Today I have my friend and business partner Toni Herrbach on the show. In this episode, we recap some of the game changing strategies in ecommerce that were revealed in Seller Summit 2023
This year was one of the best Seller Summits in terms of content and community. Not only did we have the most sessions ever, but every single talk was incredible.
Head on over to Sellersummit.com to grab the recordings.
00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today, I my friend and business partner, Tony Urbach on the show. And in this episode, we are going to recap some of the game changing strategies in e-commerce that were revealed in Seller Summit 2023. Now Seller Summit 2023 was one of the best seller summits in terms of content and community that I can remember. And not only do we have the most sessions ever,
00:28
but every single talk was incredible. This is easily one of my favorite years of all time for my annual e-commerce conference. Now, if you want the recordings for Seller Summit 2023, then head on over to sellersummit.com, that’s S-E-L-L-E-R-S-S-U-M-M-I-T.com, and click on the grab your virtual pass button. We’ll be taking this link down pretty soon to make room for Seller Summit 2024, which will be announced later on this month. But before we begin,
00:57
I want to thank Jeff Oxford of 180 Marketing for sponsoring this episode. 180 Marketing is an agency that specializes in helping e-commerce stores boost their SEO traffic. And in the past, I used Jeff and his firm managed to grow my search traffic by 4x in just 6 months. In fact, 180 Marketing is one of the few SEO agencies that I trust 100%. For more information, go to 180Marketing.com or just email Jeff at 180Marketing.com.
01:25
I also want thank Sellerboard for sponsoring this episode. Sellerboard is profit analysis software that helps you figure out exactly how much profit you are making selling on Amazon. Now, if you’re an Amazon seller, you are probably aware that there are many hidden fees in selling on the platform and Sellerboard organizes all that information for you in a clear and concise fashion. Personally, I recommend Sellerboard because they’re among the least expensive software that I know of that does this, which is one of the reasons why I like them.
01:53
For more information, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash seller board and try them for free for 30 days. It is literally a no brainer. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash S-E-L-L-E-R-B-O-A-R-D. And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast that I run with my partner, Tony. And unlike this one, where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience.
02:20
No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the profitable audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.
02:36
Welcome to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast. Today, I have my business partner, Tony, on the show. And we are going to talk about how amazingly successful Seller Summit was this past year. Probably one of my favorite Seller Summits of all time. Yeah, it’s been a long time since I’ve been on the show. I’m feeling a little neglected. Well, it’s because we have our other show now. That’s true. That’s true. I get to talk to you all the time. Exactly. It’s rare that you were actually the most frequent guest.
03:06
Yeah, I think you had I’m sure everyone listening knows who you are. I’m sure they’re all sick. They’re like her again. So I just want to ask is it just me or did you feel the same way about this seller summit? Oh, I thought it was great. It was definitely it’s hard. Okay, so it’s funny because the first seller summit always like holds a special place, right? Because it was the first one you and I well, I don’t think either of us admitted how nervous we were about people not showing up.
03:33
You know, with the first one, it’s like, we going to actually is anyone going to want to come? So I think that first one was special because it felt like, oh, we did it. It wasn’t a complete disaster. Everyone seemed like they had a great time. And so that one always holds a special place. But this one is probably my favorite in regards to just the overall, the speakers, the attendees, the sponsors. I feel like everybody was just amazing this year at the event. Yeah. And I don’t just say this lightly and I’ll just be straight up. I think.
04:02
last year’s event was one of the roughest ones. I agree. is 2022. Yeah. Because we were cutting them off. We were coming off a pandemic. Yeah. And people were still a little bit squeamish about traveling. And then I think we had like a last minute speaker cancellation because people were still kind of iffy. Yeah. So 2022 was one of my least favorite years. But this year is by far one of my favorite years outside of the first year, want to say. Yeah, 2022 was hard, too, because if you think about when we hold seller summit in May,
04:31
In 2020, we thought up until like March 20th, we were still having an event. So we were only six weeks out, I think, from seller summit when we realized that we had to cancel it. And we didn’t really know what to do. So we ended up doing the virtual event, which I thought was great as far as like our attendees were awesome. They showed up on Zoom. Our speakers delivered amazing presentations. And so I really did enjoy the presentations that year and stuff like that. But we also allowed anybody who had a ticket in 2020
05:01
to carry it over to the next live in-person event, which ended up being in 2022. And at that point, it had been two years, right? And for some people, three years since they bought a ticket because they bought their ticket in 2019. And so people didn’t know if they had tickets. They didn’t know what kind of tickets they had. weren’t like all our overseas people didn’t think they could come. So 2022 just felt like an absolute chaotic.
05:25
mess, even though, you know, we tried really hard to communicate, our speakers still did a great job presenting like everyone did their best. But I felt like that year just felt off. But this year just felt like to me, it felt like a homerun, not to pat ourselves on the back. I think it had way more to do had way more to do with the people that were there than the two of us for sure. I agree. And let me just let me just think about some of the anomalies.
05:48
Well, number one, I did my book signing. So that’s why it was special for me. That’s why I asked you that question because I knew that was it was special for me because of that. In addition to the event going fantastic. Yeah. And let me just tell you from my perspective first, that video that you put together during the opening. So for anyone listening out there, I don’t cry. I just don’t. I don’t even get emotional. But what Tony did and whose idea was it? was Andrea’s. It was Andrea’s idea.
06:18
So we give it some credit. Tony and Andrea went around to my close business friends and my family and they had them record a short clip about how I’ve influenced them in their lives or, you know, just like a whole bunch of people just wrote film. He’s really, I see I’m getting like teary thinking about it right now. Put together these thank you videos together in one long video. And it was a complete surprise to me. During the opening keynote, they played it.
06:48
And like, I was like, okay, I’m not gonna lose it. I’m not gonna lose it on stage. And then what made me, what snapped me out of it actually, was I saw you high-fiving Andrea in the front row, because you were trying to get me to cry. And I was like, okay, all right. Okay, here’s the thing. I wasn’t trying to get you to cry. I just wanted you to show some semblance of emotion. What was cool about this is, so,
07:15
As you guys probably know, if you’ve been to Seller Summit or you’ve heard us talk about it before, my brother, Todd, is a professional sound engineer. He runs our AV for Seller Summit. He’s done it since the first event. Andrea came to me with this idea. She’s like, wouldn’t it be cool if we had a video that we could play at Seller Summit that had some of Steve’s closest friends talking about how he’s impacted them in relation to the family first entrepreneur book? What lessons have they learned from you, either through business or friendship, things like that?
07:44
Immediately, I’m thinking of all the really bad videos that I’ve seen, compilation videos where people talk too long and people are getting up and leaving. So I immediately call my brother. I’m like, I got an idea. And he’s like, oh no. Because he thinks it’s obviously more work for him. ended up my nephew Zach did do the editing of the video. But my brother actually gave me a list of requirements of how people had to hold their phone, what he wanted them to not say, like the words, but the formatting, the time.
08:14
And it was funny because I felt like Ezra, you know how when Ezra Firestone asked for user generated reviews and he like sends these people like a PDF of like, hold your phone this way. Like I felt like Ezra, was like, I like, I should just send this to Ezra, see if it makes sense to him. But so I sent this out. This is what was cool. And not everybody knows this, but I sent it to 19 people. So because I thought if I can get 10, then that makes a very nice like three, two to three minute compilation video.
08:44
And I figured, you know, lot of your friends are not good with email. They’re very busy. They’re all like you, right? So I was like, huh, if I get a 50 % response rate, that’s awesome. As well as, you know, not everybody that I emailed knows me very well. Most of them do, but some of them like I’m not a familiar name. So I put the subject line, please help me make Steve Chu cry.
09:08
So I figured all my years of email writing definitely paid off in this. So, and then I wrote a very succinct email. These were the directions. You had to have it to me by this date, whatever. So I got 18 responses out of 19. I know that’s incredible. Which is incredible. And I would say a testament to your friendship with these folks and how much you mean to them and how much they value your friendship. And I didn’t, I had to send one reminder email. So it wasn’t like I was prodding these people for weeks or anything like that.
09:38
They all followed the directions except for Mike Jackness who held his phone the wrong way, but I’ll forgive him for that. He gave a great presentation at Seller Summit. So yeah, it was really cool. And it was cool because I saw them all coming in. know, they would send them to me or text them to me and I would watch them. And some of them were, and people were like, can we be funny? Is this supposed to be serious? And I was like, you can be however you want to be. Like you need to be you how you are with Steve. And so that was cool too, because it was a really nice mix of.
10:04
of like funny and sincere. But the best thing which you don’t know was like, I know that you and Jen, Jen’s your wife, as most people know, like you have access to each other’s accounts. You know, like I know you can see like emails and things like that. So I really wanted Jen and your kids to make a video. But I was like, I don’t know how I’m going to get to Jen without you seeing it somehow. Right. Because I can’t email or the chances of you seeing it are probably pretty high. I was like, I can text her, but I have to text her.
10:32
when I know you’re not with her, which is basically all the time, right? So we were on a Friday check-in.
10:39
And you’re talking away and I’m texting Jen. like, I need you to text me back as soon as possible. Steve can’t be around. And then when I was rereading the text, it sounded really bad. Like I had to tell her some sort of secret about you that was like horrible. And I was like, it’s not that bad. But please text me when you can’t see this. Delete the text. I was like, you know, wanting to make sure you didn’t see it. So we had several text chains where you were like on live with me, but I’m texting Jen because I knew you weren’t with her because I could see you.
11:07
And then she texted, the best text from her was, I don’t know when I’m to be able to film these because he’s always home. I was like, I know. Can’t you send them to the store? It’s true. Yeah. I think she did it while I was doing like some sort of live presentation at the workshop or something. Yes, because when she sent them to me, I was like, oh yeah, he’s on live right now.
11:33
So yeah, good job to everybody though who sent in a video and I don’t, is a video anywhere where people can see it? I think it’d be nice if we put it somewhere. You know what? I might integrate it into my YouTube channel somewhere. Okay. In one of the videos. We can upload it to the Seller Summit site. the people that have the virtual pass, cause they didn’t get to see it. All the attendees get see it. stayed in the keynote part, right? I didn’t watch the keynote obviously, but. No, I think that that was its own, cause it’s its own video. So it’s, I think the full video is in Dropbox though.
12:03
Okay. Yeah. Anyways, uh, the virtual pass is for sale right now. I’ll just go over to seller summit.com. This is actually the year we had the most presentations as well too. 19, We have 19 or 20. don’t know if you want to count your keynote. Do we count that as a presentation? We don’t learn anything from that. That’s true. We just get entertained by that. That’s right. right. I don’t know. Do you want to
12:31
talk about some of these. This is the first year also, I just want to add that Tony gave a presentation. first year, I’ve given one before. When I gave one the first year and I think I gave one the second year and then I was like, I’m not doing this anymore. Too much work. I don’t think you did. I did. I gave one on Pinterest. That’s the first year then second year, second year, second year and that was it. I’m pretty sure I might not have done one the first year second year. I definitely did one because I was like, this is too hectic. Right.
12:59
But I did. I did give a presentation this year on email. Totally worth the price of the pass. It was. You want to just give like a quick summary of what you talked about? Yeah. I haven’t watched it yet. Yeah. Oh yeah. Because you weren’t in my I wasn’t in your talk. You weren’t in my talk. So this year I gave a presentation on email marketing. I’ve been running email for an e-commerce business for a couple of years now with a rather large list. So it’s been fun because you can test a lot of things with a large list that you can’t do when you’re still in the early growth stage of lithium.
13:28
list building. So I basically talked about how I took her email from when I got started, she was doing just under a million dollars a year in email to this year. We’ll probably do close to three to $4 million in email revenue alone. And basically I gave this drive. I basically walked people through like from the time I started till today, like everything that I’ve either updated or changed to help her get to that point. The biggest one I would say, and like my overall takeaway from the
13:55
talk is I sent more emails to more people. So I talk about how to grow the list and then all the different types of emails that we send that aren’t, I talk a lot about the sales emails, like how you send those standard emails that everyone’s sending, but I talk a lot about how do you grow that list through your flows and the flows that maybe you’re not doing.
14:13
Right? The things that people, everyone thinks about like, oh, I have a post purchase flow or, I have an abandoned cart flow. But there’s a lot of other things that you can be doing to really engage the list and get people continuing to open your emails first of all. And then eventually either converting them to first time buyers or getting those first time buyers to buy a second time. So really walk through all, basically everything that I’ve done in the past three years, which I talk really, really fast. So you’ll have to watch that on like 0.7 speed.
14:40
Cause I felt like the whole time I was like, you had a lot to cover in just 50 minutes. Yeah, did. was, it was, are all there. The slides are all there. It was probably a three hour talk that I condensed into 50 minutes. But, uh, but yeah, it was, uh, I thought it, I thought it was a little bit, uh, I thought the talk was a little boring because it was all based in Klaviyo. So I basically just, it’s like screenshots of flows and campaigns and all the segmentation and
15:07
triggers and conditional splits. it’s definitely if you’re using Klaviyo, you’ll be very familiar with everything that you see, but it’s not like your talk, which was very like entertaining. Mine is like- Are talking about the keynote or the- Yeah, the Oh, you sat in on mine? Oh, the keynote. No, keynote. didn’t sit in your other one. I was in the other room. yeah, it’s definitely, I felt it was boring, but after it, I heard a lot of people say, no, no, no. Like I was able to implement some things. We’ve had some emails already from people that are like, hey, I don’t-
15:32
Charles emailed us yesterday and was like, Hey, I’m trying to do this from your he sends me a screenshot of my presentation. And then his Klaviyo account. He’s like, Am I doing this right? And I’m like, which one’s mine? Like, I’m trying to figure out which is which. And he wasn’t doing it right. So we fixed it. But yeah, people seem to enjoy like that. There’s a lot of good feedback on it. And I thought you just said that to pat yourself on the back, right? No, I wasn’t. But there was a lot of people who enjoyed it.
15:58
I thought I, because I like, obviously like Tiffany Ivanovsky gave a talk on live selling. She did it last year. She was amazing. This year, she actually did live sign with Jen, which was really fun. My wife is not the live selling type. Oh yes, she is. Oh yes, she is. But she did an amazing job. Yes. We need to get that little clip on the internet or something.
16:22
That was so I was gonna ask Tiffany for it because in the in the recording, it’s actually their backs are turned because of how the camera set up. what’s funny is Jen is a very she Jen’s very quiet. She’s probably the nicest person I’ve ever met. She’s I would say she’s pretty reserved most of the time. And, know, Tiffany gives Tiffany gave like a 40 minute talk basically on.
16:46
just live selling in general, why it works, the reasons you should do it. She showed a lot of her bloopers. She gave a really good presentation. And then at the very end, she did the live selling with Jen. And as soon as she turned that camera on, Jen like morphed into a different person. I was sitting there with Bill and Dana and we were looking at each other like, who is this?
17:09
I mean, she was like bumping Tiffany out of the camera and like trying stuff on and her energy level was like 10 out of 10. Like it was very impressive. And she sold like what? $1,700 of stuff in 10 minutes in eight minutes. Yeah, it was nuts. Yeah. With a bad internet connection. So yeah, that was one of my Tiffany is so entertaining. Like her talk gave a lot of really good information, but you were laughing the entire time. So that’s kind of why I felt like my talk with like no one laughs.
17:38
There was no laughter in my talk. was all like, screech out, screech out, screech out, was like, I’ll give you the slides, calm down. But yeah, she gave a great talk. It was great to see Jen. What was also nice is that last year we had attendees get up and live sell, but we didn’t pick, we basically took people that volunteered, but Tiffany definitely coached them before they got up there. This year, Jen kind of got up blind, right? Like I know they had talked a little bit about the products that she was going to sell.
18:05
But it was cool to see Jen, who is someone that I think we would all agree, oh, Jen wouldn’t want to do live selling, right? Correct. To see her get up there and get kind of wrapped up in the excitement about it and really show that anybody, not that Jen, I mean, Jen’s totally capable of doing it, but even these people that seem very shy and reserved, anybody can get up there and kind of get that energy going.
18:28
and really see some great sales. And the coolest thing about the tool Tiffany uses to sell is it shows you how much money you’re making per minute. So that was the best part because like Bill is like pointing to the screen the whole time. He’s like, it’s like $72 a minute. It’s like this a minute.
18:45
So anyway, that was one of my favorite talks just because Tiffany’s so relatable. And it really, when you listen to that talk, you feel like, you know, this might be an option for my business. This might be something that I could use to get another sales channel that I wasn’t thinking about. So that was one of my favorites. So I actually gave a talk this year too, which I haven’t since 2017, want to say. But for some reason, I decided to launch my book, run the conference, do a keynote and do this talk.
19:13
Yeah, that was dumb. Probably not going to do that again. Yeah. But I talked about how to escape Amazon’s grip, which was awkward because Amazon was a sponsor. Last minute sponsor, but how to create a thriving e-commerce brand without Amazon holding you back. said Amazon twice in the title. Yes. I don’t know if they watched that, but they won’t be back next year. They won’t be back next year. I’ve just been getting a lot of requests from people who, who
19:41
depend on Amazon for like 95 % or 99 % of their sales and how to go about, you know, moving off to, I shouldn’t say moving off transitioning on having their own e-commerce channel as well. And so it was pretty well received. I can’t remember who I was going up against, but I didn’t, I had some elements where I got some laughter and whatnot, but it was, it was pretty much a straight lace talk as well. Yeah.
20:06
And I think that’s the general theme that we see every year at Seller Summit is that we typically have about 50 % of our attendees are Amazon primarily sellers and 50 % are, you know, D to C sellers. And that doesn’t mean that there’s not some crossover like, you know, these Amazon sellers usually do have some sort of storefront, right, where they’re doing 5 % of their sales or something like that. And the people that are D to C, some of them do sell a little bit on Amazon. So there’s familiarity with the group, but
20:35
That’s a theme that we get every year is use people who have 97 % of their business on Amazon. And they’re like, listen, I understand I need to diversify. I’m not going to walk away from Amazon like it’s cash cow, but I want to learn about the brand building side, which Chris Schaeffer actually gave a great talk on like the conversation method, basically building that audience, engaging people. How do you, cause it’s hard to do this. Like it’s hard to start a store without Amazon.
21:04
build an audience. mean, obviously, you know, ads play a big component of it, but like, you’ve got to be able to build this loyal following and a brand that people want to come back and shop and feel proud of, like, what your brand is.
21:17
And so he gave a really good talk and he had a hard spot too. He was like the end of the day. Like those are the worst times to talk, right? Like end of the day, everyone’s tired. I always put the people I know are awesome at the end. I’m like, Chris is going to knock it out of the park. He’s going to be amazing. Same with the first morning spot. It’s like Brett Curry always goes first for me. Cause I’m like, he’s got that deep voice. You want to listen to him. He’s got like a commanding presence on stage, but Chris did a good job. basically walking people through, I think it was like a three-step method.
21:46
walked people through like, is what you do first, this is what you do second. And of course it’s Chris, so he always has a lot of like good easy things to remember. What are they like? Pneumonic devices where it’s like everything was a C. And so you kind of could remember things that way. So he always gives a great presentation. I always tease him because the first time he ever presented for us, I was like, I had no idea you were so smart. I was like, I thought Scott was the brain. He’s always so tacky. I was like, I thought Scott was the brains behind this operation. Clearly it’s you.
22:14
But yeah, he did mention, you mentioned Brett. Yeah. And I wanted to have Brett talk about Google performance max. Because up until this point, Google has been a pretty complicated way to advertise. Yeah. And so Google kind of took a page out of Facebook’s, you know, playbook and decided to create something that was a little more automated and a little bit more easier to use. still a little complicated, but it’s a lot easier to use. And it relies on Google’s AI to
22:42
just kind of magically show ads to people who are more likely to convert. And so Brett presented a different method depending on how much time you wanted to spend in it. And he broke it down really easily and simply so that anyone could implement it. I thought it was a great talk. He always does a really good job. I feel like his talks are always, he’s talking about a very complicated process and he makes it seem very doable, which I think Andrea probably did the same thing. I wasn’t in her talk, but she did a talk on many chat.
23:09
And basically she sat down and people were basically setting up flows inside the presentation. Like that was the goal was to walk out of the presentation with something set up for your account. Correct. Yes. was a workshop style that Andrea did. And yeah, she literally walked you through where to click everything. Yeah. So that you ended the presentation with something that you could use. Yeah. So it’s definitely one of those talks. If you’re watching the videos, you’ll probably want to watch it a couple of times just so you can get all the steps. But I think that’s nice too, because
23:37
Well, that was the thing is I feel like we let attendees know that they get the videos, but every seller summit, people are like, I don’t know what to pick. I don’t know what to go to. I’m so bummed. I’m going to miss this. And I’m like, well, you can watch it later. And they’re like, I can. Like they don’t know. It’s like, I thought we did a good job of like letting people know that they get all the record. Like if you have a seller summit pass, you get the recordings for free. So you won’t miss a single session.
24:01
which is actually a crazy value when you think about like how much the seller’s ticket cost and then how much the virtual pass costs. Like it’s a steal to get. Maybe I need to do a better job of communicating that in the keynote going forward. Yeah. Cause everyone’s like snapping pictures at slides. yeah, they’re frantically like their phones are out and that was like in mine and you feel like, cause I do the same thing because sometimes you don’t get the slide. Sometimes this is like the only opportunity you have you like at other events.
24:26
And so I know that when I take my picture out to take a picture of my phone, I have to take a picture of something like I’m missing what someone’s saying, right? Cause I can’t pay attention and get the photo and try to like zoom in because the screen’s 200 feet away and things like that. So, um, yeah, it’s funny to see people are like, put the phones down. You’re fine. Like you’re going to get this all. You’re going to get the slides. Um, so yeah, I think that’s something that people, need to do a better job in the future. they’re not panicking or fighting over like which
24:55
I know the people that we have come that are either coming with their partner or husband spouse partner thing, they’re not fighting over which one they have to go to. Yeah, we also had Brandon Young come in and talk about keyword strategies. There’s a lot of big name companies actually that aren’t doing a good job with their keyword research. And Brandon has this really great methodology where you can find all these outlier keywords and prioritize the keywords for your listing.
25:25
I’ve actually used it for my own listings, his tool and his methodology and it’s worked big time. Yeah. So one of the interesting talks, I don’t know if you, I don’t think you got to see the whole thing, but we had Walmart there as a sponsor and they are real. So I remember like we had Bernie from Plugable talk about Walmart in like 2017.
25:46
And back then it was like the Wild West. was really hard to get on Walmart. Like he was basically like, listen, only five of you in this room are going to be able to do this, you know, kind of thing. It was like so difficult. Right. And Bernie sells a lot. So like he has the volume, like he was, you know, successfully able to do that kind of stuff. But they they’re really coming after Amazon. Right. Like they I feel like this whole event was like, let’s come after Amazon. And then I’m like, oh, they’re sponsoring. Yay. But.
26:13
I was going to say if there’s one key takeaway that I took away from their presentation is that there’s this Shopify plugin that will automatically import your items from Shopify to Walmart. Yes. Yes. So they are making it as easy as possible for sellers to sell on their platform. Whereas if you are familiar with the Walmart platform for five or six, like I tried to sell on Walmart back in 20, after Bernie’s talk, I was like, oh yeah, I think I could probably do this. And then I got like two thirds of the way through it. And one of the requirements was you had to have
26:42
a physical warehouse that wasn’t a garage, you know, like it couldn’t be a storage building. There was like all these requirements and I was like, well, I don’t have that. So anyway, it’s totally changed. So they really want you guys, they want the third party sellers. So if it’s not something that you have dabbled in or experience with, you know, you could probably actually email us too. And we can hook you up with the team and they can help you get started because they were helping people left and right. I mean, their booth was always packed. I think people are just looking for.
27:10
diversifying, right? They want multiple streams of income, like it’s a pretty normal thing. So actually, that’s one thing that I really like about our sponsors every year, really. So Brandon was doing private demos of his tool, Data Dive. Mina, who gave a really great talk on Amazon PPC, he was actually breaking down people’s accounts. But Mina runs Trivium.co, who was one of the sponsors. Actually, I think he offered to just break down anyone’s account. So if you go over to his site,
27:39
sign up for an appointment and he’ll go through your account and tell you how you can improve. Yeah. Yeah. He I saw a lot of people over there getting the account. I don’t know if they call it an audit, but they’re getting account audits over there, which I always think is nice that our sponsors are willing to like sit down and help you. You know, we had Jungle Scout there. They’ve been a sponsor for a long time. They’re always so great about, you know, showing people like not just like how to use their tool, but like the
28:07
logic behind what the tool does and why you should be using it or any tool. That’s what I like about it is that they’re not really trying to sell you on their products. They’re trying to sell you on why you need that service in general. Because I think it is important for sellers to be able to have a suite of tools at their disposal to help build their businesses. Actually speaking, what’s the jungle cell presentation was quite good too. They basically broke down some common sellers mistakes.
28:33
And just in terms of profitability, really, because Amazon has all these hidden fees and everything. And it’s, it’s really easy to get lost in that and not actually make a profit. Yeah. Their talk was actually quite good. You know, it’s interesting. Speaking of hidden fees on Amazon is we had Getita back again, which they’re always a fun sponsor, but they actually help you find what lost inventory. Yes. Which is crazy. service is a no brainer to sign up for. Like Amazon loses your stuff left and right and breaks stuff too. And unless you’re
29:02
watch them like a hawk. Yeah, you’re losing, they’re losing you money. So that’s what Katita does. They recover those lost sales, the lost inventory, and you only pay them when they actually recover something for you. And I think for seller summit members, they were giving away $400 in free reimbursements. Yeah. So if you a ticket, you want to make sure you still take them up on that if you haven’t done that yet. Um, speaking of Amazon and Jungle Scout, our friend Liz, who full circle here, right? Like,
29:31
helped was our seller summit admin in the very beginning, then left us for Jungle Scout. And so she worked at Jungle Scout for like six years and then just recently left Jungle Scout to launch a extension called Fluencer Fruit, which basically helps Amazon influencers find profitable products to make videos about, which we’re going to have a podcast coming out about that on profitable audience if you want to learn more. But the other side of that is that she actually also helps sellers
30:00
get matched with influencers to launch products on Amazon. So if you are brand registered on Amazon, you have video, a video box where you can have a video in your listing. And basically influencer videos can live in that part of your listing and influencer videos are like eight times more likely for people to like watch and buy than like your own brand video. Cause it’s like, well, of course it’s a great video. It’s like professionally shot on some drone camera and all this stuff.
30:26
And so she basically talked about how a seller can use these influencers to help get velocity for their products and help kind of push them up and how it really does work well, especially if you’re trying to get some traction on Amazon for your products. I don’t know about you, but these days when I shop on Amazon, I always watch the videos. Yeah. And if you can get unbiased people to leave reviews of products, that will increase your conversion rate easily.
30:55
And I think if you’re thinking about like, of course, the influencer videos are going to be positive. They want people to click and buy because they obviously get a commission when people watch the video and buy. every influencer is especially know that videos that are too shiny, happy people ish don’t do well. Like you want to give an honest review. I just actually, right before we recorded this podcast, I created an influencer video for this new ice machine that I got. And I actually think this thing is amazing. It was hard for me to think of something I didn’t like about it.
31:22
But the one thing is it does hum, right? It has like a background noise. So if you’re one of those people that can’t stand like, you know, a background noise in your house, like I have a Bosch dishwasher and I love it because it’s so quiet. So then the ice machine’s a little bit loud. And so I’m like, hey, that’s probably the only negative I can think about this. I don’t even care because I love the ice so much, but you know, I think as influencers, they try to find something that’s like not a terrible negative, but you know, something that, you you want the video to be authentic. So yeah, definitely a good.
31:51
Talk to watch if you are selling on Amazon Because the influencers can really really help you with your products So this next talk was really important to me Alicia renozo first time speaker at Seller Summit Yeah talked about how to grow a brand with by running a six-week challenge Yes, and the reason why this was meaningful to me is because right now I’m running my own six-week challenge that I am kind of mimicking off of Alicia’s method. Yeah, and
32:19
Just to give some context, Alicia used to sell water bottles and she turned that into an eight figure company. Think about how many water bottles there are. Like thousands, so many different brands and she stood out by running these challenges to build a community. she was actually great too. I enjoyed, I didn’t know her at all. I had only heard of her through you and so she’s just, she’s very smart, great person to talk to and her talk was really interesting and I think.
32:46
If you’re not doing that sort of thing already, like, especially if you didn’t come from the content side, it will really be mind blowing what you can do to do these challenges and build this community and how much you can leverage that community to make sales. And we saw this last year with one of the people that did the live selling, Laurie. She, built this huge community and then she launched a physical product and had wild success with that because of that community that she had built.
33:12
So it’s a really great strategy to use, especially if you want to be off Amazon. Yep. And the conference would not be complete without a talk on AI. Yes. I Mike Jackness did a great job. Yeah. There were some things that he talked about that I wasn’t doing. clearly that guy is always, I don’t know how he has the time now. But yeah, a lot of cutting edge AI techniques that I’m willing to bet that you guys aren’t doing. Yeah. I didn’t get to see that talk. I was in the other room, but,
33:42
I heard nothing but like people like, know, kind of Like it’s not your standard, hey, I use it to create my listing. Yes, it’s my bullet points. Yes. Yeah. There’s much more to it. It’s a lot deeper than you expect. Yeah. And then of course we had our good friend Bill D’Alessandro who basically made a promise that his talk was going to save you a hundred grand in your business. And he was right.
34:10
There were people who wasn’t exaggerate. No, there were people literally like after his talk, like I’ve already saved it. Like it was crazy. Like I didn’t I was in Liz. Liz was so mad at me because she had to talk when Bill was talking. She’s like, I cannot believe you talked put me against Bill and he’s giving everyone 100 grand. I was like, well, technically he’s not giving everyone 100 grand, but I do see what you’re saying. But I’ve heard nothing but in fact, during the talk, people at the event were texting me about how amazing like while they were in his talk about how amazing his talk was.
34:39
I actually saved 40 grand. So I asked Bill to wire me the remaining 60, but yeah, there was stuff that he talked about that I was not doing either. fantastic talk. Yeah. And then one of my favorite people and someone that I was so excited to see on the Seller Summit stage, Natalie Mounter. Oh, yes. She is, I will say she is our very biggest Seller Summit cheerleader. She is almost an OG. She started coming in 2017, so second year.
35:08
She brings, she always has other people come, like because of her new people are coming to Sellers Summit every year. And it was pretty funny. She emailed us, I don’t know, maybe five months ago and said, hey, I’m going to send you a proposal for a talk. Right. And we’re like, okay. And we were both a little nervous because we love Natalie and we, her energy, if you know her, if you don’t know her, her energy, she’s one of those people you just want to hang out with. She always has amazing energy and
35:35
A week later in our inbox, we get a deck of slides and a fully produced one hour presentation of her talk. Yes, fully produced everything. Like she’s on a stage. Like it was amazing. And she really recorded it just for us. And so I got like five minutes in, I’m like, she could be talking about the sun and she’s speaking. Like I don’t even care. But she gave an awesome talk on influencer marketing. She blew people’s minds really because
36:03
She doesn’t sell on Amazon, think at all, right? I don’t know if that’s for sure, but yeah. But she’s managed to grow a multimillion dollar business from influencers that she doesn’t pay. Yes, amazing. All free, all free. So that talk, definitely people were just like, you know, because
36:23
She basically showing everyone thinks like, oh, I don’t know how to find influencers. You got to pay them. And then they’re going to take my money and they’re not going to review the product. Whatever there’s we, I hear it all the time. You go into like the ECF forums and there’s always these horror stories about working with influencers. She gave this like step-by-step. is everything that I’ve done. She’s done it herself. So it’s like, obviously it’s working. Um, and definitely a talk that, uh, kind of all the like Liz’s talk, Natalie’s talk, Chris’s talk, Alicia’s talk. We’re all really about like, how are you using these like free resources?
36:53
right, to drive sales, build community, get people talking about your products that you’re not going to have to pay for advertising for. I also really enjoyed Spencer’s talk. Yes, did. Spencer Jan is the founder of Solo Stove. And he basically gave a talk on how he bootstrapped that company to a $2 billion IPO. Yes. And it was very heartfelt. Yes. It was. It was very personal. Yeah, like I
37:20
I want to say I teared up a little bit during his presentation. yeah. was like, oh, this is hard. Here’s what’s great about Spencer, other than he’s probably one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Him and Jen could have like a nice off and see who was the nicest. He’s the most unassuming dude. You would never, you could never pick him out of a crowd, right? He’s just trolling along, but.
37:45
He basically, because I think we hear a lot of these talks about people that are like, you know, they grow these businesses to like, you know, crazy amounts of money and you’re just like, holy cow. But he basically talked about all the things he tried to do first that failed and like all these failures that led him to like making the decisions that he did with solo stove and some personal things that happened in his life. And I think that was very impactful because so much of the time we only hear the success and we don’t hear the failure that drives you to the success. And he did a really good job of
38:15
not focusing on the failure, but focusing on how you use those moments where you feel like everything’s failing to drive it to a place where you can find success. Yeah, amazing talk. I really enjoyed quiet lights talk also, because a lot of people don’t really think about this. They talked about the exact steps you must take if you want to sell your business in two to three years. Yep. And, you know, some people are getting some people don’t want to run their business forever. And
38:45
you should always keep in the back of your head, maybe you want to exit someday. But in order to do that, you have to take specific steps to make your business sellable. Yeah. And so it was a great step by step talk. It’s funny because like, I think people think, oh, I’m not planning on selling my business right now. But then so many people at Seller Summit have sold one of their businesses through quiet lights. Like, yeah, you’re probably going to be talking to them at some point. I want to say Meg just sold her business, right? Yes.
39:13
our good friend Carol Reins sold with them. And then we just had an exit me like Andrew Udarian. Yeah, just had an exit through. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think that that’s it’s one of those things where you can’t just wake up one day and decide to sell your business. Like you have to have all these things in place to do that. And so that talk, even if you’re thinking like in five years, I want to probably sell this. It’s definitely worth doing because wouldn’t it be nice when you get to that point of like, hey, I think it’s time to sell that like you’re not having to go
39:42
I mean, like Mike was talking about some stuff, I think when he sold Color It, of like that he didn’t know that he was supposed to do. Right? And it was like this nightmare. I think it was the, what was it? The buybacks? I don’t know what the right term was. He had some other things that were, he had like multiple brands under a single Amazon account that he had split up. It was kind of a nightmare. So these are all things that if you take care of them in the beginning, it makes your life a whole lot easier later on. Yeah. And we should have talked about this talk earlier, I think, but Megla.
40:10
talked about sourcing from India, which I think a lot of people are down on sourcing from Asia right now. think that’s been, we’ve kind of had a talk like this. I think a couple years ago, our friend Nathan talked about like kind of pushing things through Mexico. I think it was like a tariff talk, things like that. But she did a really good talk. I actually was speaking at the same time, but I heard lots of good things about her. Yeah, I was in her talk. She actually threw in Vietnam also. Oh, nice. It was India and Vietnam. She sourced this and she travels there all the time.
40:39
Yeah. And so she basically talked about what each country was good at. Yeah. And which products do well over there, which which products have lower pricing, what the labor costs are in each country. So you can gauge what types of products you want to produce where. Yeah, I’m going to actually go back and watch that talk because I’m like, that’s really interesting to me. I think everybody thinks that they can only go through Asia to to source products. But there’s a lot of other options out there. And she is definitely an expert on on that for sure. And we also had Mike Epstein come and talk about
41:08
postcard marketing. Yes, I had done this case study with my own website. And I got I think like a 16 X ROI. Yeah, I think people stopped selling stop sending snail mail with the advent of email. And then now that email is getting I don’t want to say saturated, but it’s getting more competitive, way more competitive, less people are sending direct mail. And so direct mail really works well. Yeah, right now, if you haven’t tried it yet.
41:35
I would highly advise that you do it. And he had a really good talk because he basically broke down the, once again, the exact steps you have to take to do this, how they can actually get addresses, things like that for you, as well as like the actual like real hard costs in doing this. Like how much does it cost to send a postcard? How much does it cost to do this? And so it was, and it was funny because I was actually sitting in that talk.
41:57
with several people that I know fairly well. And one of them, I was like, this is exactly what you need to be doing. So the whole time he’s talking, I’m like texting my friend, like, okay, and then you just send this and then you send that. And he’s like, I was thinking the same thing. And I was like, yes, of course. And it’s funny, because I used to work for a mailing company. And I was a little bit down on it after that experience. But some of the things that they’re doing today, which I’m pretty far removed from it now, it’s pretty cool. And it’s pretty cool what they can do. One of the things I think is really
42:26
neat is they can actually match your handwriting. Yeah. you could like they have like a handwriting machine so you can you know looks very handwritten which I think is pretty cool. Like I think I think anything with personalization is really works very well whether it’s email direct mail text anything. And so I think that’s a cool feature that you can do. I think the coolest part is that it can be completely automated like Klaviyo. Yes. Which is crazy to me too. Like and because we were because you can do an abandoned postcard right. Yes. Which is
42:55
Nutty. Like when you think about that, you’re like, what? And so I asked him a question. I was like, hey, like what’s the turnaround time? He’s like 20, 40, 48 hours. Like they’ll get that thing in the mail. It’s like, what? It’s crazy. So very cool stuff that they’re that not only that Mike himself is doing, but like in general that you can do with this direct mail marketing. And then I wanted to save the best for last, which is how we close it out. Our good friend Dana Jean-Zemes gave just an incredible keynote.
43:25
I listened to it the entire like I didn’t get distracted at all. No, she has such an amazing story. And I don’t want to spoil it. Nope. I don’t know what you want to say about all I can say was Dana is so humble. Yes. And she’s always like, I’m not really a speaker, but I’ll speak. Yeah. But I think she’s an amazing speaker. She kept everyone riveted from beginning to end. Yes. So what’s funny is I knew I wanted Dana to be a keynote like five years ago.
43:53
But at that point, I didn’t think the story worked. I felt like she was still in the middle of her businesses. She hadn’t sold yet. She’s sold her businesses now. But when we were at ECF this year, I said, I really want you to give the keynote at Seller Summit the closing keynote. And the first thing she said to me was, does Steve know? Why would she ask that, I wonder?
44:17
And I was like, I don’t really care if Steve knows, I’m like, this is what you’re going to do it. You know, and she at first was like, I don’t think I’m the right person. know, typical Dana, so humble. And I said, here’s exactly why I want you to do this. And I kind of listed out a couple of reasons of why I felt like she was the best person to do this. And she was like, I’ll do it, you know, and it took me the week of VCF to like convince her to, to agree to it. But she, the whole time she’s like, and Steve knows.
44:46
And was like, first of all, I’m the boss. Steve doesn’t clearly you’re not. Clearly you’re not. Dana had to ask. But what was, I don’t want to spoil it either because I thought it was so awesome. But one of the things that I thought was really cool and I got an email from Dana afterwards was that so many people came up to her and were impacted by her talk in very different ways. So some people were impacted by the personal stuff.
45:14
Some people were impacted by the business stuff. Some people were impacted just by who Dana was. And she said she was overwhelmed with how many people came up to her and were just like, you were speaking directly to me. And it was like male, female, new business, old business. It kind of resonated with everyone, which was, thought was really cool. And I knew it would based on what I know about her.
45:40
her life in the topics. But yeah, she just knocked it out. It was a great way to end seller summit, but topped off by the fact that during her talk, you found out that you made the best seller list. that was even better. So was kind of a good. Yeah, it was a good just overall like win. Yeah. I want to take some time to also thank the sponsors who made the show possible. We already talked about Walmart. We already talked about Trivium. And we’ve already talked about Data Dive.
46:09
but I want to give a shout out to Quiet Light, who has been a long time sponsor of the event. If you’re looking to buy or sell your business, reach out to them. I also want to thank Air Wallachs. One of the themes of the show, kind of piggybacking on Bill’s talk was, you know, how do you manage your finances? How do you save money with your business? If you’re sending payments overseas to your suppliers, which you probably are, Air Wallachs is probably the cheapest way to do that.
46:37
They have super low fees and they make it super convenient. think we talked about Getita already. did. Yeah. Getita, if you have a ticket, you can get $400 in free reimbursements. I think the link should be underneath somewhere on the website. If not, send an email to us and we’ll get that to you. Yeah. I always love Pam. She runs RPC Logistics. If you need a reliable freight forwarder who is very friendly and very attentive to your needs,
47:06
I highly encourage you to go check out rpclogistics.net. Actually email Pam at rpclogistics.net. She will hold your hand throughout the entire process. I trust her. And then our friend Steve. Steve Weigler. Crushes it every time. He crushes it every time. Let me tell you about some of the services. He specializes in IP protection. So let’s say you’re getting knocked off in China. He’s actually had luck with the console in China to shut down the factory that’s
47:35
initiating the copies in the first place. And in the US, he’ll help you with your copyrights, trademarks, and that sort of thing to make sure you can take down copycat listings on Amazon as well. That’s especially Yeah, it’s funny because we know Steve, we’ve known him for a long time. And we’ve worked with him like he’s our friend, but he has also done some work for us. And it’s funny because he’s like the nicest guy. And then when you need him to do work for you, he’s like this pitbull, right? He like immediately turns you’re like, what happened to friendly Steve, like he’s gone.
48:03
So yeah, he’s great. He was giving free consults to actually I think he’ll get on the phone with anybody, right? Is that his policy? Yes. Yeah, you’ll get on the phone. S Weigler at EmergeCouncil.com S W E I G L E R at EmergeCouncil.com Yeah, and then we’ve we’ve bagged on Amazon a lot, but they were actually a very great last minute addition to the event with but a division of Amazon their buy with prime. Correct. Which is
48:32
Something that’s pretty cool, and I actually just watched a webinar this week about the Clavio integrations with BuyWithPrime and the stuff. Oh yeah. So it’s brand new. Just launched this, I think in the last like seven days. But the integrations that they’re doing and the ability that you have now on Clavio to use that data and purchase data and information about the customer, pretty awesome. Very seamless integration, very easy to use. So definitely worth checking out, especially
49:00
if you already are using Klaviyo, it’s kind of a game changer, I think. So what Buy With Prime is, it’s a button that you can have on your site where it mimics the Amazon shopping experience. Like the address, payment info is already there and they can basically check out a one click from your website. Yeah. And then that item is filled by Amazon in two days or less. or less. And now you get all that data and it just syncs right into your Klaviyo data. Correct. You get the email address, everything. Yeah.
49:30
And all the like, it’s basically like the customer, know, it’s your customer, it’s your customer, right? It’s not Amazon’s customer. So correct. Pretty cool what they’re doing. And then our friend Sue was there from Armanino, probably one of the largest accounting firms. It’s actually kind of hard to find an accountant for e-commerce because it’s kind of like a more specialized version of accounting and Armanino specializes in that among other things. Yeah, she was great. She did some roundtables for us, talked to people.
50:00
A lot of people try to do this on their own and then they get in a lot of trouble or they go to sell their business and it’s a hot mess. So, definitely something that you want to work on early in the business rather than waiting till, you know, the end. But yeah, there, she was great. I was glad to have her there. It was her first year at Seller Summit. So it was fun to have her. Yeah, absolutely. And I’m trying to think of anything else that, oh, I also want to say this.
50:29
I felt like there was a lot more women this year coming to event. Did you feel that way too? There was a lot more women coming to the event. I want to say it was almost 40%. I going to pat myself on the back for this one. I am going to. Not for my talk. My talk was fine. You can find it all on YouTube anyway. No, I was very proud of this. Dana and I, we were at ECF and not to, I ECF is working on this too. So it’s not a dig on ECF, but.
50:58
Uh, we were at ECF at Nashville 2015. And I think we were each between us. was me, Dana, Carol Reigns, Miracle, and like two other women at the entire event. And it just felt like you were on an Island and her and I for the past, whatever eight years have talked about, like, how do we get, there are a ton of women in e-commerce. How do we get them to come to events? Um, and one of the ways that, you know, her and I both felt like that could be done was to incorporate more female speakers, which is tough in a way because you don’t know a lot of.
51:26
you don’t associate with a lot of, not in a bad way, but like most of your friends are dudes. of my friends are dudes? In the e-commerce world, yes. Oh yeah, probably. Yeah, the people you hang out with, which is normal, you’re guy. Like most of my friends are women. Right. So, you you and I both worked really hard in finding very successful, competent, great presenters that were female this year on purpose. And I think their presentations were amazing. They knocked it out of the park.
51:53
And I had so many people come up to me, Dana had people come up to her, females, I felt so included. I finally found a conference where I feel like I belong, it’s not a bros club, that sort and our guys are amazing too, which is nice because there’s not this feeling of like, you know, it’s a level playing field. And so I think to me, that’s what made this event the best for me was looking around and feeling like, finally, I’m like, oh, and like, I don’t care if you’re a guy or a girl, like what you’re doing, I just wanna learn.
52:23
but it feels nice to be in a room where you’re not the only one. And so that’s definitely something that I’m very proud of this year and I would love to see that. I mean, we’re gonna continue obviously. just think the, I don’t know who’s back to Pat, but I just think that the audience that comes to Seller Summit, they’re just all people that I would wanna hang out with Yes, awesome, awesome people.
52:48
Hope you enjoyed that episode. And once again, if you want to grab all the recordings for Seller Summit 2023, head on over to sellersummit.com. That’s S-E-L-L-E-R-S-S-U-M-M-I-T.com. And I can almost guarantee you that you’ll get a ton out of the content. More information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 471. And once again, I want to thank Sellerboard, which is the Amazon profit software that I recommend for Amazon sellers.
53:15
By going over to mywifequitterjob.com slash seller board, you can get 30 days for free. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash S-C-L-L-E-R-B-O-A-R-D. I also want to thank 180marketing.com for sponsoring this episode. 180 Marketing is the agency that I use to grow my search traffic by 4x in just six months. More information, email Jeff at 180marketing.com. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store,
53:44
Head on over to MyWifeCoderJob.com and sign up for my free 6-day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.
