to get multiple quotes. Because most commission agents only work for like two or three factories and you know, they want to directly those factories specifically. So we have our services set up. So we work for the client on the behalf of the client. And then, yeah.

39:53
They’re free to make decision on which factory they want to work with based on which one’s the best fit. Maybe they want price. Maybe they want quality. Maybe. And then general rule of thumb for textiles, a thousand units of. Yeah, that’s a general rule of thumb. We work with some higher end stuff like like we’re some suits and kind of high end dress manufacturers and we can obviously get those lower, but those are definitely higher value goods. We did pretty high end ultra like hiking backpack. But and that was like 100 units, but it was also pretty.

40:22
Oh, one thing I forgot to ask. Turnaround times, are they just similar to China? They’re a little bit slower, but relatively similar. OK. Yeah. It depends on a product. OK. We typically for like clothing, textile, I estimate 30 to 45 days when she was ordered to actually have the product finished. Some more complex items like furniture, probably looking close to 60. OK. And then does Cosmo offer QC services to? We work with we do basic factory business stuff in house, but we work with lot of.

40:50
third-party inspection services, but we’ve definitely coordinated the whole process for them and put them in touch with it, right? Okay Cool, Jim. Where can people find you? Yeah Cosmo sourcing comm is probably the best place. We’re on all the socials That’s Cosmo sourcing or if you want to my email this Jim at Cosmo sourcing comm And you know, it’s my personally is I went on your website as soon as the whole tariff craziness happened and it used to include China But now it says sourcing from anywhere, but China is still sourced from China every now and

41:20
Yeah, we definitely Yeah, I’ve been pivoting away from China. I mean think what China is relatively easy source from China um versus other countries like you just go on Alibaba and I mean Obviously we do our own search and have our own resources and go beyond just Alibaba much more beyond but at the same time like 50 to 75 percent of our results are or were on the same as Alibaba so it’s hard to really tell client hey and

41:48
Sometimes the best bet. yeah, we kind of realized there’s much more difficulty in finding factories outside of China. like for us, we’re we’re going to build a team out there. Like we mentioned, there’s not like a central Alibaba type resources. So we, yeah, we have our team reach out, you know, pre-vet factories, build a relationship with factories. totally makes sense. Yeah. And kind of do all that work for you and try to make everything as seamless and easy as possible. Cool. Jim, thanks for coming on, No problem. was a pleasure. your time. Thank you. Hope you enjoyed this episode.

42:17
If you’re only sourcing in China right now, you might want to diversify your suppliers. For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejob.com slash episode 603. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2026 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.

42:45
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 the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. Now in this episode, I’m sharing the AI changes that I’ve made to my store and courses that are directly boosting revenue. You’ll hear about what’s working right now, what surprised me, and how you can apply these ideas to your own business. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. And if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at.

00:29
Unlike most e-commerce conferences that are filled with high-level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical, step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches. People who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs, no consultants. Also, I hate big events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate.

00:55
We cap attendance at around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We’ve sold out every single year for the past nine years and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to April 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And if you’re doing over $250,000 or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for higher level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be. So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket.

01:25
Now onto the show.

01:33
Welcome to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast. Today we’re going to be covering everything that I’ve been doing while Tony has been traveling Europe on vacation. wasn’t on vacation. Let’s be clear. It looked like a vacation to me. I saw your Instagram feed. You know, actually, oh my gosh, I had a great podcast topic and I couldn’t remember what it was to this morning because I’m, you know, 52 and I can’t remember anything anymore. But we have to do a podcast in the future about

02:00
Can you really be a digital nomad? Like still work and travel. Oh, yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah. that’s coming soon, folks. But anyway, yes, I’m curious because I feel like I left and all of a sudden you got super productive. So I was like, am I holding Steve back most days? Because I leave the country and all of a sudden he’s built robots and all sorts of things and really cool stuff. You were gone a month. I was gone a month. OK.

02:28
Let’s go over the stuff that’s fresh in my head. Like literally I launched something yesterday and already within one day, according to the stats, it’s lifted my sales 18 % for just that one day. But I’m optimistic. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to stay at 18%. But I’m anticipating 10 to 20%. Okay, you know how this has been on my list for like a year to do with my store?

02:56
You know how Amazon has that bot with? Okay. And I’ve always wanted to implement it, but it is a pain in the butt to implement because you got to manually put all the bot with stuff together or you use code. Okay. So let’s start from the beginning because this is a much more tedious problem that I thought originally. So the first thing that I wanted to do was, you know, items that are commonly bought together, statistically figure out what those are.

03:26
and then just display that. That is relatively easy, but I didn’t know how to do it. But now that there’s AI, I can just have AI write the code. And it turns out, and this is the only time I can talk about this geeky stuff, turns out there’s like this package called FP Growth, where you just feed it all of your sales data. And it’ll tell you what goes with what, at what confidence level.

03:55
and at what lift percentage. OK. Right. So for example, let’s say that you’re talking that does this. It is a Python library that does this. So let’s say item B is often bought with item A. The confidence is the probability that that’s going to happen. And then the lift is how much more likely that item is bought with that. OK. So you literally have to go through your database and dump out every single order that you’ve ever gotten.

04:24
and what it’s correlated at. And then it creates this chart and then I update that into the database. So now every time you look at a product, it shows what that product is commonly bought with. Nothing fancy, right? Amazon’s had this for a long time. The problem with my store is we have like almost a thousand SKUs. And so that isn’t actually populated for a lot of the products. Because in order for this to work,

04:52
there needs to be a lot of products bought with each other. And you know, in any typical store, it’s like 80-20, right? Only 20 % of your products. And so I had tons of similar products for my best sellers, which is great. But then I had this whole library of products that didn’t have anything. And I told you the stats earlier, 18 % lift. So I want that on every single product.

05:20
The other problem is you don’t even know whether products are being bought with each other because you’re displaying them with each other or because people are finding them. It’s kind of like a chicken and egg thing. And so what I did, and this wasn’t possible before, is I had AI generate me all the similar products for every single product in the library. And I didn’t know this was possible literally until I tried it last week.

05:50
but you can feed it an image and then generate, like turn the image into math and then compare that image with every single product on your site and find the most similar ones, put them in a database and always have that always bought thing populated. Interesting. So now if someone buys like a Battenberg lace handkerchief, the AI finds everything that looks like that Battenberg lace handkerchief and then displays it.

06:20
in the bot with. So now everything is populated. if there’s a product that normally doesn’t have a bot with, it’s just gonna show similar type products below. Correct. Yeah, that’s smart. I like that. And then also on my site, I don’t know if you’ve been on Bumble Bee Linens for a while, whenever you click add to cart, there’s a pop-up that comes up that suggests products for you to add to your cart. And prior to that,

06:47
I was just using also bought data, but I didn’t have like a good algorithm. I was just showing something random that someone has bought before, like among this huge library. I switched it over to a combination of frequently bought plus the similar item. Like if there’s not enough similar items, I add onto it with the similar products. And that has grown that side probably like double the lift just from doing this.

07:15
because my pop-up wasn’t working that well before. And also, know how there’s some, this is really interesting because Amazon has all this data, but I never had all this data for my site. But you know how underneath the product, there’s a box that says you might also be interested in, like Amazon has this. And I’ve had this for a long time. But once again, the products down there were just kind of like a random set of products. And it wasn’t populated for everything.

07:45
And so that lifted tremendously. Yeah, I can see why, because when I think about the Amazon shopping experience, especially with certain types of items, right? Like when I put a book in my cart, I’m very interested to see what other people who like that book also read. Right. And they that’s a big one. Right. Because then it lists in the books always make sense. Right. Like if you’re getting a book on marketing, typically people who buy that book by other marketing books. Right. Same thing with clothing. Like

08:15
If people buy this shirt, they tend to buy a belt or a pair of pants or things like that. It’s kind of putting an outfit together for you inadvertently because of what other people are buying. I think a one-click upsell does this to some, you can do this to some degree. They have some AI tools that help you do that, but it’s not in, it doesn’t always show up right away. Sometimes it’s after the purchase or further down the purchase.

08:43
cycle as opposed to like when you just add it to your cart or when you’re just looking at the product page, right? Because I know on Amazon it’s on the product page, right? Like, yeah, yeah, on the product page. So I think one click upsell has a little bit of this capability, but not to the level that you’re talking. Well, it’s funny, as I was going to give a lesson in my class about this and whenever I do this now, I look for a Shopify plugin that does it. And you’re right. One click upsell kind of does this. But the problem with this is it’s computationally intensive.

09:13
Like that FP growth thing I was talking about, it literally takes probably like a couple of minutes to calculate on my computer when I feed it and everything. And then that image similarity index that turns into math and compares the similarity, that also takes like a couple of minutes for that to happen. Yeah. And you can’t do that in real time. The only way to do it is to the way I do it is whenever I add a new product,

09:42
it automatically regenerates everything. And then once a week, I do the other thing that calculates all the sales and what’s bought with each other. Because it takes time, you can’t do it on the fly as someone shopping. Unless someone has a super fast machine, like maybe I don’t have a fast machine, I don’t know. You can’t do it in real time, otherwise it would bog the site down. And perhaps that’s why the tools probably don’t do it to the level of accuracy. There’s ways to like,

10:12
Shortcut the problem. Yeah Well, that’s I’ll be interested to see like in 30 days where you’re at with those numbers Yeah, but I was just shocked and like one day it took me longer to code up all the tracking Then it did to code up the actual feature itself interesting But yeah, just in one day. So we’ll see yeah, we’ll revisit this and maybe in 30 days Cuz I think anytime I do think to like caution people I think this is great and I think I think this is a great thing to have

10:39
But I think anytime you make a big change on a website, you’re gonna see a very high lift initially, right? And then it’s gonna level out. I think you’ll still see a lift for sure. But what I’ve seen people do is get like that 18 % and then expect 18 % every single day and it’s like probably gonna level out to a lower than that. But even if it’s 10%, I mean, why would you not want that? I think it’ll make a big difference on my site because we have so many products that are.

11:08
kind of undiscoverable because people aren’t gonna just sort through all the categories. Which brings me to the next thing that I fixed over the holidays, or I call your vacation a holiday. The holiday month of July. Is I completely fixed my onsite search to use AI as well. Oh, I was wondering about that. I also actually just gave a lecture to this in the class, but this took a lot of time. This was like a

11:37
You were gone for how long? I was gone for a month. Four weeks. Okay. This one took like two weeks of that four weeks. What I did was I had AI generate very detailed descriptions of all of my products. So it took the photo and described every aspect of that product based on the photo. I had it spit out every possible occasion that that product could be used for. Every type of person that be looking for it.

12:07
a whole bunch of things, right? And then I fed that into, I turned that into math with a vector database. And then now when someone queries, that queries that description and returns the closest possible thing. Now I had neglected my search for a while. So I just kind of looked for the stats. Like I’ve been collecting stats about my onsite search for a long time, but I never really, I stopped looking at it after I…

12:35
you know, had it done the first time, which was years ago. And it was something like almost 60 % of the people who did searches on Bumblebee linens yielded zero search results. Interesting. That seems very high. reason for that is because people cannot spell. Yes. People use a whole bunch of weird synonyms that aren’t spelled correctly. Hank, there’s actually like 10 ways to say Hanky. I think Hank or Chip is a hard word to spell, honestly.

13:04
You know what here? Just give me a sec. Let me bring up also like you dropped the term Battenberg lace a few minutes ago, and I was like how do you spell Battenberg? Is it with a ERG a URG like I do think especially for the types of products that you have I wonder about that for You know the the curriculum site like curriculum is a word that gets misspelled all the time I wonder how often that happens right where people are spelling curriculum with one R or yeah, so I think especially if you have something

13:34
that can be used, misspelled a lot of different ways, this is something that’s very important. It’s not just, here, let me just, I brought up all the search results for vulnerable since I’ve, How do you spell hanky, I or IE, why? You can do it all of those, but that’s not what I mean. So some people will type long sentences like, I’m looking for a wedding handkerchief. Out of the box Shopify search is never gonna return anything for that, right? Or people will just type in like hydrangeas.

14:05
Oh, yeah, OK. And so we don’t necessarily have anything for that, but we can show something similar now because AI, it’ll return something similar. Yeah. And anyway, you get the point, right? So almost 60 % of my searches are returning nothing. And there’s a stat online. And I unfortunately didn’t have this tracked. But if someone doesn’t get anything in the search results, there’s something like almost 70 % likely to just leave your site altogether. Oh, for sure. I believe that. Yeah.

14:34
And then Amazon has trained everyone, especially on mobile, to go straight for search. Which means that I was probably hemorrhaging people. Anyway, so the results are preliminary once again. So this search has been out for three weeks, two weeks. No, how long you been gone? Probably two weeks. And it’s already lifted my sales 10 % for search.

15:02
So those are a huge a lot of sense because I do feel like if you go to a site you can’t find what you want, you immediately just go to the next site. Right. Yeah. And does anyone ever shop on Amazon by looking at categories? I don’t think so. No, no, never. I mean, there’s probably some times but no. think it would. I thought it would have more of an effect, but I think a lot of my traffic is coming in from ads going to a category page. Yeah. So this is going to help with your organic traffic.

15:30
Yes, yes. Or social or anything. If you were on TikTok or something like that and people were just coming in. I have seen so speaking of all that, since we have been on YouTube, we’ve seen a huge lift in organic traffic. Nice. People just typing in the name of the store, right? Stuff like that, which I mean, I guess I was expecting, but not to the extent that I’m seeing it. Right. So I’m seeing a lot of like that brand recognition. So I’m sure.

15:59
once you get out there on social, this will actually benefit you a whole lot more because people are going to just be typing in the name of the store or coming to you organically and then that’s when they’re gonna be searching, right? Because they haven’t seen a specific product in an ad. Yeah, yeah. The other thing that I was thinking about doing and this one is a little, requires a little bit more planning, but to create an AI live chat widget, I’m not sure how I feel about it yet because I hate it when I,

16:28
Yes, when you get it. out someone’s AI. But the number of people that are just looking for stuff where you can guide them along, guess search maybe accomplishes this. Yeah. But people also want to know like, when is this going to ship or where my order is? Yeah. How do you feel about AI chatbots? So I always hate them because I feel like by the time I get to that, I have a very specific thing that I need.

16:55
Right? Like it’s I don’t need to know when it’s shipping. I need to know like there’s a problem. So that’s where I feel like that’s where I feel like it gets frustrating. But I do like I do like it when I go to a site and I can just get into the bot and get the basic information. You know what I mean? Like when is it shipping? How do I look at this? Where’s the size chart? You know, something like that. So you have used it before. I have. And I don’t mind it unless it’s like, hey, I just want a representative.

17:22
you know, and then it continues to when it loops you when you can’t get a representative, that’s when I get very frustrated. So that’s a tough one, right? What’s challenging about this one also is if someone wants a representative, you need to kind of respond pretty quickly, right? Yeah. So we have someone dedicated for customer support, but I’m just thinking like, let’s say for one day, like just even 10 people want

17:50
want to chat like one person’s not gonna be able to handle. Right. Maybe they can’t. I don’t know. 10 chats though going out at the same time. Yeah, it’s it would almost be like you’ve got to find a company that does it really well and mimic what they’re doing. Right. Like how do you how do you transition people? And I think, you know, one thing that I don’t mind is when they tell me that they’re a bot. Right. When they’re like, hey, like to me, that’s if you want to implement something like this on your own site.

18:17
you have to be very forthcoming with, you’re gonna get a bot. These are the questions we can answer for you, and then if you need more help, we will move you over to our live customer service kind of thing. I think if that’s, I think if that information is at the forefront, then I don’t really mind it at all. In fact, I was dealing with that, I think it was the train app that I was using in Europe. It was like, hey, we’re a bot during these hours.

18:42
Right, so if you need anything other than, and I was like, oh, okay, that makes like, and then I wasn’t on there thinking that I was gonna get something that I couldn’t get at the time. So I think as long as you’re upfront about it, you’re probably okay. I don’t know though.

18:55
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.

19:25
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.

19:36
Yeah, I mean, it’s a hard question. was kind of checking out how Amazon does it. I mean, they have Rufus and whatnot, but I never really use it. Yeah, I don’t either. Myself and yeah, this would, okay, here’s what really fascinated me. So 11 Labs just announced voice customer service. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And Google’s had this for a long time where it sounds like a human, it acts like a human. Most people can’t tell it’s a human, but it’s actually voice. Okay.

20:06
And so I have it on my list. actually already have an 11 lab subscription and I wanted to try this, but how cool would it be? Well, in my mind, at least, how cool would it be to have like a human be able to answer these questions? Yeah, that’s where it gets weird. That’s a harder problem. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I think I don’t know. I think anytime you can minimize the interaction that you have to have right, if you can get people through a flow that answers their questions, the better.

20:35
Right, because I’m sure a lot of the questions are stuff that can’t be answered pretty easily. I mean, there’s always gonna be the complicated cases, but I don’t think that’s the norm. It can’t be, right? It can’t be, because why would Amazon do it if it wasn’t successful in cutting down time? Well, you’ll notice it’s not prominent on Amazon. The Rufus? Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s true. You don’t have to look for it, but I mean, it’s not right front and center for you.

21:05
So clearly they’re testing stuff. So we used to have a chat bot. I don’t know if you remember this. a chat bot on many chat where it answered all those common questions like where’s my order, order status, and how long it’s gonna take to ship. The problem with that was like if you make someone wait, like I would say longer than like even 30 seconds, like they’re probably gonna just close it and maybe even leave because they think that no one’s supporting you, right?

21:34
That’s what I want to avoid. like it when you get on the chat bot and you get like a little, I call it like a bubble menu. There’s probably an official name, but it’s like six bubbles of like, where’s my order? I have a problem with my order. My order is damaged. Well, like, you know, it gives you like some, some basic things and then it’s like none of the above and then you click through that. So any of the top ones, it just takes you into those flows. I don’t know. Those to me, I don’t, I’m not bothered by, but.

22:00
You’re right. If you click and then you hear nothing that I get really irritated about. I’m like, is anybody here? Right. Yeah. Actually, this happened with a tool that I pay for just the other day. Oh, OK. One, it took him two minutes to even get a response. And then after that, they just gave me a canned. It was a cut and paste. I think it was a human, but they just did a cut and paste. Yeah. Yeah. And it actually made me want to unsubscribe from the tool after that. Yeah. I mean, I yeah, I can see that.

22:28
because it was broken. And what I don’t want is it’s better to just not even have that than have that experience, in my opinion. That’s why I actually took off the live chat from Bumblebee. It’s no longer there. Yeah, that’s kind of a tough one because it really is about, yeah, that one’s tough, I think. Responsiveness and whatnot. I guess if it got out of hand, I could just hire someone else to handle Do have a lot of customer service? We do because it’s Yeah, and you’ve got a different demographic.

22:57
And we have someone answering calls. People like to call us. Which is crazy to me. Yeah. Well, yeah, I guess. Not for your kids. Not for your demographics. just like I can’t pay my kids to make a phone call. Like. But you’re on the phone all the time. I am. I was just on. Yes. I was actually just going to say I was on yesterday with American Express and I want to give them a 10 out of 10. Oh, whereas. Whereas Brian was on a call with Ring Doorbell and they’re going to get a zero out of 10.

23:26
But yeah, here’s the thing that I think is important to think before you start implementing any of this stuff is like my experience with American Express and it was a Filipino call center or you know, I could tell that. But my experience was so great, it just increased my loyalty to American Express and Brian’s was so horrid with Ring that like I think if we didn’t already like invest into the Ring system of you know, all the doorbells and all that stuff.

23:55
like he would buy another brand, right? So I think when you’re thinking about customer service type decisions and using AI and bots and stuff like that, I think actually, I feel like we had a talk about this at seller summit one year, or we need to have a talk about this, is that customer service can actually be a great sales channel for your business based on how people interact with.

24:20
the whole process, right? Like it can either build that loyalty and like, hey, this is amazing. Like even if there was a problem initially, it can turn people around versus just like, mean, literally, I think Brian was ready to rip all the ring doorbells out of my house, right? Like just because it was so frustrating to get the like he just was in a loop, right? Of like canned responses and he was on the phone for like two hours. Like nothing should take two hours. that’s not, that’s not whole. That’s talking to people.

24:48
Right? So anyway, yeah, I think that’s something that is really important for your business. Actually, you what happened to me recently? And I’m to call this company out because it pissed me off. Terminix, we had a problem a year ago and they didn’t even tell me, but they put me on a subscription. Oh, and so I got charged last week, you know, hundreds of dollars. Yeah. And then I didn’t they didn’t tell me they would put me on

25:17
a subscription and then had to call to cancel. You could not cancel online. that. I hate when you have to call to cancel. You could not cancel online. And then it took me like 45 minutes to cancel the dang thing. Forty five minutes of my day gone. Yep. Oh, that’s so frustrating. Yeah. Anyway, I just think that that’s really I think people tend to like try to find the cheapest, easiest customer service solution. And I actually think that’s something that can really send your business to another level if you have great customer service.

25:46
Oh, no, no, it totally matters. Like when someone calls us, it’s like 80 % sale. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe even higher than that. I don’t know anymore. Oh, yeah. Since I stopped tracking. But yeah, huge. This is why the decision to do the live chat requires thought. Yeah. And even Jen was a little iffy on that. So anyway. OK. So the next cool thing while you were gone, this is the first thing I implemented actually while you were gone was Tony bought and Steve. But this is so cool. This is the coolest thing you’ve ever done.

26:16
Honestly, like I I was I spent far too much time yesterday with that link that you sent me reading Yeah, so Steve created this and then he sent me a link yesterday where I could see what people were inputting and I was like it was like a Netflix binge Well, you should see Steve but I was that class is yeah. Yeah, I was I wasn’t gonna ask I was curious. I was like, I don’t want it don’t want to know What’s funny is

26:43
I don’t know, there’s some frustrated queries in there sometimes. Yes, I saw a couple in Tony bot. And I don’t think people know that I’m tracking, but I did say it before, like I’m tracking all these. I mean, you have to think if you’re typing something in, it’s going to get tracked. Like to me, that’s sort of a, I don’t know, a known thing. But this is so talk about this because this is this is genius, honestly. So I read in all of the lessons in both of the classes.

27:13
all the blog posts, all the podcasts, although I haven’t put up the podcast just yet, and then all the Seller Summit videos. And now you can query them and then you’ll get an answer back. It’ll find out which lesson that covered that topic and it’ll send you a link to that lesson. Because I was getting a ton of questions that are covering the lessons, but you know, there’s like 450 videos in the other class now. It’s impossible to watch all that. And so this is…

27:42
way better than search. I’ve noticed people were using my search function on WordPress to find videos. That search function is horrific. Like it doesn’t return anything. And so this bot, not only does it answer the question without hallucinating because it only grabs from stuff that you’ve actually said, but it returns an answer and then it tells you what lessons or blog posts or whatever cover that topic. And I think so far people have loved it.

28:10
decent amount of feedback. I actually received text. I got a voicemail about it. I know Tony bot is very popular. I’m sure Steve bot is equally as popular. What’s funny was for your bot, I was going to have it flatter me after every response. I was thinking to myself, well, what if someone new signs up and they have no idea? I took that out, but it was fun for a while when I was testing it. I’m sure you had far too much fun with that.

28:39
I think this is such a great idea because one thing when I was looking through some of the queries yesterday, I think sometimes people don’t know exactly what exactly they want to ask. And so when they put something that’s close, it finds the right videos, which I thought was good. And then I also think for you and I, because we made all the videos, but I don’t remember what the title of that video was. So I would have to… when people…

29:07
Especially when people asked a question that wasn’t a I can answer you in a couple sentences It was a I really need to like dig in I would spend 15 minutes Looking through the videos trying to remember where we covered it like downloading the PowerPoint slides trying to find it So I think it’s a huge time saver on both sides Yeah, no, totally. I actually even find myself querying it like if a student emails me a question Mm-hmm, and I’m like, I know I covered that I just

29:36
can’t figure I can’t remember where I’ll just type in the Steve bot and then I’ll send them. I need to train people to use Steve bot more. Yeah. Because it is I mean, it’s new, right? It’s it’s like a month old right now at this point. No, thought I think that’s a great. That’s what but that’s the problem with the Steve and Tony bot is that is something that is I would say tougher for people to implement on their own like you built that was that was a process for you to build that that wasn’t something that someone could just plug and play.

30:07
You know what’s funny about all this is someone went up to me and they said, hey, maybe you should offer a server plugin or something that does this. It’d be very easy to do a WordPress plugin for this. What’s harder is transcribing the videos and all that stuff. So it could be done. I guess the only downside now is whenever there’s a lesson that’s added, it needs to go through this whole process now.

30:36
right, of getting transcribed, generated into the bots and then fed in. But I know so many ideas. I like debating whether there’s like so many plugins and services now with AI that I can easily implement. And I was talking to who was I talking to this about? Oh, Bernie, was talking to Bernie about this. I was asking about customer support. Because once I create someone for someone and like they pay, it obviously has to work right all the time.

31:05
Whereas right now with the stuff that I’m doing for myself, like let’s say there’s like a minor bug. It’s not a big deal, so I’ll just suck it up and you know, whatever. It’s an inconvenience. But once you productize something, you can’t do that anymore. So that’s always been my dilemma. What did Bernie have to say? Because he’s released products. He’s released. He said customer service wasn’t that big of a factor. But then I counted it and I was like, well,

31:34
to sell your product, I mean, you had to probably answer a ton of questions. He said people are, it’s much harder to sell someone a SaaS product, is what he said. Because one, people just want you to do it for them. And two, people are a little recurring revenue averse now. I’ve always been, I don’t wanna pay Adobe a certain amount for something that.

32:00
Well, actually I use Adobe every day. That’s a bad example. Microsoft Word and all that. I barely use it now, to be honest with you. Yeah. I use Google Docs for everything. Exactly. Yeah. Or Google Drive or whatever. But yeah. And then the final thing that… Oh, actually, are we done with this? Yes. The bot is cool. The final thing that I did is I moved my community over to Discord. Oh, yes. This is the big one. And that was a huge win. There’s people actually just the other day that…

32:30
we’re like, hey, I don’t like how it doesn’t have threads. I was like, actually it does have threads. You know, the problem with the interface is it’s kind of complicated in the beginning as you’re getting used to it. But what I love about Discord is that you can code anything into it. So I incorporated Stevebot into Discord so people can just ask, you know, Stevebot questions. Actually that has not been as popular as I anticipated because then you get to see what other people are querying. Like everyone can see it.

32:59
Yeah, I can see why that’s not quite as. And I think people are a little more squeamish, but you know, still available, whatever. But it’s like Slack on steroids is the best way for me to describe it. Yeah, I think I have been in there a little bit. I think it’s a better solution for sure. Oh, it’s much better than Facebook groups. Oh, no, no question. Is there a way to prevent people from being able to see what is queried?

33:28
Because to me that would be, I don’t want people to see what I’m searching. Yeah, there’s probably a way to do it. I could probably create a private Stevebot group that automatically generates and then as soon as you leave it, it dissipates. That’s how the voice chat rooms work right now. You double click on it, it creates a room and then you can chat with anyone and as soon as you’re both off, the room disappears. I can do that with Stevebot.

33:56
I question whether it’s worth my effort to do that because you can just go to the website and use SteveBot on there privately, Right. So the question about the Discord, because I know you did spend a good amount of time building this out and getting it all set up. Right now, it’s open to course members. You said you were going to open it up to other people. you still… not for a little bit. Are you still thinking that or what’s the step? Well, I am, but it requires infrastructure. Yeah.

34:24
So for example, I’m gonna have a bot that monitors every message to see if it’s promotional. Like I’m have AI give me an analysis. And if it’s promotional, I’ll put that guy in a little penalty box. I haven’t written that yet. But these are things that you can’t really, you certainly can’t do it in Facebook. I question whether you can do it in Circle or school or some of these other places to combat spam. I don’t know.

34:52
But having a spam bot is awesome. Yeah. Like if I create the right AI prompts for it and whatnot. Yeah. To me, you’re going to want to leverage that. That discord, you know what I mean? To help grow the course. Yeah, I mean, that’s the goal. That’s the goal. I have too many things like launch it, like the podcast is launching next week. So many things going on, but AI is really.

35:20
got me more excited about the stuff that I’ve been doing more than a long time. Because we’ve been doing this for a long time. It gets a little old after a while, but this all these new possibilities for me have made me really excited lately. Yeah, I it’s funny. I was thinking about this over the weekend because I was working on scripting and doing a bunch of things for my new project. And I remember when AI first people first started talking about it, you two years ago. Right. And people were

35:48
I think it was even Spencer who did like 100 blog posts with AI and to see if he could rank. There was just a lot of stuff like that where I felt like it was kind of garbage, not what Spencer was doing, but in general, like lot of garbage content being spit out. But now I feel like things have shifted and people are actually using the technology to build, like Liz is building this really cool email tool, right? I think that like to me that’s…

36:15
the benefit and the interesting part of things. It’s definitely made it much more, I don’t know, palatable to me versus initially. I I used it even on my trip. I used it to like plot out walking paths and like to get safety information. And then I cross checked it with actual like people in the hotel and things like that. Cause I was like, I’m not gonna just trust AI with my own safety. I don’t know, I had it restaurant reservations. all, mean, it was like, I used it a ton.

36:43
just like personally, which I think is really cool. And save me a ton of time, right? Just doing those types of things. So I actually just met up with one of my buddies who’s really high up in Google in the AI, one of the AI departments. And he was telling me you haven’t seen anything yet. Oh, I believe it, And I was like, hey, can I work at Google just so I can be exposed all? Like I am considering going back to work now. I’m actually not even joking about this.

37:12
Maybe once like the kids, or maybe once Karina goes to school, maybe I’ll, there’s just so much stuff that’s happening right now. It’s like when, remember like when the internet first came out, I know we’re old enough to remember that. And it was really exciting, but it didn’t excite me that much to work in industry because what you’d be making router, designing routers and hubs, right? Which was I think the big thing for me in my industry. But all this AI stuff,

37:41
You know, we’re on the outside right now. We only get like what’s been tested and released. There’s so much stuff under development that that we’re not privy to. Yeah. And you can only be privy to that stuff if you work at a company that’s on the cutting edge of this. Right. Yeah. Well, that’s I mean, most people can’t do that realistically. No, that’s not true. I think coders and engineers are I don’t know. I mean, I think we might be a dying breed once AI allows everyone to do this stuff.

38:09
Oh, I’m saying most people can’t just go work for a company that’s doing those things. Well, they can. What do mean? Like I just couldn’t go get a job at Google tomorrow if I wanted to be on the cutting edge. probably could. I probably could. But like I’m just saying most people couldn’t. Yeah. I mean, hiring is really bad right now, obviously. I don’t think anybody can get a job at Google. Right. Yeah. I mean, they’re actually all the tech companies are are shedding people because of automation, I think. Right. So then that leads to and this is probably a whole nother podcast because I know we’re out of time, but

38:40
you know, then what happens? I mean, a lot of these software tools you’re you’re building. And while you’re building them today, I feel like in a year from now, I can probably build them. Right. Because so so whereas, you know, today I need to pay $15 a month to have access to XYZ next year. I don’t because I can just build it myself. Right. Like, yeah. So.

39:03
So then what happens to all the tools, all the plugins, all the SaaS products, right? Like what, I don’t know, what happens? So I was gonna create a video on YouTube about how I think the Shopify app store’s in trouble. We’ve talked about this for a while. We talked about this for a while, but like I was gonna do, I was gonna actually pick like a bunch of apps that are really popular on the Shopify app store, but how does that wanna single it? be blackballed by every.

39:33
I know. Tool. Yeah, I thought about that actually, because they would be pissed. But there’s a lot of tools out there. said, like, you know, they don’t do anything and they charge you like 20 bucks, 50 bucks a month. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And it adds up if you don’t know how to implement these. Oh, I’ve seen it’s funny because and this is partly from Seller Summit, but like, you know, people will give us access to their accounts to look at things. Right. And then you see that people are

39:59
You know, they might be on the $79 a month Shopify plan, but their bill every month is $532 because of all of the additional tools that they’re paying for. mean, it really, especially if you’re starting a new business, right? If you’re building your brand and you’re just starting out, like that’s a lot of money every month if you’re not bringing in that money every month or you’re, you know, that’s a huge chunk of your of your expenses.

40:23
I mean, people have plug-in bloat to be fair. Like when you’re first starting out, you’re not going to be installing all those plugins. It’s only once you start researching, you oh, that would be nice. Oh, that would think people get, like as soon as people do it, think, haven’t you met people that are like, what plugins do I need? I mean, we have people on the course that ask this question a lot. And it’s like, well, you don’t really need any of them right now. You’re not making any sales. yeah, anyway. Yeah.

40:47
That’s probably another topic. another another. Stay tuned on a secret podcast on our Patreon where Steve will list all the apps he thinks are going to be put out of business in the next 18 months. You know, it’s funny, I get emails from companies who want me to promote them probably every single day. Yeah. There’s this one that recently contacted me and they were like, Hey, it’s a tool that helps you.

41:14
edit your images and write copy for your product listings. Why the heck would I promote? Why would someone need to pay you to do that stuff when you can just do everything and what’s available right now? Yeah, and that’s the one thing that I’m… And this is probably an issue for people that have stores with actual contractors and employees that work for them is getting their employees and contractors on board using AI.

41:43
Because one thing that I have seen is that not everybody that I am dealing with on a regular basis uses it. And I’m like, you could cut your time in half, right? If you used AI to do this part of your job, or you used AI to even like summarize some things for you. And that’s one thing that I’m seeing, and it probably is very industry dependent too. But I think like getting the people that work with you on board and being more efficient.

42:10
is really important because then they have time to do other things that probably will impact your business in a greater way. Yeah. No, absolutely. So Tony, when is your next vacation? Right next week, actually. Have fun. Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s right. OK. Stay tuned for what Steve builds when I’m out.

42:39
feel free to send me email. For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejob.com slash episode 602. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2026 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. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifequithejob.com.

43:09
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. In this episode, I’m joined by a very special guest, Neil Patel. As the founder of one of the top marketing agencies in the world, Neil sees what’s really working across thousands of e-commerce brands. And today, he’s sharing exactly what’s driving traffic and growth today. No fluff, just proven strategies that are working right now.

00:25
But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at Sellersummit.com. And if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most e-commerce conferences that are filled with high-level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical, step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses.

00:55
No corporate execs, no consultants. Also, I hate big events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We’ve sold out every single year for the past nine years, and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and if you’re doing over 250K or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for higher level sellers. Right now,

01:24
tickets are the cheapest they’re ever going to be. So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

01:37
Welcome to the My Wife Coder Job podcast. Today I am super excited to have Neil Patel on the show. Now, if you do not know Neil, he is one of the most recognized names in digital marketing. He’s the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, Uber Suggest, MP Digital, all tools and services that pretty much every online business owner has either used or heard of. Now recently he spoke in my annual e-commerce conference, The Seller Summit, and here is a funny story. We actually called Neil a private car from the airport

02:08
And the dispatcher was like, you’re not having me pick up Neil Patel, are you? And I was like, yeah, why? He’s like, all rides are on the house. And you mean for me or Neil? He’s like, no, no, no, all rides for Neil are on the house. And I’ve never, ever seen that happen before in my life. Let’s see, President Obama named him one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30. But what I personally like about Neil is that he’s not just some random marketing guru who teaches theory.

02:35
He’s actually built seven, eight, and nine figure businesses using the exact strategies that he shares. Now, today I think what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna dive deep into what’s actually working right now and what’s gonna work in the future when it comes to driving traffic, growing an e-commerce store, and standing out in a crowded marketplace. And with that, welcome Neil, how you doing? I’m doing good, thanks for having me. So I gotta ask, over the years,

03:03
you’ve run a bunch of different SaaS companies. And I’ve always been curious because it seems like MP digital is your main thing right now. Why did you go the agency route? Because I personally think SaaS is easier to run and scale than running an agency, which is all like people. is easier to scale. SaaS is more competitive. If you look at the venture dollars flowing to SaaS versus services.

03:29
In SaaS, people will spend so much money to get a customer, they’ll lose money just to prove out the business. And that’s what you’re competing with. It’s just a much more lucrative category from the valuation perspective. So investors, whether it’s venture capitalists, private equity funds, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, they prefer software as a service over service based business from what I’ve seen. Yep. And what we found is majority of the revenue is actually in services over SaaS.

03:59
services generates way more revenue when you look at the GDP than software does. But it doesn’t mean that software is bad. It means for us, it’s easier to scale revenue on the services side. But of course, have to deal with other challenges like people, which is never easy. And the route we took with NP digital is software combined with services. So at NP digital, we have the agency.

04:28
but we also have tools like Ubersuggest and answer the public, both of those which we acquired. We have Scout that we’ve built internally. We built quite a bit of AI capabilities internally as well. And we think that’s the future where it’s service as a software and figuring out how to automate as much services as possible to create a delightful experience. But the key isn’t to do this to purely jack up your margins.

04:56
it’s to be more competitive and offer more for the customer. So imagine a service-based business running at 10 to 20%. You add on software, you can improve your margins. And that’s great, but instead of just improving your margins, how can you take some of those margins and give it back to the customer and offer them more services so that way they can get better results, which then increases their satisfaction, increases NPS.

05:23
hopefully reduces turnover time, increases the LTV, and then causes the company to be more stickier and be worth more overtime. So you sell the tools, but then the people at MP Digital, the consultants, actually use your tools, use the tools in-house to provide a more efficient service essentially. So it’s like a hybrid approach. Correct. a variation of the tools. Our internal tools are quite a bit different than the external. I see. So the internal tools I imagine are way more powerful, but just not ready for the public.

05:53
It’s not even ready. There’s too many edge cases when you’re dealing with companies of all sizes, and in all different verticals. So the internal tools don’t, they have more advanced features. And I can release those to the market. The problem is, is the internal tools have a really terrible user interface. Right, right. But it works really well for internal use. It’s not the best for self service. Yeah.

06:21
It’s like all the tools that I’ve written for my own company. I can never release them because there’s no documentation, nothing either. And it’s ugly too. Yeah. Okay. So back in 2009, I used to follow your blog, Quick Sprout. And I believe at the time, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, I think you ranked for your name, Neil. Like if you just typed in Neil, you were like in the top three. And then I remember you were also ranked in the top three for SEO.

06:48
You’re probably right. I’m actually just checking right now on Neil if I actually even rank on. Oh, I don’t think I do. I don’t think you do anymore, but you did at one point. Okay. So anyway, with the advent of AI and more and more people starting their journey on chat, GPT or Claude or whatever, I want to know where you think Google search is going. And as an e-commerce store owner, what are some things that we should be doing to be more searchable in today’s market?

07:18
Yeah, so when you look at search, whether it’s Google or chat GPT, or perplexity or any of the other solutions, or even people using search on meta, search is changing from traditional search that we’re used to to more AI powered. Now, is that interface going to look more like chat GPT slash AI mode, which are very similar? Or is it going to look more like Google search where you see the AI overviews and you see the listings?

07:45
interesting fact for you, and it’s changed quite a bit. Did you know that a overviews used to almost be always at the top of a Google search? Now 12 plus percent of the time, they’re not the number one position. So they’ve been dropping where they place it. I did not notice that at all. Actually, is that recent? Okay. And what we’re seeing is for certain types of queries, chat GPT type of interface and AI mode is perfect. When you’re doing really deep

08:14
thorough research on a service, a product, whatever it may be, an industry, a problem that you’re looking to solve, it actually works really well. But if I’m looking for the weather in Los Angeles, or if I’m going to travel to New York, I can open up my weather app, you know, because I just got back from New York, add New York in there, and then go look at the weather for New York over the next seven days. But it’s actually just more efficient to just type in on, you know,

08:43
the search bar, New York weather, right? And it just pulls up New York city weather. And that traditional search interface is still very relevant. Showing that in an AI version isn’t that useful. It’s a bad use case. The point I’m getting at is, and I know there are two different extreme cases that I just gave for examples, but there’s some instances where traditional search is amazing.

09:09
there’s some instances where AI search like using a chat GPT or AI mode is way better than traditional search. So which one is going to exist in the future? I think it’s going to be split and they’re going to start showing different interfaces depending on the query type that you provide. Because as a user, why should you have to go to AI mode versus Google? Right? Why can’t you just type in a search and they can figure out what

09:38
type of response and what type of interface should you see? The homepage of Google is really clean. It’s just a search bar or a box, whatever you want to call it. They are smart enough to detect what your intent is and then show you the interface that maps up with that. And I think that’s what we’re going to see in search. And what we’re seeing is also a shift on how e-commerce companies need to create content. So it used to be

10:05
where they would create content on every single thing, create blog posts on there and try to get rankings. We’re seeing content evolving. Content, if you go back 20ish years ago, content used to be where you write content for robots. You put in keywords in the title, within your text, you stuff the keywords, you rank higher. 10ish years ago, you write content for humans and

10:34
when you’re it for humans, you want the best user experience. Yeah, you’re putting in keywords because you’re naturally talking about those topics, but you want amazing piece of content that no one else has talked about. And it’s just such high quality that people are like, wow, this is great. And that started ranking really well. You fast forward to today, contents changed in which you create content for humans, but you package it up for AI. So yes, you’re writing content for humans, but it has to be packaged at the same time.

11:03
where it’s really digestible for AI. So a great example of this is people use a lot of these AI solutions for research. So if I’m selling dog food, all right, and I’m chewy, I may write articles on the 10 best organic dog food, the 10 best dog foods for a newborn or for a puppy, the 10 best dog foods for

11:31
an aging dog or I don’t know, you know, I don’t have a dog, but you know, whatever age range is towards the end, right? Hopefully dogs live a long time, but you guys get the point. And then when someone’s doing research on chat, GBT or Google say, I’m buying a newborn dog. It’s this size and this breed. What dog food should I give it? And then it’ll start pulling from your articles like the best dog foods for puppies.

11:59
and where you’re giving going into detail saying depending on the size, this is how much you feed. This is the type of food. Here’s how you transition them. I’m making some of this stuff up, not because I’m trying to bullshit, but it’s, I actually don’t know much about dogs, but you get the point. You’re just trying to be very thorough. Some of my things could be off. I’m making assumptions here on how dogs eat. And I don’t know what is reality or what is not reality when it comes to feeding a dog, but then they’ll start pulling in that content.

12:27
and then they’ll start recommending your brand. And that’s the key. How do you create content that feeds into people’s research? So based on what you just said, it seems like you could use AI to find out all the different questions that people are asking about your product and then create posts that way. Yes. Okay. So is that, are we no longer writing paragraphs? Are we just writing like Q and A like fact style?

12:56
Like what’s the style now? You’re still writing paragraphs, but you’re getting to the point and your paragraphs don’t have fluff and you’re answering the questions as quick as possible. So think of like Q &A combined with paragraphs. Cause a lot of people write paragraphs like it’s like a novel and Q &A is yes to the point, but it’s not the most friendly when someone’s reading it, but combine both of those. Interesting. Okay. So blogging is not dead. Blogging is not dead. It’s just changed.

13:26
And it’s changed in which you need to think about what are people researching and how can your blog content feed into that research? Okay, so in an e commerce store, let’s say, would I do this on a blog post? Or would I do this on each individual product page? Both? Okay. So even if it’s going to different, a blog post, let’s go back with the chewy. Let’s use chewy as an example. Everyone knows them, right?

13:55
I would end up writing blog posts on like the examples I gave you like the 10 best dog foods for puppies and you can do it by size for like miniature toy cup or tea cups. I don’t know what they’re called like really tiny dogs medium size, you know, you guys get the binoculars. But on the flip side, it lets you have a food, a dog food that I’m organic chicken, I don’t know dogsy, but let’s just go with organic chicken. All right. I would end up talking about on that page. This food is best for

14:23
and then list out the dog breeds, the dog sizes and weight, how much I would feed based on the dog sizes. So I’m being very specific so when people are asking, it’s able to pull from my products and just recommend. The best way to think about AI and sorry to cut you off is there was a case where Google had appeared in front of a judge and Google said, we don’t understand documents, we fake it.

14:48
And they’re using a lot of data like social signals, links, keywords to kind of understand the document. What AI has changed is they now understand the document. So they don’t have to fake it anymore. So even though you’re not mentioning a keyword, like if I don’t mention dog on a page, but I talk about puppies, AI knows I’m talking about newborn dogs without me saying newborn dogs. You know what’s something interesting is I started doing that with my store. And one thing that I put was, so we’re we sell wedding handkerchiefs.

15:19
So I put that we’ve sold or we’ve served over 120,000 weddings. And then all of sudden, like literally the next day, I asked who is the leader in selling wedding handkerchiefs? And then our company popped up and said, this company has served over 120,000 weddings, blah, blah, blah. So it’s instantaneous. And it happens right away. But one thing that I was thinking though is if you want to rank in traditional Google search, this necessarily might not be the good thing. So are we just shooting for

15:49
getting ranked in AI now, because that’s the future. Like, what do you see those blue links going? Are they going away or? I don’t see them going away for all queries. I do seem going away for some queries. You know, when I searched Neil, because we had that discussion on this podcast, at least the result I’m showing on my iPad only had four blue links. All right. So the rest was filled with other stuff, images and knowledge graphs and all that kind of stuff, right? Knowledge panels or whatever. So when you’re looking at

16:19
search, I think it’s going to be adjusted based on what the query people are typing in and what’s most relevant for them. And yeah, I look at it as it’s something where everything is moving towards AI, but it doesn’t mean traditional searches dead. It’s more so there’s different use cases for different things like I don’t need a chat GPT style interface. If I’m asking what two plus two is, it’s four. Google will just tell you it’s four.

16:49
And before when they told you it was four, there was blue links underneath. But did anyone really click on the blue links for what’s the weather in New York City or what’s two plus two? Not really. They were just there for the sake of it. So I don’t know about you or like your friends, but I know for me, I don’t even use Google anymore. I just start everything with the chat. GPT app on my phone and my mom has actually followed suit. And I usually use my mom as like a bellwether.

17:15
of like the common person because she doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t follow any of this stuff. So we’ve been talking about Google so far. Are you still kind of bullish that Google is going to be the place to go where people start their journey? Sure. So I’m going to give you a few points here, right? You’re based in the Bay Area, if I’m not mistaken. Yes. Yeah. You went to Stanford, if I’m not mistaken. That’s correct. Right. So highly educated, lives in the Bay Area.

17:43
tends to be an early adopter technology or people in the Bay tend to be your mom, think is very interesting use case. I think search is going to change to be more like social media. Instagram never killed Facebook. Snapchat did not kill Instagram. YouTube still exists and does well. Tick Tock did not kill Instagram or Facebook. They all coexist. According to Sprout social, I believe the average person uses like 6.6 or 6.7 or 6.8 social networks per month.

18:13
where they’re actually logging into those social networks. It’s one of those three numbers. I know it’s between 6.6 and 6.8. I just don’t know if it’s 0.6 or 0.7 or 0.8. Search is changing to be the same way. Chat GPT is growing. I don’t see Google crushing them. Just honestly, I don’t see it. But at the same time, everyone’s like Chat GPT is crushing Google. Did you know Google used to get 8.5 billion searches a day? Now they get over 13.7 billion a day. They’re at five trillion plus searches a year.

18:43
Did you know Sundar talked about with AI overviews and the response of AI overviews have been so successful at their Google IO event that those responses or those queries are causing 10 % more increase in Google usage for the AI related searches that have AI. Google’s 10 % growth is probably similar to the usage of all of ChatGPT to give you, to put it in Right now, yes. Yeah. Is ChatGPT growing? Definitely. Is Google growing?

19:13
They still are. Do I think one is better than the other? It doesn’t matter. What matters as commerce owners or entrepreneurs or business owners is you get your business place on all the platforms that have volume. Who cares if TikTok is more popular than Instagram or Instagram is more popular than Facebook or vice versa? Doesn’t matter. Use the content because it’s a similar format on all the platforms and just get as much as you can. Same with

19:42
SEO for AI. Some people call it search everywhere optimization, which is what we call it a lot. Some people call it GEO, gender, vengeance, optimization. We look at it as it’s the same concepts to try to get ranked on Google’s version of AI mode as it is with chat GPT searching, you’ll end up with an article on this. There’s a direct correlation on ranking on page one of Google and being mentioned by chat GPT. So why not just get placed everywhere? And whether it’s Google, who’s a winner or chat GPT, that’s a winner perplexity.

20:11
Doesn’t matter. You’re just gobbling up as much traffic as you can from wherever it’s coming.

20:18
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.

20:47
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.

20:58
So let’s go back to the content portion. Let’s talk about blogs, because one thing that’s happened to my standalone blog, not my store’s blog or anything, my store’s blog actually surprisingly has been fine, but mywifequitterjob.com got decimated by the last Google update. Now, it seems like due to all the content spam that Google has only started ranking content sites that actually have legit businesses or services associated with them.

21:26
going forward with just regular blogging, what is your take on that? And is it worth going through and restructuring everything according to the conversation that we just had? Yeah, so I’m in agreement with you in which if you’re just talking about regular blogging, you need to figure out how to add a product or a service to your blog, right? And the reason being is there’s a lot of revenue to be had there. If you don’t, you’re just going to miss out on a lot of potential revenue.

21:54
So I’m going to pull up on my screen. Okay. Not really on my screen, but I’m going to showcase it on the camera. AI search versus traditional search, traffic and sales. Check this out. Okay. This is for both B2B and B2C. Hard to read. All right. It’s pulling- Why don’t you just describe the graph? I’m having problems reading it. Okay. So when you look at traditional search, we’re going to do B2C first, because most of your listeners are B2C. Yep. Traditional search brings in roughly, and this data is from-

22:24
50 B2B businesses and 43 B2C businesses, all generating over 10 million in annual sales. So let’s go with the B2C first. B2C traditional search for the people in the study, it made up 27.5 % of their traffic. All right. It made up 21.5 % of their sales. I’m talking about traditional organic search to be more specific. For AI search for B2C,

22:53
it made up on average 0.49 % of traffic. That’s very little, but 11.4 % of total sales. See, that’s nuts. That’s nuts because people are doing the research on these platforms. And then when they go to your website, they’re not really researching. They’re ready to make a decision and buy. Traditionally with traditional search, you click on those blue links and you do your research on the website. And then you go back and forth and you figure out which site you want to buy from. Now they’re doing the research and everything on platform.

23:22
and then they’re going over to your website to make the purchase. In B2B, the numbers were actually even crazier, in which traditional search made up 19 % of traffic, organic traffic, 11.6 % of sales. For AI powered search, it was 0.38 % of traffic, but 9.7 % of sales, which was much more closer aligned. The point that I’m getting at is if you are a blog and just a blog, going back to your question,

23:51
and you have no conversion points, you’re going to get crushed. Your conversion points can’t be an ad, like AdSense. You need to figure out a product or service that you’re selling. Then your traffic may fluctuate, whether it’s up or down, but your conversions, what we’re seeing is overall conversions being pretty steady, even with all the AI changes. So my dilemma here is that it seems like people aren’t clicking on websites anymore, right? So let’s say you do create a blog and people are using

24:22
are getting the content from that blog in their AI searches and whatnot, but you’re not getting the click. So how can you even measure that your content efforts are actually working? Brand mentions and citations. So there’s tools like Profound and Scrunch, which are really expensive. We’re releasing a free version on Ubersuggest in the next 30, 45 days at the latest, where you can put in your URL or brand and a keyword, and we’ll figure out your industry and we’ll figure out

24:51
all the prompts that you’re mentioned on the ones that you’re not mentioned on how your competitors are mentioned versus you the sentiment analysis how you rank versus them. So then that way you can figure out all right, I’m not getting the clicks. Here are the prompts. And then we’ll give you suggestions on how you can get included into the other prompts. I would love to know the secret sauce and how you’re doing that because it’s not really deterministic every time you put a prompt and you get a different answer. Right? So how does a tool measure that not necessarily

25:19
There’s a lot of similarities on what’s included. So when you put in a prompt, we’ll run the prompt like 10, 15, 20 times. And then we start looking at patterns because if you run the prompt enough times, you’ll start noticing what they constantly always recommend and what they don’t. Okay. Interesting. Okay. And so you are looking for increase. So on the search side, you can look for more brand mentions. Like if you see your, your, brands going up, then that means you’re doing a good thing.

25:48
And then you can use a tool like what you’re adding this on to Ubersuggest, you said? Uh-huh, we’ll answer to Ubersuggest and answer the public and we’ll make most of it for free. It’s not that expensive. We don’t understand why some of the competitors charge $499 a month. The API costs for ChatGPD have gone down drastically over the last 12 months. Yeah, it’s super cheap, especially if you use 3.5, it’s like free, basically. But here’s what people don’t realize. If this is the cost now based on history,

26:16
history showing us that they’re trying to get more efficient, it’s more competitive, so they’re trying to get cheaper. You agree with this statement? Sure, of course. Right? They’re even going as far as being like, we’re going to buy our own power plants to try to even make energy more readily available, reduce our costs, and you get the price. Right, right, right, right. So maybe it doesn’t go down 10x over the next 12 months, but it’s already cheap, it goes down three times. That’s such a big savings. So we don’t understand why people want to charge so much. Interesting. Okay, so you’re doing queries for

26:45
for what keywords or whatnot. And then you’re measuring all that and you’re offering that in a database. I love it. Yeah. And in this case, prompts, right? Keywords, prompts, whatever you want to end up calling it. And I look at it as all similar because some people are like, oh, I’m typing in prompts. Technically, you’re just typing in a keyword, your keywords are just longer tail and more specific because they’re in a sentence or something. Yes. Because now the platforms can answer those questions and give you relevant results. Well, three years ago, that wasn’t possible. If you did any Google, the results would have been crap. Right.

27:16
Okay, cool. I like that idea. Okay, so that’s where it’s going. Let me ask you this question now. Let’s say you have a new e commerce store, where would you be focusing your efforts? Because you let’s say you have a small team and you got to focus and you’re brand new. Would you focus on ranking an AI search? Or would you focus on social media video? What would you do? Social shopping? I think it’s like a $7 trillion market by 2030. You see there are six or $7 trillion market by 2030. It is massive and it’s untapped and it’s not that competitive.

27:46
A lot of people get social shopping wrong, they can’t figure out how to make it profitable. But a lot of people put too much effort into it. And they make too highly produced videos, instead of just like paying an influencer who’s well known in the space to record a video on how they use a product and think it’s amazing and then just run ads. So would you do things the traditional way? Oh, so let’s talk about platform first. Tick tock Instagram, does it matter where you would start? Or I would start on all of them that allow social shopping. Okay.

28:14
because they tend to take the same content type and format. So when you’re creating your ad, it works on pretty much most of the platforms. It’s like YouTube and social shopping is not popular, it will become popular, they have no choice but to adapt. So you optimize for all channels. It’s like when I create social content, people like, why do you waste your time posting on tik tok? There’s not that many customers for either. Yes, but already created the content, it takes one second to post it on tik tok. Maybe not one second, but you get the point, maybe two more minutes, right?

28:44
Yeah, might as well. You know, you’re actually doing pretty well on there. I mean, you pop up in my feed. And, you know, I don’t know, by your standards, by my standards, you’re doing pretty well. I don’t log into TikTok. So I have no clue. Okay. So let’s walk through that strategy, then. So got a brand new e commerce store, and you’re selling something, you would create content yourself? Or would you start looking for influencers? Would you start with TikTok shop? Like, where would you go? Yes, let’s talk about dog food. Yeah, the first thing I would do is

29:14
you know, yes, you can start with TikTok shop, it’s been super effective from what we see for our customers. But what I would really do if I was getting started, I would find an influencer, a micro influencer who’s known within my vertical, like someone who’s known for just dog food, or dogs and training dogs. Like there’s this TV show that there is this dude who teaches your dog to be obedient and behave. It was popular back in the day, I don’t know what it’s called. And I would

29:43
then go and get an influencer like that to just create content around my product and I’ll run ads to it. And in most cases, you can make it highly profitable. are some guidelines? How would you approach this influencer? If it’s a big one, like you just said, free product’s not gonna do it, right? So you’re gonna have to him money. So the first thing I would do is I would actually run the ad without the influencer.

30:10
and I would run variations. You can even have AI help you create tons of different ads. And I would see what kind of script resonates the most with the audience. And it could be a few different ones. You take the pieces that you think are the best from each of them, combine them, run another test, assuming it converts well, but maybe it may not be profitable. You then go take an influencer and you say, want you to record this because now you’re paying them money, but you’re paying them money on something that you already tested, you know,

30:39
that does well, but their brand probably has way more trust than yours. No offense to anyone listening. That’s the reality. That’s why we pay influencers. And then boom, your conversion rate should go through the roof. And then it makes your ads much more profitable. That’s an interesting take because the copy that works well for you might not resonate with the style of the influencer, right? It isn’t, but typically with the copy, when you’re selling products like e-com specifically, most of it’s pretty generic.

31:08
They can add their own flair and people obsess too much about the copy instead of the messaging. Like, okay, I have a comparison. This comparison is important because people, when they consider our dog food, they consider these three other brands. Pricing is an issue. So we talk about pricing. Quality may be an issue. Should we talk about how we make it? The way the influencer describes the comparison or the quality may be a little bit different than you or I would, but

31:36
that’s okay, you’re still getting the same message across. The wording may be a little bit different, but that’s okay. It doesn’t make that much of a difference. And in terms of, so I’ve done a little bit of influencer marketing and I probably didn’t do it well because it’s always been hit or miss for me, right? It seems like it’s a numbers game. At least in my experience, how do you structure the deals so that you have even a chance of getting a decent ROI or is it more of a long-term play with mind share and branding?

32:05
I usually structure the deals where it’s performance base or they just take an upfront fee that I’m willing to test. Some people won’t do it on either of those routes. It’s a numbers game. There’s enough influencers for pretty much most verticals. You may not get the biggest person. That’s okay. Hence I talked about micro influencers. They tend to be more cheaper, more reasonable, more flexible. And yeah, I would go down that path and keep in mind at the same time, you want it to be profitable. It should be profitable.

32:34
and you’re also building your brand and you’re getting market share from it as well. So let’s just set some guidelines here like realistically and I know you’ve done this a lot like how many people should you be approaching to have like a good test and just what are some numbers in place with with some of your own experiences doing this with brands? So you probably pay a few grand assume you’re targeting micro influencers and you’re probably going to have to reach out to 20 to get one and when I say reach out to 20 manually reach out to them, you know,

33:03
Talk to them about, love what you’re doing, why, why it resonates, what product you have, what you want to talk to them about, see if they’re interested. You got to follow up two to three times. And out of the 20, you’ll get some people who are interested. The reason I say it takes one, it takes 20 to get one is the pricing won’t work out for all the ones who respond to you. So you’re going to have to reach out to enough to get one. And usually if you reach out to 20, you can get one. You know, what’s funny is that 20 to one that

33:32
pretty much matches the numbers for tick tock shop. You message 100 you get five responses and then of those five you give away product. Is that 5 % like from your data or 5 % is roughly from our data. It’s not exactly 5 % is for change, but it’s close to five. Yeah, interesting. Okay. But with tick tock shops, we’re seeing a lot of people just give away stuff for free to just boost, you know. Yeah, to get that initial traction. I actually just had someone on tick tock shop on and we

34:01
went through really in depth on the process. It seems like tick-tock shop is so seamless because everyone on there is already ready to go and you can message 7,000 a day or whatever. And it’s just a numbers game at that point. Yep. Your method seems a lot more manual use. It seems like you need someone to do this, right? Yeah. Do all the messaging and the coalition and it’s harder work. Well, that’s the key because then you can scale, right? Advertising just really makes things scale.

34:31
when you’re running ads, what are your what are some realistic returns on ad spends? So we don’t like looking we do look at it. I personally some of my team likes looking at I hate looking at ROAS. Okay, some people will be like, Oh, look, we got a seven to one ROAS or 12 to one. And then I’m like, you’re telling me got a seven to one ROAS, but it’s not profitable. So who cares? Right? Like ROAS is good. But I want profitability.

35:00
And with e commerce, if you’re generating at least 20 % profit from a sale, you’re good to go skill up as much as you can. Even if it’s like 15%, it’s not too bad. Interesting. So you don’t look at I mean, if you have a seven extra turn ad spend, chances are it’s profitable, right? I mean, depends on the industry, maybe for commerce. But like if I run an ad, and I have a seven to one on a service based business, but then I paid to get that customer.

35:30
It’s eating in my margin. A lot of service-based businesses, like we work with some service-based businesses that do five, 10 billion in revenue, but they’re only operating at 10 % margins. You can’t have a seven to one ROAS with a 10 % margin. And a 10 % margin may suck, but if you’re at 10 billion in revenue and one in profit with no investors, that’s a great business. I would take that all day long, even if it’s not growing. Give me the billion a year. Sure. But when you say profit, okay, I guess for e-comm, like typical,

35:59
Gross margins are like 50, 66 % or 75%, right? Which means you can probably get by with like a 2X ROAS just to break even. It depends on the e-commerce product. Like we work with a lot of companies that sell electronics. They would not, ROAS of two to one would not work out from them. They would lose way too much. Yeah. So, okay. So you would start with that. And it seems that to me, at least with my research, just by doing the social and getting mentioned,

36:29
that will already improve your AI search, right? So does it? Cause it all just kind of works. Okay. They have data deals with a lot of these people and they’re just pulling and scraping. So if you go that route, uh, when do you start thinking about content? Like where does that rank in the priority of things? Uh, content.

36:50
content on your own blog or social platforms or it doesn’t matter just content, just optimization of content on your own blogs, social platforms. Like right now we talked about influencers them having creating content, you paying them you want to start that out first. What’s next content is like a 10. It’s very important. You need the content, whether it’s organic content or paid content or other people writing content about your brand or you’re writing the content about your own brand. It’s super important because without the content, these a platforms don’t have stuff to push out.

37:19
when people are asking for prompts. So you need content and your products and services need to be mentioned in those pieces of content to do well. All right, so we have the influencer thing going. Other people are creating content for you. Now terms of your own content efforts, today, would you start with social or would you go with the written content and some of the things we just talked about earlier? I’ll go with written content because it’s easier. And AI platforms are pulling from lot of these sources that have written content.

37:50
And then I would figure out how to get into video next, not images, specifically video, because you can end up taking the video content, taking the written content, turning it into videos, whether you’re using AI tool, like K gen, or whether you’re doing it manually, you know, it’s up to you. And then you can slice and dice the videos into shorter form clips and reels and shorts and all that kind of good stuff and some even to ads. And then you go from there.

38:19
So how does a short form compared to long form? Long form has better retention from people remembering what they consume the next day, the next 24 hours from what we tested versus short form by a huge leap. Long form doesn’t get tons of views. We look at short form as a great way to get people into the door. Long form is a great way to get people to evangelize a brand, promote the brand, you know, which is evangelism, but also buy in a great way.

38:48
to get them over the line. So short form gets them into the funnel, long form gets them to convert. So where’s the balance here? Again, you’re a small brand, you got to pick a direction to go. You suggested starting out with written content first, because that’s easy. And then would you go on to shorts after that or? No, the long. So you create like one long form piece of content each week. And then you go and then got lost, dice it up and you’ll have like five to seven short form pieces from that long form because you’re just cutting clips.

39:18
Okay, so you start with a long form, then you cut clips. Okay. Give me some examples of long form content. For let’s say dog food that you might put out. Sure. So a video or text actually doesn’t matter. can give you both. mean, it’s the same based on the method we talked about. the method I’ll talk about, I would end up doing something like we tested, we tested

39:45
the 25 best dog food brands for puppies. And here’s what we learned. And then I would go into what we tested, animal sizes, the type of food, how it what it actually took to get it ready and give it to the animal was a quick like you just open it up and you give it to them or do you need a microwave it? I don’t know if you microwave dog food, but you get the point or add some water and mix it up and crunch it and or mush it and then put it in a bowl.

40:12
how they react better, how was their stool movement after did any of them get sick? Like I would just break down all the kind of stuff that you’re thinking some of it is probably not appropriate like getting sick, we don’t want to talk about it. It’s a little too graphic. But you get the point. And then you can turn that into a video. And you can do the same thing. And like, here’s what we learned. You know, Rover ate this food. This is what happened to Rover penny ate this food. And this is what happened to Penny. Look at their

40:40
their skin or their fur or hair or whatever you want to call it. Look how silky it’s gotten and smooth because of the food. Look at their teeth and you know how much more energy they have and they’re not getting as sick and they’re growing faster and gaining more weight. And we did this for 30 days and look at this study. Like that’s the cool stuff that people want to see. You can create a really cool long form video from that as well. And you can create a lot of shorts from that. If I cover 20 brands or 25 brands, I forgot how many I said.

41:09
That’s one short right there, each of the brands, right? So it’s like all of that just produced a ton of content for you. So what’s funny is that that’s always been your style, like information that teaches or informs. I’ve seen on the opposite side of the end of the spectrum where people are just using their product and just being a goofball on video and that seems to work too. Very Can you just comment on the different styles?

41:36
that we find the goofball one to work really well, but it’s hit or miss. It doesn’t always work for all products. It really is a big hit or miss. The education tends to be consistent and it performs. So we tend to go with the method that is more proven to work. The goofball one and a great example of this is Dollar Shave Club, right? Just messing around or squatty potty.

42:00
right? And like, you know, pooping unicorn excuse my language, or not unicorns, pooping ice cream or something like that. yeah, forgot what squatty potty. Yeah. And that’s just goofy. And it works. And loomie was also another example of one that was funny, the deodorant. But for every loomie and squatty potty, we see a ton of misses. And when you do the education is more scalable, it’s more predictable.

42:25
and these platforms pull from this because they’ll ask questions related to some dog or dog size and what food is best. Yeah, and starts pulling from these research pieces or educational pieces. And boom, you’re getting sales. So it seems like since we can make the assumption that Google is pulling every transcript from YouTube, right into their AI. So given that, it seems like the informational content is the way to go. Yes. Right.

42:52
And we assume that it’s not just YouTube, I assume that Chad GPT and others are doing the same thing because they can scrape through one of the most popular bots on the internet right now. And they understand what video are actually saying and what they mean. Okay. So given all that, the content you create that can influence a purchasing decision, it should always be some sort of informational content. It seems that way, right? Does everything getting pulled in? It doesn’t always have to be but we’ve seen it work consistently and almost all the time.

43:23
And the reason we go with that route is when you’re a business and you’re spending money, you want predictability. What can you spend money on that’s repeatable and that you can scale up versus what is hit or miss? If you’re a large organization, you can define that however you want, but organization with enough money to spend where if something goes wrong, you don’t care and you’re willing to run experiments. You can try the goofy route and the educational and informational route because you have the cash, but most businesses in e-commerce

43:51
I’m assuming most people listening can’t afford to just go spend 50 or 100 grand on something and have it not work out. So you want to go with the consistent proven route first. And then when you scale by all means, try the goofy route or any other thing that you can try that may not be as costly. I want to switch gears a little bit and just talk about some of the things that you provide. So I know you acquired Ubersuggest and Answer the Public. What is your vision for the future of both of those tools? Now it seems like we already talked about that a little bit with Ubersuggest.

44:21
But what do you what is your vision going forward with with all the tools that you’ve acquired sure and one quick thing I met on the last one I was making Yeah, do the stuff that’s not that expensive and then you can do the stuff that’s costly because you have the cash to burn But right so my version we talked about uber says a little bit my version for answer The public is really simple and I see a design hopefully tomorrow from it. I did not like the design that I saw Call it earlier this week our home page is changing

44:49
Right now and answer the public you put in a keyword and you pick the platform you want to search on whether it’s YouTube, Google, Amazon, TikTok, it doesn’t matter. And then it gives you data for that platform. We believe in this concept of search everywhere optimization, searches everywhere on all platforms, Google controls roughly 27 % of the market share when it comes to daily searches, the other platforms control the rest, which is the majority. Google is the biggest platform for search, but the other platforms make up more than Google in total.

45:19
So the way we see answer the public is instead of having to select the platform, and this will take a little bit to implement. I’m just seeing the designs right now, the homepage I was fine with, you just type in a query. And when you type in a query, you may also have to type in your domain name and we’ll suggest the industry based on pulling from AI. And then from there, we, instead of showing you all the traditional search results from Google or TikTok, we want to give you a homepage overview.

45:47
And this overview is broken up into four boxes. The first box is AI search. The second box is traditional search. The third box is social media search. And the fourth box is Shopee, like Amazon, Walmart, et cetera. And what we would do is you can then dive into each category and find keyword opportunities and learn more about what people are typing in and how to rank and get your products and services mentioned based on what platform you want to dive into or what category you

46:17
Right. So basically, instead of explicitly telling people which platform you’re just going to serve all the platforms with one query, right, and tell them how to get mentioned everywhere based on what they want to go after and give them ideas. So like, let’s say if there’s a specific prompt, what is the best dog food for puppies? And we see the articles that chat GPT and Google and others are referencing, we will start saying

46:42
you want to write content around these topics because it’s most likely to get you included. You know, you’ve always offered these tools for free or at extremely low cost. Is your master plan is to get people in through those tools and then sell them services or like what’s the master monetization? Oh, is that okay? You nailed it. Okay. And then also keep in mind, we’re late to the game. So when you’re late to the game and you’re not offering anything that’s

47:10
drastically different because we’re in a saturated market, your real differentiation is free or cheaper. Okay. Because I’ve recommended out Uber suggests to many people, mainly because you have this really sweet lifetime plan, which I don’t know how the numbers work out, but I guess they don’t work out. Okay.

47:33
But you have their information and I imagine you can sell services for MP digital to them, right? That’s how we make it work out. But yes, the cost of the product and everything in the usage does not work out. Because what happens is people use a monthly plan, and the ones who like it, and know they’re going to keep paying for it, they just switch over to lifetime. So you don’t get getting the recurring revenue, which really hurts the business. So it seems like all of your tools kind of work together and all the services you provide, right? Yes.

48:03
Okay, and then NP digital, who do you guys serve? Like what type of businesses? What size and what types of businesses? SMBs all the way up to enterprise corporations like Chanel and Louis Vuitton that are selling products. So you know, we but we work with SMBs like DTC brands that are only doing three, four or 5 million bucks a year. That can’t be profitable either. But okay, it’s not profitable. The enterprise side is much better margins than the SMB side.

48:31
But I guess a percentage of those eventually become bigger and it probably all works out. you got it right. Okay. Okay. Well, Neil, hey, thanks for coming on show, man, and providing all those tips to the listeners, which was very valuable. And then we also got a chance to hear about all the services. Any other acquisitions in mind? How are you going to improve the tool set that will help people be everywhere? We bought a company called Yodel in April, I believe it was, that does App Store optimization, like for…

49:01
you know, the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. For commerce, you know, like a great example of this is there’s a really cool fashion brand called Fashion Nova that’s here in Los Angeles. They do really well from their app. Not enough commerce companies build apps. And Fashion Nova has a really amazing experience. I recommend everyone check out their app, even if you’re not looking to buy, just to see what they’re doing. Like it’s a…

49:30
a really well executed company. So we acquire that company to help people with their App Store rankings, because there’s just so much search volume there. The Apple App Store itself gets around 500 million searches per day, per day. That is nuts. Yeah. And then we’re about to acquire an Amazon shop that should hopefully close in the next few months. It’s just like an Amazon brand, you mean? No.

49:59
Amazon agency that purely focuses on Oh, okay. Got it. Got it. it. most of Amazon, if you look at the Amazon agency, they focus on SMBs. Right? This one focuses mainly on enterprise. Interesting. Okay, sounds like you got your hands in a lot of different things. But that allows you to get all the data and keep up with the industry, right? So I see the appeal. And then the team merges them in and deals with the integration and all that kind of stuff. So I don’t have to do that much. Just being honest. Actually, what is your role?

50:29
Create content, speak, deal with sales calls, deal with client calls. Yeah, I had to deal with more stressful stuff, but not as labor intensive stuff. Got it. Fun stuff, man, Neil. Once again, thanks a lot for coming on the show. I really appreciate your time. Cool. Thanks for having me. Hope you enjoyed this episode. If Neil’s insights got you thinking differently about marketing, don’t forget to put them into action before the next trend hits.

50:59
For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejob.com slash episode 601. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2026 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. 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.

51:29
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, Jeff Oxford and I tackle one of the biggest shifts happening right now. How SEO is evolving in the age of AI and chat-based search. We break down what’s changed, what no longer works, and what you need to be doing today to make sure your business actually shows up. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com.

00:28
And if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most e-commerce conferences that are filled with high-level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about the tactical, step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches. People who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs, no consultants. Also, I hate big events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate.

00:58
We cap attendance at around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We’ve sold that every single year for the past nine years and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to the 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And if you’re doing over 250K or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for higher level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be. So if you want in, go over to sellerssummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

01:35
Welcome to the My Wife, Could Her Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Jeff Oxford back on the show. Now, Jeff runs an SEO agency called 180marketing.com where he teaches others how to get their sites ranked in search. And he recently spoke at my annual e-commerce conference, The Seller Summit. Now we all know that the traditional search with those 10 blue links has been getting disrupted by AI this year. So in this episode, Jeff and I are going to talk about how SEO has evolved.

02:04
and the steps you need to take to improve the visibility of your business in the age of AI and chat-based interfaces. And with that, welcome to show, Jeff. How are you doing, Steve, always a pleasure. Thanks again for having me. So I really loved your talk at Seller Summit. I was actually there live. And I wanted to go into more depth since I actually got a chance to re-watch your presentation again last night. So let’s start with, you for the listeners here.

02:31
who obviously didn’t get the opportunity to listen to you talk live. What is the current state of search and traditional SEO? It’s a good question. And what I’d say right now, there’s two ways of looking at it. We can take a snapshot of where things are right now, and then we can look directionally where things are going. Let’s do both. So first, where are things right now? Google is still the 800 pound gorilla. Google search, the 10 blue links on page one. This is still where

03:01
You know, Google’s market share really hasn’t been disrupted. I’d say chat GPT might be taking like one to 2 % market share from just like the typical search queries. So at this point in time, right now, you know, June, 2025, it’s Google is still killing it. You know, we’ve looked at analytics accounts for multiple e-commerce sites. Organic search is still the number one driver by a lot. You know, referrals from AIs is just, it’s, it’s growing, but it’s minuscule. So first part of it.

03:31
You know, yes, we’re seeing some progress, but right now SEO Google search is still the king. Now, directionally, where are things going? So we’re seeing some interesting things now where there’s a lot more referral traffic from chat. You’ve never before. We’re seeing more and more people use chat CPT than they ever have before. So while yes, there’s still a lot of value in SEO. The question is.

03:58
what will look like in three years, five years, or 10 years from now? Right. I actually just saw this article in TechCrunch. I don’t know if you saw it, but it said that the Google search AI features are killing traffic to publishers by 36%. Yep. So if Google still is as powerful as it is right the second that we’re recording, it doesn’t seem like that traffic is getting to publishers as much.

04:27
Yeah, not a good time to be a blogger publisher. AI overviews are just eating a lot of those informational queries and just kind of back up for a second. And the world of SEO, we have different types of keywords people use. If I search how to start a drop shipping site, that’s an informational keyword, I’m looking to learn something I’m looking for information. If I search by linen handkerchiefs, that’s a transactional search. That means I’m looking to purchase something.

04:55
So these informational queries that used to, you you could have a blog, you could have AdSense on it, you could have affiliates, that kinda got killed. I saw a similar study from HREF where they looked at whenever there’s an AI over you on the page, the traffic from that page was down 34%. So it was very in line with the 36 % that you quoted. So.

05:19
SCI, I mean, I’m almost safe saying SEO is dead for informational queries, especially if you’re kind of a standalone blog. it’s, it’s really these AI overviews have taken so much. It’s just, it’s dead in the sense that the ROI and the numbers just don’t make sense. Like they used to, you have to spend way more effort to get less traffic. However, you know, I would imagine most people listen to this are probably in the e-commerce space. And that has not been touched. In fact,

05:47
H refs, which is this big SEO tool provider. They did a study of I think it was like a million million different keywords and what they found is these AI overviews. They 99 % of the keywords that trigger AI overviews are informational keywords. So if I say again, if I search, you know, how to maintain linen napkins, like, yes, there’s going to be an AI overview. But if I search by linen napkins, there are most likely will not be an AI overview. So

06:17
Luckily in the e-commerce space, we’re safe from those AI overviews, at least for now. mean, this stuff is changing month by month, so I could be eating my words in a few months. So are you trying to say also then, or implying that content related to your products, like you mentioned buy linen napkins, but what about the benefits of linen napkins over cotton napkins? Is that content that should no longer be written on a store blog, as an example?

06:46
So if we look at the customer journey and you have the awareness stage, the research, and then you have the purchase stage. we’re gonna simplify to those three stages. So we’re at the top of the funnel. If someone’s searching like, what is a linen napkin? It’s probably not worth spending the time to create a really good article about that. Because even if you get there, there’s gonna be an AI overview, the clicks from that query are gonna be so low. And even if you get there, the conversions just aren’t there. If someone’s searching,

07:15
is a napkin, they’re probably not even close to whipping out their credit card and making a purchase. But if we go a step lower to that, then we have like the research phase. If someone’s saying like, what’s the best type of linen napkin or linen verse, what’s the other type of linen verse cotton napkins for dinner party, something like that. Now they’re, you can tell by the query that they’re looking to make a purchase. They just have to do a little bit more research first.

07:43
So I’d say those are probably still worth going for just because the conversion potential is there where you can actually get some revenue from it. But even a lot of those, they’re still gonna be like, I’d say it’s not as frequent, but you still see AI overviews and some of those. So again, it’s one of those things. You can spend all this time making a great article, optimizing it. You could rank number one, but if nobody’s clicking on it because of an AI overview, then you’re kind of screwed. I guess what I’m leading towards is

08:13
will AI, because it sees that type of content on a certain page, be more likely to show your products in AI search? I was talking like if someone types in chat, GBT, how that content. Okay, so now we can shift more towards away from. We’ll get into the SEO stuff and just. I just. We’re going down this rabbit hole right now. So the AI, so we’ve done, you know, we work with only e-commerce sites. So this is something very important to us. And we’ve specifically been looking a lot at.

08:43
know chat GPT specifically the product carousels. So if I type in best protein powder, sorry, if I I search like what is the best if I asked chat GPT, what is the best protein powder, it’s gonna have a product carousel and it’s actually going to show images of products and it’s going to have links to purchase those products. So that that’s like what I’m really focused on what I’m seeing is chat GPT is often citing sources and it’s pulling in like product reviews like I have one client

09:13
that sells indoor fireplaces. And they wrote an article of top five indoor fireplaces. And that article, when I went to chat GPT and I said, you what are the best indoor fireplaces, it pulled up my client as a source. It looked at that product roundup, that buyer’s guide, and those products had influence on the final output. So it’s interesting. This is the first time really talking about creating content not necessarily for driving traffic in Google.

09:41
but creating content for large language models to see it influence the chat GPT outputs and get more people to your products that way. So does that imply that we should start making reviews of our own stuff? I, you know, I’ve been asking myself this exact question this past week. I think anyone that wants to have more exposure from chat GPT, there’s two types of pages you should always have. One is a, you know, so we’ll stick with like protein powder.

10:10
what if you had a, I would highly recommend having a best protein powders page, but I’d also recommend getting specific. like the way people use chat GPT, it’s very specific. Like what’s the best protein powder for a beginner male age 37. Yeah. It’s like that. So, you know, I, I, I’m finding that the people that are getting sited more often that are winning and chat, you’d be thinking the most referrals have more specific content.

10:38
It’s not just best protein powder. It’s like best protein powder for beginners, best protein powder for men, best protein powder for seniors, but you you, you name it. It has it. That will have a higher chance of getting picked up. So should you go off and create this? Um, if you’re just doing it for chat GPT, probably not yet. Oh, I got a, kind of thinking this through as we go. Here’s the thing. There’s just not enough referral traffic and revenue from chat GPT yet.

11:06
to justify the amount of time and energy it take to do it if that’s your only reason. However, if we look at the growth rate of chat GBT and referrals from chat GBT, it’s growing at a rate where it’s not a bad idea to make a bet on chat GBT as like a major traffic source and get into these LM’s early, kind of build like a little bit of a moat. So I wouldn’t expect the positive ROI from doing it now.

11:34
but I bet a year from now it’s probably gonna be one of those things where you’re glad that you did it. So let’s kind of revisit the original topic then. What sort of content should you be creating for an e-commerce store or is it more just about optimizing your category pages and your product pages at this point? I would find, you know, we work with lot of e-commerce sites. I’d say 80 % of the time,

11:58
Blogging is not worth it. It’s not gonna be a positive ROI exercise. I know this goes against a lot of Things you hear online like you have to have fresh content You need to keep putting fresh content on your website Google loves fresh content and there is some truth to that but You know a lot of times those those blog posts that we talked about people are gonna have like very top of funnel Topics like what is protein powder? That’s not gonna drive any revenue but if it’s you know anything that has like best like what is the best protein powder or?

12:27
a comparison like versus, you know, linen verse, um, uh, clot linen verse. What was the one you said, Steve cotton cotton linen verse cotton napkin shirt you’re wearing. It’s probably made of cotton. know I wouldn’t be surprised. So that’s why I say like for most clients, there’s just not enough high converting keyword. Sorry. There’s not high converting topics to justify creating blog posts. I’d say maybe only 20 % of sites that I come across. There was actually a lot of opportunity for it.

12:56
So I don’t think you really need to create content specifically for blog traffic. But again, like with the way things are going with large language models and chat GBT, I think it’s still worth creating like a buyer’s guide. It’s still worth creating like a product roundup or maybe a few product roundups that are even more specific. And the other type of content format that still could be helpful is a glossary. Now this has kind of two benefits. One is just if we get in the SEO world of topical authority and

13:25
making sure Google fully understands what your site is about, identifying all the common terms in your industry, having a clear definition for them and having that on your site. Not only does that help with SEO, but we’re also seeing that get pulled in a lot to chat, GPT and large language models. In fact, one of my SEO director, he shared with me a fascinating case study that we haven’t shared with anyone else. So he lives in Maine.

13:54
And there’s this little kids dance studio that does like tap dancing and jazz dancing for kids. And he built their website for them using AI. And as part of this, he created a glossary is a super in depth glossary that had like, you know, different pages for each keyword. And again, this is just like dance terminology, you know, dance styles, different like fourth position, tempo, beat rhythm, like everything you could think of. This is a brand new website has a domain rating less than one. It’s

14:24
This glossary is already being cited in AI overviews. It’s already being pulled into chat GPT sources when you search for like dance terms. So it was just fascinating to see that you could have a site with zero SEO, no backlinks, nothing. But if you have like very in-depth content that’s defining terms and explaining those terms in a clear way and it’s all interlinked together, that can get picked up.

14:51
very quickly in AI overviews and then also chat GPT sources. Yeah, it’s funny. I just told you before I hit the record button that I found this article about, it’s not an article, it’s a paper. It’s very hard to read, it’s very dense. But it was saying basically that all the AI, it has all the content already. So it knows what’s, in a way it knows what’s good and unique and it knows which is kind of regurgitated stuff to a certain extent at this point. So I suspect that that

15:21
glossary is very comprehensive. And so it became like a trusted source. The domain authority doesn’t matter as much. Yeah, in that case. So let me ask you this question, though. He has he’s showing up in a lot of AIO reviews. Has that led to more business for that? It was interesting. This literally just happened the last seven days. Okay. Okay. So this is like a brand new website launched it.

15:48
and within seven days, they’re now showing up in the AI overviews for dance terminology. Okay. Yeah. Would you recommend that for an e-commerce store? And do you think that would lead to sales? I would say

16:05
I think if you’re putting a lot of time and effort into this and it’s gonna take this big cumbersome project, maybe not. But I would say if you can use AI to scale the process in a way that’s not too time consuming, and AI is very good at like define this term, what is this? This is where it really shines. There’s not a lot of places to mess up asking about dance styles.

16:30
So I think it’s worth doing that, like take the LLM chat GPT out of the equation. If it’s just SEO, like a lot of top SEOs swear by this, but like have a glossary page, define your terms, build your topical authority. Google can see like, oh wow, this site has full coverage of this topic. Like there are SEO benefits alone that could make it worth it. It’s not like this direct thing like building backlinks, but there’s some indirect things going on that can help. Add in the chat GPT, LLM, AI overviews benefits.

16:59
And yeah, I’d say it’s probably worth creating a glossary on your site. Okay. And then a lot of these things that we’ve been talking about, the content, should that go on your product pages, category pages? You’re recommending not putting it on a blog anymore. So this will be the one exception to my don’t create a blog post. Like I’d say don’t create blog, don’t spend a lot of time blogging except it’s probably worth creating a glossary on your page and it’s probably create worth creating like a buyer’s guide that like lists the

17:29
the best protein powders, the best gaming laptops, or whatever you sell. And this is purely for topical authority so that you’ll rank higher in Google? This is primarily for topical authority rank higher in Google, but there’s also a side benefit of getting more exposure and more referral traffic from large language models like ChatGPT. Okay. What other strategies are you recommending for ranking products in the e-commerce store? Because there’s not a lot of content

17:58
in a store if we’re not blogging, right? I always recommend like on your category page, try to have a few hundred words of content. So don’t just try to don’t do fluff. Don’t just put in like AI garbage, you know, ask yourself what like here’s a prompt sequence I use if I want to create content for category page, I’d ask chat GBT, were the common questions someone might have before purchasing protein powder. Now create a category description that answers all these questions in an easy way a beginner would understand.

18:27
It’s like that right there. You’re making content not necessarily for search engines first, you’re making it for users first, but it happens to have your keywords in there, which can have a positive impact on rankings.

18:40
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.

19:10
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.

19:21
Right. And should we be mimicking like an Amazon page where there’s like an FAQ section and, uh, you know, bullet points and all that stuff. I’d say, um, do what’s best for users, which usually means having an FAQ section. I think a lot of you will find that helpful. mean, there’s, there’s Amazon tests, everything. So my, my theory is if you’re seeing something on an Amazon page, there’s probably a reason why they’re doing it. So if they’re, if they have FAQs, there’s a chance people.

19:51
you have the conversion benefits where maybe your copy or your images didn’t answer a question. Having additional content in there might be able to save someone who would have exited out and found another product. But also the SEO side, I think provides a really good experience. It makes your category descriptions more thorough. So yeah, there’s definitely some benefits for having an FAQ section. Do you recommend putting it above the products or below the products?

20:19
So yeah, I get asked this a lot on category pages and collection pages. I’d say have two or three lines of the category description shown with the read more link and then have that expand to show the entire category description. That way you’re not having this big ugly block of text pushing down your products. But if someone maybe they want to read a little bit more before they purchase something or click on something, they’ll have that information there. So it’s kind of a good hybrid between UI UX and also what’s best for SEO.

20:49
Okay. All right. So let’s move into some other topics that have been on my mind. We all know that getting backlinks is a strong ranking factor. Moving forward, when you see AI come into play and maybe where Google’s going, where do you see backlink generation? I think the foundational approach of reaching out to other websites, building relationships will be the same.

21:20
The difference is the focus will shift. It’s gonna be less on have a link to my site and more of make sure my site is mentioned. So it’s less about is the text hyperlinked versus is the text even there in the first place and what’s the sentiment around when my brand is mentioned? Is it positive, is it negative? What are the words that become, that happen before or after my brand is mentioned? Is it talking about products, is it talking about a lawsuit?

21:48
I think that context is gonna be a lot more important. And I think it’s gonna be a little more targeted. So right now with SEO, if you do link building, you just wanna find, like let’s say I sell furniture. Well, I’ll probably wanna find some interior design blogs that I can write a guest post on or I can review my furniture to get back links from them. If I’m doing this type of outreach for chat, GPT and large language models, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna go into chat GPT, I’m gonna type in,

22:18
what’s the best protein powder for beginners? I’m see what are the sources that chat GPT’s citing. Very good chance there’s gonna be some product reviews, product roundups. And I’m gonna reach out, what I wanna do then is reach out to all those sources that are applicable and pitch my products to them. So it’s a lot more targeted. I’m not just finding any type of fitness blog or weightlifting blog. I’m finding the ones that I see chat GPT citing and that will, if I can get my products included,

22:48
and those roundups that will have a big impact on my product showing up in chat GPT and how high it shows up in chat GPT. So does that apply to Google like the old school Google search now? Even you don’t get a backlink? Yeah, if you I mean, if if you find if we stick with protein powder and let’s say you find some fitness blogs as a weightlifting blogs and they link to you. Yeah, those links are going to have a huge impact on on your ranking. So if you get relevant site linking back to you is always going to have

23:18
strong impact. I kind of wish it wasn’t as powerful as it was in 2025. You know, could have the best content, you could have a really well optimized site with a good user experience. But the sad part is, if you don’t have enough backlinks, you’re just not going to rank as well as your competitors at end of the day. So it’s an unfortunate truth about where Google is now. And there was actually a study that hrefs did recently that kind of confirmed it, I think they found that backlinks to a page is still one of the top highest correlated ranking factors.

23:48
Wow. Okay. So Google isn’t just crawling the source page and looking for the mention. It’s still looking for a backlink and it’s important. If you’re looking at those 10 blue links on page one, you need the need back links. And one, one interesting way I like looking at it is if we stick with like, if I want to rank for protein powder, there are thousands of protein powder brands out there. Yep. So, you know, all those great ranking factors you hear about, like, you know,

24:18
time on site, bounce rate, are people staying on your site or are hitting the back button to click on a competitor? That only applies to the site’s ranking on page one. So your UI UX does not even, it’s not even taken into consideration until you get to page one. So you need backlinks to get you into the competition for page one and then your awesome prices and great product and UI UX can help get you even higher.

24:47
Are you seeing that’s the case for getting mentioned in AI for Gemini, let’s say? I don’t use Gemini, I, yeah. You’re talking about like AI, getting mentioned in Either in the AI mode or the overview if it shows up.

25:03
I’ve found less correlation with backlinks for AI overviews and chat GPT surprisingly. Okay. Which makes sense. If you look at how these large language models work, they’re not really factoring in a website’s authority or links. It’s just taking in a bunch of data from a bunch of data sets. And like the example I shared, there’s a, a brand new dance website, a dance studio launched one week ago.

25:31
is already showing up in AI overviews for the term dance terminology. Right. We’re talking zero authority. So when it comes to getting cited in AI overviews and chat GPT, I’m seeing less of importance on backlinks and more of importance on how thorough and comprehensive the content is and how simple and how guess how boring it’s written. the unfortunately the Wikipedia style of writing

26:00
is favored heavily by these large language models, it’s really easy for them to understand it. If you just say, this is this, and this is related to that, that matter of fact style of writing makes it way more likely that your content’s gonna get cited by these large language models. Whereas if you’re telling stories and using anecdotes and weaving it all together, it’s gonna provide a great user experience, it’s gonna be great for your brand, but unfortunately you’re probably not gonna get cited in large language models as much.

26:30
Are you implying then that the topical authority matters for showing up in AI? I’d say so. Yeah. A lot of the things that you would do to increase your topical authority, you know, answer very specific questions on your site, have very concise answers, have it all structured in a way that’s easy for a search engine, a large language model to access it. That’s working really well with getting cited for chat, GPT and other AI platforms. So does that imply then?

26:58
that perhaps hiring a PR firm that just gets you mentions, not necessarily backlinks, might be a worthwhile investment? I would say so. I would say if you have a PR, because if you look at these sources for, if I search what is the best protein powder, and it’s gonna be like bodybuilder.com, Forbes, it’s gonna be very large publications, most SEO companies don’t have the capabilities to do those pitches properly.

27:28
For that, you probably need a PR firm or maybe a PR firm that specializes in the fitness industry. Okay. Yeah, I was just looking at my site the other day and there’s a couple of these sites that are not authoritative at all outranking Bumble Bee Linens. Right? And I remember going up to you and you said, hey, you know, it’s probably because these category pages don’t have links to products. So I changed that.

27:56
And that actually helped a little bit, I think. But these sites are still outranking. Some of these sites are still outranking me because they got like a mention in some really authoritative publication. And so that’s how I was thinking to myself, huh, OK, maybe if I hired someone who had contacts into these larger organizations just to get a mention, I don’t even need a backlink. That might make a difference. But then I was questioning myself also, like, if the fundamental way

28:25
search is gonna change going forward, should I be investing in this? That’s a tough one. I think it depends on your industry. So for example, if you’re already just breaking even ROI wise, you can probably anticipate that maybe a few years from now, it’s gonna be a little bit less of an ROI. But if you, so like if, I know for your keywords, like maybe people are searching it a few hundred times a month, maybe a few thousand times a month for some of your top keywords.

28:54
Yeah, that, know, you can make a case where like, you know what, I’m not going to put too much effort into this. I’m to focus more on long-term and go more of like, how do I get more exposure and large language models and, and other places like that. know, but if you’re in an industry where people are searching keywords thousands of times or tens of thousands of times, and it’s not too competitive, I mean, it’s probably still worth doing where not only can get lots of revenue now, but you’re still probably going to be getting lots of revenue in the future. So.

29:24
Yeah, for if you have just a little bit of search voluntary keywords, you know, you can make an argument that maybe it’s not worth investing in SEO, which is a long term approach. It’s going to take six months to get some momentum anyway. Maybe that budget could be better spent somewhere else. So what’s the playbook? Let’s use protein powder since clearly you’ve been taking it because I’ve noticed your muscles. is your what is your strategy for protein powder? Let’s say someone’s selling it.

29:53
e-commerce store, what is your strategy? Are we talking about ranking higher in Google? We’re talking about more exposure from our we’re talking about ranking in Google and looking forward into the future where you think things are going. So we’ll start with the Google process first, if you if I want to rank number one for protein powder, which is a very extremely competitive keyword. Yeah. But here’s what here’s what you do. First, you want to figure out which page are you going to push for protein powder. So for that, I’m to search protein powder into Google.

30:21
And I can see that mostly Google is ranking. see Amazon product page. I see a category page. Okay, I’m seeing like all category pages. So that tells me that I should be pushing a category page instead of a product page. So I’m gonna find a category page on my site to push a protein powder. Once I have that in there, now I wanna optimize that page with the keyword. I wanna put the keyword in the title tag.

30:48
the meta description and the header tag. And if you’re not familiar with that, what that is, if you go into Google, there’s that blue link that’s pulling from the title tag. It describes what the page is about and you want to put your keyword front and center, make it the first phrase of that title. Meta description are those two lines of black text and Google search results that show up below the title tag. It’s not really a ranking factor. It more so is just your, your, it’s kind like your ad copy for SEO. You know, it’s your opportunity.

31:16
tell people why your product’s better and get a higher click-through rate. So you’re wanna have a well-written captivating meta-description that, know, mention your keyword at least once, you Google’s gonna bold it so you can get a higher click-through rate, but the most important thing is put your unique selling points in there, put a call to action in there, try to get more people to click on your listing. So we’re gonna optimize our page, but we also wanna optimize the content. So on that category page, we’re gonna have a few hundred words of content about…

31:42
Why are protein powders great? Where we source the whey from and how we don’t use any chemicals or whatever it is. And we also want to answer any questions that a new bodybuilder or someone who wants to buy it might have in the content. make it user-first content. We’ll also want to include related keywords in there. So if I go into Google Image Search and I type in protein powder, I’m going to see keywords like…

32:10
see here, I’m going to see keywords like muscle, way, chocolate, weight gain, nutrition, body, vanilla, gym. These are all keywords that Google is associating with the term protein powder. So the ones that are applicable, we want to include those into our content as well to make our content seem like a more comprehensive overview of protein powder. So once we’ve done that, now we have we have the right page, we have, of course, everything you’ve talked about, right?

32:36
Yeah, this is all kind of standard stuff. We want to do some internal linking. So make sure your homepage is linked into your protein powder page. Make sure any blog posts that you’ve done in the past or will do in the future, those have internal links that are relevant to your protein powder page. Make sure your products have breadcrumbs so they point up to the protein powder page. All those internal links are going to help. And then next is going to build backlinks. So maybe you find some

33:02
fitness blog, some bodybuilder blogs, you send them some free product for them to review and try out. And they write about on their site and they have a backlink on your site. That’s going to help a lot. Maybe do some guest posting you offer to write an article for them. They and you can include a link back in the article to your site that can still thing Jeff guest posting. know, Steve, I wish it wasn’t. But unfortunately, even in 2025, we see really good like, okay, I will tell you my theory about why

33:32
people are pessimists about guest posting. There is so many guest post providers out there where you spend X amount, you’re gonna get a guest post link, it has a high domain rating, high traffic, maybe get 10 of them, maybe get 20 of them, and your traffic is just flat. It doesn’t go anywhere. This happens all the time, and people are like, hey, guest posting doesn’t work anymore. Well, I’ve looked at a lot of these sites that people, you know,

33:59
When I, whenever I see it, I look under the hood to see, well, let’s see these sites that the guest posts are on. They have a high domain rating, maybe in the fifties or sixties. They have high traffic. If you look at poem up and H refs or S M rush, they have very high traffic, no thousands a month. But if you look at what keywords and pages are driving traffic, they’re artificially inflating their traffic. They can spam certain queries to make it look like they’re getting searched thousands of times. The H refs.

34:26
But really they’re not getting searched at all. So a lot of these sites that you think you’re, you’re getting a guest post from that are really good sites. Like, it’s got great domain rating. It’s an authoritative site. It’s got great traffic. Google must love it. It’s all artificial. The site is just dead. It might be hurting you. So like what we sound like our guest posts, like our, our website screening process is really intense. Like we built a proprietary tool that yes, so pull the domain, ready to pull the traffic.

34:54
It’ll pull the year over year traffic to see has this site been penalized by Google. We have the tool take a screenshot of the page, feed it to AI to do like a visual inspection to see if anything looks off. But the main thing we’re looking for is we’re gonna pull the top pages from hrefs and the top keywords from hrefs to see are these keywords in line with the focus of the blog or is it clear it’s just spam that’s just getting through.

35:20
And those are the ones you want to skip. But honestly, I’d say most people, in fact, most agencies don’t even go that depth with their link screening. So they just keep buying these garbage posts that aren’t going to do anything. But if you find ones that are qualified, are good, are natural, yes, guest posting still helps. You know, what’s funny is I used to get requests for guest posting on my blog multiple times a day. It’s pretty much dried up now, actually. I might get one a week at most.

35:48
So you’re saying now’s a good time to pitch you for guest posts. We’re going to get to the top of your inbox. Okay, so backlinks seem to be a fundamental theme here. What about looking forward and where you think things are going at the rate that they’re going? The big question mark is AI AI mode. So like right now in Google, like you, it’s kind of in this experimental phase where Google is testing out AI mode, which essentially makes

36:18
AI look like it will make AI look, make the Google homepage look more like chat, GPT and Gemini and less like the 10 blue links. So that they just, I think they just put that out like a month or so ago. Yeah. Yeah, they’re doing some testing. So it’s going to be really interesting to see what Google comes back with. If this is something, a feature they want to make, like they want to push more, make it the default, or do they just kind of keep it as an optional way of searching for things? Now the one

36:48
thing that we’ll have to consider that I don’t hear anyone talking about is just the financial viability of Google search. So to run a regular web search versus an AI result for Google, it’s like 10 times the processing power and 10 times the processing cost to serve that query. Then you also have to look at the revenue side of it. Right now, you know, we…

37:12
Google ads is making a lot of money off those sponsored links. You you ask businesses that are advertising, they’re spending fortunes every single month on Google ads. So we know they’re making a lot of revenue, whereas with AI mode, we’re not seeing any sort of revenue potential yet. So even if it provides a better user experience, I’m sure Google is gonna have to be weighing how much is it gonna cost us to serve all these queries and how much revenue are we gonna get from it.

37:42
and are we shooting ourselves in the foot by pushing this? So that’s kind of the whole balancing act that is it even gonna be worthwhile financially for them? Yeah, so in terms of the 10x argument, I always think that that’s generally not a factor. It’s 10x right now, but in the future, it’s not gonna be, right? It’s go towards zero. But at the same time, and I haven’t used AI mode that much actually for shopping.

38:09
Maybe I should try it, but I’m wondering if like the Google shopping ads that I’m purchasing and performance max will just start more actually showing up in AI mode. I’m sure they’re going to find a way. I mean, this is this is their I think 50 % of the revenue comes from ads. So 56 % or something like that. Like there’s no ads right now in AI mode, but you would think they would need something if they’re going to make AI mode the default.

38:35
All right, so we’ve already talked about like kind of like the fundamentals of ranking an SEO today. What would you do to the site to kind of future proof it? So backlinks is one thing we already kind of talked about PR agencies and whatnot. What are you advising your clients? If you want to future proof UI UX is having a bigger role than it has before, you know, Google’s looking heavily on are people clicking on your site and staying there? Are they hitting the back button going somewhere else? So like

39:04
You know, in the SEO world, people don’t talk about UI UX as much as they should, but I think it’s very important. Um, it makes you have a good user experience. Uh, I’d say also just brand like brand building. We’re seeing having more and more of a fact in the SEO world, but there’s also a lot of overlap between brand building and exposure and large language models. So, you know, a lot of SEOs see correlation where the sites that get more branded search were like, if I’m searching for starting a drop shipping site and I’m typing my wife quit,

39:35
what is drop shipping. That’s a very strong sit on that. Oh, my wife quit her job provides really good information. People are searching for that. So build brand building initiatives, you know, getting your name out there, getting press, all these types of things. That’s going to help a lot. I’d also say on the link, and that’s also going to have additional benefits of just showing up more in large language models. And I’d also say link building wise, I think there’s going to be more weight.

40:03
on backlinks where Google can tie it to an author. like, Steve, if I go into Google and I type your name, Steve Chu, you have this knowledge panel. It knows that you’re associated with my wife, quit her job, knows that you’re a real person. So if anywhere you link to from my wife, quit her job, that’s going to have a lot more SEO value and backlink juice than just some faceless blog. And I think it’s almost like a tiered system where every site that you would link to, you know, if that site linked, if that webpage link somewhere,

40:32
it’s also gonna get some benefits. So I think Google’s gonna look at more of authors who are authors linking to versus just who’s this faceless blog linking to. The other thing I’ve been reading lately also is perhaps the death of the website. Like if people are doing shopping within these LLMs and whatnot, including Google AI mode or Gemini or whatnot.

40:56
Like are people even going to bother going to the website? I mean, TikTok shop has been really successful because people are buying in platform. Same with Amazon. So I, and I know you’re not going to know the answer to this, but where do you see things going in terms of just shopping? I have heard rumors that chat, GPT will experiment with like taking people directly to the checkout page and throw the product page. Like there’s been some stories about possibly doing that.

41:23
Instead of just taking that, cause what I read was different. It would just take the transaction directly in chat GPT and then the order magically shows up in your Shopify store. So I haven’t heard that then, but that’s like, wouldn’t, the technology that is there and the user experience is there where chat GPT has a map, has a big partnership with, um, Shopify. So they, they could easily have something like that where you can just purchase it. yeah, it could work very similar to how a tick tock would work. Um,

41:53
I would, I, I, I five years from now, I don’t know if I’d be surprised if that, if it had that capability. Cause chat GPT wants to provide the best user experience possible. You know, typically it’s a better user experience if it takes fewer clicks. So if you already trust it, you know, why have, why did you have to go to all these different websites, enter your information, create an account, whatever it is, when you can just push one button and it shows up at your house in a week. I mean, where do you see these 10 blue links going? I mean, how much time do you give it? Or do you think it’s longer than you think?

42:24
It’s a big unknown. It’s a tough one. Because we don’t know what Google is going to do after this big test with AI mode. Maybe it’s something we’re not even picturing. Maybe it’s not a chat GPT interface. It’s not 10 blinks, but some type of hybrid model. We might be seeing something like that. So it’s difficult to tell for sure. a lot of the stuff that you do for SEO, there’s a lot of overlap with chat GPT.

42:52
getting your products found. And again, like we know that a lot of the sources chat, GPD is most likely pulling from like Bing results. So if you’re nowhere to be found in Bing, you’re going to be a hard time being sourced. So there’s a lot of overlap. I would say if SCA, as long as SEO is providing a positive ROI, it’s probably worth continuing. If you know, you people are searching your keywords a lot, but if you’re just kind of on the edges, like where there’s not as many people searching it you’re kind of on the fence of SEO is worth it. You know, it might not be worth pursuing.

43:23
It’s funny because one of my key takeaways from your talk was that everything that you do for SEO is kind of like brand building, right? Like the way we always refer to it as backlinks. mean, that’s not really what it is anymore. Really. It’s about getting mentioned, building the brand, getting people talking about it, which will get absorbed into AI. So it seems to me that the benefit is always there. It’s just hard. might be hard to measure going forward.

43:51
Right? Yeah, it’s like, it’s the same work. It’s just, you’re just slight, you’re just nudging in different direction. You’re not just doing link building for just any old site. You’re not doing link building for the sites that are getting picked up as a source. Um, you know, you’re not, like, you’re, you’re optimizing page. You’re not just creating any type of content. You’re creating content that large language models would like, like glossaries or product roundup. So it’s, it’s taking the fundamentals of SEO and just

44:19
nudging them and pivoting them a little bit so it’s more optimized for these large language models. And I think what’s frustrating to me as I’ve been reading a lot more out of this is like I could do the same query in chat GPT 10 times and get different answers. Right? Yes. So it’s, don’t see how you can measure that. Like whether it’s working. That’s what I’m saying. There’s all these like tools coming out now, like track your LLM visibility and we’re going to track it. It’s like, you know,

44:47
It’s what imagine doing SEO where every time you search the keyword the 10 blue links were completely different like yeah, it’d be impossible. be almost impossible to SEO. So that’s why it’s kind of hard to put marketing dollars towards something that you can’t fully track and that changes so much. You know, this is in its infancy infancy. It’s still evolving. We’ll see kind of where the dust settles a bit. But but yeah, AI optimization LM optimization. There’s for sure some best practices but

45:16
you still have to keep in mind whatever you search is gonna be different and all the more like the more you it’s gonna use what you’ve searched in the past influence your future results from chat GBT. So Steve, if you had a lot of queries about my wife quit her job, then in the future when you ask, you know, what’s the the best site for drop shipping knowledge or e commerce knowledge, it’s going to suggest my wife put a job more often only because it’s looking at your past conversations. Yeah, yeah, actually.

45:45
It knows a lot about me. and it actually is. This is what I don’t like. Actually, I’ll ask it a question now. And it’s the answer that gives me is now bias towards what I’ve liked in the past, which is what I don’t want. Right.

46:00
All right, so one thing that we haven’t really talked about, and this is like the last thing I want to touch on since we’re running out of time, is the role of like we’ve talked about written content already. What about the role of like video content? short form? What does it have any effect on SEO as you can, as far as you can tell right now? The only way can see that having effect is if you have a video and you’re putting it on a blog post or a piece of content, and that increases the engagement metrics where now you have lower bounce rate, more time on site.

46:27
that can help SEO that way, but I’m not really picturing any other way you can leverage video for SEO. Okay, but it probably has a profound effect on AI LLMs, which are reading all that stuff in perhaps. For sure Gemini. mean, Google’s using the YouTube data set very heavily in its training data. I don’t know how much, actually I think chat GBT is also using It does, it does for sure. The chat GBT, so yeah, it’s for SEO, pure SEO.

46:56
extremely minimal for this kind of new way we’re seeing of using large language models and AI platforms, I think that is going to be helpful.

47:09
All right, Jeff, we talked about a lot of topics here. If anyone is interested in getting your help for both SEO and just getting more brand exposure, where can they find you? Yeah, our website is 180marketing.com. It’s just 180marketing.com. Or you can just shoot me an email directly. My email is jeff at 180marketing.com. All right, once again, Jeff, thanks a lot for coming on the show. Maybe like one year from now, we should revisit this.

47:36
and just see how things have changed because things are changing literally every month as far as I can tell. It’s going to be a whole new ballpark. I wouldn’t be surprised.

47:46
Hope you enjoyed this episode. The days of traditional search are numbered, so you have to take these steps if you want to generate sales in the future. For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejob.com slash episode 599. 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 mywifequithejob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course. Just type in your email.

48:16
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. In this episode, I share how I built Stevebot, a custom AI assistant powered by a rag database that mimics my brain. We break down the tech stack, the biggest mistakes made, and how this changes the classes that I teach forever. But before we begin, I want to let you know that the session recordings for Seller Summit 2025 are available over at sellersummit.com. If you missed the event,

00:26
You can now get instant access to every keynote, workshop, and panel. Go to SellersSummit.com. Now on to the show.

00:40
Welcome to the My Way, Quit or Job podcast. Today we’re gonna talk about a couple projects that I’ve been working on and I was a little hesitant to talk about this because I hope it doesn’t bore you guys. Tony says it’ll be interesting. Well, we’ll see. It’s just a selfish reason. I wanna know about SteveBot. My first concern is do we need another Steve? Okay, wait, we didn’t even tell people what I’m working on. It’s called SteveBot. It’s SteveBot. Yes.

01:08
And I have to say that I’ve learned more in the last two days than I have in probably like the last year. This is completely new to me. How all this stuff works and everything. But I did create Steve bot. I did this for the course because I kept getting questions that were already covered in the videos in the, the class. But since there’s like 450 videos, I get it right.

01:37
you probably didn’t watch the one that yielded the answer. Right. And this is a common problem that, that I’ve been having actually in the last few years with the class, probably the last two or three years. Yeah. When the volume of videos, even though I’m pruning them, I’m also constantly adding new ones every single week. Yeah. And the level of information is, is overwhelming for a lot of people. Cause so I always say upfront, you shouldn’t watch everything. Yeah. Just watch what you’re actively implementing anyway.

02:07
You know, I’ve just to speak on that for a minute. I think that’s the case for both courses because I know that we have been on lives and doing, you know, office hours and things like that. And someone will ask a question. And I know we’ve done a lesson on it, right? Because I know that I did gave the lesson or we did it together, whatever. But, you know, I can’t remember which lesson it’s in because a lot of times, too, I think for the courses, we get so granular in the information. like the lesson is really specific on one thing.

02:37
It’s like, well then is it in that one or is it in this one? Because they’re both talking about, let’s just say lead magnet and welcome flows, right? So which one, so I actually think this is gonna be good because personally for me, like I need it just to keep up with everything that we’re doing. Yeah, so that was the goal. And then I had to run down this whole rabbit hole of implementation, learning how to train AI models and all that stuff.

03:06
It is so fascinating. But at the same time, once you get down to like the nitty gritty, it’s actually very basic what it does. okay, so the overall goal was so that instead of asking, hey, you what lesson is this in or whatever, you just ask Steve Bot, and then it gives you the answer to that question. And then it gives you a link to the video that covered it. Okay. Right. And so,

03:34
If the answer didn’t answer it thoroughly, you go and you watch the video. Right. That sounds fantastic. So it’s like a much better version of search. Uh, in practice doing that is a little bit more difficult because you can’t literally, you can’t just shove all of your stuff into AI. kind of doesn’t work that way. So the limitations are, so there’s, um, like I said, there’s like 450 ish videos and the first tall task actually.

04:02
was automating, generating transcripts from all the videos. So the first thing I did is I downloaded all of the videos into a directory, just the ones that are active, because believe it not, there’s like close to 800 videos, I think. I mean, I believe it. The course is what? 13, 14 years old at this point? is 14 years old. Yeah. Right? So I had all these videos in there that were taken down, right? Cause they’re obsolete or whatever. Right. But they’re still, so I had to find the ones that were active.

04:32
which meant writing some WordPress routines to just grab the active posts. That wasn’t that hard. And then downloading them to a directory. Then you need to grab transcripts of all of them, right? And this is where I went a little cheap. So the transcripts, you can feed them into OpenAI and get them done. But OpenAI actually open sourced a model for free and it’s called Whisper.

05:02
You can run all that locally on your machine if you have a good video card. Actually, it’s still running right now. I was hoping to launch SteveVot today. It’s only at video 300 right now, and it’s at the rate of three minutes per video. When you think about it, that’s really fast. Yes, it’s fast. If I didn’t skimp on my video card, it probably would have been done overnight.

05:30
But I don’t play games. I didn’t really have a use for a video, a good video card until. You needed Kevin for this. Where’s Kevin? I did. I’m sure Kevin has a really nice video card. So just I want to ask a question about this. It’s slightly unrelated, but so I don’t know if you know this, but if you have videos on Facebook that were live, so anything to any time you go live on Facebook, right? Facebook has said that they’re taking those down now, like after 30 days. Yeah. So what we have done is downloaded all those

05:59
videos that we wanna keep, right? Because some of them are good, right? And like for us, we don’t do a ton on Facebook Live, so it wouldn’t be like as important to what you and I do, but like for Happy Housewife, I did a lot of live recipes, I’ve done a lot of live tips, you there’s a lot of content. I think about someone like Laurie from Passionate Pennypinscher, who has tons of live content on Facebook. So step one was download it all, right?

06:25
But now we want to be able to possibly like re-record those, right, on YouTube and stuff like that. So my issue is the transcript side, right? Because they’re not already on YouTube, right? Now they’re in my drive. So what’s the best? That’s the easy part. Is it? So what’s the best method to get the transcripts? Because like I tried ChatGPT, that was an absolute bust.

06:49
Whoa, why? Oh, yeah, you can’t you can’t just feed it in chat. Yeah, and it’s like it’ll do it in 30 second increments. And I was like, this is not going to work. Yeah. The way you do it is you can probably use make doc. Like if you don’t want to code, I assume you want to code. No, I’m not. And you’re willing to money, right? Yes, but like not a ton of money, right? So I started researching. Yeah. So what I was thinking, though, this is going to happen to a lot of people, right? A lot of people have videos that they need to probably get now because of Facebook’s new policy. What do we do?

07:19
By the way, is this only for live videos? can’t remember. It’s just for live videos. videos. That’s what they’ve said so far. you know. Okay. So what you do is you can use make.com. Okay. Throw all your videos in Dropbox and then create an automation that feeds it into the OpenAI Whisper model. And if you guys are listening to this, you have no idea what I’m talking about. Make.com is like a workflow type of tool. Okay. The hardest part about creating any app is making things talk to each other, right?

07:47
So essentially you need to make Dropbox talk to OpenAI. That’s exactly what this does. You drop down a Dropbox widget. It feeds the files over to OpenAI, the whisper model. It’s super cheap. It’s like 0.00001 cents per token, which works out to be, I don’t know, like 50 cents maybe for a… So you have to use the token model. Gotcha. Yeah. Anyway, and then you just have it drop those transcripts.

08:17
transcriptions into Dropbox again in a different folder. Okay, that’s a good tip. So just talking about the transcript side of things because I looked and I started doing some research and you know, you can there’s a lot of services are really expensive or okay. Wait, if you want the free model, that’s even easier than that. Okay, Riverside FM offers a free transcription service. Interesting. You just have to drag it over manually though. Yeah. So when I when I asked Chad GPT, you know, how can I do this for free?

08:46
Their top tip which I actually you know This is something where I think if you have an overseas VA or something like that This would be probably worth doing is basically upload them all to YouTube and have YouTube do the transcripts privately This is way better than that. Yeah, I don’t know your idea sounds way better. I’m saying that’s what they gave me Oh, no, no, no, I meant the free riverside method. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. That sounds better than Because obviously you don’t want them public on YouTube. So I mean how many videos are we talking about here?

09:15
I don’t think, Happy Housewife probably only has, it has under 50. Oh, okay. Then just do the hand drag method. Yeah. One of my clients though, I think we have over a hundred. Okay. hundred even is also borderline hand drag. Yeah, cause you’ve got thousands that you’re dealing with. Oh, and it’s not even, if this goes well, I might do this with a podcast and every blog post on my So that people can find something quickly if they have a question.

09:42
Yeah, because sometimes there’s something in the class that was covered actually in a blog post, but I didn’t do like a whole video on it. Right. Right. I feel like that happens actually a lot, especially when we do our webinars, people ask a question and usually the answer can be found in one of the blog posts that you have. Correct. YouTube at this point. Now it’s YouTube for you. Really. I was debating whether to to include my blog post in it because Google has kind of already done that for me.

10:11
You know what I mean? It’s already been read. The YouTube videos is also another avenue. I don’t know. I just want to get the course videos here first. The goal also was to consider just charging for the bot. I don’t know. Charge for people to be able to use the bot. Correct. But not people in the course. No, obviously not people in the class. Just like a…

10:39
It’s like a stepping stone into joining the full class, so to speak. Got you. You did the next step, got the transcripts. You get the transcripts. Here’s what’s-

10:49
Here’s what like confounded me about the whole process. I was under the impression that you could just throw it all into OpenAI and it just magically trains it. Right? That’s what we’re led to believe. Yes. I I believe I’m a believer. There’s a couple of limitations though. One, you can only feed in so many, so much information at one time. Yes. Cause all these models have context windows, right? And so what you have to do is you have to break up

11:19
each of these transcripts into blocks. Individual transcripts have to be broken up as well. Yes, think about it. If you have a 20-minute video, the context window might be like a thousand words. I don’t know the exact limit site. I just ask you GPT for what a good block size was. A good block size is 500. I don’t know where that got that from, but basically you need to break these into chunks. If you can,

11:49
you summarize each of those chunks and you tag them. think about like a video, let’s say we do a podcast. We talk about a lot of different stuff on this podcast, right? Yes, we do. So you can’t just shove it all in. And since we skip topics all the time, a podcast ironically is probably the hardest thing to train the AI for. So what you need to do is ideally you give it, you break it into chunks that are all about one topic.

12:16
and then you name the topic and whatnot, and then you feed it in that way. Now, ironically, and this gets really, you can actually use AI to pre-process the transcript into these chunks before you train the AI itself. Okay, because that was my next question. Yeah. I didn’t have time to do a really thorough job of that in the first iteration, but the way my videos are laid out in the class, it’s already,

12:44
pretty good, right? I only cover a very specific topic and I cover it for 10 to 15 minutes and then I move on. So in itself, each of my lessons are already kind of pretty good to go. Whereas with a podcast, especially if it’s with you or any guests, we talk about like 10 topics. Sometimes we skip all over the place. That’s harder. Okay, so.

13:10
My next question is, you’re doing this in reverse right now, right? All the content’s already been created. Moving forward, as you create, you’re giving a lesson today on Stevebot, right? In That’s not the lesson, actually. I have to work on the lesson right after this. I’m going to introduce Stevebot if it’s ready. Hypothetically, you’re giving a Stevebot lesson today in the course. Moving forward, is there another way to do it so that you’re not doing all these sort of

13:38
Because right now you’re going back and getting all the stuff that’s already happened. Moving forward, is there a way to do it where you don’t have to, you can skip some of these steps? No, you always have to do these steps. What do you mean? I don’t understand. So like right now you had to take all your videos, download them, get them and drop. You had this whole process, right? To get the transcript, to divide the transcript up. But like today, as you give the lesson, is there any way to do it as you’re giving it?

14:07
Oh, as I’m giving the lesson. So yeah, like pre and I guess not pre because there’s nothing pre done about it. But like, you know, so you’re maybe skipping being able to skip some steps.

14:18
No, I mean all the steps are gonna be there. And in fact, what’s unfortunate about Stevebot is like when a lesson comes on, I have to manually retrain the model again with the new lessons so that it knows how to answer stuff in that lesson. So I’m probably only gonna update Stevebot like once. It doesn’t take very long to be fair. It literally takes, I don’t know, probably 10 minutes. It’s not all automated right now either, right? Because I’m just trying to get the thing up.

14:47
So there’s like several manual steps I’m doing. But yeah, once it becomes all automated, in theory, once the video is there, I just throw in a directory and it automatically updates Steve. I’m not there yet, obviously. Yeah, yeah. So when you say, you give a lesson today on Stevebot, you have to train it, what does that entail? That’s what I was just talking about. You gotta break up the transcript into logical blocks. So that’s all that is. There’s nothing else after that.

15:15
Yeah, I mean, so the more information and context you can give it, the better the training will be. right now what I do is I give it a title, like of that chunk, and then I tag it with the URL and then the title of the video so that if it ends up grabbing from that chunk, the URL is automatically embedded and it tells you which video it’s part of. And then it gives you a little mini title. So that Cbot will send people to the correct.

15:43
location to get the rest of the information. Correct. Correct. I’ve only tested this on like three lessons so far and so far it’s pretty good because I got to upload the rest. mean, it takes time to run all this stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like through AI. So here’s where it’s like so simple and kind of brain dead. The way it works is and I kept asking you, is this really the best practice that everyone’s using? And they’re like, yep, this is, this is what all these companies are doing.

16:13
What’s dumb about this whole thing is you ask it a question. Here’s how it works. And I’ll try to keep it as simple as possible. You ask it a question. OpenAI turns that question into math. Okay. Right? A vector or whatever. And then what happens behind the scenes is it takes that math vector and it compares it to all the little chunks that you’ve broken up. Right? For similarity.

16:41
Right? Whether basically whether that chunk will answer that question. And then it returns a bunch of chunks. And then based on the chunks that are returned, AKA parts of the transcript, that gets only that little chunk of 500 words gets fed into AI to summarize the answer. Interesting. It’s not like AI knows all of your stuff and you’re loading up everything. Right. You’re doing most of the work.

17:10
and feeding AI only the portion that you believe answers the question. Okay. So how do you see this as a obviously,

17:23
Obviously for your students, this is a huge value add. Yes. Right. This is I feel like this is going to be such a game changer for the course, because I remember when I first met you and you had had the course, I don’t know, maybe four years. Right. But you already had several hundred lessons in the course. Yeah. It was really it wasn’t well organized because you had asked me like, I’d like some feedback. And I was like, I can’t find anything. Yeah.

17:46
And then you did a really good job of rearranging everything. when you get started, start here. If you’re here, go here. You took people on a trail. So to me, the value add for the students, phenomenal. The ease of getting information. I think this on the flip side for you, the cut down on customer service, answering questions that are available for people to find on their own is the other benefit, the cross benefit.

18:17
If you don’t have a course, right? Like how do you see this benefiting you outside of the course? I haven’t even thought that far ahead, Tony. I’ve been head down trying to learn all this stuff. There’s a lot of technical pieces involved. Oh, I’m sure. Yeah. But going forward, I was going to do a trial. Here’s what I was thinking. Like I’m going to build a community in the end, right? Yes. I mean, I have ideas for you. That’s why I’m asking. want to see where you are. do. OK, so I’ll tell you mine. I want to hear yours. OK, yeah.

18:46
I want to build a much bigger community that obviously goes beyond the course. The course members will always be the top priority. But a tripwire, so to speak, would maybe be to give them access where they can ask questions to Steve Bot for something ridiculously cheap, like $5 a month or something like that. I don’t know. That doesn’t include any of live portions. I think the live office hours and the live Zooms are always going to be the value add in the Discord group. And then once they’re in the Bot, if they like,

19:16
the questions and whatnot, then they can consider joining the full class. Plus, this makes great content. Oh, yeah, absolutely. But as far as after that, I’m going to do it for profitable audience. And that, in theory, should be faster because I know what I’m doing now. And there’s a lot less content in there. There’s only a couple hundred lessons. And then maybe I’ll make a Tony bot where the bot responds and like… With hugs.

19:46
I haven’t even done the fun stuff yet. I can make it like reply as me and use Steve-isms, you know what saying? Yes. See, I think that’s really fun. I mean, this is dumb. We were talking about this with some friends last night about how we’re talking about like AI and chat GPT and how my son-in-law was saying, like, I’m always really nice to chat GPT because when it takes over the world, I wanted to remember I was one of the good guys. Right. Like, and I was like, yeah, there’s, you know, there’s this

20:15
I think people can have fun with it, right? People like, I mean, I remember when I was planning my trip and I was like, hey, this is what I’m thinking about doing. Can you give me some suggestions of places to go? Here’s a little bit about myself, right? And I kind of gave like my little personality thing and it came back with, wow, aren’t you a fun and exciting person? And you’re like, I am, you know? But I think that part of it actually really adds to the value. Like I think people for the most part like those little quirky

20:43
things that you can get out of it. so I think making it more personable is like a huge value add, right? Even though it’s kind of silly, but I do think people enjoy that.

21:11
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. 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.

21:37
So I’m logging every question, every answer, and then who asked it. Just so I can see what’s going on. Because one thing I didn’t want to do is hallucinate, right? Yes. Yes. So I’m very strict. And we’ll see how well that works. Like, if you ask it a question that isn’t covered in the transcript, it will say, I don’t know the answer to that question, instead of just making something up. Right. Right. Yeah. So is Christina going to get the award?

22:04
for the most questions she gets. I have no idea, but it will be. Shout out to Christina. Just for fun, like I was abusing Steve Bot, like you stuck. You got to be in high school. You were only second chair on the clarinet. to see what it would say. So so far it’s it’s working. But you know, the true test will be. Oh, here, this is the other interesting part. So I’m logging all the questions.

22:31
So I know what to cover going forward. I never really had this real-time feedback before. Yeah. Yeah. So my thought was similar to what you’re talking about as far as how to make this work on a bigger scale. I I think if it was just for the course, it would be worth it. Right? I think it’s such a value add to the course that even if that was where it ended, it’s something worth doing. However, if you’re going to go to the trouble of building it, why not figure out a way to monetize it in a bigger way?

23:01
And so to me, the value definitely is giving people some sort of access to that, right? Because I think one of the reasons why people do buy the courses is because it gives them the access, right? Now with the Stevebot, they’re not getting the same type of access, right? But they are getting a lot of information that realistically, if you wanted to go find all that out, it would take you a good amount of time, right? And you might not know, like I still like,

23:30
get information back from AI and I’m like, is that really true? Is that actually what, because I was actually when I was looking for the transcript stuff, it gave me six suggestions, but one of them was wrong. And obviously I double checked those things. So I think for people to know, hey, I can ask these questions to Steve, but I know the answers are all generated by something Steve said. So I do think that’s a really nice $7 a month.

24:00
you know, value add. I think if you could get your YouTube videos included in that, that would be… the YouTube videos are always less detailed versions, much less detailed versions, the lessons, right? Yes. But I think, mean, to me, it’s like, OK, how do you leverage this with YouTube? Because you have so many subscribers, right? You’ve got a huge channel.

24:24
You know, I don’t even know, like YouTube offers all those subscription models, right? And like, to me, it’s always like kind of foggy what you get when you pay for a subscription with YouTube. You when you read like what people offer most time, you’re like, eh, is that really offering anything? But like to me, if you could figure out some way, because I do think, I do think that would be nice because now you’ve got, I don’t even know how many videos, several hundred, right?

24:48
It’s a ton. Yeah, I was shocked by how many there were in there. You’ve got five years of weekly video content, right? So, yeah, I mean, to me and I’m a math there. You do public math. OK, go on. Five times five, whatever that is. but yeah, I think to me, if you could figure out a way to leverage that, I think about Kellen right in our class that has the huge Pokemon channel.

25:15
You know, and he’s always trying to figure out ways to monetize the channel outside of just the ad revenue and brand deals and things like that. Like somehow getting people because I think like for his stuff, because I know he’s teaching people, I believe, to play a game or showing people like game strategies or something like that. I’m not a Pokemon person, so I it’s like watching something in another language to me. But like being for people to be able to like type something in and being able to get directed to like this video.

25:43
will give you that, to me that seems like really, it’s like a directory, right? But with instant answers and everything you need. I think I was going to keep them separate for now, like the class lessons bot, maybe a YouTube one. I might combine the blog post one with the, the problem is there’s some blog posts that are out of date because I haven’t been updating it. regardless, there’s a lot of potential there.

26:10
What I was also thinking, and I brought this up to Jen, she did not like it at all. I was going to do this for Bumblebee for product recommendations. Just feed in all the products, all the descriptions, all the policies, and then just have this bot here, like a product recommendations bot. I’m curious as to what, because I know her pretty well, to me that doesn’t seem, that actually seems like a pretty good idea without

26:39
Invasion of privacy. Well the problem and we didn’t even have a talk about this because you just got the axe I just got yeah, I just got the axe You know, what’s funny is I always put it on a priority and then she always just gives my ideas an axe Like right off the bat. It’s like the first reaction. I Think if customers like I think you just have to make it obvious that this is a bot. Oh That people would think they weren’t we’re talking to a real person, right?

27:08
Like this is a bot. It’s only here to help you find the product that you’re looking for. That’s it Yeah, okay, and I answer common questions like delivery and whatnot. Yeah, I do get that side of things for sure Yeah, and then you also have to worry more about it hallucinating Right. Yeah, so let’s say it says oh no shipping’s free always free, you know, it makes up something like that. Yeah

27:37
then that’s a problem too. Yeah. Okay, I definitely see that if there’s a way that you can avoid those pitfalls, that seems like a genius idea because I’ve been talking to one of my clients actually all week about how do we get people to buy either more things in their order, making, and we have like one click upsell and we have other things on the site that make recommendations, but like where people could actually type it in, right? Like I just did this.

28:06
I did this, what should I do next? Because we have, we know what it is, we know what people should do next, right? But I do see what you’re saying where, I mean we had that issue happen several years ago where it wasn’t, it was actually with our texting service where basically people could text in something and then they got a free shipping code. Well, the texting service only,

28:32
it didn’t allow you to segregate your free shipping. So like you only got the basic free, like if you wanted basic parcel post, whatever, that was free, but like nothing else would, you couldn’t get overnight free, right? Like no one gives away overnight free shipping, but the SMS service didn’t have the ability to distinguish the two. So when it went out, you could get any kind of shipping, international, whatever. And it took us like 14 hours to realize that people were getting like $50 shipping for free.

29:02
Right, because they’re overnighting stuff to themselves. So I can see like a bot doing something similar where it’s like, shipping’s always free or, you know, buy one, get six free monograms. You know what I mean? Like I can see that. So don’t get me wrong. This is going to be implemented. Yes. You just have to figure out how to avoid that. Well, no, no, no, I’m going to do it. But I’m going to start by replacing the search bar with this. OK. Right. Because my search bar is something I actually wrote years ago and it works kind of well.

29:31
It presents the products in the search based on, obviously, keywords, but also what was bought along with it in the category. But this AI one would be way better. And then the goal is, this is all in my head for Bumblebee. I have to go through all the products again, and there’s almost 1,000 now. I was going say you have lot of products.

30:01
The key is figuring out what occasion each of those products are ideal for. So I’m gonna go through and I have AI generate all the possible occasions that a handkerchief that particular style would be good for. And it’s not obvious. Like some of these handkerchiefs, and I just wrote a little routine to do this. There was this red handkerchief that had something on it or whatever. And it suggested some real esoteric, well, not esoteric, but.

30:28
Say Tana, is that what you’re looking No, no, no. you’re like a bird lover or for bird, stuff like random things that you probably wouldn’t have thought of, right? Yes. Or this red one would be perfect for Valentine’s Day because of something obscure in the embroidery. I wish I had examples ready to go, but find out all the possible use cases for a particular style of handkerchief.

30:57
feed that all in, and so when someone asks, hey, I need something for a baptism or something, it automatically pops up all of them. Bright red. Not for a baptism. Don’t do that. Okay, so here’s That’s an easier project, actually, because it’s all text. Here’s the bigger question. You’re doing this all yourself. Most of the people who listen cannot do it all by themselves.

31:26
Is this something that you think people could one figure out how to do with, you know, maybe some research and like how much technical knowledge do you truly need to have to do this? Or do you have to pay somebody or is that is it going to be you have to pay someone to set it up or you’re going to end up using a subscription tool that’s going to cost you? I think for most people you can’t set this up. Like I literally you should see my chat to be T thread learning this stuff.

31:55
I literally spent probably six hours straight just reading all this stuff just because I was interested. Like I asking little questions which actually brought me up to the way we teach stuff in schools is all messed up, right? I was just thinking to myself as I was doing this, I remember when I was in school, and this is completely random, I remember I was in school, I was afraid to ask questions sometimes to the professor because I thought I’d come across as dumb.

32:24
Or like if I asked a friend how to do this, I might be afraid to ask certain dumb questions that showed my friend that I was dumb. But with ChatGBT, I was asking all the dumb questions and it was giving me answers. So I actually ended up learning things a lot more thoroughly. And so I was going to the real nitty gritty. Like how does this technology even work? Like what’s the math behind it? All little questions like that. And so that’s why it took me a long time.

32:54
If someone were to just try to plug and chug this, I still think it’d be pretty overwhelming. I was actually considering offering this as a Shopify plugin, because it’s actually useful, right? It reads all of your descriptions and it’s like a recommendation engine. I’m sure something like that already exists, to be honest with you. Probably, yeah. But this one would be like dirt cheap, I think. Yeah. And I probably wouldn’t, maybe I would just do for the class. don’t know.

33:23
If you were to have to pay for it, what do you think it’s worth? Not like to price something, but like if someone’s like, hey, I think I would really like to use this in my business. There are some services. Like what do you think the value is of this? Because most people aren’t going to be able to do it on their own. Well, I will tell you that a friend of mine offered a service like this two years ago and she was ahead of her time. Yeah. But she was charging $500 a month. Wow. OK. So expensive. Yeah.

33:53
But realistically, once it’s all set up, it’s like pennies to run. So really the hard part is the setup and the maintenance. How do you retrain it again with new things that you have? But in terms of the value, I don’t want to jump too far ahead because I haven’t tested it enough. But I think if it even works 75%, it’ll be a huge value to the course. No question. Yeah.

34:23
Even at five, let’s just say $500 a month. Let’s just say if you’re cutting down on customer service time and you’re cutting down on your time, you know what I mean? If you’re increasing your average order value, let’s just say in your store, because everyone’s adding an additional product to the cart, it doesn’t take very much for it to pay for itself. Yeah. Like if I were to productize this, you have to make sure that you track all the incremental revenue from the service, right? Correct. Yeah.

34:51
and then show the customer that it’s worth it. Like I said, I’m sure all this has been implemented by somebody already. No question. But they probably want a couple hundred bucks a month for it. When in fact, the code is not that hard. I mean, actually I think about this for any app in the Shopify App Store. Most of the code in the App Store is not hard.

35:15
Yes. Which is why I think the Shopify App Store will probably have problems in the next couple years as more and more people don’t need code. Like everything I had to write for this AI was written in Python, which is a language that I did not know at all. I did not know a lick of it, but all programming languages all kind of blend together after a while if you’ve been doing it long enough. And so I could get through it with the help of AI without knowing how to write it at all. And so I suspect that’ll get better in a couple of years to the point where anyone

35:45
we’ll be able to tell it what it wants and then debug it and make their own stuff.

35:53
I mean, I think it’s pretty exciting. I mean, I was giddy. My wife, like I told her what I’ve been working on, she’s like, oh, great.

36:03
I think literally nothing else for the course members, it’s awesome. It’s going to cut down on their time, it cuts down on your time. Then if you can leverage it further and earn some additional revenue from it, I think that’s really valuable too. Yes, we’ll just have to see how it goes. Yes, see how good of a job it does.

36:28
See how good of a job it does, yeah. I mean, for the first two or three videos that I did and I was just asking questions about it, it knew, I mean, it has the entire transcript, but I would ask it stuff that wasn’t covered, and it would give a pretty good answer around it, and then it’d provide the link, which is the important part to the actual lesson. Yeah. So, okay, I guess my last question would be if…

36:55
So let’s just say Steve says, I don’t know the answer. We don’t have content on that, right? Like whatever. Then what happens to people? Do they get funneled into like an email form or is it just like this is dead? Is this for the class you mean? Yeah, let’s just say for the class. For the class, I’m logging all the questions. And then what I’m going to do is I’m going to do a search for anyone who got an I don’t know the answer to that question. And then I’m going to see how many times that form of question was asked and then I’ll make a lesson on

37:25
You didn’t know I get that part. I’m saying like, so let’s just say I’m in. Well, I am in the course, but I log on. I want to know something, you know, can I link my Amazon and TikTok shop? Something like that, right? Like it may be surprising that you haven’t covered. you know, and it says, hey, that’s a great question. You’re such a fantastic student. A plus, you know, all the compliments. And then it says, says, I don’t have the answer for you. What what next happens in that chat? Does it say right now? Nothing. Yeah, but what is going to?

37:55
Because then do they have to go back and now email support or is there a click to a form? What’s the next step? The next step would be just email support. It’d be cool if you could integrate a little click here to email. You know what I mean? Just get that integrated too. It’d be easy. Yeah, that part is easy. Just email and then the email address, right? Yeah. No, I’m saying that’s super simple, but just that little feature would be a great.

38:22
Because I can’t stand when it’s like email support and then they just put the email there and then you have to copy and paste it especially if you’re on your phone. Oh you want to click I want to click and it opens everything which that every a lot of people do that for other things so it could be done in this too.

38:37
I’ve actually never done that, but how does it know which email client to open up? I don’t know. It always opens up the default one on my computer, so I don’t know how it knows. Oh, I see. So if you click, it’ll open up Gmail, for example? Well, on my desktop, it opens up the Mac Mail because I’ve never uninstalled it. But when I don’t have it on my phone, it opens up Gmail. I see. Send me an example of that. I’d love to see it. I’m sure it’s like a line. Yeah, I was going to say, this doesn’t seem like a very complicated but I

39:07
What I can’t see is when they just give you the email and then especially if you’re on a mobile device, you’ve got to copy that, open up your mail app. I mean, the easiest way is to just have a little box where you just type in the question right there and you hit submit. Yeah, that would be that’s easy. That’s easy to do instead of opening up an email client. Yes. Add that to your priority list. OK, I will write that down. That’s probably a good suggestion. Yeah.

39:31
I am very curious to how people are going to treat Steve Bot though. Are they going to be rude? Are they going be polite? Are you going to track that? Who’s a bad tipper? Well, I’m obviously not going to manually track anything. I’m going to shove all that stuff in and then have it tell me what are the common questions and who’s asking the most questions. Then when someone logs on and they’re like, this is your 32nd question this week, Kathy. You need to take a break.

40:01
It’ll cost one point per question. Yes. Oh, that’d be hilarious. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I think there’s a lot of uses for this. I think it’ll be interesting once you get it up and running. Um, I’m, I’m curious, like how often is it going to get stumped? Like, don’t know. Well, I mean, obviously I don’t cover every topic, right? Right. Right. So it should get stumped if you ask it anything that hasn’t been covered. Hopefully it won’t make anything up. That that’s my biggest worry actually.

40:30
Yes, and someone sends you an angry email saying they have $130,000 of trinkets that they’ve ordered because Stevebot said, go for it. I’m sure someone’s going to ask, should I sell this item? I was going to say that’s probably going to be the top Stevebot. Then it’ll probably reference all the niche research ones and tell it, if it follows under these guidelines, that’s what I hope it’ll answer.

41:00
Yeah. Okay. We’ll have to do a follow-up episode. everything’s, I mean, like I said, it’s still transcribing and generating like the files for the, to train the bot right now, but should be done by today. And I should be able to release this bot by tomorrow at a bare minimum, I think. So yeah, I can’t wait.

41:20
Hope you enjoyed this episode. At some point, I’ll release part of this bot to my Discord community, so stay tuned. For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejob.com slash episode 598. 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 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. In this episode, I have Brett Curry back on the show to discuss YouTube’s answer to TikTok Shop. We dive into YouTube’s latest push into shoppable video content and how it’s reshaping the way creators and brands sell online. But before we begin, I want to let you know that session recordings for Seller Summit 2025 are now available over at sellersummit.com. If you missed the event, you can now get instant access to every keynote, workshop and panel.

00:30
go over to sellersummit.com. Now on to the show.

00:39
Welcome to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Brett Curry back on the show. Brett is someone who I’ve known for almost a decade now. He recently spoke at my event and I think he’s spoken there, I don’t know, every year for like the past seven years, I want to say. Has it been seven years? He runs OMG Commerce, which is an e-commerce agency that has helped hundreds of companies with their pay-per-click advertising. And we all know that social shopping is all the rage right now.

01:09
And just a month ago, he gave an amazing talk on shoppable YouTube ads, which is Google’s response to TikTok shop. And I did not get a chance to see his talk live, even though it was my own event. But I did catch the recording last night and I had so many questions. So today we’re going to dig deep on how to leverage YouTube for your e-commerce business. And with that, welcome to the show, Brett.

01:33
How you doing Steve? What’s up, man? I am thrilled to be back. I think this may be, is this round four probably for me appearing on your pod, which is great. I love this pod. Love chatting with you and yeah. Hey, solar summit for those that have not made the trip to Fort Lauderdale yet. You got to do it. It’s one of my favorite communities or my favorite events. And yeah, the pack that the talk that I gave this time was packed and was back. Yeah. People want to know about YouTube, right? People want to diversify and understand what’s cooking there. And so

02:02
Yeah, we got YouTube ads and we got YouTube organic and we got YouTube affiliate, which is kind of their answer to TikTok shops. so lots of fun stuff we could dive into. So what’s up with OMG. So are more and more clients asking for social promotion now and TikTok YouTube help? Yeah, it’s really interesting. So, uh, we don’t do TikTok shops directly. We do pull in a resource. If a client really wants that and they don’t have a solution for it. Uh, people are talking about TikTok shops.

02:29
regularly, although it is a bit split. I’m not sure what you’re hearing, Steve, but, like we, uh, it kind of runs the gamut. So a good friend of mine, actually, you know him too. I didn’t get approval to mention this. I won’t say his name, but he’s literally five X his business was not a bad business, but literally five X growth on Tik TOK shops. Just talk to, uh, um, another brand that everyone would know here. They’re in the food and Bev space and they’re like, yeah, tried to talk shops, did nothing like we’re, we’re abandoning it. We’re doing other things. Right. So.

02:58
It does seem to be hit or miss. does seem to apply to certain categories and maybe not as well to others. Uh, but people are still interested. but yeah, the, the interest in YouTube over the last quarter, uh, has really ticked up. And I think there’s a few reasons for that. One, there’s just a constant drive to diversify. So still most DTC brands, the majority of their ad spend is on meta and that’s fine. Uh, probably rightfully so for most brands.

03:26
But that’s an uncomfortable place to be in, right? If I’m spending 70 % of my ad budget on Meta, I feel like Zuck has got a little bit too much control over my brand, and so I’m looking to diversify, so that’s a piece of it. But then there’s also, did you see the House Analytics incrementality study done on YouTube? And it’s H-A-U-S, but that the one you referenced in your talk? It’s the one I referenced in the talk, yeah. Super interesting. So my friend Andrew Ferris, awesome podcast. He interviewed Olivia Corey from House Analytics, but basically,

03:56
You know, what they did is they studied like 190, they did 190 incrementality studies involving YouTube, 74 brands. So these are big brands like AG1 and Ridge and stuff like that. And they found that, that YouTube is wildly more incremental, wildly more impactful. You’re have to define all these terms by the way. will. Yes. Okay. Yes. Yeah. So it’s wildly more impactful in terms of real results than what you see in platform. And I think a lot of us are used to platforms.

04:26
over-exaggerating, right? Or like platforms taking credit for everything. For a few reasons, and I can unpack them here as we go, YouTube is the opposite. YouTube is going to under count, under report. So it’s going to look bad in platform, but the real results are quite positive. And so we can unpack that, but that’s just kind of ton of coverage in the space. And so a lot of people are like, Hey, I need to give YouTube another look. And so, so we feel that a lot of conversations because of that. Let’s take a step back.

04:52
Just in case the listeners have no idea anything about YouTube, but what are shoppable YouTube ads? Can you just define that first? Yeah, yeah. So there’s a few, there’s a few ways to look at this. So, um, shoppable YouTube ads, um, those can just be like the pre-roll ads. So I’m on YouTube. I’m about to watch my Mr. Beast video or a, you know, cooking video or whatever. There’s a pre-roll video that pops up. Usually they’re skippable. So I can hit skip after five seconds.

05:18
And they either have just a call to action button around it, or it could have your products listed right beside that video. So that would be a true shoppable ad where it’s like, your product feed for relevant products that you talk about in that video, they’re right there by the video on YouTube. So can click and buy there. There’s certain cases we use those in certain cases we don’t. And then, and then you’ve got the opportunities to take creators content. So, so people that.

05:47
have a following on YouTube, they may be talked about your product and you can turn that into an ad as well. And so that there’s opportunities there. But YouTube is, it’s an interesting beast, right? There’s so many different platforms. Like it’s wildly popular on connected TVs now. It’s most streamed connected TV channel. It’s, you YouTube shorts is growing, things like that. Yeah. I was just looking at my channel statistics for YouTube.

06:16
And it was something crazy, like almost 40 % watch my videos on a TV and not on a phone. Yeah. I’m sure that I’m sure that surprised you, right? Like really people are watching e-commerce news and events and stuff on, on TV, but exactly the answer is they are. just shows like TV is hurting. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, so get a little of this. YouTube has been, uh, and this is not just YouTube TV. YouTube TV is thrown into this. So like we, use YouTube TV.

06:46
As a family so that that’s our cable subscription. So I watch ESPN and all the sports program and I watched that through YouTube TV, but, uh, this is way more than that. So this is, know, the good old fashioned YouTube app, but on connected TVs, it’s bigger than Netflix. It’s way big. it’s bigger than Netflix. Netflix is number two, but YouTube is bigger than Hulu. It’s bigger than Disney plus it’s bigger than Peacock and it’s bigger than one other, a prime video, all of those combined.

07:14
Meaning more people stream YouTube on their connected TV than all those other platforms combined. Not more than Netflix. Netflix is number two. But yeah, people are just consuming YouTube on connected TVs. And it’s a great experience, right? Like when I let my kids watch TV, they’re oftentimes watching YouTube and consuming it that way. So it’s a great user experience, but it does feed back to the tracking issue that we had before. that’s what I was getting watching on TV, there’s no clicks.

07:43
Right. can, you can send to phone, there’s QR codes and stuff like that, but most people don’t do that. Right. You’re, you’re watching, you’re watching TV. And so, um, there are essentially no clicks from there, but those ads can be very, very impactful. So in your talk, you mentioned like if the YouTube dashboard for your ads says a one X return on ad spend, it’s really equivalent to three and a half or something crazy like that. Yeah.

08:07
And then so one of the tenets of your talk was stop paying attention to ROAS and start paying more attention to IROAS, which I wanted you to define real quick before we go into depth. So the, the I and IROAS, it’s not, it’s not an Apple product, right? That’s kind of what it sounds like, but it’s, but it’s a, it’s incremental ROAS, meaning it’s the cost for sales you wouldn’t have gotten anyway. And that’s, that’s the essence of incrementality. Right. And I think a good example to use here.

08:37
Let’s take branded search and we don’t want to make this podcast about branded search. I’ve definitely got a point of view there. I think you should do it, but you should, you know, temperate. Don’t want to spend too much, but it’s probably one of those things where if you turned off branded search completely, you might not feel the impact, at least not right away on your business. Right. So that that’s not incremental, meaning you turn it on, you turn it off. Yeah. Not really getting any additional sales. However, for a lot of brands, if you’re spending 70 % of your budget on meta,

09:06
and you shut Meta off, I promise you, you’re going to see a decline in sales and not just a decline in Meta sales, but you’ll see a decline on Amazon and other places and stuff like that. Yep. So that’s, that’s highly incremental, meaning, uh, you, you got those sales because of the advertising and you wouldn’t have gotten them otherwise. So that that’s true incrementality. And so, uh, what Google does now and Meta does this and stuff too, is that they’ll, they’ll do incrementality studies on your behalf where they’ll look at,

09:36
Hey, these are users that saw an ad. These are users that didn’t see an ad. What was the purchase behavior? How different was it? And so that’s going to give you kind of this IROAS number to say, what’s really going on with my advertising? Is this really working or is it not? Do they do that for everyone or just the big guys? So it’s becoming more and more accessible. And we actually just did a training with our Google team earlier this week.

10:01
where there’s, three types of studies that we try to run on a continual basis for our clients. Uh, one is called brand lift. And you’ve probably seen this, Steve, if you’re on YouTube, sometimes that pre-roll ad that you get served is a survey. Like, Hey, have you seen an ad for Geico and Allstate and, uh, you know, progressive this, this month or whatever. And so you click yes or no or whatever. Um, so that that’s part of brand lift. Uh, so, so Google is.

10:29
conducting those surveys on behalf of their advertisers and then feeding that information back to advertisers. So what you can do with brand lift is you can see like, Hey, are my ads causing an increase in awareness? Are they causing an increase in purchase consideration? But it’s all survey based. think those are mildly beneficial. I think you’re spending a lot of money. They can be. And if you’re definitely, if you’re progressive or if you’re all state or something like that, you probably want that data.

10:54
I think for a lot of our clients, for a lot of DTC brands, you eight, nine figure brands, it’s, it’s somewhat helpful. Um, so that, that’s one thing that we do run just, just in case there are some good insights there. Uh, the next thing is search lift. I love this one. So this is where Google looks at, Hey, people that saw your ad, people that didn’t see your ad, how did they differ in their search behavior? So basically what this is trying to understand is if someone saw your YouTube ad,

11:21
Are they more likely to search for your brand and specifically how much of a lift did that create in searches? I love this metric because I think this is what YouTube should do, right? If I’m on my TV, I’m watching the latest Steve Chu video. got popcorn and a LaCroix whatever I’m, you know, whatever I’m consuming and I see this ad. I’m like, Oh, that’s interesting, but I can’t miss Steve Chu. Like I got to stick around and watch this. So, but afterwards I’m to go search right afterwards. I’m going to go search for whatever ad I saw and that’s how I’m going to do it. And so.

11:50
That search lift super, super important. So we run those continuously. And then the third one, and this is newer. This is like the IRO ads, what I was talking about. It’s called conversion lift. And basically it’s similar to search lift. It’s like, Hey, here’s a group of users that didn’t see your ad. Here’s a group of users that did see your ad. What was the difference in purchase? they split test out. Does that happen automatically when you run YouTube ads? It does not happen automatically, but you can set these up to be running.

12:19
continuously. And so then you can constantly be measuring it. So then it’s like, okay, I can see click data. I can see conversion data. I can see view data. All that is automatically there. But then these are additional things to layer in because we’ve seen this a lot, like, you know, big, advertisers, Arctic, uh, they’re more than coolers. We did a big push for them last year for coolers, their Yeti competitor. And our, our whole goal was can we drive sales to Walmart? And it was a, it was a considerable lift. It was like range from

12:47
15 to 25 % lift in Walmart sales because of this ad campaign. We won an agency excellence award for it. But those were like, you didn’t see those conversions in YouTube, right? Cause those conversions were happening on Walmart, but we were able to kind of see search lift and brand lift and some of these things that helped, you know, inform, are we on the right track as we’re going here?

13:11
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.

13:41
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.

13:52
So here’s my problem. Like I’ve been spoiled with ads, right? Where you get a click and it leads to a conversion and you can tie it. And if you use tools, you can see the whole click path, right? My problem with YouTube ads is it’s kind of like TV, right? In the old days, Where you run the ad and you might see a lift, but it’s not really easily measurable. Right? So as a small guy, like a little guy, and I want to run these YouTube ads,

14:22
how am I gonna prove to myself that I’m not just flushing money down the drain? Yeah, yeah. It’s a great call out. And so I think that there’s a few things to keep in mind here. That analogy is really sound. Now I think YouTube isn’t just like TV, but I think it’s like this generation’s TV only, way better in a lot of ways. Yeah. But you got YouTube shorts, which is a little more social and things like that. But.

14:46
But yeah, back in the day, if I was running a TV ad, I got no click data. I got nothing, right? I could just see did the cash register ring a little bit more? Did I get more cash coming in? But we’ve all been spoiled, right? Cause we’re running sponsored product ads on Amazon, running Google shopping ads on Google. We can see click keyword, purchase. can see all that stuff, right? And I do think all of those things are the best place to start, but here’s how I would, I would look at YouTube if, if I was smaller and even going back to like that house analytics study.

15:17
That was AG one and Ridge and you know, eight and nine figure DTC brands. So what they do isn’t necessarily what the rest of us would do right out of the gate. So I’ll give you an example. Um, got a client, they they’re in the pickleball space. So pickleball apparel, pickleball paddles, awesome, awesome brand. So they’re like, Hey, we’ve got some pretty cool YouTube content. How do we get the most out of that? How can we lean in and start getting traffic? So here’s what we recommended to them. This is one of those categories.

15:47
Where if someone is into pickleball, they are really into pickleball, right? So it’s almost like golfing or, or, you know, camping and outdoors and fishing or about a four by four truck a couple of years ago, I got really into it for a little bit. Um, I’m into Blackstone, you know, griddle cooking on a griddle now. Someone’s watching Blackstone videos. so pickleball is like that, right? Like you, when you are interested in pickleball, you start watching content for fun about pickleball.

16:11
So here’s what we did. We’re like, Hey, let’s, let’s get some of your review videos, your, your reviews about your paddles and their paddles are unique and they’re, they’re awesome. And like the founder of the brand was a championship pickleball player or whatever. so like, Hey, we’re, we’re, we’re going to run some view based campaigns, meaning we’re running these campaigns to get views, to get engagements, just to show up, you know, in front of people. We’re not going to see probably any conversions really not, not directly attributable conversions, but that’s okay. We’re not going to spend a lot of money on it. But then what we did is we Hey, let’s target.

16:41
these pickleball channels. So these are our favorite pickleball tutorial channels, people learning how to improve their serve or improve, you know, whatever their doubles game or that type of thing. Or there’s also some channels where these are all pickleball paddle reviews, right? So someone is watching a review on pickleball paddles and that’s something that’s really been growing over time where, people will use YouTube for years, like for product recommendations and product reviews, but we’re seeing that trend line increase.

17:10
Where people are looking at, this product versus that product on YouTube or this product review, this product demonstration, they’re looking for that on, on YouTube. And then in fact, saw a stat recently, it was kind of interesting that, that 80 % of, uh, users on the internet say they trust YouTube creators more than other influencers or more than other creators. And so I that was, thought that was kind of interesting, but people go to YouTube to look for these recommendations. So we’re doing for the pickleball companies were saying, Hey, let’s just run your.

17:38
pickleball paddle review video and some of these educational videos on your paddles, let’s just target all these channels. We won’t spend a lot of money. You know, maybe it’s, I can’t remember exactly what we recommended for them, but maybe it’s 20 bucks a day. Maybe it’s 50 bucks a maybe it’s a hundred bucks a day. We’re just getting views. Just getting views. Now you’re not going to get conversions there directly, but over time you can start to see, are more people searching for my brand on Amazon or more people searching for my brand on Google? Am I seeing a lift in?

18:05
unattributed sales, right? Where maybe I’m getting like a lift in direct sales, you know, through Google Analytics for things like that. So you have to just start do a little more sleuthing or a little more looking for, okay, where could these sales be showing up? So that’s the that’s the way to get started. Now, if you want to go hard on like, conversion focus campaigns, I’m bidding to get customers and acceptable CPA or acceptable CAC or whatever, then you got to kind of shift gears into a conversion focus campaigns and those

18:35
They don’t technically have minimums, but like there’s some kind of rules of thumb you need to use to get, to get the algorithm enough conversions where it actually is going to work. Um, and so that does often take minimums. Like you probably want to be in the three to $500 a day, maybe a thousand a day is even better. Like to get, get those campaigns going. Can you set some expectations with the first method that you described? Like how much time should you give it minimum? Yeah. Yeah. So there’s a couple of things you can look for here. I would, I would totally look at that as a long-term play. So set a budget where it’s like.

19:04
I could spend this for three months and if nothing happens, I won’t be excited, but it won’t kill me. But what I would look at immediately then, so start running those campaigns, look at what is my view rate. So with all of these ads, someone can choose to skip if they want to, The pre-roll ad pops up, you’re like, curse you ad, I want to move on. So you can see what the skip rate is, what the view rate is. Generally speaking, I like to see a view rate that’s north of 20%.

19:32
If that can be north of 40 % even better, if it’s on a connected TV, it probably does need to be like 50 % or higher to show like, Hey, this is good content. People like it and I’m reaching the right, the right audience. So I would look at view metrics right away. You can look at things like, um, uh, views that happen after they watch that. So if you’ve got a channel, like I know you’ve got a channel, this, this pickleball company has got a channel. So did somebody see the ad and then did they consume more of my content?

20:00
That’s a good signal that hey, okay, they’re kind of my content and checking it out. And then what I would look for is, okay, am I seeing a lift in branded search? Am I seeing a lift in direct traffic and things like that? But I would definitely run it for several weeks, but just know you can get that view data and that engagement data really quickly to show, I reaching the right person and is my creative striking a chord? And it sounds like branded search is a really good indicator, right?

20:29
It is, it is. Yeah, because I mean that that’s generally the next step, right? Occasionally someone’s going to click. You’ll get click data in these campaigns too. So even if it is a view based campaign, you’ll see click data. It’s just not that many people click, right? It’s like half the click through rate of meta. So it’s not that it’s not that much, but you’ll see it. But then it’s like, yeah, are people searching for me? But I would also, I would look, you if you’re selling on Amazon and you’re selling on your own.com, look at branded search in both places. We ran this for, you know, we ran YouTube at the

20:57
got to almost a million a month in spend for big haircare brand, their Amazon just took off like a rocket. we determined over time they had a data scientist team. pretty, pretty advanced, pretty sophisticated, but they determined for every one sale we were getting D to C from YouTube, they were getting two on, on Amazon, uh, just kind of based on the way they backed into the numbers. So, uh, you do have to look at, at both places, both

21:22
and on Amazon if you’re selling in both places. Yeah, I think the numbers for TikTok Shop are similar. Yeah, I bet they are. and maybe like 30 % on your DTC store. Yeah, yeah, so it’d be almost exactly the same. Yeah. Well, I want to switch gears a little bit and just kind of talk about YouTube’s answer to TikTok Shop. And it’s pretty new. It is. Not a lot of people know about it. So give us a scoop, Brett.

21:49
Yeah. So one, I’m really excited about this. I don’t know that this current iteration is going to be the thing or the answer, but I am optimistic that YouTube is going to be able to figure this out. And honestly, if they don’t figure it out, that’s on them, right? YouTube, YouTube’s got the viewers. YouTube has the creators, you YouTube has the format. Like this should work if it doesn’t, that’s just cause YouTube drops the ball. Right. So I do want to make a couple of comparisons here where, um, you know,

22:19
TikTok I think has the ability to go viral quickly, right? Like the right creator, the right content, it can go from zero to off the charts viral. YouTube doesn’t really do that, right? It’s, know, yes, there’s viral content, but a lot of times the content gets better over time, right? You post a video that’s a review on, you know, the latest Toyota Tundra or you post a video that’s the, know, this new Blackstone accessory or whatever, it’s probably gonna grow over time and maybe.

22:46
two years from now, it’s getting more views than it gets right now. Whereas, know, Tik Tok, it’s dead and you know, a week or whatever. So it’s just, it’s just different. But the way this is working now is Google has created a portal where you can connect your brand with creators on YouTube. And this is all kind of done through merchant center now. So if you’re running Google shopping, you’re running performance max, you’ve got a merchant center account.

23:13
That’s where your, your, all your product data, your, your, this where your product feed lives is inside a merchant center. need to have a feed in order for this to work, right? You do need to have a feed in order for this to work. You do. Yeah. And so, so then the way this works is basically you get signed up for the program. It’s, it’s an open beta now, so anybody can, can get involved. Um, you set a commission. So you’re like, Hey, I’m willing to pay 15, 20, 30, 50, whatever the percentage you’re willing to pay to a creator if they sell my product. And then creators can, can see that.

23:42
You know, they sign up for the program, they select your brand, they start tagging your products in their videos. Let’s say that I’m doing a makeup tutorial and, uh, you know, boom, I, Cindy Joe’s or boom beauty. mean, uh, as a fire company, we’re like, Hey, I love the moisturizer. I’m a type of moisturizer. Right. And so you tag that. And then in the video, we’re talking about moisturizers that shoppable clickable, uh, product listing pops up.

24:08
they’re right adjacent to the video. kind of below it, if it’s on mobile, beside it, if it’s on desktop, type of thing. And so then if someone’s watching that organic piece of content and they see the tag for that boom product, they click on it, they buy, now that affiliate gets a commission. And so it’s pretty slick. There’s still some bugs to be ironed out. Like right now you can find creators that you want to reach out to, but you can’t reach out to them in the platform, right? You got to like…

24:36
You can find them inside of a YouTube affiliate, but then you just got to manually go reach out and find them. People can find you and that’s what we’ve seen. But I’ll give you some numbers here that kind of paint, think the potential here. So we have a client in the sleep space, a really cool brand, fun brand. So we set them up here. We didn’t do a lot to promote it. We’re like, Hey, let’s just see. They didn’t do a lot to promote it. Well, a handful of creators like, we love this product. We’re going to tag it and start trying to sell it. And so.

25:04
I think this was over like the last six months or so they’ve gotten 20 million organic views. Uh, they’ve sold, I don’t know, 20, some thousand dollars worth of products paid out like four to, I don’t remember maybe $6,000 in commissions. Um, I think the CPM worked out to be like 15 cents or something crazy like that, right? Where like, you know, a good, a good CPM on Google or on YouTube ads is like from

25:29
You know, $18 on down and a medic can be kind of all over the board, but yeah, it was like 13 cents cost per per thousand. Right. And so, yeah, I think there’s, there’s real potential here. As long as Google can make this easier for creators to find products for brands to connect with creators. I kind of think they need to solve that communication piece eventually. That’s gonna, that’s going to be really helpful. Uh, but that’s, that’s basically it. It’s Hey, creators can tag your products in.

25:58
their organic videos, they’re in a commission, you get, you know, the exposure from those organic videos. And so it’s pretty powerful. Then similar to TikTok shops over time, you can say, oh, wow, these three or four, 10 creators, like their videos really took off. So I’m gonna take the clip of them talking about my product. I’m gonna turn that into an ad. And so that’s called… Walk me through the process because I’m pretty familiar with the TikTok shop process where you…

26:27
have to get a certain number of sales and then you can message, you know, 7,000 creators a week and whatnot. It’s all built in. Is the affiliate program at least built into YouTube directly? So you don’t have, does YouTube handle the money? Yeah. So YouTube will handle the commissions. Yep. They can handle it. you or the communication is up to you, but basically this is all set up in, Google merchant center. And so there’s, there’s a couple of caveats here. Uh, one in order to participate, you have to either use the Google YouTube app.

26:56
by Shopify, so it’s the Shopify app. A lot of brands are using that anyway. If you’re not using that though, there is good news in, let’s say you’re using like Data Feedwatch or Channable or Feedonomics or something like that. You can keep using that solution for shopping and PMAX and stuff. You’ll need to add though that Google and YouTube app for Shopify for the YouTube affiliate. So you’ve got to have that so that’s a must or.

27:23
You gotta be using a CJ, which used to be Commission Junction. Yeah. Impact. And there’s one, there’s one other, I’ll look it up here in a minute. That’s okay, yeah. While you’re talking. But there’s like four options. So you gotta have that set up. If you have that set up then, then you know, YouTube can handle the commissions and stuff like that. I see. So YouTube, if you’re using like CJ or whatever, you’re using CJ’s affiliate, or YouTube is using CJ’s affiliate link. Yeah. And it’s all tracked. You connect the two.

27:51
So whichever those you’re using, you’re connecting that to Merchant Center and it’s a YouTube affiliate. And basically then in your Merchant Center where you see like promotions and products and stuff, there’s going to be a section that’s YouTube affiliate and you’ll click in that and then you’ll see all your data. is not collecting the money in this case. Correct. Oh, okay. So the reason why I’m mentioning all that is that means the merchant is responsible for paying the commission. Yeah. So if they choose not to, I mean, in theory they could screw over their

28:21
affiliates, which has happened in the past. It’s happened to me a bunch of times, actually. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. So I’m not sure all the remedies that Google has in place, you know, to protect creators and brands and stuff like that. But I do think there’s going to be a solution where people can just check out. know, I mean, there’s I there’s some options that the Google’s played with in the past. I it’s great for brands, right? The checkout happens on their site, right? And they all information. You own the customer at that point. All of that. Fantastic. OK, it’s great for merchants. OK, I like it.

28:50
Okay. Walk me through the process of outreach. Like you worked with this brand, right? You have to get people to promote your stuff. do, you do. there’s a, one of the easiest things to do is you can, there’s like this, um, uh, this way to promote your offer to creators. And this is something you sign up for inside of merchant center. And so basically it’s like, say, Hey, this is our normal commission rate. We’re doing a deal where we’re doubling the commission or whatever for this period of time. Here’s why here’s some messaging, stuff like that. It’s basically a form you fill out. That’s like a promotion.

29:19
Google then will send that to creators and for them to say, oh, cool, I like this. I’m going take advantage of this. So that’s probably the clearest, easiest thing to do. Also, if you have stuff built and you’ve got a bit of a brand anyway, creators will find you, right? I obviously wouldn’t lean into that. It’s like your, the field of dreams strategy, right? If we build it, they’ll come like that. lean on that. But that does happen if your brand has got some traction.

29:47
But then the other piece is like, it’s just super duper manual right now. So what you can do, and this is helpful-ish, you can start searching within the YouTube affiliate portal inside of Merchant Center and say, okay, I want like plant-based diets or I want, you know, black stone griddle cooking, or I want fly fish, whatever the case is. Then it’s going to populate here the top creators.

30:11
You can start looking at filters for like, Hey, I only want people that have gotten, you know, 50,000 views in the last 30 days, or I want people with a certain subscriber count. And so you can start to filter those. You can then build a list and you can save that list, but then it’s, up to you to just go knocking on those doors, right? you can reach out through like their YouTube channel and stuff, but you can build, you can build the list and you get the stats and you get all the information. Um, you can also then decide, okay. Uh, it’s like, this is my.

30:39
top tier of affiliates I wanna go after or creators I wanna go after. So I’m gonna build this list and all of these people, they get a 30 % commission, right? Everybody else gets a 15 % commission or whatever. And so then you can reach out and tell them like, hey, I really wanna work with you. I love your content. I’m doubling your commission, whatever the case is. And so then that makes that outreach a little bit easier. So yeah, it’s pretty manual at this point, but you at least have a few options that makes it a little bit easier. So right now it’s basically the old influencer model.

31:09
with the exception that they can easily grab your products and tag you in there. That’s the new step. Super easy. It’s like, yes, great. I love this makeup brush or this whatever, this Blackstone spatula. So I’m just going to tag it in my video and boom, now I’m done. Now Google tracks it. And only approved affiliate platforms are allowed. Yep. Yep, exactly. So you can’t It’s really just those that I mentioned. Yep.

31:35
Oh, just as, so you can’t take like a refversion or something like that, which you already have on your Shopify store, for example. No, no, you can’t use it. Okay. You can’t use that. So yeah, it’s gotta be that. It’s gotta be that YouTube app. Um, so it’s gotta be the Shopify YouTube Google act, uh, app. can be impact Rakuten or CJ. are the only options. Like those are like the biggest ones actually. Biggest ones. Yeah. Okay. I get it. Yeah. This is a lot different than Tik TOP, which manages everything. Right.

32:04
And you would think that with YouTube’s resources, they could easily replicate this. would think so. And I think they’re going to get there. We’re connected to a couple of the global product managers that are running this. And so I’m talking to them all the time. I they can’t be like super open about what’s, what’s on the roadmap, but I think they’ve got to get there just because then they’ll never be able to compete. Right. The beauty of TikTok shops is you can do it all there right now. can’t inside of YouTube, but I still think it’s worth.

32:31
test it out because they’ve got all the ingredients to make it work. Yeah, I like the idea, but just think about it from a creator perspective. Now I need to go sign up for CJ or Impact, which I guess isn’t a big deal. I already have accounts of both of those. But the fact that each one could potentially have a different one, Yeah. like the idea. Is this mainly for long form or does it apply to short form as well? In terms of the creator content, longer, form content?

32:58
It can be either. Yeah. So that this can apply to, to shorts. They can apply it to long form. You know, it does seem like a lot of the videos that get traction from creators are, are longer form, know, five minutes, 20 minutes, things like that, somewhere in that range, but it does depend. And this can work for shorts. Okay. So let’s tie it back to our original conversation now with IROAs. All Yeah. Most of these people are watching stuff on their TV, tick tock. Everyone’s on their phone, right? Yep. So

33:24
If this shows up on the TV and there’s products there, there’s no click, that means the affiliates don’t get paid out, right? And then the brand equity is, for the seller, it’s great, I think. You get the brand equity no matter what. It’s a great question. mean, so I think one of the things that Google is trying to solve, and they’re talking about this, they’re talking about this a little bit at Google Marketing Live recently.

33:49
is depending on the kind of remote you have for your connected TV, you can navigate to click on that or whatever. I don’t know, that seems a little bit cumbersome. I don’t tend to do that with my remote. I don’t think a lot of people do. You’ve also got the QR code that people can scan and stuff. But yeah, it does create a bit of an issue, right? So yeah, is Google gonna be able to attribute that back to the creator?

34:14
That does that does create some challenges seems like Google needs to use Google pay for all this stuff and not take to do the transaction on the On the Shopify store. Yeah, potentially and then maybe maybe that’s quickly on the horizon I’m not I’m not sure but that that in a lot of ways that does make sense

34:30
Yeah. Okay. All right. So it seems at least to me, and I know you’ve gotten results with your clients. It seems to me it’s not quite up to par with TikTok shop. Just not for sure. Not no, it’s, it’s in its infancy. Um, so this is more like, Hey, do you want to be an early adopter? Right. Do you believe in YouTube? Does your product really fit with like YouTube creators? I think a lot of products do. think there’s creators for almost any, any niche, but, but yeah, it’s not built out in the same way where like,

34:56
you’re not gonna five extra business with YouTube affiliate like you might with TikTok shops right now. But getting in early may cause you to be ahead of your competitor. Yeah, okay. So it seems like what we talked about in the beginning with YouTube ads is completely different than what we just talked about. It is. Right? It is, yeah. If you already have an influencer marketing strategy, this is just like one extra piece to it where you’re saying, hey, now you can tag the product super easy and this is how you do it.

35:26
Yep. Whereas before you’d have to put the link in the description and, and whatnot. Right? Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So some other way. like, you know, uh, know Sean from the Ridge, brilliant guy, you know, one of the ways they really grew the Ridge in the beginning was they reached out to a ton of YouTube influencers, like Fortnite, uh, creators and, know, just men’s fashion and whatnot. And they’re like, Hey, just, you know, talk about, a live read of Ridge in the middle of the video. We’ll pay, we’ll pay you for.

35:54
pay commissions, then yeah, then you’ve got to like give them their own link. They’ve got to, know, reference that in the video. Sometimes you’d like, we’ll just pay you for views type of thing. uh, but that’s all, that’s all very, very manual. This at least is easier in that tag a product, track it, you know, it’s pretty, straightforward. walk me through the negotiation then. So can you pay a creator less to make the video now and include the commission since it’s in theory, more commissionable. Does it change the negotiation?

36:23
Yeah. So potentially now, uh, I haven’t talked to Sean about this specifically, I hear using YouTube affiliate and you’re doing your old outreach. I’m not really sure what he’s doing, but, for the brands we’ve helped so far, they’ve kind of created treated. This is just separate, like, Hey, just tag the product. We’ll pay the commission end of story type of thing. Okay. So I know, I know other people just talking to another agency owner recently and they’re, they’re looking at, let’s reach out to a creator. We’ll pay them for the first 30 days of the views. We’ll pay them on a CPM basis.

36:52
So I think you got stuff like that. You could layer that. You could say, I’ll pay you a CPM and I’ll pay you the commission on the product. So I mean, think there’s a variety of ways you can go. But most of the people that we see testing this right now, they’re just saying, hey, tag the product, we’ll pay a commission and it’s a win-win at that point. Got it, got it. I guess the hard part is always to get them to make the video, right? Yeah. They have to feel incentivized that they’d be able to do this.

37:20
And that’s where I think, um, cause we had a conversation about this just recently. Someone was like, well, I want to pay like a 10 % commission. I’m like, wait a minute. What do you, what’s, what’s like your customer acquisition costs? Like what are you paying? You know, meta or Google or like a, you know, two, 2.5 ROAS. like, so you’re giving up almost half the sale to meta, but you only want to pay 10 % to the, they’re not going they’re not going to do it. Like why, why want to pay them the same or, know, anyway, so, so you got to think about it. It’s psychological. It’s totally psychological.

37:49
Well, that’s different. Well, I mean, okay. But, uh, and so I’m not saying you have to give away half, like incentivizing, like the, the, some, good affiliates are good and they’re, they’re going to go after they’re going to lean into the products that they pay them. And so, um, yeah, that’s how it’s going to ask you actually too, cause at least on Tik TOK and whatnot commissions are typically, you know, 15 to 20, but you’re right. Like if you’re, if you’re paying 50 % on meta, like,

38:18
For some reason there’s this psychological barrier. There is, there is physical products where people don’t want to go beyond 20. Yeah. Right. And that’s, that’s a five, that’s a five row as you’re paying 20 % five row as you’re probably not getting that anywhere. I, Hey, listen, I’m a huge fan of testing. Like if you start running a 20 % commission, you start getting results or 10%. Great. But I would just challenge that thinking of, what is my acceptable cost per acquisition? And I’ll pay close to that.

38:45
to an affiliate, to a creator, right? Because it’s the same. All right, so we actually talked a lot in a lot of broad categories in this talk. So give me your perfect customer or store that would want to try YouTube ads. Like how much are they making? How much are they willing to earn? It’s a great call out. I think

39:08
The easy answer is like if I was a, or the broad answer is if I owned a brand of my own, I would almost certainly try YouTube to some degree. So I might do that first strategy. talked about like the pickleball company where it’s like, I’m spending 20 bucks a day, 30 bucks a day targeting these types of channels and stuff, just because I think it’s going to have a little bit of an impact. Now that’s not like the best client for us necessarily. And so let me kind of differentiate that and let me talk about.

39:36
who do I think can really scale on YouTube? Who are the brands like in that house analytics study that are, oh, and also those brands were spending about 30 % of their meta budget on YouTube. So they’re spending a million a month on meta, they were spending 300,000 a month on YouTube or more. So that was just kind of as a comparison or as a point of reference. But basically what I’m looking for there is one, I do wanna be comfortable with knowing I’m gonna have to kind of triangulate.

40:05
the performance of YouTube, it’s not gonna be quite as clear or cut and dry as it is inside of Meta. So you gotta be comfortable with that. Also, I’m looking for either something that’s high LTV, meaning it’s a subscription-based product or multiple purchases, or I know I’ve got a doubt then how much I’m gonna earn from a customer, like in the first 60, 90, 180, that type of thing. So what’s that LTV? Or it needs to be a higher ticket item product. So like higher consideration set and things like that.

40:35
If this is a commodity product, a lower price product, I may not lean into YouTube unless there’s a ton of volume. Some exceptions would be like native. ran natives YouTube for six years. They grew tremendously with it and stick a deodorant, it’s 12 bucks or whatever. It’s a consumable though. It’s a consumable and you know, like, Hey, that’s a high LTV. So I get someone trying native. They love it. They’re going to stick forever. we, you we ran their direct response, uh, YouTube. ran YouTube to drive retail sales.

41:03
in, you know, Target Walmart, CVS, things like that. But generally, yeah, I want someone that’s got a higher LTV or a higher AOV. And so generally, like, if I am looking at a direct conversion campaign in YouTube, meaning I’m bidding on conversions, I’m training the algorithm on conversions, it’s pretty rare that you see a cost per conversion under 50 bucks, right? You just rarely see that. Now, generally, there’s gonna be other conversions happening that you can’t track, so it’s probably lower than that.

41:32
But just know in platform, that’s probably what you’re to see, but it may be pushing like 80 or a hundred. So you’ve got it. You got to kind of understand that that’s what it’s going to look like. And so am I, am I comfortable with that? And, so, so generally that’s what we’re looking for. And then I want, I want something that’s, it’s also lends itself well to visual storytelling. Um, and this can be about anything, right? We, we partner with the folks at Raindrop Raindrop creative. they did a lot of work with native and we were working there.

41:59
Uh, but they’ve got like laundry sauce, which is laundry detergent, right? They’ve got a Dr. Squatch, which soap, uh, shady rays, which is sunglasses. So it can be about anything, but can you lean into some good visual storytelling? That’s important too. I did kind of wrap that thought. I like, Hey, basically I talked about LTV AOV, you know, 50 to a hundred dollars CPAs, which are going to see in platform. And then said, it’s got to lend itself the price of lending itself well to visual storytelling. So I kind of wrapped with that. So.

42:28
So let’s wrap this up then. It seems like a few things are a no-brainer, right? It seems like you should hook up a merchant center account, no matter what brand you are, and just get your products, and at least you have that worst case scenario, you just start making your own products and your own videos. Yep. Right. And then if you do do influencer marketing or outreach,

42:52
you should just consider telling them, like if they’re YouTubers, hey, now you can easily tag products where this one’s available. Exactly. So you’re doing TikTok shops, you’re doing other affiliate outreach. Yeah, just share with those affiliates, hey, we’re on YouTube affiliate as well. Here’s how you tag it. And we’d love to pay a commission on YouTube as well. Yeah. And then for the other ads, it sounds like you said you should just dabble with just getting your brand out there in the beginning. And then if you’re seeing traction, maybe it might make sense to do a conversion. Yeah, I think so.

43:20
The nice thing is if you start kind of small and you’re just comfortable with, with view-based metrics and not seeing direct conversions, that’s at least going to show you like what hooks resonate, what are people engaging with? You will see some clicks. I don’t want to say there’s no clicks. And you can also see, okay, I ran these five videos. These two had the best view rate and the best click through rate. So, okay. I could probably do something with these. Right. And then you can lean into a conversion based campaign, but you probably need, know,

43:49
three to 500 to a thousand a day to really get enough conversions where you’re feeding the algorithm where it can go find you more conversions, that type of thing. Yeah. And as far as you know, outside of what Google can do for you or just looking at your branded search uplift, really you just got to look at like the halo effect. I mean, think that, you know, the search list inside of Google is really valuable. Their IROAS or conversion lift studies.

44:15
seeing the direct conversions and then, then yeah, looking, looking for this direct traffic up on my.com and it has branded search up and there’s brand a search up on, Amazon. it is a little more work. That’s, that’s for sure. So you gotta, you gotta be up for that. Okay. Well, Hey, thanks a lot for the overview, Brett. Uh, if anyone needs help on this stuff, uh, where, where can they find you? I mean, we’d love to connect with anybody, uh, uh, that’s looking at, YouTube or Google or Amazon. help with, with all those, but

44:43
I’m on LinkedIn, if anybody wants to connect on LinkedIn, I try to post pretty regularly. Brett Curry on LinkedIn, but then omgcommerce.com. If you have questions about YouTube, reach out. We love the chat, talk strategy, talk shop, show you what might be possible with YouTube for you. And so that’s the best way to connect, omgcommerce.com. But you’re right, Brett. mean, you got me thinking, like, TV is pretty much dead. Like, only people like my mom have cable.

45:10
All the young people are watching YouTube and TikTok and whatnot. Totally. Yeah. So it’s like the old school TV on steroids. new TV. Right. You got to be honest. And people are watching content like yours, but like my 14 year old daughter, she loves watching YouTube shorts on TV, which believe it or not, that’s correct. Which that seems silly to me, but she loves watching YouTube shorts on TV. Yeah.

45:36
Well, thanks Brett. hope this, I hope the listeners appreciate you. And if you ever want to see this guy in person, come to the seller summit. He always has a crowd around him though. So you might have to take a number. Awesome. Steve always great to chat, man. Thanks so much for the invite and look forward to chatting again.

45:52
Hope you enjoyed this episode. Are you going to try shoppable YouTube? Let me know in the comments. For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejob.com slash episode 597. 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 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. In this episode, Tony and I share what we’ve learned so far about building a community from the wins to the awkward missteps. We’ll talk about what’s worked, what definitely hasn’t, and some of the little moments that have surprised us along the way. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that the session recordings for Seller Summit 2025 are available over at sellersummit.com. If you missed the event,

00:27
you can now get instant access to every keynote, workshop, and panel. Now on to the show.

00:40
Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. Today we’re gonna talk about communities because this is something that has been very heavily on my mind and I actually just implemented a Discord community for my class members. And I’m thinking in broader terms now because email is getting less delivered, SMS is even getting less delivered. And so what’s the best way to get people to listen? It’s by building community.

01:09
It’s about being a part of a community and this is all new to me. So I’m just kind of winging it as we go along. So, yeah, let’s talk about the community you just launched. First of all, we’ll talk. go granular and then we’ll get bigger picture for people, because one of the things that you did that I think is super interesting is that even though you’ve had Facebook groups for people that are in the course and then like the general population, you created a community on Discord. Why Discord?

01:39
So honestly, Discord is like the platform for geeks. Like they have an awesome API. You can make bots, you can code in all these features and it’s free. So I think the free part is what appealed to you the most probably. Actually, the extensibility is what appealed to me the most plus the free made it a no brainer. Plus my friend is pretty high up at the company. So I know initially because this community just launched very recently and

02:07
Initially, I know you had some people who had trouble getting in. So I do think there is a little bit of a tech barrier for people. How is that going now? It’s been about a week. Okay, so that’s an exaggeration because any time you have any new platform, there’s always going to be someone who cannot do it. could be Gmail and they can’t get Gmail working. So to be fair, I did a very soft launch just to people who actually attended office hours live. And we had two people

02:37
say that they couldn’t get on and whatnot. Whereas the other, think we attracted 45 members that day. And of that two people could not get on due to, one, we kind of narrowed it down to an email deliverability issue. Like they couldn’t receive the password email, which I think is on their end. And the other person, we never figured it out. Cause I didn’t want to spend the whole office hours. Did they ever get in the community or are they still in limbo?

03:04
That I don’t know. We actually have office hours today and we’ll find out. Okay. So how do you have it structured inside Discord? Right now? Right now, it’s, I mean, it’s literally a week old, right? So there’s one room for discussion. So let’s talk about why I hate Facebook groups first. That’s more fun. Facebook groups suck. Like people would tag me on there and let’s say I was like in the car and I couldn’t get to it.

03:33
later on when I was not in my car, sometimes I wouldn’t be able to find that message again. It’s just not laid out well. then the fact that it doesn’t show you everything in your feed just kind of defeats the purpose. would also say the search featuring groups is terrible on Facebook. like, because what I found is that you, same thing, right? You’re somewhere, you see, you get a notification that you’ve been tagged in something.

04:00
you don’t have the ability to respond. Maybe you even take a peek at it, right? And you’re like, oh, this is gonna require me to sit down and think, right? And then when you go back to find that, and it’s not readily available, right? Because there’s activity in the community, it gets pushed down, whatever. Even when you try to search, it often, you can’t find it, right? Because the search is so janky, I think, in Facebook. So for me, that’s a huge negative. The other huge negative for me in Facebook groups is it requires getting on Facebook.

04:31
And so for someone like me who I don’t like to spend time on social media, especially not Facebook, once you get on to go into the community to answer a question, then you’re on Facebook, then you’re like, oh, someone tagged me in a photo from high school that I don’t want on the internet and someone did this and now someone sees that you’re on, so they try to message you, right? So then what becomes a simple answering a question now turns into 30 to 45 minutes of time wasted.

04:59
on social media because now you’ve been sucked into the Facebook vortex. I don’t know if that’s fair to say. Well, first of all, number one, you love Facebook because that’s your demographic, Tony. We all know that. Second of all, I think any community platform requires an app or something to get on it, right? That you have to have on. And then it’s pretty easy to get lost in like a Discord community also, because then you end up looking at all these other questions. that’s different. That’s different, right? Because if I’m

05:27
So the only thing I know on Discord is your community. don’t have any other, if I do have a tie on Discord, I don’t know about it, right? It’s something from like five years ago. So when I go on Discord, I’m only interacting with that community. I’m not being distracted by like, are they getting divorced? Because he’s posting all these pictures with this. got it. Oh, look, oh, look, she’s lost 100 pounds. And oh, look at this. oh, you know, there’s none of that, right? I’m only on there to look at the community. And then,

05:56
I’m done, right? So I think I’ve checked into your community maybe four or five times for about a week. And so I go in, I answer, if someone’s tagged me, I try to answer that question. And then I look through the other questions and see if there’s anything and then I’m done, right? There’s nothing else to distract me except for the stuff inside the community. So if you’re the community owner, I think it’s great because you go in, you deal with the community. If you’re using a separate platform, doesn’t have to be Discord.

06:24
And then and then there’s nothing else to take your time away. I can see that. mean, granted, right now it’s literally 45 people out of 6000. Right. Once it goes out, I don’t know how many people actually have discord. I was actually shocked. I think I can’t remember how many people are in office hours that day, but I think a good two thirds had discord, which shocked me. people that come to office hours, though, are a little more nerdy.

06:54
in general. Maybe. It’ll be interesting to see when it goes out to the whole group. But that brings up, I think, the first important point about a community and one that I don’t think that you’re actually prepared for, if we’re going to be honest about things today. Sure. Tell me. Tell me what I’m not prepared for. time it takes to run an active and healthy community. You joked right before we started recording, maybe ChatGPT can run the community for me.

07:22
Well, like we were joking about other things that Chad is doing very well. And while I think there probably will come a point where that is going to be a component, right? Where it can, there is some AI in it, right? And I’m sure like, especially with Discord, if you have the ability to like code things in, I can see maybe some like canned responses, things like that, the ability to sort of implement things that we do with email and customer service.

07:50
I have a solution to this problem, by the way, and it was not chatty. That was just a joke. But I do think one of the tough parts about a community, and I know a lot of people who’ve grown huge communities, right? Think about our friend Jen Garza, who had her, you know, 100 plus thousand keto community. Tiffany Avanosky had 70 plus thousand, you know, fashion based. It takes a lot of work to be in those communities, keeping it from getting spammy, making sure the discussions are

08:20
productive and positive, especially like right now, 45 people, that’s not that hard, right? But for most people, 45 people in a community is not going to move the needle in your business.

08:32
I’m not even thinking about the business part yet, but the moderation part is actually fairly straightforward. that I can see, this is why discord is valuable. I can write a little code that pipes in certain responses directly into open AI, get a sentiment analysis and then automatically ban someone or put them in like a suspension. don’t know if you can do that with any other platform where you have access to all that. Maybe you do, maybe it’s possible.

09:00
And then for the moderation part, I think once the community gets going, th there’s students that come to office hours like every week and they’ve been coming every week for five years. I would just ask them for help. Like if they want to moderate it. And I’m pretty sure I can find someone to help with that. Right. I can think of one person in particular who’d who’d love to do it in particular. Uh, once it gets off its feet and whatnot. So.

09:26
So back to the platform, like I think I was originally gonna do this on slack. Yes, because I love slack I have it on and it’s the search is great The huge disadvantage of slack is you got a paper member Which is ridiculous Granted I guess that’s probably not what slack was designed for it was probably designed for small teams You know working together but yeah, those those caught like if you had like a 5,000 member community be like

09:56
$50,000 Which is absolutely nuts. I actually asked ChatGBT, I said, hey, give me some places to host a community. Because I know we know of some, but I was like, there’s probably some that we haven’t heard of. Of course, their number one answer was Facebook groups. I think that’s been where communities have lived for a really long time. think the problem is, the other problem is you’re still relying on Facebook. You were saying,

10:25
You don’t see everything, not everything shows up anymore. And I mean, know people who’ve just been, their groups have been banned, right, or disbanded, right? So they’ve had issues with Facebook sort of just locking them out of their own. It’s not theirs, obviously, it’s Facebook’s. But, you know, so I think Facebook groups are still, they’re still popular, but I think there’s a lot of downside. And as these other platforms continue to become more popular and grow, I think Facebook groups are gonna become

10:54
less ideal, but they’re free. And that’s, think, the biggest draw. I mean, that’s the understatement of the century. I think Facebook groups suck. Once upon a time, they were great. And actually, grew mine, my regular, wife quit one to, I think it was like 14 or 15,000 people. Spam got out of control. Like they literally nerfed the reach, like in your feed, because they want to run more ads, right? And this is a long time ago.

11:23
That My Wife Quit group of 15,000 people is pretty much defunct. And it was defunct as soon as Facebook made those changes. Well, and it used to be one of the benefits of the groups was that when someone joined their group, if they were just casually on Facebook, they would get notifications about the groups. And that doesn’t happen anymore either. I think you’re right. It’s a lot of downside. They also talked about Discord, which we’ve talked about. One that they talked about that I’m not familiar with, and I don’t know if you’ve heard of, is called Geneva.

11:52
Never heard of it. It’s apparently free. It has chat, video rooms, all that stuff. So I don’t know if it’s even worth checking out if people have heard of it. It was one that was a complete shock to me because I had never heard of it. And I feel like I’ve done some research on this. So I think the important thing is that whatever platform you choose is kind of mainstream. Like I know you guys are starting a circle community. I feel like it’s not mainstream.

12:21
Meaning, like if I were to ask like a friend who’s not in the industry if they’ve heard of it before, they would probably say no. But you ask them if they’ve heard of Discord before and they will say yes. So I would agree with, I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know because most of my friends are in this world so everyone knows what Circle is. So I don’t have a lot of friends outside. Well, no, no, no, your friends like- have many friends outside of people in the internet space. No, no, no, the ones that you hang out with that I met, they’re not the only people I can ask.

12:50
Right, exactly. Whereas here, all my friends aren’t in this at all. So here’s what I think about that, though. So Circle is one, School is another one. That’s a really popular one. Mighty Networks is another popular one. Those three, think, are probably the most popular paid versions. They all have the free trial, but I don’t think any of them allow you to do anything that’s long-term free, like minimum sign-up type thing. So I think it doesn’t necessarily matter if people have heard of it because

13:21
I know a lot of people who are in communities and they don’t necessarily know what the platform is. They just know they click here to log on. So I think as long as you make it easy for people to join the community or to get into the community, the hosting of that community is probably not as important if it’s not a tech-based group.

13:44
This is what I mean by that. A lot of people already had Discord apps on their phone, surprisingly, right? So it makes it less friction. It’s kind of like joining an affiliate network, right? It’s like, oh, do I want to join another affiliate network or do I just join the one that I’m already on that I know about? I think it’s similar, but yeah, you’re right. Once someone’s ingrained in the community, the platform doesn’t matter. And I think for you, it’ll be really interesting if you open this up to everybody in the course.

14:09
how many, like, because right now you’re dealing with such a small sample size and I would say these people do lean tech heavy based on like who I know is in that group. It’ll be interesting when you open it up to the 6,000 if you’re still seeing that level of like, oh, I already had Discord. I think a lot of people are gonna be like, I have no idea what we’re doing, which is fine. I don’t think it’s that hard to figure out for sure. Well, I’m doing it slowly because I wanna see what the moderation is like and that way I can write those routines appropriately.

14:39
Not that anyone is like rude or anything, but people do occasionally post like self-promotional stuff, which sometimes is okay to me. Like I don’t usually care. But then there’s people who try to sell services, you know, or tools that I don’t want happening. Like of their own, of course. So I guess the next question is, your community is going to be free. No, it’s just a course. Oh, I thought you were going to open it up to anybody who wants to be.

15:09
Oh, okay. no. So first of all, this is only going to be course members for a long time, not for a long time, but for at least the rest of this year once, because I got to get to know the code base and what I can do and what I can’t do. And, you know, it just makes sense to roll it out slowly, especially since I’ve never done this before. Like, I don’t want to get destroyed, you know, inundated so far, and it’s only been a week.

15:37
Like people have already emailed me, know, of those 40, I would say 10 or 15 % have emailed me saying, hey, this is great. Like I can just message someone. I can message someone easily. messaging me. get an answer. So let’s cut this I said, it’s been great for me too. So I guess that’s my next question because I think a lot of people, I think this seems interesting to a lot of people and it’s actually on its own, a standalone business model.

16:04
You can have a paid community. But I think the gateway is to have, there’s a free level. Now for you, you’re kind of doing it the reverse way. You have a paid product, the community comes with the paid product. But at some point, you’re probably going to use the community to convince people to upgrade to the paid product. So people that aren’t in the course, to get them in. So what’s the strategy for that?

16:34
Is there strategy yet? I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. I seriously have not. Like the goal of this is not lead gen at the moment. The goal is to just make make a community of students that can ask questions and interact with other people easily. So here’s why I think that’s valuable for you and anyone. Right. So like we’re reversing this. Right. So instead of having a paid community, you’re having a free community for people who’ve already paid. I think the community will help people make progress.

17:03
Right, so it’ll help people continue to move forward with finding their product, getting sales wherever they are in that funnel. And I think anytime you can show success when you sell a service, you sell more services, right? So the better success stories you have, the better you sell. And so for this case, I think the community becomes a great marketing tool for, you know,

17:30
people seeing better success, being able to use that in your case studies, as well as just another selling point for being in the course, right? It’s not just a bunch of lessons, it’s also this community that’s very active, people are getting their questions answered within 48 hours, whatever it is, and being able to continue to make for progress in their businesses. Yeah, yeah. In terms of opening it up, I think I will need a lot more code in place to moderate stuff.

18:00
If anything is like the Facebook groups where every other comment was spam, that’s going to be infinitely worse on Discord. I will need to… There’s already a bunch of code written actually. I probably just need to adapt it to do the moderation. Which actually brings me to my question. Why are you guys on Circle? Is it a paid community only? So we are building a paid community. There will not be a free tier.

18:29
We’re doing the opposite. We’re bringing people in on a very low-priced offer with limited, I don’t want to say limited, but you’re not getting 450 lessons. The community is the lower hanging fruit and getting people in and then upselling them within the community to higher tier offers. We’re reversing what you’re doing basically.

19:00
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.

19:30
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.

19:40
Well, I mean, I might just charge like a buck. Yeah. So our right now we kind of have our entry price at nine dollars a month, which is ridiculously cheap. Probably not going to be that way for very long, but that’s I mean, I’m probably going to do that, too, just so it vets like the outright. And that’s where I think, you know, I actually went back and forth on the free paid. How much do you charge kind of thing and did a bunch of like forecasting models and things like that. But I think the one thing about people

20:09
that makes a difference is that it does keep out a level of spam. It’s not going to be, I mean, unless you’re charging $500 a month or something like that, you’re still gonna get problem people, right, at some point. But I think even at $1, $5, whatever, you’re going to minimize that from the start, which is why I think charging like a very small amount is not a bad idea. And honestly, for like a my wife quit her job community,

20:39
I think the charging is actually pretty smart as well as here’s my worry for like my wife quit her job because you already have an established group is that the new people coming in will annoy the old people. know, actually the old people, it’s all locked like the course members have their own. that’s what I was saying. If you’re doing something like this, you do need to have that locked area where the premium tier, whatever you want to call it. Right.

21:09
that they have a space to go to where they’re not. Because we’ve found that when we, every once in a while, we open up our Friday check-ins to all of YouTube. And all of our paid course members get annoyed at the questions that come in because usually they’re new, which is fine, or they haven’t gotten started, or their questions are very basic. They haven’t watched even a handful of YouTube videos, right? So you’re getting sort of this like hodgepodge of people.

21:37
Not all the time, but definitely happens. And so you want to make sure that you have like that safe space for paying customers to be able to have those higher level conversations. I mean, I want to save space myself. Opening this up. This is why I’m curious. I mean, you’re going to have this problem at a low price point. You’re going to have a moderation problem. Yes. Right.

22:01
Does Circle have built-in ways to moderate sentiment? It does. I’m still digging into everything that Circle has to offer. One of things that I say is a huge downfall of any of these paid products, School, Circle, Net, all those people, all those network type things, is that the more you’re willing to pay, the better the features are. Right? the basic plan is garbage. so the higher, like we were setting it up yesterday. Actually, we were getting

22:31
a few people into the community yesterday and realize that there’s nowhere to put if you have, like, is it, you you fill out your bio when you join the community and there’s nowhere to put like a YouTube handle, which to me is like a huge fail, right? Like most people are working and growing on some sort of like YouTube type platform. Yeah. And that wasn’t an option. was like Instagram, Facebook, whatever. So it’s not until you go to like the two hundred dollar a month option that you have

23:00
Shut up, you have to pay. So I was like, that’s garbage. Shame on you, Sturkle. To put it, that’s ridiculous. I know, further entrenching you in your Discord love. yeah. No, no, actually, I’m not in love with Discord. I just think it’s a great tool for the price point.

23:22
Right, and the extensibility. and I think if you have the ability to do some of the coding and technical stuff, either you personally do or you have someone on your staff or team or you can hire someone on Upwork, whatever it is. I definitely think it’s a great option. If you don’t want to do that, then I think something like a school or Circle, you know, one of the things that school does really well and Circle has the same component, I just haven’t used it yet, is that ability for people to see what’s locked.

23:52
which I think is like one of the greatest incentives to get people to upgrade is seeing what they can’t have. And I remember Digital Marker, I don’t know if Digital Marker still does this, but remember when you would buy like one of their $9.95 mini courses and then when you went to log in, it showed all the courses, but they were all grayed out so you couldn’t click on them.

24:16
And then you could always upgrade or you could get the package and get like 10 of them or whatever. But like to me, that was genius because it’s like you’re on there for 15 seconds and you’re like, oh, they have a YouTube tutorial. Like so to me, like I think and probably Discord has some ability to do this. But I think Circle and School do it really well is you can see like what you can’t have. And then also basically earning like it’s sort of the gamification.

24:44
where you earn points to be able to unlock different things, right? So based, yeah, you can do a Discord. But I think those types of things in communities are very effective is, one, for getting people to interact because there’s a reward system built in, and then two, I think for you, especially if people that come in and aren’t a part of the course can get a little peek at what’s happening and…

25:11
sort of like the next level stuff. To me, that’s obviously your course is expensive, so it’s not like a spur of the moment purchase, but I think people seeing that will be effective in getting people to convert at some point. Yeah, we’ll see how it goes. Like, I’m not even thinking that far ahead, like for the randos, so to speak. Just because I’ve just had this horrific experience with Facebook groups in the past with spam, right?

25:38
And there’s no real easy way to moderate that outside of going through each comment and saying deny, deny, deny, or whatever. Uh, this is one of the reasons why I like discord because of all the hooks. Like even if circle was free, I’d probably still go with discord actually, uh, based on the, I only took a very limited trial of circle to be fair. Uh, and then school, I actually didn’t try that thoroughly because

26:05
You guys had said some things about it. think Circle’s better than school. They’re priced about the same. I’ve worked now in both. I think Circle just has some better features. But I also think it’s one of those things too where, I mean, we’ll use Liz as an example. She started the Fluencer Fruit on Discord because that’s what the company wanted it to be on. And they were supposed to help with some things. And it ended up that they didn’t really have the bandwidth to help.

26:33
do some of the integrations and so she was kind of stuck and not able to do some of that so she ended up moving over to Circle. So I do think a lot of it is just personal preference and what you’re comfortable in because if you are gonna be the one managing and running the community, you have to wanna log in and deal with it every day. It is not intuitive, Discord. Some of the things are not intuitive. Like you’re attaching bots to what, mean.

27:02
Like I had to watch some videos just to even understand what the heck was going on, you know. But once you get it, it’s cool. It’s like anything in life, I think. I also don’t love that Discord is black.

27:14
Is there a way to change that? That’s just like, that’s just such a I wouldn’t even put brain power into that. I don’t really care how it looks Well, because I don’t like the black screen with the white text personally to read. That’s just a personal preference, which I don’t know. I’ve never seen a way to have Discord not look like that. And maybe that’s just the interface. I’ve not spent any brain power looking at that, but it’s probably true because black on white saves power on your phone.

27:43
That’s probably why they do it, yeah. Right? For certain screens, right? Because black doesn’t use power. I got these old eyes. got to.

27:55
But you’re right about the platform risk also, right? We’re beholden to Discord, Circle, and whatnot. And we’re beholden to Facebook. So unless you want to start your own platform, which is ironically something I had with the class before, that was a big time pain in the butt. I won’t do that again. I would say, unless you’re just so geeky and love

28:24
doing those things, coding up your own community. I didn’t code it up. It was just a standard off-the-shelf platform. didn’t Oh, I thought you did. Was it Andrew who coded his up? Somebody. No, no one’s coded theirs from scratch. They’ve modified what’s existing, which is what I did. There’s just all sorts of issues with that. It was also very ugly. You have to host it yourself. Oh, yes, I know it was ugly.

28:52
So also, I don’t know if you know this, but LinkedIn actually has a community option for LinkedIn groups. I did not know that. I’m new to LinkedIn. too. I just I’ve I did a deep dive into LinkedIn after. So last week we did a hot seat with Charles. And one of the things that he has been having some success with are these like many LinkedIn newsletters, which I was.

29:21
very interested in and so I basically spent the weekend sort of digging into like what can you do on LinkedIn, know, what ability, once again, you’re still building something on another platform, right, you don’t own anything on LinkedIn, but they basically do have little private groups where you can invite people in to chat and build a community. I’m not sure like what the limit is on it, like how many people can be in the group or anything like that, but.

29:48
That might be something too, where if you’re just getting started and you don’t want to invest any tech or anything like that, it just like, I wonder how many people would be interested in this. I think that might be an interesting option. doesn’t seem like it’s too difficult to set up. It’s basically just you just create the little group. So let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about nurturing the community and keeping it up.

30:15
My experience with that was I remember, like I was one of the first members of Andrew’s group over at ECF. And I remember in the beginning, Andrew was posting every single day in that group. So what are you guys doing? You have people paying 10 bucks a month, but even at 10 bucks a month, people expect value, right, as soon as they sign up. So what are you doing? So one of the things we’re doing is we’re actually holding a 45 minute like office hours every week.

30:43
in the community. That’s the bigger benefit. Obviously, the community will have conversation, but that’s our big draw is this 45-minute accountability session, a weekly accountability session. However, I think as we stand up this community, I do think you have to be in there every single day. I don’t think there’s a way around it, especially if-

31:13
Yours is a little different because these people already were in a community before you just kind of moved locations. But when you’re starting from scratch, I think you need to be in there or you need to have a dedicated person. It doesn’t necessarily have to be you on a daily basis, either starting a conversation every day or replying to conversations that will continue to grow. Right. So sort of open ended type things.

31:41
You know, the person who I think is so good at this is Tiffany Ivanovsky. You know, she’s done this in Facebook groups for years. And of course she’s got a very different type of group, right? It’s all clothes and fashion based. So it’s really about building like friendships and trust. And so she posts, you know, crazy things like when Paul goes to the store and buys 500 poinsettias, cause she said she wanted some color on the front porch, right? So she’s able to put like any kind of thing in there to drive engagement.

32:10
I think if you’re trying to build a business-based community, which we are both doing, it needs to be pretty focused on the types of business. So for you, obviously lately it could be anything involving tariffs or trade or stuff like that, stuff that just engage the people that are in there and start conversation. One of the things that I think we had someone post yesterday, basically like, hey, here’s this really great podcast. If you start listening at 40 minutes and whatever,

32:40
There’s a really good commentary on XYZ that we had talked about previously. So I think anything where you’re just like adding value, educational content, and then making sure that you interact when people post is really important, especially in the beginning when you don’t have like self-appointed community leaders. So right now, presumably you don’t have a ton of members and you’re doing these office hours for accountability. What happens when it gets to even like a hundred members?

33:09
That model will break down, right? For accountability? Yeah. Yes and no. I’m not sure. I mean, the community is not live. only people in there are invite only right now. But yeah. I mean, just looking forward. I think it’ll change a little bit. Either there’ll be multiple accountability times to accommodate, and it won’t always be run by us. So the goal would be to raise up people within the community to lead.

33:39
not for free, either for an exchange for community access, things like that. I’ve seen that work successfully in a lot of other groups. A good example of this is Ezra had a Facebook ads group for a long time. I don’t know if it was exactly Facebook ads, but it was some sort of ad-based group.

34:07
Was it Molly’s or? I of theirs. They were both attached to it. And it was pretty expensive, like several hundred dollars a month to be in the community. you know, and I think this is good and bad, like Molly wasn’t in it a whole lot. It was other people sort of leading the group. Now, I think the problem becomes when you sell it as so and so is going to be in here giving you advice versus like because. Right. And the crazy thing is that it’s not like the people that were in there.

34:36
didn’t know as much as anybody else, they did, they knew a lot, but when you pitch it one way and then deliver something different, I think that becomes problematic. We’re never pitching this community as Liz and myself, right? This is always a group type thing. So I think that’s important too, and I think for you, with the community, same thing, right? I would never pitch it as Steve answers all your questions in the group, right? Definitely not, not for the.

35:04
Well, for the course, yes. not for the like, it’s it’s a you really have to pitch it as a community of people like and I think I don’t know, like real life, like I used to be in a runners group. Right. And when I had a runner question, we had a group text. Like I wanted to know, certain pair of socks. Like I didn’t care who answered me in the group text. I just wanted. So I think you have to build it in that way where everybody in the community is going to add value and help other people in the community.

35:34
Yeah, that all sounds very idyllic. I think it’s maybe my space, but as soon as like I go live to everyone, I’m sure all these people want to use it for marketing. Right. And that’s where it’s just going to go to hell. So this is why I’m not going to do that for a while, because I need to research all the anti-spam bots and everything that I can implement first, because that’s what it’s going to be one big Festivus.

36:03
of spam. I can definitely see that. think another tip for people who are thinking about doing something like this is to join some communities, even if you have to pay inexpensive, and see how they manage those types of things. Everybody has different ways of managing. I know when Marie Forleo does B-School, there’s a pop-up community that lasts during the B-School period. Amy Porterfield does similar things where she has these pop-up communities.

36:32
And they seem pretty good about not having the spam. And obviously, I’m not in there 24-7, and I’m not monitoring them that closely. there’s clearly something that they’re doing to keep it. Well, yeah, it’s called, I bet it’s one person watching it all day. Not even joking. I’m willing to this is where you hire an overseas VA, honestly. This is where you pay someone overseas to monitor that.

37:01
Honestly, if if chat GPT can handle like 80 % of it, that’s it’s pretty easy for AI to spot like whether it’s going to be promotional. the other thing I think is and this is why I do think you should consider charging something to the non course members is that I think when people pay, they’re less likely to be when there’s like clear parameters set up before beforehand.

37:31
they’re less likely to do that because they don’t want to get kicked out. So I, yeah. Plus they’ve skinned the game. So I do think even having people pay something is worth it because, you know, I think it just clears out a lot of the problems. But yeah, I do think you have to monitor it pretty closely, especially with what you’re doing. The other thing that everyone has to deal with potentially is

38:00
You know, once you start charging monthly, like people’s credit cards, people complaining like, oh, you know, I couldn’t get into discord for like the last week and I get a pro rated. It opens yourself up to that stuff too, which is fine. I don’t know. I’m not even thinking that far ahead. Like if I can get my class community up and, and then I’ll consider looking at the moderation first. And then once I get the moderation down, then I’ll open it up. That, that, that’s my sequence.

38:31
I’m genuinely curious to see when you open it up. You’re just going to sit there with popcorn and laugh. I’m going to start drinking martinis and just sit there with a dirty martini. Even with ECF and Andrew, he has flare-ups happen all the time. These are people paying a of money. don’t know how much it A couple hundred dollars a month or something. A couple of hundred dollars a month.

39:01
Yeah, and I think, I don’t know, I’ve been following all the WNBA drama, so I’m all drama filled right now. I think sometimes drama’s okay as long as it’s moving towards a productive resolution. There have been some things in ECF that I did not feel were very productive and that were really, and I think that’s where as the community owner, you have to judge, is this in general going to make the community better or worse? And

39:29
even though some of it might be painful and might be hard, some of that’s okay to have happen because people do need to be able to have a place where they can speak, especially like a community like ECF where it’s a space where a lot of people don’t feel like they have anywhere else they can have these conversations. But there comes a time when it’s just bashing or just something that’s just really negative. And in that case, to me, you just have to shut it down, that conversation, that thread, whatever.

39:59
Well, one of the negatives of Discord is it’s hard to have dynamic threads. It’s basically one long chat, right? That’s a big negative. You can create separate rooms for certain topics, but it’s not like a forum where you have individual threads where people can comment. So I don’t know. have my only experience with all this is with course with courses. And I think for the course, having one long

40:29
thread works because oftentimes there’s not enough interaction with individual threads. Like when I had my other forum with threads, it just wasn’t that dynamic. So the conversation is better. when, but when you open it up to, don’t know how many people, let’s just call it like the size of my old Facebook group. Let’s say it’s like 15,000 people. Good Lord. I can’t even imagine.

40:59
what that’s going to be like. Yes. I’ll be interested to see if you decide at any point to open it up and you get to that point, does it work as a funneling tool? There’s so much work that’s involved in that. One is the moderation and then the payment processing part. Then there’s onboarding. Does Discord connect directly with a stripe or anything like that?

41:25
I’m not worried about that if it doesn’t. I’m sure it does because people have charged stuff like mid journey and whatnot. That’s all. I don’t fear that. Like writing code now is a snap because of chat. So anything I need, I can probably pump out really quickly. I don’t fear that at all. Like I don’t even have to read the documentation anymore. I was asking more for the general public, not for your own fear of that one. I’m sure there is. The answer is I’m sure there is.

41:52
Any platform will have an integration, for it to do exactly what you want, there’s some intricacies with payment processing. You might want to give them a 10-day free trial just to check it out before it kicks in. Some of those things might not be… I haven’t looked at it, so I didn’t want to comment.

42:19
Well, we’ll see the types of questions. It can be annoying. Like even then those Friday check-ins that we’ve done where we’ve opened it up to the YouTube channel. What’s annoying about that sometimes is that people are just asking very basic questions that are literally covered in like the first couple lessons in Some of them are covered in the free mini course. That is correct. And of course, if you’re a paid course member where you’ve already done the work, you know that

42:49
That can be negative. It’s almost like you need to have a beginner area, an intermediate and then advanced topics only. There’s a lot to think about here, which is why I’m not prepared to unleash it to the rest of final thought before we wrap this up. As we’re talking through this, I’m like, what if we just opened the community for webinars and put all the chat for the webinars in the community?

43:19
That was my next step actually. Because those people are already engaged. I’m not even there yet though because even those people… You’ve seen some of our live chats on our workshops get out of control. That would be the next step of It’s an interesting component to add to a webinar. I wonder if it would increase the sales.

43:50
Oh, you mean for people to ask questions? they, they not during the webinar, obviously, because you can’t monitor a chat and like discord more on the webinar. But I’m saying like for that, you know, let’s see, say webinar pitch starts on Wednesday, you get in the community on Monday, you’re in the community until Sunday, and then you’re out if you don’t buy the course. You see what I’m saying? I see. I wasn’t even thinking about that. I was thinking about having them as permanent.

44:19
unpaid members of the discord doing the moderation that you just suggested of kicking people out is tough unless you just destroy the discord server after you’re Cause then you need to know everyone’s handle and then you need to write a routine that fishes those people out and make sure and make sure they’re out. I don’t, I don’t know if that’d be worth my effort to do that.

44:48
Anyway, there’s a ton to think about. And if you guys are listening, we’re just at the beginning stages here, just talking things through. I think your community will go pretty smooth, right? Fingers crossed. it doesn’t get out of control quickly, right? There’s worse things that can happen if it grows quick, I would say.

45:07
I’ve been growing quickly, honestly has always been a problem for everything, for, for, for everything that I’ve ever done. Right. When there’s anything that grows like seven X like that one time we went on the today show that sucked. Um, and then that, when I got an influx of course members in my first, first webinar, that was kind of painful too.

45:32
because I realized I didn’t have good onboarding or anything. It’s nothing like the influx that shows you everything that’s broken in what you’re doing. Well, yeah, it’s stressful. Then you got to scramble to get it up. So we’re in the beginning stages, folks. We’ll report back. And if you’re listening to this and you’re interested in a community, let us know. Send us an email.

45:56
Hope you enjoyed this episode. Send me a note. At some point, I’ll be opening up the Discord to people who are actively selling right now. For more information and resources, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 596. 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 mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course. Just type in your email.

46:24
and I’ll send the course right away via email.

00:00
Welcome 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, Ian from Bullseye Sellers and I dive deep into how regular people with zero followers are building $75,000 a month businesses on TikTok Shop. We’ll break down exactly how this is happening, why it’s working right now, and what it takes to launch successfully without a big audience or ad budget. So if you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by all the noise online or unsure where to start,

00:28
This episode is a step-by-step, behind-the-scenes look at a strategy that’s actually working right now. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that session recordings for Seller Summit 2025 are now available over at SellerSummit.com. If you missed the event, you can now get instant access to every keynote, workshop, and panel. Now, on to the show.

00:55
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today I am thrilled to have Ian Page on the show. And Ian is the founder of Bullseye Sellers, where he helps e-commerce sellers launch on the TikTok Shop platform. And right now TikTok Shop is hot. It’s exploding with an expected GMV of over $50 billion this year. And it does convert four and a half times higher than traditional social media.

01:20
In this episode, we are going to break down Ian’s strategies on how to successfully launch your brand on TikTok, what it takes, what products work well on the platform. And with that, welcome to show Ian. How you doing today, man? Thank you for having me, Steve. I’m doing well. I’m in beautiful Pennsylvania. Where are you? I’m in California where the weather is perfect. I think I’m going to go for run right after this. I had the same thing. It’s like 75 degrees and sunny outside, so maybe I’ll go for a run with you.

01:49
So Ian, many the listeners I know you were at at seller summit, but many of my listeners probably do not know who you are. So I want to know how you got started in e commerce and how did you end up specializing in tick tock shop in particular? It all started with a back brace. In 2015, a back brace, a back brace. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I did a SM five. For those who don’t know, it’s an amazing selling machine. I know you know, Steve. Yep.

02:18
And it was one of those, it felt like a multi level marketing scam because all my friends were trying to get a commission off me and sell me the course. And it was like overpriced. And I was like, I don’t know about this, but you know, I had that entrepreneurial itch and I had a day job and pretty much in a cubicle and kind of that nine to five lifestyle. And I just wanted to get out of that. Um, wow, that was 10 years ago and, um, I bought the course. I just gave in. was like, all right.

02:46
screw it, I’m just going to give it a try. I’m to learn Amazon. And the course after completing it led me to a clavicle support brace. You know how you pick your first product that you. yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, I did some custom designing on it because when it, when it came from China, I was like kind of unhappy with it. It felt uncomfortable. So I actually like did a bunch of like custom designing on it with the manufacturer and it took off the clavicle support launched selling like a hundred, 200 units a day. And I was like, man, this is easy.

03:16
And I later to find out it’s not that easy for everybody, but I got, I got lucky. I had the right product at the right time. And I actually had a really early exit because what happened was I had a, a competitor that reached out to me that was a little annoyed at my presence and made me an offer. And I actually sold the brand, which at that point had a few skews in 2017. So I wasn’t actually in the e-comm space personally for too long. had immediate success and a quick.

03:45
exit. And then what happened in 2017 2018, a lot of my friends were asking me for advice. So you know, that’s just so common in the e commerce space of like, know, you know, guy who knows a guy and he’s in they stumble over each other to get your phone number and ask Ian because Ian is an e commerce expert or whatever they think I am, which I really wasn’t, I just knew a couple things. So I started doing a lot of like free consulting to friends.

04:15
And then, um, one thing led to another. And I was like, maybe I could charge for this, you know, maybe I should just sell my time. So I started selling hourly packages of consulting. And then one thing led to another. And I was like, I can’t scale this. Like I can’t scale my own hours in the day. That’s not possible. So I think maybe I should like start an agency and see what happens. And that was 2018, 2019 bulls eye sellers was born. So that’s where bulls eye came from really is all came from a back brace.

04:45
How did that lead to tick tock? Yeah. So the way that led to tick tock was in 2020. God, it was only last year. I was looking for an old number and it was only last year. Last year we went to prosper. My agency, uh, um, staff and I, think there, think eight of us went from bullseye and tick tock shop had a big booth there at prosper. And it was the coolest booth at prosper. mean, it was like lying out the door. People trying to talk to tick tock. Um,

05:14
And I already knew there was a TikTok shop. already knew viral on TikTok was always a thing and everyone wanted to go viral, but I didn’t really know like the weeds of it. Like what does it take? So I met with TikTok shop and the first thing they said is you have to become a TSP. was like, what is a TSP? They’re like, it’s TikTok shop partner. You have to become a TSP and before you can really do anything. Once you’re a TSP, you can, you’re in. And I was like, okay. So I applied and um,

05:43
supposedly it was really hard to become TSP. didn’t know. Um, cause I had a lot of peers that were like still waiting for their approval and I got approved within a month. Nice. And then, and then I was like, well, what do we do now? You know what I mean? Like, you know, I’m a, I’m a TSP. I’m an official tick tock shop partner, but I don’t know tick tock at all. And what do I do with this new found, uh, you know, license as a partner. And, um, so here’s what we did. We basically,

06:11
called all of our existing Amazon clients. had all my, all my account managers literally reach out to every single one and say, Hey, we will manage your tick tock shop for free commission only because we need to learn how to do this. And we already manage your Amazon. have asset. have all your assets. We already have this communication and this connection. Can I, for 8 % of your sales on tick tock represent your account? And of course everyone was like, sure. Because they were like sales.

06:40
It’s free sales. Like if you guys can get it and we give you 8 % and there’s no retainer, we’ll take it. Um, so we did that from right when I got back, uh, from prosper last year and I got that TSP official, whatever, which ended up not really helping me in the first year. And it’s helping me now. And we, uh, we got about 12 of our clients on Tik TOK and it was a nightmare. It was an absolute nightmare. Okay. We, we got rejected like 15 times and

07:09
documents never worked. And it was like, driver’s licenses were rejected, we just couldn’t get a break. It took six months, from March to October, to actually learn how to get a someone on TikTok shop in a reasonable amount of time. So I’m so glad I didn’t charge a retainer. It would have been such a nightmare. My turn would have been terrible. So was like, so happy. I was like, there’s no pressure. It’s commission only just figured out, you know, yeah. And then in October, we made our first sale.

07:39
Literally it was like middle of October, we had a skincare client and they’re now my number one client on Tik Tok actually. And they sell an eczema product and we got our first sale on Tik Tok through an affiliate video. And we were like, Oh my God, we, we are Tik Tok talk shop experts. Like literally right at that point, I was like, yeah, man, I’m an expert. Um, and then October led into the holiday season.

08:08
And that same brand did like 10 G’s in December. And it was like, wow, like this is something we can scale. That same brand did 25 G’s in January this year. They did 35 or maybe 38 in February. They broke 50 G’s in March. They broke 75 G’s in April. And right now they’re hovering at that 75 mark. Um, so they’re my biggest brand that we started from $0. Without a takeoff presence. would imagine.

08:36
from the first sale. They actually, they were banned on Tik TOK. They handed us over the account and they’re like, we actually banned ourselves because we didn’t know what we were doing, just getting it approved. So they were like negative, you know? Right. So yeah, that’s the journey of Tik TOK. It’s not this like, it’s not this like beautiful romantic story. It’s like us just like knocking our heads against the wall for six months and figuring it out. And I think that’s what a lot of people are still doing. And that’s why there’s a, there’s a big industry here now in the agency space.

09:05
manage the TikTok shops. There aren’t too many of you guys out there just yet. Maybe it’s because it’s the wild wild west so far, but it’s the wild west. Yeah, I am interested in seeing what you had to say about it. Now I know Amazon has been squeezing sellers and buyers more than ever before. And a lot of sellers are looking for alternative platforms and marketplaces to sell. So in your mind, if you’re already selling on Amazon in your own store, where does TikTok shop?

09:32
fall in the overall strategy and the priorities of selling to you? To me, it’s about timing. And what that means is where you’re at financially, because I don’t believe that a brand should stretch themselves too thin when they’re in the startup phase. And I would call that in the six figure a year phase. Okay. So if you’re a quarter million dollar seller on Amazon, I wouldn’t spend half your time trying to crack tick tock, I think you’ll go broke. I really do. Because you’re not getting enough profit from your quarter million.

10:00
to also seed samples to also pay for maybe expensive early ads on TikTok. And I think you’re going to stretch yourself too thin with your inventory and you’re not going to succeed on either platform. Okay. So what is the range that you recommend then? Seven figures on Amazon. And it’s very rare that we don’t take a client that’s not seven figures. The only times I won’t take a client that’s under seven figures on Amazon is if they already have other brands or they, just know that their capital.

10:29
infused and they can support the tick tock journey. If they’re not, and they’re bootstrapping the hell out of it. I wouldn’t recommend anybody hire an agency to do tick tock. And I say the same thing with meta Steve, like, I don’t, I don’t believe that a new seller should be like dabbling in meta dabbling in Google ads dabble. You know, I just feel like people get overly excited about all these different places that they can sell their products. And they’re masters of none, really, at that relief at that early stage.

10:58
Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. Just pick one medium, master it, and then move on to the next one. Make your money, pull your money, put it into other places once you’re ready. So what I would like to do first is to get people excited about TikTok. Tell me about some of the big wins. You already mentioned that eczema skincare company. What are the expectations here on the growth that you should see? Well, let me go back to that because that that eczema skincare company, when I say $75,000 a month on TikTok, it might sound like it’s not a lot, but what

11:27
what it really is, is five to 8 million impressions a month. That’s what they’re averaging. Wow. Okay. So five to 8 million impressions a month. Going to your Amazon store. And the reason I say going to your Amazon store is we found that 50 to 70 % of people with intent to buy on tik tok will actually prefer buying on Amazon. So they’ll, they’ll get inspired by a tik tok video, they’ll search the product on Amazon, and then rather prime it and get it the same day.

11:57
Okay. I’m sure most of our listeners here, you’re going to agree if you find something on Tik TOK, what’s more convenient than buying that same product on Amazon. Right. So that eczema skincare brand is seeing success that they’ve never seen before. They’re, they’re listing on Amazon for the same product is three X from when we started. Wow. Okay. Okay. Um, and it was actually kind of a dying brand. This was a brand friend of mine that for the last two years was just losing market share every single year, slowly to more competitors.

12:27
their cost per clicks were basically out being, they were like being bit out because they couldn’t afford those costs per clicks. So they were in that situation where just slowly losing market share on Amazon. And then we reversed that with this TikTok strategy. So there’s a halo effect on Amazon. What about their store? Did it have a hell effect as well? Yeah. Yeah. Their, their DTC saw a 25 % increase.

12:54
What we surveyed is 11%, which I think is probably more accurate. So, um, let’s say a hundred people see your video on tech talk and they all want to buy what we’ve surveyed to our audience. Uh, we have a huge shopper network that we surveyed regular people. And we said, where would you go? 11 % said, I’ll go to the website. 62 % say I’ll go to Amazon and the other what? 30%, 28 % or whatever that number is said, I’ll just buy it on tech talk.

13:24
So we are seeing that spillover on their website and on Amazon and their overall lift on e-commerce is way up because of that 75 grand off TikTok. So that’s the bigger reason why you do TikTok. So of those sales on TikTok, because I know you had to give away a commission and then there’s fees and whatnot, is the TikTok sales itself profitable or are you mainly relying on the halo effect for this whole operation to be profitable overall? Barely profitable.

13:53
I think their profit now is about 10,000 a month. so 10,000 on 75,000 in sales. Yeah, so that would not be a great contribution margin with Amazon if someone’s doing that. And so when you’re measuring the halo effect here, you would just kind of extrapolate out the sales that you would normally get and everything else. I assume this brand isn’t doing anything else, right, except for TikTok Shop. Okay. That’s it, that’s all we’re doing. Nice.

14:23
Yeah, okay. They even they even showed out on their Google ads. And they actually like have, you know, taken some of their Amazon PPC budget, Google budget, and they’ve given it to us. So I do know since I’m on TikTok, there are certain things that work better than others. And I just want to, I want you to just tell the audience here, what products work well, I know you have a screening process involved with the product, and you kind of describe what that is. I want brand focused products. So what that means is like, let’s just take

14:51
you know, any old product like this, you know, that this charger here, this is not a brand, this is a charger, right? Okay. So if someone even if it’s a cool charger, if someone watched a video, and this was like a unique charger, but it wasn’t really brand focus, like didn’t have like the branding all over it, the box wasn’t heavily branded, what’s going to happen is people are going to watch the video, and 60 70 % are going to go off tiktok platform, and they’re going to have a difficult time finding you and identifying you versus the other competitors on Amazon.

15:20
That’s going to be like a Swiss cheese situation where you’re basically just paying to get sales for everyone else. And maybe you get a little bit. I don’t want that. So what I would rather have is brand focused products where it’s very easy for the consumer that’s watching the video to be like, Oh yeah, brand blah charger. And they only go to your listing. So that’s the first thing that we filter out when we’re talking to people. Cause we talked to a lot of Amazon sellers who just sell stuff. Right.

15:51
I don’t really want people that just sell stuff. I want people who are building a brand. So what is your definition of brand here? I mean, you mentioned having a box and you know, with your, I mean, that’s like par for the course today, right? So what, what, what else are you looking at? Yeah, I’m looking at a shop with consistent products, not just a bunch of products that you sell because they have, okay, that all fall under like the same niche and they’re okay. Trying to build a portfolio. Okay. Got it. Okay. That’s right. Okay. Um, yeah, so that’s number one. And then number two, and

16:21
This doesn’t disqualify you, but this just highlights the type of client that does better is a high LTV consumable for sure. So if, if, know, if you have a supplement brand, a skincare brand, a haircare brand, something like that, you can absorb those costs, you know, for the affiliate commission, the Tik TOK commission.

16:45
the ads, all that are much easier for you to absorb because you get the repeat customer and you know that your LTV is, let’s say it’s 15 % of sales is going to result in two more orders or whatever that metric is. So that’s, that’s number two, it doesn’t disqualify you, but I would definitely say if you are in that category, you’re already on you’re already like on my radar is a great prospect for TikTok. you have an example of a product that is not a consumable? That’s one of your clients that has found success? Yeah.

17:13
We have a toy brand that sells bath toys for kids light up bath toys, little squeaky bath toys. They had this great product. That’s like a mold free. It doesn’t have that little hole in it. Right. So it’s like a mold free light up little squeaky bath toys. had a viral video back in April that just went nuclear and they completely sold out on Amazon. Um, and the ROAS was awesome. I think their cost per order was like a buck 50 for like a $12 product. So they were like,

17:42
thrilled and they didn’t care that it wasn’t a repeat customer because it was a profitable sale every single time for that product. So and they were very well branded. Again, that’s one of those things where a squeaky bath toy could easily just be a product but they definitely have a good brand and they really made it branded so people could could find them on Amazon. do they have cross sells for other stuff related to bath products or whatever that they’re taking advantage of or is it just that main product?

18:07
Mainly because you know, I’m sure they do because they have other fun bath products. But we definitely on tik tok shop saw that two of their products were really just getting 90 % of the sales got it because on tik tok people are pretty impulse by right like they’re they’re not they’re not hunting. They’re sitting on a couch and they’re being hunted for you know, it’s the reverse right? Right. So they’re just going oh, that’s fun. I think my little toddler is gonna love that I’m gonna buy it.

18:36
And maybe three months down the line, if you’re lucky, they might think what was that brand about the bath toys from because I want to get something else. So it’s a little bit, a little bit I personally think that their memory on tik tok is going to be not quite as loyal to a brand as it would on Amazon. Sure. Because they’re being hunted in the initial in the initial sale. Okay.

19:03
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19:32
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.

19:43
Yeah. Okay. So consumables is a plus. What else do look for? So obviously, I look for someone who can afford to talk I like to say eight to 10k a month. Okay, and that and that would include my retainer. And so if you’re doing it yourself, I would say six to seven k a month. Because if you can’t afford six to seven k a month for six months, knowing that like, I literally mean, like that money is going away.

20:11
So you are investing six to seven K for six months. So that’d be like, what $42,000 $45,000. If you can handle that, and you’re, it’s almost like don’t invest money in the stock market that you’re not willing to lose that same concept. Sure. Right. Okay. We’re to be much more successful because you’re not going to squirm or the moment we get a 1.2 ROAS or the moment something doesn’t go right.

20:40
So I would say if you’re doing yourself six to seven K, that would include the cost for you to sample your products out. That would include the commissions to the affiliates. And if you are including an agency, I would go up to 10 to 12 K because I would also pay for the agency as well. What is the timeframe that you expect to get a better ROAS? I can understand burning cash in like the first X number of months.

21:09
What is the expectation? Six months. Six months, okay. And the reason being, and I say that more of like, you can expect to be at a profit in six months if you have the right agency partner. Okay. I see guys doing it themselves that are eight months in and they’re still losing money. So I’d say if you have someone that knows their stuff, you can be profitable in six months. Okay, so the expectation here is be willing to lose, let’s say 10K a month for six months, $60,000 investment.

21:38
This is no different than meta ads, for example, in the beginning, you’re just panning for gold, right? Yep. You’re gonna lose money in the beginning. Yep. Okay. And a big part of it’s the sampling. Okay, so we just did a webinar with Mary Ruth, the CRO, his name is Jay Hunter, I recommend checking that on my on my YouTube, I’ll shout out to my YouTube, just type in bullseye sellers, you’ll find it. It’s a great webinar because they’re doing they’re projected to do 70 million this year on TikTok.

22:07
So they’re in the top 10. They’re like in that they’re they’re hanging out with tick tock corporate at the office. They’re at that level. So but they started at zero January 2024. They were at $0. within only 16 months from zero to 70 million on a year is insane. Yeah. They told me that the reason why people fail this what Jay said the reason why most people fail on tick tock is they just don’t continue.

22:35
They squirm, they send out 100 samples, some videos come back, the videos suck. This is what happens, right? And they put a little ad dollars behind the videos, they spend 500 bucks, they get no sales, and they’re like, screw TikTok. I’m just gonna go back to Amazon. I think that can be said about any content platform, right? If you start a YouTube channel, you gotta keep with it for at least a year. Same with anything, right? That’s true. That’s true.

23:04
And it’s no different on Tik TOK. So what, what Jay said is they’re sampling. They really ratcheted up their sampling and they just got less picky about who they, you know, sent them out to. I asked Jay point blank on the call. I was like, you guys are the big dogs. Who are you sampling? Just, you know, are you looking for those Kylie Jenner influencers? Are you sampling plain old mom and pop affiliates? And he’s like, if they have an 80 % post rate, meaning for each sample they receive, they post 80 % of the time of video.

23:33
or higher, I will send them a sample. I don’t care about their GMB history. I don’t care anything else. I’m like, wow. You mean 80 % of the people that receive a product actually do at least one video? Is that what you mean? The the post rate is a metric on TikTok for the affiliate. Okay, so that’d be I received 100 products and samples this month and I did videos on at least 80 of them. Okay, basically you’re measuring whether they’re going to take action.

24:02
That’s exactly right. Okay. So he said if they have an 80 % or higher, I don’t care about their GMV, which is their sales metrics. I will send them a sample. Interesting. Okay. And they’re huge. So the point is, is they’re not getting pickier. They’re getting less picky as time goes on. I mean, I’ve noticed, uh, tick tockers make a ton of money when they have like hardly any subs. Uh, there’s been a lot of case studies on that. So maybe that’s why the theory like it’s panning for gold, right? It’s like playing the lottery in a way.

24:32
And he knows that he knows his cogs. So he knows that he’s sending on a sample to get 300 impressions. Like he knows that that’s what he’s factoring in. I’m getting 300 impressions. Okay. Okay. If I get more than that, that’s a bonus. And if I can get a spark ad and turn that 300 impressions into a monetized sponsored ad and it does well, great. That’s a bonus too, but he just factors in cog sample out equals 300 impressions.

25:04
Let me ask you this, and I’m sure you don’t know his numbers, but of those 300 impressions, what would the expected conversion rate be or just a ballpark? What would you expect to be a good conversion rate on that? Yeah, I don’t know those numbers, but, um, I mean, is it higher than Amazon or is it much lower? I would imagine it’s lower, right? Yeah, it’s, definitely lower because it’s not, it’s not, it’s not bottom of the Yeah, no, it’s not. But what happens is, and what Jay was saying on the call is.

25:33
If you do that enough times, you appear to be everywhere. And the average person starts to see your videos that that eight to 10 times, which is what they need to see in order to be like, okay, I’m going to buy the product. Um, and you have that appearance. See of just being everywhere. it. Okay. That’s like Alex Hamrozi strategy. A hundred percent. Yeah. And you can’t, you can’t be everywhere on Amazon. You can’t write the platform doesn’t allow you to be everywhere. You’re only with intent. That’s it. And

26:03
The other downfall of the Amazon strategy is you are as good as your, as your competitor to your left and to your right. If you’re a little bit more expensive and you don’t have enough differentiation, you’re losing. If you’re a little bit cheaper, um, but your reviews aren’t as good, you might still be losing. So you’re only as good as the guy to your left and to your right, or, if it’s mobile above you or below you. with tick tock, you don’t have to worry about your competitors. There are no competitors.

26:32
It’s just between you and the person watching your video at that moment in time. Okay. Got it. All right. So now, now that at least I have a better idea of how this all works, what is the process that you guys take to take a brand with zero TikTok presence and then grow it to, I guess, break even within six months? Yeah. I like to say 50 K within six months. That’s what we always do. Okay. Sure. 50 K a month in six months.

26:58
So the first thing is we have to cut out the shop set up time. We’ve gotten that down to under a week. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Because if we spin our wheels on that time is money. That’s an upset client. We don’t want that. So we got it down to under a week, unless you’re in a really tough category, like weight loss or something. And if there’s FDA approvals, it might go to 10 days, but for most products, it’s under a week. Um, and then right after that, we’re using a, our sister company, sell a code to basically do giveaways.

27:27
So we’re actually in the giveaway business too now because, um, tick-tock is aware that there’s this cold start period where they don’t allow you to do much. So it’s kind of a catch 22 because as soon as your shop is live, they’re like, good, you can only outreach to 2000 people a week on the affiliate network and you have no sales. So those 2000 people are probably going to ghost you. Right. You have no reviews. So the consumer is not going to buy any of your products.

27:57
And we’re going to limit the amount of people that you’re allowed to talk to because you haven’t made any sales, you haven’t proven yourself. So it’s kind of an impossible situation. So the way we get out of that is we have our own shopper network that we created with the seller, seller Co. And we basically just pay for our own GMB. So we say, we tell our clients upfront, you’re going to give away a couple hundred units. And you’re going to basically, we’re going to pay upfront for those units, full retail price, and then we’re going to send shoppers to your shop.

28:27
And they’re gonna really make a purchase, check out the products going to be shipped, that’s going to increase your shop score, it’s going to show tick tock that you’re making sales. And then we’re gonna ask them to write reviews. Okay. So that’s the first 30 days usually, this is like old school Amazon, dude, it’s right back to where it was. And I was so nervous about doing this because Amazon’s been so hard on this. And then I talked to guys at tick tock corporate, and they love it. They love it so much.

28:57
We’re that we’re in the tick tock, um, Lark channel, which is like tick tock Slack. So we can actually talk to people at tick tock. We love it so much that they’re like tagging my name and tagging other people’s names and saying, Hey, can you show the seller your, uh, your, uh, cold start solution? Because they constantly getting that type of messaging from sell it from, from other agencies. So like, I’m actually like getting leads from tick tock for this other service.

29:26
Hilarious. Okay, so you have this database of shoppers who want free stuff, right? Just like the old days of Snag Shout. Yeah, or like Rebakey. It’s kind of like that. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And so you’re basically just jump starting the reviews on your shop. That’s right. Right. Okay. So that creates the necessary social proof for the other people want to jump on board. That’s right. Okay. And we’re getting through the $2,000. What’s called the $2,000 GMV threshold. That’s what it’s called.

29:56
So you have to sell $2,000 with the stuff for TikTok to, to allow you to expand. Yep. I have it right here. If I can share my screen, I’ll show you, but I, uh, yeah, I have a good old chat GPT for everybody here. So here are the thresholds. I’m going to have to do entire screen cause it’s not finding my chat GPT. So if you haven’t made a single sale, you can’t outreach to anybody.

30:26
Wow. Kind of weird, right? You can’t do anything. Can you buy your own stuff though to jumpstart that? Yeah, but it has to be through an affiliate. Ah, okay. So take tax gonna have to do something about this. But because it’s a little bit of a cat. It’s really the definition of a catch 22. Right. Once you get $2,000 in sales, then, or once you have a single sale up to 2000

30:55
then you’re allowed to reach out to 2000 creators a week. Okay. 2000 creators is nothing. sounds like a lot though, but it’s nothing. Okay. The reason why it’s nothing is because you’re going to get ghosted because you’re a brand new product. Okay. Then if you have 2000 to 50,000 sales, it over three X is your outreach per week. So that’s why I, that’s why we’re always like focused on that two K to get right here. Got it. Okay.

31:23
And then obviously once we get to 50 K, which we’re not going to see products for $50,000. No one’s going to pay for that. That’s when it’s just complete unlimited outreach at that point. me an idea of how many creators you guys typically reach out to in a given week, because even 7,000 sounds like a ton. Yeah, we usually max out. Okay. Yeah. We get about five process or is that a manual process? It is a, um,

31:52
A little bit of both, a little bit of both. Um, we, we use some really good software partners that help us automate it because we’re, we’re managing 38 shops right now. So obviously like with 38 shops, we’re not going to be doing it all manual, but there are some components that have to be manual. Um, especially when we have a video that performs well, we manually reach out to that person and invite them into a discord channel where we can have much better dialogue with that individual and like do more long-term strategy with that affiliate.

32:22
But I’d it’s like 90 % automated at this point for us. But for the individual, not you guys per se, like, do you typically have to go through each creator and hit like the invite button? Or is there a software? Unless you sign up for a software. I’ll do some call-outs. Uptick.io, U-P-T-K dot I-O is great. There’s another one called Reacher, ReacherApp.com.

32:50
These are softwares where you can basically set thresholds and parameters. Like I want people, I want females. want, um, you know, um, people that have dog channels or whatever, right. For dogs or, know, whatever threshold you want, or you can say, I want people with 80 % or higher post-rate, or I want people that have their GMB levels here. So we will usually max out that 7k and we usually get about a 5 % response rate.

33:19
out of 7k so that’s 350 people responding saying yeah I’m interested to work with you and out of those 350 we’re gonna we’re gonna probably distill that down to about 200 affiliates that we work with that week every single week. So of those 350 who respond you you distill it down to 200 before you send out samples or are you sending out same usually usually because we let them respond and then sometimes it fizzles sometimes just you know they they never take the sample.

33:48
other times, we, we, we, we only have a limit or a budget with our client of 200 samples. So if we have more people than we need, we’re going to pick our favorites out of those 350 for the week, and then they bench the other 150 for next week, right? Right. Because none of our clients tell us, Hey, you can send out unlimited samples. That does not happen. Everyone has limits. Yeah.

34:16
But it seems like in the beginning, you’re pretty much constrained to 350 at most, right? Based on the percentage. It’s just a numbers game, right? So it’s a numbers game. Yeah, you are. You are pretty much constrained. So at most 350, it sounds like samples every week. At most and in the early stages. Yeah, right. In early stages. Like Mary Ruth, for example, is doing about seven to 10,000 samples a month. You know, they’re at that level where they can manage that. Right. Yeah. Okay. That’s crazy.

34:46
So when you’re talking about profitability overall, you’re factoring the cost of those samples, right? 100%. Okay. All right. We’re tracking sample cost MCF fulfillment. If you’re using MCF, if you’re doing a three PL, we’ll factor that in. Um, if you’re invited by tick-tock for FBT, which is another subject we can talk about, and it’s really exciting. Um, we factor that in and, um, now another thing you should know, and I want, I want people to know this. You don’t have to pay the same rate to the affiliate. If you’re running an ad on their video.

35:16
versus if it’s an organic video. Okay. What is, how does the rate, you can set your own rates for ads or that’s right. You can, you can negotiate with them and say, good. I know you were at 20%, your video is doing okay organically, but I really want to try it with ads. Okay. In order for me to spend my money on ads, I need you to go down to 5%.

35:40
And then they’ll send you what’s called a spark code, which gives you authority to run ads on their content. And then they get that automatic 5 % commission. So that’s how we can afford to fit in an advertising budget and a video. What is the typical affiliate rate? Typical is 15 to 20. That’s the expectation from the creator. Okay. That’s pretty high actually for physical product. I know. Yeah. I know.

36:05
All right, so walk, let’s continue on the process. You’re sending out, let’s say 200 based on the 7,000, you’re sending out 200 samples. What is your expected hit rate on that? 80 % will make a video, right? Yeah, 80 % will make a video. So then we’re at what 160 videos a week, right? And then we don’t expect any of those videos to go viral. We don’t, we don’t have that expectation whatsoever. Okay, we expect the videos to

36:34
potentially perform in an advertising campaign. And then what we do is we put we get the spark codes for all those videos, we negotiate the 5%. If a video is trash, we’re not going to offer anything that video is just going to sit on the page and just die. Okay. But if the video has any glimmer of hope, and we are in our thresholds are low, Steve, because we know we’ve been wrong. Okay, we have had times where the videos did not look great. And we were wrong.

37:02
We did not think that video was going to perform it and ended up being a $10,000 video in sales, right? You just don’t know. So unless the video is absolute garbage, the captions backwards, I didn’t even mention the brand. They’re in a cave. Can’t even see their face. We will offer them. We will negotiate a spark code 5 % commission and we will put it into what’s called GMV max ads. what are your thresholds? You said they’re low. What are your thresholds? It mentions the brand name.

37:31
it at least goes over the features and benefits of the product. Maybe it identifies the problem and solution, right? Okay, that’s a pretty low bar. It is like my baby had eczema. I rub this on the baby, the baby no longer has eczema. Okay, cool. Maybe the video quality isn’t great. But it looks super raw and it might work. You don’t care about the view count. No. Okay. Interesting. All right.

38:01
So here’s why we’re only going to put five, 10 bucks on that video, Steve. Okay. You see, we’re just going to see if the video can get a little bit of little action. One sale. see, okay. I would think that if it didn’t do well organically that it wouldn’t do on the video in the ad, but I guess that’s not the case. You’ve the case at all. Okay. Yeah. And that I thought the same thing. I had the exact same assumption as you. was like, let’s, this is how we did it at beginning. Let’s see which videos perform well and only run ads on those.

38:31
Okay. And guess what happened? We had nothing to run ads on. then, you know, it’s like, and then what do we do? Like, you know, and then, you know, we wasted all those samples. Like, why would you do that? That’s a lot of money the client paid to get samples in our hands. We got to do something. So we just went, screw it. Let’s put a little money on everything. And it worked. And GMV Max is a genius program. So here’s why. Just because it doesn’t go viral doesn’t mean that

39:01
The ad platform can’t turn it into a performing video. And here’s why the ad platform actually is good at identifying the avatar. It’s actually really good at finding the right people for the video. matches up the, the, the, the shopper to the video. So if the person has a thousand followers and you know, the video doesn’t have a crazy hook or something like that, just cause it only gets 300 videos doesn’t mean that the advertising console can’t find the right shopper for that video.

39:31
and get it into the right impressions. Okay. You only pay per click. That’s it. So you’re just, you’re just trying to get enough of the right impressions to the right avatar. And then once you start getting a few clicks and those clicks are, you know, buck 50 buck 25, okay. Way cheaper than Amazon 75 cents a lot of times. So yeah, you’d be surprised how well those perform on ads. can see tick tock knows who shops a lot on tick tock shop. they can easily just, okay. I get it. All right.

40:00
Yeah, it’s smart. Their AI is extremely intelligent. I think their advertising console is probably a couple years ahead of Amazon. Because I would think that this is one of my questions for you, actually. I would think going viral would be bad because then you run out of stock and everything. But I think this way, it seems like you’re getting consistent sales as opposed to waves of sales. Is that accurate? Yeah. And I wouldn’t say and it’s never bad to go viral. It’s awesome. Because at the end of the day, you know,

40:28
All the expenses are covered now, right? They’re like, great, that first four months was painful and now it’s all kind of paid back because I got a shit ton of organic sales and Amazon and I paid nothing almost for those sales. Right. But you’re right. It’s not controllable. It’s not something that I can scale. It’s not something I can promise or something I can predict. And I don’t like that. You know? Yeah. Well, what percentage of your videos have you seen go viral just in your experience?

40:55
I don’t even know at this point because we have 38 accounts with more videos being added every single day. But I can, I can count on one hand, the amount of videos I’ve gone viral. Wow. Okay. And most of your people are probably having 200 new videos added every single week. So, right. Very, very rare. Now here’s another reason why you’re less likely to go viral talking about a product than you will just making a funny video of, your dog farting in the background or something like that. Right. That’s, that’s different. You know, people are going to share that.

41:24
But people aren’t necessarily going to share a video that talks about how to cure your eczema to like all their friends. They might share it to one person that they know has eczema. You see the difference? So it’s situational. of those five that went viral, was there some crazy hook involved? One of them was a doctor that was talking about the dangers of parasites and it was terrifying. Okay.

41:51
Okay, so his hook was scaring the living crap out of you that your body is full of parasites. Okay. It worked. I mean, people were buying that product left and right thinking they were gonna drop dead with parasites. And he was a doctor. So he had some clout, and we were lucky to get him. Okay. Another video that went viral was the bathtub video. And it viral because it was really pretty. The lady turned off the light, she turned on all their little toys and the kid was in the bathtub and the whole bathroom lit up. It was awesome. So just it was kind of a spectacle. Okay. Yeah.

42:20
with the eggs in our product, which is our top selling product we have in our portfolio right now. They’ve never gone viral. It’s been $1 out $2 in $1 out $3 in the whole time. It’s been painful. Videos have performed well, meaning the ROAS has been four and half five cost per order has been reasonably good. But it’s been one of these brands where like we’ve had to work for every single every single impression. reason why I’m asking this

42:48
Is because can you provide guidelines for your people to go viral? Yeah. No, you can’t. And Jay, I’m glad you brought this up. Jay Jay talks about this. He’s like, don’t try to chase for reality. It’ll actually happen less often. If you try to, if you try to rinse and repeat and repeat, repeat, like find that formula, you’re actually going to end up having worse performing videos. You have to let people do what they’re going to do. And that magic quality is only in the

43:15
idea that that person had at that moment in time. Now you can give them basic parameters like this is what my product does. And you know, they have to make the proper claims and they have to not say things that they shouldn’t say. But outside of the basic here’s what it does. And, know, you know, just the basic description of the product. It’s up to that creator. And you want it to be up to that creator to find a exciting, fresh, inventive and personalized way to communicate it.

43:43
And then you have better chances. Cause I was asking Jay the same thing. I was like, man, my percentages are really low. It’s like your percentages are on par. was like, okay, wow. That almost makes me depressed and also makes me happy at the same time. It’s like, So give the creator total freedom. You tell them basically about your product and just let, let it run. Let it run. Okay. Yeah. Amazing. Because there are some, there are certain things that do matter. Like.

44:13
the watch time, there’s a six second watch time that TikTok looks for. So if your video never gets past that six second watch time, the odds of it going viral are zero. But if your video can hook people and keep them on the video for over six seconds, your odds are actually higher. So we do know that. We do know that that first six seconds really matters. So you don’t want to start your video of a, my name is Joe. And you know, let me tell you about my, you know, that’s too slow. Okay. There has to be a hook.

44:42
you know, the famous concept of the sure. Yeah. But we don’t want the hook to be the hook. We want it to be the hook that the person comes up with on their own. We want it to be organic. Got it. Yeah. I know a lot of people have gotten banned from TikTok shop. Like, can you just provide some like things not to do? At this point, it’s getting better. It’s actually getting a lot better. That was a lot of that was a problem with TikTok last year.

45:10
Everyone was getting banned left and right and they were getting banned for no good reason. They were getting banned for just trying to submit this the same document multiple times. It’s like, come on, man. Like, that’s the only document the guy has like don’t ban him because he tried three times he only has that document. That’s the invoice or that’s his LLC document for crying out loud. So it’s gotten a lot better. But I would say if you do have that problem, reach out to me and we have people on the inside. Most of time it’s stupid and we can we can get it fixed.

45:40
There was a people getting banned for false claims and whatnot too. Are there any guidelines? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s in the supplement world. More than anything, you know, there at the end of the day, there is something called the Federal Trade Commission. Well, I thought incentivize reviews as part of that too, but apparently not. Right. Well, it is. And we figured out how to make it compliant. So there’s some very nuanced rules to reviews. Okay. Reviews.

46:10
are actually totally legal. If they’re incentivized, they’re totally legal. As long as you claim that it was incentivized in the review. That’s how Amazon’s allowed to sell millions and millions of billions of dollars with the vine reviews. Right? Because it says free product. Got it. Okay. Okay. So I actually, I have a lawyer, an Amazon lawyer that I’ve been working with for years and I said, how do I sell reviews and not get in trouble? And he said, here’s what the FTC law say. You have to say this.

46:38
So we actually distilled it down to a very simple sentence. Every single review at the end of the review says, I received this product for free. Okay. And we’re clear. Now every marketplace has its own rules. Maybe Walmart doesn’t like it. I don’t know. I can’t speak for Walmart, but just know that you are 100 % in the clear with the FTC and you’re not committing any federal law breaking any federal laws by incentivizing reviews. As long as you have that disclaimer. I guess what I was trying to get at is what if your affiliate just starts

47:06
making wild claims about your product. happens? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the affiliates going to get banned or they’re going to get a strike. So there’s like a three strike system and your account’s going to get the same strike.

47:21
Even if it’s not your fault? Like you have no control over the affiliates, right? The only control you have is to make sure you send them the proper information in advance. what, what, uh, what Mary Ruth says is don’t say it and they have a list of sentences. Don’t say these things. But if they do, you still get in trouble. Yeah. If it gets, if they get them, if they get the strike, you get the strike. Okay. See, that does not seem fair because you have no control over your affiliates, right? I know.

47:49
So like if I wanted to take any of your brands down, you and I would just sign up as an affiliate and just start spouting nonsense. Oh, hell yeah. Right. Just right. You know, be like, this cures every form of cancer I’ve ever seen. And it’s just, it’s a cure all for all diseases. And yeah, for sure. It would be a terrible thing to do for a for a shop. They got to fix that. Right. I mean, you know, the reason why they do it is they do it so that the shop is very mindful and

48:18
If the shop didn’t get that mark, or whatever you call a flag or whatever on their, you know, on their point system, they have a 24 point system every shop. If they didn’t get it, the shop wouldn’t be constantly reminded to do a better job at getting the right product briefs out. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, it’s up to the shop to properly educate the affiliate and go ahead. Yes, this is a weight loss product, but you are not allowed to say that it’s going to guarantee weight loss, or you’re not allowed to say the even the word weight loss.

48:48
So what you can say is pant sizes, I now fit in this dress, those kinds of things. People get the idea. I mean, this just makes negative, like you thought negative review bombing was bad on Amazon. This could take down entire accounts, right? This is much more severe. Yeah, but you’d have to have a ton of like, you know, if you wanted to be one of those guys, you’d have to take, you’d have to have like a ton of TikTok accounts and ask for a ton of samples. You know what mean? Probably true. But it…

49:15
It’s not as bad as you think like we we have a lot of supplement brands. And we also try to focus on products that are less risky in the portfolio. So like, like the the parasite cleanse I was telling you about, you know, it’s less risky because you know, but but we don’t say guaranteed to kill parasites. We don’t say stuff like that extreme. just say, parasites are really bad for you. Here’s some signs that you have parasites.

49:43
And here’s a great product that if you feel you do have them could help you with that. And that’s fine. But there are certain areas like weight loss.

49:55
just catch all medical claims that yeah, you gotta watch out for. So I wanna switch gears and talk about your services here. Do your clients typically use you for the launch phase and then feel like they can handle themselves in steady state or do they tend to stay with you in the long run? Cause you’re constantly getting new affiliates, new leads. Like what’s the life cycle like? They all stay. They all stay with me. Yeah. And I think it’s just because a lot of our sellers are a lot more mature. They’ve been on Amazon for a long time.

50:25
They have a DTC presence. A lot of them are working on getting in a lot of stores. So they’re already stretched pretty thin between like meta, um, um, Amazon, Chewy or whatever other marketplaces, Walmart now. So they’re usually just like, screw it. Like if you can just do your job and talk to me every two weeks, give me reports. I know where things are at. And in six months, it looks realistic that I can make a profit. Great.

50:53
That’s true. guess if it includes your fees, your retainer fees and everything and you’re making a profit. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe at some point, maybe it’s early, right? Maybe in six months or a year, some of my clients will be like, you know what, we’ve learned a lot. You guys got us to this place. Now we’re doing 150,000 a month. We want to take it in house and that’s going to happen. But right now, Tik Tok is such an anomaly. And another thing, Tik Tok is, is so much more work than Amazon that

51:22
Like think about on Amazon, you just list your product, send it into FBA, and then you run acts. Right. I might be oversimplifying it, but it’s really, mean, there’s more to it, but yeah, at a basic level. Yeah. At a basic level. Right. Yeah. On TikTok that does nothing for you. Like you have nothing with those things you without affiliates, you have nothing. And without affiliates, um, that’s where all the work is, is all those negotiations, all those conversations, the sampling, um, pulling those.

51:51
affiliates over to discord, getting them on, you know, running games with them, getting them keeping them engaged with the brand, building up that discord community. Come on, how many people want to spend time doing that? So what is expected from the client? I just want to get an idea of the workload for the client. Stay in stock. Okay. All right. So it’s just like selling an Amazon. Stay in stock. Don’t handle the rest. Stay in stock. Okay.

52:17
Yeah, stay in stock. And when we slack you a request for increased budgets, please respond, right? Just simple stuff like that. Like let us know. Let us know that, you know, we just need that cooperation on ad spend sampling. And if there’s any documentations we need, just be available. okay. What percentage of that 10k we were talking about earlier is towards product versus services? Mostly, mostly product and ad. So

52:46
Our retainers 4k, we’re very, we’re very open about that on our website. We literally have like a deck with our pricing. So I I’m very open about my pricing structure. Uh, we charge 4k. Um, so you’re looking at that additional 6k is in sampling and ads. Okay. Yeah. Unless your product is like an $800 air filter, then we have a different conversation to talk about. course. Of course. Yeah. Hey, so Ian, where can people

53:13
find you and get an idea of whether this will work for them. So I actually recommend that people go to the YouTube channel, watch, watch the Jay Hunter webinar first, because he breaks it down, I break it down, it’s the best place to get out, basically a long format pitch of if tick tock is for you. Okay, because we have a we have a 25 minute live q &a on there with a lot of sellers asking those tough questions. So watch that. It’s great. And if you still are interested after that, and you feel like you’re you kind of

53:42
you’re ready for that TikTok investment, financially speaking, and you want to outsource instead of doing it yourself, you can find me at bullseye sellers.com. Um, and if you book a call right on bullseye sellers.com, I will actually be invited to the call and I will meet you on that call. So then we can just talk about it and see if it’s a fit for you. And I will turn you away if I don’t think you’re ready or I don’t think your products, if it will be super honest with you. Yeah, I don’t want to fail. hate failing. Plus you don’t want to deal with someone who has

54:12
the wrong expectations, right? That’s even. Yeah. Like, yeah. How is it going to benefit me? if month three, we’re doing exactly what we said we’re going to do in month three, but you’re like tapping out because of the finances. It’s like, I don’t really want to play that game. I don’t want you as a client for three months. I want you as a client for years. So I’m in it. I’m in it for the long haul. Sounds good. Ian. Hey, thanks a lot for coming on the show. I learned a lot and I’m sure the audience did too. So thank you so much. You’re very welcome. Thanks for having me. Hope you enjoyed this episode.

54:41
If your brand falls under the guidelines discussed in this episode, then you should definitely give TikTok Shop a try. For more information and resources, go to mywifequithejobe.com slash episode 595. 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 mywifequithejobe.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.

00:01
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.