What happens when you have been developing stores for customers and clients and decide to become a store owner yourself? In episode 141, we dive into this topic with someone who has done just that.

Micheal Tieso worked at WooCommerce and Automattic on the developer side. While he was still working with clients, he made the decision to start his own online store. Store owners and developers alike will learn a lot in todays’s episode.

I asked Michael:

• What were his reasons for wanting to start an online store?
• Does he have more empathy for store owners since he made this move?
• What was his previous experience in eCommerce and has his perspective changed?
• What has he learned and what does he think store owners need to be on top of?
• What are would be the benefits to developers running their own online stores?

Today’s transcript is brought to you by GreenGeeks Web Hosting, where you will find WordPress hosting that’s fast, scalable and eco-friendly.

Bob: Hey, everyone, welcome to Episode 141. We have Michael Tieso with us today. Now, Michael is a developer. I like to just call him an all-around e-commerce kind of guy. How are you doing Michael?

Michael: Good, good. Thank you for having me here again.

Bob: Yeah, I believe this might be your third time on this show. I’m not sure.

Michael: Yeah! Yeah. It’s always fun.

Bob: So we’re getting up there. I keep telling somebody else that when it happens the fifth time it’s going to have to be like Saturday Night Live used to do: the five-timer club. It’ll have to be the five-timer something. I’m not sure what that is but … anyway, for people who don’t know your background, let’s talk about your recent transition from developer to store owner. To set the stage, tell us a little bit about what you’d been doing prior to this in the eCommerce space?

Michael: Yeah. So for four years I was working with WooCommerce. It was a combination of Woo things at the time, and then they and Automattic combined. For four years I worked in support and development— and business development. And then almost exactly a year ago today, I decided to go freelance doing just development work, and so this past year I’ve been just working mostly with clients in building their stores and consulting. So it’s been mostly building sites for other people and supporting them, for roughly five years.

Bob: Now, somewhere along the line comes this decision that you’ve been building all these sites so why the heck shouldn’t I just run an online store? Tell us the story behind this and what you’ve done lately.

Michael: Yeah. So it’s actually been on my mind for a long time to run my own store. I just never got around to it. But what’s different this time is that I’m doing a physical product, shipping a physical product. It’s easy to create a digital product. Well, easy in a sense that there’s not as many puzzle pieces or logistical issues that you have to think about with digital product versus physical.

So this was the first time I decided to try something physical. It’s been in the back of my mind for a long time and I just decided now is the right time. In fact, I just remembered that the first time I was on your podcast and you asked me if I were to start a store what I would do. So this is how long I’ve been thinking about this. I said tea. And I was pretty broad about it then, but I knew th