 sitting down with Paul and Will. So they're doing what 150 or is it 112k per month? Right, we're going to be about 140. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. And you guys have been scaling from, is it 20k or 30k before we met? We, I think our best month before we met was probably 20. And then when we began the program, we had, in August, I think a 30k month, which was then our best. Another sort of 20 or 30k in September. And then, yeah, we've sort of exploded in in October and had our best month by a long way. Okay. So this interview, we just want to like find out what, what they did, like, I know for a fact, like, why the success of the cost of the two action, but more importantly, like what is the, not mindset shift, but what is the exact tactic or strategy that they use to change because like 20 to 150k is a seven times increase. So it's not like, it's out of the ordinary, you know what I mean? So like stuff like this, success stories like this, like, definitely need to learn from them. And I just want to hear their story and stuff. Okay. So I mean, now we just want to first, Will, can you share your screen to show proof? That's like a lot of people are skeptical and stuff, but yeah, sure. So this is our, what is it? So this is our, this, this month of October. So it's 145k. And I think we've done about $700 of returns. And then this was our previous month. So yeah, we went from 20k to 140, I guess in a month. Okay. So the infection point was like 20, 22nd September around there, right? Yeah. When we started, I think we launched our new product, I think around like, yeah, 25th of September or so. And then we started to scale it towards the end of September and then into October. Okay. Understood. Yeah. Okay. So noise, I'll blow all the stuff on the information. Do we need to look at anything else? Maybe show the lifetime as well. Oh yeah. So this is, because we've had this store since March, I think, selling the same product for about six months, then we sort of have just recently changed it. So it sort of shows since we started in March. Okay. And what's the overall profit margin for? I think, check lifetime that'll have it. I think the overall profit margin would probably be, I know the dashboard. So 24%. Yeah. And previous months were probably hovering between 10 and 15. So I'd say overall profit margin would probably be about 15% but 25% for October. Okay. So I mean, now that you guys got skilled, you just need to drive down that coxer, and just be more efficient on the ad spend. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Even the last couple of days we're seeing, for the last week or so, we're seeing cost per click go up. Obviously, we've got election times, we're heading into Q4. So we're seeing our CPMs, even if we're looking inside the ad sets as well, the auction competition's going up a bit. So we're just in the process of, basically, we've sent the product to about five or six different people to get their own sort of content. So UGC and Hawks and testimonials, and we're going to sort of mash that up and refresh our creative to make sure we can sort of keep scaling in November and December. Okay. That's good. Q4, you just need to ramp up ad spend, even though the CPMs increase, and then just try to maximize ALE as I told you before. Yeah. So the other thing we're doing as well is we have sort of frequently bought together on our page two and some post purchase upsells. So split testing at the moment, but we will start split testing some different bundles to see which is more preferable. And we're using reconvert as our post purchase upsell, but as soon as OCU is becoming part of Shopify's native checkout, as soon as that's done, we're going to switch to one quick upsell. So that should hopefully get us another sort of five or 10% revenue at the back end to assist as well. Okay. Ken, sorry, but I think you can hear my construction sound right in the back. So I mean, I just want to understand you guys like, you guys friends, how do you guys met? How do you start this e-commerce business together? We met in school actually. So we've known each other for a while now. I think it's been almost 10 years, I think. Yeah. So I don't know. We never talked about going to business or anything in school, I guess. Like I went into, we both did uni, I guess, and we were like friends through uni and everything like the travel together, whatever. It wasn't until I think towards the end of last year, I guess. I don't know, we might have started talking about it in passing, I guess. And then at the start of this year, I think we like sat down and said, yeah, we could definitely do something together. Because I was definitely interested in something like this, but I was like still learning, didn't really know where to start. I don't know about you Paul, I think you were sort of in the same way, I guess. Yeah. So I think with myself, I built a couple of stores late last year in December, not with real, just on my own. And I was getting sort of a few sales here and there and a few profitable days, but I was still very much a beginner and didn't really know exactly what I was doing. And then what ended up happening was I had a really busy period with my full time job in January. And then I found out Will was actually trying to do a coffee e-commerce business as well. And I sort of said to him, I'll look, I'm sort of still a beginner in this, but I'm quite sure with coffee, it's going to be quite difficult as a beginner to get that up and running. I'm sort of doing dropshipping at the moment, we should sort of team up and work together. So I think we decided March, we were just going to build a store together. I didn't think it was anything formal like I will work together long term. I think we just had the plan of building one store together and seeing how it went. And then luckily that first product we did was actually the product we were advertising for about six months. So yeah, so that's sort of how we ended up working together. We've always been friends. We've never spoken about building a business together. And I think it was just by chance that we decided to build a store together. But now we're starting to segment a little bit of what we are both focusing on. And I think it'll be a much more long term endeavor now that we're going to take it a lot more seriously and then work together long term. Because you guys are still working full time right? Both of you? Yeah, yeah. But it works really well. Because Will works in hospitality. So he's his family owns a restaurant. So he works in a restaurant. And that means his hours are quite like scattered across the weekend and weeknights. But he's got most of the day free. Whereas I work just a normal sort of nine to five job. So I usually work on the business before and after work. Whereas Will works on it while I'm working. And then we get most of the weekends as well. So it actually works out in terms of like a momentum thing, it works really well. So sort of really good to shut the laptop after work. And then you've had all this work done as well because Will's been working on it during the day. If there's like supplier or customer service issues, Will's straight on it because he can work with the supplier during the day while I'm working and then vice versa when he's working. So it actually works out really well for us. Okay. What is the, because when, I know for a fact it's like when you work nine to five, it's like you are fixed income, right? It's very secure. You don't feel pressure. Like why would start a business? I don't know. I'll let Will answer because it's really different answers. For me, I had started, I sort of knew that there was more money to be made than in corporate world just through things I've done through uni. So I had a bit of a, I had a personal training business in uni where I was literally just find rich housewives and train them at their home for 40 minutes. And they would pay me 80 to $100 for that 40 minutes. And that was at uni. So I thought, okay, well, there's obviously other ways to make money. You don't just have to work in a corporate job. But then I never really took any, any other business idea seriously. And then I think I just had a couple of really poor experiences at work regarding just working really long hours, not great bosses, not great working cultures. And then I thought, well, you know, I can't really do this for the next 40 years. Something has to give. So it's probably through that little bit of pain, I guess, where I thought, well, yeah, the only other alternative is starting a business. So that's, that's why I wanted to do it. Yeah, for me personally, like my parents have had a like brick and mortar business for like 20 years. And so like, I've kind of like grown up in a restaurant. So like, you can see like, like everyday activities, you can see like where the pain points are in running a business and everything. And I guess like, I've always wanted to, you know, work for myself, run your own business. But like, watching my parents build their brick and mortar business, you can see a lot of like, I guess, shortcomings like areas where I thought running an income business could succeed in this like current climate, I guess. That's where like I got my interest, the income from. Understood. Understood. Why, what's the, where is the, because you guys went in together generally and stuff, right? So when you got a bit of traction, what was like the biggest difficulty that you faced together at that point? Cosport, you already was, you're really doing some self, right? Then will when you came in. So what, what was the struggle to scaling up to really big numbers? I mean, I guess when we first, when we started selling our first product pretty well in March, we probably had a couple of opportunities where we could have really scaled up a bit harder than what we did. And I think the first thing was just probably cash flow and a bit of fear, I reckon. We had never really spent much money on ads and we didn't really have, we had only put in a little bit of our money each into a bank account. We didn't have a credit card. So we were sort of limited by what our cash flow was. So we probably couldn't scale up any harder than, than what we did at the time. And then around May, I think it was late April and May, our return on ad spend was actually really good. But we sort of got caught in the middle of when the COVID shipping prices skyrocketed. So that, that, that meant our break even or our margins took a real hit. And I think our break even return on ad spend was too for a period of time. Which sort of makes it difficult to scale to higher ad spends. The other thing is, to be honest, I think we just lacked the skill. So we did, we were just like, we were beginning media buyers. So we didn't really know what to do to push it to higher spends. And then we were also beginning marketers. So, you know, it's, it's fairly easy to get to sort of $500 a day, a thousand dollars a day, but to get to anything more than that, you know, everything has to be, you know, a bit more optimized than what it was. So our landing pages weren't as good, our creative wasn't as good, our offers wasn't as good. So it was, it was probably a combination of those three things, to be honest. Okay. I'm sure. Then how, how did you find me then? Because I'm scattered around Facebook. So I'm not like posting consistently and stuff. What's the I found you, because I remember you put a case study in the Ecom Empires group. I can't remember the exact case study, but it was, I think I watched it as well. You filmed like a video and it was like how you scale just thought it was like a 30 minute video. I don't think in like June or something. Yeah. And then I think I watched that one as well. And I was like, Oh, who is this guy? Because like, I've never, yeah, like I've never heard of you and stuff. And I was like, it's pretty amazing that you can take a store to like, like seven figures that quickly, basically. Okay. Yeah. So I think I ended up joining and I think we will do as well your free group after we saw that, that case study video. And then, you know, we'll just, you know, we're in, we're in a whole bunch of different Ecom groups. And then I saw your post about doing like a, you know, your paid sort of program. And that was when we were stuck at about $20,000 revenue a month. And I messaged Will and I said, Oh, look, this guy really knows his shit. Like, you know, from the case, from the case study, it wasn't your typical case study, you sort of went right in depth. It wasn't the typical like value posts that we all know in those Ecom groups. And then I think I messaged you and I was actually reluctant to do it because I thought it might work better for branded Ecom. And obviously, we're still doing, you know, we've moved to a 3PL in China now, but technically still doing sort of generic products that anyone can do. So drop shipping. I think there's a bit of back and forth between us. And you sort of said, Oh, look, it's, you know, it will definitely help. And then I sort of chatted to Will about it. Will was happy to do it. And then we got in involved that way. But yeah, it all started really from that case study, I think in the Ecom Empires group. And then we joined your free group and all your sort of posts and knowledge meant that we were trustworthy of your knowledge. And therefore we were happy to go and be mentored by you. And then, and to be honest, I've sort of seen other people who had success quickly. And a lot of them have said like, Oh, the quickest way to success is just paying someone who knows a lot more than you do. So you can basically absorb it quicker, rather than just trial and error, which is what we were doing to begin with a lot of trial and error and figuring it out on our own. So I mean, like, first, like, first time I hit like 100k a month, right? Then I'm like, holy shit as well. Then like, once you got to a level, getting from 100 to 300k a month is harder, harder than going from zero to 100. So when you scale, you go to the next level as well, it gets harder and harder. So I guess what is your, when you were going from 20 to the first 100, right? What is the tactic or what's the strategy? Do you think that really shifted the, or is it something that I really taught you that, hey, this is the strategy that actually works. We have one landing page, one offer, then we just run smash traffic. Like what, what changed between when you guys were doing it yourself when versus, you know, after the program? I think you definitely gave us like, really good SOPs to follow. So like we could, and then it sort of taught us like, because I think at the start, we were kind of just like, we were just guessing basically, like, we put this here, here, here, is this working? We never really like, we didn't understand like split testing, optimizing pages or anything. And like, kind of like looking at what you gave us really helped us with that. And like, I think it was also just like, just learned our learning curve in general, I think helped us to just like better understand like what it is that the message like what is an offer, what is like the messaging that we want to get across to people and like how to optimize that, I guess. And so I think that was, for me, I think that was the most eye opening thing and like the most important thing to take us from like the 2020 came months to like a hundred. Okay. Yeah. That's it. How often do you, sorry, Paul, you go ahead. I mean, I was just going to say a similar thing. Like, we, we had a general structure of what we, what we did with a landing page when we launched the product. And we had a general structure of creative. But yeah, honestly, it was mostly your SOPs that were sort of modeled on the absolute best landing pages. As soon as we started molding our landing pages around that now messaging and our offer, our conversion rate sort of skyrocketed. And then that just let us spend a lot more money on ads, basically. Yeah. And even, even some of the stuff like when I think there was an interview with, I think his name's Brian, and he was talking about just creating really, really good offers. I think when we made that switch from like offering the product is like, okay, here's a product. And, and started offering it as like, here's a solution to the customer's problem. And sort of started to reframe it that way. That's when we found more success. That's it. Does it feel different at 100K per month? Is there? Oh, no. Not really, not really. Just more money in the bank account. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Like how much time do you guys spend on your SO now? Or is it now is more thinking about business development and just growing? We, I mean, the other thing that you helped us with is we were, we hired a VA straight away. As soon as, you know, even when we probably weren't, when you were looking at our numbers and like what we were doing, we probably shouldn't have been hiring a VA, but I think that was a big change as well. Because as soon as a lot of those customer service tickets taken care of it gives you more thinking time for the business. And it's, yeah. So that, that, that was another thing as well. Yeah. Sorry. What was, what was the question again? I kind of forgot as well. Sorry. Okay. No, no. It's like, how much time do you spend? Yeah. We still spend a fair bit of time, to be honest. I would say, I would say it's at least, you know, it's most of the weekend and and then a few hours every day. So I would say anywhere between like, you know, 20 to 30 hours a week. Yep. H as well. So yeah, we're still sort of, because we're always trying to get better. So we're always running a new split test. We're always getting your creatives done. And then we probably had a few issues with our supply the last couple of weeks, the last couple of weeks with that, with that holiday and then just getting the supply used to doing higher volume that probably increased the workload a little bit. Our plan really, like our plan is we know it's going to be hard work for the next few months, until the new year. But our plan that we've sort of decided to make is just try and make as much money as we can over the next three months. And then probably spend January of next year, basically getting it down all our processes in the business and trying to hire as much as possible to cover for that. So that Will and I are basically just either managing VA's or finding new products or running split tests and sort of focusing on higher level stuff. Yeah, I understood. I actually think you guys should just, because you have so much data so that you've got the email list already, so you just diversify into other traffic source plus products as well. And then if you're on Google Ads then make it stable, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's the thing. I was just going to say I've got on the Twitter list today to set up all the Google shopping for all our different products as well. So just in case, yeah, Facebook starts to take a hit or a lot of our accounts have been getting banned for no reason because of election time. So I'm sort of just waiting for the day where we wake up in the morning and our account's been banned. So yeah, I'm setting up all the Google shopping stuff today. For me, I don't know about you, but I feel skill set because two people have to do numbers, you need skill. It's not just winning product. So I think for me it's copyrighting, but what do you guys think for your side? Yeah, I think it's definitely mainly copyrighting and how you can get your message across to the customers. They'll actually listen to you. Why should they care about what you're offering them? Because everyone's selling products, but it's like why should I give my money to you, I guess? I think that is really important, yeah. And then the other thing, I think for me, was just setting up systems that other people can follow so you can automate as much as possible. I think those were basically the two things that I learned. Sorry, Paul, you got to say something? Yeah, I was going to say something similar. I think we've both started reading a lot of books on consumer psychology and all those old sales letter and advertising books. Because I think when we both started in March, we never rubbish dropshippers like terrible product pages or anything like that. Because we were always making sales and stuff like that. It wasn't as if we were starting from bottom of the barrel. We had that basic understanding because we had both done other stuff before. But I think we still didn't really understand why people purchased something and what would make them purchase. So yeah, I definitely think our skill set has deepened. But by the same token, I feel like, I don't know if you feel the same, Will, but the more you do, and I guess the higher level you get, you then get exposed to people doing even the biggest thing. And then you start to realize how little you know. I feel like we've grown our skill set. I feel like we've grown our skill set and we sort of understand why people purchased and we're getting better as business owners. But then the more podcasts we listen to, all the more people are exposed to doing bigger numbers, where we sort of understanding or realizing that we're still on a long way to go. Yeah, I mean, the people doing 3, 400 keep it. And then they just don't, they don't say anything. So yeah. And it's not, these people, like the higher you get, the less well known you want to be. That's what I like as well. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I think the thing now is I'm starting to realize that it's really, to do it consistently, it's just about creating repeatable processes. And so you can just do it over and over again. So I suppose that'll be the next challenge for us is we've had one good month now. But you know, both of us want to do this full time. So the challenge for us is to pick it up with another month and then another month and do it over and over again, like clockwork rather than just one month and then never be seen again. Yeah. I remember one of the calls, right? I think Paul, you mentioned this is like, you feel like you can do anything. And then I know that feeling as well because it's like very liberating when you know how to run traffic and then you can just make money in any environment. So I mean, I think you feel the same way, like how, what's your, what's the next step for you? Because now that you have skill acquisition, right, then now it's what's next step for you guys. I mean, in my mind, the next step is basically getting our skill and knowledge into repeatable processes and then just all the bottom of the barrel, not bottom of the barrel, but all the tasks that we sort of spend a lot of time doing now, we just sort of take away from ourselves. And to be honest, another thing that we haven't really been doing consistently is testing new products, testing new creatives. It's only been sort of the last month that we've really picked that up. So I think to, yeah, to increase consistency, it's about just getting quicker with things. And that comes from hiring to replace ourselves so that we're working on higher leverage tasks. But then, so we're basically systemizing everything like clockwork. So if we want to go down like the make as much money as possible drop shipping route, then we're testing a certain number of products every single week. Or if we want to go down like the branded e-commerce route, then we're testing like a certain number of creatives each week for a product or, however we really want to take it, whatever is the next step, which we sort of have to both think about whether we want to do sort of more branded e-commerce or try and keep doing drop shipping. I think it's just about making sure that we can do the higher leverage tasks over and over again. And that only comes from hiring other people to do the lower level stuff and managing them properly. Yeah, we haven't taken any money out of the business yet. Like we don't really need to, which is good because we're both still working, which has been a luxury. And we both, you know, maybe if we're 20 or 21, we might want things like gold chains or cards like the Insta e-con gurus do, but we don't really care about that stuff. So we can, yeah, we have the luxury we can use that money to hire people and then just keep growing the business. And what's your inclination so far? Is it more, okay, I go branded all the way, or do I still drop ship in? Yeah. I think for me personally, I would like, obviously the real money to be made is to sell brands at the end of the day. Like if we could slowly build up a couple of brands, and then eventually sell them off in a couple years. So I don't know, to me personally, like it's good to drop ship, but also like to build a couple of brands along the way and still like then just automate as much of these tasks as we possibly could. That's just how I feel personally. My thinking is either way we go, whether we go the drop shipping route or the branded route, I think either way we just have to go all in on either one because they're still slightly different things. I guess like drop shipping, it's all about testing products being quick, scaling hard, scaling fast, whereas the branded e-converter is more like, you know, a real focus on customer experience. It's testing lots of different creatives. It's really optimizing the whole process and it's a slower process that I guess is more rewarding at the end when you might sell it compared to drop shipping. You're not really selling anything. You're just trying to make as much money as possible in a short amount of time. So I think, you know, whatever route we go down, I think we just have to be fully committed to that because I feel like if we sort of go half, half like, oh, we'll keep doing drop shipping, but then we'll try and build this brand on the side, then I think that's probably a recipe for disaster. I think, yeah, the more focused we are on whatever path we go down, the better it's going to be. You guys are still working full-time. Is there a dollar amount you're looking for to transition or is it, is it still half in, half out? I don't really have a dollar. I think like, well, Paul kind of said this a while ago, like we'll kind of know when we're ready to transition out, I guess, of our full-time jobs. I don't know whether it's like, we're, our company's like fully automated. We have like key people in each like area of the business. And I guess like, yeah, I don't know. I haven't really put a dollar. I don't know if you thought about this before, but I haven't really put a dollar amount on it. But I guess we'll just kind of know when we're ready to transition fully to doing ACOM full-time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess the way I, I haven't put a dollar amount on it yet, but I feel like we probably both need to sit down and do it at one stage just because I sort of know with this, this thing and I've heard other people talk about it as well where they sort of, they, they'll always move the goalpost further and further away. So it'll be like, all right, well, we'll need to replace our income. Okay. Now it's, we need to treat the three times our income on that needs to be five times. You sort of keep moving the goalpost further and further until you're kind of running away from the, the painful choice, which is well, as soon as you take away that stable income. It's like, it's kind of, yeah, you've got to make it work or, yeah, all the line. Yeah. So I think we both need to figure out a dollar amount. But to be honest, I've sort of had in my, in my head that if we can continue at this rate for the next couple of months, then we would have enough cash in the bank to do it, to do it full time for, to basically give us a runway of at least like six or 12 months. And then I think if we were to commit to it full time with the increased capacity we have and more, more energy to spend on things, I think we would then see more success rather than all of a sudden the business crashes and burns and we don't have any money for six months and we have to go back and find jobs. Yeah. But I think it's still a mental barrier for us. Like, yeah, we've always had a stable income. So, yeah, that's probably the next, the next step for us. So even transitioning is the part time potentially as well. So, you know, rather than going like, oh, we either quit or we stay working full time, potentially both of us go, oh, we'll just take like part time jobs and then for three or six months, see how that goes. And if that goes well, then okay, we quit on this day. Yeah. Okay. I just last question since there's not enough time, but I know you guys very, very intrinsically motivated already. Like, that's not an issue, right? But do you think, okay, I cut the nets, cut the safety net and then get this, you know, when you like really need something to work, then you'll like do all you can. Do you think that's like, or nah? I think that would be a factor for sure. Yeah. I think once you cut, like once you cut the safety net and it's do or die, like you definitely like get shit done just because you sort of have to. Yeah, you have to like now, if you like leave it an extra day, it's okay. But like when we're now in the incomes coming from the business, I guess, you're like, okay, this has to be done like right now. I can't like push it back another day, you know, because this is like to pay the bills now, I guess. Yeah. Which changes your mindset a little bit. But then it gets like, what is