Alex Brown has been launching e-commerce companies for over 5 years, starting with multiple successful crowdfunding campaigns (like Coolbox which ended up on ABC’s Shark). He is best known as CoFounder of the viral hit Dollar Beard Club. DBC hit $10M in their first year with no performance marketing or affiliate help, and has gone on to become a scalable and globally known brand with over 300M video views.

You'll learn:

• Is crowdfunding still relevant?
• The one thing that makes or breaks product launches
• How a video-first strategy launched their brand
• The conditions for virality
• The three questions to ask yourself to build an incredible brand story
• What to do when you feel overwhelmed

Since exiting Beard Club, Alex has been advising multiple companies and speaking around the world on branding and content marketing. He currently runs the first e-commerce brand accelerator program for brands on pace for 8+ figures, and is an advisor to NGO’s helping building entrepreneurial ecosystems.

• Ecommerce Rockstars
• CoolBox Kickstarter
• The Beard Club
• This is Marketing (Book)
• Evolved Enterprise (Book)
• Ecommerce Rockstars

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• This episode was made possible by Ecom Growers - In eCommerce, the difference between great and good email campaigns is hundreds of thousands of dollars Ecom Growers is an agency that figured it out so you don’t leave any sales on the table.

In this episode, we discuss listener-suggested topics: bookkeeping, profitability, and pre-orders.

And then we tear down the official LEGO store.

• Bench
• ShipScout
• Crowdfunder
• Product Filter & Search
• LEGO

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A recovering banker and management consultant, Melita Cyril had her eyes (and ears) open for different entrepreneurial ideas during her maternity leave. When her baby boy suffered from eczema and she struggled to find the right socks for his sensitive feet, she started Q for Quinn - a company that sells gentle, comfortable socks for the entire family.

We talk through:

• Her journey as a "mompreneur" of a family apparel brand
• Strategies to increase AOVs, despite selling a low priced item
• Why and how she incorporated social impact into her mission
• How she get early traction

Melita is a mom of two kids and in addition to running Q for Quinn, she is also a children’s book author. Melita holds an MBA from the University of Toronto and a BSc (Hons) Economics from the London School of Economics.

• Q for Quinn - Use code KURTSPECIAL to save 15% on socks (because everyone can use more comfortable socks.)

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We discuss what an accessibility lawsuit costs, why Google PageSpeed is our Emperor Palpatine, building better blog pages in Shopify, and finally we tear down the official Minor League Baseball store.

• Brickloot LEGO LED Kits
• Paul's favorite light bulbs
• Kurt's Merino Wool Apparel
• Kurt's Favorite Jeans
• Rev
• Tim Hipp, freelance transcription
• Pingdom Tools
• DoubleYourWDW
• SmallPetSelect
• The Beard Mentor Blog
• Minor League Baseball Store
• SnowCommerce

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• See our recent work at Ethercycle
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From planning & scheduling your content for Instagram to what does and doesn't work in 2020, our guest today lays out a complete strategy to organic Instagram marketing that anyone can use to market their Shopify store starting today. We finish the episode with answers to your top Instagram questions.

Our Instagram expert in this episode is Leslie Eugene. Over the years, she's developed a reputation for helping fashion & beauty online brands build communities around their product or services that convert their audience into paying customers and brand evangelists. While social media plays a vital role in that conversion, there’s another distinctive key that makes all the difference in her success: her passion for great social media marketing.

Your questions answered:

• What’s the drawback in switching to a business account on Instagram - how much organic reach do you lose?
• What are the top 3 things small business should be doing on social that they probably aren’t?
• How often would you recommend posting in IG stories?
• How should an Ecom Store social media strategy change over the course of the store's maturity e.g pre-launch, launch, growth, maturity, etc.
• When does it make sense for a business to hire for organic social media?
• Does high engagement on your page reduce ad costs?

• Pretty Haute
• Planoly
• Iconosquare
• @miaray, @iamminglee - Examples of great Instagram accounts

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• Try Bold Product Upsell, free trial
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In today's episode:

• Why now may be a good time to upgrade your theme
• The broken promises of accessibility and what to do about it
• And finally an Away Travel teardown that goes off the rails

KeySmart
Turbo Changelog

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After raising $164,775 on Kickstarter, this husband & wife team is disrupting carbon fiber manufacturing.

You'll the hear answers to:

• How they raised $164,775 on Kickstarter to start their business
• How a revenue share agreement empowered their business
• The exact influencer outreach strategy they used
• How niche group buys are growing their manufacturing business

Gabriel Mountjoy is a graduate of the Cal Poly Mechanical Engineering Department in San Luis Obispo, CA. He and his wife, Ann Mountjoy, founded Common Fibers in 2013 after invention of a carbon fiber hinge. For the past six years they have developed composite products for the automotive, aerospace, medical, construction, and consumer goods industries. With two patents, they are building a passionate team that will continue to disrupt the composites industry and change how manufacturing is currently done.

• Kickstarter Carbon Fiber Wallet Campaign (2014)
• Book: How to shoot video that doesn't suck
• Gabe's wallet store: Common Fibers - 30% off with code ETHERCYCLE at checkout
• Refersion
• CFGroupBuy
• Crowdfunder

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• Try Bold Product Upsell free for 90 days
• Save 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme
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• Outsource your Shopify customer service with Simplr

In this episode, we discuss:

• Kurt's run-in with a Karen
• How to optimize your main menu navigation for higher conversions
• A spicy website teardown of Chicago condiment institution Marconi Foods

Main Menu examples: KeySmart, Hoonigan, Proven Winners Direct

Teardown: Marconi Foods

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Years ago, Dan Demsky wanted to buy a merino wool t-shirt for travel to lighten his load... and he couldn't find one. It haunted him. He knew this product should exist, and after a business coach told him he shouldn't do it, he spent 18 months on research and development that resulted in a crowdfunding campaign that raised $380K USD.

That brand was Unbound Merino, purveyors of quality merino wool clothing. Today, Unbound Merino is a multi-million dollar global brand selling in over 100 countries.

Its not all puppies and roses: they had positioned the brand as a travel accessory, impacting their sales in a pandemic world.

Key Takeaways:

• The grassroots campaign strategy that drove their initial success
• The difference between publishing and launching your store
• How the pandemic has created a new mentality for their business

• UnboundMerino
• IndieGogo: Unbound Merino - The ultimate travel hack
•  

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In this episode, we have an uncomfortable and necessary conversation about racism.

If you disagree with anti-racism or feel that this conversation doesn't belong in our show, then unsubscribe.

George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, David McAtee, and countless others should be alive.

• National Bail Fund Network
• Bombas

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