Like many with Asian backgrounds, Kelvin pursued an engineering degree in college because it could lead to a lucrative career. But the sudden passing of his mom drove him down a path of introspection and self-discovery. And what he discovered was software engineering wasn’t for him.
Listen in as he tells Jonaed how he grew in the midst of grief and is now the CEO of Loocrum, a performance marketing company for direct-to-consumer brands that’s generated over $2.6m in sales.
Want to get in touch and/or support Kelvin?
Loocrum
Want to get in touch with NoDegree?
Transcript for NoDegree episode 48 with Kelvin Lau
[0:00:00]
Jonaed: Welcome to the 48th episode of the No Degree podcast. Today's guest is Kelvin Lau. He’s the founder of LOOCRUM, a performance marketing company for direct to consumer brands. Kelvin went to the University of Waterloo but he didn't finish. He worked as a software engineer for several companies including American Express. However, he just didn't like it. He tried different things and failed a few times. He brought a great course that taught him Facebook ads and marketing. Through trial, error and experience, he found something he loved and was good at. Interested in learning how to become an entrepreneur and making money early in your career?
Then you are in for a lot of great advice. Listen to Kelvin’s story and learn how you too can do it. Subscribe to our Patreon @patreon.com/nodegree. Every contribution is appreciated. This show is impossible without you. Let's get this show started. So today I have Kelvin Lau on the podcast. Can you give a brief introduction of yourself?
Kelvin: Yeah. Hey guys. My name's Kelvin. I'm 23 this year. I went to Waterloo to study computer science and now I went from tech to e-commerce and now I have my own performance marketing company. I'm the founder and CEO of LOOCRUM. We build and scale, luxury high-end fashion brands. I typically work with companies between $600,000 to $20 million in annual revenue and we help them double their revenue within two years.
Jonaed: Wow. That's interesting. You mentioned that you did go to college but you didn't finish. How did you go from that tech background to e-commerce? You've worked at several different companies, what inspired that change?
Kelvin: When I went into university, I knew nothing about what my program even was. Just because I come from an Asian culture and typically Asian parents want you to go for steady path route. Most of my family comes from a family of engineers and doctors and my mom just told me that, “Oh, you should be like your cousins since coming out of an undergrad for software engineering, it can make you $100,00 very easily.”
So I was like, “All right, let's do it.” Because I didn't really do too much research back in high school. So I went into university, did computer science for three years and then I was struggling but I was still getting by. It was until 2018 when that was probably my darkest and worst year of my life. When I was starting my third year of undergrad, I lost my mom. She passed away of a sudden heart attack just on the way, just visiting me over the weekend. That really hit me quite hard because she was probably the closest to me, family-wise. She's always been the go-to person when I talk about anything related to schoolwork or personal finance or any sort of thing, she would be my best friend.
Six months after that, I was really struggling. That was when it really hit me because it didn't hit me instantly. It hit me later on. I still took courses and still moved on with my life and then I started self-reflecting of my self-choices and what I was making decisions in life. At the time I sort of evaluated myself back in 2017, I was actually clubbing and partying, like any other college student, three or four times a week consistently. What I found out that that was actually just like a shell. I tried to make myself out there because I want to also improve my interpersonal skills and kind of get out of my comfort zone.
I felt like I was being someone that I was not the person that I didn't enjoy that lifestyle too much because -- it was a fun experience but I wanted to make myself numb. I want to make myself feel like -- since I didn't enjoy software engineering too much, I wanted to find an outlet and that was my only outlet with my friends.
Jonaed: Does anybody enjoy software engineering that much?
Kelvin: Well, my friends do and enjoy a lot. Some are very technical coders just by heart and they started programming at a very young age. I didn't really come from that background. I was more of that laid back student and going to Waterloo, it was a very -- I would say, it's sort of a very competitive and sometimes it could be a very toxic culture. So from that, I didn't enjoy it at all and I was actually looking for other ways on how exactly to make revenue or how exactly to fund my lifestyle that I wanted.
I've always wanted to become an entrepreneur but I never really knew which business model to fall. Typically, what Kevin Elyria would say in a broadcast, he talked about sometimes you got to do things that you hate to figure out what you do. Luckily, I was able to know quickly from working at different corporate companies that I did not enjoy software engineering, and I didn't want to continue for the rest of my life. So I started researching and like any normal person would, how will you make money? So I started in drop shipping. My first two or three sources really failed as a whole.
[0:05:01]
I lost like $5,000-$6,000 off the bat but I knew it was possible. I saw a bunch of people like, I guess, gurus or any sort of mentors online talking about like e-commerce and it's going to be the next big thing after retail.
So I really focused on work in school but I was still working on e-commerce to make my first dollar online. Once I really made my first dollar within 2019, I was like, damn, this is actually possible. It could be like a real life job. So then, I really dive deep into private label brands and I was able to manage from $0 to $60,000 for revenue in four months.
Then in 2020, basically, this is where I looked at myself. I was like, private label brands are great but might not be sustainable in the long run because some of the stuff that I was not able to control in terms of operational management, I didn't really know. Like if the products were defective or I had no control in my reach.
So then I was like, okay, let's focus on something that's more sustainable. I started to create more systems and processes for myself, SOPs and everything. That's where I really launched my first marketing firm to help other brands roll on a bigger scale. Now, here I am right now, and I'm pulling into five figures a month right now and we're about to hopefully aim for $100,00 per month by the end of this year.
Jonaed: Nice man. Congrats. What was your first taste of entrepreneurship? When did you realize it because obviously you started it in college, did you ever start it earlier, like in high school, either reselling things or thinking of things? How was that like?
Kelvin: No. No, never, never, never. Never thought about starting my own business because I was very sheltered as a kid and as an Asian household growing up, my mom only instilled studying 24/7 and also doing piano classes so I was already occupied. My schedule was already packed and I felt like I was living in hell. But then after, until university, when I was being exposed to so much ambitious people in the same areas, I was like, okay, cool. I should start looking into other options. Once I got burnt out of tech, that's where I found out about e-commerce and then drop shipping was my first actual business, I guess you want to call it.
Jonaed: So, what did you want tobe when you were in high school?
Kelvin: Honestly, I didn't know then. To be honest with you, I had no passions. I had no dreams. I didn't really think too much but like back into simpler times, we'll just go to school and come back and then try to score as high as possible. But I never really dive deep into researching every program.
Jonaed: So were you a good student in high school?
Kelvin: Yeah. I mean, I would get 90s, really tried my ass off but then in university you know how sometimes there's grade inflation? Like from high school to a university and some schools are much more lenient than others and my school was one of the schools that are very lenient and they focus more on sports. So when I went to university, I literally completely got destroyed.
Jonaed: Hmm. So it was like just a different level. It was just like, wow, I got to study so much harder. So, I know you're being really humble. You worked at a couple of companies. Do you mind sharing, like the type of companies that you were a software engineers/software developer before?
Kelvin: Yeah. Sure. Most of the companies I worked for is mainly front -- I got exposure to front end, backend and also full stack, quite a variety of different companies. Although I didn't work at too vague of an organization like Facebook, Google or any sustaining companies. However, I think that was good on my end because I was able to realize that I didn't really like it from the beginning. Starting out, I just wanted to get more experience and get my feet wet. I worked many different companies, when it started out marketing and advertising firms to education technology, Fortune 500 companies like American Express and financial services to IoT sensor verification companies and finally consulting companies.
That's where I realized that I should serve those clients more because that way it allows me to have a broader sense of taking on many projects at once.
Jonaed: So you realized that like, I don't really like this because you've worked at several different companies. Was there ever a point where you're like, all right, that's it. I can't take anymore. Or it was just like, hey -- You know, you keep working at these companies. You never truly feel like this is what you want to do. How has that process for you?
Kelvin: I've always believed in, like, you shouldn't go for what you're passionate about. You should go for something that is feasible. If you have the intelligence to do a specific program and it will give you financial freedom or financial capability, you should do it even if you hate it. Just because I believe that once you have that starting capital, then you can start reinvest it somewhere else.
So that's what I really thought about computer science. Just going into it, I knew that it was a great career and no matter what, I will still force myself with persistence and consistency to push myself through the process until the end.
[0:10:02]
So I knew that I'm going to keep working at this but when I come back a 9 to 5, I'm still gonna work, have a quick dinner and I'm going to work from 6:00 PM until like 2:00 AM like just learning different skills, trying to get outside of the box, thinking of creative solutions and creative ideas on how exactly to focus on other strings of income.
Until that worked out in terms of e-commerce and drop shipping, when I made my first dollar online, I never really gave up on tech whatsoever. Even though maybe I didn't enjoy it but I still focus on disciplining myself to actually get through the whole process until then.
Jonaed: So how did you learn these things? Did you watch YouTube? Do you buy courses, read books? What was your methods for expanding your mind?
Kelvin: Yeah, definitely start with YouTube videos, for sure, as a resource. Eventually I started reaching out to specific mentors after I got exposure on the internet. People started talking about it in Facebook groups. Facebook groups is also another way to build connections within the community of other people who have similar interests as you and are interested in learning the same topic as you.
So, basically in the beginning, I didn't really know too much of who's legit and who's not and in e-commerce and drop shipping, there tends to be a lot of groups, especially people who try to scam your money. To be fair, in the beginning I got scammed a lot, probably lost like a couple of thousands.
Eventually I found the right mentors and what I found about connecting with people, like if you want to learn off someone, the best way to do it is either you pay them money or you connect with them eventually, like naturally. So what I've found out about -- if you want to connect with real life influencers who might have huge engagement folders, like a 100,00 or whatever, you should definitely DM them and ask them like, “Oh, do you offer any consulting calls? I would definitely love to learn from you.”
Just devote your whole heart to them and expect nothing to come back. It just shows that you're very appreciative of their time and also you respect their time that you're willing to pay for it. Oftentimes that paying, either you get value from it or not, it just builds that connection.
Jonaed: Nice. Nice. Looking back, what would you have done differently in terms of avoiding the scams? Like now looking back, you can probably figure out like, okay, I got to watch out for this guy. This is similar characters. What are some red flags that you would advise people to look out for?
Kelvin: I guess I was very impulsive because in the beginning I was like, Oh, I know this is the thing. The first person I saw online, literally posting their results, I was like, oh, that guy's legit. He's making like $20,000 a month. Okay. I'm going to message him. But that doesn't mean like, I should have known from a computer science background, right? You could have inspected element and changed it on the front end.
I didn't really know that. Eventually I found out that these results were being faked, right? People would take these results from other feeds and then post it on their stories just to make it look like it's legit. And then they'll be like chilling at this like digital nomad lifestyle type of thing. That's a lot of beginners, we definitely get trapped because they know that, oh, there's huge potential in here but those are beginner mistakes that sometimes you can't avoid because emotions speak first then logic sometimes.
Jonaed: Okay. So a lot of the other ones, they tend to give the nomadic lifestyle. I made so much money. Look at this. I made a million dollars, whatever, right? They push all that stuff. In your experience, what do the real mentors do because there are some legit people who give you a lot of value. I mean, they cost some money but nothing too crazy. What do you find different about them in their models and their presentation?
Kelvin: So two things, they don't hard sell anything. They give more than they take. Second thing is also personality wise, they're much more easier to talk to. You can tell from their voice of tone and stuff and they're just much more genuine, like, they're like normal people.
What I found about sales in general, when I was making mistakes in the beginning, is that don't be a robot, be a human. That’s literally the best sales tip that I got from my mentor is like, be a human. Don't be a robot because you want to sound genuine. You don't want to sound like you're just some guy who got outsourced like a VA and then you create this really fake imagery of your feed on Instagram. That really helps to establish better partnerships and better credibility as well.
Jonaed: How did you find these Facebook groups? Did you search up drop shipping? How did you just start and did you go down the rabbit hole? How does that work?
Kelvin: Yeah, pretty much. I searched on Google, sometimes like e-commerce groups, Facebook groups to join, anything that popped up. I would literally type in e-commerce, the keywords for drop shipping, Shopify, any specific keywords related to e-commerce. Type into Facebook search and any results that come up, you basically take that and then you add, add, add.
[0:15:01]
Jonaed: How has this industry changed over time? I know there was a time, I think 2014 to 2017, drop shipping was easy, right? You get a store. Competition was low. I think in the last two, three years, competition has significantly increased. I think even the cost of Facebook ads, marketing for that area had just generally has shot up. Is that true? And what are some other things that you've seen?
Kelvin: Over time since Facebook ads has shot up it’s obviously because a lot of people are understanding what drop shipping is. And since it's such a low barrier and low capital of entry, typically a lot of beginners, even people who are working 9 to 5 jobs are still in school, jumped on board. Later what they really find out is that the Facebook journey is very tough because you often face with payment processor problems, getting held by PayPal once you start getting high amount of orders and you have to switch into third party payment processor. Second problem is also figuring out Facebook ads is a beast. Facebook ads is not an easy mission to overcome back in 2014.
And even earlier, earlier days of Facebook, you had a lot of real estate in terms of what you could control and how you would target audiences. Nowadays, because of privacy issues and also Facebook's getting sued by the FTC and also dealing with a lot of government in the US, that's starting to affect what Facebook can provide for their advertisers.
Back in the day, you will be able to target specific household incomes and specific statuses that it might be sounded a bit creepy, I guess. Some people might be like, oh, I literally saw this yesterday. Why does it popped up on my feed? Or like, I literally saw this, I was trying to buy this and now I'm getting a retargeting ad that it's offering a discount. It started getting pretty invasive into people's personal lives. So those factors definitely increased competition and made it much more hard to make it e-commerce and drop shipping.
One other thing is also back in day since the Facebook algorithm was very easily to be utilized and you could have different bots to push up your ads, engagement and ranking. Now it’s a lot more corrected with the AI algorithm and ML and stuff. So, it's much harder to produce engagement. My word of tip for beginners is focused on your creatives. Creatives is definitely the most powerful thing. It doesn't even matter what audiences you're targeting, the scaling budgets and everything. It doesn't really matter like who you target as long as the ad looks great and also the ad copy is engaging. That's what people look for.
Jonaed: How long was the course? You took a course on Facebook ads and how long was it?
Kelvin: Yeah. It was a six week mentorship program as well as a one-on-one bi-weekly call with the mentor. It didn't really help me too much. I felt like a lot of the stuff that they talked about was easily searchable but they just collect it into one whole category collection of information.
So that will be way easier to read and go through. It's like a curriculum type of thing. What I found about is mentors are helpful if you're a super beginner and you really want to learn the foundation of it. But if you want to learn about advanced topics, there's only so much learning in marketing besides understanding your market research and competitor analysis.
A majority comes from basically spending money. Once you start spending at high amounts of budgets at like $20,000, $50,000, $100,000 then you will start understanding how exactly to sustain that role is because spending $500 and creating a five X role as versus spending $5,000 and getting a 5X ROAS are two completely different things.
Jonaed: Yeah, and for the audience, ROAS is Return On Ad Spend, just for those of you who don't know. So if you spend $1, typically, I think it's like, you want to make about $4, right? That's typically a good amount of return because you want to get your money back. You want to have some, you want to pay for expenses you want to pay for the product.
So you mentioned you had a couple of stores that failed. Do you mind sharing what type of stores they were and looking back, can you share into detail why do you think you failed?
Kelvin: Yeah. Yeah. So back in the day I was like thinking, oh, wow. Drop shipping, the model is great because you get to test with so many different products without even ordering the product, right? You only ship to customers once there is a customer that is interested in your product. So then I was like, okay, how do I maximize my chances so that I get the most number of sales? As any beginner would think of, there'll be like, okay, I'll just do it very broad, you know, a very general store.
I'll have like a pet niche, an electronic niche, like a home, beauty and furniture and everything. Literally you're like Walmart, you're trying to sell everything. That's good if you're able to have a lot of customers already driven to your website but when you're a new store, it's like so many categories and so many creatives that you don't even know how to keep track of your product.
[0:20:00]
It's better to focus on a niche. It might be too small but once you know that there is a market fit for that product, then you start expanding further out. So you look at your product and you're like, okay, maybe I'm targeting socks and then unisex socks. Then you can start targeting males and females and start broadening it out from that one little product category that you first initially started.
Jonaed: So what were the stores that you started? It was just general all over the place?
Kelvin: Yeah. The first store was general all over the place. I want it to get much exposure as possible but that failed completely. But that was also in the electronics niche. So I was focusing on iPhone cables, iPhone cases, Android cases and the Android cables.
That didn't really make me too many sales. I did get a couple of sales but it wasn't enormous and I was not profitable. Second store -- and then what I later found out is that the CRO, in terms of Conversion Rate Optimization, which is things that are on your site that needs to be optimized, you have to AB test different creatives and different product descriptions. The buttons, if they're too big or too small for visual appearance to the user that has to be tested thoroughly as well. So that really affects whether or not your website will convert. Even though you might be optimizing for click through rates and you're getting a high amount of people driving from Facebook ads to your website, you still have to optimize for Add to Cart and initiate checkout on purchase, right? Every funnel during the way, you have to make sure that the customer experience is flawless and the website page load speed is as fast as possible.
Jonaed: So you use the Facebook ads, you drive the creative and you test different things on creative, right? That's the first battle. Then what type of site do you use? Shopify site?
Kelvin: Yep.
Jonaed: Okay. How did you learn Shopify?
Kelvin: I mean with the tech background, it's pretty simple. It's just drag and drop. But majority of the time, if you don't really know, you can search up on YouTube. We have a crash course and there's a lot of helpful resources online, or you can join Shopify groups on Facebook. It's pretty easy once you get your hands wet and also you're in the trenches.
Jonaed: What are the other mistakes that you sort of made? You mentioned you tried to do things general. You had the college phase where you were trying to make up for something. What are some other mistakes that you've made that you kind of look back and it's like, I wasn't doing the right thing or I could have done things better.
Kelvin: I think our relationships with people, that's a big one in terms of friendship and stuff. A lot of times I would be avoidant to face the actual, real problem of what I was doing. Sometimes I would just tend to be ignorant about it and try to avoid problems instead of figuring things out there in then on the spot.
So communication is key. If you thoroughly communicate with others, I'm pretty sure that would save so many marriages and they wouldn't have the divorce in general. You know? In terms of relationships and friendship and also family, that applies thoroughly in my lifestyle a lot because there's a lot of times that I've been putting myself in a very awkward situation where I had to either ghost someone or they ghost me. It’s very awkward or there's a lot of tension.
We don't typically directly face the situation and we just leave it, hopefully one day it figures out. I think that that was a big problem back then. Now I try to be much more transparent. I don't really try to hide anything as well. I guess genuine is definitely the biggest thing I learned in sales. You want to be a true person. You don't want to fake everything.
Jonaed: How did you learn sales? Again, resources, books, like where did you learn that?
Kelvin: Yeah. So I definitely bought my mentor scores for that. We have another to my program for that. It was just a one-on-one mentorship and that really taught me exactly how to create systems, how to create processes, how to create SOPs, which is Systems of Processes. Basically it’s a documentation of specific little actions that. For example, onboarding, billing system. Also how to outreach, how to close to the clients, how to even land clients.
Those are a process that you have to create for yourself that is replicable, right? So when you create systems, that is what brings you money. Systems could be replicated and outsourced or start to hire for people. Because once you take on an employee or a contractor, they have to look at something that is easily trainable and typically people go through these little subs in your organization. So I think that really helped me a lot in terms of understanding a strong concept of what exactly is operational management. Because from an engineering perspective, I don't learn any of that. What we learned in school is technical knowledge of algorithms. Like how do you even create old key, which is object oriented programming for those who don't know, how to create best practices of writing code.
[0:25:01]
So very low level stuff that we don't really know in terms of high level strategy on how exactly to run a company and how to manage all these moving parts within the organization.
Jonaed: That's good. Now, obviously you don't make all the mistakes, right? You did a lot of things right because a lot of people, they still, despite getting mentored, despite doing that. What are some other things that you kind of see that people mess up on that you were able to avoid? You know, I've seen people, they buy course after course, they try and try and they really just don't get it for whatever reason. What are some things that you kind of see people repeatedly do and it's holding them back, especially now in 2021?
Kelvin: I think the biggest two things is, one is, they spent too much time banging their heads on the same brick wall and they don't understand when to actually pull out and when to start doing something differently. Because a lot of times when you buy courses, they're from a mentor or someone who's looked highly upon and you sometimes regard this person as like, oh, he's like the God, you know, like he's the Jesus or something but in marketing it’s like what works for you might not work for someone else.
It's about applying all the little, little details that you learn as you go and you formulate into one full equation that were specialized for you. I think that that helps a lot in terms of thinking outside of the box and sometimes don't be pinned down onto -- like you have to follow someone's path just because they said so. Second thing is also understanding when to meet the right people. As I mentioned before, Facebook groups is a great way of finding yourself and connecting with others who are similar minded to you. Sometimes you just have to be very aware of other people who are trying to scam you so make sure you do your research, do your due diligence, search them up on Google, make sure that they have proper reviews.
And also the last thing, the third thing that just popped up to mind is taking action. Knowledge is knowledge but at the end of the day, if you don't use it, it's still in your head and you don't really know it. I would recommend doing it. Don't bother figuring every single little step of the way. Coming from an engineering perspective, that was my biggest roadblock. I started panicking about little details on my website. Like this is a website domain. Good. What brand or logo should I pick out? You know, like you're so stuck up on professionalism and that is what stops you from succeeding because you think way too much and sometimes you start to doubt yourself as well so it’s much more doing than actually thinking.
I also think that, in terms of what ifs. Like a lot of people will ask, well, what if this client thinks that my site doesn't look professional? What if do I even need a website? Do I even need this or that? Don't bother thinking all of the what ifs. Don't think about worst case scenario, just do it. Eventually problems will start coming up and you just got to figure it out on the spot. It's kind of funny how your mindset works as well because subconsciously sometimes going from a corporate 9 to 5 job and let's say you hear people saying that you want to make $50,000 or $100,00 a month, it kind of sounds like very ridiculous because you see it as if like how are you going to make $1.2 million as like $100,000 a month agency? That's not how you should be thinking things. You shouldn't be segmenting month by month because a business is exponential. A business is not stagnant every single month.
You have ups and downs that you have to face along the road and you just got to figure it out during that. Once you really want it, you'll always find a solution to make it there or you will find the right person to help you along the way.
Jonaed: Now,how did you end up sticking to performance marketing? You obviously started in the drop shipping area. You're one of the few that I kind of see focused on the performance marketing area. You kind of realized drop shipping for whatever reason you don't want to do it. How did you figure out like, hey, performance marketing is where you want to stay?
Kelvin: I wouldn't say that that is something I want to stay. The reason why I transitioned over is just that I didn't see drop shipping as a sustainable income. It's good to test products and understand foundational concepts of marketing but performance marketing is where I'm able to juggle with way different work projects and invest myself in mission driven founders that I want to be part of their mission as well to succeed. So I like to invest myself in all three brands that I only believe that will succeed. I don't even bother reaching out to people that have no potential or they don't really have a set in stone vision of how it's going to look like in 12 months.
When it goes back to your question, it's kind of like why I decided to go into performance marketing is that it has the most similarities of where I came from a technical background. So from a technical background, we often look at best average, worst case scenarios as cases, and also analyze specific metrics in terms of like, is this scalable? How do we build systems and processes in place so that we can scale this to a bigger scale for other companies?
[0:30:09]
So that is where I got my interest in terms of like, I really love service delivery for these brands. First of all, I believe in what they do. Second of all, I love working with fashion brands as my hobby and my passion and that really drives me every single day when I wake up in the morning.
So basically helping them go through the process of how to get them to the next up, because a lot of these business owners are successful themselves and they already made great accomplishments. It's just that they need the extra push. Understanding from a KPI standpoint and understanding how to analyze with very minimal data is what I really interest because with a software engineering background, I love big data. They did it analysis. Maybe not really the super low level technical details but I do really want to understand how to make engaged high-level decision-making based on very little data and I'm able to extrapolate these data in future.
Jonaed: Let's kind of take it back. When you were in the software engineering and you kind of saw these people doing really well or doing a lot better than you because, whatever, it came easier, how did it make you feel? And how did you get over that?
Kelvin: I just told myself that from day one that there will always be someone better than you. No matter what you do in life, there will be someone better than you and you just got to eat it up. You got to suck up your ego. Sometimes people will be naturally smart at one thing and it doesn't mean that you're stupid. It just means that it might not be right for what you're currently doing but don't get sucked into it. It really hits a lot of people's mentalities in terms of like, oh, I'm not too good enough for this cohort in engineering class. Or I can't compete with my peers. Don't feel the need to compare yourself with others because that's just going to make you feel worse and you're not going to accomplish more things in life.
That's also going to be slowing you down in terms of creating more friction for yourself. What I've found works best for me is that focus on the main tasks that you're currently doing. You know that you're not going to be an expert in it because maybe you're just not too technical. In my case, I just started focusing on a different skill, finding a skill level, or finding a different skill that produces cash and also being super good at that skill. Just find something that you're passionate about and just nail it in every single aspect of that subject. Think about how to combine the current skills that you have with your expert skills and once you combine those two, you can definitely dominate that niche.
Jonaed: What are some trends you see in the future of Facebook ads and drop shipping? Because that's an industry that's changing so fast and it's a very hot industry, right? Every time I meet you on the clubhouse app and you always see those things on drop shipping. And it's funny because I always get a lot of people who were like, I don't reach out to anyone to be on my podcast. In the drop-shipping space, because I know there are so many who can really fake things, right?
Just like you said, you can fake the numbers, you can fake the screenshots and that you make money off the courses then you use that but the people are under you don't really get the results. What trends do you kind of see in the future?
Kelvin: Trends in the future, I definitely think that once IOS 14 update comes out with the Apple update, it will greatly affect Facebook ads and that will definitely have a huge hit on drop shippers. So for drop shippers, like right now, I would suggest them to build a community because typically when you do drop shipping, you don't have a community, you don't have loyal customers or repeat buyers coming through your website. All you have is just newly acquired customers that are impulsive buyers that just saw your ad and they want to purchase there and then.
Drop shippers typically don't care about customer retention. It typically don't care about optimizing for CPA. They only care about how exactly do I scale my -- as long as I get two or more purchases on this specific asset, I'm going to start doubling down on this ad set and start doing all of that, add structure and stuff like that.
Definitely, if you don't want IOS 14 to hit you that hard, with the lack of data that Facebook will be able to monitor on a daily basis anymore, make sure that you build a community and find customers who will be engaging and maybe a Facebook community that you create, or this score that you create so that you can still connect with your customers on a personal level and they will still come back to your website to purchase.
Jonaed: What would you say was your biggest accomplishment so far? You're young but what stands out? Where are you most proud of?
Kelvin: What it is like getting through the things that I hate. So piano, I didn't like at all until the last level because the whole time through my piano journey, my piano teacher didn't believe in my skills and he didn't let people go out in the real world and get hit by very tough piano examiners.
[0:35:05]
So he taught me like, “Look, this is reality. You're shit, man. You got to figure out your skills and eventually once you're good enough, then I will put you in the real world and you can start competing against people,” which in the last, last level I was able to do. And I started winning like first, second place and constantly every single time when I go on competition.
So that was a great motivator for me and understanding, getting through the things that I hate allowed me to understand what is consistency, what is persistence and what is discipline. My second proudest accomplishment is also computer science even though I did not finish but basically that whole learning curve made me able to understand technical abilities.
Technical goal is very important because it allows you to think what is feasible and what is not feasible. It really clears you up in terms of what is a dream and what is actually sustainable because Kevin O'Leary also said that if your business is not making traction within three years, it's just a dream and it's just a hobby.
But the truth about business is how do you make your CPA costs lower than your lifetime value? Often a lot of times just burn themselves out and you burn all your capital out, just making sure that you get sales but you're not profitable and you don't get viral traction. That is the biggest mistake that a lot of new beginner entrepreneurs make in their business career status. The reason why a lot of businesses fail.
Jonaed: Now what's like the typical salary range for both the industries? Like what's for the software engineering roles, what's a normal salary for that, for those types of roles that you had, if you don't mind sharing, what's the range?
Kelvin: In terms of the positions I worked for?
Jonaed: Yeah, positions you had or positions similar, what's the range that you kind of see?
Kelvin: Typically rally, I didn't really go for like the Fang company. So media companies still pay decently. Well, roughly around like $25 to like $40 an hour for internship positions. By the way, they're all internship positions, not full-time but I have seen rare cases if you work at Big Four or like Fang or HRT companies, they pay over $70 to $100 an hour.
Jonaed: For internships?
Kelvin: Yeah.
Jonaed: Wow. That's crazy. Now what about for drop shipping? It goes all over the place, right? So what's the drop shipping that you kind of see is normal?
Kelvin: Drop shipping is normal, it’s typically people are around $10,000 to $30,000 with profit margin of 30%. That is typically the average industry standard. A lot of people are not able to scale it further than that because they don't understand how this customer retention work. A lot of people focus only on the customer acquisition and only limit themselves to one channel.
Jonaed: Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. So the successful drop shippers, they focus on multi-channel. They build a brand, they build that community to break past that $30,000 a month range.
Kelvin: Correct. Correct. So, initially drop shippers would definitely test out a product, make sure there's a market fit for it before they start investing an actual inventory or warehousing and stuff like that making sure that you have a great product. You would actually order the product from the manufacturer. Investigate that there's no flaws in the product making sure that it's not defective before we actually send it to the customer.
Because when you start to create a brand, your customer success, and also in terms of your reviews and stuff mattered the most and the feedback score, you definitely don't want to have that under four out of five. Once you get below that, you're pretty much not worthy. To be trustful….
Jonaed: You’re untrustworthy.
Kelvin: Yeah, basically just don't fall under four or five.
Jonaed: Over the years, you know, you've worked with various people. You've worked with various clients, how would they describe you?
Kelvin: I think, I mean, they would describe me as very genuine and I guess I try to come off as like -- there's only been 11 months since I've worked with these fashion brands, but typically people like the transparency that you give them and the honesty.
It matters the most because it's better to give them the hard truth in terms of what they're currently doing wrong but still making sure that you're doing it in a professional manner. Just because typically founders are caught up with what they really believe in, what works and what doesn't but that's always their gut instinct.
From a marketing side perspective and performance marketing, we only look at the numbers and the KPIs and oftentimes what I see a lot of founders make mistakes is that they sometimes think that specific creatives or specific products might sell better than others. But at the end of the day, it's kind of like what do you think are winners might become dogs and the dogs will become winners. So make sure that you definitely test out every single possible component of your funnel and your products to make sure that you don't have yourself any outage, any revenue that could be lost from it.
[0:40:08]
Jonaed: Now, what are your future goals? You're young, you're just getting started. What are your future goals? What do you want to accomplish in the future? What are some future projects that you're looking for?
Kelvin: Yeah, for sure. So right now I'm just planning to nail down my service delivery, give great results from my clients. Typically I don't really work too many clients at once. Typically I want to be between a five to 10 client range. Just a boutique firm that I really focus and believe in their brands. I don't want to over fill myself with too many work and too many clients then it starts to become a mess once you can't deliver results.
I don't want to become a big agency or whatsoever. I just want to give myself that. Once I hit the $100,00 mark per month, then I'm going to reinvest some of my capital back into creating actually sustainable brands. And one of the brands is actually a personal fashion line. I'm planning to look into luxury high-end apparel brand. There's not a lot of brands out there that actually source rare raw materials and actually make it hand by hand. A lot of it is just like being shipped elsewhere from another, for example, China, or Hong Kong and it's already being made and they just slap their logo onto it.
A lot of people don't really focus on the logistics and understanding. It’s the product that they don’t get like does the sizing. Everything correct. So one model that I look up greatly upon is AKINGS New York. He has an amazing brand, he's 23 years old and he started out sewing his own clothing and then eventually led into a multi-million dollar business. He focuses on J shaped denim jeans. Basically he saw a gap in the market and his friends shared it on Reddit and it just blew up and it just went viral from there. I definitely wants to create another brand that is for influencer marketing because that's actually popping in 2022 and beyond because a lot of influencers are in it where celebrities are starting to utilize Instagram to start monetizing all of their followers and also producing a personal brand for themselves.
I definitely want to have like a viral trend that if I could create anything unique would be great. And then using those three brands, I had planned to reinvest into creating a tech company once I'm in my 30s. And then using that tech company, I'm going to reinvest into a VC fund. So in other words, a venture capital fund where I'm able to write checks to high growth potential startups in the D2C space. So such that my goal from $250,000 to $2 million depending on do they have a lot of potential. I want to see them grow because I've been in the trenches previously and I just want them to succeed and build great brands for the alpha generation.
Jonaed: Niceman. I look forward to following your journey. I definitely see you accomplishing. I mean, you're starting off great and I definitely see you keeping up the path. So how would people get in contact with you?
Kelvin: Yeah, sure. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, just send me a request. If you want to connect with me, I'm very happy to share any value or I'm very transparent in terms of what I can offer to you guys. Also, Instagram is great too. I try to keep myself on the low key, like publicity type of thing but I'm pretty active on social media so you can reach me on Instagram as well.
Jonaed: So I'lldrop those links in the show notes. Thank you so much for sharing all that knowledge, sharing your experience and kind of just being raw and vulnerable and kind of sharing the story. I wish you the best and I know the audience got a lot of value out of this episode.
Kelvin: Cool. Sounds good. Thanks a lot for your time.
Another great episode. Thank you for listening. Hopefully, this information was valuable and you've learned a lot. Stay tuned for the next episode. This show is sponsored by you. No Degree wants to remain free from influence so that we can talk about the topics without bias. If you think this show’s worth a dollar or two, please check out our Patreon page. Any amount is appreciated and will go towards making future episodes even better. Follow us on Instagram or Snapchat at No Degree Podcast. On Facebook at facebook.com/NoDegreeInc. If you want to personally reach out to me, connect or follow me on LinkedIn @jonaedIqbal, spelled J-O-N-A-E-D, last name, I-Q-B-A-L. Until next time, no degree, no problem. Nodegree.com.
“Yes. You got no degree. No problem. No problem. Any problem we can solve them, we got this. Linked Insomnia keeps us evolving. We’re growing in the knowing. The wisdom is flowing. If you did, you know, now you know where I’m going. If you did, you know, now you know. Let’s sing that again everybody.”
“No degree, No problem. Any problem, we can solve them. Linked Insomnia keeps us evolving. We’re growing in the knowing. The wisdom is flowing. If you did, you know, now you know where I’m going. No Degree, no problem. Any problem we can solve them.”
“Linked Insomnia keeps us evolving. We’re growing in the knowing. The wisdom is flowing. If you did, you know, now you know where I’m going. Yeah”
[0:46:00] End of Audio