E531: The Top 10 EcomCrew Podcast Episodes of 2023

Today I'm joined with Ecomcrew's brand manager, Ben Iballa, as we review the episodes that made the top 10 list of the year and share our thoughts on each one. 

2023 was a wild ride. I let go of most of my brands, while costs on Amazon increased by a LOT. 

Here's a roundup of the top 10 episodes of the year. As a sneak peek, some of the best podcast episodes of 2023 includes when I sold most of my e-commerce businesses, the rising costs of selling on Amazon, and my perspective on retiring. 

Here's some timestamps to help you along: 

• 0:00 – Introduction
• 0:43 – Top 10 Episodes of 2023
• 3:25 – Year in Review
• 4:02 – Episode 10
• 7:08 – Episode 9
• 8:30 – Episode 8
• 9:43 – Episode 7
• 11:39 – Episode 6
• 13:25 – Episode 5
• 15:27 – Episode 4
• 17:25 – Episode 3
• 20:57 – Episode 2
• 23:14 – Episode 1

I want to thank everyone for supporting the EcomCrew Podcast. Whether you’ve been with us from the start or are just tuning in, I appreciate your time and feedback. I’m sure 2024 will be another year of insightful podcast episodes, and I can’t wait to unpack which ones top the charts next time around. 

As always, if you have any questions or anything that you need help with, reach out to us at support@ecomcrew.com if you're interested. 

Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes if you enjoy our content. If you have any questions, send us an email at support@ecomcrew.com. We'd love to help you in any way we can. 

Happy selling! 

Full Audio Transcript 

Mike Jackness (00:05.588)
Hey Ben, welcome back to the show my friend.

Ben (00:09.822)
Nice to be here. Yeah, I think I've only done this twice or four times in total.

Mike Jackness (00:16.148)
No, I think we've done it at least four or five times. I think you're selling yourself short. What'll be interesting is, is if one of your episodes is on this list this year, I don't remember if you're on the list or not.

Ben (00:29.382)
We'll have to see.

Mike Jackness 
So I just took a brief look at it before recording. I love doing this episode. So we're doing the top 10 episodes of 2023. A couple of rules here. This year we did a November through November.

Mike Jackness (00:43.788)
because we always seem to record this in late November, early December. And so it just seems like it makes sense to do the trailing 12 months. And we always end up cutting out episodes from the end of the year when we're recording this. We've learned some lessons over the years. I think that doing like basically trailing 12 months of when we're recording makes a lot of sense. So that's the stats that we're using. We also have been working on growing our YouTube channel and all these episodes get posted to YouTube. And

we're doing a brief list of those episodes as well. And the thing that I find really interesting right off the bat, because I did briefly take a look at it, is that there's zero crossover between the two platforms, meaning that the number one episode on the podcast is not the number one episode on YouTube. In fact, neither of the top five episodes from one platform crossover to the other platform. In fact, I was only looking at the top five episodes on YouTube.

And none of those five episodes are in the top 10 for the podcast. So it's interesting. You know, I don't know if it's, I thought that people that were like podcast listeners were coming over and slowly leaking into YouTube, but what's probably happening is it's a completely different audience finding us in a completely different way and nothing showcases that more than just seeing this list.

Ben (02:04.906)
Yeah, it's actually really interesting because there's no, like you said, there's no crossover between episodes. And I think that means that people who are discovering our podcast on YouTube are probably discovering also our other videos or are being recommended our other videos. So yeah, and we've been putting into a lot of effort into that lately. So yeah.

Mike Jackness (02:27.072)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jackness (02:33.056)
Yeah, we've had some good results with that, particularly today as we're recording. We've had a good video go out, which is cool, fun to talk about. But we are talking mostly about the podcast. Let's do that. So we're going to talk about the 10 podcast. I did briefly look at the list just because I need to be prepared for the podcast in terms of like if there was anything there that, you know, we just need to be aware of. But I…

Ben (02:36.264)
Yeah.

Mike Jackness (02:56.872)
I don't remember already. I forgot, because I looked at it so quickly and I was doing my best not to absorb it because I like kind of being surprised for this list. And we considered a couple of years ago to stop doing these episodes because I felt like it was just kind of a filler episode. But it turns out that this episode's always in the top 10. So people do listen to the review of the top 10 episodes every year.

So here we are. It's getting close to the end of 2023, which is mind boggling. We were just recording another episode talking about that. Year seven, I guess, of doing this podcast, 525 episodes or whatever later. So here's our recap episode. So let's talk about the year in review. Episode 10.

Ben (03:48.502)
All right, you're in review. Episode 10 would be how to deal with Amazon storage limits from November of last year. Do you remember who you did this episode with, Mike?

Mike Jackness (03:58.502)
Mmm.

Mike Jackness (04:04.42)
I do because I just pulled up the list so I'm cheating again. But I have it so I can only see number 10 and I'm scrolling up slowly. But that was with Dave so I did see that. And just so you guys know, the rankings here are just in terms of sheer number of listens. So that's how we're ranking them. I'm not surprised to see this on the list. I'm not sure how pertinent this is now.

Ben (04:05.975)
Hehehehe

Ben (04:12.043)
Oh, okay.

Mike Jackness (04:30.964)
I think what people, they want to go back and listen to things that are going to be applicable. They're like, oh, okay, that was a really good episode that I missed. I want to go back and listen. Storage limits is not as big of a factor a year later here, luckily. I mean, I remember it actually kind of gives me heartburn just putting myself in a place. It's almost one year ago today. I was starting to wonder if we were going to go out of business. It was really…

just a really awful feeling because we had all this inventory and absolutely no way to get it in to Amazon. And for us, we have a brand that does really well in the spring and the summer. And so I was sitting here in late November, early December last year in a position where I need to get a bunch of inventory sent in to Amazon and no way to do it. Not because I needed to sell it in December, but because I knew that by time February and

that I was going to need that inventory in Amazon. And if I needed to have inventory in Amazon by March, that means that I need to be creating shipments and getting it on its way in December. And I was handcuffed. There was no way to do that. It was horrible. And I finally got someone to help me over there and got more storage space. And it hasn't been a factor since then. And we're also using Amazon Warehousing Distribution some now. So what was a…

miserable, awful situation this time last year has not been as much for us this year. Now what I have seen, which is crazy, now we don't have a Q4 centric brand, so we're lucky this year, but like our inventory cap from October to November was cut in half and then is going back up in December and even higher in January. I don't know what people out there that have a Q4 brand are doing about this, but.

You know, they really did clamp down on the amount of inventory you were allowed to send in November. So you had to be very careful about that. But we've had no issues this year.

Ben (06:34.05)
That's good to hear. I mean, I remember sometime last year you were really struggling with this and without the internal meetings and etc. It was, it didn't seem like a fun time at least.

Mike Jackness (06:46.836)
No, no, I was miserable, Mike, last year.

Ben (06:50.974)
Yeah, at least it's all better now.

Mike Jackness (06:53.22)
Mm-hmm. Well, that's better. I don't know if everything's better, but that's better

Ben (06:56.81)
Yeah, that's better. All right, let's move on to number nine. Preparing your business for Black Friday with Will Hare from Bellavix.

Mike Jackness (07:06.868)
Hmm. Yeah, I mean, that's another one I'm not surprised to see on the list. I think that there's so many businesses out there that Q4 is their business and being prepared for Black Friday is a really important factor. And so we try to put these episodes out in a timely manner, you know, sometime in September, maybe October, giving people some time to implement the things that we talk about.

And so yeah, I'm not the least bit surprised to see this on the list. This year more than ever, we didn't really care about Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It was just like, we are going to just hide. This time, you know, it's really weird. You know, in 10 years of doing e-commerce, this is the first year I've ever just ignored Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I just made a decision of, we're already running a low margin business. These are not Black Friday, Cyber Monday type products. Let everybody else fight over

losing money and spending all this money and we'll just return back to the game in January like we usually do. January is usually a really good month for us. It just doesn't make sense in an environment that we're into just be losing money, sending out products to people who are not gonna buy more of them, who aren't going to really refer other people to them. Like, you know, you got a brand that like color it or a brand that sells coffee or supplements or.

whatever that people might be, take it, fall in love with it, repeat, take it, repeat, take it, repeat, take it. Okay, that makes sense. I'm going to go ahead and do Black Friday, separate Monday or like they fall in love with it and they then next year or some other time give it to a friend as a birthday gift or Christmas gift next year. Okay, now it makes sense to be pushing Black Friday or something that is giftable itself to that people wouldn't necessarily buy from themselves. There's lots of products that people would never buy themselves.

but they make great gifts. Okay, all those things make sense. We're not in that category. And so it's fun to talk about and have those episodes. We did another one this year that probably will end up on the list next year. But yeah, it was a good episode as we're listening to this. And in late December, people are probably fatigued from that and probably won't go back and listen to that right now, but it was definitely good content.

Ben (09:19.683)
Yeah.

Ben (09:24.362)
Yeah, definitely. I think it's given a lot of people some actionable advice for preparing for this year's Black Friday, which is already passed, actually. But yeah. All right, let's move on to number eight. The winners of Econ Cruise 2022 software poll.

Mike Jackness (09:44.784)
Yeah, it's also not a surprise. I never find any of these to be a surprise, or actually, I don't know, maybe I always find one or two to be a surprise, but this certainly is not surprising to me. I think that software in this space has become such a crucial part of what we do. I think the hardest thing is to make a decision on which applications you are and are not going to subscribe to, because it can become…

a major part of your P&L, you could easily have a four-figure line item or even five-figure line item for software per month for these businesses, which is just absurd. The issue is that in any one category, there's a dozen competitors except for maybe Prophecy, which is an outlier that's doing repricing. There'll probably be some competitors that since it's been working so well eventually, but…

If you're looking at PPC software, there's a dozen options. If you're looking for listing optimization or just your overall program to run your business or do product research, whatever, there's lots and lots of options for all these different things. And so talking about what's doing the best out there and becoming aware of what other people are doing, I think is a really important episode. I would encourage people to go back and listen to this one.

Just to kind of, it's always good to compare yourself to what other people are doing. Maybe you've discovered a piece of software that you aren't using. You know, what I would caution people in general from doing is constantly spending tons of time on finding the best software, the unicorn software, or jumping from ship to ship. It's very easy to waste a bunch of time switching from one software to another that does effectively 90% of the same thing. You go switch for one new unicorn special feature.

You're probably losing out on some other feature that you're having to retrain yourself on this new software. And if you have a team, you got to retrain the team. And so we typically only switch software as an organization when there's like a leapfrog software, right? Where it has happened where, you know, you're, you're running some software that does X, Y, Z you've been using it for years. And in the meantime, some new software comes out that does the same thing, but does it.

Mike Jackness (12:05.26)
way better, not 5% better, not 10% better, but it's 50, 100% better. And you just can't ignore the fact that this new thing is there and it's time to switch. And that's typically when we make the switch. Keeping in mind, this competitor that you're currently using is very aware that this other thing is out there and they're probably going to eventually make these features. And so sometimes it's just allowing them some time to catch up. And there are situations where it never happens, but we try not to make that the norm.

Ben (12:05.762)
way better.

Mike Jackness (12:34.432)
And so we've been using the same email platform for years and years, right? You know, I mean, the same backend research for years and years, et cetera, whatever. And so there's a reason for this. It's not because we're lazy and don't want to switch. It's because I come from an IT world and I know how much lost time can happen from, from doing this. And so, yeah, I think that it's a great piece of content. It makes me happy to see this there because this is also kind of our

Ben (12:38.751)
Years, yeah.

Mike Jackness (13:03.92)
SEO, put e-comm crew on the map piece of content that we do annually. Right. And so we do a few of these types of pieces of content, original content, what we're doing. And it's become kind of like the industry standard. Now, a lot of people talk about this poll. I was just at Helium 10's offices and their headquarters in Irvine. And they specifically mentioned to me, like being on that list and how much that meant to them.

I forgot the lady's title, but she's a pretty high up person in the organization. Also Bradley, who was the third employee ever there, mentioned it as well. It's something that these organizations are aware of and they covet, which is kind of cool. It's wild to even think about your company being thought of in that regard, but that's pretty cool and humbling. Makes me happy from that perspective as well.

Ben (13:57.27)
Yeah, we're making a difference, Mike.

Mike Jackness (13:58.92)
making a difference.

Ben (14:01.014)
Yeah. And so for those wondering, we are going to do the software pull for this year as well. It's just something we typically like to do in December. So keep on the lookout.

Mike Jackness (14:12.32)
Dun dun dun.

Ben (14:15.306)
All right, for number seven, all about marketing with Rytis Louris of Omnisense.

Mike Jackness (14:22.4)
Hmm. That's interesting. I'm just looking at the notes of this because I was like trying to remember this episode. Now it's registering why it's a little hard to remember because it was done in January. It was a long time ago. I was like, I remember having OmniSend on. I remember it being a good episode. I think that in this world of marketing is becoming more and more difficult. OmniSend's a great platform.

Ben (14:35.667)
Yeah.

Mike Jackness (14:49.788)
But a lot of these things, we don't want them to turn into commercials for a software platform, but OmniSense is such a de facto piece of software in this industry. And they allow multi-channel touch points, right? So you can SMS, email, et cetera. And so, yeah, great piece of software. If you have any type of brand that can align with this, I would highly recommend checking that episode out.

Ben (15:17.846)
Yeah, all right. So the next one, number six, going through the list here pretty quickly, is November 2022's brand report, the problems with having too much inventory.

Mike Jackness (15:27.563)
Hmm.

Mike Jackness (15:31.652)
Yeah, I mean, this goes hand in hand with, it was episode 10, the 10th ranked episode, right? About inventory storage limits. Yeah, I mean, again, what a poop show last year when it comes to all this. I mean, so going back even further than just last year, I mean, the year before was basically like the year of COVID and like the poop show of logistics and getting inventory. And so like,

We all went from the situation of trying to run our businesses as thin as possible with when it comes to inventory, almost just in time inventory, to I can now get, I can't get any inventory. I'm terrified of running out again. So let me just get too much inventory. We'll get ahead of this curve. Then you get too much inventory and there's no place to put it. And so, yeah, that was a huge struggle. That also reminds me that we did these monthly brand reports last year. And we, we got away from those because they, those episodes.

we're surprisingly not doing all that well compared to some of our other content. I thought they were good episodes. I thought people liked that stuff, but it just goes to show you there's only one brand report on this list from all year, and there were 12 of them last year that we did. Every month, yeah. And it was a lot of work because we also put out an article on the website for, in conjunction with it, and it just, that content wasn't responding super well. But it's great to see that people felt our pain.

Ben (16:39.69)
Yeah, we tried to do one every year, every month.

Mike Jackness (16:54.78)
as much as we did and this episode made the top 10. Again, not as relevant. I think if you go back and listen to it, it's probably just not as relevant as it is this time this year. But if you wanna go back and do one of these, just to compare how different things are, I'm sure the tone was very different this time last year with that episode.

Ben (17:15.254)
Yeah, definitely. All right. On our fifth place, making it to our top five, the biggest struggles of entrepreneurship with Don Henig from Accrued Me.

Mike Jackness (17:25.108)
Hmm. It's interesting because this also was in January looking at this, but I remember this one more. First of all, Don's a great guest. He's been on the podcast a couple of times. He's just a great conversationalist. He's got really interesting life experiences. He's just a great dude to chat with. So I just really appreciate that. And I'm happy to see these types of episodes make it into the top list.

Lots of podcasts out there do these tactical, like here's a structure PPC campaigns and including us, we've done these episodes as well. And so talking in more broad strokes of dealing with struggles of entrepreneurship, et cetera, I think is cool to see make the list. I've been doing this for 19 years, we're getting ready to hit year 20. It's approaching and we're closer to 20 than 19, that's for sure. I think the anniversary officially would be sometime in January.

of 2024, I left my job in July of 24. So we're coming up on 20 years. And yeah, I mean, there's been a lot of fun things that have happened along the way. And I don't regret leaving that job for a second, even though I enjoyed it for the most part and got to meet my wife there. And there's a lot of great things that happened in that job. I learned a ton, but I also hated wearing a tie every day. And

I think that some people in general are just born to be entrepreneurs. I thrive on the inconsistency in some weird sick way. I think I would have just been bored out of my mind in that job. It was at a point where when I was learning at this super accelerated rate, which I was the first five years, the job was as thrilling as anything it's ever been.

going up through the ranks of the company very quickly and learning, like every day I came to work and I was like, I felt like I was learning something and experiencing something new. And then it just felt like the last year that I was there, I don't know, like I felt like I was slowly dying inside because it was just like every day was just like Groundhog Day. You come in, you know, go get the same breakfast and get the, you know, let's talk to the same people. And the same stuff was kind of just happening. And there really wasn't any room for, I mean, okay, I would have probably continued to get paid more. And

Ben (19:36.534)
Just the same thing. Yeah.

Mike Jackness (19:49.028)
slowly work my way up to another higher level position. But like the reality was that, I was never gonna be the CEO, not at that company. Cause I mean, it was the CEO was like the owner and he wasn't going anywhere. And I was already like one step below him. And so it's like, what am I gonna do at this point? And so, I don't know. I mean, it just, it was a great run, but.

Again, being an entrepreneur just kind of, again, in my blood, I grew up in that environment. And talking to someone else who has been on that journey in a parallel world with me was a lot of fun. So I would definitely recommend going and checking out that episode. That was 482, oh sorry, 484, sorry, the biggest struggles of entrepreneurship with Don from and crew me episode 484 back in January. I thought that was a great episode.

Ben (20:47.274)
Yeah. All right. So number four, our under the hood with, or under the hood follow-up with Jamie Graham restructuring an e-commerce company to focus on what you enjoy the most.

Mike Jackness (20:57.142)
Mmm.

Mike Jackness (21:02.888)
Yeah, another really great episode. This reminds me, a little plug for Under the Hood. We haven't done a lot of these lately. I hadn't even thought about this in a while. We just haven't been promoting it a whole bunch, but over the years, these episodes have done well when we do Under the Hoods. They typically are in the top. Man, I tell you what, I feel like it's been six months or more since I recorded one of these. I don't know why, but a plug for Under the Hood.

Ben (21:08.608)
Yeah.

Mike Jackness (21:26.02)
ecomcrew.com slash under the hood, I believe is the link. If it isn't, we'll make that the link just in case, before the episode goes out. But it's a free hour of consulting basically. You come on the podcast, talk to me about whatever it is that's on your mind. It doesn't have to, it can be anything really. I mean, but it's typically about your business. It's something that you're struggling with in your business. But if you wanna talk about entrepreneurship or just some advice or whatever, whatever it is, we typically will either run the whole episode.

Ben (21:29.506)
Yes.

Mike Jackness (21:55.792)
unedited together or edit it down to 30 minutes or something. The only thing that we agreed to beforehand is that we can use the content as a podcast. You've got to be willing to talk about whatever you're talking about publicly, but you're helping everybody else and I'm helping you as well. Ecomcrew.com slash under the hood. Come sign up and be thrilled to talk with you on the podcast about whatever it is you want to talk about.

and we'll turn it into a podcast episode. And again, you get a free hour of consulting. I remember this episode. I love Jamie, he's a cool dude. He's become a friend of mine. Yeah, I think you should go back and listen to this one. It was a good piece of content for sure. And it's something I'm thinking a lot about lately is, how can we be doing things that are more fun, that you enjoy? It shouldn't just be, I mean, that's kind of the fun part of entrepreneurship is you can structure it.

Whatever problems you have you've created them is what I always say at this point because you're the one that's orchestrating everything so Try to keep that in mind and yeah, definitely listen to episode 475 that was actually one of the ones that was back in November of last year. So this was done over a year ago now but very topical as well

Ben (23:11.798)
All right, number three, the five valuable lessons from eight figure seller, Taylor, Tyler, Taylor Zamir.

Mike Jackness (23:14.772)
Buh-buh-buh.

Mike Jackness (23:21.308)
Yeah, Talor is how he's, yeah, no worries. It reads Taylor, I think, but he goes by, it is Talorez, I pronounce his name. Personal friend of mine from here in Las Vegas, one of the smartest guys I know, shout out to MDS, the Million Dollar Sellers Group, ecomcrew.com slash MDS. We'll get you over there to their signup form. It's a group of literally million dollar Amazon sellers. It's their name.

Ben (23:22.83)
Talor Zameer, yeah.

Mike Jackness (23:50.28)
describes what it is, but they are, I don't know, thousands of people strong now, I think. I mean, I know they have a lot of members and they also have local chapters. They have a Las Vegas chapter, which I go to every meeting for. I've met a lot of awesome people, including Talor. The guy is absolutely effing brilliant. And if you haven't looked at the top two episodes, but if there was any one episode I would go back and listen to this point, this would certainly be one of them. The guy.

just again, really, really smart, seems to be making all the right decisions all the time with anything that he touches. I think he's on business number three now. And there's a reason for it, right? I mean, the guy again, is just really smart and makes a lot of really good decisions. And so he's not thinking small ball. He's thinking, you know, eight figures, nine figures. And I do believe he'll have a nine figure business at some point. So yeah, episode four, 79, another one of

Mike Jackness (24:49.984)
a year old now, but still really relevant kind of.

Ben (24:53.014)
Yeah. All right. Number two. Any guesses Mike?

Mike Jackness (24:58.592)
Well, again, I'm cheating. I'm sliding up the list as we go along here. So I see it now. Just I'm trying to refresh my memory in terms of who it was and what the episode was. So I'm cheating as we go along this year. Yeah, this four-step plan to retire in 10 years, it's a really great title, which is, I'm not surprised that this ended up on the top 10. I do remember this episode. I don't feel like it was, I don't think it was one of our best, but I'd be curious to know.

the stats on this one, if the playthrough was as long or other things. I don't know. I don't want to cut it short. I mean, go back and listen to it. If you find that it's for you, keep listening. If not, you can turn it off. But I look at this list now that we're getting close to number one. And I think that I really remember the episode with Talor and some of these other ones that we've been talking about and not as much this one, but.

It's always good to, there's probably some good nuggets in there as well. So this one's surprising to me, I think, because I don't remember it as much as being one of our best, so yeah.

Ben (26:00.202)
Yeah, I think.

Ben (26:06.934)
I think the, one of the biggest reasons why it's one of our biggest episodes is that you kind of gave your perspective on retiring. And even though it's more of like how to prepare for retirement in 10 years, it's some, it's something that's definitely that you've taught about basically.

Mike Jackness (26:17.161)
Mmm.

Mike Jackness (26:30.076)
Yeah, I mean, I think about it quite a bit. I mean, it's interesting because people are like, oh, you can never retire and blah, blah. Like, you know, hold my beer. I'll show you differently. And, you know, they're right in the aspect of like, I can't imagine myself just like playing golf every day and doing nothing, but I can't imagine not having the stress every day. That's definitely something that I'm already very much looking forward to. It just, I don't know. I think that at some point you just, you've had enough.

of that and I don't want to, I'm looking forward to the day where the first thing that I do when I wake up is looking at my phone for some piece of bad news. I mean, that's just like how every day starts for me. It's just you open up the phone, look at your email, you're being sued, someone quit, Amazon shut down a listing, Amazon shut down your account, something, spin the roulette wheel.

And it's a good morning when that isn't there, which is most days. Right. I mean, it isn't like, it's, it's ridiculous to worry about this in, in the macro because it's just like, or the chances of any one day that happening is relatively small. But the problem is like the day that it does happen is like, it's usually something really bad. Right. And over the years, it isn't just the Amazon thing. It's like your site's being the index from Google or, you know, the UIGA has passed and your business is no longer viable or whatever it might be.

these things have happened over the years. And so that stress is difficult because there's, it feels like there's a hair trigger on a nuclear bomb every day running a business. And so, you know, just trying to navigate that. And I think the people who ultimately are super successful are running in a parallel path with the people who completely fail and lose everything, working just as hard, making all the same decisions, just one person's lucky enough not to get sued or lucky enough to hire like that first.

person that they hire is like the real good hire or they start a business that regulation doesn't come down on them or some other type of thing where again, they're both people and it's not fair, right? That one person gets to retire and have a private jet and the other person is being evicted from their home, that they both made the same risk and the same decisions.

Mike Jackness (28:49.7)
But that's also something that's a part of entrepreneurship that you got to just accept, which I do and I'm certainly not complaining. I'm just saying that like these are things that at some point I'm looking forward to not dealing with any longer because it is something that really eventually does weigh on you.

Ben (29:05.01)
Yeah, I think it's something all entrepreneurs kind of go through, you know, looking through your phone the first thing in the morning, trying to check for any emails with any bad news. Yeah. All right. Our number one episode of 2023, and it is episode 481. What is the best Amazon

Mike Jackness (29:17.036)
Hmm. Yep.

Mike Jackness (29:34.376)
Yeah, it's interesting because it's kind of bookends, right? You got the episode one, what is the best seller software? And then one of them was about the poll pretty far down here. What was it? The number eight. So basically it's like one in eight. Excuse me. So again, not surprising and also happy with our team and the work that we put into this, that these episodes are performing well and it is becoming an industry standard.

Ben (29:46.186)
in number eight. Yeah.

Mike Jackness (30:03.8)
And so talking about the poll upfront, kind of like what we're doing with it, and then the actual winners of it, certainly something we're going to do again next year because we continue to evolve based on what is actually performing. And seeing this perform, again, makes me happy. I think that it's, we're doing something right. So hopefully that'll be on the top of the list again next year. I would encourage people to go back and listen to that. I think it's still a very pertinent topical.

episode and we are about to do the poll again. And so be on the lookout for that. What would be the link to that when it does come out then?

Ben (30:44.252)
I have no idea actually. I think it would have.

Mike Jackness (30:46.244)
Oh, come on then, let's do something. I was expecting to just come up with something and create the link later, but we'll do ecomcrew slash software poll. Does that seem fair? Okay. Okay, so when that comes out, it'll be ecomcrew.com slash software poll. And so that'll be coming out very soon. And so go over there and bookmark that and think about, sign up for the poll. Every year we do something really cool. We give away something to encourage people to come fill it out. It's marketing 101, right? So,

Ben (30:52.802)
But yeah, sure. Let's, let's do that. Yeah.

Mike Jackness (31:16.096)
people win cool cash and prizes or whatever from on a little game show or years with the annual subscription to come crew. So yeah, that's pretty cool. Again, to see that on the list. What I do wanna do is do some comparisons with the YouTube episodes. We'll talk about those real quick. Now the YouTube episodes get about 8% of the plays of the podcast. So it's not…

Ben (31:20.282)
or a year's annual subscription of EcomPrem. Yeah.

Mike Jackness (31:45.264)
nearly as impactful in terms of listens and views, but it is growing. It isn't zero any longer. We are getting some views on the YouTube content, which is good and it's slowly but surely growing. It goes down to what I talk about a lot in this business, which is the multi-purpose content. We're already recording it. It doesn't any extra work on my end at least to do the YouTube thing. I know that someone else has to edit it and all that differently for YouTube.

In terms, it isn't double the amount of work or triple the amount of work. It's some fraction of the amount of work because the base content's already there. So, but again, what's interesting is that these YouTube episodes, there was zero crossover. But what I find to be interesting is I think that some of the best episodes of the year are in this list. So I will just cherry pick from this list and talk about the ones that I thought were the best episodes. The ones I…

I would have expected to do the best on the podcast or at least be in the top 10. One of these is the fifth episode on YouTube, which was selling my e-commerce business after three years. These pieces of content that are three years in the making, I find to be so unique and so real and raw. So I'm actually really shocked that this didn't make the top 10 on the podcast. I don't know. It seems like the people are…

Ben (33:09.407)
Yeah, actually.

Mike Jackness (33:10.944)
the kind of following us and what we do, you would think that this would be the one episode they would listen to, but it didn't make the top 10 on the podcast. It did on YouTube, but not the podcast.

Ben (33:23.498)
Yeah. And I'm not exactly sure why. I have a feeling that it's because some of the older podcast episodes that we have here, they've been up since January, November. So they've had more opportunity to be listened to, to be downloaded. Yeah. To accumulate views. And so that might be.

Mike Jackness (33:40.925)
accumulate views. Yeah.

Maybe we should normalize this next year and do only the first 90 days or something because it does. It's very difficult to figure out. Like every year we massage this way that we do this a little bit, this way, that way. But yeah, it was something that came out later in the year. It probably does make a lot of sense. But I would definitely encourage people to go back and listen to this episode. I feel like of all the things that we did this year, I've actually listened to this episode back. I very rarely do that.

But when I recorded it, I was just curious after it came out, what it sounded like and what the content was. And also just, I don't know, it was a very raw, real three years of my life. And the last 18 months of it, just such a huge struggle selling that business. It's, again, entrepreneurship, the things that you go through, you find yourself in these situations that you don't expect or prepare for, nothing you can do about it. You make the best of it and find a way to move forward. And that's certainly…

a large part of what that was. I mean, it's kind of, it's this, luckily it was a success story at the end, but living through it was kind of a nightmare. And looking back at it now, it feels like even more of a nightmare than I've had some time to just disconnect from it. So I would encourage people that have not listened to that episode to go back and listen to it. It's number 508. It was done in July and that was with Chris Doody, who was our broker.

from Quiet Light that helped eventually get the things sold. So after a while, yeah. Okay, so that was a really good episode. I'll pick, well, just three more of these here because I think that these other ones are good as well. Number 513, how did selling on Amazon become so expensive in 2023? This is my buddy, Bernie Thompson. Another really good episode.

Ben (35:15.314)
after a while. Yeah.

Mike Jackness (35:41.undefined)
Bernie is an eight figure seller. He's been doing this a very long time. Also has some software called PPC Ninja that I've used and find to be really awesome software. We've ultimately been using a different piece of software, but it's not because I don't think that PPC Ninja is good. I find it to be an amazing tool. I just wanted something a little bit more advanced. And so we ended up going with, but like if you're looking for something that's a little bit easier to work with and you know, that just…

is kind of plug and play and just kind of leave it alone and let it do its thing. It'll get you like 80% of the way there. And a lot of days, I kind of wish I just went that route because I probably spend way too much time losing my mind over PPC, but he has that as well. Again, great stuff. But that wasn't what we talked about in this episode. It was all about just selling on Amazon and how things have gotten way more expensive. And he really talks about some good nuances of that.

Again, super smart dude, been around for a long time. Highly encourage people to check out that episode of 513.

Mike Jackness (36:47.536)
And then the next one here is 5.15, number two most played episode on YouTube. The new game changer in the shipping industry. This was Izzy. I don't know. I think that this is another really good episode. Now it's not applicable to everybody. You have to have a business that is D to C in shipping really from China. But if you're in that situation, I would highly recommend checking that out. And so, you know, specifically if you have a light product.

that is coming out of Asia and you're shipping directly to your customers, I would absolutely check out this episode. Now, you don't have to be currently shipping directly to your customers from Asia. The idea is to stop importing your inventory, spending 30, 60 days to get it across the sea, paying duties on it when it lands, having to pay to store it in warehouse and everything else. There's an option to never ship it here, only ship directly to your customers from Asia.

with an experience that looks and feels the exact same way to your customer, it just takes a couple of days longer. And when I say a couple of days, I'm not talking about a couple of weeks longer, like literally a couple of days extra, you know, five, seven days or something gets to the customer door to door. You can save a ton, both in the shipping fees and now you're not paying duties or all the other warehousing costs. So definitely something I would check out as well.

Ben (38:12.202)
Yeah, and for number one here, episode 514.

Mike Jackness (38:15.452)
Yeah, great episode. Absolutely recommend people go check this out in any situation. This is Liz, my good buddy, Liz Saunders, who's gone off and started her own company doing influencer marketing, influencer flute, influencer fruit. Really good episode. It is the number one episode on YouTube. As you said, episode 514. So the title was the most useful Amazon program you're missing out on. And I.

This was just recorded back in August, so still very pertinent, top of mind. Highly recommend checking out this episode. It's about connecting with influencers and Amazon's new influencer platform. Man, just getting harder and harder out there, again, to get the word out. This is a great way to do that cost effectively. Definitely recommend checking out that episode.

Ben (39:08.95)
Yeah, and I have a feeling that this is probably one of the biggest YouTube episodes on our channel because a lot of people on YouTube want to be influencers. So it kind of just makes sense.

Mike Jackness (39:24.04)
Yeah, no, it does absolutely make sense. And so, yeah, I mean, either way, I would go check out that episode, whether you go watch it on YouTube or listen to it in your car, episode 514. So I think the ones that I thought were really good were 508, sell on the business, 513, how did Amazon become so expensive, 515, the game changer in shipping that's only applicable to a handful of people listening. And then the 514.

Hey, those are all in order, by the way, I just realized. Until I just put that way. Yeah, so five 13, 14 and a 15. That was a good little string there. Um, have done really well. And those were all back in August and are already, uh, are three most played episodes of the year. So, woohoo, we're doing something right.

Ben (39:54.71)
Yeah.

Ben (40:12.522)
Yeah, excited to see the YouTube channel grow a little bit more every year, you know? And yeah.

Mike Jackness (40:16.745)
Yeah.

Mike Jackness (40:21.476)
Excellent. Well, I appreciate you coming in humor me and doing this. I know you you're uncomfortable doing it But you get more and more relaxed every time So this is just a proof that just practice and just get started. It's nowhere near as uh As gut-wrenching I'm sure as it was the first time and It's fun. Like I feel like you're living in my shoes I get to see it because I was the same way in an episode one, but there was no one watching then so We're listening. So maybe it's a little bit different

Ben (40:30.198)
Yeah, just practice, right? Yeah.

Ben (40:39.266)
Definitely.

Ben (40:50.954)
Yeah, unlike episode one mic, I have already maybe a few thousands listening, maybe, hopefully.

Mike Jackness (40:59.02)
Mm-hmm. It's just a small stadium full of people listening to this. It's no big deal

Ben (41:04.692)
Oh, that's so scary to think about.

Mike Jackness (41:08.23)
I actually think the bigger crowd is less nerve-racking than a smaller one. Because in a room of 100, you can see everyone staring at you. When you get on a big stage, there's lights in your eyes. And it's just a black sea out there. You don't really get to see anybody. It's just, you know they're there, but it's a way different feeling.

Ben (41:26.87)
Maybe one day when I go up and talk in a summit for the first time, maybe.

Mike Jackness (41:33.128)
Mm-hmm All right, man. Appreciate you coming doing this to everyone else out there until the next one. Happy selling. We'll talk to you soon