The Ecomcrew Ecommerce Podcast

This is the third episode of the series I'm doing on the business book Traction by Gino Wickman. In episode 2 we discussed creating a 10-year goal, but 10 years is a length of time most people can't wrap their heads around. In this episode we cover how to make your 10-year goal less daunting by breaking it up into smaller goals and creating your marketing strategy to help you achieve those goals.

This is the third episode of the series I'm doing on the business book Traction by Gino Wickman. In episode 1 we covered the importance of setting your company's core values and communicating them to the entire company. Next we covered setting the company's core focus and 10-year goal in episode 2.

Here's where most people hit a snag. 10 years is a length of time most people can't wrap their heads around, and we certainly did not have an easy time thinking about where we want to be in 10 years. On the other hand, setting a 10-year goal will definitely make you think what it is that you actually want to achieve with your company long term. Once you have an idea what 10 years would look like for your company, it's time to break it down into smaller goals achievable within a smaller span of time, and that's what we will cover in this episode.

Before breaking down the 10-year goal into smaller goals, Traction advises that you first set up your marketing strategy. In this phase you'll need to set up your customer avatar, the three things that make you unique, and what process you'll need to put in place in order to be successful. The book provides help along the way as you set these up.

Once that's done, it's time to sit down and formulate a 3-year plan. For most people, this means setting up a revenue number. That is definitely a part of the 3-year plan, but Traction emphasizes that it's so much more than that. You need to visualize not just the amount of money you're raking in by that time, but also the landscape of your company--how many employees you need to have, the products you'll be selling, systems and processes you'll need to set up, etc.

To help you along the process, I share my marketing strategy and 3-year plan in this episode as an example. In particular, I talk about the following:

• Customer avatars for some of our brands
• Our three uniques--the 3 things that set us apart
• The process we'll follow to be successful
• Our 3-year plan revenue and profit number
• Our 3-year plan company landscape
• Acquiring new businesses to enhance our growth
• Upgrading our IT systems

In the next Traction episode we further break things down to a 1-year plan. It's very important to keep your core values in mind as you go through this stage to make sure that what you're doing does not go against what you set out to become in the first place.

Resources mentioned:

Amazon launch strategy webinar E138: Traction Part 1 – Company Core Values E140: Traction Part 2 – Company Core Focus and 10 Year Goal Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (Amazon afiliate link) E129: How to Pick the Perfect Product to Sell in eCommerce E102: Amazon Product Launch Strategy for 2018

Thanks for listening to this week's edition of the podcast. Until the next one, happy selling!

P.S. Comment below to win a free mug!

Out of all the things I do with EcomCrew and in ecommerce in general, the one thing I get asked about the most is our Philippines office. I'm not sure if it's because I talk about our Filipino employees so much or there are so many entrepreneurs out there who want to find high quality virtual assistants but just don't seem to get landed with one, no matter what they do.

I definitely get the sentiment if it's the latter. Once upon a time, I hired my first Filipino VA. But instead of freeing up my time, that hire resulted in the exact opposite–I felt like I spent so much time daily just getting him to do simple tasks and it came to the point that I can't do what I want to do simply because I spent too much of my time with him. I eventually let him go and thought to myself that I won't ever get a VA again.

Some time later on a plane ride back from China, I decided to give hiring a Filipino VA another go. I'm so glad I did, because in that second attempt at hiring I found Mia.

Mia is the cornerstone of our PH office and without her, there would be no PH office. She was the one who found the rest of our Filipino employees, from virtual assistants to writers to graphic designers. She started as a virtual assistant and has morphed into a director managing 11 employees in just under two years.

I had the chance to get Mia on the podcast during our visit to the Philippines last month. She didn't want to do it, but just like most of the challenges I threw at her, she stepped up and did her part. In this episode we highlight the changes that have happened over the course of a year, particularly the growth of our PH team from just a handful of people to 12 full-time awesome employees.

We also discuss the following in detail:

• Why I decided to hire a VA again after my initial disappointment
• How we found Mia
• How I knew she could handle becoming a manager
• What life was like during the first few months with our first hires
• Why being very slow to hire has worked out to our advantage
• How close our employees have become, and what Mia did that contributed to this
• Why we prefer our employees to come to one office instead of working from home
• What we do differently that sets us apart and makes us more attractive to high-quality employees
• The strategies we use to reduce communication problems between two time zones
• Our entire hiring process
• Tips to weed out incompetent applicants

If there's just one advice we can give you when you hire a VA, it would be this: don't hire in a hurry. You might have so many things on your plate right now and would want nothing more than to unload as much of that as soon as possible, but hiring the wrong person would cost you so much in the long run. Be patient for the right person to come because it will be so worth it in the end.

Resources mentioned:

Amazon Launch Strategy webinar E96: Our Philippines Team – Hiring and Maintaining a Team of Rockstar VAs

Thanks for listening! Have you ever hired a Filipino VA? What was your experience? Comment down below and get a chance to win this EcomCrew mug!

If you've been listening to the podcast recently or reached out to us at some point, you might have heard of or encountered Abby. Abby is our Filipino VA and one of the people working behind me and Dave to help us get EcomCrew to become so much more. While Dave and I focus (and get distracted) on the course content and speaking at industry events, Abby makes sure everything else run smoothly--from scheduling the podcast episodes to answering emails.

We recently got a chance to get Abby on the podcast (after much persuasion) during our trip to the Philippines. We wanted everybody to meet Abby and get to know her a little, at least virtually.

EcomCrew has gone through a big transformation ever since the site merged with Dave Bryant's site ChineseImporting.com. In less than a year we've accomplished so much--we've launched new courses, upped the podcast to two episodes per week, and revamped the entire EcomCrew site. Dave and I are tremendously happy with what EcomCrew has become and we are gearing to do even more, but we would not have gone to this point if not for the people helping us behind the scenes.

If you've been listening to the podcast recently or reached out to us at some point, you might have heard of or encountered Abby. Abby is our Filipino VA and one of the people working behind me and Dave to help us get EcomCrew to become so much more. While Dave and I focus (and get distracted) on the course content and speaking at industry events, Abby makes sure everything else run smoothly--from scheduling the podcast episodes to answering emails.

We recently got a chance to get Abby on the podcast (after much persuasion) during our trip to the Philippines. We wanted everybody to meet Abby and get to know her a little, at least virtually. Here's what she and I discussed in this episode:

• How we found her and how she became the EcomCrew VA
• The challenges she encountered early on in the job
• Her day-to-day tasks
• How she learned to produce the podcast
• What's coming for EcomCrew in the future
• Her pro-tip on how to get your VA to stick around

We'd like to thank Abby again for getting on the podcast despite the fact that she was too shy to do it :) If you have someone, or a team of people behind your, never forget to appreciate them and recognize what they're doing to help you get to where you want to be.

Resources mentioned:

Amazon Launch Strategy webinar E96: Our Philippines Team

Thanks so much for listening! Until the next episode, happy selling.

This is the second episode of a podcast series I'm doing on Traction, a business book written by Gino Wickman geared towards helping business owners run their companies with more growth and enjoyment. In episode 1 of the series I talked about the importance of setting aside time to think about your company's core values and actually putting those core values into writing. Once you have that done it's time to set your company's core focus and 10 year goal, both of which will be covered in today's episode.

This is the second episode of a podcast series I'm doing on Traction, a business book written by Gino Wickman geared towards helping business owners run their companies with more growth and enjoyment. My company is currently in the process of applying the system outlined in the book and the impact is so great that I'm documenting the entire process here in the podcast.

In episode 1 of the series I talked about the importance of setting aside time to think about your company's core values and actually putting those core values into writing. In addition, you need to understand that these are not just feel-good buzzwords that will sit on a piece of paper on the bottom of your drawer, so communicating these core values to your employees and everyone else who help you run the company is of utmost importance.

Once you have that done it's time to set your company's core focus and 10 year goal, both of which will be covered in today's episode.

Your core focus is the reason why your company exists. This one can be tricky since Traction explicitly does not consider money-making as a core focus, and money is the reason why most businesses exist in the first place. But putting money aside, what is it that you want your business to accomplish? What is your company's purpose? What's your passion?

Once you've set your company's core focus, it's time to set your 10-year goal, which should be a BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal). This is a length of time most people can't wrap their heads around and possibly skew to either an underestimation or an unrealistic optimism. In this episode I'll tell you how I figured out my 10-year goal and break it down to relatively short-term, achievable goals.

Resources mentioned:

Webinar - 2018 Amazon Launch Strategy Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (Amazon afiliate link) Traction episode 1 Our 2018 $9.7 million forecast

Thanks for listening! Look out for more episodes on Traction in the future. Also, get a chance to win one of our gorgeous mugs by commenting below. Have you set your company's core values? What about focus and goals? Comment away and win!

Today's episode is a little different from what we usually publish.

I recently had to undergo a torturous customer service experience with AT&T. Those of you who are or have been AT&T customers and called their customer service hotline at any time know what I'm talking about. I have been an AT&T customer since 2007 when the first iPhone came out--not by choice, but because no other carrier offered the iPhone at the time--and I can definitely say that it has not been a happy ride. But out of all the years I've been with them and all the calls I made to them, this is, by far, the worst of it all.

So what do you do when you run a podcast and need to call a company you're pissed at? Set up the recorder, call them and record everything, then publish the call to your listeners as a podcast episode.

Today's episode is a little different from what we usually publish.

I recently had to undergo a torturous customer service experience with AT&T. Those of you who are or have been AT&T customers and called their customer service hotline at any time know what I'm talking about. I have been an AT&T customer since 2007 when the first iPhone came out--not by choice, but because no other carrier offered the iPhone at the time--and I can definitely say that it has not been a happy ride. But out of all the years I've been with them and all the calls I made to them, this is, by far, the worst of it all.

So here's a little background: I'm in a family program which made eligible to upgrade to the new iPhone X for free, as long as I return to them my old iPhone. The new phone got lost in the mail and they had to find it, and when it finally got delivered to me after weeks of waiting, there was no return label in the box. I had to call them 3 times to get them to email me the return label. I finally got the label, sent the phone back and thought that was the end of it. But as per Murphy's law, I got a text message from AT&T telling me that they have not yet received the phone, but sent me an email informing me that it was actually delivered. So I called again, and they informed me that the text message was erroneous and that I will not get billed the $999. So I relaxed. But... yes, you guessed it, I got billed $999 for a phone I returned.

$999 is a big amount of money and although so much of my time had already been wasted, I wasn't willing to just let them take that money. So what do you do when you run a podcast and need to call a company you're pissed at? Set up the recorder, call them and record everything, then publish the call to your listeners as a podcast episode.

This episode is a condensed version of 2 very long calls I had with AT&T. We edited many parts out to try to keep the episode at around 30 minutes, but if you want to torture yourself and listen to the whole thing, just click here.

I may have lost my temper in some parts of the call and I have nothing against the agents I spoke to, but AT&T's system is just so frustrating. I know I'm shooting for the moon here, but I hope this gets much attention so that AT&T can finally, finally do something and take better care of their customers.

Resources mentioned:

EcomCrew Webinar - 2018 Amazon Launch Strategy Full AT&T calls

Thanks for listening! What's your worst AT&T experience? Share them in the comments below. Until the next episode, happy selling.

We're starting a new series on the EcomCrew Podcast today. This series is called Traction, inspired by a book I read recently which had a tremendous impact on me and my business, so much so that I'm applying the principles laid out in the book to my own company. I'm documenting the process in this podcast series so that you and your business could benefit from my experience. This is Episode 1 of the series where I talk about the importance of taking the time to reflect and set your company's core values.