Emma Reid is a 22-year-old Aussie Dropshipper who scaled her Ecommerce store to $560,000 in less than 8 months, pretty amazing!
Apart from being a Dropshipping authority, Emma runs a Facebook group called E-commerce Elves, where she teaches people how to run their eCommerce store.
Emma is also a fun person to talk with. Last week we had a conversation on her journey so far, common Ecommerce problems, and how to handle the stress of being a dropshipper, Here’s our chat;
1. Can you tell me a little about yourself and what you do?
My name is Emma Reid and I’m a 22-year-old Australian who’s spent way more time staring at a screen than I’d like to admit.
I’ve only ever had one job before, and that was as a receptionist- I worked as one for 6 months till I called it quits. Employment history doesn’t mean anything when you decide to take life into your own hands.
I made my first buck online when I was 16- I started with monetizing my Tumblr blog, then I moved to affiliate marketing. After that I did domain flipping, I also traded cat pictures for cryptocurrency, or I’d like to call it Crypto Kitties
I found real success with e-commerce – Shopify dropshipping through Aliexpress.
In 2016 I launched my first dropship store and reached 10k in sales. This validated the idea for me. After a while, I encountered a lot of problems with my supplier and lost all the money (and extra, to refunds)
2 years after this, In 2018, I came back strong with a new store and hit over $500,000k in revenue (30% net margin). I got burned out immediately after this and had to step back for a few months. So I guess you can say it’s been a bit of a roller coaster. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’m super excited to see where I can go from here. In 2019 and beyond, my goal is to explore places I haven’t mapped out before – like building up a million-dollar brand or two.
As well as putting myself out there and documenting the journey. Let’s take massive action and 10X it – thanks, Grant Cardone.
2. What inspired your love for Ecommerce?
Video games!
They inspired me to get into the online money making space in general. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with playing games and trying to master the economy and marketplaces in them. I just transferred that addiction – and the skills learned – over to real life.
When you think about it, life is very similar to a video game. And so is eCommerce.
So I like to keep the mindset of levelling up and fighting bosses
3. What are the greatest challenges you’ve faced so far and how did you overcome them?
The greatest challenge I’ve faced so far had to do with me being consistent and disciplined- Everyone wants to be their own boss, but they forget that being consistent is the hard part.
Being your own boss means that you set your own deadlines and schedules, and most importantly, stick with them.
Once you’ve achieved a bit of success, it can be very tempting to just kick back and relax. But if you do that for long enough, you’ll experience a standstill or worse, move backwards. I’ve had problems with all of this before, it slowed me down.
Burn Out
I reached a point in my dropshipping business where I needed to hire out some of my operations, I didn’t. That wasn’t the right choice- I was overwhelmed by so many business operations.
I let fear and pride get in the way.
You have to delegate when you grow. Doing everything yourself is one mistake you should never make.
Supplier Problems.
When scaling a dropshipping store you get so caught up in the sales and marketing operations that you forget the back end. That’s bad. A lot of your problems will come from there.
I’ve had my fair share of them; stock issues, order delays, and even suppliers completely disappearing.
The after-sale process is more important than acquiring a customer. Because without proper fulfilment, and a quality product, your business won’t be sustainable. This is something that a lot of new dropshippers don’t understand. But the attractiveness in the model is low startup cost and not having to touch the product. So I can see why. Long term you want to start white-labelling – either via an agent in China or importing bulk stock to fulfilment centres.
4. What words of advice would you like to share with anyone who’s facing struggle with their e-commerce store?
focus on the process, not the result.
This whole thing is a jigsaw puzzle. And you’re missing a lot of the pieces right now – especially if you’ve come straight from a 9-to-5 and have no experience in business or the online space.
No puzzle comes assembled. People can package them all up in a box for you (through courses and mentoring). But you still have to put it together yourself.
As you go along, you will find more of the pieces. You’ll start connecting chunks together. And it will get easier from there.
I started with the border edges of this eCommerce puzzle already laid out. Because I had pieces left over from other projects. So it was a bit quicker for me to fill in the rest.
But if you just keep going, learning, and trying to improve what you are doing you’ll have plenty of moments where things click into place.
PS: Even after you finish the puzzle, there will always be a new one to complete. This time, maybe you’ll try 1000 pieces instead of 200.
Another thing would be;
Don’t be afraid to share what you’re doing and ask for help. My real breakthroughs happened when I connected with people in facebook groups.
Networking is a powerful thing. It helps to discuss, brainstorm, share your findings, and see what is working for others.
If you want to join my group, it’s called eCom Elves – Where The Magic Happens
www.facebook.com/groups/ecomelves
Curious about the name? Everyone is capable of powerful things. Why wait around for Santa to gift you success? You’re the elf. Go and create it yourself 😉
5. What are your hobbies?
This is kind of a cop-out, but… working is my hobby. I get completely obsessed and lose myself when I work. I do have a life outside of that though.
I read a lot of books, play board games, and love to play with lego-like a little kid. You’ll also find me going camping, stargazing, and driving on the beach.
And it’s super important to me to do one thing that scares me every day. I keep track of that on my Instagram profile.
6. What’s your favourite book?
I would have to say The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson.
Success starts on the micro-scale. Every day, you’re making thousands of choices that affect where you end up in the future- they all add up. So to get where you want to go, you just have to take a close look at what you do every day. Then take more actions, and make more choices, that contribute to the end goal.
It made me realize that anything can be accomplished if you just break the goal down and continue to chip away at it. Success isn’t something that happens overnight. Success is found in the little choices every day – like in that little moment when your alarm goes off at 6 am. Will you shut it off and snooze until 11? (I was guilty of this for so long) or get up and go read a book?
One of those sets you up for success, the other sets you up for failure. And the beauty is that you have the power to choose.
You’re either moving up on the success curve or down on the success curve. There’s no in-between. If you get complacent and stop improving you are actually moving downwards on the success scale.
So always strive to Improve yourself (and your eCommerce store) by 1% every day.
You can reach Emma through these links;
Website: https://www.emmareid.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/realemmareid
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ecomelves
Instagram: https://instagram.com/realemmareid