How I started my ecommerce business

Like some of you who may be reading this post, I had been an employee all the while since I graduated from school and started my career. All this while I had never thought about starting my business as I was comfortable with my life drawing a monthly salary. You can read more About Me here.

What led me to starting my business? 

Then one day, my husband came back to tell me he had lost his job. Given his age (he was in his late 40s), it was difficult for him to find another job. So I suddenly had this epiphany that maybe I should try to learn how to start a business, so he could continue working on it.

If it was hard for him to get a job at his age, why wait for others to give him a job? So I started taking an interest in learning about ecommerce.

How I started embarking on my entrepreneurship journey

Life has a funny way of creating its own tests

As they say, “Life has a funny way of creating its own tests”. Frankly speaking, if it was not for wanting to help my husband, I would not have dreamt that I would start a business online and begin my entrepreneurship journey one day. This is because I was exactly like what Robert Kiyosaki had described in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad: I grew up in a middle-income family where Mom was an English teacher.

Dad went into the garment business during his younger days but failed, so Mom always felt that starting up a business was risky. She had been telling me since my younger days to study hard, get good grades and then get a good job to have a secure life. In fact, I had never doubted what Mom said, so I never thought of starting up a business because to me that is “dangerous”.

Where to start?

We all need this push in life and I guess my husband's experience prompted me to act. However, I really had no experience of doing business. In fact, I did not know where to start or what business to go into at all.

Furthermore, I was working full time then, so I was not sure whether it would even be possible to start a business on the side given my work commitments. Little did I know it was actually the start of an exciting journey of self-discovery and development.

Ecommerce and online business have Low start-up cost

So for the first half of the year I was just groping in the dark. Even so, I was very motivated as I really wanted to help my husband. So one of the very first things I did was to set up a company, so it was a legitimate business.

To keep the costs low, I did everything myself. I designed the logo of our company using an online logo design software in just a few hours. I started looking up and reading information and paid attention to my surroundings to see what I could sell.

First half year I was completely in the dark

I found my first product when I went to an overseas night market when I went on a business trip. I felt that it was a very interesting product which was not commonly found in local stores. So I contacted the overseas supplier and imported the product to list on a local online platform.

However, I then realized that they always buried my product listing in the many product pages on the local platform. That made me want to learn more about selling online, so I could improve my online sales.

Then I found a great training that showed me the way

So cutting the long story short, one day I received an email about this online course teaching people selling on the biggest ecommerce marketplace on the planet (you got it right, it's Amazon.com).

It started with me watching the sales video and believed that it was an opportunity that I should go for. I then signed up for the training program, thinking if it could help us learn more about selling online and making money, then it would be all worthwhile.

I followed the system and took massive action

I then studiously followed the program step by step during my free time and, as they said, the rest is history. I could start selling and make some money. Most important of all, through taking that important first step I realized my dream of helping my husband to start a business of our own and started my entrepreneurship journey.

I will share more about this online training that I took and benefited from in my next post Why I Took the Best Amazon Selling Course as I do not want to deviate from the purpose of this post, which is to welcome you and also to share about how I started my entrepreneurship journey.

Yay! I have my own online business

Looking back, I would say that I have absolutely no regrets about embarking on this journey. It was really a blessing in disguise that my husband lost his job as that was what got me into action to start my business.

Particularly when 6 years on, we are still selling online and have gained so much valuable experience along the way. The investment in the online course that got me started has generated returns many fold for me and continues to do so.

The value of a good online business training

Through this experience, I truly believe in the value of a good course in saving valuable time to get me started in business. In fact, since the time I started my entrepreneurship journey, I have spent a lot of time searching for the best online courses to take and resources. I have invested more money in my business to continue educating myself, so I can stay abreast of the developments in the online marketing world.

Grateful for this entrepreneurship journey and opportunity

I am very grateful that God has blessed me with this opportunity to go on this path and the abundance through this endeavor. I truly believe in paying it forward and sharing.

I hope that through my sharing you will learn from my experience and find your own freedom to build something meaningful from scratch. I believe this will be important as we are going through this Covid-19 period where online businesses are thriving.

In conclusion

With that, I shall end this first post and let me extend the very warm welcome to you again to be on this journey with me. What is your entrepreneurship journey like? Have you started one or planning to start one?

Put in your comment below so that I can also get to know you. Please let me know if you would like me to cover anything in this blog and I will do my best to share with you more. Last but not least, if you ever need a hand or have questions, leave them below, and I will be more than happy to help you out.

(Update) I have recently started my Youtube Channel Ecommerce with Penny – Start Business Online. Below is the video on why I started the channel. You are most welcome to subscribe and share my channel with whoever may find it helpful. 🙂