The Ecomcrew Ecommerce Podcast

Avid listeners would have heard me mention Mia, our PH office director, in this podcast time and again. She is our rock and, through dedication and impressive skills, has single-handedly grown our team from one or two VAs to 9 full-time employees. Mia made her debut on the podcast on episode 142. Back then, she and I talked about her experience with transitioning from a virtual assistant to a managerial role, and how the team she’s formed has been doing.   Two years later, we’ve got more people on board and looking to add some new talent to the roster. I caught up with her again to chat about the biggest changes that have happened to date. These include: Changes to the organizational structure - employees are now working on dedicated brands The ColorIt sale and its impact Letting go of three employees on the same day due to performance issues Tune in to the full episode for a glimpse into Mia’s headspace as she navigates the Philippine team through all the new and exciting things in store for the company this year and beyond. We have a book and we’re giving it away for FREE If you want a physical copy of our tried-and-tested Amazon launch strategy complete with examples and screenshots, get yours here. Want to get advice from Mike and have your business featured on the podcast?  Sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today! Catch the finals of the 5 Minute Pitch on YouTube. Join season two 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!

Many successful ecommerce businesses are born out of necessity. And some of the most successful ecommerce entrepreneurs are selling products that they’re truly passionate about. A Business Born of Necessity Eight years ago, Jason Hsieh’s son Keanu was diagnosed with autism. Living in Japan at the time, Jason struggled to find support services and products for him. So the family moved to Seattle. In 2017, Jason himself would start developing products that would help children diagnosed with autism and ADHD. Today, his company LakiKid sells three physical product lines -  each addressing different areas where kids with autism and ADHD can benefit from the most. The Struggle to Get Back on Track Sales have been going fairly well for LakiKid until the end of 2018. A supply chain issue caused two of its best-selling SKUs to run out of stock right before Christmas. From averaging close to $50,000 in monthly sales, the business has been struggling to get back on track. At present, LakiKid is over 90 percent Amazon but Jason has been exploring marketing avenues off of the platform to gain back the momentum that was lost. These efforts include a Shopify store, a blog, and hosting a weekly live talk show on Facebook. Listen as I navigate this niche business with this passionate dad and entrepreneur and offer insights on how LakiKid can get the groove back, get more exposure and have those sales figures pick up. Under the Hood is a segment where we do an hour-long coaching call with one of our listeners. We take a look at their businesses, provide honest feedback, offer our best business advice, and answer whatever questions they have. In exchange for the free coaching, we will turn the call into a podcast episode so that our community can benefit as well. It’s a win-win! If you’re interested in getting onsite advice from Mike and have your business featured on the podcast, sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today! Catch the finals of the 5 Minute Pitch on YouTube. Join season two 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!

I was in Miami for a couple of days last week for Sellers Summit and the finals of 5 Minute Pitch. Without putting out any spoilers, we’ve already picked a winner this season. I’m excited to meet with this person again to fulfill that mentoring session that comes as part of the prize. For a show that’s on its initial run, we’ve had many interesting business ideas go through. One of which was from Jon Ford. A Relaxing Hobby Turned Profitable Business A firefighter by trade, Jon’s quest for a relaxing hobby has turned into a full-fledged business. He is the proud owner of SheaGarden Handmade, an online store that sells handmade soap. Jon’s winning personality and passion for his product are proving to be quite a hit with customers. However, being a solopreneur with a full-time job can take its toll. In this episode, we identify Jon’s main struggle and I provide tips on how he can get past that. Doing Marketing Right From producing to pricing his handmade soaps, Jon’s got a lot on his plate. He wants to find a way to market his products more effectively. You’ll often hear Dave and I talk about many different marketing strategies. But I’d like to emphasize that we don’t use all of them. And this is the first tip I gave Jon - choose one or two of these to try out for your business. Tune in to the entire podcast for the full discussion and maybe learn a trick or two on how to leverage some out-of-the-box strategies to grow your own ecommerce store. If you’re interested in getting onsite advice from Mike and have your business featured on the podcast, sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today! Catch the latest episodes of the 5 Minute Pitch on YouTube. Join season two 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!

Are you struggling to grow your YouTube followers? If so, boy have I got a treat for you! Today’s guest is Eric Bandholz, one of the founders of Beardbrand. From a community dedicated to beard care in 2012, it has become a full-fledged company selling a wide array of men’s grooming products. The company is unique in that it isn’t reliant on Amazon (at least, not anymore). Instead, it uses other marketing avenues to grow the business. YouTube is one of its core strategies. In the span of 5 years, it has amassed 1 million subscribers on TheBeardbrand channel , which is quite remarkable. Eric was kind enough to share some tips that were crucial to their YouTube success. Have a vision of how your business (i.e. your products or services) can be helpful/useful to people Use media content (videos are big) Learn how the YouTube algorithm works Be prepared to put in that initial effort - the first hundred, the first thousand, the first million is always the hardest Build and streamline a process that allows you to produce content on your channel on a regular basis Listen to the full episode for more insights that you can implement or adapt to meet your own ecommerce marketing strategy.   In other news... EcomCrew Premium is open this week. Get access to our full suite of courses, including the newest one Email Flows to Riches, where we teach you how to use email automation to increase your sales. If you’re interested in getting onsite advice from Mike and have your business featured on a podcast, sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today! Catch the latest episodes of the 5 Minute Pitch on YouTube. Join season two 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!

They say the most important things in life are not taught in school. For us ecommerce entrepreneurs, this is especially true. Unless you took up a business degree (even if you did, it's still not a guarantee), you probably learned how to run a business on your own, in the process of running said business. If you're anything like me, you had no qualms about learning things as you go because doing ecommerce is fun. However, there are many aspects of running a business that are NOT fun. Oftentimes these aspects are the most crucial ones and neglecting them can kill your business. Case in point: accounting. Today's episode is best summarized by Dave's favorite quote: "Revenues are vanity, profits are sanity."   Thanks for listening to this episode! Until the next one, happy selling.

While the process of selling a company is mostly between the buyer and seller, most people forget that it also greatly affects the people on the front lines of running a business: the employees. We've covered why we decided to sell ColorIt in the first place, how we prepared for the sale, and how the transaction transpired. In this episode, which is the 4th and last installment of the ColorIt series, we bring our Filipino employees working on ColorIt to the limelight to talk about how they felt about the sale, how they dealt with the transition, and the aftermath of the deal that is going to transfer them over to another company. You'll learn: How Filipino employees react when they learn the company they're working for is being sold Making sure you're not uprooting your employees' lives in the event of a sale How our manager handled the transition and kept morale high What we're doing to keep employees motivated under the new owner Thanks for listening to this episode! Until the next one, happy selling.

Hey guys! We’re back with Joe Valley for part two of talking about the process involved in selling one of our brands ColorIt.com. In 247, you found Joe and me at that point prior to putting the business up for sale. By the end of the episode, we had gotten a deposit and a signed LOI (letter of intent) from the two wonderful guys who are now the new owners of ColorIt. A signed LOI is similar to a “gentleman’s handshake”. We now see the beginnings of a deal at this stage, but not at a point where it is set in stone. Getting from this point to where the deal is actually finalized is what we will be recovering in this particular episode. You’ll hear Joe and myself discuss terms like purchase agreement, due diligence and all the minute things done before finalizing a sale and getting that money in the bank. The last episode in this 4-part series will be an interview with Nirav, one of ColorIt’s new owners and the team members themselves so stay tuned for that one. If you’re interested in getting onsite advice from Mike and have your business featured on a podcast, sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today! Catch the latest episodes of the 5 Minute Pitch on YouTube. Join season two 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!

Welcome to episode 2 of this 4-part series where I talk about the sale of one of our most profitable brands - ColorIt.com. In episode 246, I discussed the motivation behind this particular move - from the reason behind the sale down to the brand’s new owners. A major cog in the wheel with this sale is a man called Joe Valley of Quiet Light Brokerage. Joe has been instrumental in making sure that I was able to pick the right brand to put up for sale (at one point, I wanted to do away with all of them). His insights and advice helped us boost ColorIt’s saleability even before we put it up on the market. All the specifics of that are discussed in this episode. If you’re planning to sell one of your businesses at some point in the future, give this one a listen. And tune in to the next episode as Joe and I go into more detail about the preparations involved in the sale. If you’re interested in getting onsite advice from Mike and have your business featured on a podcast, sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today! Catch the latest episodes of the 5 Minute Pitch on YouTube. Join season two 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!

If you've been following this podcast over the past few weeks, it won't come as a surprise to you when I say that ColorIt is officially no longer ours. We listed the business for sale in December and we officially closed on April 5th. Being our biggest brand, you might wonder why we sold ColorIt.com among all our other brands. In this episode we talk about The events that led to the sale of ColorIt How the transaction transpired Who the buyers are How much the business sold for What's next for Terran This episode is part of a series we're doing on the ColorIt sale. Stay tuned for our next few episodes where we talk to Joe Valley, the broker who helped me with the sale, and our team in the Philippines who help run ColorIt. Thanks for listening! Until the next one, happy selling.

Amazon is crowded. Everyone and their mom is hawking something on Amazon, and since there's only a finite number of stuff most people are willing to buy, everyone is clawing their way up from the competition to page 1. One tactic sellers employ to get more sales is to lower their prices. The lower your price, the more sales you get. It only makes sense, right? While it is true to some extent, at the end of the day the race to the bottom hurts the most important thing in business: profits. In this episode, I am joined by 5 Minute Pitch contestant Amanda Wittenborn of Amanda Creations to talk about how lowering prices can actually hurt your business, and conversely, how raising prices can make you more money. In addition, we also discuss: Whether it's better to learn how to market a new website or hire an expert to do it The most important factors that influence the ability to scale How a business can stay relevant in 2019 Amanda is a designer who is passionate about spreading joy to kids and convenience to moms by offering custom design services for every celebration. Check out her creations here. Thanks for listening to this episode! Until the next one, happy selling.