#10: Shopify & Ecom

Date: July 9, 2020

Episode: 10

Title: Norman Farrar is with Elena Saris and They Discuss the Benefits of Building Shopify Websites and Dropshipping amid COVID-19.

Subtitle: It’s called chapter 2 and you’re allowed.

Final Show Link:  https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/10-shopify-ecom-elena-saris/

In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar is with Elena Saris and they discuss the benefits of building Shopify websites over Amazon and dropshipping amid COVID-19.

Elena Saris is a criminal defense attorney, a former stand up comic and a 7-figure ecommerce seller. After a successful 25 year career as a deputy public defender, she realized it was time for Chapter Two. She started an e-commerce business from scratch, first as an Amazon seller and as a store owner on the Shopify platform.

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In this episode, we discuss:

• • 1:29: Elena’s background
  • 3:50: Why Elena went from Amazon to Shopify
  • 9:02: Getting started with Shopify
  • 11:06: Alternative shipment process due to COVID-19
  • 12:30: Product examples
  • 13:59: Advertisement set up
  • 18:04: Product tester list
  • 21:03: Profiling your customers to know the best product to sell
  • 23:38: Store set up
  • 25:17: Recurring revenue products
  • 28:09: How COVID-19 affects shipment and business
  • 30:40: Steps on how to get a new product

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Norman Farrar  0:02 

Hey everybody, it’s Norman Farrar, a.k.a. The Beard Guy and welcome to Lunch With Norm. I am going to be introducing to you one of my really great friends, one of my non Amazon really great friends. That’s going to tell you a little bit about why she got off Amazon and what she what she’s doing now. So, anyways, why don’t you sit back, grab a coffee or grab your lunch and just sit back for a half hour and enjoy and Kelsey, what are we supposed to do?

Kelsey Farrar  0:35 

You can follow us on all the social media platforms, TikTok, that’s a new one, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and be sure to follow us on the I Know This Guy podcast too that just came out. So, new episodes every Tuesday.

Norman Farrar  0:52 

Ring that bell. That’s my only thing. I can’t remember all that other stuff. But I can remember ring that bell. So, with no further ado, I’d like to welcome Elena Sarris. Hey, how are you?

Elena Sarris  1:07 

I’m good. I thought we’d have lunch in the park ‘cause it’s such a beautiful day. What do you think?

Norman Farrar  1:12 

You know what? I would die? No, I wouldn’t. I would love to have lunch in the park. But yeah.

Elena Sarris  1:19 

I just wanted people to know. That’s why I’m here and we’re not about to do carpool karaoke.

Norman Farrar  1:23 

You are in the park. You’re not even in your house.

Elena Sarris  1:25 

No, I’m not in my house. I’m in the park in the car.

Norman Farrar 1:29 

Alright. So Elena. We’ve gone back a long way. We’ve known each other for years and she is an incredible lady. Elena, why don’t you tell us just a little bit about your background.

Elena Sarris 1:42 

Okay. I took the traditional route to e-commerce. I went to law school for years and was a criminal defense lawyer for, I still am, actually I was in a public defender’s office in Los Angeles for 25 years. Somewhere in there. I worked for a couple years as a stand up comic, which was kind of fun at night, at a little club called “The Haha Cafe” in North Hollywood, I had my own show on Thursdays, which was cool and one day, I just decided that I was going to learn how to make money online doing something and I thought, well, I know how to be a lawyer. So I’m going to teach people how to be better at doing trials. I recorded all these videos, and my friend says, Oh, you should market those on Facebook. I’m like, videos, like what do you mean market? Like, advertise on Facebook? Isn’t that where you like, stalk your ex and take pictures of your food? Like, what are you talking about? They told me that you can put ads and so I found this course called Facebook Ads Cracked and I was selling t-shirts off of Teespring and all of a sudden, I started selling money and money was coming in and I was like, Oh my gosh, what the heck and the T-shirts were working. But I went to market the videos teaching people how to be a better lawyer. I learned the first rule of selling on the internet, which is no one’s gonna buy anything unless you’re teaching them how to get laid, how to get paid or how get skinny, that was it and my videos did not cover any of those because we didn’t even cover how to get paid as a lawyer because I was a public defender like,  when they say, if you want an a lawyer and can’t afford one, one will be appointed to you that was me and like 750 of my closest friends in Los Angeles. So I never had to worry about getting clients. I didn’t know how to get clients. I wasn’t a Rainmaker, but I was a marketer. That’s what I knew and I knew that the same things that I was telling jurors, in terms of trying to persuade them would work in terms of selling and so this opportunity called Amazon came up and I jumped on that bandwagon and I think 2014 – 13 or 14, and did really well, until I didn’t and then this opportunity called Shopify came up, and then the sky’s the limit now with that.

Norman Farrar  3:50 

So let’s go back to Amazon. You want to just tell us why you went from Amazon and we’re looking for alternatives.

Elena Sarris  3:59 

Sure. Shout out to Watty I just saw somebody say hi so this is live. I’m not used to this but these little things pop up going “Hey Eena”. So anyway, yeah. Am I supposed to do that?

Norman Farrar  4:10 

Yeah and Alan as well. Alan and Watty.

Elena Sarris  4:14 

So anyway, I was selling on Amazon, I actually got into probiotics that’s how much of the Wild West it was and I had the number two probiotic. Just a stupid private label I made from a place in the states that did this and I didn’t know what a probiotic was, but here I was number two for the probiotic and money was coming in and it was great and then these Amazon courses started to like proliferate and all these people started coming in and I saw the writing on the wall and I said, forget it. I’m getting out of the competition stuff. So I just jumped at a really good time back when everyone was starting to get into supplements. I got out, took the money and ran and started doing like just a stable of small little products. I saw the writing on the wall. I had a connection in E-Wu China which was selling like you know a place where you can go and get things that can sell for like $20 and under. I just I just made it like 20,30 of those at one point I think I’d like 30 to 35 and they were things like a seatbelt, I mean a steering wheel cover, a butter dish, that stupid little plastic thing your kids have to play in school the recorder you know and, I was taking trips to China, the whole thing. So it was great. I mean, they were selling like three to between 200 and 400 units a day each. I had no hijackers because I was so low under the radar. Like I would get the recorder for like I was being lazy at one point I could get it in China for 65 cents but there was a guy in like, two towns over who said hey, I can put your label on mine for 90 cents. I’m like done and done and I would literally drive over to pick it up in my little mini cooper. I would map it up, send it to Amazon and sell it for 12 to $14 and I was pocketing two to $4 per sale times two to 400 times 30 products. I mean it was a good deal and then all of a sudden, like I started getting, I have one good private label big product still and that was that was the main one. But then all of a sudden I am like little store names started to pop up on the butter dish and the butter dish that I was selling for like $12.99 started selling for like $7.99 I’m like, how the heck can they do that? Because the shipping and all that and it turns out it was one of Amazon’s little stores with those play names they have that doesn’t say Amazon and pretty soon my whole thing got wiped out like I just couldn’t compete with those numbers. I would have to lose $2 a sale. But I had that one main item not the probiotic but something else and like around the end of October or end of September though, I think was 2016 somebody said I was hijacking their listing and it was just a fake complaint to get rid of me because I had been number one for so long and I was like this is easy. I’ve got two years worth of inventory,  invoices. I’ve got pictures of me in the factory, I’m going to figure this out, they’re going to figure it out and I’ll get my listing back any minute, it came back December 27, or 28, something like that and I had ordered, like, I don’t remember between 40 and $60,000 worth of inventory, which took me until the next May to sell through, and I would have sold all of that in that month. So I was not a happy camper, but I stayed the course for a while and then the next year it happened again and it was the same exact thing. Like, we just did this last year, and that and that killed the first two thirds of my fourth quarter and then that spring, when on one of the trips that I had a company called Source in Asia would take people to China, which is the trip you were on, a fellow stood up and started talking about the opportunities on Shopify, and he’s a wonderful guy and he brought his friend who was 23 years old, and they were literally talking about one of them made 8 million and one of them made 20 million in less than two years and I was like, I’m in the wrong line of work. Cuz I mean, these were nothing kind of guys, you meet some people and they stand up and they start talking and you’re like, wow, that dude like he’s MIT material. Man, I can’t do that. These were not those kinds of guys. Like, dang if this guy can do it and that was that.

Norman Farrar 8:14 

I gotta tell you that, like, you ran Source in Asia, which was a company that would bring people over and introduce people into the Chinese market. E-Wus, specifically and Bella’s on right now. So, Bella was somebody that you introduced me to as my sourcing agent in China and I just noticed that she’s on, she says, Hi.

Elena Sarris 8:37 

Hey, Bella!  Miss you! and Tony, how  are you Tony? Our company was the first one to offer every single person their own sourcing agent. Excuse me, which was really cool because you had that personal connection when you went home and I was not ever intending. I mean, I thought we would still be doing that. But the Shopify opportunity was just too good to pass.

Norman Farrar 9:02

All right. So let’s talk about the next step. Yeah, Amazon pissed you off. You started looking for something else. So what are you doing and are you making a few dollars at it?

Elena Sarris 9:14 

Yeah, I’m making a couple bucks here and there,  enough to afford gas to get to the park for lunch with you. What happened was I opened a general store and I thought because I was so successful on Amazon that I’d be really good at it. So I just like, put ads up on Facebook. I will say this. Amazon brings you traffic. Okay, and everything that I’m going to say that is wrong with Amazon and I’m not necessarily trying to poopoo Amazon. If it works for you. Great. I would not recommend it to a new person who just wanted to start online going into Amazon as a private label seller. I would tell them to go in as a wholesaler on Amazon if they’re just starting, especially if they don’t have one. I honestly believe it’s gonna take 10 to $15,000 these days to really start properly on Amazon. That’s just my personal opinion. I’ve been out of that game for going on a year and a half completely. So I started a general store and it was literally turn and burn. Like all the things that you hear about dropshipping like, Oh, you can’t get from AliExpress and everyone’s gonna hate you and it’s two months for the item to get in. I mean, there’s one fellow who sells a high ticket course I won’t name him but he spent so much time like dissing, dropshipping and the way that we do it these small items right to the store, every time he posts a screenshot for his like, month, that would be like our day and I don’t want to just I’m never gonna like comment on his post, but this is alive and well. If people are telling you that you can’t drop ship from AliExpress they’re not telling you the truth and even during COVID-19, Tony had a question about COVID-19. I mean, we have to find alternative shippings and sometimes we have to bring the stuff in bulk to be safe.

Norman Farrar 10:53 

Yeah, we just cut out ever since it was so nice. Actually, I wouldn’t say that. Because Oh, Elena, not talking. But we cut out for about the last 15-20 seconds.

Elena Sarris  11:06 

Okay, so I was saying that the Shopify, the drop shipping is not dead. Okay so there’s a lot of people that are teaching other courses telling you that drop shipping is dead. You can’t get stuff from China anymore. There are issues with shipping right now from China but they’re temporary and they’re like eight to 15 days is what I’m getting and because most of those people who are interested in what I’m talking about right now are Amazon sellers. They think it’s completely unrealistic that a world would wait eight to 15 days after sending them but it’s just not true so long as you’re transparent. The number one thing about buying online, so I will say this Amazon gives you traffic and Amazon gives you trust. So when I am selling online, I am putting ads on your Facebook newsfeed. I am showing you something so bizarre, so unique, so original, so problem solving. So Oh my Gosh, that you’re sitting there stalking your ex looking at cat videos, taking pictures of your food and you see what I have and you go oh my god I had no idea that even existed I totally wanted I’m going to get my credit card please don’t go away and that is the reaction I try and get in someone so they don’t, it’s not a thought through purchase. It’s not I’m looking for the lowest price, it’s a 1,000% impulse buy. You’re on a road trip to Arkansas. You stop for gas and there is the eight track of Shaun Cassidy that you’ve always wanted sitting next to the cash register and you have to have it.

Norman Farrar 12:30 

Okay, so can you give an example? You don’t have to get into your products but just kind of an example.

Elena Sarris  12:35 

I’ll give you one of my products that did really well was cargo shorts for men. I don’t suggest doing clothes by the way. These cargo shorts for men came down to your like, mid calf, I mean they were like the girliest male cargo shows in the history of the world and that thing did $150,000 in like less than a month. It was crazy. Other things that I have sold, crazy ice scrapers.

Norman Farrar 13:01 

Okay, okay, let’s stop at the ice scraper. An ice scraper is an ice scraper. If I wanted an ice scraper, I’d go to Amazon, but how did you get around that?

Elena Sarris  13:16 

There was an ice scraper that looked like an agility cone and it just literally looked like a traffic phone and there was a picture of a really weird looking dude just and I guess being able to scrape ice off in a circle rather than a line. Listen, I’m in LA, I’m in the park. I haven’t scraped guys off a car in my life. But apparently people wanted this and so it turns out I had a USA supplier for it and that thing did almost over $150,000 in less than a month in like between January and February which is not  a great month for a lot of e-com sellers.

Norman Farrar  13:54 

Do you go back like this winter? Are you going to be selling it again?

Elena Sarris 13:59 

That was two winters ago. So this winter I sold it, but it didn’t do great because the wow factor was gone. The wow factor was gone and remember these people aren’t looking for an ice scraper. These people are on Facebook so I just needed to show them something that intrigued them and that is the whole goal. So yes, I have to drive traffic that Amazon doesn’t do that right? Amazon doesn’t do that for me and yes, I have to have a website that looks very professional like you’re not going to take their money. So I have an 800 phone number that is answered by a live human being who speaks English. I have a call center now because I’m really big when I started, I just had my 800 number and a good email and I was just very transparent. Hey, you know they think the product is unique so they don’t mind waiting, please allow two to three weeks for shipping and that did not kill conversions. As long as they know, I truly believe everyone is concerned about being scammed online. 90% of the people that bought from me the first year because it’s different now. 2017 thought they were buying from Facebook. They had no idea like they didn’t understand that it was like a person advertising in a store and we would get returns from other sellers selling the same thing. They didn’t even buy it from us and they would return something saying it’s the wrong size. We’re like, well, then you should probably contact the company that you gave your money to. But they didn’t know they just, they bought it, then they’re on Facebook, my ad comes because Facebook recognizes them as someone who might be interested in this now because they bought it, my eyes are going down because Norm is over here, I just realized that on my screen, I’m gonna keep looking at the dot. So they didn’t understand where they had necessarily bought it from. So that part is a little bit weird. But the beauty of the Shopify experience is like, I mean, I would take the next hour listing it. We get our customers, I have 30 on one store, so I had the general store that just does the churn and burns, Hey, oh, yeah, okay, makeup brushes that look like mermaid tails are trending. I’m gonna put that up on my store. Now in order to put that up on my store. I literally take a picture of it. Put it up, write a little description, decide what to price it and it’s live. Sometimes I don’t even know where I’m getting it from. I mean, if it’s trending, I know it’s for sale somewhere on AliExpress. So I’ll find it. So, I can test four to five products a week, if I want to, It’ll cost me about 200 to 250 bucks to test the product, like, that’s how much I’m going to lose if I really bomb,  which is fine. I mean, compare that to Amazon, which maybe if you have a lot of money, you can test three products a year and it’s going to cost you what, $4,000 to test, if you’re really doing it right, with private label and launches and all of that and, all this research and keywords and,  I do my research on Facebook, I buy stuff off of Facebook ads, just random stuff and that way, Facebook puts ads on my personal profile in front of me because they see me as a buyer on Facebook. So, and it’s great because I get to write that off as r&d. Right? I buy this one face oh it’s research. I was just looking to see. So I have 30,000 customers on once, okay, so I was saying that you do the churn and burn. When you get something that you know sells, you can create a new store that’s just for that. So I have an automotive store because the ice scraper stores worked, the ice scraper worked right, I put that in its own store and now I can sell anything else for the car and it’s all very related. So I have a lot of returning customers and  people I can retarget on my main store, the one that took off like that I have 30,000 existing customers. That means every time I want to test something new, I have 30,000 emails, I can email them all the time, I can retarget them if they bought this necklace, maybe they’ll want this ring or this pillow. I can put anything I want under frequently bought together, I can suggest anything. I can have upsells, I can have cross sells, I can text them a message saying, hey, looks like you left something in your cart and then there’s a link and when they click that link, they don’t just come to my store, they go to their cart. I mean, all of those things that you don’t have the ability to do on Amazon. Hey, Melissa!

Norman Farrar 18:01 

Yeah, there’s Melissa.

Norman Farrar 18:04 

Okay, so you can even use this. So let’s say you decide to stay in Amazon, and you still want to do this, okay? You’ve got 30,000 customers. There’s your product tester list.

Elena Sarris  18:17 

There’s your product tester list. Let’s say you only have 2000 customers. Okay, let’s say you’ve got an Amazon store doing pretty well and you’ve and you’ve been selling for less. Let’s say you’re just a habit to like a lot of people, we just did it to look legitimate. We opened a Shopify store so that retailers, wholesale suppliers, whatever would look at us and think we were legit and maybe it’s only been a year, but maybe we’ve accumulated in a year 2000 customers, which isn’t hard at all. Now, we have those customer names. I mean, we can either scrape those, we’d have to actually scrape those to get them into a Facebook thing. But we could create a Facebook group. This is how I would do it. I would create a Facebook group around what I’m selling. First the page, first the fan page, then I would invite those people, if I have barbecue gloves. I’m going to have a Facebook fan page about barbecue and then I’m going to bring some of those people, I’m going to entice them into a Facebook group. Okay? Then I will test products by putting out posts in there. If I’m in the page, I’ll boost the post and say, which gloves do you like better? Or are you looking for a mat? Or do you grow more vegetables? Or do you grill more fish to get one of those little mats or something? That’s maybe a 3 to $5 ad, right? Then when I have my group, we can say, Hey, you guys are the first to have this new product and you can offer rebates for the velocity of sales. I mean, I’m not saying you should ask for reviews, but you could potentially talk about how important reviews are to your Amazon business in that group. The other thing you could do is you could create one of these churn and burn stores and you could actually find a product that is similar to your niche. So let’s say you’re selling  barbecue, you get these crazy looking I think when the example I have is these tongs but the the hands look like the the clipper thing that you turn to look like big clown hands and you get those for 90 cents and you sell those for 12.99 or even 9.99. You break even or you do free plus shipping, which I don’t. I don’t really like that model but you could and then charge four or $5 for shipping but I like to have it where it’s like 9.99,12.99 then when people and you don’t have to use your brand so if your brand is like Max’s Famous Barbecue accessories, you can just call this Barbecue Land, doesn’t matter. You can come up with any name you want and then you know that the people who bought that from you. You place the ad to that item, you make the price so enticing that people buy it and what you know now is that the person who bought this from you, shops online, off of Facebook, has a credit card and likes to barbecue and now you’re building your own list of Facebook customers that you can then send links to your Amazon directly because you have their email now, you have their SMS text.

Norman Farrar  21:03 

I’m wondering if you go one step further, I don’t know if you’ve explored it. But using a profiling app that you can, it’s a gamified profile. So you’ve got the name, you send it over to the person,  they can when they have a chance of winning $100  Amazon gift card or whatever Visa card, and you get them to answer in a fun way, these 20 questions and now you’ve got the profile of the person, everything that you know exactly what you want to sell to them,  if it’s a male or a female, their age group.

Norman Farrar 21:37 

Yeah, that might be something to take a look.

Elena Sarris 21:39 

But, I think we’re getting a little bit of a loss.

Norman Farrar 21:42 

Oh, there we go. I think we’re back.

Elena Sarris  21:43 

Okay. I think that’s great. But let me just tell you, who are the creepiest people in the history of the world in terms of spying on us?

Norman Farrar 21:52

Oh, Cambridge Analytica.

Elena Sarris 21:54

Facebook! I mean, I don’t know if you saw that meme where there’s a little boy and he’s typing on the computer mark and he looks at Mark Zuckerberg behind him and he says, my dad says you’re spying on us and Martin looks down and says he’s not your dad. Yeah. So what you’re saying yes, I think that’s great. It sounds complicated to my non tech, non math little brain. When I get my customer list, like I just did this morning on a brand new item I’m selling, I have like 70 sales on it and I just say filter by selection and Facebook tells me how old the people are, by whether they’re men or women, what device they’re on. Are they on an Android? Or they’re on an iPhone? Are they on a desktop? Whether it’s, did they see this on instant article? Did they see this in their newsfeed? Did they see this on their mobile?  Then my ads are only going to women 45 to 65 on a mobile device in the newsfeed and that’s how specific. I can get so I can get my demographic that is honed in. But I like your idea a lot because there’s a big word that I can’t remember about, like a psychological demographic that Facebook can’t give you. They can really only give you a physical demographic. So that’s a great idea.

Norman Farrar  23:09 

Thank you! I get them once in a while. So anyways, hey, just a couple of shout outs to Angela and Messi and Kelly. So Messi has a question. She says, that’s gold, Elena, do you always create a new site for new products? Or do you have a base site? You know what, I’m an old guy, and I need thicker glasses. Do you have a base site that you can repurpose for new product testing and launches?

Elena Sarris  23:38 

I have a base site and I have a couple of them. So what I do is I don’t have a one product store. There’s something called a one product store where you are just selling that one product and maybe variations and that could be like sunglasses, right? That’s just one product but you can have a lot of variations of it and other times it can just be literally one product that’s all you sell like a USB portable air conditioner for your desk and that’s the only thing available in the store. I don’t have those. I think they’re great. I just don’t have the time and the energy to create one. So what I’ll do in my general store which will sell everything from automotive to musical instruments to cargo shorts for men, I’ll have that as a full tester and then I have like a little satellite of like okay the auto thing sold so now I have an auto store which is a pretty broad niche when you think about it because you can sell an umbrella in an auto store, or you can sell  road trip stuff in an auto store, there’s a lot you can do with that and then I have a brand store which is where, like something just took off and I know that demographic, if you can have something take off for the demographic of women 45 and over, you’re golden. Because those are the people that shop online. So that is what I would call my main brand store and then I have two niche stores and then I have this complete general store that is like anything goes.

Norman Farrar:

Always Shopify?

Elena Sarris:

All of them on Shopify, yeah. Shopify you can get a store $30 a month for the basics and then it goes up to like $80 a month if you want to do more things, which is basically have more helpers is the main thing like more people sign on.

Norman Farrar  25:17 

Do you ever look for any recurring revenue products?

Elena Sarris  25:22 

Yeah, in the sense of not consumables, I won’t sell things that like consumable in the sense in the sort of overall, definition of like a vacuum bag used to be, like it’s consumable, meaning you use it, you need another one. I don’t personally, I won’t sell things that go in your body or on your skin. I’m just not going to get into that, especially on Facebook. So beauty products are really hard. I mean, people do it. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just really complicated to sell a beauty product without a before and after picture.  You have to be really kind of not shady, but it’s just more effort than I’m willing to do, let’s just say that and then you need a bunch of accounts and backups and I’m not willing to do and you don’t need to because there’s so much money in this stuff that’s just regular plastic doodads. So, yeah, I definitely try to find something, definitely that something that people want more than one up. That’s huge. If you know and the ice scraper was that, my biggest example is always you know what is a toilet plunger or something that removes the dent on your car and a magnetic eyelash. It’s a fake eyelash they have in common. Right? At first blush, you would say I have no idea. But then, you look at yourself and say okay, they’re all products women will buy for the house or themselves. They’re all products you probably want more than one of, because you sometimes have a toilet plunger like in each bathroom or you have a gift or a dent. You know a thing or a dent in your car. You keep it in your car. Your son has a car or something like that, and women with their eyelashes, they’ll want backups and they might want one at the gym, one at the office, things like that. They solve a problem and this is huge, it has to solve a problem and it doesn’t have to be a life threatening problem. I mean, toilet plunger is a big problem to solve. You can live your whole life with a dent in your car,  it doesn’t have to be like CPR solves a problem, right? It can be a problem to that person at that moment and then getting glue stuff on your eyes when you try to put on glue fake eyelashes. It’s kind of a pain in the butt. So those are really good things to look for in terms of products that move, and there is a trade off, you have to drive the traffic and you have to show them that you’re professional. But I mean, any day of the week to get my customers names, and listen, they write a review. There’s a little thing on Shopify, where you can approve a review or not and I’ll just leave it at that.

Norman Farrar 27:53 

That’s nice. Okay, I know you have you’re short on time.

Elena Sarris 27:57 

Yeah, let’s get to some questions.

Norman Farrar 27:59 

Well Kelsey, are there any other questions? Okay, here’s Tony.

Norman Farrar  28:06 

Okay, Elena has ran.

Elena Sarris  28:09 

I see it and has the dropshipping from China on Shopify. Has this business model been affected with COVID-19? It was affected. Yeah. Especially because it hit right after the Chinese New Year. So it was kind of a double whammy, right when we thought things were going to be opening up, things closed down and so I think it helped to have cash because I was able to buy in bulk and bring it to the United States, the things that I was selling, and I saw the writing on the wall a lot earlier than a lot of people and I had already been bringing it in bulk because of Chinese New Year, and I have really good suppliers there. So it did for a while. It’s all coming back and I and I think now even with e-packet being completely, almost completely gone or like a pack, it’s like 35 days now. My shipping times are between 8 and 15 days on the things that I get directly from China. Totally, totally acceptable. Yeah. But I do bring things in from the US and you don’t have to, but I do and you know it’s a smart thing to do. Once you know you have a seller like if you have an evergreen product, I have a product that pretty much on its own sells 50 units a day and with effort sells 100 units a day, and I just ordered another 16,000 of those and at the end of this month I’ll order another 20,000 for Christmas.

Norman Farrar  29:17 

Okay, another question here from Messi. Got another question, do you pay directly? Okay, I’ll let you just.

Elena Sarris  29:25 

Okay. Do you ship directly from China to customers? Or do you keep storage in the US? If shipping from China is still working, how long does it take now? That was it, that was exactly what we just said. So I personally will keep some storage. Because I know my product is selling, I will not do that on a testing item I and I definitely now. If I think I’m gonna bring it into the US. I will wait till it sells, I don’t know probably 100 units, to do that and a 100 units. I mean, again, I can’t tell you people don’t freak out as long as you follow up, especially with COVID. People are really understanding with COVID, like, we wrote because we were really hit even in the US. I mean, I had my New Jersey factory shut down for four days and I just sent out a mass email because I have their email, because they’re my customers, because it’s my store. I’m not building Amazon’s customer list. I’m building Elena’s customer list. Yeah! and I just said, look, thank you for your understanding, of course, I had nothing to do with the warehouse, but I just read an email saying,  we’re restructuring our factory for social distancing. I’ve no idea what my factory is doing. But I told these folks, I reassured them that everything was fine. We didn’t steal their money, their product was coming.

Norman Farrar  30:33 

Okay, last thing, very quickly. I know we were out.

Elena Sarris 30:36

Okay, you got two more minutes.

Norman Farrar 30:40

Okay. Can you shotgun just the steps to get a new product. So you’ve already product tested, you’ve seen that the product worked. Where do you go? AliExpress and then go down three or four steps.

Elena Sarris 30:53 

Okay, so you’ve done a little bit of research, you have spy software that you can buy that shows you what ads are trending or you like me, you buy stuff and you do see what’s coming on your newsfeed, you look and be like, Oh my gosh, that thing was on only one day and it’s got 20 likes and 40 comments, I’m commenting on this ad and when I comment on an ad, that means I get every time that someone comments I see more and if that keeps, like going like that, with twice as many comments as likes, is twice as many shares as comments, I’m on it, go to AliExpress. I typed in the name, AliExpress has the most ridiculous search engine in the world. So you have to be really funky with what you write. It’s not like Google. It’s not like whatever those Boolean whatever you call that thing, it is hard to but then you find it and then you see what the shipping time is and then you see what the shipping cost is and then you say oh, I can get this for two bucks. It’s gonna cost me $3 and 15 cents though because what’s going on to get it to the US in a timely manner. So I got a $5.15 cent product. I don’t even call the supplier at that point. I put it up on my thing and if I get a sale, I just do it from the best supplier I can find an alley that has the highest ranking and the cheapest price. Once that happens, I start calling around to some agents in China that do drop shipping on like, how much can you get for me? I will even go a little higher if they’re willing to get something from because I know it’s more stable for that. So that’s it and literally, I press a button. It’s all automated. What happens is the automation throws all the customers’ information to the guy in China. The guy in China gets it. Charge my credit card $5, send it directly to the customer. I never see it. I never touch it. I don’t know what you mean by software. If you’re talking about spy software, I’m kind of leaning towards selling the trend right now. It’s called sell the trend but there’s an ad spy. There’s a lot out there. I don’t suggest starting that way though. I suggest starting by just looking at your newsfeed

Norman Farrar 32:37 

It’s the simplest, right?

Elena Sarris  32:39 

Yeah, type in the search bar like you typed in looking for a friend from college. Type in buy now. People are going crazy. Buy one, get one free and you’ll see and then hit video and you’ll see ads galore. Okay, this is me having to head out to die.

Norman Farrar 32:53 

Alright, so very last thing. How do people get a hold of you, Elena?

Elena Sarris 32:57 

How do people get a hold of me? I’m on Facebook. It’s terrible that I brought my phone. I’m terrible about it. I don’t know how I would just say, yeah, hit me up on Facebook or? Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know how to do it anymore.

Norman Farrar 33:14 

You know what I could post a little bit in the group if you like, I know you gotta run.

Elena Sarris 33:17 

I gotta run. Yeah, there is a website, you can sign up for like a list. It’s called www.wewillshowyouhow.com and you can sign up for a list and anything that I’m doing, I put on that, but you have to do the www. Okay. I’m running! Thank you so much. Bye

Norman Farrar 33:36 

Bye, Elena. Alright, everybody. So thank you for joining us. If you do have any questions, just please, just let us know, put it in the comments and Elena said that after she gets back, she’ll be answering those questions for you right away. So Kelsey, at the end of the day, that was really quick. Hey, she can talk boy and she’s good. I love her. But Alright, so Kels, what do we got to do?

Kelsey Farrar  34:04 

Alright, everyone. Thanks for watching, if you can like and share this if you enjoyed this and please follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and follow our new podcast, I Know This Guy. It’s different from e-commerce, talks about real people and their stories.

Norman Farrar  34:24 

Their ups, their downs and everything in between.

Kelsey Farrar 34:28

That’s right. You nailed it

Norman Farrar 34:30 

Alright. Okay, everybody. See you later. See you next Thursday. Have a good day.