The Ecomcrew Ecommerce Podcast

Latest Episodes:

E268: How Harnessing Creativity Can Turn a Hobby into a Business Jul 22, 2019

Show notes

On today's show, I talk to one-half of a husband and wife team who has managed to build a successful online business off of Amazon. What's more amazing is their carving a spot for their brand in a highly competitive niche.

Meredith Erin and her husband Matt are the two creatives behind Boredwalk, an online shop that sells a variety of wearable art.

Meredith and I talk about a variety of topics - from their creative inspirations to being partners in and outside of the business.

In this episode you'll learn:

Meredith on how the lack of females in STEM professions has led to fewer women building businesses online (3:45)
How a hobby turned into a full-fledged ecommerce business (8:51)
What their creative process is like (11:36)
How she and her husband were able to carve out a spot for their products in a crowded niche (14:26)
On the importance of "leading with content" and creating great emails (17:59)
How she and Matt manage being a couple as well as business partners (22:58)
How they grew Boredwalk and continue to make it profitable (26:07)
Why they no longer sell on Amazon (43:03)

This episode is part of our Women's Month celebration. We'd love to see more women in the ecommerce industry, so if you are a female business owner, head over to www.ecomcrew.com/underthehood and tell us your story. We'd love to feature you on the podcast.

E267: Building a Mid 7-Figure Business with Experience & Resilience Jul 18, 2019

Show notes

Today's guest is Jamie Futscher, the awesome person behind SpiritedGifts.com. Jamie's also a part of my main mastermind group and someone I consider to be a really good friend.

You'll hear her say that I know more about her business than most people. And as someone privileged enough to have had that insight on what she does, I can say that she's truly an inspiring person.

Jamie has bulldozed down tough challenges to be able to grow her business to where it is today. She shares insights on her journey as a female entrepreneur.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Jamie's take on female priorities and how that plays into ecommerce (5:03)
How the '4-Hour Work Week' got her started as an entrepreneur (8:01)
How she got to engraving her products (11:36)
How she's dealt with struggles related to scaling her business (16:19)
How she's hired a new manager (18:13)
What the holidays are like for her and her company (23:59)

EPISODES ON TRACTION:

E138: Traction Part 1 – Company Core Values

E140: Traction Part 2 – Company Core Focus and 10 Year Goal

E143: Traction Part 3 – Marketing Strategy and 3-Year Plan

E149: Traction Part 4 – One Year Plan and Quarterly Rocks

I hope you enjoyed the fifth installment of this podcast for our Women's Month celebration. We'd love to see more women in the ecommerce industry, so if you are a female business owner, head over to www.ecomcrew.com/underthehood and tell us your story. We'd love to feature you on the podcast.

Want to get on the podcast and talk about your business? Sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today!

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

E266: Overcoming Early Business Struggles and Learning from Them Jul 15, 2019

Show notes

Greetings from Jackson, Wyoming! I'm out on the road doing some roadshow stuff for EcomCrew but will be making a side trip to Montana to visit my good friend Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.

Spoiler alert! If you haven't seen the 5 Minute Pitch, I'd tell you to stop reading and head over to watch a couple of episodes, especially the finale, on the official YouTube channel. There you'll see Kim Meckwood, owner and inventor of Click and Carry, in action.

Kim is the season 1 winner of 5 Minute Pitch. Along with the $50K prize money, all of the judges will be giving her a week-long mentorship session at the end of July. I caught up with her after she won and we had a very insightful discussion, particularly on overcoming and learning from past business struggles.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Kim's experience as a woman entrepreneur
How she got her start in business
How she and her business has been since winning the 5 Minute Pitch
Her early struggles (using her 401K to pay for a surge of orders from QVC contract)

Watch Kim's winning pitch on Season 1 of the 5 Minute Pitch. Or subscribe to the podcast to listen to all the pitches and deliberations while in the car or at the gym.

Join season two of the 5 Minute Pitch by filling out and submitting the application form.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

E265: Getting Into an Ecommerce Business Later in Life Jul 11, 2019

Show notes

If you've been to a handful of ecommerce live events, chances are you've met Carole Rains. She's a regular at these functions and always has a ready smile for anyone.

Carole Rains didn't become a solopreneur until later in life. She started her career in the pharmaceutical industry and then transitioned to becoming a chef. The years and monotonous pace led her to an interest in ecommerce. Today, she's the proud owner of two stores, Rustic Artistry and Emu Joy.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Carole's thoughts about getting more women in ecommerce (3:57)
Carole's take on getting into ecommerce later in life (7:31)
How she started her first store (11:22)
How she got her second store (11:39)
How she makes her businesses work for her lifestyle (14:14)
Challenges she faces in running her businesses (23:00)

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

E264: Blogging as a Jumpoff Point for Getting Into Ecommerce Jul 08, 2019

Show notes

Many people view blogging as a project that requires a specific set of skills and years of writing experience. Both of these certainly help but they're not a prerequisite to getting started. As Jennifer Garza attests, it's more important to just start writing.

In 2011, the mompreneur iSaveA2Z.com, a platform where she could conveniently share tips on how to save money. The website got so much traction that it now has a million monthly views on average.

Along the way, Jennifer went through a lifestyle change. She discovered and fell in love with the keto diet. So much so that she created another website around it, Low Carb Inspirations. In a span of a year, she's landed a cookbook deal and is now the proud author of Keto Friendly Recipes: Easy Keto for Busy People.

In this episode, you'll learn:

How being frugal led to blogging (5:34)
How she achieved success as a blogger (6:25)
The journey that led to her second website, Low Carb Inspirations (9:38)
The true key to her success (20:51)
Her ecommerce plans (30:59)

I hope this episode inspires all our listeners out there to pursue blogging, whether as a jumpoff point to ecommerce or to supplement existing marketing efforts for your brand. As Scott once said in this podcast, "Attention is the new currency." And putting the word out is certainly one way to get more eyeballs on your product.

Connect with amazing people like Jennifer at ecommerce events like Scott Voelker's Brand Accelerator Live. Get tickets.

Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

E263: Building a Multi-million Dollar Company through Authenticity, not Perfection Jul 04, 2019

Show notes

Today's guest is another lady boss who did not initially set out to build a multi-million dollar business. All Daisy Jing wanted to do was to solve a problem that deeply affected her and to share her journey with other people who are going through the same struggle.

Her willingness to openly share her struggles and her desire to help other people attracted followers. In her own words, "Relatability and authenticity really put me on the map." Years later, she's running a multi-million dollar company, Banish, serving the very same people she always wanted to help.

In this episode you'll learn:

How Banish was founded almost by accident (6:58)
How she gained massive following on Youtube and how to build trust with your audience (12:18)
How to find the right kind of influencers and how to build successful relationships with them (14:26)
The lack of women in ecommerce (2:22)
How Daisy handles the impostor syndrome (24:10)
Why successful business owners didn't go to college (26:42)

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

E262: Celebrating Women in Ecommerce Jul 01, 2019

Show notes

It might be July, but this month, we're highlighting the talented ladies among our midst.

I first got the idea for doing this after noticing that there wasn't a single female attendee at our last live event in Hong Kong. It got me thinking about how there ought to be a lot more women in ecommerce but it remains to be a male-dominated industry.

In an effort to bring more attention to the accomplishments of women in the ecommerce space, I'm having an all-female guest list. Throughout the month I'll be talking to boss ladies who are running their own online businesses.

As this is a premier, it's only fitting to start off with Natalie Mounter. Natalie owns and runs a wedding decor shop called Totally Dazzled. But around here, she's known as the OG superfan.

Here's a peek at what we covered.

Losing sight of the "why"

Like many solopreneurs, Natalie went through a year where she scrambled just to get a seat at 'the million-dollar table'. While her business grew 2x in revenue, she didn't quite hit 1M and ended up losing money when she outsourced Facebook advertising to two agencies.

Social media and its impact

Over the years, Natalie's business has gained quite a following on social media. But her brand shines brightest on Pinterest. Totally Dazzled has 450K monthly viewers and Natalie uses the platform for leads. She also enjoys doing tutorials that feature her products so she plans to pump more content into the brand's YouTube channel for her 20K subscribers to share and enjoy.

On the Facebook side of things, she keeps the followers engaged via Facebook Live. She later turns these sessions into ads, which have been doing quite well.

She and I delve deeper into Facebook marketing and explore other avenues where she can use the platform to build new audience streams and build a bigger following, which hopefully translates to greater profit.

Want a physical copy of our tried-and-tested Amazon launch strategy complete with examples and screenshots? Get your free book here.

Get advice from Mike and have your business featured on the podcast. Sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today!

Join season two of the 5 Minute Pitch by filling out and submitting the application form.

Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

E260: Ecommerce Accounting Essentials for Online Sellers Jun 24, 2019

Show notes

Ten episodes ago, I talked about some of the math involved in running an ecommerce business. Episode 250 ended up being one of our most impactful episodes to date.

So I thought it would be a good idea to do a deep dive on all the essentials of ecommerce accounting. To do this effectively, I needed to have an expert on board to break down all these things with me.

Luckily, I sat next to Scott Scharf and his wife at a dinner during this year's Ecommerce Fuel Live and he agreed to come on the show.

A Little Bit about Scott

Scott Scharf is the co-founder of Catching Clouds, an accounting services company that caters specifically to online businesses. Through the company, he's worked with ecommerce entrepreneurs for nearly eight years, helping them stay on track financially.

What We Covered

In this episode, Scott and I go full Ecommerce Accounting 101. Here are some of the basic concepts and terminologies discussed.

The most important function of accounting is to have financials you can look at on a daily or monthly basis that will tell you how your business is doing.
Profit & Loss Statement (P&L) - all the components that make up your top-line revenue; also called an income statement. An example would be Amazon sales.
Cost to Goods Sold (COGS) - shows how much it costs to create, ship, and sell a product/widget. Shipping cost would be included here.
Subtracting COGS from P&L would give you the Gross Profit.
Subtracting your operation expenses (e.g. payroll) from Gross Profit would give you your Net Profit.
Balance Sheet - a report of the company's assets (e.g. inventory, money in the bank) and liabilities (e.g. business loans).

Listen to the entire podcast to get a grasp of all these accounting basics to make your better sense of your financials.

EcomCrew Premium is opening on June 26th through July 1st. Pre-register today so you can have access to tools that can help jumpstart your online business.

We're having a free webinar tomorrow! Learn email marketing fundamentals and hear us talk about our favored strategies to capturing emails and building your list.

Subscribe to the 5 Minute Pitch podcast and get the chance to win over $5K in prizes.

Want a physical copy of our tried-and-tested Amazon launch strategy complete with examples and screenshots? Get your free book here.

Join season two of the 5 Minute Pitch by filling out and submitting the application form.

Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

E259: 5 Minute Pitch Now a Podcast Jun 20, 2019

Show notes

Season 1 of the 5 Minute Pitch was a great success. I got to hear and weigh in on the pitches of a diverse set of entrepreneurs, each one putting themselves out there to make their dreams come true.

Another awesome thing about that first season was the response we got from people who watched the show on YouTube. Now we've made it possible to listen to all of the pitches whether you're working out at the gym or during your daily commute.

Introducing the 5 Minute Pitch Podcast. Listen to all your favorite contestant's pitches at different stages of the competition anytime.

Today, I offer you guys a preview of what the episodes are like. Here's one of my favorite contestants doing his round one pitch.

Subscribe to the 5 Minute Pitch podcast and get the chance to win over $6K in prizes.

Want a physical copy of our tried-and-tested Amazon launch strategy complete with examples and screenshots? Get your free book here.

Consult with Mike at your business premises and be featured on the podcast. Sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today!

Join season two of the 5 Minute Pitch by filling out and submitting the application form.

Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

E258: What It's Like to Work for Mike and Dave Jun 17, 2019

Show notes

Over the past couple of weeks, you've heard a handful of podcasts recorded in the Philippines. You've heard from Mia and all our employees, including Abby and Muffins.

If you've listened to episode 256, these ladies talked a little bit about their specific responsibilities for EcomCrew. But what distinguishes them from the rest is the fact that they work directly for Dave and me.

So, I wanted to get them back on the podcast and hear their perspective on what it's like to work on the brand and for the 'EcomCrew Guys'. Mia didn't leave the room soon enough so she'll be making a cameo on this episode too.

Taking the initiative

I'm the type of employer who doesn't want to micromanage so I value initiative in the members of my team. The ladies had to pick up this skill and hone it while working for the brand and now have confidence and autonomy in their tasks.

First time in Hong Kong

As you all know, I love to travel. I also enjoy it when I'm with first-timers in a favorite city. Hong Kong is certainly that city. Last April Abby and Muffins were able to join us there for the EcomCrew Mastermind and check out the booths in the Global Sources Summit. It was their first international travel and I daresay they both had a great time.

Listen to the full podcast with these awesome ladies of EcomCrew.

Want a physical copy of our tried-and-tested Amazon launch strategy complete with examples and screenshots? Get your free book here.

Get advice from Mike and have your business featured on the podcast? Sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today!

Join season two of the 5 Minute Pitch by filling out and submitting the application form.

Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!

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