So we are in some really weird times people, we got Grant Cardone, going bankrupt, we have basically the entire United States population getting a decent sized check automatically deposited into their accounts. We had a lot of small businesses getting 1000 basically for free, from the government, and we got Amazon breaking records getting to new heights. In their business, and just reaching milestones that are pretty ridiculous, especially taking into consideration what we’re going through right now. So what’s going on, guys? Spoken back to another video today, I’m gonna be bringing you something a little bit outside of the regularly scheduled programming. I wanna give you just some genuine heart, a hard business advice. Mainly relating to Shopify, of course, but I particularly want to tackle the subject of whether or not right now, is a good time to start a Shopify business. This is probably the question that I get asked the most out of anything else, and I totally understand why… Like I just mentioned, these are weird times bro, so I totally get… If you’re kind of on the fence now, hopping right into it, is the best time to start a shop up five business, of course, not, no, let’s not kid ourselves. This is a terrible time to start anything really.

But does that mean that you shouldn’t start? Of course not, that’s never gonna be the right answer, to the question of whether or not you should start a business right now, the answer to that question is always going to be, Yes, start right now. Now look, human nature sort of guides us towards procrastination. It’s totally normal. Don’t get too bummed out about it.

So let me break some of the stigmas that you may have in your mind right now, that are preventing you from starting your Shopify business. First one being, you don’t have time.

I look at, I’ve been hearing this one a lot even before we were quarantine. And I know that if you’re quarantine right now, you definitely have enough time, but let’s just pretend that none of this is happening right now, and you were working your regular 9 to 5 job or you’re going to school, whatever it is, that you’re doing and you’re telling me you don’t have enough time.

I don’t know about that. I started my first online business while I was a full-time college student, also working 20 plus hours a week as a server at a part-time job, still managing a pretty decent social life, skating, as much as I could and hanging out with my girlfriend, and family, and friends.

So if you’re telling me that you don’t have enough time, I’m basically just gonna assume it’s an excuse because you can always find the time to work on a side hustle or whatever it is that you’re trying to do really, ’cause it doesn’t really have to be a business. Maybe you just wanna good at making videos, for example. And I actually get that question a lot too, is if you have a successful Shopify business, why are you making YouTube videos? How do you find the time to do that? And that’s the thing you just make the time to do the things that you truly wanna do. But honestly, the reason why you need to start now is… Because chances are if you want to start a shop of my business and you start procrastinating, even longer, it’s just gonna become harder and harder. Now, a lot of people may think that it’s too late to start right now, like it’s already saturated, there’s too many commerce businesses out there, it’s impossible, basically, to make anything out of your business.

And so, of course, that’s not true, but I’m not gonna sugar coat it. Yeah, it is really hard, it’s not an easy thing to do.

I would say be prepared to go at least a full year without making any sort of tangible money. That’s how basically it happened for me I went well over a full year without making any money. In fact, I was losing money for a long time and the only way that I was making money is through my jobs and through other little side hustles, that I was running at the time as well. But as far as Shopify, went, I was losing money for a long time and really it wasn’t like I was actually losing money, I was just investing money into my business, and it wasn’t really paying off too much, but it paid off in knowledge baby, and it became a crucial part of the journey. So just make sure that you understand that this is a patient’s game, the person that’s gonna persist the longest is the person that’s gonna succeed. Now, my next piece of advice is to plan out your day, and to sort of follow a routine, not the main reason for this is of course to be really productive and get a lot of stuff done, but it’s also so that you can have enough time in your day to balance out your life. Now, I don’t know what sort of philosophy, you subscribe to maybe you’re the type to work 18 hour days and you love that.

But for me, I’ve always believed that my number one pet with my girlfriend, I skate to do the things that I love doing, of course as long as all of the work that I need to do is getting done and that’s what planning my day ahead a time allows me to do, it allows me to have extra free time in my day to do other things outside of work, and honestly, that’s where I get most of my inspiration and most of my motivation is when I’m not working. So maybe that’ll help you out to the… Now, the next piece of advice, so I wanna give you is to always be seeking inspiration. I’m a huge fan of staying focused on your business and not copying what other people are doing. I think it’s essential to not copy step-by-step what other people are doing in whatever space you’re in, but I think it’s extremely important for your knowledge and just for you as a person constantly seek inspiration from other brands, other people, whatever, it is you gotta start consuming social media and ads that you see or websites that you come across with a critical eye.

I’ve been doing this for a very long time, and it has shaped my business knowledge because I was able to find little bits and pieces of inspiration from so many different sources, and then I could apply those to my own businesses in my own style. If you look at my computer, I have so many screenshots of different button colors or color schemes or fonts that I see on certain sites like so many random things like that, and then I take those snippets and use them in my own style. ’cause that’s the key. You have to use the inspiration and apply it to the things that you’re doing, whatever it may be, maybe it’s your own brand, maybe it’s a YouTube channel, maybe it’s, I don’t know what you’re doing okay, but my point is, be creative, but never stop seeking inspiration from other people’s work. It’s a smart thing to do and it will lock a lot of creative juices. Trust me.

Now, my next piece of advice here is to make a business that you or a loved one would buy from.

This is a weird piece of advice and it sounds kinda obvious probably to a lot of you, or maybe not at all. When I started thinking like this, it really changed the way I looked at business in general, because for a long time I was just focused on the money. What can make me money, how can I make 100 a day, how can I make X amount of day? And it’s a great thing to have monetary goals. I still believe in that, but when it comes to starting your business, I think it’s so essential to make it something that you really believe it. Because of your selling products that you’re just disgusted by, or that you just really think aren’t good at all, you can’t really expect that to become a tangible business and it’s gonna be so much harder to actually find success as opposed to taking the time to look at your business through a consumer standpoint. My next piece of advice here is to learn how to delegate.

This is something that I struggle with until this day but I still try to keep a balance between delegating and also trying to really invest in the team that I already have.

I’ve got in the habit in the passive just hiring new people, hiring this person for this and that, and then when I have done that it’s become too overwhelming, and I feel like the quality of work isn’t as good as, for example, right now, where our team is really, really small, but everybody does really high quality work.

So, I actually save money, but it’s not even about the money, it’s mainly about the relationship that my team has with one another.

And also, like I said, the quality of work that gets done, it’s actually much better everybody understands the brand a lot more. So yeah, learning how to delegate, but also keeping mind, to invest in your current team.

I think building that strong foundation is super essential. But on the other hand, if you’re not delegating anything, you’re gonna be super overwhelmed and you’re always gonna be stressed out and your business isn’t gonna be able to scale because there’s so much that’s not getting done, simply because you don’t have the time or you just forget. About It. So make sure that you start delegating as soon as possible and start building your team, even if it’s a small team but start building that team very, very early on, as you start making money. Now, my next tip is actually about networking, and it’s obviously from my experience, but I would say that is key to networking. It’s been all about human connection, so it’s really just been about who I really vibe with instead of just selling myself to someone telling him, how much money I made the… You know what I’m doing here and there.

I think it’s mainly about just whether or not you click with a person. I’ve networked with people in this space mainly through just really Viv in with them and having a lot of similar interests and when we talk, it’s not even so much about business, but just about life, just having this in mind, just really allows you to build deeper relationships, with the people you network with.

And of course, you can’t get along with everybody and you don’t click with everybody. I think it’s much better to have a deeper relationship with your people, then just knowing a ton of people, but early knowing them and just not having any sort of connection at all. That’s probably a controversial thing, but from my experience, that’s paid off a lot more. And that way, you can have more meaningful relationships and you can kinda keep your circle a little bit smaller because you really shouldn’t trust just everybody that you meet with, just for the sake of networking that can actually get you in trouble. And I’ve experienced some things in the past that that really changed the way I did have worked a lot. You just can’t really trust everybody out there.

So especially in the space where people are just so quick to copy what you’re doing if you’re seeing success.

So yeah, just keep in mind that networking is all about human connection. Just try to click with people instead of just selling yourself super hard and if someone’s selling themselves super hard with you also just be wary of them. Which actually leads me to another piece of advice, which is investing in yourself. Now this is also gonna be a little bit controversial, but I really don’t think that you should invest in yourself too much at the very beginning, I think as you make more and more money, yes, investing yourself investing your knowledge, whatever it is. But if you only have a thousands and this one go online, is telling you that if you just pay them 1500 he’ll teach you all the secrets to becoming a millionaire.

Probably not a good idea to do so. I don’t care who it is, I just really don’t think you’re gonna get the ROI that you expect and if you’re willing to give someone all of your money, it’s basically because you believe that this person is gonna just change your life, but that’s a lot of pressure on them and that’s a lot of pressure on you that’s gonna come in the future from not having any money to invest in your business now, I think you have to have a balance between investing in yourself and your business, especially with all the content that you can find nowadays on YouTube. If you have a limited budget, be resourceful, you don’t have to pay people for everything you can develop skills on your own. I know so many people that are successful that have never bought a course in their life and they’ve just been able to make it just through hard work and continuously learning from their mistakes, and what they’ve done right as well, which is the great thing about an online businesses. You can track your metrics you can look at your analytics, you can look at your Facebook data and you can determine what things you’re doing right and what things you’re doing run and learn from that.

But don’t get me wrong, guys. I’ve invested a shit ton of money into my education. I do believe in self-educating, it, but I will say that I’m really happy I didn’t make those investments when I had a little bit of money because it would have been really detrimental to my actual business. And I think grand car, one right now going bankrupt, not to kick someone while they’re down but Grant Cardone for example, is someone who will tell you to spend all your money into yourself, if you only have 3000 in the bank.

I spent all of that on a course.

I don’t think that’s smart, in any way, shape, or form. And unfortunately, that piece of advice came back to Hanson. He was super over-leveraged, he had no money in the bank, but a ton of debt, and now he’s not able to pay it off.

And it’s really sad, honestly on the rumors of my bankrupt that assumed to happen. Yes, it’s trick.

Okay, I’m losing the plane, the condo, all the apartments, 800. and I just really don’t want that to happen to any of you, but okay, that’s probably all the advice I can give you for now, this got really, really long, but on the note of finding inspiration, I do have another rate coming soon, really similar to the one I made last week about that one store, doing over a million dollars a month.

So stay tuned for that. Let me know what you think about this video if you have any other pieces of advice for other people watching this, drop them in the comments, let’s have some conversations. And while you’re doing that, just smash the Like button that always helps the videos, which really helps me out, so I hope you stay safe and I’ll see you in the next one piece..