680. How To Start an Ecommerce Business in 2025

Hi, I'm Jacqueline Snyder and this is the Product Boss podcast. I've helped launch and grow thousands of product based businesses, even one of my own. And over the last 20 years, I've seen behind the scenes of businesses just like yours. Whether they are makers, manufacturers, artists, or food and beverage businesses. I have spent so many hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what mistakes they could have avoided, how did they turn their ideas into successful business, and what are the strategies that they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers. And this is what this show is all about. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to become a million dollar product boss, I'm here to give you the permission to chase your dreams, no matter how big or small. All you need is the right mindset, a little courage, strategy and support, and you too can be the next million dollar product boss. Let's do this. Oh my goodness. Friends, if you are anything like me, you probably spend more time running errands than running your business. Am I right? Like, everything needs something, we gotta run around. And I knew that this was like a major issue for me back in the day, which is why I decided to get help where I could. And I decided to let Instacart handle all of my grocery shopping. So I no longer had to worry about running all the errands and having to run out and get more almond milk for lattes. Rather, I was like, you know what, we're just gonna let Instacart handle that. So I want you to imagine skipping the store and getting back to designing packaging, orders, making, or maybe actually taking a break, even a nap. Remember those? Okay, so with Instacart, you can get groceries and essentials delivered in as fast as an hour, so you can focus on growing your business without sacrificing a meal. Plus, less stress and more focus. And here's a tip. I've actually used Instacart before to order gifts from my daughter's friend's birthday parties. Because I haven't had time to run out and get presents. And I've been able to get the packaging like the gift bag and the gift like, hello, hello, Sephora, delivered to my house while I was in the middle of coaching sessions so that I could have the present right. It's like having a personal assistant without having a personal assistant. So if you want to do what I do and get the help where you can, you can try it now if you head to the Product Boss. Com Instacart hey everybody, and welcome back to the Product Boss podcast. I'm your host, Jaclyn Snyder, and I am so glad you're here. If you're new, hello. Make sure that you are following the show because we do two episodes a week and I'd love to drop into your earbuds every week to support you in this. And if you are not new here and you've been listening for a while or you've listened to some podcasts, welcome back. I'm so glad that you're here on the show and we're going to dig into all things product based business. So if you have an idea that you want to make and sell, this is the place for you. So a lot of the conversations we're having this year in 2025 have been what's going on, what are we going to do, how are we going to sell? I think there's big changes happening in the world. I think that there's a lot of discussion about layoffs in the government here in the US and, and people looking for work or for jobs because they're, they're leaving their jobs. There's also the talk of recession. Now I say all this not because I want to scare anybody, because that's absolutely not it, but the way to control what happens to you in your life, the way to make money and not rely on someone else or what's happening with the job that you have and your boss and all the things, is to become an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship was always built into my family generations. I realized back of entrepreneurship on both sides of my family. And it was sort of this idea that I grew up with was that you can make something out of nothing. You can have an idea, you can learn how to figure out how to do it and make it and sell it and have a good job. Actually, my grandpa in England, in London had grocery store chains. Like he had an entire grocery store with our last name multiple, multiple stores where my mom tells me how she used to like count the inventory and work the cash registers, right? So I come from a long history of people selling things, to be honest. And that's never going to change. People are always going to need something and there could be ups and there could be downs, but people are always going to need something. And I hope that you have this something that your particular customer wants. But done are we with relying on other people to have that safety and security, to have the freedom of time, to have financial freedom, because now is the time above any other to start a business. And I would say there's two ways, right? There's service businesses and there's product businesses. But if I were to tell you some of the richest self made women in the world are product people that have started a product and sold it. Or how about the richest people in the world? Okay, Jeff Bezos, product business. Sarah Blakely, product business. Jamie Karen Lima, product business. There's like women, if you look up the richest self made women in the world, they have construction products like the wood and the things, right? They sell physical goods. They're not just in the business of information or teaching or like hour for hour type jobs. They actually have scaled with product businesses. Like this happens even for people in my industry. Michael Hyatt with the full focus planner, he had a business just like mine in coaching and then he came out with a product and turned it into tens of millions of dollars. That is the way, that is the thing. It's a little bit on the harder side to get up and going in the way that you know you have to make something and come up with a cost of goods. But that is the way. And not only is that the way selling online is the way E commerce is the way having your own website and having a customer base to sell to and that is something that you will own. So if you're just thinking about, you have an idea and you want to start to make income from it, or you've already come up with an idea and started to sell it, I want to talk about the steps to take to start your own E commerce business. Because you can go from a home based side hustle and become a really, really, really big brand, right? And it doesn't have to cost you a lot if you do this right. Hey friends. Okay, so I don't know if you wrote anything like me, but sometimes it feels like my self care routine is slipping through the cracks. Because when I'm juggling and wearing all the hats in my business and doing all the things, I mean the last thing I have to do is like really fulfill that self care routine that my daughter's talking about. She's like, mom, so listen, so when it comes to running a successful business, you can't really pour from an empty cup. And a lot of times that self care is like one of the first things to get yourself recalibrated. So that's why I want you to meet Glossy. Now Glossy is my favorite daily beauty supplement designed to transform your skin and gut health from the inside out. And I'm actually an investor in this business because I so Believe in this idea of science backed ingredients for digestion and skin hydration and glossy makes it really easy to look and feel your best without that whole whole ten step routine in the mirror. The thing I don't actually have time for, all I have to do is simply mix the stick into my water and I'm good to go. So if you want to try this, because I so believe in this business, I think it's amazing. It's done so many wonders for my skin and my gut, which are two things that I need help with. And you want to simplify your wellness and your beauty. All you have to do is click in the show notes and you can use the code Jaclyn Snyder. So it's my full name. Use the code Jaclyn Snyder and I'm hooking you up with 15% off your order. So, so cheers to glowing skin and a thriving business. So let's dig into the steps. Okay, the first step is to have the idea, I like to call it, ideate it, right? You figure out what product you want to make and you choose what you want to sell. That's like the first step in building a product based business. What do you want to make, what do you want to sell and who are we going to sell it to? We got to find the niche and we got to find who we're going to sell it to. So that's one thing that you start to do, is start to think about what it is. And what I love to think about is, all right, what if you were to walk around your house for the next 24 hours and you were to think, let me think about ways that I can improve a product or I wish I had something like this, or my daughter loves to wear these shirts. Let me go see if there's other shirts like that in the world. Do a little bit of research, right? I want you to start to evaluate your idea and validate your idea. So not only do you come up with the idea, but the next step that you have to take is to validate it. Know if it's actually something that is missing in the market or you just didn't look hard enough. When I came up with Cuffs Couture, which was the wearable wrist wallet, and I had seen literally a cuff in an activewear store and I thought, huh, that's smart. How smart? You could wear your wallet, like basically a wallet on your wrist without it looking like a wallet. But I don't want to wear one that looks active. I want one that looks like an accessory. That looks like jewelry. And so I was inspired by something that existed. I had a problem that I could fix and I wanted to change it to make it better, to make it align with the market, to align with the customer, which at the time was me. So once you come up with that idea, the second thing for you to do is to figure out how you're going to make it, how you're going to get that product. So you're either going to hand make it yourself, you're going to find a manufacturer to make it for you, or, or you might source the product that exists somewhere else and customize it in a way that works for you. Okay, Those are the three ways to make a product. And once you make it, we have to figure out what. Well actually let me go. Before you make it, when you're starting to figure this out, you want to know the competition. You want to know who exists out there, which is what we did in that kind of first step. Who exists out there? What's out there in the world? And again, can it be improved? Is there room? There's always room in the market. You just need to stand out. You just need your own kind of take on it. Okay, so once you do that and you figured out how to make it, the next step is that you build a brand around it. And the brand is important. I think people skip out on this or they think, oh, I can just do it on my computer and print it out or find something generic. But it really is important that as you're kind of building this brand like your logo, your packaging, the labeling, your website, your e commerce store, that we don't want it. I use the word janky because I've seen a lot of, of businesses out there and we don't want it to feel janky. I've been calling it the grandma test. My grandma buys stuff online now. So you better bet that your website where you're selling how you show up online should be up leveled. There are no excuses anymore. Since 2020, everybody got online at that point they either died or they got online and I say died in the way of the company went away. It just didn't work. They didn't adapt. It's sort of like Blockbuster with the VHS videos and when Netflix came out, blockbust just could not adapt. So we gotta have you adapt to the times. And we're going to be left behind if we're not already adapting and building a brand that stands out in a crowded market, right? One in which when somebody interacts with our Product, it could still be a small business. It just doesn't look janky. No. I don't know what other word to use for that. But that's ultimately the test. That's like the question. Okay, so you got the idea. You know how to make it. You're building a brand around it and then the last part of it is, do you know how to launch it and sell it? So once you figure out all this stuff, it's how to actually build your first, your website. Right, Your e commerce site and then how to make your first sale, how to get the traffic there. We talk about it as a sales engine because it is a sales engine. And my students have been learning recently about the sales funnel. The sales engine funnel. So how to get people into it, how to get them bonded with your business and then how to get them to convert. So it could be as simple as that. The very, very, very first part for you really is coming up with the idea what the product is and who it's for, why they would want it. And then you have to figure out how you're going to make it and how it's going to be a brand that stands out because we're selling more than just a product. Then I would get you on Shopify so you can use our code for a free trial. So it's theproductboss.com shopify. All right, so the productboss.com shopify, I highly recommend them as your e commerce platform because they'll grow with you. Now if you're using somewhere else, that's fine too. But I do love a Shopify. And as your business coach online, that's what I'm going to tell you. Okay? And then you get your business launched, you get it out there, you hit publish and you start to do it. And then you start to learn. You learn how to market your store, you learn how to get people to your store, you learn about emails. But you don't have to worry about any of that yet. The first thing that you want to do is you want to get this idea out into the world because we're done waiting for other people to take care of us and that you can take this amazing product idea and get it up and going. So I'm going to drop a link in the show notes to get my dream business checklist. So if that's something that you want, it's going to walk you through all of these steps as well. So if you're just starting out or you're like, I do want to get online. I'm going to drop that in for you so that you can really kind of go through it and make sure that you're taking the right steps so that you can grow a business, take your side, hustle to a real income, not have to worry on other people, and also not have to worry on algorithms like Etsy and Fair and social media and all the places that are kind of out of our control because you can't build on borrowed land. So let's actually get your domain. Let's start building your own e comm site, and it'll just be another sales engine in your multiple streams of revenue. All right, my friends, until the next one, make sure to get that link. And until the next one, I will see you soon and talk to you on the podcast.