0083: Profiting from the Drop Ship Lifestyle with Speaker, Trainer & CEO Anton Kraly

Ea interviews, episode 83, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week. Join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority Effect interview. Have you ever wanted to make money online? Who wouldn't? I mean, come on, it's a lot of fun. Maybe you've considered starting your own business, maybe you've considered promoting someone else's business as your business, but maybe you've also considered dropshipping. Perhaps it was Amazon, Perhaps it was AliExpress. It could really be anything you want it to be. But that's why I'm excited to have today's guest, Anton Kraly with us from Drop Ship Lifestyle. In his first year alone, he did over 300,000 in business, and over the next three years he did 1.8 million. And he's going to be sharing his secrets of success with us today. I'm excited to bring him up right after we thank our sponsor, why every business needs a book, including yours. Would you like to save five plus hours with every prospect, generate more leads and profit in your business? Now visit businessbookchecklist.com and learn how you can implement this in your business today. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Anton Kraly. Anton, how are you doing today?

Doing very well, Mario. Thanks for having me on.

I'm excited to have you here because so many people ask about dropshipping and online businesses and all these different things, and it's just impressive what you've been able to create, and not just that, but. But you have your own online community helping people all around the world. How did you even get into it to e commerce?

It was kind of needing a way out of the previous business I was in. So I'm 34 years old. Back in 2006, I was right out of college. I actually bought a business right away, spent all the money I had saved up throughout college, which was about $25,000, and I bought a delivery route for a bakery in Brooklyn, New York. So literally what I bought was the rights to drive into Brooklyn every day, pick up cookies, then drive to grocery stores on Long island where I'm from, and sell them wholesale. Terrible business, total waste of money. But didn't really know what to do with this thing. Just spent my life savings on it. Luckily for me, the book the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss had just come out and that book talked about e commerce like a couple chapters. But that was enough for me to think, you know what? Maybe I should try this. So I built my first ever website that was selling the cookies from the bakery. And I just saw almost right away the potential. You know, instead of driving into Brooklyn and sitting in traffic, I was on my computer watching orders come in, and I was like, okay, I like this whole e Commerce thing. And again, that was back in 2007 when my first store went live. So since then, just been learning and trying to get better at this whole game.

What would you say is the biggest thing that you've learned since then to even. Let's say, let's not since then. How about the. Just the first couple? One, two, three years? Because those. Those are the crucial ones. I'd say, yep.

The biggest things I learned as my business started to grow, I would basically spend more money on ads and make more money. And what that meant is I'd also have more customers. Early on, though, I still really just treated it as a purely lifestyle business. Meaning, like, in my mind, I was this master at E commerce, and I could work for 15 minutes a day and. And then go golf the rest of the day and go to the beach. And I didn't put enough time into operations and management and really building an infrastructure as far as having a good team, so that I definitely didn't take serious enough and got to the point where I had all these customers. And then I started to feel stressed and overworked, and the customers weren't happy. And then I was, okay, what am I gonna do here? Right? Like, this is easier than owning a traditional offline retail business. But if I actually want to stay in business and if I want to have it grow, I need to focus on operations and that side of the business as well, not just marketing, sales, and traffic. So that was huge.

Who would you say is the biggest segment you do help, and how are you helping them now?

It's really people that they're smart, right? So they most likely already have a good job where they make a good amount of money, but they're working really long hours, and the upside isn't really there. The type of person that wants to go on more vacations, that wants to work less hours a week, that wants to stay home in the morning and maybe drive their kids to school, and they're looking to either build a second stream of income or supplement what they already have. And they know they could do it. They just know I need a system. I'd rather have somebody help me than click around for the next 10 years trying to figure it out. So I would say that type of person.

What would you say is the biggest thing that's holding them back?

Not having something to actually follow. So like a step by step system. And beyond that, having a community of people around you that not only would support your idea, but that could kind of bounce ideas off you. So you know, when you're getting into anything that's new, like there's going to be places you get stuck and if you can't put it out there saying, hey, I'm having this problem, you need people to say, you know what, I've actually dealt with that, here's what I did, or here's a solution. So I think not having that, it's enough for people to throw their hands up and think this isn't going to work or I can't figure it out.

What would you say to someone who's at that point right now going, you know what? I've been trying this, it's not working.

Yep.

How, how did you overcome those moments? Because every single business has ups and downs, as I'm sure we can both attest to.

What do you.

Where do you find is the best place to dig deep to go? You know what, I'm going to give it a little bit more, just one more day, just one more day kind of attitude. Yeah.

So I really wish there was a way to just like transfer the way that I think about this because I think everybody that's successful in business or in anything really has almost like they're kind of like, they take risks. Right. So maybe like a little bit of like the gambling type feel. And that's kind of what you need because like you said, there are plenty of downtimes and it's not obviously always the same thing that brings one of those downtimes on. And ideally it's not. And that's the point, right? Because when something happens that, you know, makes most people throw their hands up and say, that's it, what you need to do is think, okay, what happened here? And take just a look at it and think, did I mess up? Did a system I use mess up? Did I not have, like I mentioned, did I not have the infrastructure and where did I go wrong? And what you have to do is take that knowledge and implement something that basically fixes the problem and make sure it doesn't happen again and then something else will happen. And instead of throwing your hands up again and saying, well, now this is it, this broke everything. It's okay, where did I mess up? How did I go wrong? What can I do to fix this? And there's always going to be things I've been in e. Commerce for 12 years. And there's maybe not as frequently as it used to be, but there's always something that to a lot of people would probably give them a minor heart attack. But you just have to deal with it because that's what owning a business is all about. If you want the freedom, if you want the extra income, you do have to take on some of that weight and responsibility.

Have you ever seen that picture of the gas tank? And it says there's two types of people, and one of them is like a tenth gone, and it says, we need to fill up, and the other one's on fumes. And it's like, don't worry, I got this.

I haven't seen that, but I love it now. I can picture it. Yeah.

Which of the two types would you say you are?

Oh, I'd have to be on fumes. I mean, yeah, there's. There's no end. You know, I did a podcast once, and I was just talking about how, like, there really is no failure. You hear these statistics, right? About X percent of businesses fail in the first year, in three years. And, like, I've had plenty of things that by definition, you know, like textbook definition, have failed, but I don't even think of them as failures, because there's always a lesson. And if, like, you yourself are an entrepreneur and you're in business, then your success or failure isn't one thing. It's your life, it's your career, it's everything. So as long as you know, even if it's not a related business or an opportunity, as long as you take that lesson, you didn't really fail. You just learned something that doesn't work and take a lesson and implement it into the next thing or the next iteration or the pivot. That's the only way to succeed. And everybody that's successful goes through the same stuff. So just knowing you're not alone and knowing that if you want the benefits, there's going to be times where you're stressed out, where you're working a lot, where you don't really know which way things are going to go. But that is being an entrepreneur. That's part of making this work.

It sounds like you've had a lot of, as I like to call them, opportunities to overcome also.

Yeah, yeah, there's. Yeah, there's a lot of them.

The people you're helping. Tell me about one of the biggest transformational stories you've had with someone in your training.

Sure. There's so many. And, you know, I would say a big One, just because it's like looking at different, like polarities of where somebody was to where they went. We have a lot of people that, like I talked about earlier, you know, they're already smart, they just want an extra income and they do that, which is amazing. But one of the guys that's part of drop ship lifestyle, he's been in the program since I think 2014. So going way back. When he first started to work with us in the program, he was living in Thailand. He's from California, but he was living in Thailand on about $100 a month budget, basically living like local Thai people do because he didn't have any money. He was trying to get into blogging and different ways to make something work and literally no money. Couldn't afford to fly back home. He actually told me later he was thinking of asking his parents for money for a flight to go back and live with them and get a job. But he went from that to building a business that did multiple millions in sales that made him, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings within a couple years. Also built a business that he sold for over six figures. So all this, like this whole thing happened within 18 months to two years from that, from not being able to fly back home to get a job, to having hundreds of thousands of dollars and real assets that he created. So that one was probably from lowest to really high.

That is a phenomenal story. And if I were to guess, would you say you have at least hundreds and hundreds of those in your community?

Yes. Yeah, we do. We do. We have different people that are posting every day. That's, you know, a great thing about having this all online is people share their stories. So whether it be like on our Facebook group or in our forum, we're constantly just hearing from different people. We do what are called progress threads. So people will literally post like, hey, I'm new. This is where I'm at. This is where I want to go. And they'll post updates along the way. Some of the updates disappear and people never post again. It happens, definitely. But the ones where you could see that first post of like, this is my goal. And then a year later to where they're at. Those are just amazing.

Of all the success stories you've had, how much would you say it is for if someone's looking to get into drop shipping? Because I know there's a lot of people that have thought about it, and I know quite a few people that are already doing it. What's the Number one thing you could say before you even get into it, to turn into one of the success stories.

Yeah. So even like I'm guilty of talking about dropshipping, about how easy it is because it is a simple business, it's not that complex. Anybody could do this. But I think where there's a big drop off is knowing that this is simple and thinking that people are going to click a few buttons and then make it work. It still is a real business. Right. It's a business that anybody could build. But especially in the beginning, you need to be putting in the hours, you need to be learning, you need to be calling suppliers, you need to be building a website, you need to be figuring out how to run Google Ads. So it's easy, but it's real work. So if you think like, oh, I'll spend a couple weeks, maybe put in 10 minutes a day and I'm going to be quitting my job, that's not going to happen. So go into it with the right mindset, be willing to put in the work and you could definitely make it work.

You mentioned Google Ads. Is that one of your main platforms you're finding the most success on or are you incorporating others such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, any of them retargeting perhaps?

Yeah, we do incorporate pretty much. I mean everyone you just mentioned, mostly with Facebook and Instagram, we are bigger for retargeting there. LinkedIn. If we're selling anything B2B, we do have a presence there as well. But our biggest source of traffic is Google, not just organically, but through Google Ads. If anybody's ever been on Google and searched for a product before, you've seen these product images usually at the top right of the screen of the search results. And what you'll see is a product image. You'll see the product price and you'll see a store name that's selling it. Those are known as Google shopping ads. So people pay, including us, to have their products there. And it's a really good source of traffic, especially for expensive products like we sell. Because what we're basically doing is telling Google, hey, if somebody goes there and types in bamboo stand up desk, if I sold them, my product image price and store name would be right there. So the person that sees that, that clicks that, that goes to the store is very qualified. So that, yeah, that's, that's been a go to traffic source for us since I saw, I started.

You mentioned bamboo standup desk. That sounds nice. What types, what types of products have you seen the most success with.

So really anything that's like evergreen. So we don't look for anything like trending or hot right now. But typically products that are priced at least $200, ideally $1,000 or more. Also things that appeal to the upper middle class. So an example I give sometimes is, let's just say you were like, okay, I want to try to sell sofas because sofas fall into that price range. You wouldn't want to sell things like futons that cost 200 bucks because shipping would just destroy profits. And you wouldn't want to try to sell something like Italian leather handmade sofas for $8,000, because the sales process to sell that to a customer online is much different than something around $1,1500. Because the person buying that sofa in this example, in that price range, like $1000 to 1500, they're someone that's comfortable buying online. They probably have disposable income for it. They're probably just looking for a certain color or size or style. And that's the type of thing that we want to do, sell something that's expensive that customers wouldn't have brand loyalty for. So that's another big characteristic we look for. If like I have a tablet in front of me, an iPad, and like that's an expensive product, right? But it's something I wouldn't sell because I'm not going to compete with Apple or any of the other huge brands. But you want to sell the things that there's not real brand loyalty and customers are most likely going to be drawn to the Internet for. So the sofa in a bunch of different colors or styles, they'll go online. A stand up desk, they'll go online. A chandelier, they'll go online. So a lot of different home goods in the B2B space. You also have things like commercial refrigerators and things like exhaust vents over the stoves. So there's lots of different products, but typically expensive, no brand loyalty, not easy to find exactly what you want in person. If the product that anybody's thinking of falls into those categories, there's a good chance that it would work for this business model.

So stuff that's customizable or the stores aren't gonna carry where it's nice enough, but it's not so expensive. And so let's say elite, just for a lack of a better word that tell me about the shipping. Because you piqued my interest with the Italian leather sofa, because I personally say you can't go wrong with Italian but, but I do know the reality of shipping some things. I mean, big stuff like you're talking about online, you do have to pay for the shipping costs, let alone from overseas, regardless of where it's at. How is that process different and how much longer does it take?

So what we do is since we sell in the States, we work with suppliers in the States. We also have a huge part of our community that's in Australia and they work with suppliers in Australia. Same in uk. They have suppliers in the uk. But what we're trying to do is find brands to sell for that already have the products in stock in their warehouses domestically. So if I had an order that came from California, maybe the furthest that the warehouse would be would be New York. And with that, because most of the products are already there, they're already made, they're typically shipped out within 48 hours. And then transit times, you know, maybe three to five business days, depending on what it is. Like you mentioned, the larger items, they don't ship with UPS or FedEx. They can, but the prices are absurd. So with stuff like that, we have to ship it with freight carriers. And with that there is a cost. Maybe like that example, a sofa from New York to California might be $200, $250. So that's something definitely that has to be factored into the equation as well. But that's also why you want that price point to be right, because let's just say it was a Futon again for $200. Well, if shipping is $250, it's not economical. It doesn't work. So if you have something in that sweet spot, maybe a 1500 dollars product, where your price for the product is typically half of your retail price. So let's say it was a $1500 sofa. That means your cost of goods to the supplier is likely 750. Even if you wanted to offer free shipping, you're paying that 250. And then your cost for product and shipping is 1,000. So you still have, you know, $500 to work with. And that's a typical scenario.

So you're saying you can put free shipping on there even though you're paying for it, you just advertise it as free shipping.

And more often than not, that's how it works. Just because that's what competition looks like at this point. So that's why when you're looking at price lists from suppliers, that you're going to be working with the room in between your wholesale and the retail price there has to Be enough money there or else you're never going to make anything. But yeah, we typically offer free shipping, but then what we can do on the larger items is offer a higher priced shipping option. So we say, okay, free shipping ships freight, or maybe pay $200 more and upgrade to white glove delivery. And with something like that, the product gets brought into the customer's home, it gets taken out of the box, it gets assembled if it needs to be. So we do have upgrades like that, but typically standard free shipping is free. I like that in the sense that we pay it.

I like that a lot because there's stuff I've bought where I'm like, I don't want to assemble it and I pay to have it assembled. And that's way nicer. It's a better experience and it's just more enjoyable all around. You're bringing up some.

A lot of people take it a lot.

Yeah, you're bringing up some good points here. And here's why I like online businesses. Same thing. When you're doing email marketing, you're doing ads, conversions, all these, you can get very metricy and numbery and whatever you want to call, if those are even words. But the reality is a lot of people don't treat their business like a business. They don't know their metrics. And I was following what you're saying with, you know, the profit margins and that. And I learned long ago it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep. When you're doing it online, you need to know your numbers. Would you say that it's easier to forget about this when you don't have to look at the numbers each and every day, such as people walking in and just, you know, you know you're going to get constant foot traffic.

Yeah, I think people don't do it enough. Because, you know, let's just say, yeah, let's say somebody has a great month, right, and they do $100,000 in revenue. That looks you and it is, that's a lot of money. So they see that coming in and they think instantly like, I'm rich. And maybe your profit margin, right. Even if this is like, if you're doing everything correct, your profit margin might be 25%. So you see 100,000 come in, but your real profit is actually 25. And then even out of that, what you should be doing most likely is reinvesting maybe 15 of it into new traffic channels or trying to grow your ad spend. And what happens is people see that money coming in and not only do they spend, you know, all of it, but typically they sometimes, I should say typically, sometimes they spend more or they spend more so they don't have enough money left for taxes. And like it's just, it's not thought of as how much am I, am I actually making here? So the smartest way to do this is if you're using like the system that we use. It's have literally a Google sheet where every time a sale comes in on your website we use a tool called Zapier that basically takes the order information and it takes it from Shopify, which is the platform we use to build our stores. It puts it into a new line in a Google sheet, it shows what the customer paid. And then what we do is have a virtual assistant go in there and they enter our wholesale cost. Then once we find out how much shipping cost is, they put that in and we have order by order. What's actually there? Because yeah, if you only are looking at that top line number, it's, it's deceiving. I would say that you think you have more than you do, especially when taxes are due.

I have found that a lot of people do this and one of the exercises when I'm working with an audience, you know, speaking to them, I go, what is your time worth? Because it's, you know, like I was saying, what I love about online sales is it's real easy to see, here's wholesale here, here's retail, here's the conversion rates and you can just look at a spreadsheet like you're saying and figure out this was smart or not. When you use the example of the futon for 200 bucks and shipping's 250. Yep, I have to chuckle at that. They do it all the time. Or it's, they sell it for 200 and it cost them 199. And it's like, oh yeah, you really want to sell all of those? Yeah, you know, same thing. When I'm helping people with books, they go, well, how much is the margin on the book? I go, well forget the book. Yeah, you're going to make money on the sales. But what is your back end? What are you leading into? How much further can you deep, how much further deeper can you work with them to help them? I mean, do you want to have to sell 100,000 books or like help a hundred people? And it's like that's a whole, that's a no brainer. So the example I bring up with the audience is what Is your time worth? Because they're going, oh, I charge X amount per hour, and it could be a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand an hour. Whatever it is, it doesn't really matter because I go, okay, what is the getting ready, time to drive, time to go to this, time to go to that time. You break it down and it's the same thing. You're not making as much as you want. So it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep. And I'm glad you're talking about that because it's so important.

What has podcasting done for your business?

So for the coaching side and the, you know, the community side, it actually has done a lot of. So not only just having conversations with awesome people, but being able to quickly get ideas out in a way that's the way that I do it usually is almost informal. So typically just record maybe a 10 minute episode talking about something that's actually happening in my businesses and just pushing it out to the world. It's definitely built tighter connections. We did an event last summer in New York City and I just basically posted up online like, hey, anybody wants to come out? We rented this. It was like a restaurant on a boat with a bar. I was like, we rented this area for these couple hours, come out and like, it was maybe a few months after getting into podcasting that I did this. And almost everybody I spoke to was talking about things like, how do you know that? And they were like, oh, you know, I heard your podcast. And it was like, this is crazy. Like, you know, it's. It's such a deeper relationship. So I think that that's how it's helped not just to have, I don't know, like the guy that, like, behind the camera that has all the professional videos in the program, but now the guy that shares his thoughts about something that happens today in life or in business. It's built deeper connections.

Excellent. So if people want to hear that, I want you to mention it.

Now.

Where can they find that?

Sure, that's@ecommercelifestyle.com or any podcast player. You could just search for E Commerce Lifestyle with Anton Kraly and you'll find it there.

That's fantastic. I checked out a couple of them and people are going to like it. I'll say that.

Appreciate that.

Tease them a little bit without revealing too much. You made mention about how you're using video. What has that done for your business?

A lot. Yeah. Video is huge. YouTube, it is the second largest search engine and the Quality of interactions we get there and the quality of people that come into our world, for lack of a better term, and say, I found you on YouTube. It's just. It's amazing. I mean, it kind of like. I think podcasting is amazing, too. But the video takes it a step deeper, right? A level deeper, because not only are they hearing you, they're actually seeing you. Or if you're teaching something, like I do a lot, I can share visuals. Whether it's a keynote presentation or me, you know, drawing on my computer screen and showing them how something's done. It just, again, it strengthens the relationship. I'm still torn on what. Actually, I prefer if I had to choose one, like podcasting or video, mainly YouTube. Now, I don't know. I think podcasting people consume for longer, so I might be switching more towards that if I had to choose one. But, yeah, video has really helped to grow our community to what it is.

Well, when you figure out the answer for that, let me know, because people ask me that all the time. And.

I would say they're equal in different ways because like you said, the consumption on the podcast, I believe, is higher. But no one's going to sit down on the couch with their family and watch, you know, something for an hour or two.

That's how I think about it as a consumer. Right. Yeah. My podcast player is always going, if I'm taking a walk, if I'm in the car, I'm listening to something, and I don't have YouTube sitting there playing. So, yeah, if you want people to. If you want to be able to help people the best and kind of tap into their time when they have it, that is the better way. I wish people could watch videos all day long. This, I think it is a deeper connection. It's just hard to get that much time.

And that's the cool thing about it, because you can do the audio version, you can do the video version, you can have it written out, and whatever people want, that's what they have. But for real, when you get the answer to that one, let me know, because about once a week I'm going, huh? Which one is better? I'm going.

To. They're both good. I don't really know if there is an answer. Just depends what you're doing with it. So. Excellent. We're going to pop into the Imperfect action round right after we thank our sponsor. Why every Business needs a Book, including yours. Would you like to save five plus hours with every prospect? Generate more leads and profit in your business? Now visit businessbookchecklist.com and learn how you can implement this in your business today. And we are back with the imperfect action round. And Anton, are you ready to take imperfect action?

I'm ready.

What is the fastest path to the.

Cash in your experience selling expensive items?

Focus on high ticket. I've done both less expensive items and more expensive. And if I was starting over and I needed to rebuild a bankroll as soon as possible, I would focus on most likely average order values of $2,000 or more. And it's just, it's so everything becomes easier when you're holding on to hundreds if not thousand dollars plus in profit per sale.

Excellent. What is the biggest problem you're seeing your prospects make in the fastest way they can fix it?

The biggest problem would be fear and typically it's fear of contacting suppliers, the companies they would sell products for, which is something that we do via the phone because it's more personal having the connection there and people kind of, they stall. I think the way that they could fix it is just simply by realizing like, someone's going to do this, someone's going to make the call, someone's going to get approved, someone's going to be successful, someone's going to have another income in a year. Is that person going to be you? It's up to you. So just, you got to decide if you're not going to do it. Accept that. But yeah, just realize that the opportunity is there if you're gonna take action on it.

Very good. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Stay in contact in more ways than just promotional. This is some reasons why both video and podcast are so great. You know, once people buy from us, we don't just say, okay, thanks, have a nice life. I'm constantly putting out new content. One, because I enjoy it. Two, because it strengthens the relationship that's already there and three, because it'll help existing students and customers get better results. Also, so don't just be emailing. The promotion of the month.

Excellent. What is a book that has helped you the most?

The most would probably be the four Hour Workweek. I wouldn't recommend anybody reads that to start an e commerce business today. But that is the book that introduced me to this world and completely changed where I thought my path as an entrepreneur was going. So I got to give, got to give credit there. If I hadn't read that back then, I'd probably own a whole bunch of different franchise restaurants right now and be working 100 hours a week. Not complaining, but that would be my life.

What would you recommend for someone that wanted to start an E commerce business now?

I mean, go to dropshiplifestyle.com that's the best. That's my website. I've been publishing either a blog or a video there every week for five years probably. So tons of content there that's always updated if it's a mindset thing and maybe you've tried stuff before and failed. A book that I love, it's super short. It's called do the Work by Steven Pressfield. He also wrote the book the War of Art. And that's like a massive thing that I would not read. But do the Work is kind of like a condensed version. It's about procrastination and about why it's so hard to actually take action sometimes. But if I ever feel stuck, I give it a quick read and I'm back into it. So do the Work by Steven Pressfield.

And it sounds like what I'm hearing is the underlying theme also is all of this stuff is changing so fast. Be around, like you're saying, a community that helps you with it because Four Hour Workweek is a great book, but it's. When did that thing come out?

Let's just say thousand seven. I mean, that's why it's about building a Yahoo store, which was outdated by like 2008. So yeah, like you can't, you can't implement that stuff now. Like the concepts are good. But yeah.

So how important would you say is to have updated information for business nowadays?

It's one of the most important things. So even like with our community and my programs, every single year I rebuild it from the ground up. And it's not because it's not good. It's because what worked last year, I'm not going to say it doesn't work at all now. But there's little changes and there's little tweaks and there's other edges and advantages. And if you just sit back, one of the worst things that could happen is if you see your growth kind of flatline. Specifically with an E commerce business, if you get to a stable point, even if that point's really high and it's not growing anymore, that's a bad sign because it's not going to stay flat. Like you said, things change so fast. So if it starts to level out, that means you're a few steps away from a very fast decline. So yeah, you always want to be growing, you always want to be learning, you always want to be testing? I recommend if you have an ad budget, take about 10% of it and put it into something that you have no idea if it'll work. Not at all be okay with totally losing it all. But just that's experimental and that we've stuck with that for a while now, and it's definitely served us well.

When you're saying take the 10%, are you saying do that once a year, once a quarter, once a month?

I'm saying yeah. If you have, you know, let's just say $10,000 as your monthly ad budget, $1,000, I would recommend putting that into something completely different. So maybe if Facebook ads is what's working for you, you have $9,000 in Facebook ads that month. Take a thousand, put it in Snapchat, and then not just the money, but take 10% of your resources. So if you have a, you know, an ads manager, 10% of their time that month, put it into Snapchat ads. See what happens. See if it is like, if you get, you know, break even if you lost all your money or if you make a lot of. And if you're at least breaking even, like after one month and a small budget, then you could start to work that in more and more. Because doing things like that, it gives you an edge over time. And not only could you be like a first mover, but you could sometimes get into marketplaces or platforms that none of your competition is on. And sometimes, like, not just your competition, but people, even, you know, a few industries, like, separated from you might not even be there. So it's worth always doing. And it's not always going to pay off, but when it does, it typically pays off in a big way. So.

So it sounds like if you want your business to be a blockbuster, don't be blockbuster.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's the easiest way. As soon as you start to stay straight, like, the line is not moving up. There's. Yeah, Netflix is going to come out and you're gone one day and think, what happened? I was doing so good, Sales were consistent for so long. That's not a good sign.

It's the economy.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that's another thing. If any, like, people are, you know, always worried, and who knows what'll happen with the economy. I can't predict the future, but you can always be successful. Maybe you're spending less money on ads, maybe your revenue is less, but you can always make this work. When I started my first business, it was literally, like at the same time that the Entire real estate economy collapsed in the US the entire housing bubble burst, and we did just fine. So there's always opportunity. As long as you're smart with your money, as long as you're tracking your actual profit, and as long as it's not all just going straight out the window, you could always make this stuff work.

Let me ask you, what do you do personally and professionally to stay on the cutting edge, looking into stuff for your business? I'm just going out on a limb saying you probably invest and you're doing everything, you're preaching, but what have you found has worked the best to just stay in the cutting edge and getting to know the people and being in the industries and how do you stay ahead of everyone moving forward?

I feel like I'm kind of like, lucky. I really do enjoy this stuff. Like marketing is. It's what I enjoy. I would do it for free. I would do it as a job if I couldn't do it as a business. So it's a combination of podcasts, It's a combination of actually just seeing on my phone what I'm seeing. So a lot of it will be if I'm scrolling through Facebook and I see maybe an ad type that I've never seen before, not even from a competitor, but just something like, wait, what is this thing? I'll actually click on it and try to figure out what it was or how they made an ad look like that. Or I've seen a lot of this, like on Instagram lately. It's pretty technical. You can do all these things now with Instagram ads that I only started seeing a few weeks ago, and I didn't see them from my competitors. I didn't see them in a course I bought three years ago. I saw them because I was on Instagram checking through my own friends stories, and then I was like, oh, how can I do this? So just always keeping that marketing eye open, I guess, and looking around to see how people are trying to target you. And if they're trying to target you in a way you haven't seen before, that's typically where most of the ideas come from. It'll be something that I just, I get curious about. Like, why am I seeing this?

Well, I think that's very insightful because so many people think there's some magic bullet, some magic book, some magic mastermind or whatever, and it's really just have a passion for what you're doing.

Yeah, yeah. You have to. You have to care about it. You should enjoy it. And honestly, it's fun. Like, you know, if you're into, if you're ever into like video games, that's kind of how I see this all working too. Like it is a numbers game. And the way you create ads and the creatives you make and you know, how you target people and what bidding strategies you use and it's all just, it can be fun. If you make it fun, it's fun. And yeah, I think it's a, I don't know, it's a great way to work to be able to put something out to the world and have it shown to, depending on your budget, potentially 100,000 people in a day and see how they respond to it. Like, that's, it's amazing. So I think anybody can get into it.

As long as they get some results early on and don't blow all their budget. But you can start small. I guess that's a good thing. You don't need to spend a whole bunch of money from day one.

Well, I appreciate you for sharing with us because this has been phenomenal and I've learned a lot because this wasn't my background. But I do share the passion for the marketing and learning and helping people and there's so much possibility out there. So thank you again for sharing that with us and I wish you all the best continued success.

Appreciate it. You as well.

All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

God bless.

Why Every Business Needs a book, including yours. Would you like to save five plus hours with every prospect? Generate more leads and profit in your business? Now visit businessbookchecklist.com and learn how you can implement this in your business today. Hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.

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