Let me tell you a little story from my days as a management consultant, where I worked with some world class brands like Procter & Gamble, Nissan, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.

One day, I remember my boss, William, standing at the head of a client’s conference room, facing away from a table full of execs, associates, and stakeholders. Sketching a big red square in the bottom corner of a whiteboard, he wrote “End of Process.” The entire board was covered with multi-colored markings from top to bottom, outlining the client’s business process in tremendous detail.

He turned to face the room and paused dramatically.

In his thick British accent, he said, “Right. Now. Here are the pieces we need to rethink…”

Masterfully, he got to work.

He eliminated waste, crossing out a large section of the board that simply wasn’t needed. He drew and redrew arrows, reordering the steps of the process to streamline the workflow for maximum efficiency. He identified bottlenecks with big blue circles and put a star next to key roles that needed additional support and resources.

And he assumed nothing.

He peppered the client with question after question, asking them why things were done the way they were done, and identifying opportunities for improvement.

The result?

A redesigned process and technology tool that now saves that client hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

William is a master in the world of process and technology consulting—well worth the steep hourly rate that clients pay for his services. And I am very fortunate to have learned a lot from him over my professional career.

But what does this have to do with starting an e-commerce business?

Process Design for E-commerce

When I first got started in e-commerce, I learned two mega-popular business models: Private Labeling with Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and dropshipping with Shopify.

Perhaps you’ve heard of them. There is no shortage of gurus selling Masterclasses that you can buy online for $997 that will teach you to launch a business under one of these models.

I, like many others, failed when I tried to use a guru’s method. I sold a few thousand dollars’ worth of products, but it certainly wasn’t profitable: I lost a non-trivial amount of money.

And I definitely didn’t see that real, life-changing success that was promised to me in the Masterclass…

And I couldn’t figure out why.

For a little while there, I became jaded about e-commerce. I saw the gurus as these corrupt snake oil salesmen, raking in far more money than any of their students. While that might be true to an extent, I fell into the trap of blaming them for my failure and allowed that state of affairs to sour my outlook on the whole e-commerce opportunity.

I thought, for just a moment, that it was all a pipe dream…

That is until I finally started applying what I learned from William to my e-commerce brands.

Fed up and frustrated with my failures, I decided to strip Amazon FBA and Shopify dropshipping down to their component parts. Painstakingly, I used the conventional wisdom to map out every step.

And then I set out to do some good old-fashioned process improvement.

Recalling William in front of that whiteboard, I began to cut the waste. I reordered the steps to boost efficiency. I identified the bottlenecks and areas where additional resources might be needed. Assuming nothing, I asked all the “Why” questions I could possibly think of.

And, finally, after I had redesigned the whole damn thing, it became clear as day:

The #1 reason I had failed at e-commerce was that I started in the middle of the process instead of at the beginning.

Once I stopped doing that, I had a breakthrough. Shortly after implementing my newly redesigned process, I did my first $200k in sales and all three of my e-commerce brands became profitable.

After realizing that I had discovered something pretty cool, I started to compile my notes, wrote a book, and created this training.

I’m going to walk you through my improved e-commerce process, step-by-step, in this free and impactful training.

If you like what you see, then maybe you’ll consider grabbing my book or working with one of our awesome consultants. For now, thanks for being here, and enjoy the free training. 

-Charles Camisasca, The E-Comm Boardroom