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 [email protected].  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 absolutely key to your business being successful.

Over the course of the last few years, I've had lots of people approach me and I've been coaching people sort of on the side more so in the last two years because I want to understand what it is that the main issues for people. And I don't want to be promoting something until I've really ironed out the wrinkles and make it the best it can be. It's never going to be perfect, but don't want to just stick out half thought material, because it just wastes everyone's time including me. So you might make some money out of it initially, but you create headaches for yourself, and you also risk being called things you don't want to be called and that's going to happen too, not everyone's going to like me right. So why make it harder for yourself is what I'm saying. Things have to be well thought out and planned that's a big part of who I am.

So getting back to the actual podcast itself, it’s called the Ecommpreneur, its e-commerce entrepreneur combined, go figure, not hard right. A lot of people can't spell it right it's ECOMM because of that's the first part of e-commerce, its got two Ms, and then entrepreneurs got preneur on the end that's PRENEUR, Ecommpreneur. Not difficult, but lots of people are seemingly having trouble spelling it. So we've got the 15 K club, that should be easy 15K CLUB that should be pretty easy to remember.

Now you'll notice its the $15,000 club, it's not the $1 million over nightclub; it's not the millionaire club, the trillionaire club, the billionaire club. I'm not into the hype; I'm not going to hype this up. Most people are happy if they get 10 or 15,000 a month net going into their bank account, that's what Ecommpreneur is all about. Is how we get you from where you are now to at least 15,000 a month in your bank account, net of all your costs, you've got to be making a profit. No point in learning all this and spending all your time and effort on it if you don't make a profit. So that is the number one goal, especially if you're newbies that you might only be making 1000 a month, not even that in some cases, might not have even started. So for most of you, $15,000 a month going in your bank account is going to change absolutely everything. To go from 15 to 50 is not a big jump, getting that first 10 to 15 that's the hard bit, that's when you're peddling really hard, or you're on the runway, and the Jets are screaming down the runway trying to take off, that's where you're at right now. And you just need a system to be able to tweak a few things here and there and understand what it takes to actually get up in the air or to hit top speed and maintain it. So that's what this is going to be about.

The format that I'm going to start off with it's going to evolve because I need your input okay. Initially, we're going to start with one or two episodes, the first sort of 7 to 10 is just going to be me going through the Ecommpreneur philosophy, how it's evolved, how I think and what I want to achieve with you as a result of listening to this podcast. So initially it'll be one or two episodes of about half an hour to forty minutes in length. Each episode's going to have either a takeaway PDF or an action steps PDF. So you can action what we've been talking about straight away. That will be more the case with the guests that come on, so we'll have guests that are experts at Shopify, Bit.commerce, Magento, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Rakuten all those things, email marketing, social media, Facebook ads all that kind of stuff. So very specifically honed into e-commerce sellers. So the other thing I was thinking of was having certain months themed for a specific activity, whether it be Amazon, eBay whatever. So there's a lot of options.

Now on our website, we've got a suggestion box or you can just go to contact us and send us a message, there are a few ways you can get a message to us. But what I'd love you to do is to tell me what your number one challenge is. What's the number one topic that you want to learn about? There’s a lot of stuff you don't know about, and part of my job is to put that in front of you so that you're aware of it. But from where you're sitting right now what are you struggling with and what can we do to help. Then we can run the podcasts put all the resources and tools and other things that you're going to need onto the show notes on the website, and you can get access to it really simply and quickly, and implement it straight away. So implementations the key from all of this, no good of me just waffling away if you don't do anything, so really important that you do that.

And finally what I'd love you to do is to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and Stitcher, I think we're going to have SoundCloud too, but iTunes and Stitcher are the main things, join the free membership at Ecommpreneur. So get on the list, I'm not going to start hammering you with lots of affiliate deals, that's not going to happen okay. I'll make sure you know about the podcasts; I'll make sure you know about the guests that are coming on and how to get the most out of those episodes and the guests all right. This is 90% completely free; there will be potential courses down the road with some services that we've developed that should be very helpful. But I'm only going to send stuff to you that is helpful and has good value. And it will because we've tested it and we've taken people through it, and we've worked out what's good value for you. So we're not going to sell your email lists or anything like that, everything’s going to be protected in terms of privacy and we respect your privacy totally, so nothing to fear there. I think at the end of the day you're just going to love the fact that, we're going to give you lots of useful information, it's going to be organised, you're going to be able to implement it in a structured format, and your business is going to grow, if you focus right.

So we're going to go through so much info gradually over the next couple hundred episodes, there will be a lot more than that. But that's really the target is to get that first couple hundred and see your businesses grow. So yeah that's pretty much it, all I need you to do is to go and subscribe, rate and review, give us some feedback and let's make this the best potential e-commerce podcast going out there in the world, great to see you and I'll see you on the next episode thanks.

Outro: You have been listening to Julian Thornton, host of the Ecommpreneur Podcast, home of the 15K club, make sure you take action now and head over to www.Ecommpreneur.com/podcast and search for this episode, download your action PDF and details of our special guest. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and DeTune to keep up to date and qualify for contests and insane discounts on everything you will need to make it with your e-commerce business. If you liked the show make sure you subscribe to iTunes and give us a great rating and review thanks and we'll see you next time on the Ecommpreneur Podcast.

The post EP001 – Introduction appeared first on Ecommpreneur.