David: What does it take to start and build your own successful e-commerce store? What are the common mistakes that e-commerce stores make and how do you increase your e-commerce conversion rates? Those are just 3 of the questions that I intend to ask today's special guest, Brandon Nolte. Brandon, welcome to DMR.

Brandon: Thank you so much for having me, David.

David: Thanks for joining us. Brandon is an e-commerce entrepreneur. He's founded a store, bringing in over $20,000 a month in revenue. His favorite things include hiring, working with his awesome team, and saying no! So Brandon, what prompted you to start an e-commerce store?

Brandon: I guess I was looking for a way out of my previous business, which was a Kindle publishing business. It was actually doing really well for me, but I wanted to grow myself and my skill set. I thought e-commerce sounded like fun. It's probably not the most scientific way to go about it.

Yeah, I was really just looking to grow myself as an entrepreneur. I feel like the e-commerce business model really allows you to expand your skill set. There's so many things you can learn from e-mail marketing to customer service to building teams and stuff like that.

David: How long ago was it that you actually started?

Brandon: The store went live basically January 1st. It's been running pretty much this whole year.

David: Okay. Wow! We're talking just the beginning of October 2014. You're talking about 9 months or so it's been going. Fairly fresh, but you're obviously doing very well already. What would you say are the things you've done so far that has driven along the furthest that made it to the success that it is today?

Brandon: I think the first one is certainly finding a good market. I ended up getting into a market where I saw that there was demands.

I think, a lot of times, people go into businesses because they have a great idea or they think they have a great idea, and they have to try to validate it with the market. What really convinced me to get into my particular market was just talking to somebody who was already in it. After hearing his success, I wanted to get in. That was validation enough for me to try it.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is you want to make sure that there is enough demand for your store to grow. That's certainly one of the things that's important.