2X eCommerce Podcast

This is a very candid and honest episode, I pounder on the label 'expert'. I have been referred as an 'expert' in the ecommerce space a few too many times. I might be an 'expert' to some, but over the past few months, I have learnt from true entrepreneurial ecommerce experts. 

The key to establishing which expert to follow is understanding where you want to go in ecommerce. If you work for an online retailer or a consultant for a number of online retailers, then most experts you will gravitate towards will be people that have self-identified themselves as experts backed by a track-record of delivering results within online retail businesses they themselves have worked for in the past.

If on the other hand, you are looking at things from purely entrepreneur angle, then the ecommerce experts you will identify with will be ecommerce entrepreneurs. This is where I am striving to evolve to now. I was (and probably am too some) the former i.e. a career ecommerce expert. BUT I am now learning the ropes of becoming an ecommerce entrepreneur. I am NOT yet an entrepreneurial ecommerce expert. BUT my daily habits, are leading me down this path. 

Remember there are two types of ecommerce experts:

1. Career eCommerce Experts (marketers, CROs, media buyers, developers, designers, logistics experts, industry pundits) and
2. Entrepreneur eCommerce Experts - they are all of the above wrapped up into one that put the money in the line and take HUGE risks. The ones that turn out successful in the long-run, live to tell their story as 'experts'.

Regardless of what type of expert you strive to be, STAY HUMBLE.

Hope you enjoy the show and give me a shout on your thoughts about eCommerce experts.

 

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SPONSORS:

This episode is brought to you by:

.STORE

.STORE domains are getting mainstream adoption by brands such as Emirates (www.emirates.store), Jimi Hendrix (www.jimihendrix.store), and F1 (www.f1.store).

If you want a short and snappy domain name for your retail brand or your online store, you can now get a .STORE domain name for just £4.99 or about $6.99 using the coupon code 2XSTORE at www.get.store. 

and

Klaviyo 

Klaviyo is a game-changing email automation tool specifically built for scaling eCommerce businesses. I am not just saying it…I use Klaviyo in my ecommerce store as well in a number of stores I advise for. With Klaviyo, in just a few clicks you are able to activate pre-built email automation flows such as cart abandonment, up-sells and win-backs.  Klaviyo also seamlessly integrates with Facebook Audiences. If you’re an eCommerce manager, I cannot recommend Klaviyo enough. Give Klaviyo a try today on  www.klaviyo.com.

 

 

★ Support this podcast ★

On this episode we talk about how to build your ecommerce business in 2018, in preparation for a sale or exit sometime in the future.   I am joined by Thomas Smale; the Founder of FE International, a leading website brokerage firm.  Thomas specializes in advising in the M&A of SaaS, e-commerce, affiliate and content businesses.  He has consulted hundreds of internet entrepreneurs on exit strategy, growth and business development.     FE International offers comprehensive exit planning services  as well as direct access to an established network of pre-qualified international investors  to drive demand to your business and maximize value for your company.   FE International provides advisory services for mid-market SaaS, e-commerce and content businesses.  The company has become the pre-eminent adviser and valuation thought-leader in the industry,  completing over $75M in sales across 425 acquisitions since 2010.  FE International is headquartered in Boston, US, with offices also in Europe and S.E. Asia.    

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SPONSORS:

This episode is brought to you by:

.STORE

.STORE domains are getting mainstream adoption by brands such as Emirates (www.emirates.store), Jimi Hendrix (www.jimihendrix.store), and F1 (www.f1.store).

If you want a short and snappy domain name for your retail brand or your online store, you can now get a .STORE domain name for just £4.99 or about $6.99 using the coupon code 2XSTORE at www.get.store. 

and

Klaviyo 

Klaviyo is a game-changing email automation tool specifically built for scaling eCommerce businesses. I am not just saying it…I use Klaviyo in my ecommerce store as well in a number of stores I advise for. With Klaviyo, in just a few clicks you are able to activate pre-built email automation flows such as cart abandonment, up-sells and win-backs.  Klaviyo also seamlessly integrates with Facebook Audiences. If you’re an eCommerce manager, I cannot recommend Klaviyo enough. Give Klaviyo a try today on  www.klaviyo.com.

 

★ Support this podcast ★

HAPPY NEW YEAR FOLKS!

It has been quite a while...exactly 56 days since my last episode! On this episode, I explain where I've been and what I've been up to.

As 2018 starts off in full swing, I drop some knaw-ledge bombs on this episode, Tai Lopez style 😜. On a more serious note, I talk about books that have made a longlasting impact in my personal, professional and business life.

I categorise them into:

LIFE CHANGING BOOKS

• The ONE Thing by Gary Keller
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life - by Mark Manson
• Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday

ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET SHIFTING BOOKS

• The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco (cheesy title but huge nuggets of knowledge) 
• UNSCRIPTED by MJ DeMarco
• Start with Why by Simon Sinek

ECOMMERCE/COMMERCE BIOGRAPHIES

• Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh’
• Elon Musk: Inventing the Future by Ashlee Vance
• Ready Fire Aim - Michael Masterson

CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY, COPYWRITING / CRO

• Influenceby Robert Caldini
• Nudge - Richard Thaler
• The Ultimate Sales Letter - Dan Kennedy
• Cashvertising: How to Use More Than 100 Secrets of Ad‑Agency Psychology to by Drew Eric Whitman
•   Ogilvy on Advertising
•   Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

OTHER GREAT BOOKS

• Facebook Advertising / Paid Media: The Advertised Mind: Groundbreaking Insights into How Our Brains Respond to Advertising by Erik Du Plessis
• World History: Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan
• Key Person of Influence by Kevin Harrington and Daniel Priestley
• Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal by Oren Klaff (on my to-read list) 
• Mindset by Carol Dweck 
• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

 

 

 

 

 

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SPONSORS:

This episode is brought to you by:

.STORE

.STORE domains are getting mainstream adoption by brands such as Emirates (www.emirates.store), Jimi Hendrix (www.jimihendrix.store), and F1 (www.f1.store).

If you want a short and snappy domain name for your retail brand or your online store, you can now get a .STORE domain name for just £4.99 or about $6.99 using the coupon code 2XSTORE at www.get.store. 

and

Klaviyo 

Klaviyo is a game-changing email automation tool specifically built for scaling eCommerce businesses. I am not just saying it…I use Klaviyo in my ecommerce store as well in a number of stores I advise for. With Klaviyo, in just a few clicks you are able to activate pre-built email automation flows such as cart abandonment, up-sells and win-backs.  Klaviyo also seamlessly integrates with Facebook Audiences. If you’re an eCommerce manager, I cannot recommend Klaviyo enough. Give Klaviyo a try today on  www.klaviyo.com.

 

★ Support this podcast ★

On this webinar, I talk about ecommerce funnels using Facebook. I am running a webinar tomorrow.  Sign up for it here:  https://events.genndi.com/register/169105139238452231/bca4623575

 

 

 

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SPONSORS:

This episode is brought to you by 

Klaviyo 

Klaviyo is a game-changing email automation tool specifically built for scaling eCommerce businesses. I am not just saying it…I use Klaviyo in my ecommerce store as well in a number of stores I advise for. With Klaviyo, in just a few clicks you are able to activate pre-built email automation flows such as cart abandonment, up-sells and win-backs.  Klaviyo also seamlessly integrates with Facebook Audiences. If you’re an eCommerce manager, I cannot recommend Klaviyo enough. Give Klaviyo a try today on  www.klaviyo.com.

 

★ Support this podcast ★

SCANDIS is the eCommerce division of Scandinavian Designs and Dania Furniture. The first Scandinavian Designs store opened its doors in San Rafael, California in 1963 to cater to the contemporary home furnishing needs brought on by the huge wave of mid-century modern homes emerging in neighbourhoods throughout the west coast. In keeping with this architectural design movement, stores soon opened across northern and southern California, and later in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota and Illinois.

They made their foray into ecommerce for the very first time earlier in the year, in February and have not looked back since. 

I interviewed their web marketing manager - Julio Giannotti and he shared a tonne of insights with me; here's a summary:

• why and how they got started with Shopify Plus,
• their lean ecommerce team,
• challenges scaling their operations,
• the SEO marketing and paid acquisition strategy,
• automation of with Shopify Plus' Launchpad and Flow apps
• how they cleverly use their sales reps as affiliates**
• how physical retail and ecommerce build synergies to driving, even more, sales for their business,
• how they almost doubled sales across retail branches when they launched their ecommerce site
• his killer Shopify app recommendations

It's a value-packed episode.

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SPONSORS:

This episode is brought to you by 

Klaviyo 

Klaviyo is a game-changing email automation tool specifically built for scaling eCommerce businesses. I am not just saying it…I use Klaviyo in my ecommerce store as well in a number of stores I advise for. With Klaviyo, in just a few clicks you are able to activate pre-built email automation flows such as cart abandonment, up-sells and win-backs.  Klaviyo also seamlessly integrates with Facebook Audiences. If you’re an eCommerce manager, I cannot recommend Klaviyo enough. Give Klaviyo a try today on  www.klaviyo.com.

and

.STORE

.STORE domains are getting mainstream adoption by brands such as Emirates (www.emirates.store), Jimi Hendrix (www.jimihendrix.store), and F1 (www.f1.store).

If you want a short and snappy domain name for your retail brand or your online store, you can now get a .STORE domain name for just £4.99 or about $6.99 using the coupon code 2XSTORE at www.get.store. 

 

                                                                                                                                                                   

 

 

★ Support this podcast ★

Jason Boyce is one of three Co-Founders at Dazadi.com a home recreational product online retailer of basketball hoops, game tables, fitness equipment, and much more. He has over 13 years ecommerce experience and started Dazadi.com in 2002 with his 3 brothers. They have over 10,000 products on their site with 100K SKUs and sell on all major marketplaces in the U.S and Canada.

Over my interview with Jason, I discovered that Dazadi's strength actually lies in marketplace selling. A significant chunk of the $22 million annual revenue can be attributed to marketplaces such as Amazon, Walmart.com and Houzz. They have actually mastered the art and science of marketplace selling.

Jason is also huge on outsourcing - his business has an office stationed in the Philippines with close to 30 members of staff. His U.S. team is distributed across the country and they have an office in China for factory liaison and also quality control. 

Jason is well travelled and deeply understands cultural nuances in the countries that he does business in. 

His best decision was to ditch selling other brands and focus on manufacturing their own branded products under the 'Harvil' brand.

This is an episode to listen or watch if you want to understand the intricacies involved in scaling to a mature 8-figure ecommerce business entails. 

 

SPONSORS:

This episode is brought to you by 

Klaviyo 

Klaviyo is a game-changing email automation tool specifically built for scaling eCommerce businesses. I am not just saying it…I use Klaviyo in my ecommerce store as well in a number of stores I advise for. With Klaviyo, in just a few clicks you are able to activate pre-built email automation flows such as cart abandonment, up-sells and win-backs.  Klaviyo also seamlessly integrates with Facebook Audiences. If you’re an eCommerce manager, I cannot recommend Klaviyo enough. Give Klaviyo a try today on  www.klaviyo.com.

and

.STORE

.STORE domains are getting mainstream adoption by brands such as Emirates (www.emirates.store), Jimi Hendrix (www.jimihendrix.store), and F1 (www.f1.store).

If you want a short and snappy domain name for your retail brand or your online store, you can now get a .STORE domain name for just £4.99 or about $6.99 using the coupon code 2XSTORE at www.get.store. 

 

★ Support this podcast ★

The mention of 'dropshipping' often denotes either poor ecommerce customer experience and lack of supply chain control or some 'guru' trying to sell online courses on how to start an ecommerce business. A search on YouTube for 'ecommerce' returns a tonne of results related to dropshipping as a means to escape the 9-5 and upsells to online courses. 

My take has been and still is, a business with poor customer experience is impossible to profitably scale; and so dropshipping as a viable ecommerce model was really off my radar. But more recently I was hired to carry out due-diligence on a drop ship business ecommerce brand with monthly revenues of $250,000+ and came across another with monthly revenues of $500,000. This is when dropshipping as a business model started to get my attention. 

Don't get me wrong, there is a LOT of crap out there. Basically most dropshipping is the scrapings at bottom of the ecommerce pot. The droppshipping sites I mentioned above and all of the dropshipping sites I see that seem to be doing well revenue-wise come across to shoppers as established brands. 

I am also seeing a lot of innovation in conversion rate optimisation with dropshippers because they really are front end marketing businesses that need to prop up the perceived value of products they have little or no control of actually producing.  

Tomas Slimas is a successful and retired dropshipping ecommerce entrepreneur who generated revenues of $3 million/year from his dropship site before he co-founded Oberlo (https://oberlo.com/), a dropship app that helps Shopify stores find products to sell.

I tracked him and got him on the show to discuss the viability of dropshipping as a scalable ecommerce model in 2017 and beyond.

This is a really interesting conversation. You should still listen to it if you are an established merchant, as you should consider latching dropshipping for product catlog expansion. 

 

 

SPONSORS:

This episode is brought to you by 

Klaviyo 

Klaviyo is a game-changing email automation tool specifically built for scaling eCommerce businesses. I am not just saying it…I use Klaviyo in my ecommerce store as well in a number of stores I advise for. With Klaviyo, in just a few clicks you are able to activate pre-built email automation flows such as cart abandonment, up-sells and win-backs.  Klaviyo also seamlessly integrates with Facebook Audiences. If you’re an eCommerce manager, I cannot recommend Klaviyo enough. Give Klaviyo a try today on  www.klaviyo.com.

and

.STORE

.STORE domains are getting mainstream adoption by brands such as Emirates (www.emirates.store), Jimi Hendrix (www.jimihendrix.store), and F1 (www.f1.store).

If you want a short and snappy domain name for your retail brand or your online store, you can now get a .STORE domain name for just £4.99 or about $6.99 using the coupon code 2XSTORE at www.get.store. 

 

★ Support this podcast ★

Sabina embodies the true meaning of finding freedom through entrepreneurship and the embrace of change. She alongside her family are digital nomads in the true sense of the term. She is a self-taught entrepreneur; and a Co-Founder of two husband and wife run ecommerce businesses, Veppo Cigs and Taza Designs. 

I invited Sabina to the show to share her unique and memorable story about the need to embrace change in order to grow both your mindset and business. Change can be difficult, hard and lonely. Change can tear you apart but only for a brief period of time until experience, hindsight and resilience is re-build you. You always have to have the end goal in mind to see the benefits of change and see its true purpose.  

Sabina had limited choices over the course of the 2008 financial crisis. Her business directly serviced the real estate market; which ultimately led to shutting it down. Although she was faced with losing her business, she kept her ears glued to the ground and learnt from a business mentor about the then up and coming technology behind electronic cigarettes and its potentially disruptive impact on the tobacco industry.

She doubled down on it and moved her family to Costa Rica in order to significantly reduce their living expenses and work on building their business. She has since lived in Belize, Central America and then decided to settle in Bali for a few years. She is currently now in North America and visits Bali regularly. 

This episode and interview is one of my all time favourites as it really got me thinking about change. I definitely recommend it.

 

SPONSORS:

This episode is brought to you by 

Klaviyo 

Klaviyo is a game-changing email automation tool specifically built for scaling eCommerce businesses. I am not just saying it…I use Klaviyo in my ecommerce store as well in a number of stores I advise for. With Klaviyo, in just a few clicks you are able to activate pre-built email automation flows such as cart abandonment, up-sells and win-backs.  Klaviyo also seamlessly integrates with Facebook Audiences. If you’re an eCommerce manager, I cannot recommend Klaviyo enough. Give Klaviyo a try today on  www.klaviyo.com.

and

.STORE

.STORE domains are getting mainstream adoption by brands such as Emirates (www.emirates.store), Jimi Hendrix (www.jimihendrix.store), and F1 (www.f1.store).

If you want a short and snappy domain name for your retail brand or your online store, you can now get a .STORE domain name for just £4.99 or about $6.99 using the coupon code 2XSTORE at www.get.store. 

★ Support this podcast ★

Located in Central Illinois, Kaleigh Moore primarily crafts blog content for SaaS and eCommerce companies. She has been copywriting for the last four years under the brand Lumen. She had an Etsy store when she was 19 and ran the business for five years. She had a successful vintage jewellery company where she designed and assembled jewellery pieces.

It was from that company where she learned about marketing and specifically the power of email marketing. According to her, email marketing was the biggest driver when it came to driving sales in comparison to social media.

On this episode, we will talk about:

• eCommerce product page trends: such as the integration of GIFs/ Cinemagraphs and the use more user-generated content, buyer's guides.
• eCommerce copywriting for conversions: and the psychology behind the words, formulas and so much more!

 

SPONSORS:

This episode is brought to you by 

Klaviyo 

Klaviyo is a game-changing email automation tool specifically built for scaling eCommerce businesses. I am not just saying it…I use Klaviyo in my ecommerce store as well in a number of stores I advise for. With Klaviyo, in just a few clicks you are able to activate pre-built email automation flows such as cart abandonment, up-sells and win-backs.  Klaviyo also seamlessly integrates with Facebook Audiences. If you’re an eCommerce manager, I cannot recommend Klaviyo enough. Give Klaviyo a try today on  www.klaviyo.com.

and

.STORE

.STORE domains are getting mainstream adoption by brands such as Emirates (www.emirates.store), Jimi Hendrix (www.jimihendrix.store), and F1 (www.f1.store).

If you want a short and snappy domain name for your retail brand or your online store, you can now get a .STORE domain name for just £4.99 or about $6.99 using the coupon code 2XSTORE at www.get.store. 

★ Support this podcast ★

One of the most downloaded episodes last season was Brand Authenticity, Selling Direct to Consumer and Gaining PR Traction [Physical Product Podcast EP:02] with Scott Gabrielson, founder of Oliver Cabell. A minimalist high-end bag and accessories company.

On this episode, I bring Scott again to share the progress of his brand. What really initially impressed me was not only Oliver Cabell's very well designed Italian made products but the execution of the media - both mainstream and social. It was right on point; with coverage on Fast Company, Cool Hunting and GQ. Scott had a lot to say on how to rapidly grow an email database. 

Oliver Cabell has made another milestone; with recent funding from an angel investor to the tune of $1.2m, they are expanding beyond high-end bags into footwear (sneakers to be specific). 

So on this episode, Scott shares how he was able to attract investment and how he intends to uniquely launch designs on a weekly basis rather than seasonal. 

It was a really interesting discussion with sprinkles of anecdotes on how to build and grow a luxury fashion brand. 

 

SPONSORS:

This episode is brought to you by 

Klaviyo 

Klaviyo is a game-changing email automation tool specifically built for scaling eCommerce businesses. I am not just saying it…I use Klaviyo in my ecommerce store as well in a number of stores I advise for. With Klaviyo, in just a few clicks you are able to activate pre-built email automation flows such as cart abandonment, up-sells and win-backs.  Klaviyo also seamlessly integrates with Facebook Audiences. If you’re an eCommerce manager, I cannot recommend Klaviyo enough. Give Klaviyo a try today on  www.klaviyo.com.

and

.STORE

.STORE domains are getting mainstream adoption by brands such as Emirates (www.emirates.store), Jimi Hendrix (www.jimihendrix.store), and F1 (www.f1.store).

If you want a short and snappy domain name for your retail brand or your online store, you can now get a .STORE domain name for just £4.99 or about $6.99 using the coupon code 2XSTORE at www.get.store. 

★ Support this podcast ★