395: Never Give Up! How Saba Yazdani’s Solar Lights Store Took Off When She Was About To Quit

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You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now this is week two of student month where I’m bringing in successful students from my course to talk about their businesses. And today I have Saba Yazdani on the show. Now Saba runs sunsharesolar.com.au where she sells solar lights and she started on a low budget and it took quite some time for her to get going and she actually nearly gave up.

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But her story is the perfect example of how persistence and perseverance go a long way when it comes to running a successful business. Enjoy her story. But before we begin, I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I personally use for my e-commerce store and it depends on them for over 30 % of my revenue. Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider. Well Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for e-commerce stores and here’s why it’s so powerful.

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Klaviyo can track every single customer who has shopped in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say I want to send out an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week. Easy. Let’s say I want to set up a special autoresponder sequence to my customers depending on what they bought, piece of cake, and there is full revenue tracking on every email sent. Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used. You can try them for free over at klaviyo.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.

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If you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your customer contact list. And this is why I focus a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing. SMS or text message marketing is already a top five revenue source for my e-commerce 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 e-commerce stores and e-commerce is their primary focus. Not only is the tool easy to use, but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data.

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and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. And not only that, it’s priced well too, and SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers. So head on over to postscoop.io slash Steve and try it for free. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast that I released with my partner Tony. And unlike this podcast, where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience.

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No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the Profitable Audience Podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. Today I’m really happy to have Saba Yazdani on the show. Now Saba is a student in my Create a Profitable Online Store course. I think she’s been in the class since 2015 and she runs a six figure store selling solar lights over at sunsharesolar.com.au. That’s right, Saba is in Australia and this is actually a fairly tough niche to crack, but Saba has managed to create a great brand over at Sunshare Solar. Now she doesn’t sell on Amazon.

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And she does sell in a couple of other marketplaces, we’ll talk about during this interview. But Saba is going to teach us how she grew her store to six figures, how she got started, how she gets her sales, everything. And with that, Saba, welcome to the show. Thank you, Steve. Nice to talk to you. Yeah, it’s great to talk to you, actually. After all these years, I know we’ve exchanged a bunch of emails and that sort of thing. Yes. And yeah, I should have contacted you earlier.

03:37
That’s exciting. I think I am one of the oldest students in your course. I don’t know about that. I actually launched in 2011. You know, the oldest one is Joel Cherico, the one who makes six figures selling pottery. He’s probably my oldest student ever. Really? He was like the first person to sign up in 2011. That’s interesting. But I don’t want to take credit away from you. You’re definitely one of the older students.

04:05
So tell the audience about your store, what you sell and how you got started. Yeah. So my store, as you mentioned, is sunsharesolar.com.au and I’m selling solar powered lights from small house, house, or garden lights to the commercial lights and street lights. And how I get started. Basically, I’ve been thinking of doing some side hustle for myself.

04:35
for a while in 2015, but I had a full-time job. In 2015, after like five years with a company, with one company, I applied for a promotion. And basically, what can I say now that fortunately they didn’t give me that promotion. And it was like, it hurts me because I’ve been like my

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perspective was that I’ve been very fit for that promotion, but it did hurt so much that I decided to quit. Oh, wow. Okay. Yes. So I quit my job and I like search on the internet, what can I do with $5,000? And the $5,000 was credit card that I had at that time.

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And then I found that I can do online business or I can start an online business, an online store. And then I searched how can I start an online store or how can I open something in this case? And your course was the first search result on the Google page. And actually it was your blog, my wife,

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job and yeah, and all it starts from that search, Google search and understanding about your five day course. started the mini course, did it for like five days and immediately after that I joined the course and it turned out that it was the best decision that I made in my career. I was just curious, what were you doing? What was your job before?

06:32
Yeah, I’ve been working in an educational institute like a college. Okay. And I’ve been this actually after I moved to Australia before that I’ve been working in a national statistical bureau. But when I moved here, I started to work in an educational center and I’ve been a student administration or student support officer. And I’ve been also teaching

07:02
One day per week or one or two days per week. I’ve been also teaching in the same Institute. So kind of casual teacher and a student support officer. Yeah. So when you quit, you didn’t have another job or income lined up. Oh, no. Wow. Okay. No. So take me back. Why solar lights? Why solar lights?

07:32
It is based on the steps on your course, actually. Oh, really? OK. Yeah, I followed all the steps in finding a niche and testing a niche. following those steps, I came up with a few niches and I tested them. And the things that came up, I can’t remember, but I’m pretty sure I tested five or six niches before.

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solar lights, which one of them was silver, for example, silver plates or silver dinewares. One of them was educational games. One of them was wooden toys. And I think another couple of them, which I can’t remember at the moment, but I reached to

08:28
In my search, I reached to renewable energy or items that are related to renewable energy. I found that then I’ve digged into different types of things that are there in that space. And I find that, OK, solar energy is or the applications of solar energy is more accessible. And actually, there are, again, wide range of

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applications for the solar energy and at that time based on the searches on Amazon and on Long Tail Pro, the solar light or solar lighting was less competitive and more accessible for me to start with. As I mentioned, the only thing that I had, I’ve been like…

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not in a very good financial position. And the only thing that I had was a credit card with $5,000 limit. So I wanted basically to fit something in kind of data space. Which I ended up with the keyword that was SolarLight at that stage. I can remember that the keyword

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The volume was 8,800 per month in Australia and the KC was 28. So it fits the criteria that you mentioned and I can remember that something around at that time was something around 8,000 per month and KC below 30. You mentioned close to 25, but definitely below 30.

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which that keyboard, solar lights, fits that criteria. yeah, and also there were another couple of related, a few related keywords fit on that criteria, which I could add to my store. at the time I planned for five keywords. So I chose also solar garden lights.

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LEDs or something around that area, which all of them, had something around between 1000 to 8000 search per month and all of them had KC below 30. Nice. So yeah. I know that the Australia market for search is much less competitive than it is in the US. yes. Yeah. That’s amazing. So you did it just based on the search guides. You had nothing

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You had no attachments to solar products or anything when you first started? No, not at all. Not at all. It just, I found it through the searches. You know, I must say that it took a lot of guts for you to just quit your job and do this. I don’t know if I would have been able to do that. Just cold Turkey. Yeah. Yeah. Actually they were, it was frightening for me. Really.

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stressful time and many people around me actually told me that it’s not a good idea. But and it was hard at the time, I should admit that. But turns out that it was a good decision. Although it was really hard, like the first two, three years was really hard.

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But at the end of the day, now when I look back in one sentence, I can say that it’s worth it. Nice. All right, so you decided to sell solar lights. How did you actually find product? Again, followed all the steps on your course. In your course,

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No, I’m serious. anyone listening, I promise you this is not like staged or anything. Yeah. Yeah, actually it is first time that I’m talking to you. So, uh, probably you wouldn’t know you even wouldn’t know that, but, uh, in the, um, the section of your website, which is about suppliers, I, uh, copied that email template that you had, um,

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to the suppliers and I remember that you mentioned that you need to show you are much bigger than than what you are and at the time I basically haven’t been like I had nothing but I started with those templates and asked for samples. The first products that I asked for samples was solar lanterns

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and solar battery charges or solar phone charges. So these two keywords, solar battery charges and solar lantern, they were among those five keywords that I told just a few minutes ago. And in terms of price range, they were cheaper. So I start with the companies that had those plus

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other products that I needed or I thought that I would order later on in the process. yeah, I got samples. The first samples that I got was in just a pack of 10 of a few different models of solar charger and different models of solar lanterns.

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I can say that the most time consuming process of the setting of the websites was this process of contacting supplier and testing, asking for samples and testing them. I ended up to contact over 30 suppliers. Wow. Okay. Yeah, it was a huge number of them. Ended up with basically spending all my, not all of them, but

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almost 50 % of my credit card on ordering samples. And I took samples from something around 15 suppliers. And it was, as I mentioned, the major time in setting up, in the process of setting up the store for me was this process. And it took almost four months for finally to, to finally

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find a supplier that is reliable and we could communicate and the sample that they sent, they could understand what I mean. the sample that they sent was exactly what they promised. I started with three of them. I found the three of them and I started with all three. And it is interesting that now after almost six years or maybe

15:50
Yes, six years. Still, I am working with two of them. Actually, these two are my suppliers at the moment. I never order battery charger and solar lanterns again from them. But for the solar lights, those two that I found, still we are working together, which is basically, I think one of my major achievements is finding these two

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great, great suppliers that I have. So let me ask you this. When you were looking for suppliers, did you end up changing anything about the product or were you just putting your brand on it at first? No, at first I just put my brand on them. Okay. Yeah. it. Okay. Yeah. I didn’t actually change anything, but just put my brand on them. Yeah. What was your minimum order quantity for those products?

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in your first order? Okay, wow, very few actually. Yes. Yeah, I ordered only 10. But and I had solar lanterns in two models and solar charges in five models. So I started my the website, actually the website went live with only these five models, these five products. Let’s actually talk about your website for a little bit. Sure.

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Would you describe yourself as technical? No. I describe myself as like a person who is patient enough to work with the softwares and learn them, but not technical at all. So I haven’t done any coding, but I spent time watching videos.

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for my website is OpenCard and I watched the video or the read the documentation about how to set up things on the OpenCard and also followed your videos because you have tutorials on installing the website and setting up the OpenCard these things. So that time was the first time that I heard about all of these things.

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You know, it’s funny, back in the day, like I was really big on OpenCart because I thought it was up and coming. It was like way better than what I was using. And it was back then, I don’t think like the Shopify’s and big commerce’s were the leaders they are today. And the reason why I asked you whether you were technical or not is because you know, using OpenCart requires some technical chops, you know, to get installed. And it’s really impressive that you got it launched in your site looking the way it has. It’s amazing. Yes.

18:41
Thanks. Just curious, the platform, so you chose it presumably for the price or the open card? Yes. Oh, no, not really. I chose that because you recommended it and because I had the technical support if I needed. My husband is a computer software developer. Got it. OK. And yes, I knew that if I need some technical support, I

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can ask him. But to be honest, the start, basically he didn’t know that I’m doing that. He knew that. So basically I didn’t ask or I didn’t need any technical support for the first year because I was supposed to look for another job.

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So I’ve been searching for the jobs in job interviews and been busy sending my resume and this thing. I didn’t ask for, and fortunately nothing come up, nothing so technicals come up that I needed technical support or something that I couldn’t handle. Everything was based on your tutorials and open card documentations.

20:08
Nice, nice. There was a couple of times that I needed to contact the support desk, open card support. And at the time they’ve been very helpful. a couple of times that I contacted them, they helped me. And but after that, like from the second year, my husband

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joined the group and yeah, he did the technical support basically for me. Okay. Do you know how much you were paying per month when you first got started? How much? Just for like the hosting to run the website. I’m just curious. Oh, to run the website. Open card was free. I think the domain and the hosting was

21:00
Not more than $15 per month. Nice.

21:06
If you sell on Amazon or run any online business for that matter, the most important aspect of your long-term success will be your brand. And this is why I work with Steven Weigler and his team from Emerge Council to protect my brand over at Bumblebee Linens. Now what’s unique about Emerge Council is that Steve focuses his legal practice on e-commerce and provides strategic and legal representation to entrepreneurs to protect their IP. So for example, if you’ve ever been ripped off or knocked off on Amazon, then Steve can help you fight back and protect yourself.

21:34
Now, first and foremost, protecting your IP starts with a solid trademark and Emerge Council provides attorney-advised strategic trademark prosecution, both in the United States and abroad for a very low price. And furthermore, the students in my course have used Steve for copywriting their designs, policing against counterfeits and knockoffs, agreements with co-founders and employees, website and social media policies, privacy policies, vendor agreements, brand registry, you name it. So if you need IP protection services, go to EmergeCouncil.com and get a free consult.

22:04
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. So let’s go back to the products now. So you said you just ordered 10 as your first shipment. Is that correct? Yes. Yeah. Okay. And so you have this website now with five products, you said? Yes. Five products. So how did you make your first sales?

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How did I make my first self? It was a few months. My major marketing or basically sales channel was SEO. And I know that your emphasis is on SEO. especially at that time, I think at that time you haven’t added the Facebook things and.

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there wasn’t such a big Facebook marketplace and these things, but it was SEO. And I did everything, but haven’t got any results, haven’t got any sales and nothing changed in SEO as well. So I started opening up eBay to sell those 40, 50 items that I have on eBay. So I started

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opening up eBay and listed those items. I’ve been kind of very disappointed at the time, suddenly a sales come through, which I don’t know how, but it was certainly through the website, like someone looked and the first sale was solar lantern. And when the first sales comes up,

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which I don’t even know where it comes from, but it changed me. Actually, I can remember that I’ve been feeling disappointed and I’ve been feeling that it’s not going anywhere, but out of the sudden this PayPal notification came and just one person purchased two solar lanterns.

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And then after that, actually it really changed me and I thought that that’s it. It started and I started to basically do some advertising or do some boost posts on Facebook. created my Facebook page, did some boost posts on Facebook page and I got some sales through Facebook on solar battery charges and against solar lanterns.

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At that point, haven’t got any results on eBay, but immediately after that, everything that I earned or sold from those cells, I put to another order. And in the second order, I started to import or to get the small samples of solar lights. So I mentioned before the suppliers that I chose,

25:27
they had much more like a wide range of product which I believed I could use them in my past so I start using them. the next time I ordered solar lights and five, this time five solar lights and five of them and immediately I start putting more products on my website and then

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I started again, I have continued with boosting posts on Facebook and yeah, gradually got sales. I must admit that the process was very, very slow for two years. two years, it was very slow. I had maybe, if I had a month that I had $300 sales, it was like the best month.

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I remember those feelings. Yes. So only $300 would be per month, like made me happy. I ended up in 2017, I ended up to back to part-time teaching. So I ended up to go to teaching, like work as a casual teacher and I worked part-time.

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like part-time as a casual teacher in 2017. And the thing was slow, but what I did in those two years was just adding more products to the website. So everything I earned from teaching and everything I sold from the website, I put it in the adding more products. So even I purchased only five from OneLight,

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I would do so to basically expand the range of the product in the website. So I started categories of solar garden lights and solar security lights in 2016-17 and was working on SEO in terms of having blocks, creating backlinks. I started to going to the networking communities

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and like the community websites and then the local business websites. These things I got my business listed. And yeah, in 2018, something that happened in 2017, which again, the time that I’ve been very low in terms of energy or hope, maybe you can maybe understand.

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something happened and it was a Sunday and me and my husband we’ve been partying in one of the friend’s house and my phone got pinged like PayPal pinged and I said okay it was a sales and it was a solar charger and I’ve been very happy that

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it’s okay that’s not Saturday and it’s a really good feeling to sell on Saturday when you are not working or whatever you relate to do especially at the start when you are under a lot of pressure I think and it pinked five minutes late or maybe one hour later and pinked again another one third one fourth one and went to tens or twelve at that day

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out of the sudden we sold 12 in one day and it was in one day at the time was $800 worth of sales which was like I’ve been very very excited and happy and really eager to know how what the hell what happened what happened I had them the

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My highest record was $300 per month and now it’s $800 per in one day. And I couldn’t understand where they, what is this, where it comes from. I haven’t been on SEO and I remember the day after on Monday, one of the customers who purchased call to ask a question. And when she calls, I asked her, by the way, how did you find my solar?

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did like this product. And she said that you’ve been featured in the Sunday, one of the local newspapers on the Sunday feature or Sunday special, they featured us. They featured or Solar Lantern. was exactly, was in January around again, the same time in January. And it was back to a school collection.

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that they’ve been because in Australia, kids go back to school at the in the last week of January. Right. So they had a collection back to school collection and or solar charger was was featured on that collection. Amazing. How did they find you? I don’t know. Right. Probably. Right. Maybe probably to SEO. Yeah, probably to SEO. But no one contacted me to.

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ask me any question and no one. So it just happened out of the blue. And to be honest, it was again another boost in my energy and my determination to continue. So then from there, what happened then? Then again, nothing happened till from that day. Nothing happened till 14 months later.

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14 months later in mid 2018. It was exactly May 2018. I mean nothing happened. It doesn’t mean that nothing happened. It means that we grew very slowly. Yes, sales grew up month by month and by May 2015, I reached to something around $1,000 per month, May 2018. And in May 2018,

31:59
Again, we’ve been on holiday and everything happens. It’s interesting that all the jumps happen when we’ve been on holiday. We’ve been on holiday and again my phone pinged a few times a day and this time it was different. They were different purchases, different solar lights. And then

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I told my husband that something is going on. Maybe like we went to check the website and we found that, yes, we came to the first page for the keyboard of solar lights. after, yeah, it was like amazing feeling that happened for after more than 24 months. But since then,

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We stayed in the first page of the Google for Solar lights and like we grow from there $1,000 per month in sales to now that we are like much more than this. know, search engine optimization always takes a long time. Yes. I don’t know about two years, but yeah, I mean, it sounds right. It just depends on…

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you know, how much work you are doing back linking and that sort of thing. So you continue to put out blog posts and add new products to your website basically, right? During those two years. Okay. Yeah. We, in terms of SEO, did, yeah, keep adding blogs and adding products. So basically every month we added a few pages to our website, either blog or products. Okay.

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Did you do any paid advertising during this period outside of boosting Facebook posts? No, no, there was no paid advertising. turned on at that time, we started doing Google ads for three months in 2017, but it wasn’t profitable. So we turned it off. And just recently, we started Google shopping ads.

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Actually, by recently, mean in 20 now it’s one year early 2021 we started that. But this time is profitable and we keep that that’s good. Google is shocking. Nice. OK, can we talk about email a little bit? Because I know before we started hitting the record button, you had told me that Clavio is not compatible with the latest version of OpenCart. So have you been doing email marketing?

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or how long have you been doing it for? Yes. Yeah, we started email marketing from 2019. So it’s our third year. we doing like last year, we did once email per month. So and we are getting some interaction from the emails again, same as I think, same as everything else. Maybe it’s a slow a little bit.

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at the start. in 2020, we haven’t got any, we got interactions, but not sales. But in 2021, we started to get a few sales out of the emails. I think it will make a huge difference when you integrate Klaviyo properly, because anyone who buys will get on the list. And then if you email those people, I’m sure you’ll get a lot more sales. So yeah, this is just the tip of the iceberg for you, Saba. Yeah.

35:48
Yes, so yeah, actually it is and as the sales grow and as the as I can see the evidence that the these things or works as you know, I get also more serious in and not not that I haven’t been serious but more probably consistent in adding value to the website and growing it and I have like

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plan for growing to other applications of solar energy this year. For example, solar gate openers or solar panels for campings or this area is also in my list to add to the website and basically diversify the range of products in the website.

36:48
I just wanted to let you know that tickets for the 2022 Seller Summit are now on sale over at Sellersummit.com. Now, what is the Seller Summit? It is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. And in fact, every speaker that I invite

37:15
is deep in the trenches of their own ecommerce business. Entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. The other thing I can assure you is that the seller summit will be small and intimate. Every year we cut out ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets will sell out fast and in fact we sell out every single year many months in advance. Now if you’re an ecommerce entrepreneur making over 250k or 1 million dollars per year in revenue,

37:42
We are also offering an exclusive Mastermind experience with other top sellers. Now the Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 4th to May 6th. And as of right now, we’re almost already sold out of Mastermind tickets and we’ll be raising the price every month leading up to the event after Cyber Monday. For more information, go to sellerssummit.com. Once again, that’s sellerssummit.com or just Google it. Now back to the show.

38:08
So I know you’re not selling on Amazon and you do hold inventory. So where do you keep your inventory? How do you do fulfillment for all the products that you carry? Yeah. I do inventory. Actually, I keep the inventory in our storage room, basically, currently, or it’s been like this for the whole time. And at the moment I have a mix

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kind of the model is mixed. carry inventory for some models. I do drop ship for other models. Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. And also for the sales channel, we have, we also launched another website in 2020, late 2020. So we have now two websites selling solar lights. And also we have

39:06
eBay and Catch, are eBay is like less than 5 % of the sales, but Catch is better. Catch is something like eBay, but local, like Australia-wide. Got it. like kind of local eBay or local marketplace in Australia, which is together Catch and eBay contribute to 15 % of our sales.

39:36
And we also have a wholesaler. So it’s a lighting store who purchase, they purchase from us and they basically resell. So we have these five selling channels now. And in terms of inventory, yeah, still I keep the items that I carry inventory, I keep in my storage room.

40:05
Yeah. Nice. So I’m just curious, what was the rationale for that second website? Is that like a wholesale only website or? Yeah, the purpose of that website was to target wholesale only and was to target basically commercial and government customers in Australia. So it’s mainly

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commercial grade solar lights or solar street lights and bigger outdoor lights. So how did you get those big customers, like government customers? Yeah, got actually we got a couple of them through SEO. We haven’t got many of them like so far, but

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Our plan is to target more and more and as you know, there is always areas for improvement. we had, I think three of them through SEO. So they found us and we had one through our wholesalers. So our wholesalers also got a government customer and basically they were in the middle and we supplied

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to do that. So from what I understand, you said you drop ship and you carry inventory, but you drop ship first to figure out what sells and then you carry inventory of your best sellers or your good sellers? Yes, I do that. sometimes it is hard to or I can say most of the time it is hard to have the exact product that

41:58
sells well in drop shipping, it is hard to find the exact supplier or the exact product. But when I see a keyword gets ranked or when I see a product is getting interactions, then I find something similar to that one. Yeah. And yeah, and I then I

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basically look at the functions and look at the specifications and find something similar to the one that the dropshipper supplies and I carry inventory for them. A quick question about your dropship suppliers. Are they based in Australia or somewhere else? Dropship supplier based in Australia. Based in Australia. Okay, so the delivery time is pretty quick. Yes, pretty quick. Yeah.

42:52
Alright, so I’m going to ask you just some quick fire questions that everyone always asks me about the students in my course. Okay, so how much money did you actually spend to start? I mentioned that I had only the only found that I had was the $5,000 credit card. $1,000 I paid out of that to the for the course at that time was I think around 1100 Australian dollars.

43:19
And the rest I spent on samples and getting all the websites done. Yeah, that $5,000 was plus. I borrowed another $1,000 from a friend when I needed basically for the second order. I had like less found, but I borrowed another $1,000.

43:46
So that was $6,000 that I started with. Okay. 6,000. then it, from what I remember from our conversation, finding your product took four months. Is that roughly correct? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then your first sale came a couple of months after that? After that. Yeah. First sales came in March, 2016. Wow. You remember these months and days. Yes. All right. So

44:13
How did you keep going when things were slow during that first year? How did I keep going? Because a lot of people just give up, right? Yeah, actually, I know. I’ve been very close to giving up many times. but just I kept going because I knew that it will work and I could see

44:42
you, your students or other students in the class, did that. So I just kept pushing. I kept pushing and whenever I, the times that I’ve been very discouraged, I tried to watch more videos on your website and try to attend the classes and like just see other people are getting results to encourage myself. So

45:12
Yeah, I think the only thing that I could do was to do everything to to to keep to a stay motivated and to keep going nice nice What would you say is the hardest part about everything that you’ve done so far like the hardest part? The hardest part technical no, it doesn’t have to be technical just anything about the related to the business. Just keep continuing

45:41
Yes, keep going. think keep going is the hardest part. Yes, to be honest, there are a lot of points that I can remember, lots of points that I get discouraged, disappointed, felt that it’s not working. And then, of course, 2020 COVID hit. And there was another shock, especially in Australia, logistics and supply chain

46:10
basically was unleashed or was broken. Getting things into the country was really, really hard. So I think the hardest part was just keep going, just continue, like keep continuing. Did it help that your husband was a partner in this also? Were you working closely together back then? No.

46:38
No, not back then, but we started working together from 2017. So it was a couple of years after I started. And then from last year, basically he started to reduce his workload and working with me more often. I remember critiquing your website. Yeah, do you? What year was that? that 2000?

47:07
17 or 18? 18. Yeah, it was 18, 19. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember like sometimes, sometimes students get their critique and they don’t do anything with it. But clearly you’ve you follow those instructions. Yeah, that makes me very happy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Your course and your classes contribute to a lot of work to basically major my major.

47:37
Mainly my website is based on your course and your website critics and your classes. So yeah, you have, you get the credit. No, you did the work. mean, you persevered. Yeah. Here’s another common question I get asked. So if you were to just, if you have like one piece of advice to anyone who’s listening to this podcast who wants to start a business, but

48:04
hasn’t been able to pull the trigger or give it a try. You went the drastic route and just quit your job cold turkey and started with a credit card. But what advice would you give to people who want to start but just haven’t been able to do so? So if I want to say something to myself, my 2015 version, I would advise, I would tell myself that just be more…

48:34
faithful, have more faith and just keep going and keep going strongly, keep going with higher energy and make sure that if you keep add a little bit, even not every day, every week, you get somewhere. So I would love myself to be much more faithful.

49:03
to the process and to the like being more easy with myself, with the process and more like flow, being in the flow more often. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah, it has. But when I go back, I think that maybe I it wasn’t necessary to be

49:30
disappointed, it wasn’t necessary to be doubtful. If I could, I would eliminate the times that I’ve been doubtful, the times that I’ve been disappointed, and I would enjoy the process and I would enjoy the past more. It’s still not, it’s not late. I learned all these things through the past six, seven years, and still

50:00
is applicable even now because I guess you agree with me if I say that not there is no two months in a business that is are the same. So almost always something happens and but now I learned that I get it like I get I flow with the with whatever it comes and I am more faithful now less doubtful now and I enjoy more.

50:29
and I enjoy more and I am more serious now and I have more like bigger plans now. But it is as a result of all these learnings. I mean, it changes all the time. There’s always stuff to learn. That’s what I like about it. that’s right. So Saba, where can people check out some of your products? I know we got some Australian listeners here. Where can they find your solar lights?

50:55
Yeah, they can find it from our website sunsharesolar.com.au. Share is S-H-A-R-E. So sunsharesolar.com.au. And our second website is solarlightingoutdoor.com.au. OK. And if anyone has any questions for you, do you have like a social media account or wherever where people can ask you questions?

51:23
Yes, I have my Facebook account and my Instagram account. Okay, is that under Sunshare Solar? Solar LEDs. Solar LEDs. Okay, got it. Okay. Well, Saba, it’s been a long time coming. I’m so happy you agreed to come on the show and it’s really great to actually live vicariously through the fruits of your labor, so to speak. Like whenever I have a student that’s successful, it always makes my day.

51:52
really does. Yeah, thanks. All right. Well, thanks a lot for coming on. Thank you for having me.

52:01
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now in bringing these student interviews to you, I am purposely choosing an eclectic range of backgrounds and stories for you. Not everyone’s knocked it out of the park right away, and I hope to provide you with a realistic view of entrepreneurship. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequaterjob.com slash episode 395. And once again, I 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.

52:28
SMS is the next big own marketing platform 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 Klaviyo, 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 mywifequoterdob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-O-I-O.

52:55
Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog, and 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 assume the course right away. Thanks for listening.