315: What It Takes To Get Rich Quick With Steve Chou

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You’re listening to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today, I’m doing a solo episode to answer some of the most common questions I get asked about the different e-commerce business models. And specifically, I’m going to give you my opinion on which models are scams, which ones are worth your time and how to avoid falling for the get rich quick trap. But before I begin, I want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode.

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Now if you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your own customer contact list. And this is why I’m focusing a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing. I sincerely believe that SMS, or text message marketing, is going to be a huge channel for my store going forward, and I’ve chosen Postscript.io to be my text message provider. Now why Postscript? It is because they specialize in e-commerce stores, and e-commerce is their primary focus.

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Not only is it easy to use, but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that, but it is price well too, and you only pay for the messages that you actually send. So head on over to postgroup.io slash Steve and try it for free. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Klavia for sponsoring this episode. Now it’s safe to say that most of us have been doing a lot more online shopping.

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And if you’re an e-commerce brand, that means you might be seeing more first-time customers. But once they’ve made that first purchase, how do you keep them coming back? That is what Klaviyo is for. Klaviyo is the ultimate email and SMS marketing platform for e-commerce brands, and it gives you the tools to build your contact list, send memorable emails, automate key messages, and more. A lot more. And that is why over 30,000 e-commerce brands like Chubby’s, Brooklinen, and Living Proof use Klaviyo to build a loyal following.

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Strong customer relationships mean more repeat sales, enthusiastic word of mouth, and less depending on third party ads. So whether you’re launching a new business or taking your brand to the next level, Klaviyo can help get you growing faster. And it’s free to get started. So visit klaviyo.com slash my wife to create a free account. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.com slash my wife. Now onto the show. Welcome to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast, where we’ll teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle.

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so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host, Steve Tu.

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Welcome to the MyWifeQuieterJob podcast. Today I’m going to talk about human nature and the truth behind the get rich quick schemes you see on the internet. Now, if your Facebook feed is anything like mine, you’ve probably seen a lot of ads for get rich quick schemes that promise massive wealth in a short period of time. And here’s the thing. These ads probably convert really well. After all, it is human nature. Whenever you want to learn a new skill or achieve an important goal in your life, your first instinct is to look for the easiest way out and the quickest way to get there.

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Now, unfortunately, this mentality is embedded in our DNA and I’m not immune to it either. Sometimes I still find myself looking for the get rich quick solution, even though I’m fully aware that change requires hard work and dedication. So for example, when I was trying to get six pack abs, spent a lot of time researching magical muscle shakes and secret exercises designed to burn fat. Anyone here ever take chromium picolinate? I bought that stuff too. Now, when I first launched this blog, I thought I could leverage social media

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sign up for a couple of ad networks, slap on some ads in the sidebar and instantly make passive income. And with our online store, I thought that paying for a directory submission service would instantly bring traffic to our website. But guess what? All these strategies were a complete waste of time. And after spending so much time and energy trying to find the easy way out, I’d always come back to the same conclusion. The path to success requires consistent work and dedication over a long period of time. Now I want to tell you a personal story here.

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Most of you are aware that I teach a class on how to start an online store. And one of the perks of being a student in my class is that I will personally critique your website when it goes live. Anyway, the other day I was browsing the course forums when I saw a message that caught my eye. One of the newer students who just signed up want to know the success rate for students in the class and how long it took for them to get there. And this question was immediately followed by a comment from another student in the class who noticed that one of the sites that I had critiqued in the past was no longer open.

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and that student shut it down to pursue a completely different niche. So here is my response. Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that not everyone is going to be successful. And for a while I debated whether to take certain set critiques down, but I ultimately decided to leave them up because there are lessons to be learned from watching them. Now, I don’t want to sugar coat things for you. Your chances of success or failure largely depend on you and your first product may not be a winner. I will be there to answer your questions and help guide you along, but there are no guarantees. So here’s the thing.

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It doesn’t matter how long it takes other people to succeed. You are your own person and you are in control of your own destiny. There is no magical formula for success. I can only show you the process and the right way to do things, but I cannot act on your behalf. Want you to know how long it takes other people is completely natural, but it implies that success is based on a blueprint when in fact there are many other variables at stake. Now, the biggest variable is how much time and dedication you are willing to devote to your business.

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And another variable is how willing you are to pivot your business based on the data you collect. How willing are you to learn and execute what I am teaching you? So here’s how you get past that get rich quick mentality. Now I’ve been running my online course since March of 2011, and I still get asked the same old get rich quick type of questions on a regular basis. So Steve, how long do you think it’ll take for the average person to make $50,000? How soon will the money start rolling in after I launched my e-commerce store?

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How many hours am I going to have to spend working on this? Can I do it in just four hours a week? Now some of these people eventually sign up for my class and they get frustrated when they find out that gosh darn, it actually takes work to make money. Now what’s this? I got to learn a skill that is completely new to me? Imagine that. But here’s the thing, the students that stick it out and persevere through all the material and hard work eventually discovered that the skills they have gained go way beyond just running an e-commerce business. They can use them to start any type of business. So for example, on my podcast,

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you’ll find many stories of students who stuck it out and are now generating six or seven figures in revenue per year. The students who make it past the get rich quick phase are often on a completely different mindset. They start thinking longer term about creating businesses that are built to last. They start believing in their own abilities as opposed to following a bogus recipe. They start realizing that it is okay to experiment, fail and learn from the process. Now here’s an example of another student who got past the get rich quick phase and sent me this email. Dear Steve.

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We have failed at three prior attempts to open and operate an online business. And in hindsight, the short and simple reason for this is that we didn’t have enough guidance from competent sources. We have operated a very successful brick and mortar business for 10 years, but the transition to a successful online business was elusive until we found your site. Now I started planning our online business almost two years ago when I started looking for guidance and my priority, I wanted to get guidance from someone who was already operating successful business and was honest and ethical.

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Now I got my money’s worth on the first day I logged on to your course almost a year ago. Now the most important advice that I could give to anyone starting out is to go through this entire course and keep a dictionary handy for any terms that are not understood. Everything you need to succeed is here in this course. And if you skip videos or cruise past things you don’t understand, you are selling yourself short and you are setting yourself up to not succeed. There’s a lot to get through and a lot of it is not easy to understand. But Steve is right. Some students will succeed and some will fail. There are no guarantees that someone else can give you.

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The only guarantee that makes sense is the one that you give yourself. If you persist, you will succeed. Now here’s what the transformation feels like. Now at the time of this video, there are over 3,600 students who have taken my class. And this might sound like a lot of people, but 3,600 students over the course of eight years is actually not that large of a number. And I purposely limit enrollment. My class is not and never will be a volume course. Instead, I provide a hands-on experience with lots of teacher-student interaction. Less students means that I can do full website critiques.

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like the ones that you can find on my site. It also allows me to provide personalized recommendations for your business based on your exact challenges. So for example, the strategy for launching a successful clothing business is far different than launching a product that you personally invented yourself. Now what I hope to convey to everyone who’s watching this video is trying to get rich quick will actually only waste your time. The sooner you realize that success depends on your own internal drive and persistence, the sooner that you will start making forward progress.

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And I’ve wasted hours of my time on get rich quick schemes in the past and they have never ever worked out because if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. So stop looking for external ways to get things done and start looking internally at yourself. In fact, you should be asking yourself, what can I learn to help me create value with a business? What skills do I need to take me to the next level? And how can I avoid stupid mistakes that may hinder my progress? All right. So how do you spot a get rich quick scheme? The easiest way to spot a get rich quick scheme,

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is to ask yourself the following questions. Is this business model sustainable? Does it provide any value? And are there any real barriers to entry? If the answer is no to any or all these questions, chances are it is a get rich quick scheme. Now here are a number of get rich quick schemes that I’ve come across over the years. And the first one is drop shipping from Amazon to eBay. Now, when I first saw ads on my Facebook feed promising quick e-commerce riches without any upfront investment, without a website and without caring inventory, I immediately became suspicious.

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Now this particular business model involves copying the image and listings of as many products on Amazon as possible and listing them on eBay at higher prices. Then when a customer makes a purchase on eBay, you simply purchase the product on Amazon, have it delivered to your eBay customer and you pocket the difference. Sounds like easy money, right? Now let’s take the get rich quick test. Is this business model sustainable and does it provide any value? Now this eBay drop shipping model adds zero value to the end customer except for higher prices.

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and it’s definitely not sustainable. And in fact, eBay banned this practice within a year after it became popular. Are there any real barriers to entry? Not at all. Anyone can do this without any money, which means that the marketplace will instantly become flooded with competitors. Now the second get rich quick scheme is drop shipping from AliExpress to Amazon or eBay. And drop shipping from AliExpress is just like drop shipping on eBay, except AliExpress is the delivery mechanism.

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If you sell on Amazon or run any online business for that matter, you’re going to need a trademark to protect your intellectual property. Not only that, but a trademark is absolutely necessary to register your brand on Amazon. Now I used to think that any old trademark registration service would work and that could even try to register my own trademark by myself on the cheap, but I was dead wrong. Securing a trademark without a strategy in place usually results in either an outright rejection or a worthless, unenforceable trademark.

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Now that is why I work with Steven Weigler and his team from Emerge Council. They have a package service called Total TM, which provides the same attention to detail and process that large law firms do at a fraction of the price. Now for me personally, I like Emerge Council because of their philosophy. Their goal is to maximize IP protection while minimizing the price. So before you decide to register a trademark by yourself or file for other IP protection, such as a copyright or a patent, check out Emerge Council first and get a free consult.

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For more information, go to emerge council.com and click on the Amazon sellers button and tell Steve that Steve sent you to receive a a hundred dollar discount on the total TM package for Amazon sellers. Once again, that’s merged council.com over at EMERGECOUNSEL.com. Now back to the show.

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Now what is AliExpress? AliExpress is known as the eBay of China, and you can purchase an item at super low prices to be delivered anywhere in the world. And most items on AliExpress are shipped from China. Now the main reason that this business model took off is because of a little known shipping loophole called ePacket. ePacket allows a package from China to be shipped to the U.S. at really cheap prices. And as a result, you can ship an order from China to a U.S. customer for cheaper than shipping the order from within the U.S. However,

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because the U S is renegotiating the UPU, is the universal postal union. E-package shipping is actually going to go way up in price, thus killing this business model altogether. Now, AliExpress drive shipping was doomed from the start because it relied on a loophole for success. In addition, there was little or no quality control on the products and the shipping times were very excessive, sometimes upwards of a month. Now the final get rich quick scheme I want to talk about is drop surfing. Now, in case you haven’t noticed most of the e-commerce get rich quick schemes,

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involves some form of dropshipping, which is why you have to be extra careful whenever you hear that word. But don’t get me wrong, there are many ways to run a successful dropshipping business, but they all require work. So what is this scammy thing called drop surfing? Drop surfing is a form of dropshipping where you find a hot trending product in a group of suppliers who sell the exact same item. And then when a customer places an order, you find the lowest price for that item from your list of suppliers and you have it shipped to your customer.

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Now after analyzing a number of drop surfing businesses, here’s what I noticed. The item being sold is almost always a cheap generic piece of junk sold by a number of Chinese manufacturers. There’s little or no quality control for the product being sold. So there are a ton of customer complaints and because the item is hot, there are many people selling the exact same product, thus flooding the market. So drop surfing is essentially a marketing term that glamorizes the drop shipping of junk.

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Not only is this business model unsustainable because you’re constantly on the hunt for new hot products, but the money is short-lived because sellers are quick to flood the market. Now another get rich quick type of scheme that you’ll come across browsing on the internet are SEO or social media services that promise fast traffic and high rankings. Now from teaching my e-commerce course, I’ve encountered a ton of these services that promise quick sales overnight. And I’ve seen services that promise to blow up your social media and your SEO by purchasing active followers.

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None of these services are legit. Now, when it comes to search engine optimization, the only way to rank is to write a quality article that people actually want to read. Any service that promises to increase your rankings by spamming backlinks to your site will do more harm than good. And the same goes with buying social media followers. Just do not do it. Instead, what you want to do is you want to make decisions based on logic and not emotion. So if you find yourself deciding whether or not to sign up for a potential get rich quick scheme,

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make sure you sleep on it and ask a friend for their opinion. After all, it’s important to make your decision without getting caught up in the emotion of future riches. Now here’s a quote that I want to share with you from a student in my course that sums everything up nicely. I think it’s a little funny that some people actually believe someone else can guarantee them success. They want some magical turnkey formula. And you know what? A lot of scam artists out there know this is exactly what many people are looking for. So they promise to give it to them for a fee, course.

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People can end up paying hundreds and thousands of dollars chasing the formula, but the formula where everything is set up for you and you don’t have to do any work, I know because I used to think it existed. And at some point, I don’t remember exactly when, but at some point I finally realized that those kinds of people were playing on my emotions. They were saying things like, all you got to do is plug into the system. A lot of language like that was being thrown around all over the internet. Many scammers are still making false promises they know are lies.

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Some of these people are making tens of millions of dollars selling bogus internet marketing courses. And I once paid $500 for a course and looking back and thinking about what I know now about internet marketing today, I knew that it was a total scam, but they were making all kinds of guarantees and promising the moon with statements like make $10,000 a month with just 10 minutes of your work per day. Now this implies that you don’t really have to do any work. It will almost be effortless. Even large corporations push myths like that on people.

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Like for example, trying to make them believe that if they buy a franchise, they are guaranteed to succeed with a turnkey system. Now I’m here to tell you that it’s all a bunch of BS. It is not the system that makes you succeed. It is you. A system can only facilitate your success, but only if you have the qualities that it takes to be successful. Success is more a state of mind. It is really very simple. What many are failing to see is that successful business owners are smart people who actually apply themselves on a consistent basis.

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They have the right attitude and work ethic. They figure out what they need to learn for a business and they do the work to learn it. They have a certain mindset that many people just don’t have. And I think you have to be willing to consistently do the hard and or boring work that most people are just not willing to do. That is what sets successful people apart from those who fail. Now, many people who have always worked for someone else don’t really take these things into consideration when they’re thinking about owning their own business. What if you pick the wrong niche and you fail? Many people would just give up and say, that’s it.

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I can’t do it. With that attitude, they will never be able to own a business. And my belief is that you have to fail to succeed. When we fail, we can look back and then analyze what we did wrong. We can learn from the mistakes and apply that knowledge in our future endeavors. And sooner or later, we will stop making so many mistakes because we learned what not to do. So experience is a major factor. And the way I see it is the smarter you are, the less experience you need. But if you are less smart, you can still succeed, but you need to fail more in order to learn what not to do.

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Now the million dollar question is, can you get rich quick? The answer is definitely yes, but you’ll find that most successful entrepreneurs who have achieved fast success paid their dues with a prior flop. To expect to achieve quick results as a total newbie is possible, but highly unlikely. Everyone has to pay their dues somehow. And the best way to learn is to hire a mentor who you trust to navigate you through the process. Good luck.

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Hope you enjoy that episode. Now I actually tried hard not to turn this episode into a rant and please email me over at steve at mywifequitterjob.com and let me know what you thought about this episode. To break up the monotony of just publishing interviews, I’m gonna mix things up going forward with some solo episodes. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 315. And once again, I wanna thank Clavio, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign.

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Basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIYO. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIYO. I also want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash Steve.

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That’s P-O-S-T-S-C-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog. If you’re interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free 16 mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

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Thanks for listening to the My Wife, Quit Her Job podcast, where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information, visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitterjob.com.