My biggest lesson from starting an e-commerce business

👩‍💻 Meet Jordyn Guieb

Jordyn is the owner of PRML, a clothing and fashion e-commerce business with a store located in Honolulu, Hawaii. As the founder and owner of PRML, Jordyn oversees the daily operations of the business and also builds its strategies for growth. 

Jordyn first started PRML because she wanted to have more control over her lifestyle after having a baby and wanted to do something she was passionate about. But starting a business wasn’t easy, she has worked a lot of late nights and early mornings.

Learning from her mistakes

Looking back, she said she does have a few regrets. One of her biggest regrets was not knowing how to properly budget for inventory. She said there are so many decisions that you have to make as a founder. She wishes she had some type of an advisor to go to with answers, but making some mistakes also allowed her to learn and grow.

The biggest lesson in the past year

Jordyn said her biggest issue has been delegating. I think others can relate to what she said next, “I have a hard time delegating tasks to my staff because there's a certain way I want things done.” She has learned that training and then allowing others to take on tasks frees up her time to work on other things that are more important to sustaining and growing the business. Jordyn has learned over the past year that it is much more efficient and a better use of her time to take on the bigger issues and take the smaller tasks off her plate.

📚 Jordyn’s Best Stack Ever

The tools and software Jordyn uses to run her e-commerce business.

• Shopify as the point of sale system and also for inventory management (Daily)

• Time Clock Sync as an employee time clock on the iPad (Daily)

• Canva for social media and printed marketing material (Daily)

• Adobe Lightroom for photo editing for social media content (Daily)

• Ring for cameras inside the store (Daily)

• Total Connect 2.0 is the store alarm and controlled through an app (Daily)

• InShot for video editing social content (Weekly)

• QuickBooks for accounting and reports (Weekly)

• ADP Portal for HR and payroll, which is run twice a month (Monthly)

Even though QuickBooks offers payroll services, Jordyn said she prefers ADP because of the added human resources tools and because ADP is located on the island and in her timezone 24/7, so they are able to help personally with any issues.

The one product Jordyn couldn’t live without? Canva. “Canva has been a godsend app for me.” She said she’s terrible at graphic design, so the pre-made templates have made it easier to create marketing materials.

The advice she'd give to others

“When I first opened the store, I tried to have something for everyone. I quickly learned that it's better to niche down, especially as a small boutique. By catering to our target customers, I was more efficient in our marketing strategies because I was able to appeal directly to those people that wanted to shop with us.” 

✨Representation matters. Know someone who might be inspired by Jordyn? Share this newsletter with them✨

🍿 More to stack on

• A day in the life of a startup CEO. Mathilde Collin the CEO of Front, a customer communication platform, shared what a day in the life of a startup founder entails. She also shared the pitch decks that helped her raise a Series A and Series B. 

• 4 lessons from a 4x founder. Yin Wu spoke at Y Combinator’s Startup School this week about the lessons she learned from dropping out of Stanford and starting 4 companies (3 of them were YC-backed). Full notes here.

  • Start from the user (and the problem), not the technology

  • Pick a growing market (unit economics need to make sense)

  • Distribution and competitive advantage are key

  • Startups are still hard even when they are working

• Learnings from building a newsletter from Lenny Rachitsky. I found this amazing thread and deck from Lenny about building and growing a newsletter. If you’re interested in content strategy and growth or ever thought about launching your own newsletter, podcast, etc – check it out!

• "Are you living life or are you chasing life?" 👀

• 3 other newsletters from women that I recommend:

  • Perspectives from Deb Liu

  • Fortune’s The Broadsheet from Emma Hinchliffe

  • Axios Media Trends from Sara Fischer

If you have any questions or feedback, you can reach me at [email protected] 

Always remember to have courage and be kind 💫

Ellen at Best Stack Ever