New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

We were inspired by one of our favorite podcasts, Start-Up, to kick off a new series this week. Over the course of the next year, we'll be following Kyle Goguen, founder of Pawstruck, to see what it's like for a successful business to try and take their company to the next level. We'll be checking in with Kyle every few months to see if he's ticking all the boxes off his 2016 "to do" list. Today Kyle lays out his key goals for 2016 along with his worries about the coming year. Join us as we chronicle both the highs (and hopefully very little lows) over the next twelve months. Subscribe:  iTunes | Stitcher (With your hosts Andrew Youderian and Laura Serino of eCommerceFuel.com and guest, Kyle Goguen of Pawstruck) Andrew: Welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast, I'm Andrew Youderian. A lot of time on this show, and in the business world in general, we tend to look at businesses in the rear view mirror, at their past and their successes. But there's something really interesting and exciting about following a business in real-time when you're not sure what's going to happen. Take for example Start-Up by Alex Blumberg, one of my favorite podcasts. There's something I really respect about someone who's willing to put their goals on the line publicly as they chase them. I think that's really admirable. In today's episode brought to you by Laura Serino, our producer here, we've got something that combines a little bit of both of those, so I hope you enjoy. Kyle: Hi, everyone. My name is Kyle Goguen, and I own Pawstruck.com. Pawstruck.com sells healthy, natural dog treats and chews and food online direct to consumers. We've been in business about a year and a half now, started in June 2014. Laura: Kyle's a member of our eCommerceFuel community, and I first met him last year at our live event in Nashville. Kyle's motivated, successful, driven, and he's only 25 years old. He first got his start selling online where lots of people from his generation did, on eBay. When he was 16, he responded to an ad on Craigslist from a guy looking to hire someone to help him list items from his garage. Kyle's Story Kyle: So I found the job, I responded to the guy, we set up an interview, and then I told my parents. And as you might imagine, my parents were questioning exactly what I would be doing and where this was and who this person was that was hiring me to basically sell stuff on the internet. So my dad in a very parental, embarrassing way, kind of forced me to let him come with me to the interview, and he forced his way there, I guess, and he made me let him meet my boss, I guess. So it was a very awkward interview, having my dad there asking questions as well. But once we got through all of that, yeah, basically I would go out this guy's...he kind of had a warehouse, and we would just look through all the electronics, and I would pick and choose what I wanted to list for that day, and I would take out a camera which happened to be a camera that we pulled from the inventory, take photos, upload them, and list anything I wanted, and whatever I sold, I would make commission on it. It was definitely an interesting first job, very different than anything any of my friends were going through, but it was really nice kind of learning this skill, and also it was very flexible. As much as I listed was as much as I was going to make, and if I didn't want to work I didn't have to, or if I wanted to work more, I could. So it was really up to me as to how much I was listing and selling. Laura: Kyle continued to sell on eBay into college to make money. In his graduate program, he was taking an entrepreneurship course, and for his project, he decided to use the pet industry as a model. As a dog owner, he was hearing more and more backlash about products that were making animals sick, and he saw the need for more U.S.

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

It's everyone's new favorite social media platform and for some business owners, it's a gold mine. Lily Jade is a multi-million dollar diaper bag business and they've generated seven figures alone through Instagram. eCommerceFuel community members and founders of Lily Jade, Landon and Meggan Wood, along  with their Instagram manager, Ashley McGleary, share the secrets behind using influencers and creating engagement to create buzz (and lots of sales) using Instagram. Subscribe:  iTunes | Stitcher (With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and guests, Landon & Meggan Wood and Ashley McGleary of Lily Jade ) Andrew: Hey, hey, guys, it's Andrew here. And welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in to the show today. And on the show, we're talking Instagram today, and specifically, how do you generate seven figures in sales from Instagram? And my guests have done that. Not only do that they have a multi-million dollar business, and have done well with Instagram, but they've generated seven figures in sales just from the Instagram channel itself, by their own estimates. A really impressive story. And the owners, who are eCommerceFuel community members, I had the chance to meet them at ECF Live last year in Nashville, Landon and Meggan Wood, and they've got a really incredible story. And we're...we have them on, and we're also joined by their, kind of a Instagram manager. She heads up their Instagram team at the company, Ashley McClearyan. And talk tactics. How do you make this work? We talk about the early days, how they got going, how they got their 1,000 followers. We talk how much you should expect to spend when you paying for influencers to share your things, based on how many followers and how much engagement we have. We talk about how you should put together an engagement letter when you have people that you're paying sponsored posts for, to make sure they present your brand in a way that actually gets engagement and represents you the way that you want to be seen. And we talk about that, and a lot of other things in today's interview. So, I'm going to go ahead and get the intros brief as possible, and let's go ahead and jump right in to discussion with Landon, Meggan, and Ashley from Lily Jade. In Search of a Great Diaper Bag Andrew: So, Meggan, you were mentioning that you've only been doing this for a couple years. I think like, October of 2013, you and Landon and the team there, and...which, really surprised me, given the quality of the business of your line of products, and what you've been able to accomplish since then. So, was LilyJade born out of just, your need for a good diaper bag? Meggan: Yeah, actually it was. I'm a mom of two little girls, and when I had my second daughter, I looked at my husband and said that one day I wanted to design a diaper bag line that did not look anything like a diaper bag, and that had multiple functions, just as a great coat, and that had an organizational component that would help keep moms and women and business women just organized. Help their lives run a little bit more efficiently. So, yeah. Andrew: I think this is the kind of thing where you don't really realize how valuable that is until you have kids. Because we have a couple girls now, and when we had our first, my wife got a...she got something...not a...she didn't know about Lily Jade, but she kind of got a nicer, higher end designer bag, because she uses it so much. Meggan and Landon, of course, you guys are married, for people who may not be aware of that, just listening. But, have you been working together since the beginning of the company, and what are your different, respective roles within Lily Jade? Landon: Yes, we have been working since the beginning of the company. I think that we work well together as a team.

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

If you can't beat them, join them. Amazon FBA is a natural next step to help you grow your business. But sending out your first shipment can be ripe with potential problems. On today's episode, we've got a novice and a pro weighing in on the intricacies behind FBA, including the differences between a UPC, FNSKU, and an ASIN, along with expert tips for optimizing your FBA experience and nailing it right from the get go. Subscribe:  iTunes | Stitcher (With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and Bill D'Alessandro of RebelCEO.com) Andrew: Welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast, the show dedicated to helping high six and seven-figure entrepreneurs build amazing online companies and incredible lives. I'm your host and fellow eCommerce entrepreneur, Andrew Youderian. Hey, hey, guys, Andrew here and welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in today. And today on the show, talking about how to not screw up your first inbound shipment to FBA, something I don't have any experience with. I've got a shipment of goods coming in that I'm going to be sending to FBA for the first time and figured who better else to grow with questions about this, for my own benefit and hopefully yours as well, other than Mr. Bill Dalessandro, the man behind Rebelceo.com and Elements Brands. Bill, how's it going? Bill: It's going well, man. It's great to be back on the show, as always. Andrew: Yeah. I feel like it's been...I don't know if it was just the holidays or the New Year, but I feel like it's been a while. Bill: Yeah, the ECF Live and holiday hangover. It kind of all ran together. Big Goals for 2016 Andrew: Quickly before we jump into this one, any big plans for 2016? Or did you like sit down and have a big kind of pow wow with yourself to really plan out the year? Are you big on the New Year's resolutions things? I know we're talking about this much after the New Year, but... Bill: So I'm not big on the New Year's resolution thing, but I am big on planning for the year and setting goals. So I sat down with all my employees. We're trying something new this year, and we're doing bonus programs. So we sat down with all the employees, and I set six goals for each of them for the year. I set up a bonus pool of 12% of each of their salaries, and each goal was worth 2% of their salary as a bonus. So everybody has sort of six goals for the year for 2016 hanging above their desk, and if they hit all six goals they get a 12% bonus at the end of the year. So as a way, something new I'm trying this year to...and I made some of the goals were monetary. They were hit a certain number. For my salesperson like a certain number in wholesale sales, or for my eCommerce marketing manager a certain amount of website sales or a certain number of new accounts, new products in stores, or getting a new website launched. So some were monetary, some were more kind of projects that needed to be done. Like we're implementing a new shipping and inventory system. Things like that. So like getting that launched was a goal for my warehouse manager. I basically looked at this list of all these things and said, "Man, if all like 20-something of these things are done by the end of the year, I'll feel really good, and it'll be easily worth me paying everybody a 12% bonus." Andrew: Nice, very cool. One thing we did this year, at least on the eCommerceFuel site was tried to focus more. I mean, we've got kind of this dashboard across all of our businesses with a myriad of different metrics. You could come up with 100 probably metrics you could track for a business, if not more. We tried to focus in on three metrics this year. One that was like the overall king metric, and two other kind of secondary ones, but be able to... Bill: What are they? Andrew: For eCommerceFuel, they are the biggest one that we're focusing on is new mem...

The Affordable Care Act has been in effect for five years now. We decided to check in with small business owners to see how well it's worked for their families and employees. Today we're hoping to answer this question: is it possible to find affordable heath insurance for your small business under ObamaCare?

Get full show notes and more information here: http://bit.ly/1LIzKjr