Josh Goree, owner of Completeful, joined Discover Lafayette to discuss his journey in building his growing empire in e-commerce.

Completeful offers a Dropshipping service that allows entrepreneurs to create an online business and sell products at little to no risk, and without having to first purchase and store merchandise to successfully fill orders.

With services such as Completeful offers, a business owner can start selling at little to no cost out of pocket, and run their business from a laptop anywhere in the world.

Dropshipping has upended the shopping experiences of consumers as online shopping continues to improve and grow in popularity. Today, about 33% of e-commerce stores use drop shipping as a fulfillment method.

To bring this home, many of you may have also heard that the former Walmart building in North Lafayette was purchased by an up-and-coming entrepreneur who is setting the e-commerce world on fire. This entrepreneur would be our guest, Josh Goree.

His story is an inspirational one for anyone wanting to have an opportunity to make passive income. Josh didn't study business at Louisiana Tech; he ran track on scholarship and wanted to be a biomedical engineer. But he became frustrated with how engineers were expected to work within pre-existing 'boxes' of thought. Josh would come up with ideas and wanted them immediately implemented.

He jumped into sales for a marketing company and learned to overcome his introverted tendencies. After approximately "500 presentations," he realized he was on the way to effectively selling products and making lucrative commissions. His goal was to buy a Raising Canes franchise.

His first traditional business that he bought was a hair salon, with no experience in the cosmetology business and with no hairdressers yet hired to work for him. Yet, over a meal at Logan's Steakhouse in Alexandria, he convinced 10 of the 14 hairdressers he met with to work for him. Josh joked that they robbed him blind, but he still made a profit and sold the salon for a profit two years after the purchase.

After a foray into being a franchisee for Jimmy John's (and he eventually had three locations (with the Monroe store recently being sold), Josh realized that the traditional retail concept limited him as to how many people he could serve based on limited capacity. He started learning all he could about the e-commerce business.

Shopify turned out to be the best bet for selling goods easily and cheaply. He sold fishing bait, bikinis, and leather jackets. "For $30 per month, you can get access to a website, drag and drop your logo onto it, and start selling." Josh learned that marketing is the key. "You can have a terrible website, but if you can drive people to your website, you can be successful. Don't believe everybody on YouTube. You can learn everything you need to know for free."

Josh Goree's advice for budding entrepreneurs: "You don't need a lot of money to get started; But, there will be times when you want to quit. Push through the disappointments. You can handle the challenges. Don't think about all the ways you may fail. You will make mistakes, but you learn from them. Just don't make the same mistake twice."

Josh began to target goods in demand in the wedding industry. He figured out how to market on Facebook and targeted all the people getting married. Trying different company names such as '"From Him to Her," "From Her to Him," Yours Personalized," and Your Wedding Things," he had success but realized the business model wasn't scalable. He was still immersed in the moment-to-moment execution of his businesses.

So about three years ago Josh built a new business mo...