Start Yours | An ecommerce, dropshipping, and entrepreneurship podcast from Oberlo
By Oberlo
Start Yours | An ecommerce, dropshipping, and entrepreneurship podcast from OberloNov 05, 2019
Getting Funding, Changing Lives and Blowing Up On Twitter
Creating memorable products and an impactful brand will not only keep your business top of mind for your customers but as you will hear in this episode of Start Yours it can change lives.
Today’s guest, Yelitsa Jean-Charles, created Healthy Roots Dolls, a start-up toy company that was founded with a goal to make a new, positive beauty standard for young girls – especially for those with curly hair.
A recent tweet that featured Yelitsa and an image of her Zoe doll went viral with over 900K likes! The success of the dolls means that they are currently sold out but they are accepting pre-orders.
This is an incredible story about how one product can inspire and empower. Join us as we chat with Yelitsa and learn more about creating a meaningful brand and the early success of her business Healthy Roots Dolls.
Build Your Brand With Podcasts
As an entrepreneur, podcasts can be a powerful medium to reach new listeners and customers, share stories and get your message to a wider audience.
How hard is to start a podcast for your business and will it bring a return on investment? What gear do you need to host a podcast or be a guest on a podcast and what are some creative ways to market your product or brand via popular podcasts?
Our guest this episode is Rachel Corbett, who was the Head of Podcasts for Mamamia, the largest women's podcast network in the world. She’s the founder of Podschool, a comprehensive course about starting a podcast and as you’ll hear in the show, what she doesn’t know about podcasts isn’t worth knowing.
If you like what you hear, there are plenty more episodes waiting for you in the Start Yours back catalog, as well as new episodes dropping every week.
We also got you covered for all things e-commerce, dropshipping, and entrepreneurship over at the Oberlo blog – oberlo.com/blog
Outsourcing Hacks To Save You Time and Money
As a business owner, how do you decide when it is time to consider outsourcing tasks in your business or upping your skills and doing it yourself?
In this episode of Start Yours, we share the best tips and advice from merchants, Shopify and Oberlo team members about taking the leap and investing in hiring experts that will help to increase sales and productivity and decrease stress.
From social media to video content, our best practices for learning to value your time vs investing in freelancers, to hiring tips, this episode will inspire you to take the leap and explore how outsourcing can increase revenue and also help you see your business in a new light.
If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe to not miss an episode and check out the blog oberlo.com/blog for more information about outsourcing and time management.
How One Store Made $70,000 in 30 Days During COVID
Starting a dropshipping business with a friend during a pandemic is a challenge that many new entrepreneurs may avoid, but Australian teenager dropshippers, Lachie and Taylor, saw a chance to run a month-long dropshipping experiment during COVID lockdown.
They chose to launch a store selling non-medical items that would be helpful to families during the lockdown and while doing so, use the time to test ad audiences, customer service techniques, as well as hitting their goals and embracing their failures along the way.
In this episode of Start Yours, we talk bro-marketing, how to launch a store in an evening and what it takes to turn dropshipping from a hobby into a full-time career.
As always, if you like the show, we’ve got a back catalogue full of episodes to listen to, so be sure to subscribe and check out Oberlo.com for blogs and updates.
Boost Your Sales With Better Product Photography
"Good" product photography is the first step to getting a visitor to stay longer on your site, to click through, to learn more about what you do, and hopefully pull the trigger on a purchase.
But what exactly is good photography, and how can you take professional images at home without investing in expensive gear?
To answer that, we've invited photographer Ben Waugh, an Aussie who is now living the #vanlife dream, being his own boss, creating incredible visual content for major brands, and photographing some of the world's most scenic locations.
Listen to this episode to hear Ben share what 'good' photography actually means, what to invest in when it comes to photography gear and how we can improve our product shots with lighting and a couple of sneaky little tricks that make more sales.
As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast, and if you do, please consider subscribing.
We also got you covered for all things ecommerce, dropshipping, and entrepreneurship over at the Oberlo blog – oberlo.com/blog
How To Dominate TikTok... Without Dancing
This episode, we are talking with Jade Darmawangsa, an entrepreneur and digital strategist who started making Youtube videos in her garage when she was just 9 years old. Since then she dropped out of school, launched her own company and now her content exceeds 10 Million views via YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok…all of this and she’s only 19.
Jade was an early content creator on TikTok, which has become one of the fastest growing social media platforms with over a 1 billion users. This is a huge HUGE landscape and as you’ll hear in today’s episode, it’s the wild west for companies and brands who want to stake their claim in the TikTok ether.
Jade shares some incredible insights into how to win with the TikTok algorithm, how you can market your physical products on the platform and how NOT to stress about content creation and just... make it happen.
As always we hope you enjoy the podcast and if you do, please consider subscribing.
We also got you covered for all things ecommerce, dropshipping, and entrepreneurship over at the Oberlo blog – oberlo.com/blog.
Are digital nomads screwed? Well, not exactly.
We are all about location independence here at Oberlo. And no doubt, plenty of Oberlo users double as digital nomads. Which is awesome. Dropshipping has always been the perfect digital nomad gig.
Then came COVID-19. And as much as coronavirus has sucked for all of us, it is especially problematic for all the digital nomads out there. After all, coronavirus has made traveling more or less impossible. It has turned the economy upside-down. And it has put a massive spotlight on healthcare. And as any digital nomad could tell you, sometimes the best places for doing the nomad thing aren’t the best places for seeking medical attention.
To break down what coronavirus means for digital nomads, we are going to talk with Amanda Gaid. Amanda has been freelancing and country-hopping since 2014, and she actually wrote an ebook about digital nomads for Oberlo last year, so she is an experienced, card-carrying member of the digital nomad community. She was in Mexico when COVID-19 erupted, which is where we caught up with her.
Amanda explains how COVID-19 laid her personal plans to waste, and what it has done to the digital nomad community at large. As painful as it's been, though, Amanda insists all is not lost. Not only does she cherish the lifestyle, but she explains why changes happening because of coronavirus – like businesses moving online and relying more on freelancers – might actually be an advantage for anyone with a digital nomad skillset.
If you want to reach out, shoot a note to podcast at oberlo dot com. If you want to check out Amanda's ebook on being digital nomad, here's the link: https://www.oberlo.com/ebooks/digital-nomad.
As always, we hope you enjoy the podcast, and if you do, please consider subscribing.
Meditate now. Your business will thank you later.
This episode is all about meditation. Not meditation as a spiritual practice. Not as a way to chill out. Nope – meditation as a business tool that can help you make more money. (And still be sane when it hits your account.)
We have two awesome guests. First up is Cory Smith, Co-Founder and CEO of Wisdom Labs, followed by Bill Duane, who has helped bring mindfulness and meditation to Google.
Cory and Bill offer up loads of insights. They’ve seen and experienced first-hand what burnout does to people, and they share ideas that you can start implementing today, including:
- What meditation has to do with running a business
- The science behind why mindfulness is helpful for entrepreneurs
- How you can overcome even your most stressful business moments
You won't be able to levitate by the end of the episode. That said, meditation can be a vital hack for anyone launching or growing their own business.
If you like what you hear, there are plenty more episodes. We also got you covered for all things ecommerce, dropshipping, and entrepreneurship over at the Oberlo blog – oberlo.com/blog.
The right way to grow a business today (spoiler: bigger isn’t always better)
Two awesome guests joined us to explore how you can grow your business in this economy.
First up is author Mike Michalowicz. Mike has written a handful of books about business and entrepreneurship, including Profit First, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, and The Pumpkin Plan. His newest book comes out next week – Fix This Next: Make the Vital Change That Will Level Up Your Business. Mike joined us to talk about what entrepreneurship looks like these days, with the economy seeming to kinda sorta be falling apart. We also dig into Fix This Next and Mike’s biggest tips for your business.
As we hit on in the podcast, Mike is a big advocate of the idea that bigger is not always better when it come to the size of your business. And our second guest, Courtney White, is living proof of that.
Courtney launched the beautiful ecommerce store Finer and Dandy, and she is living proof you don’t need to be making six figures a year on your store to have a thriving online business. She loves the community that has emerged around her brand, and she loves that she still has time to parent her three children and five (!) dogs. Courtney had a whole handful of side hustles before she landed on Finer and Dandy, we hit on those, we hit on her somewhat bizarre Instagram marketing strategy, and we also hit on how ecommerce has helped her find some confidence and some nerve that she didn’t know she had.
You can visit Mike's website at mikemichalowicz.com/ and Courtney's website at www.fineranddandy.com/.
What's actually selling in the "new economy." Plus, what it's like to launch during a recession.
This episode explains how to find products that will sell in the "new economy," and then takes a first-hand look at what it's like to launch a business in the middle of a recession.
First up is Jessica, host of the online course Oberlo 101, who has been chatting with ecommerce entrepreneurs and digging into Oberlo data to see what's selling in this "new economy." She dishes out some awesome insights into emerging niches, talks about products to avoid, and gives tips on how to make sure your ad copy hits the marks in these weird times.
Next up, we talk with Gina Locklear, founder of the beautiful sock store at zkano.com. We got Gina on the line to explain what it was like to launch Zkano in 2009, just after the financial crisis and Great Recession kicked off, and right in the middle of month after month after month of horrible, horrible economic news. Here we are, 10+ years later, and zkano.com is still home to some of coolest socks that you will ever see. Gina explains what new entrepreneurs should be ready for if they're launching now – in the midst of what appears to be a pretty dicey economic situation.
How to get the most out of every penny when you launch your store
With such a crazy amount of uncertainty right now, we talk about what it’s like to get into ecommerce when you have no money, no safety net, no cushion to play with.
For this one, we dialed up Chris Wane, who has stared down the same money headaches that lots of people are facing today. Chris does not sugarcoat his situation when he launched his online business. He. Was. Broke. Worse than broke, actually – he had 12,000 bucks in debt, and was, in his own words, in a pretty bad place. So bad, in fact, that the first day he turned a profit – a whopping five bucks – he was running around his apartment in ecstasy.
Chris explains how you can be scrappy and how you can squeeze every last cent of return from each dollar you put in. And then he also talks about the stress involved with launching a business when your business funds count as the same pool of money that you need to buy food.
All-in-all, it's a first-hand look at what it’s like to do what a lot of people are going to be doing over the coming months: getting into ecommerce not just because they want to try something new, but because they really, really need the money.
Business on hold because of coronavirus? In the meantime, do this.
Things aren't normal anywhere right now. Plans are on hold – and so are lots of online businesses. So we created a list of 10 things that ecommerce store owners can start doing today to improve their stores, even if sales are slow.
We realize that it is a weird, uncertain time. But… while we’re dealing with that, there are still tactics to implement so that when things do bounce back, whenever that is, our stores and our psyches are better than ever and we are ready to roll.
In this episode, we hit on:
Preparing for delays: This one has always been a headache, and never more so than now.
Reach out to suppliers: Get your supplier on record about what shipping and inventory will look like over the coming weeks.
Learn: Yeah, yeah... you've heard it before. But there has never been a better time to level up your mind. And we've got a freebie to do just that.
Grow social media channels: Are you on social more than ever? So are your potential customers. Meet them there.
Set up email marketing: Sometimes a forgotten channel, email is labor-intensive to launch and smooth sailing to maintain. Now's the time.
Redo your website: The entrepreneurs we've talked to have gone all-in on redesigns that they had previously been procrastinating on.
Budget: Create a budget. No, really.
Fine new income streams: If the economy tanks a bit – and this looks increasingly likely – then scraping together extra funds will help you stay flexible.
Create a healthy workspace: There are ways to make that kitchen table a productive spot.
Stay sane: We discuss ways to make sure your psyche is still in one piece when this is all over.
Ecommerce during a pandemic: expert entrepreneurs share their experiences
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned ecommerce upside-down. For entrepreneurs running online stores, coronavirus has created a whole new set of challenges. And for those sourcing products from China, it has been nearly two months of urgent questions – with very few clear answers. In the most recent episode of the Oberlo podcast, Start Yours, we talk with four ecommerce experts about their experiences navigating the coronavirus outbreak, and how they are holding their businesses (and sanity) together.
Rags to riches? How about scraps to sales
In this episode, we break down exactly how you can sell trash.
OK, not trash trash. More like trash in the sense of that old saying – one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. That’s definitely the case for our guest, Adrien Taylor. Adrien joined us from New Zealand, where he runs a hat business, Offcut, that uses discarded materials to create really, really cool hats.
Adrien walks us through how he first conceived of Offcut, how he launched the business with VERY limited resources and absolutely no knowledge of hats, clothing, or anything else that would suggest he launching a fashion brand was in his future.
Beating Stress as an Entrepreneur with Successful Ecommerce Master Ezra Firestone
Ezra Firestone has been at the forefront of digital marketing for more than a decade – which is like a century in ecommerce years.
We got Ezra on the line to break down Facebook ads, and this conversation turned into a lot more than that. Ezra digs into his Facebook ads secrets, no doubt, but he also talks about how anyone signing up for entrepreneurship better be ready to sign up for a whole bunch of stress, and better be ready to give up that nice, cozy sense of security that comes with a more conventional job. But fear not! He also talks about how to cope with that stress, and how to beat the ends and build yourself a successful online business.
So, come for the tactics, stay for the psychology breakdown.
Ezra is the CEO and co-founder of a massive cosmetics line called BOOM by Cindy Joseph, CEO and Co-Founder of Zipify Apps, which makes some awesome apps that you can use on your Shopify store, and he also founded Smart Marketer, which is an industry leader in digital marketer. So that’s the resume, and here are some numbers: He oversees Facebook ad campaigns that spend 5 figures a day, every day, and he expects his various businesses to generate $30 million in revenue this year alone.
If you want to reach us at Start Yours, shoot a note to podcast [at] oberlo [.] com.
Student debt and starting a business: How to launch even if you're in debt (or better yet, how to avoid debt)
Student debt has come up REPEATEDLY on Start Yours. Student debt actually came up on the very first episode we did, and it's been coming up ever since. And if all of these ecommerce wizards keep bringing up debt, we thought it was time to give this topic its due. That’s why we enlisted today’s guests – Vadim and Sergei Revzin.
Vadim and Sergei know a thing or two about debt, especially college debt. They co-authored a big article for the Harvard Business Review called Student Debt is Stopping US Millennials from Becoming Entrepreneurs, and they have covered this topic on their own podcast, The Mentors. And no doubt, student debt is a phenomenon they have witnessed up close. Sergei is a Venture Investor at the New York University Innovation Venture Fund, and Vadim is an Entrepreneur in Residence at a non-profit called Ethos, as well as a professor at NYU and State University of New York. So they work with entrepreneurs, they work with students, and they see the intersection between debt and starting a business all the time.
They joined us to break down how debt can get in the way of entrepreneurship, and on the flip side of that, how people can launch businesses to get OUT of debt.
We hope you enjoy the podcast, and if you do, please consider subscribing.
Proof that you don’t need a beard to start a beard business
Paul Lee’s first ecommerce idea flopped. The plan was to create an elixir to kickstart facial hair growth for dudes with weak beards. Yeah, that didn’t work. Paul was forced to pivot – but he stayed in beards. Instead of selling this magical formula to grow a beard, he took all the knowledge he’d accumulated about the beard world and turned his fire toward beard care products.
His store took off, and before long Paul quit college and was doing ecommerce full time. Actually, it was more than full-time. He never took breaks, he was pulling 10-hour days, he got obsessed, and by the time he sold his beard store on Shopify Exchange for $80,000, he was thoroughly, thoroughly burnt out.
Paul joined Start Yours to talk about the crappy college teacher that inspired him to finally drop out, the branding strategy that fueled his success, his approach to product selection, his Facebook ads best practices and, first off, how someone who couldn’t grow a beard to save his life became a beard connoisseur. You can listen to Start Yours wherever you listen to podcasts, or join us at oberlo.com.
Ditching corporate life to start a business, with John Lee Dumas
Before John Lee Dumas launched Entrepreneurs on Fire, he was... miserable. John had what from the outside looked like a nice shiny job in corporate finance, but on the inside, the whole scene was driving him nuts. He felt trapped, and to break free, he jumped into the deep end and started a business whose sole purpose was helping other people start their business.
The first 13 months of this project were pretty underwhelming, as he’ll explain, but he kept at it, kept at it, and eventually… ka-ching.
John now makes six figures a month from Entrepreneurs on Fire, and he joined us to talk about that success, sure, but also the self-doubt that used to haunt him, the morning routine that does religiously to keep his inner game in check, and how he knew it was time to ditch his steady, stable life and launch something of his own.
Your Top Ecommerce Questions Answered with Magda Kuzminski
It's a monster of a show this week! We answer important ecommerce questions in this episode of Start Yours. Questions like how much money should I spend on marketing? How much does Facebook Ads cost? How many products should I sell? So join us as we hit on the 10 most frequently asked marketing questions.
If you have more questions about marketing you can read more on our blog.
If you want to reach out, shoot us a note at podcast@oberlo.com.
Tomas Slimas on How Failure Led to The World's Most Popular Dropshipping App
In this episode we talk with Oberlo co-founder Tomas Slimas. Before launching Oberlo, Tomas was a dropshipper and ecommerce entrepreneur himself, trying – and often failing – to make money online. He eventually got it figured out and generated $3 million in revenue on a single store in a single year. Tomas sold that business and then doubled down on dropshipping, founding Oberlo in the hopes that anyone could do what he had just done – build a successful online business without ever holding inventory.
If you are interested in giving Oberlo a try, start your free trial today
If you want to reach out, shoot us a note at podcast@oberlo.com
Ecommerce is Like Video Games, With Emma Reid
At first, ecommerce reminded Emma Reid of video games. It was addictive, exciting, competitive, and tons of fun. But then things fell apart. Her dropshipping supplier botched thousands of orders, she lost $10,000 in a month, and then the burnout set in. She joined us on Start Yours to explain what went wrong, the lessons she learned, and why she’s back in the game running another online store.
Read more dropshipping stories on our blog.
If you want to reach out, shoot us a note at podcast@oberlo.com
Entrepreneurial Mindset: Do Entrepreneurs Think Differently?
"To explain that we're busy from the time that we wake up until the time that we go to bed – it's kind of difficult for people to comprehend when it's not a traditional job," Rodney explains.
In this episode of Start Yours, Rodney and Kory – a pair of friends from Vancouver – explain exactly how they turned an interest in ecommerce into a job that has fuelled the lifestyle they always wanted. From choosing the best niche, to deciding their target audience they walk us through how their entrepreneurial mindset made them different
Find out more about why entrepreneurs start their own businesses check out our blog
If you want to reach out, shoot us a note at podcast@oberlo.com
Growing Your Business Through Monetizing Facebook Groups
Six figures of revenue with $0 spent on advertising? Yes, please! Mandie and Aubrey talk to us about how they’ve made six figures of revenue through monetizing Facebook Groups. We cover Facebook's algorithm, dropshipping, and so much more in this episode.
Learn more about Mandie and Aubrey's journey on our blog.
If you want to reach out, shoot us a note at podcast@oberlo.com
Dropshipping Questions: 10 FAQs Every Dropshipper Asks in 2020
Every successful dropshipping story starts with questions. Lots of them. So in this episode, we answer the most frequently asked questions about dropshipping. We sourced these questions directly from, well, you. From entrepreneurs, from dropshippers, from people who want to know more about how exactly this whole dropshipping thing works.
How much money do you need to start dropshipping? What to do about Amazon? How come I have traffic to my store but no sales? Why do, like, 85 different suppliers all offer me the same product? We hit on it all.
If you want to reach out, shoot us a note at podcast@oberlo.com
Finding Successful Products to Sell Online, with Ecomhunt Founder Mordechai Arba
There aren’t many people in the world who have devoted more thought to dropshipping than Mordechai Arba. In this episode, Mordechai explains what makes his successful stores successful, and what makes his less successful stores, well, less successful. We're talking scaling your business, saturated markets, and so much more.
Find more trending products to sell on our blog
If you want to reach out, shoot us a note at podcast@oberlo.com
How Email Marketing Helped Build a 7-Figure Dropshipping Store
Yuliya and Mike didn’t know what dropshipping was until the weekend they launched their store. In the few years since, they’ve created a 7-figure business. They tell us all about that journey through ecommerce and dropshipping.
Find out more about how to run a dropshipping store on our blog.
If you want to reach out, shoot us a note at podcast@oberlo.com
Starting a business instead of going to college
A few years ago, Ryan Carroll was unemployed and living at home. Not ideal for an ambitious 20-year-old. But after a few fails, including an Amazon refund fiasco, Ryan stumbled across dropshipping – the first step toward launching a swimwear store that generated $300,000 in revenue. In this episode, Ryan talks with us about his dropshipping journey, including where he found the courage to ignore conventional wisdom – and ignore what he was hearing from his family – and choose entrepreneurship over college.
You can read more about Ryan’s journey on the Oberlo blog: http://bit.ly/2kEE8i4.
If you want to reach out, shoot us a note at podcast@oberlo.com
Start Yours Season 1 Trailer
Introducing Start Yours – a podcast from Oberlo about what it's like to start a business. Here's a preview of what's in store in Season 1.