Audio

014: Jordan Harbinger On Building The Right Social Skills To Elevate Your Business And Relationships

jordan harbinger

Today I’m happy to have one of the most popular relationship coaches on the planet on the show today. Jordan Harbinger runs The Art Of Charm podcast where he teaches self-motivated guys how to boost their businesses and their social lives by improving their social skills.

I have to admit. Even though I consider myself to be reasonably socially aware, Jordan takes this to a whole different level. In this podcast, you’ll learn the right way to build relationships for both business and pleasure.

What You’ll Learn

  • The real reason money changes hands in business
  • How relationships affect business deals
  • How to establish relationships with people who are more successful than you are
  • How Jordan runs a 7 figure business teaching others how to build powerful relationships
  • How Jordan’s podcast went ballistic and how he uses it as a lead gen for his coaching class
  • The number one strategy for building a solid social skill foundation

Other Resources

Transcript

Steve: You are listening to The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, where I bring in successful boost strapped business owners to teach us what strategies are working and what strategies are not. Now this isn’t one of those podcasts where we bring on famous entrepreneurs simply to celebrate their success. Instead I have them take us back to the beginning and delve deeply into the exact strategies they used early on to gain traction for their businesses. If you enjoy this podcast please leave me a review on iTunes and enter my podcast contest where I’m giving away free one on one business consultations every single month. For more information go to www.mywifequitherjob.com/contest. And if you are interested in starting your own online business be sure to sign up for my free six day mini course where I show you how my wife and I managed to make over 100k in profit in our first year of business. Go to www.mywifequitherjob.com for more information. Now onto the show.

Welcome to The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suites your lifestyle, so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today I’m really happy to have Jordan Harbinger on the show. Now Jordan together with his partner AJ run The Art of Charm Podcast, where they provide relationship advice unto men and women but mostly guys. Now I’ve actually listened to a couple of episodes and they are all really interesting because the study of human relationships has always intrigued me and it’s really fascinating to see everything spelt out for me in a podcast, that I can listen to on the way to work. But what’s even more interesting to me, is that they turn this podcast into a very profitable business. Now today The Art of Charm Podcast is one of the most popular podcast over all in iTunes. And they also have their own show on XM satellite radio. Now I for one since I just started this podcast relatively recently, I’m very interested in understanding how they monetize their podcast, and exactly how they make money. So welcome to show Jordan.

Jordan: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.

Steve: Yeah so give us the quick background story and tell us exactly how the podcast comes into play and what you actually sell.

Jordan: Sure. So essentially when I was in law school, I was mentored/ un-mentored by a lawyer who hired me and he was never in the office. Rumor had it he made more money than everybody else. And one day he sat me down for coffee and he’s like, “I didn’t care about the job at all because I didn’t really want to be a lawyer.” And he was like, “Ask me anything.” He probably figured I was going to be like, “So how do you, you know develop your career?” And he was going to give me some crap cookie kind of answer and I was like, “How come everyone says you make more money and you are never here.” And he was like, “Oh well actually all the smacks that are in the office on Sunday night at one O’clock in the morning are pretty much replaceable, like they have a lot of technical knowledge and they might be really good at structuring certain kinds of deals and knowing what to look for and that’s valuable but they are not as valuable as people who go out and get business for the firm which is me.”

And I was like, “Okay we have a really nice 10 what’s the deal?” And he says, “Well I was on a charity cruise for the last you know two weeks and I did jujutsu and I played golf and I go to these events and all those other stuff and what I’m doing is, I am making friends with people who make decisions at companies that hire the firm.” And I thought, okay wait a minute, let me get this straight. So you hung out all day and network with the right people and get people to like and trust you and give us business. And then you control the deal and take the line share of the income and these other guys work on Sunday night at one O’clock in the morning probably never see their family and they check for you know the right types of fillings and they do research all day? And he’s like, “Pretty much.” And he’s like, “There is a place for everybody but the more rare skill is the networking in business thriving slash rain making part.” Which is rain making is a Deutschbag word that us Wall street lawyers like to use, right?

So and that was a really big eye opener for me because I thought wait a minute, I like people sort of, maybe, sometimes, but I really hate checking for companies and documents. So if I want to be a successful lawyer, worry less about becoming the best lawyer, and the hardest working lawyer and worry more about making friends with people that can generate business for the company. And on top of that you can, if you had to fire one person and one of them was a work horse worked all day and night and had a great technical masonry, and the other person didn’t work that much but was responsible for the revenue generated by the company, you don’t actually have a choice.

Steve: Absolutely, you know in fact you know that’s how business works in China. It’s all about the relationships and less so about dollar and that sort of thing because for our business we sell linens. So one of the first things that we did is we hoped on a plane over to China and we started drinking with these guys. And after we met them face to face, they actually gave us much better deals on the products. I suspect that being a lawyer and that sort of a thing is all in the same lines, right?

Jordan: Yeah, I mean essentially if an investment bank can chose whoever they want to do business with and they want to make sure you are going to be responsive, responsible and capable, you can tell them and sell them all you want but at the end of the day if they are like, “This guy is cool, he’s not usually late for golf and when he is, he says he’s sorry and I know his home phone number and I met his wife, she’s a gem.” They are going to hire you because people buy you, they always buy you. And business is just people doing monetary transactions with their friends most of the time. And it’s funny because people will screw somebody over in business and be like, “Hey men it’s business.” And it’s like, “No, you are just screwing people over,”

Maybe that’s a business thing that you do but at the end of the day, you don’t really do business with people because they are giving you the best deals. If we did, we would only buy the cheapest food, we would only go to the movie theater that was close to our house, we would only eat at restaurants that were close to our house or that had cheap food. We don’t do any of those things as a consumer. You never do anything like that. Even the most hardcore like, I’m dating an Asian girl, right so her parents have like, you know they are very Asian which you know you understand as well, they don’t go, “Oh this place has the freshest sea food.” They go, “This is the place that your friend’s uncles, friend’s cousins who graduated from high school they own it, so we are probably going to get a deal.” You walk in there they are just like, “Here is the part of the fish that we just got that’s yummier.” And then it’s like, “Oh thanks.” And it’s probably all service, none of it is probably real, everyone in that restaurant probably knows somebody, that knows somebody that knows somebody that works there but it’s the perception of getting a better value. That is what matters and people do business all the time like that.

The Government does business like that as much as there is rules and regulations not to do that. Every company, every big company large or small does that, small businesses do that. Everybody does that. The people who don’t understand that or deny that or want to argue with that, more importantly are the people who don’t understand the game been played around them and they are therefore losing.

Steve: Okay, so that’s kind of what you teach in your podcast, right? You teach people how to actually become friends in order to improve their sales or different portions of their lives, right?

Jordan: Absolutely, so it can be related to business, dating, relationships, networking, anything like that can happen and that’s what we talk about in the show. You know we’ve interviewed everybody from Daymond John of Shark Tank to people who teach networking skills John Crockery. We’ve not interviewed guys like Noah Kagan of whom you had on the show to talk about all kinds of new on stuff and of course dating and relationship coaches because again people buy you. So you got to be the best.

Steve: So you mentioned that your podcast is a large part of your business. So I’ve listened to a couple of episodes and you do a great job but how does that actually lead to the money that you make?

Jordan: Well essentially the show started as a hobby and it’s still largely is. I mean I love it, but what happened was, in the beginning we were doing the show and we were interviewing people and enjoying our time, doing what we were doing and people started writing in and saying, “Hey, you know what, I’ve got a lot of value from your show, I would like to learn from you directly.” And so I said, “Well we don’t really offer anything.” And they said, “I will give you $150 dollars to talk to you on the phone for an hour, does that sound fair, it’s cheaper than your legal rates but you know wherever.” And I said, “Yeah sure.”

So I spent a whole lot of time when I was in law school sitting on a hammock in AJ’s backyard. AJ is my business partner, in his backyard on the phone and on Skype with guys in Denmark, Norway, New Zealand, Australia, California, New York, Canada and the UK and just really enjoying the time and thinking okay I guess I’m coaching now and I feel like a little bit of a sherlock in here. But this is like 10 years ago, because I don’t really have any formal training but I guess I counsel people at my law job so I understand how that process works. And they kept coming back, and coming back, and coming back, and coming back, and we would just have them on retainer like crazy. And there were like there is so much value here.

Steve: What were they asking you, what were some of the questions?

Jordan: I had so many different kinds. I had a mortgage banker who was making tons of millions of dollars per year. And he was working on getting people to like and trust him because that’s how he generated the business. So we were working on those skills set and then I jump off the phone with him and jump on a call with somebody in Denmark who is an Ethiopian immigrant who now lived in Denmark and he was like, “I don’t know how to meet people because I look different, I talk different, I act different and my whole upbringing was entirely different, where do I start?”

And we started giving him draws and exercises and he was with us for a long time and I actually heard from him about a year ago, you know granted this is five, six years after I coached him, he’s like, “I can’t even begin to thank you, you know I’ve got a girlfriend, a job, I’ve totally assimilated and I know it wouldn’t have happened this quickly without your coaching.” So of course we spent the next half decade and more learning everything we could about teaching this subject, working with people on this subject. Teaching other subjects to get better at this one, and now we have the premier program for this anywhere. In fact premiers maybe a strong word because it’s the only program for this anywhere.

Steve: Okay so this program is it live, like does someone has to fly and is it all in person or…?

Jordan: Yes, our, well, we have the free podcast of course on The Art Of Charm, we have a electronic contest that’s free, but our live training programs are in Los Angeles and I know people are like, “Where, it’s too far.” But we have clients; I’m looking in the office right now and I’m looking at the classroom and there is a guy from Australia, a guy from the UK, a guy from Canada, one guy from the United States not from California and a guy from New Zealand that just left. And we have a guy from Denmark who is not in the room right now but flew out for this.

So I’m looking around and I’m thinking there is one American guy in this program and I’ve got you know, you probably get somebody listening to the show right now on Arizona and they are going, “its five hours drive, I’m not going to do that, that’s ridiculous.” But it just shows you one the pole from the show and essentially the values that’s given there. And two the fact that if you are committed you just suck it up and you do it and stop whining about why you can’t. And that’s what I think differentiates a lot of entrepreneurs and wantentrepreneurs because guys who are doing stuff, they overcame crazy obstacles all of us have with a successful business. But the people who talk about why they can’t, why some things are going to be hard for them etcetera, etcetera, they are always lacking and it’s mostly an attitude thing. It’s always a mindset thing.

Steve: So I’m just curious then, so if you are giving these courses in person that kind of limits the number of people that you can teach in a given time, right?

Jordan: Correct.

Steve: Okay, so how, so how many people have enrolled in your course and how often do you give it every year?

Jordan: We have it every single week.

Steve: Every single week, okay.

Jordan: Every single week and we are sold out three to four months in advance.

Steve: Wow, okay so how large is the class?

Jordan: Seven guys is the cap.

Steve: Okay, oh okay, wow it’s a really almost like private instructions and all?

Jordan: It has to be. We have to tailor the coaching to the students because everybody is got– Basically what we teach at The Art of Charm is that your beliefs influence your actions, which influence your results and you can’t just change your actions and try to get different results, because the mindsets are always what guides our actions. So we have to dig in to everybody’s physic pretty deep. We have therapists on staff there is a reason why we do all the things the way we do them and so yeah. You couldn’t have more than seven or eight guys because it will just become a complete mess. And not only do we have seven or eight guys, but we have five plus instructors for those seven or eight guys.

Steve: Okay.

Jordan: So it’s pretty much individualized instruction, and there is no other way to do it effectively.

Steve: Okay and so if I understand correctly your podcast is kind of like your legion where you then talk about this class and then people go on to your website and sign up, is that correct?

Jordan: They can’t sign up online actually. We don’t allow that because like I don’t want ex-murderers or weirders in my programs, because it only takes one guy to screw it up for everyone else. So I don’t, I don’t even allow that. And people there is all these folks that are in my entrepreneurs group and stuff like that and they are like, “You need to automate it.” And I’m like, “No.” That’s exactly what we don’t want to do, because when you automate it you get the dregs. And you get the gems as well as the dregs but the problem is the gems don’t want to be in the same class as the dregs. And so it’s exclusive and we keep it that way. Not to mention I actually, we do some work with some Governmental organizations and they purposely require certain types of people either on outcome or be reported and without getting too specific, basically I think they just want to make sure that Chinese spies don’t take our classes.

Steve: Chinese spies, yeah okay right.

Jordan: I specifically chose that.

Steve: I know you did. So how do you screen these people out?

Jordan: Well, since I read people for a living, I essentially do phone calls with them that are an hour, hour and a half long. And I judge their, gauge their responses, goals, what they want to get out of the program, make sure it’s a good fit for them and also that they are going to be a good fit for us. Because at this point you know ask me six years ago, I probably would have just been stroke that somebody wanted a program, but now we are looking at waiting lists and things like that, that are so long that I can afford to be selective with everybody that comes in.

It’s not like, “Oh you are not cool, you can’t join our program or oh men you are going to be a lot of work, you can’t join.” I mean we have everybody from college students to military Special Forces but I just want to make sure there are here for the right reason. Somebody who says, “You know I’m a computer coder. I don’t have a lot of people around me all day. I would love to be able to find a great girl, settle down and get married.” Or Special Forces guy that says, “Listen there is lives depending on my ability to lead etcetera.” Those are great reasons but even a college student that says, “I don’t know it seems like fun.” Totally legit reason. A guy who says, “Women are only after money and I want to learn how to beat them at their own game.” Not welcome here, you know.

Steve: Got it, okay. This kind of reminds me of the movie hitch actually a little.

Jordan: You know its funny my business partner’s friend wrote that movie, it’s largely about what we do.

Steve: Okay, so given that the podcast is one of the legions for your business, can you just take us back to the very beginning and how you actually got your first clients through your podcast and how it all worked from the very beginning?

Jordan: Yeah, it’s a really interesting question because it was demand driven business from the beginning. We never went onto the show and went, “We are offering this now for money.” It was like guys were saying things like well you know, “I really like what you have on offer.” And we said, “Oh there is other people out there that can teach you these skills.” And it’s like, some of these clients were like, “We’ve hired all of them, we don’t like them, I want to learn from you, I relate to you.” And I thought okay fine. You know, so we offered a pretty good deal in the beginning and you know we just thought all right if you want talk to us then we can make it happen. And we will answer all your questions, and we will figure out you know how to translate our personal curriculum, and the things that we are doing into a format that you can copy even though we can’t see you. And that worked really well, we had a lot of clients who really loved it.

And then we had some guy say, “Hey, I just want meet and see you in person.” And we said, “Well we are in Michigan right now we are in Francisco and before that we were in Manhattan but we started off in Michigan when we were in glad school. And they said, “That’s okay, I will fly to Michigan, I don’t care.” And we thought, “Wow, okay, well I guess we will see you in Michigan.” So we would meet people for a day and we would say, “All right, you know it’s going to be 800 bucks or wherever.” And they go, “Okay, fine.” And they would give us a 1000 and then they would say, “What are you guys doing tomorrow?” And we would say, “Okay, we can do it again tomorrow.”

And then eventually when I moved to New York to work on Wall Street, I was still doing phone coaching but we had so many live coaching clients at that point, that I had to hire coaches to deal with the demand. And from there, we literally had people saying, “I want, I will sleep on your couch for a week and give you 5000 bucks, I just want to see it in person.” And so that’s what we did for the next you know several years. Just work on a really amazing science based curriculum and hire the best experts that we could find and then have them co-create and train the out of town clients. So now we have world class program but back then we were amazed that people wanted what we had to offer but it was demand driven. They wanted what we were selling, what we weren’t selling.

Steve: So did you do anything special with your podcast or it just grew organically?

Jordan: In the beginning essentially it grew organically. We didn’t know anything. This is 2006. There were about 800 podcasts in the iTunes store. They were not that many at all. We listed ourselves, there was you know browser, there was no cover art, nothing like that, you didn’t have anything like that in your podcast really. So we put it up there and we kept producing regularly and that set us aside from 90 percent of the other people who were uploading one or two and then quitting. And we kept going, we kept going, we kept going and we found that word of mouth had spread.

We printed out some business cards and any time people would ask us, “What are you guys doing, I always see you out with different people, how come you never wait in line or how come you never pay for drinks or how come you are at this party and you are 20 years younger than everybody else?” You know, “What’s the deal?” We would hand them the card and they would start listening and tell their friends about it. And eventually we started getting things like featured in iTunes and we started getting a lot of word of mouth and the show really took off. And then when I moved to New York we landed a guest spot on series XM satellite radio and the station manager came down. He had just randomly been air checking the show that we were on and he said, “You guys are, definitely you guys need your own show.” And so he gave us a trial period and we knocked it down the pack and we ended up with the show during the evening drive on Fridays on series XM for three and a half years.

Steve: That’s awesome so did you have a website or anything or was it just podcast in the beginning?

Jordan: We had a chrome word, I don’t even know if it was a word press or it was probably blogger actually back then. And in fact I’m almost sure it was blogger.com. And it just, every time we had a new show we would say like, “Episode number 003, Jordan and AJ talk about body language.” I mean that was just the script that we got back then and that was kind of how we worked it. People were finding that and they were laughing and we of course you know like every other amateur back then, we were like chucking our cover out from askmen.com and stuff about because there were the only ones who had a high quality photos of anything and nobody wanted to invest any money in it because I think our budget was 90 bucks or something like that.

Steve: To start that was great.

Jordan: And the show just kept growing kept growing. And I don’t know where people were finding us back then because we weren’t smart enough to do market research really and the show kept growing. And I largely ignored it for a really long time, and I didn’t even try to consciously work on any aspect of the podcast, it just sort of seemed to be automatically operating. But once I started to focus on growing that and we started to focus on growing our client based that’s when everything really took off because we realized that we had accidentally built a marketing juggle not in the form of a value giving show that we’ve being running for years.

Steve: So let’s talk about that. What were some of the things that you did?

Jordan: Well, we have been creating the show every week for years and years. And you don’t really have to do that for that long. People found us out after the first few episodes and they were like this is amazing, I can’t believe this is free. What we were doing was giving away things that other people in our industry had essentially decided that, that should cost money. So I think marketer’s now call it pushing the free line or some crap like that.

Steve: Yeah, premium or wherever.

Jordan: Yes premium, and what that meant to us was wait a minute why should somebody give you 40 bucks for an E-book where you give advice that doesn’t cost you, didn’t cost you anything theoretically to get. And so we started giving away all of our information for free and that’s why we still do that. We give away a ton of information for free but I think intelligent people realize that’s its not, “Oh I have all this information, I don’t need to go to the workshop now.” People know that if they are not implementing information that they get and they realize that if it’s a complex skill set, they need to go and get the program because the training is where the money is, that’s where the juice is. I don’t mean the money is in like the profit; I mean that’s where the juice is. If I can’t do public speaking, I’m reading books on public speaking but I can’t give a speech, all those books are a huge waste of time or maybe they weren’t a waste time, I’ve great technical knowledge and academic knowledge about how that works but I can’t actually perform the skill.

And any really complex skill requires coaching period I don’t care what it is, and anybody is good at anything knows that. I don’t think Tiger Woods is like, “I don’t need no stinking coach.” You know he’s got three or four different coaches for different things and that doesn’t include his fitness and yoga and all that other stuff that he’s got to do to stay in shape. Any athlete, any professional, any sealable executive they have coaches left and right. And so it’s really our egos are the only things keeping us from that. So we thought, “Hey listen if our clients are really these guys who are really understanding what they want and they are willing to go for it, that’s a great client base to have because having a bunch of smart driven people, getting into your stuff is the optimal place.” That’s really where you want to be.

Steve: You know that’s actually very interesting. So I actually run a training course on the side for E-commerce. And what I found was that when I started publishing some of the core materials on the class on my blog, I ended up getting more customers who were willing to sign up and actually have access to me personally. So it sounds like the same effect that happened with your podcast as well in your business.

Jordan: Yeah, absolutely. I mean what it’s done by accident is branded us as; well I guess I’m the face of the company really and that’s fun. I love it, I love The Art of Charm and I love what we do. So I love it but it was definitely strange at first because it was like, “No wait we are not experts, we are just doing this.” And what we found is that our clients were like, “Listen the other guys that say they are experts are internet marketers that live in their parents basement. So the fact that you are actually out trying stuff and doing stuff and teaching people is actually pretty amazing.” And so they wanted to learn from people who actually are experienced and that was crucial in my understanding because I didn’t think, “I’m going to brand myself as an expert.”

Steve: Yeah, I was going to say something. Based on what you are telling me, it sounds like you kind of just grew your podcast organically based on the power of your content alone.

Jordan: Yes and I know that, that’s not the best. A lot of people are like, “Where, I hate this guy, I was looking for shortcuts.” And here is the thing, there are shortcuts go lower for people who don’t want to build something great. And I don’t really know what to say to those people, sure go look for shortcuts and follow in line with everybody else who doesn’t really do much, I mean.

Steve: Okay, yeah that’s really good advice. I mean ultimately the tricks will kind of maybe get you in the door, but then you ultimately have to put out the good stuff to kind of maintain that level of your audience.

Jordan: Yeah and I mean, don’t get me wrong there are tons of internet marketers that are all tricks and they making a lot of money but at the end of the day you can really deliver value in both ways, so you don’t need to only rely on tricks. You might as well develop something real that you offer people, rather than relying on the numbers game of seeing how many stupid people you can fool into buying your crap.

Steve: Absolutely, that’s great advice. So you know Jordan I’m actually really curious about what you teach and I was actually hoping that you would be able to give us some sort of quick lesson about some of the material that you actually coach in your course.

Jordan: Yeah, I mean most of what we do unfortunately for the podcast format, a lot of communication and I mean like 90 plus percent is non-verbal. So it’s really difficult to coach somebody that you have no previous relationship with in podcast format. But what we can talk about, I mean there is a million different things. I mean for example if you are looking at the fact that most communication is non-verbal then you know you need great body language to make a good first impression.

And so one of the quick tips that anybody in podcast learned, I hate that word, can pick up is that, is that you need to create a great first impression. And most people think their first impression is when they decide to make it. For example I use a dating analogy here. What we are looking at, a bunch of guys go out and they are like, “We are going to meet girls.” So they get up and they haul themselves off to the bar or whatever and they are thinking all right we are going to have a couple of drinks, we are going to chill, we are going to pretend to watch the basketball game and you know hung out and talk and then you know once that kicks in we are going to start talking to the girls. So guys go in there, they are sharking around in circles looking for where the cute girls are, they go and fix their hair, they grab a couple of shots, they grab a couple of drinks. They pretend to watch the basketball game; they sit in the corner staring at the girls. And then one of them goes, “All right, I’m doing it man, I’m going to go up and do this.” And so he walks up there in his broad voice. He walks up there and he’s like, “Hey what are you guys drinking?” And the girls are like, “No thanks.” And he goes, “Whatever, girls only want guys who have money, it’s because I don’t have a Rolex, that’s why they rejected me or whatever.” Meanwhile that has nothing to do with it.

The reason is because his first impression wasn’t, “Hey ladies what are you drinking?” His first impression was soaking around, walking around the bar, looking for the girls, pretending to watch the basketball game, building up courage, liquid courage at that. And the girls notice this, they are not dumb. They see this; women are about 20 times better than men at looking at non verbal communication. And so their first impression was when he became the blink on their radar which was probably right when he walked in the door. And since he blew that for 20 minutes waiting for the scotch to kick in, his first impression was made so long ago. By the time he had you know scraped together the gone ends to go up and say, “Hey what are you guys up to?” They were like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah we got it, you’re partially drunk and now you are ready to chat, see you later.” And…

Steve: So it’s all about body language. It’s basically what you are telling me?

Jordan: It’s all about non verbal communication which is not just body language. It’s vocal tonality, eye contact, the way you sit down and walk and talk. How committed you are and how strong you show and there is a lot of different things and that’s not physical strength, that’s like charisma, personal magnetism. How other people relate to you. I mean these are all crucial factors that people use to create a subconscious first impression of you. And the reason that’s important is because if you don’t have that in place, it doesn’t matter what you say. That’s why when guys are like, “I still don’t know what to say, what should I do to start the conversation?” It doesn’t matter.

In fact we’ve actually tested this, years ago. Me, and AJ would walk up to people and we would challenge each other. What’s the dumbest thing we can possibly say and it was like, “I like salad.” And we literally started conversations like that with the girls that we ended up dating because I remember walking up to one girl and saying, “I like salad.” And she goes that’s nice wierdo and then we started talking and laughing because it was clearly so random, but it didn’t matter at all. And so you can have un-conversely the most brilliant thing or like, “Hey blah, blah, blah” convenient really cool, clever sounding thing and the girls not going, “Wow that took a lot of effort and it was really creative.” She is thinking whatever you read that on the internet, like this is so stupid why am I even here? And so it really has nothing to do with it, because you don’t demonstrate any of the qualities that she finds desirable through things that you say. She is looking for confidence, charisma, signs of leadership, the ability to provide and protect, personal magnetism, the way you make her feel. None of that has to do with this stuff that you say in the first two minutes of a conversation, none of it, zero percent.

Steve: So let’s change the context a little bit. Let’s say I wanted to approach someone really famous in the world of business, and I wanted to get business advice from that person. How would you go about approaching someone like that? Let’s say I was trying to approach Bill Gates for example.

Jordan: Sure and I mean the metaphorical approach here is what we are going for. Because obviously even if you found yourself at a party with Bill Gates, walking up there and be like, “Hey Bill, I want some business advice.” It’s pretty much like the worst thing you could possibly say to somebody in that position because you are just, basically you are like the [hormones??] guy is like, “ Hey men, hey you got a dollar.” That’s all you are doing when you bringing that guy to party. And that actually goes for talking with women; it goes for talking with anybody in a higher value position wherever you might put them in a higher value position.

For example if you had a party and you wanted business advice from Bill Gates, you are putting him in that position as higher value because of where he is, but if you are mount biking and he’s falling and looking really tentative in your bad ass mountain biker, guess who’s in the higher value position? Right, it all has to do with situational context.

So what’s you would want to do in that case is and this is how I network with people at different levels as well. I will, one first of all you got to find out what the value add is for them. And the best way to do that is to network with people that know them already. And so you might have to work up the chain. You might have to contact somebody in your network that knows somebody in their network, that knows somebody closer to that person and their network. And you need to find out how you can give value because people are wasting those people’s time all day. And I know this for a fact because they are wasting my time all day. So if they are wasting my time all day, then they are definitely wasting more Cuban and Bill Gates time all day or trying to.

Steve: Interesting.

Jordan: And at that point where you are a billionaire or whatever or even a millionaire for that matter your biggest defense that you have, you are not trying to keep your money, you’re not trying to keep your– the only thing you are trying to protect is your time because that’s the only thing you can’t purchase more of at that point. And so what you do to protect your time, you hire a secretary who has an assistant, who has a secretary who has an assistant to make sure that nobody gets to you that isn’t supposed to. Not one second of your time should be wasted by spam email, phone calls. I mean there is just no chance in hell that, that should happen. And so you’ve got to protect your time like crazy and so the way that you do that, the way that you get through that is not by saying, “Wait, I’ve got an offer you can’t refuse and it’s going to make you double your revenue overnight.” Because they’ve heard it all before and there’s nothing you are actually going to do that can provides that. So you’re only going to establish a relationship with them on a bunch of BS.

So the way that you would have to do that, you have to work up the chain. You have to network and you have to put that into play. But mostly the way that you do that in the beginning is you have to find somebody to use Bill Gates technology. You have to find somebody that knows somebody that knows somebody, and is close to those degrees as you can that needs value from something that you can provide. And you provide that and then later on you might get them to provide return value in the form of hooking you up with somebody who might be able to get you closer to them. The idea of walking up to somebody like that, and asking for business advice even if you did have the opportunity, what’s he going to do. I mean he has no choice but to say no.

Steve: Or give you some very vague answer and then just kind of walk off.

Jordan: Sure, because you are essentially asking Bill Gates for consulting. Like how, why would you, why would he do that?

Steve: Absolutely, you know actually one thing I do when I approach. So I didn’t actually think about it until now after talking to you. One thing I do is– I don’t even, if I wanted business advice, I don’t even talk about business at all in the beginning. I try to kind of establish a rapport about other things whether it will be family, kids is actually something really easy to talk about. Every parent has stories about their kids, and then once you establish a rapport then kind of steer the conversation very casually over to business.

Jordan: Yeah I mean I hate to brush about all that but that’s probably work really well on people that are Bill Gates or even higher level. But I really don’t know because whenever, for example if I meet a mixer and somebody is like, “Hey Jordan, how have you been doing, what’s going on men?” And we are having small talk, I’m literally sitting there going, “When are you are going to ask me for want you want.” Sometimes I don’t even interrupt them, or I’ll even interrupt them. Bear in mind, I read people for a living so I know if you are just making small talk because you are going to break something at down later and I just go, “Hey cut the chase, what can I do for you.” I don’t say it like that but I will give you a more AOC branded charming way of saying, “Hey I’ve got to run, so what can I do for you?” Something like that because I know that what’s coming is, “So I know you got the show and I was wondering if you could advertize my supplement pill on it or wherever.” It happens every single day everywhere that I go. Anything that has to do with business and that’s why I don’t go to networking events that are not exclusive anymore. I used to, I can’t do it anymore.

The other thing honestly that will, that will blow up on your face is if you feel like, “Hey kids rapport blah, blah, blah and then he goes, “So I have a question for you,” What they are doing even if they didn’t see it coming is they are going, “Okay so you are just talking to me about that other stuff, because you wanted something from me, go it.”

Steve: Right.

Jordan: So you are not giving any value and that’s a great way to ensure that those people just avoid you next time.

Steve: Yeah, actually so this actually completely applies to everything related to the internet, right. So I run a blog and people approach me and if they burst that question right away, then I tend to get turned off by that. One thing I do and you can tell me if this is the right way, the wrong way. I establish a relationship early on and then I wait like three to six months and then I just kind of check in from time to time. And then it might be a year before I ask to see if you want to do something together or work together.

Jordan: It’s great and the reason, I do want better, give them value from time to time instead of just checking in because yes it might seem like, “Hey you know this guy hasn’t asked me for anything and I’ve known him for a while, so we have that sort of time invested in so I sort of trust him not to be a total freak because I sort of known him on the periphery but imagine if it were that plus, “Well men Jordan has sent me articles and he’s introduced me to people for like the last 12 months and now all he wants to do is do a cross promotion interview?” Sure, I mean why would I not do that. If anything I owe him one.

And here is the catch. A lot of people are going, “Tick, tick, tick, you are only helping people because you want something in return.” Not true, I help everybody and the thing is I don’t necessarily ever need anything in return. For most people who are asking me for help even small things like, “Hey I’ve got a question about this; can you point me to some resources?” I will point them up to somebody in my company whose job it is to point them to those resources. Because I don’t have time to personally help everyone but I won’t ignore someone just because I can’t, just because they can’t do anything for me but I will always give value. And that’s the reason when I do need something I can post it on freaking Facebook, and I have 100 responses in my inbox.

And I just did this recently. So perfect example I could not find a good graphic designer. So I just kept going through them. All these people were so freaky or they had no talent. And so I posted on facebook, “Hey guys anybody got a graphic designer?” Within 20 minutes I had 18 graphic designers in my inbox and it wasn’t the designers. They weren’t pitching themselves, it was people saying, “I’ve used this guy before, he’s excellent, his rates are great. Or this person did this project see here, link here, tell me what you think, if you are interested I will make the introduction for you.” I had 18 of those and so I reached out to everybody who showed me quality work and I found a graphic designer in two hours that I had hired already. And that wasn’t because people are like, “Oh I really like your podcast.” Some of it was but most of it was because somebody had, of those people I can probably go tick, tick, tick down the list and find somebody who would slept on my couch, you know borrowed 10 bucks when they needed it, asked me for a podcast that helped save their relationship or helped them get out of a bad one. Somebody who I had helped get a job. Somebody who I had helped get rid of somebody that they didn’t end and that sounds like a mafia thing.

Get rid of somebody in their company that they didn’t want and they didn’t know how to do it tactfully. Somebody who needed a legal, a little bit of a legal advice and these are, you know this is the value that you give in and each and every day and you don’t expect anything in return because one day you will, and when you do, that will already be there. You dig your well before you are thirsty.

Steve: That is a very good analogy. So I’m just trying to put all these together in the context of running a business now. Let’s say I wanted to start a business selling something. How important is the social aspect versus the actual nuts and bolts and behind the scene stuff? And what I’m trying to ask here and trying to formulate the question properly. How much, how important is it to dedicate to just networking versus the core foundations for your business if you are just starting out?

Jordan: I would say there are equally there because what a lot of people would do, again dig your well before you’re thirsty, right. So what people do is they go, “Well you know, I’m not in a place where I can/ need a network right now.” And I go again dig your well before you are thirsty. Because what happens with those people is they go, “Well you know I still don’t have an App, so I don’t need a network to promote it. Or you know I still don’t have a product so I don’t need to start talking with people about it.” So what happens is when the– when it’s time to start promoting their new venture, they are in a place where they need that return on that networking because they are going, “oh, oh we are sitting here with this product and we need to get people, we need to get the word out fast.” And so there are you know meetings here, meetings there and all they are doing is asking for value from people that they probably haven’t hung out with or given any of the value to previously. And so they’ll have to hire somebody called growth hacker or whatever. It’s best where somebody has a network and when you hire a PR firm, you are getting a 22 year old girl who has access to a database started by a guy who has great people skills. You are not buying anything other than press release writing, which your monkey can do. And so you are buying, people buy networks all the time. I promise it’s never as effective as the one you can make yourself, ever.

Steve: So what advice would you give on how to establish a network, if you’re just starting from the very beginning?

Jordan: If you are starting from the very beginning what you need to do, is go back to what we had discussed previously which is always give value first. If you haven’t even the faintest idea of what you might need later on, you need to start giving value to people that can either introduce you to people that can help you or people that can help you directly. So if you have an App and you are on Silicon Valley, you need to start going to– Don’t go to meets up with other start up people, maybe once in a while but usually that’s just a bunch of value lichens there anyway. Go to a place where, get to the highest level of networking that you can. And you might have to call in a favor.

For example, I will tell you what. There is a guy who came to The Art of Charm and I always use him as an example so he’s had to prey again pretty big by now, but he’s phenomenal. He’s 20 years old, others still think, he’s 20 years old and he patented a medical device, okay. So he’s a smart kid but he came to us because he knew he would need the people’s skills later on. So what he’s done, is he came to the boot camp and he’s really be killing it and he goes. I can’t, I honestly not a day goes by where I don’t get, I should say prior a week goes by where I don’t get an email from him that says, “Hey Jordan this guy would be a good fit for your show or have you read this book, I will save you the trouble, here is the summary that I wrote after I read it.” And he does this all of the time. So when I’m looking for new guests, he’s already made intro to three different people who he thinks are fit based on him listening to the show for years. That’s value that I can’t buy. And its value that I can’t get anywhere else and I didn’t have to ask for it.

So when he says something like, “Hey I was wondering if I can get XYZ.” I can’t be like, “Sorry bro.” I can’t, I literally can’t even do it, I have to say yes. There is no other choice because he’s given me so much value that I have to reciprocate it as best as I can. So I’m literally trying to find ways to almost like pay this kid back. And I have tons; I’m actually taking him with me to North Korea. He wanted to go on a trip. So there is tons of people that do that for us here at the Art of Charm and it’s one of the reasons our business has grown.

Now when he needs an introduction to somebody that I have in my network, it’s as good as done. I don’t even care if it’s Damon John or Mike Cuban I have to make that intro, because one he’s not going to let me down and make me look bad but he’s certainly done enough to deserve it. And there are other people who probably patented medical devices at age 20 that live in their you know some basement somewhere, and there are going to have a really tough time because they don’t have the skills and again people buy you. They buy you. There might be somebody who has patented that exact same, medical device and they are just waiting for someone to realize they are genius, and they are not going to get the job oh my boy. They are not; it’s not going to be possible.

Steve: Wow, so how did you guys hook up? He took your class then?

Jordan: He cold emailed me. He did take my class but before that, he cold emailed me, and he was like. Instead of going, “Hey I really need XY and Z”, which is like every email that I get every hour of every day. He went, “Here’s a great guest for your show, I’ve being listening for a long time, also here is another great guest, here is the link to the guys website, here is his email, do you want me to write an introduction? If so just reply with a yes and I will send the following two paragraph introduction that he had pasted below.” So I replied with a, “Yes.” And 10 minutes or an hour or whatever it was later, I had an email from him ccing me, introducing me to the other guy saying, “I’m a fun of both of you guys and I think you will be a great fit for Jordan show dot, dot dot, here he is, he’s already said that he’s interested.” He saved me time, he saved me effort and he knows exactly what I’m looking for. I, you can’t buy that. It’s virtually impossible. I’d have to train an assistant for years to do that for me.

Steve: It sounds like he didn’t even need your course. This is what it sounds like.

Jordan: I think he learned that from our show. We teach that at the Art of Charm all the time.

Steve: I see, okay. And it’s kind of also implies that he also kind of had his own little network as well, because of the fact that he was able to introduce you to people.

Jordan: Not at all. Here is how that works. So and this is the key. And this is where most people go wrong. They go, “well I don’t have any money, I don’t have anything to offer, I don’t have any way to give value.” It’s not true. There is other times where he’ll come to me and he’ll say, “Hey do you have anybody that knows this and this and this because I want to meet this person and I know he’s looking for this.” And I will say, “Sure I can introduce person A, who is looking for these three things to this other guy in my network who has this.” But rather than me making the introduction, I’ll say actually, I will introduce you to him first and he will give that person value. So basically I’m introducing Victor this is this guy’s name to person A. And person A is looking for these things. Victor will email him over me. I will make that intro and then he will make that intro to person C. So now both of those people are like, “Yeah this guy Victor hooked us up men, really appreciated you introducing me to him.” Doesn’t cost me anything. Sure I could have gotten an ego bound for hooking those two people on my network but, one it wasn’t my idea and two, I don’t need that. I don’t need that social currency I already have it. So I basically gave it to him but he printed it. Does that make sense?

Steve: It does. Actually I’m just realizing now because Noah Kagan actually introduced us together. And he’s actually introduced me to a lot of other podcast guests who I’ve since interviewed and now I really feel like I owe the guy. Dumb I do yeah.

Jordan: And I will tell you a secret. The reason he introduced us is because I was like, “Hey I saw you were on this show, I would like to get on more shows because that’s how my podcast grows, can you make the intro?” And he did. Now I owe him, and you owe him.

Steve: Well played Noah, well played.

Jordan: Exactly, but that happens all the time. And so maybe I don’t have any value. Say I don’t have any value to offer you and I don’t have any value to offer Noah Kagan, which hopefully is not true. But I know that you guys randomly don’t know each other, and that you actually need something that one of the other– each of the others has. By virtual of me making that connection, I just printed social currency because both of you guys now are like, “Oh Jordan is the man.” And then I’m like, “Hey can I have XYZ and a dollar 50 for a beco?” You are like, “Yeah sure.” Because I made that valuable connection. So you don’t need to have a network to create a network and you certainly don’t need a value other than, you don’t need monetary value or some sort of intrinsic expertise. Once you brought that Rolodex, that is value in and of itself and you can keep using it by weaving connections in it together. And you know a lot of people are afraid to do that, they are like, “I don’t want to hook up Steve and Noah because then they are going to hung out without me.” That’s a scare city mindset. What you need is an abundance mindset, which is the more people on my network that know each other, the more important I actually become.

Steve: So then you act like the hub?

Jordan: You are the hub of the network. Even if they are doing things without you, they are not like, “You know if I introduced you to Noah and you guys are off doing something, you are not going to be, when I come to you guys and I’m like, hey you guys both have really cool business, I kind of really need help from that business, you are not going to be like, screw you that introduction was a year ago, we don’t owe you anything.” You are going to be like, “Oh yeah he kind of was in the beginning of this thing and one of the reasons that it started.”

The principle of reciprocity is there. It’s just Robert Cialdini writes about in his book ‘Influence”, “Psychology of Influence” and sure, sometime, in some ways, sometimes people are just going to screw you over, but guess what those people they do it once and then you don’t help them again. And they are gone and you learn a cheap lesson and also it didn’t really cost you anything. Like what if I introduced you to Noah and Noah is like,” Whatever Jordan, you are a duck, I don’t want to hang up with you.” You know that’s fine. I didn’t really lose anything by introducing you guys, right. May be I got rejected and I feel bad about myself for a while, but it’s not really big deal.

Steve: Oh there is a little bit of credibility in there. Like let’s say I introduce Noah to someone who is kind of a loser, right. Then he might discount my future referrals.

Jordan: Exactly, you put your relationship thread on the line and that’s why you don’t make introductions to people that you don’t really know or you don’t really like. In fact you can also– you never want to make an introduction to somebody that’s going to blow that for you. On the other hand I’ve gotten introductions from people that have not worked out and have been totally flaky. And that person feels bad but here is the thing, “it’s okay, I would rather have 10 intros and have one of them not work out than no intros and have all of them work out. What’s a 100 percent of zero, right?

Steve: Yeah, no I hear you.

Jordan: So people really won’t fault you for that. Like I could introduce you to Noah and then he like steals your TV and I’m like, “Holy crap, I did not see that coming.” You are not going to be like, “Jordan, you did that on purpose.” You are going to be like, “Wow, we both really got, sobered by that guy.” And it’s not like every intro I make for you, to you is going to be that bad. Noah Kagan is a special case, right?

Steve: Exactly.

Jordan: Yeah so like it really doesn’t matter if that happens. That’s kind like of a scare city mindset as well like “Oh what if this happens.” Shit happens dude, you know what and it’s not that big of a deal when it does but yeah you definitely want try to avoid that if possible, but I would say error on the side of making the intro anyway. And you can always follow up with somebody. You know, if I’m going to do it again, if I introduce you to Noah, I can also write you or Noah and be like, “By the way for just FYI he seems really cool, but we’ve never met in real life, so you know don’t let him sleep on your couch.” You know whatever and that’s fine. You know and I would hope that the introduction would say something along those lines anyway, because the more authentic those are the better in my opinion.

Steve: Awesome Jordan. You know we’ve been talking for about 50 minutes now. I’ve actually gotten a whole lot out of this podcast, so I thank you for that. I just thought I end this interview by asking you how people can find you online and you know hopefully where people can learn more about your relationship advice. I think it’s very valuable especially in business. And you know some of the things you talked about, I didn’t even realize, was actually going on. And you know like the fact that I now kind of feel like I owe Noah for these introductions and that sort of things. So I think everything you’ve spoken today is just great, and it’s really nice that you pointed everything out in a very concise manner that I now can actually recognize and actually act upon.

Jordan: It’s all about seeing the matrix’s men. Now that you see it you can focus on things that are working. You can see subconscious processes in yourself and other people. And that of course closely mirrors what we teach at The Art of Charm as well.

Steve: Nice, okay so where can people find you?

Jordan: I would say you know what typically people go to my website but I would say, Listen, you are listening to a podcast, go back to iTunes or station or wherever you are listening to this and search for The Art Of Charm and subscribe and write a really nice review for me if you would, optional but you know go ahead subscribe it’s all free. There is 260 episodes or so in there and go through that stuff and then if you really love what we are doing then you can buy something from me, before that don’t bother.

Steve: All right, well thanks a lot for your time Jordan. I really appreciate it.

Jordan: My pleasure men.

Steve: All right men, take care.

Jordan: Take care.

Steve: I’m going to be honest with you. Before this interview, I actually had no idea who Jordan was, but he came highly recommended from Noah Kagan. And honestly I wasn’t sure what to expect, but after talking to him on this podcast I now have a deep respect for what he does because it’s true doing business and making money online, it’s all about the relationships. And it’s important to work on your social skills in order to succeed. For more information about this episode, please check out the show notes at mywifequitherjob.com/episode14 and while you are there, be sure to sign up for my free six day mini course where I will teach you how my wife and I made over 100k in profit in our first year of business with our online store. Go to www.mywifequitherjob.com for more information. Thanks for listening.

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

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Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?


If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

013: How My Student Sandy Donovan Created An Online Store Selling Personalized Kimono Robes

sandy Donovan

Today I’m happy to have one of the students in my Create A Profitable Online Store course on the podcast today. Sandy runs GetUnrobed.com which specializes in selling bridesmaid robes online.

Now this interview is unique in that it provides a very realistic, in the trenches account of someone who just started their online store. Sandy started less than a year ago and today, her shop is now on the front page of search and making consistent sales.

But her path was not smooth. In this podcast, she’ll tell us about all of her struggles and triumphs during her journey.

What You’ll Learn

  • How Sandy found her niche for her online store
  • Why Sandy switched shopping carts to Shopify early on
  • How Sandy sourced her products for sale
  • How Sandy gets customers to her store.
  • What worked for her and what did not
  • The hardest part about starting an online business
  • How much did she spend to start her business.

Other Resources

Transcript

Steve: You’re listening to the mywifequitherjob podcast episode number 13. A few weeks ago, I sent out a poll to my blog asking who they wanted to hear from the most on my podcast. And surprisingly, they didn’t want to hear from famous people. They simply want to hear from real people, who just started their businesses and basically people in the trenches. Now, since I run a course at e-commerce at www.profitableonlinestore.com I just happen to know many in the trenches. So today, I have a student of my Create A Profitable Online Store course with us on the podcast. Now, first things first, this isn’t gonna be one of those raw-raw type of episodes, it’s not going to be a, oh! I signed up for Steve’s class and after following the step by step tutorials, I managed to make tons of money. Quiet the contrary. It’s rarely smooth for any business owner and it would be a lie to say otherwise. So, in this interview, I give a very realistic, in the trenches account of a student who just started their online store. Now, if you are interested in learning how to start your own business, go to www.mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course on how to start an online store. Also, I’m giving away free one on one consults on a monthly basis. For more info on that, go to mywifequitherjob.com/contest. Now, onto the show.

Welcome to the mywifequitherjob podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle, so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host, Steve Chou!

Steve: Welcome to the mywifequitherjob podcast. Today, I’m really happy to have Sandy Donovan on the show and Sandy is actually a student in my Create A Profitable Online Store course. Now, last week when I sent out a poll to my readers, an overwhelming number of people responded that they wanted to hear from real people who just started out with their shops, people in the trenches, people starting from the very beginning. So, I decided to bring on different students of mine to the podcast. Now, incidentally if you want to learn more about my course, go to www.profitableonlinestore.com. Anyways, I’m gonna have different students on the show who kind of took different paths towards starting their own online stores.

Now, some students chose to go the free open source route, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about sign up for my free mini course at mywifequitherjob.com. I also have students who chose to go with a fully hosted chopping cart and I’ll also hopefully convince a few students to come on who are just absolutely killing it! Now, in a private poll I conducted with my students last week, there were at least two students doing over six figures per year, both of whom have been doing five figures per month consistently for the past several months.

Now, my goal with these set of podcasts is to give all the would-be shop owners some different perspectives on the whole process of starting an online store. Okay now, let’s talk about Sandy. Sandy is one of my favorite students in the class, because things haven’t exactly gone that smoothly for her, yet she has kept at it. Now, she’s currently doing four figures per month with her online store GetUnrobed.com, which sells Kimono robes for bridesmaids. Now, Sandy really is an amazing person and she’s done an incredible job thus far. So, Sandy, welcome to the show and thank you for coming on.

Sandy: Thanks Steve! That was such a great introduction, so thanks for having me; I’m really excited to be on the show today.

Steve: Yeah, really happy to have you. I know for a fact since we’ve interacted quite a bit through the course that, I know you’ve been trying a whole bunch of different things and you’ve had your ups and your downs so, that’s why I thought you’d be an ideal person to bring on the show.

Sandy: Yeah, well, l definitely had the ups and downs so [chuckles]-

Steve: [chuckles] And again you know, just for everyone who’s listening, we’re trying to give a realistic account for someone who’s just started relatively recently. So, Sandy, how did you come up with the niche for your online store?

Sandy: Well, most of it was mathematical, just walking through what you had shown in the course, which just to give a brief overview, is basically taking a look at what people are searching for and comparing that to what is out there in terms of competition. So, it really came down to that in the end, but just a little background on how I came up with it, I – you’d mention to look for something that isn’t being sold in the store. And one day I was with my family and one of my older cousins was turning something– I don’t even remember, 55, 60, something like that, and someone was looking for a happy coat, do you know what that is?

Steve: I do not, what is a happy coat?

Sandy: Okay, so, it is– I don’t know really where the name came from, but in Italian families, it’s basically this really long night gown, it’s kind of a mix between a robe and a nightgown and Idon’t know why they call it a happy coat, I think it comes from another language but the people now kind of tease the older generation because they wear it all the time because it just makes them happy. But, it’s…

Steve: [chuckles]-

Sandy: Something that the older Italian women would wear around the house. So, one of my cousins was searching for that since she couldn’t find it anywhere, so they used to be able to get them everywhere, and so that kind of just put me down the truck of robes. And as I was looking for different robes, I knew I didn’t really wanna sell the happy coat, but I was looking at different robes and what I was seeing was that, a lot of them were either really cheap, so cheaply made, I didn’t like the fabric or they were just really frumpy looking, so they were really big and just not flattering, and so, that kind of led me even further to find out that a lot of women were searching for robes for their bridal party and they were really hard to get. I’ve heard that from lots of different people and it has been confirmed after I opened the store a lot of my customers told me that they can’t find them anywhere in local stores. So, that was kind of the progression but, all along the way, I was checking for key words that were related. So, it all started from that happy coat but then it kind of you know, went a lot further based on the key words that were popular and low competition.

Steve: Okay, so, one mistake that I’ve seen a lot of students make is that they haven’t decided who their target customer base is, you know, when they’re starting on their niche. How did you actually decide to target your robes towards you know, the wedding party in particular?

Sandy: Well, I was definitely one of those people, who made that mistake and didn’thave a target audience right off the back, or at least I thought I did, and it ended up changing. So, if you look at the name of my store, its Get Unrobed, and that basically came from, like I was just saying, looking at the robes that were out there and either cheap or they were a little frumpy and I was looking for something that was a little more sexy and not lingerie like, but closer to that than what was, so I actually didn’t start targeting bridal parties or brides, as who I’m targeting you know, for the bridal parties, but I didn’t actually start targeting them until I made my first few sales, and my first few sales were all brides, and that was kind of when I decided, okay, this would be a much better option because, when people are buying for their bridal party you know they are buying– my average sale is about five, it’s four point something almost around five robes.

Steve: Nice!

Sandy: Per sale. Yeah, so that’s a lot better than the one robe [chuckles], that I would have been selling per sale if I just went the traditional like, hairspray gift or hairspray yourself or something like that. So, I didn’t decide right away and I wish I did because, if I had put more thought and done a little bit more research, then I probably would have come up with a different domain name and I also would have branded a little bit differently right off the back.

Steve: But I noticed that you know, I just went on your site actually just before this interview, I noticed that all the verbiage on your site is now geared towards weddings and the bridal party.

Sandy: Yeah.

Steve: And has that had a good effect on your conversion rate over all, once you started doing that?

Sandy: Yeah, I mean that, there’s been a lot that has I think, affected my conversion rates since the beginning. I’ve made a lot of changes, so, I definitely have noticed though that my customers over time have gone from you know, bridal party, bridal party, bridal party, individual, now to mostly just bridal parties.

Steve: Okay.

Sandy: So, I don’t really– I guess I can’t say that it has definitely affected my conversion rate overall, but it has definitely affected my number of items per sale.

Steve: Okay, okay sure, that makes a lot of sense. So, you know, a lot of the people just kind of want to hear about the process and first of all, you wouldn’t describe yourself as a technical person, would you? Like a programmer, developer type?

Sandy: Absolutely not! No.

Steve: Okay, so, given that as your background, can you kind of discuss some of the most difficult parts that you had about getting started with your online store?

Sandy: Yeah, so, when I first got started I actually went with open cart because, I thought that it wouldn’t be too difficult to kind of put a store together which– I don’t know why I did that. And you know, after someone made this analogy after I was talking to them about what I had decided to do. They said, you don’t know anything about building a website. If you were going to open a retail shop down the street, you wouldn’t go out and buy some bricks and try to put it together yourself, you know, why are you doing this? So, that’s basically, I started that way, started with open cart I was trying to do it all myself and I’m kind of glad I did it only because I did learn a lot, and now I’m able to take what I learned as far as very simple code and apply that to where I am now which is Shopify, which is fully hosted.

And so, the most difficult part about that, I guess, since I’ve moved to Shopify – which I was only on open cart for two months. But since I moved to Shopify, I guess the most difficult part is, you do so need to code a little bit to get things exactly the way you want, and it is tough for me sometimes. But, what I’m learning is to let go of that, and to just get somebody who knows what they’re doing to do it right off the back because, I’ve learned that I’ve wasted more time and more money making a change that has affected other things such as, okay, now– I don’t know, now the track out process is not working quite right, or it looks a little funny, and my conversion rate plummeted and I have no idea why, you know, because it’s on some browser that I didn’t check, all these different things that can happen. So, definitely I’m letting go of that and letting other people do that for me and that’s been a huge help. So, yeah, most difficult part, just even those little changes just to make things exactly the way you want.

Steve: So, just to give a little background story with the listeners. As part of my course, I always urge everyone to actually just consider the open source route because, that’s the only way that you’ll have complete control over your online store. You have everything and no one could ever raise prices on you or put you out of business. But for some people, it makes sense to just go the fully hosted route because everything is just done for you. Ultimately, you’re there to sell your products and not have to deal with website stuff at all. But you know, there’s obviously pros and cons with both, and as Sandy pointed out, she did try the open source route and I commend her for doing that, but it just wasn’t for her so she moved over to Shopify, and some of her skills that she picked up while going the open source route, kind of translated over as well. Okay Sandy, so let’s talk about the next part of getting started with your store, how did you find the vendors?

Sandy: I found the vendors– well; I have two vendors that I started working with right in the beginning. I have a few more now, but right from the beginning I found one through Ali Baba or I think actually through Ali Express, because I wasn’t quite ready to order enough to go on Ali Baba. But Ali Express let me order just like a few hundred at a time, so, that was perfect. So, I did that and what I did was just contact a whole bunch of them and ask for samples. I didn’t have to pay for the samples and I ended up not liking a majority of them actually, but then once I did find what I liked, it was nice because it’s been a really smooth relationship with that vendor ever since.

So, definitely if anyone is listening, that was something that scared me a lot. I didn’t know how to do that, I mean, you showed us in the course but going into that, I had no idea how to contact people, I was afraid to contact people in another country because I didn’t really know if, you know, what would I do if they didn’t send the product? Or how would I talk to them? I just had a lot of questions but, it actually was pretty easy so, that was one. The other one, I decided to go with a US based company, someone who manufactured in the US. So, that was my second vendor, and I really just went with those two because I felt like they had enough diversity in their products to get started.

Steve: So, can you just talk about some of your experiences with the overseas vendors? What were some of the difficulties that you had in communication if there were any?

Sandy: You know, I really didn’t have any. The ones that I didn’t go with, I didn’t go with because I didn’t like the product but, I really didn’t have any trouble with just reaching out to them, communicating with them. Actually, the person that I deal with now, he’s my only over seas vendor and basically because, he can pretty much do whatever I ask. And then he could do whatever specifications, material. I mean, he’s very flexible with that and the cost is low and he doesn’t even take long, it takes about two weeks to get products to me.

Steve: Oh! That’s really fast actually.

Sandy: It’s really fast, I was really surprised. He ships DHL and it comes almost right away unless I have something that he doesn’t normally make, that I need made special or something. But it really doesn’t take that much longer. So, yeah, I didn’t have any problems and he’s very friendly, he’s easy to talk to, he’s English is, you know, fine so, [chuckles]-

Steve: [chuckles]-

Sandy: Yeah, so it works out.

Steve: So, did you have any difficulties or struggles at all? I mean, did you have any mental hurdles in the whole sourcing process?

Sandy: Yeah, well like I said, I was just afraid but, once I kind of got the samples, and I got over that fear. And I think what it was too, the person who I work with overseas– his name is Ray Ray actually, and I don’t think that’s his real name.

Steve: [chuckles]-

Sandy: But that’s what he goes by, and once I started talking to him about what I wanted, I just felt comfortable with him and like I said, I hadn’t had a problem since.

Steve: Okay.

Sandy: So, maybe I just got lucky, but yeah, my biggest problem was myself, was just the fear of you know, mis-communicating, losing my money. I think common fears that everyone has, but just none of them panned out. And like I said, I’m probably just lucky that I found someone right away.

Steve: Yeah, that’s really good because you know, with our vendors at least, there was some back and forth, where– I mean I talk about this on the blog, but we had good product initially when they were sending us samples, but then when we placed the bulk order, he kind of mixed some bad ones in with the good ones so to speak. And we had some quality control issues earlier on, which we then actually just resolved once we met up with the guy face to face in China. So, have you spoken with any of your vendors you know, verbally at all or?

Sandy: No.

Steve: No, it’s all been e-mail right?

Sandy: Yeah, well, for the overseas ones, yeah.

Steve: Okay. And so, what made you decide to also get a domestic vendor?

Sandy: Well, that was something that I wanted to offer in the beginning. I just felt like it was important to offer something that was made in the USA. As time has gone on, I am re-thinking that because my prices are higher for those products, they have to be because it costs a lot more to get those than it does to get from overseas. And even though the product is outstanding, it’s awesome, I love it, they’re awesome robes, but I just really don’t sell a lot of those robes. So, I thought that it would be a good seller, I thought people would prefer to get something from the US, but I think when it just comes down to it, price is a factor and I don’t know, they just don’t go for it. So, it was important to me but, yeah, now I’m not viewing it as important and I feel bad saying that, but if no one’s buying it it’s like a…

Steve: Yeah, yeah. I mean, if it was selling well, obviously you’d still continue to carry them right?

Sandy: Yeah.

Steve: I mean, you know a quick question for you though, in terms of– I’m just curious this for myself, the vendors in the US, are they actually making them in the U.S, or are they actually sourcing them from somewhere else?

Sandy: Yeah, who I use in San Francisco actually manufactures in California.

Steve: Okay, okay.

Sandy: Yeah.

Steve: Okay cool! Let’s talk about your first sale, how did you get your first sale?

Sandy: [chuckles] I have no idea. I…

Steve: [chuckles]-

Sandy: I was actually getting really upset because I was on you know, open cart still, and I just didn’t like the way my website looked but at the same time, I was spending all day, everyday, like hours and hours a day trying to fix it, and it just kept on getting worse, it wasn’t getting better.

Steve: [chuckles]-

Sandy: Yeah, it was awful and I was getting really upset and I was like, okay, maybe I need to hire someone, maybe, but that’s really expensive and I didn’t know what to do. And then I just got this e-mail that just said someone has ordered a robe and I was so excited then. So, that really made my day and it was just – that one was actually just, yeah; I don’t think that one was a bridal one actually; I think my first one was just a regular robe. But I was really excited and it kind of gave me the motivation to at least keep going and try some different things.

Steve: Yeah, I remember back then you weren’t targeting anyone I don’t think and then your website when I had critiqued it, wasn’t looking so hot if I [chuckles]-

Sandy: [chuckles]-

Steve: You don’t mind me saying. But you still managed to get your first sale, and were you doing any sort of advertising or anything to drive traffic to your site at that point? Or was it just a random sale?

Sandy: I, oh okay, I see what you are saying. Yeah, I was doing a little bit of advertising but I actually wasn’t doing it. I didn’t actually think any sales were going to come from it. I was really trying to test like, where are they going? How long are they staying on the site? Like, I was more doing it for information. Of course I was hoping for those sales, right, you know, but I was kind of just playing around with it I guess you can say, I mean, I only threw like– I don’t remember, 50 or 100 dollars, no more than a 100 dollars at iGoogle adds so, it wasn’t like I was running some major marketing campaign, you know.

Steve: So, how did you end up resolving all of your site design issues actually? I forgot to ask.

Sandy: I just went to Shopify, [chuckles]-

Steve: Okay.

Sandy: Yeah, because I, you know, I did hire someone, I actually hired I think two people. One person was making progress but then he was kind of, I couldn’t do exactly what I wanted. I went to someone else and I wasn’t happy with what he was doing, it was getting too expensive and I wasn’t getting the results. And one day, I just went to Shopify and I just said, forget it, this isn’t going to, it’s never going to make me any money because I’m spending way too much time and money on it and I just needed to…

Steve: Okay.

Sandy: Re-think that.

Steve: And so, once you went on Shopify, you just chose a theme and did you have to customize it– you started to customize it yourself, so how did you get around that hurdle?

Sandy: Well, that’s been an ongoing process so yeah, I did select a theme and I liked it and then I started getting feedback from people– you were one of them.

Steve: [chuckles]-

Sandy: And they all kind of said the same thing about it so obviously you know, right, there was something wrong with it. So, a lot of the changes I could make just in the back end so, if anyone– I’m sure there are people listening who don’t actually have a store so, the difference really– and this is something I was really confused about in the beginning. The difference between open cart and Shopify was, Shopify just has more back end stuff and that’s I think really all comes down to. Like open cart still had back end stuff and I could still make some changes there, but Shopify, it aims to let you change everything back there but there are still some things that you need to change in the code.

So, I was able to get someone to work on Shopify, on the store to make some changes but, you know, it was actually a lot cheaper to have someone work on the Shopify design because it was really close to how I wanted it to be. So, the changes were small and I continue to make changes. I mean, every month basically I take a look at what’s going on and try to make some change. I have crazy eight now which has been really helpful. Yeah, so, I’m trying not to make too many changes, I’m trying not to go crazy with it because I don’t want to make a major change and then totally mess it up. So, it is– I do keep tweaking it and yeah, I have someone now who can do that and it’s really not that expensive and it doesn’t take him too long to make the changes that I want now.

Steve: Okay.

Sandy: So, it’s not too bad.

Steve: Just so for the people who are listening, the reason it’s easier for someone to work on Shopify is because, at that point the person is mainly just dealing with the aesthetic portions of the site. The nuts and bolts of the shopping cart are pretty much obstructed away because Shopify handles all that, whereas in Open cart– open cart is a lot more flexible, the way you get more things as you buy plugins and you can kind of build your store that way but ultimately, you know, you need to be the one to go in and adjust some of the code and, it is separated out nicely, but for someone who is not technical, it will tend to be a little more difficult.

Sandy: Yeah, yeah.

Steve: Okay, so, all right, so, what has worked for you in terms of just marketing your site?

Sandy: What has actually been really effective with paid advertisement, paid marketing, has been Facebook ads.

Steve: Okay.

Sandy: And, I don’t know why Facebook ads just seem to work a lot better for me than Google adworks.

Steve: Well you can target brides or people who are engaged right? For one thing-

Sandy: Yeah, right. So on Google I am targeting the key words, but on Facebook right, I’m targeting the people. So, I actually thought that it would be reverse because I thought well, if I’m targeting just brides but then not necessarily searching for bridesmaid robes, you know, it’s like a cold call as opposed to a warm call if someone is searching for bridesmaid robes and my add pops up. So, I expected the opposite, but I don’t know, that’s not what happened and I think though, one of the reasons is just, Facebook ads is just cheaper too. So I pay a lot less for people to see the ad and you know, for them to click on it so, I can go through a few more clicks before I get the sale and it still works out and it don’t pay as much per sale you know.

Steve: So, how do you have your ad set up? What’s the landing page for your ad?

Sandy: It depends, what ads. I do have a few different ones but, mostly the one that converts the best goes from Facebook to the bridesmaid robe site so, it’s just…

Steve: Okay.

Sandy: GetUnrobed.com/ – I think it’s /collection/bridesmaid robes. So, they go to the collections page.

Steve: Interesting, okay. Yeah, so my experience with Facebook has been different from yours. When I was setting up Facebook ads to just point directly to products, it actually was not doing that well. But what I found was if I pointed it to a sign up page, got them into my e-mail list and then market it to them through my list, it worked out a lot better so, I’m kind of taking a more indirect route than you are. But, it sounds like what you are doing is working and that’s awesome.

Sandy: Yeah, you know, I considered actually doing– I haven’t tried it yet, to go to my e-mail list and I actually have something all set up for that to happen. I have a download for thank you cards for the bridal party, and I thought that would be a nice little lead in, and then, you know there is kind of book cards like a little pdf, and they’re cute, and I thought that would be a nice lead in. And I have people sign up for that and then I do have an auto responder that does market to them but, I haven’t paid any traffic to go there yet. So, you know, maybe I’ll try that and because I had intended to and then, I don’t know, I guess I just kind of thought, that was right, too indirect for paid marketing, so I think…

Steve: Yeah, it’s kind of counter intuitive, but it’s jus a matter of calculating the return on investment for that particular list that you’re driving to, like you separate it out obviously and you just get an idea of how much money you’re making there versus the amount you’re paying for the Facebook ad. So, yeah, it takes a little bit and you know, again, it’s just all about experimentation to see what works.

Sandy: Yeah. I’m going to try it, thanks.

Steve: So, let’s talk about your e-mail actually. So, have you marketed to your e-mail list at all, or?

Sandy: You know, I, okay, I do but I’m probably not doing as good as I should. So, here’s kind of what I have going on right now. I do have people signing up to get those thank you cards and a few other things. So within my blog posts I have little opt in– little lead magnets, so I have a wedding prep checklist, I have the thank you cards, and then I have a five percent discount so, they can sign up and then they go to their list or whatever. Then, I do have an auto responder sequence that will send out, depending on what list it is. So it will briefly send out a follow up to kind of see if they either like their thank you cards or checklist whatever, and they do get an offer at the end of that follow up which is, it’s actually not even two weeks long, and I think for all of the list, it’s no more than four e-mails depending on what list you’re on. And so, I’m really not doing a whole lot and my reason for not– and I know this is probably not going to sound like the right answer but…

Steve: There’s no right or wrong answer Sandy [chuckles]-

Sandy: Well-

Steve: Remember, this is the real trenches, this is the way it is. We’re trying to give a realistic account here so-

Sandy: Yeah, well, okay. So, when I look at Google analytics, it tells you how long until the average customer buys and it’s only one day for me like, it’s usually a second or third visit on the same day. So, generally when people come, they decide pretty much right away, and the only real sales that I’ve been getting from my e-mail list come from the five percent -or not five – I forget how much I’m giving off right now, may ten percent.

Steve: [chuckles]-

Sandy: I change it around all the time but the percentage off that you’re getting, enter names I do for shipping or whatever for signing up, and that’s really been the only thing that has been getting them to convert, but it’s still the same day.

Steve: Okay.

Sandy: Which makes me think that, you know, they were going to buy anyway and then they saw they could get some money off and they signed up and you know, did it. So, I’ve tried doing little e-mail campaigns here and there, but I don’t think I’ve been consistent enough to actually see any benefit.

Steve: Okay. So, I can share some of my own experiences since we are kind of both in the wedding industry here. We do get a lot of – most of our customers are just like yours, because they’re shopping for weddings and for stuff like gifts, like for our handkerchiefs is for gifts right? A lot of times that’s last minute, so people are pretty much ready to buy. It’s not like you’re buying your wedding dress or setting your venue which is way in advance.

But one thing that we have attracted with our e-mail list are you know, wedding planners, event planners and we’ve also gotten people who just like our products; who aren’t brides, who aren’t you know, anything to do with weddings, and those guys are the people who tend to buy a lot. Every time we blast an e-mail we get a bunch of these people. Actually we attract crafters also so, you know, even though you might be targeting wedding people, you might be surprised at some of the other types of customers you might have on your list.

Sandy: Yeah. That’s a good idea for the event planners, so, I am going to look into maybe setting up a list of targets there, thanks.

Steve: Yeah, so, yeah, wedding planners you know, they often have to say shop for everything and they just present it back to their clients. So, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them would say, hey, I bet this kimono robes would be awesome as a bridesmaid gift, do you want to get a sample or take a look so-

Sandy: Yeah! Definitely, I’m going to do that.

Steve: I know for a fact– and this is just based on the survey that I did last week. There is a lot of people on the sidelines and these people are– deep down they’re ready to start their online stores but they kind of want to know how hard it was before you started making money. So, what I’m trying to ask is – I’m going to go through all the common risk factors that are going on through people’s minds and I think you know, we could just blast through this. How much money did you spend to start your business?

Sandy: After everything, I spent a little under 5000 dollars but remember that that included, [sigh] I want to say like, 600 robes so, and then plus some of the website design and things like that and oh! And a photo shoot.

Steve: Oh! Okay.

Sandy: And, there was a lot of stuff so, I definitely could have reduced that. I’d say I should have reduced that by at least by half because, if I knew what I was doing [chuckles] and I didn’t go through all that website trouble and also if I, well, I messed up somewhere else that I spent too much money – and I’m trying to think right now. Oh! Because the first photo shoot I did I kind of, I switched probably through to say, okay, here’s what I’m selling and then when I started to realize that I was getting more of those, the bridal parties, I switched products, I added a lot more products and had to do that shoot all over again. So and that actually was pretty expensive because I wasn’t able to do it myself. They just weren’t not coming out right and I think photos are a big part of– just because of who I’m targeting and what it is.

Steve: Right.

Sandy: So, I did spend a lot of money on that but, you could definitely do it a lot cheaper.

Steve: So if you were to do it all over again, how little do you think you could start the exact same store again?

Sandy: I would have run with drop shipping first until I tested all the products, so-

Steve: Okay.

Sandy: I would have cut that out. The photos I think would have been the only thing I would have kept honestly, and I would have went with Shopify which is– I could have that whole theme thing theme and everything exactly the way I wanted for less than 300 dollars I’m sure, even having someone do the tweaks.

Steve: Okay.

Sandy: And so, yeah, less than a 1000, definitely less than a 1000 if I re-did it.

Steve: Okay, and you know, how much of a struggle was it to find your actual niche?

Sandy: I did spend a lot of time on that. I actually ended up kind of going down a rabbit hole for over a month on another product that I was going to do and then it just didn’t pen out so – how much time did it take? Was that your question? I want to say like a month.

Steve: Yeah, not time necessarily, but how difficult was it? I mean, I guess so two months?

Sandy: Yeah, probably about that.

Steve: Okay. And a lot of it probably was just kind of getting used to the tools and that sought of thing too, I would imagine right? At least, that’s the feedback I get back from the students from time to time.

Sandy: Yeah, you know, I didn’t mind the tools. I got Market Samurai right away, and that was pretty easy to use. I’m just; I’m not good at the creative side of things, that’s not my thing. So, it was tough for me to even think of things and then if they didn’t work, to like move away from them, that was tough for me.

Steve: Okay. And in terms of marketing, what avenues do you use for marketing now? And has it been a real struggle to actually get traffic to your site?

Sandy: It’s not a struggle to get traffic to my sight, well, at least some traffic. I get – depending on the time of year and I haven’t been open a full year yet so I don’t even know this for sure, but so far we’re getting traffic. I get, around 100 clicks a day just organically which, I think is okay. So, I don’t run ads all the time. I kind of go– I found on Facebook actually that, if I run it for two weeks and then two weeks off, giving that break, I don’t know why, but seems to work. So, my ads mostly run on Facebook. I don’t spend more than 300 dollars a month on Facebook ads. Sometimes I also run Google ads when I feel like sales are you know, kind of hot and there’s been a lot of searches and like, those things are trending. Then I also run Google ads and I won’t spend more than 500 a month on Google ads but usually you don’t even spend that much.

Steve: Okay. I have the answer for you on the Facebook ads by the way. People tend to get blind to your ads so, the people who do Facebook ads effectively they tend to change out their ads quite frequently because of that blindness factor.

Sandy: Yeah.

Steve: I think what you are saying is normal, yeah. Cool, so, you know, surprisingly we’ve already been talking for a like 35 minutes and I didn’t want to take up too much of your time, but I do want to have your opinion. Like I said before there’s a lot of people on the sidelines and you know, what sort of advise would you give the people who are thinking about starting an online store?

Sandy: I would definitely– if it’s something that you really do want to do, I would definitely give it a try. I would say, for the risk, I mean, it’s worth it. I was working full time, I actually had two jobs and I’m also a single mom. So, I had a lot going on when I started, it’s not like I just was able to sit down and really work on this you know.

Steve: Yeah, I remember.

Sandy: So, yeah, it was a lot going on and that’s okay because I kind of feel like my goal was a little bit more long term. So, I was okay with that, but I would say try it if you want to try it. I would though– if I was doing it again, I would have definitely been a little more okay with letting go with some things in the beginning. And I also would have found a lot more people who had done it before that could have helped me find those resources. So, now that I have been doing it a while you know, I have people that I can go to, to do like a website tweak or to you know, a photographer that is going to do a good job and not rip me off and you know, I have all those things, but when I first started, I didn’t have anybody that could help me with that. I mean, even yeah I was in your course but I mean, you couldn’t have helped me find a photographer in Las Vegas, you know what I mean?

Steve: Right.

Sandy: It’s just like, you have to find people I think, to help you with that and that would have been really helpful and would have helped me save a ton of money, if I had the right vendors and the right team members in place right from the beginning.

Steve: Yeah, that’s a hard thing to actually overcome, but the good news is, if you were ever to start a different venture, you have all of that stuff at your disposal now, so it shouldn’t be a problem if you were to start another store.

Sandy: That is true, for sure.

Steve: Let’s see, there’s one other thing I want to ask you. I’m drawing a blanket; I didn’t actually make notes on this, but [chuckles]. So, Sandy, for all the people who are out there who actually might want to contact you and have questions for you, is there a place where they can get a hold of you, or contact you?

Sandy: All right, well, so you can find me, if you go to GetUnrobed.com, that’s the store. I definitely check that out especially if you have a wedding coming up, if you want to get in touch with me and just about that info@getunrobed.com but, also you if want to hear more from me, I also have this other side business going on right now called, clearly influential. So, that is where I talk all things communication. It covers marketing, branding, it covers public speaking– if you are basically if you are in the online world, that would definitely be a good place to get more information. So, ClearlyInfluential.com or GetUnrobed.com, that’s where you can find me.

Steve: Okay, I remember the question I was going to ask you now.

Sandy: Okay.

Steve: Okay, so you have two kids.

Sandy: One, one kid.

Steve: One kid, sorry one kid. You’re a single mom, how the heck do you find the time to do this and your side project? You know, describe me your productivity flow.

Sandy: Okay, well, I’m kind of lucky in a few aspects so, even though, yeah, when I started I had two jobs – I don’t anymore. When I started though, I did for the first six months or something so, I was a little lucky because one of my jobs was as a communication instructor/ professor, and then the second job was tutoring students that would come in and I was actually able to do a lot of things online while I was sitting at the tutoring desk which is really nice, I also though now…

Steve: Those poor kids.

Sandy: I know, [chuckles]-

Steve: They should have been to [chuckles]-

Sandy: Yeah, [chuckles]-

Steve: Sorry, go on.

Sandy: No, it’s okay. You know, well, we had down time you know but now though, what I’ve been doing– I do have a VA now and she’s great. She started about a month and a half ago and basically what I did was just document everything I did for you know what I did on a regular basis and turned that stuff over to her. So, I don’t work on Get Unrobed every single day but, I know that she’s working on Get Unrobed every single day. So, she’s doing at least social media posts and she’s also contacting bloggers that– she’s contacting other places too to try to get interviews and guest posts and things like that, just to build links. So, she’s doing that every single day so I know that there is promotion going on and that it you know, I’m slowly continuing to build links, climb up ranks, build my social media following and things like that. So, that’s what’s going on now, so, if I don’t have the time which some days I don’t, at least I know that, that’s taken care of.

Steve: Okay. And one thing that I just want to talk about to the listeners is that, Sandy has a really good attitude here. She’s looking at this in the long term, she’s doing everything little by little which kind of just builds up over time and will eventually make her business successful and that’s actually one of the reasons why I brought her on. She’s got a really good mindset and the right attitude so to a point where I know that her store is going to be huge someday.

Sandy: Oh! Thanks Steve!

Steve: And with that, I think our time is done. Thanks a lot for coming on the show Sandy.

Sandy: Thank you.

Steve: All right, take care.

Sandy: Bye!

Steve: As you could tell from that interview, there’s often a lot of trial and error involved in launching a successful business. Now, Sandy has what it takes because she’s always willing to try new things and quite frankly, she’s just a problem solver. Now, I can’t tell you how bad her first shop looked when I first critiqued it and she since improved it dramatically to the point where it is now generating regular sales. Go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode13 for the show notes for this episode and be sure to sign up for my free newsletter while you’re there, where I’ll give you a brief introduction on you know, how to start your own e-commerce store. Thanks for listening!

Thanks for listening to the mywifequitherjob podcast. Where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information, visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.

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Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?


If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

012: Billy Murphy On How To Start A Poker Training Course And Multiple Ecommerce Stores

billy murphy

Today, I have my good friend Billy Murphy on the show. Billy runs the popular blog ForeverJobless.com which I highly recommend that you check out and he runs an excellent podcast there as well.

Billy is well known for the many businesses that he’s launched over years. He started an online poker training site in his early years, owned as many as 13 ecommerce stores and now has his own mini incubator for small businesses.

Billy’s a smart guy and there’s lots to learn from this interview. Enjoy!

What You’ll Learn

  • How to start a poker membership site
  • How to create buzz for your business
  • How Billy got national coverage for his online poker site
  • How Billy tapped into existing communities to gain his early customers.
  • The right criteria to use when buying an ecommerce store
  • How to market an ecommerce store
  • How Billy got traffic to his stores early on
  • The multiples involved when buying an ecommerce business

Billy Recommends

Billy’s Sites

Transcript

You are listening to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast episode number 12. On this podcast I interview successful bootstrapped entrepreneurs, and have them reveal the secrets of their success.

Also as part of running this podcast, I’m constantly running contests and giveaways. Every single month you will have the chance to win a 30 minute one on one private consultation with me.

For more information go to mywifequitherjob.com/contest, and while you are on my site be sure to sign up for my free newsletter, where I will teach you the exact steps that my wife and I took to make over $100,000 in profits, in the first year of running our business with our online store. Now on to the show.

Welcome to the ‘My Wife Quit her Job’ podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suites your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chou.

Steve: So today I have a very special guest, and his name is Billy Murphy. Billy and I met at the World Domination Summit in Portland, Oregon. But actually that wasn’t the first time that we started chatting, before that I think he actually just randomly contacted me and emailed me on the blog and asked me to Skype chat essentially.

And usually when that happens, I actually don’t normally just randomly chat with strangers, but I noticed immediately that there was kind of something different about Billy. And so after stalking him online for little bit, and just kind of figure out what he is up to and that sort of thing. You know I stumbled upon an interview that he did for eventual millionaire, which is run by Jimmy Tardy, and you know I found out that he’s a pretty accomplished entrepreneur. And I said, ‘You know, what the heck’, let’s just have a quick Skype chat.

And ever since that first chat, I’ve learned that you know Billy is just an amazing person, and an amazing entrepreneur, and I was very lucky to have been able to connect with him. So, just a very brief introduction, of all the entrepreneurs that I know, Billy seems to be living the life. He has many profitable businesses, and he spends a lot of time travelling, going to conferences, and meeting other like-minded entrepreneurs. And so today we’ll get a chance to hear his story first-hand about how he started all of his various businesses, and what he is up to in the present day. So Billy welcome to the show, and thanks for coming on.

Billy: Definitely, thanks a lot for having me, awesome intro.

Steve: Yes, so you know for all those people who don’t know about you and your background, do want to just give a quick background story of what you’ve been up to, and just kind of give a brief overview about all of your businesses. I know you have a whole bunch, so…

Billy: Sure, I guess the quick background would be necessarily is a professional poker player, did that for about four years, and then you know noticed a need in the poker space for trainings. So basically started a poker training company which we taught people through video based membership site, how to play profitable poker.

And from there, I guess in 2011, I started buying and studying e-commerce stores, and ended up with maybe 15 or 20 of them. They were all very, very small, but the combination of them was a pretty cool business. And then I guess in the last six months or so, I’ve started investing and advising in kind of small niche businesses, and then I obviously talk about a lot of this stuff on ’Forever Jobless.’

Steve: So ’Forever Jobless’ is your blog, right?

Billy: Yes.

Steve: Okay, yeah so I kind of wanted to focus a little bit about kind of what started all of this for you and so I understand that ‘The Blue Fire poker’ site was your first money maker, is that accurate?

Billy: Yes, that was the first real business, I guess before poker I had done a ‘sports card company’, but it was more kind of less business and more just kind of a hustling side venture, I guess.

Steve: Okay, so it wasn’t like scale wall, and so ‘Blue Fire Poker’ was your first scale wall business that…

Billy: Yeah, it could have been scale wall but I didn’t know how to do it back then, I was like seventeen or something like that.

Steve: Oh wow, so you started really early, that’s pretty cool. So how did you come up with the idea for ‘Blue Fire Poker’ initially?

Billy: I was a player for years, I played full time for four years, but before that, I had been playing for years in college. And there was a lot of sites already doing what we were doing, but we felt that there were lower I guess higher quantity and lower quality than we thought the market needed. And so basically we started in January 2009, and just did very few videos, but very high quality videos and then focused exclusively on one specific game to start with which was ‘Cash Games’.

Steve: So were you recording these videos yourself or did you get other people to them?

Billy: No, yeah, it was all done by other people, and still up to this day I mean we have– I think right now we have a good dozen people doing the videos for us.

Steve: Okay, so are these big name people that you’ve been making videos with?

Billy: They were in the past, I guess you know some of them were pretty big names. Today, it depends, I mean online poker rides are big names.

Steve: Okay online poker I see, I see so this isn’t like World Series of poker, this is more focused on the online poker audience?

Billy: Yeah, 100% online.

Steve: Oh okay, okay I get that. So you know what were some of your motivations for starting your business? Was it to make a lot of money? Was it to live the lifestyle that you wanted to? Can you just give us an idea what, kind of what was going through your head when you first decided to start ‘Blue Fire Poker’?

Billy: Sure, yeah I mean as a poker player it was a good lifestyle, but it was still a job, and so my goal for starting a business was– you know I had the capital from poker built up then, you know I had a nice runway, so I could try and start a business. And you know if it didn’t work you know just go back to poker, but I really wanted something that could run without me having to work to make money. And you know something that could be automated and scaled up, so obviously as a poker player or in any job, it is a lot tougher to scale your job. I mean you really can only scale up by the hours you work, for the most part, or making a slightly higher hourly rate, but with a business you can scale up and leverage it in a lot of different ways. So that was the goal.

Steve: So everything is on the web, is that correct?

Billy: Yes, 100%.

Steve: So, you know what sort of experience did you have before hand in terms of designing websites and that sort of thing? And how did you, you know if you weren’t tech savvy, how did you overcome that?

Billy: So I didn’t have any experience to design or to develop, I still don’t. So any of the design and development stuff I have always outsourced. That project in particular was very, very difficult. I think we hired an Indian development company for like $16,000 to do the site, and it was a nightmare. I mean it was something that was supposed to take about maybe three months, and it ended up taking nine. They were just– You know I don’t know if you’ve worked with a lot of developers. It was just one of those situations where you get stuck with someone that you wish you hadn’t gotten stuck with.

They kind of, communication was really difficult because if you tell them you need one thing, you know they’ll give you word for word what you asked for, but it is completely different than if you communicated that on the same level. So if you say, “Hey, I need a button on this page to do this”, they’d give you a page with a huge, huge button over all of this page. So it was one of those things where it was just completely– the whole project was a nightmare, but finally it got done, about nine months later.

Steve: Interesting, so these people were in India, and so did you go on a website to find them, or how did you find them again?

Billy: Yeah, I used E-lets.com.

Steve: E-lets, okay. So if you were to do it all over again, how would you have proceeded differently in terms of the website design?

Billy: I would either have well– so I don’t know if you know Stu McLaren. So he runs ‘WishListMember’, and I probably would have gone with something like that, that’s more of an out of the box solution. At the time I didn’t even know there were things like that out there. Maybe it was not out there at the time, I’m not sure, and this was about five or six years ago.

I probably would have gone with something out of the box to make it a lot easier to start up. If not I probably would have gone in the US or Canada, or somebody that speaks the same language, because it was just so difficult to communicate, even when we thought they knew exactly what we were asking, lots of time they would give us something completely different back and so I think that added a lot to the times.

Steve: You know that’s actually very interesting because you read around and outsourcing to other countries was kind of all the rage. And what you don’t really hear about is yu know all the difficulties in dealing with time zones, cultural impacts, and that sort of thing. So it is really interesting to hear your experience and the fact that you would actually go within the US for your next project.

Billy: Yeah, I mean it’s one of those things that in theory, it sounds great right, I mean a lot of these the overseas companies charge a third or a fourth of what you pay in the US, but at the same time it’s just so much more hassle and frustration. For me at least, personally I would stay for the most part in the US and Canada now.

Steve: And Just for the benefit of the readers, Billy mentioned a plugin called ‘Wish List Member’. And it’s actually a plugin for WordPress, and WordPress is a very popular content management system, and in conjunction with WordPress and Wish List Member, you can easily create a membership site out of the box for a very small amount of money.

So, how did you get some of your early customers, a lot of times people launch– I know when I launched my store, it launched to no customers. So how did you guys get people in the door, in the beginning.

Billy: So the poker community is relatively small, when I say small I more mean, there’s only a number of forums and blogs, and new sites, and things like that. So it is a pretty rabid community. So when we launched, we got a lot of traction in the forums earlier on, from people who wanted to see our press videos. And then probably– I don’t know if it was a month in or two months in, we were able to get featured on’Fox News’. And so we did that by– we challenged Obama to a game of poker, and the reason was, so there was legislation in the news at the time where they wanted to try and you know ban poker. And one of the big arguments was, whether poker was a game of skill or a game of luck.

And so you know I made the challenge and offered a million dollars if he could beat one of our pros. And so ‘Fox news’ picked it up, they aired it, and obviously we didn’t get a lot of traction from or a lot of business from ‘Fox News’ itself, but what happened was that created a huge buzz in online. Poker was new because we’d just launched, and then we had just this little training site that a lot of people hadnt heard of yet, and we were on national news. And so it helped kind of jump start us in the poker media.

Steve: So walk me through that a little bit. So how does ‘Fox News’ find you? Where did you publish this information or this contest?

Billy: So I can’t remember, I think we put it on our home page, where we started putting it out there and I think I would literally stay up and email any and every media contact I could find. You know I didn’t really have a good research at the time to do– I had hired a PR guy to kind of help, and he had some contacts and so I would send him. This was like, I think this was like our second or third idea that I tried, other ones just flopped. Like I had an idea at the time– this was 2009, so you know the economy was horrible at the time, you know lots of people were losing their jobs and all that. And one other promotion that I thought was going to do really well, that if people like scanned us over or faxed us over or whatever or that their debit sheets from getting fired, we were going to train them to become professional poker players.

So that, things like that almost got picked up and then they just never did, and this one just happened to hit. So it was a lot of like trial and error, I think this was probably like our third one that we tried to get picked up.

Steve: So it is a lot of leg work that you guys did earlier on, right?

Billy: Yeah, it took a lot of time to try and get it on national news, yeah.

Steve: Yeah, so you know walk me through your interactions on the forums actually. So we actually did a lot of forum marketing with our online store early on. And I actually ended up getting banned multiple times from like, the wedding forums and that sort of thing, because I was a little too promotional. So I was just wondering if you could talk about your approach in regards to forum marketing.

Billy: So I think early on, I don’t think we made any initial post, but we had friends that mentioned our launch, and then it enabled us to have an opportunity that you know if somebody asked a question or made a comment like we keep that and go in, and answer questions and whatever. So we actually didn’t start the promotion, but you know we just launched and kind of put it out there to right people, and said– you know we asked other people like, “Hey, would you mention this.” And other people mentioned it, and once they mentioned it, it kind of took a life of its own, then everybody started buzzing about it. Then we would hop in and chat about it, and I think the moderators or the owners at one of the forums did that. We had you know threads going on– actually wanted us to do a sponsorship or something like that, to be able to talk in the threads because there was so much buzz about it that we were geting. They wanted to be, I think, paid for, compensated for the promotion that we were getting in there.

Steve: Wow! That’s really cool. So it was all free publicity in the beginning.

Billy: Yes, 100% free.

Steve: So that implies that you already had kind of contacts within this community, and this is probably from the fact that you used to play online poker, is that…

Billy: Yeah, I had been in the community for, in total, probably you know eight years or so at that point, so it was– you know becausse I started playing in college, and then started playing professionaly a little bit after college. So we knew a lot of guys in the community, so not only me, but other guys making videos for us, all knew guys in the community.

Steve: Okay, that’s cool. So you got a pretty big bump-up during your launch, and then ever since then how have you been promoting it? Do you use pay-per-click services? Do you do Facebook Ads, or anything along those lines?

Billy: No, we actually a lot of this is still word of mouth or referral. For poker stuff we actually can’t do Adwords, so they won’t let you do any advertizing on Google. I think you can on Facebook, we haven’t tried any I know. You know I’ve talked to some other guys who have, but for the most part word of mouth, referral, we do some promotions, and we have a huge email list at this point.

We do some promotions through our email list sometimes. We have some affiliates, but affiliates make up a very, very tiny part of our business. There is just not a lot of people with poker related sites that will promote training sites, because a lot of times the larger affiliate sites are people who kind of have their own deals, like poker rooms and things like that, who have their own training.

Steve: So is Google search a factor at all?

Billy: Yeah, we definitely get some from search. I don’t know the exact percentage, but I’m sure, I mean, we’ve had blogs and forums and all that for over five years now. So we get a decent amount of search result, but it’s not– we don’t make a big focus on SEO. There’s not a lot terms you know people would search like, ‘how to play professional poker’ and things like that. It’s more of a– the people would know about us and would sign up for us, and more within the poker communities.

Steve: I see so it sounds like you are most valuable marketing channel, at least, is your huge list and then all the various content that you have on your site that’s for free, which in turn kind of influences people to want to sign up for the full blown course. Is that right?

Billy: Yeah, exactly. We have so we’ve got over a thousand videos on the site, and each video has like got two minute free trials. So, if you want to sign up, you can actually watch the video, and then it will stop at the two minute mark in the video, and a screen will pop up and ask you if you want to see the rest of it you just have to sign up.

Steve: That’s very clever, so you give them a little teaser, a little appetizer.

Billy: Yap, exactly.

Steve: So you know how long did it take before your business started gaining traction, and you started actually making profits with this business?

Billy: Right away, within 24 hours we were profitable.

Steve: Wow! That is amazing, and this is just straight from all the buzz that was generated from your ‘Fox News’ promotion and your forums.

Billy: Yeah, well at that point, I mean, a day in we hadn’t gotten on ‘Fox’ yet, but it was mainly just forums, blogs, news sites, and obviously we kind of take the golden news sites and try to get them to talk about it. But a lot of them that were just – again because the poker community is so small we’d pick it up from the forums. A lot of the poker news sites go to the forums for their news.

So they would pick it up and talk about it, and so it was one of those things where we brought a lot of money right away, and keep in mind it is not just for that day, it’s a lot of people signing up for one month memberships, or six months memberships. So you know I guess in theory we were profitable after one day, but we still had to earn the money over the memberships.

Steve: Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So you know once you obviously spent a whole bunch of time getting the site up, and then getting all the initial content up. But once everything was up and running, can you kind of describe what the day to day was like, once everything was actually launched?

Billy: Most of the day to day for me was just more of marketing. I mean I was trying to talk to more news sites, talk to other poker sites, even our competitors. We’d try to join the joint ventures, or cross promotion, with you know trying to keep people active on other forums, they would find our site, trying to get videos in from pros, looking for more pros once we decided to expand, keeping the blogs and forums active, all that kind of things. So it was a lot of mostly marketing on my part, trying to expand it.

Steve: Okay and at what point– so how much time do you actually spend on the site today?

Billy: Today not a lot because I have someone kind of running, you know they handle all our support, video uploads and the pros make the videos. So I don’t really spend much time on a day to day basis these days.

Steve: And how long did it take you to get to that point where you could actually be really be hands off with your business?

Billy: It’s hard to say. You know we started over five years ago, and I think, at least the first year or two, I was doing a heavy marketing push. We had a support person in there to handle the emails and stuff, but for the most part most of my job was to make sure that we got more customers, and kind of the business strategy and things like that. So I would say this, at least for the last several years it hasn’t taken much time on a day to day basis, outside of obviously the marketing stuff.

Steve: And how many people does it take to run this operation.

Billy: So in terms of employees really just one.

Steve: That’s amazing.

Billy: Yeah, but we obviously have pros, probably like a dozen right now, maybe even more, making videos for us, but they make like two videos a month. And so it’s just you know whenever they are scheduled to make a video, they get their video in and then we have a support person who– he knows the emails and just making sure that the pros get their videos in and things like that.

Steve: Okay cool. Yeah, so that’s really interesting how you started that whole membership site with poker. I would like to kind of switch gears at this point, and kind of talk about some of your experiences in terms of e-commerce. So e-commerce is my main thing, so it is just interesting to hear some of your experiences with your stores. So do you want to just give a brief overview about some of your most successful stores that you’ve owned?

Billy: Sure, I guess I started I guess we’ll start with the first one I bought, was the organic baby furniture store, and it was our flipper. It was making, I think was like 900 or 1000 bucks a month and I ended buying it for like $4000 which [cross talking] [00:20:43] at the time.

Steve: That’s amazing.

Billy: Yeah, that was– even now I still don’t understand how I got it so cheap, but I think if I had to buy it now for like $6000, and so you know I was just learning, I had friends in e-commerce so I knew a little bit from them. But I would ask them, why is this so cheap, it doesn’t make sense, and they didn’t know why it was so cheap. And so I called the seller, found out she had to sell really quick, she wanted to buy something else, and we negotiated down to $4000.

And so everybody in the comments was trying to figure out what was wrong, there must be something wrong if she was listing so low. And so as soon as she bumped to buy down on to $4000, I just instantly bought it, and ended up getting a great deal. I just wired over the money right away, and it made its money back right away, I mean it was just you know it took four months or so, but made its money back. And so that was kind of the first store that I bought.

The second one, that was actually kind of started about the same time, but it was started from scratch. I had a French pastry store, and this was probably ended up being probably one of my better stores. This one I started just doing SEO, I would just buy links, buy link packages, hire someone to do SEO and basically slowly started making sales. I mean, a couple of months in, I get sporadic sales a couple of times a week. Slowly picked up and then probably six months to a year in, that was one of my best businesses. I mean we had months where we were making a few thousand dollars which isn’t a lot but I was playing more of the quantity game starting a lot of the stores.

So I ended up selling that store last year in a small package, I think there was maybe like three stores in that package, and started it like a couple of hundred dollars and we sold it for $68,000 last year. And so that was you know it was– that was probably the best– definitely the best in terms of I didn’t take much money to start and ended up selling for a pretty good amount of money but obviously I had flops as well. I mean I bought– you know I remember buying a store for $15,000 and literally like a week or two later, one of the big Google updates came and just lost all our traffic.

Steve: Oh, man!

Billy: So I mean there is the downside of it too that hurt. You know you buy that for $15,000 and then you are making 200 bucks a month, and you don’t know what happened. So that was definitely a wakeup call that, “Hey, it isn’t that easy to just buy a bunch of stuff and basically print money, which is what we thought we were going to do for a while.

But we scaled up pretty quick. I mean I bought and started fifteen to twenty, over like eight or nine month period. We went from like I think the first month we did like three K in revenue to yu know forty to forty-five K in revenue, probably eight or nine months later. But we were doing all drop ship and so the margins were pretty tight. So you know even if you’re doing forty to forty-five K in revenue, it’s like maybe you have a margin of like ten to twelve K something like that so it was… If I could go back in time, I would have definitely done what you did and basically you know giving product you’ve made yourself, make your own brand, get bigger margins, because we basically had a 100% rely on SEO, whereas we couldn’t make sales because we couldn’t buy media with you know we can’t buy Adwords with the small margins of drop ship.

Steve: That’s actually an interesting point. So from what you just said your margins were on the order of 20% – 25%, is that accurate?

Billy: Yeah, for the most part, I mean it would vary, but you know some stores like actually the French pastry one. Part of the reason we did pretty well was we had slightly bigger margins, so I think we were in the forties for that one, and so we actually could buy some advertising for that. And so all the other ones though we tried and you know we got to like break-evenish, and I’m sure if we’d spent a lot of time we could have gotten profitable, it was the type of thing that you are squeaking out an extra 5% margin after paying Adwords and stuff, it didn’t really interest us because we were in tiny niches.

Steve: Were there comparison shopping engines, and like Google matching center, I think they were around back then, did you guys give those a try or anything?

Billy: Yeah, we tried them we never got a ton of sales, I think we got a handful of sales, but we never got a lot of them from our products

Steve: Okay, so the macaroon site was just purely SEO, and then what about the organic furniture store, was that SEO as well?

Billy: Yap, 100% SEO.

Steve: Okay, amazing. So if you were to do it all over again, given that Google has made all these changes in the past two years, how would you do things differently in terms of customer acquisition and that sort of thing, based on what you’ve experienced in the past?

Billy: So if I was starting today I would definitely take more time and more money upfront to create a product. And not necessarily even create a product, I mean there are ways around it where you cannot be seen white label someone else’s product and just kind of stick a brand on there. But I would definitely do whatever it took to get the margins, you know at least 50%, obviously if you go overseas a lot of times you can get anywhere from 50% to 70%. Some people get even higher, but I would definitely spend the time and money to do that, and then I will spend all other time trying to acquire traffic, and then obviously through media buys, through Adwords, through Facebook advertising, all of that.

I mean there is a lot of untapped media channels, and I am not an expert on it because I have never done it, but I have talked to a lot of people who have. And a lot of people are killing it on buying advertising on sites that earn on Google because everyone knows about Google Adwords.
So everyone buying media is kind of you know they are reaching the point where it’s– I don’t want to say it’s efficient, because obviously people are making profit, But it’s as efficient as you could get because most of the people are trying to advertise there. So there are a lot of channels, like I know people who’ve done really well on Facebook and other forms of advertising that people are just getting used to buying a lot of advertising on, that I would probably spend a lot of time just figuring out where you can make a profit and just scale those media or buys up.

Steve: Interesting, you know what I like about your experience is that you’ve actually chosen to buy all of your stores, whereas I have always had the philosophy to just kind of building my own from scratch and just kind of very gradually building something up. Can you just kind of walk me through, what was on your mind on whether you should buy and how you made the decision to buy versus just start something from scratch?

Billy: Sure, part of that reason was that I was trying to– I had a bunch of money I wasn’t doing anything with, and part of it was two I wanted this to be a passive business. And so I didn’t want to actually do a lot of the scaling up and running the stores and all that stuff. So actually from, almost from day one I had someone who was handling customer service, handling orders, and a lot of dealing with the suppliers and all that.

And so basically, I figured if I bought more and more sites I’d give them more jobs to handle where if I had them started from scratch we couldn’t do a lot at one time. We could slowly start with one store and basically I would be paying them but not having an income from the site yet, because they wouldn’t be making the money yet.

So I almost treated it like in some sense less like a business and more kind like a fund, where I know I can buy a store, I just kind of place into a collection of other stores and it would keep running smoothly. So that was the idea, so obviously it was less of a hail out start-up, really big business and more like, “Hey, there is a bunch of stores you can buy at low multiples”.

Because most of the stuff, obviously we didn’t get as many good deals like the baby store, but there was plenty of deals where we got where we bought for one year income. So if we get to buy a store for $10,000 and makes 1000 bucks a month, and you just kind of plug it in and your goal is to have it obviously at least make a thousand bucks a month. You can make your money back in a year on those so that was the idea.

Steve: Just a side question about just buying sites in general, so what are some of the things you look for outside of just the regular stuff like revenue and profit. Do you actually look at how they acquire their customers? Can you just kind of walk me through some of the things that you look for in a good buy?

Billy: Sure, so I looked at yeah well you know I want to take it back– I look at their analytics, site go, through the analytics I get access, I do want to look at their back end of the store to make sure the owners came through. I do want to look at– obviously if it is a bigger store you try and get bank statements to make sure that you know everything’s legit and not just showing thick orders or anything like that.

But in terms of what you look for, you want it to be– I mean whether it’s on an uptrend or a down trend, you want to figure out why that is. Did something happen in the industry, you know why is it? Is the whole industry turning up or down or just their business? If it is their business, what did they do to create it, is that sustainable? So in other words, if they had some PR campaign and their traffic’s by choosing out of first sales, is it just going to drop off in a month?

And so you know where they may make it seem like, “Hey, look our business is growing.” And if you took a look and just really ask the right questions where, it is a huge traffic spike last year that caused a bigger income boost, and now they are selling based on that multiple, including that income in that multiple, so you want to make sure that you are not buying something that’s going to be obviously at a lower multiple, unless you put a ton more work in. So those type of things where, did they get a Google hit, did they– and I’m sure, you know I’m not really an SEO expert, so if there was anything related to SEO stuff in there, I would probably ask someone else to check it out for me and so…

Steve: So just curious, what are some of the common multiples for e-commerce stores, at least in terms of what you’ve experienced?

Billy: And this is really broad, but so at least for me it was– when sites are very small, let’s say $20,000 or less, lots of times they sell for very low multiples, like for the most part I’d say ten months to eighteen months. Obviously some sell higher, some sell lower, but for the most part that was the range. Then you look at, if sites are…

Steve: Is this self-revenue or profit?

Billy: Profit.

Steve: Profit, okay.

Billy: And then the bigger sites– it’s been a while since I looked at it, but I know the bigger, let’s say 50,000 plus you know 50,000 to 150,000 stores are selling more on the lines of like eighteen months to three years income. Three years is obviously on the higher end, but then even the higher and the higher you get, which seems like if you did the opposite, the higher you get will be low multiples. But it seems like the higher you get there are just more buyers, more people with money that can actually pay higher multiples. This is what it seems.

Steve: And it probably kind of makes sense, their sales and traffic are probably more stable I would guess, once you are larger as well.

Billy: Yeah.

Steve: So that’s actually a good lead into kind of your newest project which is from what you were telling me, like a little micro incubator for businesses.

Billy: Yeah, so I just started doing this probably about five or six months ago. I made the first deal with a couple of guys who wanted to start a design company. So basically the gist of what I am doing is, there is a lot of I guess younger entrepreneurs for the most part that have a good idea or have a current business that’s doing pretty well and they need either funding, and to advice to kind of help get it to the next level.

And so what I’m doing is basically finding businesses that I think have the potential to be really successful. And you know I don’t get involved in the operations very much unless they need help. But for the most part they run the business, they do all the operations, and then I fund them, give the money to scale the business, and then kind of help them to strategize, help them make connections that will help them grow, and just help give them a bigger network and any others. There’s two of them that I’m doing right now, looking in a couple of other ones, but there is just, there is a design company right now and an e-commerce store that I’m doing.

Steve: Cool that’s pretty exciting stuff. So by operating this way you kind of get a large variety of businesses that you get exposure to, and so I think that is pretty cool. And this is all funded from the money that you’ve been earning just kind of from ‘Blue Fire Poker’ possibly, is that kind of accurate.

Billy: Yeah, I mean from playing poker, and Blue Fire and e-commerce stuff, yeah, just had money to invest.

Steve: Cool, so given all of your experiences, what advice would give to some of the newer entrepreneur, some of the people who actually are just starting out or want to start a business?

Billy: I guess the biggest piece of advice that I always tell people is, “Listen to those you aspire to be like, and ignore everyone else.” It’s just one of those things that there is a lot of people, I guess, giving a business advice that are true in business and it is a lot easier, you know, someone who wants to start e-commerce stores obviously if they followed you, they’d probably end up doing pretty well.

But then there is a lot of people that you know a lot of new entrepreneurs don’t know who to follow and so they end up listening from advice from like a hundred people at the same time. And so it tends to be pretty difficult to know which direction to go. I would say, a lot of people don’t need a lot of capital to start. A lot of people think I’ve got to stay in a job or just do whatever it takes to make a lot of money, and then I can start my first business.

I think capital helps, but I think just having knowledge helps a lot more. So if they’re getting a mentorship or just actually trying to execute the business and learning from mistakes and then asking for advice once you hit those mistakes. I think that helps a lot more than just kind of waiting on the side for a long time to start a business.

Steve: So you mentioned a whole bunch of different sources there, so I imagine you read a lot of books, is there a particular book that kind of influenced you one way or the other?

Billy: I’m trying to think. There is a lot of good books, I read a lot of books, obviously most people read this one, so it is probably not a great recommendation, but obviously ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ is a good book for a lot of people, but it is more very, very, very passive. And the one thing people get confused over ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ is, you know they think you start with the ’Four 4-Hour Workweek’, which is a lot of people get into trouble doing that, a lot of times it takes up you know 40-hour work weeks or 80-hour work weeks to basically create a 4-hour work week. But I think that book is a good idea of the lifestyle you can have.

There are other books you know my buddy MJ wrote ’The Millionaire Fastlane’, I think that’s a really good book for people who want to learn how to make large amounts of money and hear what it takes to do so. There is a book called, ’How to Get Rich’ by Felix Dennis, and it’s really good. This guy is a, I think he is a billionaire, and just wrote a book on you know I know that the title sounds kind of scamy, ‘How to Get Rich’ but it’s actually a really, really good book, from a guy who is really rich. I like that book a lot, it’s just kind of he just gives a really broad and honest look at about what it took, and kind of what it’s like. Yeah, this is a couple off the top of my head.

Steve: So, you also mentioned finding a mentor, how do you go about finding a mentor?

Billy: For me, I guess I haven’t had mentors other than just reading a lot from people who’ve written books that are on forums. But for me, I didn’t know where to go at the time, so we just kind of stalk people on forums. And so if there was someone who seemed like they knew what they were doing, I would literally read every single post. So, I mean if someone wrote 2000 posts on a forum, I would read 2000 posts that they wrote. And then I would go to that person and I would say, “Hey, you know you wrote a post like two years ago, and you said this. Why would you do it that way instead of this way?” And I would ask like you know pretty in-depth questions so they knew that I wasn’t just wasting their time and kind of I wasn’t asking them like, “Hey, how do I get rich” type of questions, it was more very specific things and they could tell I’d done my homework, and so, a lot of those people would write me back. They’d give me really good answers.

Steve: And then you would ask to talk with them on Skype.

Billy: Yeah exactly.

Steve: I see a pattern here.

Billy: Exactly, and actually MJ was one of those guys. He used to post back, and this was a long time ago, probably a decade ago, but back on the rich dad forums. And so I would just read all of his posts, and there were probably five or six guys there and I read all of their posts. And then now these days I’m friends with them. We got to know each other through like meet-ups and going to the same conferences and things like where you know back in the day I would just– I didn’t know anything yet, and I would just ask a lot of questions.

Steve: Cool, yeah that’s really good to know. I think being really ingratiated within some sort of entrepreneurship community would greatly help out anyone who is interested in starting a business. Yeah, so I thought I’d just wraps up, we’ve been talking for quite a while. I just want to thank you Billy, do you want to just go ahead and talk about some of the sites and where people can find you online?

Billy: Yeah, definitely. My blog is ForeverJobless.com. I post a couple of times a month. I try and post a couple of times a month on Forever Jobless. I am actually launching a podcast, probably by the time this airs it might be up. I don’t know what it is going to be called, probably something forever jobless. So those are the main two places they can find me on.

Steve: Cool, sounds good. Hey thanks a lot Billy.

Billy: Awesome, thanks Steve.

Steve: All right, take care.

Here is what I like about Billy, the guy knows a ton of people, and he is an excellent networker. And every single time that I chat with him, I learn something new, and he has a ton of great insights and ideas, and in fact the idea of running a podcast contest was his idea, not mine. I just merely took it to improve the overall rankings for my podcast.

For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode12, and while you are on the site, be sure to sign up for my free newsletter, where I’ll teach you the exact steps that my wife and I took to make over a hundred K in profit in our first year of business with our online store. Thanks for listening.

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

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011: Mandy Rose On How To Start A 6 Figure Subscription Box Service For Moms

Happy Mommy Box

Today I’m happy to have my good friend Mandy Rose on the show. Now Mandy runs the popular mommy blog House Of Rose which is an incredibly engaging blog about her life as a mom of 3 kids.

One day, Mandy along with her friend Natalie, decided to create a subscription box service for moms. And within a matter of months, their subscription box service Happy Mommy Box exploded into a six figure business.

Her story is pretty incredible and you have to hear it to believe it. If you are interested in starting your own subscription box service, you must check out this interview. The best part is that both Mandy and Natalie achieved their success without spending a lot of money on marketing.

What You’ll Learn

  • How Mandy and Natalie came up with with the idea for Happy Mommy Box
  • How to come up with products for your subscription box
  • How to source goods for a subscription box
  • The economics behind a subscription box service
  • How they handle product fulfillment
  • How they created a community among moms to help them promote their box
  • How Mandy has differentiated their boxes from the competition
  • How they got their first sale
  • How they used Instagram to promote their boxes
  • How to build up an Instagram account
  • How they decide what to include in their boxes
  • Mandy’s best advice on how to start a blog or business

Other Resources

Transcript

You are listening to the ‘My Wife Quit Her Job’ podcast episode number 11. But before we begin I just want to announce that the winners of my podcast contest have already been chosen. But since the contest went so well, I’ve decided to make it an ongoing giveaway, so every single month you will have the chance to win a 30 minute one on one private consultation with me. For more information go to www.mywifequitherjob.com/contest. And while you are on the site be sure to sign up for my free newsletter, where I will teach you the exact steps that my wife and I took to make over a $100,000 in the first year of business with our e-commerce store. Now on to the show.

Welcome to the ‘My Wife Quit her Job’ podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suites your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the ‘My Wife Quit Her Job’ podcast. Today I am thrilled to have a good friend of mine on the show Mandy Rose, but I have to be straight up honest with you. I kind of have this love hate relationship with her. So, on one hand Mandy is super cool, fun to hang out with and she has incredibly entertaining quotes, but on the other hand this woman cost me a lot of money every year.

Now, Mandy blogs at houseofroseblog.com, and she often puts out incredibly detailed and visual articles about how she re-decorates her house. Now, my wife is actually an avid reader of her blog, and every time one of these posts comes out my wife goes out and buys something. So, one time Mandy posted a room model, and my wife dropped five figures on new furniture, then Mandy posted a kitchen project which could potentially cost me six figures in kitchen re-model cost this year.

And then there is the threats, so, one night we are hanging out at think-on, it’s like 8 p.m., really early, and she was like yawning like crazy. So I started making fun of her big time, because who gets tired at 8 p.m. during conference time. But instead of fighting back, here is how it went down.

So, after bursting on her repeatedly for being lame here is what she said, she said, “You do realize Steve that I have another basement re-model post in the queue, right?” and I was like, “Wh-wh-what did you say?”“And so I would suggest that you stop talking now, otherwise I’ll hit post from my phone right now.” And I said, “Yes mum”, and I shut up right away.

Anyways, the reason I brought Mandy on today was not to talk about her blog, but to talk about her subscription box service, ‘Happy Mommy Box’. Now, her subscription box business has grown extremely fast to the point where she can’t even keep up with demand, and so I invited her to talk about her box today, so welcome to the show Mandy, how are you doing?

Mandy: I am doing great, thanks for that intro, I don’t know if that was a complement or…

Steve: I don’t know what it was, I was just speaking from my mind, and you know…

Mandy: It’s a good thing you have a six figure online business.

Steve: Yeah, otherwise I would be hurting. This kitchen re-model is getting a little bit out of control, but…

Mandy: I take no credit.

Steve: It doesn’t help that your house looks beautiful, so…

Mandy: Hey, I have good budget friendly ideas.

Steve: Yes, you told me how much you actually spent on your kitchen re-model. I was like there is no way that would actually happen in Silicon Valley where prices are like four or five X higher, but…

Mandy: Yeah, see that’s the problem, you just need to move to the mid west.

Steve: Yes, yes, I would love to do that someday. Well, we are not here to talk about my spending and how you cause me to spend money. We are here to talk about ‘Happy Mommy Box’, so why don’t you just give us a quick highlight review about what you are offering and what you are selling.

Mandy: Yes, so ‘Happy Mommy Box’ was actually something that my business partner Natalie, it was all her idea. Basically it is a subscription service for mums, kind of like a batch box or searchers lane or there are so many out there right now, but they have them for every niche. And when we were looking into it, they really didn’t really have anything for mums, and so we are like, “Near”, you know like, we love– both of us have blogs that are geared towards mothers, and motherhood, and we were like, ‘What can we do to encourage other mums’, because really when you come down to it, it’s about the community and you know, lifting each other up.

And so, it was really her idea, but it is a care package service that we do monthly and we send like a surprise box of goodies to mums all over, and it’s about three to four products in the box, and one product is always for the children and the rest of the products are just for the mum, and it is just the way to encourage and inspire mums. Especially whenever you are, you know, you’ve got a new born or you’ve got young kids, just kind of like a happy melody. We call it, ‘Encouraged, Inspired Motherhood at Your Doorstep’.

Steve: So, walk me through, what’s in one of these boxes, for example, last month what did some of these mums get?

Mandy: So, we always have a print in the box, something that you could post on your refrigerator, on a bolten board. Last month there was a bigger print, so, something that you could frame and hang in the gallery wall, don’t tell your wife that.

Steve: Yeah, I have seen your gallery walls by the way, you should see it, I am going to take a picture of my wall downstairs after this and…

Mandy: If they have stuff on it, I don’t even think you mean you need to know.

Steve: It’s a bunch of blank picture frames with just the stack photos, our family photos aren’t even in them yet, but there all already posted on the wall, anyways.

Mandy: Hey! I’ve had that– I have kept that up for like a year, I had a stock for doing that, Phil would be like, “Who is this?” and I’m like oh I just have them.

Steve: Yeah, we’ve had those up for like three or four months now, but anyways.

Mandy: Anyway, so there is always a print, and then, so we always– we include that every month, we have a magazine that we do, and it is just a ‘Happy Mommy Box’ magazine. In that we feature other happy mums, other happy mums that we want to share with our community. We always have a recipe, we have, or just good idea that you can do with your kids, play aids, fun things, you know, to do with your children.

Then there is usually a necklace or some piece of jewelry, earrings, necklace. There is always a kid item, so like, you know, we had this, like, little crown holders or play doll or maybe it’s a kid’s snack, or like a makeup item. They are always just things, you know, things that women like.

Steve: I can’t relate but yeah, it sounds good. So in this magazine then you don’t happen to talk about home re-decorating or anything in there, right?

Mandy: Oh man, you know what, I think last time we did-

Steve: Ah, okay we are definitely not subscribing, that’s going to do damage.

Mandy: Usually it’s not about that though, usually it’s, I think last month it was the Easter issues, so we did, you know, some fun, DIY race projects in there, but most of the time it’s more things that are related to motherhood, not decor.

Steve: Okay, so there is jewelry and sounds like there is something for the kid to play with? Toys to keep him occupied, are they crafted.

Mandy: Yeah, like a book, a play doll, we always like to include something for the kids, because obviously this box is geared for the mums, so we wanted it to be mommy focused, but we always say, you know, when the kids are happy mum is happy. So we want them to feel included, and so, right now we aren’t able to kind of break it down to like sending age rims, like if you have, this box is really for zero to seven-year-olds.

Steve: Okay.

Mandy: Most of our mums have kids that are under the age of seven right now. In the future we will love to kind of be able to, you know, specify if your kid is between this age and this age, we just right now we don’t have that capability. So most of the items are for children under the age of seven, but it’s just a little something happy for the kids too so that they feel included.

Steve: So, do the parents know what they are getting in the box ahead of time, or is it just a complete surprise.

Mandy: No, it really is just a complete surprise.

Steve: Okay, so in that way, actually it makes it even more attractive, right? Because it’s like getting random gifts in the mail.

Mandy: Yeah, it is, it’s really just a surprise box, and you have no idea what’s coming in it, and so you kind of really have to be one of those people that like surprises, you know. If you don’t like surprises this box won’t be for you, but a lot of our mums love that aspect about it, that it is just a surprise box that’s coming to their door.

Steve: So, just for the benefit of our listeners, what has the demand been like for your box so far?

Mandy: You know, it’s been really crazy, we never thought it would be. There would be such a demand, and we knew that we had a lot of readers that wanted something like this, but we never knew how many. And so, currently like we started out just, we want to keep it small and we started by just doing– I think our first month we just did a hundred boxes. And between me and Natalie, my business partner, I’m kind of like the helper and she’s very much the big idea ‘wow’ person, and so she was ready to just blast it out with, you know, “Let’s start with 500”, and I was like, “My gosh, we can’t do that, we don’t even know what we are doing”.

So, we kind of brought it down and said, ‘let’s scale it down and just do a small start and see how it goes, and learn about what we are doing. We just did a hundred at the beginning. We started in, I think our first box was in November of last year.

Steve: Okay.

Mandy: We started sales in October, our first box went out in November, and then every month we’ve just been adding more, because we had no idea, like we started a wait list. So after we did those hundred boxes that sold out for like less than an hour, we started a wait list, because we were like, “Oh my gosh, okay, so people like this idea, we’ve got to find a way to get more boxes.”

And so, every month we’ve added and added and so right now we are doing 500 boxes. We have 500 subscribers every month, and we are trying to add to that even more, but we have over 3500 people on our wait list.

Steve: That is crazy, that is awesome.

Mandy: Yeah, it’s been great.

Steve: So, how much do these boxes go for?

Mandy: They are $29 plus free shipping.

Steve: Okay, and approximately, how much do you spend in shipping, on shipping one of these boxes?Just curious.

Mandy: Let’s see shipping, I don’t have my breakdown, but it’4s between six and seven dollars, a shipping.

Steve: Okay, so that makes sense. Wow, so did you have like a whole factory putting out these 500 boxes, or how does fulfillment work.

Mandy: Yeah, if you call it a factory, like, it was the basement of Natalie’s house, yeah, we’ve got a factory. That’s the part that was still working through. We obviously have different roles in the business, and Natalie lives in Shirley and I live in Illinois. So she’s in working on her end, that’s her part.

So she boxes everything, and ships everything, and I will tell you what, I went to Shirlety in April to help box the April boxes, and holy cow, it’s a lot of work. That was the first time that I had been involved in doing the shipping. But we don’t currently have, we don’t have anybody that we hire, we do it all ourselves.

We do have a great community of women who– Natalie lived in Pennsylvania, when she lived there she had like six other bloggers that were just willing to help, they wanted to come and box it up, and it was almost kind of like a fun girl’s night. And then now that she is in Shirley we have– there is just more bloggers that keep coming out of the woodwork and they are like, “We’d love to come help box your boxes.”

So, right now we’ve been really lucky that we’ve just had girls and women and mothers that are willing to help us, while we are kind of doing it on our own. Eventually we would like to have, you know, some type of a warehouse or-

Steve: You know, I think you guys are doing things completely the right way, like for example, when we started our online store initially, we shipped everything out of our bedroom and we put all of our goods in the garage and you just gradually scale up to the point where you are ready to start hiring people. And I think you guys are doing the right thing.

Mandy: Yeah, I think so too, she just recently, when she moved to Shirley, the place that they bought has like three levels, and so we are using the whole bottom level just for all of our boxes and so that helped. We have kind of a little bit of a space now, but we are still really just doing everything on our own at this point.

Steve: So, let’s talk about these bloggers that are helping you out. So, I know for a fact that they have some sort of incentive as well to help you out and so, can you just talk about how you’ve created this community of people that are willing to help you promote ‘Happy Mommy Box’.

Mandy: Well, ‘Happy Mommy Box’ is something that I think is very different from other box services, because it’s really focused on the community aspect of mums, and so Natalie and I both – like I said – had blogs that, and had readers from our blogs that are all mothers. One of the things that mums and women love is to connect with other mums and women.

And so we’ve really focused our marketing efforts on that rather than on our box and what’s inside it. It’s more like this community of women, they are like, “Oh we are all in this together, and we are getting a surprise box and we feel encouraged and inspired’, and you know, and sharing it on social media.

I think, you know, when you look at other boxes, and you look at searchers lane or whatever, ‘Brickyard Buffalo’ or ‘Batch Box’. I think about those boxes, and to me those boxes are all about the products, because, I don’t have any idea who runs those boxes, I don’t know the people behind who started those companies.

And so that’s how ‘Happy Mommy Box’ is different a little bit, because Natalie and I feel like, up until this point most of our subscribers are people that are buying our boxes because they either read our blog or they know us through our blog, and they love, you know, that we are mums and that we are kind of just putting it all out there and how we are doing it, our struggles. And so I feel like we are different from other boxes in that aspect.

Steve: So this is what I like about your business. You guys put yourselves out there, and your personality really shines through your blog and even all of your social media posts as well. So just knowing how you write and what your personality is like makes me want to buy your products even more. And that’s actually something that some of the other boxes don’t have.

Mandy: Yeah, and we feel like that too, so, we kind of want to capitalize on that, you know, we want to take a different approach and we want it to be about the stories that we can share with each other, you know. Not just about the products that you are going to get in the box.

Steve: Yeah, that’s a very good strategy; I don’t see very many other box services doing that actually. So in that you guys have a unique advantage.

Mandy: Yeah I think so too, thanks.

Steve: So let’s talk about the very beginning because, I know how it’s really scary to actually launch a new business. So when you guys first launched ‘Happy Mommy Box’, you know, how did you kind of get some of your early customers and generate buzz for your product.

Mandy: Well I will tell you this, when Natalie first approached me about doing the subscription box, I was like, I looked at Jeff and I was like, “Absolutely not!” I’d have no time, how would I ever do this, I don’t know what I’m doing; I wouldn’t even begin to know how to do something like this.

And the more I thought about it and the more that I prayed about it, I thought, ‘Man, all these people,” – you know, Jeff and I have a podcast and we interview people online, you know, successful online entrepreneurs, and I was falling into that, you know, the fear of failing. And I was like, “Man, all these advice that I give to other people about going for it and stepping out, and taking risks’, and I was like, I just pretty much contradicted myself, and he looked at me and he was like, you know, I really think that you just need to think about, ‘is this something that would pay out for you, is it something that you want to do?

And if it is, you don’t necessarily know how, you don’t have to know how to do it, you know, you can learn as you go. And so it was– I finally just ended up just saying, “You know what, I think wanna try it” and I knew that was going to mean for me putting back some of the stuff that I was currently doing. So, I was working for Jeff a lot on his blog, so he has a finance blog and I was doing a lot of work for him, I was doing a lot of work on ‘House of Rose’ which is my personal blog, and we have a blog together. I was doing all the groundwork, I was editing videos and podcasts, and I knew that it was gonna mean I was gonna not be able to do some of that stuff.

Steve: I hear Jeff is a lousy boss also. Anyway sorry, go on.

Mandy: Yeah really, you know, that man – just kidding, he is a pretty good guy. But yes so he actually hired help, he hired a virtual assistant to take over some of the stuff that I was doing, and I just kind of put my whole heart into, you know, trying to figure this out. And Natalie and I, neither one of us had any idea how to run a subscription service. So it was very scary.

Steve: So how did you get your first box sale?

Mandy: Well so we started by marketing on Instagram, so-

Steve: Instagram.

Mandy: Her and I both had a pretty decent following, I don’t remember at the time, I mean, it wasn’t huge by any means. I think maybe I had like 4000 Instagram followers, and she probably had like 5000. So not like something dramatic and huge, I mean, a good amount, and we just thought, Instagram to us is just a happy place of, you know, pictures and mums, and you know, just being happy.

And so we started with Instagram. We just kind of put it out there that we were going to start this ‘Happy Mommy Box’ thing and we created a buzz about it at the beginning because, we pretty much told everybody like it is the secret thing. Like sign up for our newsletter if you want more information, and so we kind of created a buzz about it on Instagram, and that was at the very beginning. And then…

Steve: So can we walk, can we go into more depth on that, so how do you– what does it mean to put it out there on Instagram, so did you have a strategy or how did it work exactly.

Mandy: So we just would post kind of, I’m trying to think in the beginning what we actually posted.

Steve: You know maybe we can just link up your Instagram account, all that stuff should still be there, right?

Mandy: Yeah it’s all on there from the very beginning, but we just put out there that we were gonna be doing a ‘Happy Mommy Box’. And it was going to be something that was going to be there to encourage and inspire mums and we were like, you know, if you are a mum and you wanna be encouraged and inspired sign up for our newsletter and you will get to be the first person to know what this is all about.

And so we posted really just stuff about that. And I think in the beginning it was really just pictures of Natalie and her kids, and me and my kids, just kind of how we shared on a personal Instagram, it’s really how we started it. And so It’s changed a little now, but that’s how it was at the beginning, and we just shared about our own lives and our own stories. And so yeah, we had people that were like, amazingly, people that were like signing up left and right for our newsletter. Yeah, so we started it just on Instagram.

Steve: Did you do any marketing on your blog, because you have a pretty big large audience there as well.

Mandy: That’s the funny thing, I can’t even remember when I first posted about it on ‘House of Rose’, but I do remember Jeff telling me like, “You haven’t even talked about this on your blog” and I was like, “You know what, you are right I haven’t”. It was almost like when we started it on our Instagrams, because you know, we promoted it on our personal Instagrams as well, that is how we got people to go to our ‘Happy Mommy Box’ Instagram and follow that.

I didn’t promote it much at the beginning on my personal blog; I think it might have been like a few weeks then, before I even posted anything about it on my personal blog. But I did post about it on my personal Instagram.

Steve: So why Instagram and not your blog versus Pinterest versus Facebook and that sort of thing? Just curious.

Mandy: That’s a good question. I think at the beginning it was just trial, it was one of these things that we were like, “Well, let’s try it on Instagram” and it worked.

Steve: That’s the understatement of the century, go on.

Mandy: So we just kind of stuck with it, I mean, we have a Facebook page for ‘Happy Mommy Box’, and it’s funny because it’s not near as engaging or we don’t have nearly as many followers. It’s just, I don’t know for some reason Instagram was just where it was up for that kind of community of women.

Steve: So how do you build up an Instagram account, just curious, so how did you build up to 5000 followers?

Mandy: I try to think about that and I’m like, ‘how did we get there?’

Steve: How long did it take you to get there?

Mandy: To get to 5000? Let’s see, I don’t know where we are at now, I’d have to look, but I mean it probably took us– let’s see, maybe like four months or so.

Steve: Okay so, four months to build that many followers, so you must have been doing something.

Mandy: Yeah well, one thing that we started doing is we started promoting other mums. So we would share some pictures, we would find other mums that were, who had pictures of them and their children doing fun things or just cuddling or whatever it was. And we would share those pictures on our Instagram and then we would tag them.

And so you know, it was just a way to get other people involved and for people to see like this wasn’t just about us and us being mums. This was about you, and you being a mum, and her and her being a mum and everybody who was a mum felt like, ‘Oh yeah that’s me’, you know, ‘I can relate to that’. And so we just really started sharing other people.

Steve: So, how did you tap into like, the ‘Mommy blogger network’ after that?

Mandy: Well, I think we are lucky in a sense that Natalie and I both had it in there already. I mean, and I wouldn’t say that either one of our blogs are huge by any means. I feel like we do have a good amount of followers and both of us have been blogging for you know at least five years, I think.

And so, we did have readers that are mums, and so that helped because we kind of already had that connection with mums. And so those few mums that saw what we are doing and felt inspired by it, you know, they shared it. So it was really just about word of mouth for us.

Steve: Wow, okay that’s amazing. Did you guys do anything else outside of Instagram and your blog?

Mandy: No, no, we watched a–Jeff and I were watching Shark Tank– this is a few months ago, and there was a subscription service that came on there, I can’t even remember the name of the box. It was like two women who were like, graduated from Harvard and they were on Shark Tank and they were like, “We have 200 subscribers”, and they were like all pumped about it, and they were talking about how much money they’ve spent on marketing. I can’t remember the exact number, but Jeff was like, “Wow babe, can you believe that, like you guys haven’t really spent a dime on marketing.”

And I was like, You know what, we haven’t, we really haven’t had to in the sense that, you know, just with our blog readership, the only thing that we have done is that at the beginning, every month we have given away a box. And because our boxes sell out so fast, everybody is like, “Oh, I want a free box” because you know, some people can’t get in as a subscriber because they are sold out. So I think just creating that buzz it’s helped us. But that’s– giving away a free box is really the only way we’ve spent any money on marketing, and even that is very little.

Steve: So I can tell you from a third party, why your stuff is selling, it largely is because of your personalities. You guys really put yourselves out there on your blogs, and you guys come across as real people, real mums. You don’t pretend to be like a super mum or anything like that, you talk about your trials, you talk about the good times, and you talk about the bad times. And that is just very endearing from someone who follows you. So there is your answer Mandy.

Mandy: All right, I like that. Actually that’s a huge complement, because when I think about other people that inspire me, and I was thinking about this actually before our interview. I was thinking, I am never inspired so much by like celebrities or these big people. I’m always inspired by people who are like down to earth people that I can relate to. You know, that are transparent and putting it all out there. So that’s a huge complement, so I appreciate that.

Steve: Yap, so let’s talk a little bit about the economics a little bit, so how do you get– first of all, how do you get products for your box?

Mandy: So, I’m kind of the brand person I guess you could say, and at the beginning Natalie and I had some relationships with brands that we had just worked with through our blogs. So we just did some brand outreach, and we basically said, you know, we kind of built up on Instagram a little bit first, then we are like, you know, we have the community of mothers, and we are going to be putting up this box. And, I don’t know, people were just like, brands were just all about it, we had ‘Ikea’ in our first box.

Steve: Really.

Mandy: Yeah, Natalie already had a relationship with ‘Ikea’, but they just saw value in what we were doing and they wanted to be a part of it. So at the beginning, most of everything that we put in the box was donated in exchange for a promotion of the brand.

And now that we are building up our capital and we have a little bit of money, now we are being a lot pickier about what we include in our box, and we’re also– we can pay wholesale prices for some things now. But I will tell you this, we have never paid over two dollars per item for anything that’s been in our box, ever. And most of the stuff still is being donated.

Steve: I would imagine there is huge incentives for companies to actually pay you to have their items in your box, right?

Mandy: Yeah, at first it was a little bit harder because we didn’t have any experience and we couldn’t show them how much value it would create for them. And so it’s hard to be, “Hey you know, can you donate this product”, but for some reason, I don’t know, people saw something in it and they were still doing it. Now it is a little bit easier because we have brands that have worked with us that are willing to, say, you know, I saw a huge increase, like we had a brand in one of our boxes a few months ago, that was like,“I had a 30% increase in sales that month from being in your box”. And just from the buzz that was on Instagram about it. So we do have–

Steve: That is crazy, 30%?

Mandy: Yeah, it was a necklace stuff that we included and yeah, so it is good to hear that. And that helps us get other brands and good products in our box.

Steve: So clearly your reach goes further than just the 500 boxes that you are selling a month.

Mandy: Yeah, I think so, I mean…

Steve: Okay, so that means that people are talking about these products and you are generating these buzz, and you have this huge waiting list and it just kind of feeds upon itself.

Mandy: Yeah, I think the buzz is key. One of the things that we feel like has helped us is that every month it does sell out. So it is always like this. It’s kind like when Pinterest started and you couldn’t get into Pinterest, you were on the wait list, and you are like, “Men, I really want in because I can’t get in” it’s like that. Looks like a logical thing. So I think a lot of people with our box are like that. They are like, you know like, “Oh, it’s going sell out, and I need to get in right now.” You know?

Steve: Yeah I know that’s great, that’s like the apple model right there. So let’s say I’m a brand and I want to get into your box, you know, what is your criteria.

Mandy: Really the stuff that we include in our boxes is just things that Natalie and I would both love as mothers. So we have tons of people now. At the beginning, you know, it was more brand outreach. So we were reaching out to brands, and now it is more about weeding out the brands that reach out to us, because we just have tons of brands every month. They are like, “how can I get in the box”.

And you know, that’s kind of the hard part, that’s– my part is weeding out those products that don’t really fit. So we are very picky now about what we include, but our criteria is mostly just, ‘is this something that as a mum I would love, I would wear or I would use’. And really I feel like we are the perfect people to know that because we are mums, and so a lot of the stuff in the boxes is stuff that Natalie and I just love.

Steve: So if there was something that you love, you actually go ahead and contact the manufacturer and get wholesale pricing, so how does that work? So obviously not all the brands that come to you are going to be providing products that you actually like, right?

Mandy: Oh right yeah, we have– actually this just happened last week. I was working with a brand and some of the stuff that they had online I was like, “this looks cute and I think this would be a good fit for our box.” But we always usually make brands send us a sample immediately before we would ever commit, because we want to have the product in our hands and we want to hold it and feel it and see, is this something, you know, does it look like the picture? Because you know how that can be online.

Steve: Yeah.

Mandy: And so we just had this happen last week where, you know, I was like, ‘Yeah this is great’ and then when they sent us the product and the sample was like much poor quality and I was like, ‘This is not what I thought it was.” You know, we had to go back and be like, you know, ‘I am really sorry, but it doesn’t really fit with what we are trying to do right now, and thank you so much.” And that’s the hard part because I like to say ‘yes’ to everything.

Steve: Right, right.

Mandy: But I finally had to learn how to say ‘No’.

Steve: So what is your– how many products are you getting pitched now from month to month?

Mandy: I would say probably each month now, we probably get fifteen to twenty brands that would contact us, yeah.

Steve: And they are competing for like three or four items in the box, right?

Mandy: Yeah, and the way that we have it set up now is, when we work with a brand we basically tell them, ‘You know you are going to be in the June box, or you are the July box, and we need your product by such and such day. And so we kind of curate the boxes based on the brand that we are working with, but the way that we would really love it to work – and this is going to be in the future hopefully – we want to be able to have a warehouse of products.

You know, we want to say if a brand wants to work with us, we want to say, “You know what, sure send us the products you will be in a box in the next three to four months. And we want to be able to curate the boxes with products that we can kind of pick from our wholesale or from our warehouse. But we are not to that point yet, and so right now it’s working.

Steve: Well, you have extra room in your house; I saw some of those bedrooms that were looking quite nice.

Mandy: I don’t know about that.

Steve: So okay, I still have a bunch of questions here. So let’s say you want to start out creating your own subscription box, so where would someone start?

Mandy: Where would someone start, by researching what other people are doing.

Steve: Like say I want to start a ‘man’ box, let’s say hypothetically speaking, well…

Mandy: A ‘Happy Daddy Box’,

Steve: A ‘Happy Daddy Box’.

Mandy: Don’t you do that now, Jeff Rosen is going to do that.

Steve: Oh really.

Mandy: No I am just kidding. We have talked about doing something for the men like on ‘Father’s day’ we might do a ‘Father’s day’ box, that’s in the works, but I’m just kidding, you can start a ‘Happy Daddy Box’ all day long.

Steve: I have no interest, but let’s say I want to start one or something from complete scratch, what would be your advice on where to begin?

Mandy: Well for me it was easier because I had Natalie and so we were able to kind of figure things out together. So I think if you are on your own it’s a little harder, you just have to research. You know, what we did at the beginning was, I know we even reached out to you, because you have an online store and we were just asking questions and kind of connecting with people that were already doing it. So we didn’t necessarily talk to anybody that was doing a subscription box, but we did reach out to people that were selling things online, and just got advice from people that were already doing it. Because I feel like, you know…

Steve: So what were some of these pieces of advice that you got that were helpful?

Mandy: Well, one of them was start out small. It’s helped me be like, “Okay Natalie, you know, we don’t need to go big so start out very small,” just do like a barter test, you know. Because you don’t want to put everything into it, you don’t even know how it is going to go, you don’t even know if you are going to like it, you know.

This is something that when we started, it’s like, ‘are we going to really want to do this every month? Is this something that is going be fun for us? Is it going to be encouraging for other people? So starting out small, I know, we had that advice from– it might have been you or I can’t remember, but we…

Steve: That’s something that I would probably say, yeah.

Mandy: Yeah, I know you gave us lots of good advice, but I’m trying to really remember the advice at the time. It’s such a blur because we literally knew nothing. I know we had– we were lucky in the fact that we had Natalie who knew a little bit of HTML so she was able to set up our site for us. But when we started out we were on burb.com which I had never even heard of, so we had a lot of issues with that.

So, at the beginning it was really all just about trial and error, we had months where we sealed the boxes, and ‘Oh my gosh,’ like we did it the wrong way and there was no way to fix it. So we had to back in and tell all the subscribers that had subscribed you know like, “Oops, you know, we messed up and we really need you to like– we’re going to cancel, we really need you to subscribe here”. And the thing about that is like, ‘that’s okay’ if you only have a hundred people. But if you would start out with five hundred people, you are going to take a lot of people off.

But we made it very clear to our audience like, “Hey, this is something that we’re just trying, and thank you for being patient with us as we learn”. We really had a good response in just the fact that being transparent about it, you know, not acting like we knew what we were doing. We were kind of like, “Hey, you know this is something that we have a passion for but we are not perfect”. And yeah, I just think that people can probably relate to that a little bit.

Steve: So, are there any website– what are you guys using now for your website, are there any packages that kind of handle the subscription model for boxes.

Mandy: Yeah, currently we are on WordPress now thank goodness. So we’ve moved to WordPress, but we are using Woo Commerce and PayPal. So I don’t think that’s probably the best option, but it’s working for us now. We are having– we’re getting to that point where we are having a problem figuring out tracking. You know, tracking our retention rate and that kind of stuff. We are still trying to figure that out and but…

Steve: But right now you have this huge waiting list anyways, right?

Mandy: Yeah.

Steve: So it’s probably not much of a factor right now, I would imagine.

Mandy: Yeah, that’s kind of how we feel about it, it’s like retention isn’t a huge issue to us because we can’t even reach the people that are like willing to buy.

Steve: Just curious though, what is your strategy for people to continue to get this ‘Happy Mommy Boxes’, so what is your retention strategy.

Mandy: Really, our goal from the beginning has just been, no matter what that just kill them with kindness. So we’ve had people who have unsubscribed or who have been disappointed with something that came in the box, and both Natalie and I decided that no matter what it is, whether they are disappointed or they are unsubscribing for whatever reason, we’ve just really been nice about it.

So we’ve never been like, we’ve had people that are like, “Oh you know, I didn’t really like this” you know blah blah blah, we are like, “Oh my gosh, we are so sorry we would happily give you a refund. And every single time that we’ve done that or said that, they have said, “Oh my gosh, no way, I so appreciate you offering me a refund and that’s really great”.

I think the key is just engaging with them and not making them feel left out, because I know sometimes when I order products or subscribe to things online, have you ever had a personal response from the owner of the store, and has it ever been like, “What can I do to make it better?” you know.

So we’ve done that and then another thing that we do is every month we give people an incentive to share their products on social media and on Instagram. So we send out happy– we call them happy mail days. And so we ask people to tag, like hash tag ‘Happy Mommy Box’ things. So then people are sharing what was their favorite product in the box. And we would pick usually three of those people from the hash tag and we’ll send them like star box gift card or a target gift card, or you know, just some kind of encouragement in the mail on top of the box.

Here is another little thing that I think is important, this is something that Natalie did in one of the first boxes, I think it was the second month. She had somebody who had commented on her Instagram it was like, “Couldn’t wait to get a box”, and she had mentioned like, “the only thing better about this box is that it included diet coke”, you know, kind of just joking around, and Natalie sent her that box and included a diet coke.

Steve: Ah nice.

Mandy: You know when she got that, she shared that all over Instagram. And just doing little things like that has really helped us keep the people that we have.

Steve: That is great advice and in fact that’s actually how we run customer service with our online store too. If there is anyone who is disappointed with anything we just give them a refund and often times, you know depending on the situation we just let them keep the product as well, then you don’t have to bother sending it back.

Mandy: Yeah, yap.

Steve: And just a word of mouth that that generates is just worth it in itself. So speaking of customer service, how do you guys handle customer service?

Mandy: I am customer service, I am everything right now, so yeah, I usually– well, we both tag team on the e-mails and the customer service part of it, but yeah I mean, we are kind of, I think that helps though because people feel like, they get to talk to us, the two people who are running the company, you know. And I think that goes a long way. So I just– customer service to me, is all about making sure people get a response.

Steve: So do you guys have a phone number or is it just e-mail?

Mandy: We don’t, we just have e-mail and so right now that’s been working for us. Eventually we would like to have obviously a number that they could call, but right now…

Steve: I’ll be sure to post your cell phone number in the show notes here.

Mandy: Yeah, go ahead and do that, I would really appreciate. If you could tell them to call me in the middle of the night that will be great too.

Steve: Well, you will be up anyway; I have seen how late your kids stay up.

Mandy: I’m actually sleepy now, well, just one of the reasons that I probably feel so pumped about this business. Don’t do that!

Steve: Okay, so let’s see, I’m trying to run through in my head all the things that we’ve covered. So okay, customer service, okay. So let’s say I am starting my box, how do I get brands to recognize me and send me their stuff?

Mandy: You’re starting a box, how do you get brands to recognize you and send you their stuff, well-

Steve: Or does it even matter, in the beginning?

Mandy: I mean, I guess it depends. For us it helps that we had our blogs and so we could– we didn’t have to just say, “Hey, we just started this website called happymommybox.com, you know, here we are”. We could say, “Hey, I’m Mandy from ‘House of Rose’ and I’m Natalie the busy burgee mama. And we’ve been blogging for five years and we have this passion to help mums and encourage mums”, and so for us it was a little easier, I will say that. I think we had an unfair advantage in the sense that we could send people to our blogs so that they could see the success that we had and the community that we had there.

And I think that they knew from that that, “Oh they have a community here, women that are following them and are supporting them, and are engaging with them, that can only carry over into the ‘happy mommy box’ and so, I think it is a little bit, you have to do little bit more ground work in the beginning. If you don’t have that, it’s harder to get brands to work with you.

Steve: Would you even just go out and just buy some stuff and throw together a box, just to see if it is going to sell even if you didn’t really make a profit in the beginning, I don’t know. Just curious.

Mandy: Yeah no, I absolutely think that’s a great idea, I think that if you don’t have that recognition already and you are having a hard time getting brands to work with you, I think absolutely, you know. I mean, you can always get brands to do wholesale you know if you tell them that you are doing a subscription box service and you want to see their wholesale prices and that you are going to buy a hundred products. Most brands are going to be willing to work with you on that. And so you don’t even have to spend a whole lot of money.

I would say too, one of the things that we did at the beginning as we worked with– so in our box we have like two to three main brands and then we always have a small business brand, like an Etsy shop or we always like to feature other mums in our community who are trying to do online business, and who make Etsy stuff, you know. And so I think that’s a great place to start too is look on Etsy at other women who are running Etsy shops, because those mums are really wanting to get their products in the hands of people, and they have a small, small audience, and so they are willing to work with you.

Steve: Okay, that’s really good advice, I not that I am going to be starting ‘Happy Men Box’ or whatever.

Mandy: Well, don’t worry because there is not a lot of men on Etsy, so you would have a profit.

Steve: What do I even put in the box, like razors, yeah turkey, razors, you know, actually I don’t even have to shave that often, I wouldn’t include a razor, I guess. I don’t know.

Mandy: Actually, you know, you can’t do that because there is dollar shave club, right?

Steve: That’s true.

Mandy: Jeff does that.

Steve: Oh does he.

Mandy: He does yeah.

Steve: Well okay, thanks Mandy we’ve already been talking about forty minutes, and I have learned a whole lot about your box business, so, you are very humble, I just want to say that. And deep inside of you, I see this marketing genius and I’m just wondering are there any books that you’ve read or, what’s your background that has allowed you to be such an effective marketer.

Mandy: I don’t know, sometimes I feel like I’m not. You know, I really do because I went to school for business, but I was more into management information systems, and I don’t really have– I am not–I don’t have a back ground in marketing and I wasn’t a marketer. And it’s really just been trial and error and I think the biggest thing for me is just– and a lot of people have a problem with this, but being transparent online and being who you are, and just putting yourself out there. It’s very hard for people to do, and that’s really been my only strategy, all I can do is stay, you know, here I am love me or hate me.

And I’m sure some people hate me, but hopefully more people love me. It is the same when it comes to anything in my life, like home decor. I am not, I don’t have any background in interior design, but it’s just something that I love to do as hobby, and so I get e-mails all the time from people that are like, “Oh my gosh, can you– I will send you a picture of my house, and can you tell me how to decorate this”, and I feel like, ‘I’m so not qualified for that, like I don’t know, I just try stuff and it works, you know, or sometimes it doesn’t work.

And I think that’s important for people to remember too is, I’ve done a lot of things that haven’t worked, and that’s okay. I think you have to do that. I think you have to get past the fear of failing, you know. I was just at the marathon this weekend, I was with one of my best friends, I remember her, I had somebody come up to me at the marathon and was like, “Oh my gosh you are ‘House of Rose’ can I take my picture with you”. And she just felt like, that is so cool, like, I wish I had something that I could like do online that was a like a niche. But her comment to me was, ‘I would have to quit my job to do something like that, and then, you know, I’d have to invest into it, and then I will have to be like, you know…

Steve: That’s a cup out right there.

Mandy: Right, that’s the mentality of so many people is that you know they are afraid to cross that line and to go for it and I think you kind of just have to get past that fear of, you know, this might not work or, you have to take risks to make things happen, and you have to do the work.

Steve: Send that woman my way, actually because you know, I still work full time and I have got three businesses and two kids. I mean you have three kids but yeah, send that woman my way, what a cup out.

Mandy: Exactly that’s– and I was thinking in my head like, “No, you have to work two full time jobs at the beginning, that’s how it works. You know I didn’t do this overnight, and I didn’t, you know, I don’t not work hard, you know, I’m constantly on my lap top, and I’m constantly working and it takes work.

Steve: I hear you. All right Mandy, so where can people find you if they want contact you, for home decorating advice or whatever. I will not be giving this e-mail to my wife.

Mandy: Hey, she already knows that so…

Steve: I know.

Mandy: Yeah, you could find me at houseofroseblog.com. I am at house of Rose on pretty much every form of social media that you can find. If you are interested on getting on our wait list for happy mommy box, we are just happymommybox.com and happymommybox on social media.

Steve: Awesome, well, thanks a lot for your time Mandy.

Mandy: Yeah, I appreciate it thank you so much for having me.

Steve: All right take care.

Mandy: Bye.

Steve: Here is what I like about Mandy, she really is a genuine person, and she really just wears her hat on her sleeve, and as a result she exudes passion for everything that she does. Now, I know that I asked her about tips and tricks with her business in the interview, but the reality is she was just being herself.

For more information about this episode go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode11. And while you are on the site be sure to sign up for my free newsletter where I will teach you the exact steps that my wife and I took to make over $100,000 in our first year of business with our e-commerce store. Thanks for listening.

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

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Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?


If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

010: Farnoosh Torabi On How To Establish Your Own Personal Brand And Become Recession Proof

Farnoosh Torabi

Farnoosh Torabi has established herself as one of the prominent personal finance gurus out there. You’ve probably seen her on tv on popular shows like the Today Show, MSNBC, CNN, Larry King Live, Dr. Oz, The View etc…

Farnoosh is also an accomplished author with many bestselling books under her name.

In fact, she is releasing a book today and I’m happy to be giving away 3 copies of her brand new book “When She Makes More: 10 Rules for Breadwinning Women”.

All you have to do is sign up for my podcast contest and you’ll automatically be entered.

To learn more about Farnoosh, you can find more info at Farnoosh.tv.

Note: Farnoosh and MyWifeQuitHerJob.com are not affiliated in any way. I used my own money to buy the books for the giveaway. Enjoy the interview!

What You’ll Learn

  • How Farnoosh laid the ground work for her own personal brand before she got laid off.
  • How to land a book deal
  • What publishers care about when making a decision to publish your book
  • How to get on television on the Today Show
  • The most important aspect of getting a book deal
  • An inside look at a book publisher
  • The one thing Farnoosh did to land her first book deal.
  • How Farnoosh gets support for her books despite not having a gigantic audience

Books By Farnoosh

Transcript

Steve: You are listening to the mywifequitherjob.com podcast episode number 10. Now before we begin I just want you to know that my podcast give away is ending this week, so make sure you sign up soon. Now, I’m giving away a free lifetime membership to my create a profitable online store course as well as free consulting. Now, my course is the most comprehensive course out there on ecommerce that teaches you how to make money with online stores and unlike other courses I give live lectures and I’m constantly adding new content to the class. For more information about the giveaway go to www.mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch. And while you are there be sure to sign up for my free newsletter, where I’ll teach you how I managed to made over a 100k in a single year with my own online store. Now on to the show.

Welcome to the mywifequitherjob podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suites your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the mywifequitherjob podcast. Today I have a different type of interview for you all. Unlike the other people that I’ve had on the show this particular guest does not own her business in the traditional sense. Instead she owns something much, much more valuable. Unlike a regular business which can go out of business at anytime Farnoosh Torabi of Farnoosh.TV has developed something far more valuable, her own personal brand. And in a way that’s what I have been trying to do with my blog and my podcast but Farnoosh has taken this to a whole another level. Now, Farnoosh Torabi is a personal finance expert, author, speaker and coach.

She’s a frequent financial contributor to Yahoo. She’s been on the Today Show, ABC; she’s written many books includingher latest book which is ‘When She Makes More: 10 Rules for Breadwinning Women’, which we will talk about a little bit later. She’s also written ‘Psych yourself Rich: Get the Mindset and Discipline You Need to rebuild your Financial Life’ and ‘You’re So Money’. Now I’ve even seen her on TV with Jim Cramer of nerd money which pretty cool also. She has hosted her own web series which turn into the number one personal finance series online. She’s been on Remake America, TLC, she’s been on CBS, MSNBC, CNN, Fox, I mean could go on and that could actually probably take the entire interview and I actually want to talk to her today. So, you know, word on the street is that Farnoosh owns what is called the Noosh Empire, so welcome to show Farnoosh glad to have you here.

Farnoosh: Thank you so much Steve that is such an awesome introduction. The Noosh Empire I’m going to take that, I’m going to borrow that for sure.

Steve: You don’t have borrow it. It is already out there.

Farnoosh: I own it. Okay.

Steve: Yes for all those who do not know who you are, can you give us a quick background story, because you have a very interesting back story.

Farnoosh: Well, thanks I hope it’s interesting to your listeners, I mean, I started out, I went to college, I went to graduate school. I studied finance in college, and then I went and studied journalism in graduate school and I combined the two fields to then pursue personal finance, reporting and writing and all of that. Though I found quickly and this was I think my lucky break earlier on, is that I realized that if you want to be a journalist, if you want to be a communicator you don’t have to pigeon hole yourself, you don’t have to be just a writer or just a radio host or just a broadcaster you can do it all. And to implement a sense of entrepreneurship in your career, that is something I learned very early on in my career.

Steve: So let us take it back to the very beginning, particularly I’m interested in hearing you know how this all started. I’m interested in hearing about how you got laid off and that story, but how you got started with a need to establish your own personal brand.

Farnoosh: Sure, so I was working at TheStreet.com and for several years I was helping them with their online strategy, with their video strategy we were having a great time. But you know 2009 rolled around and of course everything was crashing, the sky was falling, the economy was on life support and what we found was people were just losing their jobs left and right. Companies were reducing, reducing, reducing and so, I was also part of that reduction. I lost my job in 2009 and I have to say though it came at a really important time in my career. Up until that point I had been you know working sort of this full time job at The Street but I was also, I published a book, I was freelance writing elsewhere, I was doing TV and I started to see you know that there were a lot of opportunities out there and that there were other people who were completely freelance doing those things. And you know well, I wanted kind of the best of both worlds.

I wanted the 401k that the job would give me, a full time job but I also wanted to experiment and dip my toes in other adventures and I had been doing that pretty well up until that point, and then you got point laid off. And now the question for me became, do I go back to find another full time job to provide me those securities that I thought were really important like 401k and health care, constant pay cheque, or do I just sort of incorporate myself and try to build the momentum that I had build in these other side projects that I had been doing.

And you know 2009 the job market was pretty slum and it wasn’t like I had all these choices. So I just decided and fortunately at that point too, I had some savings, right. That’s really important if you’re ever considering taking a leap into a risky business, or going on your own, venturing out on your own. Having the financial cushion was a peace of mind, and it also allowed me to explore things that I probably wouldn’t have, and to take time to really find my groove again and it wasn’t this knee jerk reaction that I had to find a paying job again right away. So, I thank myself I guess for that. I mean who can ever anticipate getting laid off? But fortunately I had some savings, so I dint have to feel pressure to just take whatever came my way.

Steve: So, it sounds like you had already kind of laid the ground work even before you got laid off. It sounded like you had your book before that happened is that correct?

Farnoosh: Yes, I had my book it came out in 2008 got laid off in 2009, and I guess I just, you know I was doing all these things because I was passionate about them as so many of us do we do these side gigs as sort of passion place. But truly if we want to be strategic about it, it could end up being our next kind of endeavor. Our next full time entrepreneurial endeavor if we really wanted them to be and I think for me what was holding me back was, I was comfortable frankly you know working full time gig. Getting that constant pay cheque and doubling in sort of extra curriculars like the book and what not.

And also I was a little scared frankly of what if I truly leave my job voluntarily and do this other stuff full time, and you know what would that look like, and would I be able to feed myself, and fortunately the decision was made for me getting laid off. I have written about this experience and looking back, obviously at the time you don’t feel this way but looking back was certainly all right this is a decision that I had no control over I couldn’t beg for my job back. Even if they you know really felt bad for me, but it worked out.

Steve: Yeah, so let’s take a step back and let’s talk about that first book, so had you been on TV at the time too before your book?

Farnoosh: Well, I had been on TV as a reporter. So, you know after I graduated from grad school I worked in Money Magazine where I did a little bit of TV as a correspondent for money. But then I went to work for a broadcasting station in New York where I became a producer, and then I ventured on camera reporter talking about money and business. So I was comfortable in front of a camera as a deliverer of information, but certainly to now be an author and be asked to come on TV to give advice was a whole other ball game and I definitely had to get media trained for that to speak in a way that you know with money it can be pretty obstruct and when you are on television your goal is to make it as simple and hopefully as visual as possible so that was the training for me that I had to take on that I wasn’t necessarily trained in before. Even though I was comfortable on TV the presentation had to be a little altered and I think I just went for it you know. I kind of threw myself in to the deep end and learn how swim my way up to the top. And it was, if you look at my very first TV head, I mean I’m embarrassed to even look at these days, it is just…

Steve: We will be sure to post that.

Farnoosh: Okay, great. I’m sure you can find it on YouTube. It was like my very first interview. I was on the Today Show, I am– we are talking about my book and I think Meredith Viera was interviewing me and I think I called her old. And it was just, I mean everything that I– it was like my worst nightmare come true. But actually I finished the interview and when it was over my producer said “good job we will have you back” and I was like “really? Were you there, did you just watch what happened?” I think in our heads things go a little bit more horribly than they actually do on camera. The key I found was just to continue smiling and hopefully that would defuse any of the like awkward energy that I was sending out from my conversation. But I don’t know, someone was looking out for me that day and it didn’t totally destroy my future career in television, but it definitely felt like a horrible experience in my head.

Steve: Sure, so I’m sure at least one of the questions I have in my mind is that, you know how do you actually find someone who is going to publish her first book and how do you actually get that opportunity to be on TV in the first place?

Farnoosh: Okay, really good questions. I’d say writing a book, now you can self publish and back then when I wrote my first book it was not something that was considered easy to do or successful to write your own book and who was going to publish it, you really needed like a traditional publisher in order to get the street credit that you wanted to get the interview. So I think that, you know these days publishers wanted to care about a couple of things. They care about, they care about obviously that you have a really, really enticing, compelling, interesting story to share whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, but also they want to know why you as the author? Why should you be the person who tells the story and especially with nonfiction obviously, you know what makes you the expert, what makes you the guru, what makes you, someone who is going then to be able to bring this story to market and sell it, right.

So it is not like just you know, Farnoosh has a really cool perspective on money, it’s that oh she also has relationships with people in the media or she has a blog and it gets x many millions of hits a year. Or she has this podcast that gets lots of downloads. They want to make sure that you are marketable. And that you can help them market the book because, and this is again going the traditional book publishing route because publishing houses are overwhelmed, understaffed. They really rely more and more these days on their authors to support the marketing and the promotion. So it’s not, I would say it is 50% of your proposal is how you are going to sell this book successfully, you know.

If you give speeches, if you go to conferences, if you have relationships with co-operations that might get bulk book buys, if you’ve got a huge online audience that’s conditioned by your goods, that is all important to mention because that’s ultimately what’s going to give you a good advance and really get you the book deal. And that’s so unfortunately I think what separates some other authors from getting published and others not, there are a lot of great authors out there with great stories. But if no one knows who you are, and you are kind of hiding in a hole, it’s very hard to just rely on word of mouth, these days to get a book sold. You really need to get out there and make efforts well in advance of the book coming out to get people aware and excited about your book.

Steve: So let’s talk about your first book then, so had you already had an established audience for yourself?

Farnoosh: Somewhat, I think, you know, certainly when I was pitching the book, the publishers were excited about the fact that I worked in the media that was a plus, they considered a plus. I think they were hoping that my savvy in the industry would get me you know would the book in the right hands. I knew producers, I knew writers, and when I sold the book ultimately I had just moved over to The Street.com, where Jim Cramer had generously offered to write the foreword to help endorse it so that was a huge, huge help.

I don’t think I could have gotten the book published in the manner that I did if it wasn’t for his vote of confidence and he really wrote letters to the publishers and they were like you know, we’ll help her market this in and I mean credit yeah Jim was really super instrumental in helping me launch my career, in a lot of ways and with that book. And the book later took on like a life of its own and it has since you know helped me with other things, but I owe him big time. So that was for me and that was something that my agent recommended, he said “you know you’ve started this company, have you met Jim Cramer yet?” I said “no I just started like two weeks ago, I know my editors, and you know Jim is the founder, but he is a busy guy I have not run in to him in the office”.

So I actually made the request through my editor in chief to see if Jim would read the proposal and tell me what he thinks and he if he would be willing to do something, maybe a foreword or a chapter. And he took time you know I was like oh gosh he hated it, it was taking weeks before I heard back and I remember it was around thanks giving, I got a– my editor was like he read it, he loved it, he said he will do whatever you want him to do for the book.

Steve: Wow that was awesome.

Farnoosh: I was like what, so that was the lesson, right, like ask the scary questions. I was scared to death to as Jim Cramer to help me. I hadn’t even met him you know. So it was like, I felt like it was really premature for me to do that, but you know I took a bold chance and I was prepared for no and I got another world, so it was such a…

Steve: That’s actually a great lesson, you got to ask the question otherwise you may never know whether you are going to get results or not.

Farnoosh:Yeah absolutely, taking the fear it’s just you know it can hold you back but sometimes I always say like the fear of the unknown is worse than just the fear of failing. You know like I’d rather just fail and have an answer than to never try and feel like I just you know I’m just stuck.

Steve: You know in a way this is just like me starting my podcast. I’ve asked actually asked a few bigger names and I have gotten denied, and you know I plan on asking them again once the podcast gets a little big larger. So let’s talk about TV, how did you get your first TV segment on the Today Show?

Farnoosh: Well that was thanks to the publisher, you know I just spent all this time talking how my publishers really depend on their writers, but I will say that even though they booked that for me, what ultimately got me their attention at the Today Show because you know Today Show gets a ton of book requests, author requests, interview requests. Every day they get like sacks and sacks and sacks of books. Well when I was 20 years old 21 years old I had an internship at Money Magazine and as part of that job I worked in conjunction with the Today Show because Money and Today had kind of editorial partnership.

So I was in constant communication with this one producer of Today Show and helping her with our content and our guests that were coming over to talk about Money and I remember we would talk– I mean I would work all nights sometimes for these assignments and she remembered me and we had met. And so fast forward you know seven years and my book lands on her desk, this producer of The Today Show. And she recognized my name, and she recognized me and called me and said “did you write this book I can’t believe it, it’s been so long you have come so far. I can’t believe it”. Now, so that was definitely helpful because had I been a really a crappy intern when I was back at Money, she would remember me as this like unreliable, you know silly person who you know, oh she wrote a book but I don’t have good memory of her so you know so well good luck to her.

But she actually, you know was excited to hear that I’d written this book, and had good memories of working with me. So that helped move the needle but it wasn’t a guarantee, I wasn’t going to get on the show just because she liked me. You know she needed to prove to her bosses that I was ready for TV. So she asked me for any kind of tape that I had that I could produce that showed me on camera looking comfortable and relaxed and articulating. So I just scrambled and put together whatever I could you know from my days as a reporter.

The one CNN hit that I did when I was 22 at Money Magazine and sent that to her, and I got the call that they wanted me on the date that, that book launches. I think I just– I think I fell back in my chair when I got that email because on the one hand I was so excited, I mean you really like you know there’re moments in your life you feel like this is my break.

Steve: Yeah.

Farnoosh: But you are also scared to death. And I had all these feelings at the same time.

Steve: So, there are some good lessons to be taken from what you just said. So one thing is you know should always do your best and never burn any bridges because you never know when someone you meet might be able to you know help you later on in life.

Farnoosh: Absolutely. I can speak from that; I can speak to that in so many ways, but that was probably the biggest example you know when you are, especially young kids today when they are out there working, internships, or in college you know there is so much more life ahead of you but the relationships that you establish, or even just people you interact with casually sometimes can be the people that will help you go from point A to point B in the future, and you should be prepared to do that for others as well.

Steve: Yeah, you know I know that I’m going to do my best to help you promote your book after this. No strings attached or anything you know after chatting with you a little bit I already like you and I very much respect you, and so I’m going to do whatever I can to help you out.

Farnoosh: Oh my gosh. Thank you so much and of course I want to help you out too. So let me know how I can ever return this huge favor.

Steve: So we have these listeners out there, you know a lot of them are just starting out, and so if you have any pieces of advice for people who want to follow your same path. You know what advice would you give them?

Farnoosh: Well, if you are interested in writing a book and I don’t know if up your audience wants to primarily do financial books or other books. I would say and I was just giving this advice to another hopefully future author, we had coffee the other day, she was struggling over her book proposal. My advice would be to obviously you know every book has it’s facts and it is important to make the book educational, or service driven if it is in the nonfiction world, but at the same time again it is about your voice right, why you? Why are you bringing this book to attention and why are you best the person to share this story.

And so, going to a pretty vulnerable place sometimes it is important to unearth some of the stories that in your life really influenced you that might relate to this topic that you are writing about. Readers really appreciate authors that are transparent, that are open, that show vulnerability, because people, I find out that, that is not something that you will often hear because people think like well you are the author you should be the expert, you should just be the authority and you know, not show that that you have weaknesses like. I totally disagree, I mean even with my new book you know I am helping women with their partners in the event that she makes more, and I’m in this situation and I’ll be first to say it has not been easy for me.

And you know I’ve gotten mixed advice in the process of people saying you know may be you shouldn’t like say that you have this insecurity because you know if you are supposed to tell people what to do, you are supposed to be the strong one and I disagree with that. I think you know certainly, we all have insecurities and I think I’m not a complete mess; I am not coming to market with this book like completely distraught. I have moved on, but it’s just that I think sharing that you are human, sharing that you have a connection with that audience is so important. So don’t lose that perspective and really cultivate that if you can in your book writing process.

Steve: That’s good advice, yeah. So for people just starting out from what I’ve gathered from what you said so far, it almost sounds like you need a following first before you even consider writing a book, is that accurate or?

Farnoosh: Yeah, but it doesn’t have to be huge following. You might have just a 1000 people on your blog and I know that sounds even– I just started the whole online process of getting people to join newsletters and stuff. So, I’m completely damp founded when people say like they have like 500,000 subscribers. It’s like I’ll never get there, I just have my you know, I’m starting at a much smaller number but, I think it is quality not quantity right. You could have half a million people coming to your site but how many of them are really engaged. So, but if you’ve got a really good core audience that you know is commenting and replying. You can tell by their engagement that they are really quality followers and readers, that goes a long way and that is something you want to present your book proposal.

If you’ve got a really active twitter handle, if you are on face book, if you are giving speeches, it doesn’t– you don’t have to be a traditional correspondent to get a book deal, you know that’s not what we are talking about. We are just saying that you have a loyal and dedicated audience and that you are engaged with that audience, then that could hopefully get you the attention of publishers. But even if not, you want to go the publishing route, you could to go the self publishing route. I don’t know a whole lot about that, but certainly people are doing it successfully. I just actually spoke to a woman who in her spare time she writes romance novels, really short romance novels, but did you know romance novels are one of the hottest book categories. I mean like no pun intended but like these books go really well.

Steve: You don’t have to tell me that, my wife reads them all the time.

Farnoosh: Really?

Steve: And then I keep telling her, “Look the romance is right next to you, why do you need to read these books.”

Farnoosh: Right? Like I know, I don’t know, I was totally schooled in this. And she’s like yeah so, I write; I’ve written a couple of books, I sell them for like 299 on Amazon and you know she makes a few thousand bucks. Every time she writes these books and they sell really well. And it is a complete side project, it takes her like you know a few months to put them together, she loves to write, it’s like her passion. So, I say you know that is another way to be a successful author. And she could be because she’s identified a niche market that people are always wanting to read you know the next great book and she prices it really low, and it comes easy to her, it’s not like she has to hire people to do this. And you know to the return is quite good for her. And who knows what it will all turn in to, may be like somebody will read her book and will be like I should turn this in to a movie.

Steve: Yeah, that’s how it happens right?

Farnoosh: Right.

Steve: So you mentioned that, you said your online presence is really small and which I find hard to believe, but who are the people actually buying your books in bulk right now?

Farnoosh: People who are reading the reviews right now that are going on as we speak you know between now and May 1st when the book comes out. There is already a tonnage of articles out there– not a tone some articles out there. But I’ve also been contacting people who have bigger online audiences than I do and saying “hey I’ve got this book coming out, how can we partner up, let’s get on the phone, and I’d like to help your business, you know if you will be willing to review my book or” what I’ve done is I created a promotional kit. I mean I’m going to do actually, I think probably when I go to Thinkon this Fall, I might actually give everyone the play by play of this latest book launch, because I have learned so much about the importance of online marketing, and for me in a while I work online I don’t have this like huge newsletter database.

It’s just not something that I have focused on but it is the new kind of direction for me. But, there are people who have been online for 10 years and they’ve got so many polarizing and really loyal fans. So, I find these people and through hopefully introduction or referral introduce them to the book, give them all the goods, give them the book, I give them you know images, I give them potential blog posts already written, I give them copies for newsletters and emails that they might want to sent out. I give them badges and all these stuff and so they kind of I arm them with everything. But then still I say you know, if there is anything else that I can provide you that would be a better fit for your audience maybe it’s a podcast interview, maybe it’s a Skype interview, or it’s I interview you and you give that to your audience.

Steve: I have to say you have handled this book launch very thoroughly and in a very organized fashion, I was very impressed by that.

Farnoosh: Thank you.

Steve: So let’s talk about your latest book now. It’s called ‘When She Makes More’ and it is a guide book targeting women that earn more in their relationships than their husbands. Now, technically the business that my wife and I started together you know makes more than I do, perhaps this is a plus to her but personally when I was younger, I often dreamed of meeting that sugar mama like yourself Farnoosh.

Farnoosh: Well, thanks.

Steve: So what’s the back story behind the book?

Farnoosh: The back story is that we know women are outstanding in the workforce, we know that women are making more in their relationships. I think we have seen the headlines by now. There have been some great books actually written about this trend, but as somebody who is living this reality, and as someone who works in the financial space, who see other relationships, struggle with money and particularly with this kind of new normal dynamic of she making more. I felt like we were not having the conversation of really how to make these relationships thrive. Certainly there are couples out there that do it effortlessly. We need to laugh, I know that was not easy to come.

Steve: That was very effortless.

Farnoosh: Yeah. When you look at the statistics Steve, you know. If you look at the divorce rates, if you look at the infidelity risks women who make more have a 50% higher chance of experiencing divorce, a higher chance of infidelity in their relationship. If she’s single and does well financially, she is less likely to get married. And she does more house work when she’s married and makes more. I mean there is all this, all these difficulties, all these complexities that are specific to women who are bread winners.

Steve: I would imagine that your target audience, a lot of them must be female entrepreneurs, right?

Farnoosh: Many are certainly, and I find that actually with female entrepreneurs who are running their households financially at some point the conversation in that relationship does turn to, may be my husband should join me in my business because it is the only we shall see each other.

Steve: Right, okay.

Farnoosh: And it’s one way to for them to kind of you know, it doesn’t work for everybody, but then I have interviewed a lot of female business owners who whether business has really taken off and in order for them to really maintain a relationship of intimacy but also like to have their schedule sync up is to have him kind of participate in the business somehow.

Steve: So here is an interesting fact and I’ve never revealed this to anyone thus far, but I run this class where I teach people how to start their own businesses and I usually wouldn’t announce this publically, but there has actually been a couple of divorces among the students, and I don’t know if it has anything to do with the business itself, but I would imagine that running a business since I run a business with my wife, we’ve actually had many fights. We never fight, but we have had fights over the business because we run it together. You know it’s just interesting that there is this other dynamic that you are talking about in your book can lead to a lot of conflict in a marriage as well, so? .

Farnoosh: It can I mean money, oh look I would like you to read the book and I don’t want to like you know bore your listeners ears to death with this.

Steve: Cool, I will definitely pick up the book when it comes out.

Farnoosh: Yeah.

Steve: So we’ve talked about a lot of different things, you know I usually like to let my interviews just kind of wander and go on different directions, but I think we’ve picked up a lot of good lessons today. From one thing, I think the most important lesson that I’ve learnt is that, while you are working you should be in the same process kind of establishing your own brand. And in my opinion for you Farnoosh, you’ve established such a large brand at this point that you are essentially recession proof. Let’s say you decide to go back in the work force, it doesn’t matter if anything, if you get laid off or whatever because you will be able to find other opportunities because of the name that you have established for yourself.

Farnoosh: Well thanks, I mean and I think that’s the goal for everybody right is to how to make yourself recession proof. No job is a guarantee, but if you have skills and other revenue generating projects from the side to fall back on, you are far more, you are going to be far more financially stable, far more confident too in yourself, in your abilities to get back out there and find something great. And so I encourage everybody to do that you know whether even if you are just selling craps on Etsy, you know not even think junks, I know that’s not an easy thing to do but you know something that is of minimal time but do it, you know because first Etsy could be a really fun outlet for you, but who knows what it could turn into.

Steve: So, just curious and you don’t necessarily have to answer this question, you are not working for anyone else at the moment is that correct?

Farnoosh: Oh well, I have clients; I mean I have I work with– I write for Money Magazine, I write for other online publications. For 3 years I was working with Yahoo doing videos as you mentioned in your intro, so I, you know I am in self, I am self incorporated, I do have these partnerships right, with other entities to bring financial advice to them and to their audiences.

Steve: Okay.

Farnoosh: So that’s how I run my business. I am sort of this, I guess financial media production company.

Steve: Okay.

Farnoosh: And whether your company needs a webinar, or a speech, or a video, or an article, I can provide that.

Steve: Okay. Great so if there is anyone out there who wants to get in contact with you, how can they find you?

Farnoosh: They can go to my website which is farnoosh.TV and you can learn about what I do, all the different work that I do with partnerships, and if you want to contact me directly email Farnoosh@farnoosh.tv. The new book is called ‘When She Makes More: 10 Rules for Bread Winning Women’. That site is when she makesmore.com and so we’re running a really fun promotion between now and the launch day on May 1st where if you order the book, pre-order the book, you will earn bunch of freebies and there are some really bonus prizes that we are giving out, a limited number but you could win. You know gift pads to taskscribeit, and Evernote and you could come to the Today Show with me, so there’s lots of fun stuff. So I encourage people to explore that site and see if they are interested to buy a book, and hopefully if you have any question about it, I just gave how you can reach me so hoping to hear from people.

Steve: Yeah, I will go ahead and link up actually all of your books and the show notes but I’ll particularly highlight that promotion that you’re doing for your latest book.

Farnoosh: Thank you, thank you so much.

Steve: So thanks a lot for taking the time to be on the podcast. It was a pleasure.

Farnoosh: I had so much fun Steve, thank you and hoping, wishing you continued success with your podcast you know it’s been extremely popular and hopefully greater things to come for you as well.

Steve: All right thanks a lot Farnoosh.

Farnoosh: Thanks Steve.

Steve: Isn’t Farnoosh cool? Now she’s established herself as an authority within a niche and as a result she gets television appearances on the Today Show very regularly. And she had the fore sight to pursue her passion and go launch a book before she got laid off, so she had a foundation to go out on her own. Now I’ve no doubt that her brand new book will do well. And speaking of which, I am going to be giving away three copies of her book to three lucky listeners who signed up for my podcast contest. So, not only do you get a chance to win a lifetime membership to my course and free consulting, but you could also win her book as well. For more information go to mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch. Thanks for listening.

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

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Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?


If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

009: Laura Roeder On The Right Way To Manage Social Media For Your Small Business

laura roeder

I’ve known Laura Roeder for quite some time and when it comes to social media marketing, she is my go to gal. In today’s podcast, Laura will teach you the proper way to run social media for your company and how she turned her virtual company into a social media powerhouse that makes over 7 figures per year.

Laura runs LKR Social Media where she sells various courses on how to become “business” famous. Check it out!

What You’ll Learn

  • Laura’s most effective social media outlets
  • How Laura struggled early on with her business
  • How she turned things around to have customers come to her.
  • How she started out at ground zero and what she did to gain traction early on with her business.
  • How Laura grew her twitter following from nothing to tens of thousands of followers
  • The biggest mistake people are making when it comes to social media
  • How Laura makes new friends online
  • How to establish your social media accounts from ground zero.
  • How to get noticed on Twitter
  • How to use Facebook effectively

Websites Mentioned

Laura Recommends

Double Double: How to Double Your Revenue and Profit in 3 Years or Less

Transcript

You are listening to the mywifequitherjob podcast episode number nine. Now before we begin I just wanted you to know that my podcast giveaway is ending this week, so make sure you sign up soon. Now I’m giving away a free life time membership to my ‘Create a Profitable Online Store’ course as well as free consulting. Now, my course is the most comprehensive course out there that teaches you how to make money within online store. And unlike other courses that are out there, I give live lectures, and I’m constantly adding new content to the course.

For more information about the giveaway go to www.mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch, that’s mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch and while you are there be sure to sign up for my newsletter where I’ll teach you how I managed to make over 100 k in a single year with my own online store. Now, on to the show.

Welcome to the mywifequitherjob podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suites your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to mywifequitherjob podcast. Today I am really happy to have Laura Roeder on the show. If you don’t know who Laura Roeder is, well you should. She runs ‘LKR Social Media’, where she creates training courses for small businesses that want to learn how to leverage social media and online marketing. So here’s what’s cool about Laura; she runs a virtual team, consisting of members that live all across the world and she has a really interesting story. She started out working in an Ad agency, got really fed up, and decided to start her own business where she absolutely struggled.

Now she started out as a web designer, having to scrap her way to get clients, she got fed up again, and decided to change her business model, and instead have the customers fight to come to her. O today her business earns 7 figures, is very flexible, scalable, and the best part is, she can work wherever she wants. And in fact she is so cool that she even got her husband to take on her last name instead of the other way around. I have no idea how she pulled that off. Anyways, I’ve known Laura for quite a while now, and it’s awesome for me to finally be able to interview her online. Welcome to the show Laura.

Laura: Thank you, thank you very much, that was a great intro except, he didn’t really change his name. He uses my name because his name is un-Google-able. So he sort of uses my name, which is good enough for me, I’m very happy with that.

Steve: Okay, but his online persona does take on your last name, right?

Laura:Yes, that is true.

Steve: Well played Laura. So can you give us the quick background story, and tell us how you make a living online.

Laura: Yes, so like you mentioned, my business LKR Social Media sells trainings to entrepreneurs about what I call ‘Creating Fame’ making yourself business famous using social media and online marketing. And it’s just something that I have built up, bootstrapped and slowly over time, moving from web design to social media consulting to now a totally scalable business.

Steve: So what’s cool about this is, you started out as a web designer, and you really had to scrap for your clients, right.

Laura: Yes, the story I always tell is, remembering standing in the snow in the street in Chicago. I used to live in Chicago where we have the most terrible winters, and I would have to wait for the bus to go meet with a client in person. To give them my proposal, and try to get them to sign up with me, and I was so broke I had to ride the bus, but I would try to wear my little heels and my little business outfits, which are not very snow storm friendly. So, it was not the most glamorous time of my life.

Steve: So how did you turn it around, and actually get people to start coming to you?

Laura: Well, I really saw that so much of what I was doing was starting from scratch. I think this is something a lot of business owners can identify with. I really had this big epiphany that no matter how hard I was working, every single client, every single prospect I was starting over. You know it didn’t matter how great a job I did convincing the last guy, I would meet someone new that I tried to pitch my services to, and I had to do the whole thing all over again. Which when you are selling a service can often take months and months, going through the proposal process, and trying to get them moving on the project if maybe they don’t care so much about getting it moving.

And I really started thinking about how can I make this smarter and more leverage, and even though I was a web designer, and I was talking to my clients a lot about online marketing, I really wasn’t doing of it for myself because I think I had this mental block like, I am a local business, and people have to meet me in person before they buy from me because that is how it always operated.

So I decided to quit doing web design and move to a new business model, and when I started doing social media, I really just drew a line in the sand like, ‘I’m not going to do this un-scalable marketing tactics, I’m going to find a better way.

I started going to networking events for my clients. And networking events are actually really great when you are starting out, especially when you are starting your first business, because you can meet people that will give you advice, and help you, and meet clients and stuff. But I was sick of going to them, and they are not scaled at all, so I am like, I am going to do a newsletter, I am going to do a blog, I am going to do a social media marketing, things that don’t involve me going out there meeting with people one on one.

Steve: So that’s interesting, you just mentioned that you don’t go to networking events, like conferences and that sort of thing or…

Laura: Well, I go to conferences now, so I’m talking about more when I started out I would do things like, do you know there is an organization called B&I, and there is one called ‘Bids Club’, where you meet at 6 a.m. every week. Any ideas that you find, the leads for other people in the group, like I am talking about really painful.

Steve: Right, yeah, that sounds very painful.

Laura: Yeah, painful networking. I like going to conferences that are fun and learning things, I like doing that.

Steve: Okay, so you are getting fed up trying to find clients. So let’s go back to the very beginning. So how did you start out building this business and making yourself well known?

Laura: So I started– so when I started the social media business, I did have a few hundred e-mail addresses that I’d collected over the past two years running my web design business. And these were people I mean, I had met all of these, all 200 of these people in person at networking events around Chicago. And I think that’s an important little tidbit is you have to start wherever you are with whatever you have. A lot to people feel so frustrated especially with social media.

It’s so frustrating tweeting when you have ten followers, you know even when you have a hundred followers, it’s really hard to get putting in the time and effort, feeling like no one is listening, but we all start with zero. We all start zero, then ten, then twenty, then a hundred, and you have to keep putting in the consistency that’s the only way that it can grow. So that’s what I did. Even though the people– the e-mail addresses I had, they had come to me for web design and not social media, I figured, you know what, close enough, they have businesses, they’ll probably be interested. So I started from there, I started a newsletter that was really high quality, and was at the time a little bit different than what a lot of people were doing with newsletters, and I asked them to spread the word and they did. People forwarded it around, people found it helpful, and that’s kind of how things started taking off.

Steve: So, was there any way that you kind of jump-started this list, or was it just totally slow and steady organic growth.

Laura:It was really more of steady organic growth. I actually I was just looking up at my kind of growth tracks for my social media accounts. I was looking at it for like marketing for myself, so I can put this little chart on the page showing how I’ve grown over the years, and I was actually kind of surprised looking at my Twitter account. I got on twitter in 2008, and when you look at it as line graph from 2008 till now, it’s actually a really, really steady upward line. It’s not like one day I had this huge spike and then it took off from there, and I think that’s good news. I think it’s really reassuring me, you don’t have to have some huge lucky break, obviously that helps if it happens to you, but for me it’s been, I’m so huge on consistency. You know beyond social media everyday, I blog every week, put a newsletter out every week, I’ve done that for five years and it’s paid off.

Steve: So you have your newsletter, so what did you– which social media avenue did you start using next?

Laura: It was Twitter, and at that time actually Facebook pages didn’t even exist yet. And so I got, I jumped on that bandwagon as soon as they were added like back when they were fan pages, and you became a fan and then you turned them into ‘likes’. So Twitter was the big think for me starting out. I started using Twitter just for fun and then after that I was kind of using it to connect with local businesses in Chicago, and then Los Angeles when I moved to L.A. So I started gathering I’d talk about small business, so it started to sort of gathering a following of entrepreneurs and people who are interested in small business on Twitter.

Steve: So you know, a lot of people actually are kind of confused by Twitter, so if you could just go into a little bit more depth in how you used Twitter to actually gather your following, that’ll be great.

Laura: So a few of them are kind of like basic things you need to know about Twitter. One, with any social media tool, you need to spend a lot of time interacting if you want to grow a following. A lot of people make the mistake of sending out their status updates, especially now that there are all these tools that make it really easy. You check out something like buffer where you put up your updates, send it out to all your networks at once.

Some people just think, okay, I have sent my updates and now I’m done and never even checking on Twitter itself and see what people are saying, and how people are replying, and replying to others. But for social media to be effective, especially when you are starting out, you really need to make friends on social media, you need to chat to people. I mean, you and I have been online friends for a few years now, I don’t really know…

Steve: I don’t remember actually exactly when I found you, but yeah, it’s been a while for sure.

Laura: Yeah and one of– I think I e-mailed you first. I think I just sent you ane-mail, and I was like, I like your website, I think that’s how we met.

Steve: I don’t know, maybe. I just remember exchanging guest posts at one point, but that was like many years ago actually.

Laura: Yeah, so like I do that all the time with people that I like their blog, I like their business or I like what they are up to. I’ve always done that, and I still do that. I just send them an e-mail and I’m like, “Hey, I think you are cool, hi.” And you know it’s nothing, sometimes they don’t respond, sometimes it develops into a friendship where we keep in touch every so often and hopefully get to meet in person at some point, but that’s really the simplest way to think about social media and that’s surely how it works. Just start chatting to people that you find interesting or people who seem interested in you and what you are up to, and making friends is how your audience starts growing.

Steve: So you have this– let’s say you have this brand new Twitter account, and you have zero followers, how would I go about going and making friends when I have like no clue whatsoever?

Laura: Yeah, so the most important thing first of is that you need to send people to your Twitter account. So some people are going to start following you within Twitter. And really the way that that happens, I mean the simplest way that it happens is the re-tweeting. When someone else re-tweets your tweet, your tweet goes to all of their followers. So re-tweets are just really cool, really powerful way to get in front of existing audiences. You know, someone can re-tweet you and they have 5000 followers, and those 5000 people have seen your tweet, awesome.

So on Twitter it builds up organically within twitter but also you need to send people to your Twitter account from your other sites and social media channels. So if you are on Facebook, if you are on You Tube, if you are on Pinterest, you need to be continuously linking back to your Twitter account on your website, on your e-mails, you need to link back to your Twitter account. And it sounds really simple without actually a huge place where a lot of people kind of slip up is, they link to their Twitter account, they are like, “I am on Twitter”, and they have one link somewhere, but it is way to buried. People aren’t going to try that hard to find you on Twitter. You need to make it really obvious and really easy for them.

Steve: So here is something I want to ask you. You know Twitter– everyone has this gigantic Twitter streams like it is hard for me to keep up with a whole bunch of people and often times these updates just fly by. So, in terms of the different social media platforms, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, do you get a significant amount of traffic from Twitter, given the nature of the platform?

Laura: I personally get the most from Facebook, and second most from Twitter, it was different a few years ago, it used to be more from Twitter than Facebook. But of course it is going to depend on where you spend your time and energy. But I’m glad you brought that up because that’s a really important thing to understand about social media, because people get really frustrated about that. Especially for us on Facebook, there has been so much uproar about this. Stuff like, Facebook isn’t showing my updates to my fans, and it is just getting less and less. Like I have just been watching my own Facebook page, it is crazy how much it’s dropping lately. They are showing your updates to so many fewer people than they used to. But that really shouldn’t be a big shock, because it’s just the nature of social media that people pop on and they see what they see, and then they leave. You know on Twitter, it’s not like people see all of your tweets either. People sign on to Twitter for ten minutes, if you happen to send out an update while they are there, they are going to see it, if you don’t they are not going to see it.

And that is why you probably need to update more than you think you do, because you read all of your stuff, so this is something that’s always funny to me, like, you will always feel like you are promoting too much because you are like, I have talked about this podcast ten times over the last three days. Like I just keep relentlessly updating my social network sites. I’ve got my podcast, check out my podcast. But most of your followers you know, I read a stuff that, your Twitter follower will see on average ten percent of what you post to Twitter. That’s like a real active user, because they are not signed on at the right times. So to you it feels like you are being relentless, they might not even have heard of it once. So you need to post a lot more than you think you do, and post about the same things more than once.

Steve: Okay, so what you are basically trying to say is you don’t really have to be afraid that you are driving people away with the same updates over and over again because chances are that people are not even going to see a single one of your tweets.

Laura: Yes.

Steve: Okay, so that’s interesting. So how do you strike the balance between being kind of social and then promoting your own stuff?

Laura: You definitely have to do both, because no one’s really interested in following a Twitter account that’s just promos, unless they already have a really strong affinity for your brand. And we see that with big retailers, you know you sign for their Jay crew mailing list and they only send you promotions. There is no content in there for the most part, it’s coupons, it’s promotions, and if you are already a fan and you like their stuff, that works.

So, people do want to hear you promoting, and actually, I would guess that a lot of listeners to this podcast, everyone is afraid to you promote too much, most of the people that tend to check out my stuff actually are not promoting nearly enough, they are way too afraid of being too pushy. But, if someone has chosen to follow you on social media, clearly they are interested in your business. That’s if you are there talking about your business, that’s why they are following you on social.

So, I would say you don’t want to promote you know more than half of your updates, and even half of your updates being promotional will probably be a lot. But that’s also where the conversation comes in, the conversations that you are helping people back and forth probably isn’t going to be promotional. But to give you a number let’s say like 15% of your updates are going to be promotional.

Steve: How many updates do you put out a day on Twitter, on average?

Laura: This is something we are experimenting within my company; I know we’ve gone back and forth between doing like minimum three a day, and maximum six to eight a day.

Steve: So, you are actually not twitting a whole lot, right?

Laura: And then, I will also have replies to people, so those are the replies.

Steve: Okay yeah, those are the social ones right, yeah. Okay so yeah, I think that’s how I have mine set up. I still have a full time job, and I don’t have time to be on Twitter all the time, so, I have actually resorted to automation tools. Do you recommend automation tools in general?

Laura: Yes, it’s funny that you say, I have resorted to automation tools, because I know some people, oh no, you know don’t automate your social media. I think that’s such a bad advice for a business owner. I think it’s crazy to expect a business owner to have the time to check in on social media all day long. And there is just no reason for you to be there live at this random specific times, when there are tools like buffer, or like hootsuite that make it so easy to schedule an event. It’s still you writing it, you’re not– you don’t have to outsource the writing, it’s still going to sound natural, like you, it’s just you don’t have to be there sending, clicking send the moment you want it to go live.

Steve: That’s great advice, I often feel guilty that some robot is tweeting out my stuff. So, okay let’s go back to your business sorry. So you started out– you started gradually building up your Twitter following, and what would you say you focused on more? The e-mail list, or Twitter in the beginning or?

Laura: I’ve always focused on e-mail, which is probably a big secret to my success, I am definitely one of those people that’s a big believer in the e-mail list, and I had a newsletter for a few months before I even started with the blog, which now is very unusual. Then, it was sort of unusual too, but so I started with my e-mail newsletter, Twitter was really promoting the e-mail newsletter, and then I added on, Facebook, and blogging.

Steve: Okay, so what about Google, how does search come into play here?

Laura: Well search is sort of the foundation of it all I guess, I mean everything affects search, and Google has told us that social media will continue to affect search more and more. But even if Google didn’t consider what they call social signals, you know didn’t consider social media important in ranking your content, social media would still be incredibly important, because you are not going to share your content or get back links or anything like that, it’s going to be very hard to do that without social media. That’s how blog posts spread, you know that’s how most of us find blog posts to read, it’s something on our Twitter, our Facebook accounts. So it’s going to be very hard spreading your content out there so that anyone can link to it, and of course links help your search ranking, unless you are promoting it on social.

Steve: Okay, so let’s rank the social media sites now, in terms of what you perceive to be effective. So there is Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and G plus.

Laura: And maybe another one, Instagram, You Tube.

Steve: Instagram, LinkedIn also, Yeah.

Laura: How important are they in order?

Steve: Well, okay, so let’s rephrase the question a little bit. Let’s say I’m a brand new e-commerce store let’ say, what advice would you give to someone who wants to get active in social media?

Laura: So for e-commerce, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest are your big ones. And depending on the type of items that you are selling, Pinterest might actually be the most important one for you right now. If you are selling anything that people might be penning, I know wedding items, I’m sure are huge on Pinterest. I mean, I am curious, is that a big traffic source for your…

Steve: Yes it is, yeah, yeah. Pinterest is actually– it’s not just traffic, it’s the conversions from Pinterest are much higher than the other platforms. And I am sure that’s what you probably would see with some of your e-commerce clients as well, just because a lot of times the picture is what sells the product.

Laura: Well, and Pinterest is so cool because I mean, I knew that I have a board on Pinterest on wish lists, that’s literally a list of products that I want to buy, you know that doesn’t really happen on other social media sites, and people are looking for things to buy, and keeping boards of things to buy.

Steve: Yeah, that’s totally true, and in fact I don’t get Pinterest. See if my wife is here interviewing you then she could chat with you about it, but my wife handles the Pinterest boards, and you know she has a ton of boards of stuff that she just likes, it’s addictive, I don’t get it, but for her it is very addictive.

Laura: Yeah, I am a huge Pinterest fan, myself just for fun. And we use it for my business, but it is not a huge traffic source for us. For a business like mine that’s selling trainings, it’s much less visual, and we could get creative, and we can drive more traffic there, but we definitely drive a lot more from Facebook and Twitter. But if you are in a retail business where people might pen the things that you sell, I would say focus on Pinterest first, honestly, because like you said those are going to be high converting customers.

And then for most businesses Facebook is the second biggest, and Facebook is going through a lot of changes right now, people are scared of building up a page on Facebook because the reach is declining. But I still think Facebook is very, very much worth the time of any entrepreneur, because Facebook has the mass that none of the other social networks have.

Steve: I’ve noticed my reach has fallen dramatically, and do you actually pay money to sponsor your post, because right now I just haven’t done that because it just pisses me off that they want to make me pay to actually have my stuff go out to the fans that I spend a lot of time trying to get.

Laura: Advertising on Facebook is a great idea, clicking sponsored you know boost this post, is an absolutely terrible idea. It’s like using Facebook advertising with none of the controls, none of the regular interface, none of the regular options on. It’s sort of bordering on sneaky, that they even put that in there, because it’s really crazy they are not giving any other targeting options. So, my company does spend money advertising on Facebook, we don’t boost posts in that way. Does that make sense?

Steve: Okay, so for your advertising for your business, do you just buy a traditional feed Ad and do you just send it to a landing page? Is that how you use it?

Laura: Yeah, we send people to landing pages to get their e-mail address, we usually use promoted posts because we found they convert better than a kind of side bar Ad, and they have some of the cool built-ins social stuff like people can see other people that are liking it, other people that are commenting, they can see if their friends like it. And people will share your Ads which is pretty amazing when you think about it, that you would pay to advertise something and people would just choose to share with their friends.

Steve: Yeah, I have started using that for our online store and my course, and it’s actually worked out really well. I think for me and you can confirm whether this has worked out for some of your clients, I found that promoting actual pieces of content with a sign up box works better than just sending them directly do some sort of product page.

Laura: Yeah, we almost never will send paid Facebook traffic right to a product page or sales page. We always do some sort of funnel, whether it’s like sending to a related blog post, that’s kind of related to what they are selling, getting them to opt from there, or sending them to a landing page where they get a free piece of content if they opt in.

Steve: Okay, okay so it sounds like I’m at least doing something that’s similar to what you recommend, which is good. Okay, so let’s talk about your business model. I know it’s evolved over the years. So you sell various courses like creating– is ‘creating fame’ your flagship one?

Laura: Yeah, Creating Fame, Social Brilliant, and Social Media Marketer.

Steve: So, I know that you used to sell these behind these gigantic launches where you get a whole bunch of people to sign up, and then you close off the course. Are you still signing it that way?

Laura: Yeah, we do a mix of both, so Creating Fame is sold that way, Social Brilliant and Social Media Marketer are available all year round.

Steve: okay and I remember at one point, not that long ago, you decided to do an ‘All in one monthly subscription’ is that also available?

Laura: That’s for social media marketers, yeah.

Steve: Okay, so can you just describe how all these different businesses models kind of mesh together?

Laura: Yeah, I’m just kind of realizing, I’m really am hitting every angle, now that we are talking about it. So yeah, Creating Fame is a higher priced program, that’s a $2000 program, and we’ve played with different models. In 2014 we’re opening now just once this year, so we’ll have you know a big exciting open and close.

And Social Brilliant is comparatively lower priced, that’s about $500, and that’s kind of smaller program that lays out a social media strategy for you, kind of how to, top to bottom, what to do every day on social, and that you can just go to my site and you can buy anytime. So that’s you know if you are not quite ready for Creating Fame maybe you’ll start with Social Brilliant.

And then Social Media Marketer is a collection of a lot of different social media trainings we’ve done over the years, that gets more specific than Social Brilliant. So Social Brilliant is kind of like the foundation, and Social Media Marketer is a bunch of in-depth classes about building your lists and selling on social media and connecting with influencers and all sorts of different things, and that we sell for $95 a month to get access to the library of courses.

Steve: So in determining which business model to use, subscription versus lump sum versus gigantic launch and close. Can you just go through some of the decision making processes that were involved in deciding what to do for each?

Laura: Yeah, I mean, I always say the model really it should depend on what best serves the content and the customer. So with Creating Fame, so that’s a longer program, that’s an eight week program, and because it is more in-depth, and we have groups that goes along with it, where you can ask questions and get advice. So with a program like that, it’s really ideal to have people going through in groups together. So you know that doesn’t mean it has to be only once a year, but it’s really nice to do some sort of open and close, so that people are like, okay, we are on week one, we are on week two, what is going on with you for week three. It’s just a bit easier to keep everyone together.

Steve: I see, okay.

Laura: So that works really well for that. And then Social Brilliant I mean that one does not have a group aspect, that one’s just training, you go through yourself, of course you can e-mail and ask us questions, but it doesn’t have a group that goes along with it, the way that it works with a program like Creating Fame does. And so that’s a good way for us to just have something available on our site all the time for people who are ready to dive in right now, and if they want help with their social media they can go there and then basically if they want more on-going help month to month they want to go in-depth and get more training they can do the subscription model.

Steve: Okay, and that is the Social Brilliance, sorry I got it?

Laura: Oh no, that means I inverted names. We are actually changing the name Social Media Marketer. Social Media Marketer is the subscription one, and Social Brilliant is the one-off.

Steve: Okay, and then the subscription one, so why was that one a subscription based? I’m just curious.

Laura: We actually used to have everything as different courses that you could buy one-off, that’s inside Social Media Marketer and we found that it was causing a lot of customer confusion and strife because they were like, you are the social media expert, how do I know which class I need? You know, like you pick for me, you tell me what to do.

And it was also from an internal perspective, just so you know of like, funnels, and opt-ins, and marketing sequences that we had was getting a little bit crazy, and a little bit convoluted, so we thought it would be easier for us, and easier for customers if we just put everything in one subscription.

Steve: Okay and everything is still downloadable, right?

Laura: Yeah.

Steve: So, do you ever have people that just log on for a month, grab everything and then just go?

Laura: Yeah, I don’t really worry about that, that’s just– I don’t want to punish customers who do want things to be downloadable, because I understand why. I often like to download materials instead of watching them online. So I don’t want to punish customers just because there are a few that will take everything, and also that’s how the model is. You know, you just can’t deny that that’s a part of it, that people are going to do that.

Steve: Yeah I mean, for my course the reason– so what I do is, I kind of promote the live office hours that I give, and the human interaction that you get with me, so that even if you were just to download all the materials and leave you will be missing out on a huge portion of the class.

Laura: Yeah, we have some features like that as well, but that hopefully you will find them compelling and they are going to keep you in month to month.

Steve: Okay, so a good question for you that I often get is, you know what mistakes do you find that most businesses are actually making with their social media efforts, and if there is anything that you could suggest that would improve the average business that would be great.

Laura: One of the biggest mistakes is not using scheduling and automation enough. This is something I have to plug the Social Brilliant course because it’s really in-depth on how to really treat your social media marketing like a piece of content that you need to create a content calendar for. Most people just do their social media super spritely one-off when they have something to say, they put something in, most of the time they can’t think of anything to say, so they don’t put anything in. And social media is a marketing channel that needs consistency like anything else.

And like we talked about it needs frequency too. If you want anyone to see your updates you are going to need to update a good amount, and I don’t want to be scary, it is better to update once a day than not at all. So it’s better to do something than nothing, and you need to start with what you can do. But if you sit down and put in a bunch of social updates at once, it’s actually not difficult to update. If you update three times a day, five days a week, that’s 15 updates a week, that’s about 60 updates a month for like four weeks a month. You can sit down and write 60 updates, especially if you batch them into categories, which is what we teach you how to do in Social Brilliant. So that’s a huge thing, it sounds a bit complicated when you are getting it set up, but it actually allows you to sit down and get your social media done like once a month, have it handled in one go and then you can just pop in and chat with people. And I promise you’ll see much better results from social if you do that.

Steve: So is that true with Facebook as well, you plan all of your updates kind of long in advance and just have them go out?

Laura: Yap, and you know you will put in live stuff too, so you can always add that on top of whatever you are doing. You know if you want to put a lot of updates about what you are doing, share photos from where you are, all that stuff is great, but you don’t want to have to rely on that, you don’t want to be like, oh men, I’m at the park with my kids, I better take a picture for my Facebook page, because I’ve got to update anything today, and I have to have something to come up with. You know, you want to have a nice foundation going out every day and then you can add in life stuff too.

Steve: That is really good advice, I have actually like I said remember when I said I resorted to automation tools, because I always felt guilty that I wasn’t posting things in real time versus what was happening to me at that exact moment. So it sounds like your method is so much more scalable. You get a piece of software you batch everything, and then you just let it go for the month correct, or a week or whatever?

Laura: Yes, it is a lot more scalable, and it is also much easier if you wanted to delegate or outsource some of your social media, it makes it a lot easier to do so with this method, because you can have someone write a bunch of updates for you and then you can review them.

So I know that it’s kind of scary, just like letting someone take over your social media accounts, and you do have to be really careful doing that, because that’s your business’s face to the world, you are doing customer service there when you are responding to people. So I would not recommend that you just hire like, a social media person and just say, ‘do my social media’ with no instruction or interaction. But if you have someone write sixty updates, you can go through them, you can tell them the ones you don’t like, you can make any little tweaks that you want, and then you can just load them up or have the person load them up.

Steve: So what piece of software do you use to do this?

Laura: We use buffer.

Steve: Okay, okay. So you literally schedule like sixty it is, at the beginning of the month and you just let– actually you probably have someone else do it now, is that…?

Laura: Yeah, I have someone at my company do it, and we generally do two weeks at a time.

Steve: Okay, that is very good advice. So, let’s talk about Facebook. So you mentioned that Facebook has now exceeded your Twitter, is that true even with the fact that they have kind of diminished the reach across Facebook fan pages?

Laura: It’s true for now, I won’t be surprised if Twitter surpasses Facebook’s traffic, but yeah even with the diminished rates right now, I’m still getting more from Facebook.

Steve: So is your strategy for Facebook different than Twitter versus LinkedIn, versus Pinterest, and that sort of thing.

Laura: It’s not deeply different, and I think you can always tweak for the different networks, the more time you really want to spend getting really optimized, but the truth is you really don’t really need to. I mean, I could probably attract more likes and more traffic from Facebook if I went in and had like a Facebook only strategy where we were doing let’s say a lot more images that people on Facebook tend to like. Obviously on Facebook you can do longer post that you can do on Twitter and those can perform quite well, but it is kind of a question of diminishing returns. You know if we were spending so many more hours a week on Facebook would we really get that much more traffic? Maybe at some point my company will do it as an experiment and see, because it might be true.

But I think that’s kind of a good lesson because a lot of people just won’t update something entirely because they are so stressed about getting it perfect, about being on there all the time. You know this is why you want to use automation so that you can just get it done, and then over time as you grow your business, and maybe you can hire more people to help you, then you can go and look at the specific networks. You know, what can we be doing on LinkedIn or on Pinterest to really grow our reach even more? But start out just building the foundation there.

Steve: Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about you know what I really like about your business is you have employees from– they live in all different parts of the world. So what is it like managing a virtual team and how does it all come together?

Laura: I love it, I think it is really fun. I am in London right now and my team is across the US and one in South America. We actually recently just met up, we spent a week together in Portland, Oregon where we all hang out and worked together in person, which was really fun. And I got to meet three employees that I hadn’t met yet in person, that I’ve hired since we last met up. So, I love working from home, and I hire other people who love working from home which is not for everyone.

Steve: Yeah, see I’ve been actually torn between this, because if I was to quit my job, I would be just sitting at home alone in front of my computer and Skype I guess. So how many people are on your team now?

Laura: We have me and six other people and some interns.

Steve: So how do you manage the communication with that, do you guys just all get together on a Google hangout or?

Laura: We have a lot of different tools we use, if you go to my blog and you search for social media tools so we can link it in the podcast.

Steve: Yeah, I will link it in the show notes.

Laura: Yeah, you will find everything, but we use Google hang extensively, we do a team meeting every Monday where everyone’s on video on Google hangouts. We also do a phone meeting Tuesday through Friday, that’s like a five to ten meeting where everyone just reports what they are working on that day. We use Google docs very heavily for everything and we use confluence as our kind of wiki.

Steve: Was it always this large, did you always have six people or was it just kind of gradual.

Laura: No, it’s all bootstrapped, so it’s all super gradual.

Steve: okay, that is really cool. I mean, it’s really great to have seen your business grow over the years to the size it is now. So you are making like seven figures now from what I understand.

Laura: Yeah.

Steve: That is awesome. So, a couple of questions I always ask interviewers, do you have a particular business book that has greatly influenced the way you think about businesses?

Laura: Yes, I love to read business books actually. We recently added that as a little feature to my newsletter, but now we have the book that I’m reading right now, because I read an embarrassing amount of business books, and I thought other people might like to see what I’m reading.

Two that really standout in my mind; one of my favorites is ’Double Double’ by Cameron Herold. Cameron is someone who’s been a personal mentor to me, and he’s not that well known, and the book is not that well known, but that’s a shame, it really should be. And it has like just a lot of advice for a lot of different little things in business, everything from productivity and planning, organizing your time to public relations, and marketing, just a lot of really actionable advice. It’s called ‘Double Double’ because it’s like double your profits, and double your– something else, I don’t know, double your business.

Steve: I think of other things when I think of double double, but okay, go on.

Laura: Maybe the book needed a better name maybe that is why not so many people have read it. But that is really a favorite, I’ve learned a lot from him. And I learned a lot from him about managing a team, because I had a huge paradigm shift, something that Cameron taught me is that company culture is not just for Google sized companies. You know I never used to relate to that concept, as someone who works from home, as someone who has a small team. I always thought oh company culture means, you know, having a ping pong table, and having a happy hour, and having sushi lunch brought in. And you know we can’t do those things since we are a virtual company.

But my company has a very strong company culture, and even when you work for yourself and you have a few freelancers, you have a company culture too, and the more awesome that you are to work for, the more amazing the people are that you are going to be able to get to work for you. And that’s something I learned from that book.

Steve: I just noticed based on your passing Facebook post that it sounds like, it appears like you and your team have a great time, every time you guys get together, it just sounds like a really fun company to work for.

Laura: It is, it is really fun, like we all really like each other, there is no drama, there is no gulling in anyone, there is no craziness, it is a really, really great environment. And a great environment like that is the most attractive thing that you can give to a quality employee. More attractive than a giant paycheck even, so if you can create that kind of environment you can get some really, really great people on your team.

Steve: That’s awesome Laura. Actually you know what there is one question I forgot to ask you. Since you are so heavily involved in e-mail marketing earlier on, I just thought I would ask you a little bit about how you kind of structure your e-mails to get engagement. Do you structure your e-mails because a lot of us don’t have a whole lot of time, do you structure e-mails such that you just link back to existing content that you’ve written, or do you write your newsletters from complete scratch with all brand new content?

Laura: Our newsletters actually do have new content and unique content, but it’s very short content. And this is something I did different when I was first starting out. At the time and even now our newsletters were usually multiple long articles, if not just one really, really long article, and I knew that I never wrote those, and I never had time to read those.

So I thought okay for my newsletter I will just do one really actionable tip every week, it has to be something that you can actually do in ten minutes or so. So that really contains the scope, because they are short to write, they are obviously not too complicated. If it is just one little thing that you can do really quickly, and my little secret source for a newsletter and making that content is that, well we have unique content for the newsletter. It has not been unique every week for the past five years. We have basically about a year and a half’s worth of tips and we just re-cycle them.

Steve: Very interesting, okay so in a way that’s almost kind of automated as well.

Laura: Yeah, yeah so we put in like a little update about what I’m doing and where I’m travelling and stuff like that, but those are super quick and easy to write.

Steve: If only there was a tool which could contain a whole library of all of your social media things that you could refer to…

Laura: Steve’s dropping a hint here watch out follow me on Twitter watch out for what I’m coming out with.

Steve: I just dropped a hint about Laura’s product that’s coming out. So, anyways Laura I don’t want to take too much of your time, we’ve already been talking for forty minutes. Where can people find you and feel free to talk about all the courses that you offer online, I will go ahead and link these up in the show notes, but it’ll be great to hear from you what’s the difference between all these courses that you offer are.

Laura: We ended up talking about that a lot during the show actually so I won’t bore people with that again, but you can go to my website and you can check on my courses, and you can find me on Twitter as LKR, and face book LKR Social Media.

Steve: Okay, it sounds good. Well thanks a lot for joining me on the show Laura.

Laura: Thank you so much for having me, it was really fun.

Steve: All right, take care.

Laura: Bye.

Steve: Laura and I have known each other for quite a while now, and it’s always great to catch up. Her social media business has truly blown up since I’ve known her, and she is a total rock star in this department. Now one thing in particular that I got out of this episode is that I really need to be automating my social media efforts much more. Now I’m the type of person that doesn’t like to tweet or post that much, but after hearing Laura say that only 10% of your fans actually get any individual social media post, I have kind of had a change of heart. Now be sure to check out the show notes for this episode at mywifequitherjob.com/episode9. And don’t forget to sign up for my podcast contest where I’m giving away a lifetime membership to my profitable online store class and free consulting. For more information go to my mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch. Thanks for listening.

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

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If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

008: Jim Wang On How To Create A Popular Blog And Sell It For Millions

jim wang

Today, I’m thrilled to have my good friend Jim Wang on the show. For all of you who don’t know who he is, Jim started one of the most popular personal finance blogs at Bargaineering.com which he later sold for over 3 million dollars.

In this episode, he shares his wisdom on what it takes to create a popular website in this day and age. If you want to learn more about Jim, you can find him at Microblogger.com where he also runs an incredible podcast as well. Go check it out!

What You’ll Learn

  • Jim’s advice on how to start a popular blog today.
  • How Jim established traffic to his site early on
  • Why you need to be different
  • How Jim made his blog stand out in the early days
  • How to establish a connection with your readers
  • Jim system of pleasing regular readers while making money off of search traffic
  • How Jim’s SEO strategy has evolved over time
  • What page Jim links to for guest posts today
  • How Jim ranks the different traffic sources
  • The best way to network with other bloggers

Jim’s Sites

Jim Recommends

Transcript

You are listening to mywifequitherjob podcast episode number eight. Now before we begin, I just wanted to remind you that my podcast giveaway is still going on, in fact there aren’t that many entrants, so your chances of winning are actually quite high.

Now I am giving away a lifetime membership to my ‘Create a Profitable Online Store’ course as well as free consulting. For more information go to www.mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch, and while you are on my site you should also sign up for my free newsletter, where I will send you my free six day mini course on how to start an online store of your own. Go to www.mywifequitherjob.com for more info. Now on to the show.

Welcome to the mywifequitherjob podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suites your lifestyle. You can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chou.

Steve: All right, welcome to mywifequitherjob podcast. Today I have a very special guest on the show, Jim Wang. Now, Jim is also someone that I met at the financial blogging conference the first year that I went. And to be honest with you, had I known who he was at the time, I might have been a little bit more shy when I met and approached him, but you know, Jim is already a rock star online businessman. But it turns out that when it comes to think-on; Jim is actually somewhat of a celebrity, because he started one of the most popular personal finance blogs on the internet at bargaineering.com, which he later sold for many millions of dollars.

Anyways you know, we met in the elevator actually on the way up to one of the think-on mixers, you know, he was dressed in sweats and a t-shirt, and then you know passing behind me…

Jim: Wow, wow, hold on, hold on. I think I was in a full suit, three piece suit; I was looking like an online businessman rock star celebrity.

Steve: Hey, you are not supposed to interrupt the intro man, all right?

Jim: I’m a rock– I’m a diva; I am allowed to do whatever I want, right?

Steve: That’s true, but this isn’t think-on anymore, it’s back to reality.

Jim: Sorry, all right.

Steve: Anyways, the person behind me goes, “Oh my God, that’s Jim Wang.” And I was like, “Wow okay, this guy must be pretty popular.” But it turns out there is a reason why Jim is so popular, it’s because he knows his stuff, he executes well and at any given point in time he’s actually got a bunch of projects going on. And what I really like about Jim is that he tells it like it is, so welcome to the show Jim.

Jim: Thank you, thank you; I also interrupt intros as well multi times.

Steve: Apparently, you took me by surprise.

Jim: I just wanted to see what, you know, how you would react.

Steve: Yes, so for those outside of think-on who actually don’t know who you are, can you just give us a quick background story and tell us about how bargaineering got started and how you came up with the idea, and what were some of the motivations for starting it?

Jim: Sure, so I started working in the defense industry. I was in software development. This was back in– I started in 2003. And ss you can probably imagine in defense, this is a little bit of downtime from time to time. And you know I would surf the internet, you know, you start a new job, they give the whole big booklet of, you know, the employee manual and whatever, and so you don’t really have that much work to do yet.

So I was surfing the internet, I found all these like deal sites, you know, ‘Ben’s bargains’, ‘Fat Wallet’, all these great sites where they’d show you, you know, this stuff’s on sale, get it, whatever.

So I was like, ‘I can do that’, so I tried to do it, and me and a friend were going to start off the site and it was called ‘Ease of Travel’. It was going to be about travel deals and all that good stuff. It never really got off the ground, but it sort of gave me the taste of ‘I can do this, I can make money on the internet somehow’, I’ll figure it out, plus it’s something fun to do on the side.

Eventually that becomes ‘bargaineering’, so ‘engineering baragains’, It’s a kind of– I thought it was a clever name. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that as I’m learning about personal finance and money, I started to shop for one K, Roth, all that good fun stuff that they never teach you in school. My parents introduced it to me a little bit, but you know, when you learn it for the first time yourself, it helps to put in your own words, so that’s what I wanted to do. Created a blog, ‘bargaineering’ talked about personal finance. It was back then in 2004, 2005, there were very few people doing it, there were maybe ten, twenty of us max, and we all became friends, you know, as you do in blogging. You network with people, you talk with them, and soon the niche grows, grows, and grows till you have events like think-on where last year there were like 500 people there, this year there might be 1000 people there. And the best part is everyone’s like a regular person, like you connect on a personal level, and it’s not like business and business and stuff like that. So that’s sort of how I got started.

Steve: So let me get this straight, so you got this job out of college, I would imagine at a government facility, and the first thing you did was start surfing the web and start finding…

Jim: It was a defense contractor, it’s Northup Grumman

Steve: Oh

Jim: So I wasn’t in a secure area, not yet, that wouldn’t add up.

Steve: And then you just decided right away that you wanted to double in the online arena, kind of right away?

Jim: Yeah, there was a lot of downtime, I was doing a lot of radar development, writing software, and so what happened unlike a typical development environment where you would write code and you could build and test it there, we actually had the goal to a development bench that was connected to a radar system that was pointed at BWY, so we had real data. You have some like fake data that you can use too, but in the time that you have to wait, you have to schedule your bench time, so during that time nothing to do. Like our code was written, like we have hours and so we could do like a test flight or go on the bench and so I surfed the internet.

Steve: Nice, I wish I had more time to do that at work. So let’s go back, you know, ‘ease of travel’ that was your first idea, so what didn’t work about it, like you said you kind of mufted over, so what were some of the hurdles that you encountered early on with that?

Jim: The biggest hurdle was that, it was going to be me and another guy partnering up. You know I was really that serious, I mean I was serious about doing it, but I didn’t approach as it was a business, I approached it as a hobby right, and so what happened was, he was going to develop the end where we did like the search.

We were going to build like a Kayak, and this is 2004 where Kayak existed, or it was so new that no one– like back then all the travels sites were like ‘expedia’ right now. You go in you tell it a specific time and it does an update, there was no one used ajax, it was not pretty, it was not useful, you know, it is not like ‘hit monk’ today, where you put in something and it updates in real time.We wanted to build that.

I wasn’t going to be in charge of the building part, he was, and it just sort of never got off the ground. So big chance is that we never built the product. During that time in trying to figure it out, I thought okay well, in the meanwhile while he’s building the software, I’m going to build something to manage, you know, finding hot deals and updating it and all that. Eventually that was put in place, migrated to ‘bargaineering.com’ and then I put the blog on top of it. Blog did well, the hot deal section just sort of fell off.

Steve: So, was WordPress around back then?

Jim: Yes, it had just started.

Steve: Okay, and so was that the platform that ‘bargaineering’ was on?

Jim: Yes, it was WordPress.

Steve: So how much did you invest in starting ‘bargaineering’?

Jim: Domain was like $8, posting was probably like $50 a year, something like that, it cost nothing.

Steve: Yes, so very little, right?

Jim: Oh, very, very little.

Steve: Yeah, so, I mean, it’s like that was an online store too. We invested $630, but that was mainly becausewe needed to get inventory. If it was just a pure site I think it would have been not it, that’s inexpensive as well.

Jim: The biggest expense is your time, your investment is that time that you go in and try to figure out how to make it work.

Steve: Yeah, and so you had some time and work as well as after work in order to work on this, right?

Jim: Yeah, so my wife and I, well, girlfriend at the time were living apart, and she was in New Jersey, and so we weren’t seeing each other during the weekdays, so at night I really had nothing to do. So I would surf the internet, watch TV, built the site then.

Steve: One of the biggest problems when people blog is they don’t really have a strategy to get traffic, so I know when I first started my blog, I launched and I wasn’t really sure what to do, and so this was a long time ago, but was kind of your early strategy to obtain traffic.

Jim: In the beginning– okay, so here is the nice thing about starting a blog and not really considering it a business is that, I didn’t really have a real strategy. But what I ended up doing haphazardly was interacting with other bloggers, leave comments, talk to them, and actually the comments did well because back then, you know, you’d have a post, there were only a handful of blogs, so everyone reading a blog was going to read one of these ten.

And then they were probably going to read the comments, the comments are going to be more engaging, people are going to reply, and then that’s how you build relationships. So initially we just went through each other’s blogs. I started guest posting, sort of sharing each other’s readerships, comments, and that was essentially the start, right? Because you get the readers, and then you get some links and then search and traffic would eventually start trickling in, because you know you have your post would be very specific about a very specific topic, and you are going after the long tail, and you will be okay if you only got like one or two visits a day.

You weren’t treating it as a business; you didn’t feel bad that you weren’t doing, you know, 100 or 1000 visitors a day. It was just a fun little hobby, and so you could slowly grow your traffic organically, without feeling like you are failing or not growing fast enough.

Steve: So in a way you kind of work together with some of the other bloggers, kind of to help bolster each other, early on?

Jim: Yeah, we did a lot of stuff like round-ups, and carnivals were really probably the back then, when there were fewer sites.

Steve: And so who were you kind of working with, any big names that you care to mention?

Jim: It was like ‘Consumers and Commentary’, ‘Five Cent Nickel’, ‘Garret Slowly’, ‘Wise Bread’, all the sites that are big today were usually from the beginning, there were a bunch other like, ‘Free Money Finance’.

Steve: Yeah, I know all those guys actually; actually they all go to think-on for the most part.

Jim: Yeah, yap.

Steve: Okay, so that’s really cool. It’s funny to see how blogging has evolved a little bit, that strategy of just commenting other people’s blogs because there are so many of them, that actually probably isn’t as effective today, would you say or…

Jim: It really depends, like you could still be effective if you come in early in the life of a post, like if it goes up and you are like one of the first five, or first ten or whatever. It’s one there like hundreds or there are fifty and you are sort of near the end. People, they get tired of reading comments, so maybe they will read the first few, see if there is anything interesting, if there isn’t some sort of discussion going on then they don’t read the rest.

So I find it still effective, but you have to find the sites that are popular, and either comment early or reply to a comment early, just start a discussion that engages people and pulls them in. It’s not just as simple as it used to be.

Steve: Okay, so along those same lines, you know, if you were to just start all over, let’s say you want to start ‘bargaineering’ all over again, how would you get that initial boost of traffic early on, would you still use that commenting strategy, carnivals and that sort of thing?

Jim: I would probably try to find a way to differentiate myself, and then network with the bigger blogs in my niche, and outside of it to get guest posts, just sort of show case my expertise in whatever it is. So it is a little harder with ‘bargaineering’ because I positioned it as a personal finance site for people that are young professionals, because I was at the time 23-24, no kids, buy my first house, sort of the typical young professional issues.

Nowadays I don’t think that that’s enough of a differentiator because there are a ton of people that are in that position, so you’ve got to find a differentiator, and then leverage that to go to publish sites and provide content that their readers are going to enjoy, and that they can’t get from the original blogger themselves.

Steve: Yeah interesting, you know, I am finding that, that’s a really important aspect of just opening e-commerce stores as well, or just any website for that matter, since there are just so many things out there you’ve got to stand out in some way these days.

Jim: Like you wouldn’t go and try to open up a bookstore e-commerce site, right? Like a random books, because there is Amazon.

Steve: Yeah, you know, a lot of people actually want to launch T-shirt shops, and that sort of thing, and those types of goods are just very generic, unless you really have something unique to offer.

Jim: Yeah, you have to be different so that people– it’s, Seth Gwen said this years and years and years ago way before it was popular, the idea of a purple cow, you have to be remarkable, you have to be worthy of someone making a remark. And a purple cow is surprising, a brown cow, a white and black cow; they are just, it’s a cow, who cares. I mean, no disrespect to the cow itself, but it is not interesting.

Steve: Yeah absolutely, so you know, ‘bargaineering’ early on, so you are– I actually went back and looked at some of the archives and I saw that you put a lot of personality in your post, so you did a lot of videos, it looks like you did a lot of very personal posts, and I think in one case you were featured in a newspaper right for posting your networth or your expenditures.

Jim: Yeah.

Steve: So I would imagine back then that was kind of unheard of, right?

Jim: Yeah, that was the New York Times in September which was maybe around seven or eight months after I started the site. It was uncommon, it was certainly uncommon like socially and the greater like world, it was not as uncommon with personal finance sites online then, because that was just something that people did, they put their goals in their side bar, some people talked about their net worth, some people went as far as to talk about their budgets every month. I mean, budgets are sexy chain money; he still talks about his net worth today, that’s 2014. So back then, it was different enough that the New York Times wanted to call me and talk to me about how I shared I spent X dollars on clothing, or how much on food, because the whole idea of talking about money was taboo.

And to go back to your earlier point of putting more personality into it, people don’t follow websites necessarily, they follow people. In order to have a connection with your readers, you have to share something about yourself that they can connect to. Like no one looks up back then, no one looked at ‘bargaineering’ and said, “I connect with the guy in the hard hat” – that is the logo.

Steve: I love that logo by the way.

Jim: And people would tell me like, “I love reading what you wrote”, “I love hearing your story”, they didn’t say, “I love reading ‘bargaineering’’ or the story on bargaineering, “I loved reading what you said about this, your insight on this. And that was because I put a lot of my personality into it, and that was something that I learned over time.

Some of the initial posts were a lot of like analysis, like the second, third or fourth post was about like photography. It was about online printing sites, because that is what I was researching at the time. And it’s analytical, people just don’t really connect with that, they may find it valuable, but it doesn’t elicit emotional response.

Now when I share my story about buying a house, and how anxious I was, and how nervous I was when I applied for a loan and tried to get a pre-approval note and all these whatever, people are like, “I get it, because I did that too, I felt the same way. I feel like we are on this journey together and I understand what Jim’s going through, it is helping me a little bit but also I’m part of this community like this. All the emotion sort of builds the loyalty and the following but you just can’t with like analytical posts and you know other strategies you might try.

Steve: That’s actually a very good point; I have actually noticed that on my own blog. Whenever I get a little bit more technical, and talk you know give a little bit more in-depth how-to’s, those posts tend not to do very well, than when I just kind of talk about some of the struggles that I have been facing with my business. So I totally see your point in kind of just humanizing your blogs, so to speak.

Jim: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s tricky because some of the things like you know, it really all depends on what metrics you are looking at. People looking at analytical posts are not going to leave as many comments, because chances are you are going to cover a lot of the things that they may comment about. They probably will only say something if you did something wrong. Which is also good. Alternatively like if you look at traffic wise, you may find that your more analytical post do better because it provides a lot of information, it just doesn’t get the same level of engagement.

So I always think of my blog post as having multiple roles. If I’m writing a– every Friday I would do a ‘your take world’ to elicit responses by asking a very specific question. I would generally try to find questions that I thought would elicit emotional responses and get people engaged. Anything about taxes, politics, to where they are going on vacation, stuff like that, people would engage with that a lot.

They won’t get a tremendous amount of traffic, but it was community building, people could share, we could interact, and it is just something fun to talk about after a week of writing about personal finance. Alternatively I would write something that was very referensive, very I felt was useful, something like tax brackets.You know the IRS and look up the tax brackets, but if you want to read about it like a human being could understand it, then you would read a post on bargaineering because it would explain in a way, people don’t really comment that much on it, because, I mean, what are you going to say about tax brackets, but it is still useful for other reasons.

There would be tools like calculators, again people are not going to comment on it, but you can tell that people will find it useful by seeing how many times they click on the calculate button, right. So each of these have different roles and purposes, and so you can’t use the same metrics on each to evaluate how good it did.

Steve: Yes, let’s talk about one metric that probably all the listeners are concerned about, and that’s money. So, which of these posts that you were just talking about actually generated you the most income? Actually let’s back up a bit and just talk about how bargaineering makes money in the first place.

Jim: Sure, so most of the money that bargaineering made was from affiliate deals. Affiliate deals are where you know I put an offer on the site, someone clicks on it, they apply for a credit card, a bank credit score or whatever. They perform some sort of action that the advertiser wants, and that was probably 60, 70% of the income. The rest of it came from direct advertising, companies paying me to put a banner on the site, or from AdSense, so they would, Cost-Per-Click. They would click on an Ad and I get paid that way.

Steve: Okay, so it would sound like a lot of those more personal posts would not generate you that much money, would that be accurate?

Jim: No they wouldn’t.

Steve: Okay, so how did you strike a balance then I guess, coz obviously making money was probably one of your goals as well with this site.

Jim: Yeah, I mean that was the number one goal, because it is a business and you know to the extent that the other, there were other goals, like learning personal finance, reading and writing and being able to support myself so that I could continue to read and write about it. That was important, but ultimate they all tie back into making money.

In terms of finding balance I felt like– so how I approached the site was, we had two distinct groups. We had people that were sort of like the community, they would read every day or every other day, and they would leave comments. This group was relatively small maybe about 20% of the recurring traffic or a day’s traffic. I wanted to make sure that I took care of them, and that we talked about interesting things and didn’t just always inundate them with traffic.

However, on the flip side the remaining 70%, 60% which would be search engine traffic, referrals and things like that, those are not the loyal following. I wanted my advertising, whatever to sort of earn money from them. So in terms of writing posts, I think I tried to keep it to only one affiliate sort of motivated post a week, and I was very intentional on how I did that, and there were many cases where I was able to do both like for example, one post I did well is ‘What’s a good credit score, right? It’s very informative, explains how the credit work, it’s very in-depth. It also did well at search and saw a droll of people to sign up for free credit scores on like myFico or whatever else I forget it, you know, I forget it now.

Steve: And you’d get a cut when someone asks for their credit, okay.

Jim: Yeah, so they would sign up, they would put in their credit card they’d sign up for some trial period, myFico is one of the more legitimate ones because you could cancel it all online and you get paid a commission.

Steve: So would say then that most of the affiliate conversions that you made were from search as opposed to your regular readers?

Jim: Yes, I would. I don’t remember the numbers today, but I would say the vast majority came from, search.

Steve: I see.

Jim: I made a concerted effort to have the experience of the site be different for people that were regular readers. I gave them the opportunity to register and sign in, and by doing so – well there was a point system which we can talk about if you want, butwe also heard like, I strip the site of Ads whenever a logged in user was using it. So I took the side bars off for AdSense, because I knew that, I’d looked up the numbers, someone that was a returning user almost never clicked on a side bar Ad. It was always people from search, a first time visitor.

So I said, okay, you signed in, you tell me that you want to identify yourself as a regular reader, I give you a point system where you can bid on things like books, and then I will also take Ads off. So it won’t annoy you, and you can find the content more easily, it’s a better layout, everything is better.

Steve: That is ingenious, I actually don’t know of anyone else who’s done that. So what are some of the perks that you got as member besides not having the Ads, you talked about the point system, how did that work?

Jim: So, every time you logged in each day you got a point, everytime you left a comment you got a point, and there was an auction. It tied into this auction system where you could win books. So publishers would send me books to review and then afterwards I’d have all these books, why don’t I just mail them back to our readers, so they would bid on books. There was also like ING referrals, well I guess now ‘Capital One 360’.

Also to these referrals systems where, let’s say I refer you to that bank, you get ten bucks I get five bucks however we sell. I would actually give readers the opportunity to send me their links and then they would go through. We would go through like 100 referral links a month.

Steve: Wow!

Jim: Yeah, and people were like– that surprisingly put money in people’s pockets, built up loyalty like crazy. I must have gone through like 2000 referrals, it was kind of a pain to manage, but in the end it all worked out for the best.

Steve: So let me just summarize what you just said, so you allowed your readers to post their own affiliate links essentially for like ING, and so one of your– when you actually got traffic you’ll send someone else clicked on that link, your reader would actually get the affiliate commission, is that how it worked?

Jim: Yeah, it wasn’t affiliate commissions, it was just a referral.

Steve: Referral, okay.

Jim: So like, you as a customer of ‘Capital One 360’ can refer up to like fifty people. So I had some pages that ranked well for those terms and so I used up my referrals, I used up all my friends referrals, so I was like, “Oh this is a good thing I could do.”

Steve: So, you are actually putting money into your readers pockets in a way, through this option, okay.

Jim: Yes.

Steve: So how many users, registered users did you actually have for ‘bargaineering’?

Jim: I think it was close to a thousand.

Steve: Wow.

Jim: The active users was probably close to like a couple of hundred, as is always the case with most membership things, I think.

Steve: I see, and so these people would naturally just come back and they be incentivized to comment and just participate, right?

Jim: Yeah, yap. I did the math and I think the average comments for a post was probably around eight before we implemented the system. I say we– before I implemented the system, and it was probably around twelve. It was a 50%, 40 – 50% increase in comments.

Steve: So actually how do you– is there a plugin that you would recommend for other bloggers to do this with their blogs.

Jim: The Queue points.

Steve: Queue points, okay.

Jim: Queue points is what I use, and then I use, I think it is called WP auctions for the auction system and I had to– I had to go and edit the plugins so that they work together. This WP auctions is just an auction plugin, that you can put on your site and people can bid money on things. And so I had to tie it into the user system and look at points to make sure people didn’t bid more points than they had.

Steve: So a lot of your you know monitory strategy involved getting search visitors, so is there anything special that you did with your site to actually increase your visibility in search?

Jim: I did all the typical on page stuff, make sure you title tags are good, your Meta data is good, inter-linked well, made sure– most of the gains came from off page stuff, writing guest post on other people’s sites and driving traffic. I’m not sure how effective that would be today. I think my, my approach today is different, and it is different because of the various Google algorithmic changes, back links and things like that. And now it’s just to drive people to the site, get them to sign up for the e-mail list and then talk to them via e-mail. And so it is a bit of a tweak to the approach.

Steve: Did you use this e-mail strategy back in bargaineering, or…

Jim: I built an e-mail list by having a pop-up and taking an old post that was doing well, ‘100 Money Saving Tips’ and offering as a giveaway incentive, and you know, I built the list. I just didn’t do anything with it, coz it was around the time that I stopped being as motivated with the site, to dance around that issue. But I just didn’t have a chance to investigate how to be more effective with e-mail.

It kind of stinks because, when I, when I stopped looking at it, it was probably around 16, 17,000 e-mail subscribers, all driven off this one little light box pop-up on Aweber. So kind of wish what I could have done with that.

Steve: So you mention that your strategy for search has kind of evolved. By the way Jim’s blog is called microblogger.com. It’s kind of this brand new site that he started to teach other bloggers how to get started with their own blogs.

So on microblogger, so how are you taking a different strategy in terms of search engine optimization as you did from bargaineering, so how has it evolved over time.

Jim: I’ve actually not really focused on Search Engine Optimization. I have tried more initially to try to figure out how to be more effective on social media, just because it’s more interesting to me, and searche is so much in flux that I don’t think my previous strategies would be as effective. And so now when I write guest posts, I have links back to the site, but they are all to microblogger.com/newsletter which is a landing page that entices people to sign up for the newsletter. So it is less links to individual posts.

So for example, five years ago, I’d write a post, and I would point them to a post for tax brackets, with the link ‘tax brackets’.And then that did well in search, and it would drive more search traffic, and I’ll be, “Ah, I will do more guest posts.” And they were super targeted very specific and now it is, I think, that would be flagged as manipulative. Even though I wasn’t paying anything for the post, these were all free other than my effort, but it’s considered manipulative, and the fact that I didn’t pay is irrelevant.

Steve: Interesting, so now you are actually trying to drive all traffic from these guest posts to a landing page where you collect e-mail addresses?

Jim: Correct.

Steve: As opposed to driving, trying to drive search traffic to that page?

Jim: Yap.

Steve: Interesting, and that’s just a function of the fact that search is kind of evolving and you are worried about getting penalized, or…

Jim: I just feel that’s a more effective thing. So the problem with search is that, you know, you could, if you look at ‘bargaineering’ today, it is not as popular in terms of traffic as it was three years ago. It avoided penguin and panda, it avoided most of the damage that a lot of personal finance sites saw from the algorithmic changes, but it got caught up in the last one, and so it maybe lost like 20 or 30 percent of the traffic, all of it to search.

And it just– it used to be much easier to control, and so now I just think, well, if I want something to control it’s an e-mail list, right. There are still issues with e-mail, like there is deliverability and people opening it and things like that, but it’s a lot more within your control than search, and that is why I have emphasized it.

Steve: Interesting, so if you are building links to the same landing page, you are not really concerned if that page gets penalized for example.

Jim: Yeah, it doesn’t get any search traffic right now.

Steve: Okay, okay interesting.

Jim: But it also means like I only want to go and write posts on sites that have traffic, and I don’t care if it is a no follow link, I don’t care, as long as it is a link in there, when someone clicks on it they make it to the landing page then I’m happy.

Steve: In a way that’s actually what Google wants you to do these days, right? Get links for the sake of exposure as opposed to ranking in search.

Jim: Yeah, what stinks is that, I mean, you know, you don’t want to behave differently in your business simply because a third party has their impressions like the reason why Google has all these talks about all this is like fear and certain doubt about algorithm changes and back links, and what’s manipulative and what isn’t, is that they don’t have an algorithmic way to detect it.

So right now they are just painting with a broad brush and you have a lot of– we see it a lot in personal finance these blogs just get decimated. They haven’t done anything truly manipulative like I have seen in other industries. Like they aren’t building tons of links on a massive scale that super directed that’s clearly paid for or whatever, but you get caught up in it. The best way to avoid it, is not to play in that world, at least now until things sort of shake out, and build another asset that you know for certain will have value and that you can control. And that’s the e-mail list.

Steve: That’s very good advice. So that’s actually a different approach than I have been taking with my online store, because we kind of got caught up in some of the search algorithm changes last year as well. So we’ve been completely transitioning over to building our list, and building up our social media presence as well. So it sounds like our strategies are kind in line with what I have been seeing evolving last couple of years at least.

Jim: Yeah definitely, I think that’s smart, I mean, you don’t want to ignore search, but you only have a limited amount of time each day, and so if there is an opportunity to your left in e-mail then you should try to focus and get as much of that as you can, and the search stuff like it’s still there you can still a little bit, you can do a little bit for it. I mean, the two are not mutually exclusive, and so you focus on the one with the greatest amount of opportunity.

Steve: Yeah definitely, that is definitely good advice. And speaking of advice, since you’ve kind of gone through this all before and you are trying to start another blog from scratch, what sort of advice would you give to some of the new people who are starting online businesses. To kind of give them that extra little boost to make them successful.

Jim: I think what’s been really important, and when I think about, you know, starting microblogger and when I started bargaineering, or any of my efforts, it’s important to network with people and talk with other entrepreneurs, other people in your industry, other people outside of your industry, because that support network is absolutely crucial.

And what’s funny is because, as I have talked to more and more entrepreneurs and learned sort of – not their secrets – but like things that they themselves credit for their success, often times it’s something they learned talking to someone else that they didn’t know. Like, Steve, we talk often, and we share ideas back and forth, and in the sharing of those ideas we have other ideas right there, we probably wouldn’t have thought of if we were all stuck in our own little offices thinking about our own problems all the time.

And I feel that if you want to succeed you have to get out there, network with people, you have to talk with people that you don’t necessarily feel like at this moment will help you in your business or otherwise, but if they can be there for emotional support or just someone to talk to then there is value there.

I know that in creating bargaineering, I talked a lot with ‘Five Cent Nickel’, fivecentnickel.com, and there were ideas back and forth that I think without him and me talking as often as we did, we probably wouldn’t have built our sites to the sizes that they were.

Steve: So actually, how do you meet people outside of going to conferences?

Jim: Well, that will take research, I think that social media, especially Twitter and Facebook are great for interacting with other entrepreneurs, but you could start very simply. Go on Google, search for other blogs in your niche. Eventually you’ll start seeing hallmarks of larger and larger communities that maybe you didn’t know existed before, right.

So for example, I am not a food blogger. I want to learn, I start to search for food bloggers. I talk to Lindsay and Bjork of ‘Pinch of Yum’. I find out that they have an entire membership site just for food bloggers, to teach them how to do it and whatever. I’m not going to create a food blog, but if I were, and I was just looking around at other food bloggers to talk to, and I saw their membership site, and I was serious about it and I thought that it had value for me, maybe I’d join.

That already is a built-in network of people that you can now become friends with, interact with. If it works out great, if it doesn’t cancel your membership. You could find forums that people talk in, Facebook groups, all these things. Like just go out and meet people.

Steve: Yeah, that is very good advice, for me at least, I find it very difficult to find the time to actually go out on these forums and become a regular. So, for me at least, I find that going to conferences works well for me because I dedicate a very focused four days to just go out and meet as many people as I can.

Jim: Yeah, that is– going to conferences is probably the best thing you can do for the shortest period of time in order to build connections or build relationships.

Steve: All right so, I’ve already taken up a lot of your time, so I thought we’d wrap things up a little bit. Do you have a favorite business book or some sort of piece of writing, a blog that has really influenced you in any way to start your online business?

Jim: That is a good question. It’s funny because I ask this to people often, and I’m not really sure if I have an answer for that. I’ve constantly– so this is something that I have started recently is I have been trying to read a lot more, and the one thing we did was we took the television once we moved out of our other house into the new house. We took the TV out of the bedroom, and every night now I read before I fall asleep.

And I have just been reading so many good books, I think probably one of my favorite, and one that I see myself going back and reading over and over again is ‘Influence’ by Robert Cialdini. Just talking about how to influence people, and it sounds manipulative, but it’s not, but it is all scientifically based, some of it is a little outdated, I don’t know how effective it is, but, and how all of it, in terms of effective ness, but it is worth taking a look at. I learned a lot reading that, and it made a lot of sense to me.

Steve: I think I read that book many years ago, I haven’t opened it up recently, maybe I’ll fire up again.

Jim: Yeah, it is a fun read. I also like ‘Behavioral Finance’ books, ‘Behavioral Economics’ books. So like ‘Predictably Irrational’ by Dan Ariely, ‘Undercover Economist’ by– I forget the author, but its– yeah I forget the author.

Steve: I will look all these up and put them up in the show notes for sure. I have to go and check them out myself.

Jim: Yeah, they are fun.

Steve: Yeah, are there any online services that you use for any of your businesses that you just can’t leave without.

Jim: Google analytics, that very powerful, it sorts early even if you are not going to build, you know, use every last bit of it. I will say like Aweber. I’ve been playing around with other e-mail systems for the other businesses that I’m a part of. MailChimp is pretty good too, but I think for your initial beginning blogger, it’s tough to beat Aweber.

Steve: Nice, all right Jim, you know we are coming up to forty minutes here and just wanted to thank you for being a part of the show. If any of these listeners want to be able to contact you or find you, where can they find you online?

Jim: Sure, you can find me at microblogger.com, and if you are on Twitter, love to hear from you, let me know what you think of our chat, it’s at wangarific.

Steve: Wangarific, it attracts me up every time.

Jim: Glad no one took it before I did.

Steve: Yeah, I’m sure it was in high demand…

Jim: You say that, it doesn’t sound like you believe me, it is in high demand.

Steve: All right men, thank you for coming on the show, and I’m sure I will be talking with you very soon.

Jim: Yeah, this was fun, thanks again.

Steve: Thanks Jim, take care.

Jim: Bye.

Steve: What I like about Jim is that he is an avid learner, and he is always willing to try new things, and in fact, he’s got a whole bunch of other online businesses that we didn’t even really talk about today. And as a result he’s extremely knowledgeable across many different disciplines, plus he is just a really nice guy also and very personable as well. So how Jim and I met is actually one of the big reasons why all of you should be attending conferences. Now both Jim and I will be at think-on and I hope to see you all there.

Meanwhile don’t forget to sign up for my podcast giveaway, where I’m giving away a lifetime membership to my ‘create a profitable online store’ course, as well as free consulting. For more information go to www.mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to the mywifequitherjob podcast where we’re giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.

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Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?


If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

007: How Noah Kagan Started AppSumo A 7 Figure Business Selling Digital Goods Online

AppSumo

In today’s episode, I have the pleasure of interviewing Noah Kagan, a well known entrepreneur that has started many successful businesses. He’s also known for being employee number 30 at Facebook and a very early employee at Mint.com as well.

Recently, he has shifted his focus towards starting lifestyle businesses and that is why I wanted to have him on the show so badly. Right now, he runs AppSumo.com, a daily deals site selling digital goods for entrepreneurs.

And the nature of his business allows him to work wherever he wants and whenever he wants. You’re going to love this interview!

BTW, the picture below is how he looks in real life when he’s not sumo wrestling:)

What You’ll Learn

Noah Kagan

  • How Noah started AppSumo for 60 bucks
  • The biggest mistake that most new business owners make
  • How Noah got his early customers for Appsumo
  • Why collecting emails is key
  • What is the totem pole of business
  • How Noah lubricates the business process
  • Why he left Mint.com
  • What most people commonly neglect in business
  • The number one thing that Noah does to get email addresses
  • Noah’s philosophy on outsourcing
  • How to get better results with your business

Sites Mentioned

Transcript

Steve: You are listening to the mywifequitherjob.com podcast episode number seven. Now before we begin, I just want to remind you that my podcast contest is still going on. I’m giving away a life time membership to my course as well as free consulting. So for more information go to www. mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch. Now I also want to give a quick shout out to my buddy Jim Wang who runs the Microblogger podcast. It’s an awesome podcast that you guys should all go check out after you listen to this one. Now on to the show.

Welcome to the mywifequitherjob podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suites your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the mywifequitherjob podcast. Today I’m really happy to have Noah Kagan on the show. Now if you don’t know who Noah Kagan is, he was one the early people at Face book. Then he was like number 3 at Mint.com, which later got acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars. But then he decided to quit the work force all together and started a company called AppSumo.com, which started out as a daily deal site for digital goods that has kind of evolved into more of a store front for some of their own digital products recently. Now, AppSumo has something like 700,000 email subscribers, which is just about the largest email list that I’ve ever heard of anyone having.

Anyway Noah is a very busy man and extremely hard to get a hold of and in fact he blew me off the first time when I emailed him with the excuse that he had nothing really new to say. Now if you’ve ever heard this guy speak before the guy never has nothing to say. And in fact the only way I managed to get him on my podcast was I had to lie. I told him that I was doing a podcast about dating Asian women, and he took the bait and then I had to offer a little tacos as well. Sorry Noah those females couldn’t be here today so we are going to have to talk about AppSumo but really glad to have you on the show and welcome.

Noah: Thanks Steve, I just want to say for your audience, I didn’t blow you off. I didn’t respond to your email because it came through a trusted source but I think there so much interesting things that people can learn and I feel like it is talked about and read about and no one ever takes the heart to really spend the time thinking about how to write a damn good email. And number one you, got intro to me from a friend so that was a plus but then you just kind of, hey you should do my podcast because people do my podcast, and I was like no not my thing.

And then you actually came back really strong and I just wanted to you know share with your audience about what made it really successful for me to want to be on your show. I think number one, you reduced the time pressure and you addressed my issues which are like how effective is it going to be for me in this podcast. You said hey we’ve got a large launch about it, it would be really fun with the topless and Asian women which is kind of a joke and then you really showed me that is it’s worth my time, not necessarily just about making– having you have more content for your blog or for podcast. So I really want to commend you on that and encourage your listeners that spending more than a minute crafting their emails if they want to get responses from anyone that they email.

Steve: Yes it’s funny because I had a lot of success so far. No one has denied me or even pushed back at all so far and you were the first person to do that and I had to kind of come up with something to actually convince you to come on the show, so thanks for challenging me there in that respect.

Noah: Yeah man you even– I think you read one of my blogs first on OkDork.com about cold emails. So you kind of hid things that matter from me, because I told you here I kind of, I don’t really have much new things that I want to talk about, and I’m trying to limit my interviews or podcasts interviews to people with decent size audiences, no offence. And you said actually I have the emails from 8o to 10,000 visitors a month, I’ve 25,000 on my email list and I’m going to get you 5 virgins, I mean you could say all– no you didn’t say anything about that.

Steve: We didn’t say anything about virgins.

Noah: No, no we didn’t. But it was just you know you crafted it to the audience which was me and that’s why you know I took the time to do this so and plus thank you for having me, it’s good that people want to hear my story.

Steve: Yeah, awesome. You know I actually looked around and you actually haven’t really gone into too much depth about your back story. I mean there is a couple of sentences and paragraphs here and there, but I don’t know if anyone really knows the deep depth of you know how you got started and that sort of thing, so hopefully we will cover that today.

Noah: Sure man. I’m happy to do that.

Steve: Yeah, let’s start with the quick back ground story in case you know there are some people out there who don’t know who you are, tell us you know your background story and how you make a living online today.

Noah: So, I graduated back in 04. I went to In hell or some people know it’s called Intel. I was the supply chain optimization, that’s what I managed so I basically calculated like how many parts we needed to make on excel, so pretty much I worked about an hour a day. And I just messed around the rest of the time. And I actually got you know I got raises and people thought I did a good job. And I was always kind of starting businesses on the side so one of the things I always encourage people do is, I’m not a risk taker and I never quit my job. People do this I’m like damn you are risky, you got balls, or if you are woman I guess you have breasts I don’t know whatever you want to say.

I don’t quit my jobs or move on to do my own things until I know it’s working, and that’s something I always encourage everyone. So when I was in Intel you know I have all this free time and also at night and weekends so I started creating my own side businesses. So I started creating conferences and events which was a great way to meet people. I created college up data which is a pre college Craig’s list, then I did a student discount card called ninjacard.com which was a discount card for college campuses. It went to about 5 campuses did about 50,000 bucks. And so the point is not what I have done. The point is I was actively trying to create my businesses while I had that consistent income, so that I could eventually do my own thing. I was about to quit Intel because some of the stuff was starting to show promise and I submitted my resume and run over to Facebook because there was a project I loved, and I was using a lot of time, I was trying to get laid. And you know in 20 years and my listeners are like God no you are such an ass.

Steve: That’s how I got you on the show man go on.

Noah: Yeah. Well hopefully for my mum I will meet a nice Jewish girl we’ll see. And so anyway I got the interview and I ended up getting there really early on when it was just kind of like the show. I think we had 110,000,000 people. And you know I worked directly with Zack and Dustin and Shawn Packers and all these people not as much as Shawn and all the other guys who now are freaking multi, multi billionaires, and it was one of the most fun and educational times of my life.

I learned to build a website, I learned really how get into some minds of people using websites because I really you know for the most I was just turning around my own projects. I didn’t really have any training or really good understanding and so Mark and these guys were all like exceptional. There was not, it’s not just locked it. They are you know $170 billion company, they are amazingly talented and other people there they were all. I was definitely the damnest around, and I think a lot of times I’ve people say that they’re actually damn. I’m like yeah you are definitely a damn it. I think I’m mildly smart but I’m a little more aggressive and, but still there I got to be still around such gifted people.

And I think one of the things I have noticed about myself, I think the people with age I remember being at face book and being 23 or 24 and seeing these 30 and 40 years-olds and I was like holy shit these people are very informative and leave at 7:00 o’clock, these people suck man I’m working till 11. And a civil [convalley??] mentality which is where I’m from was all about oh work all the time work, work and we worked and then partied a lot. What I realize is that age is– I really should have focused more now on doing less things and not working as much for getting more results, and getting better results. And so it is kind of like your podcast when we talked about in the beginning which I don’t want to do 100 podcast in the beginning for marketing mass I do all the podcast to get you know App.Sumo.com feature our new product just SumoMe.com. But now I’m like all right let me just do five podcasts, and maybe they take a little bit longer to set up but they will actually give me a much more significant reach. And that’s something that you know I’ve changed and evolved as a person.

Steve: You know that’s exactly been my philosophy with my sites and my businesses. For me it all happened when you know my wife became pregnant and we started these businesses so that we could actually hangout with our kids. So, kind of similar but a little bit different than in your case. Sorry go on.

Noah: No, I think one of the other key things that your listeners and readers should really think about is how can you– and I love this is how can you add on limitations to increase your creativity. And so how can you box yourself in because then you will actually solve that problem like if you give yourself less time or with your story it’s like all right we have less income and we want to spend more time with our child so how do we make that situation work. And I think those are the kind of things you should self impose and try out to see what will make you better or get the business or lifestyle you want. I think a lot of the excuses we have this course on Monthly1k.com, and I can talk about the evolution of how we got that.

But you know we’ve helped thousands literally over 4000 people start businesses so what’s been fascinating for me is just understanding the psychology of how people start, why they are not starting. And one of the things is like I have a job and I’m tired at night and on weekends. I’m like wow this is– that means it is not a priority for what you really want. You really don’t want to have another job. You don’t really want to have a job that you can control and you can create the lifestyle that you want with it. Because if you want it after work even though you are tired you’ll do in the morning you would do it, on the weekends you would do it, but people want that result without actually putting in the input.

Steve: Yeah, let’s go over some of the other excuses. I get these all the time. So one is like it costs you too much to start a business, you need a technical background.

Noah: Yeah I don’t have a technical funders, I don’t have too many ideas, I have too many ideas, I’ve already bugged my friends a lot, I don’t know how to do marketing. I mean the list goes on you know and one of the big ones is I’m afraid of what other people are going to be thinking of me. And you know when it all comes down to it, a lot of that is just practice, all right. It’s practice overcoming like doing smaller things to overcome fears and then eventually, you know how do you build the business one at a time. A lot of people are like how do I scale and make this a $10,000 business in a month. And you know one of the things that I haven’t shared publicly too much but because you know you went to Stanford and I like you so much, you know when I started AppSumo my first year I made $12000.

Steve: That’s better than I made with my blog. I think I made a fraction of that my first year so.

Noah: Well I didn’t have a baby and a wife. You know I’ve learned some more over time and now my salary is about 120 and that is a little over 3 years later and so and obviously we have more profit than that but I created the business and the lifestyle that I want. Not necessarily, how much do I just make as much money as possible, it’s like what do I want my life to look like and how do I create that. Yeah so you know at Facebook I ended up getting fired and there is a long post at OkDort.com about what happened if anyone is interested.

Steve: I will link up to that if you give me the link after the podcast.

Noah: Yeah, it’s OkDorkfacebookpatterns and then, you know I think one of the key things that I have been thinking of lately and is– I didn’t really do anything after Facebook. I kind of like taught business and career, I worked at a start up called Scanad, did some consulting there, I kind of put on these conferences and made good money from that. You could actually, if you are interested in putting on events or conferences I have an article on OkDort.com and how I made over $100000 doing conferences. And then I finally you know someone introduced me to Mint.com and I drew just like oh my God this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.

And so the take away that really dawned on me besides I didn’t get the job at first and I can share two stories that I think are really interesting. The first one I think about a lot now which is around six years later is that I really wanted to be a part of Mint.com. And what I think about today is when I’m doing a business, I make more money I get more satisfaction, I’m more willing to stick with it when times are tough, if it is something I really want to see exist in my world.

So I think most people are like why don’t I make a subscription business so that I’ve passive income, and how I do all these things, and ultimately I think that leaves you unsatisfied and more likely to quit or give up. But if you create a business you know selling baby related stuff because you have a baby or for me I’m selling a taco shop now as a funny kind of gag thing. And on tacos right, it’s on batter brand if anyone’s curious. And I think you know with Mint.com I was exactly that. I was like cool this business is going to change the world; I have to be a part of it. I think the more that people can kind of start looking and focusing on those kinds of things, they’ll probably going to get better results than if you are just going to look for an opportunity.

Steve: But here is the thing, you left Mint before it got acquired right?

Noah: Yeah I left Mint a little under a year before it got acquired.

Steve: Okay and so what was the reason, what was going through your head you know with that decision if you loved the product so much?

Noah: I loved Mint. I basically looked at it kind of analytically where– All right I met Mint and I loved Mint and I was kind of at a point which it was going to take off and go where I wanted to go but my ultimate goal is run my own business. And so that’s not what I did at Mint. So, a few things, one I was like I’d run my own business, two I looked at the math, and the math was well if Mint gets sold– this is my math I own 1%, Mint get sold for 200,000000 I make 2,000000 bucks, right? After taxes that is like a 1,000000. And then in San Francisco that gets you like half a toilet. Right, so you don’t get shit, then naturally I stay for years right, because you have to wait for the investing period.

Noah: Right.

Steve: So then I was like well if I want to start my own business which is like my number one goal and then looking at this math I basically ask myself could I make half a million to a million dollars post tax in that same time. And you know I kind of came to the conclusion that I could, and so with that being said I also had Facebook apps that I was building at night because I saw the Facebook platforms open up in those apps I think in the first two weeks had about two million installs.

Steve: Wow.

Noah: And so, I was kind of like all right and you know as I said earlier I’m risk averse, so I was like all right, this business is working, I can monetize it because I was doing apps related to sports and I did those apps because I could link, do up Amazon affiliate links, just you know sports things like sports jerseys and I did movies ones because I could sell the movies and I did TV shows ones so I could sell the TV shows. And that was working on, so I quit Mint said all right, let me see where I could take this.

Steve: Okay. And so how did that evolve into AppSumo then?

Noah: That actually evolved to its own seven figure business that’s still going today. So, that was court kicked – it’s a crazy story, I don’t know, how long is your podcast long? Like 45 minutes?

Steve: Yeah, 45 minutes to an hour, but we could probably go the full hour, talk fast.

Noah: Yeah, well I have a hair cut at 3:30, [chuckles] And that’s actually something I think we can talk about at the end which is taking care of yourself, which is not something I normally – I just used to cut my own hair and wear hoodies and ugly jeans all the time at George’s.

Steve: I think I saw a picture of you with a beard too [chuckles].

Noah: Yeah, my end year I didn’t know who I was trip. Well, so anyway with that basically we built these apps, they grew, I got funded by [Inaudible] [00:14:58] of the angel list, hired people, we were doing around 50 to 60 k a month, and then you know, I kind of went on this thing while the whole point was, I really wanted to run my own my business and I also wanted to travel abroad. So I took the company to Argentina, and I kind of just got you know like I said before I didn’t really give a fuck about games, this was just a straight opportunity. And as the game started dying, I was just like, well, I don’t give a shit. I’m just going to have fun in Argentina drink wine, and tango and eat meat and just explore. And the guys in my team were like, dude you got to get back to work or we’re going to quit. And I wasn’t sure what else to do, so I went back to work. I’m going to abbreviate and kind of jump a little forward. So, going back to work, we ended up becoming a payment platform for games, that business ended up doing like about 20 or 30 million dollars top line. So bottom line I think we ended up making like 2 or 3 million dollars, then you split it 3 ways, then in California it get stayed in income tax, so at the end you know, I think I ended up making about a half a million dollars.

Steve: Okay.

Noah: When it was all done in about 2 years. So, that was fine but I was working like literally 18 hour day but it was fun at the time. But when I came down to it like 2 years or 3 years without the staff I was like, are you sure? The partners I was with I really liked as people, I didn’t like working with them and I had no interest in what we were creating every day. I had no interest waking up, working on how to you know, make people more money with their credit card payments. I didn’t care for them – there are people out there who do and that just wasn’t me so, you know, as I have said time and time again in this interview, someone asked me to do consulting at speeddate.com and they would pay me 150 an hour to do product consulting like, how does the products on the website work.

So I did have that blind doubt as you know, I kind of tell you guys and ended up doing speed date and then I was trying to you know, look for my next thing and so, one of the ideas was a [fish full??] sold in restaurants, small businesses – and I still think this is an interesting business, they suck at getting people’s information, and so what that means is that like, they have 100 people come to their restaurant, they don’t get any of their information and then how do you get those people back to your restaurant? Well, I guess you have to hope they think about eating there again. And so I was like, well what if I can help them collect email addresses to come back to the restaurant and I will take care of everything. And I just thought this was a really neat business and I think there’s a few people who’ve tried it. But I just kind of realized that like small businesses, a lot of them are old school and they kind of suck, so that wouldn’t be as much fun and it’s not necessarily a business I wanted myself or what I want to exist in my world.

Steve: Okay.

Noah: Am I rumbling? Am not rumbling, am I going to fast?

Steve: No, no, no worry, its interesting keep going.

Noah: All right. Yeah. You can tell me to shut the hell up or direct it in any way, you’re the leader, orchestrator.

Steve: Yeah, yeah. So I mean, eventually I want to steer towards AppSumo.

Noah: So, I had that idea then I basically, the way I try to do my businesses and the ones that I have been successful with, is I try to just like; I don’t look ahead two years or ten years. I’m not ill on months; it’s just not my thing. And most things that are scale are changing the world start with changing one person, and they evolve to bigger things and I think that’s what’s missed a lot. If Facebook didn’t set out to be this big ass mass of thing, it set out to like Mark to hook up with Rose at Harvard and then you know he stuck with it, which most people don’t do. I take persistence slash patience is a competitive damage and I think that is the thing people should think about.

But it became slim baked so, I kind of looked out about six months and I said all right, well, here’s three things that are looking really interesting; Job apps is growing like crazy, Markhaistenwho.com are growing like crazy in terms of distribution, they’re selling things at a discount for a limited time, that’s working really well, and I’m really good at marketing and I like marketing, but there’s no great way to find web tools. So I kind of triangulated those things to create bundles of web tools, and so that is what the original version of AppSumo was.

And so, I was like, well, let me see if I can test this idea, if people will pay me. So I tried to work backwards to say all right, where can I find a large group of customers, and I have written about this on AppSumo which is how I started it for 60 bucks. So, work backwards from your customers’ front. Most people – this is the common promise into this for entrepreneurs. They work forward and the like, and especially engineers because they are smart, they are really smart, they create something and they are like, well, where can I fit this into? It’s like, they create the circle and then try to figure out where can they put their circle in, verses like they have a square and now I have to find a piece that fits.

Steve: You know, as an engineer myself, I can kind of relate to that, and It’s been actually a struggle for me to kind of work backwards like that or forwards in your way of thinking so-

Noah: You know why? Because it’s easier Steve. I mean, you know I’m not some master guru, like that happens to me and it’s happened to me in times, I have wasted hundreds of– well not hundreds of thousands but at least a hundred thousand in about a year on projects that I built solutions to no one’s problem. And instead, I just started thinking all right, well, how do I just solve people’s problems and give them solutions that they actually want. So, I went on to Reddit and I found out that they love this photo, and I’m a Redditor, and I found out that they loved injure so I went to injure and said, hey, can you give me your product at a discount I’ll see if the people on Reddit will buy it.

And I ended up promoting on Reddit, I ended up buying the guys at Reddit, the founders, breakfast and they gave me free advertising. Kind of like, you e-mailed me and I just emailed them and I said, hey, can I have a thing at around four? And I said, I’ll take you out for breakfast, and then at breakfast I said, you know, I really like you guys, I’m doing this product for read it do you think you can give me some free ads? And they did, and the irony in that story, I was like joking is that, a month later I was tried to get more free ads and they were like oh yeah that’s 10,000 dollars now because I connect to the world.

That cost me I think $26 and a breakfast and I you know, I still appreciate it, I mean this Christopher Slone, good dude and I appreciate what he did for me. And so we ended up selling, you know, I think with businesses you validate, my validation method, what I encourage people to do is, three paying customers, 48 hours. And so what that means is, with your service, or product or idea, anything even an app I don’t give a shit what it is, you have to get three paying customers within 48 hours and it kind of comes back to, do I have easy access to these customers? And will people be willing to pay me for what I think will help them?

Steve: So, you did this whole thing on Reddit and Bing, did you even have a website or a way to get payment at that time?

Noah: In retrospect, I wouldn’t have done it, but I did build a website. It took me about a week, maybe even less and I paid a guy in Pakistan 50 bucks, to add in PayPal, and I Google searched for PHP membership code and I built a crappy little website and then, I manually sent each customer who bought the code. And in retrospect, I probably could have used like tumbler or Webplus or just send my hey, Paypal here and I’ll send you the injure code. So, I did that and then we started doing in bundles. And I was like, all right, well, people want to buy it, now let me keep working backwards to see how can I get more traffic and create a bundle. So, then I went to Lifehacker. I emailed one of the writers and I said, you know, I’m going to put together a of your bundles top rated and top commented on posts and products, do you think you’d write about it, he’s like I can’t promise it but that sounds really interesting.

So I went, got their top products they had written about and commented on Lifehacker which was Evernote and RescueTime and a few other tools you remember The Milk and you know, I put it all together and I said hey guys I told you I would do it and they wrote this huge article and I think that drove the first few hundred sales of that 150 bucks.

Steve: So, I just want to kind of emphasis the couple of things that you’re saying. So sounds like a lot of the stuff that you did earlier on was leg work and a lot of people that actually come on my blog, they just think that they can create a website and magically get to rank in Google and you know the customers will just come out running, but it always takes a whole of leg work earlier on and it is your hustle really that gets something started in the beginning.

Noah: Yeah man dude it pisses me off, I’ll tell you like one of the things that I hate more than anything is that people buy a– they do create a landing page and they do all the stuff that engineers do because it’s easier to build things than try to make money out of things. It’s way easier to create a landing page and buy an ad and be like hey! I got 30 emails and a 20% conversion rate. What can I try to sell these people, which is like all right, you could have done that without spending any money and seeing a lot easier but that part is more fun? Like my friends like to put it is playing business not actually doing business.

And so you know you from that point on I was like all right, do these bundles of different kinds of create categories since I try to work backwards to think that I work towards appeal and so some of the different marketing methods that worked really well for us to grow the business in the beginning was doing like free bundles. So I get people’s products and I try to give it away for free. Secondly Heaton Shaw one of my good friends– he was like do you collect emails. And this is a key thing that I would say is that when you start; get on your blogging business versus just kind of copying someone else.

And I think it’s good to copy and involve another business but as you evolve and learning the wise of business, so I used to never collect emails. My buddy he was like hey dude collect emails because it makes it a lot easier to tell them about the next deal. And in retrospect now I was like oh yeah that makes sense, but people will just like, of course he gets emails, that’s obvious but at the time I never thought I would do that. And I would never have thought that unless I started it myself to kind of understood how hard it was.

Steve: Let me ask you this, how did you get people to give you their products for free that you are actually making money on?

Noah: The ones– it varies, sometimes if it is free– if it is a paid product and it’s free, it’s just, it’s a digital product that they are getting distribution that maybe people will subscribe in the future, or it is a new email address for their other products.

Steve: Okay.

Noah: Or if it’s a– let’s say it’s a bundle and there is like three, like everyone knows it’s a huge product or fresh books from Mailchimp, but there is a fourth product that is like a kind of a no name I think it is a great product, then I’ll promote it online. I’m not going to pay you when we sell the bundles, but you get kind of distribution for it at no cost. And I mean that’s like a holy grail. And that’s one of things I learned about gambling that previous business with payments versus AppSumo which is you know and I call the totem pole, which is how valuable are you to customers? So, how viable was the payments company? Not viable I got treated like shit. How valuable was distribution? Really valuable, if you have the right audience.

And also depending on who wants the distribution. And so it was just kind of really interesting the first year, we kind of we wanted to design our bundles. Other marketing things that worked really well was we did like bundles for conferences and they were promoted out. I asked the companies that we were promoting to promote it out and I would give them templates. I think that’s one of the things that’s really helped me is how do you lubricate things. So, if I email Steve and I say, hey Steve I want you to introduce me to you know– let me give you a clear example. I’m trying to go to Napo and have a tour of the winery and a buddy of mine I ask; hey do you know anybody who does wine? And he’s like yeah, I got a buddy Steve who owns the Winers. I think his actual name is Steve. So I email him back and I’m like hey man, here is the template, but I literally wrote the email and I’m like can you forward this to Steve? And he is like hey, here is my buddy Noah and it makes it easier for him to just hit forward and send that email verses make him do work.

So, AppSumo– I just gave him the templates and said hey, can you send this out to customers who haven’t bought your product; this is a great way to convert them. And that worked really well. One of the key things that was going on in our business at that time was looking for an– I don’t know how to phrase it, if I made it up or how it goes but I look for anomalies in success. And basically what that means is kind of like just are your listeners male or female?

Steve: Mostly female actually.

Noah: Oh shit, damn it, I was going to– well we do it in a female perspective then.

Steve: Okay.

Noah: So, if you are female and you’re kind of making out with the guy or hanging out with the guy and you do something he likes, that’s the kind of thing I’m starting to be more aware of and trying to do more of. So if you are you know making out with the guy and you touch his earlobe, and you are like man this guy has an ear fetish, you probably should touch his ears more often. But you touch his toes and he giggles and you know he, he, he doesn’t like it, you probably shouldn’t do that. And so what I would– and that’s one of the things I think people kind of neglect in businesses is; one is reverse engineering which is all right as I’ve said before work backwards to what’s already working. Lifehacker has traffic that works. Let me figure out a product that will work with that.

The second thing is like do more of what’s already working, and look for those anomalies of success, which is kind of like the same exact thing, which is I noticed that these bundles were hard man. Like it was– it took me like three years five months to put a bundle together and I promote it, and I make like 5,000 but it would take me so much time. And I realized like working to just take the products because I could get those and put those out one at a time, instead of bundling it probably make more money, and have more frequency of things I can promote verses like these three months 5000 things, I could have one day 5000 things, $5000 promotions.

Steve: Yeah, because I notice that I haven’t been getting as many emails from AppSumo. Before it was all about packaged deals and now it seems like it’s more about individual products that you guys own. Is that correct?

Noah: It’s been an interesting evolution man, and I think that’s the part that people miss in businesses. They are like give me the answers and give me a tactic which I’m a tactic guy, I love me. You know like I don’t want to hear your fluff, but there is some value to the fluff you know like in thinking about things differently in how people are running their businesses and stopping things. So like I think a lot of businesses will just keep doing bundles, and I think what we did really well was all like well these single deals are going to work or should work well. Let’s try it out. It worked really well for bundles and we just killed bundles completely, because it takes a lot of time and you don’t get as much of a return for the time that you’re using, for other time that it takes to put it together. And so for the first year I mean we did and then we turned everything into individual promotions. And then…

Steve: And so…

Noah: Excuse me?

Steve: No, I was just going to ask you, so each time you are getting more and more email subscribers based on the products that you are pushing is that correct?

Noah: Yeah, I mean one of– this is funny man. I swear to God like we had, we literally had a growth hacker, like I hired a guy three years ago just to do development around marketing and tactics and you know hacks and gimmicks. And I will say that the– I mean all of it because I spent a year with this guy developing stuff to get more emails. The number one thing that got us more emails, the number one thing was the best products. So when I promoted a product like sweetener which is last week, or picture chart which is in the past and other tools like that, we get a huge ton of emails, because it’s a great thing. People want to give you their email; they want to hear more about that.

When you try to just trick and be like hey give me your email because you should, or like share this for $10 referral like for us none of that really worked. Same thing with contests you know like I think people do shit contests like oh here is a giveaway, we– our first contest was drop box for life, which in the economics was great, because I only have to pay once a year 100 bucks and people want to live till 80, and you have to be 21, so it was only going to cost me 60 years times 100 so that’s $6,000. And so I was like well, if I could get more than 6000 that would be worth it. And our contest in the beginning you know work didn’t sync really well. Guess what, because people want drop box for life and we are still paying those people and it was very profitable and it worked out for everyone who is a part of it.

Steve: So, if we back up a little bit back when you didn’t have this gigantic list, how do you get these people to take part in your deals?

Noah: Well a lot of the times yeah. So with sales the number one thing that you’re trying to accomplish is the other person’s objectives and that’s what I really focused on. So let’s say I come to you Steve and you run a product, you know one of my key question is like what is your matrix of success for a promotion with us? And then if I– I make sure that, that’s what I say that I can I can do or not do. So I think when people are starting businesses, I’m an eagle scout and I relate it to starting a fire with taking a big log and trying to light it with a lighter. Right, obviously that’s not going to work. When you start a fire you start with kindle and then you build it up.

And that’s what I did, which was I started with you know smaller products that I knew I could promote, I didn’t have to have a major listing with so well. Then as I grew, then I would go out and try to get larger products that would, you know that those companies would require larger promotions for them to want to do it. Like same with your blog, like if you came to me and you said hi, I’ve 20 listeners, I would be like you know that’s awesome, kick my ass, I just don’t have time to do that with you right now, to do an interview. And so you know I go to the sites, I mean that’s what I didn’t say when you were trying to do guest postings. I know that’s a star, we can see you are such a diva, straighten your knee, build yourself up verses trying to– a lot of people just try to start with A’s who get all the attention. Go to the ugly guys, start with them and then eventually walk up to the hot guys.

Steve: Right on, that’s actually a pretty good analogy since we are talking about dating and that sort of thing.

Noah: Yeah man.

Steve: So you know I kind of want to talk a little bit about how you run the business too because I think very few people can appreciate some of the intricacies of kind of just maintaining such a large list and it’s huge distribution platforms, so what is the challenges of running a company like AppSumo?

Noah: Yeah man I mean it’s been such a relief every partner you know I feel for myself it has been such a crazy story like I was alone for the first 6 months a year and I did everything and I was talking to someone one of our customers on Monthly1k which is our how to start a business course and I love to share why we started that not only just sharing it you know how people buy it and that’s not what is important to me. It is important to me but it’s not like the most important. But he emailed me and was like hey man I want someone else to do all this work for me. And I was like I think that’s a huge mistake because I think understanding like how every piece of your business works in the beginning is critical.

So, I did the coding, I did the marketing, I did the sales, I did the support I did everything man. And then it was only over time that I realized I can’t grow this business and we are making money so I can’t grow the business if I’m getting all the deals. So I hired a versatile person and I can’t you know do all the customer support because like then I can’t do the market so I hired a customer support person.

Steve: We have the exact same philosophies, a lot of people sign up for my course and you know they immediately just want to start contracting staff out. So one of my point to emphasize is you have to learn how the website works and you know how everything is laid out so that you understand and when it comes time to outsource, you don’t get ripped off and you know exactly what you want in your product.

Noah: Exactly, and I think one of the key things as people are trying to start businesses and I would challenge everyone is not to spend any money. Like I’ve started– I showed examples of this. I did events business, then I put up soon AppSumo.com and I’ve done OkDork.com, and I started both of those businesses worth nearly over thousands of profits, thousands dollars of profits in 24 hours, and I think I spent less than a dollar.

Steve: Let’s talk about that now because that is actually a really interesting story.

Noah: You don’t want to hear more stuff or? I’m happy with whatever you think your listeners or readers will appreciate.

Steve: You know all of this stuff is interesting. I’m just worried that we are going to run out of time, so you know one thing that I really like about you Noah is that we kind of share the same philosophies and we are both trying to convince others that are making money doesn’t have to be hard and it doesn’t have to be risky. And so one of the stories that I read on your blog was that you’ve actually gone out and physically demonstrated how a little bit of hustle can earn you some money you know on the side, and starting small then just gradually building up. So one of the stories that stood out to me was your Sumo junky story, so let’s talk a little bit about that.

Noah: Sure, so we created this course on Monthly1k.com, and the reason I created it was– let me give quick step back, because I think it is going to be really interesting to your listeners. So, in AppSumo’s beginning we grew to like, maybe I think 100,000 dollars in our first year. Then the second year we took off I think it was like a million or two million. And I think we’re in our fourth year I don’t even know. I think last year we did– or two years ago we did about five million on max, four point eight, and we had to meet all these employees and meet all these staff and the reality of it was that I never– you know I don’t want to build a billion dollar company.

I want to build a company where you know I can work here in Vegas for a weekend or last in February I worked from Thailand for two weeks and I don’t naturally always have to go travelling, but I have a business that’s creating the lifestyle that I want. And that’s not what I wanted is to have to come to an office, and have to manage all these people and all that shit. And so we scaled the company back to six people. We stopped doing all over and we started to A/B test every single price form. We used to test literally hundreds, if not thousands of things within the website and try to maximize profit.

And I think when you’re starting your business, it’s really saying, what do I want out of this? How do I want it to be? And really sticking with that. And things get hard when times are crazy. You know, we started spending millions of dollars on advertising, which we didn’t, you know we didn’t– we evolved that. I didn’t do it right away, but I said, oh shit, the ads are working, let’s spend as much as we can. That’s one of the things that I really encourage people, if you find something working, take advantage of it.

But when it came down to it, it’s like now we are a team of about six people. Last year we did I think, you know half of that revenue if not less, but we were way more profitable, because of how we run the business. And the second piece of that is, you know, the first year and a half we promoted other people’s products. And what I realized is that, holy shit, like, our business is very [sequickle??] it’s fickle. Like, we have a product like two weeks so let me give an example. Two weeks so we did a seminar and that was a five figure promotion in profit for us. And then last week did Wp101.com which we still think, we love that product and we think it’s an amazing product, but I think we made $5,000 total and you have to realize like, I have to pay $70,000 dollars a month in over head no matter what, so you can do the math and be like, holy shit! And that was-fuck! [Chuckles].

We have all these other business; I said all right well, how do we reduce that dependency? And I think that’s what people have to look at. It’s like, what’s holding you back? And how do I remove that? So we were like, well shit, if we’re not getting products that are always going to be hits, we need to create our own. And so that’s how we started. We tested it, that way we made like an email templates product and we made a– had a higher interest product and we just made a really get our own. We saw people would buy them, and then once we saw they would buy them, we‘re like holy shit, and I wasn’t actually spending money in making this better. And most people what they do is they spend tons of time and money making it great and then seeing if actually people will buy it. And so when we were bored we created that Monthly1k.com product, which shows people exactly– and I created it because I was tired of answering people‘s questions on how I’ve done that. I didn’t want to help people anymore; I wanted to put it all on this product so that it would just do the work for me.

Steve: Dude we have like parallel lives here. That’s exactly why I created my course as well [chuckles].

Noah: Come on, you just get– people kept on asking you?

Steve: People just kept asking the same questions, so I decided to just sit down, put it down on paper and then create a little video course teaching other people how to create e-commerce stores, you know go on, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to-

Noah: No, no, no do that together. You’re right, and I think one of the things that people should look at is like, what do I keep getting asked? And this is how people can– the easiest way to start a business and most people be like; oh I don’t want to turn my hobby in to money. It’s like, if you enjoy it, then keep enjoying it and make it fun for yourself. So like it could be cooking, it could be like one of the things that I love doing, is bringing people together and that’s what I’ve always done.

And I love showing off things that I love. What do you think AppSumo is? I show off things that I love; like find the products that I really love and I send it out to people. Our intern because he does things similar now, who does all that work – and so kind of reflecting on like what have you loved and done really well and doing more of that. And so, anyways we kind of started creating more of our own products and you know then we created the Monthly1k.com product, which is a whole year frankly, of hardship and of crying and it was successful for our customers and successful for us and that now provides a foundation so that we can experiment with crazier things which is like SumoMe.com, which is our latest product.

Steve: And what is SumoMe.com?

Noah: SumoMe.com is basically we’ve– I mean the guys in our team Chad, Eric and Damian are all insanely good developers, and so we built all these products and we showed people. So, we promote products with AppSumo, we built you know courses through all that. We started a business now it’s like, how do you grow your business? And so we are taking all the tools that we build over the past three years internally and making them public and most of them free. So it’s all the tools that we’ve used to grow [Inaudible] [00:37:51] to 700,000 and become a seven figure business.

Steve: Okay, I noticed this is part of the word press plugin right? You have a word press plugin?

Noah: Yes, SumoMe it’s just one line a job or if you have a word press plugin and sort of plug in like 30 seconds. It’s really quick to start getting more traffic and you know getting more emails or getting more shares on your blog.

Steve: Okay, and this make 1000 a month course – that’s what you were talking about, the make 1000 a month course?

Noah: Yeah.

Steve: So what are some of the principles that you teach in that class?

Noah: You know it’s funny actually. My instant thought is to start talking about how we developed it, because I think that is interesting as well for your listeners but, I think the co-principles that I focused on only from my own experiences of creating seven figure businesses, working at Facebook, working at Mint and putting it all together and what stuff that hasn’t worked. I mean I told you before I created onelevel.com and better arcade which both cost me about over 100,000 and over a year of time wasted. So I brought, I’ve done a success and I’ve done a failure stuff.

My core tenance is that we focus on our program; it’s probably about six things. So number one is fear. Most people have a lot of just different irrational fears and you know I’ve been afraid too about starting businesses like you know I was trying to start that jerky thing I was like, holy shit, this is going to definitely work and I only have 24 hours. And I woke up at midnight and I was like, I can’t go to sleep, I have to go work, because I was afraid of failing. And so when we work with people, we make them do different challenges and you can’t move forward in the course without doing it.

Number two is idea generation, so just different ways to get people’s idea brand just juicy then and going. Number two is then validation, so, how do you take any idea and see if people actually pay for it? So we get people sharpen that, so once they can validate anything they ever think of in the future, they can see if people will pay them for it.

Then third is how do you grow up? So, how do you take it from, all right, I have one or two customers to make 1000 dollars a month? And then, we don’t really focus on beyond. So, people are already making money online we can’t help them. That’s what SumoMe is doing is Sumo.Me.com is where you’re making money online, how do I take it to the next level. And then the two other kind of key tenents that we focus on and really helped us, I would say is accountability. So we have a coach who checks in with people so if you are struggling. That is one other thing that we are noticing is people just drop off because they have had one hick up and we’ll say yeah. And so the accountability couch was really critical for that.

And then number two was a live community. And so we have thousands of people and then we realized like at first man I’ll be real like at first there was only like let’s say a hundred and I was like oh my God, this is like stupid people helping other stupid people, I’m really worried about this. They are giving really bad advice and I was spending my whole time just helping each individual person and this is kind of I would say reflects how businesses evolve. And so I did it all in the beginning. I was– every single person I’ll respond to and as we grew you know we got more people so the crowd started helping, and then I actually hired people to then eventually do it, once we got large enough. But that group is in one– I would say probably the number one most valuable, because the live group– people buy from each other, people support each other, people get questions answered from each other. So I’d say those six things have kind of been the key things in what makes our course unique as well as made it successful for the people taking it.

Steve: Yeah, so it’s funny I actually asked you that question for selfish reasons because it sounds like we have kind of parallel tracks you know I have a forum as well where people support each other, and I was just curious how you’ve evolved the support and how you keep people motivated so.

Noah: I think, I mean you know it’s funny, one week we spent like literally 300,000 developing software, so it is all custom based software so no one can copy that. Well, what I think about because I mean dude, how many books in colleges and other products are there online teaching business? Like I don’t know tens of thousands? And there is always going to be someone else making something similar and you know it sounds like me and you have very similar ideas. And with that being the case so it’s like hosting similar restaurant. Like how many Japanese, like what’s your favorite food?

Steve: Yeah, it’s Japanese food.

Noah: Dude I love Japanese food and where are you based lastly?

Steve: I’m in Silicon Valley.

Noah: You actually grew up there?

Steve: No, no I’m actually from the East Coast.

Noah: Oh, cool.

Steve: But I came out to school at Stanford and then I stayed.

Noah: Nice man, so– Where were we? What I was trying to kind of say is like there is a ton of Japanese restaurants in the Bay area, right. There is one for every one and to think if customers had different preferences like you may go to one and think it’s awesome, I may think it’s bad and vice versa. So I just try to discourage people from sweating that there’re other competitors out there and they are like, oh Steve has it. I want more from me and I’m like it’s a large pie don’t sweat it.

Steve: I completely agree, I mean there is just so many excuses that I’ve heard over the years and so many people that are really excited when they start and then they kind of hit their first little obstacle and then they want to give up.

Noah: One thing for you is like what do you think and people ask me this and I’ve thought it’s a good question is like what do you think for you with your business was really part of the turning point in accelerating that growth to however much its making? So I would say for AppSumo advertising was our big kind of probably besides getting great products to promote. Once we started spending money on ads that kind of just really changed the trajectory of our business.

Steve: Yeah, so for our e-commerce store, so the blog came after the e-commerce store, but for our store at least the initial thing that kind of made us realize that we could make some money was; one we did adwords which kicked butt in the beginning, and then we started contacting people who could buy our products in bulk and once we found that you know, we could get these huge bulk purchases, we realized that you know, that was how we were going to make money as well.

Noah: That’s cool man! I like the stuff like that.

Steve: Yeah, that’s from my point of view. At least from my class you know I have tried to– I always look at things in a long time frame, like a five years out. I don’t know– I think you mentioned your time frame was like two or three years or something like that. I like taking a five year time frame, but it’s kind of hard to instill that in certain people who just want to make money really quickly. So, just wondering where your thoughts were on that.

Noah: You’re good for some luck. Seriously, like you know good luck. I don’t think– I think it’s possible go sell the credit cards, go to the mall and the airport and convince people to sign for credit cards. One of the things that I think about is like the destination verses the journey. So like a lot of people, oh man I hate my job, and you know one of the thing that’s always funny is that people hate their jobs but what do they want to do? Travel, I want to travel, and then after travelling is eventually over you’re like you want to go travel and work because you are like, what the hell I’m I going to do just sitting around all day, even if I’m super rich or super poor. And so I try to encourage people like you know, instead of just worrying about how to get so much money, you know, how do you work on something because you spend a lot of your life working on something, why not work on something you are interested in?

Steve: Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, people just have this misconception that, they just want to sit and have you know money will just kind of possibly come in, but then you get bored. That’s actually one of the reasons why I haven’t quit my job. I’m a little bit worried since my businesses don’t take that many hours to maintain, that I’m going to be just sitting around at home, and I’m going to lose my tech background, and I won’t have anything really interesting to propel me forward.

Noah: How did you– does your boss know about your stuff?

Steve: Yeah, he does actually. And I’ve told them upfront actually relatively recently. I’m like, you know, this job is actually the least income earner in my household now. I really like the people and everything so, I’m here because I want to be here, is basically what I told them.

Noah: I was just going to ask you, why don’t you quit?

Steve: Yeah, because so that’s a different story all in itself. So I design micro processors for a living, you worked at Intel so you know what those are at least. I feel like [over talks] [0:45:13] that if I give that up and you know, tech moves really quickly so, if I give it up I may not be able to ever go back into it, that’s my fear. I actually enjoy the tech stuff. I actually like my job which is unlike some of the people that I encounter you know that I talk to on the blog.

Noah: I mean, and I think that’s what– you are the person I love and I respect and you know I want more people to be like, which is like it’s not that– I don’t think everyone being not like a substitute, like those days when like I’m not paying bills like Steve and I’m like, oh I’m kicking ass today, because there was someone like last week someone quit. And its not– I don’t think, it’s like people are spineless to be entrepreneurs. I just think people want to like the work they do and feel focused. And so it’s so cool, and you’re like yeah, I like a lot of what I’m doing, I enjoy my work and I want to stay relevant and educating and just chill, that’s cool.

Steve: Yeah, the thing is also, you know there is also this time aspect that you mentioned before, like I want to spend more time with my family as well so at some point I think something is going to have to give.

Noah: I don’t know if you’re going to have to put it on record, but yeah, eventually I assume it would.

Steve: [chuckles] Yeah, I don’t mind putting anything on record actually, everyone knows, everyone at work knows at least what I’m up to and that sort of thing so it’s all good. So you know– sorry?

Noah: What made you start sharing the revenue number?

Steve: Revenue number for the e-commerce store?

Noah: Yeah.

Steve: So, I actually started the blog as my retirement plan. And I felt like every sort of business or blog, whatever, kind of needs some kind of back story. And the fact that we were able to essentially supply my wife’s income in a year, just sounded like a really good back story to start the foundation for a blog.

Noah: So the blog was like your kind of like your 401k?

Steve: It was my retirement plan meaning my avenue in case I ever wanted to quit my job. It took a long time to get to the point where I was today.

Noah: How long did it take?

Steve: It took four years.

Noah: Only four years? That’s it man!

Steve: That’s a long time man.

Noah: That’s a hell of a long time. I was talking to this guy– this was really awesome. His name is Taylor, he runs sched.org. And two things were really, really fascinating about him. I met this kid on yeah I am, remember that shit?

Steve: Yeah.

Noah: Like six, seven years ago and he was just like you know a little runt just like me, and we are still runts. And I remember he did events websites and I was like that’s cute, that’s not– I don’t think that’ll be business or whatever and you know we’ve been in touch and we are friends, and I saw him a week ago in Austin. And he was like yeah I’m still doing it, I was like holy shit, man, that’s impressive! I was like, tell me what do you think is making you the most successful or why do you think why this is working? And he was like do you know my number one secret? I mentioned it earlier in the podcast interview, and he said, the number one reason why I’ve been successful is patience, is that everyone else who was doing it gave up.

And it was really respectful, I really appreciated that like he stuck with it, it took four years for him to get to that level or same with AppSumo. You know, I made $12000 personally the first year, and now I’m able to pay myself a good six figures. And you know that was his competitive advantage.

Steve: I completely agree with that. It’s all about being slow and steady for me at least, and you know now my blog makes more than my day job and it took a long time to get to that point. But it was just a very gradual, slow and steady pace that allowed me to do that.

Noah: And I think that’s a really interesting point, I’m just going to repeat it because I think what people expect is that, oh these blogs have gotten these email lists over night, and there is revenue overnight and you know, it is a progression not necessarily just a destination. It’s the whole process that’s the interesting and challenging part. And I think the fact that if you know it takes time, it makes it a lot easier to say all right, it’s not making me millions today, it’s making a 1000 or 500 but as long as I stick with it, you know I should be able to get to that point.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely and the best thing about like a blog or a web property is that really, there’s only one direction to go and that is kind of up if you continue to put out good content. That’s my opinion.

Noah: Yeah, that’s pretty– I mean I can talk about that actually. I don’t know how many of your listeners are blog owners or bloggers?

Steve: Not too many. Most people are aspiring e-commerce store owners I believe.

Noah: Oh, so let’s not talk about that then.

Steve: You know we’re actually, I have actually taken up a lot of your time already, I don’t know how much time you have but-

Noah: I’ve got two minutes to my hair cut.

Steve: Two minutes to your– all right, let’s sum it up so, advice, if you were to give one piece of advice to people who want to start their own business, what would it be?

Noah: Besides joining on Monthly1k.com…

Steve: We’ll plug it in the show notes.

Noah: I know. I don’t think, I don’t know. It’s hard sometimes I think to consolidate things to one piece of advice. I would say that the number one thing that I’ve always encouraged people is, what can you do today. And a lot of people starting businesses make excuses about more money or more time or more people. But I think if you truly want– if you have a problem that you want to solve or other people have problems you want to solve, what can you do today, tonight, right now stop the podcast. I know we’re at the end, but stop it and go do something about it versus– and this is the super common thing which is, I need one more thing, I need that next blog post, I need that other book, I need that other course to learn that one secret answer, and it doesn’t exist, it exists in yourself and that’s work. And so I want anyone who is listening to go– and this is where my satisfaction comes which is, go do some work and you can tweet me what your result is. I’d love to hear about it from just taking that action now. You don’t need to spend any money, you don’t need to spend more time, but when you get up, take out those ear plugs or put in some rap music and in ear plugs, get some hustle on and go try you know, solve some people problem, make the world better.

Steve: That’s great advice Noah. So, where can we find you? If people like reach out and contact you?

Noah: Don’t find me at all unless you are Steve.

Steve: Asian dating guys, that’s easy Asian dating.

Noah: Don’t make me seem like I’m that weird, creepy dude. You know so, I’m online, you know AppSumo.com is a free newsletter to help entrepreneurs kick ass. We have SumoMe.com which is a free tool if you want to learn the things that we do for marketing that’s helped us grow, totally free. My personal blog where I share you know all the marketing secrets and tactics that I use is OkDork.com and personally on twitter I post interesting links and quotes at Noah Kagan.com and then on twitter@ Noahkagan.

Steve: Okay and once again, I’ll put all that on the notes, so you guys don’t have to remember what he said, but you know, thanks a lot Noah for coming on the show, really appreciate it man.

Noah: Yeah man, for sure.

Steve: All right, take care.

Noah: You too brother.

Steve: Isn’t Noah great? Now, the guy talks really fast and he brought a lot of great points in the podcast so, I thought I would just take the time to summarize some of the key points that he brought up. So number one, you always want to work backwards from your problems. Don’t create a product or website first and then look for customers. Instead what you want to do is you want to find the customers first and then build the site or product, because if you do things that way your products are guaranteed to sell. So, to test your idea Noah brought up that you should always try to get at least three paying customers within 48 hours.

Now, in my course I follow the exact same philosophy as Noah. In addition, to the key word research things that I teach in my class, you should always try to throw up a website and just sell things even though you might not even have inventory. So, sell on eBay, sell on Amazon if you have to, to first test your idea and if you even have to you can even fulfill your products from your competitors if you have to. So, in other words, if you have a store up and you get an order and you don’t actually have the inventory in hand, just go ahead and buy that same product from a competitor to ship.

What you are looking for in the beginning is information on what sells and what does not. Okay, Noah also brought up the issue of always be collecting emails. E-mails is the best way to keep in touch and to gather a following for your blog or your business. Another important thing that Noah brought up was lubricating the relationship. So if you want people to help you, then it really helps to have all the materials written ahead of time.

And Noah used the example where he pre-wrote emails that his affiliates could use to help promote his product so that they don’t actually have to even use their brain. They can just simply cut and paste what he already wrote and send that out as is. Okay, and most importantly, Noah also said that you should do more of what is already working and don’t spread yourself too thin.

Often times as a business owner, it’s really easy to get caught up in expansion when sometimes all it takes is to improve your existing products, okay? And one other last point that Noah and I completely agree on, is this issue of outsourcing work from your business. In the beginning when your business just starts out, you should try to do everything yourself so that you have a full understanding of what is involved in running your business. And only with that knowledge can you eventually outsource your company effectively.

Okay, so a lot of great points in that podcast. I just want to remind you guys that my podcast contest is still going on and once again I’m giving away a free copy of my course and free consulting. For more information go to www.mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch, that’s mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch. Thanks for listening.

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

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Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?


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006: How Polly Liu Created An 8 Figure Business Selling Wedding Favors Online

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I’m thrilled to have Polly Liu on the show today. Polly’s wedding favor store, Beau-Coup.com, started in her own bedroom and has since ballooned to an 8 figure business. In fact, Beau-Coup was the inspiration for my own online store.

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What You’ll Learn

  • Why Polly decided to start an online store selling wedding favors
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  • How Polly found unique items to sell in her shop
  • How to stalk popular magazine editors
  • What form of marketing works best for Beau-coup.com
  • What’s the traffic distribution for Beau-coup.com
  • Why Beau-coup uses a popup ad on their store.
  • How long did it take until Beau-coup started getting traction
  • How Polly has Google proofed her store over the years
  • What direction is Beau-coup is headed to remain competitive
  • Polly biggest mistake with her shop

Resources Mentioned On The Show

Book recommendations

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Transcript

Steve: You are listening to the mywifequitherjob podcast episode number six. Now before we begin, I just wanted to give a quick thank you shout out to Noah Kagan from AppSumo.com and OkDork.com. Now, I had a conversation with Noah yesterday, but for some reason I wasn’t in the best of moods when I was chatting with him and the funny thing is that everything was all good. I had a successful podcast launch and this podcast was actually ranked number two out of all business podcasts for two straight days and I owe that all to you, but for some reason I was still in a funk.

Now, normally I’m a very happy, go lucky Chinese boy, but I must have been kind of a downer that day. Anyway, long story short, Noah took some time out of his day to try and help me figure out what makes me happy and he actually shares some of his own experiences with me as well. Now, Noah didn’t have to do any of this, and this guy actually genuinely cares about people and for that, I just want to say thank you, it’s all good today. Now, onto the show.

Welcome to the mywifequiteherjob podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suites your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host, Steve Chou!

Steve: Welcome to another edition of the mywifequitherjob podcast. Today I am honored to have Polly Liu with me on the podcast. Now, Polly is actually someone I met at Stanford but I never really got a chance to get to know, because at the time she was an upper class man and I was kind of this lowly freshman just trying to get used to the ropes. Anyways, Polly started her business Beau-Coup.com way back in 2001 selling wedding and party favors and it has since ballooned into an eight figure business, and in fact her site now totally dominates the wedding favor’s space and she has been expanding into baby and other party favors as well.

So, since I have Polly on the line, it’s confession time. When I first started Bumblebee Linens, I secretly modeled the design of our shop after Beau-Coup. I stocked her store, I found out where she was advertising, I found out her web posting, her shopping part platform, and just about the only thing that I didn’t do was that I didn’t stock Polly herself because that would have been kind of creepy. But, you know overall, I tried to follow the same strategies with our store as what she had done with Beau-Coup and, you know, as you can tell we’ve done pretty well as well just following the same thing as she has done. Anyways, I’m really happy to have gotten back in touch with Polly after all these years, she’s truly an inspiration for my business and we can all learn from her. So, welcome Polly to the show.

Polly: Thank you Steve I’m completely humbled by your introduction [chuckles], I’m really not that great. So, I’m happy to be here and share my experiences with your audience. So, yeah.

Steve: Yeah, so let’s just start with a quick background story. Tell us about Beau-Coup and how you started it and how you kind of came up with the idea.

Polly: Wow, that was a long time ago, 11 years ago, 11 years plus but, the idea originated actually when I wanted to kind of, you know, do something on my own, something entrepreneurial. I was about to get married and about you know, six months, had gotten engaged, and I was at a start up and actually got laid off in the fourth round of layoffs but I was you know, kind of debating whether I want to go and get another job or start something on my own which I’ve always wanted to.

So, you know, my husband and I were brainstorming at the time, my husband had a full time job and you know, as I was planning my own wedding I kind of you know, stumbled upon this idea of selling wedding favors online because we were having issues with our own experience. We were really into golf back then and we wanted to give out golf ball wedding favors as our favors to our guests and it was just a really hard experience finding you know, personalized golf footballs online, and getting it packaged nicely and we just thought it was an opportunity, because you know, we needed to buy hundreds of these little golf balls and there was just really nowhere online you know, all the sites kind of look the same, carry the same type of products.

So we just saw an opportunity and we liked the business model because you know, people buy in bulk and each order would be you know, sizeable and we didn’t have to stock a lot of inventory because we could just kind of turn around and get a dropship from you know, our wholesale vendors so, we kind of liked the low risk strategy, we thought it was an opportunity, I thought I could kind of carry more unique products so, we kind of just kind of you know on our way– I remember this, we were going home to Ed’s parents house in Missouri and we were kind of just jotting down kind of a business plan on a piece of napkin on the airplane and that’s how it kind of started, the idea, and then we went to some gift shows after that and just kind of cemented our idea of you know, selling wedding favors online back then.

Steve: So it was important that you did this online, is that correct, because were there catalogues that sold these personalized golf balls that you were looking for at the time?

Polly: No, offline, wedding favors is really not an offline business, again because you have to buy hundreds of an item…

Steve: Okay

Polly: And most stores don’t want to stock hundreds of you know, a key chain or a bottle stopper to sell as wedding favors so it’s really a good business model for online so we kind of saw that as an opportunity and we just didn’t like the selection that was available back then online. And you know, most of the weddings we’ve gone to it’s kind of all the similar type favors so we thought there was an opportunity to be more unique in this space.

Steve: Okay, so back in 2001 I don’t really think that dropshipping was actually really big just yet, so how did you – were all these vendors willing to dropship right away or did you have special arrangements?

Polly: So when I was at the gift show, most vendors had a minimum order size, so if you wanted to place an order, you had to place you know, a hundred dollars worth of merchandise and this is also why we liked the business model because, you know, if someone ordered 50 to 100 of something, it usually meets the minimum size and I did negotiate with some vendors back then. But, you know, a lot of the vendors that we did end up using were traditionally wedding favor vendors so you know, and we tried to carry more upscale selections so we did– we were able to meet the minimum threshold and when I set you know, minimum thresholds on my website, I made sure that it met you know, the minimum order.

Steve: Okay, so how does customer service work and so, someone places an order on your site for a whole bunch of wedding favors and then do you then just go ahead and place the order with your vendor?

Polly: Yeah, yeah so I would take the order whether it’s online or over the phone and I literally you know, we would have a lead time on our site depending on which vendor it came from and I would literally turn around and call the vendor or e-mail them with the order, with the details of the order and it wasn’t super automated back then. It was literally e-mail with the details of you know, what they ordered and then they would turn around and ship it directly to the customer.

Steve: So how did you handle customer support and returns and that sort of thing, because you never actually saw the merchandise right?

Polly: I never saw the merchandise and if someone wanted to return something they would come back to me and not the vendor because you know, I wanted them to know that I was the interface.

Steve: Okay

Polly: And you know, when I worked with a vendor I try to get them to blind dropship so meaning, it didn’t look like it came from you know, so and so, it came from Beau-Coup so they would actually change their UPS label to say Beau-Coup, so the customer wouldn’t be confused when they got the package.

Steve: I see, so these vendors that you are working with, they didn’t really have an online presence at all either right, so it was a win win on both ends?-

Polly: Yeah, yeah.

Steve: Okay.

Polly: Yeah, and it was a new channel for them because again wedding favors wasn’t like you know, their typical customer base so you know, they loved the fact that we were able to place larger orders every time.

Steve: Okay, so even today, do you still follow that same model or do you hold more inventory?

Polly: We hold a lot more inventory because it just makes sense in how you know, a lot of times customers order you know, three or four different types of products and it does make sense to try to consolidate and send them one package versus four different packages. So, the types of products that we do dropship now are mostly personalized products that we don’t personalize in-house, like personalized ribbon or personalized cookies that we don’t bake you know, we don’t bake the cookies in-house [laughter]. So everything else we have to inventory and we you know, now we have a third party dropship, I mean, actually third party warehouse in the mid-west that ships all of our products for us so.

Steve: So, how did you know that you needed to kind of transition over to that model? Or was it gradual or?

Polly: It was gradual, we just ended up you know, stocking a little, a little more, a little more and it’s usually the more popular items that we started stocking.

Steve: Okay

Polly: And then you know, as we grew, the needs became bigger and we actually run out of warehouse space just a year or two ago and we moved our fulfillment to the mid-west.

Steve: So, take me back to the beginning. How much did you invest in this business? And, do you have a technical background at all or?

Polly: Not really [chuckles].

Steve: Not really.

Polly: I was an economics and psychology major, but I have to give credit to my husband who actually helped me build the website, did a lot of technical, yeah [chuckles] work.

Steve: Okay.

Polly: In the beginning I was, well mostly on the marketing and merchandising side.

Steve: Okay, so let’s go back to the early days. So, what were some of the challenges? So you had your husband help with the website, what were some of all the other you know, start up related challenges and how did you overcome them?

Polly: I would say the biggest challenge was probably marketing, just getting the word out, letting people find out about us and I really got lucky with a feature in Instyle magazine. So what I did was, I would just cold call all you know, a bunch of editors…

Steve: You mean stock, kind of-

Interviewer: Stock yeah [laughter]

Steve: Kind of like what I do? Okay

Polly: So you know, I try to get the contacts and either you know, e-mail them or call them and I just got lucky with one editor at Instyle magazine which really helped us kind of you know, put us on the map and get more features after that and I still remember it was a pair of salt and pepper shakers made out of blown glass, that I found at a local shopping mall, Stanford shopping mall, and you know, it was more of a home decor item and I just thought that it would be a really cute wedding favor item.

So you know, I added that to my website and this editor thought it was a great idea, it was very high end. It was like over ten dollars a pair and she featured it, and after that I just started getting you know, traffic to the site and I was able to say, hey, I was featured in Instyle magazine and I got other you know, Martha Stewart weddings or brides magazines to become interested because they thought– oh, wow! If Instyle would feature you then maybe we should too. So that helped a lot and I definitely…

Steve: So-

Polly: Like plastered that all over my homepage and-

Steve: Yeah, we do the same thing.

Polly: Yeah.

Steve: So, you said a lot of stuff in that last statement so let’s walk through some of that. So, you said you saw something at the mall that you liked.

Polly: Yeah.

Steve: How did you get from that point to carrying something in your actual store?

Polly: Yes, that’s a great question because I did that a lot in the early days. I tried to be creative. So wherever I was you know, I’m always kind of keeping an eye out for unique items so. I remember this was a gift store in a local shopping mall and I just thought it would be a really cute item to have on our site. So what I did was, I you know, I looked on the bottom, found out who manufactured it or who they got it from, I do that a lot [laughter]. I’m a very sneaky shopper [chuckles].

Steve: [chuckles]

Polly: I’m always like taking pictures with my I-phone, yeah, just to try to find out where they sourced it from and then it was a place in Santa Rosa, I remember. And I called them up, I got a catalogue and you know, some vendors will drop ship, some vendors won’t. And sometimes I have to take a risk and kind of you know, place initial order to stock and if it works out then I’ll stock more. And this particular vendor didn’t drop ship. So I actually took the risk– I think I bought a $100 worth of products and it was nice because I got to see the products, take my own pictures and you know, just took some risk on inventory, which wasn’t a lot.

Steve: Yeah, a $100 dollars is nothing.

Polly: Yeah, and I really liked the product so I was confident I was able to sell it and I got some in the shop or in my apartment, I got some shipped to my apartment.

Steve: [chuckles]

Polly: And then I just you know, took pictures, wrote some creative copy and got it loaded onto our website and yeah, then the Instyle editor just really liked it.

Steve: So, what did you write in this letter, I’m just kind of curious, how do you approach someone just completely cold?

Polly: Oh! I actually called her [chuckles].

Steve: Oh! You called?

Polly: [chuckles] And I think I got lucky she just happened to pick up the phone and you get lucky sometimes, they’ll just pick up or you leave voicemails which usually doesn’t work well. And I just started talking to her and I still keep in touch with her.

Steve: Oh!

Polly: Throughout the years, yeah, now she’s got her own show online and yeah, so…

Steve: Wow! Okay, so, how did you get her phone number? Maybe I should be taking from you lessons about stocking instead.

Polly: There’s a directory at the library, you can just go to any local library, called the Bacon’s directory, and it has all the magazines that you can ever want to you know, write to and it’s categorized like you know, wedding or baby, or family or you know lifestyle and you can literary get contact information for any magazine there by fax, by e-mail, by phone. So, it’s just a directory of all the editors.

Steve: That is a very good tip.

Polly: Yeah.

Steve: So, is that still up to date today, do you know? As far as you know?

Polly: I don’t know, I haven’t used it in a while.

Steve: You haven’t stocked anyone in a while, I see.

Polly: No, but it’s called Bacon’s directory yeah.

Steve: Okay, great! That’s awesome advice. So, okay, so you get in Instyle magazine and then did you actually get a ton of orders from the magazine ad itself?

Polly: I wouldn’t say that we got a ton of orders; we got a lot of kind of just publicity from it.

Steve: Okay.

Polly: And it was just great right, to know that someone was interested and then it kind of snowballed from there but, I would say what really helped me in the early days from a marketing stand point, I mean, that was really great, InStyle. But I also just kind of started learning about SEO.

Steve: Okay.

Polly: Search engine marketing or optimization and I you know, started writing content, I started building links, I started just trying to you know, learn how to scroll up on Google, and I think in the very early days we also did some paid advertising through Google which brought in a lot of water back traffic.

Steve: Okay, so let’s go in a little more in-depth. So earlier on, so what are some of the SEO things that you did with your site? And this is just back when you were just by yourself pretty much right?

Polly: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I mean back then it was so early for SEO so it’s pretty easy to you know, gain rankings but, I know I made sure all of my pages were re-titled, wedding favors or anything I wanted to rank for, I wrote content on wedding favors, bridal shower favors too and I exchanged a lot of links. So, I would you know go out to other wedding related sites and try to get them to link to me with anchor text that has wedding favors in it or something related and I would link back to them. So, I did a lot of that because I was just reading up on it and it was a lot of work.

Steve: Oh right, yeah.

Polly: And finding directories to you know, get my link in there. But I did a lot of that in the early days.

Steve: Okay, okay. So, just for the benefit of the listeners, the SEO game has changed tremendously…

Polly: Yeah.

Steve: In the last couple years, so some of these tactics that Polly is describing here, well, will no longer work, and in some cases they may penalize you but, in the early days all that stuff was actually very good strategy in terms of building up a search engine optimization.

Polly: Yes.

Steve: So, okay, so you have– SEO traffic start trickling in, how long did it take for that to happen?

Polly: Not too long. I would say like, within like a few months, I started seeing some results and I just did more and more of it and as you’ll see right now today I mean, we are not just ranking for wedding favors, it’s you know, baby shower favors, birthday party favors. So, we did more and more, and like Steve said, the game has completely changed so, you know, this was like ten years ago [chuckles].

Steve: Yeah, yeah. So, how has it evolved? I’m just curious, how do you guys get links now for your store?

Polly: Oh, we just try to get natural links now, we don’t build any links, we don’t submit anything to directories anymore. It’s really just building good content and doing a lot of social media. You know, we have a blog, so we just try to produce content that we think our readers or our audience will be interested in and then they will want to link to us so.

Steve: Okay, so, percentagewise you know what percentage of your business is direct traffic SEO, search engine marketing and that sort of thing just to give a very rough breakdown.

Polly: In the early days I would say almost 90 percent of it came from SEO, SEO yeah not even paid. Paid was probably like ten percent of it or something, and I think over the years paid has become a much bigger percentage of our business.

Steve: Okay.

Polly: And, today I don’t have the exact breakdown but I want to say that you know, paid is probably like 30 percent you know, SEO is probably another 30 percent and everything else is like you know, press, or social media and everything else so.

Steve: What about e-mail? Do you guys do anything special with e-mail at all?

Polly: Yeah, we have a huge e-mail base now so yeah, we do have a lot of people coming in whenever we send out an e-mail blast, but that’s not a huge percentage of our traffic source.

Steve: Oh, okay. So, do you gather e-mails from people that have purchased or do you gather in other ways with your content as well?

Polly: Both, so you know, you can come to our site and I think one of the first things you’ll see is a pop-up that asks you to join our newsletter and then you know, after every purchase or actually during the purchase process, they can opt in to receive our e-mail and then afterwards we see if they want to you know, sign up for our newsletter as well and there’s just a lot of opportunities along the funnel for them to sign up.

Steve: So this pop-up is often been controversial in terms of e-commerce stores, do you guys offer any special offers with this pop-up or is it an informational pop-up?

Polly: Yeah, they’ll see exclusive notifications on sales and I think you know, they’ll get it– and then once they agree to get newsletters we have a whole cycle of welcome e-mails and you know, so we try to give them bigger and bigger deals along the way every week to get them to buy. Even if they don’t buy on that visit, they’ll get e-mails to try to encourage them to come back.

Steve: Okay, so the pop-up actually hasn’t deterred people from shopping on your site right?

Polly: No.

Steve: Because sometimes it annoys people.

Polly: Yeah, I know [chuckles] we’ve tested it and actually it does work for us.

Steve: Okay.

Polly: Yeah.

Steve: Okay. So, you know if you were to go way back you just got laid off from your job, you’re just starting up your business, when did you kind of know that this is what you wanted to do? How much time did you give yourself?

Polly: Yeah. It was probably a year into it, I mean I remember in the early days it was just me you know, by myself in my apartment and I definitely had doubts you know, in the early months especially that this wasn’t going to work. And I remember you know having episodes where I would cry and be like, what am I doing here? [Chuckles] I’m all by myself trying to get links [chuckles] and then you know, in the early days I mean, fulfillment was you know, a challenge too. I had to like pack up my own packages and then like go to the local drug store to drop off the packages.

So it was just really manual too, and I definitely had doubts and it wasn’t until you know, I got that InStyle feature and you know, I started seeing traffic to our site start to increase and you know, started to get some orders and I realized, hey, this could really work and you know, some days I wouldn’t get any orders in the early days and then you know, I think maybe at the sixth month mark you know, I would get an order a day and then it would become like two or three a day and you know, once you see the growth pattern you just you know, start having more confidence in the business.

Steve: Okay. So, that Instyle thing happened within the first six months?

Polly: Yes.

Steve: Okay. Yeah, you know, one thing that I always tell the students in my class at least is to never underestimate the impact of leg work and it sounds like you did your share of leg work in the beginning by cold calling people as well as you know, just hustling work to get any sort of business that you could.

Polly: Yes, yes.

Steve: So-

Polly: And I did everything, I mean, I tried to partner with you know, wedding vendors and event planners and you know, just trying to get creative with marketing. I think that was the biggest challenge in the beginning, is just to get our name out there so.

Steve: What a coincidence! We have been doing the same thing.

Polly: Yeah, you can’t be shy [chuckles].

Steve: So, okay, so your business is gaining traction and you know if you can think back, I know it’s hard to think back that far, but I’m sure you made your share of mistakes as well. So I was just wondering if you could comment on some of these mistakes and perhaps you know in the hopes that other people who are starting wouldn’t make these same mistakes.

Polly: What are you talking about mistakes? [chuckles]

Steve: I know you are perfect Polly and you know, [chuckles]

Polly: I’m just kidding [chuckles] mistakes so you know I think I might have mentioned this to you at one point but thinking back, I think if I were to do it all over again, I would have invested more in infrastructure from the beginning. You know, in the beginning it’s just hard because you know, you’re not sure if this is going to work and you’re just trying to like get the cheapest like server or get the cheapest you know, any third party software you can get and as the company grew it was just hard you know, with all this legacy.

I remember you know, even our shopping cart, we tried to get you know, something off the shelf, really cheaply and even with you know, our operating system or our fulfillment software, we just tried to find the cheapest thing out there in the beginning and then as we grew, we had to switch it out, it was just a nightmare. And you know, in some cases where we had to spend a lot of time trying to, you know upgrade the system, upgrade the infrastructure and it just took a lot of bandwidth when we could have used that time and the resources to grow the business. So, you know, it’s really hard because you know, you want to save money, you want to be scrappy in the beginning, but I do think you know, for certain things you need to invest in scale.

Steve: Was open source around back then? I’m trying to think this was a long time ago so.

Polly: Yeah, but we didn’t really do that.

Steve: I don’t think it was actually that big.

Polly: Yeah.

Steve: Certainly not in 2001.

Polly: Yeah.

Steve: So, may I ask what you were on initially when you first started out?

Polly: Oh gosh, I can’t even remember, I’m sorry [chuckles].

Steve: Okay, oh, that’s okay. And then, what did you transition to then, is your shopping hut homegrown now or are you using anything kind of off the shelf altogether.

Polly: No, we were using Niva.

Steve: Okay.

Polly: For a long time, now it’s completely custom built, I mean, we built our own shopping cart, our own you know, operating…

Steve: Okay.

Polly: System, yeah.

Steve: Just between you and me, I already knew the answer to that question before I asked so, [chuckles]

Polly: Cheeky [chuckles]

Steve: Okay, so and you know, as your company has kind of grown, how has– so let’s talk about Google for a sec, So, within the last couple of years the Google rankings have been shifting around the algorithm to change so, how has the company kind of transitioned over the years to kind of Google proof yourself so to speak?

Polly: Yeah, yeah, we realized that we can’t just depend on Google traffic as much as we did in the past So we try to like you know, like I said, build a bigger social media presence, build better content and you know, get smatter with paid advertising you know, try to find other places where we can pay for traffic so that we are not so reliant on our rankings you know, we could drop tomorrow and not feel the pain so much because we have definitely experienced that I would say like five or six years ago or even the recent past. It was just really stressful to rely on that traffic. You know, today we are doing very well on Google but you know, that could go away tomorrow so.

Steve: So, what are some of the paper click services that you use and recommend?

Polly: Well, first of all we, you know, advertise on all the major search engines right.

Steve: Okay.

Polly: So Google, Yahoo, Bing. We do you know the shopping engines; I can’t remember the others [chuckles].

Steve: That’s okay, yeah, we know.

Polly: A comparison.

Steve: Google merchants centre.

Polly: Comparison shopping, yeah.

Steve: Right.

Polly: And then we do the product feed, product feed paid advertising, so you know, we just explore and then we you know, we pay for some blog advertising and…

Steve: How did that work out actually? I’m just curious, for the blog advertising.

Polly: Yeah. It actually, doesn’t work out as well as some of the other you know, channels but it’s good for kind of brand marketing. So we still do some but not a ton, it’s not a big channel for us by any means. So, in terms of you know, return on investment it’s definitely not one of our top channels. I would say e-mail, e-mail has the best return but it’s small and we also– let me try to think what else we do, affiliate is also another channel, affiliate marketing.

Steve: Oh! Okay.

Polly: Which actually has worked a lot better in the past too [chuckles].

Steve: Oh! Because the Google rankings affected the blogs?

Polly: Yeah, yeah.

Steve: Okay.

Polly: Yeah.

Steve: That makes sense.

Polly: And now we are trying to figure out how to, you know, get on mobile and you know, advertise on mobile which is not you know, the best performing channel right now for anyone so.

Steve: Yeah, mobile for us isn’t performing that well. Recently we, well not recently, is a couple of years ago, we did a mobile implementation of our site which drastically boosted conversions. But they were still pretty low and I noticed you guys launched one, was it a year ago? Or couple of years ago as well?

Polly: A year ago, yeah.

Steve: A year ago yeah.

Polly: Yeah. I mean, it’s great but it just doesn’t convert you know, I think you get a lot of eye balls but people just don’t you know still buy on their phones as much as they do on you know, an iPad or the desktop so.

Steve: So do you still continue to buy ads for the mobile space then?

Polly: We’re experimenting, I think not a ton but you know, we’re starting with our brand and then you know some of the top terms but it’s just, the returns are just not there so, right now yeah.

Steve: So just curious, how do you measure like brand penetration? Is there a way that you guys can quantify that? Or how does it work?

Polly: Brand penetration, [chuckles] you know, we do look at how many people search for our brand over time, and the good news is that it’s more and more every year because as we you know, become more well known I think people are searching for our name Beau-Coup in all different forms and we do measure how well it converts and it’s by far the best converting returns for us.

Steve: Okay.

Polly: Yeah.

Steve: Okay, so if you were– so I noticed that you decided, I think all of your stuff is sourced domestically, is that correct for the most part?

Polly: Most part I would say 98 percent we did source some things from Europe yeah.

Steve: So, was that a conscious decision to just kind of keep everything domestic? Or just what were some of the thought processes that went into products that you wanted to carry?

Polly: I think part of it is just you know, starting out, we just didn’t have the volume to import and it was just really complicated and I just didn’t have the resources or the mind share back then to even think about learning how to import. And we did go to a gift show in Hong-Kong a few years ago and we do import a few things now from China. But it’s through a middle man and I think the thought processes as we get bigger we will be able to bring in containers and you know of items, but it is a lot more risky, so we didn’t want to kind of, you know, commit to a container full of anything.

Steve: Sure.

Polly: So, it’s just you know, and I think that the domestic market you know, there’s just so much that we want to do still so that we haven’t tapped into the whole importing. But it is an opportunity, we can definitely get the cost down by a lot but we also need the warehouse space to…

Steve: Right, right.

Polly: Store all these products and then we take on the inventory risk.

Steve: And there is quality control as well.

Polly: Yeah, it’s just a whole set of issues so.

Steve: Okay. So, do you have any– let’s say I was a complete nubby today who wants to start an online store. Any advice that you would give for people just starting out, who want to create a business set similar to yours but you know not within the same niche?

Polly: Not within the same niche, gosh, I think the game…

Steve: because you would just crash them you know, if they started in the same niche.

Polly: [laughter] Don’t even try! You know, I think the game’s changed a lot, like I said, I think it’s just a lot harder now with marketing. I think it’s just so much more expensive so, you know, I would just advice to just understand your product, your category, your competitive space because I think it’s just so much more competitive this days and even with bringing traffic, just know how much it will cost you [chuckles].

Steve: Right.

Polly: So, think about you know, your margins, I think that’s a big learning for us is just trying to– I think in the earlier days it was really easy because we didn’t have as much competition.

Steve: Right.

Polly: And we were more unique and as we grew there was just a lot more people came into our space and try you know, started carrying similar type items. So it’s just harder to differentiate ourselves on a product level and we are going back to that a lot more through designs, and through carrying exclusive products because you know, competing on price is just really hard.

Steve: Right.

Polly: And we’re trying to get away from that because you know, you are bidding against all these other guys on you know Google, Pay for click and it just gets really expensive and to have a descent margin, you’re going to have to really differentiate through product offering.

Steve: One thing I do notice is that you guys take your own shots, so even though it might be the same product…

Polly: Yeah.

Steve: Yeah.

Polly: Yeah, that helps a lot actually.

Steve: Yeah, yeah.

Polly: We’ve done a lot of A/B testing on product images using the vendor’s image versus our own and using a nice image versus a not so nice image and it definitely pays off to have good photography. So, we do a lot of that and a lot of like you know our own content and we try to give people ideas on packaging and how to differentiate the product because it really helps us convert.

Steve: Any worries about Amazon kind of encroaching and taking away some of…

Polly: Yeah! We do worry about Amazon but like I said, if we continue down the path of you know, coming up with our own exclusive designs on the personalized products which is a huge part of our business now.

Steve: Okay.

Polly: Inland, and working with manufacturers on producing exclusive product lines, that’s kind of the direction we are headed.

Steve: Okay.

Polly: I think that will help us stay competitive.

Steve: That makes a whole lot of sense because the whole personalization space in Amazon, it hasn’t quite jelled yet, yeah.

Polly: Right

Steve: Okay! So, is there a favorite business book that you could recommend to the listeners?

Polly: Favorite business book– gosh, I’m trying to think what are some of my best books?

Steve: Do you read anymore Polly? I mean, I know you have a couple of kids but, [chuckles].

Polly: I do read, I do read. Maybe not so many business books anymore, but I’m reading a book called ‘Quiet’, which I highly recommend, [chuckles] it’s about introverts verses extroverts and how to you know, and it actually applies in the workspace too, you know, how you can manage people better by knowing whether they are you know, an introvert or extrovert so, it’s quite interesting.

Steve: So are you yourself an introvert or extrovert?

Polly: [chuckle] I you know, I talk about this all the time with my husband, my friends, I think I’m somewhere in between-

Steve: Okay.

Polly: Yeah, I’m not truly one or the other but…

Steve: I would not call you an introvert; I just thought I would ask [chuckle].

Polly: Really? [Laughs]

Steve: Yeah, no, I mean, an introvert – at least when we first met, the conversation was kind of free flowing so I, you know, usually introverts, it’s a little harder to get them going so.

Polly: Oh, yeah.

Steve: But, any online services that you use for your business that you just can’t live without that you recommend? You guys would look at?

Polly: There’s a site – I can get back to you, but basically, you can basically see all your competitors and their traffic and where they are coming from. God, I can’t believe I’m blanking right now so.

Steve: Open [inaudible] [00:36:33] no-

Polly: No, no, no, something with competition in it [chuckles].

Steve: Competition [chuckles] Okay! Yeah, you know, once you get that to me I’ll go ahead and put it in the show notes.

Polly: Yeah, yeah.

Steve: Chances are I’ve already used it on your site.

Polly: Oh! It’s Compete.com?

Steve: Compete! Okay, yes, Compete.com of course.

Polly: I love Compete.com because I’m always like spying on my competitors and-

Steve: Ah! So I’m not the only one? [chuckles] Okay.

Polly: Yeah.

Steve: Well, I know you’ve got some stuff you need to get done Polly, and I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but just thank you so much for coming on the show.

Polly: No, I this is great and I hope you know I want to listen to all your other podcasts too, great series you’re doing.

Steve: Yeah, I hope it really takes off.

Polly: Yeah.

Steve: All right, well, thanks Polly!

Polly: All right, thanks Steve!

Steve: I really respect Polly a lot, and in fact I owe the success of my online store directly to her and Beau-Coup. Back then, I used her online store as a role model for my own and by stocking and tracking Beau-Coup’s every move, I was able to emulate her success or be it on a much smaller scale. Anyway, be sure to check out the show note for this episode, where you’ll find the sites and links mentioned in this episode and if you have a minute, it would really help if you could subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. And don’t forget to enter my free contest where I’m giving away a lifetime membership to my profitable online store course as well as free consulting. For more information go to www.mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch. That’s mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch. Thanks for listening!

Thanks for listening to the mywifequiteherjob podcast, where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information, visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.

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Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?


If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

005: Greg Go On How To Grow A Blog To Over 1.5 Million Visitors A Month

Greg Go Wisebread Founder

I’m excited to have Greg on the podcast in this episode because he runs one of the most popular personal finance and lifestyle blogs on the Internet. In fact, his blog generates more traffic in a few months than my blog does all year.

It’s really incredible what he’s been able to achieve and I really admire him for growing a blog to such a large size. As you can imagine, with that amount of traffic the revenue potential is extremely high. Listen to Greg’s story on how he started Wisebread.com from scratch and how he’s managed to grow it to where it is today. An amazing story!

What You’ll Learn

  • The best way to get juicy information out of Greg
  • The motivation behind creating WiseBread
  • How to select the right cofounders for your business
  • How long it took before Wisebread started making serious money
  • Was starting Wisebread a risky proposition?
  • The early strategies Greg used to gain traffic to the site
  • Wisebread’s content strategy
  • How Wisebread promotes and get exposure for their content
  • The most important marketing strategy to make a blog popular
  • How Wisebread SEO strategies have changed over time
  • Why relationships are everything
  • How Wisebread makes money
  • How Wisebread has its ad networks setup
  • A common mistake that new bloggers make
  • Advice for the new bloggers starting today

Mentioned In This Podcast

Greg’s Favorite Books

Transcript

Steve: You are listening to the mywifequitherjob podcast episode number five. Now before we begin, I just wanted to give a quick thank you shout out to my buddy Tom Drake who actually owns over a dozen blogs but likes to talk about selling online at createhype.com. Now I’ve known Tom for quite a while now and he is a great sounding board for ideas and online strategies and he’s also really helped me out a lot in terms of blogging, and for that I am very appreciative. Now on to the show.

Welcome to the mywifequitherjob podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suites your lifestyle, so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host, Steve Chou!

Steve: Welcome to another edition of the mywifequitherjob podcast. Today I have a very special guest on the show, Greg Go. Now Greg is a guy that I met at the financial blogging conference, the very first year that I went. And what was funny is we actually got to know each other while someone intoxicated. Now in actuality Greg was the one that was the one that was a little bit tipsy, and I kept feeding him drinks while I dumped mine in the cup next to me and oh did the information flow. Now incidentally this is where all the best conversations begin, at the bar late night, after all the conference session are over. Anyway so Greg and I chatted quite a bit over the weekend and then I later discovered that he ran wisebread one the premier finance blogs on the internet. Now seriously wisebread is the real deal and it gets about 1.5 million visits a month and you know if you do the math that’s about 50 thousands visits per day and that’s absolutely nuts. Anyways even while drunk Greg came across as an extremely intelligent guy and he really knew his stuff, and I’m really excited to have him on the show today to talk about his experiences in starting such an incredible blog. So welcome to the show Greg and how is everything going?

Greg: Good. Really happy to be on the show Steve, and you are right keeping drinks is the best way to get information out of me.

Steve: I hope you have popped a couple before this interview because that way we can go a little deeper than my other interviews.

Greg: I did. I took more shots so I’m ready to go.

Steve: [chuckles]. Right on, right on.

Greg: It is part of being fab.

Steve: [chuckles]. So, I always like to start up this interviews you know by asking you if you can just give a quick background story, and just give us the story about how wisebread got started from the beginning

Greg: Sure. So, Wisebread’s been around for seven years now. I started it with a couple of co-founders, Lynn and Will and right from the get go we wanted to create a site that would help twenty something’s with their finances because at that time we were in our late twenties and we thought you know in the last ten years if we had a source of information for how to better manage our money, how to better manage our first pay cheque that would have really been awesome.

Steve: Aha.

Greg: And unlike a lot of other blogs out there I think we started with three people, and that’s been something that’s unique in that sphere and something that I think really has provided for our success over the others.

Steve: So real quick you know I started my first business with my wife and you know we kind of crushed a lot because the division of duties weren’t clear set, so how does it work with three people a like how do you guys split up the duties.

Greg: Yeah. I hear that a lot about partnership sometimes crushing and it is not good to have partners. I think we were really lucky, we had complementally skills, but very similar goals. So we all wanted to change our careers from our day jobs before and luckily you know all three of us we have complementally skills, so it naturally kind of- just worked itself out. I’m the tech guy.

Steve: Okay

Greg: And Lynn is the one who keeps things running on time. She’s super organized and basically the president of the company and then Will is good with strategic thinking and marketing and so he is kind of our external staicing, genius.

Steve: Yeah I met Will at the conference too, super nice guy.

Greg: And I think we were lucky but for other people looking to start partnerships, looking for that complementally skill is private key to a successful partnership.

Steve: Yes. Did you guys actually start this while you were working full time? Or was it you guys…

Greg: Yeah.

Steve: Okay, oh okay.

Greg: So all three of us had full time big jobs and we found each other because we’ve been friends since high school.

Steve: Wow!

Greg: Will one day said you know I do not want to be a lawyer anymore. I want to build websites and I was logging for some site in common and so was Lynn and I think all three of us were not happy with our career paths. So we started Wisebread, we kept working on our day jobs for a couple of years and one by one we were able to quit our day jobs as wisebread crew.

Steve: Wow! Okay. So it took a couple of years for it to gain momentum so you took…

Greg: Absolutely. Right and even after we quit you know we didn’t have the revenue– personal revenue that matched our day jobs and even quitting two years after we started Wisebread, it was very scary for us personally. But we were seeing hard that besides who was going and we loved it and we were working for free and Wisebread would weigh more than half to doing at our day jobs and we knew that building websites or you know building some kind of web property was what we were meant to do. So it made quitting a little bit easier.

Steve: Wow! So, okay so you were not making as much as your day jobs but you saw the potential in yourself and that’s what kind of gave you the courage to quit?

Greg: Right. And the fact that you know after our day jobs, we would go home and work another eight hours…

Steve: Wow!

Greg: More or less free right on our site.

Steve: Aha.

Greg: And I think at that time the thinking was you know this is what we really want to do, not whatever we were doing at our day jobs.

Steve: That is pretty cool. So, just curious how much did you guys invest into this venture earlier on just to get started.

Greg: Totally bootstrapped. We actually didn’t put any money into it. We personally put in a couple of thousand dollars but we had less than $10,000 in cash at the beginning. So you know $3000 each. But what we invested into it is, you know that to our careers of sweat equity, where we weren’t getting paid, and to tell you the truth we were each working prime of all the hours on the side for free verses our day jobs.

Steve: So when did the revenue just kind of start trickling in was it, did you see any revenue in the first year or–?

Greg: Well there was some revenue. We started with, you know ad firms, and there were some revenue but wherever possible we would try to reinvest it back into the company.

Steve: Aha.

Greg: And for each of us we had saved some money personally.

Steve: Okay

Greg: So we were making business decisions about when it was time to pay ourselves verses reinvesting back in the company, and we would take into consideration our personal situation. So like can you guys feed yourself for another three months [chuckles]. We might want to spend this money on building up a site verses cashing out, so we were always looking at the long view and building up the company and not just taking a couple of hundred dollars out for ourselves.

Steve: Wow. Okay, so would you guys call yourselves kind of risky people I mean it’s– I’m pretty conservative, I don’t know if I could do that myself but did you guys feel completely comfortable with this or…?

Greg: That is a really good question. We do have different personalities too in terms of restorence. I am prime one of the more optimistic among the three, but I was really scared about quitting my job and at the time I talked to two people that helped me actually just pull the trigger.

Steve: Aha.

Greg: First I talked to my best friend at prime, and my fear was I’m I going to starve if I quit this job, and he told me you know you are not going to starve.

Steve: [chuckles]

Greg: Even if life would fail completely if I quit my job so this is where you want to do you know do it now before you have kids or family so that was really helpful. The other person I talked to the day I quit was my dad. And I thought my dad would be really conservative and advising against quitting a job but maybe it’s his own entrepreneurial spirit that he told me you know if this is what you really want to do, you are going to pull this trigger now like you’ll probably be fine.

Steve: That is surprising

Greg: Yeah! It is really surprising for my Asian father.

Steve: [chuckles] exactly.

Greg: But dad gave me the impetus that morning to go into my boss’s office and quit and I had these conversations you know within a couple of hours of each other, I stayed up all night that night before I quit. And it was super scary, but having a little money saved in the bank knowing that I can probably survive on the savings for say six months without a salary helped a little bit.

Steve: Aha.

Greg: And I’m going to tell you, you know all three of us didn’t quit at the same time. We staggered it out, as the site needed more work, and as our personal kind of day jobs worked themselves out. So Lynn quit first, I quit next six months later and then Will was the last to quit his day job.

Steve: Just curious do any of the members say have kids, or does Will have a family or did you guys did Lynn have a family?

Greg: So Will and I are bachelors though, then Lynn does have a family. She has a young son right now.

Steve: Okay.

Greg: But at the time, you know seven years ago we were all…

Steve: All single, right?

Greg: Lynn might have been married at the time. I don’t remember that, but you know we were in our late 20s and we definitely didn’t have kids yet.

Steve: Okay.

Greg: It was a little bit easier than say if we have to do it now.

Steve: Right, yeah, yeah. Well for her definitely it’ll be a lot harder I think.

Greg: Right and now we have you know mortgages and kids so it’s a whole different area.

Steve: [chuckles] All right, so , I just wanted to you know talk a little bit about what it takes to kind of build a blog up to your level of traffic now. You know for my blog I get a hundred k visits a month on a good month and Wisebread gets that amount in just two days so you know what are some of your early strategies to gain traffic to your site.

Greg: There was probably two key strategies for us; one of them internal on is external. So the internal strategy was that we didn’t depend on ourselves to write. The three owners did write in the beginning just because we couldn’t afford writers but right from the get go we knew we needed to bring in other experts and other voices. So that means you know Wisebread is a lifestyle blog and a finance blog so we covered things from investing in IRAs to travel and recipes, but it’s all not the same person writing all of this content. We have somebody who’s really interested in cooking writing the recipe content. We have someone who’s really passionate about travel writing the travel articles, so right from the get go we had multiple writers that’s the internal strategy .

Steve: So were you paying these writers in the beginning or were they writing for free?

Greg: They run for free for a red share.

Steve: I see. Okay.

Greg: We had to switch that up midway through and that’s [Inaudible] [00:12:54].

Steve: We’ll get into that business model probably later.

Greg: Okay.

Steve: But yeah go on, sorry.

Greg: The second thing, I think that was key for us was right from the beginning our external strategy was to try to get back links from top sites and it’s not just to gain Google or SEO rankings, but the idea was we wanted to get our content in front of other audiences and you know with wisebread having covering different topics travel, and investing and financial stuff we found an opportunity to get in front of the travel blogging crowd, or the financial bloggers audience so right from the get go, Will was out there you know pitching our content and telling other blogs about you know good articles we had. So promoting our content externally has always been a part of our strategy.

Steve: So can we go into a little more depth on that so would Will just kind of cold email these people or did he go to conferences and meet people, how did he pitch prospects?

Greg: In the beginning, we had no contacts. We, none of us were you know in the internet space so we didn’t have any relationships with other publishers. So they had to be cold emails and the key to doing cold emails is you actually have to promote epic content.

Steve: Right.

Greg: You can’t just keep spamming somebody with your run of the mail article but if we had something that was really good, then we would go ahead and contact life hacker or you know trying to contact some top travel bloggers.

Steve: So can you– no sorry go on.

Greg: I just compare over the years relationships have been really key either by developing email relationships you know once in every go at life hackers we’d noticed that okay Wisebread is not just spamming them with every single article that’s published, but you know we’re actually showing them good stuff. Then we could have all that’s more of a– more personal relationships with that article right and over the years as sale hailer has developed a sin cone, we’ve had more face to face contact with the people on the financial blogger sphere, and so if I had to sum it up in one word the key to external marketing is relationships.

Steve: Okay. So I’m just curious. Do you remember some of the early successes you had so you mentioned life hacker? Was that one of the first sites that you got a big link from or–?

Greg: Yeah, absolutely. And back in days I don’t know you know people listening now remember but dig was the part of the game so we would try to get on dig and the one time that we got on dig homepage it crushed the server.

Steve: [chuckles]

Greg: That was a big win. These days if we were trying to get traffic from social media it probably be in Facebook and probably Pinterest.

Steve: Aha.

Greg: And then they get wholly done. But I think that shows that work for us seven years ago or five years ago or even three years ago is done on what we’re doing today and I feel like every year we’ve had to adjust to the market place and come up with new tactics that fit the current environment.

Steve: Yes so let’s talk a little bit more about that, so how do you see things evolving or how they evolved since the beginning.

Greg: So you are asking how I see thing evolving.

Steve: Yes. So, how have things evolved since the beginning. You mentioned that every year you have new strategies that you have to come up with. So you know how has that changed, what is the strategy now verses in the past?

Greg: I think a few things haven’t changed. One is it’s still about relationships and whether we are talking about an internet business or you know twenty years ago in a brick and mortar business relationships still play a key part in trying to promote your own business .

Steve: Aha.

Greg: Finding complementary partners for example is something that has always worked.

Steve: Okay.

Greg: The other thing that I think hasn’t changed is that Google search results still have only ten slots right so even though Google changes their algorithm every year and tactics for works ranking well change all the time to restore only ten slots and the absolute best way to ranking Google is to have one of the top ten articles for that particular topic or you know search term on the internet. And the internet has millions of page views plus millions of domains so that’s not , that’s not an easy proposition, but the angle is still the same like you have to be one of the top ten.

Steve: Okay.

Greg: And I know it’s really clichy to say you know good content wins, but I think that’s still the case at least strategically.

Steve: Well it’s a combination right you have to get the content and you also have the relationships to actually promote your content trend.

Greg: Great, and the relationships are you know Google depends on recommendations like back links.

Steve: Aha.

Greg: Endorsements. Links are endorsements from sites and so you want to get these endorsements from sites bigger than you. I think a lot of mistakes people make when they start out is getting links from sites that are equal in size of them or smaller.

Steve: Aha.

Greg: Whereas you’ve to do the hard thing and the scary thing and try to get links from sites bigger than you and more trusted by Google. Right and so that’s a practical strategy that we’ve been trying to adhere to.

Steve: I see, I see but at the same time I’ve noticed a list of pin con that you’ve reached out and you really try to meet all the other smaller blogs than wisebread so is that part of your strategy as well or how does that fit in.

Greg: That’s a really good question. For that I don’t think that’s necessary– that’s as much about Google and SEO rankings as it is about you know building relationships within the community and before Thinkon, before Will started this we were, we felt like we were basically alone right against the world, but now that Shell has started Thinkon, it feels like we’re in a community among financial and frugal living bloggers and that’s been awesome.

Steve: Okay.

Greg: The other thing is you know we all remember what it was like in our first couple of years. So we made a lot of mistakes and it pains me to see new bloggers make the same mistakes when they don’t have to. So I really want to help people and you know avoid those easy mistakes.

Steve: Yeah. I remember you were on a couple of ten or so and they were all very informative so thanks.

Greg: Yeah. I hope, I hope… [Chuckles].

Steve: Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about the business model now so let’s rewind back to the first year and let’s talk about you know how you made money earlier on in and kind of how it evolved over time as you got bigger.

Greg: Well how we’ve made money hasn’t really changed since the beginning. So it’s all advertising.

Steve: Okay.

Greg: But if we were to break it down it has evolved a little bit so we started with ad firms, everybody starts with ad firms right. As we grew bigger we noticed that Federated Media was an ad network that was focused on helping good blogs you know sell advertising. So they’ve heard that they– only one blog that were getting a million page views some more you know like the bling blings.

Steve: Aha.

Greg: So six years ago but we were bold and we emailed them and surprisingly we got in even though we didn’t have a million page views at the time. So getting it to FM was a big win for us and we are still with FM and they still do the sales for our premier advertising.

Steve: So FM is a CPM ad network? Is that correct?

Greg: CPM and they also send us some custom campaigns sometimes so for example sometimes a brand will want to do more than just CPM display ads and they’ll want a sponsored post or a sponsored tweet, tweet chart or something like that. And so we’ll gain those referrals from FM and we’ll split the revenue with them.

Steve: Okay. And all of these FM ads pay a lot more than AdSense?

Greg: More, at least for Wisebread, the least price for FM ads is something like $10 CPM.

Steve: Okay.

Greg: Now I know a lot of financial blogs are probably getting more than that in their terms but since Wisebread is more of a lifestyle blog we actually get less than them.

Steve: [chuckles]

Greg: Financial blogs

Steve: Okay, yeah I was going to ask because on AdSense I think I get more than 10 on average and I was just curious I guess it really just depends on the nature of your content and how monetized board is for AdSense I guess.

Greg: So I don’t have the breakdown but I’m guessing that on our financial articles it’s you know over 10 but then on our recipe articles and our cargo articles its closer to five.

Steve: Okay. So just curious do you have a system in place where you know you kind of just shelf all these into a you know a slot and then it just picks which one is going to pay more you know in real time or is it just kind of win till noon?

Greg: That’s a really good question. That’s something we want to do use this year and I know that DFP, the websites for publishers will do that We’ll have AdSense compete with either running networks or your own ads for that spot, for that particular impression. So it’s something we want to look into.

Steve: Okay. So for like…

Greg: Yeah.

Steve: No go on, go on.

Greg: I was just going to say right now we don’t have ad networks competing against each other. We just– so our top few ads blogs you know that’s FM and premium advertising and then in the middle spots we might use some remnant networks and the bottom ad spots we’ll use AdSense as our final fall back.

Steve: Okay. And so do these ad networks, do they require specific areas on your blog for the placement.

Greg: FM is the only one that does, so we do have to have the top two spots dedicated two FM and that’s how they can sell the premium advertising.

Steve: I see.

Greg: But we found that most ad networks don’t have those requirements and they’re happy just to get any impressions you have.

Steve: That’s interesting actually so you could put these ads on like the bottom of your blog and it’ll be okay?

Greg: For the, yeah. For the remnant ad networks, yeah.

Steve: Okay. Interesting, interesting. Okay. So have you, are there revenue models that you have outside of just display advertising for Wisebread?

Greg: Yeah. We have a couple others. One is affiliate marketing.

Steve: So AdSense, sorry.

Greg: Amazons ads. So you mention a product and we can link to Amazon, then we do so that, that’s easy. Also some you know financial products cup 136E or some credit cards if we can get an affiliate for it that’s great. That’s actual revenue if we’re going to recommend that product anyway.

Steve: Aha.

Greg: The other one is direct sales. What we call direct sales, so sponsor campaigns like sponsored posts, sponsored tweets, maybe a sponsored sub-site hog.

Steve: What is that?

Greg: So for example if you go to wisebread.com/newgrads we have a hub for new college graduates and that is sponsored by SallieMae. So SallieMae pays us you know X amount of money and we write 10 articles on it and we will continue to write articles for it and the sub-site is supposed to help new graduates deal with their, their are student loans.

Steve: Aha.

Greg: And SallieMae gets to have their logo on there.

Steve. I see. So they kind of sponsor that entire section of your blog?

Greg: Correct. Right.

Steve: Okay. So did you approach them or did they approach you? How does that whole interaction work?

Greg: It’s both. You know any contact we can get with brands we will take. So it could either be through FM, or we cold emailed them, or they come to us you know we have an advertise link and people can contact those and we can turn them their ad or ad back. I think that’s how most contacts are initiated. Usually it’s through some kind of agency who’s looking to amplify some brand’s message and they might start with a Google search.

Steve: Right.

Greg: So for example let’s say an agency is representing Discoverhomeblogs and they search for home blogs or discover and they notice a Wisebread article. They may or may not know about Wisebread but they will see our advertise link.

Steve: Aha.

Greg: Download our ad backs and start the conversation there.

Steve: I see. So they find you through search in that example you just gave is that…

Greg: My guess is through search. We get inquiries through a bunch of different channels and once said it is just all search.

Steve: Okay.

Greg: It might be through hulls even, if we’ve done something for a particular brand maybe you know one DP sharing something with another DP or if you do a good job a lot of these campaigns are run through agencies and agencies are PR agencies, so the agency might have different clients. So if you do a good job with the agency and make the agency’s job easier next time they have a client that’s relevant to Wisebread you know they will think of Wisebread first.

Steve: I see, interesting. So really is all about you know having these relationships and referrals and that sort of thing, interesting.

Greg: Yeah. I think yeah, I think referrals are great and you know for these agencies it’s– they have job to do and they have to satisfy their client with whatever it’s easiest for them. So a lot of websites and a lot of bloggers I feel may get unnecessarily hard on brand and agencies to work with them. So actually our direct sales and sponsored campaign type stuff were super flexible. We found an ad back with four, five products that we were good at but every campaign is different and [chuckles] sometimes it’s a pain for us to enhance these campaigns because every agency and every client have different recommendations. But we try to say yes as much as possible and accommodate them as much as possible.

Steve: I would imagine these are more lucrative than your average deal rate and so it’s worth it on your end. You know if anything to build the relationships right.

Greg: Right and you know these are you know four or five figure campaigns, usually four figure campaigns. And yeah they are pretty lucrative but it’s still a lot of work.

Steve: Sure, I’m sure you’re right.

Greg: If we actually broke it down, you know for our sponsor campaigns, that’s where we spend the most effort verses say display ads, [Inaudible] [00:30:06] ads, that’s you know writing good content and trying to get more page views.

Steve: Yeah, so if you were to break down all of your revenue sources, how do they rank in terms of I guess you names, sponsored sources you name, you know display ads and then affiliate offers. How–what’s the break down you know and what are your priorities?

Greg: It’s almost exactly one third each.

Steve: Wow. Okay.

Greg: Yeah. So Will and Ashley Jacobs spend a lot of time you know dealing with clients and doing these sponsored campaigns. Lynn’s job is to produce good content everyday and that helps us increase the page we have from CKAM campaigns. And me as the tech guy I tend to be in charge of the affiliate stuff, but that’s also really dependant on editorial content, right. So I just had to plug in product links, whatever makes sense for whatever articles that Lynn publishes.

Steve: I see. So is that a manual process or is there some sort of automation that you have in place? I’m just curious how.

Greg: It’s all a bit of both. We use Skim Links.

Steve: Okay. Yeah

Greg: But we also try to manually insert links as much as possible because you know Skim Links takes a big percentage, and to give you another example is we can put in a non-Amazon link. That’s you know a better deal for the consumer, or we get a bigger card than we’ll try to do that. The baseline is if we’re going to recommend a product anyway we should try to get a commission off it.

Steve: Right, now that’s only makes sense and just for the benefit of the listeners, Skim Links is actually a service that will automatically pass your content and automatically insert affiliate links within your content so you get paid, but of course they take a cut of the proceeds.

Greg: A big cut.

Steve: Right [both chuckle].

Greg: So it might be Skim Links are for just a couple of days or a couple of weeks as we wait for– I’m thinking that sometimes we have to apply for an affiliate program. So while we’re waiting for approval, we’ll just use Skim Links.

Steve: Right. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. So you mentioned you know at the same time you said it pains you to see some of the early bloggers, beginning bloggers make their mistakes, and I just wanted to ask you know what are some of the mistakes that you guys made earlier on, and you know just as a learning experience to some of my listeners.

Greg: The one thing I keep telling new bloggers is they need to be leader centric verses blogger centric or self centric, and I realized you know when you start a blog and that’s your uplift for the internet it’s really tempting to talk about your own issues or blog related problems, right. But the reader doesn’t care about that and so, what we really consciously done on Wisebread is to always think about what the reader cares about. So we might have tech problems or we might be switching ad networks or whatever it is, but we never talk about it on Wisebread because the Wisebread reader wants to know about how to save money or how to travel better, and maybe it’s because we have three of us that we can them in person [Chuckles]. So right we don’t have to depend on blog but one mistake I see far too often is new bloggers talking about WordPress plugins or other blog related issues that the reader doesn’t care about.

Steve: Interesting. I’ve actually made that mistake my fare share of times and because you know I have some problems with– I run an online store as you know and occasionally are technical problems and you know I just write about them and then my wife looks at them and says no one is going to read this, and I’m like no my readers all want to start online stores and then sure enough that article like no one makes any comments or anything.

Greg: But you know I think your situation is a little bit different because you are, also talking about how to create an ecommerce business so I think I am a little bit more okay with you.
Steve: Sometimes I go overboard on the technical stuff and that when my wife kind of slaps me and says you know you are going to make it a lot more high level.

Greg: Right so it’s good to have a partner well or a real friend or something.

Steve: I wouldn’t call her a partner she is more like a boss but yeah you know, whatever you’re right. [Chuckles] So any other recommendations for just people who are starting out blogging like, so, let’s take someone who wanted to start another Wisebread today, would they use some of the same strategies? What sort of tips would you give them? Is the multi-author route still a viable strategy?

Greg: Yeah. I still think that still a really good idea because we are able to use multiple authors we’ve got different perspectives on things we’re talking about. So I think that’s actually been a really big key of Wisebread’s success and for people starting new sites now, I would encourage them to have other voices on the blog too.

Steve: Interesting.

Greg: They don’t have to be freelance authors. They could be guest posts from other blogs. But just to be able to get some other voices on the blog, I think it really serves the audience. The other thing I would suggest for people starting a new blog today is the importance of relationships and with Thinkon you know existing nowadays and with Thinkon local meet ups happening around the country, I really encourage people to build relationships with other sites. Four years ago we didn’t have Thinkon, we wouldn’t have these local meet ups and Wisebread was very insular. We totally felt like it was us against the world, but there is a community now and I see so much awesome collaborations in the same core community and like new, awesome new products or projects getting started because of this kind of collaboration and I just want to add you know to your statement, it always helps to add a little alcohol to the mix [both chuckle]

Steve: Sure, yeah.

Greg: Like in our case you know it was really fun hanging out you know everyone loosens up a little bit at the bar afterwards.

Steve: Right.

Greg: Yeah, the first time you meet somebody, it’s a little awkward, I remember the first– the very first Thinkon in 2011, I was really intimidated by some of the big names you know I would make eye contact with JB and then look away [both chuckle] and I wasn’t even sure I could introduce myself and at that first Thinkon. I would look at Jim of Bargaineering and look away, but over the years I found that like other finance bloggers, they are actually really cool people, and now I’m not afraid to go up and talk to them.

Greg: Yeah. What I like about you Greg is that you are just like a regular guy, you are very approachable and you know the success of Wisebread clearly hasn’t gotten into your head you are very approachable so.

Greg: Yeah, thanks a lot.

Steve: Especially after you get a couple of drinks in meetings.

Greg: Yeah, yeah.

Steve: Well you know well we can conduct another interview you know about the other stuff that we talked about I think on bulge.

Greg: Yeah. All right, that’s funny.

Steve: You guys have any plans to put out any sort of book or product or start anything on your site?

Greg: We do talk about that and I think in the last couple of years in the blogger sphere people have been talking how to be more Google proof.

Steve: Aha.

Greg: Because 2013 was pretty brutal for people depending on SEO traffic. So kindle books, podcasts, some kind of course or product those are all good ideas for bloggers now. And as far as Wisebread is concerned we have talked about other things, I don’t know if we’re going to do anything this year but they are definitely on our minds.

Steve: That’s actually a good topic. How are you guys Google proofing your site?

Greg: Yeah. So we need to do a better job with email. We are considering you know podcasting or what we can do with Kindle or Wisebread publisher book four years ago and we might do another book. Other ways to Google proof ourselves is just to focus on socials and so instead of just relying on Google, we are looking for people to recommend Wisebread articles to their friends. So Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, those are all really important channels for us.

Steve: Okay, Interesting. So I don’t want to take up too much of your time Greg but I always like to end with two questions. You know was there a particular business book that influenced you in any way for you guys to take the- – to get the courage to start this and quit your jobs.

Greg: There was two books that actually was really good for me. One was ‘Founders at Work’. It’s a book about so called barleys, founders and like sleeker and some other startups and it was cool just to read about how they were normal people and the struggles that they had at the beginning and that was personally inspiring as the park third Wisebread. The other one is E-Myth, ‘E-Myth Revisited’ actually I think and that one was helpful because it talks about building systems so that you are not doing everything yourself. And what I like to tell new bloggers is you are going to think of yourself as a business owner not just as a writer. And so as a business owner you need to build in systems for tact, or publishing, or copy editing, or whatever it is and not solely depend on yourself.

Steve: That is a very good policy. I struggle with that myself because I am pre-anal and you know I like to figure things out myself but yeah excellent advice. And the second question I always ask is you know early on when you guys were starting Wisebread, were there online services that you used, that you couldn’t live without that you might still use today?

Greg: Analytics, that’s prime one that everybody uses. The other one we use is SiteMeter for public stats and the reason we use SiteMeter is because life hacker use them. And that was how they were you know projecting their public stats. So we were like if it’s good enough for life hacker, we can use it too and we’ve been using them for seven years.

Steve: Yeah, so SiteMeter it’s very unusual for people to put all their stats out wide in the open like that. What is the motivation for doing that?

Greg: Why hide it is our thinking and also if we’re going to try to sell sponsorship, advertisers want to have that data. So instead of hiding it behind you know an email request we might just put it out there.

Steve: Interesting. Okay. So it mainly applies for advertisers and that sort of thing?

Greg: Right.

Steve. Okay. Right Greg hey well thank you. I didn’t want to take too much of your time we had to win it a little bit over. Is there a place where people can get hold of you if they have questions?

Greg: Yeah. People having questions feel free to email me at greg@wisebread.com.

Steve: Okay. Great.

Greg: And also definitely talk to me at Thinkon so people who are listening and are not planning to go on Thinkon, they should register now.

Steve: Absolutely. And I will be at Thinkon. Greg and a whole bunch of other cool people are going to be at Thinkon and you know the best part of that conference is what happens after the sessions are over.

Greg: You are going to buy me some drinks, right Steve?

Steve: Absolutely, absolutely.

Greg: Okay [chuckles]

Steve: And will pour mine in a cup so at least I am fully coherent.

Greg: Make sure you bring your tape recorder.

Steve: Absolutely [chuckles]. Thanks Greg, thanks a lot.

Greg: All right, it’s cool man. Thank you.

Steve: Here is what I liked about Greg. His blog is extremely successful and he is still very humble and very down to earth and in fact I had no idea who he even was and the fact that he was big time until after we talked and someone else told me that he was the founder of Wisebread. Be sure to check out the show notes where you will find the sites and links mentioned in this episode and if you have a free minute, it would really help if you could subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. Also don’t forget to enter my free contest where I am giving away a life time membership for my profitable online store course and I’m also doing free consulting as well. For more information go to mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch. Once again that’s mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch, thanks for listening.

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

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004: How Viv And Joe Created Orbit Baby, An 8 Figure Business Selling High End Baby Strollers

Orbit Baby Founders

This particular episode is very special to me because Viv and Joe are both close friends of mine. We all went to Stanford together and majored in engineering. Viv and I studied electrical engineering while Joe focused on mechanical engineering and product design.

As you will discover in this podcast, when a power couple like Joe and Viv start a business, it’s destined to be successful. Follow their journey on how they started from nothing to creating Orbit Baby, one of the most successful high end baby stroller companies in the world.

You Will Learn

  • Why did Joe and Viv decide to start a stroller company
  • How to find factories overseas to manufacture your products
  • What are the challenges of manufacturing your own products
  • The easiest way to get your own stuff made if you don’t have a product design background
  • What Viv and Joe would have done differently if they started over
  • How Joe and Viv marketed their store early on
  • What was their best marketing move early on
  • How to get celebrities to endorse your product
  • Why they decided to go wholesale instead of direct to consumer
  • How to get stores to carry your products
  • How to price goods for wholesale
  • How to ensure that your retail stores present your products effectively
  • How to market your wholesale business

Joe And Viv Recommend

Transcript

Steve: You’re listening to the mywifequitherjob episode number 4. Now before we begin, I just want to give a quick thank you shout out to my buddy Andrew Yauderian who blogs at EcommerceFuel.com. Now Andrew actually helped me get started with this podcast and he was actually the one who recommended the mic that I’m using today, and for that I’m very appreciative of the advice that he has given me. Now on to the show.

Welcome to the mywifequitherjob podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suites your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host Steve Chou.

Welcome to mywifequitherjob podcast. Today I have a very special husband and wife team as guests. So I met Joe Hei and Vivian Chiang at Stanford where we were in the same class. Now Joe studied mechanical engineering where as Vivian, I and I both studied electrical engineering, and in fact I have many fond memories of us working together on engineering projects when we used to live in the computer lab. Now what’s also cool about Joe and Viv is that they are a husband and wife team just like my wife and I, and I’m very proud to call these two my close friends.

Now anyways Joe and Viv have created in my opinion the greatest luxury store brand in the world in OrbitBaby.com and just personally I’ve used all the baby strollers and car seats for all of my kids and I can whole heartedly say that they are easily the most innovative and user-friendly children’s equipments sold in stores today. Now it’s a shame that it’s a podcast and I can’t really show you a visual of their products but I’ll be sure to link up their company in the show notes, but you know all I can say is that their strollers are very unique in their design in that the seats rotate to make loading and transporting your kids that much easier. So I’m really honored to have Joe and Viv here today to talk about their stroller company OrbitBaby.com. Welcome Joe and Viv, how are you today?

Vivian: Good.

Joe: Great, thanks for having us

Steve: Yeah, so you know for all those who have never heard about your company, can you just give us a quick background story and basically tell us, how you came up with the idea and what were some of your motivations for starting it.

Joe: Yeah, it’s a great question and like he said you know we get asked that a lot so I’ll try to keep it short. Part of it and hopefully this is interesting to you and your audience. Part of it was just a real deep desire to understand a company I’ll admit that. It’s always been something I wanted to do, it’s kind of in the blood and for me my parents were entrepreneurs, so that was definitely a part of it but why baby products. I came out of a phase in my life where I was doing product design and other kinds of design consulting at a place called IDO, where we were doing it for obviously all other companies because it was a consulting firm and so another part of you was just thinking hey, why don’t we do this for ourselves, you know we were advising companies and designing products for them, and trying to make them great and it seemed like it would be a nice opportunity to do it for yourself.

And then specifically for baby products, I remember an incident I had where my sister came to visit us in the Bay area here and I picked her up from San Francisco international airport and had to install the car seat because she had a baby at the time, my nephew and I remember just being really hit by this feeling of like wow this thing is sort of creepy, crappy and pretty bad and that kind of lit a light bulb of hey maybe this is the thing to do it in and we get asked especially being in so in covariant and everything else, like you mentioned you guys are part of the double lees, you know, we always get asked like wow, that’s really unusual why physical products at all but also why baby strollers. And a lot of it had to do with the fact that it felt like the innovation level was really low, the quality and the design of the products weren’t great, so it felt like an opening that we could get into and then I’ll let Vivian speak for herself but it was also a great sort of point in our lives because she had just gotten out of business school and had a lot of new skills and had spent a period of time at Apple doing marketing and that’s something that we felt like Orbit Baby needed from the get go because we really wanted to build a brand along with the product.

Vivian: Yes, and like Joe said I had– we actually had looked at the high and baby stroller car seat market back even before I graduated from the Stanford business school. We did a research project kind of testing the price point of where a luxury or high end stroller and car seat traverses would look like and we pretty much found out that there was a market for that. That is why after taking a year of business school but instead of doing Orbit Baby right away I actually left apple just because I couldn’t turn down the opportunity of working in their consumer apps group.

So you know for me and building a brand from the ground up was just extraordinary opportunity and it such a big passion of mine that I really, really just wanted to do that and dive right in and just create something from scratch. You know when I see an Orbit Baby out on the street now, when I see the logo, when I see any type of marketing related to it, I know that you know back in 2004 there was nothing, and the fact that today you know we can see it in a magazine or online or just out down the street is very, very gratifying.

Steve: So did you both quit at the same time, I actually don’t even remember now or did you stagger it kind of?

Joe: It was staggered so I ended up quitting first and then Vivian was still working and so you know at some point we did both jump in, and so the family was all in at that point but we had a period of time where we were you know at least had one income in the family.

Steve: Okay, okay so in a way that probably made it little bit less scary in terms of money I guess.

Joe: Yeah I would agree on that first step, yeah.

Vivian: Yeah, and I’d just say before Orbit, we actually didn’t have kids so a lot of people ask us, how did you even start this without having kids. We– I was actually pregnant at our first stage shows but we didn’t have the added expense of having kids yet, but I just said we had eight nephews and he says you came into town to visit us so we did have experience on how difficult car seats were to use.

Steve: Now you know for our business, we import handkerchiefs and simple textiles from Asia, but I can’t even imagine putting together something as complicated as a stroller, so can you kind of just walk me through the design process and what it kind of takes to get something as complicated as a stroller manufactured overseas.

Joe: Yeah, it’s a great question. It takes a lot. The you know I think the design of a new product– you have to start with– we didn’t know what we were going end up with necessarily so we had a pretty open ended beginning part of the design process but as we got in to it and we realized there were certain key benefits that we really wanted to deliver through the product you know like you mentioned the installation and of the seat rotates. The thing started getting kind of complicated in terms of the mechanisms and the things that would allow those features to happen and we had a lot of stops and starts. I mean basically this whole industry is manufacturing basis over in Asia, so one part of that’s harder, that’s hard is there was a lot of trips back to Taiwan and China and satellite too in the beginning just to find a manufacturer leave alone to implement the product, and the only quick story I will tell about that is that we had originally engaged basically like a trading company to introduce us to you know I think at the time it was five or six factories in China that were already making baby products and long story short is the whole process framed out.

There is this trading company was based in Hong Kong and I think they just kind of went through the motions. They took us to a bunch of factories that were in hindsight clearly not appropriate because they were more manufacturing things of a lower quality, lower price frame. We actually went pretty far with one of these factories before ending up having to make a tough call to just pull the plug on the whole process which definitely, was definitively was not a comfortable thing to do when you had a start up that wasn’t making any money but it just– the fact it couldn’t handle the job. Like you said it was a complicated thing and they weren’t up to the task and it was a painful decision you have to make as a start up and the only thing that made it easier was the fact with themselves. After I mentioned it to them, it was really funny they said oh I’m so glad you said that because we were actually feeling like we were on a rehearse and so it kind of really vindicated the decision for me and then also we had to restart the process and the second restarting of the process it was partly a really kind of stupid thing of just doing a lot of Google searching but I was also leaning heavily on kind of family contacts that we had through Taiwan to vet various factories that I was finding as well.

Steve: So if we can just take a step back, let’s say one of the listeners wanted to manufacture something you know much simpler than a stroller but you know something that needed to be manufactured overseas, what would they need to do to actually hook up with the manufacturer like what’s the process involved?

Joe: I think yeah, you know it’s funny too Steve because the world is getting– I don’t think Orbit Baby you know it’s not that old of a company but the world is really shifting even as we speak I feel like. So the rules which I will describe briefly, you still can do, which was we essentially literally cold called factories and we said we want to come visit you and take– you know have a meeting both so that you can see our idea and see if it is something you would like to work on and so that we can evaluate you basically, your facilities and your capability, and that process requires– we had the advantage going into that on having experience in the product world so that processes require you to have somewhat the ability to evaluate the factory, their manufacturing shops, but also their engineering shops. I think that path is still viable.

I think that a new path that has cropped out that to be clear we didn’t use for Orbit Baby but I’m kind of fascinated by it is, there’s a lot more companies that are popping up that will kind of hand hold your way through the process and then in return they take a chunk of equity and so I guess it’s sort of like anything else in the world now, you know you can outsource the process to a certain extent but they have engineering staff, they can essentially loan out to you and they know about your factories already etcetera but you know since there’s no such thing as a free lunch in life, you do end up depending on the firm you hook up with and you do give up that chunk of equity and that’s something. It’s a compromise we didn’t have to make, but not everybody can dive in and you know do what we did if they’re just starting out.

Steve: So, when you were kind of looking for these manufacturers, did you already have some sort of blueprint in mind or was it just kind of rumble?

Joe: Of the product itself do you mean?

Steve: Yeah, yeah

Joe: Yeah, we actually had, we had basically the sort of the first love of our design already.

Steve: Oh, okay.

Joe: Yeah, which we had worked on before we you know went over to Asia and I actually think that is quite important. I think it would be very hard to have productive meetings if you were talking in general.

Steve: I see, so you had mechanical drawings and that’s, I actually don’t know what’s involved in making such a complicated product, but are we talking like mechanical drawings, and that sort of thing?

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Basically it was you know we threw around the terms CAD a lot computer and in design but there is this solid modeling programs, SolidWorks is one of them and there are these various kind of expensive pieces of software and you end up spending many, many hours grinding away, basically drawing up the parts and also making them all fit together and it’s actually sort of roughly an elegist to writing code I would call but it’s very visual and you have to piece it all together on the computer and then it’s yeah you end up going over the issue with all of that stuff.

Steve: Interesting. You know what’s really hilarious is that when it comes to like making a computer chip, that kind of comes easy to me because I’m used to all this stuff, but even making like a bar of metal would seem complicated to me.

Joe: Yeah, I wouldn’t advice for it Steve I’ll write back at you I won’t bother with the other one but I actually think they are very similar ideas you know just the different specifics.

Steve: Yeah, so okay so we have these product issues and just for the benefit of listeners who might want to do this, what are some of the gulches that you hit while you were just trying to manufacture and you know which you kind of done differently if you were to start all over?

Joe: All gosh, you know the list is maybe a long and illustrious arm. I think, well let’s go back to the beginning and where I told a little bit of the story of how we found our manufacturer. Wouldn’t it have been great not to have the hiccup in the beginning of having to switch factories? I think that it’s such a critical choice, and I think for other people just starting off with the product, you kind of, you kind of just want to get the manufacturing part of it over with and done so you can move on to all the other issues that you know Vivian can speak to better of volunteering with your sales and your marketing and getting your website up and all that stuff but the reality is just you know a factory really isn’t a place where your stuff gets made. It’s for a product, anything physical like we’re doing. It’s just, it’s maybe your most important business partner, it’s what I would encourage people to– the way they think about it.

It’s not a– yes they are a vendor, but I think it’s really, really arguably your most critical business partner and that comes through in so many different ways, you know and I think one of the things that I’m– I guess not that I’m bad, not that I do it differently, I do it the same way is we found a factory that was willing to essentially give us really good financial terms, in terms of you know when we would have to pay for the touring and when we would have to pay for our first purchase order of products you know they gave us 30 days and things like that. I mean that’s essentially a form of vendor financing and when you’re just starting out, you know that kind of service is so important. It can’t be treated as relationship of just– you’re going to you know pay some money and get some stuff.

I think in terms of stuff that maybe I actually think I don’t know if you would agree with this. I actually think we should have hired a few more people earlier in the process. I think one of the things that we were really proud of is being really cheap. I feel every start up has that, hopefully has that mentality to succeed, to survive really let’s say. So we didn’t hire people for a long time it felt like, and I actually think it is related to your question like getting physical products implemented, because we ended up spending you know just so much of our time and energy just on getting that first product done let’s call it that I think you know some of that stuff we maybe could have hired a more junior person to do some of the nitty gritty, because as founders you know, we really needed to I think start shifting our attention even earlier and put more energy into everything else it takes to enlarge the product and to run the business and that’s the part you really can’t replace at all.

Steve: Aha

Joe: So, that’s maybe one of them. I actually think it goes contrary to most people’s instincts you know.

Steve: Yeah, so would you say it’s pretty much required that you actually go over there and meet them face to face then and kind of establish a relationship that way?

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s absolutely required, yeah.

Steve: Okay, so let’s shift gears a little bit and talk more a little bit about the business side. So that’s probably Vivian’s domain so what was the kind of the business model and strategy and how did you guys kind of make some of your early sales?

Vivian: So in the beginning as Joe said, we were supper cheap. So we actually didn’t hire a lot of people in-house and we knew that we could never afford an agency to help us with our marketing. What we did do is we did– focused heavily on PR. So our strategy was to actually get the Orbit Baby in the hands of celebrities and we did hire somebody who could help us with that and surprisingly that actually relate to goals. So we didn’t pay the celebrities either, it was really just the price of the product. So for us that was really cheap because it was just the cost of the product, and then it kind of just snowballed after that. I feel like we got, you know we did things in a very professional and classy way with celebrities, so that probably helped a lot, but we just had a really compelling product that these celebrities just started raving about to their friends, and the next thing we knew, we just had a lot of the A list celebrities pushing around that product. So that was definitely a key part of our strategy and we really you know having been at Apple we looked at a lot of how they did things in terms of creating a premium looking feel of the product, and I think that’s a cut through. Our website and our collateral and really the way we run our business as well without stores and retailers across the country.

Steve: So, how does that work exactly like how do you get this in front of celebrities and how does this work. You just say hey, just to go over, do you want a stroller, we’ll send it to you? Is that how it works or how do you approach a celebrity?

Vivian: Yeah, I mean for the most part there is also you know we happen to had people who had relationships as well with celebrities, and so you know we were able to get into their hands on them through that.

Joe: Yeah, I think Steve in terms of maybe some lessons people can take. One of our earliest you know we keep joking about how we were really cheap. One of our earliest expenses was we did hire essentially I don’t know what to call it a publicist, a PR agent that we could afford basically, and I think that’s one of the moves that we felt really good about even though at the time it was you know just burning. Everything we did was just burning cash whether– I think that was really important. There is a kind of a whole background world of how these celebrities work and stuff and you know you kind of need somebody who is going to both just put in the time in the contact of the people but also hopefully have some pre-existing relationships like Vivian is saying with– because all the celebrities have their own publicists basically.

Steve: I see.

Joe: Yeah and so you kind of need to be able to get in touch with them and work with them you know they are people basically.

Vivian: Yeah, so it wasn’t like Joe and I called them up and say because just kind of a bore probably have said no thank you. So we relied on people who already had relationships with, not necessarily a celebrity but the celebrity’s publicists or agents.

Steve: I see, okay that makes sense. Okay, so what was the business model then exactly? So was it to sell on your own site, did you– were you a wholesaler like how did you guys come up with that strategy?

Vivian: Yeah, so initially we only sold predominantly through wholesale. We did have an ecommerce site that really that was there for spare parts and for accessories but we really didn’t push that as part of our business model. If you remember that was back in August of 2006 when we first launched. So at the time there wasn’t– ecommerce was not as prevalent as it is today, and we also just didn’t want to introduce channel conflict with our existing retailers. So we really built it up by going to specialty boutiques throughout the country. We were also weren’t targeting the big buck stores like Target or Wal-Mart either. So it was you know predominantly just a wholesale strategy from the beginning.

Steve: Okay, so how does that work exactly? So let’s say I want to get it into some boutique, do you just pack some strollers and just head on over the store?

Joe: It’s a great question, I think one of the reasons why we decided to do the business at all to be honest is because even though really it felt really intimidating because there is all these different accounts to your point I mean how are you going to pack up the stroller and go to a boutique in New York or whatever? What we realized about it is that we went to the trade show for this industry for research and what we realized about it is that you could basically reach all of the– let’s say a lot of the retailers that you would want to get into because they all went to this trade show.

And so it was, even though it sounds like a lot of scattered sales accounts essentially, it was really efficient for a young small company without a lot of resources because we were able to get, mix essentially I guess you’d call them sales leads, we brought our product talks to the trade show and they all came as well so it was very centralized and we met just you know a ton of people with the space of like three days and that’s how we kind of got our sales kicked off really. And I think for us that was really critical because we didn’t really want to go into an industry where it would require you know like Vivian said, we didn’t want to do a thing where you have to go only a few big accounts that have pre-existing relationships with them and etcetera. This was a really nice kind of very open environment where we could just show up at the trade show and all the accounts, if they found your product interesting, they would just come to us basically.

Vivian: Yeah and the great thing about the baby industry is that there is basically just– there used to be two shows but now there is just one show, so it’s pretty efficient. You go to the show, you meet all your key accounts, you meet other retailers and then if they love your product they’ll place an order. The challenging part though still is because they are scattered across the country, there is so lot of sales support you know going forward even after you make that first sale, you do still have to go and visit them and train the stores. We put in different mechanisms to try and facilitate that so we had– we created an orbit university which was a live streaming video of somebody teaching a sales associate products. They could chat in questions live; they could watch it later meaning it was an efficient way for us so that we didn’t have to fly out to say Minneapolis for one account. But also even though we did create leads and were able to make those initial sales pretty easily, the ongoing support though is a challenge because you know there are still accounts all over the country that you do have to go and visit.

Steve: So you went to these trade shows and then all these boutiques wanted to carry your products. How did the initial ordering work? Do they just order a whole bunch, or do they just get a couple and just to see if it sells, like how does that all work exactly?

Vivian: Yeah, so at our first show we actually created two types of packages. One was minimum opening order, so our philosophy was that if you just ordered one, that wasn’t enough. So we actually– it wasn’t like we were trying to be you know total hot balls about it, but kind of had to– you should, if you wanted to have skid in the game and if you really, really were dedicated to orbit Baby you kind of had to sign up to carry three of them. One for your floor and then one of each color on the back for your stock and that’s how we packaged it. And for some stores it was too much, they only wanted to try out one and they only had the funds to do one. And we kind of just start one may be if they– when it would be a good partners for business in the near term.

We also offered a volume package, so we I believe it was like around $5000, we would then also provide free shipping. So for a small store in Boston or New York that actually meant a lot for them and if they had a warehouse anywhere that they could stock you know six or seven Orbit strollers, then that made sense for them to save and you know the sophisticated ones would outrun the numbers and they would know that it makes sense for them to order on a volume basis. So those were the two packages we launched with, one was minimum order you know to get a lee way kind of and the second was volume special for the show and actually later on we still kept that special there because that was like a sweet spot that we thought was worth giving away free for that revenue.

Steve: Okay, so did you implement like minimum pricing, you know among your shops or?

Vivian: Yeah so, that was a good question. I mean we couldn’t really go in and say you have to sell it at $900, so that was the opening price paying for the three starter kit. So we can’t you know, I don’t think any manufacturer can like force a retailer to stock it at that price point, but if they did the math, they just didn’t make sense. It wasn’t worthwhile for them to discount and also because we run pretty lean. A lot of times they wouldn’t be able to order, or they would be on beat time, so they would rather just place it at full price and then get that sale at that price point and then discount it and then be out of stock and not have something to sell.

Steve: I see, so how does the whole merchandizing take place? So do you have a say in how they display your products, how they present your brand and that sort of thing, do you have a say in that?

Vivian: So we always try to invest a system as much as possible so we would send out small things that you know obvious things like postcards and brochures and sale sheets to help either one educate the staff or two have them as handouts for customers or consumers but what we also did was we created this point of purchase registry which was a credit share type of item that we designed in-house that was designed to minimize how much space it took up on the floor and that could show the car seat base in the store through rash anchors so as you know the car seat base goes into rash anchors and we basically try to simulate what it would act and behave like in actual car vehicle.

So we did that and as I mentioned before if they ordered it on price point, we would actually ship that for free. So they could buy it but we also knew that all of them didn’t have the funds to, and it was in our interest to have them presented in the way we rebranded them, very nice and clean manner and there is a clinic chair if you saw it, it’s very clean, it’s clear and it kinds of blends in with the store environment. So we ship that out for free if they did it a volume order. And it turns out a lot of the good retailers it would be harsh if we really didn’t cut some orbits. They actually all had that display.

Steve: Okay, yeah the reason why I was asking was because you know if you would have put your strollers side by side amongst a whole bunch of other high end strollers, it might blend in more but you know where your stroller really shines is when someone actually demonstrates that product and then you’re like wow this thing is amazing. So I was just curious if you had some guidelines for some of the little boutiques to really present your product in the best possible light because just displaying it side by side alongside other strollers might not be good enough to make sales.

Joe: Yeah, I agree and I think one of the hard lessons learned for us was just you know how everybody has sort of the perfect vision for how they want their products shown and demonstrated to a point, and that was a struggle for us all along you know we always struggled with how do we– and it wasn’t always the retailer’s fault I would argue you know we have limited resources and so we could only make so many displays, we could only train so many stores but that’s I think that’s one of the interesting challenges of doing any product business where you’re going to wholesale like we did is, how do you do that you know because I know in all the Apple stores in the world now have really sort of distorted how people think about it because those are they are vertically doing that right there. Their own stores they can control everything so everybody has this image of like oh that’s the way retail happens but the reality is it’s so hard to actually implement that.

Vivian: So we tried some other things as well for example we knew that if we sent out labels, cards that would educate a consumer on how the product works after the product was taken out of the box, it was highly unlikely that you know stores actually on the floor would remember to put those cards on. So what we did was at the factory, we started putting on these cards like turn the knob, turn star or twist this to fold and so it was really simple like three arm hot pink magenta tags that would (a) be able to help a store associate in the store better demonstrate the product and (b) the consumer you know if they saw a wholesale it would encourage them to turn the knob or twist the– twist script on the stroller frame. So we did things like that to kind of try and make it so there was some sort of consistency across the board on the product itself.

Steve: Okay, so you guys decided to go the wholesale out, did it ever cross your mind to just go the straight retail road and sell your own stuff?

Joe: I think one of the challenges, I’ll talk about the product aspect of it, you know we were– both the advice we were getting in doing you know talking to people and also our own instincts was this thing baby product and sort of very physical things the stroller, the car seat, a roll around. Everybody was telling us in this kind of you know matched our own intuition that was more challenging than normal to do it outside of a store environment let’s say, right. People were saying and I think it’s a little less true nowadays but still very true compared to say, I don’t know just buying a pen or something online.

People really want to feel the strollers and car seats etcetera, so we knew going in that physical store presence was going to be a really big deal and then at that point you know it basically brought down to, it wasn’t really going to be visible to– I mean we sort of fantasized about having our own pop up shops and things but we knew it wouldn’t be visible to achieve any scale trying to do it only through our own retail. So I think in a way the nature of the product almost ended up dictating the business model you know it was like we have to get it in the stores, we cannot have it being only in our own store, so then therefore we kind of hand to wholesale in a way.

Vivian: And just to add to that because baby products, a lot of new expecting parents will register for them. You know that was when you know that’s got a distinctly different product I’d say than say just like a pan or something but you know there were like two times in your life that you would actually register for something. One is when you get married and then two is when you have a baby and we knew that both of those scenarios people would walk into a store and go around and pick the stuff they want and register for it. So we just simply wouldn’t have the scale right to do that on a physical level in you know five metropolitan cities around the country let alone all the different states in the country.

Steve: Yeah, so I– so you’ve mentioned a number of things so far. You say. You’ve mentioned that you’ve gotten a PR person to contact celebrities, you went to these trade shows. Were there any other marketing avenues where you actually tried to push your business and get more exposure to your brand?

Joe: I mean, I think some of it just to give the– some of it is the obvious stuff, you know we really put effort and dollars actually on making sure that we launched with the pretty good website. When I mean good, I mean both in terms of its design and in terms of its functionality obviously. We’ve seen over the years, maybe it’s something with the baby industry I don’t know but you know some products will come out and even if the product is relatively promising, they launch a pretty hawky website and then it kind of ruins everything in a way I think. So it seems like an obvious thing these days but those are really big focus of ours as well.

Vivian: And one thing that we really knew we had a competitive advantage over other stroller manufacturers is that we actually have a lot of pans so he knows how many pans we actually have now I think there is ten now?

Joe: I think they are 14.

Vivian: Oh 14, I actually haven’t gone through or not even pending so we use that trend advantage and we have two real white papers right which is as you and I know like in the Dublin and the South west of the [Inaudible] [00:34:50] that’s very, very common. We basically generally did a content that we didn’t think a lot of other people would even bother to do. So we have white papers on why the harness should be where it starts for a short child in the car seat or on some other materials that we use like why our fabric is greener or more eco-friendly for your child and other ones. So we actually spend a lot of time creating a database and a library of materials to (a) promote our product and also just (b) to kind of educate newly expectant parents on what they should look for in a car seat.

Joe: And I think renown was the kind of the you know there was a higher brow end of that which is what Vivian is talking about and then there was this stuff that was just like sudden, you know almost gimmicky where we are, I remember our first trade show, we actually brought in a mini, a car on to the trade show floor so that we could show people the car seat and then that was so funny because you know in a trade show we have of a lot of car seats apparently we were the first company that ever tried to bring a car in, seems so obvious.

Vivian: Ever, ever in the industry of KPMA.

Joe: Right, I don’t know. It’s crazy right and I think I’ve mentioned this story because you know it’s in a way it’s an easy way to create a lot of attention for yourself, and the other thing that people didn’t realize is that it was so cheap because it was a rental car.

Steve: Aaaa.

Vivian: It wasn’t the best $400 we spent and literally like Joe learned how to drive stake out of a weekend from one of our friends you know her and then we flew out to Atlanta on high ways like in a chase car behind them just to make sure that he didn’t stall and then we had to drive it into the trade show floor. You know we did stuff like lay down really nice hard wood floors that are for show, put up a lot of bright lights and stuff that seems obvious to this tape you know back in 2005 people were amazed, they were like your booth is so awesome and we hadn’t really– well we did the math and we actually really just didn’t spend that much money on it. We kept things really simple and clean and fresh.

Joe: And then one of the great things I wanted to mention was just that you know there is a bit of rackers in San Francisco that I’m sure you know Steve but you know this crazy race thing that happens and one of the things we did was just we just got, we got all you know not only the few employees we had but friends and family and everybody ended up with a stroller with no babies in there obviously. We just kind of, we walked bit a breakers you know all in all baby t-shirts all sort of there is this wall of strollers just to kind of create attention you know and so we would kind of pull stance like that basically.

Vivian: And I think I mean just because I know that this podcast is really intended for people to try and learn something if you know there will always be to start their company but one thing I would say to keep in mind is a lot of people think of marketing as straight to the consumer which is it’s true you know when you build a brand you’re just thinking of the end consumer, but we really thought of it as a holistic view. So what I mean by that was you know our marketing was just as strong to our customer as it was to our consumer and what I mean by that is that our customer was really our stores you know the boutiques across the country and a lot of people I think might not think of it that way. So they might just think well why spend so much money to just go to a trade show, you know get a ten bite hem brews just use the booth carpet, what’s the big deal, why would we ever bring in a car and I would say back links should run through everything you do all the touch points. So from the end consumer to your stores, you’re basically the avenues of how you sell the product because if you take pride in how you market to you know your wholesalers then they’ll do the same to their end consumer, and I think it really makes a difference in how you think about marketing in general as a company.

Steve: That’s very good advice and in fact you know I have a lot of students in the course that I teach on how to start a profitable online store. A lot of these people actually want to manufacture their own products and they’re actually not sure where to start. So would you guys happen to have any advice for these people who actually want to create their own stuff you know based on your experiences and based on some of the mistakes that you’ve made in the past?

Joe: Yeah, I think that again I think that a lot of it depends on their back ground. If they had a product or mechanical background like me hopefully they are, they have somewhat their own avenues to get going with that but there are some companies if I was to give them advice to look into this company called PCHInternational. I don’t mind giving them a quick clag just because they are pretty involved with simple projects for example at this point they give a lot of students internships and stuff but firms like them come like I was mentioning earlier. Their job is to you know, offer varying degrees of turnkey service to try and get your stuff built in China basically. So I think that there is– there are big firms and they are based in China but also a bit more just kind of more local smaller shops that are you know may be for engineers who have basically a consulting service, who can do a lot of the work for you notice you don’t even have to pay them but on the other hand, depending on how hungry they are, a lot of those shops would be willing to take either differed payment or a lot of times equity. Frankly I mean a lot of your students are probably looking to start something.

There is a great story of a different company in our same industry called Boon, who don’t do our kind of products, they do a lot of kind of like bags and you know smaller plastic things, but they had the same dilemma. They had a great– they worked eight hour cool modern designs, they didn’t know how to get them made. They hooked up with a kind of a consultancy essentially that was willing to work with them because they were a promising young outfit and you know and sort of wasn’t able to be flexible on the payment terms and stuff like that. And in the end I mean though you know launched a really big product line after that but I always say it’s this sort of you know entrepreneurship as you know on two stew there is chicken or the egg and it’s like how do you break that cycle of always turning answers into chicken and the egg.

Steve: Yeah, I’d actually say that was a really good answer. So the point of all that was I just wanted to emphasize that you really don’t need a mechanical or a product engineering background. You can always find someone to help you out in that department on what skills that you lack.

Joe: Yeah, absolutely I would agree with that.

Steve: So do you guys– this is the question I ask everyone. Do you guys have any business book that kind of has influenced you in any way on your path to entrepreneurship?

Joe: Well I’ll make a plug for personally for me I don’t know if you’d call it business put strictly but it’s an old leaver goodie you know Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win friends and Influence People’. It’s sort of a book everybody has heard of, but and especially in our generation very few people have read. I’m biased because you know my family is very involved with Dale Carnegie training and such but it really is a great– and the reason why I mean you know I broached writing with that book title is because so much of business is communication I would argue right. So it doesn’t matter if you’re double lee, ME or not doing a product at all let’s say you’re doing ecommerce or whatever. Business really is fundamentally communication. It is internal with your people, it’s external with your customers, you know tour vendors etcetera. So I think a lot of times you know people focus– there is a lot of just sort of business folks that are about you know the business aspects of it, but I think you know I would make a plug for books that are very focused on just human relations and communications.

Steve: That is certainly true in the online space at least with blogging. It’s all about establishing relationships and just helping each other.

Joe: There you go.

Steve: I can totally see that and I can totally see it applying to a product company, on ecommerce company as well, so yeah excellent advice. So I don’t want to take up too much of your time, we’ve already gone a little bit over so I just wanted to end by saying you know Joe and Viv if any of these listeners want to be able to be able to get hold of you where can they find you?

Joe: Well I know for me I have a really easy email address. It’s just joseph@orbitbaby.com so yeah I’d like to hear from your listeners.

Steve: Thank you two for coming on the show, and I think this session was awesome.

Joe: Thanks so much for the opportunity Steve, it was really fun and I know even though we’re friends, it’s like a lot of stuff we don’t get to talk about and it’s funny. It’s like both Vivian and I are like, we feel like we have a million more things to say so I think you’ve created an awesome forum for people to both speak and listen.

Steve: You know I learned a bunch of things about your company that I actually did not know either. So that’s awesome. That’s all.

Vivian: Great.

Steve: Yap, thanks a lot

Joe: Okay, thank you

Vivian: Thanks Steve.

Steve: What can I say about Joe and Viv. They are the ultimate power couple. The perfect juxtaposition if you will of product design and engineering talent. To mass produce any sort of physical product for sale is just truly inspiring and very difficult to do. Be sure to check out the show notes where you’ll find the sites and links mentioned in this episode and also if you have a minute it would really help if you could subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. Also don’t forget to enter my free contest where I’m giving away a lifetime membership to my profitable online store course and free consulting as well. For more information about this contest, go to mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch. Once again that’s mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to the mywifequitherjob podcast where we’re giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information, visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.

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003: How Neville Medhora Makes 6 Figures Selling Copywriting Courses Online

neville medhora

I’m really happy to have Neville Medhora on the podcast in this episode. Neville is someone who I met at FinCon by random chance. He bought his conference tickets last minute and he just happened to walk in just as I was heading out with friends.

Anyways, we started talking and I found out that he’s been killing it online selling various info products on his blog at NevBlog.com. In fact, he’s never had a full time job and he’s been making a living off of the Internet ever since college.

In today’s episode, Neville will teach us the secrets on how he’s able sell his products so effectively.

You Will Learn

  • How Neville makes a living online
  • Why Neville decided to forgo getting a full time job to go out on his own after college
  • How Neville hustled his butt off as a teenager and paid for his college education through his side business.
  • How Neville discovered the power of copywriting through his store newsletter
  • How Neville stumbled upon his first info product by accident
  • Why the way your website looks doesn’t matter
  • What it’s important to validate your idea before you start your business
  • Crazy experiments Neville has done to make money
  • Why most people are doing their email marketing incorrectly
  • Neville’s advice on how to make your first sale online

Neville Recommends The Following Books

Neville’s Sites That Were Referenced In The Podcast

Transcript

Steve: You’re listening to the MyWifeQuitHerJob podcast episode number three.

But before we begin I just wanted to give a quick thank you shout out to my buddy Rob Berger who blogs at doughroller.net and he also runs a podcast, which is really awesome by the way, at doughroller.net/itunes.

Now Rob was actually one of the people who helped me nail down the audio quality and audio post processing for this podcast and for that I am very thankful.

Now on to the show!

Welcome to the MyWifeQuitHerJob podcast where we’ll teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love!
Here is your host, Steve Chou!

Steve: Welcome to the MyWifeQuitHerJob podcast. Today we have Neville Medhora on the show. Now I met Neville at FinCon last year and it was kind of a random encounter actually. We had just gotten out of an information session and everyone else was actually heading back up to their room except for Neville and I. So we started talking for a bit and that’s when I discovered that he was actually one of the guys behind AppSumo and that he pretty much makes a living selling info products online.

Now Neville seems to be living quite a life… lifestyle in Austin and he basically just lives off of his info products and his blog income. He runs the popular blog NevBlog.com and he sells various info courses that mainly focus on copywriting.

But what actually makes him stand out in my mind is he’s got a tonic character and a toner personality. And in fact by the end of the conference, I kind of gave him the nickname “outspoken Indian guy” and that’s kind of what I refer to him as.

Anyways go check out his blog and you’ll see what I mean. Neville really knows his stuff, especially in the realm of online marketing and copywriting. So welcome to the show, Neville. How are you doing man?

Neville: Hey man, how is it going? I’m glad we’re the only two losers like not going up to our rooms. We had…

Steve: Oh yeah. Yeah, I think everyone else was taking a nap if I recall. So…

Neville: Yeah, that’s what you have Red Bull for. [laughs]

Steve: So can you give us just a quick background story for those people that don’t know who you are and tell us how you make a living.

Neville: Yeah, well ever since like high school, I kind of had that little like entrepreneurial bug. And like I’m Indian, so I was supposed to be a doctor or something, right, and I had a chance to shadow ten doctors over the course of two years in high school. And I realized like that was not for me.

In fact I was voted most likely in the class to not become a doctor and going to computers. Because every time like at the hospitals, they have a problem with their internet – you know back then like internet was more finicky – I’d be like, “Oh, I know how to fix that”. And they’re like, “Aren’t you like the medical intern or something…” “Oh, yeah…”

And so from there I would do a lot of like dump crap on the internet like I would… I would download pictures of cars and Photoshop the backgrounds black, and it’d look really cool for background wallpapers, and then post those online. And then like all of a sudden, to Neville’s cool car archive, all these people were coming.

And I started a bunch of like stupid little things like that and then I was, “You know what I can probably make money with this”. Like a lot of like family friends would be like, “Oh, can you make me a website, we’ll pay you for it.” So I was like… I took a couple of those gigs and that’s when I realized like, “Oh, I can actually make money with these like random skills I have from the internet and what not.”

So I started a little company called House of Rave. That was my first company and it’s actually existed for a long time. HouseOfRave.com. Someone else owns it now and does a horrible job running it. It looks terrible.

But it paid… it paid for my college. It allowed me to graduate from college with like enough money in the bank to live for a couple of years and not have to work. And so, that was kind of nice. Do you want me to go into like how I started out?

Steve: Yeah so… Let’s… Let’s talk about House of Rave because it’s really interesting. You were in high school, right?

Neville: I’ve never been to a rave in my life, like ever.

Steve: Never been to a rave in your life and did you even know how to take… how did you figure all that stuff out?

Neville: It’s… You know here’s the funny thing, a lot of people think it’s just like because I’m smart or something. No, I’m an idiot. I just googled like it’s… I just googled it like I [??], that’s… That’s the thing.

And… And there’s so many more ways to take credit cards now but back then you had to have like an account and… So I had to cosign a bank account with my dad to open it. And then I opened a merchant account.

And then… And then I got a drop shipper, I found someone who’s already selling his rave products and I told him hey, I have this website, House Of Rave, I had already built like a sample of it. And I’m like I want to sell stuff that you send it out. And you know I get a cut or whatever.

And they sent me over an agreement and I was 17 years old. They never even bothered to ask how old I was which is great because it would have been illegal. And so then yeah, I was in business. Like… It was just like I stumbled into it, just like keep pushing through. Yeah.

Steve: How did you pick rave products? I never got that story.

Neville: Yeah, so here’s… here’s exactly what I did and it sounds really dumb. Now I know a lot more about how to validate an idea but here’s what I did.

I took a piece of paper and in my 11th grade tiny male handwriting I wrote a list of 300 products down. And I just basically looked around a room. I was like fans, mirrors, picture frames, furniture, hardwood flooring, like just random things like that, right.

And I just like wrote down every possible product I can imagine and I literally wrote down three giant columns with about 300 products and then I went through each one. Now I was like okay, couches. I was like I’m an11th grade, I don’t know about couches. Couches are expensive. I have no money, so I can’t sell couches. And so I crossed that off the list.

It was actually one of my brother’s ideas for the rave company, it was just one in three hundred. And after I started narrowing them down, I would… I would Google or AltaVista at the time the sites selling rave stuff and they all looked so crappy. And I was like, I could make a better looking website like that. I’m like that was my… that was my validation that I could do a better job.

And so I did. I went out and made a better looking website than everyone else which now I realize doesn’t matter but still I did that. And fortunately I found a supplier and within the first month I made my first order and that’s just how that started.

Steve: So you mentioned that that’s how you did things back then. So if you would do that all over again, how would you change your research?

Neville: Oh man… So… So we… I mean we’ve talked classes and stuff on validating right. And so one… I probably wouldn’t do drop shipping for rave stuff because you could find stuff on Amazon dot… now.

Steve: Right.

Neville: So that stuff’s a little harder. However if I were going to sell products or import products or something like that, what I would first do is I would make a one page, a little landing page.

And so for example I know how to use WordPress pretty well and so if I wanted to be a WordPress designer, instead of like making… buying like wordpressdesigner.com and like making a whole web page and making a portfolio and all that crap, what I would do is make a one page ad and I would probably put this on Craigslist and just say “I make WordPress… I make WordPress sites in front of your face. $20 an hour. Call Neville 7133001146”

And I would put that ad on Craigslist or up on a webpage and tell everyone I knew about it or go to like WordPress forums and say, “Hey, need WordPress help? Blah, blah, blah…” Or I would go to a WordPress… join a WordPress Facebook, I can post there as I need it. Anything like that.

And then if I got bites, like if people paid me to hire me to do my… to do their WordPress stuff, that means I’m doing something right.

If I get a lot of people going like, “Oh, yeah that’s cool. That’s a great idea. Blah, blah, blah… Oh but you know I don’t have the money for it right now, blah, blah.” That means “no”. So that’s called the quick validation. That like you validate by people actually pay you money for that service or product.

That’s what I would do first.

Steve: Ok, so what if you want to sell a physical product, how would you approach it differently? Same way?

Neville: Exact same way! If I was going to sell an app, I’d do the same way. If I was going to sell a service, same way. If I was going to do a product, I’d do it the same way. Yeah.

Steve: Ok. And then once you gather this information, let’s say you get a lot of increase, then you would actually flesh out the site and sell it online?

Neville: Yes. Yeah. So basically if I started getting money and it was… it was almost kind of rolling in, like oh okay, that’s something interesting.

So, so I have a friend who runs a 500 person company now.

Steve: Okay.

Neville: And when he first started in entrepreneurship, like he used to be clueless also, and he had his ideas for Republican and Democrat sandals. So you know how? Like people wear those yellow Livestrong bands?

Steve: Yeah.

Neville: And then some people wear the blue ones to indicate that they’re Democratic and red if they’re Republican. Like I didn’t know that was a thing, but apparently it is. So he thought, sandals with like… they’re like the little fun things or actually the color of your Republican or Democratic party. He thought this was a brilliant idea. And it sounds stupid now but like he thought this is a great idea.

So he had the mold made and he was like… he was consulting with the factory in China to order five thousand of them and he had to borrow money from his family to get them shipped over and stuff.

And he got the idea like wait, before I like blow my family’s money, let me see if people even want these damn things. He’s spent so much time on this.

So he went to this forum where people were telling him that like yeah this is a good idea, you know. He got all that like good idea feedback but no one ever bought.

So then he put a PayPal button for ten bucks to buy the sandals. He tried everything for a month. He posted on forums, he talked to people about it, blah, blah, blah. He got two orders. That’s it. Twenty bucks. And he wasn’t even making a profit on these. So he /

Steve: Yeah you know, that’s… that’s totally true you know. I tell the people in my class never place a bulk order overseas unless you’ve actually tested it. You don’t even have to have the items in hand. Just try to sell them and if you can’t get them, you know you can just buy them from a competitor and ship them.

Neville: Yeah, could you imagine what would have happened if he… if he did that? Like he would have spent thousands and thousands of dollars of borrowed family money and not been able to move it. And he’d be stuck with like five thousand pairs of red and blue sandals. I mean it would… it would be ridiculous.

And so fortunately he was just like, “Okay, clearly no one gives a thing about this product. I should move on.” And that’s what he did. That’s how you validate a product.

Steve: Nice. Nice. So just curious, from my knowledge, did you ever get a job out of college or you’ve been doing this since college?

Neville: No, I’ve never really had a job. Yeah.

Steve: That’s amazing. I wonder what your parents would have said about that. Did they give you a hard time?

Neville: My parents are pretty cool. I mean they… they weren’t obviously excited, two Indian parents are not excited when you say you’re not going to get a job out of college. Right.

Steve: Yeah.

Neville: You’re either expected to do some further education, law school MBA, something like that. Or get like a good job to get an experience.

So my mum and dad really wanted me to get experience in the corporate world first for a few years and then do this. But I was like, “Well I’m already kind of like on a roll. I’ve got enough money saved up, I can live by my own. So let me try it for a year or two. And obviously it wasn’t their number one option but they never liked pushed back too hard on me.

So I did that and then when they realized I was actually making like more money than my peers that had jobs…

Steve: Hmm-hmm…

Neville: …they were like “okay maybe you know… maybe he knows what he’s doing.”

Because I always thought for myself that with my current skills and my current education, I think the maximum amount of money I could get from a normal job, not knowing what I know now, would be about 75 000 a year.

Steve: Okay.

Neville: Yeah, that’s about 3 500 a month after tax. And I always thought like if I can make more than that, then I’m golden. Like that’s… This is a better option. And I’ll have more fun and I don’t have to go into an office every single day in my life.

Steve: So just like a frame of reference, how did you do last year, in 2013?

Neville: 2013 was a weird year because one, I didn’t really do much. I was just kind like a coasting year. So I did obviously over $ 100 000. But the previous years I did really well. That was… I was making doctor money, yeah.

Steve: Okay. Nice. So multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars basically.

Neville: Easy. Easy, yeah.

Steve: Ok.

Neville: Yeah.

Steve: Ok. We don’t have to go in the detail but I just want to give a… you know kind of a frame of reference for the amount of income that we’re talking about. So…

Neville: 2013, I made sure I didn’t have any deadlines ever. And you know what that did, it made me lazy as hell. Because when I…

You say like implement deadlines for myself, I tell someone over at AppSumo, I’d be like, “Hey, you know I’m going to put this product out on October 27th.” He’d be like, “All right, we got it March for October 27th, it’s going to go out to 500 000 people.” And… And that would put pressure on my ass. And whenever I got rid of that, it totally backfired against me.

Steve: You know, so for the last year, then you’re just kind of coasting on the products you’d already had on the market?

Neville: I’d still make money every month. It was like why did I even have to work?

Steve: Yeah, that’s a great lifestyle, man!

Neville: No, it’s… it’s one of those funny things. There was… A few years ago, me and Noah took this trip over… Noah is the founder of Face… he was like number 30th of Facebook, he founded AppSumo also.

We took a trip together in New York and we’re sitting in like this fancy smashy coffee shop and… and we just did really well that month and those previous months, right. And I had made like 50 grand that month or something just in pro… profit from like what I’d done before. And it’s just… you can’t even spend that kind of money.

And… And we’re sitting in a coffee shop at 2 PM on a Tuesday. I looked at him and I was just like, “You know what? This is it. This is what everyone dreams of.” Like we’re both like 29 years old, we’re making a ton of money. We’re… We both live in Austin but we rented a cool condo in New York. Like this is the dream that everyone wants.

And that… that satisfaction lasts for about a minute. And then you’re just like “Huh, it’s time to get back to work”.

Steve: Chuckles.

Neville: That’s just how… It’s like… It’s… It… You can coast and everyone thinks like, “Oh, but that’d awesome.” But like in reality, you still want to do work.

Steve: Yeah, you know that’s how I feel right now which is why I’m kind of doing this podcast even though if I still handle… I’m juggling all these other things. I don’t want to get bored. That’s… That’s my greatest fear. So…

Neville: What’s the point?

Steve: Yeah you know… So Neville, you know what I like about your blog is that you walk the talking. You actually go out and try a lot of these things on your own.

So if you want to just give us some crazy stories about some of the crazy experiments that you’ve done to make money, to get up to this point that would be great. I think the audience would be… would love to hear about that.

Neville: I… Some of my favorite stuffs is the stuff I’ve done with homeless people and this is… this can go both ways with people. Some people get really offended, some people are amazed.

So, one of the things was I used to past where I used to live, there… there was always this one intersection with all these homeless and I go to India all the time and see real, like excruciatingly bad poverty. And so whenever I see the homeless people here, I’m always like, “That’s just like an untapped labor force.” And… And like that… that opinion is really unpopular with people, right? They’re just like “Oh, there’s mental illness, you know. You come from a good background, they don’t.”

Fair enough. But I was just… I was thinking, can you teach these people to be like entrepreneurial, maybe no one has ever taken them by the hand and shown them. And so I thought, well you know there’s a guy standing on a hot corner in Texas, on a hundred degree day, what if they sold like bottled water or something.

And so I came up with this thing called “The Bottled Water Experiment” where I wanted to get me and a bum to sell bottled water on the side of the road. And I did not know how this was going to go. I was a little embarrassed to do it because I was like man, what if my friends see me, like I’ll look like a bum, and all that kind of stuff.

Anyhow, I lugged over in my car over 20 lbs. of ice and 120 lbs. of water… sorry, sorry, not 100, just one pack of water. We had a 24 pack of bottled water and me and a bum sold it all out in less than 30 minutes for $1 a bottle.

Steve: This is on the street corner?

Neville: On the street corner.

Steve: You’re crazy.

Neville: Like it wasn’t even at a busy time of the day and it’s just like… and it wasn’t even a hot day. And it was a cloudy day.

And so everything was against us but we sold the stuff like hot cakes. And… And the guy was so thrilled they made money so quick and he was just like, “Oh, it’s more than I make like you know bumming for it.”

And so we did it like ten times together. And… And si I got this bum to become like a water entrepreneur quite a bit.

And then it turns out he got a drug problem with the jail but other than that, it was successful.

Steve: So you actually kept it up for a while after you guys stopped?

Neville: The problem was lugging… for someone without a car, it’s very difficult to get 120 lbs. of ice and 120 lbs. of water in a cooler up to a certain place. The logistics of it are very, very hard when you actually try it.

And people are always like, “Well, why didn’t you just take a cab and blah, blah, blah…” It’s like “Dude, okay, you try it yourself first and then come back and tell me.” It’s very, very difficult.

So we could continue doing it forever but the point of that was on my blog a lot of people used to say like, “Oh, the only people that can get rich are the people with money. You have to have money to make money.” And I was like, “No, you don’t!” So I bought a $5 thing of water and sold it for $24 and I was just like “There you go, that’s reseed money. Now repeat!”

Steve: Nice, that’s… that’s a great story.

Neville: Yeah. And I saw the financial blogs of the time were always like, “Well, I’m going to do a money experiment. I’m going to sell my TV on EBay.” It’s like, that’s not an experiment, that’s selling your stuff on EBay.

Go out there and do stuff. And that’s what I used to do. That’s why people liked it.

Steve: I get a lot of excuses like that too and they’re just excuses, right. You don’t have enough time to do stuff. You don’t have enough money to do stuff.

Neville: I live in this area, I can’t do that, blah, blah, blah. There’s al… There’s always excuses. Yeah.

Steve: So how do you go from selling water and rave products to some of your info products?

Neville: It’s kind of like everything else. It’s just kind of a mistake, like people think there’s a grand master plan to it. Like I’m sure even your blog and everything was just kind of like almost a fluke sometimes you know, like you start something and it just takes off.

And so what happened was with House of Rave stuff, people kept asking me questions about like: Dude, you have this business that spits off a couple of grand a month and you barely do anything for it. Like, how do you do that?

And I’d be like, “Well, I just drop ship.” They’re like, “You don’t even carry inventory?” I was like, “I’ve never even touched any of my products before.” And so people were fascinated by that.

So I wrote a series called “How House of Rave works”. And if you type in “How House of Rave works” on Google, you’ll find a free series. And this is a six part blog posting and explains from start to finish how I did it.

But then people wanted more info. They’re like, “No, I need more, how do I exactly find a supplier? How do I do this?”

And so I told people this in my marketing community and they’re like, “We need to make an info product about that.”

And so I kind of begrudgingly made it and you know just took a month and did it. And then I sold it for $37. I have no idea why, that’s just some random number I thought was fair. And low and behold, I got like 30 and something orders on that first day.

So 37 times 30, it was like a grand or something I made in a day, right. And I was like “Wow, I made a thousand dollars from my blog in one day! Like that’s pretty impressive.”

Steve: So where did you promote this? Only on your blog?

Neville: With literally a blog post with a PayPal button at the end. That’s it. Like there was… there was no pictures of it, I didn’t show the backend, I didn’t show what the videos looked like. I didn’t make a video intro.

I literally just told everyone like: “Hey, everyone’s been asking me about House of Rave, blah, blah, blah. Here’s what I’m going to show you and here’s what it’s going to go through.” And split bullets points of what it is. And then it’s like “If you wanted to buy it, here’s a PayPal button. Buy it!” And that’s what I did. And it sold all those copies.

And still to this day, somehow people find that blog post and order it. And you want to find how to get away with it Steve? People are like, “Oh I heard you make like a fulfillment system and blah, blah, blah…” And I used like Gumroad and you know all these other things you can do.

But all I did was whenever I get an order, it comes to your PayPal… If you get sent money on PayPal, it comes to your email inbox. So it will say like, “Steve Chou ordered House of Rave Behind-The-Scenes for $37,” I literally would copy and paste the logins in that email to the people.

So it would say “Download instantly” but in reality it was just like me waiting by the computer.

Steve: Laughs.

Neville: It was. And I just waited there all night just kind of like fulfilling orders. That’s how ghetto it was. And people never complained about it. It’s ama… Still to this day, I got two orders from it yesterday from that random blog post I don’t even know how. So I made a total of $73 or something like that from something I did in 2011 that doesn’t even have a system associated with it. I mean it’s kind of ridiculous how you can make money like that.

Steve: You know I run to this all the time with the people I interact with just on the blog. People are all concerned about setting all these complex systems and getting everything in place when they haven’t even tested the product or anything yet.

So oftentimes, you know from what I’m hearing from you, is you just get something out there and try to sell it first before worrying about all the infrastructure.

Neville: Yeah. Because there’s a lot of people that do it the opposite. They spend all this time getting all the stuff in place and hiring a developer and all that kind of crap. And they try to sell it. And then they realize, yeah, no one gives a sh… no one cares about your netting program because you have no audience members. And… And you’re not hitting the right nerve.

See, mine was pre-validated. People were asking me every single day via comments and by emails about House of Rave. How do… And they asked the same questions over.

How do you find a supplier? How do you know the supplier’s legit? What kind of deal did you get with the supplier? How do you start… What… What platform did you use to put your ecommerce thing up? How did you convince the supplier to let you get a good deal? You know what is your deal? How many orders did you make a day? How much money do you make per month from House of Rave?

Those were the same damn questions I got over and over. So I literally made a video about each question.

How do you find a supplier? I saw down with my Canon Elf, you know like a $200 camera from Walmart, put it on a stack of books and started recording in my apartment.

And then for like “How do you find a supplier?” I was just like “Well, there’s this method on Google, I just looked… searched for people that are already selling it.” So I took Cam Tage or Screencasts of me just like going through Google and looking for rave products.

And each video was only like three to seven minutes long, like they didn’t need to be that long. And so the whole course, the total runtime was like two hours of video max you know, like nothing more than that.

I was like I have about a two-hour time span for attention, I assume other people do too, I won’t make it longer than that. And then I sold it, like it was… it was that simple. Like I was so ignorant to what could go wrong that I just did everything right.

Steve: Yeah, that’s… that’s hilarious. So, how do you transition to copywriting after that?

Neville: It’s just kind of like one of those things, like I studied marketing and I would read J. Abraham and I’d read all these different books. And I read a book about David Ogilvy and then my friends would tell me about copywriting.

So one of my friends was like a good copywriter. He’d be like “It’s crazy, like I can send out an email and make tons of sales. But if someone else sends out the same email newsletter in a different format, it won’t make any sales.”

And I was having that problem with House of Rave.

At the time I had 7 500 previous customers. Every single email address on this list had spent money with me already, right. Right. This is like a money list. And I would send out this newsletter and no one would buy a damn thing. People loved clicking on it because the pictures were pretty and I would… I would take all the pictures myself and put these big buttons on it.

People clicked on it but no one bought anything. And I was just like, I guess this is how email marketing works, like you send out an email and no one buys anything. Then I started studying The Gary Halbert Letters particularly the Boron Letters chapters 1 to 25.

Gary Halbert Letters, Boron Letters, chapters 1 to 25, print them out and read them. They’re amazing and they’re free! It’s… It’s like the best educational copy in marketing you’ll ever, ever get.

And so I started reading that. I started reading Joe Sugarman’s book, “Advertising Secrets of the Written Word.” I read David Ogilvy’s books, watched everything I could find on YouTube about all those guys. And then I wrote, with the help of a friend, like a professionally written, copy written sales pitch for these finger lights which were our bestseller at the House of Rave at the time.

And I’d run a sale on them before but they didn’t really sell that well. But then I realized like when people would call and ask about these finger lights was, I’d find just ravers you know going to a party and doing drugs would… would use these. But no, that was not the case.

The people buying them were party planners, wedding planners, plumbers so they can see stuff under a sink by putting the little finger under to light, people give them to their autistic children to calm them down – that was really interesting, I never thought about that. People give them to their children to keep on their finger in case they see a monster under their beds so they can check for monsters under their bed.

I mean it was like the most bizarre thing. Like everyone was buying these for the weirdest reasons. And so I wrote that in the email and I also wrote that I was like overloaded in stock with these things which was true, and I was going to sell them for a crazy ass price. Within two hours of sending off that email, I got 120 orders.

To give you a frame of reference, I was making only 10 orders per day on average and I just got 12 extra within two hours. Like I was out of the product in like an hour, I had to refund a lot of that money. But I made a tremendous amount of money that day and a tremendous amount of orders and people were like begging to get this… to get this deal.

And I was like, okay the only difference was the copy. And so that’s when I was like okay… something clicked in my head, I was like if you write something in a different way, you can get people to buy it, if it’s a good product in the first place, you can’t sell shit.

Steve: Wait, so how did you find out what people wanted or what they were using these finger lights for?

Neville: That was just over the course of the years just selling that kind of stuff, how people would email you know being like, “Are these okay for children?” I’d be like, “Yeah why are you… what about your children using it for?” I was just asking questions. And over the years I just kind of collected a mental list of like what people were using that for.

And I would tell people stories, like I even told my copywriter friend who helped me, he was like, “What do people use these for?” I was like, “Dude, you won’t believe this, like autistic… autistic children get calmed down when they put them on and wave them in front of their face. Plumbers use them.” Like I had a plumbing company buy them for all their plumbers. Party planners buy tremendous amounts of them. And he’s like, “Well, it seems like you’re gearing these just towards ravers. Do ravers buy them?” I’m like, “No, ravers are 16 have no money, they don’t buy sh…”

Steve: Ha!

Neville: Yeah. So he’s like, “Yeah, so gear this towards a different audience and show people what they can use it for.” So even if they don’t really need them right now, they’ll be like, “Wow, I could totally use this.” Even when they get this email they weren’t planning on buying finger lights, they may have a kid and they may be… their kid may have like a fear of monsters under his bed and this might be a way to get the kid to go to sleep better if he has a little flashlight on his finger.

Steve: So your before… walk me through what your before email looked like so I just get an idea.

Neville: Yeah, let’s see, where’s… where can you find that? There’s… There’s a blog post on NevBlog. You search in “NevBlog House Of Rave quick sell experiment”. If you Google that, you’ll find it.

Steve: Okay, I’ll go ahead and link that up in the show notes but yeah it’ll be interesting to see the before and the after and just you know correlate the dramatic difference.

Neville: There’s full pictures of the entire things. So what… what I’ll try to quickly explain it.

The… The before was like basic… you know you get an email newsletter from like you know Blahblahblah Store and you know from Bose… not Bose, it’s actually good… You get from like Rick Stone or something, they just have links to a bunch of products, you know?

Steve: Yeah.

Neville: I… Buy, buy, buy this crap, buy this crap, you know. That’s kind of what it was. It was… It would be like finger lights, there’d be a big picture and then there’d be a Buy Now button. And it’d be like these are great for putting on your fingers and like that’s all it said. And then there’d be like this disco balls, like “Spruce up your next party with a disco ball. Buy now!” That’s all it would be.

And so basically I was shoving a spam email in your face and be like “Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy”.

Instead, the after product was like, “Hey I got to tell you about these finger light things, you may think these are just for 16 year old ravers doing drugs. But let me tell you the real uses that I have seen with these. And then I’d go into the whole plumber thing, the autistic kids thing, the monsters under the bed thing, all things like wedding planners using them, all that kind of stuff. MTV bought some to like make this Alien show or something like that.

And so, then when people saw how many uses they had and that this is a useful product, more so than just like you know a little dance toy that you could take on a campout or anything like that, that’s when people were like, “Oh, I’ll spend $1,98 on a piece to buy them” you know and that’s when people bought.

And then I also made it like a scientific to where I’d create scarcity. I’m like, “We’ve never run a price this low and a promotion as big for these finger lights. So I don’t know how long these are going to last. There’s only 500 of them and to give you an example we sell 50 of them every day on average. So with this special price, our product is going to sell a lot more. So you need to get them now and it’s first come, first served.”

And that was true, the first orders got them and the rest all had to be cancelled.

So I did that and that sense of urgency also helped people. And you know that’s like part of copywriting you know. If you have urgency in the thing, people are more likely to buy.

Steve: You know, what’s funny about all this is I’m actually on the newsletters for a lot of the big buck stores you know, just so I can see how they do and get ideas. And almost all of them pretty much just list their products with links and Buy Now. Occasionally some, they promote sales and a little bit of scarcity here and there. But they don’t really tell stories around their products. So why do you think that those guys just aren’t doing what you’re talking about?

Neville: Oh exactly why… And David Ogilvy in “Ogilvy on Advertising” talks about it perfectly. Or you could just google David Ogilvy and watch some videos of him.

The big companies, they go with agencies, design agencies, advertising agencies and the people they employ are all designers. They’re designers, graphic designers, they want pretty pictures. They did all the stuff that I thought was good and.. .and you know they’re not… they’re not idiots or anything. They just have never studied the scientific way to sell.

And so, they’ll put pictures and they’ll be like, “Oh only 0.005% of people are buying that’s normal. If we can get 0.0001% of people that buy, we double our sales. That’s good.” But they never tried like specific sales. For example the big… the biggest box… or not box retail but retail I like is a Bose, B.O.S.E., you know the sound company?

Steve: Yeah. Uh-uh, yeah.

Neville: Like tons of Bose stuff, and they have really good emails. They don’t look like traditional newsletter style email which automatically is seen with spam. They actually talk about the product and why you can use it, and how you can use it, and how it connects your phones so easily. And they actually give you a whole like proper sales pitch.

So like, I was actually interested. Like I try to listen to podcasts in the shower all the time but like I couldn’t hear my phone in the shower, like… like the shower was too loud. And so I was like, “I could use a speaker but I’ve tried like the Jambox and crap and they suck.”

And then like I got an email from the Bose company and it was just like, “This is perfect for this, it links up immediately with your phone, blah, blah, blah.” I was like, “Oh, I’ll give that a try.” And there’s just like a whole like explanation of why you should buy this. Not just like “Hey, buy, buy, buy!”

Like you know they just don’t stick a picture of the speaker out there and say “Buy!” They give you reasons and justifications and uses for you to buy.

That’s… That’s what I teach in the copywriting stuff. There’s like formulas you can follow that will automatically make you have a better sales page than anyone else. It’s… It’s so easy sometimes.

Steve: That’s interesting, I… I’m just curious why these… these stores with such a big budget don’t just hire copywriters for their emails because you know like… like you said, they’re horrible.

Neville: You get a copywriter that works at an agency and they write, you know it’s… it’s some girl that gets paid $35 000 a year to sit there and write copy. And she… she’s never studied direct response. And agencies go based off of who wins the most awards for their email, who does the most creative pictures and stuff like that.

So the agencies go based off awards because that’s what they want, because that gets them more clients. Whereas direct response marketers such as like you and me, we’re more direct response, we just want the damn result. We don’t care how it looks. My emails are ugly man, they’re ugly but you know what? People read them and they don’t get distracted and they sell really well.

Steve: That is really great advice. Yeah, I’ve… I’ve actually read your blog quite a bit and I watched some of your videos. You’re… You’re personality really comes through and you just get to the midst of things and apparently it’s doing really well for you.

Neville: Yeah it’s… and like this is what I teach, like this is what at KopywritingKourse.com, you go there and sign in for the newsletter, within the first three newsletters I guarantee your mind will be blown by some of the stuff I teach you. That’s awesome.

Steve: Yeah, I definitely have to link those up in the show notes. So what do you plan on doing? I know you have a couple of different copywriting courses right now. So how do they… how do they differentiate it right now?

Neville: Hu, plug times, I’m gonna get…

Steve: Do it, do it! You got me intrigued.

Neville: I’ll… I’ll tell you the free stuff too that you can do.

Steve: Okay.

Neville: I would suggest to start… If you don’t want to spend any money…

Steve: Ok.

Neville: I’m going to give you the free stuff first, so kind of shooting myself in the foot, but it’s… Google the Gary Halbert Letters, Boron… Boron Letters, chapter 1 and then print out chapters 1 to 25.

Everyone I know who read the Boron Letters and prints them out usually ends up going someplace and making a lot of money, like that is just the… the plain truth I have seen. The people that are like, “Oh, I’ll just skim it online, blah, blah, blah”, like those people, they don’t do anything. They’re screwed up, they don’t do anything.

So like I have a big stack of them sitting by my bed to this day and I still reference them. That’s the great free way to start.

The other free way to start is go to KopywritingKourse.com… K, like Kopywriting with a “K” and course, the “K”, and sign up for a free newsletter, you’ll get everything free, it’s awesome.

The next way, and this what companies force their employees to watch and they… all the employees say like it’s the best thing they’ve ever watched.

The KopywritingKourse.com, you can actually buy the copywriting course, it’s just like $69, it’s crazy cheap. And it’s a set of videos specifically designed to make teach you copies. And it’s super, super quick. It’s less than two hours.

I suggest you have a glass of alcohol or tea or something like that and watch it. By the end, everything you write will convert higher, I guarantee. Full money back guarantee on that.

And the cool thing is what I didn’t realize when I made that, you’ll be interested in this, I thought it was going to be for like startups and stuff like that, the people who benefitted them most were sales people. Because sales people cold call all the time and they’re like “Buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff”, that’s all they do. But then when I show them, “Hey, hey, use this brain hat to think about this differently.”

As soon as they watch that first video, it changes their whole business. I’ve had people be like, “Dude, I made three times as much money this year because of one video from your KopywritingKourse.” I was like, “Well, that’s a damn good $69 well spent.”

And then the other thing is the Kopywriting Checklist, copywriting with “K” and then Checklist, you can buy that at AppSumo, that’s ten bucks, super damn cheap! Ten or fifteen, I forget. Ten I think. And… And if you don’t want to learn copywriting but you just need to write something real quick, all you do is follow the seven steps in that, it’s like ten pages long. It’s super…It’s super short. You follow the steps and you’ll pretty much have a scientifically proven like sales letter or email, or whatever you’re trying to write. It’s… That’s the easiest way to write copy.

Steve: Okay, nice. I’ll definitely link all those things up in the show notes. And I’m just curious too myself, what’s in this mysterious NevBox that you sell on your site?

Neville: Like you can’t see me right now but behind me I have 200 extra boxes I’m making. So the NevBox was this product I made, it was inspired by the Gary Halbert Letters. I would sit in bed till six in the morning reading these things because I was so fascinated. And it’s like there’s something about turning the page on these letters and like marking them up with notes and writing it out, that like… I was just like I get so much more value out of sitting down and reading something than just simply reading it on an email or my phone while taking a dump in the morning. You know? I’m not… [Inaudible]… only scrolling and going through it.

And so I was like I want to send out a physical box or a letter. And so it’s a box carefully packaged and it’s… over the course of three days, you open different envelopes. And there’s also some random objects in it that tie into a story.

So I can’t tell you everything of what’s in it but I can tell you this: people loved them. It was… It was one of the easiest sales I’ve ever had to do. And they sold out really quick. And so I’m making more because people keep trying to buy them.

The… Some… One of… There’s one person sent me money for a NevBox. I was like, “I don’t have any for sale.” And they’re like, “I want to preorder it.” And I was just like, “I don’t know when I’m going to have more of these.” “I don’t care, I want the first one.”

Steve: Wow, ok that’s amazing.

Neville: That’s product validation I ever heard one, right. People are like, “You don’t have any? I’m still sending you money for it.”

Steve: So these are just people that read your blog, right?

Neville: Yeah, like…

Steve: Okay.

Neville: …I didn’t promote it anywhere else. They were just people that read my blog.

Steve: So, let me ask you this. So do you have… let… let’s say… You know I get a lot of people on my blog asking how they can make extra money online. So if you were to… If one of these people were to ask you today, what sort of advice would you give them if they wanted to sell something of their own and make some money online?

Neville: Well I… I really strongly believe like the biggest reason a lot of these people fail is they… they ignore this part cardinal rule. And I say it’s cardinal rule, you don’t have to ignore it, if you’re really good, you can get away with this.

But it’s like build a community before you sell a product, right. It’s like… It’s like you make… For example you started your blog and I don’t think you started with a product, right? Like that was a way…

Steve: No. Yeah, I didn’t have a product.

Neville: We’re just putting good stuff out to the world to track your own stuff, to help other people. Like you wanted to build the network and then you started like talking in like Mr. Money Moustache and this person. And then you go all kind of became friends and it was more like a passion hobby of yours.

And then, once you had people following you, you had this inbuilt audience that you can sell something to, right?

Steve: Hmm-hmm.

Neville: If I just started out of the blue, like how to start a news business or something like that, it would have been a much tougher sell. I would have had to like go on people’s podcasts and advertise. I would have to like buy advertising, go on Facebook, start a fan page, do all those sort of stuff that a lot of people don’t understand how to do correctly before I could have sold something.

And so, I like to tell people that just at least start a blog and start participating in that community. However the easiest way is take whatever skills you know and start selling them right away. People are like “Oh, that’s not scalable.” Who cares? Like start out… You have to start somewhere.

And so what I would do, like for example if I had just started becoming like a internet person, want to make a couple of extra bucks online, I would post on Craigslist in my local area that I know how to do Photoshop, I know how to do WordPress, I know how to do this, I know how to use WishList and install it on a WordPress site, I can make your webpage. I would start doing all those things first to start building some momentum, to start making money right away at least, you know.

Steve: Okay. Okay and let’s assume if you… if you didn’t have a blog and you didn’t have a built-in audience like you do today, that’s what you would have started with your copywriting and that sort of thing?

Neville: So the copywriting stuff like obviously I have some experience in it now and so there’s momentum. So I’m just like, oh I’m going to put my shingle out as a copywriter and see what happens. It’s like well no one knows you, you know, right way. You got to do something… So let me… Can I just tell you a story about someone who’s just done it really recently?

Steve: Absolutely.

Neville: I… I got started, so a lot of people would be like, “Oh, but you know you started like whatever, I don’t have that.” There’s a dude named Bryan Harris and he has that site called Videofruit.com, okay. He just made the site like recently, it’s not… it’s not an old site or anything.

He worked the job and then just came to our AppSumo like you know “How you make your first thousand dollars course”. And it turns out he’s really good at video and so what he did was he made this site called Videofruit and there you could buy… buy videos from him. No one bought it of course because no one knew who the hell he was or what he does.

So what he did was, he’s like… He emailed me and said, “Neville, can I make you a free like connected video? Check this out.” And he showed me another one that he made for someone else. I was like, “Dude this is awesome, it was like professional great stuff. It’s like… It’s like their audio background but then the text lies in and it looks super professional, there would be like Dolby after effects or something, what it was like they make movies in.

And so he took a film clip from one of my videos, an audio clip and then put the text over it and I put that on my blog page and then I wrote a blog post about that guy. I was just like, “Dude, this guy’s awesome. Check out what he did. Videofruit.com, Bryan Harris.”

And he got some clicks from there. And from that, he got like three people being like, “Hey, how much do you charge for videos, I want to buy one of your videos.” So instantly, he’s making money because he did free work for someone who has a list and a following already, okay?

He’s not doing free work for the guy down the street who has nothing. And then he contacted like Ramit Sethi, he contacted Noah Kagan. Noah Kagan wrote about Brian. And then Brian would post all this like “Helpful stuff” within the Entrepreneur Facebook group. And all those entrepreneurs would be like, “Holy crap, you make good videos. I’m trying to build a website, can I buy your services?”

All of a sudden, this guy’s pulling in six grand in billing in one month. And then he started a blog about how to do video stuff. And then he realized people don’t just want video, they want marketing stuff. So then he would be like how… he would… he did sneaky stuff like… he’d feel like “How Neville Medhora’s book is smart and dumb at the same time”. He wrote some posts like that.

And he took the end of my eBook and showed how I put my other services at the end. And then he took the end of Ramit Sethi’s eBook and showed how he didn’t do it and he’s like: Here’s how Ramit could have improved it. Here’s how Neville could have improved it. Here’s how Gary Vaynerchuk could have improved your stuff.

So he just started putting out good content and sure enough people started slowing signing up to him. Like you know 2-3 people a day. Before you know it, the guy has a thousand followers. Now whenever he’d release a product, he’ll get 30 sales on a pretty expensive product.

And he did all that in a very short amount of time. But he hustled to play there and built a community first before just saying, “Hey buy this stuff” you know.

Steve: Yeah, you know that’s an important point. A lot of the people on my blog, actually they come to me looking for that magic bullet. But really a lot of time, it just comes out in a hustle and leg work.

Neville: Yeah. Well you know, yeah AppSumo… And AppSumo has like 700 or 1 000 people or so signed up. So like I told you before, like I just sold like a little copywriting checklist I made and I sold like 2 000 copies in very few short days. And that was with the power of AppSumo.

So a lot of people come to us every day saying like, “Can you just sell our stuff”. And we’re like, “You haven’t even sold it yourself, like we don’t even know if people like it. So we’re not going to sell it on a big audience when you haven’t even done it small time.”

So the suggestion is: Start small time, start building your audience.

And you know some people, they just don’t have what it takes, like I’m sure you’ve seen some blogs out there that you’re just like, “Man, this is just not interesting stuff” you know. Like this…

Steve: Yeah.

Neville: … is not interesting. So those people should need to try it to see if they’ve got what it takes like this Bryan Harris kid, he totally had what it takes. I’ve seen other people, they get very sh… advice that’s been out there a million times, just like whatever. They have nothing unique to offer. And so it’s just like they don’t build a following, so no one’s going to buy their product either, you know.

Steve: Yeah.

Neville: So I mean build a community. If you can’t build a community, you can’t build you know a product and sell it successfully. You could but you have to be good and most of those people just starting off are not good.

Steve: That is great advice. So hey Nev, you know we’ve… we’ve been talking for quite a while now and so I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Can you just give… give our listeners you know an email or something where they can reach you in case they have questions? And where can they find you online?

Neville: Yeah. Online, you can google me, “Neville Medhora” or just go to nevblog.com. Also KopywritingKourse.com with “K’s” is the place you can sign up, even if you sign up at nevblog, it’s the same list. And then nevmed@gmail.com. So NEVMED. @gmail.com if you want to contact me and then I’m @NevMed on Twitter.

Steve: Okay. And before we go, you know, are there any online services that you kind of recommend to do some of this experimentation that you’ve been talking about?

Neville: Which experimentation?

Steve: You know where you just throw up a page, a landing page and you just get some leads to see if your stuff is going to sell.

Neville: Yeah, there is a couple. I try to make them myself, like I suck at web design but I power my way through it. I use FrontPage 2003 which doesn’t even exist. Like people tell… hear about that, they’re like, “Does that exist?” I’m like, “No, it does not.”

Or I use like Google Drive or just like Google Docs and then I design something and just like save it as html. That’s how ghetto I am.

So I think you could use leadpages.net…

Steve: Okay.

Neville: Launchrock.com I believe is one of them. And there’s a couple other pages. If you just type in like “free landing page” on Google, you’ll find a couple of those services.

Steve: Okay, it sounds good. Hey well, thanks a lot for your time, Neville. And it was really great talking to you as usual.

Neville: Dude, you too. Good connecting again.

Steve: Yeah. All right man, thanks.

Neville: Yeah man.

Steve: Every time I talk to Neville, this guy really cracks me up. What I really like about him is that he always speaks his mind and he does not BS at all. He’s also a doer rather than a talker if you couldn’t tell from that episode.

Be sure to check out the show notes for this episode where you’ll find the sites and links mentioned by Neville. And also if you have a minute, it would really help if you could subscribe and leave a review for this podcast on iTunes.

Also don’t forget to enter my free contest where I’m giving away a lifetime membership for my Profitable Online Store course. And I’m also offering free consulting as well.

For more information, go to https://mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch

Once again that’s https://mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to the MyWifeQuitHerJob podcast where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business! For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com

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If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

002: Andrew Youderian On How To Make 7 Figures With A Dropshipped Online Store

Andrew Youderian

In this episode, I’m really excited to have Andrew Youderian on the show. For all of you who aren’t familiar with Andrew, he runs the popular site EcommerceFuel.com where he writes about his experiences running his dropshipped online store RightChannelRadios.com

Andrew is a great guy and today he takes us back in time to when he first started his dropshipped online store selling CB radios online. Learn how he got started and how he grew his store to over 7 figures in sales.

What You Will Learn

  • How Andrew got started with his dropshipped CB radio store.
  • Why passion for your product doesn’t matter
  • What Andrew looks for in a great niche
  • Why Andrew chose dropshipping as opposed to carrying inventory
  • How much Andrew invested in his business starting out
  • Learn the pros and cons of dropshipping
  • How Andrew’s link building strategy has changed over the years
  • How Andrew got sales for his store early on
  • How Amazon is changing ecommerce and what Andrew is doing about it
  • When to sell on Amazon and when to avoid them
  • Andrew’s advice for new entrepreneurs

Mentioned In The Podcast

Online Services Andrew Recommends

Favorite Books

Transcript

Steve: You are listening to the mywifequitherjob podcast episode number two, but before we begin, I just wanted to give a quick thank you shout out to my buddy Jeff Rose who blogs at Goodfinancialcents.com and Dollarsandroses.com. Now Jeff was actually one of the people who inspired me to start this podcast, and for that I am very thankful. Now on to the show

Welcome to the mywifequitherjob podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suites your lifestyle, so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host, Steve Chou!

Welcome to the mywifequitherjob podcast. Today I am honored to have Andrew Youderian with me on the podcast. Now Andrew is actually someone who I came across randomly one day on the internet and at the time he had just started his blog EcomerceFuel.com and I was just so impressed with his content that I actually decided to reach out and say hi to him directly. And I’m so glad that I did because since then he has become a well known figure in the world of small business ecommerce. He runs two drop shipped online stores at RightChannelRadios.com and TrollingMotors.net. Actually he just sold one of those recently and it was actually very interesting how he did that. You should go on his blog and check that out, but he also runs an ecommerce forum that is heavily populated with successful ecommerce entrepreneurs as well. Andrew is a great guy, extremely intelligent and I’m happy to call him a friend. Welcome to the show Andrew, how are you doing today?

Andrew: I’m good Steve, thanks for the kind intro; it’s looking forward to talking.

Steve: Yeah, so you know for all those who aren’t familiar with all the different sites that you run, can you give us a quick background story and tell us mainly I guess focusing on your baby which is RightChannelRadios.com.

Andrew: Sure, so just in terms of what I do, or do you want the back story as well?

Steve: Yeah, let’s start with the back story and then you know transition to you know what you’ve done and what you actually sell on that site.

Andrew: Sure, so I guess my story is I got a, I got out of college went to do a job in finance for a couple of years and learned a lot, met some great people but it was just– you know it was not what I envisioned myself doing for the next 10 or 20 years especially given the work life balance that was there or not there rather I guess. So I just ended up saving up much of my money and doing my best to and quit so I had a little bit of time to explore my options and well do the much different things and finally settled on ecommerce as a business model that you know could scale really well, was location independent, that is at least in terms of how I got started with drop shipping, didn’t require tremendous amounts of capital and just carried this research and stumbled up across the radio niche, the CB radio niche as something potentially that might work out.

And so I spent, I guess that was in 2008 I spent the next two or three years really just building up that site, bootstrapping that site, and after a year was, you know helped me make right about a full time income and I guess two or three years then started TrollingMotors.net with the same kind of idea, drop shipping site wanted to just get a little more experience to versify my income and a couple of years after that I started EcommerceFuel which you mentioned, which I do a lot of the stuff that you do Steve. When I was getting ready to start, you know you were one of the few people that was really producing really interesting, compelling ecommerce content and I wanted to do something along the same lines and so that’s kind of where I am now right on the RightChannelRadios, sold trollingMotors.net recently and then also like you mentioned just have the EcommerceFuel forum for existing store owners and ecommerce professionals.

Steve: Okay, great. Yes thanks for the kind words by the way. I was just curious so if you know, if you can take us back to when you first started thinking about selling CB radios, how did you kind of come up with the idea, how did you research that niche and decide that you want to go in to it.

Andrew: You know it’s really tough because that was 2008 and so here we are in 2014 and I’ve learned it’s harder for the last six years as you do is you know diving and getting your hands dirty and sometimes you wonder how much you project back on to your past self and how much is actually you know you thought about in a moment. But the high level process I took was really for me building a profitable business was most important and I didn’t necessarily need to be selling something that I was deeply passionate about. I liked the business process and so I really took a top down analysis type of approach and just looked for– some of the things I was looking for, I was looking for a decent amount of keyword traffic enough to be able to support a business but not so enormous that there was going to be a lot of huge stores really specializing in that niche. That was one thing I looked for; I looked for an area where I could add value.

Steve: Okay

Andrew: So some kind of product where there was really a lot of confusion, a lot of potential pre-purchase anxiety about, wow shoot if I’m going to buy this, this is going to work with my application. The radios I sell go in to a whole you know myriad of a different number of vehicles and there is different installation options and so there is room to add a lot of value there, look to something where very decent suppliers I could work with and so I looked at just a number of criteria, looked for something that wasn’t available locally. There is just you know probably a checklist of maybe 10 different things that I had and then I just went out and start brainstorming everything, you know every idea under the sun.

I probably had all a list of 50 or 60 totally reign on my ideas, everything you can imagine, a lot of ridiculous stuff were there too and then I just started going through and after I had that initial kind of free form brainstorming session, just went through and started evaluating those ideas that are high level against my criteria and when I got down to two or three or four I really did a deep dive in terms of looking at competitors, looking at you know trying to get an idea of margins, you know trying to get a sense for the market place and then ultimately ended you know picking CB radios to move forward with.

Steve: So was CB radios something that you actually knew a whole lot about because you mentioned you wanted to pick a niche where you could add a lot of value to?

Andrew: I knew nothing, I had never used one.

Steve: Wow! That’s amazing.

Andrew: And I think for the first year that I was in business, I don’t even think I saw a CB, no I wasn’t sure, I ordered one to install on my vehicle so I could get a sense for how to install and get some kind of tactile and a physical and personal sense for the product, but 95% of the products I saw that first year I had never even seen in person.

Steve: Wow, okay so you really took a business approach in deciding what you wanted to sell so, is that something that you recommend in general versus going after something that you are passionate about?

Andrew: Yeah, it’s a really good question and I think it depends on you as a person at least the entrepreneur in question. Whether or not, you know how you build if you love business for the sake of business and you love hassle for the sake of hassle, I think you can go out and sell just about anything, it doesn’t matter if it is something you are interested in. But if you don’t really necessarily having a need, desire and love of business in and out of itself, I think that’s going to be a lot harder. It’s a lot harder to sell something that you have no interest in and I think at that point, if you do want to build a successful business, you do need to be selling and offering something that you are passionate about because you are going to have that passion come from one of those two places and if it doesn’t come from one of those two either love of business or love of the product, you are going to be in trouble. And so that’s kind of, I think that’s kind of an internal discussion that people have to have with themselves and be really honest about.

Steve: Yeah I agree because coming from our story so handkerchiefs and I’m certainly not into handkerchiefs but I am very into the business and running the day to– you know running and planning the marketing strategy and that sort of things so I can kind of see where you are coming from. Let’s talk about the business model a little bit, why did you choose drop shipping as opposed to a traditional role which is carrying inventory and that sort of thing?

Andrew: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think like most people with drop shipping I was attracted to the convenience of it. You know of course when you drop ship you don’t have physical inventory. You are working with other suppliers and they take care of all the ordering of the stocking, of the shipping, all the fulfillment inventory side is outsourced and it’s you know it was really attractive to me and it’s also low risk when you are starting and it can be a great… we can’t do it for all markets but in some markets it’s a great way to test the viability of the market without having to go out and order a bunch of stuff.

So for me it was really the location independence at the end. You know I’m really glad that especially for the first couple of years, I am really glad I did go the drop shipping round. I think as you’re starting, it can be a great way to learn especially without having to risk internal capital. I was able to leverage the location independence of it, I was able to do some cost off without being tied down to a warehouse in terms of being able to do a little bit of travel during that time and have flexibility, but I think that I have said this before in my podcast, you starting from scratch now with my experience and if somebody has a little bit more savvy in the ecommerce world and maybe some money to invest, your long term returns as you know Steve you know in terms of making your own products or stocking your own products are going to be significantly higher if you know as opposed to drop shipping. So it’s a mixed bag, I’m glad I did it but definitely you know drop shipping is not like this you know necessarily the land of magic in unicorns and easy profits, so I think a lot of people may be you know [laughter].

Steve: Nothing, nothing ever is, so I was just curious though how much did you ever invest starting your drop ship store?

Andrew: I think all in 1500 bucks.

Steve: Okay, that’s really inexpensive.

Andrew: Yeah, it wasn’t much and it was all bootstrapped from there, I think by the end I mean I always say I rolled profits from that company back in but the only capital infusion I think was 1500.

Steve: Okay, yeah that’s nothing, I mean for us I think we invested 630 but I also did all the website development myself. I imagine you got, you got help in that department?

Andrew: No, I did it myself.

Steve: Oh you did it yourself also?

Andrew: Which is very evident by how the website looked but…?

Steve: It looks great I don’t know what you are talking about.

Andrew: Oh thank you, thank you, this is version two or three or four by now. First version looked aha, looked like the web 1990s web just mobbed in on a webpage in 2008.

Steve: So I thought you could comment on this, one trend at least since I learn a class and I have students who are interested in drop shipping. One of the trends that I’ve been noticing actually is a lot of these vendors want you to actually have a breaking model store in order for them to be willing to drop ship for you as well, so can you comment on how to get around that if you’ve ever encountered something like that?

Andrew: Yeah, I know that happens a lot and it’s tough. I know I was telling Billy Murphy of course he’s a fun of both of us and he– I think he got around that one time by partnering with a local shop who were selling the same goods and I think he pretty much went to them and said hey, here’s my situation. I want to sell this product and the only way I can do it is open up a breaking model store, so I can either (a) open up a store in town and compete with you here or we can partner up and you can be my I guess just my partner on paper if for nothing else so that I can think this agreeing with the manufacturer to be able to bill us all the pack. And so I think that’s what he did and it worked out for him which was great, so that’s one way you can also of course I think a lot of people sometimes will buy just a little small office space so I suppose even like a storage container and– what are they called, is that what they call a storage?

Steve: Yeah, yeah, it’s self storage place, yeah.

Andrew: Yeah, thank you self storage, but it’s tough you know it’s you unfortunately you either get billed something or be a little sneaky in how you do it and it’s not always necessarily guaranteed to work. So it’s tough, it’s not always something you get around.

Steve: Okay, so you know you’ve done drop shipping and you do carry a little bit of your own inventory, is that right today or?

Andrew: Yeah, a little bit not a ton but I mean may be there’s may be three or four items we carry that our suppliers don’t have and we said that we have a good working relationship with our suppliers where we buy it from the manufacturer. We ship it to our drop shipping suppliers and they try and keep an encoder for us and act as our fulfillment house and will throw it in for orders says let’s see what has come in.

Steve: Oh okay that’s pretty clever. So do you have multiple, do you just work with one or two vendors or do you have a whole bunch that you work with?

Andrew: We definitely have more than one. Yeah it’s, I think any time you sup your business procedure especially if you’re drop shipping and you rely on one source for that, it’s a pretty dangerous place to be both in terms of availability and in terms of pricing too.

Steve: Okay, I’m just curious how you have things set up also. So if someone places an order on your site, does that order just go straight to the vendor and do you have tracking information about the inventory and that sort of thing?

Andrew: We don’t. This is something where it’s almost embarrassing to talk about and– but we are really old school in the way we do things, it’s I’ve been wanting to write a post about how a lot of stuff in business just you think like you look at the service and it looks all smooth and operating flawlessly and you think people have everything together and you actually dive into the systems and a lot of times stuff is just duck tapped together and really getting old.

Steve: Oh yeah, I mean we have a lot of get old stuff too so I mean we can have confessions if you want.

Andrew: Always good at that, you make me feel better all seriously and so one thing that is on my list to do this year is to set up a little more real time inventory tracking in order running and we had that with our Trolling Motor site before we sold it but for Right Channel we just you know we have a staff member who as orders come in she goes, she will route them based on product availability and then also based on location so we have multiple suppliers and usually we try to wrap that to the supplier that’s closest to the customer to save on shipping and also to save on I guess to expedite the delivery to that person. So right now we don’t have a whole lot of over, a lot of it is done manually but we’re looking at bringing something in like Ordoro or you drop ship from Agenta of this year to automate all of that because it is pretty embarrassing that we are still doing all of that manually.

Steve: Yeah, I don’t think it is all that embarrassing and you know I think a big mistake that a lot of people do is they spend a whole lot of money on this stuff upfront when they don’t have any business so it’s just a gradual transition right. Once it gets to a point where you need to automate, you just go ahead and automate it. At least that’s my opinion.

Andrew: Yeah, I know it’s a good point, I think that’s sad, if I had to be in one of those two categories it will be definitely the latter you know doing it manually for a while because it’s true I think there is a temptation to create a perfect system for something that doesn’t yet exist.

Steve: Yeah, definitely so you know you’ve done a little bit of both so you are in a pretty unique position to kind of understand the challenges associated with drop shipping and carrying inventory so what are some of the challenges that you faced with drop shipping?

Andrew: With drop shipping it’s, man you know I even never thought about the challenges. I think margins are probably the biggest one. You’ve got you know, it’s got a very big the margins for drop shipping anywhere from 10 to 30% which 30% is on the high side for drop shipping for example our TrollingMotor site the margins were about 11, 12%. A little bit easier in that market was lower margins because we had a very high per order price, which had offset it data back but still pretty low. And so one thing, the hardest thing is I think it’s difficult to scale with pay traffic, if you are going run a drop shipping site, it’s hard to make that work, it’s hard to pay for customers and advertise to grow your business. Just because I think AdWords, a lot of AdWords have made 20, 25% is about the margin areas where a lot of times just divided by niche but roughly where you really make sense to start paying for customers and unless you have a really high lifetime value right unless you want to lose some money on that first sale to when you make it up over repeat purchases in the life of the customer.

So you’ve really got to be good at hassling, at organic marketing, at SEO, at building traffic and attention in other ways and that takes a while to do. Another issue is this, that any time you put an intermediary between you and your customer, it’s going to cause problems you know we have one of the– I think one of the things I think is most frustrating in life in general is having to own up and accept responsibility for someone else’s mistake and we have to do that on a weekly basis or other times when a customer gets something that’s an item was missing or it got shipped to route Canada versus you know Texas, and it’s tough because you can’t say hey I’m sorry I was a drop shipper, it’s not our fault, it’s highly unprofessional right.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely

Andrew: You know and so you just have to own up to it, you got to make it right and you know that’s another thing that is tough and then also the shipping experience I mean you can– you got someone else who’s managing your shipping and so you can’t necessarily control standards quite like you’d like to. You don’t have– we don’t always work with our own shipping accounts so if an item goes out and we need to return it and need to issue an intercept, we need to issue like a call tag to bring something back, we really don’t have our own UPS account, we have to go through our supplier, and then our supplier has to take care of things and communicate back to us and then we have to wait for them and then we talk to the customer, so there is a leg time on everything. So those are some of the frustrations in terms of drop shipping that we say that we’ve run into.

Steve: So that kind of implies that your partner or your vendor is a very integral part of your business and it is essential that you guys have a really good relationship.

Andrew: Absolutely, yeah absolutely and it’s tough you know because we’ve– it’s, it can be a fine line because you want to maintain a good working relationship, a good rapport but sometimes and we do, we have a great relationship with our suppliers, but you also have to be a little hop on the phone occasionally and buzz some chops when stuff is slipping and you know that it’s, you’ve got to be able to do that in a way, you’ve got to know when to do that in a way to make sure things are continuing to be taken care of properly and in a high quality manner and you also have to know when to give a little grace and a little bit of understanding when– this is tough, I mean any business is going to have mistakes I’m so sure.

You’ve to got know where that threshold is. It is kind of like management right, you know you want to be, if you have people under you and you are a leader you want to be hold people accountable, but you don’t want to be just a hammer head. You want to be someone whom they look up to and can come to with questions but you don’t want to be a pushover too. So it is a fine line to walk.

Steve: Yes, almost like having your own employees in a way except that you have no direct control over.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s a little vague, that’s a good way to look at it.

Steve: So if you are– so when you get returns, do they come back to you or do they go back to the manufacturer?

Andrew: Well, it’s funny you asked that, they usually will go back to the manufacturer but sometimes they will come back to us based on because I think US PS makes it harder to put all return, put the suppliers return address on the packages as opposed to warehouse and so if they get returned or come back to actually my office or sometimes people will just you know I guess there is this, it is kind of confusing because sometimes the UPS label will get scanned even though even it says our supplier on the return address, the address on the label will say our office and so I’ve got you know right now I’ve probably got three to four radios and six antennas in my office that they just happened to come back to me, so most of them go back to the supplier but I definitely get some straylers coming back to me.

Steve: It’s just a shared story, we got returned merchandise in our office too that’s been unprocessed, so you’re not alone there Andrew.

Andrew: That’s good to hear and it’s tough because it’s– sometimes you look at stuff and you just get caught up and usually we are pretty good about getting you know following up on people and figuring out what happened but you know sometimes ashes occasionally fall to the cracks and then there is some, I mean there are some right now in my office and I’m like oh man I’ve got it I have to figure where this came from [laughter].

Steve: Yeah, so you know in the earlier point that you just made about not having the margins for paper clip traffic so how do you get the customers on to your site if you are not paying for it?

Andrew: Yeah, a good question you know back in when I was building a bright channel it was just a lot of it was good old fashion networking in the niche, a lot of guest posting, a lot of really pitching people on quality articles and biased cards that we would put together for their audience, and so we would go out to– we would try to identify okay who are our customers? They were vehicle owners. Where do those vehicle owners hang out? There was a lot of communities for different vehicles of all different vehicles of course online, and then we would try to go identify the owners of those communities and try to build a relationship with them first and then try to network with them and then offer them something of value to their visitors and really picture as not hey can we guest post on your site but more of hey we notice that there is this gap in the articles you offer. The researches that you offer to your visitors, not sure if it would be interesting but if you would like kind of a comprehensive bio skid on taking radio equipment for let’s say covet for example, we’d love to write it for you.

And sometimes that will work and sometimes it won’t but that’s how we were able to get a lot of early slip back links out of the traffic and the relationships and I think really it’s about building relationships if you can pull genuine relationships with people in your niche and with people that serve you and customers. Eventually that’s going to lead to something as long as you have something genuine with value to offer that’s going to lead to that exchange. I think it’s when people read right out of the gates with emails that are just hard sells right up front that people get turned off and so that was the approach we took for marketing RightChannelRadios in to a last exceptionally models.

Steve: So you were guest posting on just related blogs or– and making partnerships with people on your same niche and then that just gradually build up your search engine traffic?

Andrew: Yes

Steve: Okay

Andrew: Exactly and blogs– probably blogs somewhat but then also probably even more communities and forums and a lot of like forums out there for hobbyists and enthusiasts who have a forum section and a lot of times they have regular articles and a research section and we love those.

Steve: Okay, okay so I’ll just you know since we’re on the topic of SEO, Google’s making a lot of changes these past couple of years and I just wondering if your strategy has changed at all as a result of that.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s a good, it’s a great question and it hasn’t. To be honest, I haven’t, I haven’t. It’s been you know probably three or four years since I launched a brand new ecommerce store, but at least with ecommerce if you are kind of a content community site, and that’s been about you know real lesson two years I’ve been running that and for that the approach has differed significantly I mean take the old SEO we used to do for RightChannelRadios, we would focus a lot on anchor text. We would focus a lot on really key word research still is important but we were really aiming on that you know making sure the exact phrase was perfect for what the search volume was and guest posting would probably focus more on quantity versus quality.

Fast forward to what the strategies I’ve been trying to use with EcommerceFuel and it’s been much more focused on getting a lower number of high quality links. It’s been much more focused on trying to write along or create a lot of quality in-depth long forum content and build a reputation, drive people to really engage with that content and choose their comments and shares. It’s been about building relationships with a lot of high profile key players in the space and really it’s been– it hasn’t been focused as much on anchor texts or exact key words. I’ll still look for you know when I’m running a blog post for example on EcommerceFuel, I’ll still a lot of times try to come up with a key word that I think is a key word or a key word phrase that I know people are searching for, but once I have that like for example I’m going to get write a publisher post on bootstrapping and so I did a quick search in Google autosuggest for bootstrapping in business and came up with I think bootstrapping my business was the phrase people searched for.

And so although I had to make sure that SEO url for my blog post, I’ll make sure I get that phrase at least once into the copy. I may or may not include that phrase in the title exactly based on how compelling it fits in with a really strong title and that’s it. I’m not going getting out and try to build links with it back without anchor text, I’m not going to make sure it occurs five times in the copy because Google is getting I think much better at deciphering intent and really being able to distinguish high quality stuff versus lower quality stuff and for me it’s been more about building a highly authoritative site and letting the site authority and the domain authority really help propel the rankings for individual articles as opposed to trying to game the system.

Steve: Great, it’s all right. And that’s on your blog that you were talking about right, do you still do posts for RightChannelRadios or…?

Andrew: We you know we– it’s been– we haven’t done a marketing piece for RightChannel in a while and I don’t know about you Steve but I tend to be very like silo focused like I will spend six months focusing on like promotion for EcommerceFuel and then I’ll spend six months on or three months focused on like selling one of my businesses then I’ll spend four months focused on really gearing up and improving the processes for like RightChannel and so it’s been a little while since we’ve done a marketing piece for RightChannel and so a lot of the growth we’ve seen there has been more based on word of mouth and organic referrals I think for the business, so it’s, we– to be honest with you we haven’t done a lot of guest posting.

Steve: Yeah, you know I’m the same way with you. I can’t really focus on multiple things at once, so I tend to just do one thing and when that’s done I move on to the next so…

Andrew: Yeah exactly, I feel I get so much more efficient than trying to juggle four big projects at once.

Steve: Absolutely, yes so it sounds like a lot of your traffic to your store is SEO and at least with my store SEO traffic didn’t kick in until much later in the first year so how did you get sales early on and how did you prevent yourself from getting discouraged at the beginning?

Andrew: Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m a big advocate of even if, even if it’s not necessarily profitable early on with the store to run some pay traffic to and so I’d say for the first six months we run page traffic with Google AdWords primarily to RightChannel, just for those two reasons. One to not get discouraged because man even– there is a lot there’s an emotional aspect to seeing those sales coming even if you know you’re not necessarily making a whole lot of money or any money on them, it gives you motivational factor but even more importantly it helps you start engaging with customers, understand who they are, what they want, what kind of problems they are having, what kind of products they need that you don’t offer. It’s always you know, you learn so much engaging directly with customers and so we kind of we would start with that and then as the search engine and traffic picked up and started to really become a lion share, the traffic then we kind of discontinued, or slowly trailed off on with the pay traffic but it was very useful starting you know.

Steve: Yes and what were some of the tools that you used to analyze your customers, was this just from talking with them on the phone or…

Andrew: Yeah I’d say the best tool was getting people on the phone.

Steve: Okay

Andrew: You know it’s funny because I think we probably– we could probably have a whole podcast about this too Steve in terms of whether or not you should have a phone number and we you know right now with RightChannel we do a lot of things to try to really stand out with customers but we don’t necessarily offer like a phone where people can just call up and talk anymore. And it’s okay we can talk about the pros and cons there but for early on it’s so viable. You get someone on the phone, you talk directly with them back and forth and you learn so much about who they are, what they need, where your short comings as a business are. Just being on phone as you know I think it’s the best tool you can use to get market intelligence with your customers.

Steve: Yeah, I think it really depends on the niche because in ours which is the wedding industry you absolutely have to have a phone number because you have all these frantic people calling you up with deadlines [Laughter].

Andrew: It’s really funny, yeah and it’s funny like same thing with the TrollingMotors. With Trolling Motors you know people are looking at buying a $1500 trolling motor. If they can, everyone may not need to call or want to call but if they feel like they can’t call, that’s a big deal you know. I would not want to order a $1500 order trolling motor from some place you didn’t really exposed to a phone number or that I can get a live person on the phone from. So I think it is market specific.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. So let’s change, let’s switch gears a little bit and you know at least on my mind and this is kind of spurred by one of the topics on your forums on the EcommerceFuel forums and this is just the whole topic of Amazon and how Amazon is kind of commoditizing a lot of the online stores. So what do you see happening and what are you doing with your store to kind of fight against Amazon?

Andrew: Yeah, it’s a great question and it’s Amazon is just eating up retail and it would be nice to build a hit on them but they are you know they do a really good job in terms of customer service, in terms of offering the best combination I think of for a lot of products value and convenience and so you know what I see happening is I really see– I see kind of a hauling out of the middle of the market. If you are a big store that sells a lot of you know– it’s fairly broad based and sells a lot of existing products, existing products from the market, I think it’s like they’re going to have a real hard time in the next couple of years. Places like I don’t know why Tiger director always comes to mind but I feel like they are kind of just a general retailer, reseller or kind of just general electronic parts and I don’t see how they are going to survive in the next two to three or four years.

And so what I see happening is you either have you know you either need to do one of– Amazon’s going to be the place if you are looking for something and price is very important to you. An existing product people are going to go there a lot so and really as independent retailers you either need to offer one of three things. You either need to offer a unique product that you can’t get anywhere else so you control the distribution. An example is the guys over; did you see the kick start campaign for Minaal for Minaal travel bag?

Steve: I did not.

Andrew: Also I have to link, may be you can put in the show notes.

Steve: Okay, yeah.

Andrew: Jimmy and Doug over there, they’re great, great guys and they’ve put together an incredible travel bag that solves a lot of problems that light weight travelers on the road have. I bought one of them and it’s amazing. They’ve got something that’s not sold in the market and it’s a you know they control complete distribution so they can set whatever price they want, they can control that supply chain so they are not getting undercut. That’s one option having your own product. The other option is having very strong branded experience, so if you are going to sell existing products, use something really unique, really you know something where somehow the experience is to hide into the product, that’s another option.

The third one is add value, add informational value to existing products and that’s what I try to do over RightChannelRadios is really add a lot of value upfront. Amazon can’t in terms of what goes with what, really specializing in a very niche field and adding value in a way that– one thing we are doing you know you asked what we are trying to do to differentiate ourselves. One thing we are doing this year is really going in and creating in-depth installation guides for specific vehicles. So let’s say you’ve got a Chevy 2010 half tank pickup truck. Not only can you come to our site hopefully in six months and or in three months you are going to be able to understand what products are all going to go together but we’re going to have a ten page illustrated installation guide on exactly how to install that product on your specific vehicle. And that’s something where, it’s going to cost a decent amount of money to produce up front but once we do, that’s got ten, twenty, thirty, fifty dollars with a value. I mean it’s hard to say but it definitely has a lot of value to somebody who doesn’t know how to install, is something as once you create it’s like an information product is added to your ecommerce mix. That’s one thing we are going to try to do.

We’re also really looking to personalize our site a lot more. You know just this week we’re actually going to film an ‘about us’ video for myself, for my sales manager. We are going to get in front of the camera, we are going to talk about who we are as people like how we can help our customers, really put a face to the brand because that’s another thing that just is going to differentiate small merchants from big giants like Amazon is being personal. People love to buy from people and I think that’s going to be increasingly important. So anyway sorry Steve I kind of rumbled on there for a while.

Steve: No, no this is all good stuff and I actually had a couple of comments on that so when I shop at Amazon in-house buying something complicated like a radio that I need to mount on my pickup truck for example, the support just isn’t there. Sure they have an excellent return policy but once I purchase the product, I can’t exactly go and ask Amazon how to install and that sort of thing so I would probably tend to buy from your site because the support will be there right. I could actually call you or contact you in some way.

Andrew: We’ve got yeah, we do– we have a really comprehensive troubleshooting library of resources in terms of installation and troubleshooting some of the problems that popup in tutorials and things that are going to be very specific because Amazon necessarily won’t be able to obviously have those kind of resources.

Steve: Right, so here’s the question, do you actually recommend people who have their own products for example do you recommend they actually post their items on Amazon?

Andrew: Yeah, good question. I think it depends on, I think it depends on if the product is– if it’s your product and you’ve created it, and it’s branded to you I think Amazon is a very powerful platform because you are going to reap into all their traffic and all their reputation and trust and authority. I think if you are reselling existing products, I think it’s tough. I mean I know in our niche we’ve got people who are starting to go on Amazon and resell on products and we have intentionally stayed out of that market because even assuming we could get in and assuming we could make a little bit of profit out of the gates, it just becomes a price war.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely.

Andrew: Because, I mean there have been people on the forums in ecclesial forums who’ve been signing upfront for a while and they just talk about how people do get on there, and they’ll see people selling below cost and they don’t understand if it’s because they are just trying to gain market share or improve their seller reputation and their rank on Amazon by increasing their volume or if they are just clueless and they don’t understand that they are losing money. But I think it’s– I don’t think it’s a good long term strategy for building a profitable income stream. I think there might be a few couple anomalies where may be a bit trashed up opportunities where you can get in and may be for a couple of months here and there, may be even a year you can get in and make it work, but I think selling existing products on Amazon is going to be tough.

Steve: And so, let’s say you were to decide to sell on Amazon, would you go with just selling an Amazon regular or would you actually use their fulfilled buy service, because Amazon prime is very compelling.

Andrew: It is and I think you know I think if you’re using the FPA approach if you’re selling on Amazon makes a lot of sense because like you said you get, it’s going to pop a bit of qualify for and minimum pre-shipping involved you know $25 or $35 for folks. And then also if it’s for prime members, yeah they get to ship from two days for free which is you know I know that I have been trying recently to go less on Amazon especially for unique products I try to support independent merchants more. But there are some things that just are commodities that Amazon is, I think it’s a great you know is a good choice for like diapers for example. You know you buy diapers on Amazon and I know that when I’m shopping for commodities on Amazon, I always click at all Amazon prime band.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely same here and in fact whenever I shop on Amazon, I always look for the prime. I actually don’t buy from anyone who doesn’t have the prime display.

Andrew: Yeah, exactly it’s powerful.

Steve: Yeah, yeah it’s very powerful so that actually presents unique challenges you know when you’re trying to decide whether you want to sell on there because they take a huge chunk out of fulfilled buying, I think it’s like almost a third of your revenue is just rocked off right after that.

Andrew: Are you sure, that seems really rich.

Steve: I just heard someone else on the show actually who sells on Amazon using fulfilled buyer for a living and she said yeah she dedicates a third of her revenue to pay Amazon and she gets a third to buy the product, then she gets to keep a third.

Andrew: Wow!

Steve: So

Andrew: Let’s see I– and again I’m sure she has, she is in a position of speaking with much more authority than I am on it because I haven’t used them but I always heard it was roughly 15% for just listing fee through Amazon on in there and I always thought FPA was more of a fee based. If you use FPA, I always thought it was a fee based thing that was just pretty much like you pay a dollar for every pick and then you pay a shipping fee and that’s it.

Steve: Yeah, I’m not sure of the specifics. She tends to sell smaller items but that’s how she kind of budgets her stuff. You know I think just regularly selling at Amazon, I think the fees are in the order of 12 and 13%. I have to check to make sure since I don’t sell on Amazon but I think that’s what the percentages were.

Andrew: Yeah, I think they are various by categories so like both sources like electronics versus other things but I remember looking at electronics and they were like 15% so we are going to try sell trolling motors online like it’s, the margins are very low.

Steve: Exactly

Andrew: Eventually wipes out your entire margin right there.

Steve: Yes so if your RightChannelRadios, if your margins were a little higher, I don’t know what they are but if they were a little higher, would you consider selling on Amazon or would you just stay away?

Andrew: Again we’d stay away. The only thing I would consider selling on Amazon is something which will add some kind of value to because again we’ll just get– even if it’s not today, in the next three, six months more people are going to come in and just drive that price to under zero and you’ve got you know these smart time, you’ve got to invest in, not a crazy email, you’ve got to get in, set it up and engage your listings going. So the only thing I would sell is may be smaller packages that we buddled together and included the very in-depth personal video that walks through the highlight and also included the installation guide more valuably that walks through the process because then you get some kind of differentiator, some kind of value add where you’ve got a reason to be able to charge a different price and it sets it apart so people can’t compare apples to apples but it’s yeah not interested in getting in and slogging it out with 20 people who are willing to have a fraction of a percentage profit margin.

Steve: Yeah, speaking of which I hadn’t considered this strategy with my store since we sell products that are– many of which are pretty unique, we are thinking about just posting stuff on Amazon at higher prices to cover the fees and then you know if someone buys, we can kind of just in the packaging provide a lot of collateral about our store and hopefully the second time though they should come directly to our store and then we can incentivize them with the coupon or something like that.

Andrew: It’s tough, I’ve heard that and again this is me speaking a little bit out of my authority zone but I’ve heard that Amazon has restrictions on how you can brand and what you can include in your product when you are selling on their market place.

Steve: Aaaaa

Andrew: Yeah, if you use Fulfilled By Amazon as your fulfillment center and you don’t sell on Amazon’s marketplace. So let’s say you use a fulfillment center but you sell on your own you know [Inaudible] [00:39:57] but you use FBA to ship it out, I think those restrictions are lifted, but if you have any of your products listed on the Amazon market place where people place the order through Amazon, I think they’ll remove all they know about you including branding and marketing material. I don’t think they let you do it, and I actually think you have to pay. They ship everything else in an Amazon branded box. If you want them to ship out in a box that is not branded with Amazon, just a blank one you have to pay extra for that.

Steve: Aaaaa

Andrew: So they’re very conscious of using the fulfillment services and using I guess using the fulfillment services to brand Amazon as well as not necessarily allowing merchants to use their platform to really siphon people over their own brand. I think that’s tricky.

Steve: They are clever on their part, they are very clever. Well played Amazon, well played.

Andrew: Have you read the, do you read ‘The Everything Store’ by chance?

Steve: I have not.

Andrew: Yeah, you should read it, it’s interesting, it’s a– I would recommend it to anyone listening. It is just kind of a biography of Amazon, of Jeff Bezos. It’s a good read and it’s very telling also.

Steve: So we’re coming up on to 40 minutes. I don’t want to take up too much of your time, so I wanted to just ask you, if you had any advice for people who are listening who want to create an online store, who may be want to double on drop ship or carrying inventory and that sort of thing.

Andrew: Yeah I’d say, I say if you are going to start with drop shipping, try to make sure that you have an ability to grow beyond that into stocking your own product. That’s one of the kind of little regrets I have about CB radios and that niche is even as we’ve grown, just the economics of buying products or bringing them in house really doesn’t make sense. You know so the increase in margin we would get as we bought products wholesale and brought them in-house really doesn’t offset the hassle and cost of warehousing them in the capital LA. And so it’s still a great niche but I wish we could, I wish the market allowed us to grow into that and invest more money to see higher rewards.

So drop shipping again like we talked about it’s got some great advantages but make sure you’ve had a long term plan that will let you grow past that. I mean for me personally the next business I start will likely, ideally I’d like to start building and creating my own products. At a minimum stocking products that are harder to get, but ideally in creating a unique product under our brand, that’s not available other places just for other reasons that we mentioned because it’s so much easier to scale when you’ve got those higher margins. You can use paid advertising, you differentiate it, you can leverage Amazon versus having to wait into the mark and compete with people on tiny profit margins. And so that would be my advice is don’t really think through it, if you’ve got the capital to invest, if you’ve got– if you are willing to take a little bit more of a longer approach to seeing returns. Creating your own products or stocking products at minimum is going to give you all those higher returns in the long run and if you do so with drop shipping make sure you do have one; a plan to really understand how you are going to differentiate yourself. If it’s price, if the only way you are going to be different from other folks is price, don’t get into that market.

You really need a very concrete action plan on how you are going to add value to existing products and then secondly make sure you’ve got, you know talk with your suppliers ahead of time, talk with manufacturers and say hey what’s the margin increase I get if I buy direct from the manufacturer in bulk versus buying from a wholesaler. If it’s only two, or three, or four percent, it’s tough. If it doubles or triples your margin, that’s a much more attractive growth projectory as you are increase your revenues.

Steve: Yeah, then one thing I just want to add to that is speaking of adding value, one thing I notice that in terms of personalized products, Amazon doesn’t really do a really good job of doing that. So if you could add value by personalizing, which is becoming kind of huge these days. That will help a lot with your shop as well. I don’t know if that applies to a lot of things but…

Andrew: No, I think it’s a great point. Yeah if anything people love personalized stuff and yeah you’re right, that sounds something. I don’t think, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen anything being personalized on Amazon.

Steve: I don’t think they have the interface to do it right it now. I’m sure they have something in the works though but for now at least…

Andrew: Yeah, that’s mean, we’re going knock on them. Give them three months and they’ll have it rolled out.

Steve: So I thought I’d end this interview, you already mentioned one business book that you recommend that we all read which is ‘Sell anything’ or ‘Sell everything’. Is there any other business books that have kind of shaped the way you look at business and running stores?

Andrew: Yeah or do you mean ‘The Everything Store’?

Steve: Yeah, ‘The everything store’ sorry I got the title wrong.

Andrew: Aha it’s ‘Everything Store’. I’d say a couple of books, a couple of books I’ve read recently that I really enjoyed. One was ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ and that’s kind of a classic. And I always– I remember you Steve but I’m always a little bit relied in these self help books so like it’s really inspirational kind of feel good. If it’s feel good in titles like that, and I was like really like how much you know how impactful is this going to be, but I read it and I was really impressed. It actually has changed the way I’ve kind of looked at business. It’s made me be more intentional about what I spend my time on, how I structure my day. So that is a book that I would recommend. Again ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, great book.

Another book if you are managing people is ‘EntreLeadership’ by Dave Ramsey. He really talks about how you structure your businesses, how you build the team, how you lead with intentionality and with integrity, and in a way that is going to inspire confidence and loyalty with your team members. So that’s going to be something a little bit more for folks who they do have a team, or aspire to have a team in the future, but it’s a great book ‘EntreLeadership’ by Dave Ramsey. So those are two recently that have been impactful for me.

Steve: Okay, I have not read the Dave Ramsey book yet. I’ll have to go and pick it up and check it out. That’s great.

Andrew: What about you, what are you– read any books recently that have had a big impact?

Steve: Yeah, you know I get asked this question all the time and right now I’ve been reading a lot of technical books because I’m just trying to learn all the tech behind websites and become more professional at it so that in fact I can contract out the work a little more effectively, so I can kind of understand what the developers are doing to help me out and that sort of thing. So I like to understand everything before I contract anything out. So that’s just in my personality.

Andrew: I think it’s a great– I mean like we were kind of talking about this offline before we started the interview but I just wrote a post on bootstrapping and I think that’s, I think it’s one of the big mistakes people make is not having understanding about different areas of their business before they go out and hire out because I just– more often than not it just leads to chaos.

Steve: I agree and just like this podcast, so I learnt how to post process all the audio and then maybe I’ll be using your guide to do all the post processing after this, who knows. So I would like to close, you know any other online services that you use for your businesses that you can’t live without?

Andrew: It’s a good question. I use Google docs really for a lot of processes that we set up in our documentation, use Asana for setting up who is responsible for what, not only for kind of project tracking but for managing SOPs and things like that, responsibilities and other services. Those are couple of the big ones that we…

Steve: Okay

Andrew: Apart from hosting and helped us conserve but I think a lot of those people are probably familiar with these.

Steve: Okay, so near to close do you want to tell everyone how they can find you and what all the other sites that you own are?

Andrew: Yeah, that would be great. You can find me depending on where you land over twitter@Yauderian or at EcommerceFuel. Of course eCommerceFuel.com is where I blog about ecommerce and I also have a private community. If you are a store owner and you’ve got established store with at least you know four or five thousand in monthly revenue or an ecommerce professional with at least a year of experience on the space, that’s the forum that we run for those– a vetted forum for those groups of people over there. And I also have a podcast that as well you can learn more about on iTunesall@ecommercefuel.com again the name of podcast is EcommerceFuel. So that’s you know that and the RightchannelRadios.com is the radio business we’ve been talking about and then TrollingMotors.net no longer mine. It’s in good new hands but that’s the business we just sold, so I think that’s kind of what I’ve got going on online.

Steve: Great I just thought I put it in plug for you forums as well. The amount of people, the quality of the people on that forum is very high and I’ve actually personally learned a lot myself.

Andrew: Oh, thanks it’s been good having you in and spend– it’s been fun growing in the community and just– it’s cool having a group like that of people who are in trenches that we can kind of bounce off of each other and you know that everyone there at least not to be exclusive you know to be whole it all we don’t exclude people for the sake of excluding people but I think that you know it’s, there is certain reason for having people there all in the same place in terms of maintaining a count level of conversation that everyone is kind of able to plug in to relatively quickly.

Steve: Yeah, I don’t know about you Andrew but I get lonely, because I don’t know a whole lot of people that run ecommerce stores so it’s a good outlet for me at least.

Andrew: Yeah, I like all this is human Steve, yeah.

Steve: I know, thanks for coming on the show Andrew, I really appreciate your time.

Andrew: Hey, thanks for having me Steve, it’s been good chatting

Steve: Take care

I always love chatting with Andrew Youderian. Now, what I really like about him is that he’s really down to earth, extremely personable and always willing to help. He’s also created an incredible ecommerce community on his forums, so I recommend that you go check them out at www.ecommercefuel.com/ecommerce-forum. So be sure to check out the show notes for this episode where you will find the sites and the links mentioned in this episode. Also if you have a minute it would really help if you could subscribe and leave a review on iTunes for this podcast. Also don’t forget to enter my free podcast giveaway where I’m actually giving away a lifetime membership for my profitable online store course. For more information about this giveaway go to www.mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch. Once again that’s mywifequitherjob.com/podcast-launch. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to the mywifequitherjob podcast where we’re giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information, visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.

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Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?


If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!

001: How We Started A 6 Figure Business Selling Hankies So My Wife Could Stay At Home With The Kids

Steve Chou Episode 1

Because this is the very first episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, I thought that it was only fitting that I would be the first guest.

In this episode, I take you back to the very beginning when my wife and I first started our online store selling wedding handkerchiefs. You’ll learn how we got started, how we stumbled upon our niche and how our business gave birth to a popular blog and an online course on how to start an ecommerce store.

Finally, you’ll learn about my motivations for the podcast and what’s in store for future episodes. Enjoy!

What You Will Learn

  • What this podcast is going to be all about
  • The type of entrepreneurs that I’ll be bringing on the show
  • Our motivations for starting our online store selling wedding handkerchiefs
  • The story behind how Bumblebee Linens was created
  • The story behind MyWifeQuitHerJob.com
  • The story behind the creation of my online store course at ProfitableOnlineStore.com
  • The one thing that gave me the confidence to start my own online business
  • How starting our businesses have improved our lifestyles
  • Why you don’t need to hit a home run with your business
  • Why starting a business doesn’t cost a lot of money and is less risky than you think
  • My philosophy behind why you should start a business on the side while working a full time job

Items Mentioned In This Podcast

I Need Your Help

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, then please support me with a review on Apple Podcasts. It's easy and takes 1 minute! Just click here to head to Apple Podcasts and leave an honest rating and review of the podcast. Every review helps!

Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?


If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.

In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!