Ep 13 | Business Advice For College Students

The first person that we’re going to feature today is Sayan Pramanik.Sayan Pramanik said that:

I am a student studying in college.

If there’s any college student right here who is watching this video or who is live with us put in a ME into the comment box on Facebook or put in a ME into the live chat on Facebook because I just want to find out if inspire any college student here. [Side talk 03:51-04:12]. Wow, I’m actually having a lot of people who are actually still college students. Amazing! First of all, here’s some competitive advantage for you guys. You guys have time. You seriously have time. I wish that I can actually travel a time machine and get back into my early 20’s because that just gives me so much more opportunity; it gives me so much more energy to actually do whatever I want  and to spend some time to start figuring out how I can build, and scale up my business. Here’s the deal, as a college student you’re going to be tempted for the following; you’re going to be tempted to out to a bar if you’re 21 years old in US to go hang out with your friends and maybe potentially go and flirt around and play around and be playful with some woman or if you’re a woman you maybe just want to go out to a club just to hang out with your friends or you maybe just on playing video games. That’s very common for any college student but ultimately at the end of the day if you want to actually reap the rewards early in your career you want to start hustling now and the time is now. And I want you to make that decision. Yes, you’re going to give up some amazing college time on maybe playing around, having different relationships, spending time with your friends but ultimately from my perspective I classify that as wasting time. I’ll be honest with you. What are you going to get out of playing video games? I don’t know. What are you going to get out of from simply going out to a bar getting drunk with your friends going around and basically kick trashcan or picking up fights or whatever? There’s no value. Right now if you actually turn those times to invest in yourself but at a time that you are 30, you can do whatever the heck you want and you have the money to do whatever the heck you want. You don’t just go and get a bottle of just a regular beer, you can get a nice bottle of red wine and that will even give you a better state. So, ultimately if you are in college right now and if you’re just going to college because your mom told you to or your dad told you to or simply you’re just going to college for the sake of going to college, I would actually challenge you right now to take a semester off and focus on creating an online business. This is what you want to do just take a semester off try for three months and basically, the tuition that you’re going to put towards your class put it in towards your business. Ask your parents for help and say, “I’m really dedicated to this I just want to actually ask you for your support.” I don’t want to become a doctor, I don’t want to become a nurse, I don’t want to become whatever, a profession, right? You seriously want to become an entrepreneur and you convince that to your parents. And I would tell you, they will support you because that’s what happened when I was in my early 20’s. I did not set foot in college. My mom obviously is a pretty cultural Asian lady who thinks that I have to go to school, get good grades so that I can get a job and work up the corporate ladder but I told her that’s not what I want. I want something different. So I seriously asked her, “You know what give me sometime give me two semesters to prove to you that I can do this.” Obviously, I did prove to her that I can do it so that’s why I never really went to college. That’s why right now you guys have that opportunity and you guys have the energy and the time to do it and you want to hustle on doing it.

Your question which is very common even Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook had this problem when he first started. So your question is,

I have a business idea to work on…
but none of my friends or others do not want to join me..
because they have not vision , what i am thinking…
how I can get the co workers or helpers?

This is a very common thing and I do have to tell you right out the gate when I first got started a lot of people doubted what I was doing, a lot of people didn’t understand what on earth I am doing and a lot of people thought that I was just living in dreams thing that oh yeah you’re not going to do it, you’re not going to be able to succeed, you’re just going to end up working back here or just going to end up going back to school. But listen I know what my vision is I know what I wanted to do and I seriously looked at “Okay, what do I need from myself in order for me to succeed?” And right out the gate to be honest with you, you don’t really need a helper; you don’t really need a partner. You basically need to find out what you need to know or what you need in terms of resources to actually help you start moving forward. There are a lot of things even when you have a business idea there are a lot of things that you can do on our own. And when you just do the talking and basically tell your friend, “I have this amazing idea” and you’re not doing with that then guess what’s going to happen? Your friend is just going to go like “You know what that guy is an idiot. He’s not going to do anything. Yeah, it looks great but we’re not going to help him.” Because you haven’t convinced them enough that you are dedicated and that you really wanted to move forward.

Here’s the deal though for any of you guys who are in college or for those of you who are just starting out to build a business, having a partnership is great; having a couple of friends as your partners is great; however, it is also a problem if you do not address this right out the gate. You need to have some sort of documentation to basically say what each person is responsible for, how much money each person invested in and how much equity those persons have and if there’s an executive decision or an important decision that needs to be made what are the voting rights. Because listen, you can have a friendship go south if you don’t have these proper things in place and I have to tell you, I have been burned several times by bad partnership and I’m open to talk about it and at the end of the day why because Fred Lam was being too freaking nice and basically not worrying about having all those set in stone on people’s accountability, how much equity, how are the expenses being done and ultimately what happened at the end? Well, I haven’t talked to most of them anymore. We’ve lost our friendship and that’s the last thing that you want especially if it is a person who you really, really, really care about but at the end of the day, again you have to be the person who convinced either someone helping you a partner or even your parents when you’re in college that you are seriously not just talking, you’re not just blabbing. You are seriously taking action and when they see the progress of what you have been doing that’s when they become a true believer of yours and start giving you the support that you need.

In the beginning, I do have to say, entrepreneurship, in the beginning, the journey is lonely. I went through that for many years. It is a lonely journey but at the end of the day, once you’re able to prove to people that I’m dedicated, I’m getting results and doing exactly what it is then you are going to get amazing support from a lot of people all around you. You’re going to attract people that you never thought of to actually come and help you. As a college student here’s the biggest advice that I have for you; skip a semester, obviously if you are a parent and you have a college kid or a high school kid, I don’t recommend that in high school, I recommend when you start in college. You still need to get at least high school education. When you’re in college seriously skip a semester. It’s only three months. Focus those three months on either going to YouTube, going into forums, going into Facebook groups and start figuring out what you want to accomplish, what resources you need. And you want to actually spend the tuition money, not towards that semester; you want to invest that money wisely. If you want to go into eCommerce, go find a program that works like Zero Up and figure it out. Go find another program about email marketing, go find a program about an agency or anything but you want to do your homework first by looking at YouTube videos by simply going to forums, by going to Facebook groups and really learn and gain the knowledge from there because again like I said you have time. You have time; you’re still living with your parents. You are basically having not of major overhead expense and your cost of living isn’t as high so, focus on that and then the journey will eventually unfold. But seriously use those three months, do everything that you can and start hustling. That’s the advice that I can give you especially if you are a college student or if you are a parent you may want to actually bring that message to your kids especially if you are an open-minded parent and I think you are because you’re watching Fred Lam right now who actually went through that so that’s what it is.

So, next question is by Dee Rogers. Before I actually answer Dee Rogers’ question put a 2 into the comment box or put a 2 in the live chat if that really opened up your mind especially for those of you who are actually from college right now. Moving on to Dee Rogers. Dee Rogers asked,

Is it a good idea to start an online business on multiple platforms, e.g. on eBay, Shopify, etc.?
Also, what time is the daily huddle live on facebook?
Thanks, Fred.

Let me answer the simplest question first, what time is the daily huddle live on Facebook? I choose to do my best to get on at 6 PM Pacific and 9 PM Eastern; however, at the end of the day, it also depends on my schedule because I have been having a crazy schedule lately and I’m travelling a lot. I do my best to be here at 6PM Pacific and 9PM Eastern; however, there are going to be certain times that it may be going at odd hours. In order for you to actually get notification on basically knowing exactly when I’m going to be on live, you need to make sure that you subscribed to my YouTube channel and turn on the notification. And also, you have to make sure that you follow me on Facebook. There’s also one thing that you have to do on Facebook. On my Facebook page once you actually like my Facebook page you get to change the setting on seeing all my posts first instead of just doing it by default which Facebook after they made the drastic change on their news feed which affected a lot of Facebook pages to basically lose out their organic reach that really sucks but at the end of the day nothing we can do about it. You have to make sure that you turn on the notification to the “see first” so that you see every single notification of mine. So again, if you actually are building a following on Facebook page that’s something that you want to actually share to your audience to make sure that they switch it and select “see first” so that they can see actually every single one of your post.

So, moving on to your question when you start an online business is it smart to actually start on multiple platforms, example eBay, Shopify? My answer is NO. My simple answer to you is to focus in one platform first. You are going to spread yourself thin especially as an entrepreneur, in the beginning, you are a solo entrepreneur, you have to do all these stuff yourself. And every day we share one thing in common regardless of how much money you make or how little money you make, we all share one thing in common which is time. Every single person on earth only has 24 hours a day and if you start to actually go into your market or go into your business when you’re starting out and try to focus on multiple platforms, you’re spreading yourself thin when you ultimately wanted to do is focus on one platform right out of the gate and master that platform first before you diversify your portfolio to basically go to eBay, to Amazon or vice versa, going to Amazon first then going to eBay or going from Shopify first then eBay etc. etc. even digital publishing. So, it’s very important that you get the core in place first and focus at one business master it become the best at it before you move on and diversify your portfolio and diversify your streams of income and actually go from there. And that’s what I did, I focused on ecommerce and that’s what I have been doing for a long time until I completely mastered it, scaled it to where I now just work on the business and not in the business because I have team members who are fantastic working for my business. I simply now have the time to actually create Zero Up, create software, to digital products, being on here live everyday and that just opens up me having my time to focus on this. So that’s why you want to actually do the same thing; you want to focus at one thing at a time, do the best at it, be the best at it and move forward. And that’s what exactly I would ask you to actually do.

Again, I know that there are a lot of shiny objects out there and there’s a problem with a lot of people right now which is having something called the shiny object syndrome. But anyway, going into that right now like I said earlier you want to focus at one thing at a time and there are a lot of people who have something the shiny object syndrome. Put a ME into the comment box or on YouTube if you feel that you have shiny object syndrome. You’re like looking at one business model, it’s looking fantastically well, you love it you’re all excited then all of a sudden you saw something else and then you derail yourself on shifting your focus into something, you have to start from scratch and you know what it’s absolutely fine to have shiny object syndrome especially if you aren’t having the self-awareness of knowing that you have that shiny object syndrome problem, you simply just want to address it and say, “Hey Fred you’re having that moment again on thinking that that is something amazing.” And listen, I have that shiny object syndrome too; every single person has that. I have that and I always get, I have to use the word bitch at by my team when I actually have a shiny object syndrome, I have the best idea that I wanted before and they’re like, “You have to come back now, we have to focus on our own business.” Yeah that’s true that’s what I have to do. So, you just have to basically be aware of it, know of it and basically say to yourself, “Okay, I’m not going to basically derail myself, I’m just going to focus on a thing that I’m excited about, I’m going to master it, be good at it and basically go from there. So, again, it’s very important just focus on one business at a time.

So moving on to the third question by Veronica Pando.  Veronica Pando said,

I really admire you, you are a great person. My question, I am concerned about whether the reputation I am creating on the web with my store belongs to Shopify or my domain? How do I make sure my website is creating a ranking on the web and not just giving it to Shopify so if I leave Shopify for some reason I can still keep the ranking. Thank you!

To answer your question Veronica is that you’re building your own domain name and your own brands present you are not building Shopify’s business, you’re simply using Shopify as a platform for your E-commerce business. It’s just like if you are building a website and you are using WordPress to build up your website you’re not building WordPress website you’re building your own domain and you’re building your own brand and ultimately at the end of the day that’s what it is. Here’s the thing that I know about SEO, I am not a rockstar at SEO, I want to know the basics, I have a lot of friends who are great at SEO and this is what I know. When you completely change the platform and change the context or the content in your domain you may get a SEO effect on a not saying you are going to get a rank but you may get some during the transition you may lose some ranking there and this is a common thing but as long as you have a lot of content, you have a lot of things in there and everything is staying relevant you’re just switching platform it won’t have that drastic effect. Ultimately, you’re building your own web brand or building your own business you’re not building Shopify. Again, Shopify is simply just a platform for you to actually build your store same thing as WordPress. So, I hope that helps you out.

Okay moving forward. The fourth question is by Carolina Crumel.Carolina Crumel said:

I have been reading that the newest and best platform with which to run ads is now YouTube. What is your opinion on that and will you have training on how to run an ad using YouTube soon?

Loved that question, guess where I’m actually broadcasting all my videos right now, take a guess right now on either if you’re on YouTube put it on YouTube, if you’re on Facebook put it on Facebook. Guess where I’m focusing a lot. If you have been following me for quite some months there is one thing that I’ve been focusing a lot. Put it into the comment box if you know what it is or put it into the question box if you know what it is and I’m just going to take a sip of coffee first. Oh! You guys…no one is answering me which is odd, you guys are shy today. Oh, I’m getting it done, Janelle said YouTube. Exactly, YouTube is the trend. It is moving there right now and YouTube has a lot of people like a lot of people on a daily basis. However, there’s one thing though the entry barrier to YouTube is very high, YouTube right now is becoming stricter you need to actually be enrolled inside their monetization partnership which they called the YouTube partnership in order for you to use carts and a lot of things. There are a lot of things right out the bat when you are trying to advertise on YouTube and if you want YouTube to be one of your main at the platform and here’s the deal I love YouTube okay I love YouTube. My cost per click my cost per sale on YouTube is low; however, when you first get started there are a lot of things that you need to work on in order for you to actually maximize your opportunity and your investment with YouTube and let me list out a couple of them. Number 1, you need to have at least 10,000 views and then 10,000 subscribers in order for you to actually apply for YouTube partnership. And here’s why you need YouTube partnership is because once you actually apply for YouTube partnership it will give you the ability to create what we call cards and these cards are going to give you the ability to actually link to a landing page on your website. But if you don’t have YouTube partnership accepted or enabled which again the entry to the barrier is a lot higher you are going to be wasting money but you are not maximizing the dollar of investment that you’re putting in towards YouTube for your ads.

Am I going to have YouTube training about all these? Potentially yes in the future I can but I have to basically give you or set the expectation out first. YouTube right now at the stage is not really for newbies. It is basically a lot more advanced. There are a lot more variables involved and there is a lot more work involved because you have to shoot videos, you have to know how to set up cards, you have to basically set the platform, you’re going to get viewers, you’re going to get subscribers. There are a lot of things. Over the weekend I was in a $25,000 mastermind that I was actually a presenter of and I actually cover YouTube and I got like a lot of people asking me a lot of questions about YouTube and that’s what I am in right now. I’m doing a lot of YouTube ads right now and I’m doing a lot of YouTube. And ultimately at the end of the day when it comes to YouTube, you have to play within the ecosystem of YouTube. Let me repeat that you have to play within the ecosystem of YouTube. I’m literally just giving you YouTube bombs right now like dropping knowledge for you guys right now for YouTube. Now for YouTube, you need to know exactly how the platform works. If you advertise blindly on YouTube I can guarantee you-you’re going to lose a lot of money. You’re going to get a lot of views but you’re going to lose a lot of money. You’re not going to get any response, especially for a direct response if you’re trying to sell a digital product, if you’re trying to sell affiliate product or if you’re trying to sell an e-commerce product you’re going to lose a lot of money because you don’t know the ecosystem. Inside YouTube’s ecosystem there are two things that you need to know:

1. There’s something called the video discovery so, video discovery are basically ads that are showing when someone actually search in the YouTube search query and also listed on the related videos.

The second part is going to be called the in-stream ads and the behaviour for all these is actually pretty different, very different, very, very, very different.

And in order for you to actually play within the ecosystem, what I normally tell people to do or I tell like higher level people or people that I share at $25,000 masterminds and listen what you’re learning right now is exactly what I share at a $25,000 mastermind.

Put in a ME if you guys absolutely love this. I’m not kidding you. You guys will find some photos soon that I was actually presenting about all that but moving on you guys are getting like a crazy amount of value right now that I share with you. With that, you have to play with the ecosystem on simply run retargeting on the content video ads that you have on YouTube and run in-stream. That’s the key. Now, how to do it? I see very,very,  very, very long steps on doing it but at the end of the day if I were to actually briefly talk about it that’s what you need to do, you need to play within the ecosystem of YouTube and understand how it works. And if you guys love that, super high level tip give me a love symbol on Facebook and give me the thumbs up right on YouTube at the same time. Obviously I covered a lot more than I should about YouTube but at the end of the day I may come up with some new training for YouTube and everything. I never talk about it publicly but it maybe something that I’ll be doing in the future. If you want to know what’s going make sure you actually subscribe my emails, make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel and like me on Facebook and you’ll get like the latest information right away.

So the last question of the day is by Lucas Camilo. Your question is,

How to implement drop shipping of custom luxury jewellery (such as art) with entry prices starting at 30k? How to find suppliers?

When I first actually got your question I was like, “Wow this guy is trying to sell $30,000 stuff, that’s amazing.” And then your last question is how do I find a supplier? Then I go like oh snap, so it seems like to me that you are just starting out your venture online, maybe in the eCommerce role you are. I’m going to make that assumption that you are. And if you’re right out the gate to want to sell a $30,000 piece of jewellery or art let me tell you and I’m, not trying to scare the heck out of you but this is the truth. Your risk is super high and here’s the reason why. A $30,000, a lot pf people are going to abuse that. They’re going to order from you, get that $30,000 piece of jewellery or art and if you don’t have the right infrastructure in place, guess what they’re going to do. They’re going to call a number on the back of their credit cards and say that “Oh, this is a fraud transaction.” And guess what when that happens and you’re not going to get hold of that customer you just lost $30,000 worth of jewellery and that person paid nothing to actually have your product. This called high-risk portfolio so something to keep in mind of, something that you absolutely want to keep in mind of. If you can make it work absolutely that is amazing and if you really want to actually basically sell a $30,000 worth of jewellery or art I do not suggest you to accept credit cards. I do not suggest you to—well Paypal is going to be fine so that is fine but I suggest you wire transfer only or check only and you do not ship out the product unless if the check actually got cleared, okay? Very important. Because you want to protect yourself; $30, 000 worth of a jewellery and let’s say that even your cost of goods is going to be like $5,000 that is still a lot of money. Now if you are a seasoned or a veteran when it comes to entrepreneurship and everything, you know all these ins and outs; here’s what you want to do. You don’t want to be the person who carries the inventory of this art or jewellery. What you want to do is basically align with yourself either locally and if you really want to sell like a $30,000 piece of jewellery or $30,000 piece of art, you want to basically find a supplier locally that you can meet on a regular basis. If you’re trying to get a supplier overseas or over the continent or wherever or even across the border or the other side of the country, chances are it’s a little bit risky, very risky because are you sure that the jewellery is real? Are you sure that the arts is real? Is it really a collection? So you need to really figure that out. So, the risk is very, very, very high but again if you are like, “You know what I really want to do this”, my advice is locally find a person or find a local company or art gallery that you can actually sell or have the re-sell rights to sell those products or find a local small mom-and-pop jewelry store that you say, “Hey, I can create you a website you just become my supplier and I’ll pay you before you ship out the product etc. etc.” That’s what you want to do. Now if you are like, “You know what thanks for the advice, yes I can see it’s high risk, I want to do something else then start with something called print-on-demand for art-wise there’s something called the canvass art and if you have Shopify there is an app and supplier that this canvas art and I forgot the name on top of my head, you can look into that and start experiencing it first before you go after like the $30,000. I’m just saying this to genuinely wanting to protect you and that’s why I’m saying that.

So, other than that, that’s really it for today’s advice. I’m getting a lot of comments coming in. So that’s really it for today’s daily huddle. I know that tomorrow is Thanksgiving so again, like I promise you I don’t think I’m going  to come live at 6 PM or 9PM  Eastern for our daily huddle and maybe a lot earlier that we’re going to do it because I know that all you guys need to spend time with family and I know that some of you guys are already traveling going to see your families, spend some time with them etc.etc.

With that, I’m still going to come on live tomorrow in Thanksgiving to actually so a 30-minute quick daily huddle with you guys but at the end of the day we’re not showing up, that is absolutely fine, I understand it because this is like the best family time that you guys have. Other than that listen This is the only time that I would actually, only for people who are in America I am going to give you a day off tomorrow to spend time with your family but if you’re not from US you’re not getting Thanksgiving so you have to be that’s why I’m going to be here tomorrow because it’s not Thanksgiving for me. In Canada, we already celebrated Thanksgiving so I’m going to be coming on live and I’ll do it a lot earlier because night I got a gala to go to we’re going t be all in suit and everything and be in the gala so I’m going to actually do that later.

Other than that listen remember keep hustling. Happy Thanksgiving or those of you who are in the US and cannot afford on seeing you guys tomorrow.

Before we live we had an amazing workshop last night with my brand ambassador Connor, people are blown away of what he has to share so if you guys want to actually attend our encore training, right above this video on Facebook there’s a link, click on it, save your seat and if you’re in YouTube right below this video there should be a link somewhere and you can actually click on it, sign up and actually save your seat to make sure you are there live. If you want at the direct link it got a tiny.ie /lazy. That is tiny.ie/lazy and I look forward on seeing you guys on Friday in our encore workshop.That’s it for today I look forward on seeing you guys tomorrow. Bye now.