Ecommerce and Building a Thriving Community with Kenny Kane of Stupid Cancer

Jul 14, 2016

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Kenny Kane has been coding since the age 13 and began his career as a pharmacy technician at the age of 15. Kenny is COO and Cofounder of stupidcancer and he oversees eCommerce, content curation,and much more. He has also helped develop corporate relationships such as Siemens, General Motors, Seattle Genetics and many more.

Here's a glimpse of what you'll learn:

[0:15] Jeremy's introduction to this episode with Kenny Kane of StupidCancer.org
[1:20] What is a must for sellers to boost sales and get more engagement?
[5:00] How Kenny has built community for StupidCancer.
[6:20] Why Kenny is still a big fan of email connections and marketing.
[9:30] Self selection segmentation strategies that have worked.
[13:12] The connections StupidCancer provides for people who use it.
[14:29] Mistakes people make with ecommerce stores.
[16:05] Fun facts about Kenny Kane.
[23:08] The start of StupidCancer and what it's all about.
[29:25] The early wins in ecommerce (CafePress).
[36:16] How Kenny effectively reaches out to celebrities or media types.
[38:40] The "road trip" and how it came about.
[43:12] The next steps for StupidCancer ecommerce: what they're considering and the hesitations about those ideas.
[46:00] What's the toughest part about running an ecommerce store?
[48:20] Inventory obstacles and difficulties.
[53:46] What works with Skubana for their sales engine and fulfillment.
[56:50] Resources and communities Kenny Recommends.
[58:07] How to connect with Kenny.
[1:01:20] Kenny's main tip: find the intersection of minimum orders and profit.
[1:03:03] Kenny's proudest moment in ecommerce so far.

In this episode…

For a person in their 20s or 30s, the worst and most unexpected news they could receive is that they have cancer. When Kenny Kane was faced with the fact that his father had cancer on the day he was graduating, he was motivated to do something about it. Shortly after that he joined a group of guys who began a social movement to support and encourage young people who are battling cancer. He's now the ecommerce whiz at www.StupidCancer.org and has lots of experience with the ecommerce and community engagement side of what the organization does.

When it comes to building a successful ecommerce arm of the nonprofit, Kenny has had some pretty significant success. From promoting the community engagement that fuels the sales of their T-shirts, wristbands, and other items to the actual sales and fulfillment, Kenny has lots of hard learned lessons to share on this episode.

One of the major mistakes Kenny Kane sees people make when it comes to running an ecommerce store is to depend too much on social media to drive traffic. He's still a fan of the good old email way of reaching out, building ongoing community, and promoting sales. But he's found some helpful ways to allow users to self-segment themselves within his email lists to make sure he's providing ONLY the information they want to see and drive niched sales to their interests.

Beyond the difficulties of driving traffic for an ecommerce store, there's the issue of fulfillment - a huge monster that can consume your time and attention if you let it. Kenny Kane is trying to help a team run a nonprofit so the last thing he wants to be doing is folding and packaging T-shirts. On this episode he shares the tools and services he's using to make that process more efficient and truly outsourced so that he can focus on the more important things.

Resources Mentioned on this episode