Origin Stories: Two Paths to Starting our eCommerce Businesses

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

After almost 150 episodes of the eCommerceFuel podcast, our topics have run the gamut. But one very obvious topic we've yet to tackle? The story behind why Andrew Youderian and frequent co-host Bill D'Alessandro got into eCommerce in the first place. The path to success in eCommerce can be a long and bumpy one. Sadly, many people give up before they bring their visions of starting an eCommerce business to reality. Hopefully, this episode will inspire any of you with thoughts of giving up, to understand that starting an eCommerce business doesn't happen overnight. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher (With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and Bill D'Alessandro of RebelCEO.com) Andrew: Hey guys. A quick note before we get started about one of our private community members. Jason Feinberg from FCTRY is releasing a follow-up to his highly successful Bernie Sanders action figure over at TrumpVader.us. I think the domain pretty much says it all but if you enjoy creative, interesting eCommerce projects or the media spectacle about the U.S. election so far I think you'll get a kick out of it. Again, check it out at TrumpVader.us and stay tuned for more from Jason in a future episode. Alright, onto the show! Welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast, the show dedicated to helping high six and seven-figure entrepreneurs build amazing online companies and incredible lives. I'm your host and fellow eCommerce entrepreneur, Andrew Youderian. Hello and welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast. I'm your host Andrew Youderian, and a special edition of the podcast today. Normally I do this with a guest, and very frequently one of my favorites guests, Mr. Bill D'Alessandro, but normally he is across the entire country from me, not sitting right across the table from me sipping some whiskey here in Bozeman, Montana. Bill: Yup. So I made a flight out and we are doing eCommerceFuel podcast live from Bozeman, Montana from eCommerceFuel headquarters. Andrew: And we were both commenting just before we started how we both look like 70s-style talk-show hosts with the super cool microphones and the headphones. We do not look very cool in this. Bill: I don't know, we'll leave that up to the listeners to decide. So we just took some stupid pictures, so we'll post them in the show notes for everybody to laugh at us. Andrew: But hey, cheers! Bill: Cheers, man! Thanks for having me. Andrew: Yeah, good to have you here in Bozeman, and you're in town...we hit up Big Sky to do some skiing over the weekend. Bill: Yeah, it was awesome! Came out for some skiing at Big Sky. I've not only never been to Big Sky, but never been to Montana. So this is my first time in Montana. I'd heard awesome things, so flew in on Friday and then we headed up to Big Sky to talk business, ski, it was awesome. Had a hell of a day skiing on Saturday. I hung out at the house on Sunday, talked some business, and now we're back in Bozeman to do our podcast, and Andrew has provided me with some delicious 100 proof whiskey that I hear we have his brother to thank for. Andrew: Yeah, thank you, Chris. This is good stuff. Man, you're a great skier yourself, man. Bill: Six years in Colorado helps. Andrew: Yeah, helps a lot. So we were thinking it'd be fun in our first in-person podcast...we've never really talked about how we got into business. Like how did we end up here? The paths and the stories that brought us to eCommerce, to where we are today. And thought it'd be kind of fun to explore those, and want to try and be a little bit tactful and considerate of people not wanting to hear our entire life story over the course of six hours, but it'd be kind of cool to share because I don't know if we've ever done it on the show. Bill: Yeah, we've been talking about all kinds of specific things but we never really talked about how you can go from...