612: Lessons From the Smartest eCommerce Founders At ECF Live

Summary

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)

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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.

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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)

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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).

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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

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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.

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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).

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

Transcript

[Steve Chou]

Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all the latest strategies and current events related to E commerce and online business. Now, in this episode, Tony and I share what we learned at E Commerce Fuel Live in Bozeman, Montana. Now, it is rare for Tony and I to be in the same room together and we both took great notes. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for Seller Summit 2026 are now on sale [e-mail] and if you sell physical products online, this is the event that you should be at. Unlike most e commerce conferences that are filled with high level fluff and inspirational stories, Seller Summit all about tactical, step by step strategies you can actually use in your business right away. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches. People who are running their own e commerce stores, managing inventory, dealing with suppliers and scaling real businesses. No corporate execs and no consultants. Also, I personally hate big events, so I intentionally keep it small and intimate. We cap attendance at around 200 people so you can actually have real conversations and connect with everyone in the room. We have sold out every single year for the past nine years and I expect this year to be no different. It's happening April 21st to 23rd in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And if you're doing over 250k or $1 million in revenue, we also offer a private mastermind for high level sellers. Right now, tickets are the cheapest they're ever going to be. So if you want in, go over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

[Tony]

All right, welcome to a special edition of the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Tony and I are together in Bozeman, Montana, of all places.

[Kathy]

Right.

[Tony]

And we're here for ecf. So what I thought we would do today is do a little bit of a breakdown on what we've learned. I've learned quite a bit. And we both went to separate sessions, so we're gonna do a little recap here.

[Kathy]

I'm a little like, my knowledge is like, I feel like I need like 3 day vacation after this to process everything that I've learned this week.

[Tony]

I know that I have a bunch of action items that I need to do when I get back.

[Kathy]

So I think my number. I have two massive takeaways.

[Steve Chou]

Really?

[Kathy]

Like that. I feel like. No, but like two that are like the ones that. Because when you. I think one of the things when you go to an event, you are hit with so much information and you're meeting people. Like I literally had a conversation in the parking lot on the way up here to record. Right. With our friend Alan.

[Tony]

Right.

[Kathy]

And it's like 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. So for me there were two things that I felt like these are things that I need to start doing today. Okay, we'll go to number one.

[Tony]

Yeah, well, yeah, you only have two so.

[Kathy]

Well, like two that, like two for today. Right. Two that. It's like next week. These, this, these two things need to be on my list to start working on. So the first one is the automations. AI Automations. Like I went to Kevin's talk, I think that was yesterday.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Kathy]

And then I went to another one this morning that was way over my. You would have liked it.

[Tony]

Zach Plansky.

[Kathy]

Yes. Yeah. Way more technical and basically talking about building your own apps for Shopify, like for internal use. Right, right. But I just realized there's so many little processes in business every day that you do that could be automated. And I know you're really good at this, but I think now with all the AI tools and yesterday I think they were using N8N for theirs. I have a little bit experience with make and so that's probably.

[Tony]

It's the same thing, right?

[Kathy]

Yeah. And I think that's one of those things they said yesterday, like use what you already are using, don't like switching because we're using something else. But to me, I started thinking about everything that I do that is repetitive and I was like, those things need to be automated tomorrow. And just watching. And Kevin did a live demo where he showed how to actually take something. I think it was from a Google spreadsheet and kind of automate it. And it was actually an automation to Slack, which I thought was pretty cool. Right. So when certain things happen, then there's a Slack notification that goes out. So that was my first one where it's like I need to start evaluating tasks and if it's a task that is repetitive and done over and over, like it needs to be automated because someone shouldn't be in there doing it every single multiple times a day.

[Tony]

So tell me then which tasks are on your radar first?

[Kathy]

So the first task that came to mind, which I think is if you're in e commerce, this is a big one, is when we get an order over a certain dollar amount. Like I feel like especially cause we sell low value products, they're high value, but like low price products, your average.

[Tony]

Order value I higher than ours. Right.

[Kathy]

Yeah, actually, probably. But like, our product costs, like we're selling items for $115.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Kathy]

So if someone comes in and spends $800, they are probably a group or a church or a co op. So we want to have a personal relationship with them just like you do with wedding planners. Right. And so they're. They need a phone call or a personal outreach email. They don't need to. They need to get in the Klaviyo automation, but they don't need just a series of emails from Klaviyo talking about our other products.

[Tony]

Right, right.

[Kathy]

So you can create an automation where you know, when an order is over X amount of dollars, whoever your customer service person is or the person who manages those relationships, they get a notification. In Slack, what's been happening to this day is I look at our sales, when I see like a abnormal shift in the numbers, I look through the orders, I see the order that's, you know, $1,000. I point at it on my computer screen, I take a photo of and I upload that photo to Slack. Not efficient.

[Tony]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we were doing it the same way. I mean, this is a recent automation that I made that scanned through all of my orders ever created.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

And then it, it gives a probability whether it's a wedding or an event planner on a scale of 0 to 100. And it's all in this database. I wish I could show it to you. I don't have my laptop handy, but yeah, I went through my entire database. And what's cool is we do personalization.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony]

So depending on the personalization, let's say someone just ordered like three handkerchiefs. That might not be enough to trigger an event planner, but if that person has made several orders but with different names and different dates.

[Kathy]

Oh, yeah.

[Tony]

Chances are they're a wedding planner. So ChatGPT actually takes all that into account.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Kathy]

So that was the first. That was my first. Because that's the one that I feel like is the most ridiculous of, like, times. Like, that's not a good process. Right, right. Yeah. Everyone looking at my bad nail job is not like, what are you talking about?

[Tony]

Look at these.

[Kathy]

Look how good those look, though. And then the other one that I thought was something that I'm pretty sure can be done because a lot of people are already doing this is basically doing some inventory forecasting. And that's a little more like the first one is like, I think I could set that up in a couple of hours. Right. Yeah. The next one, I also feel like I could set up, but it would definitely take more knowledge and I'd have to get a little more in the weeds. But I think a lot of people that I've talked to here and in the sessions are doing successful inventory forecasting with AI and automations. And it is a matter of like, you know, taking the time to build that. But that's one of the things that we really struggle with. So it's like that's a huge pain point that I think we could maybe not solve 100%, but we would definitely get further along than we are today.

[Tony]

You know, I was just thinking about this because you brought this up to me earlier. I think a lot of Those inventory forecasting SaaS software, I mean, it's really easy to just pipe in all of your orders into AI and have it tell you.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Tony]

And then you could guide it along. I know a lot of the inventory software is incorporating that in, but you know, you'll be able to do it.

[Kathy]

Right. And those inventory, I mean, and I'm not calling out anybody on this, but those are really expensive tools.

[Tony]

They are.

[Kathy]

I mean, to the tune of thousands of dollars a month sometimes. And also a lot of them provide so many features that you don't actually use. Yes. Right. In your business, like most people, unless you're like a trained person on that tool.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Kathy]

You're probably using 10% of what that tool can do. So it's like, well, then why don't we just take the 10% and get that? Get, just get information we need.

[Tony]

Right.

[Kathy]

For free or for $20 a month. Right. Or, you know, whatever the cost of the AI tool, which is usually pretty inexpensive.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Kathy]

So anyway, that to me is like one of the bigger. Like that's a bigger project, but also one that I feel like can be solved pretty easily.

[Tony]

Like it can. Yeah. Once you have it set up, it'll be all good. Then you can query it and whatnot. And for those of you guys listening, we were talking about N8N and Make. Those are two programs that allow you to just connect all different softwares together like Shopify to AI or ChatGPT, Claude, whatever. And the trade off here is N8N is free. If you install on your own server, which something I love. I love free.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Tony]

And then make costs money, but make is actually pretty inexpensive.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Tony]

And I think what Kevin recommended is like as soon as you exceed 10,000 operations a month, then it makes sense to go to NAN. Otherwise you can stick with make.com but Zapier is just ridiculously expensive. Like, I moved off of Zapier like, a long, long time ago.

[Kathy]

Yeah, well, and you said the words install on your own server, so that was like, immediately you.

[Tony]

But it's literally one click.

[Kathy]

Is it?

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Kathy]

Okay.

[Tony]

There's like an option to click on most servers, so. Yeah. That's exciting. So are you going to take over that as part of your organization?

[Kathy]

I feel like I will. There's nobody else that knows how to do. To do it at the organization?

[Tony]

Well, no, it's a useful skill.

[Kathy]

Yeah. And it's one of those things where I feel like back in the old days of blogging when, like, something came out and you were, like, really excited about. That's how I feel about this. Like, I went to that other session today, that. Which was much more like advanced.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Kathy]

And going to it thinking, I'm never going to build, like a SaaS product. But I want to understand the. I want to be educated about how it works and the tools and things like that. I was just talking to Alan about Reclit.

[Steve Chou]

Replit.

[Kathy]

Replit. Yeah. Sorry, it's written down. I have it on my phone. But I really want to dig into some of those tools and just feel like, understand how they work and how we can use them, how I can use them in other things. Right. Like, I feel like they translate throughout businesses. It's not just specific to E commerce.

[Tony]

Well, you know, NN and make.com is a gateway drug.

[Kathy]

I know.

[Tony]

So before, you know, you'll probably become a developer.

[Kathy]

What was interesting?

[Tony]

I can't make fun of you anymore.

[Kathy]

I know. Then you can't make fun of me. What was interesting is in the higher, you know, more complicated session, there were several developers.

[Tony]

Oh, nice.

[Kathy]

And like, our friend Carson was in there.

[Tony]

Oh, yeah, of course.

[Kathy]

And of course, as the guy's talking and presenting, I want to see what he's. I want to see his response. Because I often feel like with AI in general that people get very sensitive or protective of, like, their job. As if, like, well, if we can code everything with AI, then we don't need Carson anymore. Right.

[Tony]

And you still need Carson.

[Kathy]

Yes, you still need Carson. So I always like to see those reactions, like, is he in agreement? And like, he was nodding through most of the stuff that was said. And the guy that was presenting even said, I have two developers in Latin America that basically. But they don't ever. They don't code anymore. They're just instructing. Right. Yeah.

[Tony]

Carson doesn't do it. Get his hands dirty, I don't think.

[Kathy]

No, I don't not anymore. Which leads. The next takeaway that I had was like, hire a developer in Latin America. That seemed to be a lot of people that I spoke to after that talk were like, I need to look into this. Right. Because he said he was paying, I want to say like 30,000 a year, 40,000 a year for a Latin American developer. And was very, very happy with the results, the quality, all that stuff, which to me, I mean, I know a US developer is significantly more expensive.

[Tony]

So here's actually a shocker. You know our friend Jeff Oxford?

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

He.

[Tony]

His whole team, he had like, I think over 100 people. It's all gone now. So I heard Kenya.

[Kathy]

Oh, so.

[Tony]

So what's going on right now is the Philippines is just popular.

[Kathy]

Right.

[Tony]

Everyone here has. Has like employees in the Philippines. We have employees in the Philippines. So now it's gotten to the point where a worker there, like they don't care if they lose their job because there's so much demand. They just get another one. Whereas people in Kenya are hungry. They speak Eng very. You know, they really want to do a good job.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

So who knows, maybe that's the next spot. Like I'm going to get in touch with. I think Katrina has connections over there and I'll see if, you know, look at Kenya for my next hire.

[Kathy]

Yeah, that's. That's. I didn't know that. That's really interesting.

[Tony]

Yeah. I mean, not a single person left on his Philippines team.

[Kathy]

Wow.

[Steve Chou]

It was just crazy.

[Kathy]

It was interesting because I. Over. We were all three talking and then I, as I was walking away, you said something. He's like, I don't have anybody in the Philippines. And I wanted to turn back around, but I was trying to get.

[Tony]

It was already past 9:00'. Clock. You had to go back.

[Kathy]

It was 8:59. And I was like, I turn into a pumpkin. But no, I was really interested. I wanted to find him tonight and ask him about that because I was curious as to why, but that makes a lot of sense. Although I feel like on the Latin American thing, we also heard from, I think it was Lisa who has the 50 flowers.

[Tony]

Oh yeah.

[Kathy]

And she was. She has her business in Ecuador and she tell you how horrible it was to have a business in Ecuador because of all the labor laws.

[Steve Chou]

Yes.

[Kathy]

Right. So I'm always fascinated by. I always learn these types of things at ecf. Right. Like the labor laws in some of these countries are ridiculous. Like I think what she was saying is once someone works for you for a certain amount of time, they're on your payroll forever.

[Tony]

You're not allowed to fire them.

[Kathy]

Yes. Yes.

[Tony]

So it's like the government of old.

[Kathy]

The government of old, yes.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Kathy]

So anyway, I always feel like there's, like, these little tidbits of information that we get here. So I want to know one of your takeaways. Other than Kenya, that sounds like a pretty good one, actually.

[Tony]

I got a little thing here. Okay. All right. So this is something that I've been making a mistake on without even realizing it. So I went to a Facebook ad section run by Andrew, and Facebook ads, like, changes, like, every three to six months. I feel dramatically. And one thing that I was doing just out of laziness and also because I heard from other people, you know, broadcasting this was I would take an ad and I would just change up, like, the hook or the headline and just publish it. But now it turns out Facebook looks to see if the ad is similar to something you're already running, and if you are, it instantly just nerfs the reach. It basically picks one that. And then just runs that.

[Kathy]

Oh.

[Tony]

And so I think the guideline that he gave was it has to be 70% different.

[Kathy]

Interesting.

[Tony]

But what a lot of people were doing is as soon as you find a video that works.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

You can just. And you know it works. You just change up the hook and then mass produce it. That is not an effective tactic anymore.

[Kathy]

So those days are over.

[Tony]

I mean, those days are over.

[Steve Chou]

He was stressing.

[Tony]

Here's the other thing that he was stressing. So the way I. So I gave a lecture at Seller Summit was that last year or two years ago? I want to say it was two years.

[Kathy]

Two years ago, because Kelly, Kelly, Kelly Dream picked it all up.

[Tony]

Yeah. So the way I was teaching it, like, you know, literally two months after I gave that presentation, it changed. Okay. But anyway, what Andrew was saying is, like, the way I used to teach before is you. You test a bunch of creatives, and then you can see which ones work, and then you put more ads on this. Well, now his philosophy is the message is everything interesting. And the way he runs his ads, he doesn't actually care which ones perform like, of the individual creatives, because it's all about the message. And so each one of his ads where he puts, like, 10 or more ads in there. Because Facebook wants you to put more creatives and have less ad sets.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

So anything with the same message is within the same ad, and then it doesn't matter which one is working. You're testing based on the message and not the actual creative anymore. Because he showed examples of, like, really horrible ads that, like, when you look at it, it looks horrible, but then when he ran them, it did really well because of the message. So when he replicated that message across different creatives, they all still work.

[Steve Chou]

So.

[Kathy]

Interesting.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Kathy]

Okay. So that was like a big change.

[Tony]

The other change also, which I was surprised, is he's like, kind of waffling now on. You know, before, his philosophy was just create as many creatives as possible, but he kind of backtracked on that. Now he said it doesn't need to be that way anymore. You don't need to pump out as many creatives. You just need to find the messaging that works and then just make variations on that. And with AI, it's so simple. Like, just changing the image on a different background with the same message is.

[Kathy]

Good enough, which we learned today. And Ritu's talk is very easy.

[Tony]

We can talk about Ritu's talk next. I got a lot out of it because I had played around with those apps, but I didn't. Sometimes it's hard. Like, you know, you can do something, but you don't realize the applications of something until you see someone just spell it out. Like, this is how I'm using it. For what?

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Tony]

And so one thing that I picked up is she was creating all these little apps.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Tony]

That did all these things to your image. And these are all things that I was doing in Photoshop, mainly after the fact. And I was so. So just to be clear for everyone listening, she gave a really good talk on all the different AI tools and how she was focusing on Nano Banana, which is Google's latest. And within AI Studio, you can create little programs.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Tony]

Like, for example, you can write a. You can write a program that says, I want to remove the background for this image, which is a function that all tools have already, but it literally will modify it, create code for you on the fly, and you can modify it to do whatever you want. You can say, remove the background and then remove the watermark also.

[Kathy]

Right.

[Tony]

Something like that.

[Kathy]

Or the other thing, I like the example where she's like, crop it. Right. But then expand it.

[Tony]

Right.

[Kathy]

And then blur it. You know, it was like all these different things and then remove it. Remove the, you know, the one image off because it let the layering. Right. So the one thing I loved about that talk was that she basically gave us all the cheat codes for, like, the terminology.

[Tony]

Right.

[Kathy]

Because if you're not a creative and you're not A graphic designer. I think one of the reasons why people think it doesn't work well with images is because they're not giving it the right prompts, right? They're not creating the correct, like they're not describing it. Right. And so she basically gave us like the cheat code for a lot of different things.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Kathy]

And I was, every year when people, when people give the AI talk or wherever we're at, I always am impressed with like how much better it is. Like the stuff that she was showing us today was ridiculous. Like, yeah, it used to be like you and I would be like, that's AI, right? And it was very obvious. There's stuff that she showed today that I don't think we would know.

[Tony]

I mean, here's the takeaway for everyone listening. If you can't get AI to work, chances are it's your fault. Like you're not describing something very well. And I think of like, so I run a class and sometimes someone will email me and say, hey, I tried this, it didn't work. And that's it. Right. And like if I was the AI, I would have no idea how to answer. And so I usually, you know, ask more specific questions. Well, the AI is not going to ask you those specific questions unless you ask it to.

[Kathy]

Right?

[Tony]

And so the more descriptive you are and it actually boosts like human skill sets. The better you can explain exactly what you want, the better your results will be. And that's why Ritu's framework was excellent because she outlined if you want to create an image, for example, what you should put in your prompt to get exactly what you want.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah, I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of if you are interested in starting your own online store. I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be [e-mail] free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I'll send.

[Tony]

You the course right away.

[Steve Chou]

Once again, that's mywifequitterjob.com free. Now back to the show.

[Kathy]

One of the exciting things about her talk for me, like practical application. And this is like actually my second takeaway is that when you sell products, right, you get your product photos and those are pretty specific. Especially if you sell on Amazon. They have to be a certain way. And you obviously want to present things in a certain way in your listings, but you also want those lifestyle images to use sometimes on your listings, but also on social media, any other place that you're using it. And the lifestyle images are really hard to come by. Right. Because you can hire any photographer or even yourself can take product photos with the right lights and white background and all that stuff. But if you sell, I don't know, tactical gear and you're not tactical, Right. It's real. Like, if you don't live here in Montana, where you've got a mountain in the background that you could use, right. You're like, how am I gonna get this the right background type of thing? Or if you sell a kid's product and you don't have kids to put in the photo. And so one of the things that we had talked about with the store for the curriculum was should we make, like, Christmas type themed photos for the holidays?

[Tony]

Yes.

[Kathy]

And basically we had to veto it because it's like, we don't have the bandwidth. It's gonna cost so much money to do, like, Christmas photo shoots. Right, Right. And after watching that today, I was like, we can put everything on a Christmas background. Right? Not everything, but, like, the light.

[Steve Chou]

You can.

[Kathy]

Yeah. But like, the lifestyle photos just got so much easier. Right. I don't think we need to be investing a lot of money into having a photographer do this. I think if we have great photo product photos, which we do, it wouldn't be hard to create some lifestyle photos from what we already have, including, like, Christmas or in any theme. Right. It could be for your store. Right. You could do 4th of July or you could do, you know, New Year, whatever. It. I think that creating those backgrounds where you're not actually shooting them and they actually look real. They don't look like you went into Canva and put in some clip art. Like what it used to look like. I don't know. That to me was like, this is a huge money saver. But also it didn't. I mean, obviously she's got so much experience and she was like, whipping through things. But I feel like once you do it a little bit, you get pretty fast at it as well.

[Tony]

I forgot I'm drawing a blank now on the site that she told us something with a llama. Do you remember what I'm talking about?

[Kathy]

Oh, I think I took a photo of it. Let me.

[Tony]

Okay, so there's this site, something Llama, but it's basically a llama on a whole bunch of different backgrounds and whatnot. And what you can do is you can get the prompts for those llamas, replace the llama with your product and whatnot, and it puts it on all these different backgrounds. One of them that the examples that she gave was a Christmas theme.

[Kathy]

Right. Prompt llama.

[Tony]

So prompt llama. Yeah, prompt llama.com. so you. So instead of the llama being there, you say, put a wedding handkerchief in a Christmas theme. It wouldn't be a wedding handkerchief. It would be one of our Christmas handkerchiefs in a Christmas theme.

[Kathy]

You could get married at Christmas. That's good.

[Tony]

Yeah, right, exactly. And so that was really helpful in case you, you know, you love one of those backgrounds already and you don't have to think about the prompt.

[Kathy]

Yeah. So that was to me, really. And I liked the Google Studio, which. The other, the other part about that that I thought was really great was that you can share it across your Google. So if you're using Google for your, for your workspace, it works exactly the same way. So if you have a Google Drive folder, like that's what we use, we use Google Drive for everything, then it works the exact same way. So one of the things I think gets tricky is especially if you do have a lot of employees or contractors and you're trying to like introduce a new thing, if it's too many new things at once for people, sometimes they can't, you know, so even like the login becomes a problem. Right. So this is just felt more seamless for people that are already using that.

[Tony]

So let me just reiterate how cool this is. So you, you can essentially write your own version of Photoshop in Google AI Studio. So if you have like a very specific way to process your images or whatnot, it literally writes the code and you have your own private little Adobe Photoshop that does whatever you want. And I was thinking to myself when I was watching her talk, like, Adobe Photoshop is. I think it's pretty much done because I'm already using Nano Banana more than I am Photoshop. So, like the other day I was sending out an email for some promotion and I was feeling lazy. So I took one of my old creators from an old email and I just plugged in a nanoband. And I said, just, can you just change the year of this to 2025? And then I sent it out in Photoshop because I didn't have like the PSD file anymore. I just had the jpeg I would have to erase it and then find, you know, it would have taken forever. Well, not forever, but.

[Kathy]

But I mean, think about it. If you're doing that 10 times a week and you're saving 10 minutes.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Kathy]

I mean, it adds up. Right. Over time and continuing to find other processes like that. And I also think. And this is where. This is where it gets tricky, right. Because I feel like maybe you don't need the same amount of design team. Right. Or maybe you don't need. If you, like, we use illustrators, so, like, you know, you're able to be more efficient and you don't, you know, you're using them now as more directors, as opposed to, like, the creator part. Like, they're telling AI what to do, but they're not spending two hours creating an image. So I think there's a lot of use in that.

[Tony]

Well, what blew my mind also was I just got out of the Facebook talk when we went to the AI talk. And one thing that's been a struggle for us is getting videos done. Right. And so Ritu had this flow where you generate the image of a person holding something.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Tony]

And then you replace that something with your product, and then you put it into cling or Sora, and then you animate that.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony]

So you can have like a supermodel modeling handkerchiefs or something like that in a video.

[Kathy]

He's taking a whole new turn.

[Tony]

Right.

[Steve Chou]

So.

[Tony]

And I guess the next step for that might be to put words in that model's mouth. I don't know if I'm going to go there yet, but, like, one thing that I. One of my buddies was advising that I do is take a lot of these, like, mini movements of people holding your product and just put them in a montage because it really catches the eye because there's slight motion.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

And then.

[Tony]

And then, you know, pump out a bunch of ads that way.

[Kathy]

Yeah. Well, you showed me a model that was talking a while back.

[Tony]

Yes, she was, and it looked really good. Yeah. I can't remember what. I used that. I think I used that for one of the Facebook ads. Creatives.

[Kathy]

Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that she mentioned is that I can't now. I'm gonna blame on the Sora too.

[Tony]

Sora too. It's not out yet.

[Kathy]

Yes, it's in. You have to have an invite. She's like, she hadn't gotten an invite yet.

[Tony]

Surprised she hasn't gotten any.

[Kathy]

I was too, actually. I was like, if you're not getting an invite, I'm never Getting in. Yeah. But I think that's the thing to think about is every single. I mean, almost every day. Right. Stuff's getting better. Things are changing. They're coming out with new, you know, levels of products, and I don't know, it's. It feels like. It's almost like. It just feels like too much sometimes. Right. It just feels like everything's just rushing by because everything's changing so quickly.

[Tony]

I mean, the list of AI tools that she gave was ridiculous. I want to say there were 15 things on there, I think, just for creatives. Just for creatives. I think for me, like, the stack is nano, banana, cling. And then Sora, I just canceled my Mid Journey membership.

[Kathy]

Well, she mentioned Mid Journey today.

[Tony]

She did, but it's, like, behind now, and they just take turns leapfrogging each other. So you basically have to just check back, like, every month.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Or whatever.

[Kathy]

So. And speaking of that, were you in this con? I think you weren't here this morning. We were talking about Claude versus Chat versus Gemini, and who's gonna win.

[Tony]

There are no winners. They're just gonna keep leapfrogging each other. I'll tell you my favorites, but go on.

[Kathy]

No, tell me. Tell me what? Who do you think's gonna win? So Lars had an opinion on who would win.

[Tony]

I mean, there's no winner because they're all good at different things.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony]

And we're all winners. No, no.

[Kathy]

We're Gen Xers. Everyone's not a winner.

[Tony]

Here's what I was shocked at. I was shocked by how many people use Gemini here.

[Kathy]

Yes. Because I don't know anybody in my other life.

[Tony]

Gemini has not been on my list, but someone told me that Gemini, the coding is amazing.

[Kathy]

Okay.

[Tony]

And I've been getting frustrated with ChatGPT. I don't know if you noticed this too, but as soon as it got upgraded to five, it got a hell of a lot slower. So not only does it think slower, but it also writes text a lot slower.

[Kathy]

Yes, it definitely, definitely seen that.

[Tony]

To the point where I feel like I can type faster than what ChatGPT is outputting. So I've gotten really frustrated with that.

[Kathy]

But you're still being nice to it, right?

[Tony]

I'm not nice to chatgpt anymore.

[Kathy]

See, that's why mine's faster. Probably because I'm like, thank you so much, chatgpt.

[Tony]

So Gemini is lightning fast.

[Kathy]

Okay.

[Tony]

Because I think Google prides itself on speed. And then Claude is very fast. I use Claude for creative. Right. I'm back on the Cloud bandwagon for creating.

[Kathy]

Okay.

[Tony]

It is so much better than ChatGPT now again.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Whereas Chat GPT in the last iteration caught up, I felt. But then Claude released another one.

[Kathy]

Right. It.

[Tony]

Yeah. Anyway, this constantly happens. And then Gemini. I think Google's making a huge stride.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Tony]

In just video and not audio. Video and image. Image generation.

[Kathy]

So Lars is betting on Gemini. He feels like Google has the most to lose by not winning, basically is his. His philosophy. And in a very, very small nutshell, he's probably rolling besides me right now.

[Tony]

I mean, Google has all the data, it's got the distribution, so. But then again, OpenAI has Microsoft. Right.

[Kathy]

Right.

[Tony]

Which Microsoft has huge distribution.

[Kathy]

Right.

[Tony]

Everyone's on Windows for the most part.

[Kathy]

But I was amazed at the amount of people I've talked to in the last two days that use Gemini.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Kathy]

Because I don't normally we don't really use it.

[Tony]

I know, but I'm going to jump on the. I mean, I have used it.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

I'm going to jump back on the bandwagon.

[Kathy]

I'm going to try it. I mean, like, why not?

[Tony]

And it's. I know. Gemini is so much faster. You know, here's the other reason why I didn't use Gemini in the beginning. It's because I was using AI to generate blog posts. And I was thinking to myself, huh, if I'm using Gemini to generate the blog post, won't Google know that it was AI generated? Because I use Gemini. And so that's why I was using ChatGPT for a while.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

But yeah, ChatGPT, I guess, is just the general purpose. I don't like the image generation because it just takes forever.

[Kathy]

Yeah. I don't. I never use it for image.

[Tony]

I can't stand. Like, the speed really matters.

[Kathy]

Well, and here's the problem too. Like, if you ask Chat to create an image, it takes five minutes.

[Steve Chou]

Yes.

[Kathy]

And then if it's not right, you're like, well, I don't want to iterate. It's going to take me two hours to get, you know. Yeah. And obviously it's. I laugh at ourselves for like being irritated that we're mad at a computer for creating an image out of like, it's like, you're too slow. But yeah. I mean, we just have gotten used to a certain standard.

[Tony]

Well, I know Google Nano to ban it. You'll get something like 5 seconds when.

[Kathy]

Ritu was doing like live demos.

[Tony]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In five seconds. Seconds. So I don't know if I have anything else to say about AI except, like, I'm just. I just gotta go home and start playing with this stuff.

[Kathy]

I want, like, a month to just do nothing. But AI, that's, like, my dream right now.

[Tony]

You're not gonna be able to do that.

[Kathy]

No, I'm not. No.

[Tony]

You have, like, fires every day.

[Kathy]

I know. It's like, that's why it's a dream. It's not a. It's not.

[Tony]

Whereas I have more time.

[Kathy]

That's why he'll always be better than me and AI. But I will tell you one little nugget I got from Ezra. So our friend Ezra Firestone.

[Tony]

Oh, yes.

[Kathy]

Spoke yesterday. And the one thing. And I heard him say this over the summer because I saw him at the Barcelona event, but he talked about building wealth. And the one thing that he said was one of the best ways to build wealth is through building businesses and then liquidate. Right. Selling them.

[Steve Chou]

Right, right.

[Kathy]

And that just kind of stuck with me because I was like, you're right. Like, you have to grow something and, you know, and sell it, and then, you know, then you take that money and you invest. And I was like, you know, that's really true. Like, and he's trying to build, like, I feel like a larger.

[Tony]

He wants 100 million.

[Kathy]

Yeah. Which I know. Yeah, I'm fine with 10. But, like, I started thinking about that. Like, you know, you're right. Like, that is. And we know a lot of people who have built their wealth that way, right? Owning businesses, selling them, investing, you know, and sometimes they go and do it over and over again. Like our friend Dana, right? She's done that multiple times, and sometimes you only need to do it once or twice. But I was like, you know, that's. That's really true. Like, you're never.

[Tony]

See, I somewhat disagree with that.

[Kathy]

Really?

[Tony]

Because.

[Kathy]

Because you like to play the stock market.

[Tony]

Well, no, no, no, no. The mentality of a lot of people here is you just gotta go pedal the metal, you know, just build up that revenue and then go for the sale. Like, the exit is the final destination.

[Steve Chou]

Right?

[Tony]

But, like, let's say you're making a decent amount of money every year. Why not just milk it?

[Steve Chou]

Right?

[Kathy]

Yeah. Yes, yes, I agree with that.

[Tony]

And just keep making money and don't stress yourself out by, like, scaling, like, 10x every year or whatever it is. Right?

[Kathy]

Yes. I was. I wasn't looking at it that way, but I can see. I was thinking, like, you build your business to whatever point. Like, I mean, I think Dana is a perfect example of this. Right? Yeah, she. She said, I like to sell at this point. Like, she doesn't want to build a $20 million business to sell. She wants to build a $3 million business or $5 million business.

[Tony]

But let's say you get to 5 million and you're netting a million dollars a year. Why not just chill and pocket that a million? I mean, it's hard to spend a million dollars a year.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

I mean, I couldn't. I can't, because I. I don't even know what I would buy. No, I guess I. I guess if you buy real estate or cars, but that's not.

[Steve Chou]

I don't know.

[Kathy]

We're not car people.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Kathy]

I'm not.

[Tony]

And you travel. There's no way you can spend a million dollars traveling, so.

[Kathy]

Plus, it's not fun if you're not doing it on points. It's. It's not. It's.

[Tony]

That's true.

[Kathy]

It's only fun if it's a game.

[Tony]

So that's where I differ. I think the mentality here is like, scale. Quickly. Scale, scale, scale, scale. And then like, the. The goal is the sale, and that's the finality of it.

[Kathy]

Gotcha. I was kind of looking at it more in the Dana way of, like, slow and steady.

[Steve Chou]

Sure.

[Kathy]

Repeated like, build, sell, build, like, not this. And I knew. We do know a lot of people who just grow, grow, grow. And that's not that. I mean, to me, those people always.

[Tony]

Seem burnt out, so that always leads to depression, actually. So one of the themes of ecf, actually depression, was depression because, you know, the tariffs. A lot of people are having a hard time, it seems, you know, and so what Andrew did is he had a lot of people tell stories of their lows.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony]

And there's a lot of those stories. And I. I felt like most of them that presented. They had their lows because they scaled too quickly.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Kathy]

Yes. They get in over their heads.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Tony]

Our good friend Tall had. I think he spent, like, $5 million of his own money right. Into his business because he took out this big loan.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Where he was the personal. You know, he had to pay, like, he was responsible for it.

[Kathy]

Right. His personal. Personal guarantee.

[Tony]

Yeah. That's what I was looking for. Personal guarantee. I would never in a million years do that.

[Kathy]

I know. I was thinking that.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Kathy]

Well, yeah, because. And. And we know other people who've, like, leveraged their homes, and I'm like, no, thank you. Like, I don't. I don't know.

[Tony]

Because Tal's goal Was to create a hundred million dollar company.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Tony]

That's because he had, he had had a bunch of good success with, you know, smaller businesses, like seven and eight figure business. And he wanted like the big one. And so I'm actually an investor in his company and he did a.

[Kathy]

Get the revelation. Revelation.

[Tony]

Actually. What's funny and tall? I don't know if you listen to this podcast, but like he gives out quarterly reports and then he goes up, he's like, oh yeah, we were like two weeks away from going bank. I'm like, what? That was not in the quarterly report, Tal.

[Kathy]

Yeah, that was. I don't, I don't want to invite that kind of stress into my life.

[Tony]

Oh yeah, definitely not. Definitely not for sure. So that's why I always say, you know, sure, the sale is good, but I mean, if the thing is milk and money and there's several people at ECF who I talk to, they generate like 5 million revenue and they take home like a million or 2 million. That's great.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

I mean, as long as you can keep that up, why not just, yeah, milk that money and pocket it?

[Kathy]

Well, it reminds me many, many years ago, you and I had dinner with the native deodorant guy. I can't think.

[Tony]

Oh, yes, Boyce.

[Kathy]

Yes. And he, he, he had given a talk about basically growing and selling.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Kathy]

And when he talked about those like, couple of years, like to the sale, he was miserable.

[Tony]

Yes.

[Kathy]

And like the whole time I'm like, who would ever want to. Like, to me it was like, this is a deterrent if anything. Doesn't give me any sort of gold to try to do this. But it feels like everybody that we meet and talk to that has similar path. It's like miserable. It's like, is it worth being that miserable for however long and the risk and the stress on your body and your life and your relationships, right?

[Tony]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Kathy]

And a lot of these people went through like divorce and you know, all these different things. And it's like, yes. At the end of the day you had to exit and that's fantastic. But I don't know if it's worth it.

[Tony]

There was a speaker who took out a whole bunch of loans to import masks during the pandemic.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Tony]

I can't remember who it is at this point, but then all of a sudden, like there was plenty of masks.

[Kathy]

Right.

[Tony]

So he was stuck with all these containers of his. He was very stressful, you know, because he had all this inventory that he couldn't liquidate. So again, you Know the big winners, they do take those big bets.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Tony]

It's just not my personality. I don't need to take those big bets. I don't spend that much money. I'm very happy what I'm earning right now.

[Kathy]

Yeah, we don't need a yacht.

[Tony]

Yeah, we.

[Kathy]

We need a friend with the yacht.

[Tony]

I don't need a private jet. Yeah, I just need a friend. Friend with a private jet.

[Kathy]

We need to make better friends. That's our problem.

[Tony]

You know, it's funny because someone was asking me, hey, why don't you buy properties, you know? You know, in your favorite vacation spots or whatever? I'm like, I don't want to take care of a property. I'd rather just go there and rent something for the period that I'm.

[Kathy]

And not worry about it for the rest of the.

[Tony]

Not worry about, like, a water main breaking or something like that.

[Kathy]

Well, the guy who closed us out, I'm completely. I have.

[Tony]

I can't remember his name, but he was a good speaker.

[Kathy]

We can look it up. Hold on. You talk while I look it up. What did he talk about? He's a Portland Leather.

[Tony]

Okay, hold on. I have to add some notes here.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Kathy]

Okay.

[Tony]

Yeah, so it was. It was a. It was a guy. He runs Portland Leather, Curtis. I believe he is the largest seller of leather bags in the United States or something like that. He's based in Mexico. And once again, he had a crazy story, too. He was down to his last 100 bucks. I'm not sure how he got to last 100 bucks to his company. Did he gloss over that part?

[Kathy]

No. Remember, he got sent out on the streets and they literally pulled him into a detox center.

[Steve Chou]

Yes.

[Kathy]

And then when he got out of the detox center is when he realized that he might need to make some changes when he was living out of his car. But the one thing that he was talking about that I thought was really, like, a really good takeaway is that to move from the five, if you want to move from 5 million to 10 million. Right. You have to do something different.

[Tony]

Right.

[Kathy]

You can't continue on the same path that you've been on. And I see so many people on the same path. And he was like, someone who is a great marketer I thought was really interesting. Someone who's a great marketer in 2017 is not a great marketer today if they're still doing the same things from 2017.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Kathy]

And I was like, you know, that's so true. And you see that. I see that with A lot of people and you've not to criticize anybody in, like your mastermind group or bloggers. We know. But, like, the people that didn't pivot right when things started changing, a lot of them, I mean, like, most of the bloggers that I knew in 2013 are not bloggers anymore, which is sometimes they just went on to bigger, better things. And that's great.

[Tony]

But to be fair, they were milking tons of money for decades.

[Kathy]

Yes, they had it good for a long time, but I do think that's true, like, if you're not willing to make changes and pivots and do try new things. And I think that's one of. That seemed like one of the things he was really good at is, like, taking. They didn't seem like crazy risks, but, like, doing things like he said he.

[Tony]

Loved one of them was pretty crazy.

[Kathy]

I thought the warehouse. I thought the warehouse was kind of crazy.

[Tony]

The warehouse was well gone. I'll let you explain.

[Kathy]

The Etsy one, did you think that was crazy?

[Tony]

I thought the Etsy one was crazy.

[Kathy]

So he was making, like a good amount on Etsy. And if any of you guys have ever sold on Etsy, you know that Etsy likes to, like, screw over their sellers basically on a monthly basis. And he was getting frustrated and he said he was a top Etsy seller. And so he decided to go to Shopify while still on Etsy. He made one sale on Black Friday and he was like, we're done with Etsy. Right.

[Tony]

And he jumped straight to Shopify, which.

[Kathy]

Yeah, that was a little bit of a risk.

[Steve Chou]

Yes.

[Kathy]

But, you know, I also feel like it definitely paid off for him. And we see this a lot with people, too. Like, you can't always have your feet in two pools. Right. Sometimes you have to make a decision and take that risk. And a lot of times people try to straddle for a long time, and sometimes that hurts you because you don't commit one way or the other.

[Tony]

It reminds me of the warriors, the two timelines. Draymond Green, Steph Curry, and then the young guys. But the other takeaway of his was also, like, if you want to double your business, you got to think 10x right? And so you got to do those things that have outsized gains. Like tweaking your website's not going to take you there. You know, running the same ads or just the same way is probably not going to take you there. So you gotta do something outsized. I remember I went from six to seven when I introduced, I think, two Things meta ads and email marketing, I think took me there. I think you need like three sources or something like that to take you to seven figures. But if I was just doubling down on SEO and Google, I. I don't think I would have reached it.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Just on that.

[Kathy]

I've also realized the reason that we're not more successful is we never had like an alcoholic period. We never hit rock bottom. That's the problem.

[Tony]

That's true. Our lives are pretty cushy. And I think a lot of the people who do really well, they're willing to take those bets because they got very little to lose.

[Kathy]

Yes. Yes.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Kathy]

We have a lot to lose.

[Tony]

We have a lot to lose. I think once you have a family. Yeah. I'm not taking any of those risks.

[Kathy]

And it's interesting, too, that most of those stories come from single men.

[Steve Chou]

It's true. They're all single.

[Tony]

Yeah, they're all single guys.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Kathy]

So I don't. I don't know. You can. You can take with that what you will.

[Steve Chou]

But.

[Kathy]

Yeah, I didn't go to this talk, but I heard was. I heard nothing but great things about. It was going from founder to CEO.

[Tony]

Oh, Eamonn's talk.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Tony]

Okay.

[Steve Chou]

I didn't.

[Kathy]

Yeah. So one of my friends went to that one and she was texting me during the talk. She. And one of the things he said was, if you brought your computer to this conference, you're not a CEO. Basically, if you can't go for two days without doing work and just being able to manage it on your phone, you're not doing the right stuff, like you're not there yet. And my friend was like. She was like. And I had my computer open and.

[Tony]

I just closed it.

[Kathy]

But anyway, like, I'm like, yeah, you know, and it's. I've seen. I see people struggle with this a lot, and I think it's tough. Right, because, you know, the founder mentality is different than the CEO mentality and you have to shift a lot. And I remember Bill d' Alessandro talked about this years ago, where when his business grew and there was someone who had been in their business from the very beginning, and he had to let him go because he wasn't the right fit anymore. Right. The company had outgrown this, but this person hadn't grown with the company, basically, and how he considered him a friend, even though they weren't friends, but he had been there since the beginning and he had to make that decision, and it was really hard on him. And I think there's lots of things like that. As a founder, it's like you and your. Your bros, right? You and your friends, and you're all having a great time and you're all working in the garage and it's fantastic. And then the next thing you know, you have a 20,000 square foot warehouse and 50 employees and you're, you're still in the mentality of, like, we're all friends, we hang out together on Friday nights, and you don't. And so that, apparently that talk was fantastic. And I think anyone in that position should probably, you know, start educating themselves a little more in that area.

[Tony]

I had a great lunchtime conversation with Jordan, and he belongs to eo and he was telling me, like, every person in his EO group should just run each other's companies and make the hard decisions without emotions, right?

[Kathy]

Yes, yes.

[Tony]

Like, Bill should have let that guy go probably a long time ago.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

A mutual friend of ours should let some. Should let someone go, but there's emotions tied to it.

[Kathy]

Right.

[Tony]

Because you interact with this person and it's hard.

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

So that's maybe something to try, right?

[Kathy]

Yeah.

[Tony]

Just trade businesses for like, for like a week and then do the hard firings and whatnot and then switch.

[Kathy]

Well, and also, like, if you founded the company, most likely you did everything by yourself in the beginning.

[Tony]

Yes.

[Kathy]

So when there's a problem. Right. You're like, let me just go in and fix that. Right. Like, it's much harder to create the process to train somebody so that you don't have to do that. But at the end of the day, that will save you so much time later on. But it's like, as a parent, right, you should teach your kid how to like, unload the dishwasher. Well, you probably don't use your dishwasher, do you?

[Tony]

No, we do, we do. We're not one of those Asian families.

[Kathy]

You're not one of those Asian families. But. But like when my kids were little and they wanted to unload the dishwasher and they would just throw all the silverware, like in the drawer, but not in the correct cubby, you know, and you're just like, let me just do it. Right. As opposed to like, here, like knives, go with knives. But it's the same, just at a much greater scale.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Kathy]

And so anyway, I think those talks are always interesting to me because I do feel like it's a really hard shift for most people and why some people, I think, should actually hire a CEO. Right, Right. They still own the company, but they're not the one doing the day to day run running.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Kathy]

It is expensive to do that though. So you have to be in a good.

[Tony]

I mean that's really hard to do. But yeah.

[Kathy]

Yes.

[Tony]

Yeah.

[Kathy]

But the people that I know that have done it, we've know a couple people like they're happy. Yeah.

[Tony]

Well yeah, because they're not.

[Kathy]

They don't do anything.

[Tony]

They're doing what they like to do and someone else is handling all the stuff they didn't like to do in the in the first place. Yeah, but I think today's the last day, right?

[Kathy]

Yes. We always have the closing party.

[Tony]

We have the closing party tonight. So it was a shorter ecf but a lot of key takeaways.

[Steve Chou]

Hope you enjoyed this episode. Conferences compress years of learning and networking into a single weekend and it's well worth the time. For more information and resources, go to my wife quitherjob.com Episode 612 Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2026 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 e commerce store, head on over to my wife quitherjob.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.