The Ecomcrew Ecommerce Podcast

Cory Stout is perhaps the most frequent guest of the EcomCrew podcast. He did a Roadshow with us as well as a two-part Under the Hood segment.

In this episode, I talk to him again to see how his business is doing and how my advice to him almost three years ago worked out. We also talk about the future of ecommerce, his plans for the next year, and other random stuff about being an entrepreneur in this day and age.

Timestamps:

• How being consistent helped in growing my sites - 3:42
• How Cory implemented my email marketing advice in his business - 7:35
• Living in a world of infinite leverage - 9:40
• Assessing Cory's plan to make an eCEO - 12:20
• What decisions are worth making and which ones should be delegated - 16:48
• The effects of raising your products' prices - 24:44
• Living in the present vs. living online - 29:20
• The philosophy that best defines me - 32:36
• The future of ecommerce - 36:15
• Will Amazon still be the ecommerce leader in 3 to 5 years? - 40:22
• Cory's plans for 2021 - 45:58

If you want to know more about Cory's business, you can check out his awesome sunglasses over at woodies.com.

If you want to be a guest at the podcast, you can sign up now to get an hour of free coaching. This is also an opportunity for you to create more awareness about your brand while we get awesome content for the podcast. It's a win-win!

And if you're getting value out of the business advice we give to guests on the show, you'll love our upcoming webinar.

Get the chance to ask us anything on December 1 during our Q&A webinar. This is a feature that we give exclusively to EcomCrew Premium members, but we're letting you experience it for free.

All you have to do is sign up and show up on December 1 at 10 AM (PST).

I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if you did, please leave us a review over on iTunes.

Happy selling!

Many people who have not been in the ecommerce business themselves have these expectations about the industry that are almost instantly shattered once they try it out themselves. One of the biggest myths in running an ecommerce business is that it's an easy thing to do because you have the potential to earn while you sleep.

What they don't know is that unless you learn to manage your processes and to let go some of the responsibilities to concentrate on what matters most, you might not even get enough sleep in the first place.

In this episode, we acknowledge these expectations and show you what you can do to run and grow your business without losing your sanity. There's a lot to learn from this episode especially because our guest, Melissa Eisler, is an expert in managing ecommerce businesses.

Melissa is an executive coach and has helped many entrepreneurs figure out how to run their businesses smoothly while still being able to have time to actually enjoy life. She has also helped us with our Masterminds before, and I'm very happy that she's finally joining us in the podcast.

Timestamps:

• The overwhelming feeling that comes with expanding your business - 4:14
• How Melissa manages her responsibilities - 5:10
• Melissa's trick to determining which things to focus on - 6:24
• The cons of having freedom with your time - 7:34
• Some principles to consider to not be busy all the time - 8:53
• The one thing that keeps entrepreneurs from improving - 11:30
• How to transition from solopreneurship to hiring employees - 14:28
• The advantages of hiring employees with complementary skills - 17:28
• Mike's advice on letting go of responsibilities and assigning them to specialists - 19:10
• How to tame your controller tendencies - 21:05
• Getting a business partner vs. hiring employees - 24:30
• Self-awareness and the importance of actively discovering your flaws as a leader - 29:54
• The harsh realities about running an ecommerce business - 33:02
• Investing in good employees - 36:18
• Creating a space for conscious choices - 40:03

If you want to learn more about Melissa or avail of her services, you can visit her website to contact her.

She also runs our Masterminds, and if you want to learn more about that, reach out to us through the special email address we sent you if you're an EcomCrew Premium member. If not, you can sign up to be one to get access to these Masterminds, our Secret Sauce webinars, Premium courses, and other Premium-members-only features through our paid subscription. With our Black Friday deal coming up, now is really the best time to sign up!

Meanwhile, you can join us on our upcoming Public Q&A Webinar on December 1 at 10 AM (PST). You can ask us any questions related to ecommerce, importing, hiring, and any other areas you're having trouble with.

Finally, if you like this episode, please leave us a review over on iTunes. It helps us reach more people, and you'll be accumulating good karma for doing so.

Until the next one, happy selling!

Welcome to the EcomCrew Podcast, and we have a special episode for you today!

Brad Bernhart, our first Under the Hood guest, is back to give us updates on how his business is doing. We get to revisit my advice to him, whether or not he was able to implement them, and how it turned out.

We started this segment in January 2018, hoping to help out our fellow entrepreneurs improve their businesses while also getting great content for the podcast. Almost three years later, we're still doing it, and we want to know how my advice actually influenced their growth.

Timestamps:

• Recap of Brad's first Under the Hood guesting - 3:54
• The Jackness Five - 4:54
• How Brad implemented my advice - 7:03
• Brad's business growth update - 15:28
• The two main things that increased Brad's revenue - 16:00
• The future of ecommerce - 19:15
• How Brad can get into corporate gifting - 21:23
• My honest take on Brad's corporate gifting page - 28:20
• Good keywords for Earlywood Designs - 30:44
• How Brad can improve his site's SEO - 33:12
• Writing content yourself vs. hiring someone else - 42:00
• How long blogging will pay off - 43:18

Brad's company is selling handmade wooden utensils, which I personally think are works of art. You can visit Earlywood's official website to find out more.

In case you missed it or want to give it a revisit, listen to Brad's two-part Under the Hood guesting on Episode 110 and Episode 112 of the podcast.

If you'd like to be featured in our Under the Hood segment and get an hour of free coaching, you can sign up now and we will contact you in case you're chosen.

You can also join us on December 1 at 10 AM (PST) for a free public Q&A webinar, which is perfect for your Q1 planning for 2021. You can ask us anything business-related, and Dave and I will try our best to help you out.

If you like this episode, please leave us a review over on iTunes.

Until the next episode! Happy selling!

Welcome to Episode 344 of the EcomCrew podcast! Dave and I are back with our usual banters and some sweet tactics for you to try out to improve your revenue on Amazon.

One of the wisest things you can do as an entrepreneur is to take note of the things that worked for other sellers and try implementing them into your own business.

In this episode, Dave and I talk about 7 Amazon hacks we've used for our own listings, how they work, and how they can benefit you.

Timestamps:

• Hack #1: Strive to get an Amazon badge - 5:40
• Hack #2: Use Brand Analytics to Your Advantage - 8:50
• Hack #3: Add questions to your listings - 12:58
• Hack #4: Be vigilant about your products' measurements - 15:38
• Hack #5: Use a refunds manager - 18:40
• Hack #6: Use an IP accelerator - 21:30
• Hack #7: Add foreign keywords in your back end - 24:27

If you want more advanced Amazon hacks, you can read the blog post written by our content writer Christine. It contains detailed steps to how you can improve traffic to your listing, save on fees, and more.

And to ensure your success in Amazon, you can get our book, Amazon Domination, for free! Dave and I wrote this book to help our fellow entrepreneurs navigate Amazon better and to help them avoid the common pitfalls third-party sellers make.

All you're going to pay for is the shipping fee, and we'll send you a free copy of the book.

What did you think of this episode? Do you want us to continue our friendly banters? Leave a comment below or write a short review over on iTunes.

Until next time, happy selling!

While COVID-19 has caused some serious drawbacks to a lot of businesses all around the world, there are some lucky business owners out there who, instead of experiencing loss, have seen their revenues rise instead.

Chris Cage's company, Greenbelly, is one such business.

It seems like so long ago when Chris and I saw each other, and with all the things going on, I felt like we needed to catch up to see how his business is affected by the pandemic.

In this episode, we'll take a look at how COVID affected the behavior of Chris' target market and how it helped increase his sales.

Timestamps:

• What happened to Mike's and Chris' businesses at the start of the pandemic - 2:35
• How the pandemic affected Greenbelly - 8:12
• How Chris made sure that Greenbelly had enough inventory - 17:04
• Other mediums Chris had been working on to improve his business - 18:05
• Chris' content marketing secrets - 24:17
• How Chris manages his company's Youtube channel - 29:10
• Mike's plans for the EcomCrew Youtube channel - 31:50
• The challenges and advantages of podcasting - 35:00
• How Mike grew the EcomCrew podcast - 38:00
• Chris' plans for Greenbelly - 40:50

If you want to know more about Greenbelly, you can visit their official website or listen to Episode 298, where Chris and I talked about how he started his business.

If you want to increase your revenue just like Chris did, join us on November 12 at 10 AM (PST) so we can show you how we improved our products to make them stand out from the rest. The days of simply ordering products from Alibaba and stamping them with your label just doesn't cut it anymore. Give more umph to what you sell so you can do the same to your revenue.

If you like our free content, you'll love our paid subscription! We will be opening EcomCrew Premium for the last time on Black Friday, and if you're still unsure about whether to join, now is the time to toss the doubts away because this time, we will be giving the biggest discount ever!

Sign up for the waitlist so you don't miss this opportunity because when we reopen next year, we'll revert to our regular prices.

And whether or not you grab this chance to sign up for Premium, we still appreciate your support for EcomCrew. Please leave us a review over on iTunes if you haven't already. It helps us reach more people who can benefit from our content.

Until the next episode, happy selling!

Welcome to Episode 342 of the EcomCrew podcast! Dave and I sit down to reminisce about our biggest business mistakes and what we did to remedy them.

This episode is not exactly fun for us, but we did learn our lessons from the mistakes that we made, and we hope you will too.

Timestamps:

• Why we're doing this podcast - 3:40
• Mistake #1: My hiring dilemma - 4:09
• Mistake #2: Dave hires too quickly - 7:55
• Mistake #3: Translating my site into multiple languages - 9:12
• Mistake #4: My attempt at creating a Grammarly-like website - 14:30
• Mistake #5: Dave's auxiliary sites -15:40
• Mistake #6: Dave losing money through Vendor Central - 24:04
• Mistake #7: Marrying a business idea that you shouldn't be involved in - 27:10
• Mistake #8: My biggest and most painful business mistake - 35:40

This episode may have reminded us of our biggest blunders in ecommerce, but it also showed us how much we've improved through the years.

How about you? Do you have any business mistakes you'd like to share? We'd love to hear from you. Head on over to ecomcrew.com/mistakes, share your story, and get a chance to win an annual subscription to EcomCrew Premium! This subscription is valued at $1,500, so you don't miss your chance! If you're already a Premium member, we'll extend your subscription for another year for free.

You can even indicate in the form that you would want to be anonymous. EcomCrew podcast listeners can still learn from your mistakes without us disclosing your identity.

If you want to learn how to make small improvements to your products to increase your revenue, join us on November 12 at 10 AM (PST) for a free public webinar on product differentiation.

Gone are the days when it's enough to pick something from Alibaba and sell it on Amazon. If you want to stand out from the rest of your competitors, you need to do something they aren't and for your product to have something theirs don't.

And for those of you who are still on the fence about subscribing to EcomCrew Premium, we'll make that choice easier for you. You can sign up for the waitlist now and enrol in Premium for a very special price.

This is the last time this year that we are opening enrolment, so you better reserve your spot. We have great Black Friday deals for you that we haven't offered before.

If you enjoyed this episode, head on over to iTunes and leave us a review. We'd appreciate it very much.

Until the next one,

Happy selling!

With the holidays just around the corner, Dave and I thought it would be the perfect time to talk about seasonal products, their pros and cons, and the best ways to optimize them for maximum profit.

But we aren't just talking about Christmas lights and "4th of July" merch. We acknowledge that there's a seasonality factor to every product, and we discuss this using our own brands as examples.

Timestamps:

• The top Amazon keywords right now - 3:57
• Different types of seasonal products - 5:48
• The seasonality of Dave's products - 6:69
• The cons of normalizing your products' seasonality - 10:38
• Balancing the pros and cons of over-ordering products during peak selling seasons - 13:30
• The gamble of selling in-season products all year long - 19:14
• The seasonality of off-roading gear - 23:15
• Some stats for Wild Baby - 26:18
• Do we recommend selling seasonal products for new sellers? - 30:30
• The best time to launch a seasonal product - 32:35

Speaking of products, if you want yours to stand out, we have some tricks up our sleeves that have helped our listings rank higher and our revenue grow. The great thing about it is that you don't need to make any overwhelming changes.

If you want to know more, join us on November 12 at 10 AM (PST). This is a free public webinar, and we're more than happy to answer your questions.

If you like this episode, please leave us a review over at iTunes.

Happy selling!

Email marketing is still important, but that alone is no longer enough these days. Ecommerce business owners need to look into all the possible communication channels that may be used to improve customer relations.

In this episode, our guest is the co-founder and CEO of Omnisend, Rytis Lauris. He talks about omnichannel marketing and how businesses can make the most out of various channels of communication by integrating them into a single system where data can be collected from all of them.

Timestamps:

• How Omnisend came to be - 5:14
• Advantages of having multiple communication channels - 8:00
• How Omnisend gets permission to contact potential customers - 9:53
• Different channels Omnisend uses to reach customers - 11:48
• The highest converting channel right now - 14:18
• Omnichannel marketing and how it drives more revenue - 18:07
• The amount of effort that is worth the reward - 20:55
• The beauty of marketing automation - 25:48

Check out Omnisend and its useful services! And because you're an EcomCrew podcast listener, you can get 30% off your first three months. Just use the discount code ecomcrew3x30 to start enjoying their tools.

You can also reach out to our guest at [email protected].

Aside from marketing automation, another thing you can do to increase your revenue is to actually improve your products. Marketing is one thing, but having superior products ensures that your brand maintains loyal customers.

Over the years, we've done a lot of improvements on our products and are continuing to do so. If you want to know how we did it, join us on November 12 at 10 AM (PST) for a free webinar about product differentiation and how to do it properly.

Until then, happy selling!

Welcome to Episode 339 of the EcomCrew podcast! In this episode, we decided to have a little fun by talking about the funny (albeit stressful) customer experiences we had while running our ecommerce business.

Joining me in the podcast is Meredith Erin, co-founder of Boredwalk, a company that sells creative apparel. Meredith started the business in 2014 right in their garage together with her now-husband Matt.

In this episode, you get to hear about some of the things we had to go through in order to keep our customers happy. We laugh about it now, but surely, it caused us some serious problems when we were dealing with them.

Timestamps:

• The Package Stabber - 5:05
• The customer who ordered a shirt in the wrong size - 7:40
• Mr. Impatient - 9:26
• Customers who get mad because the package shipped too fast - 9:59
• Small mailboxes, big packages - 11:28
• The time Mike had to call authorities on a customer - 12:00
• How reasonable are customers in general? - 15:05
• Advantages of having customer representatives - 18:02
• Meredith's bingo card - 21:50
• Customers who can't tell the difference between navy and black - 22:35
• The effects of politics on a business - 24:10
• Dealing with being open about mental health in product designs - 26:33
• How Meredith dealt with people who hate their designs - 28:50
• What it takes to be an artist an and entrepreneur - 29:46
• The value of hard work in business - 31:11
• The 4-hour workweek myth - 32:36

If you want to spice up your wardrobe, check out Meredith's company, Boredwalk, and discover your next statement shirt!

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This November 11 at 10 AM (PST), we will be talking about product differentiation and how you can improve your products to make it stand out from those of your competitors.

Product differentiation is one of our most favorite topics at EcomCrew because it truly makes a difference in terms of revenue as well as the overall customer satisfaction.

This webinar is completely free, so sign up now to reserve your seat.

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For those of you who haven't tried EcomCrew Premium yet, now is the perfect time to do so. We will be relaunching on Black Friday, and this will be the last time we're going to do so in 2020.

We have some sweet deals for you, so don't miss it! Sign up for the waiting list today.

Welcome to Episode 338 of the EcomCrew podcast! Today, Dave and I are doing something new. We're not just gonna be talking about ecommerce. We're also gonna dive into the business books that shaped us into the people we are today.

These books were highly influential especially as to how we handle our teams and operate our businesses in general. We talk about some highlights of the books and how we implemented what we learned into running our brands.

Timestamps:

• Mike's new reading routine - 3:15
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - 7:00
• Book No. 1:The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey - 10:03
• Highlights of Book 1 - 12:04
• Book No. 2: The One Thing by Gary Keller - 14:14
• How Dave implemented the ideas from Book No. 2 for EcomCrew - 17:15
• Bonus Book: Who Moved My Cheese? By Spencer Johnson - 19:00
• Book No. 3:The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader by John Maxwell - 20:10
• Mike's experience with employment - 22:47
• The fear of losing one's job - 24:48
• Book No. 4: No Man's Land by Doug Tatum - 26:24
• Big vs. small companies - 28:40
• Book No. 5: Traction by Gino Wickman - 35:28
• Book No. 6: Ride of a Lifetime by Bob Iger - 39:34
• Bonus Book: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
• Dave's most overrated book: Traction - 39:38
• Mike's defense for Traction - 41:30
• Mike's most overrated book: The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris - 45:14

If you loved this episode, listen to E175 of the podcast to get to know more about Mike and how he started his ecommerce journey.

For those of you who are still on the fence about availing of our paid services, now's the time to take the leap!

EcomCrew Premium is reopening on Black Friday, and we have a very special promotion for you! This will be the last time in 2020 that Premium will reopen, and because of the spirit of the holiday, we're giving a special offer to those who will sign up.

Be a Crewmate today!

Speaking of special offers, our friends over at Captain AMZ has one for EcomCrew podcast listeners.

If you're an Amazon seller, you know how important good reviews are for your business. Captain AMZ can help you automatically request reviews and feedback and track all of them in one place.

Just head on over to captainamz.com and use the code ecomcrew10 or go to ecomcrew.com/captamz to get 10% off from their services.

If you liked this episode, show us your love by leaving us a review over on iTunes.

Until the next one.

Happy selling!