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The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast With Steve Chou
581: The Must-Attend Sessions at Sellers Summit 2025 : Here’s The Agenda
00:42:26
In this episode, Toni and I walk through the must-attend sessions at Sellers Summit 2025. - We’ll break down the key sessions that offer the most value, whether you're an experienced seller or just getting started.
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- [00:00]
Steve Chou
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e commerce and online business. In this episode, Tony and I are going to break down the sessions and the curriculum we're covering for Seller Summit this year on May 6, 2025. Tickets are now on sale over at sellers summit.com and the prices are now going to go up every two weeks until the event starts. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high level advice, mine is a curriculum based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e commerce business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000ft. 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. If you are an e commerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th. Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show. Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. It's exciting times. Seller Summit is coming up in two months and we've been putting together the curriculum and I'm super excited about this year.
- [01:50]
Tony
Yeah, me too. We have some every year. I always, I hate to say we have great speakers this year. Like we don't have great speakers every year, but this year I'm even more excited for, for what's happening.
- [02:03]
Steve Chou
Yeah, I mean I always get the jitters actually leading up to the event because it doesn't start coming together fully until maybe two or three months before the event. And things are just starting to come.
- [02:16]
Tony
Together right now, so I get the jitters too. But here's the thing. So I'm going to a conference tomorrow, right? I'm. I'm leaving for. I don't even know the name of the conference. It's a newsletter conference, right. About email and we got the schedule yesterday.
- [02:32]
Steve Chou
Oh really? That's hilarious.
- [02:34]
Tony
Like not just like the schedule but like I signed up for this not even knowing what the sessions were like. I. They had the speakers listed, but they didn't even have sessions listed until. I think the email came yesterday afternoon. And my. It came sometime yet. So, like, the week of the conference is when I got the information. And I feel like that's pretty standard for conferences, which it's crazy to me because we usually have everything settled about two months before. But that to me causes stress. Like, I want it even, you know, further out than that.
- [03:07]
Steve Chou
Well, I mean, it's just. It's not top of mind in the speakers until it gets close, right?
- [03:12]
Tony
Yes. Then they start panicking and putting together, for example.
- [03:15]
Steve Chou
I actually still don't know. Like, we have a whole bunch.
- [03:17]
Tony
You're not on here.
- [03:19]
Steve Chou
What's going on? Because I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to talk about. I. I usually just try to fill in the blanks of what's missing. Yes. So I usually put myself kind of last or figure out. I mean, there's a number of things I can talk about, but they are kind of all over the place, the topics that I. I would cover. So whatever is not filled is what I'll cover, basically.
- [03:38]
Tony
So let's dive in. So, people, if you haven't heard of seller summit, first of all, shame on you. It's surprising to me. We've been around for so long. We're on year eight, conference eight. We've been around a little longer than that. But because of the pandemic and stuff like that, there are people that still don't know that. Like, someone told us that they thought we were invite only. Do you remember that a couple weeks ago? Yes. Yeah. I was like, we were never invite. Like, that wasn't even a thing the first year. So anyway, we're not invite only. Everybody's welcome to attend. The other question that we get is, do I have to already be selling? No, you don't. Most of the people that attend are already selling. They already have a brand.
- [04:20]
Steve Chou
Correct.
- [04:20]
Tony
But we absolutely welcome beginners. And the other thing to think about is, because I think our friend Charles was talking about this on office hours last week, that sometimes the sessions, like, are the sessions going to be too difficult? Right. Am I not going to understand anything? And my theory on this is you always want to go to sessions that are a little bit further along than you are to help you grow in your business journey. To me, if you're going the beginning stuff to me can be learned on the Internet. Right. That can be learned from YouTube videos, from signing up for a Course, but it's those deep dive, like the deeper strategies, the ones that like the true top pros are using to me, that you want to go to an event and learn about because you're learning about like the absolute cutting edge things that people are doing right now in E commerce. And so to go there and hear it and be able to like be at the beginning of your business journey and be able to implement some of these things that other people don't know for 10 years is a huge advantage, especially when it's getting so competitive right now.
- [05:24]
Steve Chou
And the other thing is, we're one of the very few conferences, I want to say, that covers both Amazon and selling on your own store.
- [05:32]
Tony
Yeah.
- [05:32]
Steve Chou
I would say the bulk of the events, at least, least in my circles that I hear about are pure Amazon.
- [05:37]
Tony
Yes.
- [05:38]
Steve Chou
And we both know that Amazon has gotten super competitive since last year.
- [05:43]
Tony
Yeah.
- [05:44]
Steve Chou
And if you're selling only on Amazon, you got to be thinking about diversifying to other channels, including your own online store.
- [05:51]
Tony
Yeah. And most Amazon folks that we talk to want to diversify. Right. That it's on their list of things to do. But it gets really overwhelming because Amazon can also take a lot of time. It's so funny because we always talk about back in the day, but back in the day you could pretty much throw stuff up on Amazon and put it on autopilot and work. It was like truly the five hour work week or four hour work week. Right. It's not really the case anymore. It's gotten so competitive. And with all of the overseas sellers, primarily Chinese sellers, with 20 listings of the same product and things like that, you have to be far more involved in the business or be paying people to be far more involved. So thinking about your own brand is really important.
- [06:31]
Steve Chou
Yeah. And then actually my favorite part of the event is if you actually already have a business that makes over 250k or $1 million, we actually run a Mastermind on the very first day. And this is where we put together companies that are at a similar level. We make sure they don't compete and then we kind of get together in a room in groups of 10, we cater in food, and we just basically help each other with our businesses, kind of hot seat style.
- [06:58]
Tony
Yeah.
- [06:59]
Steve Chou
And this has traditionally been one of the favorite aspects of the event. And again, in order to qualify for the Mastermind, you do have to have a business. However, we did start offering a different mastermind.
- [07:11]
Tony
We'll get to that in a minute.
- [07:12]
Steve Chou
We'll get to that.
- [07:13]
Tony
Let's finish up The E. Comm. Mastermind side of things. I mean, I've had people tell me this has changed their life, which I feel like is a very strong statement from somebody. But we've heard this over and over again with that. Just the Mastermind itself was just revolutionary in their business. And it's not just about the mentor. We always put a mentor in the Mastermind to sort of basically keep track of time, make sure everybody stays on topic, things like that. But it's the other people in the group that can really help you and help you grow and like kind of move to that next phase in your business. And what I found is interesting is there's a lot of like Mastermind space spin offs where people meet at seller summit, right? They're in a Mastermind together and then they actually continue this for years, meeting and you know, on a monthly basis or every other month basis to continue, you know, the strategy sessions and things like that, plus the relationships.
- [08:15]
Steve Chou
I mean it's honestly a lonely process running any business. So to be able to meet other people who are at your level doing the same things is actually really refreshing. My businesses didn't start taking off until I started forming virtual masterminds, actually.
- [08:30]
Tony
Yes. And I think the important thing to note in this because we've gone to some other events that try to do something similar with a little less structure, but we are very picky about who we put together in a room. So we try our absolute best never to put competitors together. Because especially if you're only selling on Amazon, you really don't want to be in a room with someone who's selling the exact same types of things. And we also. Because a lot of people who are in the Mastermind have been coming to the Mastermind for a couple of years or. And we also have them fill out a pretty extensive questionnaire. I try to match the personalities because I do think that's really important. If you know certain people are more introverted or, you know, more extroverted, you want to match them with people that can sort of handle their temperaments. And so everybody goes in that room, hopefully getting the absolute best experience that they possibly can. And obviously we don't know every single person that goes to a Mastermind, so there's always wild cards, you never know. But we try. We spend probably the bulk of the conference planning on these masterminds and getting the right people in the same room together with the right mentor. Also, the mentor matters a lot, like who gets placed with who.
- [09:43]
Steve Chou
And you might think that if you sign up for the Mastermind, you don't have that much to offer. But after running these masterminds for eight years now everyone has something to contribute. Everyone does things in their own way. And you might not think that that's an efficient way of doing things, but you'd be surprised that the way you do something is just way different or you'll have someone in your group that just does things differently. That exactly fits your business. It happens every single year.
- [10:11]
Tony
Yeah. So what we found after running these E commerce masterminds for, we didn't do it the very first year, but we started the second year. So after the second year we found that there were people who were newer in their selling journey and maybe they already had a store, but they were only doing 100k. Or there's even been several people who hadn't even started yet. They had a product idea. Right. And they're like, well, what about me? Right. I want that same opportunity to strategize and network on a deeper level. And so a couple years ago we came up with the Content Mastermind because you and I both believe very strongly that content is critical when creating a brand these days. Like you cannot do that without that content creation. And so we created a secondary mastermind for people who are don't meet that revenue threshold, although you can meet the revenue threshold and join the Content Mastermind because we have that happen every single year as well. We had several million dollar sellers in our Content Mastermind last year. And we focus primarily on the content side of things. So we're not talking about product sourcing or you know, one year in one of my masterminds, E Comm, it was all about shipping. Everyone wanted to talk about shipping and reducing shipping costs and how to the strategy for that. Right. We don't talk about that. We talk about things like YouTube, TikTok, email marketing. That's really the focus of the Content Mastermind. And that to me has been. So I've been running that for. This is the third, the fourth year. 2000, 2003.
- [11:37]
Steve Chou
This is the fourth year. Wow.
- [11:38]
Tony
Okay, time for it. Yeah. This will be the fourth year of the content, I think fourth year of the Content Mastermind. And it's been really fun because the diversity of opinion in there and what people are doing and you know, one year, I remember there was a group, they did like kids, it was like for autistic kids. Right. So it was like toys and puzzles and things, but primarily geared towards kids with like learning disabilities and autism. And they were doing like webinars and videos. And they just had a crazy, you know, content strategy and they were in there and they were helping like everybody in the room. So we always get such interesting people in there really sharing their strategies. Last year we had a couple people that were like diversifying into real estate. So they were basically taking their profits. And one of them, one of our friends, Ming, she was actually buying commercial buildings and then using them to create like fulfillment centers and where like there's just like all these different things that are going on. And you know, so there were several other people in that room that were interested in doing something like that. Basically getting a building so they could work in it, but rent it out and like, what are the tax implications? And it got like super in the weeds with that kind of stuff. But very interesting content and I think that's really fun, especially with the rise of video and the importance of video. Usually video is a heavy, heavy topic. Like that's, you know, probably 60% of the conversation in that content mastermind these days.
- [13:03]
Steve Chou
I mean, here's how I see it. If you're only on Amazon right now and you want to sell more on your website, you want to create your own brand, which is where everyone should be going, you need some sort of content component.
- [13:15]
Tony
Yeah.
- [13:16]
Steve Chou
Today it's, it's not like, you know, five or six years ago where everything was much easier these days, you know, you got to build a brand in order to be in this for the long game.
- [13:26]
Tony
Yeah. So. And last year we had one attendee who had, I think he was trying to get a patent, he had a business idea, he was trying to get the patent and he actually got tons of feedback on like his strategy and his launch strategy and actually changed some of his strategy based on the feedback from other sellers in the room. So you just never know where you're going to end up in the content mastermind as far as like the direction. But I do think the information in there is really, really valuable. And it's funny because last year we had several people, million dollar sellers sign up for the content mastermind. So I reached out to them and I said, hey, did you sign up for the wrong mastermind? Did you mean to sign up for the E. Comm one? And they were all, yeah, no, absolutely not. Like I want to be in here. The other thing I've noticed is sometimes we have business owners and they sign up for the E. Comm Mastermind and they send their like right hand. They sign up for the E. Comm one and they send their right hand. To the content Mastermind. And so they sort of divide and conquer. So it's a really fun group. I think we only have one seat left in the content Master.
- [14:30]
Steve Chou
Oh, is that right?
- [14:31]
Tony
Yes.
- [14:32]
Steve Chou
Okay. I didn't check.
- [14:32]
Tony
Yeah, we actually might not have any seats because we sold some tickets this morning and I didn't check to see what bucket they were in. Okay. But worst case scenario, we might divide it up and make two content masterminds. Although I don't like doing that for the content group. But we'll see. We'll see where it goes.
- [14:48]
Steve Chou
Yeah. The other thing I also want to mention is for some reason I get a whole bunch of legal questions or everyone often has a lot of legal questions. So I just want to give a shout out to Steve Weigler. He's a lawyer that helps out with the event and he'll just sit down and talk with you for free. Like a lawyer that bills out for hundreds of dollars an hour will answer all of your legal IP protection questions at the event. So if you're worried about getting knocked off or if you want to go after someone in China, he's actually done it all.
- [15:19]
Tony
Yeah, he's, he's great and he's so generous with his time. You typically what he does is sends out a, like a calendar before the event where you can actually block a 30 minute free consult with him during seller summon, which I think is a fantastic. Like, honestly, that's the price of your ticket.
- [15:37]
Steve Chou
Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah.
- [15:39]
Tony
I mean, and what's interesting is we know lots of people who work with him outside of seller Summit. And you know, it was that session that he did with them at seller summit that usually sells them on working with him because he's so generous with helping people. In fact, he's even done like, I know he's done people's prenups. He's done all sorts of stuff.
- [15:58]
Steve Chou
Like, does he really?
- [15:59]
Tony
I didn't know that. I mean, he's an e. Commerce attorney for sure. But like, I know he's helped people with lots of different things. In fact, our friend Kelly is working with him right now on some. Some intellectual property stuff. And yeah, he just, he knows his stuff. And what I like about Steve is he's like the nicest guy. Like, he's so nice, but like when you get him on like the e Commerce subject, he's a bulldog. Right? Like, he's like, we will take him, you know, and you're like, what happened to nice Steve? Anyway, he's great. I love having him there. He's such a valuable resource and really helpful for the attendees.
- [16:35]
Steve Chou
Here's the other thing that usually happens. So Klaviyo sponsors the event practically every year and most E Commerce store owners are using Klaviyo as one of their primary email marketing or just marketing engines, period. So Klaviyo usually sends out someone to help answer all Klaviyo questions as well. So. And I don't know, I always have some Klaviyo questions or they'll cover some strategy that I'm not doing. So they'll be there also to answer questions and I guess give you a consult.
- [17:05]
Tony
Yes, you can get a consult from Klaviyo. What I love about Klaviyo is they don't send booth babes to conferences in general.
- [17:13]
Steve Chou
Have we ever gotten a booth babe before?
- [17:15]
Tony
I don't, I don't know if we've ever gotten a booth. But we also specifically tell people, please don't send us your PR person. Right, right. Send us your product people. And so Klaviyo they had. I remember. Do you remember Jessica from last year? She had like shorter hair. She rocked it like she was like sitting down with people like opening the account. The, the funniest part about Klaviyo last year was that I was doing a talk on email and it's all Klaviyo based obviously for E Commerce. And as I was like up on the stage getting mic'd up, I see the entire Klaviyo team walk in and sit in the front row and I was like, like I was so nervous. I was like, I just got like 10 times more nervous than I normally do because I'm thinking like, I hope they agree with everything I'm teaching people or I'm in big trouble because every single slide is like Klaviyo based only because that's what I use for E Commerce brands. And yeah, that was nerve wracking to say the least.
- [18:10]
Steve Chou
I didn't realize that. That's hilarious. I'm sure they'll do the same.
- [18:13]
Tony
Yes. Well, well, let's, let's talk about a couple sessions.
- [18:16]
Steve Chou
Sure. Speaking of that, you want to talk about yours?
- [18:18]
Tony
Yeah, because I'm not, I'm not fully talking about email this year because Klaviyo skeeved me out last year. So I actually, no, I think Klaviyo is going to give a basically Klaviyo how to little session with their new.
- [18:33]
Steve Chou
Features which at the time of this recording, I'm sure most of you guys have not heard about them. Tony, I got invited to their launch event where they launch a slew of amazing features which we'll be covering on this podcast.
- [18:44]
Tony
But yes, we will absolutely be covering probably in the next couple of weeks. But they will be basically showing you how to do all the things. Usually it's. I think it's going to be very similar to the talk that I gave last year as far as like the Klaviyo features that you probably aren't using that are available to you and can really revolutionize your business, especially when you're email marketing. And I'm more than happy to let Klaviyo tell you because they will give you some of the times when I create flows and things like that. I'm always worried that is like this the best way to set it up. You never know, right? Like I think it's the best way but it might just be the way that I do it. And so I like that they're there and can basically second check or double check everything that you do. So because Klaviyo is going to handle the bulk of email, I'm actually going to talk about how to use email and YouTube together to grow your brand. I am in the throes of YouTube launching right now for one of my clients and we are seeing some really good success and interesting stats for this. And I think if you are an E commerce business and you already are selling. Right. So this is primarily for people that already have an email list. Doesn't have to be big. Let's just say you've got 5,000 people on your email list, you're in a position to launch a YouTube channel. And I think this is going to be a game changer for e commerce brands that are able to do this well. So I'm going to talk about what we're doing and how we're growing it, how we launched it specifically and how we then use email to basically seal the deal. So the goal for this is really you get them in with YouTube and you seal the deal with email or ads. I'm not going to cover the ads, but you can seal the deal with ads as well. But I think this is going to be a really great session and something that I think is really within reach of most of the brands that come to Seller Summit.
- [20:39]
Steve Chou
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of if you are interested in starting your own online store. I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in E commerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now, this course is free and can be obtained@mywifequitterjob.com free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I'll send you the course right away. Once again, that's mywifequitterjob.com free. Now back to the show. Actually, if you're talking about ads, Brett this year is going to be covering all things YouTube ads. So shoppable. Shoppable ads and all the different. Because TikTok shop kind of revolutionized this, I want to say, or they've done it well, where you can just shop directly within the platform. YouTube has something similar as well. So Brett's going to basically talk about the shoppable advertising landscape. Yeah.
- [21:42]
Tony
Such a good. He knows so much and he's, he's great. His roundtable is always packed. Yep. Always wants to answer every question and you know, he runs an agency and I feel like once again getting 30 minutes with Brett is worth the price of admission because he'll, I've seen him, you know, open up your computer, let's look at your, you know, the back end. What are you doing? What setup? Why isn't the working for you? So I'm excited to have him back. He's such a great presenter and he usually brings like some of his family so it's always fun to see them too.
- [22:16]
Steve Chou
Yeah. The next speaker I just want to highlight is Sally Wilson. She is one of the favorites, one of my favorite students that's ever taken my class. She's doing extremely well. She doesn't really sell on Amazon at all. Instead the way she sells is she's built this community. Her store is called Caterpillar Cross Stitch where she sells crotch cross stitch kits and supplies and the community that she's built. And she's actually even run an event for her store which is pretty unheard of.
- [22:47]
Tony
Oh, that's amazing.
- [22:48]
Steve Chou
So she's going to teach everyone in the audience how she's done exactly that with her brand.
- [22:53]
Tony
Will she also teach you how to finish a cross stitch that you started in 1994?
- [22:59]
Steve Chou
Well, so the reason why I've been trying to get Sally to come for many years now she's in the uk.
- [23:04]
Tony
Yeah.
- [23:04]
Steve Chou
So it's kind of a trek. But she's going to make the trip this year and I'm super excited.
- [23:08]
Tony
That's very exciting. I'M excited for this. We, a couple years ago, we had Alicia talk about community, and that was one of the favorite sessions at that year's seller summit. So I'm excited to have another speaker come and talk about, you know, using that community to grow, grow your brand. I just, I think this is like one of those underutilized marketing tactics and E commerce because it's not easy, right? It is hard to grow a community, but if you know how to do it, it's, it's something that you can teach yourself how to do. Right. Like, you don't have to have any special skills. It just requires the dedication to do it, which I know something that you have never liked to do to the community building that is like your least favorite thing.
- [23:55]
Steve Chou
It is because it takes so much effort.
- [23:58]
Tony
Yeah.
- [23:58]
Steve Chou
To do. But if you can do it right, I mean, that basically future proofs your business.
- [24:02]
Tony
Well, that's the, that's the thing to think about. Right. Is that, yes, it does take a lot of effort, but if you have a strong community, it doesn't matter what the economy's doing, it doesn't matter what's happening. It doesn't matter if you have to raise your prices. I see this all the time in, like, Tiffany's community, where, you know, if they have to raise the prices, you know, there's going to be the, the two or three people that start complaining and whining, and then there's going to be the hundreds of people who like, pile on and defend you no matter what. Like I've seen in communities where people will talk about something and the audience will be like, do you have an affiliate link? Can I buy this directly from you? How do I make you the most money? Like, when you get that community going, people are begging to give you money. So it doesn't even feel like you have to ask. It just feels like, oh, well, once you've done the work, it just, it's, then it becomes on autopilot and it's just about maintaining the community, which is significantly easier. Easier.
- [24:57]
Steve Chou
Yep. So. So moving on. We're in an interesting period right now with Trump as president, tariffs, all these changes for importing. So I've invited two speakers to come talk this year about how to find suppliers outside of China. So we have Annette, who's going to be covering Made in the usa, believe it or not, we still make stuff here in the US And I have actually recently shifted one of my product lines to manufacturing in the US So that's going to cover that specifically in terms of textiles.
- [25:33]
Tony
Yeah.
- [25:34]
Steve Chou
And then I've invited my buddy Jim Kennemer. He runs Cosmos Sourcing, and he's going to cover Mexico and Vietnam as well. Because we always hear about China, China, China. And, you know, I mean, that's where a lot of the tariffs are going to be targeting. Plus it's gotten more expensive over the years.
- [25:53]
Tony
Yeah.
- [25:54]
Steve Chou
So there. There's other countries out there that are less spoken about. People know less about how to source from there. And that's why having these two resources, Jim and Annette, is going to really help out.
- [26:05]
Tony
And I think it'll be interesting, especially with Annette. Like, how do you source in America without just losing all your profit margin? Right. Like, what's the strategy? How do you do it? So I know that will be a very popular session. Both of them will be very popular because people really want to find alternatives.
- [26:23]
Steve Chou
Yep.
- [26:25]
Tony
We brought Andrea back. So that was. That. Was that a good idea?
- [26:30]
Steve Chou
I love Andrea.
- [26:31]
Tony
Andrea is one of our. Last year, people were asking, not only could she. Could they hire her, but could they be her. Could she be their best friend? She always delivers a great session. And this year she's going to talk about meta ads, which is really. We don't ever let Andrew talk about meta ads.
- [26:47]
Steve Chou
I know, which is weird because I did the meta ads last year.
- [26:50]
Tony
She should.
- [26:51]
Steve Chou
She should have done it.
- [26:52]
Tony
That is her thing. She has consistently driven some ridiculous ROIs on meta ads for the last seven years. So through all of the changes, through all of the updates, through everything that's happened, and I think. Here's where I think Andrea really shines is she understands, like, Facebook audiences and all the strategies behind that, but she also understands how to pivot. So, for example, one of her clients last year just the ads just went in the toilet on Black Friday, which is. Can you think of a worse time for your ads to go in the toilet? Right.
- [27:29]
Steve Chou
Yeah.
- [27:29]
Tony
And it's like, so what do you do? Right. And if you work with an ad agency, typically they're like, we're doing everything we can, you know, and it's just like, give us more money. And Andrea basically, like, did a deep dive into why there were issues and basically within three or four weeks turned it around and, you know, figured. And I don't know what she did exactly, but she's going to share this stuff with you guys at Seller Summit. But basically, to the point where after Christmas, this client had their best December and January of their entire business life.
- [28:01]
Steve Chou
Amazing.
- [28:02]
Tony
Yeah. So just the ability to, like, go in and go, okay, we have A problem which everyone runs into this. Right. Something happens with Facebook and then figuring it out and restructuring what you're doing to make things work again. So yeah, it's gonna be.
- [28:17]
Steve Chou
Never heard her speak. She's extremely detail oriented and practical.
- [28:21]
Tony
Yes, very practical.
- [28:23]
Steve Chou
She is like no fluff. Yeah. She's like Ms. No Fluff.
- [28:26]
Tony
Yeah, yeah. The only, the only fluff you're gonna get is a Harry Potter story or two.
- [28:30]
Steve Chou
Well, what I like about her talk last year is you could just sit there and exactly implement what she was teaching at. The actual session itself.
- [28:38]
Tony
Yeah. She had little, little flowcharts and all sorts of stuff that like told you exactly what to do. And it was all timeline based. Right. So you could just implement it. Very, very smart. Excited to have her. Excited to have her back for. She's almost an og. She spend every year but the first year, so.
- [28:55]
Steve Chou
Oh, she didn't go the first year.
- [28:56]
Tony
No. She wasn't in E commerce back then.
- [28:58]
Steve Chou
Oh, that's right.
- [28:59]
Tony
Took her a year. Took a year to believe in us. So Chris Shaver is coming back. He is an og. He always like. I feel like Chris is like, just talk about whatever you want, Chris.
- [29:14]
Steve Chou
That's true. Because he always does a good job.
- [29:16]
Tony
And he knows so much about so many things. I feel like this is what happens when you don't have children. You get to know everything about everything. Steve and I are limited.
- [29:27]
Steve Chou
That's true. Especially these days because the kids are older now.
- [29:32]
Tony
And Chris, I feel like Chris Schaefer's kind of done it all right. He's sold on Amazon, he's sold on Etsy, he's sold on Shopify. Right. He's built communities, he's had websites, he's done affiliate marketing. Right. He's done all the different things. And he's gonna basically this year talk about how to build that audience and sell on your own terms. Right. So, you know, you don't have to play the Amazon game 100% of the time. You can have a whole nother department in your business where you are selling directly to your consumers. And how do you leverage SEO, social media, all those things to build this like, truly lasting brand? I'm always excited for him. He always does a great talk. Yeah, he just, he like hits a home run every year. I don't know how that's possible, but.
- [30:18]
Steve Chou
He does, he does. He's just a great speaker too. And he's helped out a bunch of other companies because he's actually a, I want to say a fractional cmo. For several companies also.
- [30:28]
Tony
Yeah.
- [30:28]
Steve Chou
In addition to the brands that he runs.
- [30:30]
Tony
Yeah.
- [30:31]
Steve Chou
And so he just has a wide breadth of knowledge.
- [30:33]
Tony
Yeah. We should do a game one year at seller summit like Stump Chris Schaefer. I don't think anyone can. He just, it's, I noticed like whenever he opens up the Q and A, it's like he just, he's like, oh yeah, I did this back in 2023, you know. Oh yes, I did this in my own business. Oh yes, I did this for a client. Like he just has a huge knowledge base for E commerce and I always. He's such a. Not only that, like he will talk to you before the sessions, after the sessions, in the bathroom. He's been cornered in the bathroom before. He's told me with like cor questions. Just always willing to give information to people and I love that he's back again for another year.
- [31:10]
Steve Chou
I'm really excited for Ritu's talk. So last year we invited Ritu to come talk about AI.
- [31:17]
Tony
Yes.
- [31:18]
Steve Chou
And she blew me away. Like I use AI in a lot of ways.
- [31:21]
Tony
Yeah.
- [31:21]
Steve Chou
But she blew me away in the different ways that she uses AI to. To basically boost Amazon businesses.
- [31:27]
Tony
Yes.
- [31:28]
Steve Chou
Although this year I'm not exactly sure what direction she's going to take with AI but I do know that she and Bernie have a technical background and so they use it for a lot of ways to automate various tasks with your E commerce business. So I actually don't know the details of her talk. I just know it's going to be good based on what she did last year.
- [31:50]
Tony
And what I know is that last year she had, I want to say the most popular talk at seller Summer Summit possibly.
- [31:56]
Steve Chou
Yeah.
- [31:56]
Tony
I got the most feedback from her talk. More people were like this is game changing, revolutionary. Just like mind blown information. And she once again has that Chris Schaefer, you know, presentation vibe of just very relaxed, knows her stuff, can answer any question and also very willing to help always around during the whole event so you can ask questions. Um, which kind of brings us a little bit. I don't want to get too off topic but the round tables which I think are, you know, you like the mastermind, that's your favorite. The roundtables for me are probably one of. They're a pain in the butt to logistically for me but for attendee value, 10 out of 10. Because basically what our speakers do is they not only agree to speak for us, which is amazing, but they agree to run a roundtable which is usually another hour out of Their schedules where we have literally roundtables set up all throughout the conference venue. And the speakers, basically, they get a, like, a little placard that says, hey, this is where, you know, RITU sitting. And you can go to their table and ask them absolutely any question you want. If there was something you didn't understand in their talk, you can ask them that. You can ask them about, you know, something that did. You wanted to go deeper in. Because obviously when you get on stage, you can only go so deep with information. Information. So that's your chance to get a deep dive about information with our speakers or just ask them about other things that, you know, they're an expert in. And, you know, they didn't maybe cover that on. On stage. So this is always a favorite part of seller summit. And, you know, people, I feel like it's really hard to get people away from those tables at the end of the time. Like, that is one of the biggest challenges is getting people to go back to their seats for the key closing keynote.
- [33:44]
Steve Chou
So I think last year, someone plopped down next to Brett Curry and literally had him look at their Google Ads. Yeah, like, right. Right there in front. And so it was like a free consult session.
- [33:56]
Tony
Yeah.
- [33:57]
Steve Chou
Here's. Here's how I've always felt about going to events. A speaker goes up and they speak for however long, and then they take, like, maybe one or two questions.
- [34:05]
Tony
Yep.
- [34:05]
Steve Chou
And that's it. So the round table is a way to make sure that your question gets answered by the speaker.
- [34:11]
Tony
So, yeah, that's. So in all, most, almost all of our speakers do a roundtable. And then also the roundtable is a great time to talk to the Klaviyo guys. Steve Weigler, our friends from Quiet Light, if you've ever thought about selling or buying a business, we actually have a lot of attendees who bought their business, and that's how they got started in E commerce. They are so knowledgeable. They, once again, they don't send. They. I mean, they have booth babes, but they're not booth babes at Quiet Light. You know, I'm talking to you, Chuck, but they are so knowledgeable. I know our friend Liz, when she started her business, she built that business to sell. And so from day one, she had a Quiet Light advisor to, you know, how do I even set up my business the right way so that when I want to exit, I'm not like, we hear horror stories of people who want to exit, and everything's such a cluster that it becomes so much more difficult than it probably needed to be. And so whether you're in the I think I want to sell, I'm interested in buying another business or acquiring a business. They are the best to talk to. And you know, the roundtables are a great time to get uninterrupted free consultations really is what it is. It's free consults for you guys. And another person who is so generous with her knowledge is Pam from rpc. Just, I don't, I don't even know what to say about Pam because we love her so much and she, once again, I've seen her at seller summit. People are like, I have a container, it is stuck. And Pam's like, click, click, click, click, click. Now we have your container kind of thing. Right. And actually I heard a story about Pam just yesterday where one of one of our sellers summit attendees had an issue with their container was stuck in port and they couldn't get a chassis. I'm going to mess this story up because I don't know what all these terms mean. And they had a different freight forwarder and the freight forwarder is basically ghosting them. Like was not helping them. The container was stuck and Pam literally took over mid forwarding and had the container delivered within like three days. Like it was like some insane amount of time. So she just, just knew exactly who to call, you know. And I've heard like when other people say, oh, we can't get this for a week, Pam will have it to you the next day. Right. Like, so they do a great job. And once again, she's a seller summit og. She is. Yeah. The round tables. And just you will always see Pam, she's always hanging around.
- [36:43]
Steve Chou
I love that she's wearing a fluorescent.
- [36:44]
Tony
Pink or fluorescent yellow, fluorescent pink or yellow jacket. She's so adorable. And she is there to help you. No matter. And she'll even say, even if you don't use me, I want to help you. And so I love that everybody that attends Seller Summit is so willing to give of their time and their knowledge. And Pam is absolutely no exception to that.
- [37:04]
Steve Chou
Yep. Okay. I think we have a couple more to talk about. So there's actually more talks.
- [37:10]
Tony
Yes.
- [37:10]
Steve Chou
Than what we're talking about because not everyone has submitted their topics yet, including myself. I have no idea what I'm covering just yet, but I invited Jeff Oxford back because, you know, we've been kind of poo pooing Google on this podcast.
- [37:25]
Tony
Yes.
- [37:26]
Steve Chou
But despite the fact that we've been poo pooing Google in the e commerce world, at least it's different than the blogging world. E commerce, you know, ranking in search is still a big deal. And so Jeff is going to talk about all the changes in SEO and how to still get your e commerce store to rank in 2025.
- [37:46]
Tony
And if it doesn't work out, then we'll just put Jeff in a dunking booth with a big Google T shirt on and everyone can. Can just throw beanbags at the dunk booth and dunk Jeff. No, Jeff is another one of those who just does such a great job of explaining things and breaking things down into a very understandable. I mean, SEO is complicated and there are so many different components to it. And I feel like every time I have a conversation with Jeff, everything just makes sense at the end. And so he's a great speaker, usually has a great case study when he talks to kind of help you understand how in your business things would work if you, you know, follow the strategy. So I'm excited to have him back. He came a couple years ago, did a great job, and once again, get your free SEO session at the roundtable. Get your SEO consult. He'll do the same exact thing. He'll open up your website, he'll take a look, he'll run it through all his fancy tools. And yeah, I love having Jeff.
- [38:43]
Steve Chou
He's probably the only guy I trust for SEO because SEO and traditionally is a pretty scammy industry.
- [38:49]
Tony
Yes.
- [38:49]
Steve Chou
But Jeff is one of those ones that I trust and he specializes in e commerce stores. Yeah, I can't think of actually. You know what? I can't think of any other SEO that I've encountered that specializes in E commerce.
- [39:01]
Tony
Yeah. So he'll be there. That's exciting. And we have more speakers that Steve hasn't put up on the. On the site yet, but they're.
- [39:11]
Steve Chou
That's correct. Actually, there's two that I haven't actually put up on the site, but we. I did put up Tiffany's. So everyone's been asking us about Tick Tock Shop. Tick Tock Shop. Tick Tock Shop. Tiffany is probably the person that we know personally that does the best on Tick Tock Shop.
- [39:26]
Tony
Yes. Yes.
- [39:27]
Steve Chou
I don't know what her numbers are. I don't know if you're allowed to reveal them, but it's a lot she'll reveal.
- [39:32]
Tony
She has. That's what I love about Tiffany is that there's never any smoke and mirrors. She literally, whatever she's legally allowed to show you for the, for the site's terms of service, she will Tell you, I remember last year she's like, well, I only made $500,000 this month or something like some obscene, you know, she was all mad about it, you know, but she shows basically everything. And she is another one of the, I want to say fan favorites at seller summit. She has such great energy. She's so entertaining. Even if you don't care about TikTok shop, usually her session, you have to fight to find a seat because even if you don't want to sell on TikTok, you just want to listen to Tiffany for 40 minutes because she does such a great job and she's so entertaining and what, whatever she's, she's always working on something absolutely crazy and people want to know about it.
- [40:19]
Steve Chou
It's like a mixture of a teaching session plus stand up comedy. Yes. Is the way I see it. And the woman has so much energy.
- [40:26]
Tony
Yes.
- [40:27]
Steve Chou
Nuts.
- [40:27]
Tony
Yes. For such a tiny little person, she has so much energy and always. Yeah. She's once again one of our favorite speakers at seller summit because she just, she's so entertaining but also, you know, a lot of after I think her live selling a couple years ago. So a couple years ago she did live selling and we had many sellers try life selling after her talk.
- [40:51]
Steve Chou
Including my wife.
- [40:53]
Tony
Yes, including Jen. So anyway, she's always fun to have and you'll learn something about TikTok which, you know, part of me is like, I don't know how you can't sell on TikTok these days. Like it's very lucrative. It's a great revenue channel.
- [41:10]
Steve Chou
So we'll, we'll see, we'll see how it goes. I mean a lot of stuff is up in the air and I'm sure like some of these talks might change slightly depending on what the administration does. But, but we'll see. I mean, I'm excited for the lineup. There's a bunch more talks that we didn't get a chance to talk about. Maybe we'll cover that in a future episode.
- [41:31]
Tony
Yeah.
- [41:31]
Steve Chou
But yeah, if you guys are interested in coming to a small intimate event full of networking, full of learning, come to sellersummit.com so that, that's the URL sellers summit.com hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any questions about the event, send me an email@stevesellers summit.com for more information and resources go to my wife quit her job.com episode 581. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellers summit.com if you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton. Then come to my event. Go to sellersummit. Com and if you're interested in starting your own ecommerce store, head on over to my wife quithherjob.com and sign up for my free 6 day mini course. Just type in your email and I'll send the course right away via email.