 I think we started talking in in June or July. Yeah, and if I just look at my My last what I said Okay, I see Okay, so If you look at it here Today we have a swery I'm kind of having an interview with him because he's actually he runs an e-commerce store He's from Norway as well. And so he's an e-commerce entrepreneur. And before we met Sorry, what are the numbers were you doing? like So I had like a really slow time Starting from black friday 2019 All the way and then of course corona hit. Yeah, so when it was may I don't know if you can see my screen now in may like I had number of zero days And I I was Below breaking even or just broke even it just died. Everything just died I used an agency and I didn't know I didn't know how to handle like And my first email with you was june 4th If you go to june 4th here, I didn't start immediately with your strategy. So June 4th was actually a good day And Yeah, I had uh, I had $1,500 a day But that was the best day I had all year And that was the day I talked to you the first time And I had like real liquidity problems because of this because I had I lost about $250,000 because of this So from june 4th up until it took me about a week and a half to really get going and as you can see from from the screen Now the average is Just every single day is good And my sales are about three four times as much As they were You mentioned you did what is it 450? But this is without scaling. I have still a problem Finding enough merchandise. So I haven't scaled ads since june new july I just stepped on that level and it's so hard to get enough merchandise So this is not representative about how good it's going. It should be twice three times of this So I'm taking it careful because of another thing you taught me was When you showed me the internal rating system, which I had never heard of before and Because of the internal rating system and because I was aware of it. I was able to mitigate the problems And that other people have not been able to mitigate getting under Under the threshold level, which has been incredibly important. So right now my my rating is something like 3.5 I think or so it's it's doing really well on the rating consumer feedback rating Okay, and this is all uh norwegian market only, right? Norwegian market single products one store And in the meantime, I've lost another I've I've launched another business This is that now we have just sales everywhere. We launched here. Yep, and uh, we we're just getting started now. It's just like the first test getting our Getting our averages up so we can buy ads and do Basically everything again, but in a much larger scale and also in many countries Okay, so because like before before we met you already doing Some sales, right? So can you tell me like what exactly was the change that allowed you to scale? Uh, is it like the tech techniques? Is it like How I like to see my what I do is like one any pitch one offer and then I drive tons of traffic So what do you think was the difference for you to get to the next level? Well, it was the confidence because um, The reason why it worked so well, I mean, of course it was It had to work at that moment. Yeah, like I didn't have I didn't have a plan B at all like this was This was the almost the end of where I thought like If I'm gonna do it this has to be right now And I just remember my parents were here Like the day almost the day of when when I had to talk with you and I had angry customers on one side and I had some some creditor calls and I had everything at once Like because you when you have when when things slow down all of a sudden a bunch of things happen And I just remember that that drive we took for two hours I had like 50 calls from all kinds of parties and it was so stressful And the next day I started selling that was like literally the next day it started opening up And the liquidity came back and came way back like much better than before So now I'm doing what's equivalent or the If you're gonna if you're gonna extrapolate it to a year, it would be about 600,000 dollars, maybe And uh, that's with equivalent be equivalent to maybe 200,000 profits And your net margins what like around 30 35% is it? Yeah, I spend about 30 on product 30 on ads and 30 on Approximately Okay, I'm so so what is that what I got from you was the confidence. I mean, I didn't have any confidence in because Like eight months of just like dread. Yeah And it started black friday 2019 which is now Which is now And by the way, I used an agency back then. Yeah, which uh, which controlled my budget So the reason why I had such a disaster Experience after black friday was because they were they were killing my budget Yeah from the ukraine And I had no impact No impact no control over any of this It was an awful situation to be in So I mean because like you can clearly see like here, right? Like this is just massive like around what three four times increase Right. Yeah. So but then again, it's like you have to know way more than that I think it's if you look at you have to look at the sort of the math Yeah, and you look at the end like here from october 7 It's just not a down day Everything is up. So yeah, okay And like this is actually a pretty realistic Scaling sorry, so now you're very good Yeah, so often when you see people that scale they do it in almost a straight line and it's From zero and then it's like one and then four and then 10 and then and you end up in like 10 000 days Yes, you can But the real issue is the goods if it's a digital good, that's fine. You can do that But the the logistics and the problems that come alongside I think that cannot be overstated how problematic that is The logistical issues It's really not about the ad. It's not about the technique It's about getting enough merchandise And handling the people that are disappointed because in corona you have all these new different kind of problems that you did not before and Handling all these things is equally important as knowing like the techniques of Of making a facebook ad because that's become Significantly easier since I did my first one basically you can trust automation and a lot of these things but But like having like responding to customers and these things are Incredibly important like I do probably a third of my sales on the phone So you look at if you look at the orders I don't know if you can see it in this screen here But if you look at the analytics here from this year if you look at here, it says draft orders Yep, that's about 14 000 And then you have here where you have Shopify for android. That's also a draft order That's 20 000 in sales On the phone Yeah, but I mean that's because your product is high ticket, right? So it's necessary, right? Yeah, yeah, but it's it's incredibly important because really what you're selling is you're selling like believing someone like the confidence in in In believing that the product is what you think it is and and it's also a quite a good way to mitigate um The drop shippers because we have a number of drop shippers here locally that masquerade as being a local company and about 30 to 50 percent at least in my sector for sure And when you're actually on the phone, you're speaking a local language and you're Like a small thing I picked up like you put up you put up just a flag No, like a map I mean, sorry. Yeah And you just say here I am like right here is the office in the middle of the center Stuff like that matters a lot like you wouldn't think it do It does but it's really it really does Okay, um Besides confidence Because confidence is like a it's a mental thing But uh, like action action gets you results. So what exactly yeah From you. Yeah Like when the the way you broke down, especially something I really liked was where you broke down Traffic into cold. I don't know what I still don't remember what you call it But but like the cold media a cold medium and warm. Yeah was really effective to understand how it works and But basically like you solved 50 problems for me It's hard to say exactly what it was because it was But I knew this you can always always read Or watch on youtube and you find out A majority of things but it was so believable Like what you're selling is is confidence in you in yourself and also believing what you're saying. So right now this is a live Shopify, of course and When I yeah, you go cut off Yeah, I just got a call But then it just cuts off. So you're seeing my live My live Shopify And that matters a lot when you're gonna buy like a person like me. It's gonna trust you Because it's live like this is a very familiar scene. And I think he commerce is also about Like just believing what you're being told Yep Understood. It's difficult. It's difficult to to You know to Okay, so I mean deliver what people are expecting Enough about me, right sweet. Sorry. Um, how did you get into the game? I'll hold out the news that uh, Either I start selling or yeah, how do you even get yeah, the first first steps into this Yeah, I bought my my sister a christmas present, which was it's called the orgasm drawn It sounds crazy to give it to your sister, but it's like a head massager Yeah, and it was an australian product and I became like I delivered it to a few stores and That was my first taste of import and And then another friend who I ran a car rental business where I had the fleet of cars and then he rented one car front And he was delivering it back and I heard their Shopify the notification when you had the sales And he showed me like how it worked and that was like literally the notification sound was the reason why I started That I dropped it for a bit. Okay Because he told me about the dropshipping. Yeah, I broke even maybe little made a little bit of money sold Fucking bullshit to america Oh, yeah Yeah, I think another call And uh, I I saw sold bullshit to americans But that's like it the product is low quality and also it's uh The shipment is so important like the the two things that people care about by the way When you buy something is that it's shipped fast And uh, you reply to an email or a phone call It's the two most important things when you're going to sell something Okay, so how do you think that's important? So that's why dropshipping is uh Is a completely non-starter like you can't do it. Yeah, I'm sorry How how did you um come to even uh, so you bought your your chris sister A present right that you saw there's a market for it. They went to sell a similar product. Yes 12 years ago 15 years ago, but okay, but that was my first taste of it Yeah, so I mean how does the business transition I had Because you drop shit right there after a while. Yeah, you after a while you realize that it is not sustainable Yeah, I dropped it and I stopped And then I I needed an ozone generator For a car that smelled like shit that I had And it was so expensive to buy here So I bought it from a guy on ebay, which turned out to be one of my suppliers now And I bought a single machine and I put it up on our local version of ebay and it was sold before I got it So I bought two more With the same amount of money and I kept selling them on like ebay like markets And obviously people were interested enough that they were searching for it And it's kind of like a product that people know, but they can't find it locally if it's expensive It's technical difficult. So I sold like five machines which was all funded from that one machine And then I had some tiny problem and I lost all confidence and I stopped And then a year and a half later I picked it up again and I put up one ad on facebook from using the drop shipper guide that the guy showed me a year and a half ago And it just worked And that one machine I bought turned into pallets of machines And by Christmas I was making like five times more on this than anything else I was doing Okay, so it was really like step by step, but I didn't invest anything So I never had the plan to do it. So it became a little difficult because I didn't plan for it So I had no structure in place Okay, I understood what because you you are spending Before you met you spending a certain amount. So I'm guessing you are scared to spend a bit more In that confidence thing, right? Because it was About $200 every day and that was what I felt that should be Okay Okay, then how did you transition from like Buying stock Do you buy stock now or no I buy one do you buy stock in Like packages you buy multiple units now because you say you store in the warehouse now. Yeah Yeah So because yeah, I store it, but I I still have a hard time having enough still after two years Because it's a very popular product And because of corona made everything a hundred times harder Yeah Okay, I understood what what do you want to take this store? This current store that you skilled to is there some Dollar amount is there something I'm gonna make it No, but it's like a money. It's a money machine. That's sort of the The engine behind everything else So I'm trying to To scale this maybe to another country or two Yep, and then of course push the gas properly once I'm sort of where I'm I felt like I was a year ago Where I had the confidence and then it all all of a sudden stopped because I was doing really well exactly one year ago before black friday And using an agency and all this but the the problem when I had an agency is I had no flexibility Because I couldn't control my own budget Which turns out to be the most important thing of everything. Yep. So I think I also don't spend so much time analyzing the numbers Like the the facebook numbers Because you have like I know them by heart like I know what my Daily costs are I know where my break even is and I know mentally like where I have to be On the day to be happy So I'm only worried about profits and I it doesn't help me to do it on in excel I mean I do everything excel. Yeah except for my my income Because like I know exactly what it is And I think that's incredibly important as well to just know like how much money Yeah, I think it's good cash flow cash flow management. I basically Yeah, incredibly important Uh Your your your increase, right? It's like it's almost it's like two times. It's almost the two times on this chart right here Right. So like you also told me that your ads were more consistent Right after you implemented the sop and blah blah. That's what's so surprising. Why why why do you do it very consistent? And why do you think so I I know why Yeah, I want to I want to hear how why you why you think it's more consistent I mean I build a framework so I know why but I want to hear your opinion Yeah So I I mean I guess my guess is it's related to that the AI is getting smarter That's my gut feeling that the AI is more predictable, but it's also disturbing how How predictable the nature of the sales are But that's my own real guess. I I don't spend time thinking about that. Why is it happening? uh because the the landing page Template that I gave you is built for co-traffic So you're supposed to bring any type of customer who doesn't know you into the the pain point and the whatever Then the selling the benefit blah blah blah. So it's it's it's like direct response What's called template is it's like best best practice So anybody who's like who doesn't know your brand doesn't know like or trust you is supposed to convert their customer Yeah, whereas in in the past, uh, I remember don't know whether you realize your FAQ was like Very very skeleton. There's like barely anything there. So people can't really don't really trust that. Yeah And then that in turn that increases possibility which tells you that hey, my roeus is high So you have more confidence to scale as well Does that make sense Yeah, so so that's why But really a confidence business it really is Yeah, yeah, because you implement action and then you see a positive result. So it's like a positive look, but yeah Yeah, so right before Right before We started talking My new store, which uh, it's not really launching. We're running some ads just And I made a sale and it's remarkable That tiny little 30 dollar sale. Yeah, how much it does do you mentally? It's remarkable Even though it doesn't matter what it's doing now and it's it's not affecting my Uh, my anything plans or anything But but numbers like getting sales getting the first like few sales in Is unlike anything else. Like it's like nothing Unbelievable and it's so important like when you think like this shouldn't be that important because Like uh, you're you're selling online and In a faceless way in a way. Yeah, but it's really the same business as it's always been Yeah, that's correct. Okay. Can I ask right? How how did you find me in the first place? I guess one of the groups On the facebook group That I now left. I think it's called facebook ad buyers. Is it okay? The ads mastermind. Is that the one? Uh, I think it's ad buyers And uh, there's so many of those and you made a video. Yeah, and I've seen a thousand videos like that And they all kind of look like you and they all talk like you and they're all like they have this solution And and my my question is always the same. Why are you telling me this if it's so great? But your video stood out and I watched the whole thing and I contacted you immediately and the reason why is uh, you Showed the the workings how you you just skipped through the How rich and how many Ferraris I'm gonna have and all this. Yeah, and you skipped directly to For like this is what my customer did And this is the result and it was very like believable Okay Okay, that's great. Then so I mean that that's why you contacted this in a sense trust right because Transparency, okay, got it. Yeah transparency is a huge deal like now showing my screen Uh, you got nothing to hide really nothing doing the same thing, right? Yeah, that's okay Okay, so I mean now that you've got uh, the knowledge right and the confidence to like go into any market any industry You know how to to like make sales, right? Like why what's your? This your phone business your phone case business. What do you plan to do with it with your partner, etc? Yeah Uh, so right now we're just We're attacking it from about 10 different ways Basic e-commerce is one of them Uh, but we have about 10 different Ways to approach it like we weren't sure if this is a pure e-commerce business If this is like 50 percent e-commerce 50 percent retail Like how the cost how the dynamics and in the regular retail market is Uh, so we learned a lot about that but ultimately Uh, we are selling online profitable Uh, and we're going to expand Significantly in the next like month month after two months And then in about a month or two, we're going to expand to a country number two Because we realize that the logistics make it because it's so small and light the product we can just sell globally and The shipping is not going to kill us. Okay, so it's uh It's an interesting problem because it's more of a building of a brand. Yes. So it's just completely different like What you're doing. So i'm not 100 sure what i'm doing, but it's a good product and I think that's Really the the key thing like you cannot sell shit. Yeah If it's good, it's just so much easier You don't have returns, you know, because even just two percent returns. It just kills you. It just kills your margins. Yeah, all right I think that's the most common problem You are like, uh, this this singular product this one is like high high ticket high margin, right? So you're you went you went to basically in the phone case businesses It's the low margin volume of business, right? So why make that change since you know, for example, it's like But it's not low margin. Okay. Okay. Low price low aov, right? Yeah. Yeah, but still I mean it's I know what you mean, but if you sell A case and a screen protector It's like $50 And they do not cost me $50. I can tell you that And the margins are much higher than I'm used to Uh, and also the The dynamics is just so different Uh, that it feels like If you if you look at other competitors you look at the companies you look at their numbers You look at like you've known them the entire way It's very feasible to reach huge numbers Not very but it's feasible to reach huge numbers in in this In this market, you can do it globally. You can do it Hyper locally you can do it in every which way you want. So I think that's appealing Okay, and uh, you guys are custom making the designs right now because you say you assemble in Norway, right? Is it Yeah, it's partly assembled in Norway and it's uh, it's a custom thing and so so it's like both in terms of like quality Protecting your phone. It's uh, the best possible And also in terms of like customizing your own designs. It's also quite unique. So Is it uh, it's also called unique by the way Yeah, yeah, is it difficult to find fulfillment centers, especially because you're in Norway and what's the second country you're expanding to? Well, right now we're fulfilling it ourselves Okay, so it's straight from you don't need uh What it's straight from your house. Then you fulfill How we fulfill? Yeah, you said you're fulfilling yourself right now, right? So are you shipping from the house? Okay No, no, no from the office, of course, but okay, okay But yeah, it's uh, the shipping costs when it comes to small things are Are low and also fulfilling yourself is like it's not a hard thing to do Yeah, you can reach very very large numbers. So just do everything yourself. Maybe have one employee So using uh, we can easily use a fulfillment center We have it locally here, but I mean it's just Just giving money away, especially when you have small products that don't weigh a lot It's much easier like my other my my primary store The one you helped me with it's a physically larger product It makes everything more difficult, but it's still you can still fulfill it yourself And I think it's the best to do that It's just more heavy. I work with Yeah, I work to treat shippers Uh, people to repack. It's just always a problem. So yeah so, I mean like I've uh, you're one of the few people who is like, uh Uh, you're confident to sell in the norway market even though it's small, right? Everybody who's job shipping Uh, generally they sell in the u.s. Right. So what what was I did the same I started in the u.s. Yeah, you switched for reason, right? So Were you like effort like this sucks or what what's the how all do you think the average customer is that buy online? If if you're gonna if you're gonna estimate like what is the typical Uh, person who buys is something online that they find on facebook Uh 28 to 32 Okay Yeah, you know my first I had another business And my first customer because I delivered it to their door just kind of to see It was a different product, but it And that was a 70 year old man wearing, uh This like working clothes like he used to be a carpenter, but it was now Uh, a senior citizen. Yeah, and I will say that's the average buyer In Norway or a senior citizen, um They are I completely forgotten And I keep coming back to them And this is the third store now and you still see signs that they are incredibly active They buy a lot much more than you think. Yeah, they're of course, uh easier to advertise to because they don't necessarily understand that It's an ad or yeah, they don't differentiate between types of content. I guess It's not in a cynical way. It's just more active and general online Like young people are are significant harder to sell to of course. I have like all kinds of customers, but The the older demographic like 70 to 80 are surprisingly active and completely Not advertised to at all So that that's the reason why you switch to the Norway market or no It's just home market own language Phone number you can talk to them Because I call a lot of stores before I buy. I don't generally generally trust a brand new store Okay, do you? Okay. Uh, yeah, I do I generally do yeah, I don't I don't shop much online to be honest I don't shop much as well, but when I shop I buy I don't ask. Yeah We got amazon to sweden yesterday. Yeah It opened up yesterday. Yeah, nice amazon.se And the norway is kind of also norway is the unique market. I have to say because we have customs We were outside of the EU so we're like like switzerland like the EEC so There is There is a barrier There is a barrier to entry here which makes it quite easy to To sell here And harder for people from abroad. So if you're a foreigner Who's running a drop shipping business? You have you have this problem that people are Worried about getting a customs Invoice after they get the the goods So it's the unique marketer Do you have any uh, personally because you have done it already do you have any advice for people who are like Scared to scale or like just getting into it because your your confidence thing is because you have a positive feedback look, right? So what's your advice to those people? Oh, I mean, uh, I I think that uh, uh, With if I hadn't met you I probably wouldn't even be an e-commerce now You're gonna quit like time. Okay. Okay Oh, it's such a crucial time to to get the right support like the right support and It's so toxic to go on a place like youtube or or instagram or something and you search for the word Shopify And you see all these people trying to tell you what to do and you have all these techniques It really reminds me a lot about finance and trading. You have a lot of same dynamics and it's hard to trust people it's hard to Because you really it's just like either people click buy or they don't So it's it's kind of similar to trading where I do buy or you sell. I mean, it's it's quite a simple thing But it just involves human psychology from beginning to end. So You can't really give advice, but but it's It's a huge moneymaker if you have a high ticket product Or some kind of unique advantage You have to have some kind of unique advantage And you cannot be selling random shit from early express. It's not worth it. Yeah I've considered a lot of product and I just Just haven't done it because there is Every single thing It's a saturated something or other even here locally So and you have to I don't I don't know how to Condense it into a philosophy and I don't I don't have to because my whole business is about myself So I don't try to teach anyone anything and like like if I have A niece or a nephew that's kind of hinting about getting a job or something like that you really like I'm glad I'm glad to have anyone like help anyone and have a small job or something like this But it really requires them to put some effort in it themselves And what I've noticed is that most people just don't Because it's a huge commitment to start selling something. It's a new thing. So I think this is the kind of business that Either you do it or you don't you're you're never going to be sort of talked into doing it So is that you want it or not basically I don't have a philosophy around it. I can't condense it into some kind of nice Sort of bullet point the kind of a thing Yeah, because it's really for me. It's Like I live in a unique way and I Like I live for work in a way and I don't think it's a bad thing and uh And I I think you kind of have to have a psycho mentality to be to start any kind of Product like this because it just takes everything from you. Yeah, but I just I still think it's worth You it's for your unique, right? You have a business partner. Is that correct? Yeah, and he's he's one of my unique advantages or unique benefits. So, uh, he is The expert when it comes to phones in Norway Okay, so And that that that's what I mean. You have to have some kind of advantage some kind of So he just knows the product really well basically Yeah, and And uh, I mean he was the first guy to start fixing phones and all these things and In the country one of the first in the world. So I think uh advantages like that are incredibly important Yeah, but also the fact that it's so you have to go so deep into the Into the skill set acquisition skill set. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You have to just live this So I don't have any friends on facebook or anything like I don't have anyone I I don't subscribe to anyone the only thing I I read on facebook is stuff about advertisements That's all I have like advertising groups and creative groups and all these things. Yeah So, I mean, I think that's That's where you have to kind of be What what's the and the six four I used to care about everything I don't care about anything Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's good focus up focus Yeah Do you do you can tell like I don't have a ready made speech or anything Because I'm just focusing on myself. Yeah, it's good. That's good Do you have a six month time time plan from now to Whenever or is it more like hey, let's just January first. Yeah, I'm moving everything into LLCs So I've been Doing it sort of in a more haphazard way until now So everything is going to be structured like each store is his own LLC each project is his own LLC I've been scaling down everything else. That's not e-commerce or or at least internet advertising Business I'm I'm a little bit flirting with some lead generating businesses But it's completely a different skill set, but it's all the same thing. So I just think it's fun to Understand human psychology understand like why people do what they do online So I'm just focusing more on that. So I'm trying to increase my margins a little bit by using the doing the the lead generating business on top of it but Yeah, it's a for me. It's a natural match But I'm just more e-commerce Uh more professional The structure. Yeah What about yourself? for me um building software now And then just try to fill in the same thing. Yeah Yeah, there's no change man 100% Yeah, yeah Like what's what is it the software? I know it's I see that the deadline looming here Okay, yeah, it's in 13 seconds. Uh, this is like uh accounting Control how much yeah exactly Exactly like the the thing you you mentioned just now about the Your excel spreadsheet. Yes, basically eliminate all of that. Yeah Yeah, yeah It's really good. Do you pay per user or something like that? Yeah, correct. It's like a recurring revenue model. So it's uh Per months of thing. Yeah, yeah That's a good idea Yeah, because what the one of the last things the reasons why I trusted you You didn't talk about revenue. You only talked about Uh Roas and I think um Yeah, or yeah, and I think come whatever you talked about real numbers Yeah, like you like you said, right? You're you're gonna do 600. Is it 600k, right? Uh, usd this year We have 200k I'm doing it analyzed. So, uh, annualized. So if I if I continue this momentum in the beginning Yeah, okay. So my idea is to keep it that or or double like I'm trying to double every year That's my goal. I've been doing it for a few years now. Yeah at the end of the that net income Like you said the free cash flow is what matters that 200k. Yeah So, yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I don't like it. Also, you have to also like I'm I'm not too worried about for instance Like my product costs now. Yeah, because uh, they've been going up because of corona Of course because transportation costs are just immense now they cost more than the product almost and But I'm not too worried about that now. I'm trying to keep everything just rolling and the things working and slowly evolve but also sort of adding complexities to it and While I do that it's sort of just It comes down the the cost basis, but yeah Yeah, okay. Oh, yeah, I see the countdown time as well. Do you have any last word step? Yeah, I'm looking at it now. I'm looking at it now. Do you want to say any last advice? Nobody did weird talking about this because I used to be a journalist and I used to have like a high You interview people. No, I used to be on twitter and I always had this concise answer to everything and trying to sound smart And I don't anymore. So I just sound like in moron. I don't really speak that much English anymore Yeah So I sound like an idiot because like I didn't I didn't plan out what to say. I don't have a good I don't have a good answer to To that question And uh, like Yeah Okay, what what did you wish you knew? That that information that you know now that you wish you knew in the past That's interesting I wish I'd seen your video earlier and I wish I never used an agency Okay, so so basically On your own hands. Okay. Yeah, you have to control the budget. You have to Yeah Yeah, okay So, uh, I only have one agency experience. I know you run an agency I have no experience with your agency and I'm sure it's fine But my agency that I used was just a crocker ship