I believe starting a business is the fastest path to building wealth.
So, in my first attempt to get “wealthy” through experimentation I’m going to see if I can build a successful business selling physical products on Shopify.
I’ve seen the success people are having selling on Shopify and Amazon and I really just want to see if I can do it. Are people really creating products, marketing them, scaling, controlling their own time, making loads of money, and living the life of their dreams? Or, am I falling victim to extremely effective marketing and being sold a pipe dream so that I’ll pay for courses from the gurus?
Don’t really know the answer, but I’m going to throw the idea against the wall and see what sticks!
Why Physical Products?
There are probably 1000s of different ways to get up and running with a successful business, so why choose physical products?
A few factors came in to play for me when deciding to sell physical products:
- Can be scaled independent of time. The number one goal in starting this particular business is to create something that has the potential to generate increasing cashflow without increasing the time invested in the business. With a physical product, once the target market is identified, the idea is validated, manufacturers are sourced, and you’re able to take sales and deliver the product, there’s not much additional effort required to sell 1000 units vs. 10, but the income significantly increases. And, if the product is good, there’s no reason it can’t run on autopilot or with very minimal effort in perpetuity. If you’re familiar with The 4-hour Workweek, the goal here is to create a muse.
- Relatively quick and easy to test an idea. Tools like Shopify and ClickFunnels make it very easy to set up a website or landing page with your product idea, send some traffic to the site, and measure the kind of response you get to see if the product is worth investing more time and capital in. I also considered an information products business, but after some research (and one previous failed attempt), it takes quite some time to build up enough content and traffic to produce meaningful income. An info products business also feels like it would take longer to separate income from time than a physical products business.
- Opportunity to learn. I’ve always wanted to know how something goes from an idea to something on a shelf in a store or a listing on a website that people buy. Creating a physical product feels like the most tangible way to learn design, prototyping, manufacturing, and distribution skills and terms. If the brand I create is a massive success or a complete failure, I’ll walk away with some very applicable skills.
- I just think it’s really freakin cool. I’d be lying if I said part of this decision didn’t come down to me thinking how awesome it would be to take an idea and turn it into something tangible that can be held in your hand.
Why Shopify?
Shopify is a commerce platform that allows anyone to set up a store and sell their products online or in person.
There are a number of different ways to sell physical products, but I chose Shopify after seeing the success some big brands are having on the platform and the relatively low cost of entry. Brands like AllBirds, Fashion Nova, and Gymshark are all on Shopify and you can get a store with products for sale up and running for as little as $30 a month.
I could have also chosen to sell on Amazon through FBA and spared myself the time to set up my site and some of the monthly costs, but the goal here is to create a brand and this is much easier with your own site. With your own site, it’s much easier to actually “own” the customer than it is with Amazon. You can “own” reviews, email addresses, and communication with the customer on your own site, but Amazon truly owns all of those when you sell on their platform.
The Experiment
Goal: Can I build a physical products brand on Shopify that’s doing 1 million dollars a year in revenue in 1 year. (This may seem like an extremely lofty goal, but I started this journey before I decided to document on this site. You can see where I’m starting from and how I got there here. Also, reading 12 Months to 1 Million has me convinced that I can get there.