Welcome to episode 1 of the travel like a boss podcast. This week's guest is Adam from Los Angeles, California. In this episode Adam discusses his current 9-5 job and how he is desperately trying to build his online ecommerce store so he can quit as soon as possible.
Adam grew up in a small town in Missouri and is married to a Norwegian idol singer.
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Adam grew up in a small town in Missouri and is married to a Norwegian idol singer.
Listen on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/travel-like-a-boss-podcast/id727446851?mt=2
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Episode 01 Show Notes
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Transcription of Episode 01 with Adam
Episode 1: Adam Ecommerce from Los Angeles
Narrator: Welcome to the Travel Like a Boss Podcast. The radio show all about traveling like a boss by being your own boss. Stay tuned for weekly interviews featuring guests that have built their own online businesses. If you would like to have access to our entire back catalog, visit travellikeabosspodcast.com for instant access. And here’s your host Jonny FD.
Johnny: Hey guys what's up! This is Johnny. And today with me I have my buddy Adam. Here, introduce yourself.
Adam: Hi I'm Adam.
Both Laughs.
Johnny: Okay. Adam's one of my buddies. How do we met again Adam?
Adam: We met a long time ago in I think I met you in Vancouver, actually.
Johnny: Yeah we actually met in Canada. Uh we used to both work for the same company and moved on from that. But uh, where are you working at right now before you started this business?
Adam: I do outside sales for a company that will remain nameless. But I sell home improvement products like patio covers, kitchens, roofs.
Johnny: But, you make that sound glamorous, like you’re selling that and you’re making your own money for it.
Adam: It wasn't quite all that. I mean you're definitely working for somebody. It’s a type of thing where any commission job, they’re going to like reel you in by saying “Oh you can set your own paycheck. You get as much money as however hard you want to work.” And to an extent it is true but that extent is ninety hour-weeks and that’s not the best for your psyche or your skin or anything really.
Johnny: Besides the long work hours, I mean when you say ninety hours a week, what was your worst schedule actually like?
Adam: My worst schedule was wake-up, well wake-up at seven but worst schedule start, be at the office at 8:30 for the morning meeting. And then run appointments throughout the day so someday you might always be working all day long, someday you might get an early appointment and it doesn’t go well so you have like a couple hours of downtime or whatever. The latest I would get home is 2 in the morning. So I’d have multiple days a week working from 8:30 am till 2 in the morning. It’s a long time.
Johnny: Wow. I used to have a sales job as well right out of college. I went to a four year university for my bachelors. I thought I scored a great job with a great company. It was a big American company and I got to wear a suit and tie. Usually it’s a white dress shirt from Costco. I thought it was great but I ended up realizing after a year that I’m in a cubicle, I’m working in a forty fifty hours a week on this commission job and some months you’re not motivated you know because you’re working for someone else. I mean, when did you realize you stopped loving your job or did you ever love it?
Adam: I think I loved it at first because the paycheck’s really good and I, like, when I got the job I was pretty broke and I had a wife and still have a wife. That hasn’t changed.
Johnny: Not after hearing this podcast.
Adam: So it’s like I had bills to pay that I had no way of paying. So at first even though I was working crazy hours I kept justifying it in my head. I would say stuff like “Oh it’s only temporary. It’s just for now. I need the money.” And so at first I could justify it. And then, it started not being as fun but I didn’t like, I felt like I couldn’t really think it wasn’t fun anymore because I was like “wait I’m still making good money what do I have to complain about. I didn’t want to be ungrateful.” So I sat down and added my, I actually recorded my hours for a week and I broke down like how much money I made I think that week I made like seven grand in a week. It’s a lot of money. But I broke it down and I’m not sure of it was the same week but whatever week I broke it down for I made less than 17 bucks an hour so it’s like, it was ridiculous. Considering how much you are working.
Johnny: Yeah that makes sense. ‘Coz you’re just at the end of the day you’re trading time for money. And for me, it was the same way I was in a sales job. In the beginning I was very motivated I was excited and I was making good money but after awhile being in the same office, kind of doing the same thing everyday having to be on schedule. At least for me I felt like I just wanted to do the least amount possible and kind of escape eye. But I guess we’ll see that for another day my friends just nicknamed me Mr. Shortcut. And that’s kind of the point of this podcast is figuring out a way where we can live the lifestyle we want. I don’t know if you guys listen to this or read The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris, a big shoutout to him he’s the one that brought me to where I am today. So, Adam and I haven’t seen each other in quite a while before this trip. How long ago was that in Vancouver?
Adam: 9 months.
Johnny: So, a lot have changed in those 9 months. I just got back from THAILAND and we’re actually sitting in his apartment here in Los Angeles. We just spent the whole day working on our ecommerce search to get our website together. That’s really what got us to hang out again was this system. You know Adam tell me a little bit about why you decided to start this?
Adam : Let’s see, I wanted to travel. I want to have a life. I was getting sucked into the world of making money and it was crazy how I thought that it would solve my problems and stresses but it added a lot to it because now I have like, your working that much now you have relationship problems because you are not home enough to take care of that. And now you have health problems because you’re sleeping six hours a night or less. Because I not a very good sleeper and I you’re having like skin problems because you are working too much and you’re stressing out.
Johnny: So, for those who can’t see this video since this is just audio, Adam used to work as an Abercrombie and Fitch model. Remember those guys that stand topless wearing nothing but jeans in front of the mall. That was Adam.
Adam: More or less. I did that at the Grove in Hollywood. Everybody’s been there. Eight bucks an hour.
Johnny: So what actually happened was Adam had messaged me online and he’s been working on copywriting. Actually, how did you get to copywriting anyways? Did you read some books on it? Took a course? Or?
Adam: Let’s see. I got into it because I’ve always loved writing and I’ve done it like creatively, I written like, stories and music and I would love to do that with my free time now that I am you know running an ecommerce store. But I thought hey I was still working like full time at my sales job and I was like “Hey I need my way out of this.” What are my strengths? Writing. So, I read a bunch of articles on how can I actually make money now with writing and it seemed like copywriting was one of the more popular and actual ways to do that so that’s why I started.
Johnny: So Adam came to me just a few weeks ago and basically offered to help me promote the book I wrote 12 Weeks in Thailand. It’s still on Amazon and it’s on the kindle version it’s $9.99. It’s really cheap. And Adam basically came to me saying, “Hey you have, all your reviews are 5-star. Everybody loves this book. You can sell it for a lot more money. Why aren’t you selling it for more?” Then I told him I said, “To be honest, that’s more of a passion project than I have on the side.” Sure it brings in some money but it’s really not my priority or my main source of income. If you asked me six months ago when I was living in Thailand on a budget and I was dead broke. I was literally in Thailand without a return ticket home. No source of income. And that was my source of income. So if you ask me six months ago I would have been like, “Great! Let’s raise the price, let’s do whatever we can.” But this time, I mean what did I tell you?
Adam: You told me it didn’t really matter. You’re like, Dude stop wasting your time. Do something that works and makes real money. I have built a website too.
Johnny: So Adam had another e-book which were gonna and I take a look at it and I helped him do some research to see how many people search for it on google currently.
Adam: This is three months after I spent three months writing it. So..
Johnny: I know this is a little bit hard for me to hear but the honest truth is, you’re never going to make or you’re never gonna replace your income with this book. And I felt really bad because he just spent all his time writing this book. And I told him, even mine which actually is a really good book that people want and people are buying. Being an author really sucks. It’s something that you should do for fun. Because you like writing. Because you love it. But don’t do it for an income. And I told him at the end and said look if you really want to make some money online and you really hate your job check out this new thing I’ve been doing. It’s called ecommerce.
Adam: And I think I started that day.
Johnny: Even though you started that day, within three days you have a site basically up and running.
Adam: Pretty much yeah. I think I actually pulled an all nighter. I went home that night I went to bed. I woke up the next morning and bought the program that you recommended and then I spend whole day working on it and spent literally all night working on it. I stayed up for I think like 48 hours and then it was done.
Johnny: Was it pretty straight forward?
Adam: I’ve never really had experience in web design or anything like that and it’s super basic like you really don’t need to know that much about web design to make a living from the internet but I knew so little that I made a lot of mistakes. And that’s probably why it took so long ‘coz I mean, we set up our second site together and it took us seven hours together.
Johnny: Yeah but that’s kind of you know combining our powers. But actually one of the reasons why I decided to partner with you on the second store is because I saw how determined you are. How hardworking you are for getting your first site up without really much help at all. You know, you did called me a lot and bugged me a lot with it but I actually really appreciated that because I knew that you are serious. You are determined to make it work.
Adam: Yeah.
Johnny: Yeah so, you know basically I think it was in a week ago that we got back together?
Adam: Yeah it was let’s see today is what Thursday? It was not last Monday but the Monday before so like a week and four days.
Johnny: So about ten – eleven days ago, actually what really happened was Adam said to me, “Johnny, I really hate my job. I really want to quit but I need to be able to replace my income before I can.” And there was a little bit of desperation in your voice because I remember you telling me over the phone and said Johnny look I know you’re busy but I’ll pay you $500 to come and help me with the site and I thought you know I didn’t want to take your money especially if you are not making money from it so I said look let me come over and let me figure out what I can help you with. So I took a look at Adam’s first niche and I basically said that you know it looks like you did everything correct. The only thing you can really do is let it sit and let it go through the process and see what happens out of this and I you are going to make money from this niche it will come and if not, take it as a learning experience.
Adam: I said I hate learning experiences as I want money. But it’s actually starting to work now which is really cool.
Johnny: It’s great I mean you made your first sale a couple of days after we set it?
Adam: Yeah. And today, I mean in my first week I made like six sales. Like after my first sale, it just started coming.
Johnny: I think for the first two months. I mean it took me longer than Adam, actually. Mainly because I didn’t have, I had really no experience with building website besides blogs, kind of the basic stuff I have no experience of ecommerce at all. And I had all these problems of getting it set up and I didn’t know what I was doing. But with Adam he has patience and he actually went through all the correct processes. You know you watched all the videos.
Adam: You didn’t?
Johnny: I kind of skipped through all of them. Now I’ve actually watched all the videos over again just to make sure I didn’t skipped anything. Yeah but you know, today you made your big sale so far right?
Adam: Yeah I did. It was a let’s see I sold one of my, I was about to say what it was. I sold one of my products, I sold a $1500 product and I guess like in with the shipping and the money that Shopify takes out, I think the profit in it being right around $250 or $300 for today.
Johnny: Yeah that’s a great profit but a lot of you don’t realize is making $200 or $250 a day in a normal job doesn’t sound like a lot of money and it’s not because after working eight hours for that the government takes a quarter of it or third of it in taxes and you can only work so many hours in so many as a week. The great thing about online store once you set it up is if you’re making a $200 a day let’s do the math for everyone actually. It’s set up to run seven days a week even on weekends. Even though you’re on vacation. Even when you’re sick. So it runs thirty days a week I mean a month. That’s actually six thousand dollars in profit per month if you make one of those sales per day. And you know, also we get the big sales a day. You might get a couple of small ones a day.
Adam: You know let me calculate that for forty bucks. Even you hit like forty bucks is super super reasonable.
Johnny: I mean forty bucks is super easy to get. And per day, for making sales.
Adam: That’s still $1200. That’s enough to like, pay your rent.
Johnny: Yeah that’s $1200 a month in your pocket in cash.
Adam: That’s like, even if you want to keep working your day job and have this on the side, you have like an extra $1200 to spend.
Johnny: Yeah. I usually recommend you guys not to quit your day jobs to get everything set up and running and kind of have this as a secondary income until it replaces it. Adam kind of did the opposite where..
Adam: I was in a car crash.
Johnny: I’m glad you’re okay now. It was almost kind of good timing I guess.
Adam: I was in a car crash then I had to stay home from work. And I still can only work like three days a week and I had all the time to get started and set up. Really if you spend, I mean if you dedicate two hours every day, you can still have it up within two weeks.
Johnny: Yeah what I did in the beginning when I was setting up my first store was anytime I felt like I wanted to watch tv or do something kind of lazy, instead I’ll just be working on the site coz its actually kind of fun. It’s basically like, playing a video game. You’re leveling up, you’re collecting items.
Adam: Pretty much.
Johnny: And now that it’s up and running it’s like playing an online game on the shopify app on the phone to notify us every time we make a sale. And we just kind of go back and forth and every time we make a sale we hold out our phone like, “Yeah!”I know you just got started and you haven’t made that many sales yet where’s been the most random time or place that you made a sale?
Adam: Let me think, the most random time or place. Oh! So I think Monday of this week I was at my day job, my sales job and we do a lot of driving. I was riding with my friend Josh and I was at the passenger seat and I was pretty much like I had my computer on my lap I was like working on files offline while we were driving and we were having a really shit day. We weren’t getting sales. Everyone was kicking us out of their house. That sort of thing. And then I got like a notification on my phone and I was like “Okay I made a sale on my website and I’m even making a sale on my job today.”
Johnny: Yeah it’s awesome. I actually keep a notepad on my iPhone with random places I made a sale. Some of my favorite ones is, I like being woken up in the morning with a sale. And you know usually, I set my phone you know so it doesn’t disturb me to at least 8:30 ‘coz I don’t like waking up early. But 8:30 to something, I got a text saying “Hey! You made a sale.” Which is awesome way to start the day. I’ve also got one while watching UFC fight which is my favorite sport. In the middle of it I’m cheering, I’m screaming and I see my phone like, “Yeah!” The most random is probably at a strip club. Two of my buddies got married this month which is why I’m in town and wow in one of the bachelor parties, you know there are beautiful girls dancing around and my phone’s vibrating and I look at it like and it makes me so happy to get sales at the most random places.
Adam: Dancing at a wedding?
Johnny: So at the wedding itself, I was dancing put my phone down and I came back and I made a sale. So you know, these are kind of just some random, you know random places. It’s working for you all the time. That’s what I really really love about this is, getting back to the lifestyle design, it’s my goal is to be able to travel I’d never travelled until very recently, until a few years ago. My whole life as a kid, you know we went on some family vacations but never really left the country. Never really went anywhere. Never really went to New York. You know, until a few years ago and I grew up in California. I mean it’s not that hard of a flight. I mean what about you Adam; did you travel a lot as a kid?
Adam: Yeah I kind of did actually do a lot of travelling but it’s just like family stuff so I’ve never, like the only place where I’ve paid for myself to go is my wife’s from Norway so we flew to Norway last Christmas. But I mean I can see myself traveling a lot now that I have the freedom of mobility. That’s well it’s not having a million bucks in your bank account, it’s having enough money everyday no matter where you are to live the life that you want.
Johnny: Here’s the thing, sometimes you’re working a lot and you have an excess of money. Sometimes, you’re not working and you have an excess of time. But very very seldom do people have an excess of both money and time at the same time concurrently. And this, it’s always an excuse, if you ever ask a buddy hey let’s go on a vacation somewhere, I can’t get off of work even though I have the money or I don’t have a job or I don’t go to school, I have free time but I don’t have the money for it. And you never get both. But what I actually learned recently which is even crazier is that there is a third component. I was sitting at an a coffee shop out there in San Francisco. And it was a pretty full coffee shop so there’s this old man who’s probably, I think he was seventy. Yeah, I just remembered he was exactly seventy. He sat down next to me and we started chitchatting. And he told me that he just retired this year and now he has all this free time and he doesn’t know what to do with it. I talked to him about his old job he got a good pension. He got a good retirement fund. So he actually has a good amount of excess money and now he has excess time but what he’s missing now is youth and vitality and health. When you’re seventy you’re not going to want to travel the world and party. I know I mean you might want to go, you might want to do certain things but most like you’re not going to be able to do the things that you wish you could’ve done at your age right now. So for me, it’s you know, I’m already 32, Adam’s lucky he’s a lot younger. I wish I would’ve started this ten years ago but at the same time I’m happy I’m starting it now and not ten years from now. So definitely recommend to everyone out there that if you know if you’re holding off on something I mean you have to just take advantage of your life right now. One thing that we did today that’s actually quite easy that everybody could do. But what is really really powerful is write down a to-do list. What do you think about that?
Adam: That’s right. Coz we were at a Panera Bread and we were getting kind of lazy. Like I got a sale so we were like now, let’s work on our website together coz we’re in a couple of different sites. While we’re working on together and we kept not even touching it and we were like alright let’s do a to-do list. And we finally got some stuff done.
Johnny: Well whatever you write down gets done. And it sounds silly everyone’s heard of it before. And I was the same way where I was putting it off like yeah okay I’ll do a mental to-do list and write some stuff on my phone. But physically writing it down makes a huge difference.
Adam: And there’s another thing to keep in mind as well, I’ve made a to-do list before and there’s a mistake that you can do when you are actually making one is adding too much to it and adding so much where you are trying to like, you want to check off the boxes. Okay I got this done. I got this done. But you’re not actually being effective, you’re just being efficient. You’re just getting things done. So it’s really important to only put things on if they’re going to make a significant change in whatever project you’re working on.
Johnny: Yeah it makes sense. So what I do is I actually separate my to-do list which is more of a daily thing where it’s things I’m going to be doing today or within the next few days. And then I have a dream-line list or a three-month, six-month, one-year goal list. And on those I put kind of the bigger things. So I definitely recommend to everyone for that. First I would recommend dream-lining, is basically figuring out what your ideal life would be and writing it down. And just the simple fact that you’re writing it down, chances of it happening is much much greater. Me and Adam haven’t talked about this offline but what would your ideal life be? Don’t worry about you know if it’s immediately possible now, what would your ideal life be right now?
Adam: I don’t like being in one place so I’d love to like have somewhere where I could call home-base. Like an apartment in New York or like a nice house in L.A. and then only see that house maybe like a couple of months total out of the year because I’d be travelling all the time and while I’m travelling I’d love to be playing music in like different venues. So, having the money to be able to travel and the free time to make that music and like put it out there long enough for I have a reputation where I can play around like that.
Johnny: Yeah that’s really cool. And remember these dream-lines change all the time. If you asked me, five years ago what my ideal dream-line would be, it actually sound a bit silly but I wanted to be able to just hibernate and just not be bothered for three month four months even five months and just sleep not to have any responsibilities not to have anything to do. I think that stemmed from all the years of school I went through.
Adam: That sounds awful to me.
Johnny: I know.
Adam: You know ‘coz I remember it would be so antisocial.
Johnny: But like through our high school you know you’re just waiting ‘til you graduate so you can go to college. And once you get to college like, okay you know what, once I graduate college it will be great. And towards the end of college school, you’re about getting your masters or getting your MBA. And you realize man this is just a lie. This thing just never ever ever ends. And once you start working, you think you will be happy as well and you’re not. Most people for the first year you’re excited but after that you realize this sucks as well. Like, the other day we met a guy at Panera Bread. That’s our new favorite shop and this guy had his MBA and we know this because he was bragging to us about his MBA. But Adam tell everyone about this guy.
Adam: Okay so he was like the most, he was very soul-sucking. He had a problem it was me, it was Johnny and it was Jason. They’re both Asian so this dude’s like sitting at the other table has a problem with his computer of course he asked the Asian. What’s wrong with it? So he starts talking to us and he’s like oh you guys run businesses on your computers and we’re like yeah. And he’s like oh that’s really cool and he starts like trying to work with us and literally like starting a business with us out of the blue. He’s just that desperate.
Johnny: He basically said to us, oh you know what, we should work together.
Adam: For no reason, even though you’ve never met me and I seem like a total schmuck.
Johnny: And he starts trying to qualify to us.
Adam: He’s like oh I know how to do this; I have a great team, just give me the chance.
Johnny: Yeah he’s like. I have an MBA, I know Snoop Dogg, everything. And you know, he’s like oh give me your business card. Here is mine. Make sure you e-mail me and finally when we left he was still..
Adam: He was literally as we were leaving he was like oh I would like to start an online business and e-mail you.
Johnny: And I was like Good luck! Good luck!
Adam: And I was like I’m sure you will.
Johnny: I mean that was the first time I felt like a hot chick. You know when guys come up to you, to a girl and say, oh yeah I’ll take you here, I know this person, I know that. I’ll give you a part of that movie. And in your mind just like you know what, this guy is trying way too hard. But I generally felt bad for him because..
Adam: It’s pathetic I mean it’s not like insultingly but like it feels like it’s pathetic and that’s what makes you feel bad. It’s like you feel sorry for that sort of mental state.
Johnny: And I think what it was is I actually checked out his website and he, it’s a legitimate website but it’s one of those things that some kind of marketing consultant. He has his MBA and I think he just no longer relevant. Him and his industry.
Adam: Well, he couldn’t even market himself to some guys at Panera.
Johnny: And what it was is he offered us, he actually said to us, he said Hey if you guys need an investment or some seed money you know I can get it for you. And I said to him you know that is actually exactly the exact opposite of our business model. Our business model is to be able to get started and build a business with no capital, no loans, like very very little upfront cost. I mean, Adam to start your first store online, how much did you spent on a pocket?
Adam: I spent less than two-hundred. I already made it back. It’s been running for two weeks. So..
Johnny: The thing is, imagine if you’re starting a retail business. Or even just let’s say you wanted to sell furniture. Let’s say you want to sell desks and you wanted to start a store that sells furniture. What would you need, alright? A lot of people first need is some kind of an education for it, so a lot of people actually go to a business school to learn to start their own business.
Adam: Two hundred grand.
Johnny: Alright that’s two hundred grand. And two years or four years of your life. And then you will rent a retail location, what’s that?
Adam: That’s going to be, I.. I don’t know I have no idea. Thousands a month.
Johnny: You got to furnish it, you got to buy cash register, you got to sign up for electricity bills, hire employees, train them. You know all those stuff. At a pocket you’re looking minimum fifty thousand if not five hundred thousand dollars starting business.
Adam: That's not even with stocking inventory.
Johnny: Yeah and then you need you know, first you need to be approved by the furniture company so you would call them up say, hey guys I have this store now I want to be able to carry your products. That’s okay you know, what do you want to buy? There is a new catalog, you have to wholesale which is good. But now you have a hundred dollars worth of inventory sitting in your showroom and if you will come in, they’re basically giving you some money back that you already spent. Now the difference is, let’s say you want to start the same furniture store online and you know you’re selling these tables right, these dining room tables or like a set. You start the website; I mean you start in some kind of training. For us, you know I was very very lucky that I met Anton. For those you know, of you who don’t know, Anton runs a dropshipping ecommerce trading system. And if I didn’t meet him in person and I didn’t you know just become friends with him before hearing about the course, I wouldn’t have believed how easy it was. I wouldn’t really have believed it. But he’s seriously one of the most genuine guys I’ve ever met. And after knowing him for years online and then hanging out with him in Chiang Mai and he saw how broke I was and my old job which was basically as a writer. He offered to teach me a system and it worked and which is why I started my blog JohnnyFD.com for those who haven’t seen it yet. And because of that, a lot of my friends like Adam, my buddy Jason, my buddy Chris, they’re all starting their online business now. And none of us had any training for this before. And the great thing about it was it didn’t cost any of us more than a couple of hundred dollars to start up. There is definitely a lot of time commitment in the beginning. It’s not you know this magical thing over night. But it’s building a legitimate real business. And you do it for so little risk and let’s say you know, the learning experience that Adam had, imagine if you had started a real you know like a real business.
Adam: Well, charge it up to a life lesson.
Johnny: You know I can’t do that I can’t do that as a life’s lesson but on this online store, the great thing is you lost literally zero dollars, in fact, you made money. Even if that niche that you first picked doesn’t become the you know, the hole in one, you always make money from it and you already made back more than you’ve invested.
Adam: And I see it being profitable in the future but even if it was a flop it could be a profitable flop like a small amount.
Johnny: Well I asked Anton before I said hey do you recommend testing the new niche before you commit to it? His answer was actually quite surprising coz as easy way as a test, you can put up some of the ads for the products and not have actual check up on to see who would go check out or some people will even sell it on e-bay to see if anyone’s interested in buying this. So there’s many ways to test, most of it you know, you can spend $100 to test it but Anton actually has ways that are surprising he said that he doesn’t test any products. He just builds a store and starts selling it. And the reason for that is he said some stores don’t do very well. Some niches just don’t sell well online maybe item’s too heavy, too expensive, too cheap, too personal, whatever it is. Some things just don’t sell online. Even the crappy niches still make some money and because you can automate them. There is really no reason why you can’t just leave it up and running and a couple hundred bucks a month from it. So getting back to starting a store it’s two thousand thirteen right now and a complete game changer. I mean Adam, could you doing this before I mean what made you realize hey I can do this?
Adam: I knew it could be done. Just because of things I’ve read in my understanding of my basic understanding of business. Like seeing you be able to do it. Like seeing you being able to do it like in front of me. There’s no excuse not to do it. I was already building websites but I was just was blind so once I had like a framework to put all that effort into I’m like now I can actually head in a direction that I know works instead of trying to work so hard to find something that works.
Johnny: Yeah. For me, for the past many many years. I’ve had blogs and I really enjoy writing I think you know I’ve always enjoyed writing and I’ve always enjoyed creating blogs and sharing my experiences. But it was never a way to make money even with the Johnny FD the original URL was johnnyfd.blogspot.com and my buddy Kurt, ah shoutout to Kurt. He’s like dude why don’t you buy the domain and I said to him, why would I? It’s just my personal blog it’s not for; I’m not trying to make any money from it. And he’s like, dude but it looks so crappy and spammy. But dude it doesn’t matter it’s just my personal blog and like why should I spend money in making something look professional that is just 100% for me, my family and friends on facebook? And he finally said look, see if it’s available if it is just spend the nine dollars and buy it. I was like okay I bet it’s taken anyways. Well I guess I was lucky to have it, it was available and he made me buy it but until this day it’s really just a way where I can connect to my friends and share information about everything in my life that’s benefitted me. From things like you know finding a proper nutrition through the Paleo Diet and bullet-proof from the right physical program like cross-fit, or doing yoga and also to ecommerce and you know, how to travel, how to how to have basic break-the-chains and enjoy the life you want. And there’s so many people that like Adam that I reconnected with because of this new lifestyle.
Adam: Yeah it’s like I think it’s one of the coolest parts. Because I’m starting to realize like people are losing their passion for life like all around me. I went out on a walk last night because I loved being outside. And I walked passed all these houses and I saw, I would like, see these couples sitting on opposite ends of the couch watching TV. And there’s no connection and I hate it because people work so hard that that’s the only thing they can function well to do. It’s like they come home and all they want to do is turn off their brain and watch TV. It makes sense. But, the beautiful thing about running your own business when it’s online is that you can have the free time to, instead of when you’re done working you’re recharging, when you’re done working you’re like excelling going to that next level trying to you know achieve you know like peak experiences in your life. And when you surround yourself with people like that, your life just becomes awesome like everything you do is so much more fun.
Johnny: What’s really awesome is surrounding yourself with people that are like-minded that one of the same like you and come and do the same things as you and have free time. The reason why I came down to Los Angeles for this second trip even though I was pretty happy in San Francisco was because all my friends in SF have 8-5 jobs and nobody had time to hangout. And in LA luckily, nobody has a real job so there’s lots of free for everyone to get together. But now what we’re doing was trying to get all my friends to build their own businesses online stores and actually partner up with two guys to help them out with their stores as well because really, first it’s fun. Today, we spent the day at Panera Bread and we went to Chipotle as well, quite nice. And we worked on this business together; we worked on our own separate ones. And we worked on one together and it’s fun I actually enjoy it. Versus if you have your normal job like you wouldn’t even, maybe you can talk to each other online but that’s really it. You know my goal is to have all my friends have location independent income, and be able to just travel. I mean, I would really really like all my friends to be able to come visit me in Thailand all hangout together , be able to take a trip out to Hawaii or out to Europe or out to South America and all get together. So that is my goal and somebody actually joked the other day, was it you or Jason that I was building an army, literally building an army of entrepreneurs.
Adam: It’s awesome. You know right here in your ear buds, you’re drawn by other people who wander the same path as you. Right now, you know it’s not too late it’s really just getting started. I mean how many people who listen to this and buying stuff online. Really everybody that we know. But the market’s really untapped because there’s so many things that people don’t buy online yet that they will start doing. Like what are some things like random things that you bought online? For me, I mean my buddy just bought, he just bought a new house. I mean, he’s completely furnishing it. I mean he bought a lawnmower online which I never would have thought of but I mean you could, you could totally sell that.
Adam: Yeah! You can.
Johnny: One of the biggest hangups people have is actually picking the niche did you have a lot of trouble with that?
Adam: I did because I know that it’s like if you pick something bad to start with, that’s your foundation like you can make mistakes building your business but you can’t pick the wrong niche or you’re just done. So ended up making a list of like forty and picked on what I thought was best.
Johnny: You know what we should do is we should have another episode. Where we just sit down and talk about how to pick a niche, how to brainstorm, how to figure out which ones are great which ones are bad. Something that would really interest people. But as far as today we were kind of this going a little bit long, so we’re just going to hang up and play some video games.
Adam: And then go to yoga.
Johnny: Yeah and there’s a hot yoga next to the porn star studio a vivid entertainment right?
Adam: That’s the one.
Johnny: Alright so we will see how that goes. But, everyone thanks for joining us and if you want to know more how I got started please visit my blog it’s johnnyfd.com and on the way outside there’s actually a link that says start here and that’s what I give out to my friends, my family and it goes through the whole process. If you’re interested in the dropship course that Anton has made, it’s on there and also the information on shopify and you will get $75 of free advertising credit on Amazon and for you to start your own store. So, take care, peace out. Adam?
Adam: Later guys. Thanks for having me. Johnny?
Johnny: Alright. Buhbye.
Johnny Voice Over: Thank you for listening to the travel like a boss podcast. If you want to hear more including the bonus on how to choose the perfect niche episode join our mailing list at travel like a boss podcast dot com. See you next week and remember, if you want to travel like a boss, you got to be your own boss. So start your online business today and start living the lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of.
Narrator: Welcome to the Travel Like a Boss Podcast. The radio show all about traveling like a boss by being your own boss. Stay tuned for weekly interviews featuring guests that have built their own online businesses. If you would like to have access to our entire back catalog, visit travellikeabosspodcast.com for instant access. And here’s your host Jonny FD.
Johnny: Hey guys what's up! This is Johnny. And today with me I have my buddy Adam. Here, introduce yourself.
Adam: Hi I'm Adam.
Both Laughs.
Johnny: Okay. Adam's one of my buddies. How do we met again Adam?
Adam: We met a long time ago in I think I met you in Vancouver, actually.
Johnny: Yeah we actually met in Canada. Uh we used to both work for the same company and moved on from that. But uh, where are you working at right now before you started this business?
Adam: I do outside sales for a company that will remain nameless. But I sell home improvement products like patio covers, kitchens, roofs.
Johnny: But, you make that sound glamorous, like you’re selling that and you’re making your own money for it.
Adam: It wasn't quite all that. I mean you're definitely working for somebody. It’s a type of thing where any commission job, they’re going to like reel you in by saying “Oh you can set your own paycheck. You get as much money as however hard you want to work.” And to an extent it is true but that extent is ninety hour-weeks and that’s not the best for your psyche or your skin or anything really.
Johnny: Besides the long work hours, I mean when you say ninety hours a week, what was your worst schedule actually like?
Adam: My worst schedule was wake-up, well wake-up at seven but worst schedule start, be at the office at 8:30 for the morning meeting. And then run appointments throughout the day so someday you might always be working all day long, someday you might get an early appointment and it doesn’t go well so you have like a couple hours of downtime or whatever. The latest I would get home is 2 in the morning. So I’d have multiple days a week working from 8:30 am till 2 in the morning. It’s a long time.
Johnny: Wow. I used to have a sales job as well right out of college. I went to a four year university for my bachelors. I thought I scored a great job with a great company. It was a big American company and I got to wear a suit and tie. Usually it’s a white dress shirt from Costco. I thought it was great but I ended up realizing after a year that I’m in a cubicle, I’m working in a forty fifty hours a week on this commission job and some months you’re not motivated you know because you’re working for someone else. I mean, when did you realize you stopped loving your job or did you ever love it?
Adam: I think I loved it at first because the paycheck’s really good and I, like, when I got the job I was pretty broke and I had a wife and still have a wife. That hasn’t changed.
Johnny: Not after hearing this podcast.
Adam: So it’s like I had bills to pay that I had no way of paying. So at first even though I was working crazy hours I kept justifying it in my head. I would say stuff like “Oh it’s only temporary. It’s just for now. I need the money.” And so at first I could justify it. And then, it started not being as fun but I didn’t like, I felt like I couldn’t really think it wasn’t fun anymore because I was like “wait I’m still making good money what do I have to complain about. I didn’t want to be ungrateful.” So I sat down and added my, I actually recorded my hours for a week and I broke down like how much money I made I think that week I made like seven grand in a week. It’s a lot of money. But I broke it down and I’m not sure of it was the same week but whatever week I broke it down for I made less than 17 bucks an hour so it’s like, it was ridiculous. Considering how much you are working.
Johnny: Yeah that makes sense. ‘Coz you’re just at the end of the day you’re trading time for money. And for me, it was the same way I was in a sales job. In the beginning I was very motivated I was excited and I was making good money but after awhile being in the same office, kind of doing the same thing everyday having to be on schedule. At least for me I felt like I just wanted to do the least amount possible and kind of escape eye. But I guess we’ll see that for another day my friends just nicknamed me Mr. Shortcut. And that’s kind of the point of this podcast is figuring out a way where we can live the lifestyle we want. I don’t know if you guys listen to this or read The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris, a big shoutout to him he’s the one that brought me to where I am today. So, Adam and I haven’t seen each other in quite a while before this trip. How long ago was that in Vancouver?
Adam: 9 months.
Johnny: So, a lot have changed in those 9 months. I just got back from THAILAND and we’re actually sitting in his apartment here in Los Angeles. We just spent the whole day working on our ecommerce search to get our website together. That’s really what got us to hang out again was this system. You know Adam tell me a little bit about why you decided to start this?
Adam : Let’s see, I wanted to travel. I want to have a life. I was getting sucked into the world of making money and it was crazy how I thought that it would solve my problems and stresses but it added a lot to it because now I have like, your working that much now you have relationship problems because you are not home enough to take care of that. And now you have health problems because you’re sleeping six hours a night or less. Because I not a very good sleeper and I you’re having like skin problems because you are working too much and you’re stressing out.
Johnny: So, for those who can’t see this video since this is just audio, Adam used to work as an Abercrombie and Fitch model. Remember those guys that stand topless wearing nothing but jeans in front of the mall. That was Adam.
Adam: More or less. I did that at the Grove in Hollywood. Everybody’s been there. Eight bucks an hour.
Johnny: So what actually happened was Adam had messaged me online and he’s been working on copywriting. Actually, how did you get to copywriting anyways? Did you read some books on it? Took a course? Or?
Adam: Let’s see. I got into it because I’ve always loved writing and I’ve done it like creatively, I written like, stories and music and I would love to do that with my free time now that I am you know running an ecommerce store. But I thought hey I was still working like full time at my sales job and I was like “Hey I need my way out of this.” What are my strengths? Writing. So, I read a bunch of articles on how can I actually make money now with writing and it seemed like copywriting was one of the more popular and actual ways to do that so that’s why I started.
Johnny: So Adam came to me just a few weeks ago and basically offered to help me promote the book I wrote 12 Weeks in Thailand. It’s still on Amazon and it’s on the kindle version it’s $9.99. It’s really cheap. And Adam basically came to me saying, “Hey you have, all your reviews are 5-star. Everybody loves this book. You can sell it for a lot more money. Why aren’t you selling it for more?” Then I told him I said, “To be honest, that’s more of a passion project than I have on the side.” Sure it brings in some money but it’s really not my priority or my main source of income. If you asked me six months ago when I was living in Thailand on a budget and I was dead broke. I was literally in Thailand without a return ticket home. No source of income. And that was my source of income. So if you ask me six months ago I would have been like, “Great! Let’s raise the price, let’s do whatever we can.” But this time, I mean what did I tell you?
Adam: You told me it didn’t really matter. You’re like, Dude stop wasting your time. Do something that works and makes real money. I have built a website too.
Johnny: So Adam had another e-book which were gonna and I take a look at it and I helped him do some research to see how many people search for it on google currently.
Adam: This is three months after I spent three months writing it. So..
Johnny: I know this is a little bit hard for me to hear but the honest truth is, you’re never going to make or you’re never gonna replace your income with this book. And I felt really bad because he just spent all his time writing this book. And I told him, even mine which actually is a really good book that people want and people are buying. Being an author really sucks. It’s something that you should do for fun. Because you like writing. Because you love it. But don’t do it for an income. And I told him at the end and said look if you really want to make some money online and you really hate your job check out this new thing I’ve been doing. It’s called ecommerce.
Adam: And I think I started that day.
Johnny: Even though you started that day, within three days you have a site basically up and running.
Adam: Pretty much yeah. I think I actually pulled an all nighter. I went home that night I went to bed. I woke up the next morning and bought the program that you recommended and then I spend whole day working on it and spent literally all night working on it. I stayed up for I think like 48 hours and then it was done.
Johnny: Was it pretty straight forward?
Adam: I’ve never really had experience in web design or anything like that and it’s super basic like you really don’t need to know that much about web design to make a living from the internet but I knew so little that I made a lot of mistakes. And that’s probably why it took so long ‘coz I mean, we set up our second site together and it took us seven hours together.
Johnny: Yeah but that’s kind of you know combining our powers. But actually one of the reasons why I decided to partner with you on the second store is because I saw how determined you are. How hardworking you are for getting your first site up without really much help at all. You know, you did called me a lot and bugged me a lot with it but I actually really appreciated that because I knew that you are serious. You are determined to make it work.
Adam: Yeah.
Johnny: Yeah so, you know basically I think it was in a week ago that we got back together?
Adam: Yeah it was let’s see today is what Thursday? It was not last Monday but the Monday before so like a week and four days.
Johnny: So about ten – eleven days ago, actually what really happened was Adam said to me, “Johnny, I really hate my job. I really want to quit but I need to be able to replace my income before I can.” And there was a little bit of desperation in your voice because I remember you telling me over the phone and said Johnny look I know you’re busy but I’ll pay you $500 to come and help me with the site and I thought you know I didn’t want to take your money especially if you are not making money from it so I said look let me come over and let me figure out what I can help you with. So I took a look at Adam’s first niche and I basically said that you know it looks like you did everything correct. The only thing you can really do is let it sit and let it go through the process and see what happens out of this and I you are going to make money from this niche it will come and if not, take it as a learning experience.
Adam: I said I hate learning experiences as I want money. But it’s actually starting to work now which is really cool.
Johnny: It’s great I mean you made your first sale a couple of days after we set it?
Adam: Yeah. And today, I mean in my first week I made like six sales. Like after my first sale, it just started coming.
Johnny: I think for the first two months. I mean it took me longer than Adam, actually. Mainly because I didn’t have, I had really no experience with building website besides blogs, kind of the basic stuff I have no experience of ecommerce at all. And I had all these problems of getting it set up and I didn’t know what I was doing. But with Adam he has patience and he actually went through all the correct processes. You know you watched all the videos.
Adam: You didn’t?
Johnny: I kind of skipped through all of them. Now I’ve actually watched all the videos over again just to make sure I didn’t skipped anything. Yeah but you know, today you made your big sale so far right?
Adam: Yeah I did. It was a let’s see I sold one of my, I was about to say what it was. I sold one of my products, I sold a $1500 product and I guess like in with the shipping and the money that Shopify takes out, I think the profit in it being right around $250 or $300 for today.
Johnny: Yeah that’s a great profit but a lot of you don’t realize is making $200 or $250 a day in a normal job doesn’t sound like a lot of money and it’s not because after working eight hours for that the government takes a quarter of it or third of it in taxes and you can only work so many hours in so many as a week. The great thing about online store once you set it up is if you’re making a $200 a day let’s do the math for everyone actually. It’s set up to run seven days a week even on weekends. Even though you’re on vacation. Even when you’re sick. So it runs thirty days a week I mean a month. That’s actually six thousand dollars in profit per month if you make one of those sales per day. And you know, also we get the big sales a day. You might get a couple of small ones a day.
Adam: You know let me calculate that for forty bucks. Even you hit like forty bucks is super super reasonable.
Johnny: I mean forty bucks is super easy to get. And per day, for making sales.
Adam: That’s still $1200. That’s enough to like, pay your rent.
Johnny: Yeah that’s $1200 a month in your pocket in cash.
Adam: That’s like, even if you want to keep working your day job and have this on the side, you have like an extra $1200 to spend.
Johnny: Yeah. I usually recommend you guys not to quit your day jobs to get everything set up and running and kind of have this as a secondary income until it replaces it. Adam kind of did the opposite where..
Adam: I was in a car crash.
Johnny: I’m glad you’re okay now. It was almost kind of good timing I guess.
Adam: I was in a car crash then I had to stay home from work. And I still can only work like three days a week and I had all the time to get started and set up. Really if you spend, I mean if you dedicate two hours every day, you can still have it up within two weeks.
Johnny: Yeah what I did in the beginning when I was setting up my first store was anytime I felt like I wanted to watch tv or do something kind of lazy, instead I’ll just be working on the site coz its actually kind of fun. It’s basically like, playing a video game. You’re leveling up, you’re collecting items.
Adam: Pretty much.
Johnny: And now that it’s up and running it’s like playing an online game on the shopify app on the phone to notify us every time we make a sale. And we just kind of go back and forth and every time we make a sale we hold out our phone like, “Yeah!”I know you just got started and you haven’t made that many sales yet where’s been the most random time or place that you made a sale?
Adam: Let me think, the most random time or place. Oh! So I think Monday of this week I was at my day job, my sales job and we do a lot of driving. I was riding with my friend Josh and I was at the passenger seat and I was pretty much like I had my computer on my lap I was like working on files offline while we were driving and we were having a really shit day. We weren’t getting sales. Everyone was kicking us out of their house. That sort of thing. And then I got like a notification on my phone and I was like “Okay I made a sale on my website and I’m even making a sale on my job today.”
Johnny: Yeah it’s awesome. I actually keep a notepad on my iPhone with random places I made a sale. Some of my favorite ones is, I like being woken up in the morning with a sale. And you know usually, I set my phone you know so it doesn’t disturb me to at least 8:30 ‘coz I don’t like waking up early. But 8:30 to something, I got a text saying “Hey! You made a sale.” Which is awesome way to start the day. I’ve also got one while watching UFC fight which is my favorite sport. In the middle of it I’m cheering, I’m screaming and I see my phone like, “Yeah!” The most random is probably at a strip club. Two of my buddies got married this month which is why I’m in town and wow in one of the bachelor parties, you know there are beautiful girls dancing around and my phone’s vibrating and I look at it like and it makes me so happy to get sales at the most random places.
Adam: Dancing at a wedding?
Johnny: So at the wedding itself, I was dancing put my phone down and I came back and I made a sale. So you know, these are kind of just some random, you know random places. It’s working for you all the time. That’s what I really really love about this is, getting back to the lifestyle design, it’s my goal is to be able to travel I’d never travelled until very recently, until a few years ago. My whole life as a kid, you know we went on some family vacations but never really left the country. Never really went anywhere. Never really went to New York. You know, until a few years ago and I grew up in California. I mean it’s not that hard of a flight. I mean what about you Adam; did you travel a lot as a kid?
Adam: Yeah I kind of did actually do a lot of travelling but it’s just like family stuff so I’ve never, like the only place where I’ve paid for myself to go is my wife’s from Norway so we flew to Norway last Christmas. But I mean I can see myself traveling a lot now that I have the freedom of mobility. That’s well it’s not having a million bucks in your bank account, it’s having enough money everyday no matter where you are to live the life that you want.
Johnny: Here’s the thing, sometimes you’re working a lot and you have an excess of money. Sometimes, you’re not working and you have an excess of time. But very very seldom do people have an excess of both money and time at the same time concurrently. And this, it’s always an excuse, if you ever ask a buddy hey let’s go on a vacation somewhere, I can’t get off of work even though I have the money or I don’t have a job or I don’t go to school, I have free time but I don’t have the money for it. And you never get both. But what I actually learned recently which is even crazier is that there is a third component. I was sitting at an a coffee shop out there in San Francisco. And it was a pretty full coffee shop so there’s this old man who’s probably, I think he was seventy. Yeah, I just remembered he was exactly seventy. He sat down next to me and we started chitchatting. And he told me that he just retired this year and now he has all this free time and he doesn’t know what to do with it. I talked to him about his old job he got a good pension. He got a good retirement fund. So he actually has a good amount of excess money and now he has excess time but what he’s missing now is youth and vitality and health. When you’re seventy you’re not going to want to travel the world and party. I know I mean you might want to go, you might want to do certain things but most like you’re not going to be able to do the things that you wish you could’ve done at your age right now. So for me, it’s you know, I’m already 32, Adam’s lucky he’s a lot younger. I wish I would’ve started this ten years ago but at the same time I’m happy I’m starting it now and not ten years from now. So definitely recommend to everyone out there that if you know if you’re holding off on something I mean you have to just take advantage of your life right now. One thing that we did today that’s actually quite easy that everybody could do. But what is really really powerful is write down a to-do list. What do you think about that?
Adam: That’s right. Coz we were at a Panera Bread and we were getting kind of lazy. Like I got a sale so we were like now, let’s work on our website together coz we’re in a couple of different sites. While we’re working on together and we kept not even touching it and we were like alright let’s do a to-do list. And we finally got some stuff done.
Johnny: Well whatever you write down gets done. And it sounds silly everyone’s heard of it before. And I was the same way where I was putting it off like yeah okay I’ll do a mental to-do list and write some stuff on my phone. But physically writing it down makes a huge difference.
Adam: And there’s another thing to keep in mind as well, I’ve made a to-do list before and there’s a mistake that you can do when you are actually making one is adding too much to it and adding so much where you are trying to like, you want to check off the boxes. Okay I got this done. I got this done. But you’re not actually being effective, you’re just being efficient. You’re just getting things done. So it’s really important to only put things on if they’re going to make a significant change in whatever project you’re working on.
Johnny: Yeah it makes sense. So what I do is I actually separate my to-do list which is more of a daily thing where it’s things I’m going to be doing today or within the next few days. And then I have a dream-line list or a three-month, six-month, one-year goal list. And on those I put kind of the bigger things. So I definitely recommend to everyone for that. First I would recommend dream-lining, is basically figuring out what your ideal life would be and writing it down. And just the simple fact that you’re writing it down, chances of it happening is much much greater. Me and Adam haven’t talked about this offline but what would your ideal life be? Don’t worry about you know if it’s immediately possible now, what would your ideal life be right now?
Adam: I don’t like being in one place so I’d love to like have somewhere where I could call home-base. Like an apartment in New York or like a nice house in L.A. and then only see that house maybe like a couple of months total out of the year because I’d be travelling all the time and while I’m travelling I’d love to be playing music in like different venues. So, having the money to be able to travel and the free time to make that music and like put it out there long enough for I have a reputation where I can play around like that.
Johnny: Yeah that’s really cool. And remember these dream-lines change all the time. If you asked me, five years ago what my ideal dream-line would be, it actually sound a bit silly but I wanted to be able to just hibernate and just not be bothered for three month four months even five months and just sleep not to have any responsibilities not to have anything to do. I think that stemmed from all the years of school I went through.
Adam: That sounds awful to me.
Johnny: I know.
Adam: You know ‘coz I remember it would be so antisocial.
Johnny: But like through our high school you know you’re just waiting ‘til you graduate so you can go to college. And once you get to college like, okay you know what, once I graduate college it will be great. And towards the end of college school, you’re about getting your masters or getting your MBA. And you realize man this is just a lie. This thing just never ever ever ends. And once you start working, you think you will be happy as well and you’re not. Most people for the first year you’re excited but after that you realize this sucks as well. Like, the other day we met a guy at Panera Bread. That’s our new favorite shop and this guy had his MBA and we know this because he was bragging to us about his MBA. But Adam tell everyone about this guy.
Adam: Okay so he was like the most, he was very soul-sucking. He had a problem it was me, it was Johnny and it was Jason. They’re both Asian so this dude’s like sitting at the other table has a problem with his computer of course he asked the Asian. What’s wrong with it? So he starts talking to us and he’s like oh you guys run businesses on your computers and we’re like yeah. And he’s like oh that’s really cool and he starts like trying to work with us and literally like starting a business with us out of the blue. He’s just that desperate.
Johnny: He basically said to us, oh you know what, we should work together.
Adam: For no reason, even though you’ve never met me and I seem like a total schmuck.
Johnny: And he starts trying to qualify to us.
Adam: He’s like oh I know how to do this; I have a great team, just give me the chance.
Johnny: Yeah he’s like. I have an MBA, I know Snoop Dogg, everything. And you know, he’s like oh give me your business card. Here is mine. Make sure you e-mail me and finally when we left he was still..
Adam: He was literally as we were leaving he was like oh I would like to start an online business and e-mail you.
Johnny: And I was like Good luck! Good luck!
Adam: And I was like I’m sure you will.
Johnny: I mean that was the first time I felt like a hot chick. You know when guys come up to you, to a girl and say, oh yeah I’ll take you here, I know this person, I know that. I’ll give you a part of that movie. And in your mind just like you know what, this guy is trying way too hard. But I generally felt bad for him because..
Adam: It’s pathetic I mean it’s not like insultingly but like it feels like it’s pathetic and that’s what makes you feel bad. It’s like you feel sorry for that sort of mental state.
Johnny: And I think what it was is I actually checked out his website and he, it’s a legitimate website but it’s one of those things that some kind of marketing consultant. He has his MBA and I think he just no longer relevant. Him and his industry.
Adam: Well, he couldn’t even market himself to some guys at Panera.
Johnny: And what it was is he offered us, he actually said to us, he said Hey if you guys need an investment or some seed money you know I can get it for you. And I said to him you know that is actually exactly the exact opposite of our business model. Our business model is to be able to get started and build a business with no capital, no loans, like very very little upfront cost. I mean, Adam to start your first store online, how much did you spent on a pocket?
Adam: I spent less than two-hundred. I already made it back. It’s been running for two weeks. So..
Johnny: The thing is, imagine if you’re starting a retail business. Or even just let’s say you wanted to sell furniture. Let’s say you want to sell desks and you wanted to start a store that sells furniture. What would you need, alright? A lot of people first need is some kind of an education for it, so a lot of people actually go to a business school to learn to start their own business.
Adam: Two hundred grand.
Johnny: Alright that’s two hundred grand. And two years or four years of your life. And then you will rent a retail location, what’s that?
Adam: That’s going to be, I.. I don’t know I have no idea. Thousands a month.
Johnny: You got to furnish it, you got to buy cash register, you got to sign up for electricity bills, hire employees, train them. You know all those stuff. At a pocket you’re looking minimum fifty thousand if not five hundred thousand dollars starting business.
Adam: That's not even with stocking inventory.
Johnny: Yeah and then you need you know, first you need to be approved by the furniture company so you would call them up say, hey guys I have this store now I want to be able to carry your products. That’s okay you know, what do you want to buy? There is a new catalog, you have to wholesale which is good. But now you have a hundred dollars worth of inventory sitting in your showroom and if you will come in, they’re basically giving you some money back that you already spent. Now the difference is, let’s say you want to start the same furniture store online and you know you’re selling these tables right, these dining room tables or like a set. You start the website; I mean you start in some kind of training. For us, you know I was very very lucky that I met Anton. For those you know, of you who don’t know, Anton runs a dropshipping ecommerce trading system. And if I didn’t meet him in person and I didn’t you know just become friends with him before hearing about the course, I wouldn’t have believed how easy it was. I wouldn’t really have believed it. But he’s seriously one of the most genuine guys I’ve ever met. And after knowing him for years online and then hanging out with him in Chiang Mai and he saw how broke I was and my old job which was basically as a writer. He offered to teach me a system and it worked and which is why I started my blog JohnnyFD.com for those who haven’t seen it yet. And because of that, a lot of my friends like Adam, my buddy Jason, my buddy Chris, they’re all starting their online business now. And none of us had any training for this before. And the great thing about it was it didn’t cost any of us more than a couple of hundred dollars to start up. There is definitely a lot of time commitment in the beginning. It’s not you know this magical thing over night. But it’s building a legitimate real business. And you do it for so little risk and let’s say you know, the learning experience that Adam had, imagine if you had started a real you know like a real business.
Adam: Well, charge it up to a life lesson.
Johnny: You know I can’t do that I can’t do that as a life’s lesson but on this online store, the great thing is you lost literally zero dollars, in fact, you made money. Even if that niche that you first picked doesn’t become the you know, the hole in one, you always make money from it and you already made back more than you’ve invested.
Adam: And I see it being profitable in the future but even if it was a flop it could be a profitable flop like a small amount.
Johnny: Well I asked Anton before I said hey do you recommend testing the new niche before you commit to it? His answer was actually quite surprising coz as easy way as a test, you can put up some of the ads for the products and not have actual check up on to see who would go check out or some people will even sell it on e-bay to see if anyone’s interested in buying this. So there’s many ways to test, most of it you know, you can spend $100 to test it but Anton actually has ways that are surprising he said that he doesn’t test any products. He just builds a store and starts selling it. And the reason for that is he said some stores don’t do very well. Some niches just don’t sell well online maybe item’s too heavy, too expensive, too cheap, too personal, whatever it is. Some things just don’t sell online. Even the crappy niches still make some money and because you can automate them. There is really no reason why you can’t just leave it up and running and a couple hundred bucks a month from it. So getting back to starting a store it’s two thousand thirteen right now and a complete game changer. I mean Adam, could you doing this before I mean what made you realize hey I can do this?
Adam: I knew it could be done. Just because of things I’ve read in my understanding of my basic understanding of business. Like seeing you be able to do it. Like seeing you being able to do it like in front of me. There’s no excuse not to do it. I was already building websites but I was just was blind so once I had like a framework to put all that effort into I’m like now I can actually head in a direction that I know works instead of trying to work so hard to find something that works.
Johnny: Yeah. For me, for the past many many years. I’ve had blogs and I really enjoy writing I think you know I’ve always enjoyed writing and I’ve always enjoyed creating blogs and sharing my experiences. But it was never a way to make money even with the Johnny FD the original URL was johnnyfd.blogspot.com and my buddy Kurt, ah shoutout to Kurt. He’s like dude why don’t you buy the domain and I said to him, why would I? It’s just my personal blog it’s not for; I’m not trying to make any money from it. And he’s like, dude but it looks so crappy and spammy. But dude it doesn’t matter it’s just my personal blog and like why should I spend money in making something look professional that is just 100% for me, my family and friends on facebook? And he finally said look, see if it’s available if it is just spend the nine dollars and buy it. I was like okay I bet it’s taken anyways. Well I guess I was lucky to have it, it was available and he made me buy it but until this day it’s really just a way where I can connect to my friends and share information about everything in my life that’s benefitted me. From things like you know finding a proper nutrition through the Paleo Diet and bullet-proof from the right physical program like cross-fit, or doing yoga and also to ecommerce and you know, how to travel, how to how to have basic break-the-chains and enjoy the life you want. And there’s so many people that like Adam that I reconnected with because of this new lifestyle.
Adam: Yeah it’s like I think it’s one of the coolest parts. Because I’m starting to realize like people are losing their passion for life like all around me. I went out on a walk last night because I loved being outside. And I walked passed all these houses and I saw, I would like, see these couples sitting on opposite ends of the couch watching TV. And there’s no connection and I hate it because people work so hard that that’s the only thing they can function well to do. It’s like they come home and all they want to do is turn off their brain and watch TV. It makes sense. But, the beautiful thing about running your own business when it’s online is that you can have the free time to, instead of when you’re done working you’re recharging, when you’re done working you’re like excelling going to that next level trying to you know achieve you know like peak experiences in your life. And when you surround yourself with people like that, your life just becomes awesome like everything you do is so much more fun.
Johnny: What’s really awesome is surrounding yourself with people that are like-minded that one of the same like you and come and do the same things as you and have free time. The reason why I came down to Los Angeles for this second trip even though I was pretty happy in San Francisco was because all my friends in SF have 8-5 jobs and nobody had time to hangout. And in LA luckily, nobody has a real job so there’s lots of free for everyone to get together. But now what we’re doing was trying to get all my friends to build their own businesses online stores and actually partner up with two guys to help them out with their stores as well because really, first it’s fun. Today, we spent the day at Panera Bread and we went to Chipotle as well, quite nice. And we worked on this business together; we worked on our own separate ones. And we worked on one together and it’s fun I actually enjoy it. Versus if you have your normal job like you wouldn’t even, maybe you can talk to each other online but that’s really it. You know my goal is to have all my friends have location independent income, and be able to just travel. I mean, I would really really like all my friends to be able to come visit me in Thailand all hangout together , be able to take a trip out to Hawaii or out to Europe or out to South America and all get together. So that is my goal and somebody actually joked the other day, was it you or Jason that I was building an army, literally building an army of entrepreneurs.
Adam: It’s awesome. You know right here in your ear buds, you’re drawn by other people who wander the same path as you. Right now, you know it’s not too late it’s really just getting started. I mean how many people who listen to this and buying stuff online. Really everybody that we know. But the market’s really untapped because there’s so many things that people don’t buy online yet that they will start doing. Like what are some things like random things that you bought online? For me, I mean my buddy just bought, he just bought a new house. I mean, he’s completely furnishing it. I mean he bought a lawnmower online which I never would have thought of but I mean you could, you could totally sell that.
Adam: Yeah! You can.
Johnny: One of the biggest hangups people have is actually picking the niche did you have a lot of trouble with that?
Adam: I did because I know that it’s like if you pick something bad to start with, that’s your foundation like you can make mistakes building your business but you can’t pick the wrong niche or you’re just done. So ended up making a list of like forty and picked on what I thought was best.
Johnny: You know what we should do is we should have another episode. Where we just sit down and talk about how to pick a niche, how to brainstorm, how to figure out which ones are great which ones are bad. Something that would really interest people. But as far as today we were kind of this going a little bit long, so we’re just going to hang up and play some video games.
Adam: And then go to yoga.
Johnny: Yeah and there’s a hot yoga next to the porn star studio a vivid entertainment right?
Adam: That’s the one.
Johnny: Alright so we will see how that goes. But, everyone thanks for joining us and if you want to know more how I got started please visit my blog it’s johnnyfd.com and on the way outside there’s actually a link that says start here and that’s what I give out to my friends, my family and it goes through the whole process. If you’re interested in the dropship course that Anton has made, it’s on there and also the information on shopify and you will get $75 of free advertising credit on Amazon and for you to start your own store. So, take care, peace out. Adam?
Adam: Later guys. Thanks for having me. Johnny?
Johnny: Alright. Buhbye.
Johnny Voice Over: Thank you for listening to the travel like a boss podcast. If you want to hear more including the bonus on how to choose the perfect niche episode join our mailing list at travel like a boss podcast dot com. See you next week and remember, if you want to travel like a boss, you got to be your own boss. So start your online business today and start living the lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of.
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