Episode #9 - Part Four - Designing your ideal lifestyle with a PL business

Hey, how's it going? It's Ollie here. Very, very warm. Welcome to the E Commerce Freedom Podcast.

Welcome to the E Commerce Freedom Podcast with your host, Oliver Denyer. Learn the practical steps you need to take to build a business you can run on your own terms. Escape the 9 to 5 and work from anywhere in the world.

So this is the final part of our four part series on private labels. And today we're going to be talking about how to take the stuff that you've learned and really implement this strategy in a way that's going to give you an awesome lifestyle. Because this is what we're all about. This is why I created this podcast. It's not just to give you loads of boring information about how businesses run. Like you'd get in any boring business book that focuses on, you know, 50 pages on whether you should be a sole trader or a limited company. You want to know how you can actually begin a business that gives you freedom. Okay, so today what we're going to talk about is how to design a lifestyle using private label products. How do you come up with a goal, something that you want in your life, whether it's ability to travel, maybe you want, you know, to be able to lease a really nice car, or maybe you want a bigger house or whatever it is, take that goal and then work backwards from it using the private label business in order to be able to actually get there and achieve that goal in a certain period of time, whether it's six months, 12 months, eight months, whatever it is, we'll decide and I'll explain to you exactly how you can draw on a piece of paper a plan which will actually get you to that end goal. So obviously the first thing you want to do is figure out what your goal is. Okay? So I mean, the worst possible answer you can give yourself or anyone who's asking you, when they ask you how much money you want to earn is as much as possible, right? Because that's just not an answer. There's literally no substance in that and there's no plan to get there. How, how ever, how are you possibly going to dissect that goal and break it down into action steps in order to achieve it? It's completely impossible. So what will happen is you'll just end up getting mediocre or pretty crappy results. If you want to get crazy results, then you have to get into specifics, right? You have to decide exactly how much money you want to earn and then be able to work backwards from it and break it down into easier steps to actually be able to achieve it. So what I want you to do is think about how much money you need each month to cover all of your expenses. I mean, right now you might actually be earning the amount you need to cover your expenses. So you never have any spare cash. You might be earning, say, a couple grand a month and it all goes out of your bank through direct debits, rent, bills, whatever else, random expenses. Maybe you got pay for kids things and, and it's gone before you ever get a chance to actually have any spare cash, right? So maybe the amount you're earning right now could be the amount you need for your expenses, or you might need a bit more. You might be getting into debt, so you need more just to cover your rent and everything, your car payments. So work out, get a number for whatever that is. Maybe it's two and a half thousand pounds a month or one thousand pounds a month, or maybe, you know, you're not living, maybe you're a student or something right now and you only need say 6, 7, 800 pounds a month just to cover your bases, your rent and whatever it is. Whatever it is, you have a number and you'll know it. So figure it out and write that number down. Next, what you want to do is figure out how much money you'll want to have on top of that, to actually be able to do the things you really want to do. Maybe you've always wanted to own an awesome supercar. I mean, this might sound crazy and a lot of people might start to get skeptical at this point and think, well, I'm never going to own a supercar. Well, well, you could always lease one in a few months. Why not just pay a few hundred pounds a month? You could actually rent or lease a supercar. It could actually happen. I mean, I think you can rent a Ferrari for two or three thousand pounds a month. And if you break that down, that's only a few private label products selling very well on your Amazon account. So today we're going to talk about how to actually make these goals reality. You want a bigger house, you want a better lifestyle. You want to be able to travel, you want to be able to drive an amazing car. Well, how do you break that stuff down and actually make it reality? So you need a number, okay, you need a number for how much you want to be earning each month to really start to change your life. And to be honest with you, if you stick with like a mediocre goal, like say, you know, I want to earn £3,000amonth, then that's okay. I mean, you can do that. But personally, I think one of the things I attribute to the success I've had is through setting ridiculously big goals. If you listen to episode one, the reason I think I did so well in my first year and continue to do really well is because I set crazy goals. And I get so excited about the possibility of actually being able to reach those goals that I work really hard, I smash my head through all the walls I need to smash my head through in order to actually achieve them. Right? And when something's really hard or something's boring or one of the things in my business is difficult, I don't care, because I know that the goal is to be so awesome when I get there. You know, I'm still motivated to get my head down and keep working, regardless of how annoying things are or tough things are getting. So set yourself a big goal. What is it, 5,000 pounds a month, 10,000 pounds a month, whatever it is. And the next step is really, once you've got that number and you know exactly how much you want to be earning to cover your bases, plus have a little bit of fun. You want to create a plan. And from what I've seen with private labels, especially in the uk, is that if you're doing quite well, each private label product should be making you between £500 to a thousand pounds profit per month. Okay, this is being conservative. This is saying you did okay with your private label products. You should at least be doing £500 to £1,000amonth per product. So what you've got to do now is actually break down your goal. Say you said you wanted to make £5,000amonth. How many private labels would you need to launch to actually get to that income level? Well, if you're saying that every single private label is going to make you £500amonth, then you need to launch 10. Okay? So now you should have a number of income that you want to earn, say 10,000 pounds a month or whatever it is, you should be able to divide that by 500 pound monthly chunks to actually figure out how many private labels you need to launch to actually get to that stage. So along with an income goal that I really want you to have, and I want you to be specific about it, the other element that you need is a time frame. If you just say, oh, I want to earn £5,000 and I want to get there at some point again, it's never going to happen. It's like saying, I want to earn as much money as possible. There's no specifics there, there's no way of breaking it down. So if you can actually come up with a time frame for when you want to get to that goal, is it six months? Do you want to be ambitious and put it as 3 months or 12 months? Whatever it is, pick a timeframe. And you have to be a little bit realistic here, saying that if you're owning, say right now with the job that you're in, you're earning 1,300 pounds a month, you don't have any spare capital, you're barely able to pay the bills as it is, you're not going to be able to earn £10,000 in the next three months. Realistically, with private labels, okay, it's going to take a little bit longer than that. So you have to take into consideration the capital you have right now and the money you can invest in your products, bearing in mind that each one will probably cost you say two, at least £2,000 to launch. So you know this is actually going to. You're gonna have to put a bit of consideration into how long the time frame is when you're setting things up and setting these goals. So bear this in mind. But then once you've had to think about it and how much capital you have right now, try and figure out a realistic time frame which is still pushing it a little bit because you don't want to make it like 5 years time so you'll get bored and forget about it. I'd say year would be maximum. No matter what level of capital you have right now, there are ways to completely crush it within a year. That's exactly what I did. I went from Nothing to earning 10, 15k a month within a year. So you can do this. I mean, you don't have to be saying it's going to take you five years, but as long as it's relatively realistic. So now you should have a time frame, you should have an income level that you want to achieve. And also you should have roundabout idea of how many private label products is going to take you permitting that they're selling well to actually be able to earn this income. So next what you want to do is figure out a goal for how often you want to be releasing private label products. Right. If you need six private label products and you want to get to that income level within six months, then, then you're gonna need to launch a private label product every single month. Right? One private label product each month. And then by the end of six months time, you should have six private labels. And really you should be getting somewhere near to that goal income level. By the time six months is up, maybe you won't almost be there, cause you know the sixth one that you launch is gonna take you a little while to build up some traction, but at least then you'll have the systems in place and the ability to earn your income level. Once you reach the end of the time frame, if you've got, say, you know, 10 private labels, you need 10 private labels because you need 5k a month and your time frame is 12 months, then you could aim to launch one every six weeks or whatever, or however the maths checks out for that and just basically break down the number of private labels you need to launch and spread them out throughout the time frame. Now obviously you can launch several private labels at once, that's possible, but I'd recommend doing one at a time. So break down how many you want to do and spread them out over the course of your time frame. Now as you get more confident, you might find actually you might not want to spend so much time in between launches, or you might want to launch several at once later down the road, and to be honest with you, you might find that your one takes a little bit longer to launch than you wanted because you know, this is your first time doing things and it takes a little bit of a while to get used to the whole process. But whatever it is, try and space out the products throughout the time frame. So by the end of the time frame, you should be earning the amount of money that you want to earn now. So now you should have a number of income you want to be earning. So whatever it is, £5,000amonth, whatever it is for you, it will be very specific to you and your life and the lifestyle you want to actually create. You should have a number of private labels you need to launch, you have a timeframe and you'll have some kind of plan for the frequency of when you need to launch each new private label product. Now, as we talked about in the first part of this four part series, you really want to be building a brand. So hopefully your private labels, every single one that you launch should be fitting with your brand. So if you launch a pet brand, for example, then ideally all of the products that you launch will be pet products and you can put them all under the same brand. And as you launch more and more products and customers trust you, you actually start to build up great relationships with your marketplace and sales will get easier and Easier as you go. Also, you'll actually find it easier and easier to launch products as you release them, because you'll start to get a good idea of what your marketplace wants. And your supplier will probably provide you with a catalog and you can have a look at the catalog. And in that catalog, there'll probably be loads of ideas of private labels which will work alongside the ones you're already selling. So this whole process will get easier and easier as you go. The first one you ever import and try and sell is going to be tough. You're going to be freaking out about sending money to people in China. It's going to be all weird and, you know, it's a bit scary. I have to say, even when I send cash to suppliers in China, if it's the first time working with the supplier, you do feel a little bit worried. No matter how many times you've done it, you know, just in case, there's always the sort of what if in the back of your mind if something went wrong. However, you know, with all the security checks you can do with Alibaba, and if you understand that your supplier is legit, nothing's really going to go wrong. But the point is, in the beginning, things take a little bit longer. And then as you get more and more used to the strategy that you've got the skill set of researching products, you've got a good relationship with your supplier, things will get easier. And towards the end of your time frame, you should be able to launch products, spot products, pick them, launch them, test them a lot quicker than you did in the beginning. So along the way, what I suggest you do is until the time frame is up, or until you actually manage to earn the amount of money you want to earn each month, I recommend you reinvest all of your profits back into the business. Okay, now, this might sound a little bit tough, like it's going to be hard to do, you know, you're earning a bit of extra cash now, you've got an income coming in. It might be tempting to go out there and start improving your lifestyle whilst you're building a business. But I really, really recommend, and I really, honestly, please don't just go out and spend all your capital on things that are just going to depreciate and not be assets to your business. Don't start buying more expensive clothes. Don't start spending the money on holidays. Reinvest the money you've made back into your business, at least until you've reached that goal. Otherwise you're just going to get there so much slower. If you just spend all the profits that you made, reinvest in marketing and new products, maybe hire virtual assistants to you find products, or just do anything to help your business grow, rather than blowing your profits and your capital on things that aren't going to help your business, then you will just grow so much faster and you'll get to the level of income you want a lot quicker and it'll be a lot more likely for that to actually happen. So please reinvest your profits as you're going through this 6 or 12 month plan or whatever it is to get to the level of income you want. And it'll be a lot more likely that it actually happens then once you reach the level of income that you actually want to be earning, it's totally fine if you want to spend it. Obviously that's the whole point of having a business, right? It's a lifestyle business. You're earning the money you want to earn to support your lifestyle. So you can take out a wage for yourself or however you want to structure it. I'd recommend get a limited company once you're starting to make a decent amount of money, because that's just usually the most tax efficient way of doing things. Not that I'm giving out tax advice as I'm not allowed, but I mean, you'll basically be able to take out a certain amount of money for yourself and only do that once you're earning the amount. You want to actually start really making some amazing changes in your life. If you learn how to do this stuff remotely and you're sending the stuff from China to the prep center and into the Amazon warehouse, which I talk a lot about in my ebook, then obviously you'll be able to travel a little bit more as well. And you know, maybe at one point your goal is at the end of the time frame that you set for yourself. Maybe it's to quit your job. Maybe if you're employed right now, you don't want to be employed anymore, you want to be more free, you don't want to be trapped to going to the office or wherever it is you work. And you want to be able to work on your own terms from anywhere. So maybe once you're earning a certain amount of cash, you can begin to do that as well and travel and start working from around the world. So that's it, that's the plan. Hopefully now you have a clearer idea of how this business can actually begin to change your life. Obviously everybody's business is different. I'VE given you the five hundred to a thousand pounds a month in profit for each private label. That's just a ballpark figure, something to start off with. And hopefully in the future your private labels will actually start generating more profit. And that, that's just like a starter. Within a couple of months they should be doing that. And as you build up more credibility with your brand, you get more reviews on your products, your packaging looks better, maybe you spent a bit more money on it and you've got better quality listings, your sales ranks are higher and you know a little bit more about the business, you can start to get better profits of each private label. But I didn't want to, you know, make it unrealistic. Sure, some people out there making ten grand a month profit from one private label, but you're not going to be able to do that right in the beginning. Just to be perfectly realistic with you. I mean, you're starting a new business, so between 500 to 1,000 pounds a month is a great place to aim for right in the beginning. So I really hope you've enjoyed this episode. I hope it's painted a picture in your mind of just how this stuff can actually start to change your life. Especially if you're running the business from a laptop, you're not seeing any of the stock, you're able to travel, you're able to grow this business really relatively fast compared to a lot of other business opportunities in inverted commas that there are out there and a lot of other things that apparently are supposed to make you money, like for example, doing paid surveys, which has probably got to be the worst idea for a business I've ever heard in my entire life, by the way. But anyway, we're talking about private labels, talking about a proper business, so this stuff is absolutely crazy. I really, really recommend, if you haven't done so yet, go to my and grab my free new brand new private label PDF which will tell you a lot more about the strategy. If you go to ecommercefreedom.com 9 you can grab the ebook there for free. That's ecommercefreedom.com 9. You'll get my four reasons private labels will change your life ebook and it's got so much info crowned in there. You'll learn all about the strategies I use, how I incorporate private labels into my business to help me get more freedom and earn more passive income. And I think it'll be a really, really great resource for you to use whilst you're getting your business started. So Definitely grab that ecommercefreedom.com 9 thank you so much for listening to this four part series on private labels. Hope you've enjoyed it. This isn't the end. I'm not going to stop talking about private labels for this podcast. We're going to be revisiting the topic loads and loads and loads because it's really probably the end goal for most of you, and I know that it's a really, really powerful way of selling products and a really great introduction to the e commerce industry. So thank you so much for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. Take care. And whatever you do, keep believing.