342: How My Student Amanda Makes 6 Figures Selling Dollhouse Furniture

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You’re listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. And today I have a student in my Create a Profitable Online Store course on the show, Amanda Austin. And Amanda runs a six figure business selling dollhouse furniture, and she only works on her business between 10 to 20 hours a week because she drops ships. And here’s how she built it. But before we begin, I want to thank Klavia for sponsoring this episode. Businesses are always the most successful when they own their own data.

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customer relationships and their growth. And that’s why more than 50,000 e-commerce brands like Living Proof, Solo Stove and Nomad trust Klaviyo to deliver their ideal customer experience. Now having used Klaviyo for many years now, I can wholeheartedly say that Klaviyo is the best email automation platform in the world for e-commerce and you’ll get everything you need to build strong relationships that keep your customers coming back. Now with advertising getting harder and more expensive, it’s time to take back control of the customer experience with email and SMS.

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So if you are ready to drive future sales and higher customer lifetime value with a marketing platform built for your long-term growth, get a free trial over at clavio.com slash my wife. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O dot com slash my wife. I also want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. 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.

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Now SMS or text message marketing is already a top five revenue source from my eCommerce store. And I couldn’t have done it without Postscript.io, which is my text message provider. Now, why did I choose Postscript? It’s because they specialize in eCommerce and eCommerce is their primary focus. So 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’s price well too. And SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers.

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So head on over to postscope.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. Now onto the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast. Today I’m really happy to have Amanda Austin on the show. Now Amanda is a student in my Create a Profitable Online Store course and she runs a six figure business selling dollhouse furniture over at shopofminiatures.com. Now she works on her business between 10 to 20 hours per week and in fact she is barely working at all right now because she has a seven week old. It took her roughly three years to get to this point and she went through a lot of self doubt and a bunch of ups and downs in the road, but she did it.

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So today we’re going to do a deep dive into her journey, how she decided what to sell, how she grew her business and what obstacles she had to overcome to get to this point. And with that, welcome to the show, Amanda. How are you doing? I’m great. Thank you, Steve. I’m so excited to have you on. I mentioned to you earlier, I looked in the archives and I performed a website critique of your store on December 8th of 2017. So it literally has been almost exactly three years since your launch.

03:19
Yeah, exactly. Actually, I just remember that yesterday, the 11th of November was the day I launched my store. So it’s pretty much exactly three years it’s been live. Okay, wow. That’s amazing. So Amanda, tell the audience about your store, what you sell and how you got started. Okay, so my store is Little Shop of Miniatures, which is at shopofminiatures.com. And my store specializes in dollhouse miniatures and dollhouse kits. The kits

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are my entire store is drop ship, I should say. And I have two suppliers, one for the kids and one for the dollhouse managers. And the vast, vast majority of my business comes from the miniatures business. So these miniatures range, I literally have everything in the store in miniature version, whether it’s like a dollhouse sofa, a dollhouse food, know, little tiny food, got actual dolls and tons of random stuff. I have a miniature electric chair, have miniature condos. Miniature electric chair? Oh, yeah.

04:18
It’s a hot seller. No pun intended. There’s a lot of weird stuff on my store, but you know, the majority of people are buying like stuff to decorate their doll houses. These are mostly hobbyists, I would say, excuse toward older women, although there are men and the men tend to buy more of like the dollhouse building supplies. So I have dollhouse baseboards and dollhouse electric kits and things like that. So this is a bigger hobby than most people realize. Although I do get kids once in a while, I’ve had like a few

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kids of celebrities actually ordered from my store. So yeah, it’s it’s been a wild ride. And it’s all drop ship. I know that not a lot of people in your class do drop ship. I did it because I have like over 3000 items in my store and I could add 10,000 more easily. I didn’t want to inventory that huge amount of Oh, yeah, obviously. Yeah. Let me ask you this. Are you into dollhouse miniatures yourself or

05:15
Okay. So that’s a funny story. I chose the niche mostly because I did all of your keyword research and this one was just, you know, it was, I had like a whole Excel sheet just full of ideas. And this one just kept coming up as a very competitive keyword and there were a lot of keywords. And then I looked at the, my competitor sites and they were just so God awful that I really felt I should just go into this. But actually as a kid, my grandma handmade me a dollhouse and there was a dollhouse, store, my local mall, and I would go there all the time. spent.

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every, you know, first communion dollar, every allowance dollar I spent at that little store. And I eventually filled this dollhouse like just full of miniatures over the course of many years. And that dollhouse miniature store closed. But I still had all the miniatures, I still had the dollhouse. So I did have an affinity for it. And that was another reason why I chose to go into this because I truly do love the products a lot. do you know a lot about this? Like, do you get questions from your customers asking you specific questions about

06:15
Like the electric chair, for example, or? Yeah. So I can always answer about like things about scale and simple questions, but sometimes people write in with incredibly complicated questions about building a dollhouse. I have had to learn a lot and I’ve just bought books or got books out from the library or, you know, I’ve been on forums where I’m just learning these things, but to be honest, I have never built a dollhouse. I have never put electricity in a dollhouse. I’ve never put wallpaper on a dollhouse.

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But I have learned how to answer these questions. I think, you people are always surprised, like I write back and like, yeah, this is Amanda. And they know that I’m the founder of the store because I have my story on the homepage. And people are always like really impressed by that. They’re always like, wow, I can’t believe it’s you. Actually, it’s nice. It actually lends a lot of credibility to is it just a one man show? Are you running it by yourself? Or do you have employees or

07:09
Well, yeah, it’s pretty much, yeah, it’s just me running this, you know, I’m customer service and fulfillment and everything, but I have a warehouse actually not too far from my house, about two hours it’s located and they’ve been importing dollhouse miniatures for like over 40 years. And I know them pretty well and I’ve gone to visit them several times. So they are like my fulfillment team. And so I send my orders to them and they make sure they’re packaged and shipped. So I kind of count them as part of my team.

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You know, we I give them ideas for like new products and times and we’re in close contact all day So how did you actually find your dropship vendors? Because I know that’s one of the biggest hurdles actually for people getting started Yeah, that that’s the hard part. So what I ended up doing is I went to Las Vegas There’s a dollhouse miniatures convention because really I guess there’s a convention for everything. It’s absolutely Yeah, there’s a couple of these every year and this one was I got I joined a group it was

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can’t even remember now that it was like a miniatures group and I found out about it and I thought, okay, you know, I looked at the list. said, I think I can find, you know, someone who can supply my products here. So I ended up going there and I met, there’s like two big wholesalers that import these products. And I liked the one because it was like really close in Ohio. And I just had a good rapport with the guy and you know, I just was like, well, you know, I’m to be in contact with you. I’d like to sell your products and that’s how it got started.

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So is there anything that you had to do to convince them to drop ship for you? Or was that just part of the agreement right off the bat? No, because they were drop shipping for other people. I see. Okay. So they were pretty, pretty well oiled machine at that point. And you know, those other people, you know, I started off and I would be like, throw them an order a day. Now I’m like one of the top, top customers. Nice. Nice. I did want to also ask you this because we talked about this before I hit record.

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What were some of the motivations for starting your business? Because I think we’re a lot alike in that like we don’t need a ton of money. We just need enough to do what we want to do. So what were the motivations for even getting started with this? Yeah, it was all about having personal freedom. Like freedom from having to work a set amount of hours. I was in corporate America for 15 years. And I just I was always like a fish out of water there. I mean, I was good. I got promotions.

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I earned all the, I was in insurance for the last five years and I had like all the top designations. I had achieved a lot of stuff at my job, but I just never liked it to be honest. I don’t really like taking orders from people. I just never understood like why I had to work eight hours a day when I could get my work done in four. And, know, just like the politics, I was never good at playing that game. And I realized long-term that I was just never going to be happy. It didn’t matter. Like if I got a new job, I would still never like it that much.

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And this was before I had kids. So I was thinking all of this. was like right before I got married, I started laying the groundwork and then I had my first daughter two years ago and my second one just two months ago. And, know, having your having kids, I just, there’s like no way I, I wanted to, you know, be at a 40 hour a week job. I wanted to be present for them. I wanted to be hands on mom. So, you these are my motivations was just like the freedom. And it wasn’t, you know, I didn’t need to make like.

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a ton of money. Like I just kind of wanted to eventually replace my corporate income or get close to replacing it and not have to incur the cost of childcare. And I’ve been able to do that in three years. Nice. So when you first got started with this, like, did you have this long term vision? Did you have like a timeframe in mind? You know, I didn’t, I just had no idea where this was going to go. And not really. Like I kind of thought, well, you know, I’m going to have my own warehouse and employees. I’m going to make this

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import my own products. And I still think about that because I know I could do it very well and I could do it for a lot less than my competition. I haven’t taken that off the table completely, but at this time in my life, it’s just not the right time. And I didn’t really have a ton of expectations. Like, of course I wanted it to be a success, but I just thought, you know, I got to try and if I fail, I can always go get another job. And in fact, the first year and a half of my store was very slow. Um, it was a very.

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very part-time kind of income. So I ended up going to work for about a year for another online store. Except these people were doing millions in electronics. I kind of went there as sort of an apprenticeship to sort of learn more about how to do an online store. So I did that. I did all the marketing. mean, it was small. So I did the email and I did the promotions, the ads, everything. So I learned a ton there. So I do feel confident that if I ever want to take that route, I could do it pretty well. Okay. And how did you go about

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validating your niche? Actually, I want to know how much you started your initial investment was also and then how you went about validating this niche before you actually got started. Yeah, I was I mean, I probably spent like less than $5,000 because you to buy your course and then I then I went to Las Vegas. Now my in kind, you know, I had like six months where it took me to set up the store and get everything going because there were just so many products and I did it all myself. So there was like a lot of time where I wasn’t making money. So if you add that in, that’s probably 10 to 1000s of dollars.

12:22
Um, the way I validated the niche is I followed all the, all your videos, all your teachings. did all the keyword research. I did that for months. I kept a huge sheet and then. You know, I ran it by you and you kind of gave me the thumbs up on it. And I thought, okay, this is how I’m going to do it. I think too, you have to look at the competition, you know, if their sites are really bad. mean, you, you saw my competitor sites. It looked like it’s like clip art from the nineties and yeah, yeah. Well, navigation. I was like, I know I can do this better.

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So that was a big reason why I went into it. And I didn’t need to love what I sold. I told my husband, I’m like, I’ll sell adult diapers if it makes money. As long as it’s not like a drug or a gun’s gonna hurt somebody. But I kind of wanted something where I had a little bit of an affinity, a little bit of familiarity. So it kind of just all fit together. Okay, and you mentioned you did this all yourself. You wouldn’t describe yourself as a technical person, would you? Oh, God, no.

13:16
No, no, my store’s built on Shopify. in the beginning, I probably emailed them like five times a day about stuff. Okay. So you managed to just kind of figure out the technical stuff yourself. And you are not technical. you know, and the hardest part was getting my inventory in Shopify synced up with my drop shippers. My drop shipper is a little antiquated. And their systems for a while worked with a third party app that I bought through Shopify. And then all of sudden, they stopped working.

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Um, actually right before the holiday season two years ago, right after I had my first child, was horrible because people were able to order things that were out of stock and things go out of stock all the time because they carry 20,000 skews. So, yeah, I spent a long time figuring that problem out. eventually hired an overseas developer to create a custom app for me. And, if I could give anyone advice, it’s like, I was a little shy to hire out. Like I’m always like, I’ll just figure it out myself.

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should have done it a long time ago. When you hire someone like in Pakistan or India, it’s very a reasonable amount of money, especially as my store was bringing in a lot more. I should have done it a long time ago. And eventually I hired someone to do a redesign and paid like a thousand dollars and that was well worth the money too. Nice. Yeah. Your website looks great. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I didn’t always look like that. I mean, it was better than my competition, but I knew it. needed, you know, my store was growing. My store has grown traditionally 250 % a year. So I that kind of growth.

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Yeah, like when you’re getting more money coming in, I wanted to put some money back in the store. So that’s what I’ve been doing. So in terms of dropshippers, I imagine you talked to a bunch before you settled on those two in terms of connecting up to their systems. So the two that you’re working with, do they have different systems, number one, and some of the other ones that they not even have systems at all? Well, I don’t know about there’s really only like two people you can choose from for dollhouse miniatures. And for the dollhouse kits, I only carry one because I

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I don’t really want to be in the kit business. Like they’re, very heavy and the returns are horrible. So I just put them out there mostly for keywords so I can get people searching for those terms. Yeah. But they, the dollhouse kit maker, they really never run out of items. So I just simply list their products in my store and I don’t even try to sync up with them. But for my miniatures store, yeah. Like I had, like I said, I had to hire somebody, you know, to create this custom app. took us like probably a month to get it right.

15:40
Okay. Okay. And what happened? Like, how do you guys deal with returns and that sort of thing? Okay, so I’ve never had a dollhouse kit return because they’re like, they’re like huge, like 50 pounds, if someone wants one, you know, I clearly mark on the site, like, you know, returns like you please carefully consider this purchase. And that’s not that’s like such a small part of the business. Now for the miniatures with returns, people are unhappy or they just don’t like it.

16:04
I give them the address to send it back and I kind of make it seem like it is my store because I have a little shop and miniatures attention returns, but it really just goes back to my dropshipper. And then they let me know it’s in, they give me a credit and then I refund the customer. But I would see my, my returns are not a huge problem. It’s, it’s not a huge, there’s not a huge number of people that do returns and they’re not a huge problem because the item is so small that it’s easy for them to get it back.

16:31
Yeah, actually, your products are ideal since they’re so small, too, because I would imagine shipping isn’t that expensive either. So no, no, it’s not bad. Okay, so let’s let’s talk about some of the more difficult parts about getting your business off its feet. So first off, how did you make your first sale? I’m not really sure how that person came through. But it was really shortly after I launched my site. They just like they ended up ordering, but they couldn’t do it online. So I took the order over the phone. And I remember just like, Yeah, I got an order. 10 bucks today.

17:01
Um, I’m not sure. think I’m not really totally sure. I think I had a Facebook page. Maybe they found me that way. Okay. Yeah. I don’t take orders over the phone anymore. That’s no thing. Like see that that violates my like kind of lazy, lazy, fair business. You know, I’d rather just lose the sale than have to be on the phone with somebody. Cause they’re usually very old and need a lot of handholding. And I know it’s just not, there’s another site that does that over the phone. I don’t want to do it. So yeah, that’s how I got it. And mostly, mean, I don’t do any real advertising. The only

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I, everything has been through SEO. I have a lot of high ranking keywords because of my blog and the way I set up the site. In fact, I’m like number one for a lot of stuff. I’m the head of hobby lobby and eBay. So that that’s how I’m getting the traffic. And then, know, like over 20 % of the orders are returned customers at this point. So it just keeps snowballing. Are you doing marketing? Yeah, use PlayV. But once a week, I send an email out and like,

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And I’ll do a ton of sales. Sometimes I do a sale, but mostly it’s like these are the new products. And people just love to open those emails because I just put like a bunch of random stuff. Like today we have miniature tombstones and a miniature hand. You know, and like I always play it up. I’m like, you won’t believe, you know, the new products I put in. People are like, they really get excited because it’s just, I always make it very random. How do you decide what to include in your shop? Well, at this point, I have a pretty good idea of what sells. And Shopify is so good, they always

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let you know within each collection, like what’s a hot seller. So I’m like, well, you know, people like these miniature meals with like everything in there. So I got to find more like that and put them in there. And in order to just figure out what to sell, is it just as simple as just going up to your dropshipper and saying, Hey, can you send me some of these or, can I just list these? Is it? Yeah, you can list whatever you want. They have a whole catalog. Okay, so just go through it and I’m like, Oh, this is cool. Like, you know, I think about myself is like that

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10 year old girl that just loved going to the miniature store. like, what would I want to buy? And I usually those are usually my instincts are spot on. So let me ask you this question. So what is stopping you from just including the entire catalog? Oh, it’s just like my it takes a long time to get a product up. Like, I would like to have the whole catalog. I set goals for myself, like I want to do 50 products a week and get them in there. And I try but like

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I don’t know, I’m always putting more products in, but there’s just so many. I mean, it’s unbelievable how many things they have. Okay, so let me ask you that question in a different way then. How do you organize everything? So you mentioned SEO is one of your primary drivers. Do you just typically, when you’re deciding what to add, since it takes a lot of time, do you pull from a certain category or keywords and then you put those on? Or is it just based on what you think the demand is gonna be for a hot product?

19:53
You know, I kind of go through my store and I’m like, wow, I’m looking kind of lean in like desks and you know, or like a lot of times my dropshipper, they import a product for a while and then just, stop importing it. So over time your store gets kind of thinned out. And so I noticed I’m like, oh, I’m kind of, I’m getting kind of low on this category or like, you know, there’s, there’s, you know, people really like the little miniature cleaning supplies and why don’t I have a miniature bleach? I should put that in there.

20:17
So I kind of, you know, I kind of do it category by category and I set a goal for myself when I sit down to put in new products. Like today we’re going to focus completely on miniature armchairs and that’s just all I do. So you mentioned your shop was slow for the first year and a half. Yeah. What happened after that year and a half? I mean, it was always growing, you know, but what really blew up was like last holiday season. I don’t know what happened, but it would, it just all of a sudden, I don’t know if I got bumped up for a bunch of keywords on Google.

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But the store exploded and I was like making more from my store than from my day job. And I was just like, yeah, I forget about this. I’m out of here. Oh, that’s when you quit. And then honestly, like the pandemic has only helped the store. Like when the pandemic first, it was first spreading, I was like, oh great, there’s the end of my store. But instead people were writing to me all the time. They’re like, I’m stuck at home bored. I want to get back into this. And my sales have never really slowed down since then.

21:17
You know, like what I did in Christmas, was like, oh, wow, that was amazing. But I do that much like every month now. I can imagine, right? COVID, everyone’s stuck at home, nothing to do. Man, it’s actually was probably a blessing for your business, right? Overall. It really was. Yeah. Can we talk about your email flows, actually? So how do you get people to sign up for your list? And how frequently do you email them? What type of promotions do you email and that sort of thing? Okay, so

21:44
I have a pop-up on my store that’s like sign up for my newsletter and get 10 % off your order and a free ebook. And as soon as they sign up, they get the 10 % off. And then a day later, I send them an ebook of do it yourself, miniature crafts. Um, and I pretty much, I actually made that ebook myself. I kind of like looked online and use my own imagination about like how to do your own crafts. And it’s, it’s like the DIY dozen. There’s a dozen crafts you can make from everyday items around your house.

22:14
So you can take a paper clip and make a little miniature hanger and like an old wooden spool of thread, how to make a little table out of it. So people really like that. In fact, they get really impatient. Like they don’t even want the coupons. like, where’s my ebook? It’s coming. It’s coming. Okay. So that’s how I do it. And then, you know, I have a whole welcome series for people. I send them some of my more popular blog articles. Like I did a whole roundup of miniature museums around the country that people can visit.

22:43
And I remind them of the coupon and then if they don’t take advantage of the coupon, there’s like five or $10 off your order a couple of weeks later. And I also like send them an email with like hot products that are trending things like that. And it goes on for like six weeks at least. yeah, a lot of people end up ordering. also have an abandoned cart flow and that one, you know, was like, you forgot something. We’re still holding your cart. And then as a last ditch effort, I send them a coupon. I have a browse abandonment.

23:12
And that one’s been doing really well. What else have I got going on? And then, you know, I do the weekly emails. I try to do every week. So, you know, the majority of those are like, oh, there’s a new blog post or here’s some hot new products or like, here’s some, you know, like, you know, Halloween products you can buy, you know, Thanksgiving products, things like that seasonal or for spring, did flowers and baskets and gardening tools, things like that. And then I do do promotions.

23:41
probably like once a quarter, like I’m definitely gonna do one for Black Friday. And that’s usually like 10 % off, because I don’t have a giant margin. I have a much higher margin than most dropshippers, but I can’t do like 50 % off. So I’ll do 10%. Actually, can I, you don’t have to answer this question, but I’m just kind of curious what your margins are. And the fact that there’s other people selling these products, are you priced in line with what they’re charging? Yeah, I’m very, I’m pretty much right on the…

24:07
I’m a little bit more, but I made my free shipping threshold a lot lower than theirs. So I think that helps me. Okay. To be honest. And I would say my margin is 30%. Oh, that’s pretty good. Gross gross products. know, before, before I pay. I mean, it’s so cheap to run this store, you can run this store. That was my next question, actually, how much does it cost you monthly to run your store? I mean,

24:31
I pay Shopify like what I think I made like $50 for a subscription fee. I probably have a couple more apps. So like, I don’t know $70 you gotta get QuickBooks less than a hundred. And the only advertising I do and something that I really like is it’s called Clickly. Have you heard of it? Clickly? No, I have not actually. I really like Clickly. It’s an app through Shopify. And what it does is it displays your products and it advertises them, but you only pay if someone buys.

24:59
And I probably pay them like a good, I don’t know, a couple hundred bucks a month, but they bring in a lot of sales. And you know, my product is one that once people start ordering these miniatures, they like tend to order them again and again and again, cause they just love them. And I have so many products. So for me, you know, if I had a drop ship store and I was selling a product that people only buy once, like when I worked at the electronic headphones, you know, people buy headphones, they’re not going to buy another pair for like years. Yeah.

25:25
I probably wouldn’t do it, but for me I found that this is worth it.

25:31
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26:29
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a hundred dollar discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L dot com. Now back to the show.

26:40
So how does Clickly, actually, can we go over the apps that you’re actually using your store? I don’t know if you remember all of them off the top of your head, because you probably don’t look at it all the time. actually, how does Clickly work? where is it displaying your ads for your store? I mean, I’m not, I should probably know better. I’m not entirely sure all the places. I feel like on news sites. Oh, okay. Okay. So places ads. Yeah, things like that. So

27:07
I have 19 apps that I’m using. So I use like product reviews from Shopify to get those product reviews in, know, clickly for advertising the Clavio. Let’s see. I use, see, I use a free shipping bar. People like that because I’m like, Hey, if you add seven more dollars, you get free shipping. Yep. So that one works pretty well. And then, know, like all the social media, Facebook, Pinterest. you get a lot of sales from social media or Pinterest?

27:33
No, not a ton. I’m not super active on there, to be honest. I know it’s the thing right now, but I mean, here and there, I feel like it’s more people like to look at things. If I was going to put more time in my store, I put more products in and do more blog posts to get more traffic that way. Actually, can we talk about your content? Like how often do you put out content? Oh my God, not enough. I was doing it a lot. Again, like I need to…

28:00
I’m going to have like a lazy phase in my store, just like a distracted phase. I do have like some young kids. So we have an excuse here. Yeah, so little. know. So the things I put out have been like cash cows. Like I have one that’s like dollhouse printables. And these are things where people can go and print off. Like things they can use in their dollhouse. And so I’m like number one for that and I get a ton of traffic. I get ones about like how to wallpaper a dollhouse.

28:28
dollhouse glues like different glues to buy. I have a whole content piece about that. So the pieces I have, probably have, I know, like 20 content pieces, and they draw a lot of traffic. Nice. Nice. And these are all things that you’ve just learned from reading books. You own a dollhouse. I still have the one my grandma made me. Okay. And how often do you actually get your hands on the actual merchandise? Or do you just kind of drive over to the to the warehouse and take a look yourself?

28:57
It was about once a year because they have a show every year and you can go and I’ve gone to the warehouse and I’ve taken pictures that I could use on Instagram and just to meet the Packers and everything. But then in between like my pregnancies and then with COVID, I don’t think they really want me there right now. So I haven’t really had the product in a while. I’d like to get back. Hopefully next summer I would like to go over there. Cause again, it’s like only about two and a half hours from my house.

29:27
You’re not selling on Amazon either, are you? No, I’m not. no, I you know, actually, that’s how I started doing FBA, like Amazon FBA in my spare time. And I was like, man, this is a lot of work. And Amazon just kind of dicks you around. I was like, there’s got to be a better way. And that’s how I found your store. I’m kind of a I’m not really on Amazon because it’s Yeah, no. Yeah, it’s getting more competitive now, too. Exactly. Okay, so you mentioned before that you work

29:56
10 to 20 hours per week. Can you describe your schedule to me just so I can get an idea of what it takes and what your day to day looks like? To be honest, like right now I’m only probably working on my store like less than five hours a week. if I was being like, okay, so on an ideal day when my kids are napping, I’d probably spend like three hours doing a variety of things. Like first one would be like writing a blog post. Then the second one would be like, okay, I’m gonna put 20 products in.

30:24
reconciling my QuickBooks, because I’m the accounting department, so I have to do that and make sure I pay my sales tax and I’m in compliance with things like that because I have to pay sales tax to three different states, like pretty much quarterly. Right. And then just answering customer questions, things like that. Sometimes I’m researching a new app. Okay, maybe I should add this in. How much is it? Let’s see what the reviews say, making the store better.

30:50
and dealing with any customer complaints or issues, getting back to people, things like that. What were some of the major hurdles that you encountered? So I remember you mentioned that the way to sync up with your manufacturer went down and you had to hire someone to get that up. Does that imply then for that entire month when the app was getting up that you didn’t have any inventory controls? Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah. And then I dealt with that problem on and off for like a year. And I honestly told my husband, I don’t think I can do this anymore. I can’t

31:20
No, I had to go through, I asked a ton of people to help me out. I told them I’d pay anything to get this solved. And I had people try to solve it and they couldn’t. And I was like, I’m never, I’m never going to be able to like run this store if I can’t get my inventory sank. And there were some low points because again, I had like a newborn and I was not sleeping. And every minute I wasn’t taking care of my baby. I was trying to solve this problem and deal with customers who had ordered things that, you know,

31:47
They ordered 19 things and I couldn’t send them three of them. And it was horrible. It was so hard to get that problem fixed just because of the way my dropshippers computer system is. really wanted to give up, but I think like the hardest obstacle was just my own self doubt. I mean, I had a so-called good job at a fortune 500 company. Pension, tons of job security. Like they’d never have a layoff in a hundred years of business. I mean, I just.

32:16
I don’t know, people were kind of like, almost like, who are you to think, you you’re so entitled to leave this job. mean, you know, everyone I worked with thought I was nuts. just because I did everything myself, I was alone a lot doing this and it was just hard. just, there were days when I was like, I don’t think I’m ever going to have a payoff. I just wasted all this time. And, know, I kind of got to a place where I’m like, well, you know, at least I tried and at least I’ll always know that I gave it a shot. And if I have to go back to another job, I don’t have to wonder.

32:45
But then, you know, like you said, I think you said somewhere between year, like two and three things just start to take off from most stores. And that was certainly the case with me. Like right now. I don’t even if I stayed where I was at, it would still be like a good income and really, you know, just a good life. Because like I said, I’m pretty much a full-time mom. do some freelance writing too, because that was the skillset I had leaving my old job. And I have all these insurance designations.

33:11
So I have insurance clients and I’m able to charge a nice rate because I have this weird knowledge. that’s like my other kind of backup. If the store is ever slow, it’s very easy for me to get this freelance work. I have one client that wants to give me more all the time and I have to say no. So yeah, that’s self doubt, especially when you have a so-called secure job. It was tough. Yeah, over here in the Silicon Valley, they pay you just enough so that it discourages you from trying anything on your own. Yeah.

33:40
Yeah. Well, okay, let me let me ask you this. What would you say was the hardest part about your journey?

33:48
just, well, is it the mental aspects? Or is it the actual doing part? No, the mental for sure. You I like powerlifting now. And it’s like, I know my body can do this. It’s my mind has to get beyond that. I can’t do it. You know, I think, yeah, that was hard for me, because I don’t have, I don’t really have an example. I don’t live in the Silicon Valley. I don’t, I’m not around a ton of entrepreneurs. It’s not an entrepreneur culture where I live in northwestern Pennsylvania.

34:14
So I didn’t have an example really. so thank God for your class because I was connected with a bunch of other people that were doing it. And I have this one uncle, he’s 89 and he never went to college and he lives right by me actually. And he owns a plastics plant. makes like 80 % of the deodorant caps in the entire world. And he’s done amazing things with his life. And he told me a long time ago, if I were you, I would start something on the internet. Really? An 89 year old told you that? That’s hilarious.

34:42
Yeah, he’s old school manufacturer and he’s got like factories all over the world, but he’s always been a big inspiration to me. And he’s, mean, he’s extremely wealthy. Like he’s, he has a ton of money, but he, you he was just like, should, you know, work, you know, you should do more. You should, you could make so much money, but he was someone who like slept in his office for years. And like, you know, he, his entire life was that company and like, just don’t really want that. But so, you know, I had his example. So I think like you have to.

35:10
it’s so crucial to be able to connect with like minded people. Because let’s be honest, like most people are speaking from their own fears when they tell you not to do something. Yeah. And you’re that’s why your class was so helpful. Because I was there. I mean, for months, I was at every office hour asking questions. I was listening to your podcast, I was being inspired, I was being reminded that it is possible. So that’s, that would be the advice I give to people. And in terms of just like the work part of it, what would you say is the hardest part?

35:40
I think working on your own, doing, like if you’re used to being in an office, even though you like can’t stand most of your coworkers, you know, it’s like, you have like a camaraderie, you have that friend you get coffee with, and then like you’re kind of alone all day, you know, especially with me, I had to upload all those products, it could get very monotonous. Yeah. So doing that was kind of tough in the beginning. Did you join any focus groups? I’m just curious. I didn’t, like I tried to, but like,

36:08
It didn’t, like the times didn’t work out or, you know, and I felt really good about the forums that you had and the Facebook page and the office hours. So that was good for me. And if you were to have any advice for people just starting out, who probably feel the same way you did when you were first starting out, what advice would you give them? Well, definitely take your class because it’s, you just learn so much. You know, that learning curve is very steep.

36:37
So why, you know, why reinvent the wheel during your class was definitely worth it. learned so much and getting the support with the keyword research that I was able to share with you. And, you know, we’ve had a check-in before and then, you know, checking with other people, like I didn’t know what to do about my first charge back or like the first time someone said they didn’t get their shipment and I know it was mailed. So that that’s very important. And then the other thing would be, don’t be too afraid to hire somebody for something that you can’t do yourself. Like it’s very admirable.

37:07
to learn things and do things yourself. But I would say like, your limits. Like if you’re not a technical person, I’m not, do not feel bad about going to get somebody because now I have this guy in Pakistan and I’ve had other little things. I’m like, Hey, can I, can you fix this for me? And now I have kind of a go-to guy so I can focus on the things I’m good at, like writing content and you know, getting new cool products into the store and like, you know, researching apps that make them site better, things like that.

37:36
Actually, can we describe that? Can you describe that process? Like, how did you find that person in Pakistan? But I think I went on Fiverr actually. Really? Okay, interesting. Yeah, I did. Yeah. It was way more than five bucks, but he’s really, really good. And he’s a pleasure to work with. Did you say I need help connecting my site to the system? Yes. Yes. I went in like, and I was like, and here’s all the issues I’m having. Like, it sounds very straightforward, but

38:03
they’re in, they’re not, it was like active mode versus passive mode and this, this, can you handle this, you know? And this guy did it. So now he’s very familiar with my store and I can, you know, go back to him if I ever need to. Nice. Can I just get, you don’t have to say the exact number, but can I just get an idea of how much it costs per hour? Oh, compared to the U.S. What did I pay? I don’t know, like 10, $20 an hour? Which is probably a great, maybe 10 bucks. It’s probably like a great salary in Pakistan. Right.

38:33
Did you look at anyone in the US just curious for comparison purposes? was. Well, you know, curiously enough, I was willing to pay anything because I wanted to save my store. But like people in the US couldn’t do it. They’re like, Oh, no, I don’t know how to do that. okay, okay. It’s a really weird problem. I don’t know what I have a weird store. So with your with your store design, like when you did that, I remember that first design when I did your critique, you had designed that yourself, right? That first stab. It was

39:02
It was not great. Actually, I actually watched the review before getting on here actually looked decent. It just needed a few touch ups here and there. But but are using that same Pakistan person. Did he redesign your site as well? No, I actually hired an American company, a guy out in New York City, like a guy in Long Island. He has a small team. And he was a little more expensive, like $50 an hour, but he was very good. He was fast. So I would use him for anything aesthetic. And how did you find him?

39:29
I think Shopify experts. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, these are just good tips. I’m just trying to bring out because if anyone’s listening, and most people do need extra help, right? I mean, I would say 90 % of the population is not technical. Yeah, exactly. And to to do like the little things like, if you need like a graphic moved or something else, do you have basic HTML skills at this point? Or do you just contact that developer person? Oh, yeah, I am.

39:58
I am pretty good at that because I worked in content development at that, know, Fortune 500 company. So I have basic HTML. I also have a lot of good friends who are graphic designers that can like just tell me what to do. Okay. Okay. So tell me what does it look like for you going forward? Well, I really, I want to put more time in my store. I really do. think 2021, you know, is going to be my year. I mean, you know, like my daughter’s sleeping through the night a little bit. So we’re going to

40:27
get to that point, I’ll have more energy. And then I’m hoping I can keep my store growth, you where it’s at, if it could grow at 250 % every year, that would be amazing. I just want to keep putting in new products. It needs more content. I need to just keep my, you know, current customers engaged. And I think I can just kind of stay on autopilot and eventually, you know, I’m five or 10 years out, maybe five years when my kids are like in grade school, I have not ruled out importing my own products because everybody else.

40:57
is buying from these third party wholesalers. But the problem is like they’re definitely a middleman. So if I could just go around them, you can easily cut the price 50%. Yeah. And I have these people in China reaching out to me all the time. And I said, Okay, let me just keep you in my back pocket. Because I might do that someday. I was thinking you just go through and look at your best sellers and maybe just try one product. Really? Yeah, maybe what happens.

41:23
Yeah, like one category we talked about doesn’t have to be a category could just be like one or two products, right? They’re selling well, dip your toes in the water. Don’t invest in a huge amount. Yeah, not a lot. People. Yeah, but people I don’t know, like when I look at people’s orders, like it’s so random, like they have something from every category usually. Oh, is that right? Okay. Yeah, like these miniature collectors, like they want something of everything. They need the food, they need the furniture. They need the dolls. want the dog clothes. They just need. It’s just like never ending.

41:52
That’s like the best niche ever. Yeah. Yeah. You can just keep mining them. Right. Exactly. mean, repeat business is great. Once you have that customer list, you could probably just sell to them in perpetuity. I would imagine. Exactly. And that’s what, when I worked at the electronics company, they were always like, well, we need to get more sales. And it’s like, you can’t really, like when someone buys those headphones, they were like a hundred dollars, $150. They’re not coming back every month that, know, they might buy a gift, but you know,

42:20
you would spend like all this money acquiring a customer, but you could never get anything else out of them really. Yeah. Yeah. I imagine your email ROI is like amazing. It’s pretty good. Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s good. Let me ask you this last question. You started this before you had kids, right? Yes, I did. And I started mine, I would say a year before I started having kids and same with you, right? Yeah. It two years. Do you think you could do it now with starting from scratch with, with like just

42:49
two young kids or just even one newborn? You know, to be honest, probably not. So, I mean, there are some women who are amazing that, you know, only need four hours of sleep and everything, but I’m not one of them. And I think starting, you know, I started this, I mean, I quit my full time job for six months, and just to get this site up and going. And that was like all I did every day was work on this website, getting the products, doing everything myself. So really, there would be no way unless you had like a lot of help. So in that

43:18
In that respect, it was very fortuitous that I was able to start this as a single person. But I told my husband, I’m not against starting another like drop ship store, but I’m certainly not going to start one with that needs the sheer amount of products that this one does. Right. 10 products. And I could have had that store. Like I, I, I’m very confident that if I found the right drop ship product, I could have a store up in two months and start making money. I haven’t ruled that out either. Actually. Yeah. I mean, it’s very scalable. You could easily do it.

43:46
You just gotta find the right product with a good margin, and a good supplier. And I was like, that wouldn’t be a bad idea either. Like if you had two six-figure stores, you could easily have a six-figure salary. I live in a very inexpensive part of the country, so that helps. So I have all these ideas. I just haven’t executed any yet. Yeah, the reason why I asked you that question about the kids is like, I’m always of the philosophy, you have to dig your well before you are thirsty. by the time like…

44:15
I remember when I had my U-Born, that was like 100 % of my time. So it’s better to just start early and kind of anticipate that your life is gonna change and just get started sooner rather than later, basically. Yeah, I would encourage any potential mom out there, as much as you can get done before kids. Because even before I had my second child, I was getting emails ready for weeks, because I knew those first six weeks were gonna be insane.

44:42
you know, so didn’t even want to touch my store unless it was just to deal with a customer complaint and pay my sales tax. That was like all I was going to do. Well, Amanda, thanks a lot for coming on the show and sharing your story. It’s been great. It always just makes me so happy. Like that email that you sent me. It just made me so happy that day. Like whenever I see a student that’s successful, and it’s it’s really changed, or basically allow them to stay spend more time with their family. That just makes me happy.

45:10
Oh my gosh, Steve, I was waiting to hit six figures. And was like, as soon as I hit six figures, I had that email ready to go because, like I was telling you before, I would walk to work, you know, and just think, wow, I’ve listened to your podcast and be like, I want to be like these people. But I had a lot of self doubt and I just didn’t think I could do it. And, you know, it is very surreal to be here and it is a total blessing to have this time with my daughters. Um, my, my parents both worked a lot when I was growing up, we were always with different sitters.

45:39
and the quality of life I’m able to have. It really blows my mind. That’s amazing, Amanda. Well, thanks again for your time because I know you got two little ones. I don’t know if they’re napping right now or what, but. I can feed one. My mom’s over and I’m like, if she cries, don’t come in. You just have to rock her for a while. She’ll be okay. Second kid, know, you’re like way more relaxed. It was great to have you on and please keep in touch. Thanks, Steve. All right. Take care.

46:08
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now those of you who have followed me for a very long time know that I’m actually not a huge fan of drop shipping, but now that Amanda has established traffic and an audience, the sky is the limit. For more information about this episode, go to mywifecoderjob.com slash episode 342. And once again, I want to thank postscoop.io, 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. Now SMS is the next big own marketing platform.

46:36
and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Clavio, which is my email marketing platform of choice for eCommerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.

47:05
Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog. If you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.