Last year Dave set out on a goal to rebuild another million dollar company in a span of one year. It has been a little more than 12 months since he set out with that goal, and today we have him on the podcast to talk about his results. Did he make it to that $1 million mark? Let's find out!
But first, here's a bit of a backstory. In October 2016 Dave sold his first ecommerce company, which was doing just under $2 million in revenue per year. He had a number of reasons for selling his company but one of them was that he felt it would be easier to recreate a million dollar company using the knowledge he's gained running his first company over the past few years. He detailed his year-long journey building his second company in a blog post series you'll find here.
In today's episode Dave and I talk about his journey, and whether he was successful in rebuilding a million dollar company or not. We also talk about the challenges he encountered along the way, and what his plans are moving forward.
Some conversation points:
Whether Dave succeeded in his goal or not, what he accomplished within 12 months is nothing short of amazing. It's a great example for those just starting in ecommerce, whether they want to reach $1 million in revenue within a year or not.
Resources mentioned:
EcomCrew Premium
Part 1: Rebuilding a $1million Ecommerce and Importing Business from Scratch
Part 2 – Rebuilding a $1m Ecommerce Business – Finding Products and Suppliers
PART 3 – REBUILDING A $1M ECOMMERCE BUSINESS First 60 Day Results
Part 4- Rebuilding a $1m Ecommerce Business – 6 Month Results
Million Dollar Update – 12 Month Update
Thanks for listening! If you have any questions about this episode, feel free to leave them below.
Head on to EcomCrew Premium if you liked this episode and would want to get more content like this. We have courses, webinars, video tutorials and more to help you in your ecommerce business.
Until the next episode, happy selling!
This is the fourth and final episode of the series I'm doing on the book Traction. In Episode 1 we discussed setting the company's core values and communicating them to the entire team. We followed that with Episode 2, where we talked about defining the company's core focus and setting the company's 10-year goal. Since the 10-year goal is ideally a BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal), we'd need to break it down into a more achievable 3-year goal, which is the topic for Episode 3. We close everything by further breaking down the 3-year goal to a 1-year plan and defining quarterly rocks, which is what we'll talk about in this episode.
Obviously, your one-year plan needs to be in harmony with your bigger goals. For example, one of your 3-year goals is to develop a total of 100 new products and in order for us to achieve that, we set to develop 50 new products as one of our 1-year goals. We know how hard it is to constantly develop new products, so developing 50 this year will give us a running start for the following years.
In order to make sure every person in the team is working towards the company's goals, you need to set quarterly "rocks". Your quarterly rocks determine what each employee's priorities are and govern where they spend their time and effort on. These are specific action items for each of your employees to make sure they all work towards the company's goals.
This episode also covers the following:
To end this series on Traction, it's important to point out the ultimate purpose of the steps lined out here and in the previous episodes. In many companies only C-level employees know what "the plan" is, leaving all the other employees unaware of where to actually focus on, apart from what's currently on their plate. Letting them know exactly where the company is heading and the role they have to play to get the company there makes them accountable, proactive, and empowered to do their part.
Resources mentioned:
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (Amazon afiliate link)
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
E147: Amazon PPC Strategy – Step by Step Guide on Saving Thousands of Dollars
EcomCrew Premium
Thanks for listening! Leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this episode. Until the next one, happy selling!
Many of us starting on the ecommerce entrepreneur route debate between selling two types of products: physical or digital.
It's relatively easy to demonstrate the value of a physical product, and it tends to evoke the feeling that you're running a real business. Physical products however require higher overhead, as you need ample amounts of inventory and money on shipping operations to keep the business running. On the other hand, digital products require almost no overhead and creating them doesn't tie up any money. On the downside, digital products are far more difficult to create and creation is very time-consuming.
Between these two, what would be best for someone who wants to foray into ecommerce? Our answer - Both.
In this episode Dave and I talk about how a combination of both physical and digital products is excellent for ecommerce businesses. We use Tactical.com and Coloring Club case studies to demonstrate this. In particular, we talk about the following:
This episode is a great way for us to officially announce our new membership plan called EcomCrew Premium.
Over the past few months we've been releasing courses with individual pricing and we plan to keep on releasing new ones in the future, and selling content on a by-course basis has proven to be difficult and unscalable. We've been giving course discounts to those who bought our previous courses, and keeping track of who gets X amount of discount has become a bit of a headache. That has led to a decision to scrap the by-course pricing model and use a subscription model instead.
With EcomCrew Premium you get access to ALL of our courses for a very cheap monthly price. Aside from that, you also get access to exclusive monthly webinars, monthly Q&A's, templates and swipe files. And of course, there's the private email coaching with both Mike and Dave so you can reach out to them anytime you hit a roadblock.
Click here for more information about EcomCrew Premium.
Resources mentioned:
E117: How an MMA Fighter Built a Multi-Million Dollar Company Selling Digital Products
EcomCrew Premium
Tactical.com
Coloring.club
Thanks for listening! Until next week, happy selling.
While Amazon PPC is one of the most important tools for any Amazon seller, it's also one that's very expensive. It can potentially drain your profits if left unchecked.
Case in point: In January we spent roughly $33,000 on Amazon PPC, generated sales amounting to around $104,000, with ACOS at 30%. Deducting Cost of Goods and other Amazon fees, we incurred a net loss of $537.
You might ask what's the point of running ads if it's a loss anyway, and the answer is what I call the "Amazon flywheel effect". It's okay for me to take a hit on profits if it means getting more traffic and better conversions, because in the long run it will get me better search positions, in turn driving more sales.
While I'm generally okay with this, it would be nice to get the same results with a little less money--even if just to break even. So early this year I decided to sit down and take a good hard look at our PPC campaigns and see if there's something we can do to save some money here and there. What resulted is an Amazon PPC strategy that after a couple of months of implementation resulted in the rough stats below:
Spend: $25,000
Sales: $103,000
ACOS: 24.1% and dropping
Net profits: $6000
Yes, you read that right. We actually gained profits when we implemented this Amazon PPC strategy. The beauty of it is this strategy does not require you to monitor PPC campaigns all the time. You don't even have to do this yourself. We assigned one of our Filipino VAs to this task and it just takes her a couple of hours per week.
One of the tools that hugely helped us achieve this is Sellics. We trained our VA and taught her how to use the software and it has helped her drastically reduce the time needed to monitor our PPC campaigns. Click here to explore Sellics (affiliate link).
In this episode I discuss how we were able to do this and how you can do it too. This episode is quite technical and we might do a screencast in the future to better explain the numbers in our Amazon PPC strategy. Subscribe to our Youtube channel to get updates.
Resources mentioned:
Million Dollar Sellers
Sellics (affiliate link)
EcomCrew Youtube channel
Thanks for listening! If you have any questions, feel free to comment below.
For those who missed Monday's episode, David Wilson is our Under the Hood guest who enjoyed massive sales growth right before suddenly experiencing a plateau. He tried regaining growth by increasing ad spend, to the point that his profits were in danger of drying up. He needs cost-effective ways to get his sales back on pace, and that is what we talk about in this episode.
On Monday's episode, David and I talked about the basic things he needs to take care of before he can move on to actual growth strategies, which is delegation. We talked about his need to hire VAs and let Amazon FBA handle his inventory so he can have some free time to focus on high-level tasks that only he can do.
Today we get into the "meat and potatoes"--the actual strategies David needs to employ to boost his sales. In particular we talk about the following, among others:
I hope you got valuable practical advice from my conversation with David. If you'd like to get a one-on-one coaching session with me and be featured on the podcast, join our Under the Hood program here.
Resources mentioned:
Splitly
Famebit
SimplyVAT
Pacific Customs Brokers
Thanks for listening! Until next week, happy selling.
Massive growth is not uncommon for ecommerce businesses. We, for instance, doubled our revenue every year since we started in 2015. With this kind of trend it becomes very unsettling for most ecommerce business owners if sales suddenly remain the same month after month, even if that sales number is high.
This is what today's Under the Hood guest is going through. David Wilson had been enjoying massive growth when his sales suddenly plateaud--not increasing and not decreasing, just remaining more or less the same every month. His ads no longer worked, paid search was no longer effective, and his cost per acquisition skyrocketed. His business was in danger of losing profits if he kept doing the same things over and over.
David needs cost-effective ways to expand sales and that is the topic for this Under the Hood session. For this episode David and I talk about the first action he urgently needs to do: delegation. Much of his time is tied up on small day to day tasks and he needs to free up time to spend on higher-level tasks that will help recover the growth of his business.
In particular, we talk about hiring VAs and using Amazon FBA for fulfillment, two of the lowest-hanging fruit in terms of delegation. In addition, we also talk about the following:
This is just the first part of our coaching session. In Part 2 we get into the meat and potatoes--the specific actions David needs to do to scale his business and gain back his previous growth. These are things that can easily be done, from improving product photography to using a new Shopify theme. Part 2 will come out on Thursday.
If you liked this episode and would like to have your own personalized business advice for free and be featured in the podcast, sign up for Under the Hood here.
Resources mentioned:
Amazon product launch strategy webinar
Under the Hood
Thanks for listening! Just comment below if you have questions or advice for David, and get a chance to win an EcomCrew branded mug. Until the next episode, happy selling!
Here's something you don't hear about very often: me and Dave sitting side by side on a train heading to China talking about EcomCrew.
With me being based in the US and Dave in Canada (and Dave most recently living in China for the last 8 months), communication has not been very easy. We had to deal with time zones and dropped calls, making it hard for Dave to be on the podcast with me (he doesn't like being on the podcast very often in the first place, making it a lot harder).
Our trip to Asia was very productive not just for our respective businesses but for EcomCrew as well, as it gave time for me and Dave to be in the same place and talk about EcomCrew in real time. One of these moments was during a train ride from Hong Kong to Guangzhou on our way to the Canton Fair. We decided to record our conversation amidst train noises in the background for your listening pleasure.
Here are some conversation points:
Despite the backgound noise of train hums and Chinese chatter, this train ride has been an enjoyable experience--Dave and I even made a gentleman's bet on something in relation the Global Sources Summit. Watch out for the results of the bet in the coming episodes!
Resources mentioned:
Amazon launch strategy webinar
E102: Amazon Product Launch Strategy for 2018
How to Launch a New Brand and Product on Amazon to a New Best Seller
E127: The Importance of Masterminds on Business and Personal Life
Thanks for listening! Did you find our conversation interesting? Comment below and get a chance to win a free mug!
This is the third episode of the series I'm doing on the business book Traction by Gino Wickman. In episode 1 we covered the importance of setting your company's core values and communicating them to the entire company. Next we covered setting the company's core focus and 10-year goal in episode 2.
Here's where most people hit a snag. 10 years is a length of time most people can't wrap their heads around, and we certainly did not have an easy time thinking about where we want to be in 10 years. On the other hand, setting a 10-year goal will definitely make you think what it is that you actually want to achieve with your company long term. Once you have an idea what 10 years would look like for your company, it's time to break it down into smaller goals achievable within a smaller span of time, and that's what we will cover in this episode.
Before breaking down the 10-year goal into smaller goals, Traction advises that you first set up your marketing strategy. In this phase you'll need to set up your customer avatar, the three things that make you unique, and what process you'll need to put in place in order to be successful. The book provides help along the way as you set these up.
Once that's done, it's time to sit down and formulate a 3-year plan. For most people, this means setting up a revenue number. That is definitely a part of the 3-year plan, but Traction emphasizes that it's so much more than that. You need to visualize not just the amount of money you're raking in by that time, but also the landscape of your company--how many employees you need to have, the products you'll be selling, systems and processes you'll need to set up, etc.
To help you along the process, I share my marketing strategy and 3-year plan in this episode as an example. In particular, I talk about the following:
In the next Traction episode we further break things down to a 1-year plan. It's very important to keep your core values in mind as you go through this stage to make sure that what you're doing does not go against what you set out to become in the first place.
Resources mentioned:
Amazon launch strategy webinar
E138: Traction Part 1 – Company Core Values
E140: Traction Part 2 – Company Core Focus and 10 Year Goal
Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (Amazon afiliate link)
E129: How to Pick the Perfect Product to Sell in eCommerce
E102: Amazon Product Launch Strategy for 2018
Thanks for listening to this week's edition of the podcast. Until the next one, happy selling!
P.S. Comment below to win a free mug!
Out of all the things I do with EcomCrew and in ecommerce in general, the one thing I get asked about the most is our Philippines office. I’m not sure if it’s because I talk about our Filipino employees so much or there are so many entrepreneurs out there who want to find high quality virtual assistants but just don’t seem to get landed with one, no matter what they do.
I definitely get the sentiment if it’s the latter. Once upon a time, I hired my first Filipino VA. But instead of freeing up my time, that hire resulted in the exact opposite–I felt like I spent so much time daily just getting him to do simple tasks and it came to the point that I can’t do what I want to do simply because I spent too much of my time with him. I eventually let him go and thought to myself that I won’t ever get a VA again.
Some time later on a plane ride back from China, I decided to give hiring a Filipino VA another go. I’m so glad I did, because in that second attempt at hiring I found Mia.
Mia is the cornerstone of our PH office and without her, there would be no PH office. She was the one who found the rest of our Filipino employees, from virtual assistants to writers to graphic designers. She started as a virtual assistant and has morphed into a director managing 11 employees in just under two years.
I had the chance to get Mia on the podcast during our visit to the Philippines last month. She didn’t want to do it, but just like most of the challenges I threw at her, she stepped up and did her part. In this episode we highlight the changes that have happened over the course of a year, particularly the growth of our PH team from just a handful of people to 12 full-time awesome employees.
We also discuss the following in detail:
If there’s just one advice we can give you when you hire a VA, it would be this: don’t hire in a hurry. You might have so many things on your plate right now and would want nothing more than to unload as much of that as soon as possible, but hiring the wrong person would cost you so much in the long run. Be patient for the right person to come because it will be so worth it in the end.
Resources mentioned:
Amazon Launch Strategy webinar
E96: Our Philippines Team – Hiring and Maintaining a Team of Rockstar VAs
Thanks for listening! Have you ever hired a Filipino VA? What was your experience? Comment down below and get a chance to win this EcomCrew mug!
