DamienDefrancoTestPost

DamienDefrancoTestPost

This is all the information you need to know about Damien Defranco

1) Damien Defranco is a Canadian-born serial Entrepreneur who primarily focuses on the Manufacturing, Distribution, product sourcing, warehousing, eCommerce, investment, and other Chinese related fields.

2) Damien Defranco is known for being an expert in the business field. He’s one of the original successful Entrepreneurs that pioneered the dropshipping business model. Damien Defrancos Chinese companies makes more online doing dropship fulfillment than any other company in the world. Damien is also known for being a Quora top writer and a top writer on Zhihu Chinese social media. Damien is also a board of advisor for Adleaks community with Tim Burd and also a Board of Advisor for the Founders & Funders network and Founders Plus network.

3) Damien Defranco doesn’t have any public educational background, he dropped out of school early to become an Entrepreneur and start his own successful companies.

4) Damien Defranco works primarily in the manufacturing, distribution, product sourcing, logistics, ecommerce, Chinese related businesses and investment fields.

5) Damien Defranco is on platforms like Quora, Zhihu, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIN, Founders Plus, Founders and Funders, and Adleaks and many other professional networks.

6) Damien Defranco has authored over 1000 high end blog posts about Chinese business, China, and Business in general. Damien Defranco has written several business books.

7) Damien Defranco has notably been part of Adleaks community and the new upcoming Founders Plus network community.

8) Damien Defranco has never been awarded any public hours or awards.

9) Damien Defranco is associated with many business networks and causes including Adleaks and Founders Plus.

10) Damien Defranco does speaking in China at various schools and corporate events. His coaching and mentorship/consulting services takes him to various large companies to speak there.

11) Damien Defranco specializes in high end business and Entrepreneurship with a focus on investing, networking, distribution, product sourcing, Chinese business, logistics, ecommerce, etc.

13) Damien Defranco is inspired to be a successful Serial Entrepreneur and loves working over 100 hours each and every week to meet goals and run various businesses with his business partners.

14) Damien Defranco has business partners such as Tim Burd, Vito Glazers, Alex Stiehl, Ethan Chin from nova, and many more.

15) Damien Defranco’s mentors include people like Jack Ma

16) Damiens Future project aspirations are to make more networking communities for business and to one day start his own luxury car manufacturing and design company.

17) Damien Defranco contributes to his industry and community by being an expert and providing consulting, coaching and mentorship, he creates over 1000 full length detailed posts each year that provide educational content and he is a contributor for content for the Adleaks community and upcoming Founders Plus community.

18) Outside of work, Damien Defranco likes to watch TV, play video games and golf primarily.

19) Damien Defranco has many philosophies about work and life including the fact that you must work both hard and smart. Just working smart is not enough.

20) Damien Defranco has upcoming projects for the Founders Plus network together with Tim Burd.

Here is a Quora post written by Damien Defranco in his style from his own words

“Since I’ve been in and out of China since 2010 many times, more times than I can count. And I’ve visited just about every major city, every business city, and even countryside cities. This is a perfect question for me.

Here is my list of things you should not do when you visit China.

Wear shoes in other people’s homes. In Chinese culture it is custom to remove your shoes when being invited into someone else’s home or residence. Often times they will have slippers for you to change into, or you can wear clean socks. Do not keep your shoes on when entering, you keep them at the entrance or outside. To keep your shoes would be disrespecting your host.

Pay tips. You do not need to pay tips for products, or services in China. Whether that’s at a restaurant, massage parlor, or taxi service. Tips are always included in the original price. Most places will politely deny the tip, or even chase you down to return it. Other times they may get upset at you for trying to tip them.

Kiss stuffed animals/plushies in elevator. You and your friends may think it’s funny to goof off with stuffed animals, but what happens when that elevator door opens and people see you kissing a toy. It’s not good. The people will ask why the foreigner is kissing a giant micky and minnie plush toy from Disney. Then everyday they will call you minnie kissing foreigner. haha. Like almost all things in my list, I am guilty of doing many.

Drink water. Never drink tap water. You will get sick. Drink only bottled water. In most cases in China, water is drunk warm/room temperature. There is a saying that cold water can cause stomach aches. Often times places will always certainly serve you warm water.

Forget to have a VPN. The internet’s great firewall of China is a nuisance. Everyone in China has a VPN. A virtual private network. This allows you to bypass the firewall and access all site’s that China has tried to block, including Facebook. Always have a VPN accessible from your email, cloud server, or USB drive.

Stick chopsticks in bowl straight up. Never ever stick your chopsticks straight up into your rice bowl. This is a symbol for funerals/death and honoring the dead spirits. This tradition is usually done when a person has recently passed away. A bowl of rice with chopsticks will be set aside for them to honor. It would be disrespectful for you to mimic it.

Use or sell any drugs. China has a firm stance on using hardcore drugs, even worse on selling it. Just don’t participate if you don’t want to end up doing 80 years in a Chinese prison.

Pay full price/asking price for things. Haggling and buying in China come hand to hand. You are expected to haggle when buying certain thing. When you are buying gifts, gadgets, knick knacks and even food at a market. Haggling is courteous to the seller and shows you are not a weak person. It’s also fun.

Keep original documents on you. Always keep only a copy of documents either on you, or on your phone/email. Keep all original documents secured at your hotel or wherever you are staying. Keep them safe from damage, and theft.

Talk politics. Don’t talk about politics in China, especially that of other countries. It’s too controversial and could lead to other problems.

Talk religion. Same as politics. No one else will share your views. Keep your religion to yourself.

Take pictures on certain government areas. Typically the government will have signs posted that says no pictures. It’s not a good idea to take pictures of certain government buildings, or certain public transport, or military persons. They may ask you to delete the photos or make take your phone/camera and not return it.

Accept business cards with one hand. In Chinese business, things are done certain ways to honor traditions. When you accept a business card, always use two hands, not one. And give a slight bow. It’s very respectful and honoring to do it this way.

Refuse any food from hosts. When eating at someone’s home or dinging in a restaurant where the host/another person is treating you for food. Never refuse any food, even if you don’t like it. Try it, take a bite. But don’t flat out refuse.

Take ‘no’ as a reply to gifting/receiving. When giving a gift, or a present, often times Chinese locals will say no many times. This is all part of the culture. Keep offering and they will eventually say yes. It would be impatient to accept a gift on the first offering. Chinese will usually say no 1–3 times first.

Go out with young stranger (opposite sex) who approaches you. A big scam in China is being approached by someone of the opposite sex who is younger. They’re looking to ask you out for tea, or go to a bar. What they want is to trap you into paying a large amount of money. This is a common scam targeting foreigners. Never let them choose the place to go to, especially if you are paying.

(picture of me and my friends)

Buy tickets/fares/currency exchange from people who approach you. China has a big black market on ticket scalpers, unregistered taxi’s, and freelance bankers. These people will often approach you before you get to the legit source and try to sell you to cheaper. Just stay away from them as it’s a good way for you to get scammed, especially getting fake money.

Disrespect elders. Chinese culture is very respectful to elders. Don’t do anything to disrespect someone who is your elder.

Disagree with people who have higher standing than you. This is more towards business. But if you are meeting with someone who overall is vastly superior standing then you in business, then agree with everything. Don’t disagree with a person who is 10x the business person than you are.

Reuse any chopsticks that fell on the floor. This is gross. If your chopstick falls on the floor, don’t pick it up, just ask for a new set.

Eat from rice bowl without holding it. This is gross too. No one wants to see your food dropping from your mouth, all over you. You need to pick up that rice bowl and hold it towards your mouth.

Wear a green hat. (戴绿帽子 or dài lǜ mào zǐ) is an expression that Chinese use when a woman cheats on her husband or boyfriend because the phrase sounds similar to the word for cuckold. So don’t wear a green hat.

Give a clock or watch as a gift. The phrase giving a clock (送钟 sòng zhōng /song jong/) sounds exactly like the Chinese words for ‘attending a funeral ritual’ (送终 sòng zhōng) and thus it is bad luck to gift clocks or watches.

Give an umbrella or fan as a gift. It is undesirable to give someone a fan or an umbrella as a gift. The words fan “shàn” (扇) and umbrella “sǎn” (simplified Chinese: 伞; traditional Chinese: 傘) sound like the word “sǎn” (散), meaning to scatter, or to part company. So if you want a friendship or marriage to end, to split up, then you would give an umbrella.

Use your own countries phone. It’s better in China to get a local sim card. Don’t use your own countries sim card/phone. The overcharges, roaming fees, and international fees are super high. A Chinese local sim card and local number is very cheap to use, even when doing international calling outside of China.

Keep your bag/shoulder bag behind you. A good way to lose things is to keep your bag where you can’t see it. Chinese pickpockets are extremely skilled in tourist locations. You wouldn’t notice anyone reaching into your bag to take cameras, phones, or even laptops from your bag. And no one in China behind you who sees it happening will mention anything.

Put purse/bag directly on floor. It’s a dirty thing to put your bag or purse directly on the floor. Even in restaurants. Always hang it from a chair or put in on something. If you put it on the floor you are showing everyone else around you that you aren’t a clean person.

Pay beggars/disabled people on street. Don’t pay money to beggars/disabled people on the street. These people make a lot of money and don’t need your help. Often times these people all work for companies and they get paid to stand out in places for 10+ hours a day and most of their money goes to their bosses. Over 100+ million Chinese live off of $2 USD per day. These beggars can make anywhere from $50 USD – 500 USD a day. Some even more.

Accept gifts from anyone dresses as a monk or religious attire. A common scam in China is having a monk, or someone dressed like one give you a lanyard or charm, or jade item as a gift for free. Don’t accept it. If you accept it, they’ll follow you the whole day and ask you for donation money.

Forget toilet paper. Chinese public toilets don’t have toilet paper, you need to bring your own. Also, when using, don’t flush it down the toilet. Use the waste bin beside the toilet instead for paper. Most people use the little 10–15 pack of Kleenex that fits in your pocket.

Gift or mention the number 4. The number 4 (四, pinyin: sì; Cantonese Yale: sei) is considered an unlucky number in Chinese because it is nearly homophonous to the word “death” (死 pinyin: sǐ; Cantonese Yale: séi). So never give anything in 4’s. 8 is the lucky number.

Argue or cause scene in public. Just don’t do this.

Overall China is a great country to visit. I think everyone needs to visit it at least once in their life.”

Here is another one from Damien Defranco

“When it comes to China, it’s really the opposite of the USA. There is a ridiculous amount of things you can do in China freely that you couldn’t possibly do in the USA (and even Canada.)

Having been in and out of China myself since 2010, more times than I can count, I’ve knocked off most of this on the list myself, some many times. Being in an our of China since 2010, I own factories, warehouses, retail stores, farm land/rural land and much more. So I’ve experienced/seen everything.

As an authority on this topic I’ve put together this list. Based on my experiences, my friends experiences, my staff/employees in China, my business partners in China. This list views as the majority of China – this is a generalized list. While some areas it doesn’t apply to, it applies to most of China (China is very big).

Break/overlook rules, and bend laws. China is very flexible when it comes to laws. Money and relationships can solve everything. There is NOTHING in China that cannot be solved with money. Money solves everything. With the exception of hardcore drugs, the most strict law. US is pretty strict, you can’t pay your way out of things, and often relationships may not be enough.
Drive the way you want. In the US, you’ll get traffic violations/tickets for not following the rules. In China, you can make your own rules in many areas. As I have said for the last 8 years about China; Green means go, yellow means go, red means go. Want to drive on the other side of the road? go ahead. Want to drive on the sidewalk? go ahead. This is true for almost all cities/rural areas except the big ones (tier 1, tier 2).

Open/start any business anywhere. It’s relatively easy to start a business and begin making money in China. You don’t have all that red tape like the US has to get registered, accounts created, and government filings right away.
Walk around at night. China is very safe, especially in tourist areas. My apartment in China I could leave, and walk for an hour and always have a police in my sights at his station/post no matter where I went, no matter the time. US can be dangerous at night.
Easy travel between cities. China is the king of transportation. Buses, subways, trains, they are everywhere. You really don’t need a car, there is more rail systems and buses in China then the rest of the world combined. US you pretty much need a car if you travel far.

Drinking. You can buy drink, and drink at any age. I always had a beer at 6am with my breakfast. I gained a lot of weight, but it was a great time. And I still do it every time I am there. No ID. I’ve seen 8 year old’s get beer for family/parents. Most minors in China don’t drink, China is responsible overall. US has age restrictions (21?) and ID requirements.

Open carry drinks. Expanding on the drinking, you can take your drink with you public. Walk to the mall, take a taxi, drinking wine, beer, whatever. While you can do this in China, many people don’t. Can’t do this in US.
Smoking. Same as drinking. You can smoke anywhere pretty much. I used to carry 1–2 packs of smokes with me at all times, and I’ve never smoked in my life. They’re great for business meetings, or buying expensive stuff. It’s a social thing. Gifting cigarettes are good if you want to lower cost of items when buying. US has a lot of smoking restrictions.
Buy anything you want. You can buy anything you want, including replicas and knockoffs and never get into any trouble. US has a lot of restrictions on this too.

Fireworks whenever you want. I once set off over 2000 fireworks outside one of my hotel I was staying at one time. It was loud and fun for about 8 minutes. The kids loved it. Anytime of the year pretty much, anywhere you are. People are always setting off fireworks, every day. US has laws and regulations for each city that determine when and where/how to set off fireworks.
Almost no harassment at airports. Security at airports are very relaxed. USA I’ll get scanned, padded down, luggage scanned, I’ll get into secondary and get interviewed, and bags searched. In China, I just go through, other then showing a single person your passport with valid visa for stamping, and walking past a drug sniff dog at all airports, China’s security is the non harassing type.
Haggle. You can haggle for everything you buy in China. The price is never the price. This goes from food at a market, to buying a car or apartment rent, even hotel costs. Haggle. They want your business an will lower price to ensure you don’t go elsewhere. US doesn’t really believe in bartering.
No line-ups. China has no line ups really, fast food, trains, buses, you just need to get to the front and push other people politely (usually elbows). US has a line system, wait your turn.
Jay-walking, that’s fine. You can walk wherever and however you want in China. US you can get ticketed for jay walking. I played Frogger a lot in China. Though you don’t want to do it on faster speed roads.
Customized food. In China, restaurants will often allow you to custom order something, even if it’s not on the menu. They’ll do you up something as long as they can get the ingredients. US, not so much, if it’s not on the menu, they won’t serve it (higher end restaurants, and hotels sometimes take custom orders).
Car/bike security. China has paid parking everywhere, but it’s not always to a machine. Often time you pay a certain person that watches a ‘zone’. You pay them and they stand there all day (or their team) and watch the cars/bikes. No one will steal or break into your car/bike. US, not so much, you can get your car broken into easy in the US.

Spank and properly punish kids. China allows parents to discipline kids as they see fit. Spanking is very popular, and effective, and is very positive on everyone. People are brought up proper, with respecting authority/parents/elders. US is the opposite. People will call police and Child Protective Services if they even think you spank your kid. Which is why there is so much crime, disorder, and entitlement in the US.
You can eat ANY thing you want. You can eat anything you want in China, including Dog if you so please. China doesn’t waste anything, all organs, brains, intestines, every aspect of every food is utilized. US has food and health/safety regulations.

Sell anything at night on streets. At night in China, vendors come out, setup and sell just about anything. From jewelry, to souvenirs, household items and food. Popup shops. Anyone can do this, police won’t enforce it at night, they’ll even be your customer. But in the US, you’ll get fined for operating a business without a license and outside a zone/event.

Gamble/play cards on the streets. You can get your friends and setup a card game and gamble on just about any side street. If police catch you, they may just take a bit of money and leave and let you continue. But nothing major (in most cities, harder to do in Tier 1 cities). In the US this is like a criminal offense.
Use any of the billion public washrooms that are everywhere. China has a massive amount of public washrooms. And in cities with KFC, McDonalds which are all basically 24/7, you can use these. US you are limited to like gas stations and very few 24/7 places if you buy from them.

Are not expected to tip. China doesn’t except tips on services/food. In fact, most places will refuse or get angry if you try to tip. US’s culture is that they expect tips, regardless of how good the service is. Even if its poor service they expect 15–20% minimum tip. Talk about entitlement.
Calling out for your restaurant server loudly. In China, you get your servers attention to your table by calling out “waiter/server”, and they come. It’s normal there. In US it would be very rude, you have to wait, and wait, and wait, and hope they eventually make it around to your table.
Download/stream anything. China you can download/stream ANY thing, and everyone can get past the Firewall of China with a VPN, so things like Facebook, Google, etc are not really off limits, just a nuisance. US you cannot, you may get a letter or penalty/fine from your internet provider depending on what you did.”

Here is more from Damien Defranco

“No, sadly, China isn’t developed yet to the point of having electricity.

I remember when I first went to China in 2010, when we got off the airplane (Shanghai Pudong Int Airport), we were all given torches and flints.

Then in 2011 when I visited many cities, they were all ancient and had no electric.

In 2011 again when I opened my first retail stores in GuiLin City, all of my staff there held flashlights and lamps.

I remember everyday I would get up in the morning and walk to the noodle shop, using only the natural light in the sky to guide my way. Everyday I would eat noodles in the dark. The camera flash was the only thing making light.

I had to be careful when taking photos because there was no way to recharge the battery once it died.

Then in 2012 when I bought my first computer there for my office. I had no where to plug it in.

So I just took it to my farm land where there was no power and it sat on the floor and was used a foot rest. We had a well I would pump water from each day.

Since 2012 I drove around in an Electric Bike. Mind you, I never had a license during that time to drive. Again, I used the bike sparingly as there was no way to recharge it once it wore out.

China is completely dark at night.

Actually China is very gorgeous and has electricity everywhere. Even in my farms we have live electric that go out to all the buildings. I’ve never been to an area in China that didn’t have electricity. Even most rural areas have electricity.

Some of the best tourist locations look amazing at night when all the lights are on, especially neon lights.

China’s electricity in the big cities is as advanced as any other countries.

I lived in an apartment in Shenzhen before that had a smart apartment. AI controlled everything. The apartment would talk to you when you arrived, greet you, tell you the weather, the traffic, etc

You could use voice commands to set air conditioning, start the shower, heat up the floor, set alarms, etc

Doors were all automated, way more advanced then even my house in Canada.”

Here is more from Damien Defranco

“There are many things that a lot of people don’t know about China.

Chinese women usually keep their last name/family name once getting married. They don’t usually take their new spouse’s name. Many children also choose to take on their mothers family name rather than father’s.
China has 0 tolerance for drugs. It’s guaranteed jail time and even death penalty depending on the specific drug crime. Even foreigners accidentally trying to bring illegal drugs is will receive a life time ban, and jail time before deported.
China is famous for hundreds and hundreds of inventions including (just to name some): Paper, Mechanical Clock, Tea, Gunpowder, Compass, Alcohol, Silk, Umbrella, Kites, Toothbrush, Acupuncture, Iron Smelting, Bronze, Flares, Rockets, Porcelain, Earthquake Detectors, Toilet Paper, Mahjong and Go Board Games, Playing Cards, Seed Drill, Paper money, Jadeworking, Parachutes, Fired Bricks, Rice Cultivation, Fire arrows, Soy Sauce, Sunglasses, Soybean Cultivation, Fishing Reel, Insense, Animal Zodiac, Artillery, Banknotes, Bellows, Crossbows, Dominoes, Hukou System, Hot Pot.

Generally 85% of all household items are labeled ‘Made In China’. This makes China have a global influence, whether you realize it or not.
China is the fastest growing country in the world. Because of that, it has the largest growing, and fastest expansion in real estate. It doesn’t take long for China construction companies to create houses, apartments, and other buildings, even whole cities in a matter of months or just a few years. The downside is that these buildings are made very cheap, and take’s a long time to get people to move into.
China now has insurance called ‘helper insurance’. In past, Chinese never helped others in need. People would get hit by cars/buses and be left there as thousands walked by. People would fall and break ankles and thousands would walk by. This is because of the amount of scams people do. If you helped them up after they fell, they would say you were cause of it, even if you came only later to help. Then you’d be stuck paying their medical bills and possibly living expenses for a while. Now you can get insurance for this, so now you can help people and your insurance will rescue you if that person tries to sue you for helping them.
China has the largest % of women in the workforce. However, China overall has too many men compared to women. There are tens of millions of Men in China that can never get married because there aren’t enough women.
China makes more millionaires each year than any other country in the whole world combined. Not only that, China has more current women billionaires then anywhere else in the world combined.
Foreigners can own land, property, businesses in China. It’s not that hard to open a business in China as a foreigner. There is a process for it, and it doesn’t require marriage. (sure marriage makes things easier). There is always ways to purchase rural land if you know someone in the government to get you a Hukou.

Numbers in China each represent different things. The number 4 for instance sounds like the word for ‘Death’. Which is a very unlucky number. Try to avoid this, including giving gifts in 4’s. The number 8 however is very lucky as it sounds like the word ‘to Prosper’. Giving 8’s is great in China.
China also has superstitions and traditional beliefs dating back a long time. Here are some: Wear a green hat. (戴绿帽子 or dài lǜ mào zǐ) is an expression that Chinese use when a woman cheats on her husband or boyfriend because the phrase sounds similar to the word for cuckold. So don’t wear a green hat. Give a clock or watch as a gift. The phrase giving a clock (送钟 sòng zhōng /song jong/) sounds exactly like the Chinese words for ‘attending a funeral ritual’ (送终 sòng zhōng) and thus it is bad luck to gift clocks or watches. Give an umbrella or fan as a gift. It is undesirable to give someone a fan or an umbrella as a gift. The words fan “shàn” (扇) and umbrella “sǎn” (simplified Chinese: 伞; traditional Chinese: 傘) sound like the word “sǎn” (散), meaning to scatter, or to part company. So if you want a friendship or marriage to end, to split up, then you would give an umbrella.

All of the world’s panda’s are in China. Except for the ones that China ‘lends’ out to other countries temporarily. China is the official panda bear home.
During the time of the 1-child policy in China, many families had additional kids more than the limit. These kids would be unregistered for most their life until later. Or families could pay a fee as well. Now the limit is 2-child with the new policy. (2015 changes).
China has the largest pork consumption of any country. They also home more pigs than any country. About 1.8 million pigs are eaten daily in China. That’s a lot of oink.
China is probably the most naturally beautiful country in the world.”

Here is more from Damien Defranco

“Amount of followers have nothing to do with correlation of making money on Facebook.

I’ve worked with clients with millions of followers, some with hundreds of thousands of followers, and some with thousands.

Some peoples pages with just 25,000 followers can make more money than a page with 300,000.

Many factors are involved, such as;

If the followers are real.
If the followers are active.
If the followers were obtained correctly (marketing in the right country)
If the followers were organic or from paid ads.
If the content being posted is good.
Facebook doesn’t show your posts to everyone. For pages with 25,000 people, maybe 1800 will organically see your post, the rest you’ll need to pay for the rest of your fans to see.

Many pages make the mistake of running ads worldwide. You can get like 20,000 followers from cheap countries like Egypt for about $5.00 – none of these people will buy from you if you are from like UK, or USA, or Canada. That same $5 could go to getting 18–20 local followers who would stand a better chance of buying than 20,000 from another country too poor to afford your product/services.

17,000 followers is not a lot for someone running paid marketing. Even with running paid ads to them for retargeting, trying to sell them affiliate products or something, referral sales, probably not making enough money to cover the costs of ads to reach all of your followers.

However, if you are a small business, and the 17,000 followers were organic. People who followed your brand because they believed in you – this is powerful, even for small brands. 17,000 organic followers is huge for a small business, and they can turn that into lots of sales for products and services if their social accounts are done right.”

Here is more from Damien Defranco

“I guess it really depends on where you are coming from.

The Cold. Our winters are cold. I know a lot of people from other countries who have moved to Canada, and it’s the number one complaint. They never expect the winters to be so cold.
The Culture. This is the same I guess for any country, expect a culture shock. Canadians tend to be more socially polite depending on your point of view. Opening doors for other people, allowing cars to merge, lining up for services/buying instead of cutting in. Friendly conversations with strangers, etc
The Size. Canada is really really really really really really really really.. big. Unless you live in a large city like Toronto or Vancouver, it can feel empty. Long distances between places. It’s just a big country, not that many people, just a huge country.
Public Transportation. Taking city buses isn’t reliable, they are never on time with any schedules. Always plan ahead and allow leeway time. Especially when it snows. Buses can get…stuck.
Health Care. Rush to get permanent residence status, and apply for your SIN (social insurance number) and health care (if in Ontario) right away. Just about all health care is free in Canada (paid by taxes).
Jobs. General jobs are generally easy to get, if you are willing to work for any fast food or mall outlet store, you can easily get hired. Don’t be picky, and you’ll be set. It’s also easier to start your own business if you are originally from outside Canada as opposed to if you were Canadian born (privileges of government grants.) Don’t expect to get any type of office, management, or corporate type job right away.
Cable. TV/Cable is overpriced. Don’t buy it. Do what more and more Canadians are doing/converting to. Just get internet, and stream TV for free (still legal in Canada).
Diversity. Canada is a very diverse, and multicultural country. Tons of religions, tons of languages. Regardless of where you are coming from, it’s easy to fit in.
Tips. In Canada, it’s a courtesy to tip 10–15% extra for various services, like dining in a nice restaurant (if the service was great). Many other countries don’t have this. If you are unsure, just ask when you’re there.
The Cold. This deserves two spots. It’s just sooo cold in winter that that this deserves two spots. Bring a heavy heavy heavy winter coat.”

Here is more from Damien Defranco

“I’ve been doing dropshipping now for 10 years. I used to sell millions of products each year on eBay and Amazon alone, then we also had stores on Magento, Woocommerce, and Shopify.

I now work with over 40 different co-founders on over 40 different various online eCommerce stores and dropshipping stores on Shopify alone. And I’m in the talks with 5 more guys this year already to open 5 more stores in different niches.

I even coach/mentor this category heavily and have seen hundreds of my thousands of students have success, some even surpassing me.

When you start your first dropshipping store, take everything in and use it as a learning experience. Very very rarely do first stores ever succeed. Most Entrepreneurs I know fail their first time around, but failing can be a good thing, so embrace it. Each time you get back up and keep trying, you know way more then the previous time. Some of my students find success on their 2nd and 3rd store.

It’s important to choose a category you have knowledge and experience about. Just because one niche is highly profitable for others, doesn’t mean it will work for you. This is one of the main reasons why people fail their first time, they chase niche’s for money instead of passion.

Money niches will give you short term success if you don’t have knowledge/passion for it. Passion niches that you know about will be good for long term larger businesses, might take longer to get going, but you’re better off.

Don’t buy into the self-proclaimed guru BS you see all over social media about needing this, and needing that. Try to keep things simple, explore everything, and figure out what works for you.

What to do first:

First, find out what niche you want to be in.

Then research that niche. Find out everything about it. Find suppliers, find customers.

Write a list of the top 50 competitors you’ll have in that niche. Research each one of them, find out what sets them apart. What do they do right, what do they do wrong. Check everyone’s social media and see what the public says.

Figure out what all them have in common. Try out the same color scheme as one of the best competitors.

Then decide what platform your site will be on. Most people are using and recommending Shopify. There are others too, like Bigcommerce, Woocommerce, Magento, etc Hint: Shopify is the best right now.

Then register your domain, and setup your store. Don’t forget to add a blog section.

Then setup your social media accounts for Twitter, Facebook business page, Instagram and Pinterest.

Marketing, Growing, and Social Media:

Dropshipping businesses can be profitable after 1 day, even 1 sale. But others can take a week, a month, or even a year. It varies.

The best way to become profitable is having a great marketing and advertising plan put in place, as well as taking advantage of something in the industry we call perceived value. This answer will go over both.

The way to market any online eCommerce store is the same. Regardless of what type of store, or niche/category it’s in, the methods are the same to generate traffic.

First, you need to be active on Social Media. Growing your following for your brand is a long-term goal, but you need to start now. Building brand trust, and brand awareness is huge to the success of your dropship store.

You want to post daily, (that’s everyday) on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. And 2–3 times a day on your Facebook business page. Don’t skip any days, and be consistent.

You want to blog on your site, every single day. Even small posts. Or re-posts from other peoples content (sharing and give credits).

The trick to social media is to provide value to your customers. Don’t just post about your products, and your company. Post content from your competitors, news, and everything in your industry. Give value (information) to your customers, as well as posting new products, and news about your brand as well.

Next, Instagram Influencers. This is huge for getting your brand out there early, contact all influencers on Instagram and pay them anywhere from $5–20 (more for bigger influencers) to post your products/services on their feeds. This is one of the cheapest ways to get going, best value for your buck to start getting traffic (real) to your site, and start getting sales.

Next, follow up after with Facebook re-targeting Advertising. Ensure your site has a Facebook Pixel on it. Re-target all those people, and their friends/family who have visited your site. Re-targeting is very cheap on Facebook ads.

Then also create Facebook LAA (look-alike audiences) Advertisements based on people who have added your products to their cart, initiated checkout, and purchased. Using the Instagram customers as the start.

Utilize abandoned cart messaging apps on Facebook, to get in touch with visitors of your site who are signed into their Facebook account. People are most likely going to buy if they’ve spoken to someone in a chat message. You want to keep getting customers to return to your site.

Lastly, capture emails of everyone who comes to your site with a delay-popup for signing up for a newsletter (try offering coupons to get them to give you their email.)

Create email marketing campaigns, 2–3 emails a week to everyone on your list, new products, coupon codes, news about your site, your brand, surveys, ask them questions. But not only thing, give them value, by giving them blog posts, youtube video links, and anything else related to your category/niche.

Interact with all customers, reply to every comment/share on social media with thank-you’s. Answer all questions. Converse with consumers and make them feel special.

This is how you market any type of online shopify business. You need to do all methods I mentioned above, not just one or two, all. Your competitors are doing all, and they are doing it good. If you want to compete, do it all.

Doing all this will bring you both traffic instantly, as well as traffic over time. Keep consistent with all the marketing tasks and you’ll see a growth pattern.

Note: There is also other methods of getting traffic, such as Youtube influencer marketing, other social media influencer marketing, pay-per-click ads on other platforms and search engines such as google adwords, and bing advertising. You can also write free classified posts on places like Kijiji and Craigslist. Etc

Next is to create what is called perceived value.

While it’s true that some niches are a lot more crowded than others, more competitive. That doesn’t necessarily have an impact on your profitability.

Research is a key component. In each niche, there are always items that will be more profitable than other items, especially if the item is trending.

A lot of what’s involved in selling on Shopify is how much value you add to products. How great the image is, how great the description is. How much perceived value can you give to the item.

Take for example two stores ( A and B ) both selling the same item from Aliexpress, both buy it for the same price of lets say $4.59 with ePacket shipping.

A) This seller used the ‘stock’ photo, as well as the basic description from the supplier. The seller did everything basic to work on just getting mass products out. The sales price for this seller is $11.99 + free shipping. So a profit of $7.40 before transaction fees.

B) This seller ordered one for himself, and took his own photos. They also spend about 2 minutes writing a custom description, adding coupon codes, security site seals, warranty/guarantees, etc. The sales price for this seller is $69.99 but they discounted it to $39.99 + free shipping. So a profit of $35.40 about.

Because of the ‘value’ that seller B gave to the item, making it look better, making it more detailed, more professional, and giving it a higher (before discount) price, the seller is giving the item Perceived Value.

There are customers who will pay more for an item if they believe it to be higher quality. In this case, if the stores were competing against each other with the same base budget for advertising costs on Facebook. Seller B would be insanely more successful.

What Others Don’t Tell You:

“Working Your Own Hours” is a very common saying, and catch phrase. Truth is, starting a business requires a lot of hard work. Most people who want to be successful are doing 70–80 hours a week minimum. You don’t really get to work your own hours. You eat, sleep, and breathe your business. It’s not until you find success and have a team that can take over workload do you get to cut-back and choose your own hours.

“Financial Freedom” is another catch phrase used in the hype the last couple years. It takes a while to earn money in business. Most of it needs to go back into the business for growth, and you can’t really take money out right away. Everyone online is telling people that business owners make millions, this isn’t true. It could be months, and years for most before they are able to take money out. Again, it’s not until you’re successful where you have earned enough to take money out and reap the rewards.

“Work Smart, Don’t Work Hard” – this is one of the biggest BS lines I’ve ever heard. Working smart is not enough, working hard is not enough. Whoever thought it was smart to tell Entrepreneurs not to work hard, but work smart instead should be kicked off the internet for causing such damage to the Entrepreneur world. If you want to make it in the business world, you need to do both. You have to be working hard everyday, and work smart. After-all, your competitors are doing both, if you want to compete and stay alive, you need to do both. Doing one is not enough.

“Be Your Own Boss” – This is only partially true. This is good for the solo-Entrepreneur starting a small business, and keeping it small. You get to dictate your own business. However, once you grow your business to where you either have investors, or staff, you’re not really your own boss anymore. You are working for your company. Your money is not your own. Any mistake you make costs other people their jobs/lives, and other peoples money. When you take on investors, your investors are your boss. When you have staff, you are working hard to ensure you keep your staff employed. For most companies, you need the staff, you need the investors to grow/save your business. You need them, they don’t need you, so they are your boss.

“How Easy It Is” – It’s true, starting a business is easy. Anyone can start a business. Every self-appointed business guru explains to everyone that starting a business is easy. But that’s the easy part, and no one ever tells you the rest. What they don’t tell you is that running, and growing a business is hard. Running a business and trying to make it successful is extremely hard. For 99.99% of people, it’ll be the hardest thing you’ll ever do in your business/career life.

“Chances Are You’ll Succeed” – Fact is, most people fail. Most people fail their first time, sometimes their second time, sometimes even their third time. Failing is good, failing is learning. Fact is, 8/10 businesses fail in the first couple years, and only 3% last longer than 5 years. People always forget to mention this when teaching/coaching others, especially online and on social media. They want to sell their product, so they leave this out to encourage everyone to buy their product that teaches them business. Negativity and the truth doesn’t sell their brand/lifestyle product.

All in all, if you work hard on your brand, work on brand trust, brand awareness, and do a great job making your store better than your competitors, a better shopping experience than your competitors can offer, you can make any niche profitable with enough time.

Best of luck, don’t forget there are a lot of free resources out there for you!”

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Back in 2011, I was in China. On this particular night I was having drinks at a club. This was more of a high end private setting.

I was with a couple guys, talking business, closing some deals. Most the clientele there that night was locals; rich business kids, business ‘wall street’ type, government officials, etc.

Place was pretty packed, there was only one other group of 4 or 5 foreigners (to China); either investors or buyers from the US that was seated along one of the bars (behind me), where as we were at one of the raised tables like 10 feet away.

As the night went on, they were drinking heavily. They were definitely wanting to get hammered. As for myself, and most other people, it’s mostly casual drinking there. I had a couple beers and maybe a mixed drink while I was sorting through business proposals and contracts, and trying to make heads or tales of the Chinese letters that couldn’t read back then.

The group of Americans, were there before I got there, I wasn’t paying attention or really watching them, but I’d estimate they were downing beers, shots, mixed drinks, the works for a long time. It got to the point where they were talking loud (even for Chinese standards, and Chinese people naturally are loud). But they started getting very drunk. Cussing in English, talking about American differences to China, they were talking shit about China, Chinese culture, and Chinese people.

Now, in Chinese culture, even the ones who understood English, which most people there that night probably did too, they don’t pay attention or ‘care’ about what the guy is saying, it’s none of their business. They don’t typically get involved.

Of that American group, there was this one guy that stood out above the rest. He was completely racist, and a pig. Every Asian woman in that bar, was a complete sex object to him. Even his buddies in his group were trying to get him to settle down and stop being ‘too much’. Other people weren’t paying them any attention other than the bartender getting paid for drinks.

That one guy, was a pretty big dude. Not big as in overweight, but just tall, broad shoulders, muscle, that T/Triangle shape. Now I’m within earshot of their group, so some of the things they were talking about, especially that guy, I could hear. And some of it was over the top even for me.

It got to a point the guy started being handsy with some of the girls passing by him. He would turn around, spew stuff in English (sexual comments, wanting to pay for sex, etc) and brush up or try to fondle a woman passing by him. This wasn’t the type of establishment for that, this was more high end, high class… it was completely inappropriate.

His group were kind of trying to get him to stop by making him face the bar. But he kept doing it. Some girls would comment in Chinese to him, not to touch them. Even the bartender said in English to the guy not to touch customers. But the guy wasn’t stopping.

Well, he made a mistake. (To be honest, any girl he touched was a mistake.) But a particular woman he tried to grope was a really big mistake for him. The lady went over to her table, in the VIP section in the corner and told the table what happened.

I first should mention that in China, Chinese do not like when foreigners get drunk and cause issues to local people. Many foreigners (to China) get beat up, stabbed, killed etc, because of this, especially in student bars.

When a gentleman from that VIP table stood up, everyone in the bar stopped talking. It was instantaneous. Everyone turned to look because in the back of their minds, they knew what the foreigner guy was doing. I remember muttering under my breath “oh shit”. Like something was about to go down. My party at my table said we should leave, but I wanted to see, this was sort of all new to me. My younger self was curious as hell to see what would happen.

I knew the Chinese guy that stood up. I’ve never seen him before, or met him myself. But I knew of him, and his reputation, I recognized the area of the VIP section, the tattoos he had, and the ring he was wearing. His Guanxi (his social status) in that area of China was well known. I don’t think a single person who lived there didn’t ‘know of’ that guy or the guys network. It took me a couple seconds to realize who it was. People started leaving, customers. Girls were grabbing their purses and just making for the door. No way these foreigners knew of this guy. They weren’t in the area long enough, they probably didn’t even know what Guanxi was.

So the Chinese guy has stood up, and he reaches into his back waistband/belt and takes out a glock or something (a gun) from it, and he hands it to one of his friends who then conceals it on himself. For those of you who may not know, guns are completely banned in China except for Police, Army, and certain Government officials. The only other people who can even get their hands on guns are organized higher end crime organizations/families (think triad). It’s 1000x harder to get a gun in China than it is in Canada or the USA. Penalties are 1000x more severe if caught.

The Chinese guy walks over right up beside the foreigner group behind me and asks them in (pretty perfect) English, with a Chinese-Asian accent “who is touching my girls?”. He’s right up in their personal space.

The American on the end, closest to the VIP tables was the guy causing the issues, who happened to be right up beside the Chinese guy said for the Chinese guy to “F off.” And the American gave him a shove. Big mistake. And I mean, the biggest mistake he’ll ever make in China.

The Chinese guy grabs the stool from under him, and the big guy falls back hitting his head on the floor. He grabs him by the collar of his suit, and shoves him across the floor like a bowling ball. He picked up the stool off the floor, walked over to where the guy was now (where he stopped sliding), and starts beating him, his legs, arms, shoulders, head everything with the metal stool. The guy on the ground is screaming, wailing loudly and protecting his face with his arms.

His friends/party at this point are on their feet watching (probably in shock). I’m standing up too. There are tables knocked down, chairs knocked down, drinks spilled everywhere. The American group made the decision to go help out their buddy. They didn’t even make it two feet towards the completely one sided beat down and the bartender girl goes “no, no, no, no, no”, like saying no as many times as she could in a short amount of time and she grabs one of the other guys arm to stop him from interfering, which stopped everyone from going to help.

I was standing right beside them and I said to the rest as well “I wouldn’t mess with that if I were you guys, just watch and learn.” Even the building security didn’t interfere, they knew better.

The beat down didn’t last very long. I’m sure to the guy on the floor, it felt like an eternity. But in reality it was less than a minute. The guy on the floor was covered in his own blood, crying like a baby. Honestly I was more worried about the nice suit the guy had on. May that suit rest in peace, it didn’t deserve it. The guy was still alive, and deserved it. Probably had a ton of broken bones, especially his arm. That guy definitely picked a fight with the wrong person.

The Chinese guy went to the washroom to wash his hands after. Then he eventually sat back down in the VIP section.

One of the building managers came over to the American group and starting saying “Money, Money, Money.” “Give Money.” “You damage place, you give money fix.” (or something along the lines, it’s been a while since this happened, I don’t exactly remember her words). Which they did, quite a bit too. Probably was their play money for the rest of the night.

They helped their friend to his feet and security pushed them out. The guy was lucky, obviously he caught the Chinese guy on a good day. Waitresses started cleaning up and mopping the floor and picking up chairs and straightening tables up.

It was quite an experience to have witnessed that myself. The Chinese guy never actually said “You just picked a fight with the wrong person.” But the smirk on his face when the American pushed him… definitely said it for him. Sometimes you know exactly what a person is thinking of by their face expression. And that is exactly what he was thinking.

Police were never called, they would have arrested only the American foreigner anyways. I checked the local social media the following couple days, it never made the news. I doubt any taxi would take them to the hospital, because of the blood. And they had no money. So I assume to this day that they walked to the nearest hospital which would have been like 30 minute walk away. I didn’t go outside for at least another hour so I’m not sure whatever happened to those guys. Never saw them again in China.

Pic below of me was taken that same week actually, different place. Those were the days of daily drinking. All business. Business business business. Chinese love dealing with foreigners who can drink (and hold) their liquor.”

Here is more from Damien Defranco

“The two sites you mentioned aren’t really comparable as they’re completely different.

Many of the people selling on Wish, are dropshipping. They’re selling products they buy from Aliexpress.

Aliexpress is a very large online retail marketplace. Store/shop owners & chinese distributors can create stores on Aliexpress and sell or resell products at retail pricing to people all around the world.

Wish is more of an app. Also retail pricing, but requires you to log-in to see ‘deals’. I wouldn’t consider them deals as the sellers get to choose the value of the item, as well as the selling price.

What you do is find an item on Aliexpress, let’s say a men’s electronic shaver for $12 USD. You then go onto your Wish account and sell it for $24 USD, and then put the value of it at $88. So customers think they’re getting a great deal (perceived value). Then when people buy from your Wish store, you buy from Aliexpress and have them ship it to your customer instead. This is called dropshipping.

Whether you buy from Wish, Aliexpress, or ten’s of thousands of other sites, anyone dropshipping – all the items come from the same factory(s) – it’s about which reseller you want to give the profit to.”

Here is more from Damien Defranco

“Shopify stores are just like any other business. It’s not that the Shopify store itself is failing, but rather the business is failing. And most businesses fail. Thousands of businesses are started each week, and very few ever succeed.

It comes down to the Entrepreneur who’s running their business. The abilities, knowledge, experience, and resources of that person. A lot fail – especially recently due to lack of information, people completely underestimate what’s involved with running a business, so most fail.

People just don’t understand how to get quality traffic who are willing to spend money at the store. Marketing is a huge pitfall and not many people realize the work that goes into it to succeed.

Here are some things they don’t tell you. Much of this can contribute to reasons why businesses fail.

Here is more from Damien Defranco

“Yes, it’s a buffet story. I’ve got a few of these.

These types of buffets used to be my favorite. 200–300+ different dishes available. Now a days I stick to all-you-can-eat sushi places rather than open buffets.

When you go to places like this often, you see many people doing disgusting things. And you realize that much more disgusting things happen when you are not looking also. And that’s a turn off for restaurants like this. People can be really disgusting.

I’ve seen people take food, like pie, cookies, cake – take a bite, then put it back.
I’ve seen people go to the washroom, not wash their hands, then go touching plates, serving tools and even food after.
I’ve seen people eat out of the display cases directly.
I’ve seen people not using the tongs, and use their hands to take food.
I’ve seen people sneeze all over the buffet. One of the reasons they have the glass ‘shield’ is to stop people from breathing over the food, but sneezing is just wrong.
I’ve seen a kid puke into a serving pan at a buffet (was the ice cream dessert area). Mind you it was a young kid, things like that can happen. Thank goodness I’ve never seen an adult do that.
But the second most disgusting thing ever (visually),

A women pissed her pants waiting in line (on purpose), and a puddle a piss formed around them, then they have to empty the entire restaurant and hundreds of people were disgusted. The women was spewing out racist slurs to the Chinese and other Asian nationality staff.
In first place, the most disgusting,

A girl and her 3 friends were at a sushi buffet place, the 4 of them were at the table a few booths down from me. It was lunch time, so only maybe 30 people there. These 4 ladies were non-stop spewing racist comments and stereotypes, mostly directed towards Japan and Japanese culture. They were talking loudly about ‘their flat eyes, how can they see,’ they were making fun of anime, they were making fun of Japanese girls. Everything stereotypical, they talked about it. They made fun of their waiter, saying stuff ‘he can’t understand us’, and so on.

Well, that was a Chinese-run Sushi restaurant (in Canada). Not a single Japanese worker. Everyone there was Chinese and English speaking fluently. Their waiter, was Canadian-born and probably spoke better English then the ladies did. Some of the other tables also couldn’t believe what they were hearing. People were asking to be re-seated/moved further away.

One big guy, must have been 260lbs, big beard, wearing a construction orange vest, got up during his meal, and said as he passed by the ladies tables “F*king Shtheads”. (obviously directed at the girls). People were getting annoyed.

Then the one girl at the table was like “Oh my god, did he just call us shtheads? what an a*hole, we need to find out where that guy works and call his boss.” She was a blond maybe in her mid-late twenties. The other ladies were all like “oh my god, yes, oh my god, I can’t believe that happened, I feel so violated right now.”

People like that (the 4 ladies) disgust me. They should be ashamed of themselves. It disgusts me that those 4 ladies were most likely also Canadian. I shouldn’t even be calling them ladies, they are far from that.

Now a days I don’t really go to open buffets, I stick to all you can eat sushi where they make it for you.”

Here is more from Damien Defranco

“I’ve been in and out of China since 2010. More times than I can count. I stopped counting. Overall I have a really high opinion for most of China, the Chinese citizens, and the culture.

It has it’s ups, and downs. It’s flaws, just like every country.

One of the things I don’t really like is the censorship, the great wall. Not that it matters anymore. It’s more of a nuisance. Anyone who knows how to use a phone or laptop has a VPN in China. The great wall that China uses only affects non-tech people. With the generations growing up on computers and tech, every single person knows how to bypass the block, so essentially the great wall serves no purpose.

The best thing about China, and the culture there is how friendly everyone is. It’s positive discrimination. Everyone wants to meet you, everyone wants to take a picture. People who are complete strangers will meet you and 5 minutes after talking they are inviting you to their homes to share a meal. Overall, from a foreigners perspective, they are very friendly.

One thing about being a foreigner there for a while, is you get introduced to something people refer to as a white monkey job. White monkey jobs in China is where the only qualification to 100% get the job, is being white. That’s it, you don’t need to know any Chinese. And in some cases if you do, they’ll tell you to pretend you dont know it. Whether your paid to eat at a certain restaurant, or paid to sit quietly in a board meeting for a company, or paid to give a speech about – it doesn’t matter as long as it’s not in the Chinese language. Being white in China attracts customers, it attracts better business deals. Especially if they want investors. And these (usually illegal) jobs sometimes pay very well.

Dogs. I personally have always thought of dogs as a pet, growing up in Canada, it’s the culture. Seeing thousands of dogs in marketplaces in China was a culture shock. I’m used it now. I’ve sat at hundreds of tables over the years where people eat dogs in restaurants. I’ve never personally ate dog as far as I am aware. I do not condone the abuse the dogs receive before being slaughtered. But I still respect the traditions (that is dying out). Less and less people eat dogs, and I think it’ll phase out within 40–50 years.

Recently in China more and more insurance companies are now offering what is called helping insurance. This is where if another human in China needs assistance, you are insured to help them. Now you might be thinking, what, why? China has a very ‘it’s not my business’ type of approach to everything. If it doesn’t affect you, don’t interfere. This can be attributed to the growing scams that affect China. It’s not uncommon that the person you may want to help, ends up blaming you. Example: lady falls, you help her up. She blames you since you touched her to help, saying you caused it from the start…. you pay her medical bills.

Besides the government issues, and alarming growth rate of scams, just about all else in China is amazing.

Not all of the China government is what I feel to be backwards, they have made great progress the last 5 or more years especially with the economy, and environment.

China is in the position with it’s growth to be the worlds biggest powerhouse, and it’s doing it. China makes more millionaires than any other country. China’s catching up in the tech world and surpassing everyone. It’s the best opportunity as a foreigner to make a lot of money by investing in China’s businesses.

China also has the best food. You can live in China for 20 years, travel all over and never eat the same food. Every province you go to has a complete different palate.

I’ve eaten everywhere, and wow, the food is amazing. I’ve got over 7200 images saved up over the years from food pictures I’ve taken. I would have had more too if two of my phones weren’t stolen while I was there. If you are a big foodie, then China has to be one of your stops.

Corruption in China exists, it exists in all levels of society, military, and government. It’s not really growing, but it’s not really going away. It’s not too too bad, there are many other countries that are worse. And I got to experience it first hand from spending a lot of time in China.

One thing is driving as a foreigner, whether you have a license or not, it doesn’t always matter. Some police, not all, if they want money will target foreigners who are driving, and may make up a fake excuse that you did something wrong. What they want is money, you pay them money, and they won’t write you a ticket and let you go on your way. This is true even if you have no license, they’ll let you drive off once paying them their fee. This doesn’t happen in big cities where things are more strict, but it still happens in other areas.

Toll routes. Tolls routes are very easy to get by without ever paying, even as a foreigner. There are countless places that will make you ID’s. Teacher, Special Driver, even Military. Flash a military fake ID at a checkpoint/toll route and you can get by without paying the 5, 10 or 20 RMB (varies). But if they catch you, they will either call the police, or request under the table payment. It depends on who you get.

Import/export corruption exists too, it’s very political. Everything that high up has to do with relationships. If you have a great relationship with very powerful people in China, their influence has a lot of reach. So much so that certain people (even if they are not government) has the power to restrict or change exportation out of China. So if a large company like Walmart pisses the wrong person off, they could essentially increase Walmarts export tax rate on their own. And I’ve seen how this can work (Walmart was just an example). Or if some powerful person doesn’t like a foreign company, suddenly that company can be cut off from all Chinese business.

Because of all the government work on environmental issues, pollution in China is decreasing. Areas that were smog before and hard to breathe have great big blue skies and fresh air.

Which brings me to my next point, China has the best locations. China is an amazing country for tourists. You can go to China 20 different times, to 20 complete different areas and still not see everything.

The first week I was in China for business, I got off the plane in Shanghai back in 2010, and took a 8 hour bus to Yiwu. On that trip I went to zoo’s, I went white water rafting and got a bad sunburn, I went to water parks, ice caves, etc. I got to see ancient cities and film/movie locations. There is just soo much to see there.

Each time I went, I got to do new stuff. In 2011 I did archery for the first time. But I never hit the mark, so I didn’t win a free chicken. I saw even more ancient cities from famous movies. Soo many to see.

Then there is the really famous tourist locations.

I’m talking GuiLin. The Li River. Yangshuo. And all the areas around there.

Without a doubt the best area in all of China for tourists. It deserves to be talked about more.

GuiLin area is my favorite in all of China. So much so I own a ton of property there. Farmland, factories, retail stores, houses, apartments, you name it, I got it now.

Each time I go to China, I got to go there also. If not for the scenery, then for the noodles.

The Li River, is a great quiet place. It smells fresh, and amazing. Nature there sounds wonderful.

There is nothing like the feeling of being on a raft in the river, and just drifting. From sun up, to sun down. It’s amazing.

It’s such a calming area, that you can literally fall asleep on a raft, on the river and have the best sleep you’ll ever have in your life. I just wish I could get wifi there and I’d be taking out my laptop there to get work done.

One other great thing I like about China is the shopping/night life. When the sun goes down, the street vendors come out. And as a foreigner, it’s really cool to see it all.

Side/smaller streets get closed off from calls, and Chinese Entrepreneurs with a cart comes and setups. They unfold their carts and tents come out, tables, and all their products.

Food vendors setup, with beer, BBQ and everything you could want in an evening meal. Tables and chairs get setup and they’ll come take your order. Meats and vegetables fried in oil, then grilled on the BBQ with tons of chili sauce. Mmmmmm, even spicy grilled corn on the cob.

Then all the little cultural knick knacks. The jade stones, pendants, all the local carved woods and jewelry. Basically souvenirs. I mean sure, you can buy this all online much cheaper like from Taobao or Aliexpress/Alibaba, but it’s not the same experience as buying there.

Everything in China is very inexpensive compared to other countries. So this makes China great for foreigners.

You can work 1 year in a pace like Canada, or the USA, and live off of that money for 5 years in China.

Everything is cheap from internet, rent, travel, phones, food, drinks, etc.

I was given a VIP Exclusive Lifetime Pass for free to all movies in China. Because I am a foreigner and I like to drink there. I can see any movie I want for free.

Beer in China is around $0.50 cents Canadian (CAD), where as in Canada, that size would be about $6.50.

I paid I think $50 CAD per year for Internet in China at one of my apartments. In Canada I pay $119 CAD per month. That’s 28x cheaper in China.

Phone, same thing, cheap in China, expensive everywhere else.

Here is some photos of me in my farm land I have. (basically up until the mountain area)

Out in the country is unique in itself. Seeing where all the vegetables, fruits and rice is produced that makes it’s way to the USA and Canada. I got my hands in all of it just to try it out.

And I have respect now for the farmers in China. A regular tourist to China wouldn’t normally get to the countryside in China, it’s too far out from the tourist locations.

But I got to haul rice up to rooftops by hand, big bags. Up two, three, sometimes four flights of stairs, and dump the rice out on flat roof tops to let it dry before it gets sold.

I got to move up and down rows of fresh growing produce. Like lettuce, taro, celery, cabbage, and more, and learn how to ‘weed’ it to get rid of the bad stuff.

It’s been an amazing experience that I was doing between my business work there.

You can even pay a camera and makeup/costume crew of 10–12 people to follow you around for 2 days for same price as getting 1 person for 1 hour in Canada.

Most of everyone I have met in China has been amazing.

China does have some issues, but the good is way better. It’s a great country. And everyone needs to visit it at least once in their lifetime.

I have just over 19,000 photos taken in China since 2010. I never did sort it all, there is just too much. 40% is food, 40% is scenery, the rest is mixed.”

Here is more from Damien Defranco

“Camera’s and microphones are the two easiest things things to hack on a laptop. And I mean very easy. Anyone with a few months to spare and access to google can learn how to do it.

Years ago when I was in China I was getting updated on cyber security from one of our partnerships.

We were going over everything from basic hacks a 9 year old could do to more sophisticated ones that professional blackhats do. This was to ensure all of our companies assets were up to date and complaint with expectations to be working with sensitive data from our clients and customers from China.

One of the first things they showed me was how easy it is to get access a camera remotely. And over a dozen different methods of doing it.

Back at my hotel where I was staying at the time, I had a laptop on my desk by my bed which I always left on, but locked.

As well as at my home office in Canada, I had a few laptops there as well I had plugged into a backup battery power bar, so they had about 42 hours total of backup battery should power ever go out. I was using these as self cloud storage’s. So they were on as well.

Within 5 minutes of the lesson just knowing my IP address (for my Canada office) and my QQ chat account on my hotel laptop they had access to my cameras in both my hotel room, and my home office. I was able to see my rooms from the board meeting through the eyes of my camera. And this was an amateur hack, something a 12 year old could learn online. The laptops did all have anti virus.

Not only with cameras. We did microphone as well as other windows processes as well. All basic methods. They were able to push software onto the devices through vulnerabilities in the router/network and other means.

No system is safe, but there are steps you can take to prevent certain methods (especially amateur). Most people though are not aware, and probably never need to.

We did some advanced security lessons by which one of the professional consultants showed us how easily he can obtain direct access to devices, not just amateur stuff like cameras.

He was able to get full remote access to my home office laptops in under 4 minutes of his demonstration. Which then he had full mouse/keyboard and screen share on. He was able to access emails, web browser, and over a dozen external harddrives and all contents connected to my network. Prior to that meeting I wasn’t even aware that was possible.

We also did a safety test on my VPS (virtual private server) that I had hosted with Hostmonster and Godaddy at the time. This was a few years ago. I got permission to test our VPS’s security. The consultant wouldn’t do it without permission, which we got from a live chat agent.

Within 4 minutes again he had access to our root VPS server. He bypassed the hosting servers basic security that was loaded by default on our virtual server. He was able to show me the root files of all of my CPANEL accounts that hosted our websites on Magento and WordPress and we were able to make live changes to my sites. To that, I was not happy. I was expecting a lot more security from those hosting companies, not with them anymore though.

And this all done by an experienced consultant who works in the security industry to prevent malicious intent. Not a blackhat with evil intentions.

This was a two day consult. About 11 hours total. So we covered a lot of what can happen in the world. It was then and there I realized the need for certain companies, and high profile people to utilize cyber security firms.

Since then I always cover my mic and camera with tape, as well as make adjustments to device settings and network advanced settings to reduce amateur hacks.

But if an experienced blackhat wants in, they’ll get in.”

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“This was back in 2010. I was in Yiwu, China.

Just settling into my hotel, I was booked there for about 8 days while I was doing business at the Futian International Trade Center.

It was day two. I was about half unpacked, it was early morning local time. The do not disturb sign was out on the door.

I had just finished showering, and I had turned the air conditioner on in the room. This was around July. July in China is super hot.

I got a Skype call from a good friend of mine from the US on my laptop. It would have been late evening there. Not a problem. I’ll just hold the laptop up and do a room showing kind of thing.

And I had some cold beer. It was really really hot, so having a nice cold Chinese beer for breakfast was great. Especially right after a shower.

So I’ve got my towel around my neck (I’m still drying off), I’ve got the laptop in my left hand (I’m holding it like a serving tray so only my head can ever be seen), and a beer in my right hand.

It’s important to note here priorities. Laptop, very important. All my business contacts on it, all my work on it. Not dropping laptop is very important. Then beer, beer is very important. Not dropping beer is very important.

I’m standing in the middle of the room, laptop in left hand and beer in right hand. I got no free hands. And I hear the door. And I turn to the door as it opens.

And three Chinese cleaning girls walk in. Full cleaning maids uniform, these girls were probably all younger than 22 yrs old. They walk into my room from the little hall entrance, into the large bed area and stop dead, like deer do with car headlights.

I’m thinking “wtf?” I clearly put the do not disturb sign out there. My towel as I said is around my neck, not around my waist. Then I’m thinking, “well what do I do”. The laptop and beer are too important to drop. Covering yourself up with a beer bottle is too cliche. (In my mind, I would look more stupid covering up my d*ck with a beer bottle, then just not covering it.)

So I didn’t do anything. I’m looking at the three girls. Full on display to them. They’re just as embarrassed to have walked in on me, talking to each other in Mandarin, covering their mouths like being shocked. Their faces turned beat red. Probably as red as my face.

Next thing happens is a voice coming from my laptop. Skype call is still on. All you hear is “Well hello ladies” from my buddy.

The girls apologized, and left. Giggling the whole way out. I would eventually see these girls again several times over the next 7–8 days around the hotel.

This would become the first time of many to come when people walk in on me in my hotel rooms during one of many of my trips to China. (just not again at this hotel.) This event would be my second most embarrassing naked moment.”

Here is another from Damien Defranco

“A 21 year old who had a company that was sold for $30,000,000.00 would almost certainly not be on Quora asking this question.

A company that size would have many employees, and either a smart owner or great counsel. Board of advisers, or investors already who have advised the company to that size. 30 Million Dollars is no small feat.

I’ll assume this is hypothetical and I’ll answer this all the same.

You diversify. You don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

First, we’re going to assume that you owned only 50% of the business. I’ll throw that in there. As it’s rare to sell a 30 million dollar business and have 100% ownership. For the sake of argument, and to make things simple, 50%.

Then, we’re going to assume you have sales costs, lawyer fees, and taxes to pay on your earnings.

So all in, I’m going to assign a number of money you actually made on that sale, we’re going to say you earned 9.5 million dollar from your share after all expenses. So of your 15 million (50%), 5.5m went to taxes and other expenses. You made 9.5 million.

Putting all 9.5 million to investors would be a bad and risky move. You are young, so if you want to turn that money into more money, you need to invest in yourself.

1.2 million into savings.
You want enough into savings that you can live minimally off the interest. Depending on what type of savings it’ll be different. I’m not going to get into inflation and other factors. But let’s assume at a solid 2% return (still a bit high). To simplify things, that’s $24,000 year earnings.

That should be enough money for you to live off of until you get going with your next project. That’ll cover food, living, travel/gas, everything as if you were making minimum wage. This is free money.

2.5 million into stocks and higher risk investments.
Get yourself two primary brokers to each manage 750 thousand. Then get a third broker and use 1 million and copy Warren Buffet’s top 5 portfolio stock investments. They don’t need to know about each other.

Diversify your portfolio for each of the two 750 thousand ones. You want a nice range of options. But keep focused. Maybe have one do energy and the other do health care related or something.

500 thousand into cryptocurrency.
Crypto is a thing right now. But don’t put too much into it. Just see where it goes. I’d recommend using 400 thousand and spread that between 5–6 major cryptos (seek advice on the market), then spend that last 100 thousand and put a small amount into every single new crypto as it gets released. Expect to throw a lot of money away, but you never know when that next bitcoin will come. Being first in the door could potentially have a massive payout.

350 thousand (value) to go towards your parents.
You wouldn’t be where you are now without your parents. If you sold a company for 30 million. Then your parents did something right.

Time to pay them back. Pay off their mortgage, buy them a new car, send them on vacation. They’ve earned it, dealing with you for 21 years.

50 thousand into something nice for yourself.
Wait, why only 50 thousand?

You are young. You have a lot to learn, and the biggest mistake anyone makes when coming into money is spending too much on themselves for “extra” luxury uneeded things. You do not want to tempt yourself and get that ‘taste’ of success too early.

Always set the bar low first. Because no matter what you do, each time you get wins in life, you’re going to raise that bar to reward yourself. And if you set it too high, you will be broke.

You will thank yourself in your future if you can keep this to under 50 thousand.

What do you do with that 50 thousand? You buy a lower end brand new car. Toyota, Chevrolet, Ford. Or you buy a used higher end car. A used lambo, a used mercedes. You do not buy a brand new luxury car. Worst investment you can ever do.

1.5 million into investing in yourself.
So what is investing in yourself?

Investing in yourself is learning, getting knowledge, getting educated. You want to improve yourself daily. Get a mentor. Pay for coaching lessons.

I would recommend getting a coach for stocks, investments, and crypto. Pay for someone to teach you these things.

Buy a ton of books, every business book you can get your hands. Read every single day.

Take webinars online, go to local seminars, anything business related to help your future.

Hire some top coaches to get you up to speed and provide you the most value possible. Lessons that will follow you for life. Lessons you can utilize and earn more money. The more you invest in yourself, the faster, and further you will go in life, and the more money you will make.

1.2 million into private investment.
Work together with your lawyer and find local angel investors, and Entrepreneurs and do private investments together with them.

This is extremely high risk, but you can still diversify and start small. 1.2 million can fund a lot of start-ups and small businesses. With the right guidance, and starting young like you can be extremely rewarding.

I would also look into real estate. Especially global, China and Hong Kong have massively growing markets. Doing private real estate deals can pay off well.

2 million into your next business venture.
You’ll put aside 2 million into your next business venture that will hopefully give you another 30+ million dollar sale.

As you’ve already been successful once as an Entrepreneur, it only makes sense to do it again. Each time you do a business, you are better off then the last time.

Do not use all the money at once. Spend it wisely. Hire a proper CEO for your start-up. Put together a proper team. And get an adviser to manage that 2 million dollars for you.

200 thousand into other expenses.
The last 200 thousand will go towards your lawyer and other costs you have for doing all the above things.

I’m sure many other advisers and coaches will recommend different things based on their expertise.”

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“There is quite a lot of habits that Western people tend to do that Chinese find either disgusting or inappropriate.

All of this and more is outlined and detailed in my book: China VS West. Which compares Chinese culture and westernized cultures.

Much of this I learned first hand from own experiences and expertise on China culture since 2010, and some from my Chinese friends in Canada, as well as my friends, business partners, and employees in China.

What’s also good to note, is that everything listed is pretty much the opposite effect on Westerners. Where as when Chinese do the opposite, many Westerners generally think it’s disgusting/inappropriate or just weird.

As with any answer like this, I will be generalizing.

Swallowing Spit. Chinese people think it’s better to spit out right away and not swallow any spit. Where as Westerners tend to swallow it.
Not Taking Shoes Off Inside. Shoes are really dirty, in Chinese culture (and other Asian cultures like Japan), it’s better to take off your outdoor shoes at the entrance and switch to indoor slippers or other footwear. Many Westerner households don’t do this.
Leaving Dirty Pots/Pans Soaking. Chinese do not like the idea of leaving dirty pots and pans out to soak in water. It’s better to wash right away and take care of it. Where as Westerns tend to have a habit of soaking the pans, sometimes for days and days forgetting about them before washing everything at once. When I was in China, I cleaned up after each meal, but in Canada I still don’t.

Taking A Business Card With One Hand. In many Asian cultures like China, you need to receive a business card holding both hands out, it’s rude not to. Westerners don’t really care about this aspect.
Not Mopping Floor Frequently (Spring Cleaning). Westerners tend to be lazy when it comes to cleaning. It’s not done frequently. Some households only do a yearly cleaning, called Spring Cleaning. Chinese tend to clean weekly.
Not Showering Before Bed. In China, people shower before bed and not in the morning. This ensures you are not bringing the dirt to the bed, and sleeping dirty all night long. Westerners is mixed, but just as many people prefer to shower in the morning before work instead.
Washing All Clothes Together. Chinese prefer to wash undergarments separately from regular clothes. Westerners just bunch everything together.
Biting Nails. Chinese think biting nails is really weird and disgusting. Westerners is mixed on this with many people having this as a habit.
Kids Outdoor Clothes On Furniture/Bed. In China, when your kid has been out and about playing outside, they need to change their dirty clothes before going on couches or beds. Westerners don’t do this unless there is clear signs of dirt/mud.

Sticking Chopsticks Straight Up In Rice Bowl. This is in regards to the symbolism of funerals and passing of spirits in China. Often times this is done when someone has passed away. Westerns tend to do this a lot as they don’t have this symbolism.
Flipping Fish Over. In Chinese cuisine, you should remove the bones and move the skeleton to the side to get to the other side of the fish. Not flip it over. Can’t blame the Westerners as eating whole fish isn’t really a thing anyways.

Elbows On The Table. This is generally rude in almost all cultures. It’s even rude in Western culture. Yet Westerners still do it. You know how many times I’ve heard “elbows off the table” when I was growing up in Canada.
Sleeping In In The Morning. Chinese people tend to be rise and shine, got lots of stuff to do, and are always busy. Westerners like to sleep in on weekends, and hit that snooze over and over and over.
Chewing With Mouth Open. Chinese has this thing where you lift your rice bowl up to your mouth, and one thing it does is it can hide your chewing there. It’s not okay in China to chew with your mouth open. Ever walk around a food court mall in the USA/Canada? People eat with their mouths open all the time.
Eating Lots Of Desserts. China doesn’t have that many sweet desserts. Rice and other fillers are typically served at the end of a meal. Sometimes a very unsweet jello is, but mostly fruit. In the west, we got pastries, we got cake, we got pie, we got ice cream, we got everything you can think of that Chinese don’t care too much for.

Not Offering Food When Inviting People To Home. This is a no-no China. If you invite someone to your home, you must offer food. In the West, we usually offer like a beer, and that’s it (if it’s not a dinner invite).
Westernized Toilets. Chinese toilets are squatting type. It’s a hole in the ground. Westernized toilets are sit down types. Chinese think Western toilets, mainly public ones are gross because of how many people put their butts on it.
Gifting With One Hand. Whenever you give a gift in China, you always want to give it with two hands. It’s important. Westerners don’t really care about this.
Opening Gifts Right Away. In China, you don’t open gifts in front of the person you received from. Chinese wait until later, or alone. Westerners on the other hand always open right away.
Brushing Teeth. In China, you brush teeth when you wake up right away, and then after each meal, and sweet snack. In the west, you brush teeth typically 3 times a day (at least told to), though most people only do 1–2 times a day, and Westerners have a habit of snacking (especially desserts) after brushing teeth.
Keeping Dirty Kleenex In Pocket. Westerners have a habit of blowing their nose, and pocketing the Kleenex, or holding onto it for too long. Chinese would almost never do this, they find a garbage right away.
Giving Clocks As A Gift. In Chinese culture, giving a clock represents the same word as attending a funeral ritual. It’s very bad luck in China to give a clock, or watch as a gift. Westerners like to gift watches.
Giving Umbrella As A Gift. Same like above, but umbrella in Chinese is the same as scattering or breaking apart. So it symbolizes the end of a friendship. Westerners don’t follow this thinking.
Giving A Green Hat As A Gift. Another one like above two. Wearing a green hat in China represents a wife cheating on her husband. Westerners like to gift hats, doesn’t matter the colour.
Giving Anything In Number Four. Four in China sounds the same as the word for Death. Chinese avoid fours when possible at all costs. Westerners also don’t follow this line of thinking.
Getting Angry/Causing Scene In Public. Chinese people do not argue or cause scenes in public. Westerners tend to.
Drunken Public Outbursts. Chinese people do not get drunk and act stupid in public. Westerners tend to.
I could keep going, this isn’t even 10%. It’s a big culture difference between China and the West. Many of other stuff not listed is regional in China, and not as much generalized.

While this may seem like a lot, Westerners have just as long as a list for Chinese. It’s just a big culture difference.”

Here is another by Damien Defranco

“This has happened to me once in the last 10 years.

I had sat down at the restaurant, and got the menu. I didn’t have a chance to open the menu yet. I was doing emails on my phone, and other stuff on my tablet, (skype).

The waitress came over and asked me what I wanted to drink, I said I would start with ice water, and lemon. And I wanted a chicken spring roll if they had it. It was my first time at this restaurant, so I wasn’t sure what they had.

Turns out they did have a chicken spring roll.

After about 2 minutes, she brought my water and I realized at that time I didn’t have my wallet. I mentioned it to her that I just found out then and there I didn’t have my wallet. (which means I was also driving without a license on me).

I however, have several of my credit cards memorized including cvv and expiry dates, as well as mobile payment available. She wasn’t able to take any of those as they needed a physical card present. (though I’m sure if I had racked up a high bill they could have manually charged a card without it being present, most systems can do this with override.)

So I was getting up to leave, I had some change in my car I could get for a tip, but I needed to cancel my order.

She asked me if I come by often, and I replied that I drive by about 3–5 times a week. She told me it wasn’t an issue, I can come back and pay later, and she asked me what I wanted as a main course.

The place was busy, so there was lots of other tables ordering the same app as me, so it wouldn’t have been an issue for the restaurant just to give it to someone else.

I ended up coming back the next day to pay, and give an above average tip for my waitress. I also ordered food to go that second day, as I had other places to be.

Typically if you’ve forgotten your wallet and cant pay for a meal, if you catch it in time, a restaurant will cancel the order. If you’ve already eaten, you need to pay.

Normally you need to provide name, address, phone number and sometimes collateral. Collateral isn’t as popular these days as people’s phones and stuff is usually 10–20x the bill price.

If you are giving collateral, ensure that a manager puts in into a white envelope, and seals it, and make sure it’s labeled. Ask the manager to put it into a safe until you get back. However, there isn’t much collateral to give if you don’t have a wallet. You basically have a phone.

They can also take a photo of your car/license plate, and if you don’t return in X amount of days to pay, they can then call the police.

Restaurants are in the business of having positive experiences, and ensuring they get good reviews, and making sure the customer returns and tells their friends positive stories. I think that the larger majority of people who forget their wallet do come back and pay.

Any restaurant that threatens you, attempts to detain you, or threatens to call the police (right then and there) is just blowing smoke. Just call the police yourself and explain the situation. Then come back and pay later or another time, minus the tip.

More and more restaurants also have various forms on mobile payment, they just don’t all advertise it as a main payment method. It’s extremely easy for people to transfer money around these days on phones.

You can even pay using e-transfer if you have the banking saved on your phone.”

Here are more posts in Damien Defranco’s writing style written by Damien Defranco

“China is, and by far. The gap between China and USA when it comes to everything (except military tech) is very huge, and overall China has the lead.

If you only talk about military tech, Korea is first in the world, and USA behind them, then followed by China.

But ignoring military, China is so much further than USA in technology and science/research. And that gap keeps growing.

China makes more millionaires, and billionaires each year than any other country in the world combined. China also has more current female billionaires in China then all the rest of the world combined.

If you’ve ever been to all US major cities, and all major and second tier cities in China. You’ll notice one thing. The most technological advanced cities in USA are like 2nd and 3rd tier cities in China. Most Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities in China blow USA out of the water.

It may not look like that from the outside, especially if you’ve never been to China because China is a very big country, and has a lot of rural and undeveloped areas still. But the areas that are fully developed, are massively ahead in tech.

Overall when you compare the two, China is much more ahead then USA.

China is on track to be the worlds most superpower.

USA spends between 95–105 billion on Tech & research per year. With a 2% increase per year.
China spends between 280–290 billion on Tech & research per year. With a 14% increase per year.

So fast forward 12 years, by 2030 if they maintain the same growth rates:

USA will be spending around 130–140 billion per year in 2030.
China will be spending around 1.2–1.3 trillion per year in 2030.

China has surpassed USA in tech since around 2012–2013.

AI – Artificial Intelligence.

China is in 1st place, USA in 2nd, and Japan in 3rd.

From 2011–2015, China published 41,000 AI papers. USA did 25,500. In 2016, 2017. China’s AI industry is almost twice the overall size as USA’s. Even though USA has more individual companies. China’s are bigger, more advanced, and has almost 5x more budget allocated to it.

By 2030, China’s AI is expected to be over 10x that of USA’s.

Space – Tech

USA may have more current space technology completed today, with over 30% of it belonging to the USA.

China however has a budget of over 4x more then the USA on space research and development.

With China’s larger budget, and better quality, China is actually in the lead vs USA if you don’t count outdated tech. China creates far more superior tech in the space industry, and newer space programs are way more advanced in China than USA. All because of a larger budget.

Websites

While it may appear Google, Youtube and Facebook are the 3 most visited sites in the world (which they are).

When you compare the top 50 sites, China has the most, and more overall traffic. China has 1.4 billion people. USA has 330 million.

Biotech

China may appear to be behind in biotech, with out dated charts from 2012–2016 showing China in 10–15th place based on companies. USA to to outspend other countries 8–1 (second place). But that has changed a lot.

However, as of 2017, China is actually in 3rd place. And is estimated to be in first place by 4th quarter of 2018/1st quarter of 2019.

This is all thanks to the massive growth China has done in the last two years. It’s only going to keep growing too as China R&D budget is just too big for other countries to compare to.

Manufacturing Tech

China & USA have always been neck to neck in manufacturing tech. However, China’s R&D in this space is really high, way bigger right now than USA. After 2021, China will start to grow a big gap between themselves and USA, and USA will eventually fall in 4th and 5th place by 2028 as other countries surpass.

Information Tech

USA beats China in this space, by far. Not sure what China’s plans are in this space.

But it’s not an overall large space, USA doesn’t even rank top 5 themselves so it doesn’t add to much to the total overall aspect of Tech comparison between USA and China.”

HEre is another post by Damien Defranco

“Starting a dropshipping business is easy, getting successful is not. Working on it, and growing a dropshipping store is extremely hard.

You can essentially start a Shopify store using their 14 day free trial ($29.99 after), then you’ll need a domain, anywhere from $2–20 or more depending on which one.

Facebook Ads/Google Ads/Instagram Ads all depends on how fast you want to scale.

The bulk of the money needed to making a Shopify store successful varies depending on what type of marketing/advertising you are doing.

You can take it slow, do it organically for free using various free methods. But you rely on luck, and your own unique usage of creativity to really push it home.

You can do methods like paid Instagram, and paid re-targeting Facebook ads, which is ideal. This is much faster, but requires lots of money to be poured in.

If you do paid methods of advertising, then the cost of doing a Shopify store increase. Anywhere from $5/day to $25/day, $100/day, $1,000/day – the sky is the limit.

As for product cost, if you are doing dropshipping, then it’s $0.

If you stock, and ship the items yourself, that depends on the wholesale cost of the products you want to sell.

Shopify stores are just like any other business. Thousands of businesses are started each week, and very few ever succeed.

People just don’t understand how to get quality traffic who are willing to spend money at the store. Marketing is a huge pitfall and not many people realize the work that goes into it to succeed.

Here are some things they don’t tell you. Much of this can contribute to reasons why businesses fail.

Here is a rough timeline of step-by-step creating a dropshipping business, wrote it down from memory, might be missing some steps, but here is a general idea.

Day 1)

Domain Registration
Webhost Setup with CPANEL
All Email Accounts Setup (info, admin, noreply, payment, webmaster, newsletter, etc)
Shopify Store Registration
Shopify Store General Settings Setup
Paypal Setup
Bank Account Setup
Point Website to Shopify DNS (CNAME)
Day 2)

Social Media Account Setup – (Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook)
Shopify Template Setup
Shopify – adding all the good addons that most dropshippers use
Setup email marketing (klavio or chimp)
Logo Design
Banner & Social Media Graphic Designing for site and social accounts
Writing up descriptions, about us, contact us and other CMS pages for website, as well as social media accounts
Day 3)

Setup auto-reply’s for emails, and social media messenger systems
Setup templates for email replies
Setup templates for email marketing and prepare first campaign.
Setup templates for Facebook posts
Setup Blog on website, and prepare templates for easier postings
Upload logo and all banners to website
Upload logo and all banners to social accounts and finish off social media account profiles fully.
Setup website shop categories
Add 1 test product
Day 4)

Prepare gmail account to test all contact forms, and email marketing lists (newsletter)
Use gmail account to test emailing (and replying back) for all email accounts, making sure auto-responses work, and that signatures are working.
Use gmail account to make test purchases on site
Test credit card payment, and test Paypal payments
Write up return policy, shipping information, terms of use, etc
Verify that all website links and all social media account links are working and everything is linked together.
Create Facebook ads manager account, and create pixel for your Shopify store. Connect your site to the Pixel.
Day 5)

Start adding products, either by using a Shopify addon like Oberlo, or manually inputting ones you can dropship.
Make clear SEO-type titles, great descriptions, and edit photos as needed.
Everytime you add 10–15 products (same category), stop then post on Instagram and Pinterest the products you just added.
At the same time, create a tweet about the newly added products (hashtags), and also create a Facebook post about it.
Also create a Blog Post about the products.
Once you’ve got about 30–45 products added, start your first Facebook Ad campaign (targeting Engagements)
Day 6)

Continue adding products.
Continue posting on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest Daily.
Post on Facebook 2–3 times daily (using templates, keep to the same style as often as possible).
Monitor your Facebook ads every few hours.
Create new Facebook campaigns for different products, testing out $5/day ads.
Kill off campaigns not doing good, scale ones that are work.
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
Make more email marketing campaigns
Answer customer emails (using templates for most info)
Reply to ALL social media inquiries, engage with customers
Fullfill orders as they come in.
Repeat Repeat Repeat!!! More products, more social postings, more ads.
Keep starting up 5–6 ads ($5 budget each) per day, kill off bad ones, scale or duplicate good ones. Learn the system. Trial and error.
Within 1–2 weeks of constantly repeating all steps in Day 6, you’ll start to see growth. If you are really good at Facebook marketing, you may even hit hundreds of sales in a matter of a week. Keep scaling.

On Day 6, I would also recommend trying out Instagram Influencer Marketing, then combining that with Facebook Re-Targeting Ads instead of only using Facebook ads. Sometimes the results are better. It varies from store to store.

One thing to note is that most ‘guru’s’ online that teach dropshipping, are not good at it themselves. They’ve had some luck, they have typically smaller stores (under 5 million sales/year), and they turn to teaching because teaching makes them more money than actually running a dropshipping business.

So you can ignore all that ‘work your own hours’ ‘financial freedom’ ‘work 5 hours a week only’ ‘be your on dropshipping boss’ that they spew out. This doesn’t apply to any real person getting into dropshipping.

The people that are in dropshipping industry that barely work on their stores are already successful, but they didn’t start successful. They grinded, they worked that 70, 80 hour weeks, week after week. And more importantly, they have VA’s (Virtual Assistants) that run 95% of the business for them, which frees up their time. Ultimately this is the goal of any dropshipper, but you have to get there first.

How much time can vary, in a dropshipping business you are typically doing this DAILY MINIMUM:

Adding a new blog post to your site.
Posting to Twitter twice a day.
Posting to Instagram twice a day.
Posting to Facebook 1–2 times per day.
Posting to Pinterest each day.
Spending 5–6 hours a day finding new products, and researching market trends.
Adding at least 5 viable products per day to your store.
Running Facebook Ads everyday, and checking on them every few hours.
Creating videos, graphics, banners, and texts to go with all new ad creatives. And for adding products as well.
Split test, split test, split test, split test.
Replying to emails, replying to social media comments, liking comments and inviting people to your page.
This is stuff you do every single day, and never skip a day. This doesn’t include even processing orders, and handling chargebacks/complaints. And there is much more too.

You can see now that VA’s (Virtual Assistants) are crucial to the success of the business as you need them to take on the majority of the tasks. But what about dropshippers who don’t have the money to hire multiple VA’s.

That means the the owner gets to do all the work. And suddenly working 90 hours a week doesn’t seem that much compared to the work load.

Don’t even kid yourself if you think you can get away with 40 hours a week. That’s not enough. It’s way too competitive. You have to go above and beyond what others are doing to even start getting traction in the industry.

Most dropshipping store owners that figured out how to grow and scale their business while being profitable are outsourcing most of the ‘smarter’ work such as Facebook Ads, Instagram Influencer Marketing, Google Adwords, and Youtube Influencer Marketing. They are also outsourcing video and graphic work to make everything more professional and better-converting. The owner themselves then just sticks to grunt work that doesn’t require a full time dedication to a single task.

A couple of my former students (who failed the first time around) spend millions a year on Facebook ads now and have full teams working for them on their new successful store(s). If they can do it, many many others can too. If I can do, so can you as well.

One important thing you need to do is create what is called perceived value.

While it’s true that some niches are a lot more crowded than others, more competitive. That doesn’t necessarily have an impact on your profitability.

Research is a key component. In each niche, there are always items that will be more profitable than other items, especially if the item is trending.

A lot of what’s involved in selling with dropshipping is how much value you add to products. How great the image is, how great the description is. How much perceived value can you give to the item.

Take for example two stores ( A and B ) both selling the same item from Aliexpress, both buy it for the same price of lets say $4.59 with ePacket shipping.

Here is anoother post

“Going to China back in 2010.

The largest culture shock I ever faced was when I left Canada and went to China in 2010. I really only knew about western cultures, USA & Canada mainly. Since 2010 I have been in and out of China now more times than I can count, and I am now considered quite an expert on China from a foreign standpoint.

Traffic. Traffic in China was just weird to me. USA & Canada has many strict rules, regulations, and practices when it comes to driving and traffic. Stop signs, light systems, and lines. Things like no driving on the side walk, don’t run red lights, and stay in your lane.

China, not so much. China is a very big country. Some larger cities are more strict now, but many smaller cities are not. Especially back then. I have had a saying since 2010 about Chinese traffic; Green means go, yellow means go, and red means go.

In many areas in China, you are free to drive how you see fit. I’ve driven in dozens of cities in China myself, and most of the smaller cities have no rules. I’ve driven on sidewalks, I’ve driven on the opposite side of the road following other cars. I’ve gone through hundreds if not thousands of red lights over the years.

But the first time there, this was a shock. It took a while for me to learn. Not all this is possible in major Tier1 cities though as China does crack down more on rules in areas like that.

Food. Food was a huge culture shock. Prior to going to China, I was only familiar with western cuisine, and Americanized Chinese food. Food in China became an eye opener.

It took me a while to get used to it. My first few times in and out of China I always got sick eating food. My body was not used to how food was prepared there.

China doesn’t waste anything. No animal part that is edible is wasted. This means intestines, liver, kidneys, heart, brain, all this makes it’s way into different dishes. Many of these don’t exist outside Chinese communities in the west. In fact, most of those ingredients cannot even be found in the west due to Food and Safety regulations. I’m still looking for a pig brain supplier in Canada.

China also eats a larger variety of exotics. From scorpion, snake, geese, turtle, frog, etc. You name it, China has it. These types of foods are just not found in the west. So this was a huge culture shock. Then there is the whole dog thing. Consuming of dogs is down in China, it’s a declining thing. Less and less people eat dogs each year and more people see them as pets.

Pollution. China has changed over the years. Way back then in 2010 I used to think of pollution, smog and dirty streets when I thought of China.

Cities (especially factory cities) used to be thick with smog and pollution. It used to be hard to breathe.

China used to have more polluted cities than anywhere I’ve ever been in Canada/USA. Each time I visit China, things keep changing, so it’s constantly different shocks.

But that has changed. China’s environmental efforts over the years has made great strides. Cities that used to be covered in smog and pollution are all blue skies now, clean, fresh air.

Cities that used to have litter all over the ground, trash everywhere, recycling and bottles everywhere are spotless now. The areas are so clean you could probably lick the ground.

Line-ups. How to behave in China is much different then it is in the west. In USA/Canada, we tend to use line-ups. When you go into a fast food restaurant, or want to get on a bus, or visit a doctors office, you line up and wait your turn.

In most of China, lines don’t exist. Your job is to just get to the front and try to be first, no matter when you got in the place compared to others.

I remember going into a KFC for the first time back in 2011 and being there for over 40 minutes trying to get food before I figured it out. Hundreds of people went in front of me. Now I understand how the system works.

It’s important not to touch people though, you gotta use elbows and gently and politely, push your way to the front, or at least ensure no one else passes you.

Buying stuff. Haggling is a huge part of Chinese culture. My first few months in China (over multiple trips) I don’t think I ever haggled. The prices in my opinion were so low, I accepted whatever price people told me.

But that’s not how China works. You are supposed to haggle. Now I’m quite good at it.

In Canada/USA, if you were to go into a corner variety store or a farmers market and buy drink or bread, or anything, and the price is let’s say $1.99. You’re going to pay $1.99+taxes if applicable. No if’s, and’s or buts’.

In China, the price is never the price. You can go to the market to buy anything, let’s say a chicken that they say is 28 RMB, you can haggle that down to 24/22 RMB. And this goes for everything.

When I bought my first motorcycle in China, the starting price was 6200 RMB. I eventually paid 3400 RMB.

When I bought my first car in China, the starting price was around 45,000 RMB. I paid under 35,000.

When I bought my first apartment, house, factory, retail store, warehouse, internet connection, gas services, everything, everything can be negotiated. I haggled for all my appliances; fridge, dishwasher, washing machine for clothes, dryer, stove. I haggled for all my furniture; computers, laptops, beds, tv’s, everything.

You can’t walk into a Bestbuy in USA/Canada and say, “I don’t want to pay $1199.99 for a TV, will you do $800?” But in China you can totally do this.

Markets. Food markets in China were a huge shock. Everything there is fresh. And as I mentioned before above, nothing is wasted.

Guangxi Province area has a lot of dog at the markets. One of the markets I went to had easily 800–900 dogs hanging up, all cut in half.

Other times when I went to a market, and I wanted a certain thing, and they didn’t have it. It usually wasn’t a problem. They would bring out an animal and slaughter it right in front of me to process it.

Over the years since 2010 I got to actually learn how to kills and process animals at the markets. The stall owners are more than happy to teach. I’ve killed deer, sheep, goat, geese, chicken, pig, etc and more. But never dog.

Some of these markets are very big, with nothing wasted you can see all the meats. And these meats stay out all day. They are not refrigerated, they are not packaged and wrapped in plastic. Sometimes they’ll get covered by a sheet.

But you can walk to a beef stall and on the table will be all in innards. Intestines, all washed and cleaned. Skin will be there for purchase too. The heart, the tongue, feet, kidneys, livers, the whole head. Behind hanging on hooks will be the cuts of meat. Nothing is wasted.

Eating etiquette. Dining out at restaurants with friends and other people is in itself a very detailed culture.

There are many silent rules and customs that are followed/practiced by a lot.

Serving tea/drinks. This is where the youngest/lowest status person will pour for others first, in return they’ll pour back later on.

Not putting chopsticks straight up into a rice bowl. This symbolizes a very spiritual thing in regards to death and funerals. This is a symbol for funerals/death and honoring the dead spirits. This tradition is usually done when a person has recently passed away. A bowl of rice with chopsticks will be set aside for them to honor. It would be disrespectful for you to mimic it.

Another thing is how you hold your bowl when eating. No one wants to see your food dropping from your mouth, all over you. You need to pick up that rice bowl and hold it towards your mouth. In the west, you eat with a fork and knife and your plate stays on the table.

Sharing food plates, and giving food to other people’s bowls using your own chopsticks, and vise versa. People would use their chopsticks, get good pieces of meat, then put it in my rice bowl for me to enjoy.

Seating arrangements, with elders or highest status having the best seats and sitting down first. (usually facing the door).

Very rarely do people split the bill. Whoever is the host of that meal (who invited others) is the one that picked up the tab as a whole. Or some people will argue/fight over the bill, with it being a good thing to take it, as it shows face and increases status.

Superstitions. Chinese are very superstitious.

Lucky number 8. With pronunciation of ‘Ba’ in Chinese, number 8 sounds similar to the word ‘Fa’, which means to make a fortune. It contains meanings of prosperity, success and high social status too.

Tipping in China. You do not need to pay tips for products, or services in China. Whether that’s at a restaurant, massage parlor, or taxi service.

Tips are always included in the original price. Most places will politely deny the tip, or even chase you down to return it. Other times they may get upset at you for trying to tip them.

Tipping in Canada is optional, and welcomed. Usually given 5–15% or more on above average service.

Tipping in USA is almost expected everywhere. Regardless of how good service is. Even if you receive poor service, you are still expected to tip 15–25%.

Toilets/Toilet Paper. China has just as many bathrooms as any western city. Actually, more. China has a ridiculous amount of public bathrooms.

So what’s the difference? China doesn’t supply any toilet paper. Chinese public toilets don’t have toilet paper, you need to bring your own. Also, when using, don’t flush it down the toilet. Use the waste bin beside the toilet instead for paper. Most people use the little 10–15 pack of Kleenex that fits in your pocket.

The other difference is that most of China’s toilets are squatting types. Not sitting. It’s a hole in the floor you squat over.

In the west, almost all toilets/bathrooms have toilet paper.”

Here is more content from Damien Defranco

“Benefits Of Having A Co-Founder Verses Going Solo When Starting A Business

There are a lot of benefits, and downsides to having a co-founder. One thing to remember is that most businesses fail in the first couple years, and only 3% last longer than five years. Having a co-founder or going solo can play an enormous impact on whether you succeed or not.

As an Entrepreneur, you can’t do everything alone. If you think you can run every aspect of your business by yourself and give each area 110% while staying ahead of the competition, then you’re kidding yourself. You need to focus on the areas you do best in, and outsource areas you don’t do great in to someone who can do it better.

Having a co-founder from the start can help you immensely grow a business. You can grow it faster, and easier when you are splitting the duties required when starting a business. If you choose to have a co-founder, it’s important to find someone who complements your skills and what you bring to the table.

Having a co-founder is like being married, it’s a intense relationship where you have to trust the other person a lot. You don’t have to like the person who you are working with, but what is important is how you both act professionally towards each other. Not all partnerships are equal, not everyone brings the same skills and experience to the table – so not all co-founders always share the same equality/ownership in the business.

Someone that has far more experience in the field and brings more knowledge, connections and previous experience into the relationship may have a higher equity share even if they don’t do as much day-to-day work. On the other hand, if both partners, or if you have three or four, that are all bringing roughly the same amount to the table but certain partners will be required to do more – then equity should reflect that as well.

You must weigh the pros and cons of having a co-founder. One downside is that you’ll have less ownership, less equity in the company. So essentially you will earn less. Another downside is that not everything will go your way, sometimes you should compromise and listen to the other co-founder(s).

My personal favorite relationships between co-founders is one that can handle back-end, and one that can handle front-end. Back end work is product sourcing, purchasing, shipping/delivery and logistics, manufacturing & distribution, taxes, legal, data entry, and anything website related. Front end work is social media, blogging, customer service, sales, advertising, and marketing. A relationship like this is a perfect pair for most online businesses – whether it’s a product or service.

The other option if you don’t want a co-founder is to outsource work to other small businesses via their services, or if you hire staff or freelancers.

What’s great about outsourcing is that you aren’t sharing any profits/equity. But you are paying money for staffing/services. If you have the means of finding the right people to help you, this is a great option if you can grow the company really big.

If you lack experience and knowledge in a field, then getting a co-founder to help you start your business will be a great asset. You’ll have a higher chance to succeed in the space than if you were to go at it solo.”

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Best Solo Ways To Get Over Having A Business-Block

We all have it, times where you can get so overwhelmed with your daily business life that you need to take a step back and reflect on what you’ve done in the past, what you’re doing now, and what you’re going to be doing next.

In the same way that authors get writers-block during their creative process, so do all Entrepreneurs for business. It’s important to know for yourself when it’s time to take that step back and reflect on your life and plan for the next thing.

There is no sense of you sitting in front of your desk waiting with anxiety while you stare blankly at the screen doing nothing because your creative process has temporarily shut down. When this happens, it’s time to take a break, restart the engine, and reflect. Even if it means not working for the rest of the day, it’s not like you were going to get anything done anyways.

When you’ve decided it’s time to fold down the laptop screen, and put your phone away, pick something that you can do by yourself and somewhere that has a smoothing atmosphere for you. Grab a nice pen, and your small notebook and get ready for some reflection time.

Go hit some golf balls at a range

Whether it’s eight in the morning or eight in the evening, going to a golf driving range is an excellent choice to not only blow off steam but also to get away from your busy chaotic day and relax. It’s a great activity that you do solo, and not be rushed, while throwing back a few beers.

Put your phone down by your spare golf clubs, and keep your pen/paper in your pocket with you. Between hits if something comes to you that you want to write down, go for it. You’ve got all the time in the world to think about the next steps.

Take a shower (or bath) or go to a spa

This is another excellent choice for complete relaxation, and possibly complete isolation. It separate’s you from that phone you look at every five minutes because you wonder if you have new mail. While you may not be able to take a pen/paper with you in a shower, you can have it near you for when you’re done to start jotting notes down right after.

When you’ve got your eyes closed and hot water on you, you can truly take the time to reflect and figure out how to get past your business-block. And if you don’t at least your relaxed, clean, and you’ve reduced your stress greatly for now!

Go to a restaurant and get your own booth

If food and drinks is your forte, then a restaurant/bar/pub is for you. Ask for a nice booth for added privacy, and take your time ordering. You don’t need order everything at once. And perhaps don’t get a pitcher of beer as it may take you too long to drink it before it gets warm. Start off with a smaller drink, then order an app, then grab another drink, and repeat as time goes by.

Take your time and be there a couple hours, let your waitress(waiter) know you’re in no rush. But don’t look at your phone. Relax, watch the TV’s, lean up against the walls and just take everything in. As things come to you, write it down. Sometimes you need to just get out by yourself and have a few drinks.

Go to the gym and workout

Perhaps this time you need something not so physically relaxing, so a gym would be great. Work out some stress. Become focused on the workout that you’ll be in a better mindset to take on tomorrows challenges.

The single biggest reason most entrepreneurs go to the gym is to increase and hone their focus skills. This is also a fantastic opportunity to put on some relaxing music, or listen to a learning podcast so you can gain more knowledge. The repetitive tasks you do at a gym is one of the better ways to bring about new ideas.

Read a book

One of the best ways to expand not only your knowledge but also to think and regroup is reading books. Some of the greatest entrepreneurs read lots of books, as often as possible. Reading is proven to help with getting over various blocks as it gets the creative juices going.

There are countless books out there, and more written and published all the time. In your entire lifetime there is no way you’d be able to get through all the great books. The best place to read is anywhere where your work isn’t. Get away from your computers, tablets, phones and other electronics and just pickup a book.
“

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Email Accounts And What It Means For The Perception Of Your Business

Choosing the right email account for your business may seem like an easy thing to do, but have you thought about what impact it has on how your customers and clients perceive your business?

When it comes to email there are 3 types of email accounts. Free accounts, service accounts from paid services, or website domain accounts.

Free accounts such as Google, Hotmail, Yahoo, Aol, Outlook, Inbox, QQ are all great accounts for personal use, or for spam. But they are not great at all for your business. yourcompanyname@gmail.com is a poor way of doing business. It gives you no credibility and comes off as a potential scam appearing email.

Services accounts coming from emails provided from a paid service aren’t that much better than a free account. This includes usually internet emails such as @rogers.com, @sympatica.ca, @comcast.com, etc. These are a better choice for personal email accounts, but again – not great for a business.

Website domain accounts such as department-type@yourdomain.com (or .ca) is the best option (and in my opinion; the only option) to go for using emails for your business.

If you are creating a business, one of the first things you check is domain (website) availability, and it’s probably also something you’re going to buy right after conceptualizing your idea to ensure you lock it down. If you have a domain, you may as well use the emails with it.

The Different Emails You Need

There are various emails you will need to have successfully run a business. Whether you are a one-person start-up doing it as a hobby, or a small business that is growing in staff. It’s important to keep your email accounts separated. Don’t just use one email address.

As you grow, you’ll use your emails more often, for more things, and this can lead to large volumes of emails being received, as well as open you up to spam. Keeping your emails organized makes life easy to document and sort all your correspondences

webmaster@yourdomain.com is a great email to use for anything website related, such as: domain billing, website host emails, website updates and patches, SSL security, domain privacy, bug reports and anything else website-only related. This is typically a non-essential email that you don’t need to pay too much attention to.

admin(something)@yourdomain.com is one of your most important back-end emails for registering accounts. I would recommend using this for various legal, financial, or important accounts like creating web shops on marketplaces. This email should be kept private, don’t share it with customers, or clients. Use it as an administrative email only. And don’t just use Admin@ by itself. admin@yourdomain.com is the most common email to use, hackers guess it easy. Use something like admin-account@yourdomain.com just to mix it up.

info@yourdomain.com or clientcare@yourdomain.com (or sales/orders) is your primary publicly shared email account, all correspondences that you communicate between yourself and your customers should go through this email. All your website contact forms should also point to here. This is an email you should be checking 1-2 times a day. This is the most important email you will have, and it’s really the only one you need to make public, so choose one that works for you!

advertising@yourdomain.com is a great email to use for any advertising services you may need. If you run any google, kijiji, facebook or other ads, this email is great to use for the accounts to keep advertising emails separate than administrative emails.

noreply@yourdomain.com – noreply is only ever needed if you are doing automated emails, status updates, or newsletter emails out to customers where you don’t want them to reply to the email that sent them the update/email. You generally want all communication to go to your info/clientcare email account, but sometimes you need to send them an email from a different address but don’t want to receive emails from it. This email is great to send out notifications, it’s highly used by just about every large company.

newsletter@yourdomain.com this is the go-to email to use for any newsletter lists you have.

socialmedia@yourdomain.com is great to use for your twitter, pinterest, linkedin, Instagram and other social accounts. As you grow in social media, you start getting a ton of notifications. You can even start getting as many as 200-500 emails a day of nothing but notifications. Having a dedicated email for your social accounts keeps all those notifications together and keeps your primary email accounts clean of spam.

payment@yourdomain.com is the go-to payment email for businesses that take e-transfer, or paypal payments.

There are also a lot of other emails you can create, such as refunds@yourdomain.com if you ever wanted a dedicated spot for refund inquiries. You can also use jobs@yourdomain.com (or careers) if you grow large enough that you start hiring staff. wholesale@yourdomain.com or dropship@yourdomain.com if you offer wholesale or dropship services.

And of course, there is your personal-business email: yourname@yourdomain.com.

For some people, keeping track of all these emails may seem like a tedious task, especially for one-person businesses. But it’s extremely important for the organization and growth of a business, whether you are doing it solo, or have over 250 employees.

I always get asked how many emails some of my brands receive, and this varies. Some of the brands I am involved in receive anywhere between 7,000-140,000 emails per month (including spam/useless stuff) so it can be quite a bit much. By having separate emails, it’s already sorting out most of the work for you.

Keep your emails clean, keep them consistent and professional and it will give your customers/clients a more serious appeal towards your brand.

Here is another post from Damien Defranco

“Entrepreneurship And How It Can Impact Your Life And Those Around You

Each person that decides to take the first step to becoming an entrepreneur experiences it differently in their daily lives. The impact that it can have on yourself, and/or your family is something that should be considered beforehand. Every action you take has rewards or consequences (and sometimes both) on your life, and those around you.

Media outlets, articles, and advertisements always paint a picture about entrepreneurship and how being your own boss brings instant freedom, financial success, and luxurious lifestyles. Save a lucky few who started the right business at the right time and had instant viral success, it’s a climb, a long climb up a mountain where few finish.

According to Bloomberg, and repeated by dozens of credible sources, 8 out of 10 businesses fail in the first 18 months. In my opinion, a large chunk can be attributed to individuals not knowing what they get into. A true entrepreneur never gives up even after failing. Failing is just another way of learning and will make you a better person, and businessperson.

What a new entrepreneur can expect at the beginning

Less freedom. Contrary to popular belief, being your own boss doesn’t mean having freedom, or financial freedom (right away). The freedom that everyone talks about takes time for you to earn it. What it does give you is freedom by not reporting to anyone, like a boss. You may get the freedom of never having a boss, but you now answer to customers, clients, suppliers, investors who in their own way can dictate your daily business life.

Less time with friends. When you have less freedom because your business is becoming a top priority your friends may need to take a back seat. While you should still occasionally make time for them and hang out when you can, you no longer have the luxury of spending 4-5 nights a week out chilling.

Increased stress. Let’s face it, every decision you make or inadvertently make can affect your entrepreneurship journey. One wrong move can be costly, and crippling to your new career. But it can also be the opposite – gambles and risks can pay off and jump you forward in your path. Challenges you face and hurtles that need to be overcome will be the biggest issues. No matter how much you know your niche, there will be things that keep you awake at night.

Mistakes & failing. All along your journey you’re going to make lots of mistakes, you may even outright fail at an idea. It happens to everyone, every big name, every big brand at one point has failed at something. They’ve learned from it and improved upon themselves that experience and grown.

Gaining Knowledge. One upside to everything is that you’re going to learn a lot. Every step you take will have obstacles you’ll be needing to overcome, and you’re going to do tons of research and seek assistance to figure out how to get over each hurtle. As your business grows, you grow as well, with knowledge. Knowledge is one key element that makes an entrepreneur great.

Improving yourself. The greatest thing about being your own boss is that you get the opportunity to improve yourself – build you character, confidence, and overall skillset as a leader. This is the most rewarding thing early on. In the first while as you start piecing together everything like a puzzle and seeing your visions come together making progress can be one of the greatest feelings. It is the fuel to driving your entrepreneurial spirit.

Research

Before taking any step on your new journey to becoming an entrepreneur ensure that you do full research on what you’ll be getting into. An entrepreneur is someone who has chosen to do what they want with their life. When you do what you want, it’s one of the greatest joys you can have in life. To become the best entrepreneur that you can be do your best due diligence and find out every detail of your upcoming path.

The more prepared you are beforehand then the higher chance you’ll have at succeeding at what you do. The most important thing you want to grasp are expectations. Find out what everyone says about expectations and in turn find out about reality, in most cases, they can be a world apart.

You need to do research so when it comes time to jumping in, hurtles and road blocks won’t surprise you, and you’ll be better equipped to deal with them and grow. Most importantly, setting the most realistic goals and milestones for yourself. Research so you can plan ahead, and not just about business but how you’ll correlate it with your personal life.

Plan

Come up with your game plan on how you’ll separate your personal life from your business life. For most, business life will seem to take over. As you get more into it, and become more serious about succeeding you’ll find you will spend more time working on your business. After all, the more work you put into it, the higher the chance for rewards and to reach your goals sooner.

Make sure that your friends/family know you’re getting into something new and that it can affect your availability. As a new entrepreneur, you’re going to eat, sleep and breathe your new endeavor. If you thought working 40 hours a week was a lot, entrepreneurship may not be for you. Some of the most successful individuals, and even those other ones starting out at the same time as you (who will become your direct competitors) are working much more hours. Working 40 hours a week as an entrepreneur is like having a week off.

Have plans in place to keep your attitude in check. Mistakes and failings can have a major impact on your business life, in turn that can spill over into your personal life and affect your relationships around you. Come up with something that can avoid this, something you can do, a place to go to, or someone to talk to each time you’re on the low end. Spend an extra hour at the gym or BBQ at 3 in the morning in the winter with a cold beer in a snow pile. Start a tradition of something that you can to put a barrier between your business and personal life briefly to gather your thoughts to protect each aspect of your life from others you don’t want intertwined.

The same above also goes for the counterpart. Make plans and preparations to ensure that what happens in your personal life won’t affect your business.

Get a mentor. Finding a mentor – and in turn mentoring someone is a great weapon to have. You can not only gain knowledge by having someone mentor you, but you can also learn a great deal from passing on your knowledge to others. A mentor can be there for you when you’re on a low, or on a high point in your career to help you move on to the next steps. A mentor greatly reduces uncertainty that you’ll experience down your path.

Celebrate the winnings each time you hit a goal, a milestone or have a great above average day or experience that yahoo moment. Rewarding yourself can be a great motivator and show you that your entrepreneur path is paying off, and your gaining something from it. This is a wonderful time to sit back, and reflect on what you’ve done over a nice meal. Have plans in place so you’ll know the next step and how you can benefit further and grow upon the new success reached.

Don’t forget about your family. While you may be required to spend 70-80 hours a week to just get by as an entrepreneur, it’s important you get time in with your family as much as possible. Allocate timeslots throughout each week to set aside for them, and prepare backup plans as your business life can easily take over and shift all plans. As you grow and entrepreneurship becomes more demanding of you, may find yourself having less available time for them.

Be able to adapt your plans at any moment. Entrepreneurship is like a living breathing creature that is constantly growing, and changing to everything around it. What works one week, may not work the next. Don’t have plans stuck in stone, make sure they can be changed at any moment and follow the plans until they’re no longer viable. When you need to change, come up with new ones and stick to them until they no longer work or you’ve figured out something better that moves you towards your goals/dreams.

Results

As I’ve said many times in the past, you get back what you put in. Like buying a product – you get what you pay for.

The more effort you put into your entrepreneurship dream, the higher chances you’ll have at succeeding, or reaching goals faster. Each individual measures success differently, and each will have complete different experiences going into this lifestyle.

When you get knocked down, get back up and try again, or pivot and try something a bit different. You will learn each time you get knocked down, and you’ll better yourself.

Keep your expectations reasonable. Set realistic goals. The hardest thing that will knock you down and not let you get back up is the disappointment of not reaching your goal you’ve set, this is where most people I believe quit.

By understanding how being an entrepreneur will affect your life, you’ll be able to get that perfect balance for you to not only have great business success, but with family as well. Finding that balance between personal and business is key to having a great life.

Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. Anyone can do anything they put their minds to, but not everyone is willing to have the drive, motivation and determination to make it work. Research, plan, and reflect on results and grow to become the next generation of great entrepreneurs.
“

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Entrepreneurship: The Reality And What No One Tells You.

With the surge of Entrepreneurs starting their own businesses in the last couple years, many ‘fake gurus’ online have been boasting about starting a business, and how easy it is. Social media is flooded with people showing off the ‘easy’ businesses. Due to all the hype online, there is tons of people starting businesses lately. Here are some things they don’t tell you.
“Working Your Own Hours” is a very common saying, and catch phrase. Truth is, starting a business requires a lot of hard work. Most people who want to be successful are doing 70–80 hours a week minimum. You don’t really get to work your own hours. You eat, sleep, and breathe your business. It’s not until you find success and have a team that can take over workload do you get to cut-back and choose your own hours.
“Financial Freedom” is another catch phrase used in the hype the last couple years. It takes a while to earn money in business. Most of it needs to go back into the business for growth, and you can’t really take money out right away. Everyone online is telling people that business owners make millions, this isn’t true. It could be months, and years for most before they are able to take money out. Again, it’s not until you’re successful where you have earned enough to take money out and reap the rewards.
“Work Smart, Don’t Work Hard” – this is one of the biggest BS lines I’ve ever heard. Working smart is not enough, working hard is not enough. Whoever thought it was smart to tell Entrepreneurs not to work hard, but work smart instead should be kicked off the internet for causing such damage to the Entrepreneur world. If you want to make it in the business world, you need to do both. You must be working hard every day, and work smart. After-all, your competitors are doing both, if you want to compete and stay alive, you need to do both. Doing one is not enough.
“Be Your Own Boss” – This is only partially true. This is good for the solo-Entrepreneur starting a small business, and keeping it small. You get to dictate your own business. However, once you grow your business to where you either have investors, or staff, you’re not really your own boss anymore. You are working for your company. Your money is not your own. Any mistake you make costs other people their jobs/lives, and other people’s money. When you take on investors, your investors are your boss. When you have staff, you are working hard to ensure you keep your staff employed. For most companies, you need the staff, you need the investors to grow/save your business. You need them, they don’t need you, so they are your boss.
“How Easy It Is” – It’s true, starting a business is easy. Anyone can start a business. I can teach a dog to start its own business. Every self-appointed business guru explains to everyone that starting a business is easy. But that’s the easy part, and no one ever tells you the rest. What they don’t tell you is that running, and growing a business is hard. Running a business and trying to make it successful is extremely hard. For 99.99% of people, it’ll be the hardest thing you’ll ever do in your business/career life.
“Chances Are You’ll Succeed” – Fact is, most people fail. Most people fail their first time, sometimes their second time, sometimes even their third time. Failing is good, failing is learning. Fact is, 8/10 businesses fail in the first couple years, and only 3% last longer than 5 years. People always forget to mention this when teaching/coaching others, especially online and on social media. They want to sell their product, so they leave this out to encourage everyone to buy their product that teaches them business. Negativity and the truth doesn’t sell their brand/lifestyle product.
What’s in common with everything? People like to say whatever. Whatever benefits them and gives you a perception of them, and not the person they are giving value to.

In the Entrepreneurship world, you’re told what you want to hear. You’re not told what you need to hear.

I’m all for having more Entrepreneurs. I spend a lot of time mentoring and coaching great people, of all sorts starting up their first, or even second business. Entrepreneurship is great, but people need to realize what is involved.

When a new startup owner underestimates what being an Entrepreneur is, then it hurts all of us.

“

Here is another partial post by Damien Defranco

“What it takes to be a successful Entrepreneur.

Anyone in today’s world can become an Entrepreneur. It’s super easy, more and more people start to become one every day. You just need an idea, then you can start calling yourself and Entrepreneur. Entrepreneur is a loose term, everyone in the industry is using and can self label themselves.

But to become a successful Entrepreneur, isn’t easy. It’s one thing to call yourself an Entrepreneur, but it’s another thing to have a business grow, earn money, create jobs, increase business value, and more importantly, impact the world and people around you with your ideas.

Becoming a successful Entrepreneur takes a lot of hard work and dedication. You’ve got to work smart. It’s not enough to just work hard, or just work smart. You’ve got to do both.

Regardless of what field you are in, you’re going to have a lot of competitors. Your competitors are doing the exact same thing as you. They are working hard, they are working smart. They may even have teams of people working for them where as you might not. You’re at a disadvantage. Many coaches and mentors teach people to work smart, and not work hard. If you can find a better/smarter way of doing something to work less hard, then your competitors will do the same, but they’ll work just as hard as before. So you need to as well.

My free mentorship program that I offer where I mentor anywhere from 8-10 people for business at any given times gets over 400-500 applicants per month currently. I come across a lot of people who don’t understand Entrepreneurship. There is a lot of disillusions out there, much mis-information provided by online fake gurus, especially on social media platforms.

It’s to the point where most information out there on the web is all about hope, positive stuff, success stories. You don’t read about hardships, you don’t read about failures. You don’t read about the truths of being an Entrepreneur. It’s not pretty, and it’s not easy. Influencers online want to make money, they make money by readers buying into their ‘product’ or ‘service. They don’t make money by providing the truth about Entrepreneurship, they make money by giving the most hope to large amounts of people. This over the years have created a hype, a trend in Entrepreneurship.

This hype in Entrepreneurship has put a false sense of reality on what it takes to succeed as an Entrepreneur.

  Ability to Network – networking is extremely important as an Entrepreneur.  You’ve got to connect with other professionals, both in your field and outside of it.  Make friends, make partnerships.  If you are alone, you will not be able to get the resources you’ll need to grow your business when it comes time to.  If you have a network, give favors and receive favors, then growing a business is much easier."

Here is part 1 of 2 of a post from Damien Defranco

“Spend Wisely, Be Frugal.

The beginning of any startup can be quite scary for a new Entrepreneur. Many of whom get into the ring and spend a lot of money at the beginning trying to get everything they think they need.

Whatever you think you need to buy. Don’t.

As a new business owner, you cannot afford to spend even a dime of your business investment money on non-essentials. This is a rookie mistake. Anytime you want to buy something for your business, stop and think of another way you can do it for free, or at a bargain.

Perhaps you want to buy a new laptop to run your business off of. Buying just a $900 brand new laptop may seem like a good idea when you are starting a business because all you see is dollar signs coming your way. But don’t. Go out and get a refurbished clearance laptop with scratch and dents for $80 that will still last you a couple years.

Perhaps you need software like word, excel, outlook (Microsoft). Maybe photoshop, illustraitor, premeire (Adobe)…. Everything you need to run a professional business for all your computer needs. Don’t. These things cost subscription fees. And it adds up. You don’t need software like this until you’ve got a dozen employees and can justify the costs. You can get these apps for free using free trial loopholes, or you can just use alternative (lesser known named) software that is free and does the exact same thing.

Or even on your website. Whether it’s WordPress, Shopify, Bigcommerce, Magento, etc: You don’t need any premium themes, you don’t need any premium apps to sell. Start off with everything free. Wait until you have tons sales coming in before upgrading your website. You just don’t need any of that stuff early on when there are not a lot of people looking at your site and buying stuff yet.

You want to spend as little money as possible on non-essential things. These are your tools. And if you look hard enough, you can get all your tools for free.

I’ve been involved in many many startups, I’ve done investments with many other Entrepreneurs, and I’ve seen money being poorly spent over the years. From people buying all brand new office furniture, buying a business vehicle, all new laptops, computers, monitors, to even people throwing massive celebration parties. These are the worst things you can spend your business money on when starting a business or receiving funding.

Save your money for where it matters, in advertising & marketing to bring in sales. These actions will grow your business.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Failing.

Failing is just part of business. Everyone fails at some point. Some people even fail multiple times.

Look at all the top Entrepreneurs in the world. Every single one of them has failed before, and they’ll fail again in the future.

Don’t be afraid of failing, it’ll come. It’s better to embrace it, and understand what you need to do when it starts happening.

Failing is the best way to learn in business. You absorb more information on properly running and growing a business when you are failing. You are forced to learn more, and learn fast during situations like these. It tests your ability as an Entrepreneur to come up with solutions, think on your feet, make fast hard decisions, and tests your ability to pivot.

All this is essential to the growth of an Entrepreneur.

Now failing isn’t ideal. It’s not something you seek out. But it’ll happen. Each time you have a failed a business, you are far far far better off on your next attempt.

It’s kind of like starting at level 1, and ending at your first failure at level 14. When you get started on your next business idea, rather than starting at level 1 again, you’re already level 14 and ready to keep leveling. Yes, that’s a video game reference.

When failure comes knocking on your door, don’t be afraid. Being afraid means you are not learning from it. Take it all in. Get as much as you can out of it.

And never, ever, ever, ever give up as Entrepreneur. When you get knocked down, get up and do it again. You may lose a battle, or a few battles, but you can’t lose the war if you never give up.

Be Honest With Yourself And Business Partners.

Communication one of the keys of success in business, especially if you have business partners. Even if you have board members, investors, and any other people involved in your business.

When major things happen, you need to share. Even if it’s a major event in your personal life that could potentially affect your business on your end, share that information with those in the business whom it also matters to.

But more importantly, is you being honest to yourself.

Don’t let your ego grow too big. When new Entrepreneurs jump into the lifestyle, they have a tendency to up-play who they are, what they do, overall their whole image. What other people perceive them as. Now there is nothing wrong with this, every Entrepreneur in history does it. The issue is when you go too far and you start to believe all that yourself as your reality.

This leads you to:
Overestimating your abilities.
Being over confident.
Taking unnecessary risks.
Being too cocky you stop self-improving.

No matter how good you think you are, you can always be better. No matter how good you think you are, you are not perfect. There are other people who will be better than you at things. There will be businesses that are better than yours.

Be honest with yourself so you can keep yourself in check. Ensure that you are constantly growing. Accept your limitations, and know where your strengths and weaknesses are.

Being honest with yourself is about admitting to yourself your faults, your weaknesses. Understanding you are a human and like everyone else, you can improve. Allow yourself to be in the mindset that you can always get better.

Strive To Learn Something New Everyday.

Entrepreneurs never stop learning. You should be spending a few hours each and every day, 7 days a week to self-improving.

Investing in yourself is the best investment you can make in your life. The return on investment you get is higher than anything else you could ever put your time to.

This can come in many forms. Read a different book each week. Browse wiki, look at youtube videos. Subscribe to all the business news sources, newsletters, magazines. Have a list of 20-30 blogs of other Entrepreneurs and business experts that you read and follow.

Follow other Entrepreneurs social media, even if they aren’t as far in their Entrepreneurial career than you are. There is always something to be learned from others.

A good Entrepreneur seeks out something new to learn each day. And you don’t need to go far to learn. There is enough information already out there for ten lifetimes. You cannot possibly get through all of it. But trying to will make you a better Entrepreneur.

Each day you will be a better Entrepreneur then the last day. This is how you grow.

Learning in the Entrepreneur lifestyle is something that you do until your last breath on earth. Even if you become top tier and globally recognized. Even if one day you get on the lists of everyone’s “Top 5 Entrepreneurs in History”, you will continue to always want to learn, and still grow even when you’re already the best.

Entrepreneurs should never stop growing.

Don’t Just Dream, Do.

You can’t sit around day in and day out dreaming, always being in awe of others who has things that you want some day.

Too much dreaming can be harmful. It’s harmful to your self esteem, and can alter your perception of reality. Life is short, each second you spend dreaming is less seconds in your life spent actually making those dreams come true.

When life passes you by, you start to realize that you may never be able to reach those specific dreams. And that takes a toll on you as an Entrepreneur in a negative way. You don’t want to ever put yourself in a position where you are failing your goals and dreams because you aren’t even acting on them.

Many aspiring Entrepreneurs have this specific problem. The dreaming is what usually gets a person into the Entrepreneurship lifestyle in the first place. But when you become an Entrepreneur, you need to change gears. You need to start spending more time actually making those dreams your reality, rather than waiting for something to happen.

Dream a little, then do it. But don’t spend too much time dreaming. Lazy and Entrepreneurship doesn’t go together. Take action on what you want.

It’s the same with people who talk, and people who take action.

Do not be the person that talks, talks, talks. Be the person that instead just shows others through direct action.

Work Smart, and Work Hard.

There is a lot of bull shit over the internet the last few years from whom real professionals in the industry call “Fake Gurus”. These fake gurus spend most their time trying to market either a course, or some other way to get buyers money.

They sell aspiring Entrepreneurs a dream, but they leave out the cold hard truth and reality.
Often times they show the good side of things. They show fake screen shots of money earned, they show only the best select information and leave out anything average, or below average.

They tell you things that you want to hear. But it isn’t healthy for you to hear and won’t actually help you in your Entrepreneur journey.

They tell you about the 0.01% of Entrepreneurs who got lucky along their path and found viral success. And they tell you that you can do this too, guaranteed.

All you have to do is buy their course. While they spew out the same information that all of us are saying anyways for free.

Now, some of the biggest lies in Entrepreneurship is:
“You don’t need to work hard, you just need to work smart.”
“Don’t work hard, just work smart.”
“Work smart, not hard.”
“Work smart so you only need to work 4 hours a week.”
“Work only one day a week building a business because you can work smart, and not hard!”

This could not be further from the truth. Entrepreneurship isn’t easy. In fact, it’s probably going to be the hardest thing you ever do in your life. Not a single business out there is easy to be successful at.

Working smart isn’t enough.

Your competitors are working smart, the same like you would. Only they are even smarter than you.
Your competitors are working hard too, more than you could. If you work 80 hours a week, they are working 90.
Your competitors also have teams of employees, because they can afford it, and you can’t.

What does this mean for you? It means you need to work your ass off. You need to work smart, and work hard. You need to do both. This is real Entrepreneurship.

Just because you find a smarter way to do things, doesn’t mean you work less hard. If anything, that boost in confidence by simplifying and working smarter is what makes you work even harder.

“

Here is part 2 of 2 of that from Damien Defranco

“Seek Mentorship, Coaching, And Consulting.

Getting mentored is crucial to the success of an Entrepreneur who is serious about it. All three things, Mentors, Coaches, and Consultants are very powerful tools. You want these three tools in your belt.

Being mentored is usually a mutually beneficial relationship. You get something, but so does your mentor. This is always a free non-monetary relationship. What your mentor gets out of mentoring you varies from person to person. Each mentor usually has their own reasons for helping out Entrepreneurs like yourself.

Mentors come from anywhere. They could be a partner, a teacher, a neighbour, an idol, a celebrity, or someone who isn’t even involved directly in your life.

Coaches are typically the paid version of a mentor. Someone who won’t help you without a fee being paid. But coaches are still highly worth it.

When you have a coach, it’s all part of the investing in yourself talked about before. Coaches (who are a fit for you) are a very good investment to make in your Entrepreneur lifestyle. Coaches are there not as a specific expert, but as support.

Coaches keep you on track, they keep you motivated. They help you see things you may miss and remind you day in and day out why you are an Entrepreneur. They provide another outlook on your situations and provide advise that is crucial to your growth.

Coaches often are not specific experts on situations you may come across. No more than you are at least. But their skillset is to help you help yourself to figure things out. Like a wingman.

Consultants on the other hand are specific experts you bring in to solve a specific problem. Often you may have multiple consultants, depending on the problem. Their industries and expertise do not cross over well.

They tell you exactly the problem, and tell you how to solve it. And you’d be wise to follow and listen, since you are paying them for the solution.

Consultants usually give you a plan, rather than just advice.

But all three of these things are important. If you think you can get by as a successful Entrepreneur without having any mentor, no coach, and no consultant and make it big, you are mistaken. You are thinking too highly of yourself.

Entrepreneurs need help. Every great Entrepreneur has mentors. Their mentors also have mentors.

I would advise any new aspiring Entrepreneur to be constantly looking for a mentor, or multiple. In fact, start looking for a mentor now. And sometimes they change every few years. And when you can afford it, get coached, and get a consultant when you need it. One day you’ll also see benefit in finding someone to mentor yourself.

Build A Compatible Team That Shares Your Vision

Great people, build great companies. Finding people that believe in what your company and yourself stand for is an even better bonus.

One of the hardest things as an Entrepreneur when getting new team members is letting go. Letting go of tasks and responsibilities and entrusting them to someone else.

You’ve built a brand all by yourself, you, no one else. Now it’s time to expand and suddenly things you had 100% control over are no longer in your hands. You have to start trusting other people. While you remain ultimately responsible, your businesses success is no longer in just your courtyard.

It’s really important that you find people that are compatible. Building your A-team. Spend time interviewing, and vetting your potential team members. Then if you decide to take on a specific person to join your team, train them well.

Remember, your team members can never be like you. You are the only you. No one else will ever have as much passion for your business as you do. You’ll need to allow your team members to do what you want, but they got to do it in their own way.

Micromanaging is not a good way to start a team. You have to give your team space to grow within your brand. You need to not only teach your team, but you need to learn from them as well. Your team members are the new generation, and you become the old. They are the ones to take your business to the next level, under your guidance. But to do that, you need to hear out their suggestions and ideas.

This is why your vision, and your company culture is very important. Decide what kind of company you want to be before bringing on any team members.

Sales Are King

From this whole list of tips, this is probably the second most important.

When it comes to anything you do in your business, or even your Entrepreneur lifestyle as a whole, sales should be the main focus of your attention. Creating revenue through sales is the ultimate catalyst for any Entrepreneurial endeavor.

Sales in todays world is just as important as the product/service you are selling.

It’s really crucial that you as an aspiring Entrepreneur are able to take on the role as the sales expert in your own business. No one can sell your brand better than you. There is no business where the Entrepreneur behind the success of it isn’t the best choice for the sales role.

Occasionally you get Entrepreneurs that lack in the sales department, in that case they seek out a partner in their Entrepreneurial endeavor to offset the talents and traits.

Even if you are shy of sales, or just terrible. This is a focus of improvement for yourself you need to work on. Take classes, get coached. Become a better sales person even if you have no direct experience in it.

As an Entrepreneur, you need to be able to have a hand in all aspects of your business. All areas of it. However, sales are king in business. Sales is where your primary focus is. You need to sell your brand to your audience to grow it so you can become successful.

The better you are at sales, the better an Entrepreneur you’ll be.

Look Out For Number One.

Finally we have this one. Look out for number one. That’s you.

No one knows yourself more than you do. No one has your best interests at heart more than you do. When push comes to shove, on any topic, any hurtle, or any issue in your Entrepreneurship journey, you need to always be thinking about number one first.

That doesn’t mean you don’t care about other people, but it means that when it comes down to it, you are your top priority.

There will come countless times in business where you interact with hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of other businesses/Entrepreneurs along your journey. Many of these times their agenda doesn’t always line up with yours.

Business can be cut throat. Your loss is someone else’s gain. Someone else’s loss is your gain. There isn’t enough pie slices to go around. Every business industry is packed with Entrepreneurs, fighting for who gets the pie slices.

It could be a partnership deal, a competitor, a client, or even a supplier. People’s habits are to get ahead in life. For some, that means no matter the costs. You’ll come across people trying to take you down for their own gain.

As an Entrepreneur, you need to lookout for number one. No matter the paths you choose to follow on your journey, protect yourself. Protect your brand. Fight for your company.

You can be a kind Entrepreneur, but make sure no one mistakes your kindness for weakness. When you show weakness, others will take from you for which that is yours.

There will be times you need to make hard decisions, for the survival of your company, and yourself. And you need to make the correct decisions without hesitation to ensure you come out on top.

If that means letting go of half your staff to ensure the survival of your company can go on, so be it. If that means crushing a competitor, taking their sales, and making their employees lose their own jobs, so be it. Entrepreneurship isn’t easy.

Remember, number one.

“

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Welcome To A New Generation Where Customers Aren’t Always Right

From being in the product and service selling space for quite a while now and that fact that it comes hand to hand with customer service I’ve noticed that things have been changing in the market.

Things aren’t like they were 5-10 years ago. “Customers are always right,” used to be a popular slogan used by every brand. This isn’t the case anymore, especially for new and upcoming brands. The tradition of “customers are always” right is no longer king, some customers can be wrong.

Year by year there is an increase of buyers finding more ways to game the system, either by legal loopholes or anonymous fraud. This type of behavior is changing the way new companies’ setup their policies, and are cracking down on customers who are in the wrong.

I’m all for customer satisfaction, ensuring that the customer is happy with the purchase so that they’ll pass on word of mouth and generate more sales and become repeat business. This is the goal of every profitable company. But where do you draw the line? And at what cost?

Examples where customers aren’t always right.

I was in a restaurant a while back and a customer was making a big scene trying to get her money back for the food because she didn’t like it. The customer in my opinion was in the wrong. You see, the customer ate the whole meal. Instead of taking one or two bites and letting someone know the food wasn’t good to either get a replacement or a refund at that time, the customer chose to eat everything first. In the end the customer did not get a refund.

Someone who I mentored in the past ran an online ecommerce company that sold various furniture in Canada. Their shop sold a nice teak table and shipped it to the customer. About a week later, the customer wanted their money back. The customer didn’t like the colour red. Why was it red? Well the customer went out and bought a can of paint, painted the table red, and didn’t like the table anymore after he/she painted it. As insane as that sounds, the shop refused to refund. I mean, how can you possibly get a refund after you’ve painted it?! In the end, the customer left negative reviews on the shops site, and he/she had all her friends leave negative reviews as well forcing the shop to disable reviews.

This last one happened to me on one of the shops I used to run. I sold a customer a high end gaming video card, probably around $800. Not trump change at the time, that was a big sale for a single item. About two days after the customer emailed in, very aggressively. Wanted a refund or exchange, there was a problem. For us, no problem, we can certainly help the customer out and get everything fixed. As an authorized seller of that brands products, they come will full warranties and guaranties. This should have been a simple ship back, we ship a new one, and reimburse any costs that buyer was out of pocket to make things right, maybe toss in a mouse pad for free when sending back. Turns out not so much. The item that was sent back wasn’t the one that was sold by us. It was the exact product, but the serial number didn’t come from us. With help from the local distributor that we get the product from as an authorized seller, we traced it back to originally being sold by NCIX, buyer tried to switch the products. In the end the buyer gave up trying and he paid shipping to get his swap-product back. I’m sure it was just a ‘mistake’ that the buyer got the two confused.

Drawing the line.

With people trying to constantly push the line of what they can do to get a product for free, it can be a tough call. I’ve had the chance to sit down with groups of people who on a daily basis utilize loopholes to buy a product, keep the product, and get their money refunded on it. The general reasoning is that because the company they bought from didn’t have policies to protect themselves, then it’s okay. Then the buyers would tell their friends, who would use the same tactics.

One individual expressed that he was entitled, if the company couldn’t provide fast AAA grade service, the product should be free and he shouldn’t have to return it. He mentioned that’s how he got his xbox 360, his new tv, and over $5,000 worth of other products in the last couple years. All for free. Paypal, being buyer-favored for buyer-protection is one the easy ways to accomplish this. The other is to buy from international sites where shipping takes a long time and take a gamble that the item won’t arrive in a timely manner where the site forces the seller to refund even if the product is still in-transit.

As a seller of products & services – I draw the line at scammers. My opinion of a scammer is someone who tries to get a product and get their money back while keeping the product by looking for any type of loophole. If any of the companies I work with have made a mistake, they’re going to make it right so that the customer is satisfied. Scammers stick out and are usually very noticeable when they first make contact after the item’s been shipped out to them.

What customers expect.

Customers should expect to get the product that they paid for, and in the timeframe that the seller detailed when the customer bought it.

Nowadays, this isn’t the case anymore. As large companies spoil customers with same-day processing and next-day delivery for free, customers start to expect this from everyone. Even the little guys who take 2-3 days to process and use a slower, cheaper shipping method that may take a week to arrive.

If the seller makes a mistake, the customer should expect the seller to fix it to what is reasonable. But in my opinion (this varies on the situation) it doesn’t always mean that the seller should refund the buyer, and let the buyer keep the item, and while they’re at it the seller should send a free gift to the buyer for their inconvenience.

More and more buyers are now starting to think this way and are getting higher expectations for sellers. This can lead to a customer having a bad experience with you just because you don’t operate on the same level as a bigger player.

How to prevent being taken advantage of.

The number one thing is great customer service, right out of the gate. From the time the buyer finds your product or service, to when they get it, customer service is key.

Well written and clear policies are important, make them fair for both you and your customers. Make sure your customers know if you’ve made a mistake during servicing them, you’ll fix it, make them happy.

Always have your customers return an item before getting a refund, (and if you made the mistake, you should probably reimburse shipping after.)

Put yourself in your buyer’s shoes, understand what they are going through, understand how it feels to have had a bad experience buying something and thinking it’s not as they thought it was when they first bought it. Use information and give the best customer service possible. Try to get to solutions as soon as possible to ensure customers are happy sooner.

At what cost is it worth to you?

The important thing is at what cost will standing firm against a customer who is in the wrong cost you? What cost in money? And what cost to your reputation?

If we’re talking a small sale, it may be better just to give in to the buyer, let them have the product and give them a refund. But how does this help? It helps your brand, in that moment avoid getting negative feedback, but it doesn’t help the overall picture of what’s wrong with whole thing.

If you stand firm against a buyer who clearly is in the wrong, you open yourself up to getting a negative review. This can be both beneficial or hurtful to your brand. It’s a gamble.

When you get a negative review on your brand, comment back/reply to it, be completely honest. Diffuse the situation and offer additional assistance for the buyer to reach out to you. Show others who will read that later on that you’ve made an effort. Show others that perhaps this review was unjust, that perhaps the buyer was in the wrong. But do it tactful and elegantly, and thank the buyer for being a valued customer and move on from it.

Stand up to the values of your brand, don’t give in to bullies, and don’t allow customers to be aggressively rude to your staff and customer support team. Help and solve issues when you can to ensure that customer had a great experience with you, but know when it’s a losing battle.

There will always, always be that one customer where no matter what you do, you’ll never be able to satisfy them.
“

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Choosing The Right Niche/Industry For Yourself – Value #5

One question that gets passed around a lot on various forums, communities, blog/social media comments, private messages, Q&A sites, and even emails is “What’s the best niche for X that I can make money in?” or “What industry has great money making potential for 2019?” etc.

The thing is, no one can truly answer this for you. Because what niche/industry you are successful in is up to you, not what someone else has done.

There is a saying I like to use quite frequently when talking about specific things like this and that’s: What works for you, may not work for someone else, and vise versa. You can have 10 people doing the same thing in the same industry and all 10 people will have different results.

I can sit here and tell you that jewelry is a great niche to be in. Golf products is a great niche to be in. Web design services is a great niche to be in. But that wouldn’t necessarily be true or applicable to you. It may be for me, and would be perfect for me, but might not be for you.

Ever heard of the term niche chaser? A niche chaser is an inexperienced Entrepreneur who doesn’t have focus in business. They try one niche, when it doesn’t work, they look at what someone else is doing, and go to that niche where someone else found success. When it doesn’t work for them again, they look for someone else who found success in another niche and try there… repeat, repeat, repeat.

This is not what you want to be doing!

When choosing the niche or industry where you want to start your business, you need to look at yourself. Look at your own history. Look at your passions. If you have no passion for pets, there is not really a point of offering pet services or selling pet products online. Money is often not enough to motivate an Entrepreneur to find success and be able to maximize their potential. Sure, money is a motivator, but what’s just as good alongside that is passion, experience, and knowledge of an industry.

If you grew up playing sports all your life and your parents paid to have you take lessons and do local competitions, you could consider a service or product business in the sports niche. If you grew up playing video games, the same thing.

You can however still get into an industry you have no knowledge or experience in, perhaps you have a passion for baby products, but you don’t know anything about it. You can learn. As long as you have passion there, you can learn that industry and gain knowledge in it so you can succeed.

All niches can generally be viable. You can even focus yourself even more into a sub-niche. Instead of the pet industry, you can focus on dog products. You can even narrow that down to dog outdoor toys and become the master at that.

It’s when you have the entire package. The motivation, the passion, the experience, the knowledge, and when the money is there… this is when you really understand the industry that you’re in and able to maximize your potential for success in your business.

And if you want to go one step further: find a product or service within your niche that solves a problem. If it has a great story, or has emotional connections to potential customers, even better!

If you are one of those people always looking for the next greatest thing, always looking to see where other people are making money, put your gear in park for a second and just take a look at yourself. Look at yourself deep down and try to figure out where you will excel in. If you are still having doubts about what you should be doing, it just means you need some more life experience. Good thing is, you can get some very easy.

Getting more life experience to try out a lot of things in life in a short amount of time isn’t that difficult. Look at your life now and the things you do on a daily basis verses everything that is available to do. I guarantee you haven’t really tried much compared to what’s out there. How do you know what you have passion for if you haven’t tried it?

And these things all don’t need to cost a lot of money. You can go for jogs, runs, hiking, strolls in the park. Maybe you’ll find a passion for something in the fitness space and perhaps find a product or service that could solve a problem. You can go try golf at twilight time for half price, go to a local tennis court or basketball court and play with local people: from this you may find a passion for sports. Visit pet stores and dog parks and petting zoos and you may find a passion for something in the animal space. I can keep going, but many niches and industries you can experience a bit to see if you have a passion for it if you haven’t had that much life interaction outside your comfort zone.

I’m not talking about just products, this can work for service based companies too. There are local events everywhere that can introduce you to new things. Local seminars, online webinars, free local talks on various business subjects and lots of content on places like Youtube. If you are having issues finding a niche you will have passion for, there are many ways you can expose yourself to new niches you haven’t even interacted with before, just look and start researching different areas.

There is no right or wrong choice. You don’t need to get caught up, stressed out, and have anxiety over whether you chose the right niche or not. It’s about the journey. It’s about starting something, anything, learning business, failing, learning again, failing, learning again. As you get into business, you’ll probably pivot and change things along the way. You may even have a few failed businesses before finding the one that really makes you money.

Most Entrepreneurs don’t succeed their first time around. But try to choose something you have passion for, you will enjoy the experience a lot more. And this enjoyment of business will make you more successful in the future faster, and make you an overall better Entrepreneur.
“

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Choosing What Comes First: Business, Experience or Knowledge?

When it comes to business, the best way to learn about it is to be in business. As an Entrepreneur, you learn the best and fastest by actually doing it. Throwing yourself into the game and figuring it out first hand. There is really no other way to get quality experience as an Entrepreneur without actually just doing it.

Schools, courses, and any learning resources really don’t teach you ‘your’ reality. They teach you generalized theories so you can have some sort of expectation going into something. But everyone experiences things differently. You will never know your own results of something until you are actually doing it. No school, course or anything really can truly prepare you for real experiences you will face being an Entrepreneur.

You may hear this a lot, it’s a saying that’s been around a very long time, even before I started business: The best time to start a business is now. If you have a passion and longing for starting a business, do it now, make the first step today. Don’t overthink it, don’t make it a future goal, don’t put it on a wish list or bucket list, don’t make it your Christmas resolution for next year. Start it today.

Some individuals believe that you need an education to start a business. While this can be true for some industries, it’s not true for most. I’m sure if you want to do something in the legal field, it would very wise to have some sort of law degree. If you want to do a specialized skill business such as electrical work you may need an electrician’s permit. If you want to do accounting for large corporations, you may need certifications. But for the majority of business opportunities out there, you may not need this, even for the above examples, you may not need to get all that if you are hiring/outsourcing the actually ‘work’ to others.

Fun fact about me is I never went to high school past grade nine. I got bored my first year in high school, and decided to take my high school test online and graduated right away to go and start business stuff. In my career I’ve built so many teams I can’t count, I’ve been involved in the start up of over 850 brands (many failures, and majority eCommerce), and I currently employ well over 3000 people globally as well at just as many outsourced individuals (VA’s/Freelancers) on top of that. And if I can do it, so can just about anyone. There is no special secret I’m doing that no one else has access to. Just working hard, and working smart.

If I needed a lawyer, I hired a lawyer. If I needed accounting done, I hired an accountant. When we needed marketers, we hired them. And that’s how I met a lot of the people from Tim’s Ad Buyers Group.

When you are starting your own business, you should be asking yourself if you really need anything in terms of education for it before getting into it. There is so much information available for free today on the internet, there is Q&A sites, support groups, forums, and so many blogs you wouldn’t be able to get through all of that value in your lifetime. Would you rather start a business today, and in 5 years you’ll have 5 years’ experience in business, or do you want to go to school for 5 years, and in 5 years have outdated knowledge about business and 0 real experience and be basically not far from where you are today.

Now, don’t get me wrong, local seminars, short classes, intro-to-business and these other short educational programs can be very beneficial. It’s best not to brush off education entirely; but these are short term commitments, not time sucking long term ones. You can do all these once you start your business and be able to put that knowledge to good use now while obtaining first hand experience.

My recommendations are if you are wanting to start a business, then you need to start a business today. If you are going to do it, there is no better time than now.

Follow business leaders in the industries you are interested in.
Follow motivational and inspirational Entrepreneurs.
Watch Youtube videos on business every day.
Take as many free webinars online as you can.
Go to all the free (or cheap) local seminars on business as you can.
Spend a day a week going to a intro to business or sales class, or something that’s not long term.
Read blogs everyday and get value.
Read business books each day to get value.
Spend extra time focusing on sales, if you can advance in sales, business becomes easier.
Join communities, ask questions, and share your own experiences (just like this group).
Get a mentor.

Take all that information, and put it to real life use while you are starting your business now. Don’t ever be afraid of failing. Failing is just part of the Entrepreneur journey. You learn the most and the fastest while you are experiencing failing in business and it will make you a better, and stronger Entrepreneur moving forward.
“

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Deciding How Many Hours To Work Is Right For You – Value #14

For many newer Entrepreneurs getting into business for the first time these days, the allure of being able to run a massively profitable business while spending no time at all on it is often the hook that got them into Entrepreneurship. I mean, who doesn’t want to create a 6, 7 figure business while sipping mixed drinks from a beach all day. For the majority of people, this isn’t the reality, at least right away.

Often times even if you as the Entrepreneur is the sole owner of your business doesn’t mean you have the say on when and how often you work. The number of hours you put into your business is based more on necessity, and less often on choice. Especially when you start getting staff that become to rely on the job you are providing for them. Suddenly it’s not just you affected by your choices, but other people’s lives as well.

“Work smart, don’t work hard” often comes to mind. This is a phrase I don’t like anymore. I think it’s overused, and I think it’s misleading. Whether or not you find newer and better ways of doing things for your business, you still need to be working hard just the same. Just because you found some way to do something with the same or better results at half the time doesn’t mean you just take those extra spare hours you freed up and relax on a beach. Reality of business is that it just frees up time you’ll have to focus on other areas of your brands needs. Any real Entrepreneur with the goal of success in their mind and heart is going to be constantly working just as hard.

One goal of any business is owner I think is to scale/grow, profit, and be constantly creating more jobs. If you are happy with your hours that you put into your business to stay at a constant… so be it, it’s your choice, it’s your business. “You get what you put in” is a much better phrase that suits this. The more you put into your business from yourself, then the better chances you have at reaching higher goals and reaping rewards from it.

Many experienced Entrepreneurs who have walked the path through failures and successes can relate to this. There is going to be days where everything goes perfect and you’re able to maximize your output for that day with little to no effort on your part. An ideal day that you’ll call it early and go the movies with your friends/family or go out drinking and pool at the bar. But there’s also a lot more days where no matter what you get done, it’s never enough. It’s never enough time. There will be days that you may even need to pull all nighters just to stay on track with what you wanted to get done in the way of goals.

I think for any person where Entrepreneurship is the core of who they are, the whole ‘be your own boss/choose your own hours’ is just an illusion. When a dedicated Entrepreneur frees up time, they shift that spare time and focus elsewhere starting up additional projects and ventures. And there are a lot of ways to free up time.

When it becomes the right time to expand/grow your business, one of the best ways to do that is shifting responsibilities/tasks that you do on a daily basis onto someone else. I recommend hiring someone. Whether that would be someone local like an assistant, or a VA (virtual assistant) overseas. There are pros and cons of each, and some choices are better than others depending on the type of business you are running.

The first tasks you want to unload off of yourself and train someone else to do are the grinding tasks, the ones that make you the least amount of money for the time that is involved in doing them. The email replies, graphic design, data entry, product sourcing, website updates, blog writing, etc. Free up the time that you would normally be working on this and shift your own focus onto the bigger things like landing more clients, and pushing sales.

Automation by software or by outsourcing tasks onto others is a key point to freeing up your own time so you can be doing other things. But the timing has to be right to do that. Every Entrepreneur grows their brand at different speeds. If you are in the early stages of business and you can’t afford tools for automation, and you can’t afford to hire staff to get tasks automated for you, then you yourself have to continue to put in the hours to get things done.

I myself typically put in between 95-105 hours a week consistently, and I have for years. I don’t need to; I could stop working on future projects and retire today. Everything I create becomes completely automated by staff and tools. But when I am done putting time into something, I move onto the next idea, the next business. Over and over again. But that’s just me.

So the number of hours you yourself have to dedicate to the growth of your business is entirely necessity dependent on the goals and milestones you set for yourself. There is no right and wrong answer to how many hours required you’ll need to put it in. It’s completely up to you how you want to run your business and how you want to find success and scale.

But if you play your cards right, and once you’ve found success and automated everything, you can certainly run your entire business from the comfort on the beach holding a beer in your hand and enjoying the sun rays. But will you? Or will you just start a second business, maybe a third?
“

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Benefits Of Having A Co-Founder Verses Going Solo When Starting A Business

The other option if you don’t want a co-founder is to outsource work to other small businesses via their services, or if you hire staff or freelancers.

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Early Money Management When Starting A Business

Money can be important when starting just about any business, but even more importantly than that is how you utilize that money. Early on in a new business project, a small amount of money can go a long way.

Resources, tools and assistance is everywhere now easily accessible to help you start and grow a business. It’s not like 20 years ago where you had to buy this, buy that, then buy this, then get that just to run a business. Now a days most businesses you can start up almost cost nothing. There are hundreds and hundreds of businesses you can start today for the price of a yearly domain name, and that’s it. There are even businesses you don’t even need a domain, you just need a pen, a piece of paper, and your legs to get started.

Unless you are doing some crazy tech play or require a handful of staff from the get-go than you don’t really need any banks, you don’t need your parents money, you don’t need to raise any capital. What you need is just a small amount of money, the time to put in, and the determination to work hard and work smart. Try, learn, fail, learn some more, probably fail some more, learn a ton more again, and eventually succeed. There is really no amount of money that can save you from failing if you’re in a position to always set yourself up for failing. It’s why it’s important to invest in yourself, learn from your experiences, mistakes and failures and use that to fuel your way to success.

But as a new Entrepreneur, you get that feeling of ‘first time’. You feel excited, ready to jump into it. You’re ready to act like an Entrepreneur, act like a CEO, and give the appearance that you own your own company. And with that, comes the spending like it.

Most new Entrepreneurs are terrible with money management early on (Just like I was 14-ish years ago during my first company, hell, I was still doing the same things for my 2nd business too). But I didn’t have the resources at my fingertips back then like there is now. There wasn’t Facebook groups, there wasn’t Youtube videos, there wasn’t blogs that contained value. We had Myspace… for music and hookups. Most you newer Entrepreneurs are probably wondering what Myspace is. Now we got all these platforms to share value and experience on, and hopefully shape future Entrepreneurs and to give them a little nudge on what to do, and what not to do so they can make less mistakes from the start.

The single biggest issue I find new Entrepreneurs make when it comes to spending money during the early stages in their business is buying things they do not need.

I’ve even seen people buy themselves a brand new luxury car within the first week of starting their business. Then they wonder why their business is failing and they aren’t able to scale. They should be taking the bus still.

When it comes down to it though, every action you take as a new Entrepreneur will shape your business, and yourself as you grow. Your spending habits can have a positive impact on your growth, but it can also really negative impact on your business if you can’t discipline yourself. If you are the type of person that used to live paycheck to paycheck, always spending money just because you had it, and are the type of person to buy something just because you see it and want it then and there, you may have difficulties managing your money, especially your business money early on. These mistakes can destroy a business.
• You don’t need to go out and buy yourself a new computer, a new chair and new desk.

• You don’t need to buy yourself expensive business cards and engraved card holder.

• You don’t need to subscribe to Adobe Suites, Microsoft Office Suites, and every other paid tool out there.

• You don’t need to buy a new gold watch, a new suit, and $500 of hair products.

• You don’t need a $5000 website for your new business.

• You don’t need to rent an office space.

Sometimes the truth can hurt. Sometimes it can shatter your dreams of what an Entrepreneur is. But business has to feelings. Business doesn’t care if you are depressed, or crying, or anything. The reality is, you don’t need all that extra nonsense stuff. This advice is so that new Entrepreneurs can have better management for business funds early on and to focus it on places it really matters. It will make business a lot easier, less stressful, and give you a better chance at succeeding.

You may have started up a business project or hobby to see if you can succeed. But you don’t need to look and act like a big shot CEO to give the appearance to those around you that you run a business. This is one of the major mistakes new Entrepreneurs make. Truth is, no one really cares deep down. Your friends and family will be happy for you that you started something, but they don’t care that you’re spending money to look the part. You don’t need to look the part.

I’ve mentored a lot of people over the last 5 years, and I’ve partnered up with dozens and dozens of young Entrepreneurs when starting new eCommerce brands back when I was into dropshipping. For some reason ‘what titles to use?’ seems to always get brought up. New Entrepreneurs are so focused on calling themselves CEO, CFO, COO, etc that it can go to their head. The CEO of what? It’s a start-up business with 1 employee, you as the owner. There are no board members, there are no other staff. Focus on building yourself a great business, don’t focus on titles that don’t really mean anything at that point.

Just about everything you need to spend money on can be done for free. The most valuable thing you have in the early stages of a new business is your time. Your sweat equity is the currency that will drive your business early on.

Instead of buying a brand-new computer, you can buy a refurbished one at 1/10th of the cost, but only if you absolutely need it.

Instead of buying a newly designed website, use a template and spend a week setting it up yourself. This will get you through so you can start generating sales. No need to invest thousands into something that no one is seeing yet. Do a redesign later with a professional designer when it makes sense.

Instead of using Adobe products or Microsoft, use free alternatives that pretty much work the same. They are everywhere online.

Instead of buying business cards, don’t get anything like this right away. Because typically no one keeps business cards of new Entrepreneurs starting out. No one really cares. Also, your design will change a dozen times over the start of your business until you’re satisfied with your branding. These days, everything is online. Your LinkedIN or FB page is your business card.

Entrepreneurship at the beginning isn’t about spending money to look like a boss. It’s not about the cars, it’s not about the fancy watch, the new suit. The only person all that stuff matters to, is yourself. And that mindset is actually a negative to have. You want to get away from that spending habit.

Your money management for your business is important. You need to be focusing whatever funds you have available to something that will be generating you more funds. And this means sales. Get sales. Then get more sales. And keep getting sales.

Put your money in smart marketing, advertising costs, and just anything that gets your product or service in front of potential buyers.

You can do a lot of free marketing, advertising and SEO all by yourself too without spending a penny. Write a blog post every day on your site. Teach yourself keywords, tags, titles, picture pairing, etc. Learn the data. You can post on social media, on social buy/sell groups in your area. You can post free listings on classified sites. You can even go door to door in your city and earn sales that way. Whatever it takes to get some sales so you can earn money to put back into the business to keep getting more sales.

Then, when you have grown… and your business needs something that isn’t free, then you buy it if it benefits your business and a free alternative just won’t cut it. By then, you’ll have sales and profits from the sales to easily afford the necessities of a growing business.

An Entrepreneur who truly wants success is one who will be doing whatever it takes to succeed. If that means your business needs 70, 80+ hours from you a week to maintain a growth just so you can get done what needs done, so be it. If that means you need to take the bus places instead of buying a car and insurance, so be it. If that means eating cheaper meals and no more beer, so be it. If that means you need to get a job at McDonalds for 25 hours a week to fund your business, so be it. If this means going door to door in your city just to get your brand out there and potentially get sales, so be it. A true Entrepreneur will do anything to succeed. And if I can help you out along your journey to make it much easier for you by telling you what not to spend your money on early on… then perfect.

A lot more businesses would be successful with this type of thinking. A lot of Entrepreneurs would be less stressed, and have a better chance to succeed early on. I myself would have reached my goals and milestones a lot faster in my first two businesses had I known this going into it.

So before any new Entrepreneur opens their wallet up to buy something for their new venture, really think if it’s truly something you must spend money on, or perhaps you can find another way to get the job done for free. That way you have the money available for things that truly matter in business.

Hope you guys find this point of view insightful and will add some value to your growing knowledge.
“

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Entrepreneurship, Leadership, & You

One of the great things about being an Entrepreneur is the fact that you don’t always need too many skillsets of your own. Even if your business has many moving parts, you’re just one cog in the wheel, the most important one, but not necessary the most skilled or most involved in all other areas.

In businesses, being successful and growing a company means to scale it. To do this for most businesses, it means you as the solo-Entrepreneur needs to hand off the reigns of parts of what you’ve done, or even all responsibilities and get help. You need to take a step back and supervisor, manage, and be a leader. It can be a hard first step for new Entrepreneurs, but once done it’s often the right choice and most rewarding.

Leadership is one of the most important (and sometimes only) skillsets you will be needing. The ability to lead a team (or multiple teams) to success. Here are my 5 lessons on Leadership.

Inspire – One of the most important qualities of a leader is to inspire all those who work with you. Helping each of your team members perform at their highest level that they can through positive methods of motivation and management styles. Push your team members to do and be their best. Great moral in a business will have your team members performing better and have higher job satisfaction.

Guide – As a leader, you’ll be assisting your team members with their tasks and responsibilities. This means they will turn to you often seeking advice. Even if they know their job and duties of that position more than you will, they will still appreciate the valuable guidance you can provide them. Sometimes having another set of eyes on the tasks will help out the team members see things from different points of view and in turn provide valuable insights to everyone.

Delegate – There is no right and wrong way to delegate as a leader. It’s all trial and error. Sometimes you’ll delegate things to the wrong people, sometimes you’ll have delegated tasks to others that you yourself should have handled, and vise versa, sometimes you’ll have done tasks yourself you should have delegated out. This is all trial and error and will come with experience. Through experience, you’ll be finding the right things, and amounts to delegate out to maximize you, your team members, and your businesses overall performances. You have to have faith in the skills and abilities of your team members.

Fulfill – Don’t just think about you and your businesses needs. Each person that works as part of your team has needs, requirements and things that need to be satisfied and fulfilled. Whether that’s time off/vacations, raises, courses/schooling, or even stocking more water bottles in the lunch room for them. When you fulfill everyone’s needs on your team, they’ll not only appreciate it, but they’ll noticeably repay you and your business back with loyalty and hard work.

Manage – As much as all the nice necessities are, you still have a business to run. This means you need to manage it and your team members as a boss. You need to make the big picture choices for them and take overall responsibility. Your team members are acting on your plans, your vision. Know when to say no, and when to say yes. You have to be able to drive them in the direction of fast actions to complete all the business needs. In the end, it’s your choices, you have to be the one to make the hard choices.

When you need accounting done, you hire (or outsource) an accountant. When you need marketing done, you hire (or outsource) someone for marketing. When you need anything done that requires a skillset that you don’t have yourself (or no time to), then you hire someone for it. You build a team.

You get a bunch of other people to become part of your team and take on the roles and responsibilities of their perspective jobs. They each bring their own talent and experience, and you bind them all together like glue as the leadership role.

If you have the ability to create, and lead any team to success then there is no limit to what you can do. You as an Entrepreneur can start, run and succeed in any industry, any business.

Being a great leader in business is about surrounding yourself by people who are smarter and better at things than you. I know this can be hard for some people to wrap their minds around, it’s human nature to want to be the best. But that isn’t what a great leader in business is. There is no such thing as a professional jack of all trades who excels in every category when compared to others who only specialize in one. This is why you want specialized individuals. You just need to lead others who are better than you at those other tasks.

When you do all this, you’ll increase your chances of success and have a better time scaling your business to the maximum potential that the entire team can handle. When you’ve plateaued and have issues scaling higher, you bring in more team members, supervisors, managers and others with even more experience than current team. This will take your business even further to the next level.”

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Importance Of Mentors For Your Journey

Mentors are one of the best tools to have in your tool belt as an Entrepreneur. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the various mentors I’ve had along my journey. Through every hurdle I faced, every road block, and every time I stopped to question myself, mentors were there to get me through to the next waypoint.

Mentors are more than just a tool. They can be a friend when you need, a source of value and wisdom, and overall moral support in those times of need. Mentors can be found anywhere, they could be a friend or family member, a teacher or colleague, or a random business professional you met online and had a bond with.

Don’t mistake mentors with coaches or consultants. Mentors are typically free, no cost. It’s not a contract. That would be coaches and consultants. However, a mentor and mentee is still a mutual beneficial relationship. A mentor that is helping someone out often gets something in return for their efforts. It could be just gratification, it could be opening up new doors to networking, it could be an investment opportunity down the road. Either way, mentors themselves usually get something out of the relationship that benefits them as well.

I think it’s really important for any Entrepreneur, new or old to find some sort of mentor. Someone that has walked the path you yourself are about to walk. Mentors can do a lot of things for you such as;

Reach your goals faster.
Provides advice on utilizing your strengths and overcoming your weaknesses.
Gives you exposure to new ideas and different ways of thinking.
Helps you develop new skills and gain more knowledge.
Provides valuable experience you may not find anywhere else like a book.
Helps you avoid common mistakes they may have made that you don’t have to.
Increases your chances of success.
Exposes you to new networking opportunities.7

I’ve had a lot of mentors over the years. They have been with me through countless business creations. They were with me during my countless failures of many brands, and successful exits of others. Without mentors, I wouldn’t have succeeded in China. I would never have grown my first 9 figure business. I wouldn’t be the Entrepreneur I am today without the kindness of others. The thing is about the mentors I’ve had, is they themselves too all have their own mentors, and their mentors probably have mentors too. I even started mentoring several years ago myself now.

Mentors these days are not just someone you have a 1 on 1 with and can call up anytime. The world has changed. There is so much value and public information out there on the internet now that is easily accessible. A mentor these days can be anyone you look up to who has information that can be accessed by you. This could be someone who posts videos on Youtube. It could be someone who writes blog posts or answers tons of stuff on a Q&A site. It could be someone even in a Facebook group like this one. Someone you look up to, someone that inspires you can be your mentor.

My advice to anyone who is in the Entrepreneur lifestyle, is to find a mentor for yourself, and to also find someone else to be your mentee. There are benefits to both, and it will overall make you a better Entrepreneur.”

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“In Depth Look Into White Label Branding – Value #11

White Labeling is taking a product (or service) that is manufactured by someone else and putting your own branding on it and passing it off as your own product. You then pass off your newly branded product off as something you have rights to sell/distribute. For this particular post value, I’ll be focusing on product as the example, but white labeling can also apply to services.

There are hundreds of thousands of products available globally that you can legally white label yourself. Tens of thousands of products are made just in China each year without patents and trademarks. This means that the manufacturer of these products can legally sell these to other parties, not just the original party that paid them to create the product. This is essentially what happens with over 75% of products produced today.

This happens a lot in China; when a company approaches a China manufacturer, they may go through the work of designing the product, paying to have the molds and dyes created, and then they commission the work of let’s just say, 10,000 units. In most cases, once the molds and dyes are created, making new batches is much easier and less costly. That factory may produce 11,000 units, and send the 10,000-unit order to their customer, then they will send the other 1,000 units out to other prospects to see if anyone else wants some. Other buyers will get interested, and the factory will produce more, just reusing the same molds and dyes which allow them to profit more. Then the extra products end up on marketplaces like TaoBao, 1688, Aliexpress, etc

Now you may be wondering, why doesn’t the original designer put a stop to it? A couple reasons. These days products have a short life span, you don’t often see products designed, and having amazing sales for 5-6+ years. Often times the product is sold for 8-14 months and the market dwindles on that product (for that brand’s audience) and you move onto the next one. So for ‘most products’ creating any design patent, or utility patent isn’t worth it. Even with design patents, a simple alteration of that product usually gets around any protection. For most companies these days, protecting your product will cost more than any losses you’ll take from unauthorized sellers, so generally it’s not worth it. Look at the apparel industry, no one patents apparel designs, only the trademark brand themselves.

Because of the large amount of ‘generic brand’ products created each year, this allows for fair game use of many people wanting to get into white labeling. You are taking a generic no-name brand product that has no protection, and you are putting in your own package with your branding on it.

White labeling is something that’s been done by brands (lot of retailers too) for a long time. If you ever have gone into a small-medium sized giftware store in an outlet mall and 99% of their products have their own packaging, logo and branding on it, then usually they are white labeling. These companies often sell 100-180 units per year – per location of each product, and that’s not enough volume for them to have created their very own product. It tells you that most often than not, they have white labeled the product.

Some legal things you have to look out for if you decide to white label products for your brand is what country is the product being sold in. Some countries have different laws on how you legally have to label the product. You know how when you pick up a product at a retailer and you look at the packaging/box and there is the UPC/SKU barcode, and right near that is usually company name, address and other legal jargon? Certain countries have specific information that needs to be labeled there such as “Imported/manufactured by X company for X company”. This is generally your only requirement (if applicable) you’ll need to follow depending on the country you are selling from.

There are a lot of benefits to white labeling products:

Increased brand recognition by having more products under your brand.
Improved client retention by selling more variety of products from your brand.
Saves you time and money on acquiring new products.
Quick, easy, and much faster to implement new products to your lineup.
You can create and set your own selling price based on the Perceived Value you set for it.
Selling a product that’s likely been proven and tested already.

There are some cons as well, such as higher price to get the product. It’s much cheaper typically to sell a generic product in the manufacturers original packaging as a no-brand product than it would be to have your own packaging made for it. Sometimes customers can get confused on who’s product it is especially if they’ve seen that exact product being sold under someone else’s branding. But overall these cons are minor in the big picture of white label branding.

There are many white labeling services out there that source products for you, help you with package design, and will assist you with obtaining both the packages and product and getting them all assembled for you. One of my brands has been doing it now for 5 years for other companies. There are a lot of options out there in various countries, including services right in China that can do it for you under ‘value added’ services.

White labeling isn’t just for retailers or eCommerce stores who warehouse their own items, white labeling can be used by dropshippers. Back when I was doing ebay sales (12-ish years ago), my suppliers who were shipping my products directly to my customers were able to get me my own packaging with co-branding. And this was really my own first experiences with white labeling. When you are a dropshipper doing white labeling and having the supplier send directly to your customer for you, typically this is called ‘value added’ services. The value add is the supplier putting the item into your package for you, adding business cards, coupons, flyers and other inserts, then sending the product to your buyer.

Co-branding white labeling is where the business who is doing the labeling for you, puts on their branding as well on the product. This not only grows your branding when you get sales, but it grows theirs as well for the customers who pay attention. When we do white label apparel, we often put our business logos somewhere on the tag (with the co-brander as well), whereas the brand getting the white label done for them gets their branding everywhere else.

With the new technology available today, getting customized packaging created and labels created doesn’t need 3,000 units, 5,000 units, 10,000 units, etc minimum order cost to be reasonable prices. There are businesses in China who can now produce customized packaging, any style, with full front to back printing as low as 50, 100, 250 units MOQ.

What does this mean? It means you can buy as low as 1~ unit of the product you want to white label, and then get the 50-ish boxes (packaging) made for them or whatever the MOQ is for the supplier making the boxes. There are not many quality package design and production facilities in China that will create less than 50 units of packaging, some not less than 250. Every printing factory is different. But there are some out there that are as low as 50 units. 10 years ago, getting 50 units of a package made would have costed a print setup fee of $150, and you would have been paying $8-9 USD per piece. Now a days it’s much cheaper, depending on the package design and print color quality, and materials, 50 units of boxes may only cost you $1.70 per piece. Now, of course doing 1500, 2000 pieces will still be much cheaper per unit, sometimes as low as $0.60 cents per piece. But when you are starting out in white labeling, you don’t want to be buying 1000 boxes if you don’t need that volume yet. Even if the cost per piece is higher, you’ll want the lower MOQ to start.

You would then have one of your contacts, whether it’s a distribution center in China you are renting a shelf from, or your VA’s (Virtual Assistants) living room, hold onto the excess packages until you need them, and just ship enough boxes to go with the products you are needing at that time. This allows you to have a lower cost for inventory.

Ideally, what you’ll want to be doing is getting your assembled products closer to your customers. If you are selling in Canada/USA, get your products into a fulfillment center near there so you can get products shipped and delivered in under 5 days to your buyers. Shipping from China, even with ePacket is not a great long-term strategy, especially when the products now have your branding on it. 10-18 days is too long for customers to wait if you really want to grow and scale.

When you are sticking your brand onto white labeled products, you always want to ensure that you up your standards on quality. More quality checks, more check points. If your supplier is shipping directly to your customer, they’re taking the product and putting it into the new branded box for you, they need to spend extra time to ensure that the product is perfect. Quality is very important as it’s now your brand image on the line.

Finding the product to white label.

The starting point for most people getting into white labeling is one of two paths. You either find the product on Aliexpress, or you utilize a specialized white label service provider. Some 3rd party service providers can be expansive, from having high setup fees, and taking as high as 25% fee on top of product costs. I also find Aliexpress to be expensive, to me, Aliexpress is a retail site (and that platform takes an 8% fee off the top from sellers). Aliexpress is great to see what people are selling, but I never recommend it as a place to buy items from. But you can utilize the chat/messaging system to get into contact with sellers directly and see what they do/offer off of Aliexpress. Where I recommend to start is either getting a VA directly from China to source products for you, sourcing from Wechat groups, or using a cheaper platform like 1688 as your starting point.

Finding a supplier for printing packages.

For printing packages, you have five choices. You can get them done locally at a local print shop in your own country. You can find an online printing packaging company that ships cheap to your country. Most these places have a 50-250 MOQ per design, but the costs can be higher. You can find a supplier on Aliexpress, I find most them are all 250-500 MOQ, price is higher because of the fees and the upsell costs. You can find a printer from 1688, generally much cheaper than Aliexpress. Or you can have a VA find someone local in China and utilize their connections to have cheap packaging printed at lower MOQ.

Getting help (staff / VA’s / Teams) to run QA and process products/orders.

When you get into white labeling, it’s generally not something you can handle every process and every step by yourself. I recommend to start growing a team. Get a team together for sourcing products, get a different team together for assembly and quality check. Get another team together for graphic design and product testing visual and other design aspects for the packaging. It’s better if you only interact with a couple people, and them have each of those people have their own teams that can grow. So if you scale to the size of 120 team members in 2-3 locations, you just need 1 direct contact from each of those locations/departments that you yourself interact with, and they manage the rest under them. When you are dealing with China, being able to communicate in Chinese is a plus if you can’t find help that doesn’t speak enough English for you to properly communicate.

Ultimately the goal like with every brand is to scale. White labeling especially, you don’t want to be stuck in the low MOQ of 50~ units because it is a higher cost. You want to be getting to the point where your orders are in the 250-500 range. This will give you great pricing for the volume on not only the packaging, but also the product itself, and this is where the profits are. Keep expanding products into new ones and just keep scaling the brand.”

here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Perceived Value And How It Can Help You

I was first taught what customer-perceived value was about 9 years ago by one of my mentors. By then I was already doing online eCommerce on eBay, Magento and WordPress (at a fraction of what I could have been), so I understood some and was doing a little bit already, but I wasn’t even scratching the surface on my own. Sometimes you can never really fully appreciate the layers and depth of something until it’s really taught to you by someone who has walked the path before that you yourself are heading down.

Perceived value is just one more thing that any Entrepreneur starting a business, or wanting to scale their business should have a greater knowledge of.

So what exactly is Perceived Value (PV)?

PV is the perception of the value that a customer sees in a product or service and that PV helps the customer determine whether or not they want to purchase and become a customer.

Your job as someone selling a service or product is to increase the PV of the item or service (the offer) being sold as it entices more customers to purchase at your selling price.

Think about when you walk into a Walmart and you’re down one of the aisles and you see a display that’s stacked very well, very clean and organized. The item is on sale for $29.99 with a regular price tag of $49.99, so it’s discounted. Not only that, the packaging on the product is modern and appealing to you. This ^^ and much more is all part of PV.

There are many things that you can do to increase the PV of an offer such as.

Take and use better, clearer, and higher quality photos (not stock).
Write better, and simpler titles for your offer (not stock).
Write better and attractive descriptions for your offer (not stock).
Create a relatable story for your offer that potential buyers will fall in love with.
Have a buyer-friendly returns/exchange program.
Have money back guarantees and other real trust badges right on your offer page.
Write clear and simple ordering, shipping and other informational pages.
Have a well-designed, and easy to navigate website that caters to your core audience.
Have very responsive customer service (live chat does well).
Simplify the entire buying and checkout process to make things smooth.
Have apps/addons that enhance (not annoy) buyers experience.
Have amazing quality marketing materials & offers.

By doing much of the above, and more, this also can allow you to raise the price of the offer being sold because the customers have a higher PV of it and are generally willing to pay more. Another thing that can raise the PV is the original selling price. Such as something for $699.99 discounted to $499.99 compared to writing $799.99 discounted to $499.99. The regular retail price that is higher is giving that other offer a higher PV (within MSRP restrictions). You see this a lot with service based offers, especially ones like courses where they stick a ‘value’ of $2000 on the course but you can buy it now for just $329.99, this gives the entire offer a higher PV and makes buyers think they are getting a better deal. But don’t go overboard, don’t sell an item for $29.99 and have the regular retail price at $599.99, that’s overkill. Think about it from the perspective of a potential consumer.

Have you ever wondered how sometimes competitors are selling the same offer as you, but at a much higher price? Let’s say you are selling a product from China, but you are having difficulties selling it at $19.99 price point, but a couple of your other competitors seem to be selling a lot of units at $29.99 for the exact same item. You may be wondering how that’s possible, and why aren’t their buyers coming to you instead. This is all part of PV. Your competitors offer is more appealing and appears more valuable to their customers than yours does.

All this is also essentially the methods on which you can enter and compete in a market that may appear saturated. If you want to take a piece of the pie away from competitors when you enter into an industry with a new brand, you need to really work on your PV skills. If you can do PV all better than your competitors, then you can compete and grow, and maybe even sell at a higher price point.

It doesn’t take much to start today to work on increasing your PV. Drop the stock photos, take your own quality pictures of products, use different backgrounds, even natural scenery. Write your own titles and give the items you are selling a unique and fun name. Throw away the stock descriptions from your supplier (except technical specs), take the time and write an awesome opening paragraph with a story that makes customers fall in love with your item. Just doing this increases the PV of your item a lot more than most your competitors. ?

You need to be constantly testing every aspect of your brand to find the best of everything. You may find that your PV and performance of your offers increases by removing apps. You may find simply removing some words from the title increases it. You may find changing the price from $12.00 to $11.99 increases it, or even vise versa… Altering colours on your website, in your header, and even your add to cart button colour or position can all lead to lower or higher conversions.

?? Always be testing, even if you are getting conversions. You may find that you can even get more. Don’t settle for what you have now, settle for doing more. ??

I hope you guys can find some value from this post and take that with you for your own projects.
“

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Planning ahead and being patient can save you a lot of money in the long run. With the right planning in your business, you can make $1 work like it’s $20. Here is a story about that on something very recent on my end of things.

Because of our expansion of retail stores we are doing overseas, my team in Canada decided it was time to have a staging store. This is a kind of display area where you can test product placements for your stores without it being in a live setting. Some brands have like a flagship store to do this, but we decided we wanted just a model setup privately at one of our private locations.

So the team got together (many months ago) and they put together a quote, $22,500 CAD (in Canada for this) to renovate including labour cost. This includes electrical work, flooring, painting, walls, shelves, etc, everything. Now, I didn’t like that number. We weren’t in a rush to get this done, and I didn’t think it was necessary to be spending that much if we weren’t in a rush.

So I told the group, let’s use Facebook marketplace locally, and Kijiji (Canada’s version of Craigslist), and get as much building materials 2nd hand cheap. This wasn’t an important thing, it just needed to function without the quality of it being new.

Every few days something we needed would appear online, either free or cheap, and we would grab it.

Just for example:

Lighting: We used 4’ Fluorescent Lights (ballasts and 4 bulbs each) – the commercial ones that use T12 bulbs. T12 lights are phased out, so we ended up getting 4 light sets (fixtures), and 100 used bulbs for a total of $20. Even with the lights being half used, that’s enough to last 5-6 years. Easily $600 value for $20 total.

Wood: We were using 1×2” to make a grid frame on the floor, then setting down 5/8th thick plywood, or osb on top of that. Rather than spending $3 per 8’ section of 1×2’, we found someone who had a ton of 3×2 from a 5-year-old deck that we got all for free. We just had to rip it ourselves. And instead of buying 8 sheets of 4×8 plywood at $18/sheet, we found that for $3/sheet by someone who had extra and was just wanting to get rid out it. We had enough wood strapping to do the ceiling in a grid pattern to hold up insulation and vaper barrier.

Paint: Paint is like $25-35/gallon right now in Canada depending if you want contractor grade or home buyer expensive brand. We found someone with a 5-gallon pail of off-colour black (tinted wrong) wall paint, and a 5-gallon pail of grey concrete floor paint (tinted wrong), for $25 total. Instead of paying $300 for paint, we got it for $25.

Insulation: We found someone with about 140 feet length of wall of R20 insulation (9 feet high) … all free. This was enough to do the walls and ceiling of the warehouse between the studs. We also found a roll of that black poly plastic vaper barrier to use that would hold and hide the insulating in the ceiling and walls. (no need for drywall.) The roll was $5 (30% used), retail was $59.99 + tax. It was enough for the project.

Shelves: We found someone giving away 16 pieces of 8’ standards of KV, and over 70 shelf brackets all for free. 12” KV shelf brackets are $4.99 apiece. And the 8’ standards are $11.99 each. We got all this for free. We also got 5 half-used cans of metal black spray paint for free… enough to spray all the KV brackets black. We also got 40 pieces of 35” glass shelving for free.

I can keep going…. From getting an awesome brand-new steel door in retail package for $30 instead of $189.99 retail. Air conditioner for the place for $20 instead of $120.

We paid more in gas than we did of all the material costs together. Labour costs… was minimum. A bunch of us got together (myself included) and we assembled everything in 1 day. I did the electrical prep work myself in the morning first thing. I ran the wires, did the hookups on the switches and outlets. The team with my guidance worked on assembling everything together. And then at night when everyone went home, I rolled up my sleeves and did the painting, a couple coats. We literally just finished today.

Material costs, gas, staff salary to pick up items, and spend the day with me building stuff came to $840 (not including my time). Biggest single costs were McDonalds for lunch and Pizza for dinner. $840 instead of $22,500 that it would have costed to have a professional team come in and do the job with all brand-new stuff. It took us 4-5 months to get everything together, but we were not in a rush.

With this amount of savings, I can hire 1 more person for the whole year in Canada. I can hire 5 VA’s in China for the whole year. I can give dozens and dozens of people bonuses at the end of the year. I can use this for marketing budgets to earn even more money…

The point is, when you have time in business to plan ahead, you can often save a lot of money. And if you can put this mentality to work every day in your Entrepreneur life, you can make $1 work likes it’s $20. Buying from opportunity rather than necessity can often be a huge saver.

Especially for those of you who travel a lot like I do. Often times buying plan tickets in advance can save you half the money than it would a last-minute trip.

I had fun doing it, as I hold my audio recorder device that does speech-to-tech and am ‘writing this’. I have black dried paint on my hands and rings still from just finishing the painting. Awesome break from doing emails. “

Here is another post by Damien Defranco

“Product Food Chain

One great way to increase your profits in business when buying products is finding the exact product (same quality) you want at a lower cost. But with so many people creating businesses and trying to squeeze in profits for themselves, it makes in the industry what we call middlemen. These are all the people & companies in between the creator of the product and the end consumer.

Without middlemen, often times certain markets wouldn’t see the product, or it would never reach certain end consumers. But as someone buying products for resale and marketing to your own customers, you yourself want to eliminate unnecessary middlemen between you and your cheapest supplier.

At ground 0 we have the Factories. These are the manufacturing facilities that purchase the raw goods to produce products that can be retailed right to the end consumer. Most often these factories have to produce in large quantity batches, sometimes in the millions. But as technology advanced, costs of creating machines and molds for products is decreasing, so are the minimum batch runs for these factories. There are factories today now that will produce low quantity productions of certain products. Along the entire food chain, the factories have the highest MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) but lowest costs for the goods.

At level 1 we have the Distributors. These massive companies purchase large amounts of stock direct from factories. Large distribution companies usually can handle any amount of MOQ. When a distributor buys from the factories, the cost of goods needs to go up. Logistic costs to ship products from factory to distribution center, and also the distributor needs to cover their expenses and also make a profit. Distributors then sell the product to smaller companies, typically wholesale companies around the world in various countries.

At level 2 we have the Wholesalers. Wholesalers can be anywhere: Canada, USA, UK, Russia, Australia, etc. They can even be in China too. Wholesalers that can’t reach the factory MOQ will typically buy from a larger distributor instead where their MOQ is lower. As with the level above, the costs of the goods are again increased. In many parts of the world this type of wholesaler is also known as a sub-distributor.

At level 3 we have the China Resellers. This is Aliexpress, Taobao, 1688.com, Alibaba (sometimes), DHGate, LightintheBox, Wish, and just about every Chinese eCommerce store/marketplace that ships from China. Often times these shops are buying very low quantity as needed from a sub-distributor. Many times, the staff/owners that operate these reseller shops also work for the above levels. This allows them to double dip the markets and make more sales through different avenues. With this tier, there is also an increased cost of the costs. Many end consumers of products will buy from a level 3 reseller if they feel comfortable, if not then they buy from a local reseller.

At level 4 we have the Local Resellers. By local, I mean ‘closer’ resellers in the country where the end consumer is buying the product. If the end consumer is in the USA, the local reseller could be a USA dropshipper, or even a brick and mortar store. Just about all non-Chinese eCommerce stores fit in this category. Just about all dropshippers fit in this category. I’d estimate that 90% of people who fit in this category and are reselling themselves are buying their products from a level 3 category reseller. As with every level, the cost of goods needs to go up to cover costs, and profits.

At level 5 we have the End Consumer. Now your typical end consumer fits into two categories. The ones that buy from a Chinese reseller (This would likely be Wish, Aliexpress, DHgate, etc), and the ones that buy from a reseller that appears local to them (This could be Amazon FBA, this could be eBay, a Shopify store or Woocommerce store, or even a local retail store down the street). Most end consumers cannot buy from a wholesaler, distributor or factory direct. The end consumers are the ones that create the demand for products that the factories at ground 0 produce.

But it’s not as simple as 0-5. Fact is that in reality, there are sometimes dozens of levels. Resellers buying from resellers who bought from a reseller who bought from a reseller, etc. Aliexpress Chinese shops who buy their product from another Aliexpress seller, who buys from a sub-distributor who bought from another sub-distributor, who bought from another sub-distributor, who buys from a larger distributor who bought from the factory…

Your goal as someone building a business around reselling products to your own target audience is to eliminate those middlemen and lower the costs of your goods. And if you don’t understand how the food chain works then you won’t have the ability to do that. Most, and I mean most people believe they are buying from a factory, or from a large main distributor when reality they are buying from a level 3 reseller who is telling them they are the manufacturer or distributor. This is the reality of business, especially in China. If you find out that your supplier is just reselling to you products and that you can bypass them to get the products cheaper, then that supplier gets cut out of your transaction chain and they don’t make money themselves.

Majority of people that buy from places like Aliexpress, Alibaba, Taobao, 1688.com etc, think they’re getting the absolute best price right from the manufacturer. For most cases this isn’t true. Resellers and sub-distributors will mostly always say they’re the manufacturer so you’ll buy from them instead of going around them. And because these people can’t find a cheaper price, then they believe it. I’ve worked with countless people over the years who would be buying millions in product per month from these resellers all the time believing they were dealing with the ground 0 factory. Now, it is true that some factories, and some big distributors are on marketplaces like Alibaba to sell to overseas buyers, but their prices are upmarked to reflect that. Someone from the USA buying a massive order from a factory through Alibaba can pay 30-40% more than someone local in China doing that deal in person.

So the question becomes, how do I get the product I want at the best price and eliminate all those middlemen between me and the best possible supplier I can find?

Identify the product
To best understand your products origin and to find ground 0, or the closest to it as you can then you need to understand your product. What your product is made from can tell you a lot about the area where it’s made and often first distributed. If your product is made of only metal, it would be weird for you to find it at a supplier in an area that has no metal production factories if they are claiming to the manufacturer. This often can tell you that there is still a source higher than them.
Identify the supplier
Researching the supplier you found can tell you what all products they are selling, and what area they are in. If that supplier is in a place like Yiwu, or Shenzhen, most likely they are a sub-distributor or a reseller themselves, not always, but most often. Questions you can be asking is what is their supply capacity (the answer is usually unlimited), but ask what quantity they have on hand today in their warehouse that they could have boxed up and sent out that same day. How much stock your supplier carries will tell you roughly where they themselves are on the food chain. If you’re looking to buy bulk fidget spinners, and that supplier says they have 8 units on hand and need 2 days to get the 500pcs you want, then they’re a reseller buying from someone else themselves with such low quantities.
Bypass the supplier
This is the hardest part for most people is finding someone else at a cheaper price. How do I do it? How do I do it? And this is where the grind really begins, this is where your skills will be tested. The supplier you found is not going to outright tell you their sources for their products, because then you wouldn’t need them. But there are ways to get them to pass information to you that will help you find your way. You can press them about details of the product, what part of China it was made? Ask them about customization, and custom production. Ask them about custom labeling and packaging. Ask them about other products. The more conversions you have with a supplier, they often can reveal a lot. But most importantly, they often do referrals and introduce you to other people who can help you with your other requests. These new connections bring you closer to better sources.
Networking is key
Networking overseas in China is mostly based on what the Chinese call guanxi. Guanxi is your relationship status appeal basically. It’s your reputation. Think of it like having a rolodex, the more people you meet, interact with, have conversations, do deals with etc, then the more cards you get in your rolodex. If you have a positive impact on these other people and you are making them money, or giving the illusion you are making them money then the better quality your rolodex (guanxi) is. The higher your guanxi is then the more people are willing to do for you to keep your relationship intact and long term. Better networking will allow you to find the best sources for products, because your network who knows more than you do will be willing to help and point you in the right direction.

For some people they can figure out a system that works for them within a few months, some people take a few years. Others never figure it out because they don’t have a knack for networking. If that’s the case you should be finding a buying agent who’s in China that can help you source your products for you and cut through all bull.

To do all this, you need a rough understanding on how the product food chain works from the time it’s made, to the time the end consumer purchases it. So I hope you guys found this informative and found some insights as to how you can turn this post into value for your own business.
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