My Uncensored Opinion On Starting a Shopify Business

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Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
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once again it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

Jonathan: You are listening to List Building Lifestyle. Welcome back to another
edition with your man, The Prince, King, Czar, Sultan of Solo Ads, Mr. Igor
Kheifets.

Igor: Big daddy.

Jonathan: Big daddy? Man, I forgot the most important one.

Igor: One day, one day, my student, you shall get it right. I have faith in you.

Jonathan: I will keep working at it because I’ve got grit.

Igor: Good one.

Jonathan: So what do you got for us today, Igor?

Igor: So check this out, now my brother calls me up and he says, “You know, I’m
thinking of changing professions. I thinking of getting out of what I’m doing
right now and I think of basically getting into Shopify.” And as you know
Jonathan, Shopify has been the most recent bright shiny object in the internet
marketing space. Like everybody’s a Shopify guru, everybody’s a Facebook ads
expert, everybody knows the secret blueprint to find, you know, the ideal source
on Alibaba and then resell their product at 20 times the price using the free fly
shipping model or some crazy crap like that, and then basically build a business
where you don’t own any inventory, where you don’t own the audience and where, you
know, you’re chasing the fads and hoping to hit one product out of ten to make you
a little bit of money before it dies out and you’re off chasing products again. So
anyway, that’s to sum of the business model anyway. So my brother calls me up he
says, “I want to get into Shopify. What do you think about it? As somebody who
understands, you know, internet marketing, I just want to get your advice before I
invest into it.” I’m like, “Well, before to share what I what I feel about Shopify
and how you guys know how I feel about it, can you let me know why? Like why
Shopify? Why this particular business model?” And he says, “Well, I wanted to get
into Shopify because it seems like very easy and fast business I can put together,
doesn’t require a lot of money to get in.” And so this is such an incredible
misconception. Of course my brother isn’t to blame for feeling that way because
that’s how Shopify is sold. In fact, that’s how everything is sold. The easiest
thing in the world, the fastest thing in the world, start without money, no money
down. Whatever. Everything’s supposed to be free, low cost, you know what I mean,
like the market seems to like jump on these things like hot bonds every six
months, it’s just a different trend because eventually everybody learns that it’s
not that easy, it’s not free and takes lot of money, a lot of time, so you got to
sell something else. And Shopify is no different. Shopify, just like any other
business, is like an iceberg that’s floating around in the big vast ocean where
10% of it is above the surface and 90% of it is below the surface. And so the
people who are selling Shopify coaching or e-commerce coaching, they show you the
shiny stuff, the 10% and they over simplify the crap out of it to get you into the
coaching program. I’ll give an example. I decided to start a Shopify coaching
program, my name is Josh the Coach, and I need to get new customers. So how do you
explain to somebody what a Shopify is? Oh, I know, I’ll find a way to create an
elevator pitch. So Shopify business is a business when you source products from
suppliers and Alibaba or from China or from Amazon, and you sell these products
through storefront you build using Shopify in like two clicks, because it’s really
simple software at 20 times the price, and then all you have to do is just connect
the API of your Shopify store to the supplier, and run some Facebook ads to it.
That’s the entire business.

Jonathan: Wow.

Igor: Right? So see? I mean doesn’t it sound simple?

Jonathan: Sounds good. Yeah. I’m getting three of those.

Igor: Don’t you want to get in? Yeah, you should get in Jonathan, that’s really
simple. Even someone like me and you can do it. Somebody who doesn’t have a law
degree or a rocket science degree or whatever. I mean but that’s how it’s sold.
Right? Because how else do you explain Shopify? That’s how you explain it.
Nobody’s going to tell you that 10 products out of 9.. I’m sorry 9 out of 10
[laughter]

Jonathan: 10 products out of 9 fail [laughter]

Igor: Yeah [laughter]

Jonathan: [laughter] There’s the truth.

Igor: Nobody’s going to tell you that nine products out of ten don’t sell, and
that the one that does sell doesn’t necessarily have to be profitable. Nobody says
to you that everybody’s trying to launch some Facebook ads to their Shopify store,
so when they do and you do it at the same time, guess what? Your advertising cost
goes real high, so if you want to sell a $20 product, guess what? You’re going to
spend $10 to actually get the customer, and that means that if you’re not making
at least double that, then it’s even worth the time. So in another hypothetical
scenario that’s really common for Shopify stores, is that is high revenue, meaning
that there’s a lot of turnover, like lots of products being sold in than just the
economy keeps going forward. Right? There’s money exchanging hands, but the owner
does not keep anything because everything’s tied in the production. Right? Nobody
tells you that if you don’t have a profitable Shopify store, you need to build a
list, you need to have a funnel with like five different products, you need to
sell something that costs more than $20, you need to be smart about it, and need
to treat it like a real business. You to market yourself and to build a brand, you
need to choose the right product, and here’s the kicker, as soon as you’ve done
all that and you succeed, which you are like one out of like 10,000 people of
course, then as soon as that happens and somebody pays attention, they knock
everything that you’re doing. They’re literally going to the same supplier,
sourcing that same product, knocking off your entire store design, call it just a
slightly different sounding name and run the exact same Facebook ads, the exact
same Facebook audience that you do.

Jonathan: Ouch.

Igor: And guess what happens? None of you make money. Neither you nor him. So
that’s Shopify. But whoever’s selling your Shopify would never say that. They’re
not going to say that because they need to sell you some Shopify coaching to make
actual money. I know this one guy, I don’t the personally know him, but I know of
him and I’ve been studying him lately, I’ve been hearing about him, who’s making
about, I don’t know, 15, 12-15,000 dollars a month on Shopify, but he’s making 30
grand a month selling Shopify coaching.

Jonathan: Oh, God.

Igor: Why? Because it’s just more profitable and easier to do when there is higher
margins. Selling information and services always, will always be better than
selling e-commerce stuff, because e-commerce comes with a hard cost, and selling
his time expertise and, well supposedly the material, of a documenting what he’s
doing…

Jonathan: IP.

Igor: With Shopify stores… Yes. I mean of course he’s not showing everything
he’s doing because otherwise he’d be creating his own competition. That’s how that
usually works. So he’s just making a lot of money selling information. And I mean
all the power to him.

Jonathan: I salute him.

Igor: He’s smart, obviously. But Shopify is not easy. E-commerce, not easy. Solo
ads, not easy. Facebook ads, not easy. Catching a trend, YouTube ad is not easy,
AdWords isn’t easy, and anything podcasting isn’t easy, nothing is easy if you
truly get down in the nuts and bolts of it. If you’re only looking at 10%, the
cream, you’ll always see how easy it is, how someone is making a ton of money, but
you get down, like you just take a peek behind the curtain, you see all the
problems that that person has to deal with, you’d be like, “No. No, that’s not
worth it. You know what? I’ll stick to my day job, I’ll make my two grand, but at
least when I get back home in the evening I will not have to think about my work
at all until the next morning.”

Jonathan: So what did your brother mean when he asked you about Shopify, and he
was thinking about investing? What was the investment part?

Igor: Well obviously you got to buy the Shopify thing, you probably want to buy
some Shopify course for $30, you’d need some Facebook ads money. So he basically
thought that… I mean again, it’s only because it was sold to him that way and
he’s like one of millions of people that think that way. Like I met a bunch of
these people by the way, at the quick funnels event, because a lot of the quick
funnel guys, they are Shopify and e-commerce people.

Jonathan: Oh, yeah?

Igor: Yeah, I mean it’s a good thing because then they know how to build funnels.

Jonathan: Right.

Igor: And that’s actually how you make a lot of money with Shopify stores, you
build product oriented funnels. So anyway, I met these people and a lot of them
were just dabbling with that thing, they got in because they thought it was going
to be fast and easy and cheap, but they’ve since spent thousands of dollars and
they’ve been in for like a year or two years and still not making anything. Again
just like people in every single other industry, every single thing. Just last
week, I had my VIP call day, where I have calls with my VIP members. I was on the
phone with this guy, I’m not going to mention his name, his real name, let’s just
call him like Frank. And basically I have some notes here in front of me and you
can see, just so you can see Jonathan I’m not bullshitting you. Okay, here’s the
notes.

Jonathan: There’s real writing on paper, alright.

Igor: Yeah. So he started six years ago, and he wanted to become an affiliate
marketing, he was selling click ad products. Ever since he hasn’t gone full time.
He made less money than he spent, he’s now selling health insurance, that’s what
he’s doing. He’s a great salesman by the way. Works pretty much straight up
commission, and now he’s getting even to the crypto stuff. So and then one of the
previous episodes I actually spoke about how there’s a new trend in the industry
and how it’s going to make a lot of people rich, the crypto biz ops, now that
China has come incorporated Bitcoin into its economy, all the sudden people are
becoming more aware of Bitcoin, and they want to jump on the opportunity to make
more money with Bitcoin, and since people don’t really understand how it all
works, there is now business opportunities that offer coaching and training on how
to buy Bitcoin, how to trade it. They invite you to become a part of a mining
community, because now you have to have farms of computers, too, to mine for
Bitcoin, and stuff like that. So he’s getting into it. Now will he succeed with
this, I don’t know. But my point is that he’s been trying for six years and still
hasn’t succeed, even though he’s a bright fellow. Okay? So in anything, in any
business endeavor if you will, like nothing is cheap, nothing is ever going to
easy, nothing is instant. Nothing, nothing is ever what it sold to you as.

Jonathan: Alright, I’m going to turn it back around to you. You’ve got different
products, you’ve got different offers, you have different services. Is that one of
the levers that you pull on when you’re selling it how easy it is? Is that
something that you actually use in your marketing, and if so, how does that play
out when you deliver?

Igor: Well of course, of course I played that my method or strategy is going to be
simpler than other methods. And the way it plays out is instead of just saying,
“It’s easy and it’s instant and it’s the best thing since sliced bread.” Which is
a pure hype, right? I mean not much hype in the terms of lies, but hype in terms
of like blowing something up, really just making it into this my grand
bigger-than-life thing, which is a strategy in and of itself, not my favorite one
but still it is a strategy. Gary Halbert used to love to use and it. And it does
actually happen to work with a business crowd. I prefer to focus how my stuff is
faster, easier, cheaper than other things. So for example, instead of just saying
that my traffic is better, or my traffic is the best, what I do is I show a case
study of my numbers from Facebook ads, how much it costs for me to get a lead, and
then I show the same case study done with my own traffic source and then I say,
“Here. This is cheaper, this is faster, this is better, this is easier than this.”
So rather than just saying, “This is the best thing ever.” Which of course it can
be, because there is always going to be something that’s better in some way, shape
or form, because there’s… I mean today the society, the business world, the
marketplace is built in a way where we want to have dozens of choices for every
problem that we want to solve. Now instead of just like moving around, so moving
around I have my legs, I have a bike, I have a motorbike now, I have a car, I have
this thing, the gyro thing that has no handles and you just kind of lean in
forward and it goes. Right, that thing. I could get a bike with an electrical
engine. If I want to buy a car, I can buy a diesel car, gas car, an electrical
car, a hybrid car, a truck, a tractor, etc. So for everything there is choices,
and each person will pick what’s right for them. So while I sell my stuff, it’s
not going to be right for everybody, so I need to sell it from an angle that will
attract the kind of people that I want to attract. And again, that is why it’s not
effective to say, “This is the best thing ever. What’s effective is to say, “So
here’s an option you have.” If you want to draw in new customers you can use
Facebook ads, but here are the problems with Facebook, and here’s how none of
these problems will bother you if you use my stuff.” So this makes way more sense
because now the comparison point, the anchor is Facebook ads. So anytime you’re
selling say business opportunity, why is it that a lot of the people that you see
out there, they generate a lot of success by selling to people who are already
members of other business opportunities? Like if I was getting into business
opportunity market, besides setting up a cold traffic source of virgin biz up
seekers, I would also try and get some customers from other business opportunity.
I would literally go into other business opportunities, I’d even sign up if I had
to, and pay money to become a member to join the mastermind, to join the Facebook
groups, to join the Skype groups. And then I would try to get people to come in by
saying, “This program is okay if you want to do this, this and this. But this is
the kind of problem I ran into with this program. So I found that this program
right here does not have this problem, so I joined it, it’s much better.” And so I
know people who literally build their name, the name they built for themselves in
the business opportunity space and subsequently the business they built is purely
on this one strategy. They would go into Facebook groups and masterminds full of
people in other opportunities, and then they would like try to get them to come
into this other opportunity by blowing up the problems of that opportunity, and
let’s face it, every opportunity has some problems. Like every single one of them,
they’re never perfect, and that’s okay. Because when you join an opportunity, you
kind of have to take it with some salt, if you will like. You have to accept a
certain degree of problems that come with it. Just like when you choose a business
strategy, Shopify coaching, podcasting, right? Like you have to accept a certain
type of problem, and you should anticipate coming from it. Like say podcast,
right? If I wanted to become a podcaster and do nothing about podcasting for a
living, I’d have to for example accept the fact that I don’t need to record like
300 episodes a month, because I can’t do just one week to gain traction, I have to
be everywhere, I probably have to start several podcasts, I probably have to get
some podcasts going with other like experts together to get into their audiences,
I’d probably want to have some sponsors. So now I have to go and I have to chase
sponsors. I have to show them how big my audience is and stuff like that. So these
are the problems that you deal with if you want to be a pro podcaster like say
John Lee Dumas who says he makes money from podcasting, which of course, he’s an
affiliate marketer, and podcasting is just a way to drive traffic. But anyway my
point is this, everything that you’re ever going to do, no exceptions, will have
its own set of problems that are really uncomfortable to deal with and it’s up to
you to choose which problems are you willing to suffer through. Is it looking for
products or selling Shopify and looking for other products in a week because your
previous set of products kind of died off, because it was just a trend, or is it a
building a business that rolls around getting clients and working hard to get that
high ticket client for your business. So whatever that is, it’s up to you to make
that call, but don’t ever, ever, ever be confused by other people’s marketing.
It’s going to be difficult, it’s not going to be fast, and it’s definitely not
going to be easy.

Jonathan: Wow. There’s a lot to process there. I feel like one of the old shows we
did about what you’re willing to tolerate in business will go nicely with this
one, so I’ll have to try to dig that one up. Anything else you want to say as
we’re closing this one out, Igor?

Igor: Well a lot has been said. I just want to clarify something, I have been
bashing Shopify as a business strategy on this call. The only reason I’ve done so
is to make a point. Now, can you make money with Shopify? Yeah. Is the market
still rewarding people who get into Shopify as a business? Absolutely, the
e-commerce is exploding like crazy. Like crazy. In fact I’m thinking of getting
into e-commerce. But the point I was making is that don’t think that you’re going
to start a Shopify store with a few clicks, connect the API from Alibaba and all
of a sudden you’re going to make a ton of money. That is never going to happen. So
just want to clear that up.

Jonathan: Alright. So that is a wrap for another episode of List Building
Lifestyle, we’ll be back in your ear buds next time, thank you for tuning in.

Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle Show, make sure to
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one conversion tactic we share on the show might double your list and double your
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This is Igor Kheifets until next time we talk, have a good one.

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