SHOW TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is automatically generated by Descript.  Any errors or omissions are unintentional.

[00:00:00] Jeff Sieh: Hello folks. Welcome to Creator News Live. I’m Jeff Sieh

[00:00:04] Conor Brown: And I’m Connor Brown, and this is the show that keeps you up to date on what’s happening in the world of the creator economy and so much more.

[00:00:10] Jeff Sieh: If you ever wondered what it really takes to turn content into consistent income, maybe you’re trying to figure out how creators move beyond side hustles and build something that actually lasts. Or maybe you’re looking for practical ways to make brand deals, reviews, and live selling work without relying on luck or algorithms.

[00:00:28] Jeff Sieh: If any of that sounds familiar, well you are in the right place.

[00:00:32] Conor Brown: Today we’re excited to welcome a guest who’s built a business by doing exactly that. After producing over 4,000 shoppable videos and securing thousands of paid brand deals. Now he teaches creators how to move past maybe money by focusing on brand partnerships, shoppable content, and smart systems that scale.

[00:00:54] Conor Brown: He’ll be sharing what he’s learned, what actually works, and how creators can think differently [00:01:00] about monetization.

[00:01:00] Jeff Sieh: So sit back, clear schedule, clear your mind to get ready for this week’s episode of Creator News Live. Billy Thorpe, how are you doing today, my friend?

[00:01:08] Billy Thorpe: I’m doing good, man. You guys crush it every time you make me sound so special and smart.

[00:01:13] Jeff Sieh: That’s our job. That’s our

[00:01:14] Billy Thorpe: None of it’s true. None of it’s true, but I appreciate effort.

[00:01:18] Jeff Sieh: As always. We’ve got a special theme song for, uh, Billy. So without further ado, here we go. There we go. Your own theme song, Billy

[00:01:27] Billy Thorpe: I see. Perfect. End the show. That’s the best part. Just end this thing now.

[00:01:31] Jeff Sieh: No, no, no. You are the best part. So, we’re gonna get, we’re good going today because we’ve got so many questions from people. But I wanna make sure that we give a big shout out to our sponsors of the show. That is Ecamm. You can find out more about them by going to Ecamm dot com slash jeff.

[00:01:46] Jeff Sieh: Uh, you can say 15% by using code Jeff 15 on your first purchase there. What makes the show possible. That’s what we’re using to run it with all the lower thirds. The camera switches, everything you see. ECA M helps us produce. So make sure to check them out. They’ve also got a brand new [00:02:00] creator camp coming up in the uk.

[00:02:01] Jeff Sieh: If you’re in the UK, you can, find out more by going to Tube Fest co uk slash creator dash camp. Really simple. URL they had me read. just go to to Ecamm dot com and find out. You can find out all about that. But, April 23rd through the 24th of this year in the uk. So go check them out. But Billy, you’re the main reason we are here so much to talk about.

[00:02:24] Jeff Sieh: You, you kind of did a live, show a couple, I think it was a live stream a couple days ago before Christmas, and you were talking about like, this last year has been a lot for you and you were kind of like poo-pooing. Oh, it wasn’t as great as year, you know, as I had. But, you did pretty good. Like you are the man when it comes to this, uh, live shopping, that I know of, that you’ve done such, such good stuff.

[00:02:45] Jeff Sieh: But I wanna talk about this sustainable creator income. ’cause I know you talk about this a lot because a lot of creators hear success stories like yours and they assume that it’s fast, like it’s a fast

[00:02:56] Jeff Sieh: process. So realistically, let’s [00:03:00] kind of zoom in a little bit on these shoppable videos. How many videos does somebody actually need to publish before it starts to look like a livable income instead of that side money?

[00:03:10] Billy Thorpe: You know, this is always a great question. and I always say it depends, but, but really I kind of, over the last few years I’ve. You know, working with other content creators and kinda looking at my own progress have kind of put down this little tiered, answer I’ll give you. So there’s really no magic number, especially when it comes to like Amazon, which is the, the playground that I play in the most.

[00:03:30] Billy Thorpe: so I kind of break it down this way. I say the first 50 to a hundred videos. I really just kind of about learning. Learning the program, learning the opportunities, getting your workflow down, getting your systems down. So that’s kinda the first 50 to a hundred, I’d say the 300 to 500 mark. This is where you kind of start to see some, you know, revenue build up.

[00:03:49] Billy Thorpe: You start to see, what’s selling and how much commissions and things like that you’re making off of, of this. So it’s kind of. More of these patterns. And also for brands, I think this is kind of the sweet number [00:04:00] where you really have a solid portfolio that you can now promote and leverage to start working with brands.

[00:04:06] Billy Thorpe: And then when you get to like that thousand plus, this is where I’ve really seen the income become more predictable, even though it’s very. You know, not predictable on some of these platforms when you’re chasing algorithms and views and clicks and all that. so yeah, I think, that’s kind of how I’d break it down.

[00:04:21] Billy Thorpe: So more videos, like just make more content is what I always tell people and don’t get so in the weeds of. What is this video doing? How is it doing? or how’s this product doing? Because you don’t, you never really want to just leverage one stream of revenue or one product because you don’t really control that, especially in the Amazon, space.

[00:04:41] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, because I remember when I first got in it and I, I’ve kind of backed off from doing as much as I wa I was, but it was, the income was, went up really fast and then it went away really fast too. ’cause it was like they start jenkin with stuff and you’re right, if you rely on just one source of comment.

[00:04:57] Jeff Sieh: And I’ve seen them, the people explode on the, [00:05:00] in the Facebook groups and whatever saying, you know, all this stuff. But it’s just unpredictable. And I love what you’re saying about, have multiple streams of income because you never know you are building on rented land when you’re, when you’re playing on Amazon’s platform.

[00:05:12] Billy Thorpe: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I, I always say like, just, you’re always gonna play on someone’s platform no matter what. Like, if, even if it’s email marketing, like you’re probably not gonna have your own email server or whatever. so I, I always say that it’s like, just figure out what you can control the most of and do that, and then everything else will come, you know, so it’s kinda like build a business.

[00:05:32] Billy Thorpe: And if you’re not in control, then that’s not really a business, in my

[00:05:36] Billy Thorpe: opinion.

[00:05:36] Jeff Sieh: ooh, that’s, that’s good, I wanna, I want to ask a real question of our audience before we get too much into this section, but I wanna know a few guys, ’cause we’re gonna be talking a lot about live selling and some of the other stuff using video to make money. But have you ever bought something from a live stream?

[00:05:52] Jeff Sieh: Not a video, but a live stream. Like, I wanna know if you guys have done that, just let us know wherever you’re watching from down in the comments. Yes. No, almost. But [00:06:00] didn’t, whatever you’ve kind of done. And I was thinking about this now. I have bought things that I’ve seen video ads for on Facebook or, or whatever.

[00:06:07] Jeff Sieh: I think everybody has done that. They see something on, you know, Instagram and like, oh, I wanna have that little gadget and they buy it. Now live streams are a little different and I, I had to think about it, but I did, I actually bought something from, uh, and I actually have some what not credit from when Billy was doing what on the what not platform.

[00:06:22] Jeff Sieh: Uh, I was doing some stuff up there, but I, it’s not as much as I would think. so I’d love to know what you guys do. if you’ve bought something from a, a live, a live stream. So Connor, you have a question? I know.

[00:06:31] Conor Brown: I don’t know I have a question, but I don’t think I ever have to be honest. unless you count QVC, which you know, that’s live streaming all day.

[00:06:38] Jeff Sieh: it. That works. Yeah.

[00:06:40] Conor Brown: when you were on the show last time, we talked a lot about speed and systems and I think in the first answer you gave today, you talked about these numbers, 500 to a hundred videos, right?

[00:06:51] Conor Brown: And then once you get to 300 videos, that’s when you’re starting to hit your stride in your sweet spot and those sorts of things. That can seem like a huge [00:07:00] number to a lot of people. But when we break it down, these videos, they’re not YouTube length videos, right? It is a system based approach that you have.

[00:07:10] Conor Brown: They’re very quick, you churn ’em out, and that’s how you’re able to create and scale the way that you do. And going back to the speed and systems thing, what’s the difference between this volume based model that you always talk about and one that just quietly burns creators out? Like how can they get to a point when they’re scaling, they’re posting a lot of videos, but they’re also not burning.

[00:07:33] Billy Thorpe: Y you know, this is funny ’cause I, I get this question all the time. Like, man, how are you not burnout? How are you not burnout? And, and burnout really isn’t because of the volume. It’s because of the chaos. And this is the problem that we have, especially in this industry when there’s a lot of moving parts and there’s a lot of opportunity and there’s a lot of noise in the space and everyone’s trying to do everything.

[00:07:54] Billy Thorpe: You know, you’re looking here, looking there, and you’re trying to do everything all at one time and you have no system. So, so [00:08:00] scalable volume uses repeatable formats. Batch filming and, and once again, kind of good enough content because you, like you said, this is not like YouTube style, this is not Hollywood in the video industry.

[00:08:13] Billy Thorpe: The film industry is huge, all the way from, you know, vertical videos on your phone to Hollywood produced movies. and I just think that If you’re burning out, you’re probably doing a few things. You’re probably trying to reinvent every video. You’re chasing trends, and you’re relying more on your motivation, not on your systems.

[00:08:31] Billy Thorpe: Like I don’t burn out because I have an agenda and I have a business and a. Business has a system that can, you know, really scale. So, if a system’s in place, then that decision fatigue that we often deal with as entrepreneurs and business owners goes away. Like, there’s no decision. What am I doing today, or what should I be doing?

[00:08:49] Billy Thorpe: Or what am I looking at? Or what’s the action I’m taking? there’s, there’s no question like this is. The system when it’s in place, you’ve already made the decision pre-show up to work, [00:09:00] pre sitting in your production studio. and this is really gonna protect your mentality, your, your, you know, your mindset.

[00:09:05] Billy Thorpe: and it’s gonna help you to continue to show up and, and really just create a boring business. You know, if you talk to any of these successful business owners. That I’ve ever met. And I ask ’em like, what do you do? They’re like, oh, I just create a boring business. Like it gets boring. That’s why I have 50 of ’em.

[00:09:20] Billy Thorpe: ’cause I can just press the button and it goes. And um,you know, over the last 36 plus months, 40 months or whatever doing this business, I’ve created a very boring business. So much So I told my wife yesterday, I’m Mike, I think the New Year’s a new business. She’s like, Nope, nope, nope, nope.

[00:09:39] Jeff Sieh: So let’s do a little rabbit trail. I wanna go, go and pull this thread a little bit is, um, so take us in a life of Billy Thorpe’s boring business. Like, I there for a while. I remember you would say like, I get up at four 30 so I can beat everybody else. Do you still do that? So like, take us kind of through a typical day at Billy Thorpe Incorporated.

[00:09:57] Billy Thorpe: Yeah, so, so now the lifestyle [00:10:00] is a little different. We moved to Puerto Rico. We have different work schedules, different, you know, fitness schedules, all that stuff. so my schedule has kind of flipped to where now I work in the evenings, but I still get up decently early 5 36 o’clock. And I’m, you know, first thing is just.

[00:10:15] Billy Thorpe: Where does the money come from for my business? It’s brands first. Then, you know, maybe money second. So I’m really focused on getting those emails, getting, you know, all the deals set up, getting my future business in place, negotiating all those deals. and then I’m homeschooling with my son. For, you know, several hours until my wife gets home.

[00:10:36] Billy Thorpe: and then I’m coming into the studio, I’m flipping on the lights, I’m making my videos, I’m doing whatever, you know, task is at hand, uploading those pieces of content and then I’m going home. and I’m just trying to do that in 25 or less hours per week so I don’t get offended by myself.

[00:10:51] Jeff Sieh: So do you have, do you have, VAs or subcontractors you use, or is it all Billy?

[00:10:56] Billy Thorpe: It’s just all me and, and there’s, and I could be doing more, right? Like there’s a [00:11:00] bunch of opportunities I’m not taking advantage of. and it’s kind of a con, it is not kind of, it is a conscious decision I’ve made because I’ve had employees, I’ve had people come to the office, I’ve had all this stuff in the past, and I’m going, this is not. is putting too much pressure that is messing with the lifestyle I wanna live. and I’ve said this a lot lately, but I feel like there’s only two reasons to build a business. One, it’s to build it and, and scale it and sell it. or two, build a business that provides you the lifestyle that you wanna live.

[00:11:29] Billy Thorpe: And in this current moment in my life. I am building a business for the lifestyle I’m living. I’m living on an island. I wanna spend time with my son on my golf cart with my wife. I wanna chase Christmas parades. You know, it’s like, I don’t want to think about my income and John’s income and Susie’s income because now it puts me in this production wheel of like, I can’t stop because too many people rely on me.

[00:11:53] Billy Thorpe: So in my current business model, it’s just me and I just. You know, kind of fly by the seat of my pants. Come in, do what I [00:12:00] want, go home when I want. so yeah, it’s kind of a cushy little,

[00:12:04] Jeff Sieh: But I think what you said that’s very attractive to a lot of people. A lot of people would like, Hey, I don’t really want employees. I just want to kind of do, you know, have enough money that I’m, can do what I kind of want to, when I want to. So I think, I think what you said, people are going, oh, I, I want what Billy has so.

[00:12:20] Billy Thorpe: Yeah. The time freedom thing is huge

[00:12:22] Billy Thorpe: for me.

[00:12:23] Conor Brown: That’s the whole point, right? It’s like you get to decide what you want to do with, with your business. And I think that that’s why we as entrepreneurs get into this Right. With, with something like that. As you’re talking about, you know, chasing other opportunities though, Billy, you’ve often said when it comes to these sorts of videos and, and, and the like, Amazon, which people often think is number one, the Amazon affiliate income, they think of that as, that’s what we gotta go all in on.

[00:12:50] Conor Brown: But you, the expert, you’re saying Amazon is the icing, it isn’t the cake. So for entrepreneurs that are, are looking to add some cake to [00:13:00] their, their business, what is the cake today in 2026 that they should be focusing on?

[00:13:05] Billy Thorpe: Cake is my favorite thing. So I’ll, I’ll try not to talk about cake too much. Um, but when I say cake, I’m talking about the predictable money. So I’m talking about brand deals, content for hire, live, selling with guarantees. you know, Amazon is powerful and it’s, it’s honestly changed my life because it’s given me a leverage point to be able to do what I do with, with no audience.

[00:13:27] Billy Thorpe: And so it’s. I don’t want to like poo on that platform, but it’s still a platform and it’s still delayed payout. It’s performance based and it’s controlled by algorithms and systems that I don’t know and I don’t really control. So I really feel like that stability comes from mixing this guaranteed income, you know, with this maybe money upside, uh, which has been really good.

[00:13:47] Billy Thorpe: And, and I make a lot of money from Amazon, don’t get me wrong, but it’s one of those, things that if I can’t invoice it, if I can’t invoice someone. Then that’s not the cake. And so I kind of think of it like if I’m gonna bake a [00:14:00] cake, I’m getting all the ingredients and I’m in control of what goes into the bowl and I can mix it and I can put it in whatever pan I want, put it in the oven.

[00:14:07] Billy Thorpe: Icing. You just buy that crap. Maybe you can make your own icing if you want to, but majority of people just buy it, put it on the top and it is what it is and you can’t really do too much about it. So anyway, that’s a bad real, a really bad cake analogy, but I just wanna talk about.

[00:14:20] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. Yeah. Now I’m now I need some cake. Have your cake and eat it too. That, well, that’s what people want. They wanna have like, they wanna have freedom. I mean, there’s always a balance with what you, what you have. Like, um, I think, like even tech troublemaker said, please help us.

[00:14:35] Jeff Sieh: ’cause I hate selling, like he hates selling. A lot of people hate the selling. and then Ralph said, let’s be honest, content creation income is, chaos at best. It really is unlike any other business income, but it’s manageable. It’s just different. So for me, I love it. I love being able to have, certain clients that I have luckily, and I’m blessed with having a set amount of income each month.

[00:14:55] Jeff Sieh: But then I also have all this affiliate stuff and speaking and, you know, memberships and [00:15:00] masterminds and all that stuff that kind of is adding on. I would say it’s a little higher elevated than icing, but you know what I’m saying? Like, it’s, it’s another thing, it’s a lever that I can pull. If something else fails, I can pull a different lever and kind of balance things out, which I love, but it’s not for everybody.

[00:15:14] Jeff Sieh: Some of my friends love going every day and looking at a gauge at Eastman Chemical, and that’s their job and they’ve there for 20 years and they love it. Not me, but some people, that’s the way they want, they want that stability. anyway, sorry for the rant, but I just, you know, different people like different things and I just love what I do.

[00:15:33] Jeff Sieh: And I think a lot of people in the audience either are where I’m at or want to get to where both Billy and Connor and all of, I mean, Connor’s the same way. He’s super creative, does all this travel stuff but also he has got a job ’cause he likes the stability.

[00:15:45] Jeff Sieh: So, Connor, speak about that a little bit. Like in your mindset, is this, are you where you wanna be or what are your, you know, we’re kind of going off the rails a little bit, but I, I would love to know your thoughts on this.

[00:15:56] Conor Brown: I love what, what Billy said about building the lifestyle that you want, [00:16:00] and that’s what I have done. You know, I think the funny thing is that there’s not a book that’s like, this is how your business needs to be and there’s, this is the only way to, to build your business. There’s a million ways to do it, but I think we often see success as.

[00:16:15] Conor Brown: Having employees as working for ourself, as, as bringing in everything through that, that one business entity when in 2026. You don’t have to do that. You can do a little bit of everything and, and do that. So for me, yeah, I’m by myself. I’m single, right? So I need some stability and I find that in a regular, you know, corporate job.

[00:16:36] Conor Brown: but because we do have freedom and we can do other things, I have all this stuff on the side, like this show and the travel stuff and vacation kingdoms and, you know, keys to the castle Travel where I’m a a, a travel agent and, and director of agent development. So what I look at it is the stability is the income from the regular job, right?

[00:16:57] Conor Brown: Everything else is gravy, and that’s what pays for [00:17:00] my lifestyle, for the fun things that I do, for the places I get to go for growing myself as a better marketer and creator. All of that, that fills up those buckets and then stability pays the bills, it gets the rent on time, and it helps me save for the future.

[00:17:16] Conor Brown: So that’s kind of how, I think, that’s my flywheel system almost.

[00:17:21] Jeff Sieh: That’s awesome. I wanna bring up some comments real quick, Billy, um, for some of the, awesome people we have watching the show live, Steve says, employees can make things very expensive. my businesses are low cost and a higher margin, which I think is very attractive to a lot of people.

[00:17:35] Jeff Sieh: And then, Ralph says, this is the hardest part for content creators. When they have seven different revenue streams, all the more reason to have effective systems, especially accounting systems underneath of it. So Ralph is an amazing accountant. I’ve asked him a lot of tax questions and it’s very, very true.

[00:17:49] Jeff Sieh: Yes, it’s awesome, but if you don’t have the systems in place like a great accountant, it can be a big head. I remember waking up in a cold sweat. in the middle of the night going, oh, the IRSI thought I heard him at my door. [00:18:00] What’s going on? You know, you know, get it all freaked out. and then Steve also says, Billy’s model is the best starting point for beginners in the Amazon influencer program.

[00:18:07] Jeff Sieh: It gets you on a solid foundation to build on. It does. It helps you get those reps in you need for creating videos. and one of the things, Billy, we had a couple months ago, uh, Justin Moore, and I know you do a lot of brand deals. his book’s really awesome.

[00:18:21] Jeff Sieh: You have trained and taught a lot of people on brand deals, everybody wants a brand deal, but what’s one of the biggest misunderstandings creators have about brand deals when they’re just starting out? Like, I know everybody wants one, but I don’t think everybody thinks it through.

[00:18:35] Billy Thorpe: Well, I, you know, I think in my experience anyway. It’s always, brands just want followers, like, or subscribers or whatever. I think this is the biggest misconception and they really don’t. I’ve monetized podcasts, I’ve monetized video. I’ve monetized live shows, live streaming. I’ve monetized a ton of different content.

[00:18:56] Billy Thorpe: Never go look at my social profiles. You’d be like, well, this [00:19:00] guy barely even has any followers. so brands, and especially in this space where it’s like we’re talking about shopable content, live shows, they’re really paying for usable content, clear demos, reliability on the camera, the ability to show up, create quality content quickly.

[00:19:15] Billy Thorpe: A lot of companies you’re gonna work with or, or agencies or reps, and they have thousands of products and they all need these videos. You, you gotta really understand the game that you’re playing in and then build a system from there. And that’s how I got into this whole business was there was a bunch of big audience content creators, true influencers in the Amazon influencer space in the very beginning.

[00:19:39] Billy Thorpe: And so they would all snub their nose at 20, 30, 40, $50. Product deals. And that’s where I was like, wait a minute, I can push buttons on, on my stream deck and, and Ecamm and I can create this video in two minutes. Like for 20 bucks. For 50 bucks for a hundred bucks. You know? So I think you don’t need influence.

[00:19:57] Billy Thorpe: You really need clarity and [00:20:00] consistency. It’s like, what exactly are you trying to accomplish? and then how do you do that and what’s the system to, you know, once again, show up and do those small things over and over and over again.

[00:20:09] Jeff Sieh: Hmm, that’s well said.

[00:20:10] Conor Brown: And when you are showing up, you know, I think that consistency is so key, right? You don’t just wanna do a couple things and then forget about it and then try to pick it back up three weeks later. ’cause your muscle memory is gonna be weak and you’re not gonna show your, your readily available for when those sponsors do come.

[00:20:27] Conor Brown: But if someone only has like five hours a week to dedicate to monetizing their content, this is a bit of a different question, but if they only have those five hours, what should they not be doing? What do you think, Billy?

[00:20:42] Billy Thorpe: Okay, so, and once again, I’m gonna frame this just for like, what I do with the, with the Amazon stuff. don’t overed. Geez though, Pete, if you’re spending two hours to edit, edit a 20 or a two minute video. Like, just quit. Like go do something else. don’t obsess over [00:21:00] analytics. It’s like people blow my mind how much time they spend looking at these metrics that they can’t control.

[00:21:08] Billy Thorpe: It’s like you can’t control placement on carousels. You can’t control delivery of that content around Amazon. you really can’t, you know, control any of those things. But yet people want to focus on it. Why isn’t my video on the carousel? Why isn’t this happening? Why isn’t that happening? I go. ’cause you don’t control that.

[00:21:24] Billy Thorpe: You control the upload button. So the only question you should ask yourself is, why isn’t a video uploading right now? How come there’s not a loading bar on my screen? That’s the number one question they should, you know, be asking themselves. And then I also think it’s like building these complicated systems to try to get brand deals.

[00:21:39] Billy Thorpe: Like I see this a lot where people spend a lot of time like, what’s my pitch deck look like? What’s this look like? What’s that look like? And you don’t need that. I’ve closed. Thousands of deals. And I’ve never one time sent a pitch deck. I’ve never sent analytics, I’ve never sent anything. I’m building a portfolio that is full of assets.

[00:21:57] Billy Thorpe: So the five hours should be, [00:22:00] not that you asked me what they should be doing, but I’ll tell you they should be building assets. They should be batch filming, they should be using one format for videos, and they should, you know, be answering those questions that buyers really want to make that product convert.

[00:22:13] Billy Thorpe: and I think that’s the, the three things that. I would really focus on is like, how can you make quality content quickly and produce that asset so when that asset goes up, it’s like the videos that I have of, I can’t find anything I’ve made a video of on my desk, but if of like, you know, three in one chargers, I’ve made hundreds of those videos.

[00:22:32] Billy Thorpe: So for brand reaches out to me, or I wanna reach out to a brand, what’s more powerful saying that I have the ability to make great content. Or sending them a portfolio of 4,000 pieces of great content. So build, build assets in five hours. Don’t worry about all that other stuff.

[00:22:47] Jeff Sieh: Wow, that is really, really good. I think one of the things that you mentioned, the, the editing part of it, like people spending too much time editing. I just read over the break that, and this was from Adam, er, I think is, I can’t ever say his last [00:23:00] name from Instagram, right. The guy who runs Instagram basically said that, polished videos are dead.

[00:23:06] Jeff Sieh: They’re just not gonna work. They’re not gonna work in the algorithm with the rise of all the AI content, all the slop that’s coming out. the stuff like we’re doing here where we’re talking, taking questions, the rawness of the, like, you’re a real person. You’re telling real advice. do these lens wipes really work on glasses?

[00:23:23] Jeff Sieh: Like, do they really work? Lemme show you how they work and why I use them. That’s what people are gonna want to see. They don’t want a, a, you know, a a 3D graphic of the lens wipe and you know, a motion blur, like a lens flare, whatever.

[00:23:35] Jeff Sieh: They don’t need all that stuff. They just need you talking about it in a real way directly to your audience. So I think we are gonna see a huge rise in like live video, what we’ve been doing, just real authentic content. I just think that’s coming and, and if you’re doing that already, you’re already ahead.

[00:23:50] Billy Thorpe: Yeah. And, and it’s kind of sad to see, I, I just saw, on an Amazon influencer the other day where their early videos was them showing up, holding the product, [00:24:00] showing how it works, showing how to do all this stuff. and then their latest videos is just like their AI avatar holding up a product, basically reading the product description.

[00:24:09] Billy Thorpe: And I’m like. Wow. I know you’re trying to be more efficient and more effective, but you actually just ruined your brand and congratulations, you know?

[00:24:18] Jeff Sieh: Yeah.

[00:24:19] Billy Thorpe: so yeah, I mean, it, it’s, you know, I love efficiency and it is so tempting to be like, okay, let’s create this AI avatar and let it just run the world. But, I, yeah, you’re right, man.

[00:24:32] Billy Thorpe: Authenticity and, It’s like I need this to be a real person who’s really used this product.

[00:24:37] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. we have a great comment. Uh, we have a lot of great comments, but this is from Steve and I wanted to bring this up. He says, Billy taught me to make the $20 video in 10 minutes or less than I do five of those in one sitting. My wife and I hit top creator in under six months with his method.

[00:24:53] Jeff Sieh: So that’s a great transition. Billy, to talk really quick about, I know you’ve got a, a group, you’ve actually, [00:25:00] it’s at Billy Thorpe live, and Thorpe is spelled T-H-O-R-P-E, for people listening. So Billy Thorpe live, but tell a little bit about your, your group. ’cause it’s free to get in. Am I correct?

[00:25:10] Billy Thorpe: Yeah, yeah, it’s been, uh, it’s been $7, $27 free dollar. Get in while it’s free. ’cause who knows what I’m gonna do or what, what one of my personalities is gonna change the price too. so I really started this group to answer questions. I was getting a lot of dms in my inbox. ‘ cause, you know, I just like help people.

[00:25:29] Billy Thorpe: I like talk about it in Facebook groups and, you know, say, oh, I made, you know. 4,000 videos and got paid 35 bucks on average for each video or whatever. And people are like, what the heck? You know, can you teach me? Can you show me? but they started clogging up my inbox, which is where all my brand deals come from.

[00:25:44] Billy Thorpe: So if there’s a social media inbox or email or whatever, I’m like, you can’t be in here asking me these questions ’cause I want to help you. started creating this group, called Deal Makers. Had a handful of people jump in, get some amazing results. So I was like, you know what, I’m gonna open it up. even more.[00:26:00]

[00:26:00] Billy Thorpe: Just to make it free to get more people in there, just to really kinda get exposed to what the model is. ’cause I, I think where I set myself apart from most people in this space is I’m a, I’m an entrepreneur first, content creator, second. So my whole objective is like, how do I make money and how do I scale?

[00:26:18] Billy Thorpe: You know, these different systems and not rely on algorithms or, or video placement. so anyway, we got people in there and then I started a asynchronous, higher ticket coaching, you know, one-to-one, asynchronous group, which is going amazing. And yeah, we’ve had some amazing results. We just got some end of the year numbers from some people and, you know, it’s real money.

[00:26:38] Billy Thorpe: It’s like kind of crazy.

[00:26:40] Conor Brown: Uh, ‘ our friend, uh, Sean from, but mostly Disney, he’s got a great question.

[00:26:44] Conor Brown: He says, you know, when you’re talking about brand deals, how careful should you be taking brand deals? He got an offer. It’s not a bad company, but it’s not really a fit in what he does. So, sort of some context, I know Sean’s has been looking [00:27:00] into taking on sponsors.

[00:27:01] Conor Brown: He does a YouTube channel of vlogs, live streams, those sorts of things in, in the Disney and theme park space. How important is it to go with the, especially your first kind of brand deals, one that makes the most sense versus, hey, maybe we just start with a little thing here and, and get the audience warmed up the things.

[00:27:20] Billy Thorpe: Yeah, so I think this is two, two different conversations. Like, when I was in the podcasting space, I had a salt water fishing podcast, and I was very particular about the sponsor. We brought on one because I sold a package that was. Evergreen. So we never replaced the ad. It was always in there.

[00:27:38] Billy Thorpe: It was like baked into the content. And so I didn’t want some mattress company, you know, baking in an ad forever to a fish. Yeah, sure. Fishermen sleep, but they’re not here to learn about mattresses. Okay. so I would be super, super picky. Also very, very high ticket because I understood in that podcast there was only so much sponsorship placement in, in ways [00:28:00] that I could sell.

[00:28:00] Billy Thorpe: So the price went up and that was even with the small audience as well So I’d be very particular, I would make sure that this little, triangle of love was, you know, between you, the brand and your audience is very tight and it makes sense. That’s how I personally approach it, with Amazon.

[00:28:17] Billy Thorpe: Don’t care. Send me some fingernail clippers, send me an electric scooter, send me a a dog turd cleanup bags, like I do not care. I will make a video of anything and everything, because that’s not really a channel like YouTube. I think YouTube is, you know, more curated in my opinion, than just what I’m doing on Amazon.

[00:28:35] Billy Thorpe: So Amazon, I’ll take anything, YouTube, I would be a little bit more picky if I had that super niche audience.

[00:28:41] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, Mon Weaver is that way, like, I know he’s kind of a mentor of yours, but he, he’s very specific on his tech channel that he does on YouTube. But like, you know, a lot of people, uh, do Amazon. Like I was the same way. Like, I would take anything, I got all sorts of junk set my way. A lot of it was good, A lot of it was not.

[00:28:57] Jeff Sieh: and then you kinda have to pick and choose what you wanna you put out there and [00:29:00] actually recommend. So, like Steve says, me and my wife took everything we could get at first. Now we have, brands contacting us and we cherry pick the absolute easiest products we prefer. Easy over high dollar.

[00:29:11] Jeff Sieh: So that’s a, that’s another choice that we talked about in, in the first section we talked about, like, what does it look like for you, you know, lifestyle you want, you know, versus like being super stable. And so this is how they, they have decided that they wanna run it and that’s perfectly fine and it works for them.

[00:29:25] Jeff Sieh: So, I wanna kind of dive into this, We talked a little bit about AI at the first section, but, I wanna ask the audience, wherever you’re watching from, go ahead and just put it down below. does AI content creation feel easier for you or more overwhelming? I know a lot of people wanna click that easy button, but then they start kind of diving into it and they’re like, oh, this is a lot.

[00:29:44] Jeff Sieh: Like, I don’t really know what I’m doing. So I kind of wanna talk about this in the aspect of like, creating and, and having a business. So, ’cause creators are experimenting more Billy with AI for scripts, for outlines, even full videos, you know, we talked about the [00:30:00] avatars a little bit. Is there a really a risk in using AI generated content in review videos or live selling?

[00:30:07] Jeff Sieh: Like, where’s the line, you know, when should you use AI And when shouldn’t you?

[00:30:11] Billy Thorpe: And this is a great question. one, I think its platform, you know, was the platform allow, so right now Amazon doesn’t really allow AI content, even though you’re gonna find it all over there. It’s in the terms of service that they don’t really allow it. However, I In my opinion, I don’t think ai, I think it’s a tool.

[00:30:27] Billy Thorpe: I don’t think it’s gonna be like a replacement and hopefully it’s not gonna be a replacement for me. and I’ll fight back and charge more money if I get to show up as a human to compete with a bunch of AI avatars. But I think it is great for outlines. I think it’s great for structure. I think it’s great, to keep you organized and learn new skills and learn new things that you? can then leverage to work with more companies, more brands, create better product videos.

[00:30:50] Billy Thorpe: ‘ cause there’s a lot of people getting in this game who aren’t content creators. They don’t have 20 years of, you know, camera experience and all that kind of stuff. So I really feel like AI can be [00:31:00] an asset to help you kind of streamline quickly, to the top of the, you know, to the, to the front of the line.

[00:31:06] Billy Thorpe: If you use it appropriately. I, I think if you’re using it as the easy button, Hey, I’m lazy. I don’t wanna show up, I don’t wanna hit record, I just wanna dump in, you know, here’s a link, make a video with my avatar. I don’t think you’re gonna be around very long. you know, once again, there’s no point in having a video of someone holding a product.

[00:31:25] Billy Thorpe: And just reading off the description, like that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever seen. so yeah.

[00:31:29] Billy Thorpe: I I think it’s like if you’re allowing AI to generate its own opinions or experiences and then, you’re not sharing those experiences yourself, like I think that’s the problem. Like I. I don’t really understand why anybody would do that.

[00:31:45] Billy Thorpe: It’s like, what’s the, I mean, I guess you’re just trying to create this cash cow, jump on the carousel, maybe get, you know, money now. but it kind of reminds me of those gurus who like do something one time and then they go sell a $97 course and they’re really good at marketing, but they [00:32:00] really don’t know what they’re talking about.

[00:32:01] Billy Thorpe: It’s. It’s kind of that same, like, I don’t know what that is, but I get that same ick from, but, but AI is powerful, man. I’ve learned so much stuff from it and it’s helped my content a lot. Just being able to, you know, pare down stuff and to take this, all this A DHD brain and go, boop, here you go.

[00:32:18] Billy Thorpe: In one paragraph.

[00:32:19] Jeff Sieh: I think it’s a great way to enhance your content as long as it doesn’t take away from your humanness, like. Like, I would not have been able to do a, a like little jingle for every guest on this show. It wasn’t possible before. Like, it just wasn’t, it would’ve been too long, too expensive, whatever.

[00:32:35] Jeff Sieh: Now it takes me, I’ve got the process down. It takes me about 15 minutes to get a cool, I mean, I have, a lot of ’em when I, you should hear all the Billy Thorpe songs that I have. and it’s fun now, and it, and it’s something that I can add to my process that I think enhances the show.

[00:32:46] Jeff Sieh: It’s a fun thing for guests. And so using it to enhance creativity and give you some assets that you can use, I think is a great way to use ai. Just like you were saying is pairing stuff down. So yeah, that’s kind of where I’ve kind of fallen in, the, AI spectrum of how to [00:33:00] use it.

[00:33:00] Jeff Sieh: So.

[00:33:00] Conor Brown: I also think something too that’s important, Billy, that you mentioned is, you know, some places just don’t allow it right now. Right? Like Amazon and it would be terrible to start to experiment with it and and go against your brand and then it’ll be doubly terrible if it also goes against the place that you post terms of service and everything gets taken down right?

[00:33:21] Conor Brown: Which is something that we talk a lot about on this show and something that you really champion as well, Billy, which is very clearly stating you shouldn’t be building your. Business on one platform, right? You should be diversifying, you should be going to other places. You shouldn’t be, purchasing rented land outright.

[00:33:40] Conor Brown: You have to diversify so that you can kind of hedge your bets and those sorts of things. So what warning signs should creators look for when it comes to the fact of like, is this platform becoming too risky? am I betting more than I could get out of this? by sticking with, with this platform, what should creators look [00:34:00] for, uh, when it comes to risk

[00:34:01] Conor Brown: and posting on platforms?

[00:34:03] Billy Thorpe: they, they should know it’s all a risk because you don’t, because you’re not in control. It’s like, this is the whole thing I talk about every single day. I’m like, unless you’re in the boardroom of Amazon, YouTube, Instagram, then you have no business, you know, going, oh, I’m gonna put all my eggs into this basket.

[00:34:21] Billy Thorpe: and and, and once again, let me, let me just. You know, put this out there. ’cause I don’t wanna be like the guy who just like beats up on maybe money. ’cause this is really changing people’s lives. So if you are someone who has a, you know, maybe you’re like, Connor, you got a nine to five, you got your, your stability money and this is just money that you wanna build on the side to do vacation and all that stuff.

[00:34:41] Billy Thorpe: Then do whatever makes you happy and do your lifestyle. Do that. Okay. Like play with the platform. See what they’re gonna do. Just know that they’re gonna change the game without notice. This happens all the time on Amazon. This is a risky thing that these platforms?

[00:34:57] Billy Thorpe: and they all do it. They’re gonna pay the payout rules, they’re gonna [00:35:00] pay the commission rules, they’re gonna change, or they’re gonna change.

[00:35:02] Billy Thorpe: Rather they’re gonna change all these different things without you. Having a decision in it. That’s not your business if you’re not making those decisions. but once again, just know that and, and it’s fine. And it’s okay. And I totally like, that’s the same thing with, like I say, I don’t do free product videos, but there’s a lot of people who want to, and that’s fine.

[00:35:20] Billy Thorpe: If this is not your sole income and you’re not trying to, squeeze every bit of juice out of this lemon, then don’t worry about it. Do whatever makes the most sense for you. but when the monetization becomes unclear, like if it’s confusing at how you make money. There’s a risk, and all these platforms are confusing.

[00:35:37] Billy Thorpe: Every single one of ’em. I can’t think of one platform where somebody goes, I know exactly every way that Amazon’s gonna pay me. And I know guaranteed I’m gonna get paid every time. No people every day in the chats like, oh, so I sold this product, sold and shipped, but I didn’t get paid for it. Why didn’t you get paid for it?

[00:35:53] Billy Thorpe: I don’t freaking know. They’re cares.

[00:35:57] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. [00:36:00] Right.

[00:36:02] Billy Thorpe: Promising you, especially in the early days, TikTok did this, Amazon did this YouTube shop or whatever they’re gonna call it, it is gonna do this. Like, everyone’s gonna just inflate those numbers and you’re gonna get so jacked and you’re gonna be like, Yeah. I’m making all this money. I’m making all this money.

[00:36:16] Billy Thorpe: And then it’s gonna go, it’s gonna just plateau. this is a problem and this is, all these platforms do it. So, you know, once again, I, I think to, to like sum this up, it’s like if your income feels mysterious. Like you can’t build a business with mysterious great.

[00:36:33] Jeff Sieh: So I, I’ll be very transparent and, and I’ll like when I first, after I ramped up Amazon. There was a good amount, like of a year that I was making three to $4,000 a month just on Amazon, which was great. And then one month they janked up the placements and it went, it, it was less than half of that, and then it went down from there.

[00:36:54] Jeff Sieh: So I mean, it’s, it was great while it lasted, it was great money that we luckily socked away, but [00:37:00] that’s, it can go away. Like you could lose, I mean, easily, like you’re thinking, all right, I got $4,000 extra month it could go away the next month. Right. Like you just have to be ready for that and have backups in place.

[00:37:12] Jeff Sieh: And don’t, I mean, if I would’ve put all my eggs in one that basket, I would’ve been in trouble. Right. I mean,

[00:37:18] Billy Thorpe: scrambled. Your eggs would be scrambled Right. now.

[00:37:21] Jeff Sieh: Right,

[00:37:22] Jeff Sieh: And I like scrambled eggs, but not

[00:37:23] Billy Thorpe: And that’s the thing I I try to tell people all the time with my experience, it’s like I have 4,250 videos on Amazon. There’s a couple tools out there where you can see which ones are, you know, like still active or whatever.

[00:37:37] Billy Thorpe: I have 1,977. That are no longer available. So not only are you worried about the platform and what they’re doing and how they’re delivering the content, but now you’re working with sellers. Sellers who changed, sellers who changed businesses. Inventory that comes and goes, V one, V two, V three that you don’t get V two and three.

[00:37:56] Billy Thorpe: So V one is now. Unavailable. You know, it’s like there’s so [00:38:00] many inventory things, there’s so many shipping things, there’s so many, Amazon things and you know, TikTok and I’m not just beating up on Amazon, but all these guys, it’s like they’re a marketplace and that’s the number one goal is to sell stuff and sellers on there as well.

[00:38:14] Billy Thorpe: And so, um, but I did the math ’cause I’m like, maybe I’m, maybe I’m making a mistake here. Maybe I should be qualifying all these products, uploading this video and trying to make more what I call maybe money. The reason why I call that is ’cause maybe it shows up on the carousel, maybe it passes Amazon stuff, maybe it gets bought, maybe it gets shipped.

[00:38:32] Billy Thorpe: I mean, there’s a lot of maybes. but I did the math on those 1,977 videos just based on my average fee. And I’m like, oh, I’ve made $60,000 in brand deal fees. Just from those videos. I’m gonna sleep well at night and I don’t give a rip. If they’re unavailable, I’m gonna make another video, you know? but if I was just doing that and doing product, dude, I would be weeping, like, how do I fix this?

[00:38:56] Billy Thorpe: What I mean, this is like half, like 51% of my [00:39:00] assets are now not working for me. It’s like 51% of your employees just got up and walked off the job.

[00:39:07] Jeff Sieh: that’s, I think it’s, it’s so important, like you said, as the, as that mindset. And then even Ralph, our resident accountant says, you nailed it. The revenue streams are a huge issue with creators because they see the gross number, but don’t realize it’s not what’s gonna hit their account with fees and timings and, tariffs, all that stuff.

[00:39:24] Jeff Sieh: Right, Billy? I mean, it’s just like. yeah,

[00:39:26] Conor Brown: Shiny object thing too. It’s like whenever these platforms come up, they have all the incentives in the beginning. Remember Jeff when it first started, and then I got that incentive that said, post five videos on Amazon, we’ll pay you $2,000. Those videos didn’t have to get a single view, and I qualified for it.

[00:39:42] Conor Brown: Sure enough, two grand showed up. They’re not running that promo ever again. Right? It was to get things started. So it’s this, it’s this land grab, right? It’s this thing of when it first comes up, yeah, they’re gonna throw money at it, but what happens in eight months when they [00:40:00] aren’t throwing money at it because they’ve hit their numbers that they need, that’s when they’re gonna change stuff.

[00:40:05] Billy Thorpe: Yeah,

[00:40:06] Jeff Sieh: this is a great question from Rich. Sorry I off there. Billy, but he goes, is the Amazon influencer the best place to start this? So I’m assuming he’s talking about product videos, or can you just upload review videos like on YouTube or maybe TikTok to get started?

[00:40:20] Billy Thorpe: Yeah.

[00:40:20] Billy Thorpe: So I mean, I think the biggest difference is like if you can upload ’em anywhere, right? It’s like we can all create, we see it all, I mean, it’s been around for years, these YouTube channels with products and product reviews. the difference is the audience size, the beauty of the Amazon influencer program.

[00:40:34] Billy Thorpe: Is, it’s on their platform, it’s on site, it’s on the product page. So the likelihood of somebody actually watching that, viewing it clicking by now you making a commission, it’s just way higher. and, and we’ll just say, I have a YouTube channel where I post videos. I don’t post every video there because I get paid to do.

[00:40:51] Billy Thorpe: That’s another upsell, um, that I, that I do however. If I relied on the offsite platform versus onsite stuff, I would [00:41:00] definitely be working for someone else Right.

[00:41:01] Billy Thorpe: now. Like there’s no chance. so I think you have to build an, I think that’s where the audience size matters. It’s like only a certain percentage of those are gonna convert.

[00:41:10] Billy Thorpe: So you have to like really figure out like how to, how to grow that audience of, Yeah.

[00:41:18] Billy Thorpe: if I was rich, I know he’s in the, um, you know, product promotion space or whatever. I’d be doing live shows all the time, selling crap, sending people to my website, buying banners, shirts, hats, whatever I’d be, here’s how we embroider, here’s behind the scenes, whatever.

[00:41:32] Billy Thorpe: I think there’s a lot of opportunity for the common business to go live And, build a crazy audience and be able to produce that, those types of products.

[00:41:40] Jeff Sieh: And, and even, what you’ve mentioned before is even liquidating inventory. Like if you, let’s say Rich, you’ve got all these cups that you have and maybe they’re not even available anymore to buy, but you have three pallets of them. You could get on a live stream and liquidate those, you know, give it to Billy, he’ll do it on whatnot for you, uh, and just take 50% of the profits.

[00:41:59] Jeff Sieh: But [00:42:00] anyway, uh, but that’s, I mean, that’s a whole nother, that’s a whole nother, and Billy and I have talked about,of a, like a business model. Like you could go in and. And help these places clear out their inventory. If you are really good at live streaming and selling stuff, why not? So tons of opportunity here in 2026.

[00:42:16] Jeff Sieh: we talked a little bit about, uploading to YouTube and this stuff. So if a creator is repurposing the same content like Amazon and then uploading the YouTube, is it okay to do that for one, like cross posting and how do you, do you have to like reshoot some stuff to make it work for a different platform or you just throw it all up on the same video everywhere.

[00:42:34] Billy Thorpe: I would just throw it up on the same video I mean, that’s just ’cause I’m lazy. but, you know, I see a lot of Amazon influencers doing this and making good money. There’s a couple people in my group who are, are making really good money every year just by uploading those videos to YouTube every single time.

[00:42:50] Billy Thorpe: And, and they’re doing well with those offsite clicks or whatever. So I, I really think it depends, you know, it’s like, it’s kind of funny to talk about Amazon and YouTube at the same time because they’re like [00:43:00] way two different animals. so, so yeah, I, I do, and now if I’m doing a vertical video, I will try to like go reformat it. So if a company says, yeah, we wanna pay you to put it on TikTok, I’ll go reformat the video. Maybe, maybe make a few slight edits. That way the product’s in the center of the screen and not over to the left or right.

[00:43:17] Billy Thorpe: but yeah, that’s all I do really. But I’m not, I’m like the worst person to ask ’cause I’m just lazy.

[00:43:21] Billy Thorpe: So.

[00:43:21] Conor Brown: You are not lazy. You’re, you’re efficient, and you know what you need to do every single day and, and anything else doesn’t pay you, then you can chalk up being lazy. What, what have But that being said, you know, I think this what we’ve all talked about, it’s one thing to just start creating a bunch of videos, right?

[00:43:38] Conor Brown: And posting these product reviews and, and getting brand deals and those sorts of things. And, and we can edit as less as, as as possible. but live selling, I think is a, a whole nother beast that is booming right now. And I think, we’ll, we’ll continue to boom. And Billy, you’ve seen so much success with it yourself, looking ahead, do you think creators [00:44:00] who, who can’t live sell or, or who can’t confidently sell live, are they gonna start to be at a, a real disadvantage over the next.

[00:44:10] Conor Brown: Five years when it comes to pushing out

[00:44:12] Conor Brown: their, their product.

[00:44:13] Billy Thorpe: Yeah, I, I think more than creators, I think, you know, e-commerce sellers, retail stores, I think if they can’t figure it out they’re gonna be in a pickle. and, and it’s not really, you know, I wouldn’t say like, oh, it’s required, but it’s, I mean, it’s powerful. It’s like, look, we have a whole audience in the chat, so we’re one to many right now.

[00:44:31] Billy Thorpe: So we’re building this, communication with our. Audience with our customers, if you wanna put it in that perspective. We’re building confidence with them, we’re building trust with them. We’re answering questions. So, you know, I think about it like I used to work in, in retail and you have 20 people.

[00:44:46] Billy Thorpe: I, I was actually at a retail store today. I was upgrading my phone. I was at T-Mobile and I go in and there’s like four salespeople and there’s 25 people in line. It’s like, oh my God, you guys are gonna be here all day doing this one-to-one. But if you’re one to many, and I’m [00:45:00] selling this Ecamm mug, and we all know like when you’re live selling, so like I live sell and whatnot, and what I love about specific platforms that live sell, or maybe you build a show that’s like, this is a live selling show is everyone knows what’s going on.

[00:45:13] Billy Thorpe: There’s no like slide of hand. It’s like, I’m here to sell stuff. You’re here to buy stuff. That’s what I love about whatnot. It’s like I can just get on there and go, I got a pile of crap. I’m gonna sell to you and you’re here to buy. This is perfect. And so, with whatnot in particular, I’ve built an, a whole entire different type of audience of over 3000 people on that platform that are buyers.

[00:45:33] Billy Thorpe: They’re ready to buy whatever I can, you know, put on there and sell. So I think, you know, even for. Creators. It’s powerful because with creators, when you learn to show up and you can live stream, then you can monetize that a bunch of different ways, not just selling your own product or services. But you know, some, similar to what Jeff said earlier, it’s like, I can sell stuff for other people.

[00:45:53] Billy Thorpe: Maybe I can travel to warehouses and set up and sell on my whatnot and take a percentage or, you know, sell on my own [00:46:00] platform. I can start my own YouTube show. I have brands pay me and then I spotlight their, stuff on there and send ’em to their websites or wherever. the technology is there now where it wasn’t here five years ago, but now the technology’s here where we can send people to Shopify stores and we can show up anywhere.

[00:46:17] Billy Thorpe: I can be here in Puerto Rico sending someone to Jeff’s Shopify store, you know, 20 hours a week. so, but I think the nine creators, I think the business owners, the retail people who have employees sitting around doing nothing. This is a huge opportunity to, one, get your team to where they’re prepared.

[00:46:34] Billy Thorpe: When someone does ding to the door, they are actually aware of what’s going on and they can sell the product. on your shelf. So live selling would be very, good training for the people to show up, show up to their social media audience, build a whole nother audience. I mean, you think about live selling, it’s like we’re all over the world Right.

[00:46:51] Billy Thorpe: now, potentially.

[00:46:53] Billy Thorpe: People watching from all kinds of different places in the us, Puerto Rico, wherever they’re watching from. Like, it’s just way [00:47:00] outside of your market. Versus if you were opening up a store in downtown Bluff City, Tennessee, population 500, it’s like, what’s more powerful? So Yeah.

[00:47:09] Billy Thorpe: it’s a, anyway, I, I won’t get, I’ll digs I’ll. No, that’s.

[00:47:15] Jeff Sieh: speaking of technology, um, that was a perfect segue to our pals over Ecamm. That’s one of the things that lets you go live really, really easy, have all these really cool lower thirds. You can actually tie it into Amazon, like you can bring up your Amazon comments and, and do stuff there ’cause they tie into Amazon Live as well.

[00:47:31] Jeff Sieh: So you can find out more about Ecamm. I go to Ecamm dot com slash Jeff. You can say 15% by using code Jeff. 15. Billy, this has been amazing. We only have five minutes left. we’ve talked a little bit of live streaming about, you know, I think it’s really coming. It’s gonna come more into North America.

[00:47:46] Jeff Sieh: It’s really big overseas, A lot of places. huge, huge, live, uh, like in China, they have like warehouses of people just live streaming all the time. 24 7. What do you think is gonna push kind of our last question. What [00:48:00] are you gonna push life selling into the mainstream here in the US first? Is it gonna be better tech like e km?

[00:48:05] Jeff Sieh: Is it gonna be better creators or brands that are just like, we’ve gotta cut through the noise. This is the best way to do

[00:48:10] Billy Thorpe: Yeah, I, I think all the above. I mean, I definitely think brands need conversion. We’ve seen This on TI mean, TikTok is huge. Whatnot is huge. Amazon live selling, I don’t know what they did. They seem like they had the edge and then they just like cut, cut it off. I don’t know what happened. They just like put a wall up on the, on the edge.

[00:48:26] Billy Thorpe: I don’t know what happened. but that, I think that, you know, more platforms, we see it.

[00:48:30] Billy Thorpe: now, platforms are gonna push commerce. Like you, you see it on. Every platform Right,

[00:48:34] Billy Thorpe: now, they’re all pushing, you know, live selling or, or click this, you know, link in the carousel or whatever. ‘ cause they see that it’s a huge industry and they all want a piece of the pie.

[00:48:43] Billy Thorpe: Now will that on the consumer side get a little tiring? Will it, you know, detract us from spending more time on those platforms? You know, my wife and I are having this conversation earlier and we were talking about affiliate links and disclosures because there’s some companies that, Anyway, I won’t get into that.

[00:48:58] Billy Thorpe: Anyhow, it’s something fresh off [00:49:00] the Amazon drama wagon I won’t talk about. But anyhow, we were talking about that and she goes, yeah, I’m just tired of it. I’m tired of, if I ask my friend where she got her workout shorts, she’s like, oh yeah, I got ’em here. Oh, let me send you my Philly link. She’s like, I’m sick of it.

[00:49:12] Billy Thorpe: Like I can’t. Just like make a recommendation without the affiliate link. And I’m like, I get what you’re saying honey, but don’t forget how we make a lot of money in our family. right. That’s That’s exactly yeah man, I think it’s a huge, huge, huge opportunity. You’re right. China’s been doing it forever. There can be the driving force behind the product supply. ’cause it’s all comes down to like, where’s this product coming from? That’s where it’s coming from. Like it, love it, hate it. Doesn’t matter. It is what it is.

[00:49:40] Billy Thorpe: They’re the factory of the world. Like accept it or go get a fat loan and try to compete with it. Good luck. so Yeah, I mean, I think they’ve, you know, they kinda set this and then we’ve seen success on, you know, TikTok especially, I think TikTok really like opened the eyes of big and small brands.

[00:49:56] Billy Thorpe: but really big brands have not gotten into this as much.

[00:49:59] Billy Thorpe: I mean, [00:50:00] there’s some in the creator space that have,

[00:50:01] Billy Thorpe: but I know some top guys over like Energizer and things like that, and they’re still like, yeah. we’re watching, we’re paying attention. But they haven’t, you know, ’cause they, they more red tape I guess, and they got like conglomerate companies. So it’s bonkers what these people are doing. Yeah.

[00:50:19] Jeff Sieh: so stay tuned for 2026. I, I have a feeling there’s gonna be a lot coming in the live streaming space, but Billy, we’ve mentioned a little, couple times, but I wanted to give you the, the final say to tell people where they can find you, more about your free community and also your upsell, you know, like to your one-on-one that you have for

[00:50:35] Billy Thorpe: Yeah, man. Appreciate it. Well, appreciate you and, and Connor having me again. And once again, just go to Billy Thorpe live. I do have the Dealmakers group where we, uh, do some meetups over there. You can, it’s, it’s completely open to ask your questions. I’ll try to get back to you or some of our awesome community members will to kind walk you through.

[00:50:52] Billy Thorpe: really what my focus is, is working with brands. So I’m not really focused on, um, making money with Amazon. That’s kind of my, the passive [00:51:00] thing that happens. But if you want to really build a business and learn what brands want and do a more low ticket, high frequency business model by leveraging these platforms, that’s really what I focus on and help people with.

[00:51:12] Billy Thorpe: So, Yeah, I mean, I see some students in the chat,

[00:51:14] Jeff Sieh: Billy is one of the people who I trust on this. ’cause he has walked the walk, he does it, he’s living it every day. So, he’s not one of those, people who just knows how to market. He knows how

[00:51:23] Billy Thorpe: I.

[00:51:24] Jeff Sieh: and how to make brand deals. Yeah. So, so make sure you guys check ’em out.

[00:51:28] Jeff Sieh: Connor Brown. Where can people find out more about the unsinkable Connor Brown?

[00:51:31] Conor Brown: You can head over to vacation kingdoms.com and follow me at Vacation Kingdoms across the social medias. Let me know where you’re going, where you’re traveling in 2026. What a fantastic episode of Fantastic Guests. As always, Billy’s the man. Great way to start 2026.

[00:51:47] Jeff Sieh: Yes. And thank you to all of our great people in the chat. We got Ralph, we’ve got, rich Graham, everybody who’s stopped by, Sandra, all of our friends. Thank you so much for watching. I would love for you guys if you would go sign up to find out more [00:52:00] about our show. If you can go to jeffy.com/news, get on the, email community.

[00:52:03] Jeff Sieh: We have a great time over there. jeffy.com/news, usually comes out Tuesdays and Fridays. So we’ll see you guys next time. Thank you for our pals over at Ecamm. Find out more about them at Ecamm dot com slash jeff. With that, we’ll see you guys next time. Bye everybody.