The Store That Never Closes
I opened a store this year. It has no door, no sign, and no closing time — it is an online store, and opening it took an afternoon: a platform account, a payment processor, and product photos taken on a phone that shoots better than the digital cameras we used to budget for.
The education since has been worth more than the revenue. Advertising auctions, shipping math, return rates — when it is your own money, every metric stops being abstract. Running a checkout taught me in a month what advising on conversion rates for years did not.
Most of the buying happens on phones, late, in short sessions between other things. If the store loads slowly, you do not have a store. If checkout asks one question too many, the cart dies where it stands.
Every Friday the numbers settle the argument about what worked. I recommend this education to anyone who sells technology for a living: run something small, with your own name on the account, and let the register grade you.