Introduction to Ecommerce

If you feel like you’re chasing your tail this podcast is designed to get you moving again.  If you want to build a sustainable online business the Ecommpreneur podcast is here to deliver for you.  I’m a Brit by way of Australia and I’ve been working in online business since 1999.  I made a lot of mistakes along the way but things really started to take off once I got onto Amazon in 2013.  I have had plenty of friends recently tell me that I should share those lessons with others and that’s what I started this podcast.

I’m not going to sugar-coat anything in this podcast.  The get-rich-quick sales hype is not for me.  I know how difficult it can be to get an online business going. And there are plenty of unscrupulous courses out there willing to take advantage.

I’m going to cover a lot of ground in this podcast.  Everything to do with e-commerce.  From sales platforms to traffic and conversion.  I also want to discuss the importance of a good marketing campaign and a detailed description of how to run your business.  But beyond the nuts and bolts of running a good company, I want to talk about something that is less discussed.  That is the necessity to plan for success.  You have to win the battle before you even start.  That means picking the right market with the right product or service.

Being of service and being useful to your clients is the key to creating a successful company.  Not only is that good for your customers – it’s good for you.  It’s the difference between just making money and really enjoying your work.

I want to start this series by discussing the philosophy that I’ve developed over that last decade.  There are five phases that we are going to discuss over the coming weeks.  All of this is going to be free and the podcast is going to be a strictly no-pitch environment.  That’s not what this is about.  If you subscribe write and review you’ll become a member of the 15k club.  I know what you’re thinking.  You want 15 million not 15 thousand.  That’s a great goal but you have to get to 15k first.  That’s what I’m here to help you to accomplish.

We are going to do two episodes a week.  One will be with me alone and on the other, I’ll be joined by a guest who will share their business lessons.  And I want to hear from you! The more feedback I get the better I’ll be able to tailor this content to your needs.  You can contact me at support@ecommprenuer.com.  I’m really looking forward to starting this journey with you.

Transcription

You're listening to the Ecommpreneur Podcast where e-commerce meets the entrepreneur. No BS e-commerce tips and advice to help you achieve your business dreams.

Hi there and welcome to the Ecommpreneur Podcast, this is a very first introductory episode so welcome, it's great to have you here. My names Julian Thornton and I'm here to tell you more briefly about what this podcast is all about, why I started it and why it's important for you hopefully.

So let's start with that first, you've come here, your time is precious, so let's just tell you straight out whether this is for you or not. So I've designed this podcast specifically for people who are either very new to e-commerce, whether it be Amazon, eBay or you've got a Shopify store or a Magento store, so if you're brand new or you're stuck. Now stuck can mean many things in a different way to different people. Stuck can be that you just can't get started, stuck can be that you're at a certain level and you need to get to a higher level to build the income and the lifestyle that you want. So the other thing too is it's not so much for info products, it's for physical products, for private-label wholesaling online and retail arbitrage that kind of thing. So if you want to build a store that's systemised, that has processes in place, so you understand how to build a long-term sustainable business that's profitable and doesn't take every minute of your waking hour then this podcast is definitely going to be of use to you.

It's going to be short, sharp, punchy, direct that's the kind of person I am. And you may or may not know who I am, people who know me know that I'm direct, I'm blunt, and I don't mess around, so I'm going to ask you right up front for permission to be me. I can be a little colourful, I'm a mixture of English and Australian, so a bit of a bulldog if you know what I mean with a kangaroo tail. So I've got the bulldog with the kangaroo jump, which is a bit of a strange mix, my accent might be a little bit hard for you to understand I can't slow down usually, I'll try. But if you find me hard to understanding then get VLC for your audio player or enounce.com and replay the episodes at a slower pace. That way hopefully you can understand what it is I am saying. The other thing is I'm going to transcribe all the episodes, so if you do struggle at a certain point you can go and find out or get a translation if you know what I mean. So anyway it's a funny thing all this accent stuff because I can't stand a lot of Americans and some of the English too now.

So you know what’s in it for you I guess is really structure, guidance, expert advice in a short snackable format. So you're not going to be going around circles and not getting traction. The whole purpose of this is to get traction. So over the course of the last few years since I've been in the e-commerce world, I've been online since 1999, so I went to my first conference in America in 2000, so I've been for a long time failing online since 1999 anyway. The first course I bought was Cory Rudl Internet Marketing Centre course; it was a dirty great big it was probably about 10 pounds that thudded on the ground, a big folder with a ton of DVDs or CDs back then and it was nuts. And I got hooked on that day one; I'm just into associate marketing and e-books and that kind of thing, the only problem was I wasn't very good at it.

And for most of the first 10 years I was a complete failure, got to 2009, 2010 I started to get a better idea of what was going on, and certainly, by 2012 I was better and then learned about e-comm and 2013-14 it just took off. So I'm a great case study for anyone out there who's been persisting and has gone through huge ups and downs probably more downs than ups. You may have lost marriages over it, friendships, I've been through all that, and it's extremely painful. But if you wired like me, like you're a wannabe entrepreneur, or you're an entrepreneur that's starting to make some waves and get some traction then fantastic, it's worth it trust me. Just stick with it, follow your heart and don't listen to the naysayers, be sensible, learn from your mistakes, don't make the same mistakes time and time again. You can make the same mistake a couple of times, maybe 3, but once it gets over 3, then you need a smack over the head so, stop making the same mistakes. And we'll talk a lot about the shiny object syndrome that is mistake number one, and we all including myself keep doing it. So I have to smack myself over the head on a regular basis because all the tools and courses in the world are not really going to help you. It's actually very very simple and we'll talk a lot about this over the coming episodes.

So if you don't know much about me, that's kind of a brief, my backgrounds actually in investments and banking. I was a mortgage broker; I was a real estate investor and I traded stock options both in America, Europe and in Australia and I've always been around helping people understand how to create wealth and how money works. And I guess the system that we operate in which I'm not a massive fan of but it’s what we're stuck with and we've got to do the best we can right. So that's been my background for the last 10-15 years, and now that I've discovered e-commerce I'm just obsessed with it, I think about it non-stop all the time, I'm always looking for ways of improving marketing and sales and systems and procedures because that's the key. Every time I have an issue with anything its like well it comes back to the system and the systems broken. So systems are