eCommerce and The Gold Rush
To get the gold, you have to pan
I’m going to tell you about one of my most memorable elementary school experiences. And after, I’m going to show you why it has to do with eCommerce. But indulge me for a bit. Maybe I’m an old soul, telling a story of my youth, but maybe I’m just a narcissistic 24-year-old entrepreneur looking for the limelight.
Either way, this is my article, so follow the rules and you get the gold at the end, in the form of lessons from my experience.
Cue grade 4.
Erin Chavanne (my main elementary school crush — if you’re reading this… you probably could tell, but my 4th grade self is blushing) and her mom taught the class to knit. The boys knit hats, the girls knit shawls.
I loved it so much I later turned it into a side business, selling hats for $30-$40 a piece, and once for an cool, even $120.
This time, however, we were going as a class to Sutter’s Fort overnight, built in the mid 1800’s to house the settlers coming to California, and later, to house the prospectors looking for gold.
Growing up in California, we learned American history, but were exposed to the history of California first and foremost.
Besides the trouble of dysentery while traveling in Conestoga Wagons most 80s and 90s kids have experienced first hand on the Oregon Trail, gold rushers had a lot of trouble to look forward to.
Like swindlers, aggressive territorial claim-stakers, the survival-of-the-fittest nature of the wild west (depicted with shreds of truth in old westerns…) for some examples.
But some who got there and survived and brought their family with no dysentery or cannibalism(link) had a bigger problem — How to actually get gold…
See, it’s not that there wasn’t any. There was tons of untapped gold in California. That’s why people came despite the danger! And, also the “From sea to shining sea” prospecting, new frontier stage of America’s development — the goal our country had of stretching from one ocean to the next.
No, there was still gold. But you had to work for it. You had to get a gold pan and work work work. Or mine rocks and sift, sift, sift to find those veins of gold glinting out.
It wasn’t like an orchard of gold, glinting everywhere like some would have you believe.
No, it was beneath the surface. Waiting to be taken. But waiting to be taken amongst a ton of iron sulfide (Pyrite, a.k.a. fool’s gold), basalt, micah, quartz and granite. You had to work for it.
Fast forward 150 years to today.
eCommerce is being widely regarded as the new gold rush.
And for good reason! Many people who know how to pan it have made millions in profit! Some even make 6 figures of NET PROFIT in a month!
And it’s worthwhile. Seriously, it is!
But you have to PAN FOR IT. It doesn’t just get shipped to your doorstep — the gold.
That would be nice, wouldn’t it? The moment you open up a Shopify store, customers from all around send you money with a note saying:
“Hey! Just sharing my wealth. I heard you opened a store and I want to encourage you to sell by giving you my money up front and making it easy for you!”
Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that easy?
No. But it’d be interesting…
I created an eBay store late May, worked hard on it, hiring my first worker, attending eBay’s event in Vegas (where I saw Barenaked Ladies and took home the guitarist’s pick!), buying a course from a guy who was a great manager, but not the most up front businessman — I learned some businessmen care more about their bottom line than honest, up front communication and drew some strong boundaries out of self respect.
I asked questions of mentors and sought guidance.
And it paid off!
In my first 90 days I made nearly $9,000 in sales! From businesses which made a couple hundred at best, I shoulda been so proud of myself!
But the gold rush mentality got to me. So many successful people sharing their stories made me believe I needed MILLIONS to be even slightly proud of myself.
It was stifling. I decided to be proud of myself for the $9,000 in sales I made, and the 40+ positive reviews I got on my eBay account.
I realized these lessons:
- Perfectionism is for the weak.
Appreciate your progress, little by little, rewarding yourself for every step forward, encouraging yourself and keeping your eye on little goals (as well as the bigger, far off ones.) You can bully yourself into success, and sap your strength and that of those surrounding you, or you can support yourself and positively motivate yourself towards the goals you desire. Fear is a great motivator too, but only if you use it in a way which supports yourself
2. Making money even in the modern-day Gold Rush takes a lot of work
3. Success isn’t easy, even if it becomes easy over time
It’s a habit of successful people, and a successful mindset, to boil down success in retrospect to a simple formula. This is a great tool for successful people to a) grow their bank of useful information and validated success, to draw confidence for the future. And b) to teach their new knowledge to others hungry to learn.
A positive trait of successful people.
For those looking to climb the mountain from those saying it’s easy, know it’s not. It’s not grueling, like trying to brush your teeth with sandpaper, but it’s also not super simple and painless.
It’s somewhere in the middle, depending on your skill, natural ability and mindset.
4. But success also doesn’t have to be grueling hard like some portray it
A lot of people who are too scared to start the road to their own success, or who have been talked out of it by others tend to rationalize their personal failure to themselves (the only real failure is not trying, or in quitting too soon) by saying it would be way too hard, it’s dangerous, they would have failed (a.k.a. found out there were things they still needed to learn in order to succeed) anyway.
This creates a culture of either “Hey! It’s super easy!”
or “It’s so hard, don’t try or your hair will burst into flames like Michael Jackson from all the stress.”
The reality is it depends. It depends on your experience and confidence with the subject. It depends on your support system. Are your friends and family encouraging you or pushing you to get a job instead? Do you have access to someone who’s done it before? Are you encouraging yourself by appreciating your small wins and breaking down the big picture to focus only on the handhold in front of you on the rockface of success?
It can be super easy, if you have succeeded at similar projects, have a supportive community and access to people who have been there before.
It can be super hard, if you have not succeeded at anything similar in your life, your family is trying to force you to look elsewhere and you cannot find anyone who has been there before.
It’s usually, in my humble experience so far, somewhere in the middle. You have some advantages usually, and some obstacles to overcome.
The trick is to enhance your strengths, and either compensate for your weaknesses by finding alternative routes (hiring someone who is good with people if you suck with people for instance) or learning to improve yourself (reading “How to win friends and influence people” and joining a discussion group.)
So with this gold rush of eCommerce, and your own personal gold rush of success, what will your first step be?
Joe Buchoff is a creative entrepreneur working on his D.I.Y. Channel (link) while he experiments with ways to juice a living out of his passions.
He likes to graphic design logos for himself and clients and create websites, among other projects. His portfolio and blog can be found on www.JoeBuchoff.com
If you need a logo, design or website made, email him at design@joebuchoff.com! He’ll get back to you soon.
