The Ecomcrew Ecommerce Podcast

If you've been listening to the EcomCrew Podcast for quite some time, you'll know that I'm a big believer of masterminds. The company of people who understand your struggles as an entrepreneur and offer guidance on your growth is invaluable. In the words of Napoleon Hill: "Deliberately seek the company of people who influence you to think and act on building the life you desire." I recently joined...

Going to trade shows is by far our favorite method of sourcing. I can tell you so many reasons right now why we prefer it over everything else, but I'd be getting ahead of myself. Some of the trade shows I absolutely love going to are those hosted by Global Sources . Much like Alibaba, Global Sources is a frequented supplier directory on the internet. However, unlike Alibaba, Global Sources is usu...

Amazon sellers' forums and groups were alive with the sound of panic last week. On February 26th, Amazon sent emails to hundreds and maybe even thousands of sellers containing the following: Hello, We are contacting you because you appear to have violated the policies of "Misuse of ratings, feedback, or reviews", "Misuse of sales rank", "Misuse of Search and Browse" on our site... If this conduct...

On Monday's episode , Rob and I discussed how to effectively manage Filipino VAs and foster a long-lasting working relationship with them. Now that we've got that covered, we move on to the second part of Rob's problem: scaling his business. This is a topic we are well-versed in for two reasons: we managed to double our revenue last year, and we are actively trying to replicate that growth this ye...

Have you ever hired a Filipino VA and was so pleased with them that you felt like you hit the jackpot? They're incredibly talented, they get things done the way you want, they're just downright fantastic. With them helping you out, you get more time to focus on business direction and you couldn't be happier. But then, and seemingly for no reason, your incredible VA suddenly disappears. What just h...

Our months of hard work have finally paid off! We are happy to announce that the following courses are open for registration: Build a 7-Figure Product Brand Import From China Like a Pro And to kick things off, we have Dave Bryant from literally the other side of the world on the podcast to talk about the course and the carefully curated content that's waiting for you on the other side. And if that...

"If you think about the money as the fuel that drives the car, if the money is getting stopped up before it gets to the vehicle--meaning it's not being organized properly--then you never get the vehicle to move forward." - Ezra Firestone Ezra Firestone is in the house! That's right, Ezra Firestone of Smart Marketer is our guest for today's episode. Labeled as the first and leading ecommerce influe...

"The reality is that one day you wake up and you realize that you're the bottleneck in your own business, and it's time to be fired." - Mike Jackness on handing over the reins of the company to someone else Have you ever had that feeling when you just know you're about to get fired from your job? In 41 years I have never been fired--I worked hard enough to not be in that situation--and it's certai...

In Part 1, Cory and I talked about his business, Woodies , and the SAAS subscriptions he has racked up in running his business. We went through his SAAS subscriptions and evaluated whether or not he should hold on to some of them and let go of the others. Since he has quite a long list, we continue to talk about the rest of the services he uses in the first part of this episode. Cory then talks ab...

We've released 4 Under the Hood episodes so far and we've been getting a lot of good comments about the segment. It seems to resonate with a large listener base, and since we've been really happy about your feedback, we're bumping things up and releasing more of these episodes. For today's episode, we have Cory Stout of Woodies.com on the spotlight. Cory is living a nomadic lifestyle while running...

"Even when you find business models that are pretty well fleshed-out, there's gonna be a million ways to connect the dots that you just kind of have to take your best swings and learn as hard as you can and work as hard as you can. That's going to be everybody's experience in entrepreneurship. There's really no way around that." - Dan Faggella Our guest for today's episode is a Class A badass guy....

Last week , Megan and I talked about cash flow and early-stage financing for her ecommerce business. We continue to talk a little bit more about financing in this episode, specifically Amazon loans, then move on to the next big issue: Facebook ads. Any ecommerce entrepreneur knows how important Facebook ads are in any ecommerce business. However for a business like Megan's which is still at its ea...

We have another Under the Hood episode for you! Under the Hood is a new segment we are doing on the EcomCrew Podcast where we give our listeners the opportunity to be on the podcast and ask us any advice about their business. They get free coaching from us and our listeners get amazing content, too--it's a win-win! For today's episode we have Megan Loftin of  The Bootstrap Boutique on the spotligh...

"The most finite resource you have is your time and your team's time. So if we were to spin our wheels chasing this huge big box business, that would prevent us from spending our time to stuff that is hugely profitable and is continuing to work. So why take your eye off the ball?" - Bill D'Alessandro on abandoning the big box retail route "My products are in 5,000 Target stores." Admit it, at some...

"What's the next thing we have to do to keep going? Is that contacting Amazon, or fixing a listing? Where in some places we probably should take a step back and think about where are we going with this brand and how do we picture it in the next 6 months or a year." - Jacquelyn on focusing on the bigger picture and not getting distracted by the day-to-day activities of the business   When you run a...

This is Part 2 of last Monday's Under the Hood pilot episode . We'd like to thank Brad for bravely coming on the podcast to talk about his business, essentially becoming a guinea pig for our new segment. If you're interested in getting at least an hour of free coaching too (and getting featured in a podcast episode), sign up to be an Under the Hood guest here . During Part 1 Brad and I discussed h...

This is an episode I wish we didn't have to record. Competition on Amazon is getting stiffer and stiffer and some sellers, in order to succeed, use the short cut and employ black-hat tactics--killing the business of other sellers mercilessly, if need be. In this episode we discuss in detail how these black-hat tactics work. I invited three Amazon sellers who actually went through the grueling expe...

We're excited to do something new at the EcomCrew Podcast! We want to make EcomCrew a better and more awesome resource for ecommerce business owners like you and today marks the start of that endeavor. Today we are releasing a brand-new podcast segment which we believe will tremendously help you wherever you are in your ecommerce journey. The segment is called Under the Hood, where we call one of...

"Never lose sight of the bigger picture--life is short, so make great products that customers truly enjoy and enjoy coming to work." - Mike on one of his most important 2018 goals 2018 just rolled in and there's no better time to set goals for the fresh year than today. I think everyone should be doing something like this, as having clear and sharp goals keeps you from getting distracted by seemin...

Merry Christmas everybody! We just want to thank you guys for an awesome year, it never would have been possible without you. We did a lot of things that are new to us this year (insert shameless plug for our course ) and you've stuck with us through the hiccups, providing us feedback along the way which helped us improve immensely. We can't thank you enough for that. Since everyone will be on hol...

As 2017 comes to a close, it's only fitting to devote our last episode of the year to 2018 ecommerce predictions. Dave and I listed what we think will happen in the ecommerce world next year, from sales tax to Bitcoin. It's always fun to make these predictions and then revisit them by the end of 2018 to see how many of them actually happened.  It would've been great to have Dave on the episode as...

I just did a podcast about my 2017 biggest struggles in our last episode and today I will cover the biggest news to ever explode in the ecommerce world this year. It definitely seems like 2017 flew us by but not without leaving news bombs that left a lot of people in ecommerce amused, worried, hopeful and wondering what's going to happen next. We compiled a list of the biggest news in ecommerce th...

"In general, I think that people spend too much time talking about their wins, and gloating, and how well things are going and never talk about the disarray or things that are going on behind the scenes, or things that they're struggling with. I think it's important to talk about this stuff; I think everyone goes through these types of things." - Mike Jackness on the business and life struggles he...

"If you put no effort into your stuff, like if you're really not contributing any value to whatever community you're in--you have crappy packaging, crappy products, crappy support--you're not going to get anywhere. So you have to make yourself stand out." - Nat Arem of Hookgrip Here at EcomCrew we put emphasis into how important it is to build a brand and not just sell a bunch of products. It's fi...

"If you're never been an entrepreneur before, I would suggest starting a business. If you have done it once, I would strongly advice buying a business. It's just a lot easier." - Bill D'Alessandro of Elements Brands If you've been listening to the podcast for a while now you might have noticed I that when I talk about my speaking engagements, I always give credit to someone who told me--back when...