Business Lessons Learned from 100 Podcast Episodes

I'm beyond excited because today marks the 100th episode of the eCommerce Made Easy podcast! 🎉 Hitting this milestone got me thinking—what does 100 episodes really do for you as a business owner?

This journey wasn’t just about podcasting. It’s been about business growth, reinvention, and the lessons learned along the way. Running a business for over 20 years means going through cycles of change, and sometimes, you have to redefine and reshape your approach to stay relevant and successful.

In this episode, I’m sharing the biggest insights I’ve gained—not just about podcasting, but about sticking with something long-term, adapting in business, and embracing evolution. Plus, I’ve got some fun stories and valuable takeaways that can help you on your own entrepreneurial journey.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Celebrating 100 Episodes
• 3:10 The Purpose Behind the Podcast
• 5:03 Start Before You're Ready
• 6:58 Consistency Fuels Growth
• 9:46 Listening to Your Audience
• 12:05 Business Evolution is Inevitable
• 15:52 Relationships Are The Ultimate Currency
• 18:08 Gratitude and Call to Action

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 1:10

I'm super excited because today marks the 100th episode of the e-commerce made easy podcast, and in today's podcast we're going to be talking about what does 100 episodes do to you as a business owner? What lessons did I learn? Not about just podcasting, but more so about business and how to really redefine and redevelop our over 20 year old business, because businesses go through cycles and many times we have to reinvent ourselves. So this episode is all about all the lessons I've learned sticking to podcasting and doing 100 episodes almost two years is what that means, since we release these once a week and we're just going to go into some great, exciting, wonderful stories and some business lessons learned. So stay tuned.

Carrie Saunders: 2:00

Welcome to the e-commerce made easy podcast. I'm your host, k Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine month old my main goal to help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech into easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the e-commerce made easy podcast. So today we're talking about one celebrating our hundredth episode. Honestly, we couldn't be here without you, our listeners, and we want to thank you and we're so appreciative of you listening and giving us feedback, letting us know what you enjoy, so that we can help serve you and help you in your business and help you with all the lessons we've learned, all the business friends that we've made and all their lessons they've learned when they come on the show and teach us about their expertise and how it's been for them.

Carrie Saunders: 3:09

So first let's start off. You know why did I start this podcast? Well, we started this one. It released first on May 2nd in 2023, but I had had the itch to start a podcast for about a year before that. And the reason being deep down in my soul and this is the reason I've kept this business for 22, 22,.

Carrie Saunders: 3:31

We're working on 23 years is that I just absolutely love helping others and that lights me up, and one of my skills and one of my you know my, one of my major skills is technology understanding technology all the way from. You know what? I would consider a bit more simple and we're connecting pieces of technology together all the way to super complicated, and we're doing custom programming and custom web applications for our customers and I just absolutely love helping people. So I built a team that can do that range of services for our customers and I do it because I love helping people be not stuck, not afraid, not burdened, not slowed down by technology. I love helping, you know. I love our team helping other businesses. You know, get past that and get through that. So that's the main reason why I have this podcast is I just love helping others. And if I can teach you to do some things yourself or at least educate you enough to be better at picking that right developer to work with you or that right tech VA, if you just need you know things connected together, and then then I've done my job, I've helped you then, you know, do a better job of picking that right, perfect person, because not every tech person out there is going to be perfect for you. So some of the lessons I learned when this is a big one and this you know. If you're a perfectionist out there, hold on to your hats. You probably heard this before, but we need to start before we're ready. I'm a recovering perfectionist myself. I still fall into that perfectionist trap, but with this podcast I was determined. I set myself a date and I was like I am starting, even if I don't feel ready. I had that date. That date was actually an anniversary date for our business. It was the first day we sold something to a stranger online May 2nd 2003, I think it was was the first time we sold to a stranger, somebody we didn't know in person. So that's one of the reasons why I picked that date for the podcast to launch, because it was a bit symbolic.

Carrie Saunders: 5:42

I started this business on accident. There was no ready Like. I didn't start this business on purpose. I started it to help some local businesses here get their stores online, because that was back when the retail was a lot heavier, back in 2002, 2003. Retail was a lot heavier. A lot less people were selling their items online, and so start before you're ready. If I had waited until I was ready, I might not even still have started by now.

Carrie Saunders: 6:10

So if you're considering doing something new in your business, like starting a podcast, starting a blog, creating a course, selling different products on your website, you know sometimes you got to start before you're ready. So do a gut check. Are you hesitating because you're trying to be perfect, or is it really not the right time? So really look into yourself and see what, see what's going on in your brain there. And then I also learned that consistency is key to growth and thankfully, my podcasting mentors let us know this up front.

Carrie Saunders: 6:43

I'm going to give a shout out to Crystal Prophet. If it weren't for her, I don't think I would have ever launched this podcast, and she has been a great mentor and a great supporter of me in doing my podcasting and in my podcasting journey. And she taught us that consistency is the key to growth. She taught us that you know your numbers, your download numbers, for example, for a podcast. That's what can be very important. It's going to be potentially slow at first and don't worry about what other people are doing. Compare yourself to yourself week for week or month for month. And she even says in the beginning don't obsess over your numbers early on, just get it done, get moving. And she was totally right and I expected her to be right. You know, once we hit, I would say, about a year mark, we really started growing the podcast listeners a lot. And then it even got even further when we were closer to the year and a half mark and I had, you know, quite a few episodes under my belt and word of mouth was getting around.

Carrie Saunders: 7:43

So when you're starting something new with your business and you know it's the right thing to do, be consistent with it. Don't give up because you don't see the results right away. Think about all the famous people out there. You know Steve Jobs and I'm blanking on the Microsoft guy's name right now. I'm sure you guys know it, but they had so many failures before they were successful. They had to wait. You know for that. You know consistency to set in and help them then grow. So if you're just starting out on something new whether it's a new business or just a new segment of your business and you know it's the right thing, give yourself grace and be consistent with it, even when life gets busy showing up matters.

Carrie Saunders: 8:32

I only missed one podcast episode in the hundred episodes. That was because I was deathly ill for two weeks with the flu and I just didn't have any extra episodes like queued up that I could throw in there. So I think I did a replay of a really good episode, but you know, that was really my only time I missed because I was determined, even if I had to record the day before. I was determined to get this done because I had made a commitment and it's very important to me to say yes to me and to not let myself down and potentially not let my listeners down. If I had some already that were, you know, really into the show and, you know, looking forward to it every week, I wanted to make sure I was there for them as well to create a simple, sustainable schedule that works for you, especially when we're talking about content creation. I knew I could do the podcast once a week. I knew that was doable. I thought it was going to be a little bit of a stretch, honestly, because I'm running a 27-year-old business with seven employees at the moment and I just needed to make sure I could do it and I knew it was a little bit of a stretch to help me grow, but it wasn't too far of a stretch. I knew, with my team behind me, we could get it done, because they do help me on some of the production parts of this. And then I also learned that your audience will tell you what you need. I kind of knew this is probably going to happen, but, man, it felt like it took forever for me to quite start understanding how they were telling me what they needed.

Carrie Saunders: 10:07

Some of my most downloaded episodes weren't the ones I expected. I think one of my top ones still is the product bundling episode that I released the fall of the first year I was podcasting it was like in November of 23. It was such a high downloaded episode. So sometimes you'll get some surprising information back from your audience, whether it's your customers or your audience, the people who are buying physical goods from your e-commerce store, or whether you're a coach or a course creator, and it's your you know social audience and the people who are buying from you and buying your services from you. You know so you don't want to hold back on releasing content that is you Like.

Carrie Saunders: 10:54

If I hadn't released that product bundling episode, that was actually me. That was my years and years and years of experience seeing how my clients, when they bundled products together, really increase their revenue. It's kind of a no-brainer whenever you're, you know, go to buy something and there's something else that goes along with it that you won't have to have, but it helps enhance that original product. It's kind of a no-brainer many times for that person to go ahead and buy both items. And that's the principle behind the product bundling episode is that we want to make it easy for our customers to be buying more from us. And you can apply this to services and you can apply this to physical goods as well. So you know, produce what's inside you, produce the knowledge that's inside you. Don't be afraid to share what you have. If I'd been afraid to share that thinking, oh, nobody really want to learn about product bundling, I wouldn't have one of my top listen to episodes right there, and that was early on. That was only about six-ish months into podcasting.

Carrie Saunders: 12:02

And, as I alluded to already, business is a constant evolution. Being in business almost 23 years, it'll be 23. Yeah, it'll be 23 in November, and this is April 2025. As I'm recording this or as this one gets released, business definitely evolves and so be ready for that. It's kind of like if you're a parent, you know your children evolve. You have, you know, the baby years and how they act, and then you've got the toddler years and how they act in the early elementary and how they act, and they just kind of morph into different, little different people as they get older, and your business does that as well. We do that as well. We, you know, have learned more things, we have experienced more things, so we also evolve. So we've got to make sure that we are ready and okay with the fact that our business is going to evolve.

Carrie Saunders: 12:59

Originally, when we started our business, we were only serving people who use a specific shopping cart called X cart. That's all, only X cart people. Shopping cart called X cart that's all, only X cart people. Now we service X cart, magento, big commerce, shopify. We also service course creators and coaches too, so we service people who use Kajabi's, who use high level, who need help with their email systems, because we have all this knowledge from all the years. So make sure that you're okay with that. You know evolution.

Carrie Saunders: 13:35

You know, if I had been, like you know, super sad and stuck on the fact that, oh, we're not only just serving these XCart people, these people who run shopping cart software called XCart, we would have fallen behind. You know, allowing ourselves, especially when our one customer who moved from XCart he was a big client of ours and we worked with him every month Well, he let us know ahead of time because we had such a good working relationship. Hey, we need to grow, we're going to go off of XCart, we want to go to Magento. I want to give you a heads up. This is basically how the conversation went. I want to give you a heads up because you've been so good to me. Heads up, this is basically how the conversation went. I want to give you a heads up because you've been so good to me. But you know we'll be moving off into another platform soon and so we're like OK, sure you know we'll help you till you're moved. You know we're happy to help you. If I had freaked out right then, this is a person who bought hours from us every month, who helped me employ one of my employees every month. If I had been freaked out about that, I'm not sure where we would be today. What would have happened? Well, so the story keeps going. I might as well tell you this story. So the story keeps going.

Carrie Saunders: 14:39

About four or five months after they made the switch to Magento, that client emailed us and was like hey, we really miss you. Can you learn Magento? Can you learn Magento? We really want you to learn Magento, because we really miss your services. We miss your white glove services and helping us. I was like so I talked to my employee who worked with them and he was like sure, why not? So there we go, we start learning Magento.

Carrie Saunders: 15:06

This was, I think, about 2011, is 2012. If we hadn't done that, then we wouldn't know Magento today. Plus, I was listening to the client, I was listening to what their needs were, and so many times we need to make sure that we're listening to what our customers are saying. Our customers were shifting. Some of them were outgrowing XCart, some of them wanted something a bit more enterprise-like, like Magento is. And so, you know, be ready to evolve. It's okay. You know, definitely do gut checks, definitely. You know, think about it and things like that, but give yourself permission to pivot when it is necessary. Don't be afraid of it.

Carrie Saunders: 15:53

And then, lesson number five and this is one of the most important lessons I feel like you can learn is that relationships and community matter so much. They matter more than your numbers, your metrics or anything. More than your numbers, your metrics or anything. So, being part of this podcasting community, podcasting myself, it has really brought me to more people One more people as far as, like, potential customers go. But, even more importantly, it has brought me a bunch of business friends, and it's lonely to be sometimes an entrepreneur and owning your own business right, and it's just so wonderful to have met these. I feel like there's several that are more like my business besties now, and many of them I've only known for maybe a year, maybe a year and a half, right, but they're just really great human beings for one Plus, they have their own business. So we have something in common there and we can help each other out, brainstorm business ideas, do some gut checks with each other, because we each have our own different experiences.

Carrie Saunders: 16:56

So all these guest collaborations led to business growth and partnerships. Many of them give me a shout out on social media whenever somebody needs some tech help. They're like oh, you need to get a hold of Carrie Saunders, so we'll be getting business from that. We've been making great relationships because of that and we do, of course, the same thing for them. We shout them out whenever somebody needs help in their expertise. So focusing on engagement and it can be engagement that's not even directly related to profits in your business can really help your business growth. They are always your best marketing tool and your best support tool. And we're not talking about just sales here. We're talking about mental health. We're talking about being happy in our businesses and all the things. So business relationships are super important.

Carrie Saunders: 17:49

So I've shared some of my biggest lessons on what I've learned in doing 100 podcasting episodes, and I'd love to hear yours too. So if you had to pick one thing that's transformed your business or your mindset, what would it be? Click that text, carry button on this episode and let me know. And if you're hearing some weird noise in the background, the cats wanted to celebrate the hundredth episode of the podcast as well, so they're having fun in some boxes in my room. So, anyway, let's get back to the episode. So 100 episodes I still can't believe it. It wouldn't have been possible without you.

Carrie Saunders: 18:25

I want to thank you so much.

Carrie Saunders: 18:27

I'm beyond grateful for each and every one of our listeners. I'm beyond grateful for your reviews, for your feedback, every guest. They've all been so wonderful and it's been wonderful to learn about these other amazing human beings and all your messages of support on social media. They've all been wonderful and I really appreciate them. So make sure you drop me a text on that text carry button in your podcast app. I'd love to hear you know what is one of your biggest lessons you've learned from. You know doing what you're doing and I'll give you a shout out on the podcast. And if you love this episode and this podcast, be sure to rate and review it and share it with a business friend so that they can get the help that we are putting out there in the world. We truly appreciate you and our listeners and we want to give you a huge thank you and a huge shout out and a huge hug from our staff and from me to you. We just really appreciate your support of this podcast and we will see you next week.