Jared Goetz: Calling Young Entrepreneurs On The Phone

Do you have any tips to get into a good routine?

Do you consider yourself reactive? Are you just like getting up and going to your job and then going to college and like you don't really have much time to yourself to plan? Does that sound familiar? Is that kind of what it's like for you right now?

Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah, so that's normal. So that's the good news. And there's definitely some stuff I can recommend you do that would help you for sure. Yes sir, what's going on guys? We got Instagram, we're on the Ecom Max Facebook group here. We're gonna be here for the next 20-30 minutes, maybe an hour, we'll see how it goes. Answering questions. I know a lot of you guys have tons of different questions, mainly regarding e-commerce, but also just entrepreneurship in general, mindset, you know, anything that you wanna ask, we're here to answer. We actually, I posted before, I told you guys I'll be calling people, and we got a ton of DMs. We got probably about 100 phone numbers to call. We're not gonna be able to call everyone, but we put together a list and we're gonna just start calling people now, and whoever answers, you guys will get on the phone and We'll have a fun conversation. So, Brad, you wanna make the first call?

Yeah.

We got Maxwell. Maxwell.

Yeah.

I'm also keeping note of questions coming in through the feed, so keep those flowing too. And if anyone in this group wants us to call them, just post your phone number in the comments and we'll give you a call. I'm sorry, but the person you called— Oh, he didn't answer. I'm gonna leave a voicemail for him. First person we called.

Goodbye. Oh, it is that my voice fell off.

All right, all right, next one. Hang up, hang up.

He said it's hung up.

All right, cool.

Who's up next?

Owen.

Oh, is this Owen? Yeah, what's up Owen? This is Jared Goetz.

Hey Jared, what's going on?

What's up man, where are you?

I'm in Ontario, Canada.

Nice, I love Canadian people.

Yeah, man, it's great over here.

Nice, yeah, so I got your DM before. You had some questions, you wanna talk about some stuff. What do you do?

So right now I'm actually just, I'm trying to get into the e-commerce space. I've been learning and testing for Just over 6 months now, and I started following you back when I started my journey, kind of. I got your book, and I absolutely love your book, man.

Awesome, you read the book?

Yeah.

Amazing, great to hear. Did we send you a copy of it?

Yeah, you did. Yeah, I was one of the people who sent you the address.

Good to hear you got some value out of it. Yeah, so what kind of questions do you have?

Um, I kind of wanted to ask you, um, if there's ever a time where you were— because right now I'm working a job to fund, uh, my learning investing with Facebook ads and advertising online— if there was like ever a turning point where you were able to jump like all in to your stores and your journey with eShop?

Yeah, totally depends on your lifestyle. I mean, where are you at in life? Are you living by yourself? Do you live with your parents?

Yeah, so I graduated college last year. I took a general program and I'm living with my parents still, so I'm in a good position where it's in my life where I have really little expenses, living expenses, so I'm able to put like all my time and focus outside of my job at the gym into Okay, cool.

So you're basically working, and then aside from that, you're, you're working on your e-commerce business and trying to make things happen. So what is your daily routine look like? Like, what time are you waking up? How much time do you have to yourself? You know, are you just like waking up, going into your day, or do you, are you, you have time to plan and strategize? What does your day look like?

Yeah, so yeah, I'm really into breaking down my day. So I get up at 4:30 every morning, and I work Monday to Friday, 5:30 to 6:00 AM at the gym until 11:00 in the morning. So I'm working a 5.5-hour shift Monday to Friday, so that takes me a good amount of hours after that. So I start from like 12:00 until about 5:30 at night, take a break, kind of like talked about in your book. I don't hit the gym until around 6:30, and then from 6:30 till 9:00 I am back at it, and then I go to bed and do it and then Monday to Friday.

That sounds like a great routine to me. I wouldn't jump ship from your job anytime soon. I mean, even if you start making money, but 'cause the good thing is, you know, with your e-commerce business, there's a lot of ways to automate it. You know, there's a lot of ways to automate the tedious stuff like order fulfillment, even like putting up ads, dealing with customers, and that's what takes up 90% of the time. So I think you have an ample amount of time to be able to like test products, get ads up there, and get the business moving. So I probably wouldn't jump ship from your job right away.

Okay, all right. Another question, do you have time?

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Another question, when you were starting out learning, what were the best ways of learning? Like what medium did you use? Did you study courses or blogs or learn from experts? What's your—

Yeah, so I think the main thing is, it's not so much learning because there's so many things that are changing all the time. Facebook's algorithm's changing, different marketing tactics work now that didn't work 2 weeks ago. So you might be learning things that are outdated. The key is to continue to try things. In order to like keep being able to try things, you gotta keep yourself inspired. You gotta keep yourself disciplined so that you have that motivation and you're able to keep going. So I wouldn't say that there's necessarily one way to learn. I would definitely keep following people like myself. Surround yourself with people that are also doing things that you wanna do, obviously. Keeping you in the right mindset. But, you know, there's tons of free resources, you know, on YouTube. The problem with that is sometimes the information's conflicting. So rather than trying to learn so much, you have to have a balance between learning and doing. And for me, like, I tried a bunch of things before I had a big win. You know, I was— I've tried, you know, a bunch of different ecommerce businesses before I got into dropshipping. And most of the stuff didn't work, realistically. Like 90% of it didn't work. And we've had students who've done millions of dollars in sales, but it took them 60 products testing and trying different things before the first thing worked. So really what you gotta focus on is like, even if you get discouraged or even if you're like, you know, not extremely motivated, keeping that discipline up so you can keep trying new things and eventually something will work and change your perspective.

Okay, that's awesome. Yeah, because one thing, because I've tested a few different things, I've had some success here and there. It's almost like I'll try something and then some things won't work out, but I'll learn from it and then implement that on the next thing that I try and find a little bit more success that time. And it's kind of like a repeated process of slow growth.

Absolutely. And, you know, don't forget that, you know, knowledge compounds. So as you try things, as you learn new things, broadens your perspective. So when you see— you'll see opportunities that you wouldn't have, you know, typically seen had you not tried so many things. So just get yourself out there. If something looks cool, give it a shot. Like, worst case, you learn something and you can apply it to something else you're working on.

Okay, perfect. I got one more quick one if you got a second.

Sure thing.

So one of the things you talk about in your book that hit me really hard was like in a good way, was talking about the grouping and the people you surround yourself with in life. I'm back in a small town, Colbert. It's like only 10,000 people. It's a really small community and it seems like I'm one of the only ones who are trying to get into the online marketing space and e-commerce specifically. How would I go about meeting and networking with those groups who are groups 3 individuals who are kind of trying towards the same thing as I am if they're not around physically? Is it like important to physically jump to the leap and move away somewhere or connect with people online? Or how do you suggest is the best way to network?

Yeah, that's actually a really good question because a lot of people, you know, aren't necessarily in big cities where they have, you know, all these other, you know, hungry like-minded entrepreneurial people around them. But, you know, it's actually, you're better off not hanging out with many people at all than just hanging out with people for the sake of it that are in your town or in your area that are doing things that you don't wanna be doing. But the cool thing is that there's so many different events, especially these days. Like entrepreneurship is at a level where it's never been before. I think the statistic is like 66% of millennials wanna be their own boss. People are throwing events and masterminds, even free events, just get-togethers. And actually, going to an event like a mastermind that, let's just say it's 2 or 3 days long and there's 20 people there, all those people are like-minded people. And when you actually immerse yourself in an event, when you're in an area with other people that are doing what you wanna be doing, it actually like changes your beliefs and your realities a little bit. Like you might be at home and you may be on the computer and you may be seeing, you know, other people's success and it gets you a little bit, you know, excited. But like deep down inside doesn't really change your beliefs. But when you're sitting next to someone who's doing and has accomplished the things that you want to accomplish, it actually literally changes your belief structure. So I definitely recommend getting out to some masterminds. There's, you know, Even just going to like a 10X Growth Con or Affiliate World or just getting yourself out there in the space that you wanna be in is important. I would definitely recommend, I mean, how long have you lived in your hometown for?

I grew up here and I went to school in Ottawa and then now I'm back here, so I've been stuck in this place for my whole life.

So you've been there pretty much your whole life and how old are you?

I'm 20 years old.

20, okay, cool. I would, I mean, like for myself, I threw myself out there. It's kind of like if you throw yourself in an uncomfortable situation, you're gonna be forced to grow. You might be like, oh my god, going to a big city is gonna be so expensive and, and I'm not gonna know what to do. But when you do those types of things, like say for example you just decide I'm gonna move to New York City, which is like probably 5 times more expensive than where you live now. You feel like it's really expensive, right? But eventually you're gonna figure it out. You're gonna figure out how to live there. You're gonna figure out how to earn that money. And in turn, you're gonna actually raise your standards for what your minimum is. Right now you have a base that you're comfortable at. If you push yourself and you went out to live in New York City and you need to earn $10,000 a month to be somewhat comfortable, you're gonna, you're going to get there because you have to. and now for the rest of your life, you'll never make less than $10,000 a month. It's like this, you know, I'm in this house that was originally out of my ballpark when I first moved in. It was like a little bit out of my budget. But like now I'll never downgrade to something less because you already get it. Like when you get something, when something's in your possession, or you have a lifestyle that's in your possession, it's really hard for someone to take it away from you. Getting there is hard, It's even harder for people to take it away from you.

Wow, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense because I was thinking of taking the leap back to Ottawa because of just networking upstream and meeting people. I think it's like, how did you get over that, that like risk factor, that fear factor?

You're never gonna get over the risk factor and the fear factor, and it's, you know, the tough part is that like we're programmed to think the worst-case scenario is gonna happen. Like, just like deep down inside, you're always thinking about the worst-case scenario, but like, you just gotta remind yourself that 99.9% of the time, that won't happen. And actually, more than half the time, something better than what you even expected a good outcome to happen will end up happening. So you just gotta keep reminding yourself that, you know? And, uh, you'll build up a confidence. You just gotta throw yourself out there, and you start to build up a muscle and a confidence.

Yeah, it's like mind over matter kind of, keep your emotions out of it, eh?

Absolutely. I mean, it's just, you just got to do it and then, and you don't have a choice.

That's awesome. Appreciate the advice.

Yeah, man, of course. Do you have any last questions before we hop off here?

Um, no, I think that answered, those were some of the big ones I put together and some of the things I took away from your book, but Will you be releasing another book anytime?

Not anytime soon. That one was hard enough to get done, but eventually.

It was amazing, man. It really was.

I'm glad you liked it. Oh, and very nice talking to you. I'll talk to you soon.

Yeah, it's awesome talking to you, Jared.

All right, we got a call back, I think, from— is this Maxwell or Max? Is this Max? Mm, just a minute, let me call him back.

Hello?

Hey, is this Max?

Yeah.

What's up, Max? This is Jared Goetz.

Yo dude, this is crazy.

How you doing?

Good, man. Where are you based?

Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I've never been there before.

Yeah, no, pretty big city.

Cool.

What do you have on your mind?

Yeah, I mean, I got a lot going on right now, man. I mean, I'm a college student and aspiring entrepreneur. I've been following you for a while, and I don't know, I just got a lot of big ideas that I just I don't know, I can't focus and I just, I need to get into a routine. Like, do you have any tips to get into a good routine?

Well, what does your routine look like now?

What?

What does your routine look like now?

I mean, I stay pretty busy with, uh, I work almost a full-time job in college, so I'm pretty busy Monday through Friday, but I just don't, I don't think I utilize weekend time enough.

Do you consider yourself reactive? Are you just like getting up and get going to your job and then going to college and like you don't really have much time to yourself to plan?

Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah, that's, um, that's how like the majority of the world is. They're very reactive. They wake up and their phone is blown up with, with Instagram DMs and text messages, and they have to eat breakfast and get to work, and then they're at work, focus on work all day. By the time they get home, they're too tired to even implement on these great ideas that they have, and then it's just a vicious cycle. Yeah. Does that sound familiar? Is that kind of what it's like for you right now?

Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah, so that's normal. So that's the good news. And there's definitely some stuff I can recommend you do that would help you for sure. So first of all, what time do you get up every day?

Usually 7 o'clock.

7 o'clock? Read this book. It's called The 5 AM Club. Get that book on Amazon today. Yeah.

Alright.

So, not enough of us have time to ourselves. You know, we're so busy and we're just consistently thrown into the mix. If you start getting up a little bit earlier and exercising first thing in the morning and getting your endorphins going, you get yourself into a good mindset first thing in the morning. And then if you give yourself an hour disconnected from social media, just by yourself, maybe stretching, drinking some tea or coffee, and relaxing, you, you'll start to gain clarity on things that may be overwhelming because you'll have more time to think through them. Also, you got to remember, we're in a day and age that our stimulation from, from technology is at an all-time high, right? You're on Instagram all the time. You find yourself scrolling through Instagram and just like waiting for that next hit of dopamine from a video and sometimes even just close out Instagram just to reopen it. So getting distracted and your thought process is not as long as it used to be, you know, 50, 100 years ago. The greatest people in the world, people that have accomplished the most in the world, Mozart, Albert Einstein, like, you know, true geniuses worked on single things for years, and we're not programmed to be like that these days. So you actually have to put forth an effort to give yourself that opportunity to think things through. So if you get up a little earlier and you— but you can't just like get up and mosey around. You got to get up and exercise or do something that makes you feel good and give yourself an hour before the world wakes up. You'll be amazed at what happens. Yeah, no, for sure, right? That's where discipline comes into play. You got to do the shit you don't want to do And if you just keep doing that, actually, like, if you, if you know that something will make you better and you're not really motivated to do it, but you do it anyway, you'll start to build up this subconscious self-confidence just because you trust your— you're true to yourself. You know, if you're like, I want to lose 10 pounds and I just, I know I got to go to the gym for 2 months straight, I got to eat healthy and I'll lose 10 pounds. If you'd say you could, you know, that's all it takes and that's all you got to do to get that done and then you don't do it, you lose trust in yourself. You're like, I can't even be true to myself, how can I be true to someone else, right? So you gotta do the things that you know that you need to do to make yourself better, and then that will parlay into your entire life. When an opportunity strikes, you'll have a little bit of extra confidence, 'cause you're like, oh, I'm able to be true to myself, that means I can be true to this task. So I guess main things are just really work on that discipline, write out your entire week. This is something I do every Sunday. I'll sit down and I'll write out my schedule. I'll start by putting in blocks for like when I'm gonna wake up, when I'm gonna exercise, what I'm gonna eat, when I'm gonna eat it, when, you know, all like the life stuff. You know, when I'm gonna be having dinner with my girlfriend, when I'm gonna be, you know, all the personal time. And then I start putting in all my work blocks. And then you don't wake up on Monday and you're like, oh shit, what should I do today? You know exactly what you need to do to have the perfect week. Now it's up to your discipline to achieve that. Now you just gotta be disciplined, and you know if you do everything you planned, you're gonna be better off at the end of the week than you were in the beginning of the week. So try writing out a plan.

Yeah, for sure. I think I'm definitely gonna start doing that. I think I'd utilize my time a lot better because when I have free time, it's more just like, oh, what do I do now? You know?

That's just—

Yeah, very cool. Yeah, do you have any other things that are on your mind or any other questions?

I mean, yeah, just generally about like dropshipping nowadays. Is it something you think diving into now is profitable?

Yeah, so we're finally getting to the e-commerce questions. That's funny because most people have been asking like mindset questions, which I'm really passionate about too. But, um, yeah, so he's asking, is dropshipping still profitable?

Profitable?

The simple answer is yes. The perspective answer is, you know, when I got started with dropshipping 3 years ago, people were saying it's dead. And since then we've done multiple 8 figures in e-commerce sales. So you're going to always hear people who have failed tell you it doesn't work anymore. So just like, you got to block that out. But the simple answer is yes, it's profitable. Is it the same as it was last year? No. Is it the same as it was 2 years ago, absolutely not. Is it always ever evolving? Yes, just like any business. But the business model itself, it simply works. You just have to be, you know, savvier with your advertising these days than you were last year.

Yeah, no, 'cause I really want to start that this summer.

I'm gonna have a lot more free time just without focusing on work. So I wanted to dive into it this summer. And just look for ways to make a lot of money online and to diversify everything out.

Cool, so what makes you want to wait until the summer to dive in?

Just right now with school, I gotta get out of the semester with a good grade, so I'm really focusing on when I have free time pretty much just on studying. I got like 3 weeks left, then the semester is done.

Alright, cool. It's right around the corner, so that's good. Do you have a game plan for what you're going to do when you get started?

Oh no, not really. So I've just been looking on videos about dropshipping and starting up a store.

Cool. Well, don't get caught in the rut that a lot of people get caught in where they're like learning too much before they start doing. Even a lot of our students, they're like watching our course over and over and over again. I'm like, hey, have you put up any ads yet? And they say, No, I just want to make sure I know enough about the platform first. And I'm like, well, you're never going to really know about the platform until you start using it. So just, you know, get in that action-taking mindset when you first get started. Yeah, I mean, I've had a—

I've run Shopify stores before. I've played around with it. And I mean, I do Facebook ads. That's the one business thing that I do is I run a couple clients' Facebook ads for them. So I've gotten really familiar with Facebook ads and everything with that.

That's awesome.

So I'm hoping to apply that down to dropshipping.

Well then you're a huge step ahead of the game then because a lot of people who first get started, especially with Facebook ads, it's complicated and it's confusing. So it takes a lot of energy expenditure to even do the smallest tasks and you have limited energy throughout the day. So if it takes half your energy to put up one ad, You know, you're not gonna get much done. So you're definitely ahead of the game there.

Yeah, awesome. I just don't know what— do you recommend a course for dropshipping, or how would you recommend we go about it?

Yeah, I mean, we have a course. It's called Ecom Hacks Academy. It's, you know, fully comprehensive, start to finish. If you're interested, shoot me another DM after this and I can get you set up. But I'm not here to sell you on anything. I mean, realistically, it's a good—

Yeah, no, no, for sure.

I'm not, yeah.

It's a good guide just to get started and get started in the right direction 'cause there's a lot of conflicting information out on YouTube. You don't know who to learn from. But more than a course, more than anything, I just recommend building a store and running ads and learning as you go. My first biggest win in e-commerce didn't come from something I learned from someone else. It came from me literally just trying something. And it was just like— I just was like, maybe if I duplicate all my ad sets, I'll get as many sales, but I'll multiply them by 5. I did that, and then the next day I did it again, and in like 7 days the ads went from doing like $1,000 a day to over $50,000 a day just by trying something. So you never know what happens when you try something.

Yeah, sweet.

I'll definitely look into the course for sure. Just want a good baseline where to start.

Cool, absolutely. Do you have any other questions, anything else?

Yeah, no, that's pretty much it.

I really appreciate your call, man.

Absolutely, yeah, thanks for hopping on. Yeah, alright, have a good day, Jared. Alright, cool. So who do we have next?

Um, so I'm actually going full-time after graduation with an online Shopify store that I've been working with for 2 years, and we're gonna be actually shipping our own product because you Had tons of problems with 4 different dropshippers. So I was kind of curious if you have any advice on going from working part-time to going full-time in the office, shipping your own product and stuff like that.

Yeah, well I'll tell you, it will definitely be a lot more work. I actually, my background, I come from importing products, building brands, selling to retail. I discovered dropshipping after I did all that stuff, so it was like a breath of fresh air. Not having to deal with all that. But do you have a brand?

Yeah, so it's GreenGone Detox. It's actually a THC detox supplement.

So that's one of the reasons I'm doing it.

I'm sorry, what was it?

GreenGone Detox. It's a THC detox kit.

Okay.

And we're opening a couple subsidiaries, a dropshipping company, so we're going to try to get other people in the area, whether they're making signs or whatever other products, try to ship for them too to get another stream of revenue.

So you're saying that you're gonna start also fulfilling products from other brands?

Yes, that's the goal.

So do you have a fulfillment center? Are you gonna have your own warehouse? Are you gonna partner with fulfillment?

Yeah, we're moving into a warehouse.

Is there a reason you wanna do it that way as opposed to working with like a fulfillment center to do it for you?

So right now, like, one of our biggest costs is the errors in shipping and shipping itself. Um, our dropshippers, like, some days they just won't even shipping product. Um, and we kind of decided we want to do it in-house. Um, and we have the time. Both me and my coworker are taking a gap year between, uh, whether it's law school or MBA. So we saw the opportunity. Boss offered us a a decent salary, that's why we're doing it again.

Yeah, I mean, I've been there, I've had my own warehouse, I've actually personally taped up boxes and shipped them out for like a few months and it's cool to be hands-on and see all the orders go out, that's for sure. But it's gonna be a lot more work for you.

Yeah, I mean, we're doing only like 20 to 30, sometimes upwards of 40 orders a day, so. I'm not too worried about the time frame because we're going to be in the office all day soon.

We're going to start packing up, getting ready to go.

So you're doing 30 or 40 orders a day. Do you want to scale that? Do you want to do 400 orders a day or 2,000 orders a day?

Um, yeah, we would love to scale that. Our Shopify actually kind of got down in the dumps and we were relying on Amazon and now our Amazon has kind of, it's kind of flipped and we have a third party, we outsource the SEO team and they've kind of been bringing our SEO back to our Shopify. We try to offer a service too and help people throughout the detox. We have a support line where they can ask any questions about whether it's their testing methods or diet recommendations, all that stuff. So right now we're both part-time, we aren't trying to scale that but once we That's cool.

So it's probably difficult advertising with Facebook ads with a THC type product, right?

Yeah, we never advertise on Facebook. We got Google AdWords running for a couple months and we were raking in like $3,000 to $5,000 a day and now we're back around $1,000 to $2,000 a day.

Yeah, and have you worked with any influencers yet?

No, we haven't. That's kind of the thing with the product.

We're not sure who to reach out to.

We reached out to like YouTube people who post about marijuana stuff, but it's kind of an interesting target.

Well, after this call, shoot me a DM. A friend of mine owns pretty much all the Instagram pages that have, that are like weed related or marijuana related. So I can connect you with him after this.

Oh, that's good.

Absolutely. Yeah, man, do you have any other questions?

I mean, how are things going for you?

Things are really good here. We're working on a lot of different software platforms for our community. Of course, running our dropshipping stores. We have a few masterminds coming up. And just, you know, focused on having a good, fulfilling life.

Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the things I'm looking into doing too is Trying to open my own dropshipping store on the side, and I don't really know exactly how to do it besides the few things I've watched with you, the dropshipping and importing product into the channel and stuff like that.

Yeah, if you want to get started, there's kind of two different ways. One way is just kind of be on the lookout for something that you see out there that's trending, like if you're getting hit with an ad all the time, or you can use spy tools that we have a platform, EH Product Finder. Spy tool. Um, and the other way is just testing a ton of products until you find something that works and then scaling it. And the good thing about that model is like, the business that you have right now is great because you're building equity in your brand, um, and you're building a business that you can sell. Uh, but the good thing about a dropshipping business is that it's very scalable. You know, you could do 2,000 or 3,000 orders a day on something without having to worry about logistics. Definitely recommend it.

Facebook ads and Google AdWords for sure.

Yeah, Facebook ads and Google Shopping, that's another good one.

Yeah, we've been trying to get on there for a while.

There's a lot of—

trying to find payment actually. We have to use only PayPal checkout right now because we don't comply with Shopify payment terms of service and we comply with Shopify terms of service.

Oh, for which product? For your, uh, THC detox?

Yeah, because Yeah, because you mentioned marijuana on our website and there's a marijuana logo.

Yeah, so you need to get yourself another merchant ID because if you're just using PayPal, that's gonna cut your conversion rates in half. Meaning if you get 100 people on your site, as opposed to getting 10 customers, you're gonna get 5. Not everyone uses PayPal.

I reached out to a few and the one we got that said they'd 100% take us was called WePay LLC and they wanted 8%.

You know what? Yeah, if you're— when you're dealing with high-risk merchants or merchants that deal with THC products, you're gonna have to pay a high percentage, but it's better than losing those customers.

Fair enough.

Those are lifetime customers. Those are, you know, those are customers that 25% of them will buy from you again. You know, if you have to pay an 8% fee on that, it's worth it.

Yeah.

And then you can negotiate. Once you're moving a lot of volume, you can go back to the company and say, Hey, you know, we're processing $1 million a month, we need much better rates. And there's definitely other competitors out there too, so you can start shopping your business around to other merchant accounts.

I appreciate all the advice.

For sure. Awesome, man. Any other questions or anything else?

No, thank you. Appreciate your time.

Yes, sir. Alright man, well have a great day.

Can I shoot you a DM or a text with this number?

No, this is not my number, but just shoot me a DM and I'll connect you with my friend who I told you about.

Okay, appreciate it, have a good day.

Awesome.

Cool.

Got some questions coming through on picking the right product. Just starting out, trying to pick the right product.

Coming out, so we have questions coming from the group about how to pick the right product. So what we always teach and what we recommend— I'm about to make another phone call here in a second— but what we always teach and recommend is that you start with a general store so that you can test a lot of different products. You might be selling, you know, a makeup organizer, and then you're on Facebook and you see that this t-shirt is selling like crazy, or you see an ad for it, it's going crazy, but it's in a totally different niche. Well, If you have a general store, you can start selling both of those products. And then whatever works, whatever product is profitable for you, you can then go ahead and build a single product store for it. And when we build single product stores, our conversion rates go from anywhere from like 3 to 4% on our general store upwards of like 8 to 10% even on our single product store. So that means for every 100 visitors, instead of getting 3 or 4 sales, we make 8 to 10 sales. And imagine with 10,000 visitors how much that could change your business. Somebody's asking, does single product work? Absolutely, but you have to prove it out first before you build that store. Brad, do we have any other questions in the meantime?

A few more, but let's get another phone call here.

Alright, I'm calling, uh, Saroosh. Excuse me if I mispronounce your name.

I'm gonna call you right now if you're on here.

Sorry, our dogs are freaking out out there if you hear them.

Hello?

Is this Saroosh?

Huh?

Is this Saroosh?

Yeah.

Am I pronouncing your name right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is Jared Goetz.

Oh, how you doing, dude?

What's up, man? How are you?

I'm good, man. How about you?

Doing great. It's great connecting with people and doing a livestream like this, just having a lot of fun. Where are you located?

Well, I'm in Chicago, Illinois.

Very nice. It's still cold over there?

No, it's pretty nice now.

Got the good weather now.

45.

Yeah, man.

There you go.

I really want to thank you about that book.

Oh yeah, did you get a chance to read it?

Yeah, man, I finished. That was like my first book. After that, I started reading books every day. I read a chapter a day. I got this new book, it's A Millionaire Mindset.

By Dean Graziosi?

Huh?

Yeah.

Yeah, Dean's a good guy for sure.

Like, you're a boss, like, bro. It's crazy, man. Like, the discipline I got, like, after that, like, I was slacking, man. Like, when Shopify was not working for me, I was like, damn, man, what should I do?

Then I got on Etsy.

Well, that Etsy, like, I got disciplined. I started uploading products every day. Dropshipping on Etsy is working out for me, and I'm doing dropshipping right now, man. It's like pretty— like, thanks, bro. Like, I really want to thank you.

Dude, I love that and I appreciate the kind words. You know, that book is something from the heart. It's just lessons that I've learned over the last like 10 years and as an entrepreneur going through ups and downs and the people who end up making it as an entrepreneur, you need to have some grit, you know, you need to be able to push because 90% of the time or 80% of the time, you're not, you're not, it's not as glorified as it looks. Like when you see people on social media who are successful entrepreneurs, they're only showing that 10 or 20% of the time of their lives when they're having so much fun. I mean, there's people who exit and sell their company for $200 million and they have fun for the rest of their lives, but the majority of entrepreneurs out there, it's a grind, it's hard work, and you go through some dark places. So it's definitely important to get that mindset right.

I just heard of this dude like doing Bitcoin mining, like lost $8 grand, started from zero. I was like, damn, what should I do again? No money for ads, like I don't know what to do, have to pay for college. On zero, man, started grinding doing Uber Eats every single day. Like I was not even 19, I could do Uber Eats. I was using my brother's thing, like I was just grinding. I was like, man, I gotta get this thing going.

It's like all about that grind, like how bad you want it.

Well, that during, during the time when you're going through that shit, it seems like the worst in the world, but it builds you up to be stronger.

Like, you're so much dark, like you don't know what to do. Like, yeah, like you're so at the bottom, like you don't know how to feel. Like, yep, yep, yep.

I've been there, man. I wouldn't— when I was 22 years old, I came from— I was, I was hot and successful at 21. We made almost a million dollars, and back then that was like mind-boggling right out of college. And when I was 22, I basically lost everything in my business, all my personal funds, and I lost money from an investor. And then I got sued and I had no money in my name. I got hit with a $250,000 lawsuit and I didn't even know where I was gonna eat. So I got a job as a waiter, which totally went against my ego and what I thought I was at in life. It was a dark place. And it took me 2 years to get through that lawsuit. And that— the whole 2 years were kind of my rock bottom. But looking back at it, it kind of— it helped me build this muscle that lets me get through problems now that would seem difficult, but they feel really easy. So, you know, you really got to appreciate those times. And even if you keep going through those times, you got to remember that you have to go through those things. You have to go through those things.

Like a lot. I got a quick question. You know when you set up, like I just like, for Facebook Ads, right? Like when you run Facebook Ads, do you click purchase at the first day? Because when you're starting a new store, you don't go for purchase, right? You go for like view add to cart, right?

So there's different styles. I'm always a proponent of just optimizing for purchases right off the bat. Because you got to think of it this way: if you're optimizing for add to carts or view contents first, like, yes, you're going to get cheaper traffic to your website first, and you might, you know, quote-unquote season your pixel a little bit, but the people who are coming to your website, they're not buyers. When you're optimizing for purchases, it costs more, but you're getting higher quality traffic to your website, which means that your audiences that you're going to be building are stronger audiences. You might get 100 visitors and it costs you twice as much if you're optimized for purchases, but when you're retargeting those people and you're creating lookalike audiences of people who've clicked and who've added to cart and then eventually lookalikes of your purchasers, those audiences will be so much stronger if you've been optimizing for purchase since the beginning. But it could go either way. I mean, some people say, you know, optimize for view content, then add to cart, then purchase. I'm a big proponent of just going straight for the purchase.

Purchase.

Yeah, purchase objective right off the bat.

Both ways, like on my different store, like it's just like sometimes like it works the other way. Like I was going for purchase, purchase was not working, but add to cart, I'm like feeling it right now and it kind of works. Like I don't know, man, like there's so many gurus out there. Like it's just like I'm just trying both ways now. So I tried it with add to cart, it was decent going. Then I started with the other store. It didn't work out and I want to purchase it and I was like, okay man, what should I do? Like, which one should I pick? Like, at the end of the day I was like—

Yeah, so you gotta remember that Facebook ads are based on an auction. So if everyone's optimizing for purchase, you may get cheap, much cheaper traffic optimizing for add to cart and that may actually end up working better for you. But the majority of the time it's more of an even spread. So, you know, we've, We've scaled probably about 15 to 20 products into the multiple 7 figures. We've always just went straight for purchases.

Like when you, like you right now don't do dropshipping, right? I read in your book how you said you got the smart toilet.

Yeah, but we're also, I also run about 7, maybe 6 or 7 dropshipping stores right now.

Mm-hmm.

But like, in the long run, can you do dropshipping?

In the long run, can you do dropshipping? Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's stores that I have running that I've been running for 2 years now. But there's also stores that have been seasonal stores that we've cranked out $1 million in December, for example, one store. And it was a seasonal product, and we're gonna wait until next December to run it again. But dropshipping is just a business model. It's not a bit— I mean, you could absolutely— I mean, think about Wayfair Furniture. It's a billion-dollar company. They're a dropshipping business. That's a long-term business. It's just a business model.

But like, if you try and like— I don't know, bro. Like, you know those big friggin' stores like they're making like $45,000 a day? Like, are they dropshipping too? Like most of the brands like you go for like their There's one dropshipping store on Shopify, Frank, like number 12. I know it's dropshipping, but like some of their product, I ordered one and it was quick, bro. It got delivered in 5 days, like, and it's like, it says it's a dropshipping store. I'm like, how does that work?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you're selling products and you're testing and you're dropshipping a ton of different products, but then one of them becomes a winner, it makes sense for you to then import some of those products. You know, it makes sense for you to import 10,000 units of something and ship it out fast because it's gonna mitigate your refunds rate, it's gonna make your customers happier so you have a higher lifetime value of customers, and you won't get chargebacks which won't fuck up your merchant accounts. So it makes sense to import them eventually, but dropshipping, you know, you may import 10,000 pieces of something and send it to a fulfillment center here in the US. That's still dropshipping. You're still not touching your inventory, but you're fronting the money for it so it gets out faster.

Yeah.

One more question. You know when people do chargebacks, but like they actually got the product, but they go through bank and they say like, I got the product, but the quality is shitty. But like it says on the description that you got the product. Like how can I fight them? Like what can I do with them? Because like I go through with bank, they say they and not a customer service.

You know what, you'll more than likely win those ones unless people file a chargeback for fraud or that they didn't receive the product. Most of the time you'll end up winning those chargebacks.

But I was selling these Stella Currants, like there was like 20 chargebacks that went through banks that said the product is shitty and the bank was not even going through. They was like, you gotta pay them back. And the PayPal was coming, like PayPal is They will send you an email that says if you don't send the money, a third party will come to your house to get the money.

Yeah, you know what, it's actually— and hang on just one second. By the way guys, anyone on Instagram, my phone died. We just plugged it back in, but we're still doing these calls. So it's part of the business. Actually, any business you're in, you'll get chargebacks. That's just part of the business. But what's more important is that you actually are proactive with your customer support. You know, if something's going to take a long time to ship, if you haven't imported it in bulk and started shipping it where it takes 2 to 3 days or 5 days, 5 days. You know, what we do on some of our stores is actually everyone who buys from us, we send them an email right away and say, hey, by the way, this product may take, you know, 12 to 15 days to get to you. And people appreciate that, you know. If you stay in communication with them and you have good customer support, you— I mean, some of our biggest dropshipping stores have less than a 0.5% chargeback rate because we have really good customer support. But if you just You don't talk to anyone and you ship their product out and don't communicate with them, you're going to get a ton of chargebacks.

You think like the thing works like when you send an email over and over? For example, like a product is taking 30, 29 days to ship and every week you send them an email. You think that will work like your product's on the way, it will take them days?

Well, I wouldn't ship out anything that takes 29 days. If I'm shipping something from China, it's coming from my own warehouse. Supplier who I've trusted and worked with and sent millions of dollars to. I'll try to avoid buying from AliExpress because you don't know what you're gonna get. But if it's taking 30 days, that's not gonna work. If it's taking like 12 to 15 days and you hit them with an email right when they buy telling them, the refund rate will be low. They're not gonna be like— some people say, okay, just issue me a refund, you give them a refund. But most people say, okay, cool, you know, you say like, we're able to offer you this great deal because we're shipping straight from our manufacturer. It might take a little bit longer than expected, but it'll be there within this amount of time. And people appreciate that proactive outreach.

Uh, last question, bro. You know, like, can you dropship with Amazon and can you get in trouble?

I'm actually not experienced with using Amazon, so I, I know people who do, uh, but it's not something that I do, so I don't want to speak on it.

Oh, for real?

I just, I wanna make sure, 'cause I was thinking like dropshipping from Amazon, 'cause it's like, get the Prime shipping and you can—

Oh, you're saying like your Shopify store and then sending out products from Amazon? You actually, you can't really do that, 'cause Amazon has their own shipping services and tracking numbers, and you won't be able to get anyone tracking numbers.

No, but like, but like, if you, yeah, oh shit. I didn't think about that.

Yeah, so I don't know, we've never done that before, but you know, if you give it a shot and it works, let me know.

Oh well, man, I'm 100%.

Awesome. Yeah, good, good, good chatting with you. Have a good one, man.

Yeah, good. With YouTube going on right there.

Sorry guys, my, my phone died while we were on live. We're, uh, we're almost done here. We're probably gonna be making one or two more calls. We got a list of people here. I'm gonna be giving a call to— did we call this person already?

Let me check.

No.

Let's give a call to Chris. Chris, if you're on there, I'm giving you a call.

Hello?

Hey, is this Chris?

Hey, what's up, man? How are you? Is this Jared or Dean?

It's Jared.

Jared, what's up, man?

How are you?

I'm doing great. How are you doing?

I'm doing good.

I'm doing good.

I had a couple questions for you.

Absolutely, shoot.

Awesome, man.

So one thing is, you know, being in where you're at right now in your entrepreneurship game and the success that you've had, obviously I'm not there yet. I'm one of your students that just joined on a couple weeks ago, or probably last month. I'm still testing out products right now, but my question is, you know, I racked up about $24,000 in debt and my credit cards are like up to the brim, and I own a house, I have a car, And, uh, you know, I'm kind of getting a little nervous. Um, I'm also in a job that I just, I'm really unhappy with, very toxic. Um, and I'm just like struggling. What, what would you do? Um, I know there's a lot more details, but I don't want to keep you on too long. But what would you do in a situation like that? Would you basically sell your house and move it back in with your parents? You kind of stay afloat as you're on this journey, or do you, would you just keep moving forward and just let shit happen the way it's supposed to happen, and then eventually just wait for your breakthrough. Like, I'm still kind of trying to decide what to do.

Well, there's a lot of factors that go into play on like what you should do. There's probably a lot about your life that I don't know, but it seems to me that you feel like there's some pressure. You got the pressure on right now, right?

Yeah, there's a lot of pressure.

A lot of pressure, you're not sure what move to make. I mean, are you earning decent money with your job?

—Um, not really, no, because the job that I took, I am making $50,000 salary, but it's technically a contracting job, so I'm paying for all my benefits and everything, so I'm kind of like just, I guess, making ends meet. I'm not saving any money or anything. —Gotcha.

—To pay debt off, if that makes sense. —Right, that does make sense. Do you find yourself taking action based on like, are you getting stressed out and making actions based on it, or are you able to kind of like keep yourself in the right mindset regularly?

Um, I get stressed out a lot. Stressed out a lot. Yeah, a lot. And to be honest with you, I'm getting stressed out also because of just the work environment that I have. It's kind of very dysfunctional working from somebody, somebody's house, and I guess a lot of personal issues in his home. Uh, literally today, I'm not even kidding you, the cop has to come over because he had an issue with his girlfriend. Oh, okay. So now I'm just looking for other jobs just to get out of this situation. Um, but it's, they only gave me like 3 or 4 days out of the year to take off. And as I'm going to different, or trying to get to different interviews and trying to tell people, listen, I really cannot do an interview during the workday and they can't work with me, it makes it kind of tough. So it's like, it makes even the, the job hunting harder while I'm trying to, you know, build my side businesses, if that makes sense.

Yep, yep. I mean, listen, going through stuff like this is normal. Everyone, I mean, I don't know if you heard the last thing I was talking about on live, but I've been through some really tough times myself. And you'll always be, okay, so just one thing I want you to note is that the stress that you feel right now where you're like in debt and you're not making enough money, even when you, and you may not even believe me, but even when you're making $500,000 a year, or a million dollars a year or more, you're still going to have the same feeling of stress financially at a different level. So I want you to internalize that because you may not, like, you might be like, what the hell are you talking about? If I'm making a million dollars a year, how am I gonna have this stress? It's just on a different scale. You know, you have so much other stuff going on at that level. So number one, you can use this as an opportunity to learn how to be the best version of yourself and feel good during these stressful times. So, so, so use where you're at as an opportunity. Now, what you should actually do in the physical world— should you sell your house? Should you— I don't, I don't know enough about your life if you have, you know, and, and I don't want to give you life advice not knowing you well enough. Um, yeah, but I would definitely work on getting a different job in the meantime, and I would definitely set aside 1 to 2 hours a day to work on your business, no matter what the fuck happens, no matter what the day is like, every single day consistently, and not just wait until you have a conversation with someone that gets you motivated. Like, ingrain that into your soul where you have to work on something every single day because eventually you'll get traction. I guarantee it. You may have to try 100 things, You may have to try 500 things, but something will hit. And if you're in the wrong mindset, and if you're feeling too stressed all the time, you're gonna miss those opportunities. You're gonna, like something will be right next to you and you won't even see it. So, and just remember that the stress won't go away. Even when you have millions of dollars, it'll just be at a different level. But it'll actually get, it gets more stressful sometimes. I'm more stressed out now than when I was in, you know, when I had a lawsuit of $250,000 over my head and had $0 to my name. Sometimes I'm more stressed out now. And it's like, if you told me back then that I would be more stressed out now, I wouldn't even believe myself. But I'm just telling you this because you can use your situation right now in life as an opportunity to grow as an individual so that when you do start, you know, hitting things, you know, getting your first win, getting some momentum, you can roll with it much faster and you won't let those types of opportunities slip by you.

Wow, awesome. Awesome.

That's awesome stuff. I've actually been taking your advice already. I've been dedicating like even 3 to 4 hours a day on my businesses. Even when I'm tired and I'm like stressed and I'm scared, I'm still doing it because to me that's like the only option.

There's just no other option. Dude, you'll figure it out, brother. I could tell you got— you have the right energy. You know, you seem like a hardworking guy who's trying to make it work. Like, you— something will work for you. It might not happen today, might not happen even in the next 6 months. I hope it does, but it will, it will work out, and you just got to keep that mindset.

I appreciate it, brother. Thank you. I'm in Priscilla's mastermind.

I'm one of the— one of her—

on her team. Oh, great. Priscilla Hernandez? Yeah, yeah, of course.

Yeah, yeah, that's it.

That's me. And I was at the I was at the elevator meet with that question that you were asked, but we just couldn't talk. We just never had a chance to meet you.

Oh, great.

Well, I think you had left over or left or something. Okay, cool.

We're actually doing a mastermind here in South Florida, and I'll extend out an invite to you if you want to join.

Yeah, that would be great. I have one last question real quick.

Sure thing.

I had sent you an email and like a DM just because I know that you guys, you know, I need help on your team. Are you guys hiring by any chance or no?

Possibly, we could talk about it after this call.

That would be great, absolutely. That would be awesome. Awesome, man. All right, man, well—

Thank you so much, Jared, I appreciate it.

Yeah, I appreciate you opening up and letting me know where you're at, and I hope you gained a little bit of value from the advice.

Oh, I have. Even your book is phenomenal.

Awesome. Phenomenal. Awesome, man. That makes me feel great. I appreciate that. What's up, guys? Jared Goetz here. Thank you for coming to this video. Uh, if you like it and you get value from it, do me a favor and just comment, um, share with your friends you think will get value from it, uh, and just make sure to subscribe to my channel so you can keep getting more value.