The Ecomcrew Ecommerce Podcast

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.

I've mostly been an entrepreneur for as far as I can remember. When I was 18, armed with a box of business cards and a pager, I started my own company called Discount Computer Consultants. One of my clients hired me and I got a taste of the corporate life. After that stint I went back to being an entrepreneur and have run various companies since. Through all those years, I noticed that there's one thing that kept repeating in all the companies I've run or been in: as the company got bigger, things just started falling apart.

As I run my current company, I've tried my best to avoid the same thing happening especially as we keep on doubling every year. Experience has greatly helped me on this front, but something kept nagging at me and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Until I read Traction.

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business is a business book written by Gino Wickman who developed a practical method for businesses called the Entrepreneurial Operating System, which aims to help entrepreneurs keep their company on track to achieve lofty goals. We certainly have lofty goals for Terran and Traction is already helping us get there.

This episode is the first of many dedicated to Traction. Here are some of the things I discuss:

• How I started in eCommerce
• The problems most companies face as they grow
• Introduction to Traction and the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)
• The importance of sitting down and writing your company's core values
• Our company's 7 core values and how we came up with them

We've slowly began rolling out the Entrepreneurial Operating System in our business and we're already seeing big improvements. I'll continue to cover our progress in this series of podcast episodes, and if you have any questions, just comment down below.

And speaking of comments, once you do leave a comment on this episode, or on the previous episode, you get a chance to win a limited edition EcomCrew mug! Just leave a comment by the end of the week and we'll ship you your cool mug anywhere in the world if you win. Check out how fabulous this mug is here.

We're also running another webinar on May 16th where Dave and I will be talking about our Amazon launch strategy. We've talked about our strategy many times both in the podcast and blog, but this is the first time that you can ask us as many questions as you like, as we provide ample time for Q&A.

Resources mentioned:

EcomCrew Webinar Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (Amazon afiliate link) E120: Getting Fired From My Own Company Basecamp Who Moved My Cheese?

Thanks as always for supporting the EcomCrew Podcast. Don't forget to post your comments down below to win your EcomCrew mug! Until next week, happy selling.

Hey everyone!

If you went to the EcommerceFuel Live event in January and got shoved a microphone in the face by me, then this is the episode you've been waiting for :)

You might have forgotten what transpired during the event (especially if you got drunk during the party) but this episode, with all the snippets I recorded both sober and drunk, will surely remind you what an awesome event ECF Live is. If you didn't go, I am pretty sure you're going to want to go next time.

This episode is long overdue considering how long it's been since January but this is the first time in EcomCrew history that we're doing something this different. And in light of new and different things, we're doing something that's another first: we will be raffling off an EcomCrew mug for those who comment below.

That's right, just comment anything about the episode down below (for example, let me know if you think Andrew Youderian's prank is mean) and you get a chance to win an EcomCrew mug, shipped to you for free, anywhere in the world.

Special thanks to Andrew for making ECF Live possible. Make sure to check out this awesome community here. Thanks also to those who put up with me during these interviews, and to the cop who was Andrew's accomplice. I hope you read this and know you're awesome :D

Resources mentioned:

E114: Chasing Retail Dreams with Bill D'Alessandro E95: Growing and Selling Drop Shipping Businesses with Andrew Youderian E99: An 18-year Ecommerce Journey with Kevin Stecko E91: Ecommerce Growth and Profitability With Dana Jaunzemis EcommerceFuel E94: On the Road with David Couillard: How to Run an Ecommerce Business while Traveling with Family

Thanks as always for listening, let me know if you like this episode, and until the next one, happy selling!

As ecommerce entrepreneurs we are used to doing things on our own, with many of us even starting out as solopreneurs. This isolation, and the ability to control our time as a result, has been very attractive for us for a long time. But more recently this very same disconnectedness can lead to our own ruin.

One of the issues that rattle us to the bones is online sales tax. States have been salivating on the billions of dollars they could get from online sales and ecommerce steadily grew. They went after the online platforms we sell our products on, especially Amazon, but Amazon has proven to be a big gorilla to fight especially with their ability to create thousands of jobs as leverage against states. And so some states turned their attention to the ones they can easily intimidate: us individual sellers.

Amazon claims ownership of most of everything--customers, listings, even prices--but unsurprisingly sales tax is not one of them. It's up to us to handle sales tax, and everything is so complicated that many of us are not sure what exactly is the right thing to do. Many states even disagree among themselves about sales tax nexus. But still, some sellers have begun receiving letters about this in some states, and it's definitely not a good position to be in.

This is one of the reasons Online Merchants Guild was born. This nonprofit was created by ecommerce sellers for ecommerce sellers, with the goal to have as many members as possible so that we can collectively fight against issues that are too big for any one of us to fight.

In this episode I talk to Bernie Thompson, an 8-figure seller and member of Online Merchants guild, and Paul Rafelson, a lawyer and law professor working with the likes of GE, Microsoft and Walmart. Below is an overview of what we discussed:

• How Online Merchants Guild was founded
• Sales tax nexus and how complicated it is
• The Wayfair case
• Constitutional principles violated by states with regards to sales tax
• Goal for everyone who joins the organization
• Other goals and member benefits like business insurance, discounted shipping rates, etc

Fighting this issue all by ourselves, like what we are used to doing, is costly and ineffective. We need to stand united and we need more support. We can't do this by ourselves. There is strength in numbers.

If you want more information about the organization, just head on to its website (it's still a brand-new site that needs fixing here and there) or send us an email at [email protected]. We'd love to discuss it with you.

Resources mentioned:

EcomCrew webinar Online Merchants Guild Amicus Brief

Thanks for listening! Until next week, happy selling.

"How can you find someone you can trust enough, who can perform tasks as good as you do without breaking the bank?" This is the question we answer in today's episode. This is Part 2 of last Monday's Under the Hood segment with Kevin Sanderson. Kevin and I discuss my VA hiring process, from weeding out spam applications (or applications of people who don't read, which is a lot), what questions to ask, the tests we require applicants to take, training, and how to manage them once they're hired. Ultimately, we talk about how to find a VA who is smart and quick on their feet, and who will help him grow his company. [We recorded the intros in our Philippines office during our Asia trip. Our office is not optimized for recording; apologies for the bad audio quality.]

Last Monday, Kevin and I talked about one of the biggest problems most small ecommerce entrepreneurs encounter: becoming a bottleneck to the growth of their own company. This is something that usually happens when we try to do the unthinkable, which is to do every single task on our own.

Naturally, the best way to solve this is delegation. You can try to be as efficient and productive as you want, but there will only by 24 hours in a day and one body to work with. But how can you find someone you can trust enough and can perform tasks as good as you do without breaking the bank?

That is the question we answer in this episode, which is Part 2 of last Monday's conversation. Kevin and I discuss my VA hiring process, from weeding out spam applications (or applications of people who don't read, which is a lot), what questions to ask, the tests we require applicants to take, training, and how to manage them once they're hired. Ultimately, we talk about how to find a VA who is smart and quick on their feet, who will help him grow his company.

Some conversation points:

• Red flags when hiring VAs
• Filtering irrelevant applications
• My hiring process
• What questions to ask during the interview process
• What kind of experience to look for
• Using Camtasia as a training tool
• Best practices when delegating tasks to a VA

Delegating is not easy, especially if you're assigning tasks to a person who is literally on the other side of the globe. But if you find someone trustworthy and smart, delegation will work wonders not just on your stress levels, but on your business in the long run.

Resources mentioned:

EcomCrew webinar Under the Hood Sellers Summit

Thanks so much for listening to this Under the Hood episode! If you want to be in an episode yourself, just sign up here and we'll reach out to you for more details. Until the next episode, happy selling!

At the beginning of January, I laid out 18 goals I wanted to accomplish this year. My list consisted of both business and personal goals, with some items certainly harder and loftier than the others. While I made sure that my goals are reasonably achievable, I can't deny that a part of me--any maybe you, too--is wondering if I can achieve them all.

That's why I decided that I will do a quarterly check on my progress to clearly see how far along I am on the road to achieving my goals. If you've set goals too, this is a practice I highly recommend. Far too often we underestimate how quickly a year can pass, and if you don't make frequent checks on the things you set out to do, you might have the surprise of your life in the form of untended goals by year's end.

So in this episode, I will share with you my first 2018 Goals Quarterly Review. If you didn't get a chance to listen to my goals episode, here's the list of my 18 (yes, I did that to be cheesy) 2018 Goals for your reference:

1. Develop 50 new products
2. Launch on Amazon Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and eventually, Australia
3. Optimize our Amazon listings to increase sales by 50%
4. Improve PPC
5. Implement the concepts in the book Traction in our business
6. Reach $10 million in revenue with a 10% net profit
7. Lose 12 lbs
8. Record 100 episodes of the podcast
9. Launch a new version of ecomcrew.com
10. Launch 4 new courses
11. Speak at at least 4 industry events
12. Hike 80 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail
13. Take an epic 2-week vacation
14. Visit the Philippines office at least once
15. Read 4 books (I know, I know… 4 books aren't a lot but I'm not really a book reader so please don't laugh at me)
16. Hand off my Facebook ads to other people within the company
17. Come up with at least one new tactic that no one else is doing
18. Never lose sight of the bigger picture: create 5 star products that people will truly love and continue to enjoy what I'm doing

I'm happy to say that I'm on track with most of the items on the list. I know, however, that this is just the 1st quarter and unexpected things could derail those goals. But this check has given me the confidence I need to continue with the year head on.

Resources mentioned:

MyEcomCrew E109: My 2018 Goals Sellics affiliate link EcomCrew courses eCommerceFuel Global Sources Summit Sellers Summit

Thanks for listening to this episode. Until next week, happy selling!

When running an ecommerce company as a side hustle, it’s fine–and most of the time necessary–to wear many hats. But if you want your business to grow to more than just a side hustle, it’s a different story altogether.

This week’s Under the Hood call is about how to stop being the bottleneck to the growth of your own company. My guest is Kevin Sanderson, who started his ecommerce company 3 years ago selling online “just to try it”, experienced the rush of his first sale, and never looked back. Now Kevin wants to level up his business to more than just a side hustle. The problem is, as the business grows, the more things he has to do, and only so little time to do them.

So in this coaching call Kevin and I talk about how he can systematize and, more importantly, delegate low level tasks he doesn’t need to be doing so he can concentrate on business strategy instead. This episode is Part 1 of our call, and we cover the following, among others:

* How he started in ecommerce

* His background as a high school football official

* Biggest contributors to his brand’s success

* Why meeting other sellers is a great way to grow one’s own business

* Lowest hanging fruit in terms of delegation

* Why full-time dedicated VAs are better than project-based or part-time VAs

* How to find superstar VAs

For Part 2 Kevin and I discuss how to actually delegate tasks to VAs, what to delegate, and what you must need to do yourself. Stay tuned!

Resources mentioned:

MyEcomCrew

Under the Hood

Sellers Summit

Thanks for listening! Until the next one, happy selling.

 

When running an ecommerce company as a side hustle, it's fine–and most of the time necessary–to wear many hats. But if you want your business to grow to more than just a side hustle, it's a different story altogether.

This week's Under the Hood call is about how to stop being the bottleneck to the growth of your own company. My guest is Kevin Sanderson, who started his ecommerce company 3 years ago selling online "just to try it", experienced the rush of his first sale, and never looked back. Now Kevin wants to level up his business to more than just a side hustle. The problem is, as the business grows, the more things he has to do, and only so little time to do them.

So in this coaching call Kevin and I talk about how he can systematize and, more importantly, delegate low level tasks he doesn't need to be doing so he can concentrate on business strategy instead. This episode is Part 1 of our call, and we cover the following, among others:

• How he started in ecommerce
• His background as a high school football official
• Biggest contributors to his brand's success
• Why meeting other sellers is a great way to grow one's own business
• Lowest hanging fruit in terms of delegation
• Why full-time dedicated VAs are better than project-based or part-time VAs
• How to find superstar VAs

For Part 2 Kevin and I discuss how to actually delegate tasks to VAs, what to delegate, and what you must need to do yourself. Stay tuned!

Resources mentioned:

MyEcomCrew Under the Hood Sellers Summit

Thanks for listening! Until the next one, happy selling.

“Is drop shipping dead?” – so many blog posts in 2018

We’ve recently encountered a paradox of sorts.

If you type “is drop shipping dead” in a Google search bar and hit enter, you’ll notice that the first page is chockfull of blog posts with that exact same title. This could only mean that people are catching on the thought that the drop shipping business model is pretty much in a bubble, and if it hasn’t already burst, it’s most certainly about to.

The arguments on those blog posts against the merits of drop shipping echo our own. That is why we focus on a business model that is sustainable and won’t go anywhere anytime soon—building a brand through private labeling.

Then Dave stumbled upon something interesting while doing some research for a blog post. He found that the average monthly Google searches for “drop shipping” was about 400k in 2016 when drop shipping was at its most successful. Come January 2018, and the searches for the same phrase was at a whopping 1.2 million. If blog posts are questioning the merits of drop shipping, why is there an increased interest in drop shipping?

This issue caught even more of our attention when someone from a site selling drop shipping courses reached out to us asking to come on the podcast. If this site is earning more than $3 million dollars, is drop shipping, in fact, not dead?

Interestingly, Dave and I have different opinions about this. I believe that drop shipping is not sustainable with very razor thin margins and is not worth it. Dave, however, thinks that there is still some opportunity left.

So we decided to take it to the recording studio and have a debate about whether or not drop shipping is dead, and if private labeling is definitely the way to go. This episode is the result of that debate.

Some conversation points:

Our own experiences in drop shipping

Why I decided to stop drop shipping and sell my own products instead

The pros and cons of drop shipping

Too many courses from drop shipping “gurus”

Reasons drop shipping is right for you

Reasons drop shipping is not right for you

What you need to do to survive with the drop shipping business model

Is drop shipping really dead?

This has been an insightful and fun episode. Dave does’t come on the podcast enough, but when he does come, we usually debate about something we have different opinions on.

This episode will hopefully give you an insight to the two sides of the coin. In the end, the choice will be yours. What’s important is that you know what you’re getting into, and that you don’t buy into the hype simply because of the hype.

Resources mentioned:

MyEcomCrew

State of the Merchant report

CB Radios

Trollingmotors.net

Survivalfood.com

E121: How Ezra Firestone Spends Money Growing His Businesses

Global Sources Summit

EcomCrew Hong Kong Mastermind

Thanks for listening to this episode. Until next week, happy selling!

"Is drop shipping dead?" - so many blog posts in 2018

We've recently encountered a paradox of sorts.

If you type "is drop shipping dead" in a Google search bar and hit enter, you'll notice that the first page is chockfull of blog posts with that exact same title. This could only mean that people are catching on the thought that the drop shipping business model is pretty much in a bubble, and if it hasn't already burst, it's most certainly about to.

The arguments on those blog posts against the merits of drop shipping echo our own. That is why we focus on a business model that is sustainable and won't go anywhere anytime soon—building a brand through private labeling.

Then Dave stumbled upon something interesting while doing some research for a blog post. He found that the average monthly Google searches for "drop shipping" was about 400k in 2016 when drop shipping was at its most successful. Come January 2018, and the searches for the same phrase was at a whopping 1.2 million. If blog posts are questioning the merits of drop shipping, why is there an increased interest in drop shipping?

This issue caught even more of our attention when someone from a site selling drop shipping courses reached out to us asking to come on the podcast. If this site is earning more than $3 million dollars, is drop shipping, in fact, not dead?

Interestingly, Dave and I have different opinions about this. I believe that drop shipping is not sustainable with very razor thin margins and is not worth it. Dave, however, thinks that there is still some opportunity left.

So we decided to take it to the recording studio and have a debate about whether or not drop shipping is dead, and if private labeling is definitely the way to go. This episode is the result of that debate.

Some conversation points:

• Our own experiences in drop shipping
• Why I decided to stop drop shipping and sell my own products instead
• The pros and cons of drop shipping
• Too many courses from drop shipping "gurus"
• Reasons drop shipping is right for you
• Reasons drop shipping is not right for you
• What you need to do to survive with the drop shipping business model
• Is drop shipping really dead?

This has been an insightful and fun episode. Dave does't come on the podcast enough, but when he does come, we usually debate about something we have different opinions on.

This episode will hopefully give you an insight to the two sides of the coin. In the end, the choice will be yours. What's important is that you know what you're getting into, and that you don't buy into the hype simply because of the hype.

Resources mentioned:

MyEcomCrew State of the Merchant report CB Radios Trollingmotors.net Survivalfood.com E121: How Ezra Firestone Spends Money Growing His Businesses Global Sources Summit EcomCrew Hong Kong Mastermind

Thanks for listening to this episode. Until next week, happy selling!