The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast with Steve Chou

Episode 612: Lessons From the Smartest eCommerce Founders At ECF Live
Date: October 23, 2025
Guests: Tony, Kathy (recurring friends/experts in eCommerce)

Episode Overview

In this engaging post-event recap, Steve Chou welcomes Tony and Kathy to break down their most valuable lessons from ECF (eCommerce Fuel) Live in Bozeman, Montana. The trio dives deep into automation, AI tools, business operations, outsourcing, advertising trends, and mindset shifts needed to scale and sustain successful eCommerce businesses. They candidly discuss strategies, technology, people management, and the sometimes-overlooked emotional and lifestyle dimensions of entrepreneurship.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Navigating ECF Live Overload & Prioritizing Takeaways

• Kathy emphasizes the challenge of information overload at events and the need to distinguish immediate priorities from longer-term ideas.

  “How do you decide what is a priority? What you need to start now, what you need to like put on a shelf for later?” – Kathy (02:19)

2. AI-Driven Automations: From Mundane Tasks to Advanced Apps

Immediate Applications

• Kathy attended technical sessions including talks by Kevin and Zach Plansky about creating custom automations for Shopify and daily operations.
• Tools spotlighted: N8N and Make (for no-code automation), Replit for experimenting with code. The message: use what you already know before migrating tech stacks.

Practical Examples

• Automating large-order notifications to trigger Slack alerts for personalized outreach (instead of manual monitoring and uploading screenshots).
• Inventory forecasting using AI, building low-cost, bespoke tools instead of expensive, feature-laden SaaS products.

“If it’s a task that is repetitive... it needs to be automated because someone shouldn’t be in there doing it every single multiple times a day.” – Kathy (03:23)

• Tony shares his own automation: classifying customers (e.g., wedding planners) using ChatGPT and order data (05:34).

3. Outsourcing & Labor Markets: The Latin America, Kenya, and Philippines Shift

• Hiring developers in Latin America is gaining traction for quality and value compared to US-based hires.

  “Hire a developer in Latin America. That seemed to be ... I need to look into this.” – Kathy (11:01)

• New trend: Kenya emerging as a source for reliable, hungry remote talent as the Philippines labor market saturates and workers become more in-demand and less loyal.
• Business owners must beware of local labor laws (example: Ecuador’s lifetime employment restriction).

4. Facebook Ads: The New Best Practices (Andrew’s Session)

• Facebook now penalizes duplicate/similar ads; must be at least 70% different or risk reach being nerfed.

  “If the ad is similar to something you’re already running ... it instantly just nerfs the reach.” – Tony (14:17)

• The focus is now on unique messaging; creative and message variations within the same ad set are encouraged, with less obsessive testing of individual creatives.
• Pumping out mass numbers of creatives is less important than having messaging that resonates.
• AI tools make it easy to refresh existing creatives with new images or backgrounds for testing.

5. Next-Gen AI Tools for Creatives & Image/Video Generation (Ritu’s Talk)

• Google’s AI Studio (“Nano Banana”) is disrupting Photoshop for product photography and manipulation.
• Apps and prompt repositories (e.g., PromptLlama.com) can generate instant lifestyle or themed backgrounds:

  “The lifestyle photos just got so much easier. I don’t think we need to be investing a lot of money into having a photographer do this.” – Kathy (21:18)

• Custom Google AI Studio workflows allow teams to process images at scale, supported by company-wide Google Workspace integration.
• Video generation and animation tools (e.g., Sora, Klyn) allow for producing dynamic ads with AI-generated models holding the product, adding subtle movement for eye-catching montages.
• The key to AI image success: highly descriptive prompts, as outlined by Ritu’s practical frameworks.

6. Which LLM is Best? Claude vs. ChatGPT vs. Gemini (Google)

• Gemini is gaining ground, especially for speed and code generation; many ECF attendees now prefer it.
• Claude is resurging in popularity for creative tasks.
• ChatGPT’s slowness in v5 is a pain point; speed and utility in AI tool selection matter most.
• General consensus: There will be no single long-term winner; all providers leapfrog each other regularly.

7. Wealth Creation: Build, Scale, Sell... or Milk Profitable Businesses?

• Ezra Firestone’s wealth-building approach: build valuable businesses and sell them.
• Tony prefers a “milk it” strategy — keep profitable businesses running steadily without stress to exit, especially if net profits provide a comfortable life.
• Discussion about burnout and risks associated with aggressive scaling, personal guarantees, and massive loans.

  “Most of them that presented had their lows because they scaled too quickly.” – Tony (33:01)

8. Founder-to-CEO Mindset: Letting Go & Growing Up

• Key challenges in transitioning from founder/doer to true CEO including delegation, emotional attachments, and core management changes.
• Eamonn’s talk advice: If you can’t unplug from your business for a couple of days, you’re not running it as a CEO (42:01).
• Peer advice: swap companies to make unemotional, hard decisions for each other.

9. Leveling Up: Moving from $5M to $10M and Beyond (Curtis from Portland Leather)

• Major growth requires fundamentally new strategies, not incremental tweaks:

  “If you want to move from 5 million to 10 million...you have to do something different.” – Kathy (38:26)

• Need for bold decisions, calculated risks, shedding old marketing tactics, and being open to pivots (e.g., shifting from Etsy to Shopify).
• Many successful entrepreneurs at ECF Live took sizable risks, often triggered by past hardship or “rock bottom” moments, and not without collateral damage.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Use what you already are using, don’t [switch] because we’re using something else.” – Kathy on picking automation tools (03:23)
• “ChatGPT actually takes all that into account.” – Tony describing automated customer segmentation (06:00)
• “If you can’t get AI to work, chances are it’s your fault.” – Tony (18:31)
• “Google has all the data, it’s got the distribution ... OpenAI has Microsoft.” – Tony on the LLM wars (29:03)
• “Why not just milk it and pocket that million?” – Tony on the wisdom of maintaining profitable businesses over chasing an exit (32:16)
• “If you brought your computer to this conference, you’re not a CEO.” – Summarizing Eamonn’s talk (41:54)

Important Timestamps

• 02:05 — Kathy’s two major takeaways: AI Automations and Inventory Forecasting
• 05:25 — Automating high-value customer outreach
• 13:31 — Tony’s Facebook Ads revelation: Don’t repeat creatives
• 16:42 — Application of AI to product images & assets (Ritu’s talk)
• 18:31 — The importance of prompt quality: "It’s your fault if AI isn’t working"
• 21:03 — AI-generated lifestyle images as a cost/time-saver for eCommerce content
• 29:03 — LLM discussion: Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT
• 31:12 — Ezra Firestone’s wealth-building advice
• 33:32 — Depression and mental health from scaling stress/failure
• 38:26 — Curtis of Portland Leather: Moving from $5M to $10M requires bold change
• 41:52 — Going from Founder to CEO — Eamonn’s practical advice

Final Thoughts

The episode is a goldmine of both tactical and strategic insights for eCommerce professionals:

• Automate repetitive processes as much as possible, using cost-effective, low-code and AI tools.
• Keep your technology stack familiar and scalable.
• Be bold and proactive with ad creative strategies, staying tuned to platform algorithm changes.
• Reevaluate your approach to outsourcing, and keep abreast of labor market shifts.
• Understand that sustainable business growth often hinges on an evolving mindset, radical prioritization, and the willingness to make hard, sometimes uncomfortable, decisions.
• Above all, ensure your business strategy balances ambition, lifestyle, and mental health.

For more resources and upcoming events, listeners are encouraged to check out Seller Summit and Steve’s eCommerce mini-course (resources omitted here as per instructions to skip ads).

This summary captures the podcast’s engaging, conversational tone and provides actionable insights for eCommerce entrepreneurs at all levels.