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 sit down with Daniela Boltzman, founder of Mindful Goods, to talk about what actually separates high converting Amazon listings from the ones that quietly bleed sales. We dig into why repurposing your Shopify creative on Amazon is one of the most common and costly mistakes that sellers make and walk through the exact frameworks Daniela uses to optimize main images, titles, and A-plus content for seven and eight figure brands.

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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 events that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants.

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Also, I hate large 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 high-level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be.

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So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now on to the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife Quarter job podcast. Today I’m excited to have Daniela Boltzman on the show. Now, Daniela was introduced to me by a good friend, Ritu Java, and Daniela is the founder of mindfulgoods.co where she helps Amazon sellers with Amazon listing optimization and branding. And her female led agency has had their work featured in many case studies by Amazon and they provide a done for you service that makes your products stand out and sell.

02:07
She’s also spoken at many events, including Amazon Accelerate. And as we all know, Amazon is getting more more competitive every year. So today I invited Daniela to come on the show to talk about how to make your Amazon listing stand out in a sea of competition. And with that, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you for having me. My favorite topic. I’m excited to be here. I thought we were going to talk about tennis, actually, but.

02:35
Second favorite topic. Actually, I’ve been getting into paddle now. Do you play paddle? No, what is that? It’s Padel. Some people say Padel. It’s of like, what is it that they play in the States? Pickleball. it’s with glass. It’s like pickleball, but with glass walls behind you. So it’s like, yeah, it’s really, really fun. It started in Mexico, spread to Europe. It’s more popular than pickleball in Europe.

03:03
And it’s a lot of fun. And I love tennis. I play tennis like three times a week, but I’m really into paddle as well. Okay, I can’t get into pickleball as much because it’s not as much of a workout for me, which is why I like tennis the best. That makes sense. All right, Daniels, for those of the people listening who do not know who you are, how did you get started with e commerce? And what’s the backstory? Why Amazon? Oh, it’s a great story. um

03:29
I’ll try not to bore everyone, but my background is in marketing and tech. I had a tech business before this and I exited that business and realized that I was a burnt out founder. And uh I had 10 years of marketing experience under my belt at that point, but I was more of a Jill of all trades. I could pick up things really quick. ah I could do a little bit of coding. I could do a lot of everything.

03:57
And I really wanted to specialize in one area and e-commerce had always been very interesting to me. um So when I had kind of dabbled, I was trying to decide between focusing on D to C or focusing on Amazon. Around that time, Amazon had acquired Whole Foods and I was fortunate enough to have a family business um that was in CPG. And so I had asked my aunt if I could.

04:22
learn Amazon, you know, with some of their products. And she gave me the go ahead. Soon as I did that, I realized what a big learning curve it was. And I made it my goal to start helping other founders to do that. And at the beginning, I just said, you know what, I’m a marketer, I will learn this stuff, but I’m going to learn it alongside you. So I did that. And after the first couple of years, I realized that I was pulling my hair out. And there were so many pieces of this that

04:50
I was never going to be an expert at everything. And so when I did some reflection, I looked back and I said, you know what, of all the brands that we’ve worked with thus far, of all the things that we’ve done for these brands, the piece that brings me the most joy and that becomes my zone of genius is really the creatives, the SEO, and that’s on PDP and storefront. So it was just this one specific lane that I decided to double down on and

05:18
which was a very difficult decision at the time, right? Because I had started a full service agency. had retainer clients paying me five to 10K each per month. So it was a pretty healthy way to live. And I was basically saying, I want to forego that safety to just focus on projects and project-based work to help more brands, right? A little bit more volume. And um I didn’t pull the trigger right away.

05:47
It was like right before COVID, I was deciding if I was going to do this. And there was a lot of brands coming to us that really wanted to work with us, but they couldn’t afford retainers. So I said, why don’t we just work on your creatives and help you get your listing up so you can generate some cash flow. And then you guys can start your ads and see how things go. And then you can level up over time. And so we did that with a few brands. COVID hits. Our clients that are on retainers need to get out of their retainers, understandably, to help manage their cash.

06:15
We let all of them out of retainers. We flipped our website and just said that we’re now just doing creative projects because what I saw was all of the retail shops closing their doors. And now all of these brands need to start selling on Amazon. so overnight we had uh lost all of our business and within 30 days we had tripled our business. So we just never went back to the old model and that’s still what we do today. And we’re just fortunate enough to do it with ah

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now mostly seven and eight figure brands that are a little bit further along, but equally, you’d be equally surprised at the plateaus that they hit and how their content can go stale. So even the biggest brands in the world have this problem. So you’re completely project-based now. So that implies there’s not that recurring revenue or do they just keep coming back for more? that We do have brands that repeat. We do now have

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larger clients that do enter into retainers, but our retainers are by invite only. So if we have a good experience with a brand and they have a catalog big enough to support us working together for, you know, at least six to 12 months, we’ll have that discussion and and we’ll work with them if it’s the right fit. Okay, love it. Yeah. So for everyone listening out there, I know a large percentage of them are are on Amazon. And so what I want to start with

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is by just kind of addressing some of the common mistakes that you see. uh I know that you’ve worked with large brands and I know you’ve worked with smaller brands as well. what are some of like the mistakes that you see almost everyone making, whether they’re big or small? Pretty much across the board, the number one thing that I see is a copy paste approach. Because a lot of times you invest some money initially to get some creatives for your Instagram that you then use on your Shopify that you then try to repurpose for your Amazon.

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Whereas when someone goes to your Shopify site, you pretty much have their undivided attention for a certain set of time, right? There’s not a whole bunch of advertising distracting them. And so ah you would think you could take the same creative and bring it over to Amazon. should suffice, but it doesn’t. We need to be thinking through how we can get their attention and keep their attention all the way down the page with all of these different distractions that are going on on Amazon in terms of your competitors advertising on your page. And so

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It’s just a different lens, a different strategy that you need to think through. But that’s probably the most common mistake that I see. And it is still happening with the largest brands. And I’ll tell you, the problem that is happening on the large side of brands, and I mean, like we’re working with some of the biggest ones in the world right now, and they have full e-comm teams, right? Full budgets, full production, full in-house teams that can do this stuff. But there’s a little bit of a learning curve associated with it.

09:09
There’s very few team members in-house that are completely dedicated to Amazon. Amazon is still considered the ugly stepchild. There’s not a huge dedicated budget thrown at a launch strategy for Amazon, a growth strategy for Amazon. uh Usually all the focus and a majority of the budget is going to the D2C side. And so what we are focused when we’re working with brands like that is trying to make those team members the internal champions, right?

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10:06
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11:01
That’s kind of our whole goal is working alongside those teams to make their process easier, make it so that they can do these launches easier, make sure they’re using the content in the right way, and kind of streamline that process for them going forward. Walk me through an example of something, a creative that you use on Shopify that would not work on Amazon. So when you’re looking at a Shopify page, you’re typically looking at like, let’s say like a flat lay. um might have, let’s use, I was just on uh Bayes.

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luggage website, right? They have these like stunning uh imagery that is like uh of all the product shots, right? So the product would be like on the suitcase with the trolley handle on it. You would show the suitcase open, the suitcase closed, close up shots of the pieces. Now you would still use that on Amazon. The problem is that if you were to use that in your product images and you were just to use those images, oftentimes one, they’re not using all the images first of all.

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The second thing is they’re just uploading those images as is with no text layovers, nothing interesting about it. And so while the customer might click through it, you’re not telling them anything. You’re just showing them something, right? And so their eye is going to look at it for a minute and just go to the next shiny object. And oftentimes we need to be showing and telling at the same time so that we can effectively increase conversion. So that’s kind of the basic, basic.

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thing that you have to be doing on Amazon. Extra images, not the main image, right? Because you’re not allowed to use text in general. Yeah, on the other product images in the product image stack. The main image itself, um you wouldn’t really play around with it that much. Probably on your DNC website, you’d probably have just like a really pretty hero shot product on white or maybe not. Maybe it would be a background. um But on Amazon, when people search for your product and see that product show up in the search results,

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you’re competing against immediately like 20 images in the upper part of your screen, right? And a bunch of them are gonna be advertisements, um but then there’s a bunch of organics that are gonna show up and your product needs to stand out. And so there’s so many little things you can do here or there to tweak how that image is showing up in the search results and try to get more clicks by playing around with that. And that’s basically one of the lowest hanging fruits that most brands can take advantage of.

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So using that suitcase example, since it’s kind of fresh in your mind, what would you have changed about that image? it sounds like you saw a flat lay of the suitcase, which is pretty standard for a Shopify store. How would you have changed that for Amazon? Like the hero image. Let’s start with the Yeah, so a hero image, um there’s a couple different approaches that I would take to it, right? So one, what I’m looking for is what’s going on inside the category. So I’ll go look at all the competitive sets.

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And then what is going on in other categories that are more competitive? If I were redoing the main images for base, for example, what I would be looking at is what is going on inside of their category, but also what is going on outside their category and maybe other competitive categories. What are people doing that we can get some ideas from? We go through an ideation jam session, but we don’t want to limit ourselves to creating just one or two options, right? So

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What we have done is we’ve taken some of our top performing main images that we’ve done across lots of different categories. And we’ve trained an AI to basically uh create a bunch of different main images based on the one product image we’re dropping in from a brand. So um it might come up with someone holding the handle and maybe pushing the suitcase into the frame. So you’d imagine kind of like a hand coming in into the frame, right? And so something as subtle as that.

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can totally catch the eye when nobody else is doing it. ah Another thing that we might do is we might play around and figure out like, how are we showing that it has multiple colors? How are we showing that it has multiple sizes? ah Are we playing with the angle of the suitcase? Does an angle make a difference in terms of what people are looking at first? So if all the suitcases are straight on, what happens if we put ours at an angle? uh If all of the suitcases are straight on, what happens if we show

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someone leaning it and pulling it out of the frame, or it’s just thinking through all of those little elements. that’s angle, orientation, hands, middle hands. One thing that I noticed on Amazon is almost every image looks the same after a while, because I’m pretty sure it’s just people copying stuff, right? Yeah. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store,

15:45
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Part of it is yes, being different. The other part of it is how we can get um Rufus and the algorithm to pick up on what it is that we’re doing. So are we putting in some high-intent keywords in really tricky ways, right? So sometimes you’ll see like a hang tag on something that obviously is not a real hang tag, but it’s a digitally enhanced hang tag that might have your high-intent keywords on that hang tag. um

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So for instance, if I’m trying to buy a bae’s bag, I know exactly what size I need that I’m looking for. When you buy a suitcase, you know what size you’re looking for. You don’t want to see all of the large suitcases when you’re just looking for a carry-on. That’s probably one of the more frustrating things, right? But it’s the same context of a mom who might be looking for snacks, right? If a mom is looking for snacks for her kids’ lunchbox, she doesn’t want

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the big box of popcorn, she wants the individual snack size popcorn, right? So what’s the easiest way to communicate this to the shopper? It’s by having some of those high intent keywords in some way. So if you had a suitcase that was taking up the frame and you put a fake label on top of the suitcase that says 18 inch, you know, whatever it’s called, what was it called? What did I say? 18 inch roller handbag or, you know,

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ah And then you you don’t figure out what your main keyword is there but the other thing that you’ll that you can do is when you’re doing your keyword research and this could be a secondary image you want to be figuring out like what are the questions that you know people have about luggage and that they need to check off in their mind right like one of the main things that we know people are curious about about luggage in general is and this is like it’s personal for me because we have a big luggage brand that we work with but also I’m

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actually shopping for luggage right now myself. And one of the things that I noticed in my behavior is that I just have to know if this one will specifically fit in the Spirit Airline little like size chart. Right? Because everyone hates when you’re traveling, if you’ve been to Europe and you use any of those budget airlines and you get pulled out of line because your carry on doesn’t fit in their little thing. You know, this happened when I went to Iceland too. It’s like, it’s got to fit in the little thing. Right. And so

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uh You have to check those dimensions with the wheels with the handle with everything and so What brands can do proactively is they know that is a question they can either put that chart on there to be like this is your Airline these are the dimensions this check check check fits and this this xxx doesn’t fit right and so it’s thinking through all of those little details To make sure that all of those questions are answered in the shoppers mind. So going back to the example of the um

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of the uh main image, what if I want to know, what if we know as a brand that people that buy this product are mostly concerned if it’s going to fit specifically for Spirit Airlines? I might decide to put a badge on top of the luggage image, not on the white part, but on top of the luggage image that says Spirit Airline approved. And that way, as I’m seeing these images pop up in the search results, I as a shopper, I’m like,

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Oh, that one is Spirit Airline approved. Boom, I’m to click on that one first. You know, it’s like, give them what they want really easily. so for a mom, the mom example buying her snacks, I know I need the popcorn. I want the snack size. This is the 25 piece snack size. Great. If it says it right there, 25 piece snack size for kids lunch boxes. I’m like, I’m going to click on that one because I don’t want to click through these other examples if I don’t know that they’re actually snack size or if I don’t know

20:07
That’s the 25 pack. So I guess you can get away with this on the bag. Like you can create like a fake label, right? Like, like it comes that way, right? And then insert all that information. And you’re saying AI is crawling all that also, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. I love that. Okay. And then, um, and in terms of just filling out all the image slots, I know, I think I heard you on another interview about uh storytelling.

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with the imagery and all those slots. Walk me through that with the bag example. Yeah. So a bag example, we want to think through what are the top questions that people are going to be asking about the luggage, right? So one would be like the airline example. Another one might be the colorways that it has. Another one might be all of the features that the bag has. So like if it has pockets, if it has the expandable piece, if it has any inserts, if it has like any bonus items that come with it.

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um There’s a set of questions for every product that you should know your consumers are asking, right? And if you can do a great job of making sure that you know the priority of those questions, like how many people care about this one thing versus another thing, and you can prioritize your image stack to answer those questions sequentially, you’re setting yourself up for success. And so you would want to do that in your product image stack and in your A plus content. And through the rest of it, you want to add different

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details like badges uh for media are a great one if you want to build trust. Showing photos of the founder, it’s like uh some kind of a locally founded brand, telling the story behind the brand if that’s something that’s really important. There’s always some sort of personalized details that you can infuse into this or some sort of narrative that you can.

21:56
Conveyed have people identify with the product in some kind of way So you want to be thinking through that angle as well? Not just not just you know info info info info. It’s a bit of info and a bit of personalization as you go So how do you feel about video on the listing you mentioned founders story? Do you recommend that everyone have some sort of video on their listing as well 100 % Okay listings with video have 20 % increase in sales according to Amazon

22:26
Um, video used to be challenging. think that the way to go with video right now still is, uh, UGC. I think it’s, it’s, it’s easy. You get a bang for your buck. get potentially those, those creators posting on their platforms as well. You could tie it into a tick tock strategy, but that content is so easy to repurpose and you can repurpose it in so many different ways on your listings and in your advertising. So you can think through.

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um taking all of these little micro clips from multiple different UGC videos, piecing it all together in various different ways, not just in one way. Like one might be an unboxing video, one might be a comparison video, one might be here’s how I pack my suitcase video, one might be here’s all the things I brought to Europe in this bag video, you know, like all of these different things um and showing that multiple different people love this product. And here’s all the reasons why in these videos.

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Right? So that’s your strategy for getting UGC at scale? maybe not at scale, but what’s the strategy for getting UGC in the simplest way possible? We use various different sites for, like there’s a bunch of platforms that are out there that have UGC creators that are already on there and you can pay 200 bucks for a video or 300 or 500 depending on.

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what specifically you want, you send them the product and they’ll do the video and then you get the video back. Okay. Just for the listeners, are there any particular ones that you use for your agency? We do. Okay. I’m like struggling to remember the name of it. So let me think. Okay, no worries. Yeah. Yeah. And as you’re looking for that, maybe we can, I’ll just link those up. Maybe you can email them to me after.

24:17
Let’s just talk about just some SEO fundamentals, because I know with AI and Rufus and everything, things have changed a little bit. How would you set up your listing doing keyword research and everything now today? So our tried and true stack that we’re using is Voc.ai paired with… So describe Voc.ai for the audience. It looks at reviews. Yeah. So Voc.ai does a number of different things.

24:44
It’s like many of these tools, many of them do many different things. But what we primarily use this one for is we’ll put it in ASIN and it will uh take all the reviews and all of the data on the listings, and then it will distill it down into visual interpretations for us. So um what that helps us do is kind of look at things like numerically to figure out like we were saying, what are the most important factors of this listing? What are the most important factors going on with the competitors as well?

25:14
where are the gaps within that, right? So an example of this is we were working with a baby brand and we noticed that this baby brand, em products actually em helped the, all the parents were saying this product helped the baby sleep. All the competitor products didn’t say this. And so this is one thing that is, it’s a gap because yes, we know this as a brand and obviously that’s why we built it. But the fact that,

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the parents are saying this and that it’s not being said on the other listings is huge, right? So we can play that up. We can even show um like maybe some sort of like clock that shows like how many hours the baby’s sleeping. You know, it’s like, think about the pain that parents have when their baby’s not sleeping and they’re just like, they just want to sleep, you know? Like that, if they’re looking for product like this, it can be amazing. The other thing is that there was a gifting component to this, but the…

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ways that it was mentioned in gifting was not in line with how everybody else was mentioning in gifting in that category. So just you’ll notice different things as you as you start to just kind of sift through and take in the data and you can say, okay, what happens if we play that up a little bit more and lean into that a little bit more. So that’s one reason why I like looking at voc.ai. You won’t always find insights for everything, but it’s a great place to start. Then on the on the data dive side,

26:40
What we’re doing there, one of my favorite pieces is they have this thing called battle of the titles. And that is something that I consistently say, if you’re looking to optimize your listing and you’re looking to get some quick wins, that’s the number one place you should start is with your titles, because we’ve seen the largest gains with the shortest or lowest effort, right? So it’s a very low lift activity. Imagine typing some keywords and putting that into your title and seeing sales overnight. That’s essentially what can happen with some of these tests. So

27:08
I always recommend starting there, but the reason why I like Battle of the Titles is because it forces you to look at your competitive set and try to increase your reach factor of your keywords in your title more so than theirs, right? And so you can basically change a keyword here, change a keyword there, and then you’ll see your score go up or down, and you can compare that score to the competitors that you’ve put into the Data Dive system. And so…

27:34
Doing that is just a really easy way. And the reason why I love this so much is because we had built our own internal calculator. And we had been doing this for brands manually uh in a spreadsheet. And we’d be giving this to them with a video showing them, like, here’s how you play with the calculator. And now, like when Data Dive uh had been already doing this inside of their software, I was like, yes, finally. So we completely migrated to Data Dive. uh

28:00
Primarily for that, em but then within that they have a really simple Niche dive as well So you have like a one-click system where you can go to your search page results Click on your product add your competitors and it’ll pull all of your data super fast um Into what they call their niche dive and that’ll help you start to figure out um your whole keyword system like which are gonna be your main root keywords that you’re gonna go after and you can start to

28:28
basically have all your keywords live in this platform. em And so you would take the two things, right? It’s the insights from Vogue that kind of give you direction. And then it’s the keyword data that you’re pulling from there. um And in addition to any keyword PPC reports that you have, any brand analytics that you have from Amazon, like you would want to pull that and cross-reference everything and make sure that you’re bringing in the Amazon data that you do have if you’re already selling on Amazon.

28:57
If you’re not, then you would definitely want to lean heavily on something like a data dive tool. So you’re not just launching into Amazon with very little keyword research. just seems like the, to me, at least the book, AI is more useful for the creative generation as opposed to the keywords, right? Does voc AI turn up a keyword that you can use in your title or I mean, data does all that already, right? Yeah, that would be more of a data dive thing.

29:26
But I think in terms of like laying out your overall strategy, you would want to understand the two, right? Because if you’re looking at Voke AI and it’s showing you certain trends around your product, then you might be more heavily on those types of keywords that play into that trend. And if you that again with your PPC keywords and say like, it could be that your PPC team is only going after the gifting words in the beginning, right?

29:54
They’re going after the gifting words. We want to show more of the, not just gifting images, but more of the gifting images, perhaps. We would want to lean more heavily on what types of gifting actually matter in the category. And so it’s really like looking at everything together and coming up with like a holistic strategy as opposed to just saying like, these are all my keywords, let’s go after everything at once because it’s probably going to be less effective. So I see. So you’re using the review. uh

30:22
generation, the reviews from Voc.ai to prioritize the keywords that you put in the front of your titles, thus overriding perhaps some of Data Dive’s suggestions. Not necessarily. would, we definitely lean on, on Data Dive for that component where I would say we use Voc.ai more heavily is for instance, one of the things that I do is I pull all of the, so yes, more on the creative side, but I will pull all of the reviews. I’ll download the CSV. I will put that into,

30:51
uh some, you know, like a custom GPT. And I will ask it to build a, uh build us the avatars for this brand based on all of this data that we have. And then also build me the creative brief uh for this avatar specifically for Amazon. And so we’ve uh built that kind of uh a GPT that’ll do that for us. And then from there, like, let’s say the images say we want to have an image that says

31:21
uh that talks about this and it shows this and it says this. We want an image that talks about this, says this and shows this. We would want to make sure that that’s aligned with the PPC or the SEO strategy. Okay. Okay. And swap out some words here and there, pull some of those data dive keywords, make sure it’s in the copy that we’re using, that sort of thing. It’s actually been a while since I’ve gone deep in the woods with data dive, but I remember there was a lot of discretion on your end uh in terms of the prioritization. m

31:48
maybe choosing outliers in certain cases. I don’t think I’ve tried that battle of the titles yet, so I’ll have to go back and give it a try. Yeah. That’s a fun one. That’s one of my favorite features. Okay. Okay. And then so you have your creatives. Can we talk about A plus content a little bit? Do most people you find scroll all the way down to the bottom and does it make a big difference? So A plus content is, there’s two things I can share with you about A plus content. It is the, the,

32:16
point of which you can have the biggest gains on your listing. So we’ve seen up to a thousand eight percent increase in sales just from basic A plus content, not even talking about premium A plus content. um So A plus content, the reason why it’s so effective is because it’s the last piece of content that people are going to see before they hit the reviews. So if you can think of it through that, through the lens of it’s more important to stop the scroll here than it is to have a bunch of

32:44
uh textual jargon. We don’t want to be keyword stuffing here. We want to be stopping the scroll and tell them one or two more things before they hit those reviews so that they can buy. You know, the goal should be to convert here. um The other thing I will say is that most brands today that come to us still don’t have their premium A plus content unlocked. If you’re selling on Seller Central,

33:07
This is something that is free and accessible right now. I have clients today that are paying a half million dollars to have this turned on on one skew on vendor central. And so, and that’s per year, they have to pay that amount. So they have to have huge advertising budgets to even get access to this still, which I think is silly. That’s a whole nother thing. But um if you’re a seller central brand as of like over maybe even two years ago now, um Amazon has given access to brands. It’s very simple to unlock.

33:35
The only requirements are that you have a brand story applied to all your ASINs ah and that you have submitted A plus content more than five times and that it’s been approved. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to have more than one product. It doesn’t mean that you have to have more than one set of A plus content. It doesn’t even mean that you have to have A plus content designed or brand story designed. You could literally put a placeholder in the brand story section.

34:02
You can put a placeholder image and you can put a placeholder image in your A plus content. You could submit it, see if it gets approved, make any changes if it doesn’t. Once it’s approved, duplicate, submit, duplicate, submit, duplicate, submit. You get the idea. Do that five times. Duplicate, submit. You don’t even need to redesign, change anything. Then it will unlock. You need to wait about a week. Should unlock premium A plus content on your account. The next time you click to enter your A plus content, it should say,

34:32
basic A plus content, premium A plus content, brand story. So from that point, you can design something nice and amazing. And the reason why you would want to do that is because it’s actually giving you a seamless scroll, very similar to a landing page takeover. It’s giving you the ability to add hotspots, it’s giving you the ability to add carousels, multiple carousels, it’s giving you the ability to full scale video. um you’ll have the best thing is that you get to upload a separate set of mobile content.

35:02
So that the 70 % of shoppers that are on mobile are now looking at their own set of content, which is ideal. OK, right. So right now with just regular A plus content, what happens on mobile? It just shrinks it probably all down, right? Yeah, it’s not optimized at all. So yeah, but it’s such a quick fix, really. So it’s something that everybody should be doing if they haven’t done it already. That’s a high priority that I highly recommend. Yeah.

35:31
of all the things you could do to your listing, the lowest lift is gonna be the titles. The second lowest lift is gonna be your main image. Those are both gonna show great gains, and they can show great gains, and then your A plus content will show the highest gains, but it is the highest lift. It’s the hardest one to do well. Sorry, I’m trying to just understand what you just said. So you’re saying like the A plus content has the potential for the highest gains on your list? Yeah, yeah. So I’ll give you the breakdown. So main image and product image stack.

35:59
we’ve seen up to 547 % increase in orders. For SEO and title testing, we’ve seen up to 990 % increase in orders. For A plus content, we’ve seen up to 1,080 % in orders increase. So they can each independently increase. The best is when you do it all together. Altogether, the highest we’ve seen together is a 2,500 % increase in order.

36:26
Okay, I would have thought that the title in your image stack would be the highest priority. do, cause I always thought that people don’t even make it down to the A plus, but I get it. If they’re looking for the reviews, they have to scroll past it, which implies that like the images used in the A plus content have to like grab you. Yeah, I think there’s also probably a, I uh don’t know. My brain always goes to this dwell factor of.

36:52
Like how, like I know, we know Amazon is tracking this very similar to how social media companies will track, like how much time people are watching your videos, how much time people are liking your posts and that sort of thing. I would imagine that brands that are performing best are getting higher dwell factor. like by having interesting color palettes going on in the product images and all kinds of flashy images going on in those product images that are showing and tally, people stay on those images longer, swipe back and forth.

37:21
and check them all out, right? But if it’s not interesting, they’re probably not gonna finish swiping. They’re gonna click the button and just go straight down the reviews. But if it is interesting, you might actually increase the factor of people scrolling to look at the A plus because they know it’s there. And just to get a few more questions answered because they might still have a couple of questions that they didn’t get answered that they might be looking for like, where is the answer to this? Right? And so they’re either gonna look for it in the A plus or they’re gonna start asking Rufus for it.

37:48
And Rufus now displays the image that’s associated with that answer. So if you know that people are asking Rufus about particular things, then you would want your imagery to answer that very clearly so that Rufus does serve it up in those scenarios. So you’re saying that this dwell time could be a ranking factor? I don’t know if it’s a ranking factor. I think it’s probably associated with conversion. Like if people are digesting your content a little bit longer, they’re likely more interested in your product and they’re likely adding to carton buying.

38:16
But if they’re, it’s like, it’s like, you think of a high bounce rate, if they’re not, if they’re not interacting or engaging with your content and they’re just leaving and bouncing, then your conversion rates going down. Right. So the whole goal is like, how can we increase that engagement factor? Like, how can we keep their attention, which is already really hard to do on Amazon, but how can we do it? Right. So like carousels of our, did, we pulled like a, our best performing, um, premium a plus content to see like,

38:45
What did they have in common? Is there something that we did there that we can lean into and say, okay, these are best practices we should do? And we itemize what are all the things that we may or may not have done with any set of A plus content. The only thing that all of them had in common was that we use carousels for every single one. And there is some sort of a bias on carousels that some people don’t like carousels because they feel like

39:14
why would I want to take my people down a rabbit hole? I just want them to put it in the cart and buy. Yeah. Right. But there’s a difference between primary content and secondary content. And a lot of times your primary content, which is the first thing that people are going to see, we want that to answer the most direct questions that people have if they’re just looking to like get it in the cart, like answer the question, get it in the cart. But there’s there’s a whole nother set of buyers that probably want to they like to spend time researching. They’re looking for the best one.

39:43
they want to know the secondary information. And so by having that information in the carousel, yes, tucked away, but it gives them some more to digest and convinces them that this is the right product for them. Right. So that could be the different differentiating factor there is like showing them why this is this is right for them or showing them that it’s easy to assemble in this amount of steps or showing them like, what are all the things that you would want to break down in a carousel that would help people better?

40:11
identify and understand your product. I can see this being very effective for product that’s a little more nuanced or complicated. Like the bag example, I could see A plus content being really worth it, right? Or any electronics or anything that requires more research, right? Or anything that has larger catalogs and multiple use cases. like if you have, um like there’s certain brands, there’s many brands that are coming out right now that have like 15 different products and they all have a use case. And so

40:38
this gives you a chance to kind of break those down and really explain when you would want to buy one or the other or a bundle, right? So you could get into cross-selling, upselling products across the catalog by taking advantage of carousels. What do think about bullet points? Like, you know, usually when I sell these, when I buy on Amazon these days, I just kind of look at the images and maybe like a look at the title and I just buy it, right? So like if you were to prioritize all these, how would you do it?

41:07
Prioritize what? Everything. Titles, uh image stack, bullet points, A plus content. Let’s say you had a limited time. For me, I group the title and the bullets into the same category. I just look at it like primary and secondary content is the same way I look at title and bullets. So title is your primary, bullets is your secondary. You still have to lay out the main five to 10 things in your bullets.

41:36
and it has to be super easy to digest in just the first few words. So it has to be skimmable, know, that sort of thing. ah But your primary heavy hitters are gonna be in your title. And with A plus content, it’s the same thing. It’s primary and secondary content. Your primary content that answers the questions are gonna be the first banners that people see top to bottom. Anything that requires a swipe is gonna be secondary content.

41:58
And I just had this question that just came to my mind. Why are these brands paying $500,000 for premium A plus content when they could just use your five submission method? Oh, that’s on vendor central. Oh, vendors. Oh, vendors central. Then they are. Okay. are. And vendor central brands don’t get access to it even today. Sorry, can you just explain to me what the advantages of being on vendor central today? So vendor central um

42:26
I think a lot of the larger brands are the ones that are still on vendor central because they have a direct relationship with Amazon. And so for some of those brands, it makes more sense that Amazon would still buy their product and they just ship it off to Amazon. um So it just depends. And even some of those are even doing like a hybrid approach at this point. So. Yeah.

42:51
I would say it’s not the majority of the clients that we have. It’s probably like 10 to 20 % of our clients are vendor. But yeah, not all of them have premium. For most of them, we’re pushing them to get access to premium because I personally think that they should have access if seller central brands are getting it for free. It seems unfair that vendor centrals wouldn’t get it and they’re the ones spending the big advertising dollars. So. Okay. You know, it’s funny, before I hit record, we…

43:19
briefly chatted about AI generated content, but while we were talking, it seems like you are using AI for the images in a way. Oh, absolutely. Okay. So what, can you clarify your anti AI or your reservations about AI content that we talked about before we hit record? Yeah. So, okay. So here’s, here’s my two cents on AI. Okay. One, I think everybody’s

43:45
uh We’re caught up right now in a new AI tool coming out every week and having to learn all of these different AI tools and how it’s gonna, know, how we’re gonna make it happen for our business. AI can do so many things so great. My team uses it every single day. We use multiple different tools. We’re always trying to figure out the best and latest creative tools as are any team right now and as they should be. uh I don’t think on the creative side that many AI tools are able to do anything in one click. It is a huge time suck.

44:14
first of all. um we have found ways that it does make sense to use AI in certain scenarios. The second thing is AI is awesome at creating these like whimsical crazy things, right? But in order to do that, if you still want it to be pixel perfect, it most likely won’t be. um It is gonna require touching things up in Photoshop afterwards. So again, like it is, you can do almost anything you wanna do in your imagination, but you have to know that that comes with

44:43
a resource intensive time suck, right? Okay. All right. Yeah. the other thing is, the other thing is like, I don’t think AI is suitable for doing entire listings top to bottom. um I’ve seen people try to do like a one click and that creates all your product images, a one click and it creates all your A plus content. We ourselves are trying to do that. We’re trying to break our own systems. I don’t feel confident in anything that we’ve created to sell to anyone today.

45:11
And I would, and that’s something like just ethical. I think that there’s, we take a lot of pride in the quality that we put out there. And so if I’m going to put something out there, I want it to be something that’s better than you’re going to get on Fiverr at least, you know, or better, you know, like I want something that’s like meaningful in that sense. And I don’t think a lot of AI tools.

45:32
especially the one click things that people are trying to pitch right now are really there and that they’re taking in the data that’s required to create more of a strategic approach to doing listings well. So I think that that’s a caveat. That being said, we have created listings that are full AI and nothing else. And we’ve done it for just two brands at the moment where it made sense to do it for them. It was very specific products. I’m not going to say which ones they were, but

46:01
In those scenarios, it did make sense. For the majority of brands, it doesn’t make sense because you would look at the product and you would kind of subconsciously know that the content is just like off. Like something’s just not right. And then you lose that trust factor with the shopper. And that’s something that you have to take into consideration. It’s the same thing of like when, when people started using renders for their imagery and Amazon didn’t want people using renders because so many people were getting bad renders. And then you have things that just look

46:31
horrible and then the customer receives something totally different and they’re upset and so we have to make sure that when we’re adopting any of these tools that we’re doing so responsibly and still showing what the customer is actually going to receive and that everything feels really authentic and true to the brand and so Where we’re using it today is in a few different ways. We’re filling in the gaps with any content that’s missing we are

46:56
Maybe taking the photo shot like there’s a bunch of clients that have spent thousands of dollars on on photo shoots and then they’ve changed their packaging and that’s something that we can place back into those images with AI and then touch up in Photoshop or we can just do with Photoshop. Just depends on the scenario. um There’s certain scenarios where we um we might want to play around with something that’s not possible in a in a photo shoot or we might need models that we don’t have available to us in a photo shoot and we might be in a time crunch.

47:26
So in that scenario, we would want to lean on AI imagery. I just don’t think it’s best to use it for everything start to finish for most types of products. usually takes me multiple iterations to come up with an AI image for like a meta ad, for example. And then recently I critiqued a student’s website. They were selling ethically sourced supplements and it was an image of a AI woman which ruined it for me, right? Like as soon as you see like an AI person that’s obvious, you start to question everything that’s on the page.

47:56
So 100 % agree with you there. But if you couldn’t tell that the woman was AI and it was done really well, then you wouldn’t lose that trust factor, right? But it’s because you picked it up so quick. And so there’s things that you can use like PickFu to help determine whether people are noticing whether it’s AI or not, right? Like you could have easily put those images into a split test.

48:19
and ask people like, which image do you like better? Don’t even mention the word AI, but then see if people are like, I like this one because it’s not AI. And if you notice the multiple people are catching that it’s AI, it’s like, okay, this isn’t working. know, we have to either do it better or do something different. Since you brought up PickFu, let’s give these guys a shout out here. So how are you using PickFu in your agency? So I actually found PickFu from your blog many, years ago. So almost eight years ago, I want to say, maybe between six and eight years ago, long time.

48:49
um And I loved it so much for Split Testing Main Images that I immediately reached out to them and I told them, was like, we have to get on a call. I am gonna be your ambassador. We need to do videos together. More people need to know about this. And they didn’t even have a choice. It was just like, this is happening. Whether you like it or not, this is happening. I made a video, I sent it to them and they were like, this is great. So we started doing videos together many, many years ago. And…

49:16
Since then, I just made it part of our process at mindful goods that we always use split testing as we’re creating designs because sometimes you need to get data back quick into these feedback loops and you don’t have time to wait for manager experiments on Amazon. Like you don’t have four to 10 weeks to wait for one split test. We need to get some sort of pre validation. And what that does is it helps us understand maybe

49:43
which main image might perform best on Amazon or which order our image stack should be or any little tidbits that we might’ve missed on our A plus content that we didn’t think to incorporate back into our design. So there’s so many little insights that you can gain by running these split tests. So we just make that a part of our design process so that we are doing that for our clients. I mean, I personally found that real humans, so the trend right now is to just upload images to like AI and have them tell you which one’s better converting.

50:13
But I’ve always found like human responses are just way more nuanced and things that AI would just never tell you. At least that’s just been my experience. Also, if we think about the, I do think things are gonna go that way for sure. And that’s gonna allow us to do even like more rapid testing without thinking about the financial costs as much. I’m like, uh I’m really into that as well on the AI audience side, but I agree with you. There’s certain insights that you get from the human element. um

50:42
that you might not get from uh an AI poll. And there’s certain specific ones that instantly come to mind when I think about it, where it’s usually the questions that people have that are in their head that they then say in the comments. That might not come up uh in an AI analysis, but one of the ones that I always remember is this one that we did with Yesbar. And I think they’re actually uh

51:12
their founders are based in your area as well. they, we were testing main images for them and a bunch of people kept uh mentioning in the comments like is or asking like, this product vegan? And we realized like, oh, wow, we did not highlight the fact that it’s vegan. It is vegan, but it’s like very small, like light type on the box. So we basically digitally enhanced the word vegan onto their packaging so that it was like big and bold. And one of the first things that you saw

51:42
And I mean, there’s a couple other things that we obviously did to the design. We included some close ups of the stacked snack bars and we enhanced the colors a little bit and like, you know, our little wizardry tricks and the click through rate on their listing went up by 11.8 % within two weeks. And that’s like, that’s that’s like the power of playing around with this creative stuff. That’s something that I probably would not have pointed out. Right. I mean, how would I know that people are looking for vegan stuff?

52:11
Yeah, in relation to this product. Correct. Correct. So Daniela, where can people hire you or get help from you? And what types of brands do you serve? Like, do you have certain limitations or requirements? I should say not limitations. Right. We’re typically working with seven and eight figure brands that are a little bit more established at this point. We still do work with a handful of early stage brands every year.

52:38
But it has to be the right fit. Like we’re really passionate about working with brands that believe their product should be in the world for some reason or another so that we have great stories to tell as we’re working with those brands. So if you think of like some of the most amazing direct to consumer websites that are out there right now, we are helping those brands bring that to life on Amazon. Okay, because I know you have a pricing package page, right? Where you can just buy a package.

53:05
Is that open to everyone or once you click on that package, you get further screened? get further screened. So I will say we do turn away like 80 % of the business that comes our way is not a fit. I know it’s a bummer. I wish we could serve everybody, but we’re really great at serving this specific type of clientele, these specific type of brands that really believe in their content.

53:34
right, like that investing content, they want their product to look the best that it can possibly look on every single channel. That’s who our dream customers are, because they get it. They completely understand the value of content. And so we prefer to work with those founders. Anyone that’s like not sure why somebody would pay uh three times the cost for a listing for us, it’s just like, it’s not even a question. Like it’s like the clients that we work with, they completely get it and we don’t, we’re not questioned. So

54:02
ah You can find us at mindfulgoods.co and you can find amazing examples and case studies and we share everything. We have a whole metrics tab on our website that has our, usually we’re updating a few times throughout the year of all of our split testing data. We publish it all. ah I haven’t seen any other agency doing that yet. So we’re really passionate about helping founders manage their split tests, run their split tests, using that data iteratively, improving throughout the year.

54:32
And then we like to share those results in aggregate uh and in the form of amazing case studies from smaller and larger brands on our website. And if you’re looking for our latest and greatest creatives that we’re putting out or test results, we share almost everything on LinkedIn. So you can find me there. So search for Daniela Boltzmann on LinkedIn or mindful. OK, Daniela Boltzmann. Yeah. OK. Well, Daniela, thank you so much for coming on the show. uh

54:59
It’s just a small world. I’m actually going to play tennis with the founder of Tik Fu and like right after this interview. They’re great. I’m jealous. I’m jealous. All right. Thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me. Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you haven’t updated your Amazon listings in a while, then we listen to this episode and follow Daniela’s playbook. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 628.

55:25
And once again, tickets to Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you wanna hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com.

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 going to show you why many e-commerce stores are dying right now, and most owners have absolutely no idea that this is happening. Because in the last two years, three big shifts completely changed how customers find products, how they decide what to buy, and whether you actually get to keep any of the money that you make.

00:24
Everything I’m walking you through today is pulled straight from the playbook that I’m teaching live at Seller Summit 2026. So stay with me because this is genuinely important stuff. 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 events that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away.

00:53
Every speaker I invite is in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants. Also, I hate large events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. 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.

01:23
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. Now on to the show.

01:44
Welcome to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast. Today we’re going to talk about all the cool things that are happening in e-commerce and the skills that you need to have in order to survive this year. Yeah. Why does it already feel like it’s been 15 years? I know it’s only February, but I feel like I’ve aged a couple of years in just the past month. That’s just what it’s felt like for me. I feel the same exact way. Is there like an age in Shopify years that we?

02:14
like agent dog years, but agent Shopify years. don’t know, but there’s some, let’s just start with the good news. Shall we? Yes. The tariffs have been marked as unconstitutional. This was just announced today as of this recording and I’m like, how do I get a refund? Uh, it’s going to make life so much better. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know how, I don’t know the procedure. Like I literally saw the announcement this morning, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen.

02:41
Yeah, I got an alert on my phone, actually. don’t even like I didn’t sign up for tariff alerts, but it was like such big news that it hit the Apple News, I think, cycle. And so I got an alert. It’s going to be really interesting because I know last year at Seller Summit, there were people, multiple people who had containers sitting in China that they could not afford to ship over, um you know, full product. And so and obviously it’s been, you know, 10 months, nine months since that.

03:11
that time, but I mean, it really impacted people in a very negative way for several months last year. So this should be interesting this year to see how it all works out. it’s funny. One of our vendors in the US actually gets their stuff from India and she hasn’t she’s been out of stock for months because the India tariff was 50 percent and she refused to ship that container over. So we’ve been like out of stock on a small subsection of our of our products that we get from the US. Wow.

03:40
OK, yeah, so we actually know who our vendor is. Yeah. So good news. That’s good news for everybody. I think I don’t think you’ll be getting a refund. Let’s just be honest about that. you have to wait for the class action lawsuit to happen, which will take 15 years, and then you’ll get a check for four dollars and 22 cents at the end of it. Exactly, exactly. But future tariffs, that’s a good thing. Yeah. The other thing that’s

04:08
is one of the sponsors for Seller Summit is offering three full months of managed PPC, Amazon PPC, but only if you’re an attendee of Seller Summit. And this is a killer deal. It is. Now I haven’t sold on Amazon in quite a bit of time. What is the value of that, honestly? What are people… Feels like it’s expensive. I did a trial with another company in the past.

04:38
because, and I think they charged, I wanna say it was something like two to $3,000 a month for fully managed. And of course you still have to pay for ads, obviously. But this company is trying to establish themselves in this space right now. And this is just a killer offer. Fully managed services for three months.

05:06
Again, worst case, if it doesn’t work out for you, you just go on with your day. I mean, that’s a crazy deal. That’s basically paying for your ticket five times over. Absolutely. Yeah. 10 times over probably. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s exciting. Now I want to sell on Amazon again. I just want the deal. I love a good deal. So any of you, guys listening to this, have already signed up for Seller Summit. Send me an email. Of course, we’re going to announce it at the event, obviously. But if you’ve already…

05:34
If you want to get a jump on this, you’ve already bought a ticket, just go ahead and send me an email. Just hit reply to any email that I’ve ever sent you. Get first in line for that one. The other thing that I’m excited to present, I’m going to start with myself. One of the talks that I’m giving at Seller Summit is how to vibe code your own Shopify apps. I think in a prior episode, we had talked about the death of the Shopify app store. Yeah.

06:02
I really think, you know, just for context, I went through and I vibe coded an app in about an hour for an app that costs $50 a month in perpetuity. Yeah. And I know nothing about Shopify app development. And I actually didn’t even look at the code that it generated. Really? I vibe coded the whole thing. I did not even look at it. OK. So because I was going to ask you, our friend Chris Cody will be at Seller Summit and he’s going to ask.

06:30
Can a regular person do this? Yes. And in this case, I was a regular person because I had no clue what the hell was going on. OK. Yeah. I that’s pretty exciting. Do I need to get a bigger room for you for that one? Because I think that will be very popular. So what I’m going to basically do is provide the frameworks. I’m going to provide like three real apps that I have VibeCoded. Yeah. And then I’m going to walk through how to VibeCode one of them. Yeah.

06:58
Well, and just a good example of this is you and this was like a year ago, you and I were talking about the loyalty app and how much I was seeing on my end, like revenue was being driven by the loyalty app. And you said you asked me bunch of questions about it. And then you asked me how much a month it was. And I said, I think we are paying it was like two or three hundred dollars a month. And we had the like not a great plan. We didn’t have a lot of the features. And you were like, you’re paying what?

07:28
And I was like, yeah, super expensive. And you ended up coding that up for your own shop pretty quickly. I don’t think that was an hour code, but it was definitely something that was reasonable. Yeah, that one took a weekend. OK, so you know what? I vibe coded that from scratch from my own platform. Yeah. I think you could probably do this in an afternoon using this vibe coded app. Because something like a loyalty program actually isn’t all that complicated. Yeah. Also.

07:57
You’re not going to be able to do this just to be clear with like a Clavio or a PostScript or something like that. That’s a little bit more involved. But there’s a lot of apps in the app store that are super popular that do very simple things. You can easily vibe code those. Yeah. So what I’m also hearing you say is there won’t be any app sponsors at Seller Summit. There are not going to be any app sponsors at Seller Summit. Certainly not Shopify apps. Yes. I actually don’t think we’ve really had many app sponsors at Seller Summit over the years. So that’s OK. uh

08:25
So let’s switch gears a little bit because I do want to, this is something that I’ve been actually kind of thrown into on accident. I think our friend Jeff Oxford is going to be there, who’s uh one of our favorite Seller Summit speakers. And I’ve been having to do a lot of SEO work lately on category or collection pages. And every time I get tasked with this, I’m like, does this even matter anymore? Like, should I even care?

08:53
about SEO, can I cancel my Ahrefs membership? I hope he’s going to be talking about all that. Yes. I asked him to talk about it. I actually did an experiment over the holidays where my traffic went up 25 % because of these SEO and AEO tactics uh ranking uh in the AI LLMs.

09:16
And Jeff is going to cover all of that. asked him to cover. He’s actually gone the extra mile and he’s actually gathered a whole bunch of statistics, whereas I’m only one store. He actually has a variety of clients that he can talk about, too. Yeah, I’m excited about that because I sometimes I’m working on these these little tasks and I’m like, this which am I even doing this right? Should I be changing my strategy? And I’m sure I should. I’m excited to hear what he has to say about it. I think ranking in the LLMs is the most important thing that

09:45
you could be working on right now. Because people aren’t using the traditional Google search anymore and they’re not clicking on the blue links. They’re doing their research in ChatGPT just as an example. And when they’re ready to buy, they buy what ChatGPT tells them to buy. So it’s really key to get mentioned. Yeah. I mean, know I am just uh as a user. So yeah, absolutely. That’s actually how I shop now. Yeah.

10:14
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10:43
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11:13
talk to them right now. Find out what needs fixing while you still have time to fix it and go over to quietlight.com for a free valuation. So speaking of AI, I saw this on the Seller Summit website and I’m actually intrigued because I didn’t I don’t know anything about this talk, but it’s a

11:32
Practical AI strategies to grow your revenue by 4x and AOV by 22%. What sort of bold promise are we making here with this That’s everything that I’ve done with my store. It’s going to be piggybacked on the Shopify live coding. I’m going to show people exactly what I have done with my store, and then I’m going to show them how to implement it. Awesome. I actually presented this at DTC, whatever number it is, 8x, 10x.

12:02
But people were asking like, how do I do this with my store? Like, is there a Shopify app that does this? And I was like, well, the problem with Shopify apps today, like if you look in the app store, they all say AI powered and you really have no idea what the heck does what. But you can easily vibe code the things that I’m gonna teach you in that lecture. Awesome. And then, you know, we talked a little bit about AI. You know, one of the top popular sessions people wanted.

12:31
all the sessions, we talked about the free PPC, are just ads in general. So, ah you know, we’re talking about YouTube ads again. ah I feel like every year, I’m assuming this is Brett Curry. It’s Brett Curry. uh So TikTok Shop has been killing it. And of course, YouTube wants to do the same thing. Yeah. And YouTube shopping has evolved a lot since the last year.

12:59
And so Brett’s going to give us an update and how to sell on video and develop affiliate relationships just like TikTok, Sean. So one thing I love about Brett’s talks is that since he has an agency, he’s like a little bit like Jeff Oxford in that he can bring multiple case studies. oh it’s not just and obviously I like hearing single case studies too, for sure. But like I love that he always has lots of examples.

13:26
um It’s funny. I still think about his examples from last year um two of the big ones that he had were the Navage or whatever the nasal I can’t get that one out of my head the nasal and then they also do like a really bright hair color brand um But it’s funny because I was talking to another ads agency a couple weeks ago And one of their clients is a different nose nose clean your system

13:51
And I was like, oh, it’s the competitor to Brett’s nose cleaner system, you know. So anyway, I was like, it’s funny because like he has such great examples that like they they I still think about those ads that he was showing us a year ago uh from the stage. So it’s pretty cool, like all the examples that he brings. And it really makes it easy to understand, like what’s happening because he shows you like this is exactly what it is. This is why it works. This is the breakdown of how how it’s set up. And so I feel like anyone can walk, watch his talk and implement it like.

14:21
you know, the next day or the next week. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, lives not not just live selling, but social selling is still huge and will continue to be huge. And YouTube’s playing catch up. Yeah. Which brings me to TikTok shop, actually. I invited Ian Page to come talk about TikTok shop. It’s actually changed dramatically in just the last six months. I don’t I just published a YouTube video about this, actually some of the changes, but.

14:49
they had announced that they’re not allowing people to do merchant fulfilled anymore. Like they’re not allowed to ship stuff themselves and they’re trying to push everyone over to fulfilled by TikTok. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in e-commerce that you should all check out.

15:18
It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show. And that’s one of the major changes and there’s all these like hidden

15:47
gotchas actually. So Ian is a, I can’t remember, certified TikTok shop partner. And he actually shared with me some of their internal documents about, you know, how they, how they tier their different sellers. So Ian’s going to go through all the fine print on how to become a successful TikTok shop seller. And I think this is very important because discovery has pretty much gone the way of social, right?

16:15
Which is why I’m really excited that Tiffany’s coming back. I think if we had to vote on, her some of it’s favorite speaker of all time, Tiffany Wynn’s hands down. I think so. uh Always, she could talk about anything and people would go to that session. But she’s actually doing something that I think is really important. She’s going to talk about the importance of storytelling on video. And just, you know, we.

16:37
You and I have been pushing this for so long, couple years now in the course, on the podcast. I feel like we’re always talking about you need to make video, you need to make video. But still, the number one question we get is, can I make a faceless video channel? Right? Like people do not want to be on video. And for you and I who’ve been doing this a really long time, it doesn’t seem as overwhelming. But I know if you’re just getting started, in fact, we’re doing a challenge in the course next, know, this coming month about making videos.

17:06
It’s tough, it’s a big hurdle, but it’s a hurdle that if especially as a brand you can get over and make that video content. mean Tiffany’s grown her entire business on video content and she’s been doing it for, I think she got started in e-commerce in 2016, 2017 timeframe. So she’s gonna give you guys some tips on basically how to be comfortable on camera and how to push record. What do you have to do?

17:35
as well as she’s gonna show you guys the halo effect of that video content creation, right? Which leads into the storytelling, the brand storytelling. um And she’s like, it’s amazing when you make videos how, um like she was talking about how people will search, right? Like they’ll go into chat or whatever they’re using and they’ll start searching. But at some point, they usually type in your brand name, right? And they wanna learn more about the brand. um

18:03
And she’s like, and if what’s coming up is video content for people and like it’s the founder, right? Talking to people or the rep, right? Doesn’t have to be the founder, right? If you want to have like a brand spokesperson, whoever that would be. um She’s like the amount of sales that they get from people like searching for not, not searching for Emmalou’s, sorry. um Emmalou’s or searching for Tiffany, right? Or Paul um and getting uh just that halo effect of.

18:31
the search and the video and then basically connecting with Paul and Tiffany and their story and the brand. And she’s actually launching a brand new brand right before Seller Summit. So it’ll be really, you guys will get to hear all about that as well. So super excited to have her, obviously one of the favorite Seller Summit speakers and always entertaining. And hopefully we’ll help you guys get over your fear of video. Well, I think one thing that’s important about what she’s teaching is

18:57
Your face doesn’t have to be on there. You can do a really good story tell with just your voice and maybe different scenes maybe around your office or whatnot. I forgot what it’s called, a voiceover, that’s what it’s called. Voiceover videos. So even if you are squeamish, the storytelling aspect is way more important than anything else. And you know who’s been creating really great video content is one of our Solar Summit alums is Meg. And this is where I feel like you…

19:27
Because the other question we get is, well, I sell dirt, right? I sell cement or some really obscure product. you’re like, remember that we had a guy one year that sold cement stones like years ago. um So there’s people like, this is not a video product, right? Like Andy Humphrey sells sprinklers, you know? But Meg sells hermit crab food. And like crickets and like really weird dirt, like basic stuff. And she has been making TikTok videos.

19:56
at least for the last year. And when I started seeing them, she didn’t have a ton of engagement, she doesn’t have a ton of followers. Now when she posts video content, you can see how much it’s grown, right? And while she is on the video talking, a lot of the content is geared towards like, we just got this huge shipment of grubs, let’s repack it to ship and sell, right? And let’s see what we’re, this is the Christmas bonus bug. You know, all these things where you’re just like,

20:23
It’s not about her, she’s talking about the product, she’s talking, and it’s all about the product getting to you, right? So I think people are like, I don’t wanna just stand in front of the camera, totally get it. But there’s ways you can do this, even with bugs, to uh grow your brand. Actually, while we’re on the topic of storytelling, there’s a session that is gonna be all about storytelling for meta ads. uh

20:52
I first met Scott at one of Kevin King’s events and we got to talking. He runs Merchant Mastery. And he was like, hey, why don’t you just give this a try with your meta ads? And it involved telling your entire story in text on the meta ads itself. And when I adopted that, it actually is now one of my higher performing ads. Interesting. So he sent over one of his presentations for us to look through.

21:22
Yeah, a couple of weeks ago, I was shocked at how much he gives people away, like gives away that he should probably charge for it. I mean, I know he does have a program and stuff, but like the amount of stuff that he’s giving away for free is pretty nutty. Yeah, and it works. What he’s teaching work. So if your meta ads have not been performing that well lately, his storytelling framework that he’s going to be teaching at Sellers Summit works because I have actually tried it for myself.

21:51
And I will say the bar is high for him only because we know multiple people who have come to Sellers Summit over the past five years who have said the meta ads talk alone was worth the ticket price. um I think of our most recent is Kelly, who has Kelly Dream, which is a crochet kit. I mean, she went to the ads. She jokes that she went to the ad session and did every single thing that you said to do. I think it was your session um and basically blew her business up and.

22:19
matter of a couple of months to the point where every time I would talk to her, she would be in her her townhouse garage shipping products, right? She was not prepared for the level of growth that she had. So I would say these the meta ads talks typically at seller summit are what people view as the best investment of the entire event. Yep. And what’s funny about this is we have a couple of talks on sourcing and this all obviously happened before this this terror.

22:47
real got ruled unconstitutional, but all these tactics still apply. And all the factors over there are willing to do some of these things. So one of our talks given by our very own JK Beaton, who’s long time sell-a-some attendee, he’s actually a student in my class. He’s going to give a talk about how to cut costs. just imagine now that the tariffs hopefully will be gone, and you can cut costs, things could get like cheaper than they were.

23:17
like a couple years ago when all this stuff was happening. And there’s a variety, I actually, I’ve seen his entire talk. There’s some tactics in there that I was not employing with sourcing also. Yeah, because he does this for a living. Yeah. Yeah. What’s the other tariff talk? The other one is how to source from Vietnam. Vietnam, so I just started sourcing from Vietnam. It’s Jim Kenamers giving that talk and

23:45
I found that the prices in Vietnam are lower and at the time the tariffs were lower as well. So it’s a win-win. uh The hard part actually is finding the factories in Vietnam to work with. And that’s what he’s going to teach us, like how to source in Vietnam, all the gotchas and the differences. Well, know, it happened to one of my clients where she’d been sourcing from China for six, seven years, probably longer than that. And then last year,

24:13
She sent some she does curriculum and Bible studies and she sent something to her factory that she’s used for a really long time And they were like we can’t print this it’s religious materials They’ve always printed this stuff right and it’s never been an issue, but something was triggered right? And they were left absolutely scrambling so kind of regardless of you know your situation. It’s always good to have another you know tentacle right to

24:40
be able to at least, if you’re not gonna source from Vietnam tomorrow, to understand how it works and to be able to just be exploring things because I feel like last year was so volatile and most people had all their eggs in one basket. And just sort of being prepared for whatever comes next and having options, really important for folks. I mean, here’s what’s great about Vietnam. They’re getting their stuff from China, like the raw materials and they’re making it. So you can pretty much get everything.

25:09
A lot of the stuff from Vietnam that you can from China. It’s just where it’s like assembled and created. Which speaking of getting products, let’s talk about product research. Yes. You know, I feel like most of the people at Seller Summit already have a product, um you know, and are already selling. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t need new products to sell to, you know, expand their product line or even, you know, we still always have some new folks.

25:38
who are still in the process of trying to figure out, they know they wanna do this, but they don’t know exactly what they wanna do yet. Yeah, so Isabella’s given this talk. uh She has this framework that is very comprehensive that allows you to come up with a product, make changes and validate that it’s gonna sell before you invest a lot of money into it. uh What’s funny about this is I’m trying to actually, so one of the tools she uses, I’m actually trying to get,

26:07
some free free love because I’ve been in contact with this company. We actually had lunch. I had lunch with the CEO and he wants to sponsor. He just doesn’t have the resources to spend send people out. So I’m trying to finagle some free free membership love of this tool so that when she gives that talk, people can do it right there. That’d be very exciting on the floor. Yeah. But yes, even if you are not new and you already have products, I feel like Isabella’s uh

26:37
talk on research and validation is top notch. In fact, I believe right after that talk, Charles hired her on the spot. Yes. Yeah. We have a lot of talks this year on AI, which I think is fantastic because I feel like that’s all anybody’s talking about right now. um And it’s something that I will say people are either using very successfully or people are failing wildly.

27:06
And I’ve seen both examples this past week of that happening. So let’s talk about some of our AI talks. Yeah, so I think for me, like the AI talks that I curated are ones that can actually make you money. Not like the fun ones like, oh, create your own music video. There’s a bunch of cool stuff you can do with AI, but we’re focusing specifically on what can make you money.

27:31
And one thing that I wanted Bernie to talk about since he’s like the AI, he’s one of the people who’s played around with this the most. Is this ability to let agents handle all your busy work. And the idea here is you’re treating these agents, and I know that term is being thrown around a lot, but you’re treating these agents as like individuals who you assign tasks. And then they, so it’s more like,

28:01
people management almost. And so he’s going to be talking about what agents he uses. He’s actually going to focus on one just to not overwhelm everyone. Right. The main one that he uses, the main frameworks and how he deploys these agents to do those tasks for him so that when he kind of just wakes up in the morning, he already has a whole bunch of stuff done. I haven’t seen his talk yet, but because I actually don’t know that much about how, what he’s doing. Yeah.

28:28
But I do know that he’s really good at simplifying things and making sure that you can leave with something. You’ll be able to deploy these agents by the end of this talk. And if not, you can see them during the round tables and even get some hands on help. Yeah. And I feel like we don’t see Bernie without seeing Ritu. That’s correct. I love every talk that Ritu gives. She’s like Tiffany to me. They have very different personalities, but like.

28:55
whatever she’s talking about, I like rushed to that session because it’s always so informational. We I saw I don’t know if you were in that room with me. I saw her give a talk last year at another event about creatives and just like blown away at how she was doing things. And basically, I felt like what makes her talk so strong is that.

29:18
A lot of times you’ll still see people give an AI talk, right? But they don’t tell you exactly how they got to the final product, right? And so it’s like there’s always this gap between like, okay, do these three things and then boom, you have this, right? But when you do it, it’s like, boom, you have not that. And I love how like one of the things she really hit on when I saw her talk last was basically like all the important prompting ah components that she has basically created.

29:47
And basically how even if you’re not like a graphic designer or a video editor or all the, you know, like a professional in that area, you can get really, really close to a perfect final product using the right words, right? Which I think most of us just don’t know how to do. So this year for Ritu and it’s where I haven’t like completely squared away exactly what I want to talk about yet. But right now she’s going to be talking about vibe coding.

30:16
for e-commerce, I’m covering the Shopify part, she’s covering vibe coding for pretty much everything else, mainly focused on what you can do on Amazon and with your website as well. Very interesting. And then I see AI generated UGC. Yes, so Leo Segovio is giving that talk and I saw what he was doing and I was fascinated by it. So what he’s gonna teach the audience how to do is create

30:45
creatives for your meta ads on mass using AI. And so one thing that really caught my eye when he was talking to me about this was you can take like a winning ad. Let’s say I sell moisturizer. Okay. And I see this ad and I want to just kind of replicate it. Well, he has this automated flow setup where you could take an existing ad, insert your product, change the model around and the script, and it automatically follows that format.

31:15
Oh, wow. That already works and it looks really good. And then you run ads with it. So it’s all automated. He uses this tool called N8N, which is, uh I don’t even know what you call it. I guess an automation platform or workflow pattern where you just click a button and it generates a bunch of these creatives. So one of the problems of running meta ads is that you constantly need to refresh your creatives. But with this automated flow that he has, you can do this at the push of a button.

31:44
I don’t think I’m doing it justice actually, or I’m describing it very well. I don’t know, it sounds fascinating to me. It’s pretty darn amazing using all the AI video tools at your disposal. Yeah, and I feel like, I mean, we’ve been talking about this for a couple years now, but this is the first year I think at Seller Summit that we have a lot of AI components in the talks because I feel like it’s how you are going to stand out from your competitors, is being able to scale quickly.

32:14
being able to implement things quickly using AI, saving money, saving costs, right? Whether it’s like Bernie talking about, you know, having these agents or, you you talking about vibe coding, right? Like it’s just gives you a leg up in so many different areas of your business and the people who are quick to adapt it. Because I will tell you, there are a lot of businesses that do not want to adapt uh with AI at all. They view it as plagiarism. They view it as all these kind of like, I feel like it’s old school, but it’s not even that old. ah

32:44
So I feel like if you can get on the bandwagon and start, know, even if you can take one of the things that we talked about at Seller Summit and start implementing in your business, you’re going to have advantage over your competition. Since we’re on the topic of AI, we’re going to be talking about how to be like a one man content machine. We already talked about the importance of creating video, creating creatives and whatnot. So I mean, these are all forms of content that you need to be churning out.

33:12
Problem is, and this has been a big hurdle with students in my class, they’re like, how do I stay consistent? How do I create this content without just driving myself nuts and having this consume my entire life? So Chris Schaeffer is gonna be giving this talk. How to use AI to not only magnify the content that you create, but also how to create a really good routine with AI augmenting what you’re doing to be very consistent with your content creation.

33:41
Chris Schaeffer, Seller Summit OG. OG. He always gives a fantastic talk. I actually think if you remove you and I from the equation, he is the only speaker who’s given a talk every single year at Seller Summit. Is that right? Yeah. Even the first year? Yeah, he gave a talk the first year. I’m pretty sure he did. He came the I know he came the first year, but I think he gave a talk the first year too. um So yeah, true OG and Chris Schaeffer.

34:08
Also, we had a conversation last night about Lars. Lars is not speaking, but our good friend Lars will be there. Another one of our OGs. My daughter told me that he was her favorite Seller Summit attendee last night. Is that right? Yes. She thinks he is. I mean, no matter what Lars is up to, is like always has so much good feedback for whatever you’re doing. Very honest, does not pull any punches, which is great. So anyway, he refuses to speak for us anymore.

34:38
but that’s okay, because he still attends and that’s good. And speaking of like feedback, let’s talk about Reddit. We’ve never done a Reddit talk before. Everyone can talk feedback uh about your This is one actually I was kind of hesitant to have, but I think it’s necessary. These days when you do a search in AI, it mentions a whole bunch of Reddit posts. So if you were to go to ChatGBT,

35:06
and you were to ask it best standing desks, and then you would click on the sources button. I would be willing to get guess that 30 % of the citations, the sources for the citations for the answer is from Reddit. And there’s this like whole community of people who are gaming Reddit to get mentioned in the LLMs, which is the name of the game right now. I believe Reddit is mentioned or cited 40 % of the time for

35:35
e-commerce searches now, which is pretty nuts. And basically this talk is going to teach you how to get mentioned in Reddit without getting banned by Reddit. Yeah. Well, yeah. And it also reminds me of the fact that one one time one of my clients said, hey, there’s a whole subreddit about my business. Is that good or bad? And I was like, depends.

36:01
Yeah, and we are we are having someone come who knows a little bit about bad press in their business um Yeah, this would be like a really fun talk uh Dave Bryant of ecom crew. We’re trying to get Mike to come out too. Yes, but uh He’s learned a lot of lessons from this failed launch I don’t want to give too much away. It’s just a very interesting story I don’t know. How do you put it?

36:31
So I think it’s, what because uh I like to joke with people that like all press is good press, but that’s not true. Bad press, bad press can really hurt your business. um And there’s definitely the right way to handle it and the wrong way to handle it and what you can learn from, you know, the whole experience. And so I think I I actually love the talks that are like this is everything that went wrong.

36:57
Because I feel like so often people get up and are like, my business is amazing. I sold for two billion dollars. I’m living my best life. And it’s like if you’re, you know, in the first three or four years of e-commerce, you’ve probably experienced, especially right now, you’ve experienced all sorts of you’ve had the ups and downs of a pandemic and then tariffs and, you know, elections. And so it’s sometimes it’s like, oh, hey, let’s have a realistic talk about like, hey, when things don’t go exactly your way.

37:26
If something bad happens, like this is what happened and this is how we handled it and this is what we would do differently, right? Next time around or maybe they do everything the same. Yeah, actually, the talk is really about how to launch a brand. Yeah. But he’s framing it in such a way like all the mistakes that he made, what not to do and what to do. So it should be really good. Yeah, I’m excited. Although I’ve I’ve heard it a million times. I still well, I don’t think you know all the little details. I probably don’t.

37:54
It depends. Then I will be giving the closing keynote this year. I know. You’re ruining my whole event. um I’ll have to be thinking about it for three days. I usually give myself the first talk of the event so I get it over with. Oh, yes, that’s right. You’re to be last. Yes, I’m going to be last. Saving the best for last.

38:22
I do know what I’m talking about, but I don’t think I’m gonna share it. You’re not gonna share it, okay. I think it’s gonna be, I mean it’s not like a surprise, you know, someone jumping out of a birthday cake level surprise, but I think it’ll be a good closing wrap-up of this year for sure. Okay, well I can’t wait. Yeah, well we’ll see. do a little bit every day on it. That’s kind of my, has been my goal. Oh, that’s, yeah. I don’t operate that way, I just like,

38:52
pump out the whole thing. I don’t operate that way either, but I was like, can’t be pumping this out the week before the event. I have too much other event stuff going on. If I did that, it would be me getting up there and telling you everything that went right and wrong with the event. You know, what’s funny is I was debating whether to give like three talks this year because there’s like so much stuff that I’ve been working on this year. But I don’t want to kill myself either and make myself a nervous wreck the entire time.

39:19
No, and the one thing we didn’t get to talk about, which I wanted, we’re like close on time here, but we didn’t really talk about the masterminds. Oh yes. And I’m excited because this year for uh the content masterminds, so we have a couple masterminds at Seller Summit, and one of the masterminds that we introduced a few years ago was the content mastermind, and this is for people who really want to focus on content creation to help grow their brand. So while it is still e-commerce focused, it’s not like, you know, completely outside of that.

39:48
It is definitely we talk a lot about YouTube and TikTok and social media and you know all the different channels you can use to put content out there. And last year our friend Danan was in my mastermind in the content mastermind. And after the content mastermind he pulled me aside and he was like hey that was really great I loved it you know this and that. He’s like I have some ideas for next year. I was like perfect I love I love feedback. And he

40:17
He is one of those people who, he reminds me of a lot like Chris Schaefer and that they’re always testing like 10 things at once. Like, I’m starting five YouTube channels and this channel I’m doing four videos a day and this channel I’m doing four videos a week and this channel I’m doing four videos a month and this channel, know, he’s always got like all these things going on. And so he said, you know, I’m doing all this stuff and he’s like, and I have these spreadsheets and I’m tracking things and can I give those away to people in your content mastermind next year?

40:43
Can I give my whole process of how I was like, no, no, we definitely hate when people get free stuff at seller summit. ah So anyway, he’s actually going to be leading the content mastermind this year. Awesome. And going through all of this testing he’s been running for the past couple of years, he has multiple e-commerce brands as well as content brands. So I’m excited for that because I feel like it’s going to be especially and he’s doing almost all video focused stuff. So uh ton of experience and uh

41:13
He was even nice enough to share his first video he ever made, which if you are someone like us who’s been making video a long time, you never share the first video you made, because it’s so bad. And so he’s like, yeah, this is where I started and this is where I am today. And like huge, phenomenal improvement. so he knows this stuff and he’s really been very generous with what he’s gonna do in that content group this year. So I’m super excited. And that’s actually almost full.

41:40
So if you are on the fence about that one, I think we only have two seats left in that. So, oh, Okay. Yeah. And then we’re also running the e-commerce masterminds. Uh, we have two tiers, one, if you’re making over a million bucks and one, if you’re doing over 250 K and, uh, it’s gonna be the same style a year, sorry, a year. Yeah. Uh, breaking up into groups of 10 or 12. And what we do is we just sit in a room and help each other with our businesses, hot seat style.

42:10
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s always been good. It’s it’s the highlight of the event for a lot of people. It’s also a great chance if you’re a little uh shy to get to know a group of people really well, because you’re literally in a room for eight hours. Yeah. You get to know each other well. And then when the event starts, you guys are already like really good friends. Yeah. And I I’ll quote Chris Cody one more time. He texts me. Well, we text.

42:37
frequently, but he texts me about once every six months. So he came to Seller Summit several years ago, was in a mastermind with Dana Jean-Zemes, and he texts me about every six months thanking me for putting him in that group and letting me know that she has changed his life so dramatically in a positive way. And he’s not the only person I hear that from, but he’s the best at giving me like every six months a little text thank you.

43:01
And it is true a lot of people’s lives have been changed dramatically just from that one day mastermind Because they changed the direction of their business. They decided to sell they decided to buy, you know, it’s a variety of things right everyone comes out with a different takeaway from those but uh Definitely business or life-changing in those groups. I mean there’s been Groups that have formed during those masterminds that have been meeting for years. Yeah. Well think about our friend Natalie who

43:30
came to, I think her first seller summit was 2017. She was- to all of them, I thought. She was an OG, wasn’t she? She did not come to the first one. Oh, she didn’t go to the first one. So she came to the second one, and we didn’t have masterminds in the first year. So second year, she came to a mastermind. She was in the 250,000 mastermind, and she told me in that mastermind, my goal is to get to the million dollar mastermind. She hit that goal a couple years later, was in the million dollar mastermind, and then actually was a speaker.

43:56
at Seller Summit talking about influencer marketing and then just recently exited her business, which was kind of her goal, I think, for a long time and got to the point where that was a smart decision for her. So and kind of watching her through all the Seller Summits ah and all the phases is just very rewarding and exciting. She’s not the only one, but she’s probably the one that most of you guys know, because she’s very outgoing. So if you’ve been to a Seller Summit, you definitely know Natalie. And then we actually have a Discord community for Seller Summit this year also.

44:26
In the past we didn’t have that because Discord was, thanks to vibe coding, like I’m a master of Discord now and there’s a lot of cool things you can do with it. So you’ll get a chance to keep in touch with everyone that you’ve met outside, form your own groups and just keep in touch. Hope you enjoyed this episode. What’s happening right now is probably the biggest shift in e-commerce that I’ve experienced in a very long time.

44:53
More information and resources go over to mywifecoderjob.com slash episode 627. And once again, tickets to Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you wanna hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com.

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, Janelle Page reveals the brand framework that helped her drive over $475 million in e-commerce sales and take clients like Glamnetic from $80,000 a month to $3 million per month in revenue. She breaks down why getting chosen matters more than getting found and how to build a brand that makes customers pick you over the competition every time.

00:27
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 events that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants.

00:56
Also, I hate large 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 high-level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be.

01:25
So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now on to the show.

01:36
Welcome to the My Wife, Quit or Job podcast. Today I’m excited to have Janelle Page on the show. Janelle was introduced to me by my good friend, Ritu Java. We’ve known each other for over a decade. And anyone Ritu recommends is instantly on my must have guest list. I don’t even have to screen the person. Actually, Janelle didn’t even think that we were interviewing today, recording today, but I was like, yeah, Ritu recommended you, so we’re on.

02:03
She is a much sought after consultant who helps both e-commerce business owners and creators make more money by being known, found and chosen. And she has driven over $475 million in online sales across e-commerce services and coaching. And she has built herself and launched and sold multiple seven figure companies and brands. Just by coincidence, however, I also found out that she helped Anne of Glamnetic, who was actually a

02:32
prior guest on the show, grew her Amazon sales from 80K per month to over $3 million per month. And what’s also cool is that she owns a pickleball company. She’s got a ton of projects, not to mention a family, but today we are going to focus on her framework for growing an e-commerce brand. How’s it Janelle? I’m doing great. So great to meet you in person, Steve. I’ve heard a lot of great things as well. And watch the podcast.

03:01
I even saw the episode with Ann. It’s a great, great job. And I’m sure if everyone’s as cool as you, an incredible community. So I feel honored and privileged to be here today. Well, thank you so much. And I read in your bio that you started in e-commerce since elementary school, but uh how did that lead to what you do today? Yeah, entrepreneurship since elementary, because I’m quite old. Everyone’s probably like, there’s no way they had internet back when she was in elementary.

03:29
Yeah, no, I remember. So my dad was always he taught us to work hard. That’s the thing I always have to say my dad set us up for success, both him and my mom, hard workers, we would collect cans at the lake, we live by a reservoir. And then we’d go recycle and collect the money. And then we’d go to at the same at the time, it’s like a Sam’s Club, you know, our Costco, and we’d buy those blow pops, the big bolt candy, and then we take it to school and we’d sell it to our friends. So we’d make you know,

03:55
20 bucks. That was a lot back then. That’s pre-inflation dollars for stuff I did for a kid. So we were always running little businesses, mowing lawns, babysitting. I even started ironing shirts for the families. I grew up in a religious community where the people would go to church and wear white shirts and ironing. I still to this day hate ironing, but I made good money ironing when I was just in junior high. yeah, I’ve always been one. I love money. I love making money.

04:24
I’m not afraid to say that. I think you can do so much good with money. And it’s been, there was a time in my life where I didn’t have a lot of money. was a single mom with four kids under the age of five and I was hustling like crazy. And so I just know that like when you have money, the stress level is so much less, you know? So yeah, I’m a big fan. already know the answer to your thoughts on this question, but I actually want my listeners to hear it from you or someone other than myself.

04:54
Okay, so how do you feel about doing keyword research on a product, throwing it up on Amazon, and making money that way, and that’s that. Have you ever wondered how much your business is actually worth? Now I sold one of my businesses through Quiet Light, and honestly, just getting that initial valuation changed everything for me. Not because of that number itself, but because of what came with it. My advisor walked me through exactly what buyers would be looking for.

05:23
how I needed to restructure my accounting, what documentation I was missing, the gaps in my financials that might kill a deal before it even starts, and stuff that I really had no idea that mattered when it came to selling a business. And here’s the thing, I wasn’t even ready to sell yet, but knowing what I needed to fix meant that I could actually start preparing and I now had a roadmap. Everyone at Quiet Light has built or sold businesses themselves, so when my advisor told me what needed to change, it was actually coming from real experience sitting across from buyers.

05:52
By the time I was ready, everything was positioned right and we attracted serious buyers. So if you’ve been thinking about selling someday, even if that day feels way far off, just getting a free valuation from Quiet Light will make a huge difference. You’ll learn what you need to fix right now so you’re not scrambling later. And if you’re interested, go over to quietlight.com.

06:20
you know, over a decade and I’ll always present and people will be like, well, I’ve got this product and I did these keyword research. I’m like, I don’t even care what the keyword research is. I’m to create a product that I want, that I love. And then I’m going to build demand for it. you know, like when I, speaking of Glamnetics, and she brought that up, like my whole strategy with them, it was like, let’s build demand off Amazon. Cause then you change the nature of the game because see,

06:46
Amazon’s like a closed ecosystem. There’s only so much keyword searches that exist there and everyone’s fighting over that pie. But what I’m going to do is I’m going to create brand searches on Amazon. And then it’s a defensive game. I just got to make sure I look great there and I defend my position. And those cost per clicks when I’m defending Glamnetic’s keywords are much cheaper than press on nails or magnetic lashes. It’s always been my strategy. I want to create a product that people love. I want to create a brand that will create loyal raving fans.

07:14
And then, you know, the product markets itself and we get to market the solution. I mean, I always think you created a product that solves a problem or helps someone achieve a dream state. So you just got to go out and tell people it’s a distribution now of letting people know about the product and if the product’s really awesome, you’ve got built in distribution because everybody’s going to talk about it. And that is the right way to do things for everyone listening. uh OK, so, you know, we’re at this point right now.

07:41
And I’m sure you’ve seen this in your communities and the people you talk to. Amazon is just getting a lot harder. It’s getting more expensive. Products are just constantly getting knocked off. And all of a sudden, at least in my community, more and more pure Amazon sellers want to start their own brand. And it’s kind of backwards from the way I started out. Like going from Amazon to a brand is much harder than going from a brand to Amazon. So what I want to do today is I want to learn your process.

08:11
of building a brand for product. I know you use words like creating a movement and creating a story behind the product. What is the blueprint for you? Okay, awesome. Well, that’s a great question. And this is pretty much what I feel like I do most days is I got people that started out as Amazon sellers, they are really good at the Amazon game, they know how to find product opportunities and launch them and you know, start ranking and all that jazz. But then they end up like the guy, you know, I always say Central Park with the

08:37
French coat open up and I’ve got the watches and umbrella, all these things. I’m hawking my wares and there’s no like cohesive story. And so if you try to like go generate brand demand, it’s like, well, who are you? Because typically when you create something you think of a person and you’re solving a problem. And then usually that person has other problems like related to the first problem that you solve. And that’s how you kind of launch, you know, complimentary products. And so they’ve kind of not done that. So we usually start with a what’s your hero product or what are you passionate about?

09:07
or we try to get, what’s the story? Most of the time, I mean, that’s what I wanna get to is like, because we didn’t do all this, we kind of have to go back and build that foundation first because every brand has a great story. And it doesn’t mean like, and every brand usually that’s an Amazon seller is like, well, I don’t have a story. And I remember I was working with these two ladies who said the same thing. They had great products on Amazon. They had best seller badges and they were lotions and potions. And they’re like, we don’t have a story.

09:33
Like in five minutes, I’m like, you have a story. You’re not even native to America. Your mom had these herbal remedies, because as children, you guys got rosacea, or was that, yeah, skin Yeah, rosacea, uh-huh, yep. And I was like, so she had these ointments and tinctures that she used, and when you moved to America, your skin condition flared up, because you didn’t have those products. And so you went on like a five-year quest to build them and source and formulate here in the United States. I’m like, that’s an incredible story.

10:02
So I think sometimes we get so close to the project because we’re in it, we can’t see the forest through the trees and we think, well, I’m nothing special. I have this problem myself. I literally like started writing on LinkedIn and I hired a mentor and he was like, there’s so much you can write about. I’m like, what? He’s like, you know so much. I’m like, I cannot even think of one thing I would write about on LinkedIn. You know what I mean? And that’s ridiculous if you think about it, right? And so I’m like, oh, this must be how my founders feel that I’m helping.

10:31
you know, create their brand story. They’re just in the middle of it and they forget how much they know or how special what they’ve done is. So we can, we can create a story for anything and it’s there. It’s just uncovering it, shining it and polishing it up. And that’s usually what the first part starts to look like. And if they truly have disparate products all over the place, it’s kind of like, we call it like trimming down the tree. Like what’s our hero? Where’s our best, you know,

10:55
Path forward. I like to think of it like an arrow or tip of a spear We’ve got to get some traction and go in with the focus and then we can get laser beam focus with that marketing I think the biggest thing is we have to identify the audience and who the product is for and a lot of people don’t want to do that because they get nervous about niching down because let’s say they’ve got a product that they made for dogs, right and it’s like a calming treat and they’ll say well, it’s for every dog and I’m like, well great if we go on Amazon right now there are

11:25
homing treats for dogs. There’s like hundreds. So we’ve got to come at it with a unique story and unique mechanism. Or maybe it’s just for Chihuahuas, you know, for little dogs, like, and they think by doing that, they’re leaving a part of the market and you are, but you’re also gaining traction. like the rock climb. I think we’ve got to get a handhold somewhere, a good one, right? And so if that’s just going to be in the Chihuahuas, we’re going to own that space. Doesn’t mean that’s where we’re going to stay for forever, but we will wrap up.

11:53
the chihuahua space and then we’ll start to expand to other toy dogs or whatever. You know, I’m just, it’s just, you have to go in somewhere. And the classic example where I learned this was when I first started in the marketing industry, I was helping as a copywriter, company called progenics and they had supplements and they were trying to break into like the Arnold, they had a recovery drink, a post-workout recovery. It tasted really great and it actually worked. Usually at the time you had something that tasted great and didn’t work or it worked and it tasted like terrible choc, right?

12:23
So we had two great things, efficacy and taste. 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.

12:52
and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show. And so here we are one weekend at the Arnold and the next week we’d be at some rock climbing convention and then we’d be at some jujitsu event and not getting traction at all. And it wasn’t just my idea, me and the director of marketing at the time was like,

13:21
There’s this new sport in California. It was called CrossFit. It was just getting started, a little event at the Cucamonga Ranch. And we went to the event and we kind of owned it. Like there was nobody else in the space and we thought, let’s go all in on CrossFit. And I remember the meeting that we had. I remember we decided it and that focus right there, it gave us laser beam focused marketing. Now we knew exactly what events we were going to be at. We were going to be at every CrossFit event. We knew what magazines we’d advertise in.

13:50
We knew the language we would speak because CrossFit, they don’t do workouts, they do wads and they don’t go to gyms, they go to boxes and they don’t do like a traditional workout. There’s, know, Fran and Murph. And so we got the language and then we were able to paint this picture that we made supplements for CrossFitters, nobody else. And this was made just for them. And if you’re someone that’s into your body and peak performance and you find out there’s a brand that made and formulated a product just for you and they locked down all the athletes, I knew exactly.

14:19
who I needed to now try to get under contract for my athlete strategy. It was every pro level, um top and rising CrossFit athlete. And then I built out an amateur program because you want to get all the young kids too, right? And so it’s just that kind of focus that allows you to dominate a market. now for Janice, know, millions of dollars later, we’ve branched out and we own surf culture, we own spearfishing and like yoga, like, but we couldn’t have done that initially. It’s like those people who say,

14:48
You’re an overnight success and we all know there’s no overnight success. You missed all this seven years of grind, of me up late night doing all these things and you see now like Janelle everywhere or something like that but that’s not how it started, right? Yes. oh You know what’s funny is not too long ago I was actually at Home Depot looking for oil to oil our sewing machine and there was like the whole shelf of like lubrication oils and whatnot but then the one I bought it actually said four sewing machines.

15:18
And if you look at the ingredients, it was the exact same ingredients of like a quarter of the shelf. So just those two words caused me to buy it. And that’s just an illustration of what you’re talking about, right? Yeah. Yeah. It’s like you knew you wanted sewing machine oil that said sewing machine oil. It was exact match. I mean, this is a little strategy I did um doing a contract with Amazon ads and I’m doing some um content for them teaching like ways you can do better on your headline ads. And one of them like the simplest hack

15:47
and I’ll put this on LinkedIn in a couple of weeks and go into more detail. But it’s like when your customer types in like, glamnetic nails, like that’s, I won’t use a brand example. I’ll do something like Halloween nails. Your headline ad should say Halloween nails in it because there is this psychological switch that thinks, oh, I typed in Halloween nails. This is Halloween nails. You know, instead of saying like spooky nails, which is cute and fun, but I was in my mind, I don’t want to have to make that processing leap to

16:16
Halloween nails, spooky nails, oh, you know what mean? It doesn’t feel like, oh, that’s me, that’s what I wanted. So just little things like that, buyer psychology, fascinating, you know? So I wanna know your process, because I have a lot of people that come up to me and they say, hey, you I don’t have a story, I sell these really boring, generic products on Amazon, like how am I gonna make sales in my own store or create a brand? What is your process for extracting that information out of your clients? It’s the interview style, just like this.

16:46
It’s like two weeks ago, a guy who’s like told me those exact words. It’s boring. I worked in the TV mount space for all these years installing for like RC Willie or whatever. And I just, you know, was like these, these mounts suck. And I’m like, already fascinated. Can you already tell this is a story? You know, he’s like,

17:06
And so, you know, I’d sit here and I was like, try to like screw their big TV mount into like their pillar out on their patio and it just wouldn’t grab. then, you know, it’d only be flat. And I thought, wonder if he could angle this. then he basically goes home like for two years, he’s tinkering with how to build better mounts that can like slide back, come around crane attached to any surface and not have to make big holes. And he’s going on and on. And I’m just sitting there and I just kind of start chuckling. And he’s like, what I’m like,

17:33
This is an incredible story.” And he’s like, this is? I’m like, yes, you basically, he didn’t, he fails to mention he’s an immigrant. He came here with nothing and that’s the only job he could get. He actually was very well educated in his country of origin. Comes here, can’t get employment, gets his green card and all that stuff. So he’s basically taking a menial labor job all those years installing mounts when I think he had like a PhD. I don’t remember that all the details there, but I just thought that’s

18:02
That’s a great story. Can we not all agree here on this podcast? So it really is just start talking to people. I can find a story in anything because people think you have to have an incredible story. And I’m like, every story is the way you tell it. I’m sitting here, I’m talking with animation. I don’t think I’m really the best speaker, but I win the best speaker award. And I think it’s just because I’m animated. I’m excited. People feel the energy. I used to teach high school. very first, that’s what I went to school and I got a degree in

18:31
secondary education. You’re basically an entertainer. mean, teaching history, I thought it was so fun. I got to like talk about dropping bombs and like, this is great. They all hated history by the end of the year, everyone in there, when you ask them what they want to be when they grow up, they want to teach history. I mean, almost forgot about that because that’s the power of a teacher or the power and enthusiasm, know, that energy that you can feel when somebody’s passionate about what they love. And so I’m like, you know, I always say,

19:00
I don’t have to be passionate about things because I like to make money. I’ll shovel a manure because if it pays good, then I’ll be happy about that. I was like, yeah, well, because you’re passionate about making money. That’s where your passion comes from. So I just feel like if someone here and watching this podcast is like, I don’t have a great story. like, why did you start your Amazon store? There’s a story right there. Just like your great story. Why did you and your wife? How did you end up with this podcast? Because she cries a lot. It’s all because she cries a lot.

19:29
You do not want to go to work. You’re going to fix this fast. That’s what men do, right? We’re fixers. I say we are fixers. I’m not a man, but I have been accused of being in my male energy. When because I was a single mom for so long. And this is actually really fascinating. We’ll get we won’t go too off on a tangent, but there’s what they call feminine and masculine energy. And that masculine energy is the fixing energy. And it’s what we that hat I wear a lot.

19:56
but I’ve owned multiple businesses and know, managing employees, it’s like someone comes to you with a problem, you’ve got your like problem solver hat on. But when you come home, we need to learn that sometimes people just want you to listen and not fix, right? That’s more that was the hardest thing for me to change. Yeah. So now I just keep my mouth shut for an extended longer than I think I should. And then that’s so funny. I just told my husband like, when you come to me with the problem.

20:24
If it’s not one you want me to fix, just let me know in advance. Hey, babe, I’m just I’m about to tell you something and I’m not asking you to fix it. I just really want you to listen. And that was a huge unlock for us because then I got to take off the you know, because you’re in business mode all day and take off the I’m not here to solve the problem. I’m just here to listen. And you know, it’s not necessarily a man or a woman thing. It’s that masculine and feminine energy or just like boss mode CEO that we deal with.

20:50
And that is great marriage advice. I thought we’d be talking about e-commerce only, but that keeps relationships together. So Janelle, okay, so we got the story. We got something interesting to say. What is the next step? And this is another pain point I have, you know, people in my class have is it implies you got to create content, right? You got to get this story out there. So what is your advice on that? Yeah, there’s two ways and I can do them both and I enjoy both, but it’s…

21:17
It’s really not rocket science. And I love Alex Hermosy because I feel like he says things now better than I’ve ever been able to say him. He’s got a way of crystallizing and teaching that I don’t know if he knows this, but he’s an incredible teacher. If you can crystallize things down to the simplest form of truth, that’s just really sticky. But I was teaching this before and it’s basically there’s two ways to get distribution. You can either pay for it or you can earn it, earn attention. Right. So paid media, which I love, and then organic, which is slower, but

21:47
It’s also nice to, if you can build an audience, not have to always pay for it. So I do both. And sometimes I get frustrated with organic content because it’s slower. I think it’s got a longer uh ROI and it’s, more sticky over the longterm. build a really loyal audience, whereas you’re kind of churned and burned when you’re paying for attention, but they’re both wonderful. And I would say you do both. So, you know, it depends on what your

22:14
budget is if you have funding, if not, you’re going to earn that with your time through organic content and posting. And what people don’t realize with organic, trying to gain traction and build an audience is it can take up to a year of hard work, a daily posting multiple times a day. And it has to be great content. And you’re not going to start out with great content. uh It’s going to take a while to hone and sharpen that skill. start to see what works.

22:41
sometimes don’t have the patience for that, but I actually really enjoy writing. So I love making content on LinkedIn. I’ve tried video. It just takes a lot more time. got to the studio. It doesn’t work with everything else in my life that I like to do. So, and I’m kind of out of that phase where I don’t have to grind. But if I was like back to Janelle with the four kids under the age of five, and I need to make something work, you better believe I’d be all in on YouTube, creating long form content, educating, you know, I mean, building out those assets.

23:10
And I tell people I’ve worked with YouTubers, creators and launching products with them. They have such a head start because they have the audience, the people know, like and trust them. And it’s now just, OK, what product can we create for them that they’re going to love? That’s true to you because they have distribution built in. So you’re going to have to build distribution or buy it. OK, so back back to like the Amazon example. I’m an I’m an Amazon brand. I want to, you know, build a brand. Do I have to do video?

23:39
is the question I always get asked. Because written word doesn’t work as well anymore. It did once upon a time. Yeah, no. So like if you’re going to do written, you’re going to do founder content, right? That’s going to be you talking and you’re going to need to share pictures people want to see. But if you’re talking about your product, you got to show don’t tell. In fact, if you go to my LinkedIn, if people want to see like I’m always posting like great ad examples and explaining the breakdown or marketing strategy. Like I just broke down Taylor Swift’s life of a showgirl because it was recent she does her

24:08
ingenious launch of her 12th album and all the marketing there, you know, so I like to break things down like that because then brands, or mostly Amazon sellers who really aren’t that strong in brand marketing, they can start to see my goal is to teach you like, look, this is what someone who’s building a brand does. Like who has the biggest brand in the world right now? Taylor Swift, right? So like, here’s her playbook. Here’s how she launches her 12th album. mean, that post alone, I don’t see people

24:36
this is probably the biggest unlock you can have is like taking things that work in other industries and applying it to your own. I mean, that’s huge, right? So go look what Taylor Swift is doing in music. You can apply that in e-commerce. I try to break that down for people. So you are asking like, what can they do? What was the questions if I don’t come back? A of people are actually squeamish about doing video. Oh yeah. Get on video. Okay. Well, you’ve got to, if you don’t want to as a founder,

25:01
at least show your product working. Like I just showed the cat video on LinkedIn, like one of the best product demos ever. If you’ve got a product, if people can see that it works or how it works, that’s half the battle. If you don’t have a product that’s demonstrable, I’m like, I don’t want to invest in it because just of what I know now and how easy it is to gain traction on social media, make video content, like create products that can sell themselves. Like when somebody sees it, they have an aha moment.

25:30
Because the hardest thing with Amazon sellers, and I do feel bad saying this because I know a lot of people probably listening to this podcast, if they’re Amazon sellers, is they probably have a Me Too product. They probably saw something in a category that was like, oh, wow, these shelves are doing great. I’m going to get in in the shelf space and I’ll just make it a little cheaper to ship. And they can’t even tell you why their product’s better. And see, that’s just not, I just would never create a product like that because I know

25:59
you’re basically not able to build a brand off something like that. Okay. That’s actually, that’s a really good point. So there are a lot of people that come to me, they, they found a product and it was good because of the numbers, right? And at the time it wasn’t that competitive. So they listed it, they made a lot of money, but now like everyone started jumping in and all of a sudden they’re selling this product that you, like a hundred that are the exact same thing. Yes. I literally just wrote a post on this brand is your moat is all you have because in today’s

26:27
environment where it’s so fast for people to manufacture what you’ve got and your factories, trust me, I have lots of brands and we have factories and we have uh patent protections, they still knock you off. All right. So if you can build it, so can they. That’s what I always tell people. So you know what? Your only moat is going to be your brand story and how you market and your distribution. And so you’ve got to figure that out. And if you don’t have that,

26:53
I’m sorry, there’s no middleman anymore. So you’re not going to be able to beat the factory on pricing. And this is why I don’t love Amazon as a platform strategy because it’s a price driven platform. So whoever goes there and has the cheapest product and they’re all equivalent will win. Yes. So you’ve got to have the story. You’ve got to be the Patagonia, the North Face, the Gucci. You’ve got to do that. And I have a lot of friends that come to me and be like, I want to start Amazon brand or I want to get into what you do. I’m like, no, you don’t.

27:22
You don’t want to do Amazon. You know, I’m gonna say, if you want to do what I do, then I’ll tell you what I do, but I don’t do Amazon. Amazon is channel for me. And I’m platform agnostic. I don’t care where you buy my product. You can buy it in retail. You can buy it on Amazon. You can buy it on my site. My job as a marketer, as a founder, as a brand creator is to create the demand and the desire. And then you go buy it where and how you will. So back to the content now.

27:50
A lot of people are intimidated. So let’s say you get over the video hurdle. Great. Okay. So they’re willing to create video, but then creating content on a regular basis. Cause a lot of it is consistency. Like we’re both content creators. uh How do you find endless ideas about your brand that you can create like a Tik TOK channel or a YouTube channel or an Instagram Reels channel? Yeah. Okay. Well there’s two things. First, I want to, these are good questions. I want to say one.

28:17
good piece of content can change your business. I used to tell people this and I still do all the time. One good lead magnet, one good funnel can make you millions of dollars. You know, so it’s not like you have to have 15 great marketing funnels. Sure, it’ll be great if you can build up to that, but you really just got to nail one of them. Get that rocking and rolling. And then as you find success in a funnel that works and you start bringing in customers, you get so much feedback from them that you can actually start.

28:46
They write your funnels for you for the next year, your next ads. It’s like you have to, it’s the hardest part. It’s just getting that first initial traction, finding the thing that works. And in order to do that, you have to test a lot. And I meet with people all the time. They’ll say, well, I tried Facebook ads. I tried this video. It didn’t work. I’m like, how many did you try? You know, one or two. I’m sorry. Like I test initially out of the gate, like 20 creatives. That’s just an initial launch. So, you know, when you say how, how many do we need to make?

29:13
We need to make a lot because we need to test. But yeah, you can shorten the timeframe of success by studying what’s working. There’s formulas, there’s frameworks. I guess a good reason to follow people like me or you teaching, you know, is I’m breaking down all the time successful ads, how they’re doing it, what they’re doing. And it’s really like hook the body and the call to action. So if you get them to stop the scroll or you grab their attention and it doesn’t have to be this huge, you know,

29:43
dynamic demonstration, it’s literally just when you understand your audience and what the problem is, you can hook someone by just calling out the problem and showing your product, fixing it. It doesn’t have to be a dramatic displays. What I’m trying to say like, there’s so simple, like, you know, I just that cat ad, it’s on top of my mind, because I just made a video about it on LinkedIn. It shows like I have a cat. And so you know, I hate having cat hair, we got these lint rollers around, I’m always like, you know, get the cat hair off me.

30:11
It doesn’t work that great. have to always be taken off. So of course I see a video where they’re trying to get cat hair off of the sofa cushion with this and it’s just, know, we all know the pain and in like three seconds you’re already like, oh yeah, I relate. This is like, they know a cat owner. Obviously stop the scroll by showing me exactly what I do every day. And then they take their little mitten that they’ve uh developed. You’ll have to go watch the video and they literally just go like this and picks right up that hair. And I’m like sold.

30:40
That’s not even hard. You know what mean? It’s like you showed the problem. You showed how your product is solution. It is that simple. And again, I think the problem is, is that we have people that have created products that it’s like, well, this isn’t demonstrable. Like it’s the shelf that sits on that. Like talk about your bookshelf behind you. I mean, if I, that was my product first, I just, I’d never go into market with that as my product. I just, I I know too much now about

31:08
how you have to be able to market a product, unless there’s something like that, this folds up and you live in a European studio apartment and maybe you need that space later in the day and that will like condense down and do something so funky and flatten against the wall, then that bookshelf to me is like, okay, there’s 1000 bookshelves, they just wouldn’t ever even enter that space. Yeah, which is what I wanted to say, like sometimes your Amazon product isn’t gonna work.

31:34
right, for creating that brand. You gotta pick and choose like your best ones that are most demonstrable and stand out, right? Where you can create some sort of story around it. Well, and I talk a lot because I have colleagues and good friends in this space that literally there is a model that is I am an Amazon seller and this is what that model looks like. And I wish that they would teach this to their students so they understand. An Amazon seller

31:59
your job, if that’s the model you want to do and run an Amazon business is you are constantly on a hamster wheel of finding products that you can have some good margin for maybe three, six months. Maybe it goes for a year, but you get in, you make some good money on that product and then you basically are wiped out because competition gets in there. Everyone and that is the business. Then it’s looking for that next product. So if that excites you, if that’s fun, that’s very different than building a brand that is

32:28
looking for product arbitrage or opportunities where you can come in to a category. It’s not fully saturated. You have a little unique advantage where you’ve found how you can ship it cheaper or flatter or make this tweak. And so if you have like a three to six month glory run and you make, you know, a hundred thousand dollars and you’re going to reinvest that great. And I know people who have done well doing that. And unfortunately they don’t do as well anymore because the aggregators don’t want to buy businesses like that anymore. And that’s what I think there’s a lot of people now in the Amazon space that are kind of like, Oh shoot.

32:57
Like my whole goal was to get in here and do this because they were gonna help me exit, but nobody wants to buy that anymore. It’s so high risk. I work with P groups and aggregators all the time and they won’t touch that. They’re not interested. They want a brand. Yeah. So the examples that you just gave like regarding the cat, like those are great for ads, right? But if you wanted to have like an organic content strategy that required consistency in posting, what is your strategy with that?

33:26
I’m going tell you one because I am launching a cat brand. Oh, you are? Okay, great. I’ll tell you exactly what I want to do in my opinion. brands do have, Janelle? a Literally, like every day I get approached by people that are like, Janelle, I want to launch a brand and I want you to partner and just, you know what mean? And it’s fun, it’s exciting, but it’s like picking the ones where you’re like, okay, this is one where I want to be involved in because here’s why I love this brand.

33:55
What’s the most shared content on TikTok on Instagram? Like to me, it’s a no brainer. I’m like, yes, sign me up for cats. Do you know how much fun we can have making cat content? Like I literally posted about on LinkedIn what my strategy is gonna be. It’s gonna be finding the best cat content, sharing it already. I’ve got creators out there creating, know, that reels of cats, millions and millions of views. I’ve just got to basically.

34:21
work my product into the end of it or do something, you know, that’s an easy one. And then it’s like, have you seen the new stuff they’re doing with the AI cats that do cat casting? Can you imagine like, I’ll have liquid death style, like, know, liquid death to me, I will model all of their commercials and all of their publicity stunts. And instead of human beings being in it, I’m going to put cats as the characters.

34:46
And instead of them, you know, doing liquid death, like we’re doing lickable cat treats, you know, like hydration for cats, that will be our product. And so it’s like, this is what I’m saying is like, you can go in and it’s not like I’m, yes, it’s stealing like an artist. I’m like finding frameworks that already work, brands that are crushing it. And now I get to personify that with cats. And, you know, I literally was thinking the other day, I’m going to go up the animal shelters, like up the street. like, I’m going to go adopt.

35:13
every cat right now. Cause I just got this house. have a lot of acreage, know, and like, and I was like, what if I had like a hundred cats on my property? And like, just go out with my lookable cat treats and they all just come running. Like, I mean, the possibilities are endless. I’ll find every cool like commercial that’s ever been made that’s worked. And instead of it being humans with whatever product it was, it will now be cats with my product and I’ll, I’ll remake that commercial, that content. And so

35:42
That’s kind how I think about like ongoing content on ongoing basis would be what can I do that’s fun? And then I will do contests with people with their quads because people love their cats. People love to make videos of their cats. So I’ll create contests like, Hey, you know who can make the funniest cat video, send it to us like in America’s funniest videos. I don’t even care what it is. I just want everyone sending me their cat content and I’ll just have cat years. We’ll have tons of cat content.

36:11
It’s gonna be too easy. That’s probably not fair because that’s so easy, right? I mean, I think the key takeaway from what you just said is you’re basically trying to attract people who would buy your product and it your videos don’t even have to be about your product. You were just saying you’re gonna be posting all these, uh you know, videos that people submit and then maybe slip your product in occasionally in one of your own videos that that you publish, right? Yep. And here’s something like, I guess you just have to be creative.

36:39
I’m literally, we just launched at Glamnetic, one of the things I’ve been pushing them to focus on, because there’s so many people that can get into the press on nail space and it’s blowing up, right? And your factories are gonna compete with you. And that’s what I say, like, if you don’t have a brand, good luck, because you’re not gonna be able to beat your factory on price, but we can beat them on brand. And we’ve been able to lock down the brand deals. And that’s what I’m pushing for every licensing deal we can get, because the faster you lock those down, your competitors can’t get them, right?

37:06
So if we get all the IP, like, you know, we’ve done Harry Potter, we just did fanatics, you know, we’ve got Hello Kitty, Beetlejuice, like we’re going after those hard. And then like think of the content. Like I’m just sitting here yesterday and I’m like, okay, fanatics has launched. And you remember like the NFL, the Budweiser and Bud cores, know, I’m like, we’ve got Kansas city chiefs and the Cowboys game coming up on Thanksgiving day. I’ve got those nails. So I’m going to have like my graphic designers create like the nails, you know, like.

37:36
They’re going on Superbowl Sunday, although it’s Thanksgiving day. They’re going against each other head on. The cowboy press on nails, Kansas City, Kansas City chief press on nails and we’ll put the helmets on them and we’ll recreate those Budweiser ads. Those were killer, you know? So just thinking outside the box or getting inspiration from what’s worked before. I literally had my VA go into every Facebook group for fan groups. And this is organic site. This is not costing a penny. And I was like, go find every Kansas City chiefs group.

38:05
Um, and it just start posting these nails, like getting my game day on every time there’s a Kansas city chief game. She just literally, I told her a post idea to go have a poll where it was the Cowboys versus the chiefs. Cause this is the same scheme. want to build a ton of hype around that. He has over 3000 shares on this Facebook post, which is like, and it’s got like our nails in the background. She’s talking about getting your game day on. And I mean, I took a screenshot because I’ll probably post about it on LinkedIn, but I’m just saying guys, this is so easy, you know? And, and maybe

38:35
I don’t want to say maybe it’s so easy for me, but I really believe I guess the more I can talk about it, the more I can teach about it, it will become easy for you too, because I’m not smart. I’ve just been doing this more and I sit around, I think about and I look for examples. So I’m hoping that as I’m talking, people are getting ideas, but I’m like, I’m not a genius. know, it’s just the system that I use. I kind of look around like what’s working over here. It’s the Facebook ads library is fantastic. I’ll go into like the most boring.

39:02
I say boring ass categories, I’ll not to swear, and be like, what are they doing in tech? I think tech’s kind of boring, but some people might think that’s interesting. What are their ads? And usually it is pretty boring. think, man, I can make these guys so much more money because they’re so boring. what? You should go help Google. Their ads are always horrible. Or Bugatti or something so different. Like Lamborghini. The brands that have to actually position themselves and sell this feeling

39:32
That’s who you kind of want to look at because they’re not competing on price. And when you see how they position and how they sell, it should really like a Rolex. What are their ads look like? What, is the feeling they’re trying to create? Because they’ve created some dang good loyalty. love things like Harley Davidson. Like if someone’s willing to tattoo your logo on their body, you’ve got a killer brand. And so start thinking about to you, what are some brands where you feel like this affinity or you’re just like, man, they’re good.

40:01
And then to start thinking about, what have they done? And just those thoughts will start generating ideas of what you can do with your product. And then too, sometimes this is so theoretical and this is so brand and this is so high and mighty. I believe so much in brand marketing. I believe it is the long-term investment that people aren’t willing to make. And I work with brands that are, you know, 50 or a hundred million dollars and they are all performance driven. They’re very much direct marketers. And I just have to really push on them. say, I love it.

40:28
You know, you want to know the ROI on everything, but will you just trust me that there’s some things like Gary Vee will always say, what’s the ROI of your mother? Like there are just some things like I cannot sit here and tell you like what that ROI will be, but you have to believe me that it works building your brand, investing in the story and just becoming known. That’s what I call it. A category of one brand get known, get found, get chosen.

40:54
Like these are things that I can’t necessarily say, well, I spent $300 on a Facebook ad and I made, you know, $450 after it. It’s it, it’s brand marketing. It’s always worked. It will work till the cows come home. That’s why all these big brands still do it. Coca-Cola, Nike, like they’re big for a reason. They invest in the long-term ROI that they’re not just building for a one year exit, three year exit. They’re building to build an empire, a legacy. So I think I was why I wanted to tell you that is because I’m talking about

41:22
this brand marketing, but I want to give the listeners also some hope that you can drive incredible returns with a great Facebook ad strategy to like make a funnel, like where you make a great offer on your product. And I’ll tell you an example of a lady that just started working when she was doing like a hundred thousand dollars a month just on Google ads for her kidney. helps. She’s a herbalist for pets, mostly dogs. like

41:49
people will come to her and they have like their dogs in kidney failure. And I didn’t even know anything like this because I didn’t have dogs, but um she can’t make claims. She’s an herbalist. She has botanical formulas and formulations and she has literally saved. I don’t know if I can get her in trouble talking about this, like she’s saved thousands of dogs lives. where they took them to the vet and the vet was like, we have to them down. There’s nothing else we can do. And then these people at desperation will start searching the internet and find her website where she has like,

42:19
her five step system and it works. And she was like, what do I do? And I’m like, you need to run some Facebook ads. mean, literally you’re saving dogs lives. like, oh, but I can’t say this and I can’t say that. I’m like, okay, well the number one step in her program is first you’ve got to get your dogs on raw food. know, and believe it or not, people like actually cook their pets meals, right? Like it’s not good for, I mean, she explained it to me. It may not make sense. I feel like a terrible cat mom because my cat.

42:48
cat food out of the dry bag. But like that is so bad for their kidney. It’s so dry. It’s so processed. These animals were not meant to eat all this. So you see the power of education right here. I’m like, Amanda, if you start teaching people this, on you say what content should she create as a founder? She should have a YouTube channel where she talks about the dangers, the hidden dangers in processed food for animals. Like they were never made by God or whoever created or evolution to be eating dry food.

43:16
Okay, so that’s step one. So what do we do about it? Well, we can cook them meals. Can you imagine? said, do you know what a great lead magnet a recipe book for raw meals for dogs would be? Do know how many leads I could get you at less than 25 cents a click overnight with a Facebook ad giving out free recipes for dogs? You know, and she’s, it’s just, just never think about they’re thinking so transactional, like I got to the product, I’m like, no, we need to get people educated on what it causes kidney failure in animals.

43:45
and how your five step system saves them. And the first step in that is getting them off of their processed food onto a raw diet. And any human being that’s ever into health understands that because it’s the same step for humans, right? We can’t eat garbage, garbage in, garbage out. So it makes complete sense to now the dog owner that’s like, oh my gosh, the food that I’m literally feeding my dog is killing my dog. All right, so step one and then step two is like, they have to have

44:13
pure water. Like I didn’t know this, you know, so she has like all these, these five very beautiful steps. We create a funnel and now we can go to market with getting her leads and it’s just, we’re just getting started, but I would love to be able to like, and I will share it on LinkedIn, but she’ll, she’ll, she’ll have a million dollar funnel. Give us another six months. We’re building the landing pages. We’re getting all the assets together. We don’t even need six months. It’ll be three months. It’s going to be so, so fun. You know, she’s excited and she has so much knowledge.

44:43
She has like saved thousands of dogs. And even if she’d only saved two or three at this point, you still could go to market with this product and this solution. So that’s why I don’t want people thinking like, oh, brand marketing, she’s not out there building like, know, five leaf botanicals, investing in billboards. Like she can literally go into and target her unique owners. We can target on Facebook. The beautiful thing about Meta anymore is you don’t have to know like, what audience, what interests, the creative drives.

45:12
So when you start talking about what you know, and you create the ads, it’ll find them. she’s going to need 500 bucks to go to market, you know, and start getting leads. You know what I like about that example is this is just the tip of the iceberg. She’s building herself as an authority in this niche, and she can release millions of remedies and people will just buy it because of her. Right. Yep. Well, here’s one maybe in case we’re getting

45:40
boring because I’m like I do me to products. I am helping a brand right now. They are literally in the supplement space and I’ve done you know millions of dollars in the supplement space and I start to think supplements are kind of boring but they make they do well but there are a lot of me to products especially if you’re like magnesium and biotins and you know they’re just a dime a dozen and these guys have all me to products and they were just come to me and they are we’re an Amazon bad brand have tons of bestseller badges they’re crushing the Amazon game but literally they’ve got nothing else and it’s competitive as you know

46:09
So I was like, ah, this is going to be actual work, you know, not super exciting or fun because it’s like, how do we get, but I was like, okay, well let’s pick the product that has the most easily identifiable problem. And maybe it’s just cause it’s top of mind for me, but like my hair’s thinning, biotin helps. Like, as you get older, as a woman, go through perimenopause, you start losing hair. There’s all these reasons. So I was maybe most interested about that. But I’m like, okay, we can make a great funnel for biotin because that’s emotionally something that I can stop the scroll with.

46:38
You know, I can show viscerally hair, a lot of hair on the shower because that stresses you out as a woman, as you’re, you know, putting your shampoo and your conditioner in. I know that problem. You know, you pull out and you’re like, oh my gosh, like it’s like a sickening feeling or you see it, you know, at the bottom of the shower drain. And I’m like, this will stop the scroll because it’s speaking to me. I know the problem. And I know like if somebody told me the solution was I need more biotin and here’s the biggest thing people with their hair.

47:07
things like that, they’re very skeptical. And so you’ve got to have a killer offer. So the offer has to be like, you know, 30 day money back guarantee, like no risk, you know, all those typical great marketing, but guys, it’s that simple. Like, let’s find out some of the problems, the solutions that we provide and give an ironclad guarantee. If you believe in your product and they do, they’ve got clinical studies behind this. They can actually say things that most other supplement companies cannot. And so just creating a funnel for them just on that product.

47:36
to help them get traction because the nice thing is when you bring someone in to like if you have a supplement house, you have like all these different products, get them using one product, then it’s very easy when they’re on your email list and you’re nurturing them, you talk about, did you know that magnesium helps with sleep? It helps with restless legs. It can help with your brain function. So now your magnesium, have all these new users that pretty much everyone should be taking magnesium, right? We can get them taking magnesium as we educate them on all the benefits.

48:05
just kind of trying to give examples of things of working on that they could be like, oh, okay. I don’t wanna pick all the easy stuff basically. You know, I was just thinking about all this and we’re talking about this. It’s almost like you should just start creating the content first, building that audience, right? Yeah. And then have that audience that you’ve built dictate what you sell. Yeah, well, I love that you mentioned that because I’ve been writing on LinkedIn just for fun, kicks and giggles, you know.

48:34
I don’t know really why I’m doing it. don’t, it’s not like I have all this extra time, but I just enjoy teaching and my mentors like, what product do you want to sell? I’m like, I have no idea, but I’m kind of like you. It’s like, I’m at one, some time at some future point, maybe I will have a product, but I don’t, I don’t have one. I just know the power of having a brand and an audience. And so there will be maybe somewhere where one day I’m like, this is the product, but

49:03
I’ve been sitting here being like, what would I sell? what do I do? You know, and everything I think of, I’m like, ah, I don’t want to have to fulfill that. You know, maybe I’m just getting older. don’t know. Well, then I can’t play pickleball if I have to like get on the phone every day and do this or that. So I think maybe that might be my problem, but I just know there’s value in brand. Brand is the valuable asset you can have, whether it’s personal or your product brand. Like it is an investment that will pay dividends. has for me.

49:31
and continues to pay is probably my best asset that I’ve ever created is my brand. I 100 % agree with you. We have the same messaging. What we talk about and Janelle if anyone wants to hire you because I can already tell from this episode that there’s going to be a lot of people because you’re like bubbling with creativity, right? I’m an engineer. These things don’t come as easily to me. But for you, it just seems like you’re just pulling them out of the air.

50:00
Where can people find you online? Oh, yeah. I’m at Janelle page.com LinkedIn and Janelle page that’s P A G E like page in a book. And Janelle page 11 on Instagram, I really don’t post about business stuff on Instagram. It’s mostly like my scrapbook. So if you want to see me at Benton Boone last night with my kids, then that’s where you find that if you want like educational tactical information, probably LinkedIn or my website. And then what about the pickleball? I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah.

50:29
Seriously, you guys, if you love pickleball, like we need to play first off, but we also have a coaching program where we teach people how to run low maintenance, high profit pickleball facilities and we have franchise. So it’s the kitchen and I love pickleball and I don’t really want to own a facility where it’s hard to make the numbers work. If you have overhead, that means staff. Um, it, the numbers just won’t work. So we have a system that we’ve created and we have over eight locations just here in Utah. And then we have.

50:58
many nationwide and then lots of coaching students that we teach them how to run like basically low maintenance, high profit, pickleball facility. It’s all smart locks, codes, automation. So it’s been really fun. I do enjoy that as well. Well, Hey Janelle, thank you so much for giving us your energy today and teaching the audience, not only about the importance of brand, but how you can just basically pick up content ideas from midair. you just sit down and just think about it for a little bit. Yeah.

51:28
Exactly. Yeah, or they can just have out with you, Steve or me, we’ll have like exactly. It’s been a pleasure when we have to actually meet in person. Do you play pickleball? I’m a tennis player. I like pickleball. I like pickleball. However, what I don’t like is how all these pickleball courts are taking over my tennis courts. It’s a real thing. I know. And you know what, as a tennis player, you’ll be really good at pickleball because you’ll have the footwork, you have the strokes and

51:57
you just won’t get as good a workout. I always tell people, you know, it’s like the older people like can cream you like it’s like the only sport where you can show up and get beat by eight. don’t anymore. But I got beat by an 80 year old when I first started. I now I believe it. I’m sure I get rocked. What I like about pickleball is like my wife will actually play it because it’s less intimidating than tennis. And so I think pickleball is just the next big thing. Unfortunately for me as a tennis player. Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, cool.

52:27
All thanks, Janelle. Yep, take care. Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’re still playing the Amazon PPC game, it’s just going to be a race to the bottom over time and you have to build a brand. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 625. And once again, tickets to 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.

52:56
go to SellersSummit.com.

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 a project that I’ve been quietly working on behind the scenes and that’s building a community for e-commerce entrepreneurs from the ground up. I’m going to walk you guys through why I’m doing this, the vision I have for it and the biggest challenges I’m trying to solve before I launch. 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,

00:29
This is the event that you should be at. Unlike most events that are filled with high-level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches. People who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. There are no corporate execs and no consultants. Also, I hate large events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people.

00:56
so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We’ve sold out every single year for the past nine years, and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and if you’re doing over $250K or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for high-level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be, so if you want in, go over to SellersSummit.com and grab your ticket. Now, on to the show.

01:29
Welcome to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast. Today we are going to be talking about a cool project that we’ve been working on for quite some time and that is developing a community. It’s tough. Let’s just put that out there in the very beginning. Well, it’s tough because like that’s generally not my personality. it’s tough. I should have said it’s tough with you. No, I’m totally joking about that.

01:55
Yeah, so I think this is interesting and I wanted to talk about this today because you and I are both in the middle of community building. one of the like the first thing I want to talk about is both of us are building communities off of Facebook. Well, we were building communities off of Facebook. You like we’re not off of Facebook. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I see how that was misinterpreted. Yes. Our communities are not living on Facebook. There we go. Right.

02:23
And I have chosen Discord as my platform and you guys have chosen Circle. Circle. Yeah. Right. So I thought it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Well, I mean, I think we’re going to talk a little bit about the platforms, but I think I have found that even and I talked in depth with Liz about this yesterday is that, know, she had a pretty active community on Facebook and she so this is a completely separate community. She had a very active community on Facebook. She has tried to move it to Circle.

02:52
and she is struggling getting people into circle. I know for you, there was a private Facebook group for both courses actually. The one for Profitable Online Store has always been a little more active, but there’s a lot more people in it, so that makes sense as well. But I would say percentage-wise, you’ve struggled too to move people over to the Discord community. Of course, because people, a lot of people don’t want to be on Discord who are on Facebook, right?

03:21
The same could be true also. A lot of people don’t like being on Facebook. So there’s always been like a uh fraction of the people on Facebook period from the people who sounded for the class. Right. And I think there was a time um and I think about our friends, Paul and Tiffany, who do have a community on Facebook. There was a time when building a community on Facebook was the be all end all. Right. Facebook gave a lot of priority to communities and groups. They sort of helped with your reach.

03:50
But that seems to have come to an end. And so some of the advantages of building on Facebook has disappeared, in my opinion. I mean, that came to an end like years ago. Yeah. Like five years ago, they already started sucking. Yeah. I mean, I’ve seen people with groups work. Like one of the most popular ones is this million dollar sellers. I think they charge like five thousand dollars a year and they’re still going strong on Facebook. Yeah.

04:18
Yeah. And I will say like there are terms of service with Facebook as far as like charging for a Facebook community. have to you have to circumvent that. You can’t just have a community that you charge for on Facebook. You have to offer something else. And I know Million Dollar Seller does. But yeah, there’s definitely some some things you have to watch out for. But I would say you chose Discord. Let’s talk about why you chose Discord, because I did not choose Discord. Yes. So number one, it is free. Yeah. But more importantly,

04:47
It’s got the best backend ever in terms of what you can do with it. It’s like communities for coders. And that’s why I chose it. Which makes sense because a lot of the groups that are very popular in Discord seem to be more tech-focused and based. From what I’ve seen, I’m not a Discord expert. I’m not either, actually. But it started out as a gaming platform, right? Right.

05:16
I actually, when I first got introduced to Discord, it was because I was playing games with my buddies and there’s ties to it. It knows who’s logged into what game and then you can just chat on Discord as you’re playing the game. How can you chat as you’re playing? Is it audio chat, I guess? Oh yeah, it’s audio chat. Yeah, not video Trying to envision you typing with one hand and playing the game with the other hand.

05:40
But like you can integrate like a payment platform you can integrate we’ve integrated like Steve bot and Tony bot and whatnot and we are moving this community also over to our conference the seller summit and We should have done this a long time ago. It’s just I got too many projects But you know anytime someone goes to an event they want to be able to keep in touch with people afterwards And so we have seller summit bot also which has read in all of the talks

06:09
and you can query it like a chat should be T. I’m actually excited about that because we do get a lot of questions about talks and it’s like, I can’t remember what year. In fact, I was talking last week at ECF to Dana who gave one of our closing keynotes and I was like, yeah, 2024. And she’s like, no, it was 2023. And I was like, no, 2024. And she’s like, no, I’m pretty sure it was 2023. And then I was like, you’re right, Bill was 2024.

06:34
So I just, you know, it’s too much information, right? I don’t remember all of that off the top of my head. Who spoke on what, when? I don’t even probably don’t even know what I spoke on what, when. I think the content is the problem, right? Like, oh, I remember that speaker said this one thing, like, what was it? And now you can ask it. Yeah. So I will say as someone who’s new to Discord, watching you build it and then being in the community, I do think that it’s

07:00
pretty cool everything that you can do and all the features and the different groups. I’m still learning how to use it. I’m definitely not a power user of Discord, but I can see the appeal from your end because you can figure out the back end of it. I mean, it’s like really, it’s just slack on steroids is really what it is. Yeah. Right. But let me tell you, it’s a lot more engaged than Facebook for sure. Like Facebook was crickets.

07:28
Whereas like on the discord group, I see messages come in all the time people using the bot people interacting with each other and just the other day for the very first time actually I saw two people in a voice chat room together. Oh That was the first time I’d seen that I’ve seen it happen once or twice on there, but I think that’s pretty cool Yeah, so one of the things that I think is interesting about using any platform off Facebook is as the admin as the moderator

07:58
I know for me, because I’ve moderated in many Facebook groups, if you get tagged in something, you get that notification, it comes through with all of your other Facebook notifications. So Facebook notifications from my mother and when people comment on a photo or memory or whatever it is, right? So I’ll open Facebook and it’s like, have 300 notifications, right? And so to find where people are mentioning you in a group that you are managing.

08:24
and potentially people are paying to be in, it gets really tough, right? It’s very easy to miss stuff in a Facebook group. Every time I get tagged in Discord, I know it, right? It’s very clear to me that someone is asking me a question or mentioning me. So I do think, and I would say the same goes for other platforms as well outside of Facebook, but I do think that’s one of the huge positives of building something off of Facebook is that as the moderator, your ability to see what’s happening seems to be greater.

08:54
I mean, the downside, of course, is not many people use Discord comparatively, right? And for some reason, think Discord’s onboarding is a little messed up. Yeah, so let’s talk about that. Because that is where I have seen a lot of people have an issue. And maybe it’s because we’re only letting certain people in. You have to be a paid course member. I’m not sure. You could talk about how you set that up and what people are struggling don’t that’s the problem.

09:21
Just the people? No. No, no, no. It’s got nothing to do with the people actually, because I actually managed to reproduce one of the problems that someone had. And it stems from the fact that if you don’t have like the app installed, no, no, I think if you have the app installed on your computer, but you’re using the web interface or some combination of the two, it’s been a couple of weeks now, when you get invited to a group, it like tries to create a new account for you, even though you already have one.

09:51
and then you end up with like a million accounts. oh That’s the issue. It didn’t happen to me, it didn’t happen to you, but I did reproduce it by just creating a whole new account on a fresh computer. Well, I did have a glitch getting into the seller summit account, then I was actually… Anyway, it can be glitchy, I have found. um But also when I get a technical glitch, I just assume it’s me.

10:20
All right, so here’s what’s cool about Discord. In the backend, you can approve people to be able to see certain threads or groups, right? And you can automate that pretty easily. basically, within the course, like the membership site where you have to log in, there’s a button that you have to push to get approved. And then after you hit that button, which can only be accessed if you’re actually a member, then you get access to all the stuff.

10:50
Let’s just say that I am me. How hard is it for me to build what you’ve built on Discord? I mean, I think it just depends, because I didn’t know anything about it. I basically vibe coded my way through it. OK. And even though I was vibe coding my way through it, it actually was very confusing.

11:13
because uh Discord has all this terminology and all this stuff, so it’s a little hard to understand. So now I’m a little more familiar with it, but when I first started, it’s actually a little intimidating. It’s not like your typical Vibe-coded project, in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah. So you could do it. I’ve seen you and Liz create apps and whatnot. You could do it. It’s just not… There’s a learning curve, basically. Yeah. So let me compare that to Circle, because that’s what we’re using. um

11:42
You know, obviously there’s a big differentiator in that Circle is not free, right? You pay monthly. And the one thing that Liz and I were chatting about yesterday that I don’t like about Circle is that there’s a couple tiers, and we’ve talked about this a lot in the course, Companies nickel and dime you, right? They give you the base thing and you get like bare minimum and then it’s like, oh, but if you pay $50 more a month, you’ll get this feature. But then if you want the really cool feature, so one of the features that I wanted was to be able to like,

12:10
send a blast notification when um accountability starts, right, our accountability hour or half hour. And of course, that’s on a tier that we’re not on, right? And we’re not willing to pay for that right now. So obviously everyone’s in ConvertKit. I can email them from ConvertKit. It actually is not that big of a deal, but it would be really nice to have that feature um as part of the plan that we’re paying for, but it’s not. I would say setup wise with Circle, um like the Uber, it’s like,

12:40
ordering an Uber, so simple, right? It guides you through everything, tells you exactly what to do. um One of the issues that Liz ran into that she finds is like a pet peeve for Circle is that every single thing that you build in Circle requires a different size graphic. And they don’t resize it for you, so you have to then resize your own graphics and put them up there. So nothing is a standard across the board. So if it’s like an events page, it’s this size graphic. If it’s this kind of page, it’s this size graphic.

13:08
Which, you know, that’s one of those like nitpicky type things. um I feel like Circle could fix that very easily, right, in their own back end. But, you know, if we’re gonna do a true review of it, that is one of the negatives. um But I like it because it’s very similar to Discord in that you can have different buckets of people, right? So, like where you and I see like everything in Discord, um you know, I see everything in Circle. If you’re part of, you know, one group.

13:35
that’s a totally private group and it’s not seen. And I don’t know about Discord with this, but like the two people that got on the phone call, right, the voice chat? Can someone else just automatically join that chat or is it private between those two people? They can join, but they can say, hey, this is a private chat and then that guy would leave. Maybe. Maybe, maybe not. Well, I mean, worst case, they would just DM each other and then join the private chat. Like the ones that are…

14:02
that I saw were like technically like meeting rooms within the Discord. They could easily just have their own private conversation on Discord if they wanted to. Yeah. So, you know, so basically you can do those private rooms where, you know, only certain people have access to, which you can do in Discord because we have different buckets of people. Like if you’re in seller summit, you don’t have access to the profitable online store unless you’re also a member of that course. So there is a lot of flexibility with those types of things.

14:29
And I would say just overall, if you have zero tech experience, if you don’t want to vibe code or haven’t figured that out yet, Circle is a good option. It is expensive. I think the plan we’re on is $100 a month, which is that’s expensive. But the people who join don’t have to pay, obviously, right? So we it’s a paid community. yes, they do have to pay. But they don’t have to pay to use Circle. Correct. Yeah, that’s what I meant. And that’s all integrated. Right. The payment.

14:57
plan and everything is integrated within Circle, which I know for you, think you had to integrate, you’re gonna have to integrate that at some point. Yeah, yeah, I will, yeah. For Circle though, is there an app also, like a phone app that works pretty well? I think there, I actually only use it on desktop, but I can only assume there is a phone app, so yes. Okay. I would just think that Discord has more of a user base than Circle, right, just because Discord’s been around longer.

15:25
in a different community. I guess my only concern is like these guys are not pro, because I have some, have a friend who’s pretty high up over there. Pretty sure they’re not making any money. And they’ll need to, well, you know, it’s just one of these venture backed companies designed to grow, grow, grow, right? So. You know, and then it’s going way, way back. mean, I remember when you, when I first met you, you had your community on a forum. Yeah, that was the biggest disaster ever.

15:56
But I can’t even remember, was that something that you built within WordPress or was that something? No, I didn’t build anything. It was just a plugin. It was a WordPress plugin that had a nice forum on there. And I think the problem was that in order to respond, you had to log in, post your reply, and no one was logging in. And that’s why I asked about the app. I think the app is important because when people have it on their phone, like I do, you get a little notification. You can mute certain threads, you can mute certain people even.

16:25
Am I muted on your Discord? That way when you get a notification, you can just reply to it right away. Yeah, so that’s it’s interesting because so one of my clients moved to Slack a couple months ago. They were using Voxer, which I did not love at all. ah And I really hesitated putting Slack on my phone because typically I’m in front of my computer every day from eight to five.

16:53
you know, you know, bathroom breaks, whatever. But what I didn’t want was to be away from my computer, you know, at 730 on a Friday night and have like ding, ding, ding, you know, slack, slack, slack. I feel a little bit the same way with Discord as the community owner, right? Like not as a user, but as the owner, I feel like I really don’t want to, because my personality type is one, if someone says something, I feel very obligated to respond, right? I feel very obligated to interact like immediately.

17:23
And so I don’t like having it on my phone because I feel like that’s sort of the boundary. But I also ended up when I was traveling, putting it on, putting Slack on my phone because I was like, well, there are going to be times, you know, that I don’t have my computer open and I want to be able to answer people’s questions in a quick way. But yeah, I don’t know. The phone app to me is as a user, though, I think it’s a really cool feature. Yeah. 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.

17:53
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. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away.

18:20
Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

18:27
Yeah, I mean, I think an app is essential because if there’s any friction at all in responding, people just aren’t going to respond. And what’s also important is that you get like a little email saying you have un-responded requests and whatnot. Yeah. Just little things like that. I don’t know, you know, for many years I’ve resisted creating like a community, but I think because of AI, it’s more important than ever to do so. And so that’s why I’ve changed my tune as of late.

18:56
Yeah, I do think that you bring up a really good point is that the more AI, the more people are using AI and it’s becoming just part of our everyday life, having that community interaction is really important. um I felt that way a little bit at ECF this year, right? It was just really nice to see people and talk to people and not ask Chad GBT all of my life questions. um Actually, our friend Dana was telling me that she’s created like a whole um like therapy.

19:24
session with chat GPT by inputting a bunch of different things. It’s way too complicated to get into right now, but um I don’t know. I feel like when I have any kind of question, I immediately ask chat before I ask anybody else now. um So to me, it was like really nice to sit and talk to people at ECF. Well, isn’t chat nicer? Not that ECF people, very, it’s like seller summit people. They’re all very, very nice. But yeah, so one of the things that you’re doing, so My Circle community is paid.

19:54
uh Liz’s Circle Community for Fluencer Fruit, you get it with the tool, right? So you’re doing something similar with that. If you’re in the course, you get the community as part of the, I don’t wanna say it’s a bonus, but it is a bonus. uh I think those things are great bonuses if you are doing a course, having that community is a great add-on to add value to what you’re selling. But you’re thinking about, and I don’t know where we are on this, but you’re thinking about adding it as an option to people.

20:23
who are not in the course, they’re not, now before everyone in the course flips out on me, they’re not in the course community. There will be another, there’ll be another bucket of, we’ll just call it, know, another bucket of people who aren’t as cool as our course members. Let’s just make that very clear to our course members uh who will have access. Let’s talk about that a little bit because that feels like a huge uh gamble as far as your time.

20:48
It’s not a gamble. I worst case, I just refund everyone and call it a day, just shut it down. I made a terrible mistake. I don’t want to talk to you. OK, so here’s the problem. So I’ve been raising the price of my class over the years, and I just literally raised it this past week. What is it priced at now? I’m curious. It’s $2,500 now.

21:11
Okay, in the world of courses, that’s cheap. Most of them are $5,000. I actually added a $5,000 tier also. What is that? They get to come to your house and play croquet? No, they get quarterly one-on-one consults for the year, and then they get a tear down of their business. I’m not involved in those consults, right? Just making sure you didn’t put my face on that. Actually, you’re the one giving the consults, and I was going to give you a little cut. Right, right. Here’s your $17.

21:40
for your your hour consult. Yeah, we’ll see how that goes. But I think the purpose of that, even if no one signs up, is that it anchors the price higher so that when you just pay for the regular course, seems cheaper. Yeah. So it serves two purposes. why do you get so many people sign up for that? You’re going to be like, just kidding. I’m refunding you all $2500. Well, yeah, we’ll see how that goes. But I think.

22:07
If someone signs up for that, I know they’re gonna be serious. And when that happens, I’ll probably wanna talk to them, because I know that they’re serious. We get this question a lot, actually, in webinars, is how much is it just to talk to you? I mean, I would say that question, it’s come up in every single webinar, usually multiple times, and usually also in email questions, we get it as well. And we’ve always said, we don’t do that.

22:34
Right. It’s just not we don’t have the bandwidth. So now you’ve changed that for profitable online store to what is it quarterly? You quarterly. Yes. OK. Yeah. I mean, we’ll see how it goes. If it’s overwhelming that I’m just going to take off the tear. It’s very simple. Just climb, climb down from your pile of money. I’ll just say sorry. We’re not doing this tier anymore. oh Anyway. OK. So back to the community. So the reason why is because I’ve been raising the prices and literally the price went up

23:03
like this week and just before like the day it was gonna go up, I got a bunch of emails saying, this is so expensive, like I can’t afford it, why are you like gouging people, you know, whatever, comments like that. And I was thinking to myself, okay, well, you know, I’m not willing to lower the price and maybe the solution, the real solution is to have a tier that’s much more affordable for those people who can’t afford it, who actually still wanna learn.

23:33
And I thought the best way to do that would be to create a community where they can ask questions and I can chime in with answers or the community can chime with answers. And then we have like just like one time every week where we go live and just kind of answer questions as a group. Right. And yeah, I mean, that’s that’s the purpose. Also, the secondary purpose of having the community is to just.

24:00
get to know more people and just kind of understand what people are looking for. Like I’m always living in this bubble since I don’t like I told you before, like I’m not really a community person. And so I think that hurts me because I don’t really have a strong pulse on what like people want or what they’re looking for or what not. So. Yeah. OK, so so if someone joins the paid community, they’re not a course member, so they don’t have access to the lessons.

24:30
They don’t have access to office hours. Right. So so they’re getting questions answered in the community as well as you’re going to go live once a week and talk. So they get a number of things. OK, so they’re going to get the the Steve bot of the blog portion so they can instantly look up anything that I’ve ever answered on the blog really quickly and it’ll link them back to the post and answer the question. They’ll also get the podcast bot, which allows them to query any podcast with anyone that I’ve ever done.

25:00
with their questions. And they’ll also get my YouTube bot, which has all of my YouTube videos that I’ve ever done about e-commerce. I’m probably not going to create the bot for my, I like to call them my fluff pieces or my rants and whatnot. don’t think that’s useful. But any tutorial I’ve done on YouTube, I will create into a bot also. And so they’ll get, I guess like an encyclopedia of everything that I’ve done outside of the class, obviously.

25:30
So what do you have a price yet on this or are you still mulling that? No, no. I we just got back from ECF, Tony. I haven’t thought about this. I’m trying to think of like I’m just thinking to myself, what would that be worth to somebody? feel like so podcasts are terrible to search, right? YouTube videos are hard to write. Like so to me, the value in the blog posts are probably the easiest thing to search. Right. You go to my wife, quit her job.

25:56
to the blog, you put in a search query, you’re probably going to get an answer, I would say, most likely. I think you would probably just more likely search Google. Well, if I wanted to know your opinion on something. It’s not easy to even find the blog post, right? Because a lot of times you have one specific question, and you don’t want to sift through like a 2,000 word post to find that answer, right? True.

26:18
But I would say like having searched your blog meant for many things before because I’ve used it in like promotional stuff and looking like the blog search to me is the is the least valuable not to say it’s valuable, but it definitely will cut off time But the podcasts and the YouTube to me are huge right because there’s no possible way I’m gonna be able to search your YouTube for something ah And same with the podcast as well. So to me that are two extremely high value

26:46
So my concern for you, as our as we’re friends, is that what’s an acceptable price point that keeps the community full of people that are truly wanting to learn and start a start a business or grow their business versus like the looky-loos? I’m not even worried about that at all. Really? Yeah, because I’m going to start it out. She’s going to ban them and review. You’re just like refund Steve today. I’m just going to refund them. It’s no big deal. It’ll start out cheap.

27:16
I don’t even know what that price is gonna be. And then if it’s popular, then I’ll just raise the price. uh Like if it gets overwhelming, like that’ll be my threshold. Like if I feel like this is like running on a treadmill, then I’ll just raise the price and reduce the demand. That will be six people in the community guys, just so you know. He will be overwhelmed. ah But I mean, there’s benefits for me too outside of just the money.

27:43
The money to me in this particular case, at least in the first iteration, is gonna be what I call maintenance costs. I’ll probably use that money maybe to hire a moderator to just make sure things are okay. And then uh what’s nice about the community also is they’re gonna be asking me questions, they’re gonna be asking me what tools I use, so that leads to affiliate. It’s also kind of like a gateway drug into the main classes.

28:10
It’s also, you know, if people get to know each other, they probably want to hang out in person. So that might lead to more people coming to seller summit, you know? I mean, there’s a lot of benefits outside of just the membership fees. So that’s the way I think about it right now. And it’s not like, you you decide on one thing and it’s in stone, right? Right. Like if it’s overwhelming, you just. My biggest fear actually is the spam problem. Even if you’re paying, like there’s always going to be people who

28:39
who cause a ruckus. Like I’ve chatted with Andrew who runs ECF about this. I mean, it gets out of hand like all the time. And that is my biggest fear. Is the ruckus. Is the ruckus. And, uh you know, as another mutual friend that we know, like you can’t just like ban someone because then they’ll cause an even bigger ruckus outside. Like, so one of our friends for all these, for anyone who’s listening, he got canceled basically. Yes. uh

29:09
saying something on the forum and then, you I think he ended up just banning the people at first. Yeah. And then those people who got banned, like just causing even bigger ruckus. And it just got way out of hand. Yeah. And that can happen very quickly if you’re not careful. You know, I will say Andrew must do a great job of helping with uh the spam because I rarely I don’t ever see anything. Now, I’m not in the forums every day either, but.

29:35
they obviously do a great job of moderating over there. And he has a full-time moderator too. He does. He has a full-time moderator. And I’m pretty sure there’s some sort of AI element, which is like my backup plan. Like I’m going to have this bot that will query everything that people ask and give me a number on the scale of like one to a hundred in terms of promotional or abusive. That’s the part that’s a little tricky. And then it’ll just…

30:03
Instantly ban anyone not ban anyone but suspend that particular message if it’s like above a certain threshold is what I was thinking So I do think that one of the things that is really cool about this and and I don’t know for me personally It’s a motivator. I can only assume it motivates other people as well is the whole scene what you don’t have access to Right, so I remember there was a website. I can’t remember whose website it was. It might have been smart marketers No, what was Ryan Dice’s?

30:32
Oh, a digital marketer. Digital marketer. Like if he used to sell these like $10 courses, right. And really they were for if you owned a business, you bought like the Facebook course for your Facebook person. Right. And they took that course and went through it. But when you so I bought one of the courses one time, I don’t even remember what it was. And, know, because it’s like 999. Well, when you log into your course page, I think we’ve talked about this before. It had.

30:58
all of the courses that they had available, but they were all grayed out and only the ones you had paid for were like bright and you could click on it and you would access that curriculum. And I’ve seen other people do this over the years. And to me, that’s like super effective, right? And there was also some like bundling components to it, right? So it’s like, well, if you buy one more course, that’s another 9.99. But if you want to buy this whole suite of like social media, then that’s, you know, a price that’s cheaper than everything bought, you know, individually.

31:26
And I felt like that was a huge motivating factor to upgrade. I’m sure it was, I mean, they did very well in that time period. So I’m sure it was a very effective way. So I feel like getting people in the community and seeing like, oh, look, there’s all these other places that you could be, but you don’t have access to right now, will be a motivator. Does Circle have those, the ability to moderate like programmatically? That I don’t know.

31:53
I would assume probably not the way Discord does, just based on how the platform is built. Right. Like on Discord, you can literally read in everyone’s messages, run it through AI or whatever you want to do, and then take action on whoever that person was. Yeah. I don’t think to that level at all, for sure. I mean, not to know if that’s necessary even. I’m just like a paranoid guy. Yeah. You know, I always plan for the worst, hope for the best.

32:22
Yeah, I will say for a, and obviously we know people who have, mean, Andrew’s community is not cheap, but we know people who have, getting people to pay definitely helps with a lot of that, right? Like you’re removing the, because we see this on webinars, right? Where people will spam and sort of, we don’t get it a ton, but it does happen. But with a paywall, you’re removing at least 50 % of that, if not more.

32:51
I think more than that. think even like a dollar makes a huge difference just getting someone to open up their wall at all. Now will you have will this be like a monthly recurring or yearly or you haven’t thought

33:06
That’s a good monthly with a year membership being like obviously a discount to the monthly. It’s very cheap right now, but um that’s our plan is to do monthly with uh pay for a year and get a substantial discount. Yeah, I think with monthly, like there’s always this huge hassle of credit cards expiring. Yeah. And all that. I mean, I have it. I see it right now with my payment plans. Yeah. Kind of a pain in butt.

33:31
Like assuming you want people to continue paying, right? Obviously. If you don’t care about money. If you don’t care, like they lose access and then whatnot. But I mean, a lot of times, you know, want to get, they’ve already opened up their wallets, so they’re willing to pay the money. And so you almost need to have a person like reminding them to, update their credit card and whatnot. So that’s like another hassle, probably at the price point that I’m thinking for the mic media. I probably just, I probably wouldn’t even care. Probably just.

34:01
For the class obviously it matters because we’re talking hundreds of dollars a right, right, right And you can send out an automated email, but it just doesn’t work as well as when you just send an email that says hey look, you know Right. Yeah, I’m actually glad we’re talking this out because I haven’t spent too much time On the monetization part like I just know it needs to cost something right because if someone opens up their wallet They’re probably not gonna be like overly promotional

34:30
Mm-hmm or as much as like someone who’s just in there just to spam and run right right right and plus I will have their you know information right so You know I can easily ban them in the future ban on their life. So I think my only When I’m thinking through what you’re doing because you have this really high price product at $2,500 so let’s just say you charge $49 a month for the community

34:58
Right, that’s that’s completely made up number. um That seems so cheap, right? Do you think people will, do you think this will, so I can see this affecting the sales of the course initially. I don’t think long term it will affect the sales of the course because I think when people get into the community and realize that like the course actually has all these, you know, I don’t even know how many, we have almost 300 lessons in our course and it’s way newer than what you’ve been doing. um

35:25
I can imagine people thinking like, well, let me try the $49 a month option because $2,500 is steep and then maybe not convert or maybe this is the way they do convert, right? Like, I’m not sure which way it’ll go. Have you thought about that at all? That’s a good question. I think what’ll happen is like I make most of my conversions these days on like the three day workshops that I do, right?

35:53
because that’s what I can show and demonstrate like the true value of the full class. And so the way I see it is you get someone in the community and then you get them to join these free workshops, then they’ll see the value. So like I said, it’s kind like a gateway drug and it’s easier to get people into that workshop if they’re already in the community. So I really don’t see that as a detriment. And for those of the community is gonna be useful, but it’s not gonna be nearly as useful for getting answers.

36:21
as like the full class, obviously, right? Because you’re depending on the community to answer and then you have the bots not for the detailed lessons in the class. Here’s the problem with podcasts, YouTube and blog. Let’s just take YouTube for example. You cannot go into too much depth on YouTube on the actual implementation or the solution. Otherwise that video is gonna bomb. YouTube is kind of meant for the masses.

36:47
Likewise with the podcast, we’re not gonna go into this huge in-depth tutorial on the podcast, right? Interview with anyone. Whereas the class, you can actually get a lot more in-depth on the actual implementation. Yeah, actually I have perfect example of this. So right now we’re talking about communities, we’re talking about Discord, we’re talking about Circle. Liz is gonna come on to Profitable Audience in a couple weeks and give a full breakdown of Circle. The setup, the in-depth. So for people who are considering it, this will be your guide.

37:14
to whether this is the right decision or if you’ve sort of already made up your mind, here’s some cool things we found that it does, that kind of thing. We can’t go into that on the podcast, right? It’s just not feasible. Also, know, obviously this is video recorded, but we’re not screen sharing, we’re not showing, demonstrating types of things. So I totally agree with you. The depth that we go into in uh the lessons in both classes is far greater than we could ever do in a podcast or on a video. uh

37:44
YouTube video. So yes, I totally think that’s the case. I just hope I Don’t know. I think it will be the gateway drug as well for people like they get in there They see how much input it’s kind of like when I took your course a million years ago, right and I took your mini course right 2014 I think it was and The amount of information you gave away for free in the mini course in my mind was like well If this is what you’re giving away for free, what in the world would I get if I paid?

38:13
Right, it was like this, it was a complete motivator based on how good the information was in the free product and we teach this all the time, right? Like you want that information that you’re giving away for free in your lead magnet or in your flow or YouTube series, whatever. We want that to be the best because if people see what you’re giving away, to me it means what am I gonna pay for then? Like how amazing is this going to be? Like what’s the level of service if the level of service is already so high on the free tier? So.

38:40
I think that’s what will happen, but I’m curious to see it because. Here’s actually how I see the community. It’s like a much more improved version of an email list. Right. Because you’re getting all these people together who you actually know and you can interact with.

38:58
And they’re much more likely to respond like when you tag everyone, for example, which is something you have to pay for in Circle, which I think is ridiculous, by the way. Yes. Yes. I said, I said there’s a lot of things that I feel like are dumb for sure. So I can just go at everyone on Discord. Hey, I’m giving a workshop or hey, I’m to be speaking at this event and whatnot. And people instantly get their notification on their phone, which in theory should have much better deliverability on email, which has gotten a lot worse over the years. Yes. Right.

39:28
So actually what I’ve been torn was, you know, on my YouTube videos I always say, hey, if you want to learn about e-commerce, take my six day mini course, which is my email lead magnet. Maybe the right thing to do is to say, hey, join my discord group or something So that’s what we’ve been doing on our TikToks is join, um you know, join. Well, we actually have them take the lead magnet quiz, but our push is to the community. Our push is not to the email.

39:55
You’re asking for a payment right off the front. Yeah. Now we’re going back and forth with that. Right. Like are we going to do we would be rather. And since we are basically starting from zero. Right. um You know we’ve gone back and forth. So now we’re kind of experimenting between take the quiz and you know join the community. Our community price is so low we have had people just join the community because it’s very cheap. But eventually it’s not going to be right. It’s not going to always be this this less this inexpensive. So

40:24
At some point, I’m charging right now. Nine dollars a month. So it’s like a no brainer. Yeah. But I say that hopefully it’s still nine dollars a month when you listen to this podcast. But it should be. You’re like, I got 10 members. I’m overwhelmed. I know. It’s like I’m paying for my circle fee. We’re good. But no, but like to me, our quiz is really good. Like, I feel like our I feel like our lead magnet is exactly what it.

40:50
I felt like we really nailed that. And so to me, part of me is like, I don’t know, we’re also converting people into the community from the email list. So one of the things that we’re doing, because we do a weekly accountability chat, basically, where people, basically, one of the pieces of feedback I got from Lars at ECF was, my wife has joined a lot of communities, but she feels like it’s just all fluff and no action. And so one of the things that we’re really focused on is,

41:17
Having people take action on the next steps and whatever they’re doing right because um our community isn’t for digital content creators It’s for any like female ceo. So it could be you know managing a team or um doing something completely different than like what we do with our courses, um But our so every time we we just started this so I have no I don’t have any data but To remind people about the accountability check-in. I send an email

41:46
but I send it to the whole list, which is not very big. um And as the list grows, probably will not be able to do this long term, but as the list is small, I say, hey, guess what? Today or tomorrow, whenever I send it, our accountability check-in is this day at this time. um Can’t wait to see you there. Oh, but by the way, if you’re not a member of the community, you can join so you can be with us in that accountability chat. Click here, right? And I think we’ve converted two people off of that from an exceptionally small list, so to me, that’s a win.

42:16
So, and I think at a low price point, that is a way to convert people, right? So for you, probably more difficult because your main. I tried that accountability thing. It ended up being a disaster. Well, I wouldn’t say disaster, but, you know, people would purposely not show up because they didn’t want to be. They didn’t want me to ask. Yes, we’ve experienced that for sure. But people are people. the people who are joining our group are only joining for accountability. Like, that’s the point of our whole program, right? Is we take your archetyped.

42:45
and your archetype and we help you figure out your pain points through your type A architect. anyway, um but I would say that might be uh a ploy for you because you have a large general email list, right? When you launch the community, let’s just say you’re doing your check-in or your ask me, let’s call them ask me anythings, right? So you’re doing your ask me anythings Thursday at 10 a.m., right? Let’s just say. So.

43:09
at Wednesday night, you send out an email and say, hey, don’t forget to join us for Thursday. Ask me anything. Oh, not in the community. Join here so you can be with us tomorrow. Right. Yeah. And if the price point’s low enough, for it’s very low for us, I’m sure for you, it’s going to be a very affordable price point. That might be a way to get more people into the community. Right. Is that urgency like, hey, we’re going live in 12 hours. Right. Or whatever it is.

43:34
You know, I talked to Spencer about this. He actually left his community free in the beginning just to get people in and chatting and whatnot. I don’t think I’m bold enough to do that because that’s just inviting spam. Like I’ve I’ve had like many Facebook groups before that were wide open and like they get spam. It’s just I had to close my my wife quick community, which I think it has like 20,000 people. Yeah, it got big. But you had so much spam in there. I remember that.

44:02
Yeah, so the point is like I had to approve every post towards the end. so like huge time. So I can’t handle that. I can’t handle that at all. So that’s why I think it’s important to charge a little bit. So I’ll probably charge like super little just to get, you know, yeah, some people. That was our theory is like charge a little bit in the beginning, get your founding members type thing in. And then obviously they get grandfathered in on the pricing, but then you just continue to creep it up.

44:30
Yeah, and my mentality is like an alternative email list. So I don’t really need to profit off of this, to be honest with you. I just need to be able to pay like a moderator, I think. And it will just be a way to communicate with a lot of people. And I don’t know if that’s your goal with yours, but for me, I actually don’t care about the money that comes in per se in the beginning. Yeah, our goal is a little bit different. Our goal is

44:58
the community is the goal, right? So, but a very focused, know, not just female only, but type A female. We had a couple type B females reach out, very disappointed. I said, well, we’re not qualified to make a type B community, because neither of us are. But our goal is different, right? Our goal is to build the community into a pay, like a revenue source. And so, I think.

45:22
And that way we’ll probably build it a little bit differently. But I think in the end, the goal is always the same. Right. You want an active community where people are actually getting help and benefiting from being in there and being willing to continue to be a part of the community and be like the way communities work is that it’s not just me and you investing in the people in discord. Right. It’s the people in discord investing in each other. And so that’s our goal with what Liz and I are doing as well. But, you know, the way you have to do that in the beginning is definitely

45:50
you as the owner have to be in there. You have to be investing and you have to be making it something that’s exciting for people to be a part of. mean, I can already picture what’s going to happen with mine in my in my dark mind. Like I’m going to see a bunch of agencies and whatever join. Yeah. Yeah. And then just try to be very helpful and then slip in. Oh, by the way, I run into it, you know. Yeah, because we teach that. So I’m thinking to myself, OK, well, how am I going to prevent that from happening? Right.

46:19
So maybe I’ll have to screen to see what people do. So that’s why, in my mind at least, this is feeling like a lot of work in the beginning. So we’ll see. That’s why I’m fully willing to just refund the person and call it a day if this experiment doesn’t work out. But I think it’ll be fine. I think it’ll be fine. Will there be a big announcement when people can join? I’m sure you’re going to get emails like, can I join? Where is this? Let me join right now.

46:46
Are we going to do a big announcement when this happens? Where should people look to find out when this is available? I mean, just join my email list right now. So if you just go over to mywifequitterjob.com and then just sign up for the mini course and then you’ll be on my list at that point. And then I’ll make the announcement there as well as text also. So and before we close it out, I have to give a shout out to someone I met at ECF. I was having a conversation during one of the parties with our friend Danny, who actually is my neighbor.

47:15
I didn’t know we live so close to each other. his former business partner was sitting there and he said, your voice sounds so familiar. And I was like, it does? you know. And he’s like, hear you on. He’s like, are you on Steve’s podcast? So shout out to Patrick, who recognized my nasally, gross voice. ah That was pretty fun. was like, oh, that’s kind of fun that someone recognized me from my voice. ah

47:42
Also a little a little weird but very very exciting so that was I think the first time it’s ever happened like people know me from the podcast obviously but that was the first time someone just hurt had only heard me and never seen me and Recognized the voice. I thought that was kind of And there we go. The easiest way into Tony’s heart is just recognize her voice She just wants to be recognized just want to be recognized

48:06
Hope you enjoyed this episode. Once everything is live, you will all be the first to know. For more information and resources, go over to mywipequitardop.com slash episode 623. And once again, tickets to 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 over to sellersummit.com.

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 sit down with Ian Page of Bullseye Sellers to uncover the brutal truth about why most TikTok shop sellers never make it past their first couple months. Ian breaks down the exact strategies and mindset shifts that separate the struggling majority from the elite few who are building million dollar brands on the platform.

00:25
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 events that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants.

00:54
Also, I hate large 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 high-level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be.

01:23
So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now on to the show.

01:34
Welcome to the MyWifeQuarter.podcast. Today, I’m thrilled to have Ian Page back on the show for the second time. And if you do not remember Ian, he is the founder of Bullseye Sellers, where he helps e-commerce sellers launch and succeed on the TikTok Shop platform. Now, in the last episode, Ian gave us a step-by-step strategy on how to get launched and be successful on TikTok Shop. And a lot of people tried it, but obviously we could not.

02:01
cover every last detail about TikTok shop in just a 40 minute episode. So today, I invited him back on the show to talk about the two biggest reasons that TikTok shop sellers are currently failing. And what is interesting about these two reasons is that it is not documented publicly anywhere. And with that, welcome back to the show again. How you doing? Thank you. Try not to be a Debbie Downer on this on this episode. So I’ll try to brighten it up at the end.

02:29
You know, I think it’s better to be a Debbie Downer so that people know what they’re getting into. Right? Yeah. I mean, the worst thing that could happen is you go and you spend all this money and it fails. Right? So yeah, and you know, like, like I think I mentioned last time is part of my sales process is to tell the client everything wrong or all the warnings or all the investment costs or the worst case scenarios because when I do that, the clients always, okay,

02:57
That’s not that bad of a worst case scenario. And what if I, what if my case isn’t the worst case scenario? And at least I know I have a team working with me that is super honest from the gate, right? Yes. I want to do that more on this call too, is just be like super honest out the gate and save you guys a lot of time too. think if I teach some little tricks and tips on how to avoid these pitfalls, I could save you six months of time. Yeah. So I mean, your first episode was very well received. And so I want to actually dig deeper.

03:28
And I kind of want to start. So the last time we recorded was I believe June of last year. Has anything fundamentally changed with TikTok since then? you can’t change? Okay. Well, I don’t know where you want to start. So let’s talk about the changes first before we get into the guts. Okay, good. Okay, so I guess the changes with TikTok in the last six months have been, there’s been a lot more sellers signing up. Okay.

03:58
So that saturation has actually increased TikTok’s probation rules and probation period because their concern is they can’t have people selling products that aren’t actually real, genuine products, uh shipping from unknown origins and shipping times that are impossible. They just need consistent quality on the dashboard. And with this influx of all these sellers, people from

04:28
other countries creating proxy corporations and trying to basically have these workarounds to become a tick tock shop seller. It’s been a big concern for tick tock of how do we make sure the customer experience stays true and honest. So with that, yes, there’s been a lot of additional red tape. does that mean like, I remember when I was on tick tock before there were all these like knockoff purse sellers, you know, like the fancy brands like Gucci or all is all that stuff kind of gone now?

04:57
pretty much it’s cleaning up. It’s cleaning up. And that’s part of the problem, right? Is they open the floodgates and guess what you get when you open the floodgates, you get everything. um So it’s always the same thing happened with Amazon for so many years. It’s like the bad actors have only made it harder for the honest sellers and the Amazon like 10 years, right? I mean, this tick tock shop changes like six months. So yeah, they’re quick. Tick tock is quick. um They’re very fast. I think

05:27
I don’t know if it’s if it’s just how management operates. If it’s cultural being that they’re a Chinese company and that’s more the speed of how they operate over there. I don’t really know what it is. But yeah, they are fast. Okay. Yeah. What about the US purchase? Has that changed anything at all? No, I haven’t seen anything change on that except for more aggressive business development strategy. So I have noticed they launched something called Project Horizon, uh which I feel like I’m literally

05:57
Like when I say that, I feel like I’m talking about some sort of like alien program that no one knows about. Um, area 51 program, but project horizon is something that they’re heavily recruiting me for. And it’s basically a program. I don’t know if it’s public, but I guess it is now, but it’s a program where they highly incentivize, um, agencies to bring in 10 million plus sellers. So if, if, if the seller has to prove that they have sold 10 million plus on Shopify.

06:26
or so not blended together Amazon in the last 12 months. And they’re highly incentivizing agencies like me to bring those sellers in with kickbacks. So this is a new thing. um And the reason being is that they’re they’re actually kind of they don’t really want these tiny little startups anymore. Yeah, they want the established brands that

06:53
they know that they can trust and they don’t have to put through probation. They can basically just whitelist them because they’re like, oh yeah, we know you guys are good. So that’s been a big change. Okay. Are the incentives still out there? Cause I remember back in the day, like they were handing out money left and right to get sellers to come on and subsidizing stuff. Yeah. But have to be, you have to be a much bigger seller to even see an incentive. Okay. You see where back then it was like anybody now it’s like, okay, let’s, let’s make sure you are.

07:24
like really worth our time and then we will give you incentives and some of the stuff that they’re doing for news for 10 million plus sellers kind of unlevels the playing field, Steve, I gotta tell you. yeah, like they’re basically no probation, full whitelist, which means your account is good to go viral right away. ah You’re not limited on affiliate outreach. um You have immediate access to FPT, which is the fulfilled

07:53
by TikTok program. Yeah, which without it, you’re screwed, which we might want to talk about. Yeah. So yeah, so with those things, if you’re 10 million plus seller, and you go through that kind of project horizon program, and you’re white listed, you’re basically ready to start going viral within 30 days, where if you’re an average seller, let’s say 1.5 million a year or something, a Shopify seller, you’re basically going through barbed wire for about 90 to

08:24
120 days. Okay. Well, let’s talk about that barbed wire actually, because uh we discussed a whole bunch of different ways in the last episode on how to get past that cold start problem. And I remember in order to message affiliates, you need sales in order to get sales, you kind of need to have affiliates. And I’ve actually since that episode, I actually know a bunch of people who got past that initial $2,000 sales barrier that we talked about got their affiliates unlocked.

08:50
But then they ran into a slew of problems. So one friend of mine specifically got banned after one late shipment over the holidays. I don’t even think it was his fault. And then he was just shocked that there was like no grace period for any of that stuff. And I know a bunch of other colleagues of mine, just from going to an event, they’ve gotten banned for what appears to be a slew of very minor things. So what exactly is going on here? So

09:17
But you know, the old analogy, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Yeah. So they’re basically throwing babies out left and right right now, because the bathwater was so dirty. So let’s go into the legit businesses, right? mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re, they would never screw anybody order over. uh Hey, I, I have a client that refused to do FPT. This just happened last week. And every single order that came in,

09:46
They literally shipped it in under 24 hours. I’m talking if the order came in at 9am, it was out by noon. They were on it. Right. And they still had seven orders that FedEx failed to scan at the right point. And their shop score went from 4.4 to 3.7. And it’s not even their fault. It’s just FedEx. here’s the deal. TikTok set up way too much, in my opinion.

10:13
The automation and the bots and the, and the sensitivity level of their shop performance score is prohibitive of most sellers. This is the bad news. This is why I’m kind of being Debbie downer here. Okay. Um, they did that because they figured we really want guys who are in FBT. We really want large sellers. We don’t really care if we screw over 3000 mom and pops when let’s just focus on Adidas. Let’s focus on.

10:43
You know, big brands, let’s focus on Reebok. So the probation period, let’s talk about that a little bit. So basically right now in the probation period, you have hard requirements. You, in order to get through it, and even the probation period has four subsets. It has like starter and then it has like pro and all these subsets. So they’re basically judging you across four subsets. And within those four,

11:12
There’s all these like, have to have this, have to have that, and then you graduate to the next one. Okay. And a lot of that stuff is solved by being an FBT. And what FBT really is, it’s basically fulfillment by TikTok. So you’re sending them the inventory, they’re verifying the inventory and now they’re fully responsible for fulfillment. So it removes about 50 % of the BS that you deal with with.

11:40
them trusting or not trusting your fulfillment process. Okay. And it gets rid of all the potential violations. It gets rid of even refund potential violations because they automate it and handle it for you. most people get in trouble with on time tracking, customer messaging, and refunds. Okay. So the last time we spoke getting into FBT was very difficult. Is that still the case? Unless you have an agency? Really?

12:09
Okay. Honestly, it’s been good business for me. Right. It’s it’s been good business for me because I have a guy literally have a guy I call him I say here’s the shop code. They’re they’re approved. It’s it’s not fair. But I have a guy if you don’t have a guy you’re on a waitlist and you’re fulfilling orders yourself and getting and getting bad. Have fun. Have a good time. Does the seller score mean nothing then?

12:36
The seller score that will the shop performance score. Yeah, that’s what I meant. The shop performance score. Yeah. No, no, no. It’s still important. Even if you’re an FPT, but a lot of the metrics that create your shop performance score, a lot of those things that they watch go away with FPT. So now you’re only basically judged on other few points. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. I interrupted you. So you were talking about tiers, right? So you said there’s four of them. Yeah. Let me see if I can find them too. I have it written down somewhere.

13:06
Okay, while you’re looking for that, when you start, I’m assuming you’re still in the lowest tier as soon as you hit $2,000, right? Yeah, so the $2,000 part, again, this is kind of a spiderweb. And I don’t expect everybody to totally understand the connecting dots. But the $2,000 part solves a different problem, which is affiliate tiers, right? So there’s probation period, and then there’s affiliate, okay, tiers, okay.

13:36
But it helps with both because in order to get $2,000 of sales, you need to receive orders, deliver the product on time. And that will automatically push you through the line on some of the probation periods because they’re seeing that the product is being delivered on time and they’re like, okay, that’s good. You’ve checked off these boxes, right? Right. Yeah. So we still do a lot of giveaways. We still do

14:02
We still recommend every one of our clients give away $2,000 with a product. We still help our clients get a compliant product reviews because good reviews improve your shop score. That’s another thing. It’s kind of a lot, but the simplicity is as long as you are basically in FBT early on, like pretty much within the first 30 days and from FBT, you have fulfilled some giveaways.

14:32
which are very easy to do. There’s plenty of giveaway services. Selloco is one of them. You’re basically good to go. So I don’t really want to give every nuances to the probation period just because I know that like, it’s actually pretty easy to solve between being an FPT and running successful deliveries and giveaways through your shop. All right. So you’re making it sound like FTP is a is a hundred percent required now today. Yes. Yeah, I wouldn’t do it.

15:02
Really? Okay, so you would not go on TikTok shop at all unless you can get fulfilled by TikTok. I wouldn’t do it. No. It’s too hard. Okay. Well, that’s drastically changed since the last time we spoke. Yep. Right. That has that’s why I said everything right. It’s okay. Like what? It’s like everything’s changed. Right. So here are the four tiers. Okay. Okay. We got beginner. Yep. We got standard, premium and pro and as you can see in and

15:30
this client is now in standard. There’s these four subsets of how to get out of standard and look, they have 4.4 shop score, which is a well done. It’s out of five, right? Yeah. Their shop scores 4.4 out of five. That’s right. And then enforce counterfeit listings. They don’t have any. em They don’t have any counterfeit listings. So they’re under four. um They’ve passed the probation quiz, whatever that means, right? It’s probably a

15:58
a few questions. I wouldn’t know because my team does that stuff. And then they have nine out of 10 active listings. So guess what? They’re not graduated because they need another listing. How they’re not graduated from what tier from the standard. from standard. Okay. All right. Why wild? Yeah, exactly. Okay. Because because tick tock arbitrarily said you have to have 10 live product listings. Interesting.

16:23
Okay. what if you like what the business of like one or two hero products, that’s just not going to fly anymore. You literally have to have 10 products. We can still get you through. Okay. But if you were on your own and you weren’t with an agency, what would you look at? You’d see this and be like, what do I do now? You see what I’m saying? It’s like, it’s not clear. But yes, the answer is yes, we can, we can push you through. Um, because we know that if we force enough of other things,

16:52
these will fall off. But they don’t say that they just say you need these four things to move on to the next tier. Okay. So tick tock benefits do you get for the next year though? I don’t have that tier there. But basically, the benefits are you’re allowed to receive more orders. Your videos get more views. Your GMB max spend performance better. Okay, okay. And I want to be clear about something.

17:21
This isn’t different from Amazon. Amazon just doesn’t tell you about it. If someone launches on Amazon today and they run PPC, they will probably be nodding when I say this. Their first couple of weeks of PPC, they’re not even able to spend. They’re just trying to get it to spend because they’re in their own probation period as well. Amazon has probation periods, but they don’t give you the path. At least TikTok says we’re ghosting you bro. And here’s why.

17:51
Amazon doesn’t tell you that. Okay. Yeah. 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.

18:20
and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show. So it’s just like this hidden switch that instantly gives you more visibility is what it sounds like. It gives you more visibility. Okay. It allows you to receive more orders. ah It allows you to get payouts.

18:48
So you can receive more orders that implies that they’re purposely limiting your sales. Yeah. When you’re in that tier. Yeah. 500 a month. Is that new or is that all was that there the last time we talked? It’s pretty new. Yeah. Okay. Last few months. This is kind of ridiculous. Okay. So this is what I’m saying. Like, and this is kind of why, and I got to admit, this is why money has been good. Steve is because people come to me and they’re

19:13
really smart and they’re 15, 20, $30 million sellers and they come to me and they’re like, Ian, I don’t know how to do this because I’m like, yeah, cause it’s rigged. You can’t. So if you do everything right, you’re still maxed out on 500 sales. And it’s just like, it’s, it’s, it’s a very long, tedious process that could easily deter you many, many points along the way, but they come to me and I get them right into FPT. push some giveaways in there.

19:43
I know a hack of how to get a few, I send customers to the store to do some customer messaging. We respond to the customer messaging really quickly. The point I’m trying to make is my team has all these stupid little hacks and then we’re through it. Right. But if you don’t know the hacks. Right. It’s really hard. I imagine they’re there. They did that. They limited sales because there’s a bunch of junk on there before. Right. And you’re limiting the junk factor. I think I, I guess I get it.

20:12
Yeah, they don’t they don’t want a product to go viral. That is actually counterfeit. uh Shipping from an unknown origin that is not within the shipping timeframe that they promise, or all the other reasons why that people can get screwed over. So they’re really, they’re so scared about counterfeit and, and bad actors that they, uh they’re making it very, very difficult for the rest of us. Okay.

20:40
So before we get into the fulfillment part, uh so what are the requirements? You said 10 listings. What about order volume? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And on this one, order volume is not an issue. You just need four orders delivered or something like that. It’s like really small. ah And uh let me go back to my, I won’t share, but I just want to look at my screenshot again. Sure. Yeah.

21:08
This one doesn’t even have any order things. This one’s just you have a good shop score. You don’t have any counterfeit listings. I don’t even know how they verify that you pass a probation period, period. And then you graduate to premium. uh And then from premium, we graduate to pro and pro. That’s when you’re basically fully there’s you’re you’re at no limits, you can go viral, you can sell 15,000 units a day when you’re a pro.

21:35
How long does it take, assuming you’re doing everything correct, to get past that standard tier into premium and pro? I would say for us, we get it done in about 60 days. Okay, so no matter what, you’re still on probation for two months. Unless you’re a 10 million plus seller that I can get you white-listed? Absolutely. Okay. And then, do you know any of people not using Filled by TikTok that are in those highest tiers? There obviously are, right? There has to be, right? No, there aren’t.

22:04
I don’t know anybody. I mean, you asked if I knew him. Yeah. I don’t know anybody. ah But I’m sure there are I’m sure there’s guys who figured it out. And you know, they have a good three PL. Okay. But the point is, is why would you not just go into FPT if you can get there because their fees are really good. um Have I ever showed anyone in your audience the FPTP? No, actually, what I give me an idea, compare those to FBA for me.

22:33
Yeah, well, I’ll just show you the fees right here. And then I guess you can kind of make a comparison if you have a mental idea of FBA, but here it is. All right, I’ll put this up on the screen. And for the people who are just listening to this, guess I’ll try to narrate. Okay, so it looks like anything that’s four ounces or less, one unit order is about 428.

23:02
And anything over four pounds is $7.66. And if they order four or more units, it’s basically half of that, which is way better than at first glance, because I only know certain tiers, it seems to be substantially cheaper than than FBA. And I assume are there like, inbound fees and like fees to ship everything out to the warehouses? This is like just the flat fee, including everything? It’s all included. Okay, way cheaper than

23:31
way cheaper. There are storage fees, but their storage fees are actually pretty reasonable. And you can you can avoid them because they’re, you know, their check in process is pretty fast. So we haven’t had a huge amount of storage fees. But yeah, like, come on to ship a one and a half pound item for $5.71 is ridiculous is ridiculous. You can’t even get that as a seller. So this this reminds me of like old school Amazon back in the day. Yep. Right.

24:01
Which means it’s going to worse. So my point is, Steve, why in the hell wouldn’t you go into FPT? That’s my point. And if they lose stuff, is it the same thing? They refund you the selling price? oh Just like school. There’s a bunch of refund services popping up. We have a whole other ecosystem of get it as popping up for TikTok right now. Okay. And in terms of limits, do they limit you what you can send in? Yeah. You get a square footage. They give you a square footage.

24:30
amount when you’re on, right, I’ll try to find a screenshot because I actually have clients, obviously a lot of clients on but they basically show you they show you like a little bar of like you get up to 50 square feet, and you’re using 15. So you have 35 square feet available. Got it. Okay. So the current strategy today is you get someone on fulfillment and you have a guy

24:59
that you call. And so you start that from day one, basically. Yeah, so literally, we bind them to our agency portal. Okay. And we’re actually finding the moment we bind them. It’s like, greases wheels, that kind of thing. Right. And then we give that shop code to our guy. He clicks a button. I don’t think it’s much more than a button. And then FPT shows up on the dash. And it says, Welcome to FPT.

25:29
It’s like, literally, right. And then all of a sudden, all those fulfillment issues totally go away. Like all the penalties, like my friend wouldn’t have gotten banned, right? Yep. Okay. And then refunds, how do they work? if someone automated, automated, so does that get sent back to you? Or does that go back into inventory? Do you get to decide that? Yeah, yeah, you can definitely decide that. But the automated approval process when you’re in FPT, tick tock doesn’t mess around with you having options. It’s like Amazon, they’re kind of like,

25:58
you’re not going to decide whether we are going to refund or not. We’re just going to you just let us know where you want to send it. That’s it. uh And the refunds haven’t been bad. We have a lot of clients that are under 2%. A lot of clients between one and one and a half. And they’ve actually said that their refunds have been lower on TikTok than on Amazon. And I think that’s because Amazon has made it so easy with UPS pickup and that kind of thing that we’re kind of in a nice honeymoon period. Take talk on that. Who covers the return shipping? It comes out of your fees.

26:28
comes out your fees. Okay. Yep. Okay. And then you pay the film fee no matter what, just like the old school Amazon. Yep. Okay. Yep. There’s a lot of old school Amazon esque factors here. Okay. Let’s see here if I can find through my I’m looking through my agency portal to see if I can find my FPT button, but it’s not showing when I log into my account. So I can’t show you but yeah, I was gonna say the whole square feet thing. Okay.

26:55
That’s okay. It probably works similar to Amazon, right? get, except Amazon does it by units based on your size. Same thing. That’s right.

27:07
All right, so assuming all of those hurdles are gone, uh has the strategy for communicating with affiliates and getting them to make videos and all that stuff, has that changed at all? No, not really. mean, the good thing is the actual human to human relationship is still a very primitive thing, actually. Okay. And that’s probably the one thing that’s never going to change is how is…

27:36
If you have a really good offer and you have a really good product, then you’re going to get a higher response from, better affiliates. like to say the brand does basically earns the affiliates that it deserves. And cause they can look at your metrics. You can look at their metrics. So if you can see that an affiliate is making $50,000 in sales a month, they’re going to look at you and see that your entire shop makes two G’s a month. You think they’re going to want to work with you? Yeah, no chance. uh

28:06
It’s no different than a, you know, me trying to call Dwayne Johnson to do my TV commercial. Same thing. So what we have to do with every new brand that comes in at Bullseye is we have to build an affiliate army. That’s the same size as the brand coming in. So if the brand is, let’s call them a level one brand, we’re really going to look for level one, two affiliates, and we’re going to basically pair up equal levels.

28:33
And then we’re going to have to coach the hell out of those affiliates because they’re pretty raw. They’re pretty green. But what’s fun, and I can show you some viral examples is we’ve had many, many examples now where we have been the big break for these brand new low tier affiliates. And that’s fun. One thing you told me a while back was that those initial sales that you get, those have to be from affiliate videos.

29:03
Yes, they have to be affiliate GMV. That’s right. Okay. So that makes it a lot harder, right? Yes. Because you have your classic chicken and egg problem. So does that imply that? Well, do you guys get around that because you have this network of affiliates that can make the okay, make the videos? No, we get around it from sell a co sell a co is basically a shopper buyback program. That’s all it is. And we recruited some of those affiliates to work for sell a co

29:29
I see. when someone’s setting up a campaign in Celico, you can say, Do you need an affiliate video to even run these giveaways to right? And if they say yes, they just pay us I think I think they’re cheap. I think we’re selling them for 50 bucks a pop usually only need one. And that that affiliate video, there’s a way for us to basically connect your shop with the affiliate manually. Send them a sample, they do the video.

29:56
and then the a Celico video and then the Celico campaign automatically happens when that video posts to your account. It’s all automated for the seller. It’s pretty easy. Yeah, but I’m just saying like without a service like that. mean, it sounds like the classic chicken and egg problem, right? I mean, you need to get sales from an affiliate video, but you can’t even get any affiliates in the beginning or it’s hard to write you get some limited messaging, right? Yeah, you get a sample pack. It’s like, hey, welcome to tick tock. Here’s 1000 messages and you’re like, okay. ah

30:24
But the typical shop gets on average, a new shop gets on average two to 4 % response rate. So if you’re a thousand, you’re getting 20 to 40 responses. And you’re probably gonna say yes to all those people regardless of who they are. Right. Right. And then that video has to generate a sale. guess you that then you can artificially do it, I guess, right from there, you can get someone to buy it. Yeah, like you could just literally, you know, have your have your sister.

30:54
buy from that video. So it’s not that big of a deal. sell a code just speeds it up instead of like going through 1000 people and messing around and sending them samples and all that. mean, you could in theory, I guess be your own affiliate, right? No. Yeah, if you have an affiliate account. Yeah, if you have an affiliate account, okay. Yeah, because your affiliate accounts not tied to your brand account. Right? Yeah, it’s two separate things. um So yeah, back to the affiliate thing. And what we’re getting better at is we’re getting better at cross pollination.

31:24
And I think that’s the thing that agencies do have a leg up is that we take all of our successful affiliates. put them into a VIP group, which is an internal WhatsApp group that we manage. So now we have our, now we have our best guys. Now we have everybody who’s sold at least a thousand. Some of them have sold 10,000. Some of them have even sold 25 K. So when we’re launching a new shop and we got something to immediately tap into, and that’s another advantage of working with.

31:54
an aggregate agency model versus you’re just completely on your own out there in the cold with no leverage. remember you said something to me a while back regarding the number of affiliates that generate X dollars. I can’t remember what the amount was. Something like 2000 affiliates that sell over $10,000 a month. Right. And then there was there was some $5,000, 5,000 affiliates make over 1000 or so.

32:21
There’s not, my point is it doesn’t seem like there’s that many affiliates out there. No, there’s very little. There’s actually over a million, but out of a million, how many, how many people have basically enrolled in the program? I’ve never posted. Okay. Yeah. And then, you know, um, you have probably about 150,000 that are active. I mean, it’s just, it just gets to slim pickings, right? So I actually have some numbers here, um, about the affiliates.

32:51
And it’s pretty fascinating and uh about how little they are and why it’s really important. This is the key here is why it’s really important to build your own level one affiliates and not come in cocky. have to come in humble and those level ones, you have to take a chance on them just like they’re taking a chance on you. And that’s what Tik Tok essentially needs. It needs more sellers that are like,

33:20
Everyone gets a car, you get a car, you get a car, you get a car. So that that way we have, can build up these, this affiliate audience. It’s too small. has that, I remember you quoted that statistic to me several months ago. So that hasn’t changed. So TikTok has like an affiliate problem. Essentially it look, I can’t verify my number today. Sure. Okay. I just can’t, but that, that number always stuck with me and so, so check this out.

33:50
85 to 90 % of all affiliates have little to no GMB at all. Okay. Most level one affiliates will never even generate a sale statistically. Okay. Level two affiliates make up roughly eight to 12 % of the ecosystem. Okay, level two is 5000 bucks. Right at eight to 12%. Then

34:15
I think it goes into level three here. Hold on. Let me see level three and above represent only one to 3 % of affiliates. And that’s where you get into the 10 G’s. Right? I’m one to 3%. I mean, even 10 G’s doesn’t sound like that much. It’s not because I’m looking like I’m an affiliate, but I’m not an affiliate for physical products, more for services. And like, those numbers are minuscule, right? Yep. Compared to

34:44
the affiliates. So okay, can we just take a step back then and just kind of talk about like the TikTok shop opportunity. uh So you worked with a bunch of level ones, I kind of cut you off when you’re about to tell that story. But can we can we delve deeper in that one story you’re about to tell? Yeah, so basically, and this doesn’t look good on video, but I’m going to try ah because my web guy has been messing with my website. But let’s share share.

35:14
tab. So here’s some examples of videos that have gone viral in the last three months. We like to update our carousel here. um Every one of these and this is what’s cool to me is every one of these sellers was level one and level two. Okay. So people listening in the pod, I’m looking at three videos, one got 4.1 million, one got 1.31 million, and the other one got 7.8 million views. Yeah, this guy fully this guy in the right.

35:43
selling this pop up greeting card, fully cleared out my client on Amazon and on tik tok. Wow. And his manufacturer is scrambling. You know, it’s always a shock when it happens to you. Right? Yeah. This girl has got 9 million views. She’s a rock star. She was nothing. When we started. I mean, she was like 500 bucks. When we started, right now, we’ve paid her over $30,000 in commissions in the last 60 days.

36:13
She’s kicking butt. So this is why, uh, basically what tick tock really needs is more of these relationships to, because everyone has to have a big break, right? You know, all these high affiliates, this one here, 2 million views. She’s killing it. She created a bunch of copycats for herself that are coming in and copying her videos, which is always fun. Um, this guy, all this guy did was a point of view video, meaning his hands.

36:42
30 seconds of his time, he got four and a half million views and sold over 150 grand worth of poop bags. That’s so easy. Yeah. Okay. So I just wanted to comment for the people listening. It seems like most of the products I’m looking at here are creams or some sort of a consumable or skin or something like that, right? Beauty product, maybe there was one that was a really cool pop-up greeting card. And then the last one that you just mentioned is literally poop bags. Yeah.

37:12
Yeah, yeah. And this toy here crushed it over the Christmas season. Right. This is this is a fun toy. It’s really hard hand eye coordination toy. It does really well on video. Yeah, poop bags. Yeah, I know. I know. And I actually tell people if I can sell poop bags on TikTok, I can sell anything. Well, I the outlier here is poop bags because the last time we spoke, you said beauty products, maybe unique toys, but there’s nothing unique about poop bags. You know what?

37:38
There was a third component. I don’t know if I told you that but a really good offer. I don’t care how good the offer is on a poop bag. mean, what was why did the poop bag work? It was a good offer. It was a really good offer. It was basically like a huge like one year supply of poop bags with this awesome poop bag holder that you see right here in the corner of the video. Yeah, it’s also a name brand that everyone knows. Right. So you know, these guys are in every pet smart target in United States.

38:07
So you get a little bit of extra. And when you have a little bit of a brand name, and it’s a great offer, people just kind of go for it. Okay, and those two kind of have to happen together. Okay. mean, what’s most interesting is that outlier actually, because if someone went up to me and said, Hey, I sell poop bags, should I go on to shop? I probably would have said no, right? And you do. Okay. I’ve learned a lot in the last six months. Any other outliers like that? Because

38:35
I know a lot of people listening out there, they’re not selling beauty or, you know, lotions or anything like that. Right? Yeah. So at the end of the day, TikTok surprises me all the time. Like I say stuff and I’m pretty excited when I say it and I’m pretty definitive. And then a month later, I’m like, wait, you know I’m saying? I miss something. Or I maybe I didn’t think of that. Um, but when I say it, I’m a hundred percent sincere and honest at the time. But what happens is I’m evolving and I’m learning.

39:04
Because we manage almost 100 brands. So I’m shocked on a daily basis. Did I ever think that a year ago I’d be selling greeting cards on TikTok? Hell no. I would never would have thought that. These guys are going to do a million dollars this month. It’s crazy. know, and they were at $4,000 in December. Crazy. $4,000 in December to a million dollars in January. That’s the power of TikTok. Yeah. So I’m learning a lot.

39:34
So yeah, a good offer is probably my third pillar. know, my, my, and my first two are still true. You gotta have a really good demonstrable video, like, like something that shows well, and then you have to have a unique selling proposition, right? Which is what I said earlier, something that like shows before and after shows that it solves a problem. Um, a good example is this, this girl here selling the serum. Um, this might be a little X rated, so I’m going to keep it. I’m going to keep it PG 13, but, um,

40:03
She found a use for this product that really helped make downstairs look a lot better in a bikini line. Okay. Okay. And this isn’t what this isn’t what it’s for. It’s actually for back acne. It’s for body acne. But she is an affiliate. She does what the hell she wants. Okay. She takes our script and throws it out the window and says, No, here’s what this does. And I’m going to prove it to you. She does a video that shows before and after she kind of like blurs things out. And it’s actually

40:33
amazingly compelling. It’s like, wow, your bikini line before and after actually looks 1000 times better. And that video goes viral. Yeah. So I get it. You know, you get it, right? That’s why it works. And then on the poop bag one, we were shocked. We didn’t think it would work. But this guy was like, bro, I buy poop bags every day. These are like half the price you’re gonna get in the store. It’s an amazing deal. You know, you’re gonna buy poop bags anyway. Everyone needs poop bags. So you might as well just get him at a deal. People went, you’re right.

41:04
Yeah. All right. So let’s, let’s sum up what we’ve, what’s different actually. So number one, seems like fulfilled by Tik TOK in your opinion is required to not deal with any of the BS that’s happening with like my friends, for example. Right. Yep. And then in order to get into that, to grease the wheels, an agency partner is the fastest way to do that. Yep.

41:32
And I know you would say that sincerely, you wouldn’t just say that just because you run an agency. No, and honestly, I’m gonna say no to probably some people that call me and, and be, you know, and tell them other agencies to work with if, if, if we’re a little bit busy, like, I’m not just doing it so that I get I get the clothes, you need an agency. And I need one that has connections at TikTok. And then TikTok is going through this phase right now where they’re just trying to take away fraud.

42:01
because it did go crazy nuts and there was all these negative press. And so maybe that’s why they’re reacting the way they are. So right now, at least it’s hard to get anywhere without an agency partner to help vet you. Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. And for someone who wants to do it themselves, go to sell a code.com S E L L I C O.com do a giveaway campaign. It’ll take you three minutes to set it up. I’m telling you.

42:29
takes three minutes and just run giveaways to your shop. And that’s going to handle 50 % of your problems just because you’re going to be able to say, look, I fulfilled the orders myself. They’re successful. Improve your shop. And tick tock looks at those orders like the real orders. And then get on the FBT waiting list the moment you can. And then if you’re going to fulfill it, have Amazon fulfill it. Amazon and tick tock are somewhat jiving right now.

42:59
So just do MCF and you you’ll have a, have a better cadence than some three PL who doesn’t know tick tock. So just have Amazon fulfill it for the first few months until you’re approved. The second year approved FPT cut that Amazon thing off as fast as you can and run over to FPT and you’ll pay about half the price. Is there a harm in, sticking with FBA? Yeah. So expensive.

43:29
MCI aside from that. I mean, there’s also logistical issues, right? You’re splitting your inventory and there’s no fulfilled. There’s no MCF for tick tock shop, right? Yeah, so there is a harm. tick tock now has a badge. If you’re an FPT on the product page that says three days shipping, fulfilled by tick tock. It’s prime versus non prime now. Exactly. Exactly. And you don’t get that badge with Amazon, right? MCF. Yep. So, you know,

43:58
I think a lot of this is going to chill out. think the pendulum swings that are going so crazy on both ends are going to eventually chill out. um but just it, Tik Tok’s such an opportunity. I’ve never seen anything that’s changed lives. Like Tik Tok has, I got off a call with the owner of that serum with the, with that black girl that did that video. Yep. And the owner was just like almost in tears, just thanking me. And it was like, so moving to me.

44:27
that to see someone that was like, so her life was changed. She was like, my Amazon’s up 30%. My tacos are down. I can’t keep my stock in. I have access to capital where I didn’t. It’s just like, that’s what gets me on a bed in the morning is when I have those conversations. So yes, TikTok is a nightmare, but it’s also where your wildest dreams come true. Ian, where can people reach you?

44:56
bullseye sellers.com. uh Yeah, and you can you can book a call there and uh and uh I might not be able to join every call but if I like your product and and uh I see that it has potential and I don’t care about your revenue. don’t give a shit. If you’re doing 50k a month. I don’t care. If I like your product. I think it’s fun and it’ll be good for tick tock. I will book a call with you after you call it after you book a call and I will have a one on one with you.

45:25
Cause I love the journey. Awesome. Yeah. Well, I will link that up in the show notes, but, Ian, uh, thanks for coming on again and being so honest about TikTok shop. Like I’ll never get a rah rah TikTok shop interview out of you, you know, Hey, did I end on a high note though? You brought me down and he brought us all back up at the end. So, and, and on the next episode, conspiracy corner.

45:55
We’ll go into those aliens and big foot and we’ll go down that rabbit hole in the next episode, Steve. Well, cool Ian. Thanks a lot, man. And I will see you at seller summit in April. I will be there. I’m going to do a, I’m going to give you my 45 minutes. Hopefully you won’t depress the audience. You’ll, you’ll bring them back up at the end, but yeah, I’ll bring them all back up. And I’m sure by then things will change again. So if you want the latest, make sure you guys stop by the event as well. All right. Thanks a lot, Hope you enjoyed this episode.

46:24
If you plan on selling on TikTok Shop this year, I highly advise that you at least send in an email, even if you plan to go about it yourself. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 623. And once again, tickets to 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.

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 in this episode, Gracie Ryback and I dive into the live selling phenomenon that’s turning ordinary people into six and seven figure sellers on TikTok, Amazon, and social media in a matter of months. You’ll learn why this shopping format is exploding right now and show you the strategies top sellers are using to rake in thousands of dollars per stream. But before we begin,

00:27
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 events that are filled with high-level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. There are no corporate execs and no consultants.

00:56
Also, I hate large 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 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,

01:24
Go over to SellersSummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

01:34
Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast. Today I’m excited to have Gracie Ryback on the show. Now, Gracie was introduced to me by my friends over at Lunch with Norm, and I’m really glad that we connected. She is a top Amazon influencer and content creator known for her expertise in influencer marketing and short form content. Now, back in 2020, she started sharing Amazon product deals just for fun. I don’t even think she had a plan, and before she knew it,

02:03
she had cracked the code on Amazon influencer and affiliate programs. And now she is one of the go-to creators that brands work with and they want their products to actually move on platforms like TikTok Shop. And she has also become a major voice in the Amazon creator space, teaching sellers how to use real authentic content and influencer partnerships to grow their brands. And with that, welcome to the show, Gracie. How are you doing?

02:29
Hi, Steve. I’m excited to be here. Thank you for having me excited to talk about this fun topic. Absolutely. Yeah. And I am curious, like, how did you get started in e commerce? And was this like a pandemic thing? Like you were stuck at home and decided to just make tic tocs? It was such a pandemic thing. I was working a remote job like literally March 2020. I started that. And I think what my best friend introduced me to tic toc and I was definitely like a watcher of videos for a

02:57
few months and then towards kind of end of 2020, I was like, for absolutely no intention of any expectation, let me just start making videos of Amazon deals that I’m finding. And very unintentionally, that turned into, long story short, some Amazon sellers finding my videos, reaching out to me and then asking me to do videos for them. And that’s when I got catapulted into this world of

03:25
affiliate marketing, I had really no clue what it was before I was already deep into it. And then the brand owners I had met through it kind of introduced me to this world. And it was it’s a very deep world. And I’ve learned so much from that point. And then from there, I know you’ve been involved in Amazon live also. Is that still alive? Or is that kind of dead? Because of TikTok? So

03:52
It’s interesting. And I would say that it’s kind of different from what is possible on TikTok. know, most of TikTok live is very much like similar to Instagram live, where you prop up your phone and you’re kind of just chit chatting. I would compare Amazon live to a more formal type of live streaming where, you know, you have products like preselected, you have a set plan in place. You’re probably planning to go live for one to two hours. And maybe you have like a theme like

04:21
a get ready with me or today I’m talking about this specific brand. And I’ve seen more uh brand partnerships come specifically to Amazon Live rather than TikTok Shop live streaming, but that’s definitely changing. I’m seeing more happening on TikTok Shop live for sure in the last couple of months. ah But Amazon Live is still uh a thing. do see more creators. I do see more creators kind of

04:50
coming from a brand partnership place rather than like, I’m just gonna go live for the fun of it. I think going live for the fun of it is a TikTok or Instagram thing. think um having a more specific plan is an Amazon Live thing. Okay, because I know, you in China, live selling is like all the rage right now. And then we’re always like a couple of years behind. oh So are you seeing that already happening with like maybe some of your clients, Amazon Live, TikTok Live? I have definitely seen a lot of

05:19
success come from TikTok lives. But I think what I have discovered is that it’s not always just big numbers and big dollar signs that you should believe came organically. I think a lot of what TikTok shop live success came from is a lot of money directing traffic to that live stream and a lot of like pre-preparation of sharing the live stream, marketing the live stream, a lot of brand resources being poured into those live streams. I have yet to see

05:48
too much success come from just non-brand supported or organic live streams. always really been so fascinated by the success that China has had with live streams. And I’ve always wondered like, why can’t the US get there in the same way? And my personal hypothesis is that in America, we are getting sold to from every different direction. And I feel like people are feeling fatigued from getting like product pushed at them all the time.

06:17
That might be the case in China, I’m not sure. But I feel like that’s why Americans are less liking live streams rather than how China has done it. So you don’t think it will be as crazy as it has been in China for like the last couple years? We’re not there yet. Could we get there? I think if there’s a shift, we could. But I don’t think we could say we’re nearly there yet. Okay. You know, what’s funny is my mom buys all of her products.

06:47
from QVC and the Home Shopping Network. But that’s probably just her age demographic. Like she’ll literally pick up the phone and like dial to actually buy the item. It’s pretty funny. I remember like, I remember adults doing that, like when I was younger, and I have certainly never done that. But I definitely know it’s still happening. QVC is like alive and well. So it’s definitely still out there. And I mean, as you said, there are people still dialing up the phone and be like, I want this.

07:17
For a pretty high price as I’ve seen QVC. Yes, yes, it gets taken a lot for a lot of junk. Okay, so let’s let’s switch gears just to kind of talk about ecommerce Amazon. So if you were to start a brand today, and let’s talk about organic short form first, which platform would you choose? Still today, tick tock as the best top of funnel to get started with. And I always say, pick one platform to create content for and then repurpose that

07:46
one piece of content into any other platform you can. And so if you create for TikTok, that style is more likely to work on Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Amazon storefronts, rather than creating for Instagram and hoping that it works for TikTok, I’ve noticed. So what are the differences in the types of content that work on TikTok versus Instagram versus YouTube shorts?

08:12
So YouTube shorts algorithm is definitely a lot slower to push videos out. Instagram and TikTok are like more similar, but I would say that with TikTok, it’s a lot more raw and messy. And you’ll see videos with millions of views with some girl, no makeup, in bed, bonnet on, just saying a random thought that she had. And if people liked the thought that she had, it might go viral.

08:41
But on Instagram, definitely is a lot more still, as it always has been, more curated, more aesthetic, more high quality professional. Like, here’s a recipe. Here’s an outfit idea. Here is, you know, home decor. Everything is really pretty well lit and curated, as opposed to TikTok. It’s kind of messy. It’s in the moment. It’s authentic and relatable, if you will. And so that’s still the case. um But I’ve also seen more like raw

09:10
unedited, unperfect content, imperfect content on Instagram more successful recently. So it sounds like Instagram takes more effort, right? Yes. Okay. So if you’re going to do it, just start with TikTok and just post the exact same content on both. is what you’re doing. All right. So let’s, maybe we should just like make up a hypothetical brand here. uh What are you into? I’m into

09:38
I like beauty stuff because not because I’m like, I like beauty and makeup, but because it has a good before and after that you can show really quickly. And that I think converts well. let’s, let’s use beauty if you. Sure. Okay. Let’s use beauty. uh Okay. What types of content, you know, cause it’s a first off, do you have to post every day? So my personal formula is I’d rather somebody post quality over

10:08
quantity, but with consistency in mind. So if you’re going to post three low quality videos just to get something out there, I think that’s less of a good strategy than if you were to think a little bit harder about like, am I providing value in this? Is this something I actually am getting something from when I watch this video? And uh thinking a little bit more about the quality and the lighting and the energy that you bring to it. uh

10:38
So I wouldn’t say like post every day you’ll see success. I think it’s make sure you’re posting something good and then being consistent at it. So I’d rather you do three times a week good videos than crap videos once a day. Okay. And then when you say quality, you don’t mean production quality, right? Slightly. Like I think the very basics are having good lighting, the video is not blurry. You’re not like the sound isn’t warped and you’re not like in

11:08
you know, in a windy airplane or something, like, at least have clear audio, good lighting. That’s like, I feel the basics. If you don’t have these two basics, you can assume that your video probably won’t perform. And then quantity, would you say like the minimum would be three times a week? Yeah. Okay. Because I’ve been told like, you know, multiple times a day, especially if you’re trying to scale. That’s a great way to burn out really quickly. Right.

11:37
because anybody, no matter who you are, you will run out of ideas eventually. And then eventually the pressure of like, I ran out of ideas, what do I do today? How do I get something out there? And then like that pressure is going to kind of mess with your creative creativity. And so I think, I think batch posting is great. I have like a running list of ideas that I might get at 3am in my head and then actually film it and batch it like a week later.

12:07
quality I think is still going to be a priority over getting something out there when it’s bad. I mean, that totally makes sense. Do you have like a content bread and butter? Because I think what most people have problems with is what do I put like if I own a brand, like what am I going to post? And I think so many brand founders at least the consensus that I’ve heard is like, I don’t want to put myself out there. I don’t want to, you know, yeah, I’m not interested. I’m not a social media person. The thing that I think

12:38
Um is missing from brands is the human factor something that I actually learned from our friend kevin king is He said what’s going to make the difference between you and your competitor is the story behind your brand if you can share that story whether that be a founder story or um, might be the story of a mishap a mistake that you made in your business that caught you this but whatever That’s actually so much more important than any kind of marketing

13:07
ads you can run, campaigns you can do with an influencer. If somebody can see, this person is the one who created this brand. This is their why behind creating this brand, and this is their process behind it. That’s actually really fascinating to somebody completely uninvolved in the e-commerce side of things. Take somebody who’s just a normal buyer, a normal consumer.

13:30
Like this is fascinating. had, you know, still so many people think Amazon is not a marketplace. They’re just like, it’s like Jeff and us and like, it’s just Amazon to consumers. They have no idea there’s like small sellers and you know, individuals in the middle that are actually doing the selling. They have no idea. So when they come out with the human factor, that’s a huge, huge, huge differentiator between one brand versus the next. Let me give you an example here. So

13:59
I’ve been trying to get my wife to do a TikTok channel for our brand, for example, and she doesn’t want to be on there. And I mean, we sell handkerchiefs, right? We don’t want some middle-aged Chinese dude hawking handkerchiefs, although it might work, I’ve been told. So you do the founder story and then you, you know, maybe you talk about like the process, how we process orders and we’re talking like one post a day, right? You’re going to run out of that really quick. So I’m just kind of curious, like what your mix is. Like if you were to…

14:26
If a brand came to you and said, hey, I need to create content, like I need a list of things that I can even talk about. Yeah. Indefinitely. Yeah. So there is two types of important content. There’s nurture content and then there’s reach content. So you need reach content to reach new people. You need nurture content to keep the people you have around and interested. So it involves a mix of everything with that reach content. I would suggest.

14:55
Hopping on trends. There’s constantly trends that you can hop on every single day October 1st hop on the it’s the first of the month trend You could take a video of you sitting at your computer at your desk write like a quote not necessarily like an inspirational quote, but something like Something useful something valuable like a little quote It could be a five to seven second like b-roll clip of you at your computer that could go viral um you can also hop on trends like

15:24
For example, Taylor Swift’s album just came out. You could use her music, incorporate her music into like your business. There is always a trend that is happening that you can hop onto, make it relevant to your brand. And that’s your reach content. The nurture content might be a little less viral. That’s not for the big views. That’s for, you might get a few hundred to a thousand views on it and that’s okay, cause that’s like your nurture. So that could be a one plus minute video of you sitting there being like,

15:53
Today, I ran out of stock and I lost my rank. And this is what it means as a business owner. Today, I had to buy more inventory and I’m out of money right now. That’s the life of a business owner. It’s not always glamorous and money and successful. Oh, this is our new launch. Check this out. Here’s a handkerchief. It’s made out of this. Here’s how I use it. It’s on sale if you guys want. There’s a bunch of different stuff. But if you only rely on your life and your brand, you could run out of stuff really quick.

16:23
But if you look at the greater ecosystem of what’s happening on TikTok and then you jump in with your angle, that’s like, you can never run out of stuff with that. Okay. And then what is like a good mix of nurture content, uh growth content, and what about just flat out? Like does flat outs mentioning your product work also, or is that going to nerf the reach? I think em if you are a brand and you are nonstop, just hustling and selling your product and bringing no insight or value or entertainment, you might not grow that.

16:53
Right. That’s like the reason for the reach content. If you’re talking post cadence or like how much reach versus how much nurture. Yeah, percentage wise. Yeah. Okay. So I’d say 30 % reach. Okay. 70 % nurture, I think. Okay. All right. And then when you decide to mention your product, it’s just like a casual mention, right? You don’t have to mention any links or anything like that, right? That’s a no no.

17:21
You know, at this point, given that we’ve already been in this world of people buying stuff from social media, I think people know, OK, like, where do I find the link to this? Is this a TikTok shop link? uh I’m going to go to their profile and see if there’s a link or most most likely they’re going to just search the brand name on Amazon or Google. So that’s why I always say instead of saying click the link here, go to the shopping cart. You just say, oh, this is the brand name handkerchief. Da da da da da da da

17:51
So people will know, oh, this is the brand name, Hankerchief. Let’s see if it’s on Amazon. Or you could say, it on Amazon. And there you have search, find, buy. And you didn’t even mean to do it. Right. Yeah. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in e-commerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials.

18:19
that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show. Okay, so what you mentioned in terms of the reach content implies that you need to be a consumer of TikTok content, right?

18:48
Yeah. Is there a quick way to like figure out what the trends are or something like that? A separate site or some resource for that? Sure. So there’s a couple of sites that could give you insight as to what’s trending, but there is, and this is why I say scrolling on TikTok is part of my job because it really truly is.

19:13
Until you have consumed enough content to understand what separates a good video versus a bad video, you’re always gonna wonder, why did my video flop? What am I doing wrong? You can’t know until you have seen both sides of the spectrum. And then I, at this point, can look at a video and not see the views or comments or insights, and I can know this is a viral video versus not. Simply based on the hook, the cadence, the lighting, the sound, these factors,

19:42
Viral videos always have a reason that they’re viral. This is not like- Okay, what you said was very interesting. Can we break that down? Like what is in your head that you know? Like, you put that in words? Yes. So what makes a viral video? So first and foremost,

20:00
If you don’t have a good hook, you don’t have a good video. So there is so much importance and weight on the hook of this video. So it could be you like doing something in the camera really quick, flashing something. It could be a closeup of something kind of like, as a viewer, you’re like, what’s going on here? um Or you could say something really controversial, like click, bake, hot take, like, know, whatever, feel like. um You can start with saying like,

20:29
Why is nobody talking about how come I didn’t know? um I just discovered it. I I just changed my life like whatever and then like go into something completely like not life changing. But at least you have the person’s attention to for them to even give you the opportunity to say whatever you have to say. So like first and foremost, it has to have a good hook. If a video starts out, hey, I’m Steve. uh I wanted to talk about like, bye. Like, that’s not going to work.

20:57
Okay, first and foremost. Second of all, like I said, lighting, sound, that’s like the basics. Have good lighting, have clear sound. Second of all, hopefully it has one of these following things. It has value, it has entertainment, it has education, or it has something of substance to share. So at the end of the video, you either get more insight, more education, you’re laughing, you’re sharing. Like this is the stuff that makes people share it and save it. This is a recipe I wanna make later, save.

21:25
Oh my God, this is funny. It’s like talking about the new album and I’m gonna share it with my friend who is also talking about this to me. I’m gonna share it to them. So this is the stuff that, or something controversial is like, oh my God, this changed my life. I discovered coffee this morning and everyone’s like, that’s not life changing. And so like the comments are going off. Most of my viral videos, people are like talking in the comments, they’re arguing, they’re saying I’m wrong. They’re saying I said something wrong. Like this is not necessarily a bad thing to maybe make a mistake, make a typo.

21:52
say something click bait here. you that on purpose? Or was that just completely by accident? I’m the way I did it. It was an accident. I said Auntie on’s like Auntie and Oh, yeah, the pretzels. Auntie in like a weird accent and everyone’s like, Oh, the ones but everyone was saying on the on so it went viral. So this is the stuff of a viral video. If you’re just sitting there like, oh, like come shopping with me. It’s a vlog but you don’t have a following yet. Ask yourself

22:22
Why would people care to watch a stranger go shopping unless there’s something valuable coming from it? Right. Once you’re famous and have that, go shopping. People want to know what you’re shopping for. until you get to that point, you have to lead with education, entertainment, or value. Do you care about length at all? TikTok is pushing videos over one minute. However, unless you really have the ability to keep someone interested for over a minute,

22:50
I would say keep it 30 seconds to 45 seconds. The thing is, if I can keep it under 30 seconds, I will because there’s the scrubber bar where you can like jump to a certain point in a video on TikTok. If it’s under 30 seconds, it doesn’t have the scrubber bar. So if somebody wants to see something in the middle of the video, they have to watch the whole video again. So that obviously helps if you can keep it under 30. And then in terms of determining the ROI, which is another question I always get, right?

23:19
There’s always a halo effect when you do this stuff, but is there a way to measure it? I think we’re trying to figure out right now. As of right now, today, I don’t think there is because this is like, how do you measure brand awareness? How do you know how many people saw the video and now know your brand exists? And now might be like being like, oh, like if I ever need this, I’ll come back to it. But I at least know that this is out there now.

23:47
That is something so valuable to just be discovered and be known and like for your brand name to be in people’s brains. But how you cannot really track that or ever know, but it’s happening. And this is the halo effect. So you might get that search, find by on Amazon. You might not, you know, get all the attributed clicks through affiliate links or attribution links that you can calculate. So this kind of ROI is so hard to measure, but brand awareness is very important and should not be discredited.

24:17
Let’s switch gears a little bit. uh Let’s say you’re willing to create one TikTok per day. But then on the flip side, also, you could be spending time getting influencers to create the content for you. How do you make that decision? And which one will be more effective? At what budget? I know it’s a complicated question, but I think you get what I’m asking. I get what you’re saying. So as the founder, you have your own insights and value.

24:47
to bring and nobody knows your brand better than the founder themselves. I was on a call one time with a brand and she was literally saying like, I don’t want to be in front of my product, but my product works. I had eczema and I use my product. was the only thing that it, and I’m like, why don’t you just put up your phone and tell me what you just say to the phone, what you just said to me and like you sold me. So like you just did it right then and there. part of this

25:13
for brand owners and founders is that they feel like social media is this huge, scary influencer thing when they’re doing it already by just sharing with their friends and family that their own product works. Anyway, so to answer your question, I really like the strategy of using UGC and then using the content that actually converts and using paid ads behind it.

25:39
So I think at this point, I’m seeing more and more brands not only just depend on an influencer video to organically do well, but they’re always asking for the ad codes or the spark codes to then boost that video as well. every platform as I’m seeing literally starting from Q4 this year is becoming more of a pay to play platform, unfortunately. organic reach is at least as I’m seeing it dying.

26:06
even Amazon and TikTok themselves. TikToks like use the promote video feature. TikToks like here’s how to promote on Meta. So at this point, I think driving traffic, paid traffic to an affiliate link used to be against terms, but now they’re really pushing and supporting it and brands are as well. So not every video that an influencer does organically for you will result in good views or good sales. But what you can do is if it does a little bit better organically, choose that piece of content.

26:35
Use organic video to kind of test what’s good, what’s not. If it does well organically, boost it with ads. And that way you’re not paying a huge flat fee to a bunch of influencers. UGC is much cheaper. And if you use, you know, softwares that do UGC, typically they give the brand or the seller the rights, the copyrights to the content. So you can post it on your own feed or you can run ads, whatever you want to do with it.

27:04
All right, so what I’m hearing right now is organic reach. Maybe they’ve made some changes, but it’s not nearly as what it was like several years ago. And so that implies that creating your own organic channel is not going to be as effective, right? It’s lower. It’s harder. It’s more saturated and brands want, you know, pay to OK, so in terms of your time, then would you just jump straight to like UGC influencers?

27:33
Maybe putting out your brand story, but not being as consistent with it. It depends on the brand and the owner. It depends how much you are able to dedicate to it. It is never a bad idea or a waste of time to get content on social media about you or your brand. That is never a wasted effort. is always like a small, think about like it’s stock investing. Like every penny that you put in today is going to result in gains one day.

28:01
The only way to not get gains is if you stop investing. with social media now, we’re seeing the death of hashtags and the rise of SEO. So now TikTok and Instagram are taking the words that you say, the captions that you put, the text on the screen. And like literally AI is like looking at what’s in the video. You can now tap on a TikTok and it’ll show you similar products. So you can shop everything in the video without the creator doing anything about it. So.

28:30
At this point, it is so important to use SEO and get content out about your product because Google is indexing these SEO things in TikTok, Instagram, whatever short form content and putting it into Google searches. just know that in the future one day and already happening, your video is going to be found when people search your brand or when people search your product. OK, so I mean, when you phrase it that way.

28:59
it is essential. Correct. Okay. effort at all. It’s kind of like how I see my YouTube channel, right? Although I think I feel like long form YouTube is a much better investment. I don’t know for like a physical products brand, but at least for what I do. YouTube long form is an excellent investment. mean,

29:20
for whatever you’re doing it for, as we’ve seen, like it stays there forever. YouTube is the best algorithm for evergreen content. So again, it’s YouTube is great for longterm. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So let’s talk about the, uh, let’s talk about TikTok cause that seems to be the platform that you like the best. How would I create like an influencer army? Ooh, wow. Okay. So there are,

29:48
ways that you can get. So with TikTok specifically, are you saying using TikTok from uh like a Spotify, or it’s not Spotify, Shopify or uh Amazon brand, or are you on TikTok Shop? Yeah, okay. So that’s the first question I was gonna ask you. How important is it to be on TikTok Shop if you’re gonna do this influencer thing? Yeah, it’s just a really great opportunity with a lot of money. If you don’t want that, like you don’t have to be on it, but

30:17
it is simply going to get more saturated from this point forward. And it is simply just another avenue. There’s not a brand that has joined TikTok shop. Every brand is like wondering, should I be on TikTok shop? Is it worth my time to like get into another platform? But then once they’re actually on TikTok shop and putting in that bare minimum effort, they’re like, oh my God, I can’t believe I even questioned being on this. I’ve made seven figures just from TikTok shop, blah, blah, blah. And that is a great way to kind of

30:47
enter into the creator world and start building relationships with creators. You can start sending out samples through TikTok. You can start building an email list through TikTok. You can also uh have creators invited into a Discord or a community of some sort and then nurture them there and then give them perks. You can offer flat fee campaigns or samples for new launches.

31:16
or you could do higher commission rates just for your little community. Like make them feel exclusive and special because they are. And then that’s a great way right now to grow a creator. And you can’t do that if you’re not on TikTok, right? There’s no easy way for you to give out samples, the whole platform, everything. You have to be on TikTok shop, right? So can you get people, let’s say you just joined TikTok shop just for the sake of joining so you can get access to these influencers.

31:45
Can you do like side deals after the fact if you don’t want to do them through TikTok Shop? Or is that probably not going to happen? No, I think that’s definitely possible. Like I’m in so many little communities of different brands now from TikTok Shop. And I think TikTok actually encourages that. Unlike some platforms where they’re like, don’t talk to our creators, like don’t talk to them off the platform and make your own deals. I think TikTok’s very much open to like join this Discord group or like join this community with this brand.

32:15
So yeah, that’s definitely not something that they are against, I would say. Okay. I mean, I’ve spoken to several people who run TikTok shops successfully. And I guess there’s just a couple of different schools of thought. Like on one end, you just like max out the number of influences you can message a week, which is like thousands, right? I think it’s like 7,000, give out free product. And just over time, you have this army, right?

32:43
On the flip side, I’ve also had people that tell me, hey, just being on TikTok shop and getting creators to do things has already boosted my Amazon sales. And their TikTok shop sales actually are not that great, but their Amazon sales have exploded. There’s your halo effect, right? Because even now, TikTok shop is a great discoverability platform, people still want to go up buy on on Amazon. So people are discovering on TikTok and then search find buying it on Amazon. And that’s why

33:12
you know, whether it be the price is slightly higher on TikTok or maybe the shipping is just longer, or maybe a lot of TikTok shop products still don’t have free shipping. It has to be above the $30 point or have specific shipping requirements. But I’m not going to pay $8 shipping for something I can get free shipping on for Amazon. And this is a big thing for buyers. Like people don’t want to be shipping. So they’re still going to search, find, buy on Amazon. And that’s why your TikTok shop sales might be a little bit, but you’re seeing that result on Amazon. Another thing I want to mention,

33:42
is the higher commission rates on TikTok shop that are required that can really hurt profitability. So a lot of brands go into it and they’re not counting for the fact that like, I have to send out hundreds of samples. And then my commission rates are what minimum 10 to 15 % upwards of 30%. Those margins aren’t built in, you before they start that. all of a sudden, and then they have to pay for GMV max ads, you know, they have to pay for ads too, to really

34:09
get the ball rolling. So they’re like, oh my God, I’m losing money. I’m not profitable. Da da da. It’s like a dead platform. I don’t know why I’m doing this, but that is like a learning curve to get to that profitability. Like that might be where you start, but don’t get scared there because you’re seeing that brand awareness, that halo effect on Amazon. And like, once you get enough sales there, it really does snowball. So I don’t want that to be like a scared, like fearful thing because yes, you are going to have to pay

34:40
for the extra samples and the commission rates and the GMV max and it’s gonna feel unprofitable, but you’re getting so much value that it’s not just calculated in sheer sales. Yeah, it’s just not easily quantifiable like the halo effect. Let me ask you this, I know you work with lot of Amazon sellers, what types of products work well and will you just sometimes tell someone, hey, this product’s not gonna work on TikTok shop? I’ve been surprised before. um So products that are demonstrable.

35:09
are very important on TikTok. I personally have seen supplements do well. I’m not a big fan of them because I like to see like, it’s hard to describe a long-term before and after effect within like a short video without like the process. uh I definitely think there are some products that are very niche or very, very expensive or just hard to describe that might not be.

35:36
a good fit for TikTok shop as much as others are. The good TikTok shop is like demonstrable, a pretty affordable price because again, like the demographic is younger on TikTok and something you can like explain in a video. If it’s something very niche, that’s hard. Because- about something boring? Like would you do TikTok shop for like, I don’t know, office products or something like that?

36:03
Yeah. don’t think boring is like a bad thing. think boring is like, you know, people say like invest in boring businesses because people are always going to need boring things like cookware set. Everyone has one. It’s kind of boring, but like this is doing numbers on TikTok or like an office shelf. People love decor. People like seeing it decorated in different ways. They want to see like organize my office with me. And this is like a perfect natural product placement. So I think boring is not necessarily bad. think maybe uh

36:33
reddish flags are like very niche hard to explain or super expensive. Give me an expensive of something that’s super niche that wouldn’t work. A really expensive camping stove that is geared towards like survivalists specifically not like just necessarily campers and it’s like five $600 and it has like

36:57
weird features that you can’t really like show. That might be a bad example because maybe I think that’s a good example. mean, maybe that would work with the exception of the price part, right? What is the spot for price? Price I want to say like between if it’s over 75 to $100 that that leaves the realm of impulse purchase. Okay, that’s more of like a there’s a there’s a hair dryer product right now going viral on TikTok shop.

37:25
And it’s about $470. And everyone’s like, well, dang, I want it, but I don’t have that. And maybe that’s like just like the loud people in the comments. It’s like, I don’t, I have 10 bucks, but like, but people want to see like maybe under $50, I think is like the, you’re going to hit a bigger population of people who can just be like, okay, like I’ll buy it rather than like, I want it, but it’s kind of out of the budget right now. Is that hairdryer doing well?

37:53
It is doing very well. And I have 170 bucks. Wow. It’s it’s yeah, it’s like a reverse vacuum type of hairdryer and it is doing really, really well shockingly. But I also have seen that it is selling well on Amazon specifically. I haven’t seen how many units they’ve sold on TikTok, but TikTok shop has been doing these like specific sales that are not available anywhere else. So people are going in stores like look at this.

38:22
hairdryer that’s you $200 here, but you can get it 150 on TikTok with a $50 coupon. So that’s that’s like how TikTok is like incentivizing buying there versus store or Amazon. So there are clearly exceptions to the price rule. It’s really just how cool you can make it look in a video. Yes. Yes. Okay. Alright, so let’s say well, let’s go back to the fact that you have a brand now. How do you pick the correct influencers? Like what do you look for an influencer when you’re looking for a brand?

38:52
Never follower count ever. So I will always look at their previous content. That is a really great, that’s their portfolio. That’s a really great way to see like, what can they do? What can I expect? Like what’s their typical content look like? uh I always say, look at their average numbers of views, their engagement, their comments, are people actually reacting to their comment? Do they have good average views?

39:19
If the influencer has like one huge video and like they’re normally averaging 200 views every other time, you can like probably assume that you also will be a $200, a 200 view video because this is a brand deal or like a right video. um Another thing is like when you’re searching for influencers, a lot of even through TikTok’s own catalog of influencers directory.

39:46
they will say like GMV as like a big indicator of like if a creator is good or not. And that is not the best indicator because that GMV could have 99 % come from one viral video. And so that can’t necessarily be applied to the video that they will make you. So the way that I like discovering is I will search keywords. Let’s say hairdryer, for example, hairdryer. I will search that on TikTok.

40:14
go to the filter options and then search most viewed within the last three months or even month. And then this will pop up the most viral videos about hairdryers. And then I will see those creators, which one described the product well, clearly it converted. It was a successful video. ah And then from there, I find like some really good creators rather than just going directly to the directory and looking at all beauty creators. Okay.

40:45
What about at scale? Like, cause when you’re doing TikTok shop and you can message like 7,000 a week. Like does that all go out the window? Like I can’t imagine clicking on each one of those people. No, at some point, like you can find your shortlist. I always recommend having a shortlist of like, these are the creators I really want to work with. I’m going to work extra hard to reach out to them, you know, give them that good commission rates, you know, maybe a small flat fee. These are my priority.

41:11
But at some extent, you’re going to run out of that, and you’re always going to need to scale. So then, of course, there is software, there’s Yuka Helium 10, there’s these mass outreach platforms. And then at that point, it really is kind of like a spray and pray kind of like numbers game, because your response rate is always going to be a small percentage of your outreach. So you might be reaching out to 1,000 creators, getting 100 interested, and you end up working with 5 to 10. Right. Right.

41:40
What’s a good outreach email that a creator is likely to respond to? So I always say, keep it as direct but comprehensive as possible. So I got this email the other, I mean, I get many emails that are looking like, hey, hey, like, and then they’ll say, I’m looking for an influencer. Can you do it? Thanks, brand. And so, you know, when I get this,

42:10
And I’m really stressed looking at all the emails that I have. And so immediately, we have to start this back and forth game of like, okay, like what’s the product that you want? What is the budget here? Like, what are you, are you looking for a TikTok, a live stream of like UGC? Like, what are you looking for? Are you looking for this tomorrow, next month? Are you looking for like Black Friday? um And then like, what’s the goal here? Are you looking for sales? Are you liquidating? Like maybe most influencers might not ask like about the intention behind the

42:39
the campaign. But if you can include this kind of information in that first outreach email and then leave my responsibility to decide yes or no, simplify it for both sides instead of creating like a whole back and forth that’s going to take a week or two to like get to the bottom line. you would recommend like the money and the affiliate terms right off the bat. If you have that and if they’re strict, then yes, I don’t think there’s any problem in asking the creator what is their rate.

43:10
Because sometimes the Spider-Man meme where it’s like, what’s your rate? What’s your budget? But I think if you have a very strict budget, you’re like, I have 50 bucks and I’m not willing to pay anymore, then say that outright. So the other person’s like, I charge 500 a video and you’re like, But if you have the information, say the information outright. If the rate is something you’re not sure about, then fine. Ask what’s the rate. What’s your rate for this? That’s not a big deal. For the clients that you’ve worked with,

43:38
How many influencers do you have to work with in order to give it like an honest shot at this for the people listening who are like, I don’t know if this is for me. I hate to see people give up on influencer marketing or working with creators because I truly don’t see success without it at this point in the game for long. I think influencer marketing is always going to be an important piece of the marketing puzzle. um How many?

44:08
you could get a one-off lucky hit, or you might have to work with 10, 20, 30 before you get the results that you’re looking for. And that’s why I’m also talking about these lower budget costs. Like if you’re paying every influencer a flat fee, like you will run out of money for that quick. But if you work with micro influencers on a performance commission-based way, and then you kind of boost

44:34
ad spend with the videos that actually organically convert, then it’s a lot more less budget heavy and a lot more like performance based. So I don’t know, there’s not a specific number, every brand is different, but I hope that you know, a couple of non viral campaigns don’t doesn’t make a brand give up on it completely and say this isn’t for me. mean, here’s just what I’ve seen, like people go out and they get like 10 influencers and it doesn’t

45:03
have an ROI and they’re like, this doesn’t work, right? Right. And I think especially with influencer marketing, when things are hit or miss all the time, what I was trying to get at is given what you know about like the percentage success rates, I know there’s a ton of variables in there, like what is giving it a good honest try? I would say if you have reached out to 1000s of influencers, and you have over 100 pieces of content, and not a single one of them has

45:32
provided any inkling of sales, success, awareness, views, you could probably be like, all right, I either have to completely change my strategy here or my product just isn’t a good fit. And as a brand owner, you could probably logically think, OK, I understand my product is, because of this factor, maybe not a good fit for this. Or I could see where the friction is on why this is not working. Because at that point, 50 to 100 videos, pieces of content, is

46:03
with for TikTok shop what you need to get into GMV Max. Right. So once you get that, I wouldn’t say that’s like a super hard or expensive thing to do. It does involve outreach and that might be a little time consuming. But once you get to that point and you’ve seen nothing, no organic results, it’s changed strategy. that’s highly unlikely. But yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you a different question then. How do you how does one manage interacting with thousands of influence?

46:33
Mm hmm. It’s time consuming, to be honest. Of course it is. That’s like managing thousands of relationships back and forth of, you know, everyone’s different details, different situation. You’re going to need time to do that. em This is something you could get an assistant for. This is something that it would be worth getting like a VA or an assistant for because it is important. But also as the founder, brand owner, like your time might not be best spent here.

47:02
have other important things to do that only you can do. So. I guess what I was getting at was I know there’s all this TikTok shop software out there that like just automatically blasts like your template modifies a little bit. uh Are your clients or anyone using those things or is it? Definitely. I think at this point there’s there’s no better way to get that mass outreach and save time doing that. I think those are a very, very good tool right now to get.

47:30
your product message out to as many creators as possible. um Once you’re playing that numbers game. But I also do want to say, have your short list of influencers, maybe like 2030 that you find and really focus and hone in on those because they’re shortlist for a reason. They’re performing in a niche converting have good content, whatever. And if you have to invest a little bit more in working with them, whether that be flat fee, higher commission, extra samples, try. Let’s tie it all together now. All right, so your brand, you just started out. oh

47:59
What’s your relative priorities between putting out your own organic content, finding influencers or going on TikTok shop and, and, uh, you know, just trying to get influencers that way. If you have a brand being on TikTok shop is a very great way to just grow it. And I don’t see any reason not to be on TikTok shop right now. Brand if you are established on another marketplace beyond take talk shop. Okay.

48:28
especially as Q4, especially now. there’s that. um If you’re talking about like, much do I invest time in my own content versus working with influencers, I’d say make your own content. uh I’ll take the wise words of Gary V here. Document, don’t create. oh

48:47
Like don’t specifically set out time and try to be something you’re not and try to like find ideas out of thin air. Like just document your process, document your thoughts, be real, be honest about it. That’s your job as the founder. It’s to give insight into what your life is like and what you’re doing as a founder or whatever your product. Make that natural. um But I don’t think that should overpower working with other creators. That is like the, that’s the greater picture here.

49:15
So that’s the way to reach more people than like your brand new founder account. So that is a little bit more priority for me than the founder creating their own content. oh But not to say, don’t do it or it’s not worth it. It’s not the priority or focus compared to working with others that could talk about your product. mean, if I can put words in your mouth, you’re basically saying like TikTok shop and working with the influencers would trump your own channel.

49:44
and you don’t even need to have your own channel to make the rest of this work. Whereas the flip side is not necessarily true. If you focus strictly on your own content, it might not go anywhere because these platforms are looking to make money. Right. But I also want to say it’s never a wasted effort. If you can mesh it into your daily schedule in like an effortless way that’s not taking too much time away from everything else you have to do, it’s so worth doing.

50:09
Thank you, Gracie, for that advice. Where can people find you online if they need help in this department or if they want to look up some good great deals on Amazon? Are you still doing that? I am. am. OK. So you can find me on Dealcheats on all platforms, D-A-L-C-H-E-A-T-S. And my email is contact at dealcheats.com if you ever want to reach out. OK. Well, thanks a lot for coming on the show, Gracie. Really appreciate your time. Thank you for having me. It was really fun.

50:39
Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’re even half decent on camera, live selling is definitely worth a try. At Seller Summit, my wife actually sold hundreds of dollars of merchandise in about five minutes on stage. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 622. And once again, tickets to 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.

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, Dave Bryan from e-comm crew and I expose how sellers are still flooding Amazon with fake reviews, even after the major crackdowns you’ve been hearing about in the news. I’ll show you the exact loopholes they’re exploiting right now and why Amazon’s detection systems just keep missing them. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com.

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

00:56
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. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be. So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

01:32
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today I am excited to have Dave Bryant on the show. Now I’ve known Dave for over a decade now. He is one of the founders of EcomCrew, which was started in 2015. I think we met in 2014. It’s one of the top blogs and one of the top podcasts in the space. And he also has a YouTube channel, which is pretty amazing also. Dave has bought and sold several e-commerce companies at this point, and he’s an expert at selling on Amazon.

02:01
But in my mind, what sets the guy apart is that he doesn’t hold back on anything. And he’ll talk about like the shady stuff that’s going on Amazon. And he’ll literally physically travel to China to visit the epicenter where all the large Amazon sellers live. And today we’re to talk about Dave’s businesses and his advice for how to grow your e-commerce business today. How’s it going Cool, thanks Dave.

02:28
I love the glowing endorsement. So thank you very much. I did like that other video too, I wanted to say, but I just wanted to say though, your last video that I just watched, I really enjoyed it. It was about how Amazon sellers are getting illegal reviews on Amazon. I will link up that video actually in the show notes here, but you spent a lot of time on it. was very well done. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and just to give a quick summary of it. basically Amazon had claimed to shut down a bunch of fake review brokers.

02:58
And it turns out they didn’t actually shut them down. they had kind of filed frivolous lawsuits against these guys and they’d won default judgments. I shouldn’t say frivolous lawsuits, but they basically won a bunch of default judgments against these fake review brokers. But these guys are all based in countries like India and Bangladesh. And really there’s no way to enforce a U.S. judgment in these countries. So these fake review brokers are continuing to operate. You can go onto their websites right now today.

03:25
buy fake reviews for four to five dollars per review. I did actually buy one of these fake reviews and they actually do a really good job of getting you reviews quickly. They look completely legitimate and if you wanted to, you could buy a hundred of these reviews. could buy thousand of these fake reviews for your product and very, very, very hard for Amazon to trace. We’ll get back to that actually, Dave, because I’m pretty sure the listeners are interested in it. uh I want to talk about you first though.

03:55
Here’s my first question to you actually. I want to say about four or five years ago, I remember you and Mike were on an episode of Ecom Crew, where you guys are both giving your own recommendations for e-commerce. And I distinctly remember that you recommended, and I think you and Mike differed on this, you recommend just going all in on Amazon, because Amazon was just growing so quickly. And your opinion was that websites would just get crushed.

04:23
and Amazon would just start dominating everything. Now fast forward what four or five years later, would you still do you still believe that recommendation today? I would believe half of it. So yes, I believe your own website will be crushed for the most part. And there are exceptions to this. There are like the Ridge Wallace of the world, the Vessi shoes of the world who absolutely dominated just with their DTC websites. So yes,

04:49
I do think your own website will be crushed, but I do think there is an alternative now to Amazon. And I think getting back to China, you talked about uh me going over to China and seeing what the e-commerce sellers over there are doing. And in China, anybody who follows e-commerce in Asia overall, whether it’s China or Japan, Korea, they know that live selling and social selling is a huge, huge thing now. And I think it’s making its way to North America now. And the biggest reflection of that are TikTok shops.

05:18
So I think that that is now a viable alternative to Amazon is social selling. I don’t think live selling is quite here just yet, but I think TikTok Shop is a really good example of how you can succeed outside of Amazon and not necessarily with your own Shopify store. And of course you do need to still have your own Shopify store. I just don’t think it will ever be, I shouldn’t say ever, but the vast majority of the time, I don’t think it can be sustainable alone to sustain your e-commerce.

05:46
That is very interesting. mean, that’s where we differ. Like I have like almost the complete opposite philosophy because we make almost all of our revenue from our own store. Right. But I do want to talk about a live sell. Did you want to say something before? No, I mean, there’s definitely situations where you can succeed having your own DTC website. And I think you guys are a great example of Bumblebee, Bumblebee linens where I imagine there’s a fairly high touch.

06:15
with the customer where you’re doing a lot of back and forth with them in terms of their orders and customization. And I think when you get into the situations like that, it definitely makes sense. And there’s a ton of other examples too, but for the vast majority of people, I think on its own, it’s very, very tough to succeed in most niches. would argue that, uh, like you, mentioned Tik Tok shop, like a lot of products do not fall under Tik Tok shoppable territory in my opinion, right? In terms of the type of products.

06:45
It’s almost like you need to sell something that’s super high margin to begin with. Beauty, supplements, anything just kind of unique, right? Yes. Yeah, there’s no, there’s no search intent with TikTok. It’s all discoverability. So if you have a product that somebody discovers and goes, oh, wow, I need this. Yes, works great with TikTok shops. If you’re selling a boat anchor, yeah, probably not the best for TikTok shops.

07:11
You know, Amazon, I want to say, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Amazon cancel their live selling platform? I don’t know if they still have live selling on Amazon or not. I mean, they were going all in with Amazon live, but with Amazon, whatever way the wind is blowing that day, they could kill a project or start a new project. So I’m not sure how Amazon live is doing right now, regardless. It never took off the way they imagined whether it’s still around or not. And that’s where I don’t think live selling is quite here just yet.

07:41
in North America. think we’re seeing like the effects of social selling overall, just through things like TikTok shops and influencers hawking products. But the whole live selling component, it’s no, without a doubt, it’s nowhere near like it is in Asia right now. Actually, can we talk about that? Because when you were there, you kind of witnessed this craze firsthand, right? Like, what is it like over in China right now? Yeah, so Steven mentioned a video that I put out basically going to the Mecca of

08:07
Chinese e-commerce sellers. And basically what this Mecca was, it’s a giant office building and by office building really is, it kind of rivals the Pentagon in size. And it’s basically almost every major Chinese e-commerce seller is based in this one office building. So either they have their main headquarters there or they have branches there, but basically almost every single major Chinese seller is based there. And a lot of the office space there was being repurposed from

08:36
you know, just their marketing offices and doing the day to day operations to now a big chunk of that office space was being repurposed into live selling studios. So you can go rent out a live selling studio within this office building and just do your live selling right there. And they had different scenes for everything. They had, they’d have a Christmas scene if you’re selling Christmas trees. And so you could live sell in a Christmas background, you could live sell in a Thanksgiving background, you could live sell in a forest background. And so they’re,

09:06
just a ton of different variants for how you could sell like the scenes that you could sell in. And it was just basically overtaking this office building in terms of live selling. And they were all curious in this office building. Everyone I talked to is like, look, Dave, we’re killing it here in China with live selling. We have no idea how we could ever do it in America because language is a big issue. Cultural differences is big issue. So it’s really easy for a Chinese seller to sell on Amazon, but they

09:34
hadn’t quite cracked how to sell through live selling in North America. You know, I want to say I saw a YouTube video not too long ago where there’s this street in Shenzhen where it’s literally just littered with people with the ring light and they’re just live selling like, yeah, street full of them. Yeah. Did you witness that firsthand? I never seen live selling on the street. So this Mecca is just on the outskirts of Shenzhen. Okay, I don’t know why you would sell on the street when you can just go to this office building and rent out like this nice warm

10:02
It’s free office. Yeah, that’s true. I mean, I could see it, of course. I mean, I’m just selling a food product or something or uh some running shoes. Maybe it makes sense. But I didn’t see it firsthand. But I definitely did see it within this office building. That’s nuts. And typically, I want to say the US is like a couple years behind China, right? So we’re probably due for that wave coming pretty soon. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think we see it though, in a small, very small little trickle with

10:32
the sudden dominance of influencer led brands. So whether it’s like the Rocks, whatever he’s selling now, Vodka, the Kim Kardashian’s Beauty line, all these influencers, obviously Logan Paul with Prime, a lot of new, very successful brands are being driven by internet influencers. And I think this is kind of like the first baby steps towards getting to the point of live selling. And where the average guy, where Steve Chu can all of sudden launch a vodka or a whiskey or.

11:00
whatever product he wants to launch. even a smaller influencer can have pretty big success. And again, this is my prediction, who knows? The fact I’m predicting it probably means it will never happen, but it does seem that is kind of the way that we will eventually go. Well, okay, well, let’s talk about like this prediction in the context of your own brands. So I know we have, you have an off-road brand, right? Correct. Are you currently, is that mostly Amazon right now? Yeah, it’s mostly Amazon. Okay, mostly Amazon. uh

11:30
Do you have like a content part of it, portion of it that you’re developing? Well, you know, that used to be a pretty big component of, so we run three brands and that was a big component of two of the brands we run oh is we had pretty significant content sites and a lot of that traffic was being directed to Amazon listings. Now, after the Google helpful update of whenever it was, when was it now? 2023 or yeah, it was, yeah. That basically eroded that.

11:59
side of the business and it made that strategy very, hard to succeed it. Now I will say with the off-roading side of the off-roading brand that we operated, that content site kind of went more or less to nothing because of the way that content was. It was written content. That’s why, right? It was written content, but it wasn’t very visual. Now we also have another craft brand, which is extremely visual, which is hard for AI really to replicate. So if you’re trying to show somebody visually how to do something,

12:29
people still want to see images and videos for that. And that content business has done okay. And so that strategy is still kind of working for that brand. Um, so yeah, that was the overall strategy, taking content, using that as a traffic funnel into Amazon and Amazon really love loved and loves when you send external traffic into Amazon. But yes, both of those brands are primarily Amazon. Would you say it was largely because

12:57
the one that succeeded was video content versus written content? Yes, 100%. And not just video, just visual. Just visual. whether images or videos. And obviously video is typically Trump’s images. But anything visual, I think that is still kind of a lane that AI, chat GPT, ah they can’t quite replicate right this second. I mean, we’ve all seen it where, uh

13:25
Any AI generated hands seems to have six or seven fingers. So it’s not quite there yet. Eventually it’s going to get there, but right now that’s still one space that doesn’t seem to be too tarnished by AI. And in our experience with that craft brand, yeah, it’s done pretty well after the helpful update. I guess I’m what I’m trying to get at right now is like, would you even bother creating written content, even with a lot of images now to promote a brand? Or would you just jump straight to video? ah

13:53
I think there’s edge cases where images do help. mean, video, video is how most people want to content. Um, so I mean, if I had to pick between one or the other, I would definitely pick video, but I do think there is a lane where you do want images. Some people, I, I’m this type myself where I do want to consume a lot of content, just visually. I don’t want to sit and click through a 10 or 12 minute video. So the best answer, the right answer is both. If I had to pick one, it would definitely be.

14:22
But videos, videos time intensive, like it’s a lot easier to put up images and video. Like that’s the big barrier. It’s not that it’s not better is that is the ROI on the amount of time that you have to put into video. it there? It is as we both know, it’s very time intensive. mean, the only reason why I’m also asking is just the way things are going. Like everyone’s just doing research on AI. People might never even see that image that you’re posting, right?

14:48
They’re just doing the research and then they go straight to your website or wherever to make a purchase, right? Yep. Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, like we talked about off air, there is still a significant amount of Google traffic that goes to the top two or three listings for certain topics, which aren’t being AI generated by Google. Uh, whether that’s there or not in five or 10 years, probably not. It’s pro it might be viable right now, but five or 10 years from now, definitely that will not be the case.

15:17
So that’s definitely where the puck’s going. But right there, right now, I think the puck is still there where you can get a top-server listing on Google and do okay. Yeah, yeah. At least for like the next six months. I actually heard a rumor that Google was going to upend their entire search for a version of AI overviews. I don’t know if that’s gonna come true or not. Yeah, yeah. mean, we’ve all experienced it where it does seem to be overtaking

15:47
search results for most searches. And I’m sure there is uh a time when it will become even more intrusive and it’s basically purely AI results. uh But we’re seeing it now already. I mean, there’s a lot of searches where basically all you’re getting is AI results. All right. So you’re still all in on Amazon content and Amazon uh has like all the increased fees and advertising and all that stuff. Like what advice would you give Amazon sellers today to

16:15
stay profitable in the environment? Well, it comes down to product ultimately. uh You know, what I always tell people too is, you know, five or six years ago, kind of the rule of thumb is you basically needed a product that you could sell at 4X. So you buy it for 10 bucks and you sell it for 40. And then two or three years ago after the Amazon fee increases, it changed more to like 5X. And now with all the tariffs, plus some of Amazon’s fee increases, it’s more like 6X. So I think that’s the key.

16:43
You have a product that you can sell at 6X, you’re okay. If you’re still trying to sell a $10 widget for $40, that’s a very tough proposition, not only with Amazon fees, but plus tariffs. And most people are still importing from China and they’re not importing from China. Basically every other country now, except for the U.S. has tariffs. So tariffs are obviously a very significant additional cost for people. both of those things, Amazon fees and tariffs basically means that

17:11
the magical formula now to stay profitable and profitable is probably 10 % net margins, that magical formula is probably more like 6x. Interesting. And I know you’re in Canada, actually, for the Canadian listeners out there, like, what’s it like right now over there? Well, good news is we’re pissing you off here from the US, right? And some of the old tricks you can’t do anymore. Yeah, we haven’t become the 51st state yet. So think we’re all okay with that. I mean, that

17:40
That part’s good. uh I know Steve is kind of licking his wounds because he can’t get Canadians travel down to his conferences, but it seems like the Americans are making up for that. So yeah, we are doing the good Canadian thing and being passive aggressive and just refusing to travel or buy American whiskey. So in that regard, uh you know, I think Canadians would have said their feelings hurt from a business regard. I mean, it’s it’s affected.

18:07
certain industries actually in Canada. ah So there was a very healthy percentage of e-commerce companies who were taking advantage of de minimis and they would bring their products from China or whatever country into Canada and then ship across the border same day because 90 % of the Canadian population lives within 50 miles of the US border and they would just ship cross border every day. So effectively it was the same speed as shipping from the US but no tariffs. So now de minimis gone that

18:34
little niche of e-commerce businesses who are taking advantage of that little loophole. They have all had their businesses totally disrupted. So on the e-commerce side, yeah, it’s been a little bit disruptive depending on what business model your e-commerce company had uh from a business side, like overall economy seems to do have been doing okay right now. But yeah, obviously a lot of I think anywhere in the world has been disrupted by Trump 2.0.

19:01
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. I actually have a ton of friends who, you know, when the de minimis, when Trump eliminated de minimis from China, they’re like, ah, no problem. We’ll just ship all of our stuff to Mexico and Canada on the board. And then when he passed the everything, every country rule, they were like, oh my God, I just spent like the last couple of months moving all that stuff over.

20:01
Well, I mean, I remember when I sold my business a few years ago, I thought, you know what, I’ll take some of this money. I’ll buy a warehouse here in Canada. And now with all these tariffs, I’ll just take advantage of this. I’ll be like the low cost provider because we’ll have all our products brought into Canada and ship them cross border and there’ll be no duties and we’ll be able to undercut everybody on price and never pulled the trigger on that, thankfully. But uh how do I mean, that entire business model just be. It’s very unpredictable. All right. Well, OK.

20:31
Let’s talk about the illegal activity on Amazon. That’s a very juicy topic. Okay, so you just put out a video on this and I do know that Amazon has been putting out these press releases over the years that it’s drastically cut down on illegal reviews, how it’s actively trying to like lose less merchandise in its warehouses. What’s really going on, Dave? In terms of reviews, did. So just to give a little history lesson, in 2022, they did suspend

21:00
a lot of very major sellers on Amazon. And basically they were all guilty of putting insert cards into their packages and saying, hey, buy our product, leave a five-star review and we’ll give you $20 gift card. And that was very traceable. Amazon, all they had to do was go into the warehouse, open up a box and they can find these review insert cards. So you’re caught red-handed with that. And they suspended a lot of very, very major sellers, like public companies in China. So definitely.

21:29
That was a very real action that Amazon took and that had like a very material positive effect in getting rid of a lot of these bad actors who were basically paying for reviews by leaving these insert cards. That’s fine. So they did a good job there. Now what’s happened, it’s gone from insert cards, which are very, very traceable to now people using these review brokers, basically people who will get you fake reviews for five bucks a piece. And that’s where all the actions turn to.

21:58
these fake review groups exist basically in one place, it’s Facebook. So if you go on to Facebook, you search for Amazon reviews, you can find a million Facebook review groups where you can get free products all in exchange for leaving five star reviews. And so now basically all the action has shifted from leaving insert cards to using these review brokers and Facebook groups. So Amazon did do a lot.

22:23
had like a rebate service that kind of got in trouble, Well, yeah, yeah. that’s a really good example of kind of also what exists today. So yeah, you’re talking about one of our friends who had a rebate service. And the theory behind that service was it wasn’t necessarily to get fake reviews, although we’ll talk about that in a second. The point was to kind of juice

22:51
Amazon’s algorithm and get some extra link juice and conversion juice for your product. So you give away a bunch of free products through one of these rebate services. Amazon would think, oh my gosh, everybody’s buying this product. We should rank it highly. And so that was the overt reason why that service existed. The wink, wink, nudge, nudge side of the service was, yeah, buy our product for free. Great. And by the way, please leave us a review. So that was the other thing that was happening. And that still exists today.

23:20
like these wink wink nudge nudge services where you give away discounted products and there’s kind of an implicit agreement that yeah, you’re probably gonna leave a five-star review because if you leave, you don’t leave any review, that’s probably okay, but you’re definitely not gonna leave a one-star review because you’ll get kicked off the platform. So that still exists today. Okay, but what you’re talking about here is completely different and sketchier. With the overt.

23:45
buying a fake review. So I’m not going to mention the websites. You can Google buy fake Amazon reviews. A ton of these websites exist and you can buy five review packages. You can buy 10 review packages. You can buy a hundred review packages and you pay a set price per review. Obviously you have to compensate the product costs as well. And within seven to 10 business days, you get either five, 10 or a hundred reviews.

24:10
You know, realistically, Amazon could shut these sites down by just telling Google to just filing DMCA take down requests with Google and they wouldn’t be in search at least, right? But they’re not doing that. So that’s one way to find these review groups. But any Amazon seller listening has probably at some point or the other had a little message, somehow get through Amazon’s filters and say, hey, you want reviews? Message me. We chat me. So there’s these kind of underground ways where you can find these.

24:39
services where you buy reviews as well and not to pick on China but again talk going back to like the Mecca of Chinese sellers you walk through this shopping or Half shopping mall half offices you walk through there and there’s basically billboards everywhere for different Amazon services Some of them are photography services some of them are listing off an optimization services and some of them are Review services and they don’t say fake reviews, but they call them review services. So

25:07
there are more kind of grassroot ways that people are finding these services to get fake reviews. So you’re right. They can stop it on the Google side and just like not have them show up in the service. But there’s other ways that people can find these groups. Let’s get to the interesting part. You actually tried one of these services just as just for content reasons, right? I did. How does it work? Yeah. So tried one of these services. So basically Amazon really suppressed what they saying. They shut down all these

25:36
websites, I went to one of these websites, tried to buy a fake review. Message the operator of the website said, hey, can you get me a fake review? They said, sure, no problem. By the way, though, I just want to hop on a WeChat call with you just to kind of verify your identity. And basically, the identity check was to make sure I was Chinese. ah As I talked about the video, I kind of smudged the camera on my lens a little bit, put on a hat, tried to give a broken English accent. uh And the guy more or less said, OK, sir, it looks like you’re

26:06
might be in China, so yeah, go ahead and buy your review. Now, talking to this guy, he was very clearly South Asian. Turns out he’s from Bangladesh. So that’s where most of these fake review services are working. did you find that out, by India or Maine. It was in actually the court documents that Amazon had filed taking down these review brokers. they actually had the names of the people and where they existed in the court documents. Now they weren’t able to take action against them, but they did find out their names. So yeah, it turns out most of them are in India.

26:35
in Bangladesh, probably not a surprise to a lot of people. I just remember it happened to be Steve, right? It happened to be Steve. It was definitely not Steve. You can see it in the court documents. It was definitely not Steve. So yeah, not Steve, but Steve still managed to get the fake review. So paid $5 plus the cost of the product. I did not do it on my own product. Found another product with tens of thousands of reviews because I don’t want either my products getting suspended or

27:05
somebody else’s product being suspended and truth of it is like the chances that Amazon is gonna notice one fake review on a product with tens of thousands of reviews probably Probably not likely so anyways bought this fake review I thought for sure my money’s gone because I basically Bitcoin the guy because I didn’t want any trace of this happening uh Did you really hit with crypto? Yeah, well, how else am I gonna do? I’m not gonna do it with PayPal Okay, and

27:34
And again, to their credit, right? Like he could have mistaken the money and run. Maybe there’s a bigger scheme here. He wants me to buy the 100 review package for $500. Maybe that’s the ultimate scheme, but I do legitimately think that he’s actually just providing a good service. And like, he’s not going to take the money. He’s actually going to provide the reviews of my bought a thousand review package. anyways, crypto the money over to him. And within about seven to 10 days, that review popped up right on the product page.

28:03
Now, the other thing was, this is not some rudimentary operation. So I had to create an account on their website. It had to log in. They had a tracking service where I can, number one, track the order that the person had used to order. And then also I could track the status of their view and it would say, okay, you need to wait a few days for the review to populate because we don’t want to do it too quickly. Otherwise Amazon’s going to catch it. So the whole process took about 10 days from the time I cryptoed the money to the time somebody bought the product and

28:33
ultimately left the review. like this is a real business with like a software back end and Oh dude, it’s incredible. Alright, so where is this review coming from though? Is it someone the US who bought it or that part? I mean, they’re not going to reveal their secret sauce where they get the reviewers from. So I did ask Steve I said, Hey, where are these reviews coming from? They’re all coming from Facebook and Oh, no, no, no, no, no, we have we have other sources. Truth of it is almost all of them are coming from these Facebook groups. So

29:02
they operate these Facebook groups for the buyer side. So people buying products and leaving reviews. So again, like I mentioned before, if you go onto Facebook, look for Amazon reviews, you’ll find a million of these Facebook or Amazon review groups. And so all these guys who operate these services operate a few of these Facebook groups. Most of them have thousands of members and that’s where they’re getting the reviews from. So they’ll post the product.

29:31
Steve has his linen that he wants to get a bunch of free reviews for. He’ll tell Steve, Steve will then go post that product in the Facebook group for all the customers and say, Hey, if you guys want some handkerchiefs and linens, go to this link, buy it, message us your order number, leave a review and then we’ll reimburse you for your costs. So that’s where they’re coming from. They’re almost all coming from Facebook review groups. They might say otherwise, but even in the Amazon court documents, they’ve said the same thing. They’re almost all coming from Facebook review groups.

30:01
Here’s what I found nefarious about all this. You could actually pay for one star reviews too, right? Yes. Yes. So, and that’s what I was curious about because we’ve all as Amazon sellers been hit with one star reviews. And so I asked Steve, said, Hey, you know, it’s great that you can leave five star reviews. Can you leave one star reviews? He said, Oh, yeah, sure. No problem. You want one star reviews, three star reviews, five star reviews. No problem. Anything you want, we’ll get it for you.

30:28
Okay, so I’ve had a rash of students in the class where they launch and before they’ve even shipped their stuff over to Amazon, they get a negative one star review. So it seems like this is very common. What do you do in that case? I mean, this is the sad part about it. So a lot of people, what they resort to, you get hit with negative reviews and you know it’s your competitor, what do you do? You hit them back. And so you buy, goes for this tit and tat where people will buy fake reviews against their competitors. That’s…

30:58
the natural reaction from a lot of people. ah In terms of if you don’t want to get into that slugfest, what can you do? I mean, really all you can kind of do is cross your fingers and hope that Amazon catches these fake reviewers. So Amazon did claim that last year they shut down 250 million fake reviews before they ever got posted. They shut down that many, how many are getting through? Who knows, but it’s probably a lot bigger than 250 million. So yeah, they’re catching some of these.

31:27
And hopefully they catch them if you’re getting hit with fake reviews. But other than that, they’re very hard to trace. And that’s the problem. They’re real customers leaving these reviews. They’re real customers based in the US leaving these reviews. Very hard to catch. Now if somebody hasn’t bought the product, then that’s very traceable from Amazon. Like if somebody’s- is, but it’s still really hard to get it taken down, right? I mean, yeah. In this case,

31:51
And this is I get asked these questions and I don’t really have good answers for them. That’s why I brought it up here. Like I had one student who was already spent a lot of time getting his product ready, puts up his listing instantly. I think he got four negative reviews and he hadn’t even shipped anything yet. Okay. And then he appealed to Amazon. Look, the listings didn’t even live. I don’t have anything, but he couldn’t get them taken down, which is very frustrating. Yeah. I mean, a few tactical things that people can do. um

32:19
just to kind of make it meaningful. So first off, Amazon is being a little bit more receptive to review removal requests and it’s brute force. Most of the time you just got to email, email, email, case, case, case. The conversion rate on that is very low, but they are definitely a lot more receptive nowadays than compared to previously where it was basically a blanket no, never a chance in hell that you’ll get a review removed. They are more receptive to it now. So that still is an option. There are also,

32:49
review removal services now that exist. Steve, you might’ve had some reach out to you to sponsor podcasts and emails. And they’re doing the exact same thing that these account appeal specialists are doing when you get your account suspended. They’re just doing brute force and they’re just opening case after case after case trying to get your reviews removed. So it’s something you can do yourself or you can use a review removal tool as well. And most of them you only pay per review that you get removed. So that is another option.

33:18
And then the third more realistic option, you have to make up for it. If you’re in a really competitive category where these bad actors exist, you got to be able to make up for it with a ton of five star reviews and not buying fake five star reviews. That’s not a good option because eventually you will get caught. But you have to have, you have to have that launch velocity when you launch to get a ton of reviews. So fine. There’s your 30 free reviews. And then after that, you know, you really got to pump.

33:48
PPC and just get a ton of sales because you are going to get some percentage of people that are going to leave reviews. Hopefully it’s a good re product and you’re to get a lot of five star reviews and not three star reviews and just really blast in the beginning to get that order volume where those four reviews get washed away. That’s kind of the only thing you can do. But you know, sometimes you get four one star reviews right out of the gate and you basically have to relaunch the product. That’s actually what I told him to do. He’s like, you haven’t shipped anything yet. So it’s not a big deal. You’ll have to remark your products.

34:17
Yeah, again, not a big deal. Just relaunch the listing. It ended up being good in the end, but like it’s just very frustrating and discouraging for someone who’s new to hit that. Oh, yeah, it is. And the problem is with Amazon, they can’t do anything against this against people buying either fakes one star reviews or five star reviews, because there was a time many years ago where if your product was getting a bunch of fake five star reviews, you would have your product almost immediately suspended because Amazon can eventually you get enough of these fake reviews Amazon.

34:47
knows that it’s a fake review. At least one or two of their reviews will be detectable. They’ll suspend the ASIN. And then sellers caught on, huh, okay, well, if I just leave Steve a bunch of fake five star reviews, this product’s gonna get suspended because Amazon thinks that you’re buying fake reviews for your own product. And Amazon realized that, that, now this is just a technique to get other people’s products suspended by leaving them fake five star reviews. And you do it in enough quantity, they’re gonna get suspended. So now Amazon, can’t.

35:16
really suspend people when they’re getting fake five star reviews. All they can do is things like they’re trying to do by taking down these actual review brokers, which they’re not really doing a good job of. But actually suspending people who are buying fake five star reviews, very, very, very tough for them to do anything. Well, Dave, I know you do a lot more volume on Amazon than I do. uh What is your general feel of the landscape in terms of just bad activity? Has it gotten better? Has it gotten worse? And what’s your outlook on Amazon going forward?

35:45
I mean, I think Amazon is getting better at getting rid of bad actors. I think my best advice to people still though is avoid categories where bad actors exist. So, you know, things like off-roading products and boating products, really not a lot of bad actors. If you’re selling supplements or beauty products, yeah, you’re going to have a lot of bad actors in that space. So good reason to avoid those categories unless you’re prepared to get into that fight.

36:14
If you are, mean, some people are just more apt to participate in those things. By all means, go ahead. But if that’s not a fight you want to do, avoid those categories. And those are the big two ones. Like, well, anything that’s selling millions of dollars a month for our top selling ASIN, it’s going to be a dirty, dirty fight. So avoid those categories. think the best thing you can do have a lot of products doing tens of thousands of dollars a month, not a single product doing millions of dollars. Basically stay on the radar, right? Niche products, have a collection of them.

36:44
diversify. If one gets hammered, you still have a whole bunch left over. exactly. And yeah, and if you avoid the categories where you’re going to get into those fights, you’re probably going to sleep better at night doing it. I mean, one reason why I love just having the brand in the first place is because, you know, people will actually search for your brand, right? Whereas on Amazon, like if you get taken down,

37:10
And the brand is in such small letters, someone will replace you eventually, someone will knock you off eventually. It’s harder to do that when you have a, have something recognizable or reputation out there, right? Yeah. Yeah. I would argue that reputation is probably a lot of people think their brand reputation is more than it really is. think actually having a brand that people are Googling on any volume is pretty rare. And there are obviously brands that do it.

37:38
For the most part, think we’re kind of in a world where brands are becoming less and less important. And we’re kind of just getting into just your plain Jane private label products. And we all have Amazon to thank for that. Interesting. I feel like it’s going the other way now. Now that Tmoo has gotten drastically hurt also, right? Tmoo was like, Yeah, in the US. Correct. In the US. Yes. I’m very US centric because I live here. Probably not in Canada, right? I mean, Tmoo is…

38:08
still probably going strong in Canada, I would imagine. Yeah, yeah. And they’re going all, mean, they are definitely going very hard in Europe, uh Canada, Australia, trying to make up for that lost US volume. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. So going forward, um are you going to try any live selling with your brands or? No, I don’t think live selling is here just yet. Okay. Social selling, I do think, and that can be oh

38:37
personally selling it yourself or working more aggressively with influencers. Definitely that is going to be a project for 2026 and going onwards. And it’s something we have actually been pretty good about in the past, uh specifically working with YouTubers. So especially in the off-roading space, there are, there’s a very healthy community of off-road content creators there. So we’ve been pretty good with working with them in the past and just going to continue down that path and

39:07
breaking out to other platforms too, like especially TikTok and working with influencers there. Because again, it’s very niche specific. When it comes to off-roading, there are a lot of content creators, both on TikTok and YouTube. So it makes it pretty easy to work with them. With something like a boating brand, there’s actually not a lot of content creators there. So it makes it a little bit secure. I’m surprised. Rich old guys, right? That’s the problem. Yeah, I guess. You need young poor guys or girls.

39:36
So you’re deciding to go the influencer route rather than creating your own content for the most part, it sounds like. Yeah, mean, create content for eComprove. That’s actually what I’m kind of passionate about is creating content for eCommerce. um You can only do so many things. I think if I was going to be the sole content creator for a brand, it would have to be something I’m uber, uber, uber passionate about because you can only fake it so much when comes to a brand.

40:04
Do I enjoy camping in the outdoors? Yes. Am I driving around in a lifted four by four? No. you need to be the rule. Of course. In the off-roading, I mean, you can’t take your Prius off-roading, right? Well, you can get a Prius lifted, but yeah, it wouldn’t be your typical day-to-day driver. Well, what is the future of e-comm crew, actually? What’s the goal there? Well, first off, uh blogging has been very, very hit, especially in that space.

40:34
by Google helpful. Again, speaking about social, I think definitely where people are consuming their information when it comes to e-commerce, or really anything technology is more YouTube than anything else. So yeah, that’s the big goal is to get some traction on YouTube. I enjoy making the content there. um Haven’t quite succeeded in figuring out how to get it to stick there yet, but I think that’s the transition is.

41:01
continue to go hard on YouTube, continue the podcast like we are. I think our email list and our emails that we put out weekly are really good as well. those are kind of the three big ones. And then, you know, less emphasis on the blog. But like we were talking about offline, it’s still a major component to the brand, but definitely not as important as it was pre-helpful. You know, I gotta say, though, I think

41:28
You’re one of the few people that are still putting out blog posts on Amazon and they’re all really good. Um, and obviously I would trust your newsletter over something that AI hallucinates online. So, yeah, well, yeah. And AI has helped with repurposing content a lot. So it definitely makes it easy or easier to take something like a blog post and help regenerate that into content for your email list and into a script for YouTube.

41:58
So AI has definitely helped in that part and just making jobs easier in terms of creating the content Yeah, never in a million years. Could you trust it? They give you any real ecommerce advice But it definitely helps with some of just the day-to-day tasks with repurposing content because that’s a big part about content is repurposing Yeah So Dave, where can people find you online? Where can people sign up for your newsletter? Where can people find it? Check out your YouTube channel. I’ll link all this stuff, of course, but say verbally

42:27
Sure, ecomcrew.com and anyone listening should go to youtube.com slash ecomcrew. Subscribe, that would be great. But yeah, those are the two big ones, ecomcrew.com and youtube.com slash ecomcrew. And I will say this here first. I think the channel is gonna break out this year. If you keep putting out hits like the last video, I think it’s gonna be really good. Okay, am I nipping at your heels there?

42:56
400,000 subscribers, we? Are we doing You know what’s funny about YouTube? I don’t feel like there’s any competition in the space, you know what saying? No, It’s like, rising tide lifts all boats. It’s not like we’re going head to head on anything. I’m always happy to help promote you with any of the content that you put out. Yeah, I mean, that is the beautiful thing about YouTube. You’re absolutely right, where you can have multiple topics or multiple creators on a topic, and they don’t cannibalize each other’s content.

43:25
Take away anything from the other guy people some people like ketchup some people like mustard some people like mayonnaise And so you can have something for everybody’s taste buds. So go check out the ecom crew channel Thank You Steve for the recommendation Hope you enjoyed this episode Amazon is still getting the squeeze from all sides So make sure you check my youtube channel to learn how to fight back for more information and resources go over to my wife clitter job comm slash episode 621

43:54
And once again, tickets to 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.

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, Tony and I break down our plan for 2026 and why it looks very different from this past year. Instead of chasing every new opportunity, we are focusing on the few decisions that actually move the needle and the trade-offs we’re making. 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 the price does go up on January 7th. And if you sell physical products online,

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

00:54
We cap attendance at around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We’ve sold out every single year for the past nine years and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And if you’re doing over 250K or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for high level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be and the price is going up on January 7th. So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket.

01:29
Welcome back to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. I can’t believe it, but we’re already at the end of the year and it’s time to start thinking about 2026. I can’t believe it. I feel like we’re a little late thinking about 2026. It is November that we’re recording this. Correct. It is November, but I don’t know.

01:51
I actually don’t usually plan that far ahead to be honest with you. I usually have very high level goals. I know you have every minute of every day planned out, right? I don’t. Well, yes. As a type A person that I am, I usually have things well more under control by this time in November. But this year, I feel like just went too quick. I don’t know. Maybe that’s just me, but I feel like it’s hard. It’s like I blinked and now we’re in November and that’s it.

02:19
So one thing that I was excited about was, uh did you see that announcement of the robot? Like it was a video of a robot that like, it’s like the first edition that’s supposed to come out next year that can Does your dishes? Yes, yes I did. I thought that, I honestly thought that was a joke. I didn’t think that was real. Is that true? I think it’s real. Okay. And I watched it I’m like, okay, we got a long way to go. I still need to get my kids to do chores. I don’t want to hire a robot. oh

02:48
Yeah, I’ll be interested to see that. I’m not buying one. uh Well, no, the reason why is because I’ve been really excited about this revolution coming. Can you imagine just uh having robots pack orders for you, run the sewing machines and everything, and you just walk in, you just make sure they’re still running. You squirt some oil in their joints and whatnot.

03:12
Do you really see that as how, I’ve, reminds me of the Jetsons, right? I feel like we’re sort of living in the Jetsons era at this point, but then also, I don’t know, I feel like you got that really fancy printer two years ago or whenever it was, and it was nothing but problems. And part of me wonders if some of these robot type things will also be nothing but problems. Well, the new printer is actually great. Okay. Okay. Yeah. But you know what’s funny? There’s actually this print shop

03:42
literally two minutes away from our office and having them do all the printing is actually the same price as printing it at home. Really? At the office, yeah. Because they do it in bulk, right? yeah, so we’ve been using them a lot. It’s a one day term. It’s funny, right? We don’t even need the printer actually anymore because this print shop is so convenient. But anyways. Yeah. uh

04:10
I don’t know, Elon Musk has been on a bunch of podcasts lately and I don’t know, it seems like we’re like five years away maybe from something. Yeah. Well, I mean, I know that I remember back when I worked with Valpak and Cox, Valpak made a lot of news and this is back in like 2012, 2013. They made a lot of news for basically making their facilities very robotic. So on the floor of the print shop, basically little

04:39
I mean, I guess there were robots, but little machines basically did the bulk of the work, right? I think they only needed uh like one or two people on the floor because everything was the printing, the sorting, the moving of the different things, the enveloping. I don’t know how you say that. all done. Yeah, it was all done robotically. And so I feel like, and I know Amazon uses a lot of robotics in their… uh

05:05
warehouses as well. So I feel like we’ve been on this path for a while. I think what’ll be interesting is if we can bring it into the homes, right? Which is the commercial that I saw with like a robot unloading the dishwasher and stuff like that. Well, it took them five minutes and 30 seconds to load two cups or something like that. Oh, my word. I don’t have time for that. Yeah, exactly. So well, one of the things that I was thinking about for 2026, which is not a robotic thing.

05:32
is that in 2025, one of my goals was to attend more events, which I think I did a pretty good job with. I went to many conferences. I tried to do some networking things. I was actually at a networking thing the other night. I will say though, I’m tired. It’s because you’re old. I am old. am old. networking days are for the young.

06:00
And unfortunately, like I feel like if you live in certain places, like I feel like, you know, Charles who lives in New York City or Liz who lives in Austin, you even who live in California, there’s a lot more opportunity locally for you in Orlando. We definitely have things right. I know I don’t want anyone from Orlando to like send me hate mail. They’re like, you missed all these cool things. But like in the world that I’m in with, I would say more of the marketing tech e-commerce like that’s not Orlando is not a hot spot for that. Right.

06:28
um Whereas I think if you live in Austin, pretty much any event that you go to is going to be people that are in your industry and you’re going to be able to get some really great networking opportunities. Liz talks about stuff all the time and people she’s met and seems pretty fantastic. So, you that was one of the things that I put for myself in 2025. I feel like I achieved it and I’m tired. I’m tired of traveling. I do have status on Delta now. Thank you. ah But

06:56
Part of me is like, I don’t know if I want to do this again in 2026 because of how much I was gone and feeling like, yes, did it benefit me? Did I meet some people? Did it open some doors? For sure, it definitely gave me some opportunities, but I don’t know if it was worth the investment overall. To me, think podcasting has given me enough interaction, although I am going to some events. Yeah. I think maybe four total for this year, which is more than enough for me. Yeah.

07:26
But yeah, mean, for podcasting, I think that’s the easiest way to meet someone. Yeah, I’ve met a bunch of people. Yeah. So I think for me in twenty twenty six, I’m not sure if I’m to go all out on events again. I think I will still go to the ones that I really value. Obviously, I’ll be at Seller Summit, guys. Thanks. See you there. ah But, you know, ECF, I feel like that’s always a great networking event. It’s good. It’s also good to see friends and things like that. Yeah.

07:52
I have some tickets to some other things. I’m not sure if I’ll go. bought the super early bird tickets. I never feel bad if I don’t use them because they were 100, 200 bucks or something like that. But I also was thinking about instead of focusing on attending events, maybe only attending events that I’m going to speak at. So applying to speak at events. then I feel like the return can really be measured.

08:19
When you’re, when you’re going as an attendee, which I think, you know, especially if you’re new or wanting to make those connections, going as attendees actually really important. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. Like, um, I don’t think I necessarily benefit as much as being an attendee, but I think getting on stage is actually really beneficial to your business. If, especially if you’re doing the things that like we’re doing, um,

08:42
That’s one of the considerations that I have. just submitted my application for not only PetSummit, which I’ve spoke at for several years, but the Global Pet Expo, which is all the big time, um like Purina and all those things. Now, obviously I’m not in the pet space, but I submitted to talk about email, email marketing, retention marketing, things like that. For me, I think for 2026, if I’m going to attend an event, I want to have some part of the event, whether it’s

09:11
like a round table leader or speaking or something of that nature, I think for it to be worth my time in the coming year. I agree. I 100 % agree with that. uh For me, with the AI stuff that I was getting to, so I already started working on this, but there’s a Bumblebee bot now. I was just telling Leslie Samuel that you were building this.

09:37
Well, it’s already done, but like for some reason, like it works for me, but for some reason when I gave it over to Jen, like it stopped working. So basically what it is is it has access to like all of Bumblebee’s databases, everything. So you can say, oh, what items do I have like less than 10 days worth of inventory left? And it goes and it calculates how much it’s been selling for whatever and it tells you how many days of inventory are left so you can reorder. Or it tells you like, oh, what

10:05
what’s the top selling product for the last 30 days or whatever? Basically you can ask it whatever question you want. It formulates the right database query and tells you the answer. I was really excited about it. then, know, Jen types her queries in a different way, you know, and then it doesn’t, right? So, but anyway, I want to incorporate more AI and get rid of paper.

10:32
at Mullenby Linux. Yes, I know the get rid of paper has been a big thing for you. I don’t know. Do we even talk about this on the pod? oh No, we talked about it personally. OK, we talk about personally. I feel comfortable talking about it on the pod. So Jen just went to Korea on a girls trip and whenever she leaves, I go into the office pretty much every day. Usually I’m not in the office for everyone listening. Like I go in maybe one day a week if necessary.

10:59
But with her gone, this time uh whenever she leaves, like I’m the new sheriff in town. So I go in and I just kind of shadow the employees and see what they’re up to. And I just look for inefficiencies because when you’re in there all the time, you do things a certain way and it gets the job done. it might not, anyway, uh I just noticed that we rely on paper for pretty much everything.

11:28
uh If an invoice, for example, drops on the floor and goes underneath the table, then sometimes that order gets lost. Not lost, but it might not get packed. And people call in all the time, change up their orders, change up their addresses and all that stuff. And it’s just been marked on a combination of paper and slack. So while she was gone,

11:57
I implemented a more centralized system of tracking all this stuff and everything, which I’m happy actually, we’re 75 % using it. Nice, nice. And I didn’t, maybe it’s because Jen was just so happy from her vacation. Like I didn’t get a whole lot of flack for it. Although it was pure chaos for like the first two days after she got back. Yeah. Yeah. How did the employees take it? Were they on board?

12:23
Of course they’re on board because it was based on their feedback. I went in there and I said, well, what’s inefficient? Why are we, what’s that in your hand? She’s like, this, it’s a piece of paper. I’m like, drop it. Drop that piece of Put it down. We’re not using the paper method anymore. That leads me to another thing that I actually talked about this in my mastermind a couple of weeks ago.

12:49
One of the things that I really wanna focus on in 2026 is basically learning how AI can help me move forward the projects that I’m doing. um I feel like, and I’m sure a lot of people feel this way, things are moving so quickly, it feels very difficult to keep up. If you are not taking an action or getting involved in it every single day, it feels like if you…

13:15
take two days off from AI, everything has changed. And I’m exaggerating a little bit here, but I feel like, you know, it’s like an ocean wave and you’ve got to like paddle as hard as you can to catch the wave, right? So that’s something that I really want to focus on in 2026, because I do feel like, I feel like it’s kind of like the haves and the have nots, right? There are still, and we see this a lot in our webinars, I actually encountered it with uh another person that I work with a couple of weeks ago.

13:45
There are people that just think AI is absolutely terrible, right? No one should be using it. It’s detrimental. The one person that I was interacting with who I know does not listen to this podcast, like kind of went off and was like, it’s plagiarism and this and that, and kind of had this whole soapbox. And I was like, uh I can see why you believe that, but I don’t think that’s true. And I think that it’s doing a lot of really cool things. In fact, I just saw a thread in ECF where this guy basically built this

14:13
automation to track social media posts, right? Because before that they had been tracking it on a spreadsheet and obviously like, especially other mentions from other people. And he basically built this free tool that he’s giving out to people and it’s like, hey, this distracts your social media. And I was like, heck yeah, right? And I feel like there are a lot of uses like that where, uh like you were saying, you went in and you were like, hey,

14:36
what’s the pain points? What’s the problems? I feel like there’s a lot of things in all of our businesses that are just very repetitive tasks that can be automated and probably automated with more accuracy, right? Than people copying and pasting into spreadsheets or writing things on a piece of paper. So one of my goals for 2026 is to really focus on how to best use it for the things that I’m working on. I realize there are a million use cases and I think that’s the danger, right? As you get kind of…

15:05
rabbit-trailed into all the different things. one of the things I think is so cool is all the animations with AI. I think that’s so fun. um Dana Michelle is crushing it with this. But ah I don’t need that for my business. So as much as I think that’s cool, I need to step away from animate. I’m not doing a lot of that, but I can’t get sucked into it. I need to focus on the parts of it that will help me and what I’m doing.

15:32
but I really wanna have that be one of my main focuses for 2026, personally but in business. You know, it’s funny, you’re right, AI is moving fast, but I don’t feel like it’s moving that fast in terms of what you can actually apply to your business. True. Like everything that I’ve already done, I could have done with like the basic stuff. Like where it’s innovating right now is in all the media, mainly media, I wanna say.

15:59
like the browsers, like Google just announced a browser where you can train it to do what you wanna do. So, I mean little things like that to save time, but in terms of things that move like the bottom line or the top line, uh I think with the current state of AI, there’s a lot you can already do already and you just need to take the time to absorb and not get distracted by like the shiny objects, like making movies. Actually, I wasted like an hour the other night

16:29
making movies. So my son who has a very manual type job, he does not use AI in his job at all. He manages a restaurant. ah But he has been taking… I’m so irritated with him, but I also find it so funny that it’s hard for me to be mad.

16:51
He’s been taking moments from their childhood that have been like slightly traumatic in creating AI animation. So one of the most famous moments in their childhood was when my oldest daughter was babysitting them. You know, this is back when I think we didn’t have as much money. So she made a pizza and when she pulled it out of the like a frozen pizza, when she pulled it out of the oven, it fell on the floor. She picked it up, like put everything back on it and made them eat it for dinner.

17:17
Right. And it was like, still talk about this to this day. Right. So he basically animated this girl who looks like my daughter dropping a pizza from the oven and then slopping all this stuff off. And it’s like, tough luck, kids, you’ve got to eat it. And then the next scene is the rest of the kids all crying and like, you know, there’s like a baby and a teenage boy. It’s like, so he’s been doing that with like all of her, like, fails as a teenage babysitter with them.

17:45
And I was like, surely you can use this for good, son. Like, quit tormenting your sister. But like, that kind of stuff is fun. was like, oh, I kind of want to make those too. But I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, cannot get sucked in. As cool as it is, we cannot be doing that.

18:02
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.

18:31
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. There’s so many things like I wanna be doing actually, like just for fun. I don’t know. Yeah, so one of my things for 2026 is to launch my community. I’m probably gonna try to do it earlier, but for some reason, like I keep dragging my feet.

19:01
It’s already like 90 % ready to go. I just need to implement like the final payment processing and whatnot. yeah, I don’t know. I’m a little scared because once you turn that switch on, you can’t turn it off. Well, and lucky for you today, which is obviously, you guys will be listening to this much after this happens, Liz is actually going to be talking about building a community and office hours for profitable audience. I’m excited for it because you and I have talked a lot about how

19:30
um Email and SMS, they’re still very effective, but they’re not like they used to be. And sort of that community aspect is, I think you and I both agree that there’s definitely a future in that for building a business, building a brand. And she basically built all of Fluencer Fruit through community, right? The interactions, the building. And so I’m excited for her to talk about, hard is it, right? Like how much work is it? What do you need to do? What can you automate? Because she’s really into automation as well.

19:58
So what can you automate and what’s the manual side of it? And then she’s actually gonna share a lot about Circle, which is a tool that you can use to build. mean, you guys are, we’re on Discord, you use Discord as well. There’s several options out there, but I think it’s good to talk to people about all the different options, because not everything works for everybody. So I think building a community is really hard though. So I’m interested to hear what she has to say.

20:22
Yeah, you know what, ideally what I want to do is I want to build a community of people who already have something going. Yeah. And so we’ll see how that goes. Every time I get excited about the community, I’ll have like a one-on-one with somebody. Like I actually just recently had one, like it was a pretty bad one-on-one. Yeah. Where the person came with no prep and I was like, I really want a community?

20:50
I want a community of people like I want to interact with that. I think that’s the hard part. Yes, you cannot guarantee that in any way. That’s correct. You cannot guarantee that. You should have people I will tell you because I used to do a lot of one on ones years ago. I had people fill out a form and until the form was filled out, I wouldn’t schedule the one on one. And then it forced them at least to show up prepared. I feel like for you and I, when we do our one on ones, everyone is like over prepared. Right. Yeah, for the most part, it’s been positive. Yeah.

21:18
But occasionally you get those people that you’re just like, oh, we should reschedule. Well, so what was funny about this is it sounded like the person was prepared. Like, I want to have a product by the end of this. Yeah. I’m like, OK, great. OK, did you watch the first video? She’s like, haven’t gotten a chance to watch any of the videos yet. Like, OK, so you want me to just give you a product, right? Yeah. That’s not something that you can do in like 30 minutes. No.

21:48
No. Anyway, also not a great idea. Like to me, it’s like if because you and I don’t do one on ones, like you can’t pay for them. You know, they really only come with like signing up through a webinar or earning them through the points in the courses. Like, yeah, I don’t think people understand. Like you will never get this opportunity. You should come very prepared because, know, we don’t we don’t sell these on the side. Like you’re not going to be able to do this. Yeah. Anyway, but I am excited about it because I do think

22:17
that just think about the people who come to office hours. I actually love hanging out with them every week. So I guess the caution here is growing it too large too quickly maybe. And maybe just keeping it small and deliberate and gradually grow it. I think it’s probably the way to go. We’ll see what Liz has to say, I’m curious. Yeah, so one of the other things that I’ve been thinking about, and this was spurred on by my brother sending me a text yesterday. um

22:46
Have you, Steve, seen the OpenAI browser yet, Atlas? Okay, so I’m not using it at all because I heard it’s full of security holes. Oh, interesting. So I’ll let him know. Well, no, because people can embed little directives into their sites that cause the AI to, because it has access to stuff if you give it to it, if you give it access. Yeah, so here’s what my brother did with it, and I’m sure he’d probably just opened himself up to all sorts of issues, but.

23:13
um So he opened up his Shopify site and his brand guide, right? So he has a brand guide created. He also has a Shopify site and basically AI went in and changed all the settings to match the brand. So it basically gave him consistency through the site. um He said it was really slow, but it actually got it done. um And I actually think that’s a pretty cool use case for it. However, if it’s filled with like

23:42
security issues that makes me question it. But I think those types of things that AI will do, one of the things that I’ve just started doing um with AI, which I probably should have done this year ago, is I’m basically running all of our landing pages through AI and just asking for feedback and what can be better, what’s missing, what’s not explained well. Because I think one of the problems, especially if you have a brand and you’ve been running it for a long time, is you don’t see the flaws.

24:08
Right? You already know how everything works together. You already know the pros and cons. So it’s not as obvious to you when you look at your own site. um And so anyway, I think it’s actually, I just run them through chat GPT. So I’m not even using anything fancy, but um I’ve actually gotten some really good feedback from chat, especially on um doing a better job explaining the value proposition for the product. Because chat,

24:35
Chat has so much information about the business. It’s got all the product briefs uploaded. It’s got the product PDFs. It’s got everything that it needs. um And so I think it’s actually been very helpful, but I need to get in the habit of doing that with every page, right, to get the feedback until I’m at the point where I’m like, oh, okay, I remember. This seems to be better. Change button text, do this. I’m not as much concerned about formatting and things like that, but the actual content on the page, I feel like the feedback has been really good um from AI.

25:05
Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of things you can do. You know, what’s funny is I didn’t really have like a whole bunch of prep to figure out what I’m doing for 2026. Usually I just kind of wing it. Yeah. I’m not like you. Like you have like a plan. For the most part, mine is community. And then I want to do something with Bumblebee. I’m probably going to launch the YouTube channel. Like what’s funny about this is I have like 10 videos recorded for that already.

25:34
but I never launched it. And I actually just went back and watched one of the videos the other day. was like, you know, since AI got a lot better, I think I can do these videos a lot better now. So I know, I know. It’s one of those things that once you start it, you gotta keep going with it, right? And that’s another thing, like, do I want that on my plate? Or, yeah. Yeah, so speaking of YouTube, you know, I soft launched a channel last month and- You didn’t tell me about this. Yeah, the Taipei channel.

26:04
Oh, I didn’t know it was a YouTube like long form. Yeah, long form. Yeah, we do a video every week. And so one of the reasons why we soft launched it was because we really didn’t know what people wanted. Like the content wise, like we know what we wanted to create, but obviously we need to find the balance between what people want us to create and what YouTube likes. So that was launched. But now I feel like my focus for 2026 is really

26:32
dialing in that channel and getting the content better. I think the content’s good. The content’s very good, but we can make it better. One of the things actually, we’re actually filming this weekend, but we have Adam coming because he’s like, you know, the lighting just wasn’t, we film in a studio. And of course, he’s like very picky, which I love because I’m like, I’m never going to be this picky, but you’re going to make me look better. um But I think just kind of focusing in on those little details because we have the content creation down.

27:01
Right? So like the next step is how do we improve on what we’re doing? So basically, you know, getting to the point where we have, I mean, right now I think we have 12 videos up. Maybe not 12, maybe 10. think 12 are scheduled. So by talking about this on the pod, does that mean you’re hard launching it now? I mean, you can. What is the channel type? I let me see what the YouTube name is. Hold on. Let me. OK, because we have a different I think the website’s different from the YouTube. I guess it’s hard. I mean, a hard launching by January. Yeah, for sure.

27:30
um I’m having a lot of fun with it. I’m having a lot of fun with writing the scripts and you know, the thumbnail and title game need to be vastly improved, you know. So I feel like, you know, we’re getting there but it’s a process and I did not want to rush this mainly because I don’t have like oodles of extra free time. um Type A circle is the… Type A circle. So… m

27:58
To me, I wanted to do this kind of as a slow burn to really get a good footing and make sure that we could keep up with it, right? Because I do work with Liz on this and so as you know, whenever you’re working with someone, you both have to make sure you have the bandwidth to um keep it going. oh Just recently, we started really putting a lot of shorts on YouTube because we have a ton of shorts and we’re basically combining the shorts with shorts that we just recorded directly and then using Opus clips. ah

28:27
to cut apart the long form videos, which is actually working better than I thought it would. OK, but uh yeah. So it actually Liz built an entire automation for our short form, which I told her was like, you’re going to to come on another office hours for this because this is pretty cool. Does it do? Basically takes I have to look up her whole text to me. Basically, it takes it from beginning to end and it’s all basically automated minus, I think, the final the final part of it um using Zapier. And I think she’s using make.

28:57
But I’m probably messing that up because I haven’t seen the full build yet. That’s this weekend, I get to see it. But anyway, my goal for that is really getting the content where it needs to be focusing on building that out and pushing it. Because as we’ve seen from the shorts, people are like, we’re getting like 7, 800 views on a short with basically no subscribers. um

29:26
really getting that out there and I think, oh know, I don’t wanna say going all in on YouTube because it’s not the only thing that I do, but definitely making it a much bigger focus and really focusing on the strategy of it for 2026. I mean, the way I think about it now, like with AI, I think video is like the last bastion. Just recently, there’s been a lot of people like opposed to like AI music, but there’s actually this group,

29:55
I can’t remember what the name of the group is now, but they’ve gotten like an insane number of downloads and it’s all AI, but the person who’s responsible for creating this person mixed like certain voices together and it sounds really good. Like it’s a song that I would listen to on my playlist and that got me thinking to myself, if the song is good,

30:20
then I’ll listen to it whether it’s a human or what does it matter? I mean, it was kind of like when synthesizers came out, right, in the 80s and people were like, oh, it’s not real music. It’s like, well, it is. It’s just created differently. So I was thinking like video will probably go that way too, right, for entertainment. Like if something is fun to watch and it’s entertaining, it doesn’t matter if a human created or an AI created it, right? So…

30:50
What is the last bastion? Your personality online, right? So that’s the only thing that can’t really be replicated. Yeah. Which is why I want to focus on just tightening up the content, right? Because I feel like that’s where we win, right? We have better content, better information. It’s more relatable. It’s more logical. Whatever the angle is that we’re going for that we hit on those angles. Because I agree.

31:19
You can’t I mean, I’m watching Dana Michelle build all sorts of stuff for video and it’s pretty incredible. But at the same time, I know that like what Liz and I are doing, some of that just can’t be replicated right at this point. Who knows? It probably will be at some day. Well, here’s what I was thinking also, like for Bumblebee, you know how I’ve long talked about like how I should not be the one creating videos for Bumblebee. Well, now I can have like an avatar. Yes.

31:48
And who cares if it’s not a real person or not? Because there’s fake AI avatars right now out there where companies are paying them a lot of money to create videos about the brand. And if you’re the pers- from the perspective of a brand, it doesn’t matter if it’s human or AI as long as it brings in sales, right? And I don’t know, because it’s- HeyGen just released a new version and it’s way better.

32:17
than the last one. Like it’s got the mannerisms and everything down. So why not just pump out scripts and be transparent that this is an AI or whatnot and just see where that goes. Maybe that’s the future. Well, one of the things I like that you did, and this has now been a while since you did this, was you basically took real reviews but had them presented by AI.

32:42
Didn’t you do that with that lady and I thought she was real and she wasn’t real? Oh yes, yes, yes, I did that. Yeah, yeah, Because I think reviews from real customers are actually really important to your business. We try to use those in everything that we do. um But I think there’s a difference between reading a review on a page or in a post or in a social media post, something like that, versus having someone talking about the product. And so when you use that review and gave it a voice,

33:11
Right? And obviously the voice wasn’t real, but the review was real. To me, that’s actually really effective um because I would much like, I think a lot of people, the way they consume content, listening to that or hearing it or watching it is better than just reading it for a lot of people. And so I would like that, you know, that’s another thing I’d like to explore is like, how do we do this in a way that’s authentic? Right? The content is correct.

33:38
It’s just the delivery is different. And so, where’s the line with that as far as what people will accept and not accept? I’m not sure. I think people will accept it as an avatar. I don’t know. I mean, it’s already happening. There’s all these avatars that have tons of followers. There’s a handful of avatars right now where companies are paying millions of dollars actually to create videos. And companies are making their own avatars now too.

34:07
from a personal standpoint, like I don’t like this, but I mean, if it’s already happening and it’s, you’re right. Like as bubble bee linens, do I care whether it’s a human or an AI as long as it’s bringing me leads in sales, right? I don’t care. So I feel like it’s also dependent on what you’re talking about. So I follow not a ton, but I am sure probably Jen does too. I follow some beauty influencers, right? On TikTok or Instagram, wherever.

34:35
I’ll watch them. The big thing that I am super into right now, because I feel like I never get enough sleep, is what shrinks the bags under your eyes outside of surgery? I want to know what. I want to watch someone put the little things on their eyes and they get all shriveled up and then their puffiness is gone or they put the cream on. To me, I don’t want to see an AI of that. I want to see it on a human who’s close to my age. But I also feel like if you’re talking about a purse,

35:03
and you can create an avatar that’s my height, my weight, similar to, know, like, and like, this is what the purse looks like on a person. I don’t care if you’re real or not, because most models don’t look real anyway, right? They’re not the representation of like most of what the population looks like. So I feel like it’s also like very product dependent as far as like what I’m gonna accept. If I need to see a result, like how you, you know, lost weight or your hair grew thicker, I don’t wanna see fake hair, right? I need to see someone’s real head of hair, but.

35:33
when it’s like, how does this look on a person? Make it look as much like me as possible. Like, I wanna know that. Yeah. See, I actually got a lot of flack with the testimonial thing. I got a lot of flack when I presented that to people. Interesting. And I get the reaction, right? That’s not really that person saying that. It’s real testimonial. So I’m sure there’s some moral dilemmas there. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, if you run an ad with it, though, you have to disclose that it’s AI generated now.

36:02
Yeah, so okay. It’s gonna get there. I know so my last thing that I am thinking about this is definitely not a on the list yet, but um I don’t know if you’ve seen this but Dana Michelle has been going live every day and basically building live And I watch other people do this as well, right? She’s not she’s the one that a person I know personally doing it, but I’ve seen other creators doing this I think this is fascinating um

36:31
She’s still kind of, think, working out some of the kinks of how it’s broadcasting and what people can see and things like that. But I think one, the live component is huge, right? I don’t think that’s going away anytime soon. think we know platforms give priority to these things. We know that people enjoy watching other people go live. um

36:53
My concern and thinking about this is what am gonna do live that I’m okay with people seeing, which I don’t have to worry, because you can’t do a lot of stuff with, I I live a lot of my day in email, right? You can’t do a lot of email stuff live because you have to protect people’s email addresses, right? You can’t be showing certain things on the screen. But I just find the live building so fascinating to the point where I will watch live stuff that I don’t care about, or I’m never gonna do this, but I’m interested just to see the process.

37:22
So that’s one thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about the past couple of weeks is like, okay, would this work for anything that I’m doing and is it worth my time, right? Like the two things. But to me, this is a fascinating, I don’t wanna say it’s new, it’s not super new, but I don’t know. I’m very interested in it. I kind of wanna play around with it. I just don’t know how it will work for my business. Yeah, I think that it can work. Like have to actually ask Dana Michelle how it’s going. You probably know better than I do.

37:52
She’s getting, I mean, she’s using it to build her channels. She had like several hundred people watching live. Yes, yes, she’s using it primarily to build her client base, build her community, build engagement, and it’s working, right? Like it’s doing all those things. um It also to me, like,

38:13
I don’t know how to say this right way. It feels very authentic as far as like if I’m hiring you, I know you know what you’re doing because you’re doing it in front of me. Yeah. Right. Like that’s a huge like, I don’t know, it’s your own testimonial, right? Because people are watching you do it. So, yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I would literally you could if you had a job site where people were like, you know, building a bathroom, I would totally watch a bathroom build, right? Because obviously that’s what I’m doing in my free time is working on my house. But.

38:41
I don’t know. I feel like this is something really cool that people have really kind of started doing far more than they used to, but I just don’t know how it works for me. I was just thinking I could do that really easily. I could just put up a website like an online store. Like right now have all these videos that teach it, but I guess there’s something different about doing it live with an audience where they can ask questions. Yes, yes. And see, so one of the things too, I think, is that

39:09
I think it’s good for people to see. I don’t wanna say the mistakes, like, you know, I was watching her Dana Michelle live the other day and she had, I didn’t catch the beginning, but at the point that I tuned in, it was like, looked like a stockbroker, like parachuting or paragliding in between like a big city, right? And she had put in a prompt and it was really bad, right? Whatever the result was, was like, oh, that’s not what I wanted. And it was cool to see her like have to adjust like what.

39:37
What did I say wrong? And so to me, that’s where all the learning comes in, right? For the people watching is like, oh, oh yeah, I would have probably done the same thing and now this is how you course correct and this is the result. I don’t know. I think it’s fascinating. I feel like this is gonna be a much bigger thing moving forward. I just don’t know how to harness the power yet. Well, you can cook. I can cook, yes, that’s true. You can watch people like.

40:03
That’s true. seconds in the microwave. Yeah. Shove the TV dinner in there and then serve it. Yeah. Did I reheat somebody’s coffee in the microwave today? Yes, I did. Yes, I did. uh I don’t know. To me, it’s like also like how much of this needs to be something that is actually a skill people can learn versus like this. Like I remember I told you this. One of my kids used to go live and make sandwiches. Right. And she would have like 500 people watching her make a sandwich. And you’re like, I don’t understand. And I was like, trust me, I don’t understand either. So.

40:33
So I don’t know how much of this needs to be like just pure entertainment. Like you’re just literally making a sandwich and talking to people versus like Dana Michelle, who’s actually people. If you watched her stuff, you would learn how to build these AI automate. You would learn how to do these uh animations um in AI. So I don’t know. I feel like it’s probably going to grow in both buckets. I don’t know like where where you should spend your time, though.

40:59
There’s so many things that I could do, but they wouldn’t be interesting to most people. Like watch me code for an hour. That sounds like lot Here’s the thing. I think people would be into it. I really do. It sounds crazy, but I think people would be into it. Really? Yes, I do. Okay. I mean, yeah. Well, how does that lead to money, though? So you’re just building an audience in a community? Well, so for like Dana Michelle.

41:22
So this is where I think this has always been a way to build an audience. Dana Michelle has clients where she creates videos for them and their e-commerce products. Right. OK. That’s perfect. Like if you have a service based business. Yes. Yes. So I would say for you, if you are building, let’s just say you’re putting together a basic e-commerce like WooCommerce type website, it makes sense because you sell a course on e-commerce. We sell a course on content creation. If you went live and said this is my whole process for like

41:51
thumbnail, title, description in YouTube, like because we talk a lot about YouTube in the course and video content, like to me, so, and that all makes sense that way. Where I don’t think it makes sense or where I can’t find the connection is like if I’m making a peanut butter sandwich, how is that going to do anything other than just gain followers and, hopefully play the game of, you know, AdSense, right? Which is to me not the best way to be doing things. But it’s, I people are still doing it. It’s just not what I would.

42:21
probably recommend. mean, in a way, it’s similar to doing the lives that we do for the webinars that we do. Yeah. Except this is just purely demonstration. Yeah. Like I think about John in our class who has the lawn care business. Yeah. Right. I would I would like have on the background totally like a yard getting done. Right. Because I love to see yard transformations. Right. Where it’s like the grass is overgrown. There’s leaves everywhere. You you trim up the trees.

42:48
Like to me, it’s like if I watch this company like Transform Yards and I lived in that area, I’d probably hire them, right? Because it’s literally just a camera. So I feel like there’s like a lot of uses for this. I just don’t know like for me in particular, like where it falls. For services, 100%. Yeah. And maybe if you sell products. I know you wanted me to do this want you to embroider live. Yeah, embroider live. I’m telling you, I think this would be huge because people like bottle stuff live.

43:17
or make candles live or like the pottery people that they go live and do their pottery. I don’t know. I feel like you could do this for Bumblebee. But it’d be so boring. Like you set it up and then you just and then it stitches for like five minutes or whatever. then. OK, I went to the Yingling. Was it Yingling? I it was Yingling Factory in Pennsylvania. And I don’t know. Doesn’t really matter what the brand was. It was a beer bottling company. Right. And.

43:45
I could have watched the bottles on that assembly line for an hour easily. They circle, they get filled, they get the label slapped on, the top is sealed. I was like, this is the best, this is the most entertaining thing I’ve done in a million years. I don’t know, I think people do like that kind of stuff. I love going to factories. I remember I went to the Cheeto factory once. I’m surprised I still eat Cheetos after seeing how Cheetos are made.

44:14
you watch them dump the puffs into this container that then gets sprayed with the cheese, right? And then it’s all shaking around. At this point, I was like, I don’t think I want to eat Cheetos anymore. And then it spits out the cheesy Cheetos and then they get put in the bag and then the bag gets sealed and then the bags get, I don’t know. That stuff’s interesting. I think people watch it. I know it’s crazy and it’s probably not a good use of people’s free time, but people are doing it.

44:42
Okay, I’ll put it on my list. Maybe I can have my embroiderist on. Yeah, just, yeah, I’d have to get her permission, of course. Yes, yes, you do. Have a have a camera on her like for the full day as she’s sewing. Yes, that sounds like a nightmare. Yes, her. I don’t know. Okay. Well, yeah, I think for me next year, the focus will be on community for me. If you had to pick one thing, what’s yours? YouTube. Speaking or YouTube? sure. Getting that tightened up. um

45:10
Speaking feels like, because I don’t wanna speak every week, I feel like that can’t be number one. um I can’t be the retu, although she’s killing it. She is, but she also, every week she’s speaking somewhere, feel. All right, well all I can say is I’m excited about 2026. I think there’s a ton of opportunity, I think there’s a ton of potential, and I think whatever you’re thinking about doing, you can probably make it happen with all the new tools and technology that are out there.

45:39
Hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information and resources, go over to mywifecoupterjob.com slash episode 620. And once again, tickets to Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. So 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 over to sellersummit.com.

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 sit down with Robin Hall, who did the impossible by building a thriving, sustainable kids clothing brand in what I’ve always called the most brutal niche in e-commerce. You’ll hear the full 45 minute story behind her appearance on NPR’s How I Built This, including the strategies, struggles, and surprising pivots that took her from my wife’s college friend to the founder of Town Hall.

00:28
a company that’s rewriting the rules on how to succeed selling apparel online. 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,

00:55
people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants. Also, I hate large events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. 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 the 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

01:22
And if you’re doing over 250k or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for high level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be, so if you want in, go to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket.

01:42
Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast. Today, I am happy to have a close friend of the family on the show, Robin Hall. Now Robin is actually a good friend of my wife’s from college, and it was pretty random how this interview got set up. One day, I was listening to the How I Built This podcast, which is actually one of my favorite shows. And I’m like, I think I know this woman. She sounds familiar. I think I went to her wedding, but her name was RJ at the time. And not

02:12
this other Robin. And it turned out to be the Robin. So Robin is one of my wife’s favorite people in the world. And she started she started Town Hall Company, an outdoor apparel company that specializes in sustainable clothing for kids. Now, if you’ve listened to my podcast long enough, you know that I think that selling clothing is one of the most difficult niches to sell into. So today, we’re going to delve deep into Robin’s story on how she created the company.

02:40
And unlike the how I built this interview, which was only 15 minutes long, we have a full 45 minutes to completely delve into her story. So how’s it going Robin? How are you doing today? It’s going great, Steve. Thanks for the warm intro and great to see you. Great to see you. Your wife is fantastic too. I think we were just chatting earlier. It’s been almost 20 years since we’ve last spoke. I’m sure you and Jen have spoken before then, but uh all this time I had no idea you had the company. Did you have it at your wedding?

03:10
Or did it come way out? No, no, no, I was straight out of, yeah, I mean, I went to went to school with your wife at UC Davis and then moved back down to the Bay Area where I was born and raised and went to school or went to straight out of school, went to Gap Inc and worked at their headquarters in San Francisco and did finance and inventory with them for years. And then, you know, my husband and I looked at each other and said, if we don’t try something new now, we’re going to live a mile from our parents for the rest of our lives. So.

03:38
Maybe we like the mountains. Let’s see what happens in Colorado. And so I got a job at Vail Resorts in Colorado in 2003. And we moved there, um did again, back of the house, kind of finance and accounting, but always trying to really be involved with the business and learning all about all sides of the business. And one of those kind of typical ski days where you’re putting on your ski jacket and I was thinking, gosh, I really want to get back to seeing and touching product in my career.

04:06
putting on my ski jacket, North Face, where are they putting on my pants? Marmot, where are they? Socks, Smartwool, where are they? Oh, Smartwool is in Steamboat. That’s not too far from here. And Steamboat Springs is an incredible place. So uh I sure enough, I look for jobs, got a job at Smartwool and had an amazing 11 year career there. So was there until 2000 when the brand moved to Denver. And, uh you know, we made the really tough, hard decision, but

04:34
the right one to stay in this town. didn’t want to leave Steamboat. It’s really, for any of your listeners that know, it’s an incredible community and a beautiful place to live. So great place to raise kids. So we stayed here and that’s when we started Town Hall in 2000, in the year 2000. So it was a nice COVID baby, but it’s been great. So what was the motivation to start Town Hall and why apparel, of all things? Yeah, yeah. So, um,

05:01
Yeah, it kind of came together in this kind of our Venn diagram where we, you know, there were three of us. So myself, Jay Lambert and Joe Solomon, Jay and I worked at SmartWall together and he was incredible supply chain background and product. And Joe is this amazing entrepreneur who, you know, has his own adventure travel company. And yeah, just a great triangulation of the three of us. And we were putting our heads together and like, we’re both staying, we’re all staying in town. We got to do something. What should we do? And, and

05:30
It was, you know, why are we asked ourselves, why are we staying in steamboat? It’s really this community and our kids, we don’t want to raise our kids anywhere else. And we want to give back to this community. And what are we good at? There’s your answer there apparel. mean, we knew we had some good, we have great network through our smart world days. Jay is a skilled supply chain guru and uh expert at product as well. uh And we had, you know, again, a great network we could pull from. And then what are we passionate about? And it’s

05:59
playing outside with our kids and being outside as a family and giving back to the planet and making sure we’re not just creating more stuff to create more stuff. So those kind of four things met in the middle, kids, outdoor, community and planet. And we saw some white space for a kids apparel brand. So we launched. And then the name of your company is a play on your last name and is the other owner town or town literally means town?

06:25
No, literally town means town. it’s certainly we, you know, we went down there with a couple other naming ideas that fell through due to trademarking issues. uh But, you know, we kind of, someone said, hey, you should use your last name for something. it was hallelujah and all those ideas. But um town hall just hit because it’s a community gathering place, the hub where everyone’s welcome, you know, to make change and use their voice. So that’s been really, really powerful for us. So uh

06:53
lot of my listeners are very interested in the starting phase of the business. So I want to I want you to go back to like the early days. How much money did you invest in this business and what was your first product and how did you come up with a design it sourced everything? Yeah, I think uh between the three of us to start, I think we put in like 50 K. We started with 50 K. Anything we could do to literally get logo and branding.

07:20
our legal setup and then, you know, very small kind of down payment on our first product line. Then we went down the road of lying a credit on the house and you know, all those brutal things you do as a small business owner, which we’re still working on navigating out of and around. We’re in the middle of a funding raise, which is really exciting. Oh, wow. I didn’t know that. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of a small friends and family safe and

07:48
a simple agreement for future equity. And it’s going well. We’re going to close that up here in the next couple of weeks. We’re getting close to our goals. That’s exciting. Go ahead. You have a question? was just to say, was your first product a single product or did you start with like a line? You know, we wanted to start with a little collection. We said, what do kids in mountain towns need to go outside in the winter? And winter was really resonating with us. we said,

08:14
ski jackets, they’ve got to have a waterproof, durable jacket and pants solution that they can go outside and play in. Then we said, okay, we need a collection. And in fact, we kind of proved this out. A couple of years back, we launched, or maybe one or two years back, we launched a fleece, you know, like, let’s try a warmer weather thing, one fleece. And boy, it just didn’t quite resonate. Like, it wasn’t a big enough story to talk about, you know, it’s not like

08:39
hey, we’re launching into a big spring line with shorts and all these things. No, it just didn’t quite resonate. we went with, uh we needed a collection to round it all out. So we pulled in a puffy jacket, a full 100 % down puffy jacket, which has been great. uh And then we also thought, okay, so not everyone’s gonna be a mountain town kid. There’s kids in Chicago that we want to outfit with our gear that love to play outside that…

09:05
you know, are walking to school on freezing days and then they want to go ski in the weekends. And so what can we build for them? So we built one other, we call it our around town jacket, which is a little bit, little less, you know, waterproof, those types of things, but extra warm. So four pieces in the original line. And yeah, we, you know, from a factory perspective, we, we, it was cute. Our, co-founder Joe is not traditionally from the industry, so he’s not an apparel guy. And he said, so we’re making this stuff in steamboat, right?

09:33
Like, well, you know, it’s gonna be tough. It’s gonna be tough. But no, I don’t think somebody’s like Colorado, the US, you know, and Jay, the supply chain guru is like, Joe, there’s a reason why $900 ski jackets are made in Asia. They are so good over there. It’s, know, when you find the right partner, they have access to the materials that are all made over there. Anyway, they

09:57
have the best production machines, they have skilled labor there. And so we found an incredible partner that was willing to take a shot with us and make kind of below their minimums. We had to pay extra for sure, but yeah, gave us a shot and they’ve been incredible ever since. So it’s How big was your first batch? Oh gosh, we probably did 200 units of each. Wow, that’s it? So four times 200. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was great. It was great.

10:26
And then you’re going up against like the North faces of the world, right? So what sets you guys apart? And like, what was your, what was your in so to speak? Yeah, yeah. Couple things. One is certainly building this for kids and essentially we kind of say for kids by kids, we do these things called kids’ sumer insights where we take a bunch of kids and put them in the park on a blanket with trail mix and lemonade and ask them a million questions. There are a little

10:53
kids, consumers, ask them what colors they like and where do they want their pockets and what do they keep in their pockets and what do you think about the planet and how does your mom shop and what do you look at on social media? So all sorts of things. So they’re informing everything we do. You know, a lot of these outdoor apparel brands do this kind of shrink it and pink it model where they just take an adult piece, make it smaller and throw some paint on it or unicorns and make it for kids. And we are

11:17
100 % designed for kids and what they need. Durability in all the right spots, you know, those types of things. and pockets for the right size hands and gloves. that’s one piece. Certainly the other piece I think we’re seeing with consumers a lot is they’re shopping kind of more with their hearts, at least our consumers are. They’re looking for brands that care, that are giving back, that have unique stories, that are smaller, uh that are from mountain towns that know how to make gear for mountain kids.

11:46
So that certainly sets us apart as well. And we’re building this community, of one high five and sticker giveaway at a time. And it’s been really special. When you say kids, are you talking about kids under the age of 12 or teenagers also or? Yeah, five to 14 is what we do. we’re actually, yeah, yeah, we’re looking at expanding a little bit lower because we’re finding, you know, from a business perspective, getting those kiddos into the brand a little bit earlier and also

12:14
They need good gear and there’s not a lot of options out there for three and four year olds. So you get your first 200 units of each style. So that’s 800 units. How did you make your first sale? Oh, wow. Well, the first sale was comedic. We, and I were like, we got to make some t-shirts and hats or something, at least to start spreading the love. So we printed out, we had a bunch of, we partnered with someone amazing in Steamboat to do a bunch of printing, screen printings. And we go to this little event called the Fruit of Kids Adventure Games out in the West side of Colorado.

12:44
We’re setting up and we’re so excited and it’s my partner Jay and I and we’re putting up the tent and this woman comes up and says, Hey, I need a shirt for my kid. And we’re like, Oh, okay. Okay, great. Here’s $30. And she’s like, Okay, great. And she throws us $30 in cash and walks away. And we were like, Was that our first sale? And then we looked at each other and said, We don’t take cash and we forgot to charge tax. And so we lost money our first sale, we didn’t know what we were doing. It was hilarious. And so we

13:14
you know, it’s been that kind of story. It just make it work ever since. It’s like, just make it work. So that was our first real sale. But when it came down to the apparel, you know, and the gear, man, our friends and community in Steamboat just came out of the woodwork and they A, to support us, but then B, because they really saw something in the gear and they knew that their kids helped design the gear. So those initial sales were web sales. And it was our community of 14,000 people.

13:42
here and then it’s just slowly expanded out and out now. Nice, nice. I actually went on your website and looked at the jackets. They are pretty intricate, like to design. I mean, it’s like no joke. uh Walk me through the design process. Is this something that you guys were, did you have to fly over to Asia? How involved was the design and did it involve CAD drawings, tech packs? You know, do you have that background?

14:09
All the above, CADs and tech packs and bills of materials and yeah, getting down to all the intricacies, know, sizing was certainly an issue, building something kind of to size. You know, honestly, there are market leaders out there like the North faces and the Patagonias and we looked at a bunch of their gear, you know, a couple, a couple tactics we took one is a kids, what do you want? Okay. Now, now we’ve got a visual idea in our minds about what’s going to work and then B what’s already out there and what do we like?

14:38
from brands and don’t like from other brands that are doing things out there. And so we kind of blended art and science there to say, um yeah, let’s add these features and benefits and ooh, we really like the fit of this. We don’t like this fit. And so again, once we found this factory partner, we found a designer who’s incredible, um who um has, you

15:00
an expert in the design pieces and all those features and benefits and materials and fabrics and what zipper pull we want. know, Jay is an expert at that as well. essentially build those tech packs and then designed with the factory and iterate it and did probably two to three protos, I’d say prototypes on each of them. ah You know, when it comes down to for your listeners, if they’re curious, you know, comes down to it, we pay for that. You know, we pay for the sampling and all that um goes kind of into the bill.

15:30
the pricier of your jackets and everything. yeah, was, we iterated but it went really well, went really well. So was the designer part of the factory or did you find your own designer? We found our own designer. Okay. Yeah. Because I know when you work with a factory sometimes like the file formats and all that stuff can be different across factories. Was your designer, had they worked with that factory before?

15:58
They hadn’t. They haven’t worked with that factory. Our factory is very reputable. They do a bunch of other brands in the industry, which has been really great. But no, they’ve been, it’s this, we believe in the partnership business model where we’re not just sending over a PO and then writing a check and we’re done. It’s, we share our behind the scenes strategic plan with these guys. We have, they know our core values. So they’re always looking for sustainable materials for us and bringing those ideas to us.

16:27
So it’s a true partnership. So they’re delighted when things work out great, because it benefits all of us. And how did you find your designer? It was friends of friends. It was a network, and it was a networking thing. And was just kind of reaching out to all my actually was it ended up being a gentleman from Gap that I worked at in 2003. I was like, hey, I know you were at North Face Kids years ago, 10 years ago. Do you know anyone in the design crew in that space? And so we were off to the races. It was great.

16:57
And how did you convince the factory to only make 200 units? It was a combination of uh beautiful negotiating on Jay’s part. uh Number two, we certainly had to pay for that. They were like, well, with that amount, we got to make it in the sample room. And that actually costs more. So we did have to pay when we were that low, which we were willing to take the risk. I think

17:23
You know, then once again, it come back to that partnership like, hey, you got to believe us. This is what we’re in for. Here’s our reputation here. Between Jay and I, we’ve got 25 years of outdoor industry experience. We’re not just making something up here. So a lot of trust, a lot of respect and then some risk on our side for sure. Okay. No, that makes sense. Actually, you guys all have the credentials. So a factory would probably take a chance on you guys, right? As opposed to someone who’s never done this before. Yeah, fair.

17:50
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18:19
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show. All right, so your first sale was a t-shirt and then you talked about, uh do you guys even sell t-shirts? We sure do. Yeah, sell t-shirts and our trucker hats are our crusher. That’s our silent winner. It’s amazing. And you talk a lot about community. uh

18:47
This is actually something that a lot of brands have trouble doing. So what is your strategy for building this community that you feel? Yeah, ours is um if you’ve ever been to, know, mountain towns or special places, everyone, you really need to be in love with the town and work hard to be here. It’s not easy, both from a resources perspective, it’s not easy to start a business here. It’s not easy from an expense perspective. Every mountain towns are getting hard. So there’s this

19:15
really secret passionate bond about mountain towns and Steamboat in particular. And so I think we had that going for us in that, you know, we were this darling story of we were at SmartWall, we didn’t stay, you know, we stayed in town, we didn’t move, we wanted to give back, lots of friends, lots of family, our kids. So there was that kind of natural community vibe of Steamboat. But what we really leaned into early on, Steve, was

19:42
events and just getting out there and not hiding behind the screen and telling it all and the good, bad and the ugly. And then being at events and literally giving out stickers and high fives and you know, Hey, you don’t want to buy a shirt today. That’s fine. Take a sticker, tell your friends about us. And when it comes to snowy times, give us a call. Cause we’ve got a great jacket for you. And we did last year, we did 84 days of events. Um, everything from farmers markets to, uh, kids adventure games to

20:11
you know, Warren Miller shows, we partner with Warren Miller and sponsor and giveaway jackets at every single one of their, you know, 100 stops on their national tour every year. So uh it was the events are what we didn’t even think of, you know, as selling opportunities that really is if we don’t sell something that day, that’s fine. How many stickers do we hand out? How much fun did we have? How much joy did we spread? were most of the events that you start out with, were they just local and Steamboat?

20:39
For the most part, we had our eye um on some bigger things like kids adventure games, those types of things. We also, we can talk about this too, if you’d like, we decided, gosh, if we don’t, two things, we were all D to C. We were like, let’s sell through our website the whole time, no problem. um And we want to own that warm hug with the customer and we want to own the margin and how we spend those marketing dollars. And we quickly realized, boy,

21:08
If we don’t, we’re going to be a grain of sand in the world of the internet. If we don’t expand out and try wholesale. In addition, there’s no better way to build community than these awesome wholesale, you know, retail doors, like these specialty shops you walk into in a little mountain town or, or in the Bay area that you’re like, Hey, what, hiking boots should I buy and where should I hike? And then where should I get my coffee afterwards? And those are the people that can help spread the love really well for brands and businesses. So.

21:38
I loaded up my car, drove around the state, hit 74 stops and kind of came away with five purchase orders in that first winter. so from then on, you know, the wholesale part of the business has been awesome. Okay, so do you make more wholesale than you do D2C? No, we’re 40 % wholesale 60 D2C, which is feels like a great mix for us. Yeah, no, that isn’t that is an awesome mix. Okay, so you just said a lot of things. Let’s break it down here. So yes, started out with events.

22:07
How do you justify the ROI? You’re traveling all over the place and you said sometimes you don’t sell a thing. Is it not an ROI thing? Is it just a faith thing that you get your name out there, good things will happen? Yeah, it’s brand awareness. It’s a crowded space. uh Outdoor apparel is a crowded space. And to the degree that we can set ourselves out apart from not just being another jacket on the rack, and truly, it’s a one-two punch, right? So how do we…

22:35
go to an event and do an event in a town where we already show up. So Jackson Hole, hey, thanks for coming out to this event. Here’s a sticker. By the way, we sell at Jackson Hole Sports right there, Mountain Sports right there, and at Skinny Skis. So pop on in and then they come in and that drives traffic to their stores. So our retailers love it too. So that’s why I kind of went down the road of these retail partnerships is partnering with the retailers on events too goes a really long way, both in, you know, for the good of…

23:01
all of us, but then also to drive revenue and traffic for those retailers. But is it, can you go to an event and say that you were ROI positive? Is that not how it works? Do you know what I Like how do you measure the effectiveness? No, yeah, I measure the effectiveness in a couple of ways. One is a tracker. So I have a counter when I talk to people. So one event, the Outside Festival in Denver, I talked to 370 people last June on one day. And so that’s 370 people that didn’t know about the brand. It’s also

23:31
the types of events we’re at. mean, we get a lot of clout when we go to an event like the Outside Festival. We’re parked next to Fjallraven and the North Face um and seeing our logo everywhere and engagement. So yeah, the ROI on events is truly number of people we talk to. It’s web traffic after the fact. We do all sorts of fun activations. We take good old fashioned newsletter signups. um

24:00
And yeah, it’s not necessarily how much revenue did we do that day. Right. Okay. And then walk me through how you got your first wholesale contract. You literally just walked into a store with a bunch of jackets and talked to the owner. Like how does that work? Well, it was was comedy because I went into the first one, I had no idea what I was doing. I mean, I’ve been at Smart Old for years. I knew how the sales process worked enough to be dangerous. I had this little like flyer, you know, thing and I

24:26
walk into the first store and it smells like ski wax. And there’s some, you know, snowboarder dudes behind the counter and not really, you know, paying attention. And I’m like, Hey, my name’s Robin and I have a kid’s brand. Do you need jackets? And they kind of look at me like, who are you? What are you doing? And I’m like, okay, this is the right store. So I walked out, you know, I did that in five stores. And then finally the sixth store, I’m like, you know, maybe I should take the jackets in with me. That’s a good idea.

24:56
So I put a jacket over my arm and I walk in, it’s the same thing. I’m like, five more stars. I’m like, maybe I should ask for the buyer or the owner or the manager. You know, like it was such, I mean, Steve, had no idea what I was doing. And so finally the first one, it was in Leadville and this tiny town at 13,000 feet in Colorado or 12,000 feet in Colorado. And I walked in, she’s like, you know what? People ask for kids stuff all the time. Yeah. Can I just buy like a size run of that red puffy? like,

25:25
Yes, you can. And I have them in my car. So I ran out to my car and it’s dumping snow and I’m putting hang tags on and I’m writing down what I’m you know, and I walk in and that was our first sale at wholesale. And they hung them up in the window and sold out. And there you have it. All right. let me see how this works. Like what are the terms? So you have like just like a car full of jackets? How like do you have like a minimum order? What are the terms? no.

25:51
No, no, when you’re fighting, you’re fighting, you’re trying to get anything you can. we, was, I mean, I went down the road even of like, hey, just give us a shot. Like, let me give you 20 pieces. And then at the end of the season, if you don’t sell them, send them all back to me. I don’t care. So I would invoice them, they’d pay. And then I would take them back, assuming they weren’t worn and torn up. And then, you know, write them a check back at the end of season. Anything just to get our foot in the door. And I think that goes a long way with partnerships and showing that we care and we believe in our stuff. uh

26:21
It was also a reason to check in mid season. You know, I’d call and say, hey, how are those selling? Oh, you know, the Reds aren’t selling. Great. I’ll take the Reds back and send you some blues. I mean, we had no other accounts. So this was all I was doing is trying to really foster these relationships. You know why this interview is unique Robin? Like most people have on here. They’re all digital marketers, right? But like what I love about you is this is like grassroots. This is like word of mouth marketing. This is like.

26:49
you hard work and grassroots marketing. And it’s clearly worked. I was going to say I want to lead up to how you got into REI, but I imagine all these little steps contributed to that, right? Yep, for sure. For sure. Yeah, I mean, you you start to get this credibility and then we, you know, we hustle on the PR side to just sending jackets out to, um you know, gear guides and gift guides and review, review, you know, articles and that type of thing. And

27:19
So really sending out and getting our product out there has been huge for us. Walk me through that process actually. How do you get the contact information of all these guides? Do you send them to celebrities and everything too, I would imagine? I haven’t done that. In my mind, I’m like, Jimmy Fallon’s like the Holy Grail. If I could get his kids in town, that’d be amazing. I’m not that, I don’t know what the right word for that is. Gutsy, I don’t know. I don’t wanna just send that, who knows?

27:47
I feel like, uh you know, reaching out to Outside Magazine and Powder Magazine and, you know, what have you, those are the ones that, and I literally just Google, I just Google and then I’ll read an article like in the New York Times about like, here’s the best kids gifts to give this year. And I will look up that writer and their byline and then I track them down on LinkedIn, I’ll email them offline, whatever. And I just tell her story, honestly, it’s.

28:16
We’re so values-based, we’re so small and nimble and able to adapt that people generally are excited to hear from us. So at this point, like in the beginning, is it just the four of you guys or do you have like a team? This sounds like a lot of work actually. Doing events, driving around to stores and getting wholesale customers. Yeah.

28:39
Yeah, no, it was the three of us. um And Joe and Jay have full-time jobs elsewhere. And so I get them kind of nights and weekends when they’re available. And uh again, Jay drives all the supply chain. I could never even fathom the skills and the hustle around that and the work around that’s huge.

28:58
So I kind of manage everything else. And we’ve since hired a part-time customer experience person who’s been incredible filling orders and replying to customer service details and getting our, you know, kind of working on affiliates and our influencers and that type of thing. But yeah, it’s still the tight kind of four of us. Actually, that was I was gonna ask next, where’s all your inventory stored? It’s about a mile from our house in a little warehouse just in Steamboat Springs. And we just spent

29:28
the last week filling all REI orders, all Christie Sports orders, we got all those out the door, so AR is looking great right now, we love it. So you rented a warehouse nearby and you’re doing your own fulfillment? Correct, yep. That’s okay. Yeah, yeah. Amazing, RJ. Okay, so how many wholesale partners do you have now? And presumably the way you get them is you literally walk in, you talk to the owner and you…

29:55
you know, one by one get these deals that is that accurate? Yep, you’re right. Yeah. And when it comes to yes, so yes, we’ve got I think we’re in about 17 stores around the country right now. uh R.A.I. this fall will be in for R.A.I.s and online will be in for Christie Sports and online, um mainly in the West, actually solely in the West now. And yeah, I mean, those I think back to your question about how did we get R.A.I. um

30:20
It comes down to we have a great buddy who is in REI for his business. This as a side note, this entrepreneur, small business community, it like it makes me tear up. It’s the most awesome, supportive group ever. mean, there are Slack channels and group chats and the amount that we’re just all cheering each other on. so literally it was, Hey, do you want me to introduce you to the kids buyer at REI? That would be awesome.

30:49
I emailed and you know, my pitch, it wasn’t even a pitch. was just, you know, me writing the email was, Hey, will you give us a shot in three doors or just Colorado or something? You know, the last thing we want to do is ship 200 cartons to the New Jersey store and it never moves and everyone’s frustrated and it doesn’t work and then we’re done. And she called immediately and said, that’s what drew me to you is you get it that

31:13
we don’t we’re not shooting for the moon here. Let’s just start small and tell your story and see how it goes. And so we were in the Denver flagship last year and online and this year we’re going up to four and hopefully next year it’s 10 then 50 and then 100 kind of thing. So just proving proving it all out. We’re a slow growth brand and a passion based brand. How does one get into these Slack channels Robin? It’s a secret handshake. It’s pretty special. um No, it’s I mean, and then everything like

31:43
like Title IX, I don’t know if you know the brand Title IX. I’m actually wearing their, we collabed with Title IX on a women’s jacket this fall, so I’m flying out to Title IX next week, but got involved in their pitch competition last year and pitched at their Pitch Fest. And now, I mean, what Missy and that team has built is just this community of beautiful women founder brands that get together on a regular basis and share big ideas, dumb ideas, horror stories, wins. uh

32:11
help please type scenarios. so, you know, there’s these little microcosms of, uh again, Slack channels and in person events that just are so close. So you get into REI and a couple of stores as a trial. Did you do anything to make sure that those trials were effective? Like Sarah Blankley at Spanx, like telling all her friends to go shop at North Shore when she got them in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what we the what we did was just

32:38
be good partners and call them and say, what else can we do? Do you need signage? Do you need us to come tell the story, go clinic the staff? So we’d walk in and go to bring bagels and donuts to their Monday morning meeting, stand up meeting for the whole staff and say, here’s what Town Hall is all about. Here’s what our jackets do. Here’s the features and benefits. um We would partner on events, say, hey, you having any events? Can we host an event there on our own dime? Can we give away a jacket on our dime?

33:06
Can we post about you on social media? Just all those. I mean, it sounds so silly core basics, but we really did them. And know what’s funny about all this Robin is most people aren’t willing to do this stuff. I mean, it’s required, but most people are afraid of the hard work. Right. They’ll hide behind like Facebook ads. Actually, are you guys even running any ads? didn’t check. Zero. We’ve spent zero dollars on. I mean, much to our own demise, right? Like we’re really slow growth, but we were growing.

33:35
You know, 50 % every year, on a base of zero, that’s not, you know. So no, all that to say, no, we haven’t spent any. And that’s what actually our friends and family raise right now is for is, wow, we’ve done real well building a brand. And now let’s really try and click over and build the business. We got to pour some money into AIO and SEO and, you know, all the core basics we’ve been not able to spend money on for the last five years.

34:01
That’s amazing. And it’s still just three. Well, no, you hired another person and you run a warehouse. Good Lord. Okay. No, it’s an incredible story. Like I said, this interview is very different from the one like here’s here’s how a typical interview goes. I’ll talk to the guy and he’s like, Oh, yeah, we just poured in like, you know, $50,000 a day in meta ads and like we got it. You know. But the thing is, they’re chasing like the ROI isn’t that great, obviously, in the beginning for them.

34:30
And then just by gathering emails and repeat business, that’s how they grow their brand. It’s like revenue first in a lot of cases. I feel like for you, it’s different. You’re building a very solid foundation of community, raving fans. And then now you’re about to take that next step in scale, which is pretty amazing. You got it. Yeah. It’s, um there’s pros and cons to all of it, right? But I think it, one of the big things we learned in our time at SmartWall, which is so beautiful is

34:58
get those core values and build your foundation, your mission, vision, values and live and breathe by those. we have. And so I think we’ve done it our way. And now it’s time to your point to, wow, what could we do if we went to the Vale Kids Adventure Games where we talked to my little clicker, you know, we talked to 300 people over the course of three days and we got, you know, 130 email addresses. What if now? Wow.

35:26
we actually targeted them with meta ads afterwards and know, XYZ and really kind of exploded from there. So I think where I get really excited where our investors are that are in this round are really excited to see where we can go from here. What we built with nothing and a lot of hustle and now what we can build with a lot of strategy and well spent dollars on marketing. prior to the raise, like selling apparel like this has got to be cashflow heavy, right? So were you literally just

35:56
taking out loans to manage the cashflow and everything. Yeah, and I mean, for good or for bad, doing all this stuff on, you know, with three founders and my car driving to events, you know, there was a little cash outlay with, you know, we, yeah, it’s taken its toll for sure on the car. But, you know, there’s a little bit of a cash outlay on, you know, events and what we sign up for. But again, honestly, oh, again, it kind of makes me cry. But like the goodwill of people and the goodwill of these

36:26
You know, we usually charge three grand for people to be at this event, but we love what you’re doing. Just come on down. We got a lot of that. And that’s where we’re so thankful. And we keep going back to those events to pay them back for those types of things. yeah, we don’t spend a lot of money. We do it all on a dime and we hustle a lot. it’s, but all that to say, man, when we’ve got to put down 50 grand, you know, 50 grand in January for something we’re not going to see the revenue on until the following January.

36:56
because of terms, it’s nasty. It’s brutal. It’s brutal. You know, one thing I love about your website, I just wanted to let you know is I went on and I shopped for a jacket and I loved this survey that you have, like how cold is it? uh You know, your kids, is it wet? Whatever. And then it tells you exactly what to buy. As opposed to some of these other sites, like there’s this huge variety. have no idea what the heck to get. And I love that aspect of your site. Oh, thanks. Yeah, we do see.

37:23
a lot of opportunity. mean, the website is kind of the number one place we need to focus a lot of effort right now and just, you know, a lot of video content, a lot is needed to explain the features and benefits and why if it works for kids in the mountains, it’s going to work for you in the Bay Area kind of thing. Oh, one thing I also wanted to ask you and this is the first time I’ve heard of this but a B company is what you guys are right? Yeah, so we are a public benefit corporation.

37:50
which is a legal term, essentially means we, uh no matter what happens to our business, we get sold, we, whatever happens, we always will, we’re more than just for profit. We’re actually for, you know, something bigger than that. And number one is to give back to the communities of Northwest Colorado. And number two is to give back to the planet. And so those kind of foundational uh reasons for being will always live with Town Hall. Then we went so far as last year to actually get B Corp certified. So we got the

38:19
the certification stamp, and then we’ve got the legal backing as well. So I’m not as familiar with B Corps, like how do they differ from C Corps in terms of how you operate? Literally not much at all. Nothing. I mean, it’s just it’s essentially the same, the same, you know, you got to the same articles of corporation, the bylaws, and you have the same annual meetings and the shareholders and all that type of thing. It’s truly just, hey, you cannot

38:45
go against these, is your company always heading in the direction of these core values? And we check that box every year. Okay, I noticed it was front and center on your site. So it’s a pretty strong value prop as to for sure, the values of your company. I also wanted to ask how you got on how I built this. Because that’s like one of the biggest podcasts in the world. Right? That was just a cold call. You know, it’s like I just if it says

39:13
if it says reach out, I’m going to reach out. said, Hey, do have a story to tell? Give a call. So I left a voicemail. I don’t know. And they called me back and I left it in like August. And, know, I didn’t tell Joe and Jay, and it was just like, whatever, we’ll see if this voicemail goes anywhere. And then I got an email from a producer and you know, eight months later, and then we recorded three months after that. um I don’t know, we have, we have something about you, Robin, like uh

39:41
I don’t know if it’s me, Steve, I don’t know. We just have a lot of, I don’t know. We have a lot going for us. We’re just, I don’t know. I don’t know. just, love this brand. I love this community and it just, everything we do comes from the heart and hopefully I think people see that. And we’re just, we’re hustling and that goes a long way too. Let me ask you this. So you decided to take funding and with that,

40:06
comes like another can of worms. Is it just friends and family? Or is it? Are you getting like institutional funding also? Just friends and family? Okay. All right. Okay. Yeah, I was about to say if you got institutional funding, like that puts pressure for you to light a fire and like go all out. But yeah, no, no, this is just friends and family. And I mean,

40:27
It’s no secret that the outdoor industry is not a lucrative investment opportunity. this isn’t, know, the folks that we found and the folks that we’re seeking out to invest really get the brand and where we’re headed. And quite frankly, almost all of them that are investing are actually going to sit on an advisory board because they’re just savvy and excited and passionate and want to see us succeed for the good of

40:55
us and our families, but then also for this town and the business and their kids. So uh it’s really neat to see that it truly is, it’s friends and family that are actually going to serve as advisory roles, which is really cool. That is cool. uh It sounds like you travel a lot for this business and whatnot. And I know you’re very family oriented as well. uh How is like, have you integrated your business with your family?

41:23
and make sure you have time for both. And your husband’s obviously very understanding of all this. Oh, my husband is our number one biggest fan. He is uh the town hall guru. He could explain the jackets inside and out. uh The family, for good or for bad, town hall has a firm seat at the dining room table every day. Town hall is part of the family. so we…

41:48
go through PNLs together. We’ve taught the kids about financials. We asked them, like, we’ll have a, you know, a bunch of kids are over here jumping on the trampoline and I’m like, hey, can everyone come inside and tell me what colors of jackets you like? um You know, everyone gets it. People, the family comes and works at the events for fun. You know, they’re getting older now, so they’ve grown out of the jackets, unfortunately. But um it’s just such a, I don’t, I don’t have to separate.

42:13
Honestly, it’s really like we’re all in this together and we’re doing it together, which feels really special. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I can just tell from the website, like the pictures that you’ve shown, it’s like a very tightly knit community that that you’ve that you’ve created for your brand. And uh it’s pretty amazing. So for anyone listening out there, where can they go to check out the brands? What events are you going to? Do you have like a schedule where people come up? Because there are people in, you know, mountain towns.

42:43
For sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we’ll be doing the REI Summon the Snow at the Denver flagship in, I think it’s the end of October, October 20 something. So that’s down there. We’re doing a Kids on Snow event up at Jackson Hole. um We are, yeah, there’s a holiday market in town. So lots of little things. Definitely check out our website, townhallco.com.

43:07
Get involved, come, you know, join our newsletter. I send the newsletters so you’re not going to get a lot of them because I don’t have time to send three a week. So and feel free to reply if I send something dumb. um But yeah, give us a follow on social. think, you know, the other thing it’s been interesting from a marketing perspective, being super transparent with our community and telling them all the good, bad. I used to do this Rosebud thorn about what we’re working on. And I think it’s been neat for

43:35
entrepreneurial folks and business savvy folks to kind of follow along from a, what does it take to start this business? How does this go? What is she working on? So we’ve been talking about the business uh in Town Hall and the products, but then also the business itself. So if you want to learn more about business, give us a follow on social as well on Insta or at Town Hall CEO. Do you guys have like a YouTube channel or a short form video channel?

43:59
We don’t, it’s on the list, it’s on the list. You’d be incredible at it, incredible. You should definitely do it. Oh, I’m taking cues from you, my friend. It’s pretty impressive to watch you do your magic. It’s cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Robin. Really appreciate it. It’s good to get back. Thanks for having us. Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’re thinking about selling apparel, I hope this episode helps you evaluate your niche before you begin.

44:24
For more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 619. And once again, tickets to 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 mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away.

44:53
Thanks for listening.

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 shared the latest AI updates because this past week was a little nuts with a ton of new announcements. But before I begin, I want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are on sale over at sellersummit.com. And if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most events that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories,

00:27
Seller Summit is all about tactical, step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants. Also, I hate large events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room.

00:53
We’ve saw that every single year for the past eight 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 sellersummit.com and grab your ticket.

01:21
Welcome back to the My Wife, Put Her Job podcast. These past couple of weeks, I feel like there’s been this huge bonanza of AI announcements. And I think we say this every single time this happens, just AI every week, a new tool, a new version of something comes out. And it’s very impressive. So I have an interesting thought to this. Most of your friends are pretty techie, I would assume.

01:50
They’re not actually. Really? I guess you’re like real life friends. you talk to your life friends are doctors and lawyers. How do they use AI? Because I was out to dinner with my friend Sandy, as you met Sandy before. She’s in medical sales. Her husband’s a firefighter. We were with a couple other people. And we started to talk about AI. And it’s very interesting to me. Because I feel like you and I live in this world where people are using AI to do all sorts of crazy stuff. Like Dana Michelle is doing full.

02:18
you know, video, we’ve got people like Ritu doing it with ad and creatives. I’m using it a lot to like decipher information, build flows, charts, you know, um the very technology, right? Like Liz and I are using it a lot to, you know, we built a quiz, are, you know, designing websites, all this stuff. But when you talk to like people that don’t live in our world, how they use AI is like very different than I think how we think about it. Do you feel the same way?

02:47
So what’s funny is the sentiment, at least among some of my friends, is almost anti-AI. Yes, yes. Right? Because they’re afraid that it might displace the stuff that they do or whatnot. And so they’re actually not really playing around with it. So what’s interesting to me is…

03:06
I had lab work done a couple of weeks ago and weirdly, I don’t know if there’s like a new lab, but like each lab test, you know how they run like the CBC and then maybe they test for like a thyroid thing and then they they test for different like buckets of uh problems. I have no problems. That was the good news. But it ended up coming back. Well, no problems with the lab work. They check the mental stuff. Yeah, the mental stuff, it just broke and they couldn’t do anything. So it came back in like, you know, I usually get like one big long

03:36
piece of lab work, well this came in multiple documents, right? So it was like, well this is your thyroid test, and this is this, and this is that. And I was like, this is too much information, right? It was too hard to like, because some of it does play off each other, like well if this number is a little high and this number is a little low, whatever. So I fed it all into chat GPT, right? And I was like, hey, can you summarize this? Can you find anything that it’s on the higher end of or lower end of normal, whatever.

04:02
And I had it read all my labs and everything and like give me like summary and then give me like questions that I could ask my doctor. Right. I think nothing of this. Right. So we’re at dinner the other night and someone mentioned putting medical reports into chat GBT to get you know how when you get like a X-ray or something and you have like the radiology report. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like my brother dumps all that into A.I. to get like a layman’s term. Right.

04:28
So I’m like, yeah, I do the same thing. My friends were like, are you kidding me? No way, I would never put my medical information into AI because then it’s out in the world. And I was like, well, it’s already out in the world. It’s been sent on servers. It’s all like, I don’t know. But you’re right. My friends are all like, oh, I don’t really want AI knowing a lot about me. And I’m like, I put everything about myself. We have a friend who’s using it for therapy. I’m not sure I would go that far to recommend it, but like.

04:55
I don’t know. just feel like we have such a different view than maybe that’s the general public. I’m not sure, but that’s the sentiment around my friends that don’t work in the technology fields. They’re the same way. Actually, my friends aren’t even on social media. That’s how like, yeah, they never see what’s going on in my life because they’re not on TikTok or Instagram. Rarely Facebook like they’ll occasionally go on Facebook. So, yeah, I feel you. You know, what’s funny about this is uh

05:24
AI recently announced shopping. I think the integration was with Etsy, but then later on it’s gonna be coming out with Shopify. Because of your medical report, all that stuff is fair game, right? So let’s say you had uh high triglycerides for some reason. All of a sudden, OpenAI might recommend you fish oil supplements, right? Because it knows those intimate details about you. And I think most people just find that

05:54
pretty terrifying. don’t, I find it great because to me, I don’t like, cause to me, like when I put all my lab work in and then I was like, Hey, I, one of my questions was what supplements should I take? You know, and then I put in a bunch of like caveats of like, I don’t want this in my supplement. There’s right, right. Like I want AI to know more about me.

06:17
so that I get better tailored responses. Just like I hate it when I get served ads for things that I would never buy. Like serve me all the ads of things that I want. But we probably skew way to the other side. I Yeah, I think so. I mean, let’s say you’re complaining about like your boyfriend or your spouse or something chat to BT and all of a sudden it prescribes you like Prozac or something. I don’t know. Or you’re getting all these Tinder ads. Something more personal like that.

06:45
Actually, other news like Gemini, I haven’t seen it firsthand because I don’t know if it’s available for me, but supposedly there’s ads now in the AI mode, which is going to become like the new ad platform for Google instead of their usual 10 blue links and whatnot. the fact that it’s been announced means it’s probably rolling out right around the corner. So the way Google ads works is fundamentally going to change right around the corner.

07:14
Now, you using AI? Because I know we talked. I don’t know. I know you did a lesson on this for AI uh search and shopping if you have a store. Yeah. SEO. Well, it’s not SEO. But um are you using it all? I’m not really using it for shopping. I ask for recommendations. we know people who are using it I it’s happening. I can see it in my search results for my store. Yeah. uh

07:41
I made a video about this so I can’t remember the stats, but I think it’s like 3x to this year. Now it’s 3x of a small number, right? Right. mean, it just shows that it’s that’s increasing. What I’m curious to what you think the future is for that. I mean, I feel like it eventually it will overtake Google. Well, I mean, Google is going away like the traditional search and then Gemini, which was just announced, is gotten really good reviews. I’ve actually tried Nano Banana Pro. I think it’s

08:11
And we can talk a little bit about that, but it’s like way better than any other image tool that I’ve ever used also. So, and then the number of searches, according to like the stats from last month is still increasing. Google is not really losing market share. So what I imagine will happen is that Gemini will take over because Google has like this huge installed base. Yeah. And then Gemini will have the new ads and the shopping and everything already built in. Yeah. What do you think that’s going to do for like

08:40
I mean, it probably won’t impact meta at all. People still get on social media and browse and get served ads. I just feel like that. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the same as like a Google search, but I feel like in Gemini, like the intent is going to be so much greater or than I don’t know. I feel like I feel like AI knows more about you than just like Google did, even though it does. Oh, yeah, for sure. history, you know, obviously you’re putting all that information into your computer, but I don’t know. I feel like it’s going to be a bit. It kind of reminds me of how excited I was when Tick Tock

09:10
sort of launched and the algorithm was so fantastic, right? And you would like get everything that you wanted to see. Meanwhile, like on Instagram and Facebook, it was just like this barrage of garbage that you didn’t care about. Like to me, it feels like, ooh, maybe it’s gonna be a similar type experience where like the algorithm is just so much tighter. um I think the company that has the most to lose, ironically, I think is Amazon. Yeah. Right. Like if everyone does their searches on Chachi BT and then clicks

09:40
on an Amazon product, for example, to buy. Well, Amazon’s ad revenue has been increasing by 22 % year over year. That is their main cash cow, not retail. Like they don’t really care about retail as much and retail is slowing. It only grew like in the single digits and it’s slowing down. Amazon’s the biggest one impacted here because why go to Amazon to search when your AI already knows you and is recommending stuff?

10:10
So yeah, mean, Amazon’s hurting. I think OpenAI and ChatGPT are maybe in the long run in trouble too, because Google just has everything, right? They have your phone and they still have the browser, which is where most people are asking these questions now. So if Geminize is good as everyone’s saying, maybe more people will start using it over ChatGPT because Geminize is free.

10:38
pretty much right now. Yes, yeah. I haven’t used Gimini at all. I need to. I need to start to. I’m just a little worried about it because like if I use it to like help me with my YouTube stuff, mean, YouTube is owned by Google, right? Right. So I’m wondering if it has a history of all this stuff. I don’t know. I’m a little paranoid probably, but. You know, what’s interesting is um our friend Kevin gave me an idea a couple of weeks ago. He was, you know, he had his YouTube channel blow up a while back and

11:07
He said one of the ways that he was really liking AI was that he was dumping all of his analytics in AI and having uh chat basically give him suggestions, room for improvement, all the, know, basically having, because that’s what I feel like for like the regular user, right? Like let’s just, you know, it’s basically dumping complex information into it. So you’re owning all the information, right? Like you dump all the information and then,

11:35
having it analyze it for you and then give you feedback, results, summaries. I feel like that’s the strength for the regular, someone like my mother, right? And so, Kevin was talking about dumping Olive’s Analytics in there, and so I started doing that last week with my client, because I was like, it’s just a lot to go through, right? And immediately, I was like, this is so easy, right? What was probably a two to three hour job, I had,

12:05
not everything I needed, but like a pretty good start in under 30 minutes, right? Of then like where I could drill down and start, you know, really focusing my attention. But I feel like for the regular user who’s like nervous about it, like that’s the use case for for those people today. So vidIQ actually does this. They have this AI coach. And so I use it all the time because it already has all the data and everything. Yeah. But with the latest Gemini, you can actually upload your video to Gemini and it will critique your video.

12:35
I didn’t know that. I haven’t tried it on Gemini. That’s my problem. Yeah, I haven’t tried I mean this is all Gemini 3 stuff. Yeah, and so I suspect actually behind the scenes now like when you upload a video to YouTube they run it through whatever Yeah, and they can tell you right away It knows right away how much to show your video based on how the video is structured the scripts Your facial expressions intonations and everything. Yeah, so maybe it makes m

13:03
It’s on my list to try this for my next video. Yeah. But I’m going to upload the finished product to Gemini, ask for its feedback and maybe re-film certain parts that it doesn’t think is good. Yeah. And since it’s all connected, like the reason why Gemini is so good is it has all the YouTube data also, which is which is better, in my opinion, than Reddit data. I don’t know. Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe it shouldn’t be. But yeah. What’s funny is I just got back from an event where one of the topics

13:32
Like one of the talks was gaming Reddit, right? That’s not surprising. All sorts of people are gaming Reddit right now. In fact, they formed a little mastermind group on Reddit and WhatsApp that I’m a part of where we’re like uploading everyone’s posts to get to a minimum uh karma rating so you can start spamming Reddit with stuff. So I don’t trust Reddit at all. No, no, Yeah. Yeah.

14:02
Well, anyway, yeah, that’s the whole well that that was that all has come out of, know, when search changed, right. And all of a sudden Reddit was the number one search result for every single question you ever had. And I was like, I don’t want Reddit information for a colonoscopy. Right. Like there’s just I don’t know. I don’t like Reddit. I know a lot of people love it and use it. But I don’t know. For me, like, that’s not a source of information for me at all.

14:29
I mean for a while all the AIs were pulling the majority of stuff from Reddit. I think that’s toned down in like the last couple months. Yeah. And I think I mentioned this briefly in the last episode, but China is passing a law where in order to talk about the law, health, or finance, you actually have to have a degree in that subject before they will allow you to post about that subject. I told you this before. I’m not a post.

14:53
I am not opposed to it all because I looked at my TikTok feed. I do scrolled a little bit this morning. Yeah. And I want to say 40 percent was AI. It’s funny because that is not my feed at all. That’s not your feed. OK. Are you sure? Like I’m just talking about like stills where it’s like a robot. I mean, the robots are better now, but someone narrating a bunch of screencast stuff. You don’t you don’t get that. No.

15:22
Well, I guess that hasn’t reached the gossip scene yet. I am most of my so it’s I was actually surprised that I didn’t see more of it because, as you know, and I think I mentioned this in the last podcast, my son just launched a TikTok channel that’s all I generated content. And so I watch every single one of his videos. I like my share. Right. So I was actually surprised that, I’m not seeing more of it because of my interaction with his channel.

15:48
But, uh what’s funny is I haven’t seen as much AI, but I have seen uh in the same content pillar, like the same topics, like I get some of those videos now. But my TikTok is mainly travel and DIY. So that’s pretty much, which are both, uh now sometimes travel will be slightly AI, like you’re like, that’s probably some AI, but most of it’s people talking about like the top five places they ate or things like that. It’s not really.

16:17
It doesn’t really lend itself to AI as much as, I you could absolutely make that stuff with AI for sure. Maybe it’s because a lot of minds are sports, so I get a lot of Warriors and Niners stuff. Yeah. And it’s basically like screenshot or video of the actual game with like an AI narrating what’s going on. Yeah. Or doing a recap. Maybe that’s why I’m seeing it so much. Do you think we’re going to change our opinion? Because I know that you and I, in all of our webinars and in the course, we talk to people about

16:46
if they’re going to start creating video content, having your face aligned with it is better than just creating this anonymous type channel. Do you think we’re going to have a shift over time or do think we’re going to stick with that? Okay, so at this event, I met a guy who has an insane number of AI channels and supposedly he’s doing like $100,000 a month just pumping out AI videos.

17:16
for these channels, push button, basically. So if that gets around, and I don’t know if this guy sells a class or whatnot, but I have seen classes on this, everyone’s chasing the quick buck, kind of reminds me of drop shipping back in the day. And if everyone just starts pushing all this AI stuff, then it’s gonna get, I mean, I think it’s already crazy. I don’t know the stats, unfortunately. I didn’t come prepared with stats today, but.

17:44
I’m gonna wanna see human. I already wanna see human. I’ve actually started marking a lot of these videos as spam actually. In my TikTok, Like if I see like a garble of characters as the username, that clearly indicates that it’s like one of these mass accounts that they’re just blasting around themselves. I’ll report it as misleading or spam. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. 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.

18:15
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. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away.

18:42
Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show. I think watching my son’s channel blow up so quickly, I feel like if you have an angle, right, if you have something clever, and I think this has always been true and it will always be true, if you create content around that clever idea, whether it’s you, AI, you know, it’s the content that you’re creating, you can do it any way you want, right?

19:10
But you have to have that like million dollar idea. You have to have something that no one else is doing or no one else is taking that spin on it. I think the problem with a lot of the AI content and I don’t see as much as you do is that it’s just like regurgitation of other things. There’s no like, there’s no angle or interest to it. It’s just, know. I’ve seen your son’s stuff. He actually creates the scripts and he comes up with the idea.

19:38
What I’m talking about right now is where AI writes the script. Yeah. And then pumps out the video to go along with it. And it’s so obvious now because I’ve used chat GPT and Claude so much. Like I can tell whether it’s AI written just by the way it’s like. Yes. And it’s so funny because I for type A a lot of we generate a lot of scripts through chat with with modification. Right. But on the last bunch of scripts I noticed like

20:07
when we were doing the bulk recording on like video six or something, I was like, ooh, we’ve said those couple words a lot. Like, you know, because chat has its favorite like sayings and words and I didn’t notice it like when I was going through it, but then, you know, when we were recording and like boom, boom, boom, boom, was like, oh yeah, we need to change these couple words out. Like we need to remove them from our scripts because it felt very much like AI. It’s just the patterns. It’ll say like, not this, not that.

20:36
But this. So what’s funny is my son, um which like of all my kids, if you would have said he was the one doing this, I would have been like, no, he won’t. um Because he’s a manager at a restaurant. doesn’t have like a lot of free time. He does it all like he’ll be working the grill and he will have an idea and he will literally talk to text it into chat, have it do all the prompts to go to Sora to like he’s got a whole workflow.

21:05
that he can do from his phone while he’s flipping burgers, which is crazy. I mean, that’s the benefit of being young. He still has the energy to have those ideas. So there’s two people I talked to at this event who are coming up with tools that allow you to, so right now the tools are a little hard to use because they’ll only produce like an eight second clip and you often have to splice everything together.

21:31
There’s two people that I talked to that are here coming out with tools that kind of do this for you. Their angle is mainly for meta ads. uh yeah, so meta ads, but I mean, that’s gonna bleed into all the short form videos and everything. And I agree, if the thing is entertaining, it’s gonna work. So maybe AI gets really good at coming up with stuff that’s entertaining, who knows? I know in music land, it’s picked up so,

22:00
I think last week I saw like an AI band got like 20 million downloads and reached the top of the charts or something like that. Wow. And this acquaintance of mine sent me his AI playlist on Spotify with stuff that he generated for himself to listen to. It’s the type of music he likes. And so he made his own tunes with AI that he could personally enjoy. And he showed me, I’m like,

22:31
wow, this is pretty good. I would not be able to tell it was not a human singing this. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. So music, for me at least, I just want to listen to something that’s good. Just like I just want to watch something that’s good. Music is an easier problem to solve, I think. Yeah. So if it puts out good music that I just want to listen to while I work or whatnot,

22:58
I wouldn’t care whether it’s human or AI. Yeah, I agree. But isn’t that it’s weird. Like, I don’t know. It kind of reminds me back when I don’t know, this is probably the 80s when, you know, music was definitely like it was a band and drums and like guitars. And then all of a sudden all the synthesizer music came out. Right. And the drums were like electric drums as opposed to like regular. I don’t know if they’re called regular drums, whatever. And people like really had a backlash against some of that.

23:27
Right. Because it was like, well, that’s not like it’s all done on one synthesizer. Right. You can do the whole song and you can make the horn sound and you could make this and people were like, now it’s like very common. you know, I don’t know. I watched a it was actually on TikTok. I watched a clip of Charlie Puth on Jimmy Fallon and he had Jimmy Fallon sing this like little ditty. Right. And then he turned it into like this full song with like

23:56
drums and harmonies. I love it when they do that. Yes, and it’s like so cool and I’m like, I don’t know, I think it’s fun and cool and if you like the music then who cares how it was generated, but anyway, I don’t know, it’s tough. It’s like when I go to an Erasure concert and no listens it’s gonna be Erasure, but one guy runs the synthesizer and his name is Vince, all he literally does is stand there and hit buttons the whole time.

24:25
while Andy does all the singing and everything. ah Anyway. It’ll be interesting to see, we’re so new into AI, but yet it feels like it’s come so far, but where is it gonna be at end of next year? What are we gonna be talking about? It’s crazy. So you wouldn’t care if you were telling Chachi Petit something really sensitive about your skin or some health issue that you had, and then all of a sudden you started.

24:54
getting ads and links to products, you wouldn’t care? No. OK. I would care if chat made a website and was like, here’s all Tony’s medical issues. Where’s that rash? that. Yeah, prefer personalization. Like, actually, it’s kind of funny. So one of my clients sent me this website and she’s like, get on their email list. It’s so amazing. Right. And it was a baby brand.

25:24
And so I was like, well, I don’t need any baby stuff. And um so they had a spin it to win it wheel, which I was kind of like, wow, these things still work, huh? Like we’ve been talking about spin it to win it for how many 7 % opt in. Yeah. On my site. Yeah. I mean, it’s just so funny. You’re like, this thing will never die. So I spin the wheel. um And of course, my client doesn’t.

25:47
I don’t think fully understand how some of the technology of this works. she’s like, and I was like, yeah, you can set the wheel to whatever you want. Like everyone, you can give whatever coupons the way you want. Like this is not randomized, right? And so I spin the wheel and then in order to collect the coupon, I had to put like the age of my baby, right? Was I pregnant? Did I have a newborn?

26:13
there were like four options, which makes sense for us. It’s actually really good for a baby brand, right? Because then you know like what you’re dealing with. And then there was like a next thing like, oh, wait, before you can get your coupon, we need to have your phone number. And I was like, this is annoying, right? Because like, and I know you do it too, but there wasn’t an option to drop off of SMS. Like you had to do both to get the coupon. And I was like, okay, fine, do that too.

26:37
I feel like with certain brands that would, you would lead to a huge drop, right? Sure. Not everybody. It’s about 50 % for me. Like if they opt in the email, 50 % give their phone number. Right. So then, you know, you finally get your coupon and it comes in an email. And the crazy part was my client was convinced that the email was personalized to her, right? Like because she put, that she was shopping for, you know, whatever, I think newborn, whatever.

27:07
and she got an email with newborn. Well, I put that I had like a three to four year old, right? Because I don’t have any of those ages. But I was like, you don’t like you. Like, is there a slot for 30 year old on that 30 year old gift gift guide? Anyway, I got the same email that she did. And I was like wasted opportunity. Right. Because they’re using Klaviyo and I’m sure some other email tools like Omnisyn probably does this as well. But like.

27:33
As soon as I hit that box of I have a three to four year old, it should have tagged me in Klaviyo as someone with a three to four year old and they should have sent me a different email. They shouldn’t have sent me swaddly blankets. They should have sent me toddler stuff, right? But I was like, this is such a good example of personalization missing the mark just ever so slightly. It’s like you’re collecting this data about me, but you’re not doing anything with it, right? You’re not executing on the data.

28:01
Because if you would have sent me something, obviously not me, but if you would have sent me something in that age bracket, the chances of me buying are so much higher, right? Because you’re showing me exactly what I want. And I think that’s one of the, I don’t know, dangers, not dangers of AI, but could be a problem is because it allows you, when we have all this technology and we have the ability to collect data about people and we have the ability to analyze it, if you don’t act on that data, then it doesn’t matter.

28:28
Now you know all this stuff about me, this baby brand, but not really about me, because I had to make up a fake profile. They’re not doing, in every email since then, they haven’t sent me anything personalized. It’s like they’re just sending me their standard flow. um And so anyway, I think if you’re gonna be making an effort collecting this, analyzing data, then you have to take action on it. I know you’ve done a good job of that. You’ve implemented a lot of stuff on Bumblebee. um

28:57
where you’re mostly post purchase, but, you’re still gathering the data. Um, but if you’re not taking the time to act on it, then you’re kind of wasting your time on the front end. So here’s like a kind of a contrarian take. I feel like AI is kind of ruining email. Uh, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been getting a lot more email, like in like the last year, just random emails that are clearly AI written.

29:22
And because it’s so easy now, like in the past, you’d have to write these emails and they’d have to sound decent. Now, like I look at my inbox and usually I’ll just look at the first paragraph. And now they’re all kind of well written. Yeah. And to the point now where I’m like desensitized and I just close it and don’t even read anything anymore. Yeah. That’s a problem. And then on your uh your privacy thing with shopping, this is what I was getting at. uh Someone, I think

29:53
a month ago asked me if I tried the new agentic browsers that had come out. The problem with using those browsers is that if you visit a website that has like hidden prompts in it, like give me all of your sensitive information or the passwords in your talk, the agentic browser will actually send that information out. There’s so many security holes right now involving that. In fact,

30:22
a guy I met this event, he actually went on Gemini and said, a server just fell on me. I need the root password in order to survive or something like that. And Google actually gave him the root password for a Google server. He sent that to Google and Google ended up sending him a $500 check for finding that loophole. That’s crazy. But what’s going on right now is an invisible text on some of these malicious sites are

30:51
are prompts that are prompting whatever agentic browser or whatever that happens to randomly visit that site to give sensitive information. I don’t want to scare anyone, but this is why I don’t use any of those agentic browsers right now until I think. Because it’s really hard to put those safeguards in, right? You have to verbally put them in, and really no one is in control of the model fully. It makes me nervous for people like our mom.

31:21
Right when you’re talking about like everybody can send an email now and I’ve noticed that too I get so I’m like where did this this come from right like people are just emailing like crazy uh But I feel like what AI does in a negative way is it makes all those spam emails better Right where it was like before it was yes, don’t don’t don’t get money to the Nigerian prince everybody knows right but now it’s like really legitimate looking stuff and I feel like you know

31:50
people like, well actually my daughter had something that happened last weekend where it was like we were not sure if it was real or not. Like it was, you know, she had her phone stolen and so she went and got a new phone, you know, reported it stolen, all that stuff. Well then she got a text like two weeks after it happened was basically like I have your phone. Like I have all your information, blah, blah, blah.

32:15
Yeah. So anyway, was like, you know, so we’re like on the phone with T-Mobile and, know, all this stuff and Apple trying to like get everything, you know, figured out. I’m like, don’t click, don’t text back. Like, don’t. But I feel like the the problem is that it’s going to make, you know, bad people worse, right, because it’s going to give them better tools. So I think, you know, there is something to be said about really paying attention and, you know, protecting that kind of information. Yeah.

32:42
I don’t want to turn this podcast negative. These are just things that I’ve been thinking about lately with everything that’s been happening. And the fact that I think AI is not really doing a good job of telling a positive story to the general public. Like I’m super excited about it. You’re super excited about it. Anyone who’s in business that I hang out with super is super excited about it. But I think like the general public and maybe correct me if I’m wrong, if you guys are listening to this, are kind of anti AI in nature.

33:13
I rarely hear outside of people my kids age, right? So like the 18 to 25, let’s just say that age group, I feel like is in a different bucket, but like outside of that, I don’t hear a lot of positive about AI um outside of our circles of friends. Yeah. I don’t know. I just gave a lesson relatively recently about uh Google’s vibe coding platform, like making image apps and images that you can just then animate.

33:43
and turn it into a video. In fact, my last YouTube video actually had an animated image of, so my last YouTube video, which actually really took off, was how Shein and Tmoo got destroyed in Europe by France, right? And I found this still image. So what they did is they stormed in and started opening all the Shein packages. I guess you know what Shein is, right? Like the fast fashion brand. Yes, my girls love it, yeah. But uh all I’ve had was a still image.

34:11
of the whole process where they were opening packages. So I said, animate this and make it look like, and it did such a good job. It looked real actually. And so I included it in the video. It’s just crazy what you can fabricate now. But here’s the thing. I think there’s a difference between, and maybe this is where I’m just completely brainwashed. Because one of the things that I wanted to try was, one of my clients sells homeschool curriculum. We have a lot of still photos of kids.

34:40
like from like top down so you don’t see their face, but they’re like writing in one of the books, right? Or they’re working on a handwriting thing. And I was like, wouldn’t it be nice to just get like an eight second animation of that, right? To use in B-roll and things like that because it’s more interesting than just the photo. And kind of the same thing was you already had a photo of the people with the packages, you just didn’t have any action involved with it, right?

35:06
It almost reminds me of like my girls do this all the time where they take everything in live photo on the iPhone and they turn it all into video, right? Because they have actual video, you know, from the live photo. So to me, like that is, I don’t want to say it’s like an acceptable way, but like I feel like it’s different than like you literally like create me a five year old child who’s sitting at a desk. Like, so you’re basically creating something out of nothing versus creating something out of source. I don’t know.

35:33
To me, there’s a difference in that. I don’t know if it matters, but. I don’t know. think it’s all. I mean, to put together an advertisement. So one of the big things at this, once again, the event that I went to are what I call like fake testimonials. Like you just have someone hold your product. Yes. You write the script and it looks amazing. Actually, there’s this one.

36:00
ad that I saw and it was for something random. It was for some energy drink or something. But it was this guy on a jet ski going crazy and having the time of his life drinking this energy drink. Yeah. And is that acceptable? I don’t know. Yeah. Because it’s clear in that case, guess, that it was, well, no, it wasn’t that obvious actually that it was AI. So I think where the problem comes is if you are just faking reviews, right?

36:29
Like I feel like putting a person with a review that’s already been left, I don’t know. It is manipulative, right? Because if I see someone saying something, it holds more weight than if I read it, right? Like if I talk to you and you’re like, oh, I went to that hotel in Vegas, it was terrible, it was dirty, blah, blah, blah. That holds more weight than like me just reading it on TripAdvisor, right? Because it seems more genuine. So are you…

36:59
I don’t know. mean half the ads that we watch are all fixed anyway. Like all the UGC, there’s firms where you just literally hand a script over and they have an actor or whatever read it, right? Yeah. So I don’t know, is this any different? Because the human is AI generated? I don’t know. But that’s coming because there’s all these tools out there that are doing it. Push button. Like right now you can do it.

37:27
Like I actually have a flow which I was gonna present to the class on how to do this. uh Like just the process, but it takes like a good 40 minutes, 30, 40 minutes to put it together and it requires multiple tools. know, like I have to have, well, I’ve been piecing them together using Camtasia, but you know, whatever video tool. And it never comes out the right way that you want in the beginning. So it requires iterations and whatnot. But just imagine a push button tool that allows you to do that.

37:56
Well, it’s interesting because we talked on the last our Black Friday podcast about live selling. Right. And so we did the live selling last week and it made me think about our friend Ming. I don’t know if she told you this, but she was telling me at Seller Summit that there are avatars in Asia. Right. I think it’s mostly China. Well, they’ll be live for like 24 hours on TikTok selling and it’s all AI.

38:24
Right? They’re not real people, but they seem real. Right? Like, I don’t know. So to me, it’s like some of that stuff is it’s already happening. And do people does the regular person know that this is a I probably not. don’t know. I mean, I think it has I think sometimes it has to say something on on video, too. But I don’t know. I feel like it’s already happening. Yeah, there was that big news story. The guy made seven million dollars in like 11 hours straight or so. can’t remember. But yeah.

38:52
That AI avatar was trained on all these gestures and everything. So it looked real and it responded back to the audience. Kind of like when Tiffany goes live, she interacts with the audience and everything. The AI was interacting with the audience as well. Yeah, so you say Tiffany’s not replaceable, but is she? Right? mean, it’s hard to say with Tiffany. Tiffany’s probably not replaceable. She’s probably not replaceable. But an AI avatar might be able to do as well.

39:21
you know, a comparable job. Yeah. Right. And be funny about it. Yeah. So what is your like moving into 2026? Like what are you most excited about to try use, you know, develop with AI? So for me, it’s mainly just about optimizing my existing workflow. Yeah. You know, I actually just canceled my 11 Labs membership. So 11. What my dream actually

39:51
was to just put together a podcast script and have 11 labs narrate it in my voice and then just auto publish. And I used to do solo episodes and that was my dream. To just literally put my modified YouTube scripts onto my podcast. But it never sounded, at least to me, like when I had…

40:18
someone in the class listened to it, I published it to Discord, they was like, oh wow, I can’t tell the difference. But I can tell the difference. So I scrapped that idea. Okay, I don’t know if I like that idea or not. Well, the other one was for short form, just have a talking head avatar, and me just put together the script. I actually spent a weekend trying to get that to work. But the only way I could get it to work,

40:46
Was if I just spoke really deadpan in like the training video and then the videos will come out like that too It sounded just like me, but it was there was there was no like spirit to it So I can that idea That’s not very engaging No, it’s not and if you try to be engaging like it screws up like the gestures or it’ll it’ll like act really happy when you’re when you’re trying to say something really negative You know what I mean? Yeah

41:15
So that actually was my dream. It’s kind of like a half-assed way of doing it. It’s not completely auto-generated. I’m writing the script. I’m just not the one filming. But was it an avatar of yourself? Yeah, of course. Yeah, it was an avatar of myself. I trained it. I used 11 labs waving your hands wildly and it’s not? Well, they recommend that you don’t gesture at all, actually, when you’re training it. But it still doesn’t get the intonations correct, depending on what you’re talking about. That’s the problem.

41:45
Yeah. And then the voice was correct because it was using 11 labs and I just pieced everything together. And if it worked, I’d be able to just upload an entire transcript of like 50 videos and out would come the video right without me having to film it. Yeah. But I mean, I wonder, is that really a time saver? You’re spending all this time. I mean, I guess once it’s all trained. huge time saver. Yes. OK. Just the initial part is the investment. It takes out a whole step of the filming part, right?

42:15
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. What am I excited? I don’t know if I’m that excited for next year uh with the AI stuff. Like, no, I think what I’m excited actually is pumping out ad creatives really quickly. Yeah. I think it’ll help on the e-comm side. On the creator side, I’m just kind of conflicted, right? Like, I hate getting the AI stuff in my feed right now because maybe it’s because most of it’s bad. I don’t know. Or I can tell.

42:44
that it was written by AI. Even if it’s like a human narrating it actually, I can tell if it’s written by AI. That turns me off. So I’m just gonna go with my gut and focus on me actually creating the content at this point. Whereas for ads and creatives and like that, I’m gonna heavily use AI to automate everything. What about you? Yeah. I think I would really like to get more into vibe coding next year and just…

43:11
But I would say that’s like for fun. don’t necessarily think it’s I mean, I don’t think it’s a hobby, but I would like to um just get more. I don’t know, more familiar, gain more knowledge because I’ve seen what little I know can do. And I feel like I feel like and we’ve talked about this a lot. um It sort of levels the playing field between me and you. Oh, yeah, for sure. know, like and obviously I do not have your.

43:39
technology background, but I feel like the gap is getting narrower. And so in the more I the more time I spend, it’s kind of like I used to want one of my this is like a weird thing. One of my goals was to go back to college and take a course in Excel. Right. In Excel. Yes. And learn how to use Excel because I don’t like I don’t know how to build pivot tables. I don’t know how to use Excel. Right. Like I use Google Sheets, but basically same concept. Right.

44:07
And I was like, if I could learn how to use Excel like a pro, this would be like a game changer for me as far as like time management, right? Because I spend far too much time on chat GBT asking how to write a, create a formula, right? And how to do this. And over the past year, I’ve been building all of my spreadsheets in chat, right? And I’ve been having it show me every step, like so every single thing is like.

44:33
show me the formula, never create a spreadsheet that’s pre-populated, right, with the data, I want everything formulas. Which is tricky with Google Sheets, because chat likes to spill it out in Excel, um that’s how they like Actually, that’s all kind of built into Gemini now. Yes, it is, which is another reason why I want to get on that. now I find myself, like I was working yesterday in a Google Sheet, and I literally just knew the formulas, right? Because I’ve been, for a year, I’ve been doing this and training myself.

45:03
So to me, it’s like, feel like with the vibe coding, it will be the same outcome, right? The more time I spend and having, you know, it teach me, more, the easier it will be for me to just like create something without having to like have a cheat code for it. um So, and there’s just so many like little things that you can do that make your life easier. um So that’s kind of what I’m most excited about. am really like watching my son build all these like animations and stuff.

45:32
It’s been really cool to see his whole process. And so there is a part of me that finds that whole thing and watching. I also watch Dana Michelle do a lot of stuff between the two of them. I think that’s really fun. Unfortunately, I’m probably never going to be a video editor. Right. I’m just never going to do that. So to me, it’s like, do I do I spend time on this? Probably not, because that would be like a total hobby. That would be like, oh, I’m not going to doom scroll TikTok. I’m going to, you know.

46:01
mess with Sora too, mess with Nano Banana kind of thing. But I find that stuff fascinating. I had Sabrina Romanoff on the podcast. I don’t think it’s been published yet as of this recording, but we were talking about, because she has this video where she says, like, you can vibe code, like I vibe coded this Bloatato essentially. Yeah. And I was like, really? Like for something as complicated as Bloatato, you know, you have to actually know what’s going on.

46:27
behind the scenes and she was like, oh yeah, I just five coded the MVP. But once I started selling it, like I ripped out all that code and everything. I think for now, like even now, so I’m redoing our like financial accounting like with Bumblebee, right? Like I had to think about like all the database structures, how I was gonna organize all the data and everything. And ChachiBt, I was using ChachiBt to help, but I couldn’t have it just like,

46:57
code that entire thing for me, otherwise it would just be a disaster. I think for anything complex, you still need to kind of know what you’re doing. Anything that’s visual, like you just need a quick proof of concept and whatnot, I think that is entirely, because she gave a whole bunch of examples of vibe coded apps that were making money. Like for example, I think one kid uh made an entire database of

47:26
hair salons or something like that? I can’t remember. Something like that, right? That people started using and paying for. So apps like that, entirely vibe codable. The other thing I think too is that I feel like just based on even what Sabrina is saying, I think a lot of people will say that AI is making you dumber, right? Because it’s giving you all the answers. I’ve heard people say that. It’s just going to dumb down a whole generation of people. And that’s very possible, right?

47:55
um But to me, I feel like I’m learning so much. I was doing something similar to you with the financials. I was trying to evaluate um an order quantity, sell through rate. And so I was dumping all the data into ChatGPT to have it create a bunch of different scenarios. But I realized very quickly that if I was giving ChatGPT bad information or poor directions,

48:22
it was spitting out stuff I didn’t care about, right? And so for me, it made me think through the entire process of like, what are all the components that I need to think about when I’m doing this math equation, basically, to get to the answer that I need, right? So to me, it makes me stop and think a lot harder about things because also I hate waiting for chat to figure stuff out. if you give it a bad piece of information, then you’re waiting for like three minutes and then know, because it types a book. Yeah. Yes, yes. So it’s like my own, like, you know.

48:52
impatience is like helping me become better. Although I did see something and this could have been fake, but I saw it on on social media that like there’s now one of the one of the uh tools like you can watch TikToks or something on the side or Instagram on the side while you while it figures it out. I’m like, that’s deadly. I’ll never get off my computer if that’s the case. I know for me, like whenever I code now, like I have to worry less about actually writing the code.

49:22
than I do thinking about the structures and how everything’s gonna work. So I don’t think people are gonna get dumber unless you’re just kind of blindly using things. But it’s been good for me because I don’t have to worry about the syntax or anything. yeah. I mean, I think obviously it’s not going anywhere. think if you are, uh I think especially if you are in our world of online, you know.

49:49
this is definitely something that you need to be experimenting with. I think it will be revolutionary for your business, especially with time management and things like that. But even as just a regular user, I think you should start playing around with it because I don’t think it’s gonna go anywhere and so, as well accept it.

50:09
Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’re listening to this right now and anti-AI, just give it a try. If my 80 year old mom is using it, there is literally no excuse. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 618. And once again, tickets to 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.

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 have a student in my created profitable online store course on the show, Charles Cicallo. Now most people think retail arbitrage is a dead Amazon side hustle that barely pays for gas money, but Charles has quietly turned the same dead model into an eight figure machine and runs multiple of his own warehouses as well. But before we begin,

00:26
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 in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants. Also,

00:55
I hate large 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 high level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be, so if you want in,

01:24
Go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket.

01:33
Welcome to the My Wife, Quit or Job podcast. You guys are gonna love today’s show. Now, a while back, my friend Dave Bryant of eCom Crew made this video about secret ghost sellers on Amazon who are essentially resellers who are making millions of dollars flipping existing brands, but kind of laying low. And so in this episode, I am thrilled to have Charles Chokalo on the show.

01:59
He’s one of the students in my class. He has built an incredible business through retail and online arbitrage in addition to private label. And if you followed me for a while, you know that I am not the biggest fan of arbitrage as a long-term business model, but Charles is the exception. He is one of the most successful arbitragers that I know and his results speak for themselves. Now, not only that, but Charles is what I would call an intense learner.

02:29
And I mean, intense. He literally goes to every single conference, probably knows every last detail about Amazon is today he is going to share exactly how he’s done it, what is working right now and the strategies that have allowed him to thrive in a business model that most people honestly struggle to scale. with that, welcome Charles. How you doing today? Nice intro. Well, I do talk to you like every single week. Do I not? Right.

02:59
No, mean, and listen, I mean, it’s not only an honor to be here just because the platform, it’s an honor to be here because once I was just a listener listening to podcasts like this and Scott Vulkers and now I’m being featured on the podcast itself. So it truly is an emotional journey that got me to a place where, you know, I’m amazed myself that I got here. Well, you totally deserve it, man. And for the audience.

03:25
who does not talk to you every week, how did you get started selling on Amazon? And how did it balloon to what it is today? So actually, I got started, I’m 29 years old, I got started selling on Amazon 15 years ago as a freshman in high school. Good Lord. Yeah, I went into so I love technology always did. Went into Best Buy got things on sale, and then started reselling on eBay and Amazon. I resold throughout high school.

03:55
And, uh, I was about, was prepping to go to law school in, uh, in college. My brother did the same thing, but in fishing gear, tap me on the shoulder. goes, you want to try this thing for real? And during college, we, you know, put our entire life savings into it. And we worked since the age of 10. So life savings was, know, not, not your average college age life savings either. And, uh, I worked for a couple of years as a litigation paralegal on top of that. And I said to myself, you know what?

04:25
I cannot get these 22 to 25 years back the ages the years between 22 to 25. I can’t get those back if this whole business thing fails. Law school will still be there. It doesn’t need me. So let me uh let me try this with my brothers and see how it goes. uh Long story short, I never went to law school and thankfully it took off from there.

04:47
uh So this is a family business. How many brothers do you have? I’m actually being curious about this myself because I work with my wife. What’s it like working with your family? So I mean, so I’m two brothers. And the best part of it is I knew I knew them. I know them a lot longer than I know my wife. We have very different skill sets and we have, you know, a life of relationship to build off of instead of just

05:15
a marriage which starts, you know, at least two thirds into your life. Sure. There’s an added element of complexity when it comes to more and more of the family relations when you’re sitting down around the family dinner, uh be it for a weekend, Thanksgiving for a holiday. Do you talk about business because that’s what you do and what you see with each other all the time? Do you, you know,

05:40
take a chance of pissing off the wives and maybe my mom because they’re not into it and we keep business very separate from personal. um It’s a different element of complexity, but we’re all on the same page and that’s how it really gets kept together. We know that business is in business. Sometimes it bleeds over into a comment on the dinner table where we may look at each other funny and then just say, you know, abandon this topic. We’ll switch it up later.

06:08
That’s how it really works. then when it comes to, mean, it could get pretty, obviously, we don’t all agree on the same thing all the time. And we could get into that when I talk about the shows that I go to. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. I mean, I was just gonna say, know, uh ecommerce can be intimidating for people to start. Yeah. And in terms of retail arbitrage, especially, I would say 10 years ago is a great way to get started.

06:37
But it just seems like for the past decade or so, Amazon has made it much harder for retail arbitrage on the platform. the audience is interested in e-commerce. so I just want your opinion just to kind of start out with, is retail arbitrage something that you would start today? And if the answer is yes, like if you’re having trouble getting started, walk me through the process of how to get started. So I want your opinion first on whether you even do this. ah

07:07
If you have relationships, not necessarily directly with companies, but with at least distributors that distribute authentic products, not product that falls off a truck, I would say it’s worth trying and launching with. If you’re going into stores and will be providing receipts as your proof of purchase, do not. The reason why I say that is because

07:36
at the beginning of this year, really Amazon has been cracking down on valid UPC or GS one codes on product pages or ASINs and they’re, going through about 400,000 ASINs a day and running it against GS one’s database and suppressing those ASINs that don’t have a valid GS one UPC on there. Let me explain what that means. Let’s say you’re going for Colgate toothpaste and

08:05
10, 15, 20 years ago, somebody created a page on Amazon for Colgate toothpaste using the wrong UPC, which by the way, you could have, and you probably still can buy UPCs that are not accurately affiliated with the brand that you want to sell on eBay or something like that for like a penny uh UPC or something. That UPC and ASIN have 15 to 20 years of data. That means sales, means reviews, that means Q and A, that means

08:36
listing copy that ranks number one for Colgate toothpaste. today and this year, especially Amazon decided to wake up and say, wait, all of these are invalid UPCs. We want to give more control of the product listings and brand presence to the brands. And uh it’s been part of our policy, but we just never enforced it for all these years. So we’re going to, we’re going to start suppressing all of these UPCs in ASINs. What that led to now,

09:05
is a bunch of sellers sending in pallets and pallets of inventory, in some cases trailers of inventory and all skewed for a certain ASIN and that ASIN is suppressed and they’re stranded with that inventory by Amazon facing the dilemma of do I pay for a removal, a disposal or something else because that inventory has to get out of Amazon somehow and it will cost the seller. The reason why I say you may want to get started with a distributor at the very least

09:35
is because you may have an avenue to reactivate that UPC or ASIN if you’re going through a distributor or definitely the brand. But you have to have the right contact and you have to have the right know-how about Amazon and seller support. Let’s say you go shopping though and then you check the listing and the UPC and it is in fact registered to Colgate in your example. Would that be okay? If you’re going with a store receipt, I would think it’s okay. um

10:05
It’s okay for the purpose of your product won’t get stranded at FBA But it may not be okay as far as proving the authenticity of your product which you definitely will face I mean even private label sellers face that for their own branded goods, so um Your case is less strong with a store receipt, but it’s not actually incompatible with Amazon’s TOS stores receipts are Considered to be full proof of payment

10:33
I mean, I’m sure you go through this all the time because your product mix probably constantly changes, I would imagine, right? Depending on whatever clearance. yeah. It’s not just close outs. It’s not just close outs. Sometimes it’s running products. uh We do close outs from time to time if we have a good deal on it and the rank is proper and so on and so on. But um yeah, we have constant running goods and we also have close out goods depending on what comes our way. How often does Amazon ask you for these receipts?

11:04
Next week, next week or em at the time of this recording, I’m going out to Amazon Accelerate in about 10 days. I made an appointment at seller cafe with seller support about this topic on my account health dashboard. I have 183 issues to resolve. Oh my gosh. Okay. Right. And that’s over the past six months. Every single account health issue has a response by me, but

11:33
I have a VA employed full time putting together invoices, paper trails, bills of lading, showing the authenticity and the basically chain of custody of my goods. Amazon almost instantly replies by saying not enough information was provided, vague, vague, vague. We’re not giving you any direction as to what we need further. That’s where I usually leave it.

11:59
At least I, you know, I settle for at least a paper trail so that if it ever comes back to bite my account on a more larger scale, I can point back to say, Hey, you were the vague ones. And I provided a response on a timely matter. But when I’m going to Amazon accelerate, I’m going to sit down with them in person. would say, I hope this doesn’t come back to bite me that all of that to say my account health rating is a perfect 1000, which to the

12:26
So when they ask you for the paper trail though, you can still keep selling during that period? Yeah, totally. um Except for cases where they give you notice that your listings will, your listing or the ASIN will be suppressed in 30 days. Some UPC mismatch, they do that. Some authenticity complaints, they do that. They actually give you 30 days to either sell out um or 30, yeah, 30 days to either sell out on the GS1 mismatch or 30 days to sell it on an authenticity mismatch.

12:56
But sometimes they actually isolate your inventory and don’t let you recall it if it’s a certain infringement, either authenticity or trademark. My goodness. Okay. What about uh just getting ungated in categories? Do you generally avoid that or do you just go through the ungating process? And if you do, what is that ungating process? So before, before we even buy a product, we go ahead and try to list it and to see if we’re ungated. uh The ungating process is hell and a half, but

13:26
is largely like the rest of Amazon is algorithmic based on your history, age of account, sales volume, and also account health rating, all those things combined. There are newer sellers that wouldn’t get ungated for the silliest of brands, but it depends on the, again, overall value of the account and largely, you know, like a seller like mine that’s been seasoned in this for a while.

13:53
we get ungated for brands that don’t really have control or don’t really care about their Amazon presence very easily. For the ones that do care about their Amazon presence, we were able to go back and forth with the paperwork just depending on the return on investment because we evaluate the time that’s good. That goes into that application. Um, that’s not to say that it’s a walk in the park either. It’s we’ve been regated on about eight or nine brands.

14:20
that I actually plan on bringing up at my cellar cafe appointment. So it’s not all dandelions and roses. Okay, so this kind of sounds like a hassle from an administrative standpoint. Yeah. So if you are just going through the clearance aisles, like at Walmart, for example. Don’t. It’s not sounding attractive right now. Don’t. Don’t. Okay. that portion of retail arbitrage is pretty much dead. Yep. That type. Okay.

14:49
So let’s talk about the type that you do. And you know what’s funny is uh we were just in office hours and there was a student like, hey Charles, can you just tell me who your distributors are? And that’s the secret sauce behind all this, right? uh If you were brand new doing this, and I know you have your relationships already, how do you even look? Do you just kind of Google distributors and just cold email them or what do you do? There’s a ton of shows. mean, distributors are always looking to, well, they’re basically all

15:19
structured the same way. The distributors have a direct relationship with the brand. You deal with a salesman who gets a commission that of whatever they sell to you, you ask those salesmen for their catalog and you go ahead, compare it to you download, keep you install it as a Chrome extension. You see the sales rank, you see the self, the self rate. So know exactly how much to order. And as far as locating those distributors,

15:47
There’s a bunch of retail shows to go to wholesale shows to go to. mean, ASD is one of them that happens biannually in Vegas. want to say, um, a lot of them, the second you say online will tell you to go scram, but, um, they’re there, they’re there. And, and with enough persistence, with that persistence, you’ll find them and one leads to another. And when you say that, and when you grow to a level where you could say, Hey, I can give you X amount of volume of, Hey, I could commit to.

16:17
X amount of dollars of POS per month per year that salesman’s heads gonna light up and say, oh my God, you know how much commission that is per month per year? And they may rethink their strategy. So tell me this, do you need a physical location to get approved for a lot of these guys? If you want to lie to the distributors and say that you’re an actual store instead of an online seller, yes. Okay, because this is sounding kind of like wholesale selling now where a lot of the guys today require a physical presence because they don’t want just like a bunch of Amazon sellers on.

16:47
Yeah. Yeah. And, and if you, mean, if you ask me, like I engage a lot on LinkedIn, that’s, that’s where I put a lot of my content. That was like, I sort of believe like a Nathan Barry approach of like growing in public. there was a recent post by Scott Needham, the founder of smart scout, because Lego and Hasbro just completely relinquished control of their brand on Amazon. And I engaged with them and I said, why, why is that a bad thing?

17:16
Hasbro and Lego are making the sales, as long as the sellers are selling authentic goods, they’re not relinquishing any control that they can’t reclaim any day. In fact, they’re making more sales and outsourcing the maintenance of their brand on Amazon to the resellers. So yeah, I mean, if you want to insist on an in-store or physical presence, that’s fine. But as a brand, if you don’t have the bandwidth, patience or capacity to deal with Amazon,

17:45
That’s one requirement that I’m seeing more broadly, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing for brands at all. So you go up to a distributor and you want to have some of the products. I would imagine like a whole bunch of other people are doing the same thing, right? I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in e-commerce that you should all check out.

18:15
It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show. Yeah.

18:40
Yeah, they’re all doing the same thing, but it’s up to you to be persistent and say, even though I’m online, I could still make you bank. Right. So let’s say that happens, but on their end, they probably have a bunch of Charles Chakalos, right? Right. Like selling stuff for them, right? So that means if they’re listening on Amazon, you’re listening on Amazon. Uh, there’s this like fight for the buy box, right? Yeah. Yep. And how do you deal with that?

19:05
So there’s the only way you can actually engage in retail arbitrage or wholesale or whatever you want to call it. It’s all the same to me is you have to have a repricer and it cannot be the Amazon repricer. It ultimately comes down to a game of margins. Who will operate at the slimmer margins? A philosophy is there will always be somebody willing to work for less than you. So, you know, a major unlock to, to

19:33
maximizing your margins in this space is owning your own logistics. No way will you make it in this if you think you can outsource all this to a 3PL that will unbox things for you, unpalatize things for you, label things on different FN SKUs, put it back on a pallet, ship it into Amazon FBA because the only way you’ll box out the other sellers on the listing is by offering it on FBA, which is a default requirement. Owning your own logistics is a big unlock as far as maximizing your margins.

20:02
and then you put your products into a repricer with a certain floor and a certain ceiling and you let it do the work. You are supposed to be doing the research before you buy products, so all of it is pretty much predictable, but it’s a game of margins. I mean, in general, the lowest price gets the buy box, right? In general, in general, there’s a little bit of lift that happens once you’re FBA and once you’re a seasoned seller and once you’re distributed adequately across the country so that you’re actually in the buy box across as many zip codes as possible.

20:31
And that goes into a different formula of how to ship into Amazon, how to ship in different warehouses. Is it a minimal split? it, is it a single inbound location? you playing, are you paying placement fees? Which is a totally separate conversation we didn’t touch on. All right. So walk me through, I’ve never used a repricer before. Walk me through how it works. mean, you got a whole bunch of people selling the same stuff. Sure.

20:56
And if they’re from the same distributor, I guess it’s just all about like the backend negotiations, what pricing you’re getting and whatnot, right? Yep. Well, all about the backend negotiations and then the prep. The prep is also a cost that you can, you can eat into as far as maximizing your margin. Okay. So how do you set the repricer? Do you just say, Hey, I want the lowest price not to be below? There are a few settings and I mean, there are a few repricing softwares out there and I recommend we can get into that later.

21:26
The repricer I use has a few features on aggressiveness. It’s sort of on a sliding scale of dominate the buy box, which means I don’t drive that price lower. I want to be in that buy box no matter what. And you can drive that price all the way to my floor price. You have a floor price, you have a ceiling price, and you have a different setting on aggressiveness for, say, maintain the buy box. You have seller specific rules that you can put in by saying

21:55
Hey, seller X always goes five cents below me. So just wait till seller X sells out and then compete for the price and try to drive the price back up. And, um, the repricers external to Amazon actually get refreshed every 15 minutes. So every 15 minutes, if anybody tells you it’s shorter, they’re lying. So every 15 minutes, the repricers pull a data feed from Amazon, see what the other sellers are priced at.

22:24
and then does their calculations, readjusts your price that way. That’s really the long and short of it. I could go further into detail if you have any particular. Well, okay, this is what I’m getting at. Yeah. Like you’re probably not the only one using that same repricer. I know I’m not. So you’re competing against other people using the same repricer. And let’s say it’s always get the buy box no matter what, then it always leads to the floor price, right? Yeah, but I mean, the other sellers do have a vested interest in not driving the price lower because then they make less money.

22:54
on the sale. They may dominate the buy box for a little more, but there’s still that interest there and that keeps prices pretty not a race to the bottom by default. There’s a common understanding that if they do that and if a seller does that and all the resellers know each other, we know the ones that do that, then we would simply implement that rule of, all right, wait till this guy sells out and then my stock is already checked in. Once he sells out, I’m just going to take the ride.

23:23
And then why would you put a ceiling price? You don’t want the buy box to be suppressed because if the price goes too high, the buy box will be taken away. Right. OK. Any tips for people using repricers? I’m sure this sounds complicated, actually. What’s your rules? Like, what are your if you were to set up your rules and just like a couple of sentences, what? em Don’t set your ceiling price to be more than 20 percent of the average buy box and.

23:50
Make sure you calculate your margins because you could be bleeding yourself dry if you don’t calculate prep, you don’t calculate freight into Amazon and you don’t calculate freight to your facility. All of that are actual costs and if you’re using a repricer that’s especially reporting on your profitability and performance, you better be factoring those in because there are sellers that don’t factor those in and uh I’ve literally seen them going. I know the names and I know the numbers. We get it from the same spot.

24:19
And I’ve seen them go under because all of those were just overlooked and not factored in. So you said a couple of interesting things earlier about owning your own warehouse. And I’ve seen your warehouse and you had this cool forklift that I’m really jealous of. I know most people don’t want a warehouse and everyone preaches three PLs, three PLs. I’ve actually talked to a couple of three PLs because my students always ask me for recommendations. And I’m like, because I run my own warehouse, I’m thinking to myself, this is really expensive.

24:49
Right? mean, for a for larger goods, I should say, if you’re just selling jewelry or whatnot, I think it makes complete sense. walk me through actually just tell me like what your savings are. And I’ve seen your where it’s much bigger than mine. A lot to deal with. Yeah, I mean, we have we have a couple we have two locations, one in Brooklyn, one in Westchester, New York. The it’s it’s

25:17
Okay, so before we went into it, we priced out a three PL and I think I was paying maybe like 30 cents a unit. And then I also had to pay from the unload of the trailer to the reload onto a pallet. And then they actually had to touch the goods per unit. Our unit cost is about 30 or 40 cents when we do it ourselves. And I’m talking just labor, not the cost of maintenance, electricity, taxes, utilities. Um,

25:46
But that’s a lot less of the calculation that I put into it. The more of the calculation I put into it is I can go downstairs and touch my goods. I don’t have to wait at the mercy of some 3PL that may not answer my calls one day, that may undergo a flood and not tell me that my goods are damaged. especially, I just spent the past 25 minutes telling you how lucrative the resale business was and you know,

26:13
Colgate toothpaste could have three different pages, that means three different FN SKUs. Not every 3PL can handle that level of nuance. So if one page gets shut down, I don’t have to go ahead and coordinate with a 3PL and explain to them how each sticker has to be redone and so on and so forth. I could just do it myself. We run the staff. Yes, I have to deal with HR. Yes, I have to deal with handling. I have to deal with three sets of parents dying when it’s nice weather outside.

26:42
All of those are number one skills. Number two, exposure to real America. And number three, I’m building an American workforce that I can take into any capacity as a business owner. I think that’s priceless. Not to mention the, if the facilities like ours that we, that we bought are also viewed as investment real estate. Sure. um All of that, all of the, both of those facilities were improved and those facilities

27:12
are actually located in areas where I know it’s industrial and it’s gonna only become more industrial. That’s the nuance of it. And then of course, top it all off. It goes back to the margins that I said earlier. All that works into our margins and is our basically competitive edge. I mean, these warehouses were relatively recent, right? Yeah, one of them was in 2020. Okay. There’s a funny story behind that.

27:39
And the most recent one was actually in November of 24. So almost coming up on a year now. So before the 2021, were you just using FBA? AWD didn’t exist back then. No, it didn’t. You know what we were doing? So we started this business in 2016 and coming up on 10 years now. Next year will be 10. And we were working out of the second floor of the storefront.

28:06
And we couldn’t palletize things. couldn’t, well, we, the way we palletize things was we, we basically, we had a conveyor belt from the second floor to the first built 26 pallets. Cause that’s a full trailer on the sidewalk and then loaded and then hoped. then, oh no, and then we loaded that onto a 26 foot truck rental that had a lift gate back to that 26 foot truck into a 53 foot trailer. We hoped Amazon sent us that day.

28:35
And then, uh, and then shipped it off to Amazon. Now I hope, I hope that was clear enough. Any clarification because it gets better. Uh, I think, I think it’s probably enough for the audience. it necessary to understand more? Okay. necessary to understand more. Okay. Long story short, I had 26 pallets sitting on the sidewalk one day. Amazon’s trailer did not show up and it just, and it was the end of the workday. We sent all the employees home.

29:04
My brother and I, we said, what are we going to do? We have all this merchandise and we can’t put the pallets back inside and close the door and go home for the night. We both, uh, I took a chair. He took a chair. We took, we stood on, we sat on both ends of the, uh, of the pallets on the sidewalk and you know, was a pretty ghetto area. So it wasn’t even exactly safe either. And, uh, we just said, we’re just going to sit here and hope for the best. And if Amazon sends us the trailer, they might, it started to rain.

29:33
At 2 30 in the morning, Amazon’s trailer decided to show up. Him and I did what our entire staff should have been doing and loading that trailer. And then we both looked at each other and we said, you know what? We need a spot where we could put stuff back inside and close the door. So that was the 2020 location. that’s and then that was able to fit pallets as recently as last week. Last week, our Brooklyn location is able to actually fit a trailer.

30:02
so that Amazon can drop off a trailer. We load it, a tractor comes and picks it up whenever it’s ready. So we graduated to, we could put the pallets back inside, close the door. So we could put a trailer back inside and close the door. So that was really cool. Okay. Your operation is much, your warehouse is much bigger than mine by far. Hey, no, no, This is, and this is an evolution and this is, um, I’m very hands on. I mean, I’m, I’m nothing like the conventional Amazon seller or, or what

30:29
Most people are at these, you know, DTC conferences where they sold multiple brands, they never touched their goods and stuff like that. I am really hands on to the point where I was at a conference less two weeks ago and people mocked me for driving that forklift saying you, the owner operate the forklift. Listen, the truth is I have somebody else who could do it, but it’s not as fun. know, I don’t like people that do that actually, because they this is just my experience.

30:58
They’re all like high level guys where if you just start asking them detailed questions, like low level questions, they don’t know what’s going on. em Yeah. So I totally, this is one of the things I appreciate about you Charles. Like you get your hands dirty. Actually, I appreciate it about anyone who gets their hands dirty with stuff, you know, instead of just kind of out trying to outsource everything kind of unknown. mean, like think of it just outside of, outside of e-commerce and Amazon DTC stuff. You’re a business owner at the end of the day.

31:27
I mean, that’s my engagement with having employees. It’s hearing what they have to say, hearing their perspective on things, hearing what life is like. mean, how isolated can we get? mean, us, us too know, and I’m sure most listeners know, how lonely it could be running the business in our field. I mean, some level of interaction is also good for the soul, I mean, in today’s day and age.

31:55
So with the AWD, I know they’ve had their share of fair disasters. Like, uh, so you, did you even consider AWD? No, I actually, left when they launched. Okay. I, uh, I thought to myself, wow, they’re really, because it was either simultaneous or near simultaneous with their product placement fee restructuring. And, uh, I saw, I saw it what it was. It was a strong arming into Amazon to own more of the supply chain than they already do. Yep.

32:24
For now, mean, people know that they’re trying to be the Alibaba of India. They want to own that part of the supply chain. They want the AWD to be the part of the supply chain and FBA so that they have basically all the data they need and they could do whatever they want with that data. However, that makes you feel. uh looked at AWD as a, just sort of a relief valve for the placement fee restructuring, but it didn’t end up being that complicated for us to just learn and manipulate our advantage.

32:54
that’s and actually when AWD was launching, it was before we bought the second warehouse and the second warehouse was purely a move to scale. uh I’m actually gonna be giving a presentation on that uh in a few weeks on how to scale through investing in yourself and your own operations. yeah. Cool. ah Okay, so let’s go back to the original premise of the episode like

33:23
If you were someone new, wanting to get into selling online, would you go the online arbitrage route? Let’s say you have 10 grand. Sure. Or 15 grand. Would you jump straight to private label? Cause I know you have a couple of private label products yourself. Yeah. Um, it’s, it’s amusing actually. So we, like, like I, like I said before, we, we specifically invested in scaling our resale operation this year and it has scaled big, but.

33:53
The same thing is with private label. has to and sort of unintentionally again through owning our logistics. uh There were a few other things that we did as far as refining our PPC, leaning a little more into the whole branding aspect of it. uh The A plus content, our storytelling ability and so on. But the 10 grand I would say is much better spent learning the private label route.

34:21
not investing in the resale route. Like I began with, the only adjustment I would make to that response is if you have those relationships to begin with. If you do, go ahead, by all means, God bless you. em But it won’t be easy. It won’t be easy. And there’s a lot less of a support system out there because most of the Amazon and DTC orthodoxy is based around private label, is based around branding. uh

34:50
there’s a lot less people and the market is thinning. There’s a less people in it. The market is thinning and um more sophisticated resellers are really the ones that are going to make it. And eventually I think they’ll be cut out, but there’ll always be a market to resell stuff. Yeah. Just on Amazon, it’s harder. I know it still happens on eBay and whatnot all the time. Yeah. Yeah. But eBay is story of its own. has nothing of the volume Amazon does. Correct. Correct.

35:19
Charles, let’s switch gears a little bit. I want to talk about Charles the seller. So you’ve been making quite a name for yourself uh in the Amazon space and you mentioned you’re speaking uh pretty soon. Did you say at Prosper or? No, so actually I’m giving so it’s funny on that on the whole warehousing topic. I’m doing a debate with Rob Hahn from Pattern. It’s up there. They’ve done over a billion on Amazon and they’re going public soon. uh They’re their own warehouse. uh

35:48
3PL operation and the big resolve is should every seller have some logistical capacity of their own? I obviously say yes, of course, they should have some operating capacity on their own where an emergency happens, they need to house their goods for some period of time, they should have that option. They shouldn’t be bound to a 3PL like handcuffs. um I’m doing that. There’s just so many horrors since we’re on this topic. There’s just so many horror stories from.

36:16
several of my friends where three PLs are always great until they fill up or if there’s some catastrophe over the holidays. I’ve had several friends these aren’t isolated incidents instances where they’ve had to rent a U-Haul fly like fly somewhere renting driving that far and then hunt go through the warehouse and hunt and peck for their stuff among these boxes among other companies doing the same thing. I mean,

36:41
I have a 3PL that if people ask me, I automatically refer them to because they’ve been great with everybody I know. Of course, I don’t use him, but I know him and I know people who do use him. And that leads into what I’m doing. I the beginning of this year, I thought to myself, listen, Charles, you’ve been in this space for 15 years in this specific business for nine. And I know a fair share of what’s going on in the world of Amazon, at the very least, e-commerce at the most. I mean, I attend 20 to 30 shows a year.

37:11
I have, thankfully I have partners who let me do that. And um one of them is merchandise heavy and other one is logistical heavy. And if I need to go out to a show, oh they hold down the fort while I do that. I build up those personal connections. I’m very, very, very up to date on the trends and I intend to be. If this episode didn’t prove it enough, I love being social.

37:36
I love learning how different people operate things. love learning about different people outside of business. And I said, let me just at least put it out there. I’m just a seller. Everybody else and their mother have a newsletter that try to get you on some sort of discovery call to retain you to some agency. I said to myself, but there’s no seller out there just saying what it’s like to grind your teeth and go through it. So I decided to put together that just a seller newsletter and um

38:05
So that’s justacellarnewsletter.com. Yep. That’s where you opt into it. Justacellarnewsletter.com. And I put out what it’s like to grow just as a seller. mean, in there you get, you’re automatically opted into my value welcome sequence with who I use for logistics, how I get certain truck loads out, how I run my operation, who I use for payroll. That’s cloud-based and not clunky old retail stuff. um

38:32
And I update you on what I think is going on in the industry. And the number one thing that I learned I have to do is deliver value. That’s the number one thing that keeps people coming back. That’s the number one thing that keeps people opening your emails, keeps people respecting you and you’re not devaluing their time. So that’s my North Star when it comes to that newsletter. And is it regular? No.

38:56
I mean, frankly, I say that in my welcome sequence. I run a business. not there to land you on some sort of discovery call. there to update you on certain things that are going on in the industry. But what is guaranteed is I’m not going to be selling you on anything. Something that I’ve been thinking about is maybe offering coaching, but that’s really it. mean, that’s something that crossed my mind. It does seem pretty regular. mean, yeah.

39:23
I make sure not to be completely absent in people’s inboxes. I don’t want that to happen. Yeah, and it takes a fair amount of discipline. it’s funny, Euderian can never do it for the life of you. How many times has he he’d taken it seriously? Yeah. Well, okay, so you’re providing a lot of value with your newsletter. With your arbitrage business, what do you think is going to happen? Because the value that you’re providing right now is

39:50
I guess packaging and you’re very efficient, would imagine, on the margins, which is why it works. Yeah. Right? But I guess what I’m trying to get at is, do you lose vendors on a regular basis and have to acquire new ones? No. No. Okay. No. I lose listings on regular basis and have to acquire new ones. Like I was telling you, the GS1 suppressions that are happening. mean, Amazon combing 400,000 Asins a day.

40:21
I was talking to a reseller yesterday on a mastermind I have with other resellers. They know sellers that lost up to 300 SKUs in one night. One night. woke up and the ASIN was suppressed. They could basically kiss a goodbye. I haven’t been that unfortunate, but that’s really the scary part.

40:44
Yeah, okay. So I guess my opinion of arbitrage hasn’t really changed much then. No, it’s really specialized, Steve. It’s really specialized. And what you do can be, it’s also considered wholesale, right? I mean, you have wholesale products also. Is that a different thing? Some people differentiate, they say retail arbitrage is going into the store and selling it online. Resale is just in general selling other brands and wholesale means

41:11
getting things on a case or pallet basis directly from the brand. I don’t distinguish between the three. I think it’s all the same stuff. I use it interchangeably. It seems like the wholesaling based on your definition seems a little bit more stable since you are essentially a distributor for a brand. And then what Amazon views as the Holy Grail is a letter of authorization directly from the brand. And if you’re

41:39
engaging directly with a brand and you’re able to secure something like that, that will be your sort golden ticket. But even Amazon doesn’t always honor that surprise, surprise. ah If you have a brand contract or some sort of licensing agreement, it’s a little better. If they’re able to authorize you on their brand registry, good luck finding a brand that knows how to do that. Yeah, I mean, very specialized, very lucrative. And once you have those relationships, they could be really, really fragile.

42:09
The relationships can? The relationships can, especially if you say, hey, I need you to delegate certain permissions to me on your brand, on your brand registry. Right. People get skeptical and then the brand may wake up one day and say, hey, I can just get another reseller and why do need you? Well, you got a track record and you know what you’re doing. guess that’s yeah. Yeah. The brands, the brands don’t really, and then you have brands that wake up one day. uh

42:38
happened to me, oh my God, I didn’t even, I actually told this to you at seller summit one year. I was using a brand to manufacture certain goods and they manufactured my goods up to 90 % of my catalog, my private label catalog decided to cut me off the next day. Not only were we acting as a reseller for that brand, we actually use them to manufacture our own goods. They said, huh, you’re having all the success? Cut off, we’re gonna do it ourselves.

43:09
That brand is now in multiple lawsuits and struggling to stay above float. Yeah. I, uh, I sort of relish and, uh, I’m waiting for them to come back. What percentage of your business is reseller versus wholesale versus just like liquidation arbitrage? So big picture, it actually fluctuates from 60 40 private label to resale to 50 50.

43:38
And if I were to break down the resale into wholesale retail arbitrage, it’s about 75 % resale and then 25 % retail arbitrage. Okay. That’s good to know. Dude, Charles, I feel like I’ve known you for a long time now. You know what it is? One, it’s on my bucket list one day. I need you to go back into like your Clavio or whatever it was and see how I engage with you at the beginning. I’m sure it was like 2020, 2021.

44:07
You know, our relationship goes back to 2018, 19, whenever Scott Volcker did brand accelerate alive. I saw you and Tony do a presentation. did it on, uh, of course your Bumblebee, of course Bumblebee. Yeah. Like how you sold the same thing on two different listings. One men. yeah. Same item. Yeah. And, I remember that. And then I remember once I bought your course, I was like, all right, this guy seems pretty cool.

44:37
I like to think I turned to something more than a teacher student relationship, maybe more of a friendship. Oh yeah, for sure. Because like you show up to everything, right? Yeah, I intend to. I call myself a serial learner. And again, it’s my partners that let me do that. You know, they tell me, don’t forget us when you’re rich and famous and you know, we let you do this. like, yeah, you did. Yeah, you did. And you know, I aim to return whatever I gained back to the business.

45:06
you know, be it my network or a sort of connection that can help out the business in some way. And you’re actually one of the few people also who I, you know, I see you at Seller Summit too, we hang out, right? So of course, like it can’t help. Yeah, it’s been good Charles. I’m glad that I’ve met you over the years. And honestly, you know more about like the little intricacies of Amazon because you’re in the day to day, your hands get dirty. Well yeah, it extends beyond that. I mean,

45:35
And I know plenty about, let’s say, the e-commerce side of things. I’m talking D2C, I’m talking Shopify, I’m talking uh DKIM, SPF. Amazon sellers generally don’t know that kind of stuff. Of course, because they don’t need to deal with it. They don’t need to deal with it. Right. And if you ask me, mean, yeah, it’s not directly in your field, but you should definitely be familiar with that. And it’s something that I make sure to stay up to date on as well. So yeah, I definitely know the intricacies of Amazon, but…

46:03
knowing how e-commerce in general works and what other people are using and other marketing tactics and other AI tactics, they’re not directly related to Amazon. Just broaden your horizons and may enable some creativity that other Amazon sellers in their Amazon bubble won’t be exposed to. So I try to stay within the Amazon field, but branch a little further and look at it from different angles as well. And Charles does share all this information. Did you want to just give your…

46:32
your newsletter URL one more time Charles? Sure, Justicellarnewsletter.com. ah It’s my pleasure to give any presentation, any value add that people would ask of me, be it resale, retail arbitrage, private label, even putting together a Shopify site, anything like that. I’m more than happy to give some time and value add. Well Charles, thanks a lot for coming on the show man. It’s been a long time coming. It is is an honor. It is a pleasure. uh to the listeners out there, it’s possible. It’s possible.

47:03
Hope you enjoyed this episode. It’s been a while since I’ve heard about anyone making money with retail arbitrage, but clearly there are people out there making it work. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 616. And once again, tickets for 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 over to sellersummit.com.

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 everything we’ve learned about running Black Friday sales that actually make money instead of killing your margins. We break down the exact strategies we’re using this year in our own e-commerce stores to build hype without discounting the brand. 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.

00:30
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 and no consultants. Also, I hate large events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people,

00:56
so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We’ve sold out every single year for the past nine years and I expect this year to be no different. It’s happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and if you’re doing over 250K or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for high level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest ever gonna be, so if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket.

01:28
Welcome back to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast. Can’t believe it’s the end of the year and Black Friday, Cyber Monday is right around the corner. Yeah. So we’re going to talk about what we’re doing about it, I guess. Yeah. So what’s interesting is we’re in mid-November right now and I have already seen stores pushing it. Have you? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Actually, there’s place. early this year. Like beginning of November. Yeah. Early. Yeah. Yeah. I think Black Friday is no longer a thing.

01:58
to be honest with you. Back in the day, I used to wake up early, go to my favorite store at like 5 a.m. and then rush through and try to grab as many things as I could. Right, so when you and I were probably like teenagers, early 20s, like that was the thing, right? You got up at four in the morning, you went to the mall or the Best Buy Plaza, whatever it was, Circuit City, Circuit City back then.

02:22
Right. You waited in line because they had the big screen TV. I remember one year like we were trying to get a router. Right. Because it was like the 90s. Like, you know, because it was like they were that stuff was expensive. But on Black Friday, you could get it for like 19 dollars or whatever. And then do you remember the progression of when stores started opening on Thanksgiving night?

02:47
Yes. So like I think Kohl’s was one of the Walmart and Kohl’s like started opening at like 4 p.m. on Thanksgiving and people threw a fit, right? Because it was just like you didn’t care about people’s families and the alternate argument was there’s a lot of people who don’t live by their family. So they were very happy to come in and work and have something to do, right? As opposed to being forced to take a day off. So that felt like a creep. But now I feel like I mean, you said I feel like

03:16
I walked into Sam’s Club November 1st and it was like all Christmas, right? Like just nothing but Christmas decorations. I’m just trying to think like the last, as long as I can remember now, you can walk into a store on Black Friday and it’s not that bad, period. No. And I think part of the reason for that is like Amazon has introduced prime days like multiple times. Everyone’s just kind of desensitized the whole thing now.

03:40
So let’s just back up a little bit about these prime days because I noticed this year for the prime days that happened I think in October, ah Target had their Target days, Walmart had Walmart days. So it looked like all of the major retailers were competing against Amazon this year, which I feel like that’s also crept in, right? Like think last year Walmart went head to head. I don’t know if Target did as much, ah but this year it felt like all of the big retailers were going

04:09
head to head on Prime Day, which happens in October. And to me, I don’t know. I’m also, I’m the person that shops on December 23rd and 24th, unfortunately, but I can’t imagine like Christmas shopping in the middle of October. Yeah, I mean, I hate shopping to begin with. Yeah, me too. But yeah, I mean, it used to be fun for me when there were actual deals, but. Yes. Well, we can talk about, we’re going to talk about it from an e-commerce perspective, I guess. Yeah.

04:37
But overall, the holidays for as long as I can remember, and this has been happening for like the last decade, it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. Yeah, I feel. Yeah. So I feel like you and I are in an interesting spot because um Bumblebee and then one of the clients I have.

04:56
We don’t really sell giftable. Yours is a little more giftable. Mine are totally giftable now, actually. We started a whole Christmas Well, because you did your whole Christmas line. But before that, Black Friday for us has never been a huge… It’s always nice. It’s a bump, right? But it’s never been this massive driver of sales because people don’t give other people curriculum.

05:17
You know, as again. Well, no, Asian cultures, you do get Yes, yes, math. We need to come out with a calculus for Asians. Merry Christmas, SAT. SAT prep. College essay 101. But before you had the Christmas line, you were in a similar boat where it wasn’t like people were flocking to Bumblebee at Christmas time. But you actually I think you did something smart where you created something to sort of I don’t want to say drive false

05:46
you shopping. like you gave people a reason to come to the store over the holidays when typically maybe that’s not where they would shop. Yeah, I mean, thanks to Hallmark, there’s a million holidays and we them all covered now because we do print. Yeah. Which is I mean, that’s a pretty big change for you guys. It’s actually not because I mean, with the printer, you can print anything, right? Well, yeah, but like it’s a pretty big change in what you offer. Right. Oh, the offerings. Yes. Yes. Our skew count blew up.

06:15
Yes. As a result of that. But not from an inventory perspective though. Right. is nice. Yeah. So how long has it been? I can’t remember when you did that two or three years ago. So do you see a much a different Black Friday now that you have these giftable Christmas items? OK, so I think Thanksgiving has always been our biggest thing, not the actual Black Friday. Yeah. Because everyone comes to us and they buy like napkins and towels and everything. Yes. So our

06:43
Black Friday actually happens leading up to Thanksgiving. Yeah. Which I think is something to think about depending on what your brand sells is that your Black Friday might not be the day after Thanksgiving, right? It might be leading up to or around, know, so I think first of all, you got to get out of that whole like Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving because honestly, no one cares about that anymore. People are Black Friday sales have already started.

07:07
Yeah, and I think the idea was you don’t want to be like one of the inbox emails on Black Friday. So everyone just started staggering everything to the point now where it’s not really Black Friday. Now in July, we’re getting the Black Friday email. But the other thing about Bumblebee, which I’ve always been very impressed with, is that you guys do not discount steeply. We don’t. And I think we’ve done the math or at least I’ve done the math. I don’t know if I’ve done on the podcast yet.

07:36
But whenever you discount, how much you lose is dramatically more than you think that you’re missing out on. And in general, if you’re gonna do a 15 or a 20 % discount, you better make sure that you can actually double your sales as a result of that discount just to break even. We’re not gonna do public math on the pot. Okay, we’re not doing the math, okay. No, we can, we can if you want, but.

08:01
Well, the other thing that I think is interesting and I was just having a conversation with our ads person about this is that ads are more expensive over Black Friday. It’s because there’s a lot more competition. so if you think about this, if you think about how you acquire your customer and maybe let’s just say you get 60 % of your customers from ads, which would probably be pretty normal for a lot of e-commerce brands. So you’re paying to get the customer, right? You’re paying for the ad.

08:28
you have a discount, so let’s say you’re discounting at 25%, so you’re losing money on the sale, you’re paying to get that person, like the actual cost of that is pretty significant, where you might think like, oh, look at us, we’re up 50K over this Black Friday period, but then when you look at your ad spend and the discount amount, you could be actually down when it comes to just pure profit. I mean, here’s what I’ve just come to know from just going to

08:58
various e-commerce conferences and talking to people who just run Facebook ads for a living. A good return on ad spend is like 2X for old customers, right? One and half to 2X. Well, if you tack on a 25 % discount, those type of funnel ads probably are not gonna be profitable. So you gotta make it up on the backend. Actually, even at like a 2X return on ad spend, chances are you’re probably breaking even, right? And so already, you need to make up for it on the backend.

09:27
Depending on how much your product is obviously. The other thing that I’ve noticed, and this is just from my own personal experience looking at, from when I had an e-commerce store and then from other people that I’ve worked with, is that a lot of times those customers that you do acquire on Black Friday through the ads are not sticky because they’re either buying a gift for somebody, they’re buying because they saw the ad and it’s a promotion, but they’re not like your standard customer. So you can’t also afford to spend extra money.

09:56
to get them because the chances of them coming back and making another purchase are probably lower than someone who finds you throughout the year. And I know your store, you obviously, not everyone gets married multiple times. So you have some general issues with, and a lot of people do, right? They sell one-time products. I think about Mike who used to sell treadmills. I’m sure people aren’t buying two treadmills, right? You’re buying one treadmill.

10:22
more places to hang their clothes. Yes, yes. They need more closet space. get to. But there are there are products that like you probably don’t buy again. But for companies that do have like repeat customers, I feel like those Black Friday customers that are acquired through ads actually aren’t the best people to come back and buy again. It’s really hard to you have to work to nurture those people to get them back. We see that a lot because people are buying stuff as gifts.

10:51
And so, you know, if they buy a true giftable to give to someone else, chances are they’re not going to come back and buy homeschool curriculum. They probably don’t even homeschool, you know. So what do you guys do? Do you turn off ads over the holidays? We don’t, because I think the owner would murder us. But uh no, I mean, I’m sorry. Not not turn off. But do you dial down like the top of funnel stuff? We’re dialing down this year for the first time because of some really. Yeah. Traditionally, we just up the retargeting and we kind of dial down the uh

11:20
Yeah, the cold, the cold ads. And then it’s just all email and SMS for us. Same for you guys in general. ah I’m not sure exactly the percentage versus like cold to retargeting, but I know this year we’re trying to do a better job with that. However, we just launched a whole set of games and we launched them last month and they actually did really, really. In fact, we sold out of a game, which.

11:46
I don’t think we’ve ever really sold out of a product during a launch. That’s pretty crazy. What type of game is this? You will not be able to relate to this at all. It’s actually a really cool product. I don’t know who on the team came up with this, I think there are, e-commerce, you get these products where you’re like, this is a winner. This is gonna crush. And so this was one of these. And the creatives on this were fantastic. So it’s a magnetic bookshelf. So it’s a…

12:15
picture of a bookshelf that’s magnet so it can stick anywhere. And then it has each book of the Bible and they’re color coded by like where they would come in the Bible, like as far as like the Bible has different labels for the books. I know you don’t know any of this. And so kids can basically, well, I would say most people probably don’t know this. It’s not you. So basically, know, like Old Testament, New Testament, but then within the Old Testament, there are different like categories. And so kids can basically put the books of the Bible in order on this bookshelf.

12:44
And it helps them learn basically the books of the Bible, the order, you know, kind of gives like an overview, but it’s really fun. Right. And all of our creatives, they did stop motion photography for these. So it basically shows the little books like climbing into the bookshelf. so it’s like the creatives were like, it’s like one of those things where the product is great. The creatives hit the copies good and it doesn’t exist. Right. Like this product is not out in the market. Right. So people went.

13:12
Like the first day I saw the numbers and I was like, we are running out of this. Like we are, and I was like, if we can keep this until the end of the launch sale, it’ll be a miracle. um So we kept it to the end of the launch sale, but we’re out, we’re basically out right now, which means we don’t have it for Black Friday, which stinks. Cause I feel like this could have carried like the whole company. um And then after the game sale ended, we actually increased the price from the retail price, like to see.

13:41
So it was regularly $20, it launched at 14, we put it to 25, sales didn’t really decrease. So I was like, oh, maybe we can keep this at 25 when it comes back in stock. Because it’s a little more expensive to make. Magnets aren’t cheap to make, I don’t know if you know this, but they’re a little bit more expensive than just the standard paper type stuff. But yeah, so.

14:06
But we have some other pretty fun games that we’ve released in the past year. And so I think that that will actually help get people to the site because the games are interesting and fun and the creatives this year and the photography uh really make it look, I don’t wanna say better than they are, because they are fun, but like it really tells the story a lot better because I think with games, right? Like that’s kind of tough. It is tough because you gotta educate them what the game is, right? Yeah.

14:32
And so I think just everything was in a really good spot. The listings were good. The creatives were great. The products are fun. uh And typically we don’t like what like no one wants math for Christmas. So now we actually have products that people would buy and put in their kids stocking or under the tree and stuff like that. So I’m just curious, how much AI do you guys use to create these things? Or is it just still all old school?

15:00
I don’t know who listens to this podcast. We do not use any AI. I have been pushing for AI actually for the last several months. ah I think after talking to Ritu, our friend Ritu um at Seller Summit, and then once again at ECF and seeing what she was creating and then also all the stuff that Dana Michelle is doing.

15:28
I so on my list of things to do is actually create some like I’m not sure if we could have done the stop motions really fun. I’m not sure how great that would have done with AI because there so many like there’s 66 pieces right of the magnets. But I do think there’s a lot of things we could do with AI that we’re not doing right now um that would one free up like creative designers time and. um

15:56
You know, I do think that this this comes down to probably some hesitation on the team’s part about like one, the quality, which I understand that because there was a time when, you know, you try to make a dog and it had five paws and two tails and all that stuff. But also, like, it’s changed so much in the past couple of years. And then I also feel like there’s the like, I don’t want it to take my job kind of feeling.

16:25
Well, it augment your job. So I actually used VO3 for the first time yesterday to do some B-roll for one of my YouTube videos. And it got it right on the first try. Yeah. Which I was shocked at. Yeah. I think it’s at VO3.1 at the time of this recording. Yeah. So my son is actually super into creating AI cartoons.

16:48
that basically are like funny and or they they’re either making fun of one of his siblings like he makes a cartoon about something that they had happened to them in their childhood um or he makes them based on something else that I can’t talk about. But um anyway, I told him he said he sends them to me like all day long. And I was like, do you not have a job anymore? Like, what are you doing with all your free time? But I told him last night, I was like, make a TikTok account and put these videos on there. And so he did ah because they’re actually clever and

17:16
Anyway, so we’ll see where it goes, but it’s all cartooned. You know, it’s not real people or anything like that. But I feel like we that’s like something that I will push for huge in twenty twenty six because I feel like watching Dana Michelle, I know we’ve talked about this before, watching her give that lesson on how to create this. I feel like Dana Michelle knows how to do this in part because she worked for the movie studios. Right. And she is a.

17:43
video editor and so she understands all the components you need to make it look great. And so I feel like that’s the same thing with design. Like I need a designer to tell me, to give me the idea to make it look better. A designer is always going to create something in AI probably better than I can because they understand the language, right? And I’m not a designer. So for me, I don’t see this as a threat at all. I see this as a way to create so much more assets, right? And not…

18:13
you know, not have to do stop motion photography for everything and things like that. um 100 % agree. 100 % agree. 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,

18:40
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. So one thing that we’re doing this year, so we always do a 12 days of Christmas sale. m

19:08
This is we should be doing this in prior years, but I’ve actually gone back now since I have bumblebot Did I tell you I created bumblebot? Yeah. Yes for my store It’s basically an AI that knows all the sales and everything So I went through and I looked to see which of those so each day for the 12 days of Christmas still we heavily discount one item Yeah, every day for 12 days So I went back and I looked at the sales of some of those items and some of them didn’t do that Well, some of them did fantastic

19:37
And so what we’re doing now is we’re taking the ones maybe that didn’t do so well. And these are all items that we kind of want to liquidate anyway. We’re thinking about creating 12 days of Christmas bundles with those to boost up the average order value. And for the ones that do well, uh we’re actually raising the prices on those and then discounting them. I mean, we raised them a while back already. yeah, so we should be able to make more money off of that 12 days of Christmas sale.

20:07
but just looking at what happened the prior year. Yeah, so I love bundling. I think that’s a really great way to uh improve your average order value. But also the one thing that I’ve found with bundling for us is that we have most of our margins are insane, right? 80, 90 percent. They’re really great. But then we have these kind of products like the bookshelf, right? The Bible bookshelf where the margin is not as great, right? Because we can’t sell this thing for $40. Maybe we can at this point, but like uh

20:35
You know, we know our customers are price sensitive. So what we found is if we bundle a, you know, item that has a worse margin with something that like we have this, actually it’s a really cool Bible timeline. And it basically goes through the whole Bible and it’s like, also you can kind of understand like chronologically, like what you’re reading. And it’s super popular. It’s one of the most popular products on our site. But the margin on that thing is like 98%. It’s like insane.

21:02
Right? So you can bundle them together and give a small discount, right? Like for bundling, but then you sort of even out the margin on the bookshelf product. So we’ve been doing that with some of the games because like board games are actually really expensive to create. I actually don’t understand how like Target and Walmart can sell board games at like seven and $8 during Black Friday because our cost of goods on a board game is like $9, right?

21:30
I mean, obviously, Monopoly. all it’s all volume. Yeah. Jesse was on this podcast. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The price breaks. Yeah. I mean, once you start creating, I think at Target’s levels, it’s like dirt cheap. Well, yeah, yeah. But it still shocks me that like the board itself, you know, the whole thing, the shipping, the space it takes up all that stuff, which is why we like to create card games because they’re very affordable. They’re like 40 cents, 50 cents, you know, kind of thing. um But.

21:58
So yeah, so we’ve bundled to sort of offset the costs on higher products, which people really like because they still are getting a deal, right? But then it’s helping us sort of balance out our costs with that. So I like the bundling. think it’s great. um We keep doing it more and more because it keeps working. And people, what we found is when we start promoting those bundles, people are like really interested in them.

22:27
I didn’t even know you guys sold board games. We just started, like this is very new. Ah, okay, okay. I’m actually the voice in the back going, can’t do board games, they’re too expensive. You know what’s expensive about board games is the little pieces that you use to like go around the board. Those things are like really expensive, um which you know, it’s funny, like it’s really expensive, but it’s like $2, right? Like it’s not, it’s expensive when you think about selling it.

22:57
The other thing when you were talking about the 12 days is one thing that I’ve learned about these customers that I’m dealing with is that um they love that flash deal. So where you discount, um let’s just say the Bible timeline, we’ll say that. That’s like $9. We sell it for five. So it’s like almost 50 % off. Crazy, crazy deal. Even if they don’t want the timeline, they click over.

23:25
Like the engagement rates on those emails and SMS is like so much higher than other ones because and they don’t necessarily like one time I actually went and like looked at how many people actually bought that exact product versus, you know, a bunch of other products. Most of the time they buy a bunch of other products. They actually don’t even buy that one product. But they’re so like, you know, oh, my goodness, what in the world? Five dollars, you know, five dollars is like our our

23:54
Email point, if we can say $5 in an email, people click, we know that. um And so for us, having that one item discounted is actually really profitable because people might buy that, which is fine, but they also buy a bunch of other stuff because we get them on the page and then, you know, they convert. Here’s a tactic you might like. I actually stole it from Mr. Beast. OK, so what he did was he sent out an item for a discount.

24:23
And in the email itself, he had five different images. And he said, if you click on the right image, in this case, I think it was a cup of coffee. Only one of the icons holds the discount. So what ends up happening is everyone clicks on all of them, right? And you have them go to different pages, but then your click through rate for that email and the engagement goes through the roof, which improves your deliverability for the rest of the year. Yeah. Oh, I’m trying to think of a way to do that without angering.

24:52
Well, there are people. mean, they eventually get the discount. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. We just have we have an audience with like a little bit of a less sense of a sense of humor. OK. But I think that’s fantastic idea. Like I do that a lot with. So I do it differently where it’s like, hey, are you having a great, you know, Thanksgiving season and it’s like a thumbs up or a thumbs down?

25:15
They both take you to the exact same page. But like people click, right? Like they think they’re voting, right, on the thing. But I love the idea of like the discount takes you, because that would definitely get people to click. And they eventually get the discount. And then the follow up email is how many tries did it take you on the last one? And then they give out something else after that. That’s genius. So I like that one. Yeah.

25:42
I did try it once and the click through rate on that email went through the roof. It’s not something you can use all the time, you got to pull that out. But if you pull it out on Black Friday, you know, right before you’re going to send 12 straight emails. Yeah, you know, that’s a good one. We do the another way to not discount. We do discount at Black Friday, so I don’t want anyone to go, you do. I mean, we do. But one of the things that I really like is the free gift with purchase.

26:10
um So we do this in two different ways. So every month we actually have a free gift. And what we’ve moved to this year is basically these gifts are exclusive to that month. You cannot buy them. You only can get them if you make a purchase. And they’re pretty fun, right? Like right now our free gift with purchase is a New Year’s Eve countdown pack. And it basically is…

26:32
balloons and confetti and little pieces of paper and you write things on the piece of paper and put them in the balloons and then every hour up until midnight you pop a balloon and confetti and whatever you’ve written on the card, know, whatever. um that’s one of our most popular ones that we’ve done. But they, you know, we’ve done things like lunchbox notes for your kids, right? Little love notes that you can put in your kid’s room or in their lunch or, you know, in their backpack or whatever. um

26:56
Last month we had, it was like a gratitude jar kit. So it was basically, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the gratitude jar where like people, they just take like an uh old pickle jar or something and they put things that they’re thankful for or grateful for people, things like that. And then they like read them out at Thanksgiving. um So we had like a fun kit where you could like decorate the jar and it was, you know. So you guys ship out an old pickle jar? we don’t. You have to provide your own jar. it had everything. So they’re all like, and the goal is the goal for these free plus purchase items is

27:25
that they cost less than 20 cents to make and that they’re flat pack, right? So that if you put them in a box, you’re not having to like have this, you know, thing that’s gonna change the shipping size of the box or the shipping side, shipping box size. ah So anyway, these have been really popular and what we found is at first we started this to liquidate stuff, right? Like we can’t sell stickers. Let’s give everybody a pack of stickers with the purchase. But then we really pushed towards like, let’s create special items that

27:54
will really move the needle for people. um So, you we have some really fun ones coming next year, like one of the ones next year that I think we’re launching over spring break is like a car bingo. So basically if you’re traveling for spring break, there’s like all the things that you X off and try to get bingo. And it comes with like 20 sheets of bingo cards. So like, you know, it’s enough for a road trip. But these have been like, we have people, one lady was doing local pickup. She literally made like 10 orders.

28:23
to get like 10 of the gratitude packs. 10 separate orders? Yes. Were she paid for shipping each time? Well, no, because she picked, she was local pickup. Oh, local pickup, got it, But she wanted him to like give them to all her family members. So she went through, which, know, I mean, that’s not exactly how we want it to work. But we know that tells us that like, hey, we’re on the right track with, you know, the products and getting people excited. So do you do it with no threshold whatsoever or? We do it with, it’s any purchase.

28:53
Not digital, just physical products, obviously, because we do have digital products. But then during certain months of the year, specifically like Black Friday, and then we have a big back to school sale in the summer, we offer a $100 or more, you get a tote bag. And it’s our custom tote bag, people love them. And so what it does is since stuff’s on sale, it boosts their order value, right? Because what would be a $75 order is now like a $50 order.

29:22
So this is getting people the incentive to get to that $100 threshold. So I’m just curious, during Black Friday, do you do that in addition to the free with purchase? Yeah, so you get both. So you get two items. nice. I mean, you gotta spend 100 bucks to get the tote bag. Oh, no, no, I know, but for the free with purchase, like we have some stuff in our store that’s like two bucks. Yeah. So it wouldn’t matter how much they spend to get that free item? Yeah, yeah. mean, they have to pay shipping too, obviously. Sure, yeah.

29:52
So, but we know that the tote bag, um had a different, we’re doing a custom tote bag now every year too, to just add to the value of it. um We have people ask if they can buy it all the time, we don’t sell it. We’ve kind of gone back and forth on whether we should. Next year, the tote bag’s really fun. This year, I felt like it was a little boring, but people still really like the tote bag. um

30:14
People do anything for free bag and the bags are pretty inexpensive to create. Like if that’s something you’re thinking about, like tote bags are kind of the way to go. For the high threshold. you guys have those separately made then just for this? You don’t sell them normally, right? No. No, just for this. She also uses them at convention for people who buy over a hundred dollars, which is really nice at convention because you can put everything in the bag and walk around with it as opposed to like the cheap plastic bags that you normally get. So that’s why. then so that’s a really good one.

30:44
that we, you it started with us just trying to get rid of the extra things, right? Kind of like with you with the one day sales, but then it’s now moved into like a full strategy of, you know, how do we create these like exclusive items that people can only get that month and just to get people to shop more frequently, right? Like, get people back to the store and, and spending money. Yeah. I’m trying to think. So you guys aren’t heavy. What’s the biggest discount that you guys give?

31:14
It’s very heavy. Oh, it is heavy. Yeah, very heavy. It’s the early bird discounts close to 40 percent. Wow. OK. Our biggest discount is only 15 percent. I know we are never. Yeah. I know. Actually, on that day, like a whole bunch of people buy because they’re like, hey, this is the only time this ever going to happen. Yeah. And that’s probably a whole other conversation about discounting. um I don’t love that. But I also know that it like we do have margin to do that. And.

31:42
it does move the needle. We do double the sales, right? So we hit that. So yeah, but yeah, I would love to have less of a discount in general, but that’s not my call. I think for your products, it works. Yeah. But there’s people out there where their margins might be like 50%. Right, that does not work. And if you give like a 20 % discount off of that, that basically kills your profits. Yeah.

32:10
We can go to about 35 % off and still be at an 80 % margin on most products. That’s right, because it’s just paper, right? It’s paper, yeah. So anyway, I would like to maybe have a slightly different strategy, but at the end of the day, you know. I mean, it’s working. It’s working, yeah. Yeah. And it’s growing the sales. You know what’s funny is I always think about it

32:38
maybe in the wrong way, but I think about it as you’re doing a lot more work for less money, mainly because we run the sewing machines and everything. And I’m just thinking to myself, yeah, this, cause I actually hate, every season I hate Black Friday. I hate the holiday season, cause that means I gotta go in, everyone’s on deck. And then like, it’s just a madhouse for like two weeks straight. And then we to relax afterwards. Yeah, you know, it’s kind of funny that you say that.

33:06
Of course, when I was in e-commerce, really liked Black Friday because it was like, this is a trip. The sales on Black Friday pay for my entire family to go to a tropical island. the one thing, like this year, I have a doctor’s appointment on Black Friday, which was, that’s not a big deal, right? So was like, no problem. And then in my mind, it’s like on this part of town that I really like, and it’s like kind of close to my house, but I don’t go there a ton. And so was like, oh, I could go to my doctor’s appointment. Then we could go get brunch or blah, blah.

33:35
I’ve got this whole idea in my head and then I was like, I can’t go anywhere on Black Friday. I got to get right back home to my computer and make sure that nothing’s broken and that the emails are going. I was like, oh, why did I think that I could do anything fun on Black Friday? So now I’m like, oh, I hate Black Friday. Let me ask you this. Do you guys text every day? We don’t text every day because our people are very personal privacy. Yeah.

34:03
So we text, let me see, I just did this yesterday. I think we sent four texts over like nine days, which is a lot. That’s what we started doing. like last year, I remember for the first time, I was like, yeah, what the heck? Let’s just try texting every day and let’s see what happens. People started getting a little annoyed. Yeah. Yeah. I think if I had giftables, 100 % I would text every day. Like I would I would probably be much more aggressive. But because I know that people, if they’re shopping on Black Friday, they’re just stocking up to get a deal.

34:33
Right. It’s not because they’re going to give, except for like the games, the few things that we have, they’re not going to give someone a P.E. workbook, you know. Right. Hey, kid, looks like you put on a few pounds from Thanksgiving. Here’s a math workbook curriculum. Maybe only text the Asians like the math workbooks or whatever. Can you segment for that in PostScript? Oh, just all the California area. Northern California. That’s how I know. So are you guys doing anything different this year?

35:00
You know what’s funny is like I listen to a lot of e-commerce podcasts and everyone always does like a big BFCM thing leading up to it. But yeah, really it hasn’t changed that much at least from what I can notice. What about you? We are doing some different things this year. uh So the first thing we did last year, but we’re continuing on it this year. And I got this idea from Laurie at Passionate Penny Pinscher, where I think she’s the one that I saw doing it years ago where it was like.

35:26
you send an email out and you’re like, there’s 22 codes of this, there’s six codes of this. It’s basically the Mr. Beast strategy just in a different way. Let’s be honest, I go adjust those codes all day long. No, no, no, I know exactly. You don’t want people to come in. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So we’re doing that. That worked very, very well. The other thing that I started doing, think sometime this year I tried it and I was like, oh, adding this to Black Friday is sending an email out at like 7 p.m.

35:55
basically saying free shipping till midnight, right? So it doesn’t kill you with the shipping, but people go bananas. Like I think the last time I did that in an email, the email made like $30,000. Really? Okay, so just free shipping for that one day? shipping, but like literally five hours of free shipping. So it’s not like you have, because I feel like the other problem with this time of year is that if, and we send emails in the morning, so I’m not saying not to do that, but you send an email at 6 a.m.

36:22
it’s competing with every other email that got sent around that time. And so people are like, they see your email, they go to the store, they look, they don’t do anything, then they see the other email, and then they see another company, and then they see another company, and then by the end of the day, they forget. And so maybe they come back and buy later, because they get an abandoned card or a browser abandonment, but the urgency of this deal only happens for five hours has actually been super effective for people. Even on days where we don’t have like,

36:48
great open rates, because certain days are just not as good for us. It still converts really, really well. So I’m curious about the codes, because this is something that I think I made it a lesson for profitable online store, but I don’t do it myself. Do you let people enter in a coupon code that doesn’t work? No, because if it’s sold out, yeah, I do. That’s what I meant. So let’s say you’re down to the cheapest one now. You want people to actually enter in.

37:16
Yeah, you actually want people to enter in three coupon codes incorrectly. You know what I’m talking about? I mean, I guess I do. Yeah. OK. And it’s been fine. We get like, OK, so we have a huge email list close to 300 K when I don’t send that email to everybody. Actually, that email I send to a very specific segment of people. So let’s just say I send it to 50,000 people. We probably get three people emailing customer service complaining, which seems like that’s worth it. I don’t know.

37:43
The only reason why I ask is like people can’t spell like I track every time a coupon code doesn’t go through like it literally emails me. Oh, interesting. Okay. And so like if I get like a whole flood of emails, like people can’t spell like the easiest coupon codes and then they get frustrated sometimes and then they leave.

38:00
One of the things that I did to because I go back and forth about the coupon code thing a lot because part of me wants to have like the coupon code that’s like Z 7 6 7 X P whatever. Yeah, because that feels like it’s because whenever I say this is exclusive to you, people feel like that is exclusive to them because it’s like this jumble of letters and numbers. also no one like especially on mobile, it’s harder to copy and paste and all that exactly. um So I always make sure the coupon is you know how in Shopify. Well, in Shopify you can link that they can click on that and it

38:29
automatically applies the coupon. Correct, yes, yes. Yeah, so that kind of helps with the, so when they get to the cart, the coupon’s already been applied if they click on, so I try to make every link in the email that link. However, when you do the five coupons in an email, right, you can’t do that. So I try to make the coupons as absolutely basic as possible. It doesn’t, it’s not foolproof, right? But like if it’s additional 5 % off, the code is add five. If it’s an additional 10%, it’s add 10, like the number 10. um

38:58
If it’s free shipping, it’s free. Literally, the code is free, right? Like I try to like eliminate because I know people don’t people cannot spell. cannot type it all. One time our coupon code was like Mother 25, right? Yeah. People were like, M-U-T-H-E-R. Yeah. Mother MTHR Mothers 25. was like, Oh my God. Yeah. Anyway, that’s why I was curious about that strategy. Yeah.

39:26
So the other thing that we’re doing this year that’s brand new, we are totally, I have like, this is gonna flop, but you have to try it, right? We’re live selling this year. Oh, who’s doing that? The owner’s doing it, yeah. So she’s great on camera. it’s not, that’s not gonna be an issue. um There was, it’s not playing out exactly how I want it. So how I wanted it to happen is,

39:55
She live sells, there’s 10 items. Those items have better pricing, like basically during the live sale and throughout the rest of the day. Okay, walk me through this. Are you guys using comments sold or? No, we’re literally like just sending people to a landing page with those 10 products on it. Oh, I see. Yeah, because I don’t want to try to integrate comments sold. I mean, that would definitely be the easiest way to do it. But also, I don’t know if her customers know how to do that. So that’s true. There’s one link. The link has the 10 products on it.

40:23
So it’s not the main sale page, it’s a secondary page, which also I’ll explain that fiasco in a minute. um So she’s gonna do this the Friday before Black Friday. So it’s like the 21st. So basically we’re hyping it up in social, we’re hyping it up in email, click here, she’s gonna go live, she’s gonna have the 10 products. They’re all products that you can give as a gift basically. So we’re not really promoting anything that’s like, and also get your,

40:51
a handwriting book for your child with their terrible penmanship. um What I wanted was this special code that basically was only good that day. However, we want to run ads to this because it will actually probably do really well with ads. And so if the code’s only good for that day, then that’s not, we can’t do that, right? Because it can’t be time sensitive. So we can’t really have a code.

41:14
um Which is the part that I think is annoying however I do understand the component of running the ads to it because we’ve had a lot of success when She goes live for anything running ad set especially to get people to opt in and things like that So I understand like the pros and cons of doing it each way um However, I would like to do it at some point with a code Because I do think that would be really effective and also a really great way to track like exactly people who came from the live

41:42
Okay, walk me through this. You go on this page with her face on it going live and then there’s 10 products. Is she gonna be out, can anyone just buy the product at any time at that big discount and just leave? Or do you have to wait for her to say the code first? nope. Because there’s no code now. It’s just at the Black Friday discount. So she’ll go live, she has 10 products, she’ll talk through each product. The goal is to get the live to about 45 minutes.

42:08
talk about why you should buy it, talk about how giftable it is, they’re all sitting there, it’s all branded, it’s in the warehouse, which I actually think is a huge selling point, right? Because people will be shipping, uh all the products are behind her, like on warehouse shelves and things like that. uh One of the big things if you’re gonna do this, this might impact your customers, we cannot have any boxes that say China on them.

42:30
Like, you know how those products come? So it’s a part of the warehouse. doesn’t have the shipping boxes in it because people get really been out of shape if they see China on the boxes. However, I’m like, do you not think everything comes from China? I don’t know. But that’s neither here nor there. um I kind of like this idea. And I’m wondering if I can get my I guess I could. You could. I want to try it because I know it works. We have friends that are very successful at this. Right. Like, yeah. um

42:59
I think of like, even like, we obviously talk about Paul and Tiffany a lot and they’ve made their whole livelihood on live selling. But think about like Kelly Snyder, right? Who has a digital course and product but sells accessories, right? She goes live multiple times a year and she calls them trunk shows and she sells jewelry pieces and accessories and things like that. And it does really, really well. uh And she’s also, once again, great on camera. So I think, you know,

43:27
Having Kim, the owner, which I think is another big thing, right? You’re the owner of the company, you’re telling people what to buy. That’s impactful, right? You’re talking about why the products are great, you’re talking about your value prop. So what are you doing? You’re helping your social media, right? She’s gonna be live on Facebook and I think on YouTube, right? So you’re helping the Facebook algorithm, which is where we run all our ads, right? So then we’re gonna run ads to it. It’s gonna improve that. You’re gonna get people commenting, interacting.

43:54
We have people that will be on Facebook, like monitoring, responding to comments, answering questions. um And then that video can live throughout Black Friday, right? It’ll live for the next week, all with these giftable products, right? So the exact thing that we think people are probably gonna be wanting to buy from us. um So I’m excited about it. I would like to, at some point, try it again with a coupon code.

44:20
to like special discount off those products so we can really track who came from the live. But the problem is, that’s not as evergreen. um I think the coupon code is gonna be problematic unless the link, I can say like, I can see her just spouting out the coupon code and then people using it. But again, like the same issues, there’s friction. Yeah.

44:42
So and then the other strategy, so we’re not doing the coupon code. So that’s out for right now. So the strategy is talking about it on social media, letting people know she’s going live. We’ve talked about throwing in a free gift if you buy that day. So basically just having them throw something in the box. Like mystery, right? Not. And then you could probably pack, how fun would it be, you can just pack it on the fly. Ooh, that’s a really good idea. That’s a really it into a two hour live or three hour live. Yeah, I like that idea.

45:11
I’ll have to add that to our list. So if I were to do this, I would have to do this though. You would have to do it. So then the other thing is so, you know, promotes on social promotes on email. It’s also a way to like talk about stuff on social and email that’s different. Right. We’re not just like discount buy. It’s like, hey, I want to talk to Kim about what to buy for Christmas. Like, here you go. Well, plus you can actually give a demo of the product and like.

45:36
Yes, especially since it’s a lot of games and stuff, like the demos are good. And then basically what we’ll do is look at email stats from the emails that talk about her going live and then basically send like a watch the replay, um you know, basically retarget people who clicked on any on that page. Right. So if they went to that live sale page, you know, retarget them an email. So I think there’s like a big strategy around this and I’m excited about it because it to me, it’s like different than what

46:06
99 % of people do, right? There’s obviously clothing boutiques that go live all week, right? I think Tiffany and Paul are giving away $50,000 on Black Friday. It’s some insane thing, right? All I know in my feed is Tiffany holding up wads of cash all the time right now. I was like, don’t know what promotion they’re running, but they know what they’re doing. But in our space, in curriculum and homeschool products, nobody’s doing this, right? So it’s completely disruptive.

46:34
knowing that Kim is good on camera, that risk is kind of removed. She went live the other day to test it, basically talking about some new products. So she didn’t sell anything, but just kind of tested the setup, tested the camera, all that thing. I don’t know. I’m excited about that. think that’s gonna be… If nothing else, I think it’s a good practice to do it and see how people react and potentially…

47:02
What’s your tech setup gonna be? Is it just gonna be like for the chat? It’s just gonna be Facebook chat. Oh, Facebook chat. Yeah. Okay. So that’s the only place you’re broadcasting live. I think we’ll also broadcast to YouTube. That’s a separate chat then. Yes. Yes. But we have people to monitor that. Oh, I see. Oh, so you’re not gonna let them see the chat on this on the page. It’s gonna be wherever they’re watching. Yeah, wherever they’re watching. Yeah, I see. I see. It’ll also probably be embedded in the page.

47:31
When like both chats, YouTube and Facebook. No, the video will probably be embedded on that sale page. Right. But, you know, I would say the chat, like I said, this is a very janky setup for the first time because we haven’t done this before and also didn’t want to invest too much resources in it if it completely flops. um It’s not going to flop. It’ll do fine. I don’t think so. But you know what I mean. It’s like this is the beta. Yeah. Oh, these are things I wanted. I guess if Jen and I went on together, we could play off each other.

48:00
But I’m pretty sure she’s not gonna be on board for this. I think she would maybe do it with you. Maybe. I think that’s fun. Yeah. Well, fun for me. She doesn’t like doing these things. No, I know that about her. But I think any time the owner or the head of a company, whatever it’s if it’s a figurehead or like the brand face, I think any time they can come on and talk to the customer is really impactful.

48:30
for people. No, agree. 100%. Yeah. It’s like I fly Delta a lot now and that one of their videos, it starts with the president of Delta right now. Obviously he didn’t find found Delta, right? Because Delta’s been around for 100 years. But just the fact that he like starts the video off like.

48:49
For some reason, I immediately, do you ever watch the safety video? I don’t. I don’t, I don’t. I’m like, I know how to work the life vest, I know, blow, pull, activated light with water, I know how to get the slide out, whatever. But he starts talking and I was like, oh, it’s the president of Delta, I wonder what he’s gonna say. It immediately changed my perspective. And I actually watched 90 % of that video, because they start the video off talking about they’ve been it now, they’re the oldest airline. So there’s a good story.

49:17
You know, he’s he’s he’s looks like your typical CEO of a big company, right? So he’s not super relatable, but like at the same time, you’re like, oh, it’s interesting, right? So I feel like it’s just a disruption and you got to do something during this time to get people’s attention. All right. I know we got to wrap it up. I’m going to bring I know I’m going to bring this up tonight. OK, good luck. We’re cheering for you. But I like that idea, Adam. Actually, it’s it’s one of the newer things that I that I’ve heard this year, like going live. So cool.

49:47
See if I’ll let you know how it goes. Hope you enjoyed this episode and best of luck on your Black Friday sales this year. For more information and resources, go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 615. And once again, tickets to Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at seller summits.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 over to seller summits.com.

50:15
And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife, quitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. Now in this episode, I have Brandon Harahoe, who is the VP of an eight figure made in the USA brand called Montana Knife Company. And if any of you out there listening are doubting that you can create an eight figure brand without Amazon, this is the episode for you because this company has been killing it with Shopify from day one.

00:24
But before I 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 events that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit is all about tactical, step-by-step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches, people who are running their own e-commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers, and scaling real businesses.

00:53
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, and if you’re doing over 250k or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for higher level sellers.

01:22
Right now, tickets are the cheapest they’re ever gonna be. So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

01:36
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today I’m excited to have Brandon Harahoe on the show. Now, Brandon was introduced to me by my good friend Kurt Elster from the Unofficial Shopify podcast. He is the co-founder of Montana Knife Company, an eight figure e-commerce store where all products are made in the USA. The company was 100 % D2C from day one. I don’t believe they’re on Amazon at all and they are killing it in the space.

02:05
And I wanted to have Brandon on for two reasons today. One, I wanna talk about the challenges of Made in the USA. And two, I wanna talk about how he scaled his business to eight figures 100 % with Shopify. And with that, welcome to the show, Brandon. How are you doing today? I’m doing great. And thank you for having me on the show. it’s cool to connect through our mutual friend, Kurt. He’s been a long time friend and he’s actually helped our brand a ton too on the e-commerce side.

02:32
when he reached out, says, Hey, I got a guy who has an awesome podcast. I was like, count me in and I listened to a bunch, know, you know, getting ready for this podcast. And it’s like, this is spot on with like what we’ve been building and how we built this and everything. Awesome. if you guys like Montana knife company’s website, Kurt Elster actually designed it over at ether cycle. Just give giving Kurt a little plug there. Yep. So, Brent, I know you’re the co founder of the company.

02:58
but you’re not like the main guy, like the face of the company, but what is the story behind Montana Knife Company? Yeah, so Montana Knife Company has an absolutely wild story. I mean, to the point where we’re actually trying to like, appropriately like, you know, film an actual documentary around it, especially with the phase of growth that we’re in right now, it’s just a really cool time to actually film something as like things are going on. But, you know, to kind of give you like the quick story is, you know, this, company, you know, started with Josh Smith.

03:28
You know, he actually started making knives at the age of 11. And then then he became then he became the youngest master bladesmith ever in the history of master bladesmith. And he achieved that level at the age of 19. You know, and he’s had that title for almost like 20 something years and no one’s no one’s been able to become a master bladesmith at a younger age. And some people have tried and failed. But, you know, Josh is a, you know, a true craftsman, a true artist. And, you know,

03:57
He is just obsessed with making the best knives. So, you he started as a really, really high end knife maker. mean, literally the show like Forged in Fire um is based off of what Josh has been doing, you but he was doing it 20 years before the show. ah You know, Josh is actually, think, on season one and two, too. they like just to understand like how he’s kind of like in this ether of, you know, knife making community and all that. um

04:22
You know, and then, you so that was, you know, his teens and then his twenties and thirties, you know, he became, you know, actually one of the best knife makers in the world. He was really known for like his high end Damascus work. But the problem was, is that all the knives he was making, they were like expensive pieces of art. Like people, you know, when they commissioned a knife from them, they’re like, I want a $15,000 dagger or I want like a $30,000 sword.

04:48
He has stories of him making knives for sheiks in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and getting flown over to the London archives and looking at all these historical swords and building replicas and all that. But at his core roots, he was born in Lincoln, Montana. He’s been a hunter since day one, but he’s always made the best hunting knives. But the problem was that for him to make a hunting knife for somebody,

05:17
You know just to justify time and material and all this stuff He had to charge like $3,000 for it, you know or even on the very lowest end, you know a cup like a thousand fifteen hundred dollars and then promise like people weren’t using them they would buy them and they weren’t being used and the reason why they weren’t using them is because like a the price and they were just so beautiful and it’s you know, so his thing was is like I make the best using hunting knife

05:43
you know, on the market. There’s no question, you know, I’ve made thousands of knives in my life. I can distill this down to this one knife that every hunter can take on any hunt anywhere in the world. But I’ve got to figure out how to do it in mass and get that cost down. So people actually use them like these aren’t meant to be collectors items like we want people to use these in the field. And our one of our early sayings was, you know, used, abused and passed down. That’s the goal. We want that knife to be used and we want you to pass it down for generations. um So like that’s kind like the backstory and where like

06:12
you know, Montana Knife Company was born and a couple of really cool things happened is, you know, his mom and him had like the foresight to actually go and register the trademark name Montana Knife Company and buy the URL in like 2000. Which is just crazy. Yeah. So when I came on board, I had to go find this, you know, URL that was owned by some little web agency in Montana, which you can understand was hard to track down and find and get it linked to our Shopify site and all that. So.

06:41
So that’s kind of like the prequel to what True MKC is right now. And then we launched the brand in 2020. And I’m talking height of COVID. The first time Josh and I met was almost right before the lockdowns, the country-wide lockdowns. It was like, yeah, should we start this? We’re like, well, might as well. Because he always says in 2008,

07:11
He kind of listened to the news and all this stuff and he actually stopped being a full-time professional knife maker when the economy crashed in 2008. You could probably understand the budget for a $15,000 knife kind of shrunk on most people’s P &Ls. he actually became a lineman for 10 or 15 years making really good money. But this has just always been kind of like eating out. I’m like, need to do this Montana Knife Company thing.

07:39
But then, you his thing was like, I just don’t have the marketing guy or like the business guy, you know, set up the business in the back end and the funnels and like just the advertising creative. in and that’s that’s where like Josh and I met and it’s like the rocket fuel, you know, we got the product, we got marketing. And that’s where it started. Okay, okay. So you know, what’s funny here is I have a couple colleagues that sell blades, not not knives per se, and they get all this stuff from China. Maybe it’d be heresy, I guess, if Josh did that. But

08:10
China seems to be significantly cheaper. The labor costs are 4X lower. And then even like the steel costs, I think are 15 to 40 % cheaper in China. and I know cost is like a big factor here. Can you just kind of comment on some of the challenges of USA manufacturing? And why did you guys decide to focus on Made in the USA? No, that’s a great question. And here’s the thing is like, you know, when we started this company, you know, it used to be easy to say that like, oh,

08:39
Chinese knives are cheap and they’re not that good and like all that stuff. The truth is, that knives coming out of China, knives coming out of Pakistan, Taiwan, like some of them were awesome. They were great knives. were very well manufactured. know, it took them, you know, they had 20, 30, 40 years competing with some of American brands, you know, to refine their stuff.

09:01
So we couldn’t say that like it’s a superior product. do think now we are a superior product, but at the time, like there were still good products coming out of China. But you’re right. It’s cheaper and you can just, you know, you can order 100, you can order 10,000, you can order 100,000 and they just show up in, you know, six months. but our biggest thing was, that like, you know, we’re watching this thing happen during COVID.

09:29
we’re watching supply chains get shut off, we’re watching all these things happen, and we’re just like, if we’re gonna do this, let’s do this the right way. And honestly, American manufacturing has been always true to my heart, it’s always been true to Josh’s heart. So it was just in our ethos to wanna do it, especially with him being an actual maker. And the other thing is too, is that so many things went right for MKC. One of the other things that went really right for MKC is that the entire knife market, I’m talking every company,

09:59
in the early teens and early 2020s, everyone was trying to race to the bottom of the barrel and make the cheapest knife possible. So they can just go sell it like a bella’s in a bubble blister pack for $20. And then it dolls and you just of like hock it in your center console or you put it in your closet and then you just go buy a new one because it’s not worth the resharpening. um And that was just kind like the mentality of the industry. And then we came in and we’re like, like

10:28
There’s not a lot of things that men pass down anymore, you know, from father to son to grandson. You know, it’s usually just like, you know, a watch, maybe some firearms and like the knives, you know, like no one’s going to want your iPhone 13. Like my kids aren’t going to want my Apple watch. My kids aren’t going to want the iPad. They’re like, no, that I can’t even open the iOS now. It’s 2050, you know? So these things that we carry on our body.

10:52
It’s different than what men used to carry on their body in the early 1900s and the 1500s, early like the 1950s, like watches and knives and wallets and things like that. like I said, there’s a lot of things that just kind of like, we’re like, it’s all just focusing on making the best product possible. And for us, that was making it ourselves. Would you say Josh is famous in this niche, even before when you guys first started? Absolutely. buy knives for him?

11:22
You know what’s wild like at the very beginning I would definitely say like our first like, you know, hundred customers were definitely fans of Josh and knew his pedigree and things like that What’s wild now is like it’s crazy because like there’s times that were like, oh, I don’t even know who Josh Smith was by own like five nights It’s just like the brand itself is just getting you know, big Okay. I mean, I don’t know anything about knives, but I do know that it’s pretty competitive uh so

11:50
You mentioned like these knives are heirloom quality, right? But when you’re first starting out in your marketing, can we talk about how you guys got your first sales? Like how does one scale a knife company? It’s a very competitive niche. Yeah, so it’s very competitive. um And also to like, it’s probably the oldest, like, I have a buddy that owns a seasoning company. And I always joke that him and I are in the oldest trades possible sharp objects and seasonings. Like it doesn’t get much older than that. So like,

12:20
know, there’s a lot of companies, I mean, if you just think of USA made companies, you know, lot of those guys have 120 years on us, a lot of them have 7080 years on us, they have government contracts, you know, they’ve perfected their manufacturing through mass quantities. mean, we didn’t know how to do anything in 2020. So like, that’s where it’s just like, so you know, we’re like, it’s just not like American made, like, we also had to figure out how to manufacture ourselves. And like, that’s what we’re doing. You’re like,

12:48
You might even hear the CNC machines like downstairs buzzing right now. You know, so it’s again, like it’s not like we’re placing an order with another factory and just hoping those knives come and we sell them. I mean, we’re literally making them. And like our first drop, like our first real drop, we we like, you know, I was like, hey, you know, we’ll probably sell like 25, 30. We ended up selling all 150 that we had cut ready to make. And literally the next day when we were packaging them.

13:14
I had to go to Staples and get a printer for the hook up to Shopify to print labels. Josh is in the other room, literally sharpening knives. His wife is helping us package them. Like I said, it’s not just building an e-comm brand and doing drop shipping. It’s like, we have to make this product. It adds a whole other layer of complexity. We have 90 people in our company and 65 of them on the manufacturing side. There’s only 15.

13:44
people on like the accounting and CFO and growth and you know, so yeah. So when you first launched, were you guys just running it out of the house or? Yeah. So it was Josh’s two car garage and then my bedroom. I was, I actually lived two hours. Yeah. I actually lived two hours north. You know, I was shooting all the product photography in my garage. I was going, and that’s a beautiful, you know, I was living in Montana is like, I could just go walk out in the woods. got the best landscape in the world. So, um,

14:14
You know, and I still want to answer your question, like how do we get those first like couple of sales? ah know, like we, so, you know, obviously like Josh, you know, he kind of had his, you know, his connections, you know, I’ve been in, you know, the marketing e-comm space for, you know, almost 15, 18 years at that point. uh I had a bunch of connections and we literally just relied so hard on our network for that first couple, you know, sales, you know, and then what we did is we just, just focused on two things. We focused on,

14:43
you know, just Instagram growth, because at that time that worked out really well for us. You TikTok wasn’t really around. So we put a lot of focus on Instagram. ah And I’ve been a photographer for 10 years. So I had like, you know, terabytes of all this beautiful Montana landscapes and like all this stuff. So I ended up dumping my catalog on there just to start getting followers and things like that. Well, because we didn’t really have knives because we’re still making them.

15:08
So we couldn’t even talk about the product. had nothing to sell for the first three months because we had to make the knives. So there’s a lot of just preloading that funnel before that first drop. was almost like doing a Kickstarter without actually taking pre-orders. Okay, so you built up an Instagram account and then you used that to launch. I know you guys have a pretty cool model and I definitely want to hear about it where you literally drop new knives every single week, right? Right.

15:38
Yeah, and the drop model’s wild. you know, I came, I spent five or six years in the apparel industry. You know, that company did a lot of drop models and stuff like that. But this is like totally different because it’s the same model, but there’s like, everyone’s like, oh yeah, Montana Nightclub is just good at like, you know, doing manufactured scarcity. Like they’re just manufacturing scarcity and they’re like dropping five knives and like, like no. I mean, literally, so we have our largest drop tonight. We’re dropping thousands of knives.

16:07
And I can tell you right now, I went downstairs and the entire shop is buzzing right now because they are way behind. And like we can only drop on the website what we can ship tomorrow. That’s always our commitment. So as many knives as they get built this week is how many knives get launched on Thursday night. And that’s always been our been our model. So from day one, you know, Josh and I put all this stuff on credit cards. We bought that first batch.

16:32
you know, of raw steel, we turn them into knives, you know, we got them assembled, sharpened, know, clean sheath packaged. And then, you know, I remember it just like it was yesterday, it was December 18th of 2020, we launched the first, you know, Speed Goat. And we sold them all out in like 14 minutes. And we’re like, oh, and then it’s like, we don’t have anything, we literally don’t have knives. Like we don’t have anything else to continue this business.

16:59
And we can’t call someone to make them because no one else knows how to make them. So we rushed, ordered more steel, we got them through the pipeline, and I think we had another drop within like a month, month and a half. So that’s what started creating this drop model naturally because I had six weeks as a marketer, I had six weeks and I made a commitment to post on Instagram every single day and send out emails and stuff like that.

17:27
I had six weeks where I couldn’t actually convert a sale. So I started pulling on some of my older backgrounds that I started coming up with apparel for the brand. even launched, in this time I even launched a Montana Knife Company coffee, uh like coffee, because I went to the local roaster and was like, I need something to sell. So we make a Montana coffee and we just white labeled some coffee and we did a drop for that in between the knife things.

17:55
But like that continued on for three or four years where it’s just like, you know, we sold them, we bought more, sold them. And we kept on expecting to never not sell out. like, our goal is to be in stock. We want to be a mass knife company. Like we don’t want to be a drop drop model company. Like that’s not our thing. But we just kept on selling out and we just kept on ordering more and ordering more. So when you’re talking about bootstrapping, I mean, like we literally just sold it, bought more, sold it, bought more. And then we started getting into a little bit of a cadence of like, all right, let’s

18:25
order in between drops so we have more frequent drops. So 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

18:54
Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show. So for the audience who doesn’t know what the drop model is, it’s basically you make a set of knives and then once they’re sold, that’s it, right? For that, for

19:21
And then so that for that first drop, you relied on connections to get those sales, but you can only rely on like your audience and your connections so long. So by then was the word of mouth good enough for subsequent drops or had the Instagram account and everything caught on? Yeah, so no, this is a great question. And I love these questions. It helps me like kind of like go back in time and think about like what worked and why it worked and stuff like that. so before Montana Night Company, um

19:50
you know, I owned my own agency and I specialized in linking Klaviyo and Shopify accounts. So if you’re a big Shopify account at the Klaviyo, I’d come in, clean things up, help you with your campaigns, help you with flows, things like that. It was really successful at the time, but it was cool because I got to go look in the back end of like 20 different companies and see what they’re doing, see what you’re doing wrong and see what they’re doing wrong. So I got to build MKC’s like email list from scratch. And I’m talking I build it like and it was just so

20:21
I was just so obsessed with building the highest quality engaged list possible. And that’s what we did. like, you know, for those first like six months a year, the main thing I focused on was email. Like I used to tell Josh, I don’t care if your grandma buys a knife, she has to do it through a Shopify website and I want her email. know, so like, just being really strict about that because with us being a knife industry, you know, we couldn’t figure out how to do paid advertising until about year three or four.

20:50
because everything was so restricted because everyone considered us a weapon because they just lumped everything that’s hunting into weapons. I’ve had calls with Google Ethics and Meta and all this stuff and they’re just like, it’s a slippery slope, we let you go, it lets the door open for other companies and we’re like, I understand. But it also kind of keeps people out of our field too because you can’t just rely on paid ads. And it’s something I’ve never relied on.

21:19
um for building this company. Now it’s just gasoline on top of our organic. Right. Okay, so email lists. uh How did you get people on your list in the beginning? It’s hard to get people on Instagram onto your list, right? It is. It definitely is. I mean, and that’s where like the drop model thing kind of worked was just like, if you want this knife, sign up for an email. Like, simple as that. Like we’ve never done a discount for an email.

21:44
You know, I and I’ve played all those like, you know I’ve done all those different things like, you know build an ebook and you know exchange that for their email and like those things work those things are great but We had a certain type of energy at the beginning of the company where people wanted our knives so bad They are willing to give it their email and text message first time they visit the site to get this knife because they saw him sell out and in the knife industry it was absolutely wild for Someone to do drops without pre-orders

22:14
I mean, we had some of the CEOs of the biggest companies in this industry being like, you guys are crazy. If you just took pre-orders, you can leverage that pre-order database and go get bank notes at a cheaper rate and all this stuff. And we’re like, we’re like, we are not gonna take anyone’s money that we can’t ship the product the next day. And I’m talking since day one, I bet you 99 % of all knives have shipped the next day. And the reason is A, that, but then also two is like,

22:43
we were still learning how to do this manufacturing thing too. So we didn’t want to take someone’s money and promise them like, you’ll have a knife in three months and that batch come in wrong or get lost, you know, in between heat treat and blade grind or like there’s all these like, there’s a bunch of risk involved with that. And we just never wanted to take someone’s money that we couldn’t give them the product the next day. so like I said, there’s a lot of

23:09
We really went a lot against a lot of norms in a very, very old industry. like I said, it just worked out for us. Walk me through, like you said you have a big drop coming. Walk me through the preparation leading up to the drop to make it the most successful drop ever. Yeah. this drop is fun. So this is our Blaze Friday. uh so what Blaze Friday is, like,

23:35
When I’m setting up our marketing plan and everything like this, I obsess about uh repeatable successes. So like that’s why we do a drop every Thursday. And then we actually started adding um in-stock drops on Saturday. So we’re almost doing like a hundred drops a year just for knives. And we’re also dropping a piece of peril every single Tuesday and now Friday. So we’re dropping two pieces of peril a week plus two knife drops. But then.

24:02
to make it different. if you pull back and you look at your full year marketing plan, ah everyone’s so focused on uh quarter four. Everyone’s so focused on Black Friday. I’ve been through like 18 Black Friday cycles for D2C e-comps. I know the playbook, I know what’s going on. I’m just starting to realize, especially with Montana Knife Company, our customers aren’t buying because it’s Black Friday.

24:30
they’re buying because we’re putting all this freaking energy into it. like, you know, like we’re throwing everything at the wall. We’re coming out with new products just for Black Friday. And I’m like, why can’t we do this in quarter three, quarter three, sorry, quarter two, or, you know, or quarter one, like when we’re, you know, traffic’s a little lighter on quarter two. So what we started doing is like doing a Black Friday event every single quarter. So it’s the same playbook as Black Friday, but we’re doing it on August, you know, 14th.

24:58
um And you know in though, you know the two-month lead-up to it just like you would start in October, you know Facebook ads, know emails Captures and then the good thing is too is like we we talked to our customers and we’re like, what do you guys want? They’re like we love the blaze knife So we made that a big event. So all of our knives that dropped tonight are blaze orange. So You know, it’s so when you’re answering that question, like there’s there’s different types of drops we do and The ethos of the company is this just work

25:28
put in more effort than anyone in this industry has ever done before. So when we restock a knife, we actually act like we’re relaunching that as a product launch. Like we go through the whole thing, like a brand would, what most brands put in effort of launching a product, when a knife restocks, that’s how much effort we put into it. And when we launch a new product, we honestly act like we’re almost relaunching our brand from scratch. Like, so it’s just about the effort that’s being put out there because like, again, like,

25:58
you know, only up until about a year, a year and a half ago, we were able to run paid ads. So the excitement had to come from us from the inside of the business. So does this mean that the knives once they sell out, you don’t sell them again, but occasionally you’ll bring them back but then you relaunch them in a drop? Is that how it works? Well, no, not actually. So so this is another thing that is so wild about our company. So opposite of the industry. There’s a lot of other name companies that do drops now. But what they do is they’ll

26:27
come out and they’ll drop like 30 super custom knives that are all different and they’re like, this is the only time you get this. MKC is the complete opposite. You we have our, you know, our 20 different models and we rotate them and they’re always in the same six colors. Like I’m obsessed with like our branding. Like when someone sees our knife hanging on a hunting pack, I want that person to be immediately like, oh, that’s a Montana knife company knife. And you can’t do that with all this like crazy customization. And I think that’s where the knife world

26:57
got a little crazy was just like people were just so obsessed with trying to look like a custom knife company. It would have been easier for us to do that with Josh’s pedigree. Like, he’s designing these custom knives and everything’s different and everyone’s individual. But it’s more of like the Rolex model. It’s like, oh, he has a black foot. That black foot is kind of the equivalent of like the Submariner. Like, oh, he has a stonewall. That’s like a Daytona. And it’s like.

27:23
They don’t change, and there’s slight variations as we grow, but they’re not blatant variations where we’re gonna come out with pink handles or we’re gonna put jade in it or stuff like that. But then when we do do an event like this, Orange Knives, it’s insane because this is the only time you get it. But we only do that four or five times a year. So you have your staples that are always available on your site.

27:52
you do drops every single week and those are variations of those or. So yeah. So I mean like right now we have I think we have like 28 different models. So I mean like if you think about it like you know like we’re just going to make like for example like OK we’re going to chef cleavers this week downstairs. They’re just making as many chef cleavers as we can finish in that week. And that’s all we focus on marketing wise. We sell those those sell out. And then like next week we’re going to focus on

28:21
you know, a large skinning knife for hunting. And those knives just like rotate. it’s like, so there’s no reason to really like do like, like sit down the pipeline, like we’ll probably have to start doing some crazy custom stuff. And like, like you’re seeing Yeti now, like Yeti’s been selling the same cooler for 15 years. And now they have to sell it in like, they like green and they have to sell it in lavender this and match this persona. And they go after, you know, you know, know, Duck Hunters in the South want this camo.

28:50
And like that’s probably like a part of our evolution. But as of right now, it’s just about like my biggest thing is just getting as many new people into our brand as humanly possible just to buy our basic products. So I think I understand now. So you have scarcity because those cleavers that you mentioned, I’ll have to wait for the next cycle of manufacturing to get my hands on those. Right. Yes. Yeah, exactly. So it’s like you’re buying now or, you know, it might be another year.

29:17
It might be six months, it might be three months. Yeah. So you mentioned at the beginning of this interview though that you didn’t, you don’t want to sell out, right? Right. So how do you determine the quantities? I mean, you could just make a lot more and not sell out, right? Or. Yeah. And that’s, well, that’s also the balance. Like, you know, with our, you know, with the current building in right now is around 10,000 square feet. Like there is a manufacturing limit.

29:44
Like there’s an actual limit. So we have to like, what are our drop knives? What are in stock knives? And like, we have to have that balance of, you know, like what knives. Our goal is to make as many knives as we can possibly think and sell, but there is like a give and take that we have to account for. ah And, you know, so like, you know, there’s like five products right now on our website, you know.

30:08
that are in stock, that we’re trying to keep in stock at all times. Those are what we call our annuities, like the Blackfoot, the Speed Goat, the Stonewall, and a couple of our MiniBlades. so our goal was just get as many of those out into the public as possible so that our current funnel is saturated with those knives so that they’re just not selling out. Because if a new customer comes to our website, they have nothing to buy, I have nothing to convert to. So the idea is just like, okay, just…

30:35
almost get these guys sick of hearing about Blackfoot. They’ve had enough and now when a new customer comes in, they’re like, oh, there’s a Blackfoot available, cool, I’m buy that. Or my dad’s birthday’s coming up, I need a gift. Like I said, there’s a lot of things we’re doing that not a lot of companies get the chance to do because A, they’re either omnichannel through wholesale, where like, oh, it’s not on your website, but I can just go to Amazon or I’ll go to Cabela’s or I’ll go to there. So we get to control that narrative a little bit more.

31:05
So you don’t do any wholesale, is that correct? That’s correct. We have a couple stores in very select towns. There’s a small store oh in Jackson Hole right next to the Antler Arch. It’s more about foot traffic advertising than it is needle mover. And it’s literally then less than a half a percent, maybe even less than that, versus our competitors that are 60%, 70 % wholesale.

31:35
Right. So it seems like you are selling at the capacity that you can make these knives right now. So there’s really no reason for you to go wholesale. Is that accurate? Right, right. And the goal down the road is like, we want to be able to that point where we are wholesale. But even if Cabela’s came to us and I mean, we have big box stores knocking our door all the time and say like, hey, we need 60,000 knives for 2027 or 2026. We’re like, like is that worth?

32:04
cutting down on our capacity to D to C to supply wholesale. But we wanna do wholesale down the road because there are people who are not buying online, especially our knives, the older generations and things like that. They wanna see it, they wanna feel it, they wanna buy it from their local shop. We are missing out on that. And we see that and we know that. uh But it’s just something that it’s, we just have to have the responsibility of just understanding that’s an opportunity that’s.

32:33
this is down the road. Sure. You know, what’s funny is I looked on Amazon for Montana knife company right before this interview. A of people search for it. I know on Amazon. But yeah. And so I guess like if you had the capacity, would you guys be on Amazon or is Amazon something that’s not in the cards? No. So Amazon, Amazon’s fun because like I actually hired someone who was on our marketing team was specifically hired for us to onboard on Amazon. And we hired him and we hired him three years ago.

33:04
So we still have it. But he’s also amazing marketer too that helps us with all of our DTC and all that stuff. And then also to our COO, Andrew, we actually poached him from Amazon. So he was in charge of the entire Spokane packaging and shipping fulfillment thing. So we have the full system. We have the dude that knows, because a lot of companies where they fail Amazon is the shipping and the packaging and getting everything right the first time.

33:33
So we have all the right components for it. um We’re just waiting for the right time, you know, in our life cycle to actually onboard that. But it’s something I’m super interested in and like, yeah. So yeah, that makes sense. It’s not really compatible with the drop model, I guess. It would have to be with staples, right? It would be. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there’s a lot of brands that do that where there’s just like their core products are on there that are on their website. And then the idea is kind of get them to bite.

34:03
on that one product, the product is so good, they come back and they want another one, but it’s not on Amazon. So they have to go to their, you know, their, their, homepage. because these knives are, are what I call, I guess, heirloom knives, do people buy a bunch of them? Yeah. So if you said like, that’s the wildest thing is like our return rate is absolutely insane to where it was my, it was actual metric for me to decrease our return rate.

34:33
which is very untypical for a lot of companies, but it was like, do I get new people into our funnel? So we have a lot of people buy them, we have a lot of people to collect them, we have a very, very ravage Facebook group that buys, trades our knives. It’s really cool to watch, and they’re some of the best dudes ever, and we use them, and we’re in that group all the time, Josh and I, and we use that as quality control, we use that as product design. We’re asking them always, hey, what do you guys wanna see next? What do you like?

35:02
Don’t you like, and then like we also. No, we didn’t. Oh, you didn’t. Okay, wow. No, okay. I know. So some other fans created it. um We feed it, you know what I mean? Like we definitely promote it and let people know that it’s there. But you know, it’s up to I think six or 7000, you know, people in there. And it’s like, there’s probably a post every 10 to 15 minutes, which is just crazy to us. It’s so cool. It’s so cool to see.

35:30
Can we talk about your social media efforts? I know you have a YouTube channel. I was watching some videos there. uh Is that a big driver of business or? It absolutely is. Yeah, so our social is, you know, we put out a lot of content. I’m still personally running our Instagram. So I use the Instagram as like, hey, this is the voice, the brand and all this stuff. So what I post on Instagram, like then we’re able to distill that down over the other channels. ah And so, but like our YouTube is a little bit different.

35:58
because like, a, you know, it’s not photo based. Like our Instagram actually has always been really good with photos, not that great with video. Our YouTube is really good with video. And to me, our YouTube channel started as just a part of our big SEO hack, like our big SEO plan of like, how do we just like, we’re looking at all our competitors, they’re kind of sleeping behind the wheel, let’s just like day one was the first contractor ever hired was my buddy Joel from Flux.

36:26
and he set up SEO, I’m talking day one. We were paying this contractor before we were paying ourselves a salary, because I was like, there’s this massive hole that these people are just ignoring because they’re so wholesale focused. I was like, we’re gonna come in and now like Montana Knife Company is ranking better than companies have been around for 100 years. literally 100 year head start and just focusing on the boring thing. through that we were writing weekly blogs about knives and then every blog had a video.

36:56
And that video was the information, it was just like the digested video version of the blog to kind of help with everything that Google’s algorithm likes for SEO. So that’s where the YouTube channel started. It started as extremely informational. And then every once in a while, one of those videos would pop off. How to sharpen a knife correctly, sharpen a knife like a master bladesmith, how to field dress a deer, how to go elk hunting, how to do this. So that’s how it started. And then we started doing the behind the scenes, like the old school Gary V days where it’s like.

37:24
a weekly vlog of like what’s happening downstairs. We have a very, very eclectic group of people downstairs, a lot of personalities, they film really well, they love being on camera, they’re a bunch of goofballs. And like that to me is like, so our weekly vlogs are like our, is that middle funnel, we get you in and then you start watching our vlogs and stuff like that you’re like, oh, these are guys just like me. And that’s the thing about American manufacturing is like, you can go have a beer, you know, with like the guy that sharpens your knife.

37:52
So YouTube, A, has been amazing because A, we finally figured out how to do paid advertising on YouTube. what’s crazy is we’re getting a much greater return because of how good our organic content is. So they’re seeing our ads and our commercials, but they’re staying and subscribing because of our content. So it’s something we’re really proud of. It’s been really working. We only just started putting true focus on it for about the past year, year and a half. And it’s one of our top

38:22
four to five converting things on our exit survey, just YouTube itself. Are you guys doing short form videos also? on TikTok? We are, yeah. And of all those, would you say, like if someone listening to this is trying to prioritize what to do, what would you prioritize? So I get that question all the time. It’s so dependent on a product. Like right now, like, you know, some of my friends have some of these companies that are just crushing on TikTok shop.

38:50
because they have a product that is in that price point that is, that you’re able to go trade, you know, to a, you know, influencer for a commission. Like we don’t have that. Like for us to send a $1,300 chef set is a big gamble. Yeah. So like, so we don’t even have that option. So like, I can’t say like there’s this one specific thing. It’s all based off of a like product fit. And then B is like what you’re good at. Like one of the,

39:18
co-founders of the company was amazing behind the camera. So Instagram was just like natural and know, TikTok was not, cause it’s like turning the camera around and at that time it was just dances and like all that stuff. so what I would always, what I always advise people is like, whatever your strongest suit is that you’re able to do every day. Like if, if it was like that, that’s why we have no Twitter. Like I’m horrible at writing. I’m horrible at copywriting. Like I don’t want to, you know, like, our Twitter has been ignored for the past like five years.

39:48
It’s just because it’s like we don’t have someone who has that, you know, that verbatim flow just to sit there and tweet all day. Yeah. Actually walk me through your posting schedule. So Instagram you post every single day and like, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I’ve posted every single day for the past five years. I have not missed a single day uh of posting on Instagram. uh

40:14
And most days we post two or three times depending on the content that we have or what type of drop it is and things like that. So like that’s the nice thing now is like the new algorithms, you it’s so favorable to just getting as much content as possible before, you know, they use almost like, um like hurt you, it almost used to hurt you to post twice a day because you know, like it just had to sit in the feed and finally get seen. Now it’s, you know, fed to new people. yeah. And you’re in there answering comments and everything on the Instagram as well.

40:43
I do a little of that, it got to a point where we actually had to hire someone. So we have someone that handles comments and our DMs, just to make sure that we’re… Because there’s a lot of really big names that slide into our DMs and stuff like that, so we want to make sure they’re getting addressed as fast as possible. And then even more importantly, our customers are using that as a form of customer service. And then our DMs, our comments are very important because we want to respond to every single one.

41:10
And then are you guys still blogging given the changes with AI and like the Google search landscape? Yeah, this is the this is the I cannot take any credit is just pure luck. But like, yeah, we’re still doing one to two blogs every single week. We’re doubling down on it. We’re actually creating video series that we turn into blogs. Now, here’s the wild thing that we did not see coming in 2020 when we when we set up this SEO program to like break down everything about

41:40
every knife, every steel, every blade grind, every handle, every, you know, cause like when you, you know, when you do the SEO thing, you do the spoken hub thing and it’s just, eh so over the past five years, you know, we have, you know, blog a week, you know, so, you know, and we’re using gorgeous AI and we had five years of training. We dumped that into our AI agent and it knows our company better than anyone else. Like,

42:05
That’s the thing. That’s that’s like I said, there’s so many things that just worked out for us that like so like so we’re definitely not slowing down because like because like and then you know, then we obviously index it with all the you know, the the chat GPTs and grunks and stuff like that. So and they’re pulling information from our website as a trusted voice. OK, I think this like answered all my questions because I was originally I was like, OK, well, you guys are probably significantly more expensive than like a Chinese competitor.

42:33
But it sounds like you’ve created this community and this cult following for your knives back by Josh’s background and you’re just killing it on the social and community front. Yeah. And the biggest thing is we just show up every day. If I had to give any advice to any marketers, it’s just like, the only thing that’s gonna beat AI and really good paid ads is you being excited about your brand yourself. I can’t tell you how many marketers I talk to who just

43:03
don’t care about their company, they care about their bonus at the end of the quarter. Like I care more, like this is our lifestyle. This is the company we’re growing. We’re trying to grow it every day. Like we’re taking pictures of our new building, get built. Like if you’re not excited about your company, why would your customers be excited? Like that’s like, I think that’s the hack in 2025 and six and seven is just the human element of this whole thing.

43:28
I mean, you guys are doing everything right, documenting everything, putting out tons of content. mean, I think that’s the way to go. I mean, that’s how to get indexed. And that builds the personality for you guys. mean, content is like the backbone of what you guys do, right? I mean, the drops are cool too. I mean, what I like about the drops is you have scarcity, like every single day. It’s every other day, it seems, right? Yeah. So what’s it look like going forward? It seems like you guys are building a new facility or something, right?

43:57
Right, right. So, I mean, you know, the building that we built now is still on Josh’s property. It’s literally right next door to the two-car garage that we started on. And the goal for this was like, this building was supposed to keep us like in motion for about five years was our plan. Ten months into us moving into here, we started the building of the other one. So it didn’t last us that long with our growth. our next facility is, you know, 51,000 square feet.

44:23
It’s gonna have full retail store. We’re gonna have a Black Rifle coffee in the building itself. So it’s gonna be a destination right here in Montana. It’s right off of Highway 90. And um then like I said, the goal is to be 100 % self-sufficient in our manufacturing, even all the processes that we would use to have to outsource heat treat. Almost every, I I can only say this, every knife company right now is…

44:49
outsourcing, heat treating, and bevel grind, and all these things to people who just do all the knives. So now it’s like our goal is like, okay, let’s roll the dice and start bringing all that stuff in house and just be 100 % self-sufficient. um So we’re self-sufficient on our marketing, the DTC, our massive email list, text message list, and then we’re self-sufficient on our own product and being able to make it and things like that. I love it, man. Especially with all these tariffs going on, you guys are well positioned for everything.

45:18
And I love how you’re self-sufficient. You’re not really depending on anyone. And so you’re in full control of your own destiny. So Brandon, uh thank you so much for coming on the show. Like if people are interested in your knives and just checking out some of your content, where should they go? Yes, just Montana Knife Company. You can Google it MKC, Google and just Montana Knife Company. uh Check those out. Follow us on Instagram, DM us, pop in the comments if you heard it from this podcast.

45:48
We’re extremely accessible. can literally DM Josh anytime. can DM me anytime. uh That’s our goal is like, we wanna take this back to the older times where like, you used to know the person who owned the business and it’s uh just not a boardroom looking for bigger profits. it’s us and I think that’s what people like following us is like, we’re figuring this out. We make mistakes. We’re very transparent about it, but we also have a lot of wins.

46:17
Dude, I love it, man. Thank you so much, friend. I’m so glad that Kurt introduced this. Yeah, absolutely, Steve. This has been great. Hope you enjoyed this episode. The way Montana Knife Company markets their products is pretty cool. Go check out their website and sign up for their email list. For more information and resources, go to mywifequitherejob.com slash 615. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com.

46:44
If you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs, and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to SellersSummit.com. 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.