Are you tired of the chasing down one-time transactions? Do you want more predictable revenue? Then a subscription ecommerce model might be what you need.

Just because you sell sunglasses or messenger bags or some other kind of apparel doesn't mean a subscription ecommerce model won't work for your business. In fact, it's quite likely that it will work for you...once you make a small mindset shift.

This is a special episode for us as it brings us back to our humble beginnings. Both of us planted our entrepreneurial roots and cut our marketing chops at Sean's company HUMAN Healthy Vending. Without this experience, we wouldn't have been able to successfully grow our business in the way that we have.

It's amazing how things come full circle now as we chat with Sean about how they've been able to take their healthy snack delivery business and apply the subscription ecommerce model to be able to grow 10x in just 9 months.

What's even more incredible is that they've taken an outbound sales team approach that you find in typical b2b/c businesses and applied it to ecommerce, which they credit much of their massive success to. It's a bit counterintuitive when you think about ecommerce in the typical way, but that's why this podcast is awesome.

It gave us a chance to learn of new, out of the box ways to grow an ecommerce company. 

Key Takeaways from the Show

• How and why they chose a subscription ecommerce model for their business
• Why content plays such a big role in their success and the detrimental risks you face not doing it in your business
• How to use an outbound sales team to grow a subscription ecommrece model business by 15x
• How to produce massive amounts of quality content without doing all the work yourself
• Why the "membership economy" is the future of ecommerce

How would it feel to go from working 14 hours per day 6 days a week to working 6 hours per day and not working Fridays? Working with a virtual staff can make that promised-land a reality.

If a self-proclaimed "micro-managing, pain in the butt boss" can do it, then so can you.

Virtual staffing is no longer considered a new concept thanks to Tim Ferriss's 2007 book "The Four-Hour Workweek", but knowing how to hire, train, and manage a fully functioning and efficient virtual staff seems like a new concept to many.

Lucky for us, Chris Ducker, the virtual staffing expert, joins the show to talk about working with a virtual staff, the type of mindset you need to build a virtual team, how to determine what your staff should be doing, how to take your business to the next level with virtual staffing, and much more.

Give it a listen and learn how you can go from 14 hour days to 6...and no Fridays.

Key Takeaways from the Show

• How to execute the "Three Lists to Freedom" exercise
• The one mindset shift you need to make to start working with a virtual staff successfully
• How building a virtual team has changed and where it's heading
• The next level beyond your virtual staffing foundation

Links / Resources

• Chris Ducker's Website
• Chris Ducker's Twitter
• Virtual Freedom Book
• Ecommerce Influence Insider

Subscribe & Review

To get more awesome Ecommerce Influence content sent directly to your device and into your ears as they become available, you can easily subscribe.

Also, ratings and reviews on iTunes (hopefully 5-stars!) help us tremendously and we’re very grateful for them. We do read all of the reviews and we’ll answer your questions or comments on future episodes.

You might not be the right type of person to start an ecommerce business from scratch, so maybe you should buy an ecommerce business instead.

The amount of time, energy, money and sacrifice it takes to build a business from the ground up can be exhausting (we know first hand), so why not skip all of that and buy an ecommerce business that is already established?

To be honest, we never really considered the benefits of buying an already established business, but after talking with David Newell of FE International we've been convinced that buying an ecommerce business might actually be a better option than starting from scratch.

In this episode, David will cover the 4 main reasons why you should buy an ecommerce business, including a few reasons we never thought about and now have us considering it. He'll also cover the 6 areas you need to focus your due diligence process on so that you can make sure you're not getting hosed when negotiating with the seller.

Oh, and if you're thinking about selling this would be a great episode to listen to so that you know exactly how a buyer is thinking and the steps they're going to take (with the help of their broker) to make sure you business is legit and worth the investment.

Key Takeaways from the Show

• The 4 reasons why you should buy an ecommerce business instead of starting one from scratch.
• How to know if you're type of person who should be buying
• The 6 key tenets to robust due diligence when buying an ecommerce business
• The biggest mistakes most first-time buyers make and how to avoid them
• How to find financing when you want to buy an ecommerce business

Links / Resources

• FE International
• David Newell on Twitter
• David's Advanced Guide to Buying

It's been about a year and a half since since we started the podcast and countless experts have joined the show to provide us with incredible insights into building a successful ecommerce business.

The question is, which ones should you be focusing on?

We thought it would be the perfect time take the thousands of ideas, tips, and tricks we've learned and flesh out the top 7 things we've learned about building a successful ecommerce business so that you can focus on the most important things now, while helping you better plan for your business's future. It was tough for us to choose just 7 so know that our recommendations here do not come lightly. [player]

Key Takeaways from the Show

• A breakdown of the top 7 things we've learned about building a successful ecommerce business
• The main difference between a real business and a job you created for yourself
• Predicting the end of most ecommerce businesses
• Why you're not as important to your business as you think (and why you want it that way)
• The traffic strategy that the biggest and best ecommerce companies use that you might be ignoring

Subscribe & Review

To get more awesome Ecommerce Influence content sent directly to your device and into your ears as they become available, you can easily subscribe.

Also, ratings and reviews on iTunes (hopefully 5-stars!) help us tremendously and we’re very grateful for them. We do read all of the reviews and we’ll answer your questions or comments on future episodes.

Today we're talking about risk and decision making.

In business and life entrepreneurs and must decide to take risks (or not take risks) and live with the impacts it has.

We're talking about an article from Bonobos.com CEO Andy Dunn called The Risk Not Taken and it's had a massive impact on our approach to risk and decision making and wanted to share it with you. Andy talks about everything from the role money has in risk to personal shame and embarrassment. It's something we all feel but rarely talk about in the conversation about entrepreneur-ism and life.

Key Takeaways from the Show

• The role that risk plays in business and life.
• How to deal with the "Decision Elf"
• What to do when you feel like a fraud.
• The need to understand how well off we really are.

Links / Resources

• Andy Dunn