00:26
But before we begin, want to you know that tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit are now on sale over at Sellersummit.com and they’re almost sold out. In fact, there only 10 tickets left. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, is a curriculum-based event where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their business.

00:56
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01:22
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01:50
when you grab the book over at mywifecoderjob.com slash book. So go over to mywifecoderjob.com slash book, fill out the form and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now onto the show.

02:07
Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast in a brand new section of the show called Profit of Audience, where we break down all things content creation. And the topic of today is gonna be this gigantic Google update that just hit last week on March 5th, I think. And it’s been really bad. For almost everyone in my mastermind group, I got hit as well. And we’re gonna talk about this update and how I’m a little…

02:35
I’m kind of happy about the update, even though that it actually hit me. So we had this conversation last week and you said, oh, I think this next Google update is going to be really bad. And then you whip out your phone and you check out. would assume you were checking your analytics because I wasn’t I couldn’t see what you were doing. And you’re like, I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. And then we immediately change the subject and we’re talking to something else. But you weren’t fine. I was fine.

03:02
for that first day. 12 hours. Or while we were at ECF, I was actually fine. Okay. So I am ill-prepared for this because I don’t even look at Google Analytics because I can’t read GA4. So tell me more. Tell me more about this. All right. So

03:22
Let me just go through the Google official press release and then I’ll talk about like the real stuff that I’ve been chatting with all my colleagues about. Dumb it down for the rest of us, please. No, no, no, no, it’s not. It’s not complicated. mean, basically they fought AI spam. So anyone with an AI generated content website pretty much got deindexed out of the Google search entirely. So that’s a positive. It’s a positive. That’s what I’m saying. That’s not the reason why I got hit. Why I got hit, I’ll talk about in just a little bit. But yes, I thought you were a robot.

03:51
What we’ve all suspected for many years is now we know to be true. No, I think that’s a great thing because you and I have talked about this for what? The past year and how these sites and you were I remember we talked about this one site probably over a year ago that was was it talking about board games or something games and they had like thousands of of posts and they were ranking and it was completely an AI generated site. So to me, that’s a good point. Number one seems good.

04:21
It’s a fantastic, they didn’t actually outline that, but it’s funny, they kept fluctuating over this policy. They were like, oh, AI is expressly prohibited, no AI is allowed as long as you edit it and whatnot. But it seems pretty clear that if your content is AI and of no value except regurgitating stuff, you’re pretty much gonna be penalized with a manual penalty. What’s funny is I didn’t get ahold of Spencer, because remember we talked about last time how he held this AI competition?

04:50
I’m very curious how those sites fared and I suspect that they did not fare very well. Yeah, I’m actually that was the first thought that I had because we had just talked about his challenge a couple weeks ago. Yeah. So I view this first one as a good thing. Right. And you know what’s funny is I just discovered that Amazon has been asking the question, did you use AI to create this listing? Oh, interesting. I don’t have I don’t see that in my interface, so they must just

05:19
be kind of rolling this out to a few people. So if you check yes, I don’t know what that means. But if you check no, but you did in fact use AI, I don’t know what that means either. But both can’t be good. I was gonna say, I feel like either one is probably bad. Yes. Okay, okay. So this is, I’m fascinated, keep going. And then I think YouTube, I read this somewhere, I don’t see it my account yet either, but YouTube’s gonna have a checkbox similar to that as well.

05:47
Okay, so let’s veer off really quick because this is a question. You and I both do something similar. So I’ve been creating YouTube scripts from my own blog posts, but putting them into AI to turn them into script form. I’m assuming that is not what they’re talking about. I don’t think that they’re going to penalize you for that. But if you’re using AI generated content with like an AI voice or I don’t know. I don’t know what it means, to be honest with you. Yeah, it’s not even out of my account yet. So right. I mean, that would be my question because it is my content that I wrote.

06:16
I’m just having AI generate it into a script version as opposed to a read version, which they’re fairly similar. It’s just changing some of the beginning of sentences and stuff like that. Anyway, that would be my. I have no idea, but I think they want you to self incriminate yourself. Yes. Like if you say no and then they use their tools or whatever they do and find that it was in some way or someone complains, then who knows? Maybe that would be a strike against your channel. OK, OK. So what’s what’s number two? What did they do?

06:46
So number two, this is all great stuff by the way. The second thing that they cracked down on is expired domain abuse. And for all of you listening who don’t know what this is, people would buy these expired domains that had pretty good domain authority and backlinks to it. They would buy that domain and then they would build a new blog based on that domain about something completely different and essentially get a head start on their website. Oh, I remember this. This seems like an old school trick. It’s been going on for

07:16
as long as I can remember actually. feel like Jim Wang invented this trick. This seems like a Jim Wang think Jim Wang did this. No, but I feel like in our our FinCon group there were people that did use this tactic. Not our particular group of people, but overall I think that I learned about this at FinCon. By the way, if you want to learn about all the black hat tactics, Black Hat World is like the

07:37
I like to go on there to see what cutting edge people are doing that are gray hat or black hat. I hope you’re on a VPN at a Starbucks in another city. I just logged in as you. You probably are you big jerk. Okay. What’s up next? So that one was good that they cracked down on that. The next thing that they cracked down on was what is called a site reputation abuse. This is where you buy links on like Forbes.

08:08
and you’re just artificially leveraging someone’s larger site to boost your own. And you know all these publications like Forbes, Business Insider, they’re all hurting for cash, right? It’s hard to make money with a pure content site, especially at scale like that. So what they’ve been doing, and I don’t know if you’ve gotten these emails before, but hey, get featured in Forbes. We can guarantee you a Forbes placement. And then you read the fine print and it’s like, may include some sort of fee.

08:38
Okay, I did not know about this. I thought you had to earn those links. I get those every day. Like, hey, we want to feature you on Forbes. You’re like, oh, great. Yeah. And then you read the fine print may have fees associated with it. So you pay like five grand or something and you get on there. So people have been doing this, obviously. I can see people jumping at this. People have been doing this for a very long time. The other thing I want to say is, I don’t know if you remember, I think we recorded this episode with Profitable Audience where I had a buddy of mine.

09:08
And what he did, he would guest post on large publications. And then he would go around and tell people, hey, I will include your link in my guest post if you let me guest post for your site. And if you recall, I was doing this. I was gonna say, wasn’t that person you? Well, no, no, no, that wasn’t my idea. And I did it on a very small scale. But my buddy did this on a huge scale. You we’re talking like a post a day. Yeah.

09:37
like in this, had this whole network and he grew his site to like 1 million visits per month off of this. And I used it too, if you recall, this is all in preparation for my book. So this had to have occurred maybe in 2021 or something like that. And it worked. I actually grew my site tremendously during that period. It was just too much maintenance. I didn’t have like a really good system for doing this.

10:01
But you you add great results, but it wasn’t something that you could maintain. It wasn’t sustainable for me unless I hired a bunch of people and train them up for this. Anyway, long story short, Google started cracking down on this as part of this update. And I actually just went and checked my friend’s site. He went from one million visits per month all the way. Now, I think he’s down to like eleven thousand now. What? Yes. Holy cow.

10:31
So he got hit because all of his backlinks were built this way.

10:36
Okay, this one seems a little, I don’t know. I don’t know necessarily if it’s a bad thing if you’re actually creating educational and good content for people. I mean, I get it’s gaming the system, but to me it’s like if you’re writing legitimate guest posts and they’re quality posts, who cares if you’re kind of weaving the tapestry? I don’t know, you know what I mean? I guess, but it is gaming the system, right? Like it’s, if you look at these articles, it’s pretty clear.

11:04
Like you just take one word and you’re linking to another related post. Oh, I see. I haven’t read a lot of those posts. So I the posts are good. They’re well written. It’s just they’re linking to, you know, random sites to spend a lot of time on this. I did. Yeah, because, yeah, everything I did, I did for this book, actually, like in preparation, like I literally started preparing to launch the book probably two years before the book got released. Yeah. OK, that’s an interesting one.

11:34
Yeah. then so back on the AI one also, it’s unclear how they’re detecting this, but I think they’re mainly cracking down on blog post velocity. Like if all of sudden you have like a thousand posts, it up. But I’m sure they have ways to detect whether it’s AI generated. Okay, but if you’re using a Google AI tool to create AI, don’t they know that your email address is locked?

12:04
Those people aren’t using the Google AI tool though. Well, correct. But I feel like Google could probably fairly easily tell who’s doing that. I don’t know. You would think if you’re just straight copying what the gray area is, if you take something AI generated and you modify it, whether they can tell or whether that’s even OK. Anyway, this brings up to the final one. This is the reason why I got hit. Oh, yes. We haven’t even gotten to that We haven’t gotten that.

12:34
basically going down the Google official press release, which actually means nothing in most cases because what they release and what actually happens isn’t really. Right. Okay. So number one, why me and all my buddies got hit is because now just, just do a search on Google right now. The top spot for one of my main queries that I used to rank for is now a LinkedIn post.

13:00
followed by Quora, followed by Reddit. And Google has greatly promoted all of these sites and just knocked everyone else down in general. Now here’s what’s fascinating about this. We have a mutual friend who’s not in my mastermind group, but what he started doing was copying his blog posts directly into LinkedIn. And he has the top spot for a keyword. And then the blog post that he has on his blog,

13:29
He’s redirecting that to LinkedIn now. And his LinkedIn post has all the same affiliate links and that sort of thing. And that’s how he’s managed to rank a bunch of his pages. Well, that works if your content works for LinkedIn, but if you have a chicken leg recipe, that’s not, I I’m not posting that on LinkedIn. Well, this is just an example of what people are doing, right? And it was like a financial services review that he had dropped in the rankings.

13:59
And so he just copied it to LinkedIn and all of a sudden he got the number one spot again. Identical content, right? Pretty dumb. But he’s redirecting, so this guy didn’t get hit, he’s now ranking, right? Well no, he copied his stuff to LinkedIn. His blog lost ranking. Yes. So he decided to do an experiment and just copy that blog post over to LinkedIn and then that LinkedIn post that he posted got the number one spot.

14:25
So when people type in his blog post URL, they are redirected to LinkedIn. They are now, which is, I don’t recommend this because you’re essentially telling Google that LinkedIn is the authoritative post now. However, he doesn’t care because that LinkedIn post generates a lot of money because it has his affiliate links in it. And you’re allowed to do that on LinkedIn. I did not know that. I’m not really a LinkedIn expert, but I went to check it out and it’s got his links in there. He doesn’t care about it. Okay, just.

14:55
Keep in mind also that these people that we’re talking about make all their money through affiliate marketing. They don’t necessarily care about email subs. Although you could have a link in there that takes you to a landing page where you have an email signup form as well. I found that fascinating. And if you look at some of my queries, I think the Google search results are worse now because they now link to this Reddit thread that is just garbage. Sometimes it’s linked to… So there’s one of my posts.

15:25
where I’m doing a review of like a drop shipping site. And the number one spot links to a Reddit thread dated 2021, which is completely not accurate. I have noticed that. In fact, this just happened to me the other day. What was I looking for? think it was, yeah, it was something about a credit card. I needed to know how to do something with a certain credit card. And I Googled, I couldn’t find it on the credit card website.

15:52
So was like, rather than call and sit on hold, let me just do a quick Google search. I’m sure that I’m just not searching the right thing on the credit card site or probably nerd wallet has the answer, right? that’s, nerd wallet always has the answer. And when I Googled it, the first thing that came up, you’re right, was a Reddit post, which I clicked on, was not even close to what I was, I mean, it had the words in there, but it wasn’t what I needed to know. And then once again, like a bunch of Reddit people don’t know how to solve my problem when it came to this.

16:21
So yeah, think that was actually yesterday that that happened. And I was like, wow, this really stinks. Because normally, it was about an American Express card. Normally, the first response would have been an American Express help page, right? That would have usually shown up number one in Google, and it did not. It was a bunch of Reddit threads. And then, I don’t remember if it was Quora or something else, but then, yeah, it took me, I ended up going back to the American Express site and just digging deeper to try to find the answer.

16:49
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that Tony and I offer over at Profitable Audience that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in learning how to make money with content, whether it be through blogging, podcasting, or YouTube, we put together a comprehensive six-day mini course on how to get started blogging that you should all check out. It contains both video and text-based tutorials that go over the entire process, including a full tutorial on how to set up your first content website. This course is 100 % free.

17:16
and you can sign up over at profitableaudience.com slash free. Once again, that’s profitableaudience.com slash free. Now back to the show.

17:27
Yeah, my buddy Glenn Alsop, who runs detail.com, actually did a case study where it was something crazy. Let me see if I can find the post. But it was some really large percentage of Reddit posts gaining in the search results and pushing everyone else down. So I’m actually looking at, I just typed in, which is better Shopify or BigCommerce? So the number one response here is Forbes.

17:57
Shopify versus BigCommerce 2024 comparison. The next response is Shopify. Well, I wonder what they’re gonna say. The third one was Reddit. And it’s not even, it’s like any advices for a Shopify, BigCommerce new seller. yeah. sorry, Quora, Reddit, LinkedIn, basically any of the established social media sites.

18:27
And people are gaming these big time now. Oh, 100%. It’s a little harder to game Reddit because if you post a link, like sometimes you get flamed, but people are doing it, especially if they own their own subreddits. Yeah. And that’s how they’re ranking. Interesting. Yeah. I think this has got to change because it’s garbage. It’s worse now, in my opinion.

18:49
Well, it’s like, do you remember when forums were really big, like back in the like 2006, seven, eight, it was before the internet was, I felt like as big as it was, so a lot of the information being shared was on like specific forums. And if you ever searched for anything, you would get the forum response, but the forums are so biased against, like you could be on a forum that was completely anti-homeschool.

19:16
Right, so every single post in there was about homeschooling, but it was about why you shouldn’t homeschool, right? But then there was an entire forum dedicated to like pro homeschooling. So you never got any agnostic advice about anything because if you landed on a forum, it was clearly biased in one direction or another. And I feel like that’s what’s gonna happen again, right? Is that, you know, the people, the threads on Reddit, I mean, there’s sometimes there’s good stuff on Reddit. don’t think it’s, but to me, Reddit’s more of like entertainment.

19:44
like reading through and just surveying the people. It’s not an information, to me it’s not like an informational site. Maybe other people are using it that way, but I’ve never thought of it that way. And certainly not concise. By the way, I found my friend’s blog post. So what he did is he reviewed 10,000 product review terms, just kind of random. This is what he does for a living. He of does these cool case studies. And this is what he found.

20:10
The reddit.com domain was present in 7,500 search results and featured 14,000 times. This means that if the SERP feature was present, Reddit not only had a 97.5 % chance of showing up, but on average had 1.9 of the three possible listings at the top. And then he goes on to talk, maybe I’ll link this article because it’s fascinating. But people are gaming it by voting up

20:39
like their earbuds or their review in the results. And so it’s an artificial, the conclusion of this article was the Google product review search results are now the worst that he’s ever seen. Which I feel like we said this several months ago where it was gonna get worse before it gets better because of, you know, everything, how everything’s changing. So, I mean, I hope eventually it will get back to giving you useful information, but

21:09
You know, all the statistics and articles I’ve read, you know, people are searching on Pinterest for information. The younger generation is searching on TikTok. They’re not Googling anything. They’re TikToking it, like to find the information. Which is more real because you see a video, right? Right. And then last week at ECF, in one of the groups, a lot of people were saying they just ask AI, right? They just go into chat GPT and ask the question.

21:39
they don’t even Google it anymore. Yeah, I started using Proplexity a little more. Are you using this? Have you tried it? No, but that’s what they were talking about in my little group in ECF. Yeah. All right, here’s some more stats. This one’s interesting. So Glenn manually went through the top Reddit threads that appeared in 1,005 individual search results. And of the resulting 122 URLs, 63 have a top comment with a self-promotional affiliate link.

22:09
often written months after the original thread was created. And that’s how people are gaming it. right, so should we switch gears and talk about the reasons why I like this update, even though it hit me? Yes, let’s talk about how bad you got hit first. Give us I got hit about 25%. Okay, and what about your other affiliate marketer friends? Some of them got hit worse than that. I was just gonna say.

22:37
It’s interesting because I know the group of people you’re talking about and it feels like they’re just getting, like every couple years they just get decimated and then they work their way back up and then they get decimated. It just feels, it’s almost like social media now, right? Like I don’t wanna be on the hamster wheel. I don’t wanna be on the hamster wheel of Google updates, right? It’s feeling very similar of like, well now I’m gonna follow all the new rules and then only to get decimated two and a half years later for whatever reason.

23:06
I think the difference is that this time I think search, the search days are numbered. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. That’s my general opinion. Cause AI is going to replace search eventually. Right? Why type in a query and get a bunch of junk or links? We can just get the answer. But anyways, okay, let’s switch gears. Cause, okay. So remember a long time ago, we did an episode where I told you that I hate writing now because Google has forced you to write in a certain way.

23:36
that answers the questions and nothing else. Well, they just did a 180 on that. Right. So as part of this last update, they don’t want content that is the same as everyone else’s. Right. Because because you’ve noticed, right, when you search for something, you’ll see two pages with the results that essentially regurgitate the exact same stuff. it’s just like one upping the next person. Right. Yeah. Who has more content? Well, that’s different now, because Google actually wants real

24:06
content that’s original, which ironically is the way that I used to write. Before I discovered that writing original content reflecting my experiences was actually hurting me in the search results, right? Because it’s getting interpreted as extra stuff and it was hard to categorize when Google just wants the answer. So if you look at the people who benefited from this March update, and it’s still really early by the way.

24:35
No one really has any definitive conclusions, but there are a couple of outlier sites that were literally just photos and People just talking about hey, I bought it is almost like the old days of blogging We just kind of talked about your day Yeah, you talked about your day and you mentioned this thing and how you loved it and whatnot a Couple of those type of sites got promoted in the search results

25:00
And again, it’s still early and there’s not that much data, but the old days are back. I’m happy. When I used to, because I hated my blog. Yeah. And I remember when I launched my book, I was not proud of it at all. And I knew people were going to come to my site and I was thinking to myself, what if they go to my blog and they see this kind of robotic, you know, encyclopedia of stuff where they just answer the question and nothing else.

25:27
They’ll be like, that’s the Steve Choo we’ve always known. What’s ironic about all of this is I spent probably a year and a half optimizing my money posts by removing all of my own opinions, by removing all of the stories I had involved with the tools that I use to keep it short and succinct. Thank goodness WordPress has a revision button.

25:56
It’s so, it’s so different now. So I can’t even, you know, but basically Google’s looking for original content. The good old days of, uh, Brian Dean skyscraper technique, where you just taking what someone else has written, kind of rewriting it and, trust trying to outdo the next result. As of now, I think those days are over until Google decides to change your mind. Yeah, but it makes sense. Right.

26:23
I mean, you don’t want to read the same regurgitated stuff in the search results. I hated myself. This started in 2016. I want to say this whole regurgitated stuff because that’s what Google was. They wanted that. They just want the answer and nothing else.

26:39
Well, I’m glad I’m working on YouTube now. Actually, that was my next point. So even though my wife quick got hit, I actually looked at my analytics results and my YouTube channel actually dwarfs the blog now. Yeah. In terms of email subs. You hit 300,000 subs. I did. Yeah. Yay. And I actually figured out a system that I’ve used on my last two videos that I’m pretty confident will

27:08
I’m going to actually present this to our class today in fact. Okay. Awesome. that I just kind of discovered recently where I was screwing up on some of my other videos and I’m going all in. I was already all on YouTube, but even more so now I’m actually going to go back to my blog and add in like my own personal experiences again. And it’ll be fun for me this time because that’s how I used to write. Yeah. And so even though I personally got hit, I’m actually

27:37
kind of glad that it’s going this way in a way. I mean, I’d be more glad if my traffic was still here just to be clear, but it will make writing a little bit more fun again. Yeah. Unlike before. Yeah. I never went over to that side. I was like, I’m not doing it. It’s not my content doesn’t lend itself to that anyway. but it can write like if you’re if you have a recipe, you’re just not going to give out the recipe, right? You’re going to talk about.

28:06
Oh yeah, but I never went to the whole just give them just the facts, ma’am. I was like, this is not what I do. So yeah, was I just never got on that train, which I’m glad that I didn’t. Well, I mean, there’s a lot of money made during that time. You’re right. We’re talking almost eight years of gravy. Yeah. But I’m also not an affiliate heavy site.

28:32
Yeah. So and people buy like I was actually looking at this the other day. The the affiliates that people are like my heavy moneymakers are all because I’m like I joined this program, this and that. Like it’s all because I’m sharing my experience of why people should, you know, like one of my top affiliates for a long time was Adore Your Wardrobe from Kelly Snyder. Right. And the reason why that did so well is I’m literally making videos in my closet.

29:00
right, and telling people why they need to dress for their body type and clean out their closet. I mean, that’s why that converted. wasn’t because I was just giving the fact, I don’t even know the facts of the program anymore. I couldn’t tell you how long of a program it is or anything. What I could tell you was it worked and my own experience. Which I do think is pretty compelling for people.

29:25
in my niche, you know, I think it’s definitely different in your niche. So, I mean, we’re just coming from two totally different places. That’s correct. Yeah. I am curious, though. So what happened? You said used to be. you? I just haven’t promoted it in a long time. Like, because she only does like twice a year launches and things like that. So it’s like if I if she launches in a period of time where it’s like, I’m just not something I have time to promote, then.

29:52
I don’t promote it, but yeah, when I do promote it, it always does well. Same thing with the passionate penny pincher menu planning boxes. Those always do really well, but I talk about my whole sites about menu planning and how it’s, I have personal stories and I have actually shared reader stories of how it saved people thousands and thousands of dollars in their grocery bills. So because I have all those stories on there, I think that’s why that stuff converts so much better than.

30:20
me just talking about a product on Amazon or But I noticed you used the word video also. Yes. And not text, right? Yeah, but I’ve always done both for those things. Obviously now working more on the video. It was interesting. I was looking at my YouTube channel, because I’ve had one for 12 years, a long time. And some of my older videos that have thousands and thousands of views are so awful.

30:50
And it just makes me, like if you wanna think about how far the iPhone has come, I filmed these videos with like an iPhone 5, I think was the phone of the day back then. you know, even if you are just filming with an iPhone 12, the picture quality is absolutely phenomenal.

31:11
Anyway, was just kind of, was kind of laughing at it I was like, maybe I’ll like add a thumbnail and like, you know, kind of like re up some of these old videos. And then I watched him and I was like, no, it looks like a grainy. It looks like I’m filming through a dirty window. I was like, I will not be, I’ll not be re upping these videos for sure. So let’s talk about Bumblebee next. So the Bumblebee blog got hit. Really? Yeah. Which I care a little bit less, but my core product results.

31:42
were okay, but what I noticed, because I immediately just looked at all my rankings for my money pages, right? And I noticed a bunch of sites got promoted that are the crappiest linen sites that I’ve ever seen. Really? Yeah, to the front page. And in fact, there’s this one URL from Big Cartel where they didn’t even have their own domain. It was literally store.bigcartel.com, which means it didn’t even pay for.

32:09
like a real membership, they’re just using the free tier. And the site was like the ugliest thing that I’ve ever seen. It looked like just a standard template, just threw up some products on there and they started ranking. And there’s no way that that site should rank. Why? What’s the logic behind that? I have no idea. I have absolutely no idea why that site was ranking. So Google, and again, this rollout is supposed to take a month, so it’s not done yet.

32:39
But so far it’s been terrible from a usability standpoint in my eyes. Yeah. I feel like that’s been the case for a while now. But it’s worse. I don’t think it could get worse. yeah. Well, I think we’ve actually we actually said that several months ago. Like, well, this is this is pretty crappy. And then all of a sudden it’s now even worse than it was before. So I talked to Jeff Oxford and he primarily does e-commerce SEO.

33:06
and he basically said that most of his sites did not get hit in his portfolio. Maybe 10 to 15 % of the sites did. It seems like at least e-commerce is fairly stable. It’s just in the content side where the biggest changes are happening. He said that, but yet Bumblebee got The blog got hit. Yes. That’s the content side of Bumblebee, Oh, I what you’re saying. The listings, the category pages, things like that. Correct.

33:35
not the products in the categories. They’ve shifted though, but yeah, pretty flat on the product side, the blog. I think everyone, be honest, I have not talked to a single person personally that I know who’s benefited from this. And I think it’s because Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, and all those sites have gotten promoted, which has pushed everyone else down. Right, just in general, if those are going up, everyone else by nature has to get pushed down.

34:03
Why even have a blog anymore? Like why not just post all of your blog posts on LinkedIn was the question that we were just kind of bouncing around. And the reason is you don’t wanna put your stuff on a property that you don’t own, right, in case anything changes. But that’s essentially what Google’s telling us right now. Meh, I don’t like it. Yeah, no, mean, you have to have a blog, you have to have a landing page, you have to have a place for people to opt in for your email. Yeah.

34:33
And I’m sure this is gonna get reversed at some point, because this is not, yeah. Sorry, go on, I interrupted you. No, just, first of all, the fact that Reddit shows up at the top is laughable to me. just, I just don’t, I know there’s people that, like my brother loves Reddit, and I know people love commenting, reading, I mean, it’s very, it’s very, very popular. But to me, Reddit would never be a place I would go for information.

35:03
It’s entertainment to me or just mindless, I don’t know. Because it’s like, here’s the thing, right? What did Google tell us for so long? Like you need to show that you’re an authority in the space, right? If you’ve been featured on magazines or TV shows or publications, you need to put that in there so we know you’re an authority. Any idiot can go on Reddit and post something. You have no idea what their background is. You have no idea what their knowledge base is.

35:33
And then now they’re going to rank. Now they’re going to rank, right, because they’re in a thread. And so Billy Bob is out there, you know, given medical advice on Reddit. And I don’t know, I just think it’s absurd to me. Like I. Yeah, it’s absurd. I’m going to go on strike. I’m going to go on strike from Google. So Google actually tweeted about this. And the head of Google, like the front facing guy. Yeah, he was quoted as saying Reddit has a lot of practice dealing with spam.

36:02
and experienced users there are not shy. And so their logic is that these communities have been around for a very long time and they must have pretty good spam policies. Therefore, Reddit has higher searches. They were basically defending what they’d done. So, yes, they probably have a great spam filter. mean, because I know I’ve heard people saying that they got their stuff removed from Reddit and things like that. But it doesn’t mean that the people talking on there know anything.

36:31
Those are two completely different buckets. 100 % agree with you. Yeah.

36:38
I don’t know. My prediction is that Google’s search is, it’s, it’s definitely going down. Yeah. And it’s the days are numbered. I’d say I give it like two years tops. Interesting. And the reason why I say that was, you’re, you’re about my age, right? Yeah. A little, little, little, little older. Back in the day when I was in college, Yahoo was the main search engine in town. Yep. But then within one year it was gone. Google had destroyed it in one year. Yeah.

37:08
All it takes is something that’s superior to quickly, like once word of mouth spreads. example, if perplexity takes off, for everyone listening to this, perplexity is basically a site that gives you an AI answer, but it also does searches and then it gives you, it sites all the, it basically has backup and links for where it got the data from. So you can feel fairly confident about the result. So it’s essentially like a combination of AI and Google search.

37:38
is what it is. And it works pretty well. I’ve used it on occasion. Most of the time now I use ChatGPT actually to ask a question and then I just double check and Google if I think it’s sketchy. Can we veer off for two minutes and talk about ChatGPT? Sure. So I think on it, I don’t know when these will publish, but we talked about the AI talk at ECF Live and how I thought it was a great talk and I’ve never done the paid ChatGPT.

38:07
I’ve always just used the free version. And because of that talk, I was like, okay, it’s 20 bucks a month. gonna splurge and get the paid version. So I was looking for some email content and I had ChatGPT 3.5, which is the free version, I believe, versus the paid version, which I think is for something, maybe just for worlds apart. And on stuff that’s not factual, right? It was like ideas for birthday party or something like that.

38:37
It wasn’t something where it’s like the information needed to be cross checked. It was more like creative ideas for things and it was nuts how much better it is. So if you if you’re cheap, I believe you’re so I know if you’re like me, I know, I know. Stop, stop. But there’s probably a lot of people like me that are like, oh, I don’t know, because I don’t use it as much as a lot of other people do. And so I wasn’t I know, I know there are so many things I need to present to my class.

39:06
Yeah, for online store that I’m doing right now with AI and just advertising and everything that I’m thinking about like postponing all the zoom calls for a while while I all this content out and then likewise and profitable audience as well. There’s a lot a lot of stuff going on. Yeah, that I that I’m just itching to present. Anyways, yeah, if you’re not using AI, you’re going to fall behind. Yeah, Google’s search. I can’t imagine.

39:37
At some point they’re have to make decision whether they want to decimate their revenue or not because what they’re doing right now and the results Is just not working. and it’s actually turning off a lot of people. You know, what’s so funny is I belong to this one Facebook group that just kind of covers SEO Everyone’s moving to Pinterest Okay, so yes, I didn’t want to bring this up on this episode because it’s so far different I’m completely re-upping my Pinterest strategy

40:04
So I’ve just been like maintaining because it’s still a decent source of traffic for me. Google’s always, not Google’s always my number one, but Google and Pinterest usually sit like one and two depending on the month. But I start with all the Google stuff and with everything else that’s going on, I was like, you know what, I need to just, it doesn’t take a lot of time to do it. I think we have a lesson in the course like 45 minutes a week or something like that. It’s pretty short.

40:30
amount of time to work on, but yeah, I’m completely re-upping my strategy with Pinterest. For that reason. has the same problems though, right? I don’t know, they’re not showing Reddit threads as in the search results. I mean with spam, I mean with spam. Yes, I feel like they’ve gotten a little better. And I also feel like the younger generation, because now I’m old and I can say that, is actually using Pinterest. So like my kids are all, I was actually talking to your sister-in-law about this a while back.

41:00
It’s their fastest growing demographic that 16 to 24 age bracket. My kids use it all the time. They all have the app on their phone. mean, when Pinterest came out, I would have never thought it would be an app for teens. I 100 % agree. This is so random how that happened. Anyway, so I’m recommitting my efforts to Pinterest 100 % because I feel like, yeah, that’s…

41:27
I’m not playing the Google game Pinterest for all of its changes and stuff that’s gone on. Like the core of Pinterest has stayed the same. It’s all about the images. It’s a visual search engine. And I even bought a course this week just to like see if there’s anything that I’m not doing that, you know, is out there. So yeah, I’m re-upping it totally. Yeah. Meanwhile, I’m still going to, I don’t want to say play the Google game, but I’m going to go in and add my own opinions on, my post again.

41:56
That’s actually easy writing for me. I’m gonna take what I have and then have a section of like, hey, this is my personal opinion on this. If you want all the facts, continue reading below. I’ll say something like that and just give my straight up opinion on all these tools that I’ve been using for so many years and see what happens. It might make blogging fun again. Right, I should get a hat.

42:26
Hope you enjoyed this episode. Now these changes to Google are just the tip of the iceberg and there’s going to be many more changes in just the next three weeks, so stay tuned. More information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 525. And once again, tickets to Seller Summit 2024 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. And 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.

42:54
And if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywipequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

00:25
I want to let you know that tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit are now on sale over at Sellersummit.com. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online and unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, is a curriculum-based event where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their business. Entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods

00:54
and not some high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Now I personally hate large events, so the Seller Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. Now if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 14th May 16th.

01:22
and the ticket prices are going up every two weeks leading up to the event. Also, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, it’s actually available on Amazon at 50 % off. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that does not require you to work yourself to death. Plus, you can still grab my free bonus workshop on how to sell print on demand and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube, and podcasting when you grab the book over at mywifeclutterjob.com slash book.

01:50
So go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash book, fill out the form and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now onto the show.

02:03
Welcome to the My Web Quotar Job podcast. This is a new segment of the show called Profitable Audience where my business partner, Tony and I just discuss things, all things related to content creation, productivity and various other topics. And today we’re actually going to cover productivity because we have the queen of productivity herself on the show. Tony has seven kids, a bunch of businesses. I don’t know how she does it all. And a puppy. Can we talk about the puppy?

02:33
That’s a productivity killer. That’s my tip. Tip number one, do not get a puppy. I would never get a puppy. It’s like having another child, right? That eats everything off your countertops. So, yes, that’s but anyway. Yeah, I was actually thinking we should read just can we rename this like tidbits with Tony? know, this is the second. Well, I got some stuff to share, too. No, no, no. I’m just saying like this, you know, this new like part of my wife quit her job, like because I’m on it, not because you don’t have anything to share.

03:04
You are welcome to do a solo episode, Tids and Su Tony. I have no problems with that whatsoever. When, when all of your rankings tank, the advertisers go running away screaming. Uh, probably not. You know, it’s funny. We always have these talks where I go up to you and I say, I don’t know how you do it because like right now I’m actually at a point right now. And I was just telling you this before we started to hit record. Like my level of work is getting to a certain point where I need to start dropping stuff.

03:34
Because I always like, and you always make fun of me for this, but I always like to have a day free. Yes. Every week. Sometimes two. I prefer two actually. I was just going to steal your punch line. Or sometimes two days free. Well, you know why? It’s because I feel like you actually need to have at least one day free because emergencies always arise. Yes. Right. So you need some headroom in order to make forward progress with your business. And two is ideal because then you can actually relax one day.

04:02
Plus the weekend. really you only want to work three days a week. But you, I always feel like you have your schedule filled to the rim. I do. Right? To the brim. And I can’t live like that. So what happens if something out of the ordinary happens? Do you end up just scrambling and having to drop something or? You know me, of course I end up scrambling. Yeah, you’re always doing so. Okay. So let’s start with, why don’t you give an intro like what you have on your plate.

04:31
and that sort of thing. I want to talk about several things today because I think this is really important because we do operate very differently. You like a lot of extra space. I actually don’t love a lot of extra space, but I see the benefits of having that margin. There’s actually a book called Margin that’s really good. It’s an older book, but it’s still really applicable.

04:57
inevitably, everyone has emergencies, whether your dog eats a sock or your kid has to stay after school or you have a volleyball tournament, right? We’re all dealing with these things or you have a personal crisis, right? You need that extra margin built in. So if you have a day like mine, that’s usually just packed from the minute you get up to the minute you go to bed, that gives you no opportunity to have any, you know, glitch in the matrix, basically. Yeah. Like, for example, my fridge broke.

05:25
My car, my car needed repairs. mean, stuff like that can take, waste like half a day. Yeah. And that’s, that’s the hard part too, because what I think we, people don’t talk about with those things is that it’s not just that it’s an inconvenience. Like I got a screw in my tire a couple of weeks ago. And so that’s obviously something that you can’t just keep driving on. And it’s not just that you had to take that two or three hours to go to the tire shop. It’s then your mindset like completely shifts, right? Because you’re irritated.

05:53
You’re like, I’m wasting my morning, you know? then, so not only are you losing those hours of productivity, you’re actually losing so much more because your mindset almost always shifts into this. Even if it’s a slight level of irritation, it’s something that’s now basically keeping you from being as productive as you could be in the time that you have. Oh, 100%. So we were actually at my daughter’s volleyball tournament this past weekend, and I really needed to get something done because I was not able to get it done during the week.

06:22
And there’s a lot of downtime at these volleyball tournaments. So my wife was like, Hey, why don’t you just hop over to the car and just do 30 minutes of work of creative work where you have to write a script or blog post. And that just, I just can’t flip that switch on for 30 minutes. And that’s the one thing that I’ve actually, it’s, I feel like it’s one of those things that I’ve probably even said and given it to other people, but I haven’t taken the advice myself is that it’s very hard to flip the switch between the menial tasks that we all have to do on a regular basis. Right.

06:52
filling out, stuff in our QuickBooks or responding to an email versus writing a YouTube script or filming or doing things that involve a lot of brain power. And I’ve always said, take those little moments to do the quick things when you have them. But then I find myself being irritated and then not doing it. Like I’m just like kind of in a fluster of not being able to get anything done. So for you,

07:22
when Jen says, just go to the car and pop out a 3000 word blog post in 30 minutes. Or just whatever you can get done. Yeah, whatever you can get done. I have had a mindset shift in the past several months that I have a mental list of whatever you can get done things that are truly whatever you can get done. And actually yesterday was a perfect example. I had a packed day yesterday of non-work related things. had multiple appointments. We had a webinar at 5 p.m. my time.

07:51
So my whole day was basically, I didn’t even think I was gonna be home until about 4.30. So I took my computer with me because I had appointment, but then there was like, okay, well, how long is the appointment gonna go? And then I don’t wanna come home and then have to go back. So I was like, I’m just gonna be out. And if I have to sit in my car and work or go to a Starbucks or Panera, whatever. But then I was like, so my first stop, right? Where I was now had my computer out and I had like 35 minutes.

08:19
At first I was like, oh, I should write some emails. And I’m like, this is dumb. I’m not gonna write good emails in my car, balancing my laptop on my iSpy children’s book that I keep in my car to put my laptop on. And I thought, you know what I do need to do is I need to update some seller’s summit stuff. Mark off who we’ve gotten contracts back from, update speaker information, these little things, right? Create some email templates to send to our speakers and sponsors.

08:48
all these things. And I was like, well, that’s, that’s no brainer work. Cause we’ve done the same conference for a really long time now, eight years, all the information is basically they’re in my head or in a template somewhere. I just need to move it around. So I spent that first 35 minutes basically only working on those little projects. And what was crazy was I finished all of them and still had 10 minutes left because I was like, I was just laser focused on like, okay, get the contracts back, do this.

09:16
write this and it was I looked at the clock and I was like, oh, I probably have to go in to the next appointment and I still had time because I just wasn’t I just forced myself to just think about these tidbit, you know, little jobs that could be done. So you have a list of just menial tasks. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I have a to do list also. It’s I use a Google draft. People always make fun of me for this, but I feel like Google or Gmail, a Gmail draft.

09:43
Yeah. Is the only thing that’s available on every device by default. Yes. Like you don’t have to install any app or anything like that. Yeah. So I have a, a huge to-do list actually, which every morning I just rearrange the lines in order of priority. And I just try to get through that. But the problem is, is I don’t, there is a mixture of, of brain power work versus stuff that needs to get done. So maybe I should separate that out into menial tasks as well. Well, because I, mean, we work.

10:13
sort of the same. I I basically work out of my email as my to-do list. So if there’s an email that requires action that stays in the inbox until the action has been taken. And then there’s other things obviously that I need to get done. I use ClickUp, which is a project management software for one of my clients. So I have different, like my to-do stuff is in a couple different places just because of the nature of what I do. However, I know that there are things that don’t require a whole lot of creative thinking.

10:43
And so when I know that, so for example, like after we record this, I of course have another appointment. So I’ll have like 35 minutes before I have to leave my house. So instead of being frustrated that I can’t work on a bigger project or I can’t film a video or I don’t even try, that’s the thing I used to try. Like I was like, oh, I’m just gonna have my camera set up like this. And you know this about me, like we would be doing this right now. And as soon as we would turn off, I would go try to film two videos.

11:11
and then I would try to leave for the appointment. But then what happens is you’re rushed, you get frustrated, you make one mistake and that one mistake becomes the deal killer, right? Because it’s not like I made a mistake filming a video and no big deal. Everyone makes mistakes. Let me re-film. I don’t have time to re-film. I have 15 minutes left. Like I’ve got to do this, right? So your whole mindset shifts when you just allow yourself that, listen, 35 minutes is not enough time to film a video. don’t care how, you know, unless you’re making a short.

11:41
you need to allow yourself an hour or whatever it is for you personally. And so now that I’ve sort of reshifted my thinking of like 35 minutes is time for me to, let me get back to a couple of those emails that I’ve just been kind of dreading or let me go book something for my kids that’s on my list, right? Like it could be a personal thing that I need to handle, but I know what fits into that time and I just put the things that fit as opposed to thinking that I can get something done that I can’t.

12:08
I mean, you have seven kids and I only have two. So you have three X the emergencies. Let’s just say. Yes. Yes. So when do you have the time to do the deep work? Cause I feel like there’s always something come up with one of the seven kids or, or something, your health or what? don’t know, whatever. Yes. Never. No. Um, so I, I think it was Erin Chase that gave me this idea from $5 dinners is that she basically set aside certain days for certain, uh,

12:37
parts of her business because like me and Erin, we have a bunch of different components. So I have my own website, we have the course, I have another Amazon course, I do email marketing for e-commerce sellers. So I have different buckets that don’t, even though it’s all in the same online marketing space, it’s very different, right? Working on a presentation for our course is not the same as writing emails or doing email strategy for an e-commerce client. So.

13:07
And I think we’ve talked about this on another podcast, but you know, Wednesday, since we record the podcast and have office hours, that’s sort of my course day. So that’s my priority on Wednesdays is obviously the podcast is always a priority. The office hours is a priority, but I’ll schedule emails for the course. I’ll reply to course members if they have questions. I’ll work on a presentation if we need to do that.

13:32
It’s also my Seller Summit day. It’s like my Steve day. Wednesdays is on my Steve day. I know you do your hair on Wednesdays too. I also have to wash my hair. So we will definitely schedule that time out. But that’s just sort of what Wednesdays have become. if it’s, you know, just whatever it has to do with the course creation or updates that need to happen or things like that.

13:55
Monday I have a team meeting with one of my clients. So Monday is pretty much all that client. I the full day I focus on that client because I’m already in that one meeting. So it just sort of makes sense. Tuesday is my day where I don’t have anything minus, whatever happens. So you do have a free day. I don’t have anything like meetings scheduled, things like that. So that’s the day that I will do.

14:22
what you talked about, like that deep work of, you know, that’s when I’m writing content, working on YouTube stuff. If I want to watch a webinar or like replay things like that. Like Tuesday is the day where I usually don’t respond to you. If you notice, like Tuesdays, I basically shut everything off. I’ve never I don’t think maybe I haven’t messaged you on a Tuesday in a long time. I don’t think because Monday and Tuesday are your busy days, too. Correct. Yeah. And so Tuesday is my day where I try not to schedule anything.

14:52
at all because I want to work uninterrupted. And usually on a two, like if I just put my head down, I can write 15 emails at least, like client emails. I can write YouTube scripts. Like I can get a lot done. I do work quickly. And if I don’t have the interruptions of, you know, kids, dogs, meetings, because for me, I know that like once I’m in a meeting,

15:20
Like I just can’t end the meeting and go right back to work. I have to have some time to just un-meeting. I don’t know what the right word is, but. I do have to compliment you on your emails because if you guys aren’t on our email list, profitableaudience.com slash free, you spend a lot of time writing like a nice story. Yeah. And it’s kind of unlike my emails, which the purpose is to point people to other pieces of content that I created that week. But yeah.

15:49
It’s very creative and these are all written by you, right? Yes. You’re not using any augmentation? AI. Nope. All right. Nice. So yeah, so Tuesday is sort of my day of, you know, just absolute focus. Don’t knock on my door. Don’t ask me questions. I hate to say it. My kids don’t listen to this, so it’s fine. But like that is the day if they text me or call me, get I have like inner irritation.

16:17
Wow. And they don’t know that it’s my it’s that day for me, but I just am so focused on Tuesdays that. Like, I don’t want to have to stop for anything. I don’t take any phone calls. I don’t try to make phone calls. Like, it’s just absolute focus the whole day. So note to self, do not text you on a Tuesday. I do respond to you sometimes, but like it’ll be a while before I get back to you I try to shut everything down. OK. And then are you do you work Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to?

16:46
I love to not work Friday afternoons. Right. Yes. Yes. I don’t. I don’t. So I have found for myself, like, I don’t want to work past three p.m. on a Friday. That’s just my personal like I just want to be done. I put in long weeks. So sometimes like you, I have a child in activities. So if I’m taking her to practice, I’m also working for two to three hours at night while she’s at practice because I don’t want to go.

17:16
get into the cheer mom drama. I will sit in my car or go to Chipotle or go wherever and just work for that time too. So there’s times where some weeks where I’ve already worked like 50 hours before Friday at three o’clock. So you work past three p.m. on a regular day? I’m not productive actually. work till five. Five thirty six. Just depends. Depends on what’s happening.

17:44
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that Tony and I offer over at Profitable Audience that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in learning how to make money with content, whether it be through blogging, podcasting, or YouTube, we put together a comprehensive six-day mini course on how to get started blogging that you should all check out. It contains both video and text-based tutorials that go over the entire process, including a full tutorial on how to set up your first content website. This course is 100 % free.

18:12
and you can sign up over at profitableaudience.com slash free. Once again, that’s profitableaudience.com slash free. Now back to the show.

18:22
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. For me, Monday is my busiest day. Sometimes film two YouTube videos on that day. Now I have two podcasts to just kind of put together and prep for editing for my editor. And then I have blog posts. Actually, I just revived the Bumble Bee Linens blog. Like literally, I just published five or six posts yesterday, actually. Because they were all kind of queued up.

18:51
And I was trying to train someone to read it and edit it. And I was like, forget this. I’m just going to do that. So you also had to make the crafts then. No, no, no, we’re not doing crafts anymore. OK, no crafts. This is a pure SEO play now. And it has been like that for like the past couple of years where we’ve had really good results, just mainly gift guides where magically our products are at the top. Magically, all the gifts involved embroidered.

19:21
So yeah, I usually work a full day, but a full day for me is usually till like one or two. But it’s you’re laughing, I know. But I don’t talk to anyone. I don’t do anything. It’s just me in a semi dark room and I just crank. I have Pandora on just putting my favorite 80s music on. Yeah. And I just little little new order. And for the videos, I usually already have the scripts written. Yeah. So

19:50
I use a teleprompter and so I just go through, I can actually film something in about 20 minutes. So if I do have a spare 20, 30 minutes, I know how long it’s gonna take to go through that script. All my videos are around 10 to 11 minutes long. And then Tuesday is when I’ll usually prep for office hours. So are you prepping office hours lectures now the day of? No, like two weeks in advance. Oh, two weeks in advance.

20:19
You’re so silly. You’re so silly. Because once upon a time, you did a couple of the day of and I was like, wow, I was really surprised because I can’t. That’s too much anxiety for me. Yeah. For me, sometimes I do it the morning of actually. I know you do. But usually I do it the day before. And since I have you as a partner and profitable audience, I pretty much only have to do something every other day or every other week. Sorry.

20:46
or every third week since we’re Zoom calls now. And Profile Online Store, I actually have a bunch of lectures kind of already stored up for a rainy day. And then Wednesdays, what do I do on Wednesdays? Usually I’ll have some sort of interview or something in the morning. We record this podcast on Wednesdays usually. And then office hours from 11 to one. And then my kids come home early that…

21:15
They’re home for lunch. So usually I just hang out with them for the rest of the day. And then Thursday and Friday are designed to be my free days. But Thursday is usually for Bumblebee. So for this particular week, we have that printer, as you know. So we got a bunch of St. Patrick’s Day designs since St. Patty Day’s is coming up. And I have to go through and create products for that and put them on the site. And I’ve actually been working on a whole new social media strategy for Bumblebee.

21:45
which I’m hoping I don’t have to be the one to run it, but I’m going to start it off and then hopefully hand it off because I hate social media, as you know. And then Fridays is usually completely free. I’ll usually just spend it with Jen, actually. And that’s the ideal week for me. But it’s not always like that because there’s emergencies that come up. And I would say most of your listeners cannot manage your schedule.

22:16
Most of the people listening to this podcast are not in a position to not work, only work three and a half days a week. See, here’s the thing. There’s physical work and there’s mental work. The mental stuff I’m thinking about all the time. Yeah, I’m not calling you a slacker. No, I’m just saying, I think the other problem is taking too much stuff on. I feel like you’re a yes woman. Would you agree with that? What I like to say. What?

22:45
Here’s what I like to say. Monday me is a yes person. Thursday me is a why am I friends with Monday me person. Ah, okay. Yeah. So yes, I am a yes person. But I’ve gotten a lot better. I feel like you like to be busy all the time. Is that accurate? So apparently, I just learned this. Apparently, liking to be busy is actually a trauma response.

23:15
from your childhood. Wait, what? Okay. Yes. Explain. So being busy is a… And I’m not… I had a great childhood. So this isn’t like I didn’t have any trauma. know, everyone has some trauma in their childhood inadvertently. But I’ve read this a couple of times now and I heard it again yesterday and I was like, is this just like someone knocking me in the head like, hey, trying to get you… Get the message to you. You’re not paying attention. Basically, when you are busy all the time,

23:44
It doesn’t give you time to process anything like emotionally, right? Because you just always have things going on. So it doesn’t ever allow you to like sit in your feelings, which I know very woo woo for you. But… It’s not woo woo for me. I’ve always wondered if you’ve had feelings. So, yeah. So being busy is… here’s the thing. People do this in a bunch of different ways.

24:14
People will also numb themselves through, know, they just watch TV all night, right? Or they use recreational drugs or they drink, right? There’s all these ways that you can numb yourself. And the busy one, I think, has gotten a free pass, right? Because what’s wrong with being productive? What’s wrong with having a great business or, you know, in…

24:40
It’s just it’s when you think about it, though, you’re like, OK, but why are you so busy? Like, why do you have so much to do? Because you’re just filling your time because most people don’t like to sit and just not have anything to think about. Right. Unless and then you think about all the things that are painful or unhappy feelings sort of thing. So busy being busy, like on purpose where you just continually fill your schedule is not always a good thing. No, I agree, because I can’t live like that.

25:08
Yeah, like if I go through two consecutive weeks when I’m working Monday through Friday, I know then I know I need to drop something. Also, I just heard this on a podcast this morning and I I avoided sending it to you. OK, but it was basically talking about people who publish a book and publish a book with the intent of making the bestseller list. It’s actually a very traumatic experience because of the amount of work and the amount of things that you have to do to put yourself out there.

25:36
is actually, don’t want to say damaging is probably going too far, but it’s I think that you this is now I’m now I’m your therapist, Steve. All right. I won’t even charge you for this. I think that you because you launched your book. had great success. It’s probably the hardest I’ve ever seen you work. And all the time that I did, worked like literally seven days a week. You did. Three months. You worked harder than when I met you and you had a full time job and your business.

26:06
I was listening to this person and she was saying everyone that she knew that had written a book with the intent of making the bestseller list was basically after the book launches and you either reach that success or you don’t, you obviously did. There’s a lot of like emotional trauma from all of that and issues. And I saw that with you. Like it was kind of like almost like a letdown, right? You like get this great achievement and then.

26:34
It’s a letdown and then it’s burnout and there’s all these things that come along with it and people I’m sure experience it in different ways. But I think you experienced it as well. didn’t want to do anything for the rest of the year. And in fact, I didn’t do anything for the rest of year. And maybe I’m paying for it this year. but not everybody can just not do anything like that’s not a normal. OK, by nothing, I mean just maintenance. Yes. Just keeping keeping the lights on. Absolutely. Keeping the status quo, which is essentially what I did for.

27:02
from May on actually after Seller Summit. I didn’t say yes to anything. I didn’t travel either. didn’t go to any events. don’t think except for… went to FinCon. FinCon, yes. But that one’s more like You went with Jen too. Correct. Yeah. And you’re right. This year I started out going, okay, I think I’m over it. I’m prepared to work and I’m back to my normal production. But you’re right.

27:32
Maybe it was like a trauma, but it shouldn’t be a trauma because I mean, feel like the way I worked those first three months is like your everyday life for you. So, yes, part of it is that it was a big shift for your schedule. But the other part of it was and I think this is what people when you are trying to reach that bestseller list, right? You basically feel like you’re selling your soul to get to that point, right? You’re making deals. dollars. Yes. No money.

28:01
It’s all about the bragging rights. But you know what I mean? You were making deals left and right. You kept feeling like you were indebted to all these people. And that’s what everybody who does it, but everyone feels this way. The things you were feeling were very normal because of the things that you have to do to make the list. Let me just tell you this. So prior to the book, I had podcast sponsors always sponsoring my podcast. And oftentimes to get sponsors for the podcast, it’s a lot of talking.

28:28
You have to do outreach, you have to negotiate and that sort of thing. And to promote my book, you I had companies do bulk buys and I promised them slots. And as soon as I got through all the slots in May, I actually stopped even soliciting sponsors. I know. Like I do not want to talk about, I don’t want to negotiate any sort of sponsorship ever again. I mean, I do it for Seller Summit, but a lot of those clients are ones who sponsored the event before. Like we have a…

28:58
I mean, almost all of them are repeat sponsors. Yeah. Yeah. But for podcasts, for some reason, it’s it involves more talking. So that’s why I have not had a sponsor for the past seven months, just because I don’t even want to deal with it. If there was like a push button that said, sponsor, hit this button, include your read. And that was it. Maybe I would consider doing it again. Yeah, we’ll get back into it, especially now that like I have you on as a segment to. Yeah.

29:26
Maybe later this year I’ll try to get more sponsors. But yeah, so anyway, all this leading back to the whole being busy thing, it’s the okay coping mechanism, right? Because you’re, oh, you’re so productive. Oh, look at all the things that you’ve accomplished. You get stuff done. And really it’s just another way to keep yourself from having to deal with other things. caveat, caveat. If you are a person who has young children,

29:56
It is not a coping mechanism. That is your life right now. If you have little kids, your life is crazy. I don’t care what people say. Little children are hard. They take up all of your time. You’re tired all the time. There are points in your life where you are going to be more busy than others, right? I think about people that are just getting out of college and have their first job and they’re really trying to push that first job of like, is my entry into society and I wanna…

30:24
play the game, right? I want to level up and get promotions and jump from companies, whatever it is. You know, there’s definitely seasons of your life where things are busy and it’s legitimate, but you shouldn’t be this busy all the time for 35 years. You know what’s funny about that period when I was launching my book? I actually shocked myself how productive I could be because it’s all a mindset thing, right? Yes. Yes, is. if you know that you’re going to have to work really hard, it’s actually not a big deal. Yeah.

30:53
It’s only when you’re like, oh, I need two days out of the week free. That’s when like every little thing becomes a big deal. So I actually enjoyed that period in a weird, messed up way, because I was, wow, I can accomplish so much stuff if I if I were really apply myself. But I think it was a little too much, too much to maintain for for a longer period of time. Well, it was a lot in that you were constantly having to have those conversations.

31:19
If it was just the amount of hours put in and you were doing it coding or creating a social media strategy, whatever, that would be it. That’s a different type of work than you were literally on the phone with people 24 seven. I was I was constantly on the phone doing podcast interviews. Yeah. Just just everything. And, know, I had to write the book. Had to edit the book. I read that thing like 25 times. I I remember once you’re like, this is the 24th. I was like, it’s not that good.

31:47
I can’t read it 24 times. It’s a two, it’s a two time read it most. No, it takes a while to read it, especially if you’re reading it for like content, you know, and flow. Yeah. Yeah. That’s funny. There’s a student in our class, Charles, I’ll give you a shout out. He was, he’s been trying to get me to write another book. Oh, that’s right. And he keeps sending me stuff like, Hey, this author writes a book every year. You don’t have to do every year, just every other year, you know,

32:16
And this book can really launch your business. I will say this, I think the book has helped because it’s like the gateway drug. Like people just start with the book because like the Kindle version I think is like eight bucks now. Yeah, something like that. A low cost entry point for people to just kind of get to know who I am. And then that leads them into other stuff. Yeah, so it’s been good. I didn’t know I didn’t know I hear him.

32:41
Talk to you about it on office hours, but I didn’t know this was a continual Did you see the email? So Tony is a part of my, she has a log in to my email, like for everything that comes into one place. I try to avoid it at all costs. Okay, so back to, in terms of your time and your week, how much time would you say is spent, know, dealing with your kids’ issues and whatnot versus the actual work itself? Is it about 50-50 or?

33:10
No, you think I spend 50 % of my work week dealing with my I don’t know. It seems like that sometimes. It’s just because there’s so many of them. I can just keep throwing names around. No, but this is the thing. And this is I love spending time with my kids. Period. Full stop. Like my kids are almost all of my kids, but one are adults now. And they are very fun to hang out with. Like I enjoy like if I had to choose people to hang out with, I would choose my kids.

33:36
But the difference is, is that I don’t have a lot of downtime because I have so many to choose from to hang out with. So just think about it. Like if you think about a weekend, right? Where it’s like, oh, I have nothing planned this weekend. I do things with two of my kids. Now I have plans for like both weekend days. You know what I mean? Cause my kids also, because they’re all adults, none of them have the same schedule. They all work different hours. So it’s not like, oh, let’s have a family dinner and everyone can show up because half the people are working. My kids, a lot of my kids are, you know, like…

34:05
restaurant workers and things like that. So they don’t have like a Monday through Friday. Actually none of my children have a Monday through Friday schedule. Okay, so it’s all odd hours. Yeah, they all work odd. I mean, my son-in-law is a pastor, right? So his day off is Monday because, know, pastors don’t get Sunday off. Right. You know, my daughter is a freelancer. So she works whenever, you know, her kids are in school or things like that. My other son’s a restaurant manager. You know, he works.

34:32
Like last week he had like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off and then he worked 15 hour shifts Thursday, Friday, Saturday, you know, so it’s just it’s crazy what they what they work and I’ve got two still in school one in college, you know, just a lot of stuff going on. So that what I realized is that I don’t have a lot of time where it’s just me because I want to spend time with them. And but because there’s a lot of them that does take up a lot of like the what you call me time. Yeah.

35:01
And there’s always I feel like emergencies in your day where you have to take one of your kids to like, I don’t know, the doctors or something. Yes, that’s obviously lessened now that they can all now that I can only take one doctor. All but one can drive. But yeah, but all to say like, but I still enjoy the time that I get with them, because now that they’re all older, I realize that that time is very limited. Right. Like then they move out and they have their own families and, you know.

35:30
So to make this episode a little bit more constructive, let’s just kind of list off some of the things that we talked about. So you have a menial task list, and you also have a deep work list. you ever find that it’s only the menial task stuff that’s getting checked off? No, because I wasn’t good with them. would, no, I will drop the menial task stuff before I drop the deep work. OK. OK. I guess that maybe that’s something I should do to have the menial, like it’s all mixed in.

35:59
With me right now one thing that I was expecting you to talk about that you didn’t was you started using the pomodoro? Yes, yes, actually I want it. Can I just talk about my mornings? Sure, because I shifted my mornings. I Don’t want to say at the beginning of the year because that sounds like a New Year’s resolution. It really wasn’t It’s okay to have a new year’s resolution. Well, I was it I was out of the country on New Year’s so okay I didn’t have any time for resolutions and I don’t

36:27
I don’t know if this is going to apply to everybody, but if you are a female and you are 45 and up, I will tell you that at some point everything in your brain is going to turn into mashed potatoes and it’s going to be foggy. You’re going to feel like garbage. Everyone I know that’s in that age bracket is experiencing some sort of feeling like this. And that’s not the type of podcast that you run. So I don’t want to go into detail. A large amount of people are women over age of 35, not 40.

36:52
And as someone like me who as Steve says is always like go go go go go always has a million projects going on the brain fog and the feeling like not my normal self and not having energy was like devastating to me like I would say I was even in some level of depression of just feeling like I can’t remember stuff I can’t get stuff done I would stare at my computer it was the weirdest thing because I’ve never experienced anything like this before and you know I’ve been like

37:20
trying to figure out how to fix it, right? Because we’re fixers. And I stumbled, you I’ve been reading and all the stuff. And so I stumbled across this thing and I was like, OK, I need to change my morning routine because I have I had a decent morning routine before, but I was also I feel like I’m productive. So it’s like, well, you know, if I don’t want to get out of bed at this exact time, like what does it matter for 30 minutes or, you know, and I just kind of like let things slide.

37:45
And I know not everybody’s a morning person, but I will tell you this morning routine has literally changed my life. And I hate when people say that. So I’m always like, eh, but here’s what I do. I have no phone, no computer, no tablet. When I wake up, nothing. I used to wake up, turn off my alarm, grab my phone, check, whatever it was, right? Text, email, do not touch my phone. That has been a game changer. I think people like, oh, I don’t really get on my phone. Yes, you do. Everybody does.

38:15
I’ve never, I’ve shared hotel rooms with a lot of people. I’ve never seen anyone not do it. I turn off my alarm. have, I think I talked to this before. I have my workout clothes and my shoes hanging on my treadmill. I literally put the clothes on and get on the treadmill and my treadmill overlooks the window. So I open up the curtains and like let it’s kind of the sun’s like rising at the time. So I have sunlight coming in, get on the treadmill, whatever time you can do. I started out at like 25 minutes.

38:43
I tried to increase it like every couple days. Most days I get- this your desk treadmill or a regular No, this is like a full on regular treadmill. Okay, got it. I would do this outside if I could, but I have bears in my neighborhood. I get on the treadmill for 30 to 45 minutes. I do like a very fast walk. So like a four mile an hour walk. And I get my phone and I listen to a podcast. I don’t listen to music. I don’t watch a show.

39:09
And I think that’s the other game changer. And I listen to podcasts that are very intentional. my, what I would wanna listen to is like true crime. But I try to like cue up podcasts that I know are going to help motivate me throughout the day. Whether it’s something that I can learn like marketing wise, something health wise that I can listen to. So I try to, and I also have some walking.

39:32
Basically walking podcast, so basically they walk to a beat, they talk to a beat that keeps you on cadence so you can keep up your speed. That would be great if you were outside, right, and you can’t track it on the treadmill. As soon as I do that, I get off the treadmill and I go sit outside for five minutes. Just sit in the sun. And I know not everybody lives in Florida where it’s sunny a lot in the morning, but even if you live in a place where it’s cloudy, this actually works. It helps your circadian rhythm. And so,

40:00
I thought that someone, my doctor told me this like six months ago and I was like, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You think me sitting outside for five minutes is gonna revolutionize how I feel? I was an idiot. Been a game changer. So if it rains, do you still sit out in the I’ll just sit right by the window. Okay. Once again, no phone. Do not look at my phone. I sit there in complete silence.

40:25
sit there for a couple of minutes, and then I put on, once again, something that I would have never done six months ago, a five minute morning meditation. If you Google five minute morning meditation on YouTube or you search on YouTube, it’s the top one that comes up. And it’s literally five minutes of, I don’t even know what they say on it, honestly, but it basically just like relaxes you and gets you, like it takes all the noise out of your head.

40:50
And I would have told you six months ago, I can’t meditate, I’m always thinking about things, my mind never shuts off, you can do it, I promise you. I sit there for five minutes, listen to the morning meditation, and then my day starts. So usually I’m all sweaty from the treadmill, so that’s way too much information, but then I go like pick up my bedroom, whatever, a couple little things, jump in the shower, go downstairs, start my day. The other thing I stop doing is eating breakfast.

41:16
Once again, you know I’m a breakfast person. Like if I don’t have breakfast, I’m an evil witch. And I started reading that like if you can extend the hours between when you eat at night and when you eat in the morning, it is going to give you a better day. Baloney is what I thought because I’m like, I need to eat at eight o’clock in the morning. If I don’t eat my eggs and spinach at eight o’clock in the morning, I am a terrible person. Now I eat at like 10, 30, 11, which also becomes my first break in my day.

41:43
Right? Because I’ve gotten up, I’ve gotten ready. I go to my computer. I’m highly productive in the mornings. So I have this like two, two and a half hours stretch of just massive productivity. And then I’m like, OK, time to go eat. And I don’t I don’t push it. I eat when I feel hungry. So if some days it’s 945, some days it’s 11. Right. I’m not, you know, strict about it. And I’ve been doing this religiously for the past 45 days. Actually, 46. That’s like my 46 day. And the effects?

42:12
I feel like a different person, 100 % different. Like my to-do list is getting done every day, my big projects are getting knocked off, I have so much energy, I have so much clarity, and I think because I’m working faster, because I don’t feel that fogginess anymore, I’m lessened my caffeine intake, so all these changes. And then, I mean, I’m able to sometimes in my day at like four.

42:40
Right, because I don’t really have anything else to do that I want to start that day. Right, there’s obviously stuff that always needs to be done, but it’s like, okay, this is a good stopping point for my day. The other thing that I started doing was no phone before I go to bed, which everyone tells you to do. No one does it. I can never do that, yeah. I don’t do it. And if I have a day, like I had a day yesterday where I just had like thousand things that I had to do. You know, I was like, I got to get off this webinar because I got to paint my laundry room. Yeah. So I’m like painting my laundry room.

43:09
And when I got in bed, it was like 930 and I was like, I could just feel the day, right? Like you could just, and I was like, I got a ton done, right? I was like, I had all these appointments. I still worked. I painted my laundry room. I cleaned stuff up, but it just felt like I could feel it in my shoulders almost. And so I put on like a five minute, like evening meditation. Didn’t pick up my phone the rest of the night. Like just call me down and like, it’s crazy. Cause I would have told you like meditation is kind of a joke.

43:38
But I really don’t think it is and the reason why I think it works is it forces you to just

43:45
clear all the garbage out of your mind and stop, because usually I’m thinking about everything that needs to happen for the next three days, right? And all the things that need to go. And at the end of it, I haven’t thought about all of that for five minutes. And even five minutes of not having your mind race is very effective. So I’m not saying you have to have my exact schedule, but I will say it has been an absolute game changer. I even had labs done, like blood work done, and my labs have improved.

44:14
in the past 60 days. And I haven’t changed my diet. I didn’t give up alcohol. Like I didn’t make any other changes other than my morning routine.

44:26
Now I was listening to your morning routine. I have a very tight window of productivity, which is from when I wake up till about noon. If I were to do that exercise, which I think is valuable in the time out in the sun, that would probably eliminate maybe an hour out of my productivity time. Which is why I stopped doing it like a year and a half ago. I was like, I need, I’m a morning person. I need to get up and get on my computer. Right. So this has actually increased your productivity for while sacrificing maybe like an hour.

44:56
But I’m not because I’m far more productive. Because before I started doing this at two o’clock, I felt like I could have gone to sleep for the day. I was absolutely exhausted at 2 p.m. Now, like everybody gets a lull in the afternoon, I think, unless you’re a night person. Like I have the little lull, but within I usually get up, walk around my house, just do a couple of things. I go stand outside, whatever it takes. Within 10 minutes, I’ve like reset back. You know, like a year ago on office hours, I was like yawning.

45:25
Yeah, I could not even stay awake on like, and it wasn’t because I wasn’t getting sleep or anything like that. It was just like my body was like, yeah, no, we’re done. And I don’t have that anymore. OK, maybe I will suggest this for Jen, because she’s always very low energy. You guys are about the same age. Don’t say that to her. She’s she’s much younger than me. Yeah, I would never say that. Maybe it’s just different for men and women, too. I have not really experienced any energy changes. Yes, because your hormones are not.

45:55
at the circus right now. I’m losing my hair. That’s a different story. yeah. I will say, though, you know, you have to do what works for you. But if I would say if you’re in a productivity rut or you feel like things aren’t how they used to be for you, like do something radical that you wouldn’t have done before. Like, you know me, I would have never done meditation. Yes, absolutely not. And now I.

46:22
And even like this is how much I like it. If I’m like super stressed out in the middle of the day, like if just stuff is hitting the fan, I’m like, excuse me, five minutes, headphones on. I take five minutes and just completely reset and then get back into it. And my, it just, my mindset is different.

46:45
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now, Toni’s time and workload is like way more than the average person and hopefully her tips helped. For more information about this episode, go to mywebquitterjob.com slash episode 523. And once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2024 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. And if you are interested in starting your own e-commerce store,

47:15
Head on over to mywifecluderjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

00:23
Before we begin, want to you know that tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit are now on sale over at Sellersummit.com and tickets go up in price this Friday. The Seller Summit is an e-conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their business.

00:53
entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Now, I personally hate large events, so the seller summit is always small and intimate. Every year, we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. Now, if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers.

01:21
The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, from May 14th to May 16th. And right now, the tickets are going to go up in price this Friday. Also, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, it’s actually available on Amazon at 50 % off right now. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that does not require you to work yourself to death. Plus, you can still grab my free bonus workshop on how to sell print on demand and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube and podcasting.

01:51
when you grab the book over at mywifequitterjob.com slash book. So go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash book, fill out the form and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now onto the show.

02:07
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. This is a new segment called Profitable Audience, where I have my business partner, Tony, chat about content related topics. And what we are going to cover today are challenges and specifically how to run a challenge that eventually leads to some sort of paid product. Yeah. Or a sale of a physical product too, right? It could be anything. In fact, I think one of our Seller Summit speakers didn’t, Alicia.

02:38
run challenges to her water, sell her water bottles. Is that my remembering that correctly? That’s correct. She sold water bottles that were just about the hardest things that you can sell. Yeah. Really. And she turned that into an eight figure business before she sold it based on the back of these challenges. Yeah. So I wanted to talk about this today because I just went through, it’s interesting as people who work in content and commerce,

03:05
I tend to take other people’s courses or sign up for their lead magnets or participate in challenges, partially for myself, but then partially just to see the logistics of how they run a challenge because I think there’s just so many new and innovative things that you can do. And so just within the past three days, I finished Amy Porterfield’s list building challenge and Shalene Johnson’s…

03:31
I don’t even know what her challenge was called. It was like a walking challenge. So the goal was to get more steps each day than you did the next day. OK. That’s pretty easy because I’ve been getting none. Yeah. I go from 0 to 15. So as you, we’ve talked about this offline, Shaleen has sort of rebranded herself as like a middle-aged aging expert.

03:55
talking about diet, exercise, hormones, things like that, all targeted to women ages like 40 to probably 60 years old. And that’s her core. And so this, think, was a big part of her rebranding is holding this walking challenge and then moving people into her paid, I don’t know if it’s a course or a product or I’m not really quite sure what Is a paid walking? Yes, yes. You pay Shalene and you have to walk.

04:22
Let’s start with the list building one with Amy Porterfield. think most people are probably familiar with her. You’ve had her on the podcast. I will say her work is flawless. Everything about her stuff is perfection, correct? The landing pages are beautiful. The slides are beautiful. Very well intentioned. No I undotted, no T uncrossed. Kudos to her for really creating quality

04:51
content that’s free. And so she did a list building challenge, which is very similar to the webinars that we give for profitable audience that you give for profitable online store. Hers was solely focused on email list building. And she basically, you signed up for the challenge, but it wasn’t free. It was actually $37. And I think we talked about this a long time ago, but you she had the $37 webinar.

05:18
And then there was the upsell to the $99 VIP where then after the webinar, she stayed on and answered questions to the people who bought the VIP pass. I have done that before. Yes. We’ve tried it based on her. did gate one of the workshops once if you bought my book. Yes, I remember And I hated every minute of it. I don’t know. just didn’t. So basically it

05:45
I want to say it halved my sign-ups. Maybe even more than that. But you didn’t get paid because it was about the book, so it’s a little bit different. They had to pay to get in, right? The book at the time, I think, had to be the hardback because I was trying to Yes, it was $27 or something like that. Exactly. So, $27.37 is about the same. Either way, a lot of people weren’t even willing to buy the book. I would say just for people listening,

06:12
This is not a great strategy if you don’t have a big list. You’ll have a hard time selling a $37 webinar. If you have a Amy Porterfield sized list or a huge following on social media, YouTube, TikTok, I would say this is something to explore. But if you are just getting started out, I would not start with paid. You know, I was thinking about it though. If you’re not willing to spend 27 bucks to get my book, chances are you’re not going to get the class, right?

06:41
Yes, absolutely. It’s that first barrier, right? You’re weeding out, because we get this sometimes on our webinars where there’s people that like, just go read a couple articles before you watch this, right? Because you have no idea what you’re talking about. Educate yourself a tiny bit. So it does sort of weed out some of the really hard people to deal with on the webinars. However, if you don’t have any social proof of your products or your services, I do think starting out with paid is a tough sell for people.

07:09
Yes, I agree. On the flip side too, I’ve noticed that people sometimes go to eight or 10 of my workshops before they sign on. Yes. There’s a trust factor. Okay, so she always goes paid or? I don’t know if she always goes paid. I was like, you know what? I’m just going to pay the $37 because I really just want to see how she’s running the webinars. I will say she has a completely different style than we do.

07:36
which is fine because I think you need to do the style that works best for you. Her style is clearly far more polished than we are. There’s not a lot of joking. There’s not a lot of interaction with the audience, whereas we are very interactive with the people that come live to our webinars. It’s not that she’s not interactive. It’s just not anywhere like what we do or I’ve seen other people do, but it works for her.

08:01
I’ve attended hers before. I almost feel like the questions, like she’s not answering anyone in the audience. She has these pre-fed questions that she has answers to. She’s like a presidential candidate. Right. Yes. Yes. That’s the best way to describe it. However, she is delivering a lot of value. So I think,

08:21
We always have people say, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to run a webinar. I’m not sure how I should, should I stop in the middle and take questions, all these different things. You have to do what works best. And if what works best for you is having a set of pre-written questions that you know people, we know what people ask. People ask the same thing every webinar. If that’s what makes you more comfortable or you think sells your webinar better, then do it that way. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong.

08:45
What I did think was interesting that she did was the webinar was a series of, I think, four days, three or four days of lessons. She ran them at noon every day, noon Eastern. I always find that interesting, the time of day that you’re running webinars. Before the webinar, she did a mindset training each day before the webinar. I see your face. Did you go to these? I did not.

09:14
Oh, you didn’t go to the- I wanted to go to Curious. I know. I could barely attend the webinars because it’s at noon. It’s like a terrible time for me. I watched them after the fact. Oh, you did? Okay. I did. Okay. Okay. You and I both, I don’t know, I’m buying far more into the mindset thing than you are. However- That’s not true, actually. After doing the millionth consult, we hardly ever even talk about the specifics.

09:44
of any business, we’re all just convincing them that they can do it and that they can be successful. Right? Anyway, so I actually thought this was very valuable because most of the time when you are trying to convince people to buy a product at the end, whether it product, service, membership, course, water bottle, whatever it is, there’s a financial hurdle.

10:11
That’s the one, obviously there’s people that either have money or they don’t to buy it. But the other big hurdle is, do they have the mindset where they’re willing to take that money from one thing and put it into your thing? Are they confident enough? Do they believe in themselves enough? Do they think they have the ability, the talent, the technical knowledge, whatever it is that’s holding them back?

10:34
95 % of the time people don’t take action because they don’t have confidence in themselves to do whatever it is you’re asking them to do. That is 100 % correct. Actually, that is the topic of almost every single one-on-one consult that I’ve ever done. Yeah. So I think the mindset training was actually pretty genius because you’re basically handling all the objections.

10:59
by getting people into the right headspace before, and the mindset training was right before the webinar, right? So was mindset training first, 15 minutes, and then the webinar was like 45 minutes after that, or it was like very much in sync. Wait, also on timeout, so if it was at noon, you said, Eastern time, so she just starts to set 11.45? I think the mindset was at 11. So it was kind of back to back, but the mindset was only a 15 minute thing. Interesting, so she went on live.

11:28
and then let people sit for 45 minutes. think so. I have to double check that one because I never made the live mindset. And I’m not sure that she actually ran every mindset. I think she had other people doing it as well. I also don’t think the mindset was necessarily live. I think it could have been something pre-recorded that people just watched. You know, what’s funny is I’ve had this content for a very long time. I know you didn’t attend any of the family first challenge, but

11:57
the very first two days of that challenge was all mindset. And I can’t believe I could talk that long about it, but I actually ended up talking for two hours about the subject and people loved it. Yeah, because that’s people’s almost always their biggest issue is getting over the mental hurdles. But for me, I was thinking to myself the whole time as I was giving it like,

12:24
Oh God, people are not going to like this challenge. There’s no actionable content in here whatsoever. It’s all about getting out of your own head. I guess that could be actionable, but people loved it. And I got so many questions about it and so many fluffy questions about it. You know, like, how did you get over, you know, getting started? How did you get over the fact that you didn’t know what you were doing? I was like, well,

12:51
I had YouTube, I had Google and just figured my way out through it. I actually think that was pretty genius to hold these little mindset seminars before she taught the webinar. She did it every day? Yes. Okay. You’re basically getting people in the right head space for your training. She did the three or four day webinar.

13:18
Actually, today is the last day to watch the replays, which is also very interesting because there’s a lot of people in the Facebook group who are complaining that they paid the $37 and that the webinar training is not available lifetime. Wow. Yes. Which we could do a whole episode on. I actually got in the rabbit hole the other night of reading people’s comments about being really, really upset that the training’s coming down.

13:48
You know, team Porterfield came in and basically said the whole point of this is to work. So then she, you know, she sells this list builder society where, you know, it’s, it’s the course it’s 497. You learn how to build your email list, uh, you know, get a lead magnet, all that stuff. And team Porterfield’s point is, you know, the point of the training was to get you to a certain point and then into the list builder society. So, you know, we have to take it down because this was meant to everyone do together.

14:18
This isn’t a self-paced thing. This is a group activity, basically. You should see how much flack I got when I hated the replays based on not buying the book. There’s like 45 plus comments on each in the thread of a comment. There’s a comment about it and then there’s 45 comments responding, mostly in agreement of upset-edness that these aren’t available.

14:45
I think the problem is, and I bought the $37, I don’t remember seeing anywhere that they would be taken down on February 21st, which is when we’re recording. Now, I’m sure it was on there somewhere, but it was not clear, right? It was not bolded. It was probably buried at the bottom. And so I think that’s where they made the mistake because the general perception in this group of people who are disgruntled, let’s just say, is…

15:14
We had no idea there was a time.

15:17
Interesting. How did they respond? Basically, tough to do. This was a challenge for us to do together. You missed it. You missed it. This is the whole point of it was to do it together, work together, team-build, work as a team kind of thing, which I don’t know. I have mixed feelings about it. I think if you put it up at the top,

15:44
February 21st, you do not get access to these anymore. Obviously, that would dissuade people from signing up. Correct. It also keeps you from having a Facebook group that is now filled with people who are pretty irritated about the recordings coming down.

16:02
Is this how she always does it? I’ve taken one of her prior. I don’t know. And that’s what’s bothering me is I can’t remember it because I did another one of her paid things. Actually, I probably did this one. I probably did. 37 bucks. You don’t keep track. I don’t know. I feel like she’s always taken the recordings down, but I never would go back and look at them anyway because I did not take this because I don’t know how to build a list. I do know how to build a list. I more wanted to see, you know,

16:32
What do her sides look like? What’s she talking about? You know, just in general. So I feel like, so this is my overall synopsis of it. I feel like Amy Porterfield does an amazing job of putting very quality products out there, right? Everything is beautiful. There’s a lot of worksheets, free downloads, bonus things that you can get during the $37 challenge webinar, whatever you wanna call it. What I feel like is lacking,

17:00
is that there is very little technical implementation. I hate to say this, but I don’t think she knows how to, she has an implementer do everything for her. Sure, which is great. Which is great, but most people don’t have that. I don’t even have that. I’m the implementer. I don’t either, I’m the implementer. So I feel like that is her style. That’s always been her style.

17:29
So she was talking about creating a lead magnet. She recommends ConvertKit, which we recommend as well. And this is for content creators, not for e-commerce. And she was talking about creating a lead magnet. And she’s like, you can just create that landing page and your email service provider has landing page templates for you. That’s almost verbatim what she said. And I’m like, to someone who doesn’t know what a lead magnet is, and after they go through the webinar, they do understand that, that’s very overwhelming.

17:59
Like I’m just supposed to set up a page? How? Where do I go and convert kit? To me, there’s a lot of confusion. However, the positive it is, and we actually had a student and profitable audience come up with this, come to us with this the other day, is that we do a lot of technical inflammation. Like this is exactly how you do this. This is exactly how you do that. And then they change the interface. Bluehost changes the interface and they’re like, I can’t find the button. you’re like, cause it’s on the left now, not the right.

18:28
So I mean, that is the negative side of doing a lot of implementation, which we do, is that it becomes outdated. And then you’re in a whole bunch of weeds with people because they’re watching a video that’s not even that old, right? Six months to a year old, but because the service provider changes something, it doesn’t make as much sense to them.

18:49
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19:16
and you can sign up over at profitableaudience.com slash free. Once again, that’s profitableaudience.com slash free. Now back to the show.

19:27
That’s always been a conflict with my class. What I do now is I actually explain what the button does. I say something like, hey, this button might not be here when you watch this video, but you know what it does and you know what to search for. You’re right. It’s much better to tell people exactly where to click because people are just mindlessly clicking sometimes. They’re just literally following.

19:54
So, but I think that’s a good thing to think about. If you’re thinking about doing any kind of a challenge, you have to decide what your audience level is and what you’re capable of confidently teaching. So I feel like for me, like right now in my life, like I could do a pretty in-depth teaching with Klaviyo with some of the implementations because I’m in it all every day. It feels like, you know, first grade reading to me. However,

20:20
Five years ago, I would not have felt comfortable. I could tell you what you needed to do and I could tell you why you needed to do it, but the actual steps, I’m fumbling around, right? So if you aren’t super confident with some of those implementation things, it’s okay to tell people to do it, why they need to do it and the reasons behind it. And that’s a perfectly fine way to give people information because the people that you’re talking to don’t even understand that part. They don’t even understand that that is…

20:47
something that you can do. In fact, I was talking to someone the other day just about setting up an automated price drop in Klaviyo where it’s basically all automated. But when you change the price of a product because it’s either clearancing or whatever it is, they get a notification automatically if they visited the product page. things like that. People don’t even know you can do that sometimes. So just giving people, educating them on the opportunities that they have.

21:13
is really valuable. if you can’t do the technical implication, it’s clearly not a hurdle. Amy Porterfield’s made a ton of money never telling anybody how to implement anything. Here’s my philosophy on that, too. If you give someone instructions step by step and they mindlessly do them without understanding what’s going on, then they might be able to get it to work in the beginning. But then something will change. And unless they’re struggling a little bit through it and figuring it out as they go along, they’re going to be stuck.

21:42
at every interface change. Yep. So that instantly is kind of how I raise my kids. Yeah, I don’t tell them the answers. I just say, just figure it out. If you know, you should be able to figure this out. It’s not rocket science. I wish you could see my desk right now. It’s literally on my computer. I have our recording page up. Every other page on this computer is mass. I have stacks of graph paper on my like literally.

22:11
What’s that for? My daughter’s math that she’s very much struggling in. She must be desperate. If you are in Orlando and you are a math tutor, hit me up. We can work something out. She asked me yesterday, she’s like, do we have graph paper? I was like, we’re not to choose. We don’t have graph paper laying around the house. What are you, crazy? My response to her was, of course we don’t have graph paper, print some off the internet.

22:38
She looks at me, she goes, print some off the internet. I was like, yes, do a search for graph paper, free printable. Her mind was blown. I’m thinking, I need to add that to my free printable collection. That is hilarious. Anyway, yes, teach them why they need to do something. She did the couple days of training. It was a very basic introduction to email marketing.

23:07
But people were very satisfied. Aside from the whole $37 debacle, people were very satisfied with the training. It looks like she’s converting fairly well on the list builder side. always converts very well. Then she converted people to this $497 course. You are right. If someone’s willing to pay $37 plus another 99, you’re probably going to shell out 500. You’re inching your way up into that price point.

23:36
So you mentioned VIP, right, for the 99 bucks? Yeah. I did the VIP, I would say, for four to six straight months. I can’t remember what it was. Where if you paid $99, you got another mini course and you got a group Zoom call at the end. And I remember going to Amy’s group Zoom call. I don’t think she answered anyone’s question from the audience. It was just another prepared. Interesting. Right? OK. Yeah.

24:07
Whereas the reason why I stopped doing those group Zoom calls was it got out of hand. Imagine like, don’t know, 150 to 200 people on Zoom. It is nuts. Even though I had people raise their hands, it was pretty uncontrollable. So I guess I could do it like Amy, just like another Q &A, but I already do Q &A at the end, but I guess this one would be more private. So I think that’s the other differentiator too, right? When we do our webinars,

24:36
We stay till the very end. We answer every single question as ridiculous as it might seem or as hard as it might seem. We try to give people an answer. Whereas I don’t think Amy does that at all. I don’t think she answers people’s questions or even like has those conversations after the teaching is over. I think the teaching is over, she signs off. And the fact that this is your chance to have access to her is the part that makes people think valuable and gets people to open up their wallet for the $99.

25:07
You know what a mastermind person just once told me, he was in my mastermind group. He was like, you have to be aloof and then you can add the dollar value. And I hated that statement. We’ve talked about this. I hate that statement too. Right? Like you’re personally, you’re purposely trying to like avoid being seen and avoid having people have access to you for the purposes of being able to charge more money. Yeah.

25:36
I don’t know. don’t like, get it. works. It is a hundred percent a tactic that works. It is not something that I feel comfortable doing.

25:48
Yeah. So you’re saying that not answering questions probably adds to the value. Right. someone to sign up for the VIP. Yeah. Because I know she does ask for questions in advance as well, which I also think there’s nothing wrong with that, right? If you are not great off the cuff or if that makes you nervous or that just gives you anxiety, some people do. Some people want that prepared list. Then have a prepared list.

26:13
There’s nothing wrong in doing that. And if it makes you feel more confident, especially on camera, then start with people submitting their questions in advance. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. That’s not how you and I operate because one, both of us are okay being wrong. And two, we’re okay saying, hey, we’re not quite sure, but let us figure that out for you. But not everybody is.

26:35
Not everybody feels OK doing that. Some people really feel like I need to know everything and tell people everything if they come on. And you and I are just like, hey, of course we don’t know everything. Nobody does. I always preface everything by saying, hey, take everything with a grain of salt. I have no idea what I’m talking about here. And then I say it. But you do. OK, so let’s contrast that to Shalene’s challenge. I just have this feeling that Shalene’s challenge would be something that I’m more in line

27:05
Of course. I think it just shows you that two completely different styles, both are effective. So, Shaleen’s challenge was all about, so she’s very much into zone two cardio right now. This isn’t a fitness podcast, we’re not going to go into all of those things, but basically brisk walking can get you into zone two cardio, which has been shown for people who especially are in those 40 to 60-year-old bracket for females.

27:32
is the of the cardio that you should be focusing on to maintain weight, health, everything. So you know I love her. I’m a huge fan. No shame in that. But I also feel like she’s a bit scatterbrained, right? She’ll send out links that are broken. She makes mistakes, which is very much part of her charm, right? The fact that you feel like, we would be best friends if we were neighbors, right? Which I feel like if Amy was my neighbor, I would literally never see her. She would park in the garage, you know?

28:02
That’s 100 % correct. She would take her garbage out at 10 PM so no one can talk to her. That’s just my impression. She’s probably a very nice person. I don’t know her personally. But Shaleen just has that like, we would be besties sitting on the back porch drinking our champagne. So her challenge was a two-week challenge, which I also think is another strategy. So you can do these shorter. You can do a one-day webinar. You can do a week-long webinar. We’ve experimented with anything from a day to a week.

28:31
Shalene had a two week challenge to basically increase the steps that you walk every day. And so with her challenge, it was totally free. And I wanna talk, don’t let me forget to talk about her verbiage that she used at the end of the challenge. Cause I think this was so impactful. So it was walk every day and each day you got an email in the morning with, so she had a kickoff call. the challenge started on Monday. She had a Sunday afternoon kickoff call where she talked about.

28:58
kind of the goals and why you should be doing this, but you were already signed up, so you didn’t really need to be sold on it. But it was a live Zoom. So interactive with her, feeling like you were, you know, basically a part of this community, which I think is very effective, right? But then you didn’t see her again for two weeks. You got an email every morning in your inbox with an audio recording. Oh, nice. Which I’m like, genius, you did all of this in December.

29:26
Right? Right. Although Shalene probably didn’t, but some people would do it in December. So every morning you got an auto recording on some topic that would be applicable to wanting to feel better in general. So one day it was about hormones. One day it was about improving your energy. One day it was about zone two cardio. One day it was just like a, let’s check in. Let’s do a mindset check. Here’s the other thing. Not every audio was from her.

29:55
So of the 14 days, the audio from her was probably six days and the other eight days or seven days were other people in the industry. Like there was someone that did a talk on like food, right? And how you eat and the types of food you eat. And that was someone who is a nutritionist. There was someone who talked about energy and she was a personal trainer, like, you know, the qualifications to talk about these things and also had a large social media presence. So all these people that talked,

30:24
and gave the recordings, not only were they certified experts, because we’re talking about health, so that’s important, but they also were, either had written a New York Times bestselling book, something like that. So they were people that if you hadn’t heard of, knew them personally, like if you didn’t know exactly who they were, you had heard of them. So not only that, she didn’t do all the work, right? She had people, you know, so each day you got this training in the morning of like basically a podcast to listen to, but it was about 15 minutes.

30:53
And then she also had things like, if you’re gonna take a 15 minute walk, here’s something that’s 15 minutes long to listen to, then here’s a 30 minute talk to listen to if you’re a 30 minute walk, 45 in an hour. But all of these came via email. So pretty smart because she got everyone’s email address to even get in the challenge, right? Okay, this is ingenious because it’s a walking challenge. So you’re literally supposed to listen to this stuff that she recorded as you’re walking? Yes. That’s smart. Yeah. Super smart, right? Yeah.

31:22
And each email was very personalized, right? It felt, you know, I don’t know if she wrote them or not, but it felt like it came from her. She included some menu plans. So if you wanted to also improve the food that you eat every day, she had two weeks of menu plans. And I think there was an option to pick from like a vegetarian and a non-vegetarian. So two different options for that. And they were decent meals. Like I printed out, I looked at the meal plans. They were good. You know, it wasn’t…

31:51
It wasn’t thrown together, all very well done, graphically, design-wise. Oh, OK. Yeah. So it wasn’t just like a Word document with a bunch of recipes on there, because it was a menu plan, a shopping list, things like that. All things you can create in Canva. So not out of reach of anybody. All right, so I’m curious how you can monetize a walking challenge. Oh, genius. Genius, right?

32:17
And the reality, so I did the challenge. was like, you know what? You know, I’ve been like fighting all these like energy and fatigue and stuff. And I was like, and I am, you know, a runner, but running has been so painful for me for like the last year that I’ve just kind of stopped. And I was like, you know what? I can walk. Like I walk anyway. So I was like, I’m going to do it. I’m just going to do the walking challenge. And so every single morning, I, the first thing I did, I have a TikTok about this actually that I’m going to post in April.

32:46
Yeah, I know you’re saving Cause I’m holding on to it. Every morning I got up and I literally kept my shoes and my workout clothes hanging on my treadmill. And I got up every morning and I got on the treadmill and I did 30 minutes on the treadmill every single morning. And I even did it when I was working. I did it at Kim’s house. Like I was very consistent about it. And so it was funny cause she had her like last, her zoom call last night was like the wrap up of the challenge.

33:15
And she’s like, I know not everybody was perfect. I was like, you know I was. I did, cause you what I I’m like, oh, don’t, don’t dare me. I’ll do it. So, but it’s crazy. Like, and just like, this is total side note, but like do it, getting up and walking at like a brisk pace for 30 minutes. And some mornings I did more, but 30 minutes was like my minimum. I have had more energy the past two weeks than I have had in two years. It’s nuts.

33:42
Like it’s completely shifted my metabolism. I don’t know how or why, but it’s ridiculous. And then I also like do the walking desk too. So then I would get the rest of my steps in front of my computer. But I made sure I started my morning and that they recommended that like they’re like, anytime is better than no time. But like, if you can do it first thing, that’s actually really effective. So she does her final, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, I was, I was going to say get to the monetization part.

34:09
Yes, anyway, side note, get up and walk for 30 minutes in the morning. So last night she has her Zoom call, the closing call, where basically it’s her telling everybody how proud she is of them. And she has, of course, all this social proof of people who have seen changes, whether it’s energy, weight loss, feeling better. Oh, sorry, is there a private Facebook group associated with this? No, she just tells people to message her on social media. Oh.

34:37
or reply to emails, but she’s got all the text, right? So just think about this. She did the kickoff Zoom call on day zero, and then she did the kickoff or the closing Zoom call on day 15. Everything else was pre-done. So like very little, like as the challenge is going work. And then during the call, she was basically like, if you’ve seen any change, right? If you felt better, if you enjoyed blah, blah, blah, join my Phase It Up community.

35:07
for $14.95 a month, you can get my exact workouts, all of the meal plans, all the mindset, podcast, everything, all done for you, or you can pay $99 for the year.

35:24
Genius, absolute genius, right? Because anybody who felt anything, right? Anybody who had any improvement over those two weeks is signing up. Because you’re like, well, if all I did was walk and I feel even a little bit better, what in the world would I get if I, because she provided so much free value with like the trainings and the certified people coming in and giving those mini podcasts in the morning. It was almost like people were running up to her to buy it.

35:55
So for $100 a year, that implies that she’s constantly adding new stuff or? See, don’t think she’s, I mean, I don’t think she’s really adding a whole lot of new stuff. Cause like once you have your workout set, like you don’t need to re-film that. Like once you create like 30 days of meal plans, you’re not coming up with 365 days of meal plans. Nobody makes that many meals. I guess what I’m asking is it’s recurring. It’s, so yeah, it’s $100 a year or $14.95 a month.

36:23
And so there’s, in that community, there’s new information’s obviously being added, new, it’s mostly audio trainings, right, or video, but there’s not, it’s not anything that, I don’t want, I’m not saying this in a negative way, it’s not anything that’s like, oh, this is gonna take me hours and hours and hours to create. It’s basically just, I think the biggest benefit to joining something like that would be the accountability. The accountability in the community? Yeah.

36:53
Essentially. It’s interesting. Yeah, and actually that’s, it sounds pretty cheap. $100 a year sounds like nothing. Oh, I signed up. I was like, a hundred bucks a year. want in and I want to see what you get for a hundred bucks a year. So I signed up, you get in, you immediately get a personalized, like it asks you like series of 10 questions. So there’s a quiz, right? And then you get personalized stuff based on the answers you gave to the quiz. But the amount of people,

37:21
that you saw on the comments, things like that, in her social media was insane of people who were just all in on this, right? Because it was something easy. so the two things that stood out to me was it’s not hard to walk. Most people can do it. You can walk around your block. if you, mean, like, Leon’s a perfect example. He lives in Iowa. He goes on walks every day. It could be five degrees. He goes on walks, right? You can walk anywhere you live, basically.

37:50
And so the success rate for that challenge was probably really high for people because it’s not that difficult to just get out and walk. If you have people motivating you, cheering you on, you have people to listen to in your headphones, things like that. The other thing that she said, which was I want to talk about from before, was I was thinking about Amy Porterfield and people just being irritated. Yep. So Shalene was like, I am so how did she word it?

38:18
She’s like, am so thankful that you could be our guest in this challenge, but we’d like you to become a member. You’re a guest in the free challenge, but you’re a member if you join the community.

38:33
Like I was like, oh, that was good. Like make a note of that, because I want to use that in something. But when you think about it, you’re like, yeah, I was a guest. Like my friend invited me to the country club. I was a guest. But then you can join the country club or whatever it is. Right. That verbiage just made so much sense. And it was like, I was a guest. I, know, as soon as she said that, I was like, oh, 100 percent. Great job.

38:58
Yeah, I like Shalene’s method so much better. She’s very personal. She’s very personal. And throughout the challenge, like if you followed her on social media, and most people probably found out about it from social media, so they do follow her. You know, she was posting questions every day, polls, quizzes, she was answering questions, you know, all in these like short little stories, right? So if you think about the time spent to do those, 10 minutes.

39:27
Right, 15 minutes of just like, I’m gonna pull up my phone and I’m gonna answer a bunch of questions and post. Not hard at all, right? But kept keeping that engagement going. But I think the thing that I took away from hers so much was that she made it really easy for people to succeed and feel like they won. And so then getting them to convert was so much easier. And so as a content creator or as an e-commerce seller, like how do you create that for your potential customer?

39:55
how do you create something where they can win? Because I think that’s the biggest hurdle, right? It’s the same mindset thing, just presented in a different way. She got people to feel like a winner, and so they were very willing. mean, 15 bucks a month, like that’s coffee for people. And so how do you do that as a content creator or as an e-commerce seller, where you give people that feeling of winning to take them from a subscriber to a customer? Yeah, if you watch…

40:22
or listen to Alicia’s episode on this podcast, Alicia Rinozo is her name. She did the exact same thing. She did a fitness challenge and people just wanted to buy her water bottle because that’s what she was using the entire time. Then I think she probably made some affiliate revenue too off of certain things that she used for fitness. Oh, yeah. I’m sure she’ll lean. Well, Amy does write with ConvertKit. Yeah.

40:48
Then Shaleen does because she recommends supplements and other sorts of things that all have an affiliate relationship. I think the difference between Amy and Shaleen in this case is I think Amy’s teaching something much more difficult to get a quick win on. Yes. Right? Yes. The quick win is to get your first subscriber, let’s say. Yes. There’s work involved in the setup, whereas with Shaleen, you just go outside. Yes.

41:16
I mean, it’s true. Actually, I Amy’s quick one was to set up your lead magnet. That was the impression I got that she felt like the quick one was, which I also think can be problematic if you set up your lead magnet and then you don’t have a subscriber. Because I did see some people asking that question in the Facebook group of, okay, I did this, but how do I get people to come to my website? That was a common question that was asked in that group. It makes me think about, we’re going to do this challenge with our course in April.

41:46
30 videos in 30 days. That’s a tough challenge, but it’s only for members, right? It’s only for people in the group. But how do we do a challenge for people to get them in the group that is something where they can have a win? Because I think when you get the win, the sale becomes so much easier. It’s why the car salesman wants you get you in the car to drive it.

42:09
As soon as you get in and you smell that new car leather and you push the gas pedal in the car, it accelerates like crazy. Meanwhile, your clunkers over there are barely getting anything. It’s just more effective for people. I think this short form video challenge is pretty easy to do for the masses too. I think it’s tough. Because you just pick up your phone and you just say something that’s on your mind. Yes. It’s tough because it’s video. If it was audio.

42:37
Or if it was Twitter, for example, where 30 days you put out one tweet, that’d be the easiest, I guess. But I don’t think you’d get the same level of results. No, I don’t think you would.

42:48
Yeah, you know, the lead magnet, like my lead magnet, for example, probably took me like a month or more to put together. So I guess it just depends on, you know, because I had all those videos. have a six part video series, right? Yeah. As part of my lead magnet. So I guess it depends. Even if you’re just giving out a PDF or something like that, it’s still like probably a week’s worth of work. Yeah. weekends. I don’t know, depending on the level.

43:15
I like both of these challenges. I’m not a huge fan of the gating part of Amy. But on the flip side, it works and she’s much more successful. I mean, yes, she had at least 2,000 people in the $37. Yes, so I don’t know what the math is on that, but it’s not bad for your free webinar. I know that is crazy how she’s able to do that.

43:42
I mean, she has a huge list. She mentioned what it was before. Was it like 300,000? I don’t know if she mentioned it, not on what I’ve watched. And of course, replays go down today, so I won’t be able to tell you. I do know that when I did this with her before and I paid for the VIP because I was so intrigued by this concept that on the VIP chat, there were 1,800 people.

44:11
Wow. That’s nuts. Wow. Yeah. All right, guys. No more live chat. No more questions getting answered. Only the VIP. We’re going to be aloof and non-personal for $99. You can sit with us at lunch. But I think the one thing that I really took from both of these because I don’t…

44:37
What I, well, actually I took a couple things. One is I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to do something. I think both of these challenges were completely different, right? mean, Shalene literally sent an email with the audio recording, which is genius for what she was giving for walking, right? Because that’s easiest thing to do. But Amy was live every day, right? So two totally different things. Shalene’s was two weeks, Amy’s was a week. Very different. The mindset factor. So important.

45:06
Because I do think that’s why people don’t buy. It has nothing to do with the fact that the product isn’t good quality. It’s that people aren’t ready to make that buying decision because of whatever presupposed ideas they have in their head about themselves. 100 % agree. You have to believe that you can do this. Yeah. I’m just, maybe I should watch these videos. Because why not just do the mindset right before you go into the presentation?

45:35
for the first 15 minutes. She purposely did the mindset part first, made people wait 45 minutes or however long it was for the real presentation. And people, thank you for reminding me of this, because I’ve got a lot of mindset stuff, material, actually. I just never really thought it was… Because it’s stuff that I don’t need maybe, you know what I mean? As much. Well, well.

46:04
I mean, maybe I do, but I, you know, like if I want something, I just go do it. Right. And sometimes I, okay, here, here’s the example. Like I just discovered in these past two or three weeks that I don’t like doing any, I’m much less productive when it’s raining outside. Interesting. You live in the wrong place. Well, no, I live in the right place. You should live in Hawaii. Oh, well, Hawaii, rains every day actually. Yeah. But in the afternoon doesn’t count. So I’m sitting here like these past couple of weeks.

46:33
I’ve literally had to force my, well, plus I’ve been sick too. But during that period, I actually got some stuff done because I had to force myself to do it. And I can do that probably for maybe six months or so. So as long as it’s not raining for six months. So, you know, my point is, I think I’ve just was brought up to always like, I don’t want to the word suffer. It’s suffer. I don’t want to use the word suffer, but

47:02
I’ve gotten used to the grind and just sludging through everything. Maybe that’s why. I talk about that in the mindset stuff, but people aren’t interested in Asian parenting. They don’t want to take it on themselves. Here’s where I think the difference is though, because yes, you are used to the grind. I think most people are actually used to the grind. I think that the benefit that you had, especially when you got started, is you actually had a job you really liked.

47:32
So you weren’t, think about most people that we interact with. They grind for eight hours a day and then they’re gonna come home and grind for three hours or two hours, where it’s just like, I’m losing at work. I feel like people don’t appreciate me, don’t value me. I’m underpaid. I have no vacation, whatever it is, right? I hate my boss. And then they come home and they’re trying to figure out something that is completely foreign to them.

48:00
Most of the people that we encounter have zero experience in e-commerce or creating content. They’ve never been on a WordPress site. Like when we meet someone’s like, I’ve had a WordPress site for seven years, we’re like, yes, you know, but most people don’t. They don’t know that you can get products from Asia. They don’t have any idea that what display advertising is. It’s like absolutely like learning a new language. And so there’s a grind all day and then there’s a grind all night. And I think

48:28
humans can only take so much grind, right? Which is where the mindset comes in and those quick wins. And like, I think we as like course providers probably need to do a better job of the quick wins for people because you and I are both grinders, right? We can do this all day long, all the time. But most people don’t have our personality types. And then when we don’t wanna do that, you and I both are the same. We’re like, I don’t wanna do anything.

48:57
We’re completely extreme. We either are like, will grind it out as hard as long as we have to. Then it’s like, I’m not doing anything today. There’s no middle. I think for most people, they don’t want to grind all day at work and then come home and grind on these things that they don’t have any knowledge of. All right. I’m reviving the family first challenge. That’s right. Mindset training is coming back. I got to remember what I said in those because I did those all off the cuff. Oh, did you?

49:26
I did. Okay. People are going to be excited. It was live and interactive. I think they’re on StreamYard still. I got to find them.

49:37
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now, if you want to know more about challenges, make sure you watch Alicia Rinozo’s presentation at Seller Summit 2023. More information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 521. And once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2024 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.

50:06
If you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to MyWifeQuarterJob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

00:27
I want to you know that tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit are now on sale over at Sellersummit.com. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online and unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their business. Entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods

00:57
and not some high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Now I personally hate large events, so the Seller Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. Now if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit’s gonna be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 14th May 16th.

01:27
And right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be and the prices are going up every two weeks until the event. Also, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, it’s actually available on Amazon at 50 % off right now. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that doesn’t require you to work yourself to death. Plus, you can still grab my free bonus workshop on how to sell print on demand and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube and podcasting when you grab the book.

01:56
over at mywifequitterjob.com slash book. So go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash book, fill out the form and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now onto the show.

02:11
Welcome to the My My Quitter Job podcast in a brand new segment called Profitable Audience. My partner, Tony Urbach and I, we’ve decided to join forces and combine the podcast because up until this point, we had two sets of editors, two sets of hosting companies, and I guess a fractured audience. It was a little bit, although I have heard from your audience, they do like you better when you’re on with me because you’re more real.

02:39
Well, I can act normal. Normally when I have someone on that I’m interviewing, I kind of have to be on my best behavior, right? Yes. Yes. You put on your, what do you call it? Your good Chinese boy hat. So now you can be your normal self. Although the last couple of guests I’ve had have been from my mastermind group and that’s been completely natural because I can bag on them all I want. But if I have one of my idols on like Robert Cialdini, I have to be extra nice, right? That’s right. I think if I had one of, I don’t know,

03:09
who that would be, but if I had an idol on, would probably be on my best behavior as well. I I wanted to push the boundaries. I remember in that interview, I was like, so do you use these techniques of persuasion on your wife and do they work? That was one of my questions. That was a risky one. But really? Yeah. Okay. Oh, that is risky. She’s fine. She’ll be quiet. Okay. So one thing that I wanted to talk about today,

03:35
Mainly because during the last office hours for both classes, I gave an update on the state of Google. I know you were off gallivanting somewhere. I’m not sure if you got a chance to catch anything. you meant working. I’m not sure if you caught any of that. I heard all about it. In fact, I saw the emails come in after you gave the office hour lessons and I heard a lot of good feedback. So you definitely got people’s attention.

04:03
I’m sure it got good feedback, but it wasn’t like a rah rah episode. Right. You know what I’m I don’t think any time in the last year where you’ve talked about Google, there has been any rahing going on. That’s probably true. You’re more depressed than anybody else, I think. You’ve said many times to me that you feel like it’s taken the fun out of blogging. Oh, I’m not even talking about that. So we’ve been talking about what’s been happening is tons of spam on Google.

04:33
Yes. Because people are using AI. so Google has been frantically trying to adjust and still put out like the best search results based on all the spam that’s being put out there. And so some of the things, just to give you guys a preview, I covered how, you know, a lot of the Reddit, Quora and LinkedIn results are now ranking like way high in the results because, you know, they’re perceived as more accurate information. And one of this, one of these things happened because a lot of people

05:01
are appending Reddit to their searches now, right, to get a real answer. Problem now is like one of my posts, which I had ranked for a long time, all of sudden got outranked by this one LinkedIn post, some random dude just posting something that wasn’t entirely accurate, but because it was a LinkedIn post, Google upgraded it. And so I’m sure there’s gonna be another, there was five updates towards the end of last year, back to back to back. So the search results were like crazy.

05:30
fluctuating. know what? It worries me a little bit. All of this stuff worries me, but the thing that worries me is, do you spend any time on Reddit? I do, just reading. I’m not really a poster though. I feel like the problem with ranking things on Reddit is you have no idea. You know how we talked, Google talked a lot about EAT, the expertise, the authority. You’re reading a blog post and let’s just say the blog post is written by Brene Brown.

05:59
who is a, what is she, a doctorate or at least a master’s degree in psychology and she has all this training and research and she’s written millions of books, all this stuff, right? So when you’re reading something by her about mindset, you feel like, okay, she is an expert. She’s done 30 years of research. She’s written multiple books. She’s interviewed hundreds of people. And then you go on Reddit and it’s like a dude in his basement giving advice. It’s like, you don’t know who that person is on the other side of Reddit.

06:29
And most people don’t use their real names or anything like that. So to me, that’s what makes me nervous is that when I search for things outside of like a recipe or something like that, and I want good information, I don’t trust any information I get anymore because I have no idea what the qualifications are when I see things come up in the search results. I agree. And in fact, people are already gaming this now. So people are posting on Quora because Quora got upgraded as well. And then in Quora, you can actually link out. Yes.

06:58
It’s like another game, people are just going to start gaming those things. I think it stinks for the user. Google’s got to figure this out because I don’t… Then I get worried when people tell me that they are educating themselves from the internet and it’s like, oh, should you be? Are you taking medical advice from the internet? Are you taking marriage advice? I don’t know, it just makes me very, very nervous. You know what makes me really nervous now is…

07:27
You know my feed is a lot of Golden State Warriors. Yes. And what happened recently was there was this on both YouTube and TikTok, it popped up that LeBron James got traded to the Warriors. That’s kind of funny. And I flipped out and it actually looked real the way it was put together. So I was about to text you and then I just Googled it and yeah, it was, was completely false. But there’s a whole bunch of those out there now.

07:52
Well, same thing with the marathon runner who died in the car accident. He did die, the guy who set the world record for under two hours on a marathon. I saw it come across my feed and I was like, oh, that’s fake news. Then I dug deeper and I found that he did indeed die in Kenya in a car accident a couple of days ago. It’s like I can’t believe anything that I see because half of it’s fake. Then I just saw this article, I want to say it was on CNBC about

08:19
how the latest generation is getting most of their tips and searches doing TikTok searches now. Oh, my kids think, like my girls think TikTok is like Encyclopedia Britannica. I mean, isn’t that scary? Oh, yeah, you have, And I will, I’ll tell this story. My daughter does not listen to the podcast, so I am safe, because she got in a lot of trouble for this, but she saw a TikTok hack about cleaning like your drain.

08:47
And so she was doing it with chemicals that could have an explosion in the bathroom. I don’t know what she was mixing, they were too, you know how you can’t mix like bleach and ammonia? I don’t know what it was, but apparently she came out and told Brian, she’s like, hey, I think something’s wrong. And she told him what he did and that she had learned it on TikTok. And he was like, never, ever, ever. If you see something on TikTok, run it by me, right? Run it by your mom or

09:16
whatever before you do it, but he’s like, could have blown up the bathroom with some TikTok hack. Yes. Sorry. It’s presented with such authority. That’s the thing, right? With the editing and the way things are presented, it feels real. When I saw that that runner was killed, I was like, oh, and then I was like, oh, no, it’s not true. This is another one of these so-and-so died, they didn’t really die.

09:45
Yeah, I was just noticing that my YouTube feed is almost a third AI generated content now. Because the sports stuff, think is the easiest thing to do that with. A game just happens. You just have AI do the summary and then you just move pictures around. I think the NBA allows you to make clips, which is why everyone does it. Right. Yeah. And so it looks like a real broadcast. Mm hmm. Yeah. And they even use like the name of the channel is something that sounds real.

10:14
Like highlight deals or something like that. You’ll think this is funny because you’re not in, I mean, I’m not really in this world either, but people are using AI to create their dating profile. Oh, you mean the pictures? Yes. Yes, I’ve that program. I got an ads for it on TikTok. Yes, which, know.

10:35
Anyway, yeah. Okay, so we’re gonna talk about AI, because one of our friends did- We are, but I want to finish. I want to hear this profile thing. what was the- Well, so basically they’re using AI prompts to feed the chat, which is kind of funny because a girl will like- So I’m in a couple of Facebook groups that are like, basically that you’re gonna go on a date and does anybody know if this person, is it gonna be safe? Right? Has anyone ever dated this person before?

11:01
So I joined the groups a long time ago, but now I can’t leave because it’s like soap opera. But what I’ve been seeing lately is people are using AI prompts to respond back and forth via text or in the dating app chats. And what’s funny is, is that people are getting the same prompts, right? So like a girl will screenshot the messages and another girl will be like, I got the exact same message and she’ll put up and it’s the exact same message from a different guy.

11:29
It’s creating very similar prompts when you want to say certain things to people. That’s happening. Then people are either completely generating photos from AI. It’s not even them. It’s not them enhanced with AI. Oh my God. Okay. Which is basically like catfishing on another level. You’re not using someone else’s picture. You’re using someone else’s picture that’s been upgraded by a computer.

11:55
and which is nuts. And then people will post the photo and say like, hey, does anybody have any information on this person? And everyone’s like AI, that’s AI. And you can tell, like the pictures are too perfect. Right. Right. But also on a dating app, if you think about it, you’re on your phone, the picture is small, you’re kind of swiping quickly. Like anyway, it’s effective, right? It’s getting people in the door for who knows what kind of scam or something like that. But oh, it’s infiltrated.

12:24
the dating app scheme. Filters are no more, it’s AI now. So I’ve been out of the dating scene obviously for For a very long time. I would imagine a conversation that’s run by AI would be really easy to spot, wouldn’t it? So here’s what I think. I think females, and I’m going to make a global generalization here. I think they want, because the dating apps are so cruddy, right? You meet so many people that’ll ghost you or stand you up or no show.

12:53
that when you get someone that seems interested and nice, you sort of cling to, you’re like, oh, it’s a good one, right? Like, oh, this is not gonna be a total jerk. But then, so even though the conversation to me, when I look at it, I’m like, oh, 100 % AI. I think there’s that, right, your brain is saying, there’s hope, this person’s nice, they look safe, right? And so the message is even though once you read them as an outsider who has no attachment, you’re like, oh, AI.

13:22
If you’re in it, you’re overlooking things, right? It’s just like you overlook things about people when you are crazy in love with them. You just meet them and you think they’re wonderful and all your friends are like, yeah, but did you notice this? And you’re like, what are you talking about? I think it’s the same thing. They just don’t notice it. I’m so glad that I’ve been married for so long and I’m not in this world that we’re living in right now. Can you imagine just at another level of weeding out computers versus real people? That’s nuts.

13:50
Okay, well, you what’s funny is the original topic that I wanted to talk about on this episode was our mutual friend Spencer Hawes, who’s actually speaking at Seller Summit. He’s an excellent content creator. He’s kind of always on the cutting edge. He runs niche pursuits. You guys should all go check out his podcast. He, in the light of AI, decided to run what he called a Google versus AI content challenge. I love that he does these things. I know, it’s so much work.

14:19
Last year he said I’m going to write a thousand blog posts, not him personally, but his team was going to do a thousand blog posts in a year, see what happened to his traffic, his rankings. I think he ended up with what, 960? Something crazy like that. Yeah. He has a whole YouTube video about it. You can check them out. Yeah, I love that he does these things, but they are so much. I’m glad he does them so we don’t have to. They are so much work and we can just talk about it on the podcast and give him some extra props if you guys want to go check out all the details. What he did is he wanted to see

14:49
whether you could actually rank a pure AI site pretty much in 90 days. Which seems crazy to me. It does. So what he did is he just blasted out to his list and he said, hey, I’m running this contest and at the end of 90 days, whoever gets the most organic traffic from Google from an AI content site receives 2,500 bucks. That’s a lot of money. It’s a decent amount of money for the experiment.

15:16
And not only that, you have to check everyone’s analytics. You got to make sure that no one’s cheating and that sort of thing. It really is a lot of work. So what ended up happening is he got 74 people to join. That’s a lot. Which is actually a lot of people, right? Yeah. And then some of just some of the rules that he specified was only traffic to the new published articles would count towards the competition. So let’s say you had the domain or something for a while and maybe it had a couple of articles.

15:46
It’s only the new stuff. Interesting. You could participate if you already had a content site. I think so. I think so, which seems a little bit like cheating because if your domain was a little stronger. I don’t know those details actually or whether he talks about it. Well, you all have to watch his. For the most part, it was new people creating AI content. I don’t think anyone had an outsized domain rank. I’m pretty sure he would have accounted for that.

16:16
Yeah. So I was actually really skeptical when I, I actually had a call with Spencer not too long ago, cause we were trying to get him to, um, speak at seller summit and I was skeptical that people could achieve any sort of results in, well, so he, he checked like every month, right? But 90 days is pretty aggressive. I think, uh, to, rank stuff in search, but, um, after 30 days,

16:43
The top participant already had 4,800 visitors in a month. Really? They had published 850 articles. What? 850 articles in one month. AI. All AI and it was in the beverage niche. The beverage niche? I don’t know what that means. Maybe it’s coffee or I don’t know. Alcohol maybe? It could be alcohol. Yes.

17:11
But I could not think of 10 articles to write about beverages, let alone 864 or whatever. what you do is you have one, AI produce all the topics. Yeah. I haven’t actually used the, so a while ago I talked about this AI PRM plugin for ChatGBT, which is essentially an SEO plugin for ChatGBT that goes and it can create an entire article map for you. Like you give it a topic. let’s say,

17:40
Let’s say it’s blogging. You tell it, I want to create a blog about blogging and it will output every single article that covers every possible topic. Okay. Right. So it actually does it in like a table form, the name of the article, the keyword, and then a description of what goes inside. Interesting. And then from there, you can take that description and topic and then have AI actually create the article. I’m pretty sure that’s what this person did. Okay.

18:11
But still, 850 articles in 30 days. head is hurting. That’s 30 a day approximately. I can’t imagine even reading that many articles in a day, let alone editing it. Realistically, they probably couldn’t do a whole lot of editing or manipulating what they got from AI. They probably just published it almost as is. I mean, this is what people are doing right now.

18:40
What’s funny is I think Spencer also participated in his own challenge like he always does. Of course he does. He only got 52 clicks in the first month. Interesting. What was his topic? Do you know? That I don’t know actually. Probably running shoes. Wasn’t that one of his first niche sites was long distance running? He used to use it in all of his explanation things back in the day, like a long, long time ago. Yes.

19:08
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that Tony and I offer over at Profitable Audience that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in learning how to make money with content, whether it be through blogging, podcasting, or YouTube, we put together a comprehensive six-day mini course on how to get started blogging that you should all check out. It contains both video and text-based tutorials that go over the entire process, including a full tutorial on how to set up your first content website. This course is 100 % free.

19:35
and you can sign up over at profitableaudience.com slash free. Once again, that’s profitableaudience.com slash free. Now back to the show.

19:46
Yeah, I think like most of the people that were creating articles for this contest were just using listicles. And the people who did really well, it says here there was substantial human editing. Although that person that published that many articles, I can’t imagine human editing that. don’t know. Anyway, what ended up happening is so the results after 90 days, the top five participants achieved over

20:18
15,800 clicks total in three months, which is astounding to me. Yeah, that’s a lot. That means it works. Oh, does it? Right? I don’t know. I mean, the winner ended up with 274 articles. And they just use, the strategy they use is they use AI to generate the outline.

20:45
And then they just ran it over and over and over again for each section of the post, which is actually the way I kind of taught it in profitable audience. Like that AI article that I wrote about Alibaba still ranks on the front page and gets me a ton of traffic. And that’s exactly the way I did it. I ran it to create an outline. I don’t remember what the article was now. Something to do with Alibaba. And then for each section, I So I ended up running ChatGPT probably like 15 times.

21:13
Throughout the course of that article and then I human edited that it actually took quite a bit of time Yeah, but it was I would say it was like 75 % AI Interesting. Yeah So the person who won I think ended up publishing articles based on current events. Oh Okay. Yeah, but not the type of current events that you would think he covered cricket matches

21:42
I don’t even know how to play cricket. I don’t know either. I just remember we met one of your friends at a conference once that was investing in a cricket team. Do remember that guy? Yes, I’m trying to remember who that was actually. Yes, he’s a huge cricket fan. He’s like, is the sport of the future. like, I don’t think it is, but have fun watching it. I feel like cricket’s one of those sports that is way more popular outside of the US.

22:08
being in the US and that being our frame of reference, we don’t think it’s as popular as it actually is. It probably has a lot of big fan base that we’re just not familiar with. I know that every Indian friend I have here watches cricket. Yeah. So I know it’s big among the Indian population, but it’s one of those things that it’s a little bit more obscure, right? Probably less competition. I would imagine. So I think that’s why it worked. So here’s my question.

22:37
Obviously, we haven’t read all these articles, but just like we were talking about how you’re getting fake warrior stuff in your feed, to me, that information can’t all be correct.

22:51
I don’t know. You know what I’m saying? Because we’ve already seen AI manipulate news and current events. I wonder how much of the cricket info is correct. I have no idea. The contest wasn’t an accuracy contest. was just how much traffic you can get. A straight-up traffic play. A lot of those Warriors videos that I watch, they have 10,000 views by the time I get to them. I wouldn’t watch them if it only had 100 views.

23:21
Yeah. And that LeBron one had a ton of views. Well, yeah, because every Warriors fan was like, please, please, please give us LeBron. I actually had a dream that LeBron and Steph were on the same team like two nights ago. So I probably saw it in your feed. you did. Yeah, because I wouldn’t normally dream that. I think the problem with creating, I mean, this is a contest for that was limited to three months. But I think if you’re doing current events, AI articles, they have like no value in the search results.

23:51
pretty much right away, right? It’s almost like a social media post.

23:57
I don’t know, I remember when I started blogging, I started blogging in 2008, 2009 was the big recession, people were feeling the economic squeeze. I would write articles based on, remember when the government was going to shut down and when the government shuts down, the military doesn’t get their paycheck? Yes.

24:22
So I wrote a couple articles about, you know, the military not getting their paychecks in the angle of like, hey, here’s what to do. Here’s how you can stretch what you already have. Here’s some chat, you know, was, but it was all based on that. When the extreme couponing phase and all that show came out, I wrote a couple articles and I always ranked, like I ranked number two or three for extreme couponing for a couple of years, even though I was never on the show. I didn’t do anything with the show, but I did piggyback on

24:51
I mean, current events is weird because extreme couponing isn’t a current event, but it’s like a current news cycle topic, right? Same thing with stuff with the military. I would try to capitalize on those sorts of things as they were happening because I think people, when there is stuff going on in the world, they get paranoid or upset or interested and they start searching for more information. I agree. Yeah. And then I guess there’s just a lot of attention right now. Yeah.

25:21
I mean, it’s a volume game. Like just think about how many articles that these people published in such a short period of time. Yeah, because the winner did 264. 274 articles. that’s they’re basically doing almost 90 basically 90 articles a month. Yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah, yeah. had to just verify your math. Look at that quick math that I have this week. I’m definitely I’m on top of my game right now. The winner did do human edits, though.

25:51
I guess to be fair. And I think Spencer, when he published those 900 articles, he had a lot of writers, but I think his policy with those writers were it was okay to use AI-generated content as long as you fact-checked all the numbers and everything related to the article. Which I think is something, because we get this question, I think we get this every webinar, right? Can I use AI to write my articles? I mean, think that’s probably one of our top questions in the past year, which is a question we never received.

26:22
before 2023. And I think you have to, if you want to create a lasting product with content, you have to fact check the stuff that you’re putting out there. I think you have to fact check no matter what, right? But if definitely you’re using AI, that needs to be a priority. Whether you’re having one of your VAs do it or you’re doing it personally, I don’t think you can just, I would never recommend someone just publish AI content straight from ChatGBT ever.

26:51
Apparently it works though, that’s thing. I would love to see where are these people in three years? If they just leave the site. Now current events would be tough, right? Because cricket games, probably people aren’t looking up three years ago from a cricket game. The person who’s writing about beverages, that stuff doesn’t change. A drink is a drink. I wonder in three years, are they getting any traffic at all to that? I’d be curious.

27:19
I’d be curious too, and maybe I’ll go and ask Spencer to see some of the URLs for these sites. I wonder if these are just walls of text or whether they’ve actually used images to break up the content and that sort of thing. Whether they had an author bio and everything that just makes a content site more trustworthy these days. I’d be very curious. Well, because for me, some of my older posts are still my strongest posts and they were written 10 years ago.

27:47
So I’m just about the longevity of that sort of a thing because it’s like, okay, you’re going to write three posts a day. You can’t keep that up unless you’re making a full-time income, like three posts a day. Even if you’re doing any editing at all, I guess you’re spending every single night making edits. You know what I’m saying? That’s a big time commitment even if AI is doing 90 % of it. Yeah. I do know that a couple of students in the class got hit by the series of five updates.

28:17
that happened toward the end of the year. And one student in particular was like, hey, should I switch up my content strategy? Because Reddit and Quora and LinkedIn are getting a lot of the clicks now because they’ve been raised. Actually, if you look in the search results now, there’s like a special section for those sites that is a wonderful. It’s called, I think, forum and discussions. But sometimes the Reddit actually gets the top spot with a quote from some random schmo, from some upvoted article.

28:47
Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s like crowdsourcing. I don’t know. The whole thing’s crazy. It was pretty easy to game Reddit back in the day. When I first started, I was friends with all these Redditors who had really high ranks. Occasionally I’d just say, can you promote this article for me? What ended up happening is that article would get 2,000 visits in the next hour. Then I had this voting group that just upvoted everything.

29:16
That reminds me of stumble upon, which was a similar tactic, right? Is you would put something on stumble upon. I don’t even know if that exists anymore actually now that I’m saying it. I’m to Google it right now as you’re talking. It’s the same theory, right? Is that you would have your little stumble group stumble your content and then for the next 24 to 48 hours, you would get some ridiculous amount of traffic and then it just disappeared immediately. It wasn’t a-

29:44
a longevity play for sure. The fact that you can upload things on Reddit, I think is great, but I don’t want that in my search result. I just don’t. I don’t know. I’m dating myself so much right now, but- That’s the trend because people actually say what they mean. If you do a search, what was I doing a search for the other day? It was best router because I need to update my router. All the search results with the exception of maybe Wirecutter who was clout was all bogus.

30:13
I think it was just whoever, like if you do best web host. You come up. It’s Pat Flynn’s post that’s made him millions of dollars. Or best mattress. So you know what’s funny is that if I’m searching for anything finance related when it comes to like credit cards or you know, best like business bank account, stuff like that, not like stock stuff, but just banking in general, I just go to nerd wallet.

30:42
I don’t even look anywhere else. It’s just like, feel like, listen, we don’t know those guys, but they’ve been around forever. They actually are a trusted resource. I know they’re making commission off of everything, but I’m not going to go to any other site unless it’s someone that we know that comes up. It’s it’s nerd wallet or someone we know or nobody, but I’m definitely not going to a random site when it comes to.

31:08
like finding a credit card. When I did all the research about the travel card, I wanted to find the best card for traveling. I read Greg and Holly’s stuff because they obviously play the points game. Then eventually I ended up on NerdWallet because of course they have a great comparison chart and all that stuff. I was like, can you imagine going on Reddit and picking a credit card? No way. I don’t know. You know, the one thing I will hand it to those guys is they have a really good experience. Even on your phone,

31:38
you know, the images change like the aspect ratio. So it’s actually nice and easy to scroll. I actually did this experiment with my wife, quit her job. And there’s a bunch of articles actually that I’ve written where it looks good on desktop, but on a phone, it’s literally like this wall of text. Oh yeah. So maybe like I have to actually go back and maybe even break up those walls of text with even more images to make it easier to read on mobile. Because I think

32:08
Google the way they have to proceed going forward is it has to be, you know, how much time does someone spend on your site or what is their behavior like? Right. Right. Because what they’re doing right now, I don’t think it’s sustainable. Like someone will just game core Reddit and LinkedIn or whatnot. And so they’re going to have to I’m pretty sure there’s another update that’s going to happen. Yeah. Like pretty soon if it hasn’t happened already. And so I told that student to just kind of stand Pat, like things are just

32:37
You don’t want to like chase like the next strategy. So, um, my strategy personally has, has been to just kind of proceed the way I’ve been doing it, but just paying particular attention to my mobile experience and making sure that it answers the question thoroughly. There’s really no fluff. And if there’s some amount of personal experience where I have like a real experience using a tool, if I’m doing a review or whatnot, include, you know, a little bit of it that after the question is answered. Right.

33:07
And we’ll just see what happens. It’s so interesting because I was trying to think about my own search behavior. How do I search? Because obviously I’m a Gen Xer, so my search behavior… I just read this article this morning that Gen Z-er are getting all their information from Pinterest right now. I thought it was TikTok. Wait, Gen Z? No, they use TikTok, but Pinterest has kind of become…

33:31
Like they feel like they’re taking over Pinterest. And it’s funny because my kids who are my girls, which are all Gen Z-ers are active, active Pinterest users. And when I was talking to your sister-in-law, we were talking about how Pinterest is very interested in Gen Z and getting, because I think that’s their fastest growing demographic on, you know, for searching and creating boards and all that.

33:57
content stuff. And my kids are like, that’s their search engine, right? It’s TikTok and Pinterest. They would never go to Google to search for anything. And so I was thinking about my own search behavior. And what’s crazy is that, so you know how when you get labs done, you don’t get like, you get the results, but you don’t know what any of them mean until you go to the doctor and they’re like, oh, everything looks normal. So like sometimes if you, and they always tell you like, they have like a little sliding scale usually, like if you go to lab core.

34:23
and it’s like the dot is somewhere usually in between like the high and low, right? As long as you’re in between the high and low, you’re apparently fine. So I got lab results a couple of weeks ago and I had a couple of dots that were like close to the edge of like high and low, but I have no idea what that means, right? So I’m Googling like, you know, what is this? What is that? And of course it’s like half of the sites, actually probably 75 % of the sites that came up were all sites selling a drug.

34:51
for whatever that was versus a Mayo Clinic or a WebMD or something like that, which is more of an agnostic type of site, just providing that data. Obviously, Mayo Clinic wants you to go to Mayo Clinic, but they’re not trying to sell you a prescription. It’s interesting to me how many of those drug makers ranked for content when I feel like Mayo and WebMD are the stalwarts. They’ve been around forever.

35:17
They put out tons and tons of content on everything medical related. So it’s just, to me, it’s like really tricky to figure out who’s telling you the right information these days. Can you describe to me how a Gen Z user uses Pinterest? Why is Pinterest results more reliable than Google?

35:34
I don’t think they’re more reliable at all, right? Yeah, I mean, it’s just people pinning stuff, right, that they’re seeing. I think so. think people… So how I think Gen Z is using Pinterest versus TikTok, I think they’re using TikTok to search a recipe, right? Like how to make a 15-minute pasta dish or something like that. Whereas Pinterest is, what do I wear to Coachella? Right? What do I do? So see the difference of like…

36:03
the types of information because, I want to decorate, I want peach and teal in my room, right? That’s on Pinterest versus I want to unclog my bathroom drain. What can I do? What can I find on TikTok? Right? I don’t think the results on either one are accurate or necessarily truthful. However, I think how they’re searching on Pinterest is more of like preferences, right? Like what styles and it doesn’t, you you’re not going to get hurt from a style. You’re not going to get hurt from decorating your room a certain way.

36:32
Whereas you could get hurt from a recipe or something like that. You know, I started using TikTok as a search engine relatively recently too, because it’s actually a great place to find new restaurants in your area. My brother has been using TikTok for like news. I mean, he follows very specific people, but I, it’s so funny. So recently I was in the true crime TikTok for like six months. I was loving it. Okay.

36:58
Brian was like, what are you listening to? And I was like, leave me alone. I need to find out what happens. But somehow I got into the auto repair TikTok. And so now I follow like five repair shops and they basically, it’s like the head guy, he’s clearly been a mechanic for like 40 years. And like this one that’s my favorite, it’s this kid, not a kid, he’s probably like 40. And he’s like, dad, top five SUVs you wouldn’t ever buy. And he’s like,

37:25
only stay the car, don’t sell why. And the dad’s like, I can’t do it, I have to tell you why. And he’s like, we’ll talk about it in the comments. And he’s like, and he basically lists off like five SUV, three row SUVs that he thinks are terrible as far as reliability. They’re always pulling numbers from their computer, like cars with the most expensive repairs, top five, you know. And then in the comments, they actually go through and answer. So one of the cars that he said he wouldn’t recommend is a suburban, which is what I drive. So you better believe I in those, I was in those comments, like.

37:53
What’s wrong with a suburban? And so then in the comments, someone’s like, I drive a suburban, what’s wrong with that? And he’s like, well, if it’s this year to this year, it’s fine. But if you have this year to this year, look out for these four things or whatever. So they’re like giving you all this great information. But I’m in like, I’m in that TikTok car thing now permanently. I’m like, this is amazing. If I ever buy a car, like I’m totally going to these people to get information because to me, like that is reliable. He is, it’s like talking to your local mechanic, except for you don’t have to go down to the garage to do it.

38:23
Yeah, I think that’s where TikTok has the advantage, right? Once you follow some for a while and you trust them, then it’s all good. It’s just like the random TikToks that I see my kids watch or whatever that worries me. Yes, that worries me a ton because I feel like it’s such garbage. Yeah, I I think the other thing that Google has to do is they’ll rank based on your reputation, are people Googling you? I actually just did this exercise with me. People actually, I get

38:53
Like I think almost a thousand searches for just my wife quit her job. And then I get an equal number for just Steve Chu. I think if Google sees that, then they’ll give your site a little bit more weight as well, which is why I think social media actually plays a part. YouTube, TikTok, you know, if people are searching for you after the fact, after watching one of your short form pieces of content, that is one way I think Google will determine whether you’re trustworthy or not also.

39:21
When my last name was Anderson, I could not rank for my name because there was an author named Tony Anderson who’s actually a pretty, it’s not like a Grisham level, but I think it’s a she, is a pretty pluralistic writer. I could never get, because everything would come up as her stuff, her books, her things like that. I was like, it’s probably a good thing that I’m a little anonymous. Now I’m not at all. No, I mean.

39:49
When you switch last names from a very common one to one that only people you are related to have, it’s good and bad, right though? I mean, I don’t mind it. Do you rank number? I’m just gonna do a search for you right now. I don’t know if I rank for my, I haven’t even checked it. You do? Yep. Well, there’s probably only one of me, unless I go back to Germany. That’s true. Actually, I show up too.

40:14
You are trying to encroach on a Herbhawk? You’re not allowed to do that. because our podcast comes up and that sort of thing. That’s funny. What’s funny too is- I don’t know. weird. You’re under speakers for amzsummit.com also. Was that a virtual one? Maybe. It was probably virtual. That’s probably what it was. I was like, yes, I think I did.

40:39
It’s funny because I think when you live your life online, you toe the line between wanting some anonymity, but also wanting everybody to know everything about you so that you can get more traction. It’s like, where do you balance that? Do you rank number one for Steve Chiu? I used to. Let’s see if I do.

41:01
I haven’t Googled myself in a while. Yep, I do. I got the top five spots. Oh yeah. Oh, Twitter is number one. That’s what’s coming up for me. Yep. Twitter is number one followed by the blog. sorry. X, number one. Wow. So this is actually really interesting. Oh, you actually have an author on my side, on the side search results. Did you know that? Oh no. Chu is a highly recognized influencer and speaker in the world of e-commerce. It’s your author bio.

41:31
Oh, interesting. Yes. What’s interesting about this is in my… I’m an incognito right now, but I have X is number one for you, then my wife quit her job, then Instagram, and then it’s your YouTube videos. For me, it’s followed by LinkedIn, and then my about page, and then a bunch of podcast interviews that I’ve done. Interesting. All because of the book, actually. What’s also funny is Steve 251 went on America’s Got Talent.

42:00
It’s a picture of some random dude with a microphone. Stephen Chu used to be the secretary of energy and he used to outrank me for a while. Thank goodness they got rid of him. I know. Actually, he’s down the second page now, Stephen Y. Chu. That’s pretty funny. Anyway. think that does totally going off the AI stuff. I do think that shows that-

42:25
if you’re trying to get your name as the brand out there, having that social presence is effective in search. Google’s clearly ranking that stuff as important, right? The fact that your Instagram is coming up for me third, your Twitter’s number one. That stuff is weird because I put no effort in Instagram whatsoever. I know. Yeah. I’m just going to bite the bullet and start. You know what I’m

42:49
I want a dollar every time you tell me that. I know. I’m posting consistently on shorts and TikToks now. Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have. like them all. Whenever I post one of my business things on Instagram, I always get a lot of flack from my friends who private message me. Your friends aren’t paying the bills. I they aren’t paying the bills. I mean, neither is Instagram to be straight out.

43:13
That’s the rub. We should do this as the next podcast. What is a realistic Instagram strategy for you? I know what I have to do. It’s just posting. What should you post about though? I don’t want to make additional content just for Instagram. It would be my TikTok stuff. It would be my YouTube short stuff. Can you just AI yourself? Stevebot. What’s funny is I am going to do that. This is another topic for a different episode.

43:42
But I record intros and outros for this particular podcast. And then now, you know, with profitable audience on this, I might have to do this potentially three times a week. Right. And usually I record it from scratch just so it flows better. Cause you know, the, levels might change, but 11 labs, which is the leader in, in this space for AI voices. If you train it well enough, then it actually sounds pretty close.

44:10
And fact, there’s a guy who does like a fake Joe Rogan podcast where he like conducts interviews just randomly generated by AI. And it sounds just like Joe Rogan and whoever he gets as the guest. And it works pretty well. So I might start just generating the intros or even just putting my YouTube, you know, transcripts on the podcast also, because I just need to make subtle changes. Like instead of video, it’ll be episode, you know, just subtle changes to the script.

44:39
to make it work and that in theory should save a lot of time. You know to put together one of these podcasts, like the one that we just published for profitable audience on My Wife Could Her Job, it took me like a good 40 minutes for some reason. Really? To record the intro. Maybe it’s because I was coughing so much, I was still sick. Yeah, I was gonna say, I think 40 minutes seems extreme. But I had to line it up also and then I recorded an outro. Oh, I know why, I also had to…

45:08
create a a mid-roll ad for our mini course also. Maybe that’s what it But anyway, it took 40 minutes, but I would say it still takes 20 minutes, even if I didn’t have to do that stuff. So you know what’s interesting is you remember last year at ECF where Andrew Udarian said you’re fed your podcast into AI and created this fake apology from you to him, which was hilarious, but it sounded, I mean, as someone who talks to you,

45:35
on a very regular basis and is very familiar with your voice, I would say I would have given that a score of probably like a 90 to 92 % of like being able to fool me. Like if I would have heard that, I would have been fooled that it was you. Whereas literally two months earlier, Mike Jackness, I was in the car with Mike and he was playing his own AI, his voice on AI and I would have said it was like 50%, right? So just even in like a couple months, like the changes in

46:05
the quality are pretty crazy. Well, Living Labs allows you to upload all of your content. And the more you have, the better it sounds, which means that you, Darien, probably spent a good amount of time on that. He did. I think he took the entire month of January.

46:22
Alright, well, if you guys, since we were talking about Spencer, if you want to see the guy speak, he is going to be a speaker at Seller Summit. I’m not sure when this episode is going to come out, but we’re running low on mastermind tickets right now. Spencer, I’m not sure what he’s going to talk about. Probably his content strategy and blogging. He’s always on the cutting edge. So I know we talked a lot about Spencer today. If you want to see him and meet him in person, he’s an amazing guy.

46:51
Hope you enjoyed this episode. Google is in a state of flux and we will report back as soon as we have more information. Now for more information about this episode, go to mywifecoupterjob.com slash episode 519. And once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2024 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 were interested in starting your own e-commerce store,

47:21
head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

00:26
This podcast will have a new segment to the show called Profitable Audience, where Tony and I will riff about content creation and making money online, just the two of us. But these episodes will be in addition to the regular interviews that I normally conduct on the show. But before we begin with this first episode, I want to let you know that tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online.

00:55
And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Now, I personally hate large events, so the Seller Summit is always small and intimate. Every year, we cut off ticket sales in around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast.

01:24
and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. Now, if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250K or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit’s gonna be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 14th May 16th, and tickets actually go up in price this Thursday. And from here on out, they’re gonna go up in price every two weeks. Also, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, it’s actually available on Amazon at

02:18
Now onto the show.

02:27
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast and a new segment to the show called Profitable Audience, where my business partner, Tony and I discuss all things related to content creation and building an audience. And in this episode, Tony and I are going to discuss the latest news in the online business space for 2024 because a lot has changed. So we haven’t told each other what we’re what our topics are. Yeah. So this could be a crapshoot here. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I don’t think we subscribe to the same publications.

02:57
We probably don’t. You’re probably going to be talking about, I don’t know, lifestyle stuff, and I’ll probably be talking about tech is my guess. Wow. Wow. If that’s not an Oscar snub. I don’t know. Is that true? I don’t know. I’ve got some tech stuff. Okay. All right. So you want me to start or you want to start? I’ll go first because this is an interesting one. And we actually just released a podcast on Tmoo a couple of weeks ago when you’re listening to this. And I just read an article yesterday that said Tmoo’s ad spend jumped

03:26
1000 % in the last like six to nine months, which is not surprising considering, you know, the episode that we did where we talked about how they’re just like blasting basically right now everything. But what I did think was interesting about that information is that 76 % of that ad spend is on social media. I believe it. Do you know, is it Instagram or TikTok or? They didn’t say.

03:54
But they basically said, you know, their big non-social spend is going to they’re going to do another Super Bowl commercial this year. They did one last year, which I don’t remember. I don’t know if you saw the Super Bowl commercial for them last year or not. I actually don’t even remember who played in the Super Bowl last year. Because I only watch for the ads. Didn’t the Chiefs beat the Eagles? Oh, the Kelsey brothers played each other. Yes, I should remember that. So anyway, so they’re going to do another Super Bowl commercial this year.

04:19
But then the majority of their ad spend will be on social media. The other interesting thing that they said is when Tmoo advertises, they don’t focus on a particular product. Like they’ll do a carousel ad with like a headband in one frame and a drawer organizer in the other. So there’s like, it’s almost like absolute chaos, right? I see their ads in everything, everywhere I go actually. So.

04:46
I don’t see their ads a ton. What’s funny, I don’t see them on social media. Where I see them is like in a sidebar on like a news site. That’s where I tend to see like maybe it’s retargeting because I have been to the website a couple of times. I see them on TikTok. I see them on Instagram. I see them on YouTube. Like some crazy Chinese lady with a bad accent comes and talks. I guess that works. OK, total side note. But have you seen the crazy Chinese lady on social media?

05:14
who does product reviews where she literally like holds the product up, throws it down and slides it. And then the next product appears. No. So she’s got millions of… I didn’t see her on TikTok. I heard about her from a site. Basically this girl has gone completely viral and she doesn’t even talk about the product. She literally will like take a purse. She’ll hold it up like aggressively, slam it down and throw it to the side and grab the next product. And in each video she does like eight or nine items.

05:44
Um, which just goes to promote them or I mean, I don’t know, but I guess it just goes to show you that having a shtick, like doing your own thing, like, cause like everyone’s like, Oh, everyone does product reviews. Everyone talks about stuff on Tik TOK or Instagram reels. Well, not everybody’s doing this, like this aggressive, you know, and she’s like this tiny little Asian lady. She’s like hurling products to the side. Right. So anyway, just goes to show you that if you have a unique take on something, you can still be successful.

06:13
So Tmoo is losing like $30 in order. Yeah. According to this article on the Wired, this is an older article. It’s like May of 2023. But yeah, they’re just trying to take over the market. I actually have a couple of YouTube videos coming out on Tmoo. You know what’s really funny is Tmoo has been reaching out to me a long time to create a video for them. And so finally I was like, all right, let’s see how much they’re willing to pay. And so I say, okay, I’ll do it for $10,000.

06:43
And then they said, well, our budget is not that high. Can we give you a whole bunch of Tmoo products? Can we give you 872 Tmoo products, which equals a thousand dollars? Yeah. So, but what’s funny is I am coming out with a Tmoo video, but it’s probably not going to be what they’re expecting. Well, they’ve already emailed you once.

07:10
But no, what I’m saying is they’re not gonna, they wouldn’t be willing to pay for this type of video that I’m putting out. Right? Just because the content is going to be unbiased and. Yeah. So the one thing I was thinking, I was thinking to myself, so Timo is spending a lot of money on ads. Seventy per six, seventy six percent of that is going to social media. Should we look at that and go, OK, should we be moving our ad spend to like social media? Right. Tick tock shop or tick tock ads, Instagram ads.

07:38
And then I thought, I don’t know if I would follow what Tmoo is doing because right now they’re in a bleeding money phase, right? Like they’re in a throw money at everything. So if you’re listening to this and thinking like, oh, well, Tmoo is doing it. Maybe I should try it. I wouldn’t take that advice. I wouldn’t do anything that Tmoo is doing unless you have just a gigantic budget. Yeah. And they’re just going to drive the ad costs up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, you know, what’s funny is like Tmoo is literally advertising for every single product under the sun. Yes. For all of my search terms.

08:08
On Google, I see Tmoo now. So they’re just like blanketing every single demographic, I think, every vertical. Yeah, I would agree with that. But we’ll see. We’ll see what happens. It’ll be interesting to see in like two or three years what happens. I don’t know if I released a podcast episode on this yet, but people are getting a little pissed that China essentially or Tmoo doesn’t have to pay any taxes, import taxes or sales taxes, because everything’s coming directly from China and it all falls under

08:36
less than 800 bucks, which means they don’t have to pay taxes. Right. And people are getting pissed, right? Because it’s basically destroying a lot of these commodity type businesses. Yeah, for sure. think I yeah. Okay, so my piece of news is about a week old, think, at this point, but New York Times is suing OpenAI for copyright. Okay. Because they claim that OpenAI has used New York Times articles to train it. And they’re suing for

09:06
billions of dollars in damages. This is interesting to me because depending on how this case goes, it could really affect content creation. For example, if OpenAI, I’m sure they’ve crawled my site because I can say, hey, write this in the style of Steve Chu and they know who I am. So clearly they’ve crawled my website, right? If they lose, if OpenAI loses, that might mean that you can charge

09:34
to get your content crawled by AI and maybe potentially get compensated for it. But if they lose, then I guess nothing happens. But I’m pretty sure this case is probably going to go on for a very long time. I can see this case going to the Supreme Court. And there’s still that case of, I think it was earlier last year, middle of last year, artists were suing Mid Journey and other AI image creation tools because they’re stealing the same

10:03
style or likeness of art. I think that one’s a little harder to prove. I don’t I think this is going to get really, I don’t know what the word, I want to say the word swampy because that’s what it reminds me of. Like I feel like it’s just going to get really gross with like people coming after AI for, for content. Because if you think about like, think about books, right? People write a work of fiction or nonfiction, right? Like, you know,

10:33
You wrote a book. It took a long time. was a lot of work. You know, you’d probably be pretty ticked if your book came out like the AI version of your book, right? Like if because that’s AI just can copy other people’s things, basically. Right. It’s verbatim, right? I not verbatim. But it’s like the ideas and everything else is like this. The spin that you put on something can be copied. Right. It always has been someone just had to. It was a lot more work before. Right.

11:02
Yeah, I’m just thinking like, is anything really original these days? Right. Because then that brings up like the whole I’m probably going to botch this, but like wasn’t 50 Shades of Grey like fan fiction from Twilight or something like a lot of like big series and books came from fan fiction from other books. Right. So it’s like this is this has already been happening for years and years and years. It’s just like how much of your own uniqueness are you going to put on something?

11:32
to then make it yours. I think the problem with AI is there’s a lot of people out there that get information from AI and don’t put any spin on it, right? It’s basically like copying word for word at that point. You lost me at Twilight. Sorry. So I think I could be getting the series wrong, but I think Fifty Shades of Grey was a fan fiction book about Twilight where it’s like.

11:59
Fan fiction is basically where they change the characters and the scenery, but the entire plot and everything is the same. it could be the wrong book, but basically some of these really huge blockbuster books that have been made into movies and made all this money started out as fan fiction from a book that was written before. And all they did was change the main characters. So it’s not vampires, it’s something else kind of thing. So it’s not much different today.

12:28
except for you did change the characters, you did change the scenery. Now the thing is set in outer space versus this or whatever. So that’s where I think it’s going to get really ugly because we’ve already been doing this, but it felt like a little more creative. Now it feels zero creative, right? It’s just like, let me plug this in and then spit out this information and then just use it. You know, it’s funny is Jane, my wife, Jen’s been complaining that all the books she’s been getting from Amazon now.

12:58
Yeah, crap. She uses Kindle Unlimited a lot and she’ll you know, she’ll try new authors, but she suspects that AI is generating some of these stories and which is 100 % totally crap now. Yeah. Huge problem. So yeah, so I just feel like it’s going to get worse and worse, right? Because the problem is now people are just using it as a shortcut and not actually putting their own spin on anything. So along those same lines, since we’re talking about AI, you know, Chinese sellers on Amazon are using AI to create

13:27
Amazon listings. Right. And there’s products on Amazon now that say that are titled, I cannot fulfill this request. It goes against open AI use policy. So literally they’re writing these scripts to list all these products on mass and they’re not even checking. Wow. The title. Right. See, that’s where the problem that’s where the problem comes in. It’s like it’s not even you’re not using AI as like a jumping board, you know, diving board off into something of your own. It’s just like literally

13:56
Copy and pasting. I mean, this is all done by a script, I’m sure, or a program that’s just mass listing millions of products. But I mean, is Amazon not even checking for this stuff? How can you have a title that says, I cannot fulfill this request? goes against OpenA. So I feel like Amazon should have just an AI tool that immediately puts down listings that have that in the title. There’s keywords in the title that immediately flag a listing. Yeah.

14:25
I mean, this is a huge problem. Well, speaking of another thing about AI, it’s interesting. don’t know if you saw this, but LinkedIn just announced that they were discontinuing their lookalike audiences. Oh, OK. OK, totally a clickbait headline, right? Because I mean, I don’t run ads, but I know you’ve run ads and my friend Andrew runs ads. I’m in the space. understand. Lookalike audience are really valuable.

14:51
Right, like because it allows you to target people that are very similar to your current customers, right? They have the same, you know, profile qualities. So I saw this title on like six different places this week, right? And so, and I was like, well, I don’t really care about LinkedIn, so I’m not gonna read it. But then when we were like, hey, let’s talk about news, I’m like, well, this might be interesting, right? Like why is LinkedIn doing this? You know, our friend Chase is like crazy growing LinkedIn, talking about how you should be using it, all this stuff. So I was like,

15:20
Well, it sounds like LinkedIn is kind of growing. So why would they do something that makes no sense? Well, they’re discontinuing it because they’re doing predictive audiences, right? So now it’s all AI, like predict, they’re going to use AI to predict the audience as opposed to look like, which will probably in the end be more effective once they get enough data about people, although they probably have tons of data about people already if they’re LinkedIn users.

15:47
But that was in none of the headlines. It wasn’t like they’re getting rid of lookalike audiences to go with predictive audiences. It was like, they’re getting rid of lookalike audiences. I like, that’s I don’t actually understand the distinction because lookalikes is predictive. You’re finding a group of people that are similar. So I would think of it as like, so let’s just talk about a lookalike audience on Facebook. So you upload your group of customers.

16:15
they’re all 35 to 40, right? So Facebook is gonna pull people who are 35 to 40. They all are in toddler Facebook groups. So they’re all in, like, pull people with toddler Facebook. Like, they pull, so I feel like with AI, it’s just predicting people that are most likely to have that behavior of taking the next step. So it’s pretty similar, right? But it’s not, to me, it’s like they’re just kind of changing the verbiage a little bit.

16:42
So anyway, but I thought that was an interesting, very click baity news title because it’s like, well, they’re not really, and you can actually still use lookalike audiences on LinkedIn. They’re just not going to update that group. So it’s basically like whatever bucket of people you had when it sunsets, like February, whatever is going to be like, you could still use that bucket of people in May. It’s just not going to dynamically change. So they’re not going to add new people, you know, drop people off based on behaviors.

17:13
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17:40
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17:51
So since we’re talking about advertising, Google just as of January 4th, eliminated third party cookies from the browser. I saw something about this. Yeah. So for anyone who’s listening who has no idea what that means, let me just give you a brief overview of just cookies. Like cookies are these little files that get placed on your browser to identify who is browsing. It’s literally like this little code. And that code is like an ID that you

18:19
can be used to look up like this huge database of all your information. A first party cookie is a cookie that is placed when you visit someone’s website and it’s placed by the website owner. But third party cookies are like, know when you see ads on like a blog, let’s say you’re on someone’s blog, that means another company, not the blog owner, but another company can actually insert cookies on your browser as well. Google’s eliminating the ability for

18:49
other companies, not the owner of the website, to put these cookies on your browser. Basically what this means and the implications of this really is that it’s going to hurt advertising. It’s amazing. If you were to ever look at the amount of cookies that are interested in your browser, you would probably be shocked. So prior to this change, you go on a website that has Google AdSense on it, for example. You’ll get like

19:15
cookies placed on from practically every single advertiser, whole bunch of different platforms outside of your own cookies. And that means like all these companies are tracking your usage across the web, assuming you don’t have cookies blocked. And what’s ironic about this is Google is the one eliminating third party cookies. And I think it’s smart on their part because they have a lot more information about the user outside of these cookies. So essentially, I think Google is strengthening their monopoly in the online advertising space.

19:45
I mean, they didn’t have to go through anything to do that. They can just make that decision. mean, they control Chrome, which is the most popular browser, right? Right. And traditionally, let’s say you were a different ad network that wasn’t owned by Google. You would rely on these third party cookies to do the tracking. Google is not allowing cookies, third party cookies anymore, but they own the browser. Right. So they’re cooking you all the time.

20:11
Well, they’re not using cookies probably. They’re just tracking directly through their platform. And they have Android also. Every website you go to, everything that you click, they already know. Right. So the way they pitched it though was like, yeah, we’re not going to let other people collect your data anymore. Just us. Yeah, exactly. Just us. So then we’ll sell it to these other people for some premium. mean, Apple’s been doing that for a long time, right? So Google’s just.

20:39
taken a page out of Apple’s book, yet they still have all the information. Yeah, that’s a real bummer. We should have saved that till the end. Oh, it’s kind of that’s a kind of a deflating news story. Well, you were talking about advertising, so I know that. Yeah, I have more advertising stuff, actually. But so I’m curious because I actually don’t know this. Can you see where your cookies are? Yeah. Well, you can’t see the information. It’s really just an identifier.

21:06
But yes. Can you tell who’s cookied you somewhere in your… Yeah, you can. Yeah, you can to a certain extent. All you got to do is right click a web page and then click on Inspect, which is the debugger for Chrome. And then you can just look at your cookies and what’s stored for that. So they’re all in there? Yeah. For example, if you were to go to Bumblebee Linen’s, I don’t know if… actually haven’t checked recently if this has been reduced, but there’s probably like… I don’t know.

21:35
50 cookies if you visit because each one of my tools that I have on the site, Postscript, Klaviyo, all that, they’re all putting cookies on. But there’s not like a place where like I’d have, so if I went to Bumblebee Linens, I could see everybody that was cooking me from Bumblebee Linens. But I couldn’t, there’s no way to see like every place in the past week that’s cooked me. In the past week? Yeah, you can’t, I mean, these are just files on your browser and you can see them. You can see how many there are, yeah. Where?

22:04
in the debugger for the browser. But that’s only if like that only shows me what’s on from Bumblebee linens. It doesn’t show me from. Oh, you just mean in general Old Navy, which I was on, you know, three hours earlier. You know what I’m saying? Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure there’s a way to do it. I just have never tried to do that before. I would be afraid. I would be afraid like I because I I don’t mind being so I just feel like we do this for a living. I don’t mind being tracked and everything because I kind of want to see what comes up. Like I like to see

22:33
how my behavior influences what I see. since I don’t do anything, I feel like I don’t do anything interesting on the web. I’m not worried about like, oh, you visited this webpage. But I would be curious to see all the different third party I wouldn’t wanna know. Actually, since we’re talking about advertising, here’s a funny fact. You know how a lot of people are using ad blockers? Mm-hmm. Well, some people are using ad blockers for YouTube so they don’t have to watch the commercials. Mm-hmm. Right? So YouTube,

23:03
I don’t know if this is still the case because there was backlash for it, but YouTube was purposely slowing down their experience loading for people who had ad blockers. I’ve so okay, here’s where I get the hate mail. You can buy YouTube premium and have a premium experience where you don’t get ads, right? So it’s like to me, it’s like, you’re kind of skirting.

23:27
the system like with the ad blocker. So it’s like, you’re not going to have as good of experience. I don’t know, considering there is a premium model with no ads because you’re all this. This is where this is what’s always bothered me about the Internet and what’s bothered me about like, I don’t know, users of the Internet. I remember when I was blogging probably two or three years in and this is back when, you’re putting up a three, four, five posts a week.

23:53
Every post is like heavy content, right? Recipes, DIY projects, how-tos. And I would have people email me complaining that like, they had to have an ad or like, oh, well that’s in a fit. Like people mad about it, right? And I’m like, you would have to go buy a cookbook, you know, for $29 or you would have to go buy a manual to do this or you’d have to buy a cleaning how-to book. Like, especially before the internet was like as crazy as it is today.

24:23
It’s like, you’re complaining to me that you see an ad when I’m giving you all this information for free. Like that’s always bothered me because I’m like, I’m teaching you how to do stuff. Like you teach people how to do all sorts of stuff on my way of quitting job. Who cares if there’s an ad, who cares if there’s a way for you to make money from it? I think I mean, I agree with you, but I always think maybe I’m biased. I’m sure I’m biased because that’s what we do. But like.

24:52
If you need, like if I need something, so for example, we have this puppy, right? She’s good, but she probably, I probably need to get a trainer just to like work with her on some behaviors, cause she’s big. And it’s like, am I willing to pay a trainer to come to my house and train the dog? 100 % I am, right? But if I wanted to do it myself and read articles and go to like Kristin’s site, right? And read more articles on things like, know, pets and training and things of that nature, then.

25:19
that’s fine too, but then I’m saving probably $500 by not hiring a trainer. So I should be okay with an ad, right? It’s like, it’s an either or it’s not, you know, I don’t know. No, I, I, I agree, but just people have been trained, you know, to get free stuff. I know, I know. So it’s annoying, but anyways, they got a lot of backlash, so I’m not sure if this is still happening. I just thought it was really interesting.

25:49
I think they should do that because I just started making YouTube videos and let me tell you, it’s not easy. just made a, I made, I made a video this morning right before recording. My hands are still sticky from this video because I was making a chicken marinade and um, I

26:06
Of course, I’m making a recipe, but I’m doubling it because it’s for my family. And I have everything in a Ziploc bag with this marinade and I go like to zip it up, but I push pressure down on the bag and all the marinade comes out all over me, all over my hands. And it’s like oil and vinegar and all this stuff. And I’m, you know, as I’m filming myself, which of course I’ll keep in. Yeah, perfect. That’s like, did you do it That’s video gold! Yeah.

26:31
But it’s still, I like wash my hands like four times, but I can still feel it. So yeah, listen, if you’re making a video, you deserve to get some ad money. Cause it’s it’s a pain in the heinie. I’ve made like seven videos this week and I was like, wow, I’ll watch every ad happily for these people. That’s really impressive. You filmed seven videos this week. I have no audio issues. Thank God. So yeah. And now I have like six short.

26:58
scripts written, so I’m probably going to film those either today or tomorrow. So, but speaking of like using the internet to find information, I don’t know if you saw this, but TikTok is growing as a search engine with Gen Z. But what’s interesting is once again, the headlines were very misleading, only really in the categories of recipes, workouts and fashion, which is honestly what I think TikTok’s good for.

27:23
Like the recipes on Tik Tok are actually really, I mean, some of them are terrible. I can’t stand when they like put uncooked pasta in a dish, but yeah, Jen, and whereas the boomers like zero desire to search on Tik Tok for anything. So I actually use Tik Tok now to search for problems and solutions. So our heat press actually just broke yesterday and it gave out this weird error code and

27:49
I couldn’t find like all the search results in Google were crap. They were like affiliate sites saying, this is the best thing ever. That was another piece of news by the way. Oh, okay. Yeah. That one’s a big one. could do a whole episode on that one. But anyway, so I went on YouTube next and it was still kind of crappy, but people were just doing reviews and I didn’t want to wait, watch like a 10 minute video just to get a simple answer. Yeah. So I went on Tik TOK and there’s a whole bunch of people complaining about this same error.

28:17
And then different people had different ways to fix it. Some guy had to take apart his heat press. And then I just discovered that our heat press is still under the 30 day return policy at Amazon. So we just returned it. But the point is that TikTok had pretty good information and you don’t have to watch anything long. It gets right to the point. Well, that’s what Jen Z said is they like the digestible size of the content. So actually reading that made me think, OK,

28:43
Cause I was gonna do, so I wasn’t even gonna do recipes on YouTube. And then Andrea was like, you gotta do recipes on YouTube. They’re just such a pain. Like I am not a chef. I don’t need people telling me my knife skills are bad. I know they’re bad. So I was just like, I don’t really wanna do recipes. But then she talked me into it. But now that I just read that and I’m like, actually a lot of people use TikTok for recipes. And most recipes really can be presented to you in three minutes, know, a minute to three minutes. They’re not, my recipes aren’t complicated.

29:12
I’ll probably I’ll probably just see if my guy can cut him down. I don’t want to film him twice If it involves filming him twice, I won’t do it. So we’ll see I should do a last-minute recipes for dudes Like I made a chicken nugget pizza the other day. I was just gonna say is it your chicken nugget quesadilla? We JD’s seafood pasta with the gold

29:34
So what came up in my memories just the other day was when my son made the I always think of you he made the buffalo bites quesadilla So he took the whatever the Frank’s buffalo bite. So they’re the boneless chicken wings He chopped him up and then he used like sour cream Monterey Jack cheese and more hot sauce, of course, because he’s a boy

29:58
and like made a quesadilla with it. And it smelled so good. I came out of my office. Like I remember this when you made it a couple of years ago, but it was on TikTok. It was on a Facebook memory. was like, I remember that, that boneless quesadilla. I was like, if I liked hot, spicy food, that thing would have been awesome. little sour cream to dip it in. You’re good to go. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, TikTok, you know, I’m going to try it. So we do have someone talking at Seller Summit about TikTok shop.

30:25
I’m going to try to get TikTok shop because I have a contact in the person who runs it. I’m going to see if they want to actually come to the summit, maybe as a sponsor to answer some questions because it’s growing like gangbusters. Yeah. Despite that setback where people were getting banned just for doing stupid stuff, I think that just happens in the life of any platform. Yeah. So this is funny. So I just happened to. So both my kids play volleyball.

30:52
And whenever you play volleyball, you have to travel to these tournaments and you actually get to know the parents pretty well. And so I met a parent who does AI video, literally like stuff that people are using for YouTube automation. And what is surprising, because I asked her about it, because I, oh, maybe I’ll give it a try. Like, I’m not going to do YouTube automation, but her service, which is called Rizal, actually will

31:22
take any script, create B-roll narration titles, and turn it into like a video. That’s pretty good that you’ve scripted. And also like if you, if you say any statistics, it’ll automatically like detect them and flash them up. the service is really good for podcasts also. So if you have two heads, two talking heads, it’ll literally change the picture to the person speaking. Interesting. And also do annotation. So

31:50
That one’s not released yet, but I can’t wait to give it a try. since we’re friends now by nature of this, she’s taking a couple of my podcasts and we’ll just see how goes. But it could save a tremendous amount of time in just editing. remember how I talked about Opus in Office Hours, a couple of that. Opus is a tool that basically generates AI clips out of your own existing YouTube videos. Her tool takes it one step further and, you know,

32:20
literally just whatever you type in and finds B-roll for you. And they have access to the largest library of B-roll. Anyway. that wasn’t like the whole piece of the news. Like it turns out that large news outlets are doing this too. Meaning they’re just having AI generate the content. Not a human and just posting it. And you would think that large media outlets would want

32:49
you know, they’re writers to write the content for these things. Yeah. But I think just right now it’s like the wild, wild west. Like anything that you throw up, you know, in quantity, eventually something’s going to hit. We’ll see. I know. I just found that surprising because I know that I would never put out pure AI content. I know. Unless it was just an experiment where I just generated like a thousand pieces of content and just posted them. Right.

33:17
But all these big news outlets, I’m not going to name any names on here because, know, she kind of told me in confidence, but big names that you’ve heard of are doing this. Meanwhile, the New York Times is suing. Yeah. Meanwhile, yeah, exactly. I was actually looking at my YouTube feed. It’s just the other day, probably a third of it was AI generated content on YouTube. And I think it’s because I watch

33:47
Actually, you have my YouTube account. watch a lot of sports sometimes, so sorry for messing up your algorithm. I watch a lot of sports stuff. And all these sports news things are now AI generated. I have noticed that about the sports stuff. And not only that, it’s false. I don’t want to bore anyone, but one of these videos I watched claimed that the Warriors did a trade when in fact they didn’t.

34:17
But it got me to click on the video. It got so that’s I think the problem is there’s a lot of stuff that’s not true. And now it’s harder to find what’s true and what’s not true. Yeah, it got me to watch the ad because you have to watch one before you get the video. And then even though I clicked away, they still got paid for that ad, right? Yeah. That was a depressing one, huh? So I have an interesting one. OK, all right. So the FTC just ruled that TurboTax

34:47
can’t advertise as a free service. Okay. So TurboTax is one of the shadiest. I’m not recommending TurboTax, but I, there’s an interesting point to this, but go on talking about TurboTax. You know, they make a lot of the, a lot of their money from TurboTax every year. used to work there. Oh, I didn’t know that. Yeah. She used to work it into it.

35:14
Okay. Oh yes, I did. I forgot that they own Termitaks. It was there before they actually started doing all the shady stuff. But they have a free version, but they hid the URL. They hid the URL so that you couldn’t find it. And the only thing you could find was the paid version. Well, apparently about 70 % of the people don’t even qualify to use the free version, which is why the FTC

35:43
has told them they can’t advertise as something that they have a free version because the majority of people can’t use the free version anyway. And so basically it’s a lie, right? Like it’s not free because you don’t, it’s not free for you. might be free for, it’s probably free for like every 19 year old that works an hourly job, right? And that’s it. It doesn’t live in a state that you have to pay state income tax. What I think is interesting about this is that,

36:11
I wonder if this will eventually trickle down to, and it probably won’t, right? Because these people are small. mean, TurboTax is huge, right? Like it’s a huge company. They run a million ads from January to April. But there’s so many marketers out there that advertise that you can come to something for free, but it’s like barely free, right? It’s like what you get for free is garbage. And then, you know, it’s an immediate pay. And I wonder if that will eventually trickle down into things like that.

36:41
I mean, I think we advertise a webinar. We don’t advertise. We promote. So we don’t even actually run ads. But we have a free webinar. But I believe that our free webinar, you could easily get started and start doing things and never sign up for our paid course and have success. And we know people who go to all the webinars and do things on their own. It’s very possible. Now, if you want in-depth handholding,

37:09
cheerleaders plus like every question you’ve ever wanted answered under the sun, you sign up for the paid version, right? Which is true for most things. But I wonder if this will ever trickle down on a lot of these, what I think are pretty sleazy marketers who advertise things as being free, but they’re truly not free. Yeah. Yeah. Turbo tax, man. You know what I don’t get about this country? And I’m sure there’s some shady deals in there somewhere, but the government wants people to pay taxes, right? They want them to do it right.

37:39
so they can get paid. So why doesn’t the government just put out a free tool? It can’t be that difficult. mean, I technically they do. put out the forms, but you have to have a PhD in accounting to do the forms. But it’s a paper form, right? Yeah. Oh, I totally agree with you. they should. Well, they should just simplify everything, right? Like it’s so complicated that it’s like you clearly don’t want your money. I’m pretty sure it’d be pretty easy to put together some software.

38:08
That’s like 75 % of what TurboTax does. Oh, 100%. And just give it away for free and it’ll probably encourage more people to file correctly or even file, right? Yeah. I don’t know. There’s just things, some things that are just, I just don’t get. So Intuit must have some deal with the government, some crazy deal where maybe the government’s getting paid. Well, now they can’t advertise it as a free service anymore. So, which has been their, that’s been their

38:37
of their marketing strategy for as long as I remember them being online, like advertising online. If you guys are listening to this, go ahead and Google TurboTax. This scandal has been going on for years. Yeah, they’ve been doing all sorts of shady stuff. It drives me nuts. Okay, my last piece of news is kind of depressing too. All of your news has been depressing. I’m trying to think if I have anything positive.

39:06
Well, okay. So Google Podcast is going away. Okay. I know that doesn’t affect I don’t know what Google Podcast is. It’s a podcast app to listen to podcasts. Oh, okay. Is it for Android users? It’s the one that I use, which is why so the three people that are using it are going to have to find another way. You can’t listen on Spotify? What do you use? use the Apple’s app. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I don’t like Spotify. Have you ever used Spotify?

39:37
Not to listen to podcasts, I use it all the time to listen to music. Okay, do you have a paid version or do you have a free version? yeah. Oh, you have a paid, okay. So I’m using the free version. Yeah. And it just constantly has bugs or stops, ads and whatnot. So it’s not really like a pure podcast experience. That makes sense. So yeah, I’ve had the paid Spotify app for a long time, mainly because

39:59
The main reason why I got Spotify was to have music to listen to while running or at the gym. And there’s nothing like an ad for like hemorrhoid cream that will slow your rundown. Right? Like it’s just, didn’t want, I was like, I just need to be able to listen to my playlist and be able to download it and not even think about it. And so it’s worth it. And I have like the whole family accounts. My kids have, you know, they can listen to stuff and all that jazz. So. those are the ads you’re getting. I’m getting hair loss ads and erectile dysfunction now.

40:27
Everyone gets the erectile dysfunction. They’re all over the TV. They’re everywhere. Like, do we just watch shows made for 50 year old men? that the deal? Okay. Let’s this on a positive note. Give me a positive piece of news. Oh, you need a positive note? Okay. This is kind of positive. had two. Actually, I’m to do one that’s not positive. It’s just information, but people need to know this. So by the time this podcast airs,

40:54
The new DMARC regulations will go into effect about having the unsubscribe on your email. So if you’re not in compliance with that, you need to do it like immediately because we’re already gonna be past the deadline when you hear this. But an interesting thing that I read this morning actually was for your spam rates, you want to keep it below 0.1%. So that’s your goal for spam and never, never, never get above 0.3%.

41:23
So if you’re looking for like a benchmark for your email list and what you’re sending, that’s where it needs to sit. Now, most people sit there just fine if you’re sending out good content newsletter type stuff. But if you haven’t ever checked that, this is the time to do it and then make sure that you are really culling your list before, well, now when you hear this, it’ll be done. Make sure you get those people that are non-engaged off your list. Yeah.

41:51
I mean, we didn’t do a good job of explaining all this stuff. I mean, we explained in the class, but Google and Yahoo are basically cracking down on email spam. and Tony mentioned DKIM, SPF, and DMARC. These are just technical terms for ways to authenticate the email to make sure that you were the one sending it. In the past, you didn’t have to implement these things, but today you do.

42:19
And this goes into effect, I believe February 1st. Yeah. So this will be out after that date. Yeah, this will be out after that date. in the event that you do any email marketing, you have to get that set up. And practically every email marketing company that I know has been just sending out mass emails. Yeah, you know about this for sure. But what I haven’t seen, because everyone’s talking about the spam, but no one’s given like a hard number. Like this is where you need to keep it. And then Drew Sinaki came out with something a couple of weeks ago.

42:48
about it, of course, him saying, but this is why you should use direct mail. And then I read something today on a reputable site. can’t remember which one I was reading, but so yeah, just make sure you’re in compliance with that. It’s always been 0.1%. You know, what’s funny is a long time ago, I used to send out emails in different chunks. I’d send it out to my most engaged and then all the way down to the least engaged. Yeah.

43:18
That’s the wrong way to do it. I just set it all in aggregate now because then like they look at the spam rates percentage wise, Percent. And by amassing everything together, the spam rate is always going to be lower. Yes. I do have good news to end on. OK, I forgot. And then I remembered again, I didn’t have it in my browser, so I don’t forget someone we know just started a newsletter and you must subscribe.

43:48
Do know who? Who just started and used it? One of our friends? good, good friends. You’re not talking about Chanel, are you? No, our friend Dana Jean-Zemes just started a newsletter. all right. It is called Gap Pond, and you can subscribe. She has no idea that I’m saying this. She’ll probably kill me. You can go subscribe to it at gappond.substack.com. Oh, she started a sub stack. Excellent. Yes.

44:14
And it is basically talking about her gap year that she took between selling her business and retirement. So she sold her business and she was like, I’m not ready to retire, but I don’t want to buy another business. I’m going to take a gap year. People take gap years all the time. So, and she has made no promises. She’s like, I don’t know how often you’re going to get an email, but it is very good. Highly recommend. I think anytime you can learn from someone like Dana, you should.

44:40
you should sign up and digest everything. So go subscribe, gappond.substack.com.

44:50
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now both Tony and I will do news episodes whenever something brand new comes out that could potentially affect the world of content creation. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 517. And once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2024 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.

45:19
And if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequoterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.