--- type: Article title: "Best Sellers Beat Tech Overwhelm: Start With What Sold" description: "Best sellers and best buyers tell you everything. A 1960s TVA story shows why retailers feeling buried by tech should start with what already sold and who bought." resource: https://amyfaychandler.com/weekly-retail-tidbits-241-beat-technology-overwhelm-start-with-what-sold/ tags: [weekly-retail-tidbits-241-beat-technology-overwhelm-start-with-what-sold] --- [Weekly Retail Tidbits](https://amyfaychandler.com/category/friday-retail-tidbits/) | [Build Your Systems](https://amyfaychandler.com/category/friday-retail-tidbits/build-your-systems/) | [Embrace the Tools](https://amyfaychandler.com/category/friday-retail-tidbits/embrace-the-tools/) # Beat Technology Overwhelm: Start With What Sold and Who Bought It — Weekly Retail Tidbits #241 By[AmyFay Chandler](https://wordpress-1600709-6279960.cloudwaysapps.com) March 20, 2026July 31, 2026 Originally published as Tidbit #241. “The most transformative technologies are often the ones that take the longest to feel normal.” — Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows Spring starts Thursday. If you’ve been waiting for a sign to start something new, this is it. A friend told me a story recently that made an impact on me. In the 1960s his wife worked for TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority. Her job was to travel to rural areas across Tennessee and teach people how to use electricity. Not generate it. Not repair it. Use it. How to operate a range. How to plug things in. How to make this world-changing technology work in their daily lives. Edison’s work dates back to 1879. These women were doing this 80 years later – not because people were unintelligent, not because they were stubborn. They were simply overwhelmed by something unfamiliar, and nobody had shown them where to start. Sound familiar? I hear a version of this constantly: I know I need to get better at that. I just don’t know where to begin. The tools exist. The need is clear. But overwhelm has a way of keeping us exactly where we are. I was that retailer. Better tools existed than the ones I was using, and I knew it. But I was overwhelmed and I didn’t know where to start – so I didn’t. It cost me more than I realized at the time. This week I have 2 simple tips: Know what sold. Your best sellers are telling you what your customers love. If you can’t see what’s moved, you can’t restock it. An empty spot where a best seller used to be is quietly losing you money. Know who bought it. You cannot build a relationship with someone you can’t reach. An email list, a loyalty program, even a simple sign-up sheet – whatever opens that line of communication is everything. I write this newsletter every week because that line stays open. You need the same thing in your store. Those TVA educators couldn’t teach anyone a thing until they could get to them. Same principle. You can’t serve your customer, surprise her, or bring her back if you have no way to reach her. You don’t have to overhaul everything. You don’t need a perfect system by Friday. But pick one – what sold, or who bought it – and make it a non-negotiable. Not someday. This week. The electricity was already there. Someone just had to show up and say, “Here’s where to begin.” We’re in one of those moments right now. The tools exist — better than anything we’ve had before — but a tool is only useful when you know what you need. Start with what sold and who bought it. That foundation is everything. It’s what makes every other tool make sense, including the ones that feel overwhelming today. Already doing both? Read on for a technology tip. xoxo, ❤️AmyFay ## Technology Tip This morning my agent briefed me after all of my subagent specialists did their morning research – tailored to exactly what I want to know. Not people agents. Bot agents. I have a working team of somewhere around 50 agents – it grows daily so I am not even sure of the number. Yes, I am writing this. 😊 I, the human. One of my research agents found a post that a friend also shared with me. It’s worth your read [here](https://x.com/MattShumer_). (by Matt Shumer on X) The anxiety, the excitement – I am living it. Dancing down my hallway, jumping up and down in my office by what I figure out – and then totally freaking out all at the same time. You’ll understand that if you read Matt’s post. My tip again – because one of you surprised me this week. Use an LLM. (Large Language Model). OpenAI has ChatGPT. Anthropic has Claude. Google has Gemini. Perplexity uses them all but does not have its own model. Pay for it. Most are $20 a month. Use the best model within the model. That uses the most “energy” so costs the most – but this is less than pennies for what you will learn and get in return. So – what do you need to do? Track inventory? Know your customers better? Or do you have those down and you need to manage your finances better? Learn