If you’re a regular podcast listener, you’ll know that I’ve been involved with something called the 5 Minute Pitch. It’s a show where we offer up and coming ecommerce entrepreneurs the opportunity to grow their businesses. This season, we had 32 people make their pitches to us for the chance to win $50,000.

Going into the second round, we’ve whittled down the contestants to 17. You can watch the final three pitches from Round 1, as well as the deliberation episode on YouTube.

Today, I’ll be talking to someone who made the cut. Dawn LaFontaine owns and runs Cat in the Box, a company that sells stylish cardboard boxes for cats. She was featured on the very first episode of 5 Minute Pitch and got a “yes” from all 5 judges.

Dawn left quite an impression on me with her presentation. She has such an infectious personality and a good business story that I thought it would be great to share that with our listeners through an Under the Hood episode.

In this episode, she and I discuss some strategies she could use to drive and convert traffic. These include:

• Getting into interruption marketing by targeting Facebook groups that are cat owners
• Looking at the subset of those cat owners who are homeowners

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

If you’re interested to get onsite advice from Mike and have your business be featured, sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today!

Join this month’s giveaway and get the chance to win an annual Premium subscription for free.

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!

Before I hop on a plane to Asia, I thought it would be a good time to do a review of those goals I made for myself at the start of the year.

1. Sell a brand. We already did this. ColorIt is officially no longer ours. We’ll be discussing the sale in a series of separate podcasts which is definitely something I'm looking forward to.
2. Position another brand for sale in late 2020. All of our brands now have their own LLCs. I don’t know which brand it will be, but we plan to figure this out in the middle of this year. We’ll start thinking about this now in anticipation that we will be in a better spot with whatever brand we’ll be letting go of next year.
3. Getting back to location independence. Now that ColorIt’s off our plate, it’s allowed us to move everything to a 3PL and shut down our California warehouse. It’s also allowed me to start filming episodes of EcomCrew Roadshow.
4. Reducing debt to zero dollars. We have completed the first step of this. ColorIt’s sale has allowed us to pay all of our business debt. We are working on clearing our mortgage by the end of this year.
5. Hike the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. This will be happening in August and I’ve already started training for it and doing 5-mile walks.
6. Take at least 10 weeks of personal travel. We’ll be going to Japan and I’m super looking forward to going to Tokyo. We’ll have three full days to spend there. That comes after going to Hong Kong for the Mastermind and Global Sources Summit and the Philippines to visit my team. 
7. Record 6 or more episodes of the EcomCrew Roadshow. Two of those are already done. We’re planning to do at least four more.
8. Invest in at least 1 ecommerce business. This is either going to be investing in something that can be a great story for EcomCrew or starting something new. Whatever it is, it will be a transparent case study for all of us to learn from.
9. Lose 10 more pounds. The plan is to lose about a pound a month. I’m pretty convinced that I’ve lost some weight, although I would need to confirm that with a weighing scale.
10. Visit the Philippines office in 2019. I’m gonna be there for two full weeks at the end of the month and at the beginning of May.
11. Start selling our services for EcomCrew. We haven’t started on this yet as staff members working for ColorIt were transferred as part of the sale. But the plan is to offer extra services to EcomCrew Premium members to give them the push they need to grow their businesses, at a minimal cost.  The hope is to launch it this year.
12. Significantly improve the quality of the podcast. Abby is doing pre-interview stuff to send over to me so I’m more prepared to do each episode. We also have a job offer out for a full-time video and audio editor.
13. Film season 2 of 5 Minute Pitch. This will be happening in August. We’ll be filming in Austin for a week. We’re planning to change the format for this new season based on the things we’ve learned from the first one.
14. Break each of our brands out into different companies. This is done but we’re still in the middle of the repercussions of this move. We are still working on making things as organized as they can be.
15. Start hosting in-person events for EcomCrew. This year, we’re going to do at least two. We’ll then do another one in Vancouver in the summer.
16. Speak at 6 industry events. I think I’m already signed up for maybe 8 events at this point.
17. Shift to doing things that only bring me immense personal fulfillment. This is a continuing journey but I am particularly enjoying the things I’m currently doing for EcomCrew. With Under the Hood and now with the Roadshow, I’ve had the chance to do this from a more personal level.
18. Do intermittent fasting for all of 2019 (and eat less meat). I’ve been able to keep at this for the most part of the quarter.
19. Not to drink the rest of 2019. I have done this but with one exception - a glass of champagne when we closed on ColorIt.

That’s where I’m at. You can review the first episode of my goals for 2019 by clicking on the link below.

https://www.ecomcrew.com/e227-19-goals-for-2019/

Join this month’s giveaway and get the chance to win an annual Premium subscription for free.

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!

Cory Stout has already built a successful brand, Woodies Sunglasses. But like any keen ecommerce entrepreneur, he’s seen the potential of acquiring Amazon businesses to grow and improve on.

In this Under the Hood, Cory walks me through the process of his latest acquisition. Inspired by the episode with Shakil Prasla of Pro Click Ventures, he jumped on Empire Flippers and looked at his options. He eventually settled on a business selling a bird feeder called Nibbles and paid $30K for it.

Cory and I then discussed some low hanging fruit in terms of improving the product listing and marketing. These include:

• Replacing existing stock photos with high-quality images
• Improving the copy
• Adding infographics
• Investing in PPC
• Change up the packaging (but not too much)

We also discussed how tying in the product with some type of birdseed can be a great way to not only generate interest in Nibbles but also open up the possibility of introducing new product additions to complement this one SKU in the future.

If you’re interested to get onsite advice from Mike and have your business be featured, sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today!

Join this month’s giveaway and get the chance to win an annual Premium subscription for free.

Watch the final three pitches for Round 1 of the  5 Minute Pitch.

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!

From a Dublin-based seller, we now have an Under the Hood guest from the UK. Jamie Graham is a Premium member. I met him in person at the Million Dollar Sellers meetup in Cancun last year. He and his wife Kayleigh own a beauty brand that’s bringing over a million pounds in revenue, with a 30-40 percent growth rate.

In this episode, the majority of the discussion was focused on these three points.

• Figure out how to build a ‘real’ business that’s not reliant on him and his wife
• Developing a top-level hire
• Working with a sourcing agent

Jamie and I also went over how he was able to implement the principles discussed in the book Traction. It’s an excellent read, especially if you’re on the process of growing and organizing your ecommerce business.

Check out the full episode. I’m looking forward to hearing back from Jamie over the next couple of months. With a growing business and a new baby, he’ll definitely be having his hands full.

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!

Get more information about Million Dollar Sellers on EcomCrew.com/mds.

Need onsite and personalized advice for your struggling ecommerce business? Sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow. Read more about it here.

Join this month’s giveaway and get the chance to win an annual Premium subscription for free.

Tune in to the 5 Minute Pitch. New episodes published weekly until the final round in May at the Sellers Summit 2019.

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!

This Under the Hood guest is someone our Premium members would know. Fabio Molle was on one of our private webinars last month to talk about strategies he used to grow his brand’s Instagram following to more than 200k followers.

Fabio is the owner of Functional Tennis, a company that sells match journals to aspiring athletes and enthusiasts alike. While the brand is taking off on this particular social media platform, that success hasn’t necessarily translated to a profit boost.

The match journal is a good consumable product. Unfortunately, tennis is what you’d call “a niche within a niche” so marketing using conventional channels is out of the question.

I brainstormed with Fabio on possible routes he could take to generate more interest in this product. Here are some takeaways.

• Instead of going the Amazon route, go to the grassroots level.
• Capitalize on social media channels by adding more content.
• A free course can be a great lead magnet because it adds value and can create relationships with people. If those people want to learn more, you can then offer paid content.
• Google Shopping is an asset you’d want to build long term.

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!

Need onsite and personalized advice for your struggling ecommerce business? Sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow. Read more about it here.

Join this month’s giveaway and get the chance to win an annual Premium subscription for free.

Tune in to the 5 Minute Pitch. New episodes published weekly until the final round in May at the Sellers Summit 2019.

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 ask us to pick one episode from the EcomCrew Podcast that we think every ecommerce store owner should listen to, today's episode would be a clear winner.

We're very excited to have Brian Dean on today's episode. If you've been living under a rock, Brian is an SEO expert and the founder of the Backlinko blog. He has been called an "SEO genius" and is one of the people I follow closely, and whose courses have helped propel my ecommerce store to new Google search heights.

In today's episode Brian and I discuss a topic that many ecommerce store owners find daunting--ecommerce SEO.

There is a misconception among online store

You'll learn:

• Why it's no longer possible to rank simply by putting products on a page
• Brian's experience with black-hat SEO and how he figured out how to give Google what it wants
• Why you should go for longer-tail keywords
• The ideal number of clicks from the homepage to a product page
• Why you need to have unique descriptions for every product
• How to see if your website has "page bloat"
• The importance of content marketing and how to find the perfect writer for your store's blog
• The advantage online stores have over blogs when building links

This episode is a discussion of a guide Brian wrote about the topic. You can read about it here.

Resources

Ecommerce SEO: The Definitive Guide

Backlinko

SEO That Works

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

Gideon Kai is facing a dilemma.

His 74 year old father-in-law just declared that he'll need to start working a day job again to pay bills. Gideon knows he's a prolific artist, but not having displayed his art for anyone outside of family and friends, whatever he earns from selling his work is not enough to cover even his basic needs.

He could not stand seeing such a great artist fall into the oblivion of a day job, so he came to us to ask for help. He knows that with a little direction on marketing, he'll be able to spread the word about the man's art so that he'll no longer have to work a day in his life.

In this episode you'll learn:

• The various business models and strategies suitable for different types of art
• How to test if there's enough demand
• Whether or not Kickstarter is a good idea for testing demand and generating funding
• Logistics - finding a good printer, shipping artworks, and lowering costs down for the end consumer
• Tips on raising capital

This episode is part of our Under the Hood segment, where entrepreneurs come to us for a free hour of coaching which is recorded and turned into a podcast.

If you want to be featured on your own Under the Hood, you can sign up here.

Resources:

The Trifecta

Dave and I always liken our Asia trip planning to a tumor - it starts small at first but as the travel dates get closer and closer, the anxiety gets bigger and bigger.

We love going to Asia, especially Hong Kong, but there are little idiosyncrasies that make the trip the trip a pain in the rear end. One of these is the internet and everyone who's been to China knows what I mean.

That's why Dave and I decided to sit and talk about our upcoming Asia trip. We'll be talking about our plans and itineraries and tips and strategies to make the trip a lot less stressful. If you're heading to Asia yourself, you'll find these tips invaluable.

If you'll be in Hong Kong on the 26th, you're free to join us in a meetup we're doing in the evening. Send us an email to support@ecomcrew.com to let us know you're coming.

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

As ecommerce sellers we ultimately want to be seen. That's why we spend ungodly chunks of money on Amazon PPC, Facebook ads, and Google Adwords and Shopping. But what happens if those paid traffic channels become unavailable?

Christian Gravel of Grower Scrog Nets is facing this problem. He has developed a product that helps people grow good cannabis more easily in their homes, and with more states legalizing cannabis, it seems like a viable product. However, marketing for products in this niche is very challenging as there's not exactly a Facebook audience fit for it. On top of that, ad platforms like Facebook and Youtube regulate ads for this niche very heavily.

Building authority in his niche is essential if he wants to be seen, especially since paid ads is not an option. In this episode Christian and I discuss how to most effectively do this.

You'll learn:

• How to get people to spread the word for you
• What the ultimate purpose of every blog post should be
• How to practice writing overwhelmingly great content
• The 6 essential parts of a great blog post

Christian and first I met when he joined the 5 Minute Pitch. Watch his entire pitch here.

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