The Journey Scaling a MultiMillion Dollar Ecommerce Drop Ship Business with Kevin Zhang

Today’s show is really exciting. It’s a really good one about drop ship empires. We have the pleasure to get Kevin Zhang on the show who is a serial eCommerce entrepreneur who at the age of 23 generated $20M in sales in his first year as an entrepreneur. He talks about his whole drop ship story and how I started getting into the e-commerce game and we also share some stories and best practices. Let’s dive in.

Thanks Kevin!

√ Kevin’s VIP Experts Page
√ Mcckinsey Consulting
√ Vanderbuilt University
√ Chargeback911
√ Dollarshaveclub.com
√ IG – kevinzhang

Thank you so much for listening and thank you Kevin for coming on the show and sharing. We’re trying our best to build an amazing community here in the Philippines and online around the world. Help people make a better life for themselves if they want to just get down to business and get things done.

• Direct Download: Right-click here and click “Save As” for a direct download
• iTunes: Listen and subscribe on iTunes for free!
• Android: Check out Android Options or Listen via Stitcher Internet Radio streaming
• If you enjoyed this episode, leave a positive review on iTunes, & more (directions here)!

gfa290

[00:00:00] Episode 290 of the Global From Asia podcast. Got a good one talking about drop ship empires. Let’s do it. Welcome to the Global From Asia podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight up actionable advice. And now your host, Michael Michelini.

[00:00:25] Okay. They get ready for choosing to download and listen to the Global From Asia Podcast

[00:00:30] We’re always keeping things real here and I, survived the volcano You know, actually I recorded today’s interview like the first day I arrived in the mall before the volcano came. It was a, it was a great one. We have Kevin Zhang or Zhang, he has his Americanized family name.

[00:00:48] I’m, I’m in China, so I know it’s at least I know how to, at least I pronounce it Zhang, but known as the thing in the West and he is really an amazing guy. I had a pleasure to see you on his presentations at the affiliate world Asia in December of 2019 so luckily Zach Benson also mutual friend connected us.

[00:01:13] He was also on the podcast. We had the pleasure to get him onto the show and talk about his whole drop ship story, how I started getting into the e-commerce game. We share some war stories about, you know. These platforms sometimes lock in people] out, best practices. It’s, it’s a really a really amazing one.

[00:01:34] And, uh, I’m really happy to have him share with us. It was, it was a longer one too. I mean, we, man, we weren’t really wanting to deep deep dive. So I hope you, um, will appreciate this, where I’m pretty sure you’re gonna enjoy it. Episode 290 of the global from Asia podcast. Let’s tune in with Kevin. So you enjoy these global from Asia podcasts.

[00:01:57] You want to meet other listeners that are crazy  like you and me that are doing business cross border business and he commerce between Asia and China and other parts of the world. It’s a niche community and we want to get a good people like you that are listening together. Cross border summit, fifth annual, November 19th and 20th in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

[00:02:17] We’re moving out of China this year. I know, I know. My wife’s not happy about it, but we are doing it and it’s . Can it happen? We have amazing speakers already getting pulled, put together, amazing sponsors coming back and more new ones and attendees ready and willing to come. I’m really, really excited about this one.

[00:02:33] I mean, we’re putting everything at it still 10 months away, but we have been working hard on it already for a month or two venues getting locked in and I’d love to see you there. Cross border summit.com/thailand see you November 19th and 20th 2020. Thank you everybody for tuning into Global from Asia podcast.

[00:02:56] I’m really excited about today’s show. It was at my, uh, hanging out at the affiliate world Asia conference earlier in December of 2019. And, and I happen to. Get to participate or, or, or see Kevin Zhang speak about his journey making, you know, drop ship websites in the future of drop shipping and eCommerce and his empire.

[00:03:18] And, uh, and it was really a really a fascinating to me and just really, happy to have you on the show, Kevin, and thanks for coming on. Hey Michael, it’s great to be here and I thank you so much for the kind words and for everyone that’s listening out there. I’m here to provide you guys as much value as possible.

[00:03:34] And I know Michael is definitely an authority. I’m a very, very well versed in the space, so I think we’re about to have a really excellent discussion. Yeah, for sure, man. I mean, I feel, uh, I feel you’ve been through some similar journeys for sure. If from, from your talk and. So I think, uh, maybe we’ll start at the beginning of your, you were in college and you’re, you know, hustling with Facebook ads and drop shipping.

[00:04:00] Do you want us to you know, share how you, uh, how you got going? Yeah, definitely. We’d love to share the origin story. So I started drop ship. So my background is kind of non-conventional in this sort of digital entrepreneur space, right? Like a lot of people I’ve met, they’re either, you know, high school dropouts or college dropouts.

[00:04:19] I actually was on a very, very institutional path. I, uh, grew up in a family of Chinese immigrants. Uh, they weren’t always very financially secure. So you’re growing up, growing up. Uh, we kind of struggled financially throughout, as, you know, a lot of immigrant families will. And so I was really instilled by my parents throughout my life of chasing something that was stable.

[00:04:41] Right? They taught me a really, really solid work ethic. And also they taught me that if you really want your goals to come true, you have to sort of, uh, you know. Treat every single day like it’s do or die or else you just won’t survive. Right. And that’s kind of the mentality I’ve taken throughout my life and everything I’ve done.

[00:05:00] But I was on a very traditional path. As you can imagine, your classic Asian immigrant parents who . Okay. So I went to Vanderbilt university, which was a great school that was fortunate enough to go to, and the moment I went on campus, I was thinking of very conventional career, right? Like I was planning on becoming a management consultant, which if you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a, someone that big companies would hire to help solve their business problems.

[00:05:26] And I was working very, very hard throughout college, you know, getting good grades, good extracurriculars. I’m going into the right internships. I was thinking through, you know, either consulting or finance, which is what most, most people from my university ended up pursuing. And upon senior year, I actually got a really, really good job with the consulting firm called McKinsey and company, and they’re basically the world’s like number one consulting firm, and I was going to get paid.

[00:05:52] Six figures right out of college. You know, my parents were super proud of me and I was, I was feeling awesome on top of the world, right? Like, wow, this is what I worked for years to get. And now my life is about to be amazing. Crazy thing is entering my senior year of college. So how this sort of corporate job recruiting works is you kind of do an internship the summer before your last year in college, and that internship like turns into a job offer.

[00:06:17] Uh, you know, if you’re a competent and you don’t mess up. So I had this job offer coming in. And most people in that position kind of feel like they’re on top of the world and you know, they, they have that money they saved from the summer and they’re kind of blowing it on, you know, going out with their friends, having a bunch of fun, et cetera.

[00:06:35] That’s kind like the classic mentality, right? You want to just have all your fun out of the way before you sell your soul to wall street or, uh, the rest of corporate America. Right? Um, and I came in and I was actually in a pretty serious relationship with a, with a girl, which I didn’t plan on. But she ended up going abroad that second semester of my senior year, and I was just really, really bored because I structure my last semester of college originally planning to have a lot of fun party a lot, so like wasn’t that many class hours.

[00:07:05] I wasn’t taking that many hard classes, but now it’s just like. I, I had all this time and for whatever reason, I’m just the type of person that’s wired where like I need to be productive doing something or else I’ll go insane. Right? And I don’t know if you feel that way as well, but I think people in this space are workaholics, right?

[00:07:25] It’s like you have doing something, you have to be leveling up, or you kind of just, you feel like you’re stuffed. And I actually felt for the first time since I was a freshman in college that. I wasn’t very excited about what was awaiting me after college. Right. Like I, I essentially got probably like one of the best jobs you can get out of college, but it just didn’t excite me.

[00:07:49] Right. It actually kind of scared me that. It was one of those places where I could predict, it’s like environment. When you go in, you know you do this, then you go to business school that you do that and then you try to make partner, and by the time you make partner, you know you’re, you’re going to be a millionaire and you’re going to live a very comfortable life.

[00:08:06] But I was like, wow, you know, like, is this really what I want to do? Like just sign away my time for the next 10, 12 years. And then. Like by the time I’m 30 or 40 I’ll finally make it big. And it kinda just scared me. So I was like, okay, I have all this time. I have this money I saved from my internship, which was $3,000 at the time.

[00:08:28] And originally I was gonna use it to travel Asia before I went to go work my job. Right. Which is like a very classic thing for college students to do. And I just kind of made a kind of bold decision. I was like, okay, I’m not, I’m gonna risk. This $3,000 and learn something or try to do something, um, that, that maybe can give me an alternative to sort of this corporate path.

[00:08:51] And if, if I get some messages that, you know, this isn’t sort of what I’m destined to do, I’ll go work my job and I’ll be very fulfilled. And this was when I first started drop shipping. Right? Um, so this was January, 2018. But I was drop shipping kind of part time. Like I was still a student. I still had my on-campus commitments, you know, I was like involved in a lot of different organizations, obviously those, that social life components.

[00:09:16] So it was kind of like I was spending two, four hours a day just learning, drop shipping through YouTube videos and just like kind of trying it out. Right. And it was something that was very fascinating. It took me around, I would say  a hundred to 200 hours. Um, to finally like a month to finally build out, um, like my first store that I was proud of, right?

[00:09:39] Like from the lens of a consumer. I saw this website and I can say, Hey, this isn’t the scam, easiest thing in the world. And that’s when I started running ads. And. I remember, this is January, right? I remember by March there was a crazy day that happened, which was this business that was kind of hustling on and didn’t even know much Facebook ads on.

[00:10:00] Like I was doing my own Photoshop work. I was taking calls literally on my phone with customers and emails. It was all fascinating, like I loved it, especially when sales are rolling through. In March, there was a day where I hit $6,000 in sales. I didn’t make much money on that $6,000 because my margins are terrible and my ad buying was terrible, but.

[00:10:19] It kind of just triggered the spark in my brain of, Oh my God, me as someone with no experience, right in my like underwear in the storm room with this dorm Wi-Fi just built a business that if you annualize today, it’s a $2 million business. Right? And that really just slapped me across the face as like.

[00:10:43] This isn’t just a hustle. I stumbled upon a phenomenon, right? And simultaneously going on was like, you know, I saw all these e-commerce as sex success stories, like dollar shave club, you know, you had all birds, Kylie cosmetics, and I was like, wow. I basically found kind of like a hustling, you know, broke path.

[00:11:05] Into this global revolution that’s taking place before my eyes, which is this e-commerce revolution. So at that moment, I was like, okay, there’s no way I’m going to do my job now. I really need to make this work. And then fast forward again in may, I should reveal it. I was, I was selling like a RC vehicles, right?

[00:11:23] That was my niche. That was kind of working. And, uh, by may, from January to may, I probably made around like. 2020 $5,000 in profit, right? So it was, it was a lot of money for me from someone that was a broke college kid, and it may something crazy happen, which was, I graduated college. So I kind of had to make a big decision now about my future, right?

[00:11:44] Like I, this is a common courteous. Now I have to tell my employer I’m not going to go work for them if I don’t want to work over with them. And simultaneously, which is such bad luck that there was a mass shooting in the United States and they started regulating lipo batteries. So now you couldn’t deliver products with light bulb batteries to customers.

[00:12:03] Cause there’s a terrorism threat, right? You can rig those batteries become explosives. The this like RC drone industry got completely regulated and I couldn’t have sent products anymore, but I was still getting a bunch of returns. And now I had all this like inventory from returns and my dorm that couldn’t clear.

[00:12:20] Like, you know, I couldn’t have a garage sale on campus and like sell drones and these like race cars, right? So I actually lost a bunch of money. And in may, I  basically ended up breaking even overall from January to may. So it’s like I made a net zero $0 million, and I made this irrational decision at the time of I’m going to quit my job, right?

[00:12:41] Like this was so fun and I was doing this part time. I want to see what I can do 24, seven, um, and give myself a year. Like I’m going to go back to my parents’ basement. I’m going to work hard for a year. And see where it takes me. If I, you know, I mess up after a year, I can’t get anything to go, then I’m going to go work a job.

[00:13:01] And I know entrepreneurship, e-commerce was never for me. If I get any traction, then this is what I’m going to do. Fast forward into July, right? I lost additional $3,000 just on like failed concepts, right? Like fail knishes still trying to get the hang of ad manager. I was still doing everything myself.

[00:13:20] Um, so now in July I had $3,000 in credit card debt. Right. Um, and now it was like crazy. It’s like from January until now, I lost a total of $6,000 from start. Right? Like, this is life telling you, you suck at what you’re trying to do. Like, you should quit at this point. This is kind of like my, my, my final push, right?

[00:13:41] Like, I was so broke, I was asking friends from college, um, for money in return for equity on sites. And looking in hindsight, I was, I was basically like committing fraud almost, cause I was like over promising completely, you know, I was like, yeah, I’ll show you these sales figures, you know, like look at this, all these sales.

[00:13:58] And they’re like, Whoa, okay. And that’s actually how I got connected. My business partner, he was a friend of mine in college and I was like, okay, you know, he gave me $2,000 in investment. And we were like, okay, I’m going to start making these sites again. And this is like, okay, this runs out and I have this credit card debt.

[00:14:14] I’m just gonna, I’m gonna beg my, my employer to get me my job back. Right. And this was probably like the darkest part of this whole experience. Like, you know, my, my Chinese parents were like always hounding at me. Like at dinner there was just silence and you could feel the tension of like, you know, we didn’t raise you.

[00:14:34] And send you to such an expensive school for you to screw around. Right. And it was just like a really, really tough period. Like I was barely sleeping. I was so stressed, but I, I just like, I knew. Every single day, but the next day was the day I was going to make it right. Like I was getting closer and closer with Facebook ad manager.

[00:14:51] Uh, my, my partner started doing a lot of the creative work, but it’s like we were getting closer and closer making websites that were looking better and better and better, and our ads were looking better and better and better, and the CTR was increasing and like we have some profitable days and then bam.

[00:15:05] I remember this day, like so vividly on August, we started a drop shipping business and the men’s apparel and accessory space. But August 12 2018 11 days after starting that particular site. And we’ve already failed three sites at this point before that one. That site in 11 days hit $20,000 a day in sales, and the rest is history.

[00:15:27] So by August, 2019 you know, a year from my guests, that official start day of August, 2018 when I started working with my business partner, we did $20 million in sales. And our first year. We’ve sold our products to over 250,000 customers around the world. Uh, we have now, you know, as of August two and 19 now, you know, like in this present moment, we have over 60 employees that we’re employing all working remotely.

[00:15:53] You know, we have facilities within our network in China and Singapore and the Philippines, all doing different functions, and we truly built kind of this like drop shipping machine, right? Or empire, as you called it. Like. It’s super awesome. We have this awesome team around me now, and it’s now, now we’re thinking about issues on a whole different level, and now it’s like, you know, we had $20 million in year one.

[00:16:16] Our goal is like $30 million in year two and hopefully by end of 2021 becoming a nine figure business. Right? So that’s kind of my story from when I started all the way until now. And I think because of the way I started, because I was broke and I didn’t know about. All these gurus and all these people out there, and I’m really blessed that I didn’t because there’s so many scammers and there’s vase.

[00:16:40] I kind of had to learn everything the hard way, but also the right way by losing money and failing so many times, you actually start realizing what you’re doing. And I think because I wasn’t brainwashed. On how to drop ship. It really gave me unique mentality and approach to this business model that’s made me accelerate, scale a lot faster than most.

[00:17:01] And also build something that’s actually sustainable, you know, in this environment of feedback scores, payment processors, um, and, and all this stuff with consumers. Also smartening up, right? Like I actually am really thankful about this journey and I think because of my unique story, and also. Let’s me bring out very fresh and kind of unique take on the world of eCommerce and drop shipping, um, hopefully for your viewers.

[00:17:27] Yeah, I know. I, I mean, there’s so much you to go on from this, I think, I mean, I’m like, I’ll use this open and you know, you fail a lot of people, especially gurus, they know they hit it. Ran for a shot and it’s so easy. Just pick up product on alley express, do some keyword research, you know, make a nice say, put a plug in, you know, Oberlo Shopify and you’re, you know, you’re making money, but they didn’t, like you just said, you got to, you got to keep refining and failing and, and developing.

[00:17:57] That is. Any, I mean, I think that’s always a top question though, is how do you choose this niche? I mean, it seems like you did a good job, you know, but you went through a few sites. I mean, is there anything you could, obviously that’s a huge topic in a course by itself is product selection. But, uh, anything you can think of that, that finally hit is, Oh, um, the first thing I want to clarify for everyone is just, I view drop shipping as like the two most popular models right now are ones I completely disagree with.

[00:18:26] But they’re kind of like the general store approach. One is one of them, which is [00:18:30] like, you know, you have a bunch of random products on a store and you’re, you’re running traffic to the product page, you’re trying to find a viral product, and when you do find a bio product, you scale it. When that dies, hopefully you found another viable product that’s like a general store right approach, which has a lot more.

[00:18:45] Professional a lot cleaner. It’s called the single product store approach. Right? And obviously it’s, it’s kind of similar general store, except now all the marketing and the web design is focused around one product. So it looks a lot less scammy. It looks a lot more professional, kind of like a Kickstarter, um, kind of feel.

[00:19:02] Right. But I actually don’t like either of these business models. Right. Um, I think general stores are kind of just dead at this point because. There’s no incentive to build infrastructure and it’s just way too scammy. When we’re consumers are a lot more clever and I think single product stores, then you can’t really differentiate that much because all your sales are coming from like one product, right?

[00:19:23] And this is, this is me knowing that are very successful single product dropshippers so I’m not trying to throw any shade personally. I [00:19:30] just, when I learned about those models, I was like, ah, I’m not going to do this. What I do is branded niche drop shipping. So what we do is we create a niche that’s kind of, everything is themed, right?

[00:19:41] So an example of a niche would be like, uh, let’s say outerwear, right? If you’re in the outerwear niche, you know, you’re selling winter jackets, gloves, hats, vests, et cetera, right? Like boots, maybe. Like, you know, you’re, you’re building kind of a niche business where it’s not all your sales resting on one product.

[00:20:03] And my goal with website design and Shopify design is when a customer comes onto one of my drop shipping stores, they can’t even tell it’s a drop shipping store. Like if I make a prep. A store, you know, it’s going to look like polo Ralph Lauren, or it’s going to look like Brooks brothers, right? If I make a, um, you know, like a, a decor store, you know, it’s going to look like that bath and beyond, you know, it’s gonna look very, very professional and very clean, right?

[00:20:32] So that’s kind of the drop shipping business model I operate on. And this way. Not all of your sales depend on one product. You have a lot more versatility and differentiate yourself from a field. Right? The customers come onto my websites and they kind of have an experience, you know, like the banners from the logo to the category photos to our product photos, to even the creatives.

[00:20:53] It’s all kind of a feel that they’re experiencing in the same way that when they go onto the North face, right. They also get a feel. Right. Um, so. In my opinion, nice selection is actually kind of overrated. Like I think too much attention and time is spent on all these analytical tools and all these crazy things where you’re trying to pick the right niche.

[00:21:16] But I actually kind of have a counter, um, thesis to this, which is even if you and someone are in the same niche or selling the same products. Execution is actually [00:21:30] everything, right? Because just because you and I, let’s say we both decide to sell, um, let’s just say we both decided to make a shoe store right.

[00:21:38] How we designed that shoe store, the type of messaging we have on that shoe store, how we describe the shoes within that store. You know what we decided to do with the images in that shoe store? Maybe we even go the extra mile of photography, no, photographing our own product, pictures and and et cetera.

[00:21:58] Like. How the creatives we made for that shoe store, the offers we run for that shoe store. Those are all massive, massive variables that are different, right? So just because I decide to make a shoe store and you decide to make a shoe store doesn’t mean at all. We’re going to get any where close to similar results, right?

[00:22:15] Because the execution is going to be so, so, so different. And I actually think this is my criteria for picking a niche, right? Number one, I think people should have an interest. In the niche that they’re about to make. Meaning, you know, it’s going to take a long, long, long time before you have team members and this massive infrastructure that I have now.

[00:22:37] In the beginning, it’s going to take a long time to build a really, really nice website and a website that you believe in because you’re building a brand essentially. It’s just that the brand is composed of dropship products, but other than that, it’s the same as building any other sort of brand, right?

[00:22:50] So having an interest is really important because it’s going to be really, really hard work. It’s not an easy process. And the more passionate you are about the type of products are selling, you know, the more willingness you’re going to go, the extra mile of getting that conversion rate up, getting better creatives and making this thing work.

[00:23:05] Number two, the second criteria is to make sure that when you go on Ali express. And you take a look at the cost of the products on there that you can sell at a competitive cost. Like your cost as a drop should be. Business should be lower than institutional competitors, right? Like I’m selling baseball caps.

[00:23:26] I should make sure that whatever all expresses costs is plus that shipping costs, you know, multiplied. I like to do 2.5 to three times, right? That’s kind of the margins I like to operate on. Like that price I’m charging has to be much lower than an institutional competitor, or else, why would anyone ever buy baseball caps from me instead of a place like lids?

[00:23:48] Right? Um, and then the third criteria. And then I give a, we’re sort of this branded, nice drop shipping approach. And, and you know, like, uh, and finding these products is basically making sure that the products are actually available on Ali express. So you can actually find multiple collections. Um, within that store.

[00:24:09] And then you can also fill those collections, you know, with, let’s say, at least 10 products per collection. So if I choose outerwear as a niche, I had to make sure that Ali express actually has enough products to supply for gloves and also jackets, and also vest and also pants. Right? But outside of those metrics, like.

[00:24:28] There’s, there’s no other ones I really use, and I’ve tried so many analytical tools, like Google trends and things like that, and it’s just, it’s false precision, right? And I’ve seen niches work. I’m in very, very competitive spaces. Like I’ve made athleisure work, for example. And I would say athleisure is probably one of the most competitive spaces, period, even outside the world of drop shipping.

[00:24:50] Right. And then I’ve had like very, very analytical kind of finding crazy slices. The market. Like I tried modest clothing, which is kind of like conservative clothing that, you know, very religious woman will wear. Um, and that was all based on niche analytics, Google trends, all this forecasting. And that absolutely bombed right.

[00:25:11] Um, so I haven’t found any traction with this kind of niche analysis stuff. I really think it’s like, okay, you find a niche you’re interested in. You think the products can be priced at a competitive price point. Um, compared to institutional, um, competitors. You found a good supply of products, um, on, on, on this particular niche, and you just kinda have to roll with it and really try to make it work and try to execute the right way because.

[00:25:36] I think, uh, you know, at the end of the day it’s, it’s execution that differentiates you. And that’s kind of the difference between a brand and niche approach and this general store, single product approach where you kind of aren’t differentiating your kind of product driven, right. And a brand new approach.

[00:25:52] You’re not product driven. You are kind of brand driven. Like you’re not trying to find a viral product. You’re trying to find a  viral brand, right? Like. I have a men’s apparel and accessories dropshipping business where it’s very, very provocative. Like, you know, the messaging is geared towards like, very masculine, um, almost like, like, like Southern, uh, you know, kind of like misogynistic.

[00:26:18] Like they love seeing really hot girls. I love the messaging of like, you know, like, be a man, this kind of stuff. Right? And that brand. Brandon niche drop dropshipping store is selling a lot of men’s products that you see all over all the express and you see other people trying to sell all the time, but they just, they can’t provide that feel.

[00:26:40] Right. And that feel is the reason why my drop shipping products sell. And that’s also why I’m not on this kind of like endless rat race, continuous path of always looking for new products. I’m not, when I build one of my sites and it starts. Getting great numbers and it’s profitable. It lasts forever.

[00:26:57] Like my first profitable business, I told you about that, that blew up in August 12 2018 that is still around today, and it’s still doing tens of thousand dollars in sales a day, right? And on black Friday, I did $120,000 in sales on black Friday. So. Over a year, it’s still turning and I haven’t changed anything on that website sense.

[00:27:19] Like that’s just the example of why I love the approach I took to drop shipping compared to a lot of the other ones out there. I agree, man. I think you and I have similar, similar thinking. I like, you know, I guess a couple of takeaways summarizes. Yeah, I think you have to kind of enjoy the product and then have an angle for the product line, right?

[00:27:36] Like the target market, you know, and. Not just the product, right, but who you’re selling to and how you’re selling. It was a couple of my big takeaways from what you, you’re explaining and in evergreen, right? You can call evergreen. You’re trying not to find these fidgets in her store or whatever. You know, you’re trying to find something that has a longterm, uh, demand with a steady supply, with selling multiple products.

[00:28:02] Right. You know, if you start an outerwear store, sure. Maybe one particular winter jacket is selling better than the others, but it’s overall kind of spread out. You know, it’s not like as concentrated on one skew that determines your business. Right. And I think that’s a big source of stability. And it’s also like how you execute the niche is so important.

[00:28:23] So instead of. Like, let’s say you make a sh, a sneaker store, a sneaker drop shipping store, and you’re going for a very like Footlocker vibe, and that doesn’t work. Instead of scrapping it, well, you can do is completely rebrand and now go for kind of like a, a urban, you know, streetwear sneaker vibe, right?

[00:28:42] Or maybe if that doesn’t work, you can try another sneaker vibe of, okay, we’re going to do like artists in kind of like very unique, crazy design sneakers. Or, or maybe another one is kind of like a massive discount one, right? Like we’re going to go for like a Payless shoe store, massive discounts like shoe Emporium type of vibe.

[00:28:59] Like these are all different ways to execute and that impacts your website, impacts your creatives and perhaps your, your targeting and it impacts your messaging at the ad copy and product page level where it’s like, you know, that’s why I always tell people like, there’s no such thing as looking for the perfect niche because.

[00:29:19] You can make your niche the perfect niche by figuring out what the perfect way of pushing that niches. Right. Totally. Totally agree. And um, yeah, I sleep you have a good product. Yeah. Like you could target different, yeah. Just to reiterate, it’s true. You can, you can leverage that with multiple stores and multiple, yeah.

[00:29:36] Multiple positionings. Exactly what you said. This has been fascinating so far, man. Thanks for sharing so much. I think you said you, yeah, of course. Like a lot of times you gotta hustle. You gotta do everything yourself. You learned ad manager, you were grinding your. Parent’s basement and things like that.

[00:29:51] But you did mention, uh, later, of course, you have a team now. Pretty impressive. I’d love to hear also a little bit of a recap of some of the structure, but you said it was like your first hire thing. She’s even still with you. You know, I, I also have some longterm team members now, six years going. Um, so I’d love to hear, you know, some of the structure and the, you know, building that team, which I think is probably a really must say, pretty critical, right?

[00:30:15] For the longterm scalability. Yeah. So I actually think a lot of the other players, right? Like I don’t think I make the best creatives in the world because you have very expensive agencies that can make great creatives, right? And you have great people that know Photoshop. I don’t think I’m the best person at ad strategy.

[00:30:31] I think I’m pretty damn good. Right? But I wouldn’t say like I’m the best, right? I go onto these communities that I’m part of and Facebook, and I know people that are like. Wizards with the algorithm, right? Like they know every little thing about it. Uh, you know, one of my friends like Neil Patel, for example, great authority in the space.

[00:30:48] Like he is a wizard with Facebook as like, he can tell you everything about the algorithm, everything. I’m not that level, but what was able to give me these, these sort of crazy first year results and, and growing so fast and, and moving forward, you know, even growing faster is exactly that. It’s infrastructure.

[00:31:06] And I think that’s something that digital entrepreneurs kind of neglect because everything seems so make belief, right? It’s kind of like, you know, you have a virtual storefront, you have virtual customers, you have VAs, and then you have yourself. So it’s very easy to kind of approach this business. In a sense of like, okay, I’m the driver.

[00:31:27] These guys are kind of just like tools and I just need to kind of like drive everything and, and I think how I described that as like, that’s kind of the hustle mentality. What I try to bring to the table is you have to hustle in the beginning. Everyone does, right? You have to do everything. You have to wear a lot of hats.

[00:31:44] But. A critical point in your experience as a digital entrepreneur and especially in eCommerce, is when you go from being a hustler to an actual business owner and what businesses do and what they hang their hat on is infrastructure, right? Like. [00:32:00] You, you’re thinking about the biggest fortune 500 companies.

[00:32:03] It’s not like the CEO does everything, right? The CEO sets vision and sets priorities and make sure things are moving along, but we’re really what’s generating those billions and billions of dollars in revenue. It’s like this massive infrastructures, this massive machine that’s full of all these cards, right?

[00:32:18] So that’s what I tried to build, and that’s what I approached this business with from the very beginning. And I think that set myself apart from a lot of people that kind of like just are hustlers right? And my, my kind of obsession and what I do very well is I’m obsessed with freeing up my own time. So I, I love automating, right?

[00:32:40] And I kind of have three rules of automation. Number one, it’s, I first have to understand something before I try to automate it, right? So I have to have had experience in it or done research in it. So customer support is a good example. I had to. Respond to a bunch of emails in the beginning to try to understand my customer.

[00:33:02] Trying to understand the rate you should be responding emails, um, at, and to try to understand, you know, what are things that works with customers? Before I decided to offload that into someone else. My criteria two is. Um, you have to be able to determine metrics of what good automation means and bad automation means, right?

[00:33:20] Which means, you know, you have a, you have a good understanding of what good and bad is, so you can actually evaluate the team members. You choose to actually automate that process. And then finally is you should automate everything in your life that you don’t think is something you do that generates the most value with your time.

[00:33:40] So even if you do particular tasks within your business very, very well, it doesn’t mean that you should do it. If someone else can do it 90% well, and in the time that you’ve saved, you can do something else. So that’s kind of the principles I took it with. And yeah, like you said, I started out earliest things on, and it was like customer support, right?

[00:34:00] And, and this, this lady that, um, I was doing customer support with. You know, I was literally like training her literally like how to respond to customers. Like even like how to speak English. And sometimes it’s like, you know, how to like, do with angry people, how to deal with like the better business Bureau, you know, how to deal with all these crazy situations.

[00:34:20] And you know, in the process we were kind of figuring it out together. But what I look for when I hire even VA’s is I actually look for like an entrepreneurial or ownership minded mentality, right? Like. . There’s a big difference in someone that is like, okay, you tell me what to do and I can do it. Versus someone that’s like, okay, you tell me what I do, but when I get stuck I’m going to try to find the right answer.

[00:34:47] I’m going to try to implement that right answer and then update you later. I would much rather have that second person, even if they mess up. Like you know, the deal with the angry customer, they deal with it in completely wrong way, but they had the courage to actually go and do that. That speaks volumes to me because I think of that person as being a problem solver.

[00:35:05] And this lady is exactly that, right? So start off answering emails, like making $4 an hour or $5 an hour, whatever, like that standard. Upwork VA rate is how you fast forward throughout time. You know, now she’s managing all of my customer support on this massive business. She has like 20 employees and like an office in the Philippines.

[00:35:27] And she’s very much like, you know, she’s now like a big member of the organization and, and you know. She’s making a really, really good income for herself, and that’s just like, I think goes back to the principle of you want to hire and you want to train slowly. Right? You want to find the right people and you want to really take the time and resources, invest in them, and you want to fire quickly.

[00:35:51] And if they let you down and you can get glimpses of their, they’re not the person you’re looking for. You’ve got to move on. And took me to cycle around multiple [00:36:00] candidates. Do you want even your initial employees to eventually mature into managers? So now even the hiring process is something I’ve automated, right?

[00:36:08] So tying back to this infrastructure, it’s like, okay, we’ve automated our business to the point where. It’s kind of like clockwork, you know? It’s like, okay, we come up with a concept, you know, it’s like our team is doing research on potential good niches and good products, right? And we come up with which needs you want to go for.

[00:36:28] Then we have a team that can actually go ahead and source those products. After those products are sourced, we have a team that can go ahead and give those products titles and give them descriptions, right? Americans that are doing this right, and now after these, these products are described and title, we have a graphics team that can go in there and clean up the express images, right?

[00:36:47] Remove Chinese texts, remove Chinese logos, like remove anything that that makes a little sketchy. Put everything on a uniform, white background, even Photoshop some graphics on top if we have to emphasize certain features. And then we have another team. That can kind of build a website and build multiple iterations of it, and now it’s like, okay, bam, it’s kinda gone through this assembly line.

[00:37:09] All I have to do now is just launch ads, and all my business partner has to do is like make the creatives. Right? Those are kind of two things that we are still very indexed on because we’ve, we’ve realized that’s a worthy part of our time. But you know, we have the capability of building very, very professional.

[00:37:29] Like crisp, high conviction brand and niche websites in the course of like one week. Right? So if you think about it, we can launch like four different sites with a lot of products that are very high conviction each month. And if we have a success rate, and I can tell you my historical success rates around, you know, why not have five stores, one out of six stores, uh, I would say in historically is right.

[00:37:56] One out of five stores will succeed. So every single month, you know, we’re launching four stores or five stores, we only need to get one success, and that success will scale up to a seven figure eight figure eCommerce business, right? And every single time we lose, or we fail one of these niches, you know, we lose like two thousand three thousand dollars.

[00:38:20] But every time we succeed, it turns into now a massive, massive stream of income, right? A massive stream of revenue into our business. So that’s kind of the benefit of building out infrastructure is it took me a very, very long time to do this, but it’s paid a lot of dividends. And to highlight this, just like how different my mentality is with so many people in the spaces, you know, from August, 2018 to December, 2018.

[00:38:47] We probably did around $5 million in sales. Right. That’s a lot of, that’s a lot of revenue. And guess how much money I actually personally took home. I only personally took home $35,000 and a big part of that is because we spent so much resources and time and effort. Right. Especially resources, building out infrastructure.

[00:39:08] Yeah. I actually ended up acquiring my eight my Ali express agent that was basically supplying all my products. So now that’s how I inherited sort of this team in China that’s now leading all my procurement, a lot of my product research, you know, my fulfillment sort of, um, and logistics processes. Right?

[00:39:27] And. Now, you know, from August, 2018 December, 2018 we did 5 million. Then from January all the way until the following August, right? A year, like the second half of that year, we did $15 million in revenue because we spent from August to December, really just building out this team and this infrastructure and we’re still building our infrastructure.

[00:39:49] You know, like we are never stopping building out infrastructure. Like recently we just onboarded someone that’s kind of going to be managing and leading. Our entry into foreign markets, right? Like developing countries, which is a big opportunity by the way, like leading the translating of stores, leading the research into looking for payment processors in those domestic markets and making it work that way.

[00:40:10] You know, like, this is someone’s job now. Now this is something I don’t have to think about. So at the end of each day, what do I get? I get updates from my higher level managers. And they tell me like, Hey, this is what’s going on. And really what I’m looking for is like, is there anything messed up? Is there anything I have to engage on?

[00:40:26] If not, I don’t even have to worry about this core business that is growing and growing and growing. Right. And what this structure really replicates or kind of alludes to is your classic. Fortune 500 company structure, right? And I think when you take these core business principles that everyone else in the world is applying, and you take it into a space like digital entrepreneurship where things are moving so fast, you mix those things together, you get some really, really, really magical results.

[00:40:59] And we’ve kind of created this drop shipping machine, if you will. That’s really exciting. I think one point I remember you talking and nobody likes chargebacks and you had to better business. You’ve mentioned a little bit with your area helping out, but I’m just curious to structure or you know, even just the risk, you know, I think that’s one of the big fears of drop shipping is, is these chargebacks or, uh, or shipping issues.

[00:41:24] I’d love to hear, I know you had this. Really funny kind of story where your, uh, your strategies, I’m not sure what you’re willing or you want to share that, but I don’t know about you. I’ll admit it. I’ve gotten shut down on PayPal. I’ve, I’ve gotten shutdown on, on different payment processors. Uh, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll see it, but, uh, there must be some, some kind of chaos there, I hope.

[00:41:49] Unless you know, there must be. I also had, I’ve, I’ve had a shut down by Facebook. I’ll be very transparent. I’ve had problems with, uh, you know, chargebacks before I actually got kicked off a payment processor, but I got kicked off PayPal before, you know, like terrible, by the way, for everyone that’s listening and you’re drop shipping, like don’t use PayPal.

[00:42:10] Hey, bow, go on air right now and say, PayPal is a scammy organization. They rip, they’re not a bank so they can steal your money. Basically. I don’t like them at all. Um, so, you know, in terms of chargebacks and this, this, uh, drop shipping thing. I completely agree. And I think that’s why the general store and single product store methods are kind of dying because in those methods, you don’t have an incentive to build infrastructure, right?

[00:42:34] Like when your products are going to go viral and the die anyways. Why would you invest money into faster logistics or invest. Time and energy, and to negotiate with your supplier for branded products, packaging, et cetera. So what I sort of teach, and I have an eCommerce education group, when I started to teach people to do in there is exactly what I did.

[00:42:55] We leverage Ali express, drop shipping at the beginning as kind of a test of concept, right? Like you are. You’re going beginning is to scale, but you’re, you’re scaling very consciously and proactively, which means. As you’re scaling and you’re worried about selling and selling and selling, the one thing that everyone can do right off the bat is offer good customer support and offer lenient customer, uh, support policy, right?

[00:43:22] You’ll be surprised how many dropshippers like don’t even give refunds. Don’t give free exchanges and like have 12 hour, like 20 hour, 30 hour response times on email. It’s like, you know, regardless of your product quality. Those three things are already screwing you over, right? So right off the bat, if you just are lenient with customer support, even though it cuts into your bottom line, that is a big thing for sustainability, right?

[00:43:51] Number two, if you’re responding to emails and you’re actually nice and you’re very customer oriented, right? And you’re getting good response times like I  have four to six hour customer support response times. You know, and that’s what makes people happy. And I offer customer support via email and also my Facebook page, right?

[00:44:08] It’s through Zendesk. It’s all like integrated ticketing like that is already can go a long way in terms of your feedback score and also your chargebacks. Furthermore, something you do right off the bat is you can install sort of charge back management, right? There’s services like charge back nine one one and that’s the one that I use.

[00:44:28] There’s bunch of them out  there, but they will actually claw back. 20 to 30% of your chargebacks, like giving customers an automatic refund. So there you go. Your charging backs are reduced by another 20 30% and then as you are scaling the moment, you hit higher and higher numbers. What happens is you’re also in the process consolidating the agents you’re working with.

[00:44:49] And I’ll express in the beginning, you’re kind of sourcing randomly. You have like hundreds of people you’re working with. But as it progresses, you know, and you, and you start off by your best selling products, you engage that age and you’re like, Hey, I’m also selling all of these other products. You know, these agents basically aren’t factories, right?

[00:45:06] They can actually technically supply any product under the sun. What you see on all express suppliers, these suppliers are actually just people with facilities that buy from factories and they’re kind of the middleman between you and the factories, right? They’re kind of a fulfillment house. It’s buying from factory.

[00:45:22] So as an agent that you’re doing a large volume with and now you can move all your other products with them too, is now going to be really, really receptive to whatever you have to propose. Because what all the express agents want more than anything else, is they actually want stability. Because if you think about it from the agent’s perspective, it really sucks for them that dropshippers come by a lot of their stuff and then die like within two weeks or a month, right?

[00:45:48] Like they hate that because they are the ones taking inventory risk. If someone’s selling some viral product and they decide on their end, okay, I’m going to stock up a lot of this product because this guy’s going hard, right? Then they all of a sudden get kicked off of Facebook, or they get banned from the payment processor.

[00:46:03] This agent just got left with a bunch of inventory they can’t sell, right? So an agent wants to ability, you want stability. It’s actually kind of a perfect fit. So once you start consolidating your suppliers and you’re starting doing high volume, I would say if you’re doing 50 orders a day. Or at least two or $3,000 a day or more in revenue.

[00:46:21] Suppliers are already gonna listen to you. And what you can ask them at this point is like, Hey, can we talk about. Branding are my products, right? Like, you know, if it’s clothing items, can we put a tag on them? Um, you know, can we kind of like standardized shipping the next time you order from the factory?

[00:46:38] Can we get custom packaging done? Uh, you know, can we get faster? Logistics E packet is a terrible shipping option. You have to use it in the beginning, right? You have to, you have to use in the beginning, but whenever you can, you have to be proactive and negotiate with your supplier, even if it means you paying.

[00:46:56] A few dollars more for another shipping method. Right? So the shipping methods I use right. Gets me to the United States in 10 days, and it gets me to continental Europe and five to 10 days even faster. It gives me to Australia and 12 days, Canada, 12 days, and all the other countries that I sell in and 14 days where I was, I don’t even sell them them.

[00:47:16] So that’s what you do. So it’s kind of like tying this full circle. Yeah, there’s a lot of risks with drop shipping. What do they say? They’re like, Oh, drop shipping is dead. It’s not that. It’s just dad, if you’re doing it in a bad way. And I actually, I [00:47:30] like it when Facebook kicks these people off when merchant projects kicked them off because they are actually making eCommerce and overall a much better place.

[00:47:38] So then for the people that are proactive and are doing their homework and are purposeful in delivering value, delivering good customer support, and always kind of in the stage where my CPMs. Went down right after that day, literally like a day after magically down and my return on ad spend Rose up and it’s like, hell yeah.

[00:47:59] Right? I just got rewarded for doing something I didn’t really have to do and that environment, but guess what? I always knew I always had the foresight that this was going to happen because it makes sense, right? The one thing you look at, the one thing I’ve learned in this world is that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, right?

[00:48:17] Like. If there is a business model out there that is ruining people’s lives, like making people angry, making payment processors angry, and just like kind of making everyone angry. There’s no way the world would allow it to continue. Like there’s going to be an end of the tunnel eventually, right? So all these scammy infoproducts that are out there, we saw for the first time recently, like the FTC crackdown, and one of the biggest.

[00:48:42] Amazon core sellers out there. Right? And there’s like the first time the FTC was like going after a faker, which is crazy, but this is the same thing as drop shipping, right? It’s like if you piss people off a bunch, you are going to get caught eventually or else what kind of world do we live in? Right?

[00:48:57] Like there are so many players that are trying to get you out of the marketplace because you should be out of the marketplace. So yeah, in the beginning, when you start dropshipping, you’re going to piss some people off. But. All a customer angry customer ever really wants is just for you to refund them and reply in a timely manner.

[00:49:16] And in fact, we actually negotiate with our customers. We’ll say things like, okay, how about we refund you 30% and you keep the products and they’re usually pretty happy. And that plus chargeback management and, and lenient returns policy, consistent customer support emails that is already things fully under control before you have a team around you.

[00:49:35] And then the moment you can. You start making money, you start scaling. You want to put that money back into your business and to start developing infrastructure because there’s no, like your niche. There’s nothing wrong with your niche. There’s, there’s only something wrong with your business practices.

[00:49:50] The moment you fix your business practices, which you can once you scale and have capital, right? Then your niche is evergreen, then it’s a, it’s a moneymaking machine, right? Because in a world where customers did like your products. Now your business is going to last forever, and that’s kind of what we’ve created with the infrastructure that we’ve built, right?

[00:50:07] Um, and. That’s, that’s the type of dropshipping that I teach, and that’s the type of drop that’s only relevant to this branded niche approach. Yeah. I love it, man. I mean, I think we’re on similar wavelengths. I mean, it’s just people that will come and go, right? And there’s trends that’ll come and go, but I think what you’re, yeah, what you’ve been sharing today is, uh, is, is exactly what people should be thinking.

[00:50:27] It’s not even really called drop ship. You’re just really, it’s e-commerce. You’re just selling a good product and you’re trying your best to deliver the best customer experience. Right. That’s, that’s really what it boils down to. Whether you can wholesale this, you could, you could, uh, you know, you could do anything you wanted really.

[00:50:44] Right. If you want to stop, drop shipping it if you want it. Right. It’s not about the, the draw Shamal you’re just delivering a good customer experience. Wealth, you know, from the ad ex adds to the conversion to the, you know, after, after sales support. I mean, that’s an S was a, that’s what’s helping you succeed.

[00:51:01] Yeah, and it’s like, when I tell this story, people probably visualize like, Oh my gosh, Kevin is some genius that kind of just did everything the right way. It’s like, not at all. Like I got screwed so many times and burned so many times, so it’s a learning experience, right? Like I learned after I got my first ad account banned.

[00:51:17] Right. Then it’s like I learned, I first run in with the BBB and it’s like, okay, I learned after a payment processor, Leary kicked us off their platform and we almost went bankrupt. They held $380,000 for 180 days. And we were at the point where literally like my business partner and I were like about to pawn our personal belongings to try to keep our business afloat because we started to pay the costs, right?

[00:51:42] And we still pay the advertising costs on the product costs, but we weren’t getting any money. And that was just like that. That was like a wake up call. And, and I think like what. What blows my mind about the drop shipping space is like how many people get banned off Facebook and get banned off their payment processor, and their first instinctual response is like, okay, I’m going to try to figure out a way to keep doing what I’m doing.

[00:52:06] And it’s like, well, why is that your first response? Why is your response not, I’m going to try to fix the reasons why I got bad, because, sure. The second part. Seems like it’s, the thing is like the second part is even harder than the first. I would say the first part is harder, right? It’s like hopping from ad account ad account to add a cow and like getting paying people to use their personal Facebooks and creating this elaborate system of like this craziness.

[00:52:35] It’s like, that’s an exhausting dude, you know, was like, that’s nuts, right? It’s so much easier to be like, Hey, supplier. How much do I have to pay to get some faster logistics? Or oftentimes if you talk to them and it’s like, Hey, supplier, how do I get better quality products? The next time you go to the factory, Hey, you know what I did?

[00:52:54] It was like, Hey, if I go out and buy some jackets from, you know, a store like a, like a legitimate brand, like a legitimate store retail store that’s selling kind of the same type of products, you know, if I buy you these products and all of us sizes. Can you use these as the molds for the next time you go to the factory and order the next round of inventory and the supplier like, yeah, you know, it’s like sizing doesn’t make my cost more expensive.

[00:53:19] It just makes things more accurate. And all of a sudden it’s like, bam, I solved my sizing issue, which is a massive issue with obviously Ali express, right? So there’s these things that you just have to be proactive doing. And my overall vice for everyone that’s listening is when. The eCommerce world gives you a sign that you fucked up or you messed up, right, like you messed up and to keep messing up and just trying to evade is never the right response.

[00:53:47] Agreed. Agreed. I mean, you have to adapt. I mean, you’re not going to. Well, we can try to not use PayPal sometimes that’s hard, but try. I try, but, uh, yeah, you kinda gotta use the Google and the Facebooks of the world. See, you know, you can’t really beat him. You know, he can’t keep making new accounts and trying to your ear old broken way.

[00:54:05] So yeah, you have to adapt and, uh, and make it work longterm. Cause it’s only gonna get more intense. Like we saw feedback in more and more strict over time. Right. And payment processors like Shopify payments. Used to not care at all. Like they built their business around drop shipping, right? Um, they, they, they own Oberlo and we saw for the first time this past year is Shopify payments and Stripe,

[00:54:30] you know, said like they’re not working with bad dropshippers anymore, which is kind of groundbreaking news because they build their business almost working with bad dropshippers.

[00:54:39] Right? So the tides are all pointing in one direction and it’s going to happen no matter what. So it’s really up to. You know, everyone, if they want an adapt and if they don’t want to adapt, they’re going to die. And you know, the more people that die and are irresponsible, like the lower my CPMs are going to be in, the better my business does, right.

[00:54:58] So. Agreed. Man, this has been fascinating, man. I really appreciate you sharing so openly. I think maybe we’ll get you to give back, God if there’s an opportunity, because it’s so, it’s been really fun. I had a great time, but I think you’ve got to wrap up for today. Um, what’s, I’m sure people might want to find you, or what you’re doing online is their websites or Facebooks or what’s the best place to send people.

[00:55:19] Yeah, definitely. So, uh, the, the first thing is there’s my personal Instagram that has links to sort of everything. So you can follow me on Instagram at Kevin Zhang official. So

[00:55:30] that’s K, E, V, I, N, Z, H, A,N , G official. Uh, find me on Instagram. And then, you know, through Instagram you’ll find links too. I have a YouTube channel that I recently started.

[00:55:41] I’m sure if you looked up Kevin Zhang e-commerce, you’d find it as well or on, basically, I’m actually giving out a free drop shipping course via YouTube and I’m releasing a video every single two days. And this started two days ago. So now there’s four days ago. So now there’s two videos up. I’m releasing a new educational video every single two days, cause this is kind of

[00:56:00] A year for me where I made a determination where I want to change the world of e-commerce education and at least put some of these scammers and these fakers out of business by providing a lot of high quality content. Um, so there’s that. And then I have my own education group on Facebook called generation E, and it’s free to join.

[00:56:20] I do a live call every single weekend, and it’s just literally, you hop on the live call, you can ask me any single question. Again, I’m trying to give value back to everyone because. Like e-commerce has completely changed my life, and I’ll just give my final sort of words to everyone that’s listening. If you’re listening to this and you’re kind of like struggling a little bit, or you feel a little stock, or you know you’re kind of indecisive, or you feel like your business is not growing as fast as it could be, just like mad, just, just, just really take in this crazy world that we live in, like we live in this digital world where.

[00:56:53] Crazy, crazy things are happening that never could happen 20 years ago. Like, you know, I’m going to use Albers and example. They reached from zero to $2 billion in valuation. Zero to 2 billion, right? And two years. Right? And this is the eCommerce business. They went from zero to 2 billion in two years. This just has never happened.

[00:57:12] 30 40 20 even 10 years ago. Right hand, we’re, we’re living in this. Awesome, awesome world full of opportunities, especially in e-commerce, especially in drop shipping as well. And just like, I don’t know, just like just, just harness this energy and keep pressing forward because I’ve certainly hit my fair share of failures.

[00:57:32] And I would say even today, I fail a lot more than I succeed. And like I told you guys, only 20% of my drop shipping niches end up working out. But that doesn’t sway me. So until you’ve built out. Five stores and they’ve all failed, like there’s no excuse to even consider quitting. And with that, I’ll, uh, I’ll, um, you know, I’ll thank you for having me on the podcast and really appreciate sharing these insights and I hope all the listeners found a lot of value out of this.

[00:57:59] Yeah, it definitely is valuable, man. Thanks so much, Kevin. Michael, you have a great rest of your debt. You too. Thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. And we have a membership GFA vip.com mentioned it over the years and we’ve been upgrading. We have an amazing new forum. It’s a new and improved forum.

[00:58:19] We and then the old one was hard to maintain. Honestly. We have courses and we have members calls. We have masterminds, we have private. Community events. If you’re just getting the inside,

[00:58:30] what’s happening here at colo for me is if you really enjoy what you’re listening to and you want to hang out with some crazy people like us, get discounts across border summit and more, check it out@gfavip.com.

[00:58:43] Also, we have a new keyword name. If you’re in the inside, you might see a check it out. Thank you, Kevin for sharing. I’m sure listeners got a lot of value out of that one. And uh, I really. I mean, it was all about sharing and putting things forward. And I hope you all

[00:59:00] are enjoying these, these shows. So we are just rocking head, getting closer and closer to episode 300 have so many amazing shows, already recorded, so many more guests to get onto the show lined up.

[00:59:12] I hope everybody, uh, likes these. We, you know, we do have a little bit of a wide range. Of course, you show us, like with Kevin, with eCommerce and. Various, um, ways of selling online. And of course they have the ones like my uncle Gary talking about some kind of radical or crazy

[00:59:30] ideas, give you some inputs and insights on that and, you know, corporate structure, international business and of course, some stories.

[00:59:36] And we still bump into China and I’m trying to get more into Southeast Asia too. Actually. I just spoke in a ups  campus in keys on city. Uh, there is the 23rd of. 2020 January where, uh, we’re talking about China sourcing and all the Philippines eCommerce businesses are interested to expand there. And I’m really exhausted, but, but also, you know, will do amazing things.

[01:00:03] Alpha rocks is close around and working hard there and working hard on just building up a, building up a legacy, you know, life is, life is short. And, uh, I hope everyone had a good Chinese new year or air in the middle of Chinese new year. Now. So I hope that is, uh, going as planned and everybody is enjoying that.

[01:00:23] So we are just pushing forward and making things happen. I’m, I’m really exhausted. I just spoke planning more events, working so hard and cross border summit. I mean, it’s not until November, but so much work to do already planning it. So we are, um, we are full steam ahead here. If you’re on a GFA VIP membership, make sure you check out the new and upgraded forum forum, uh, at GFA.

[01:00:47] Vip.com and, uh, get some inside info about what’s happening in the community. And some are more private things. We’re really trying to add value to those that want to even do more for us and getting

[01:01:00] more value. I’d love to work with some of you more. Do you have a VIP? Um, but I really have a pounding headache and it’s been intense, intense couple of weeks here in Manila, thriller in Manila.

[01:01:12] So thanks so much for listening. Thank you, Kevin, for coming on and sharing. We’re trying our best to build amazing community here in the Philippines and online around the world. Help people make a better life for themselves if they want to just get get down to business and get things done. To get more info

[01:01:30] about running an international business, please visit our website@wwwdotglobalfromasia.com that’s www.globalfromasia.com also, be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed.

[01:01:41] Thanks for tuning in.