7-Figures E-commerce Brands & A Digital Agency By 23

In this episode, we had chat with Shaun Tan our MVP of the day and his journey in digital marketing and e-commerce

Can you share about yourself, your background, what you do now?

Hey guys, my name is Shaun. I graduated from Monash and I majored in a degree economics and finance however after awhile I realized that although I don't think I can actually do finance I can't even do economics because I've failed many times and almost kicked up from my university for failing too many times so I said to myself "Okay, let me try something new, I don't think I can be a banker" then my parents said I should try marketing management. It really interests me so I took up a role in my unity of Unity of Student Association as the head of marketing, back them we called it the Publicity Officer so that one whole year we were given budget and with that budget to create student usage initiatives and we need to use that budget to like bring awareness to order like we could fill up every single event regardless of the school, regardless of the size. We managed to fill out so after that I know eh I think there's a mixture in Facebook marketing and also digital I would spend where a lot of business out there are not using.

So 2018 I came across right now my partner he said that a come about I've hired as a freelancer so back when I was in year two I l kinda came as a freelancer and I did nearby so we back there with the lead generation and also e-commerce that was when I just started barely knew anything and I just bring it. I did bring them a lot with great results but initially, I was like this is also what he told me tha push me for what is that I said Shaun I hire you right now and I really want to empower you because it's not so much about the skill. I know you're hungry for knowledge I know they're big with empowerment and we can provide you can push you the the next level so fast follow right now I think three years down the road we started you could say Agency but we just moving out officiants at the wall, we have tons of clients coming in and we have a wonderful team I'm growing a very young team all of it me some of my high school friends some of friends I met online playing games and a very small close community where we are going and fast so yeah that's body for how we started with digital for our agency. On the site, I also run E-commerce. I enjoy doing e-commerce so back then I used to scale a lot of electronic devices to sell electronic cigarettes in Malaysia and is electricity is considered quite grey because it's a lot of restrictions to it and it's not a lot of companies don't allow you a lot of copies as you do in a way around, it's not a video-based but on certain platforms where you can post and can still the sales so we measure, me and my team managed to scale multiple brands up to maybe from zero to six.

How was your life before the freelancing?

So before all that I was in university as I said and I tried digital marketing and so that if we can correctly spend a little bit of money let's say you spend 10 Ringgit on Facebook and we can fill up an entire room before it falls because it's like people be actually the top and we actually charge a post clubheads 1000 that's for example just yeah back there anyways like oh I think we can make a business out of this so after that I meant try to do something like drop shipping I did some flipping. I just mess around with Facebook ads, Instagram ads and we saw there were various but positive results so I say like oh my god that's really really bad marker over here, let me try to really go all the way here and make this book so I just felt like these are energy I used to say back then I wanted to stop trading I wanted to like manage hedge fund, manage funds for investors of unknown right I didn't get the chance to left so right now when clients was a citation if I give you ten hundred k I'll just thank you I'm gonna give you 1 billion how much money can you get back different for me so that way I still feel like I'm a marketing manager away so I feel I'm actually doing all these now still it's similar concept what I wanted to do yeah

What was your most insane returns?

5k per month and become a hundred K so that was why do crazy returns yeah because it's like I said it's really really intense like so much potential to and a lot of people are like flocking towards it right now especially during MCO and this long period but people don't know the right way the right methods to any signal when the FT there has to be matters they have to do stuff yes everyone but not everybody was succeed why me and my team our company succeed to actually bring results to our clients hey I put in effort winner time yes basically it's like a sinus time projector we can't actually find the optimal result and once we find what works we just go all in

Maybe you wanna share a little about your freelancing journey?

Yeah sure sure, initially I thought okay I wanted to post up some for some ice goes like man I want to but someone gets hungry right there so I said okay let me freelance for someone I did before I want to post a con on jobs free on Facebook forums or what not I My partner let's say that I come on freelance for me I say okay come let's try so many freelance you always you're you actually I would say end up K by European long beach but but you if you actually good you bring immense on optimal results for the client so that is how I will say freelancing box hello sorry yeah yeah I can kill you okay okay just go out and sell a outreach I'm very very passionate in doing something how are doing or three or almost and a very low-cost and I'll just bring in like I have so many friends like friends and families or even like outside that people say Sean I really want to try this and I can see the hunger passion in them and then like they like had a friend yesterday you said I if I really want details can I can you crying I can be second that oh it's not so simple to say a good come in I give you salary and then you because salary and all requires a long-term diamond so I said okay come in let's see how hungry you are I give you some projects we try we work together if you if it what's up great you can always be a partner we can own this what together so I will say freelancing this always a great start you start off freelancing at no is much more money rise more about experience more about building rapport with the person who you feel asking for and then just in future if you are great people will definitely take you it's about the way it's not long term right if you are doing full services. 

Can you share a little bit about omni-channel digital marketing I can bring all these different pools together?

So I will say okay there's this before we go to the conversion rate optimization thing or a funnel to work the funnel is basically the whole we are selling leads for you it's a funnel so the whole funnel has to be seamless and has to have a system if the funnel has no system in this say okay I want to do condo I want to get customers to sell something and I'll mainly go for the kill go for the sale how about the initial part like the awareness phase the nurturing phase you straight go over for the sales sometimes you don't work like that yeah so a funnel has to go from initially you do awareness let me take Hacker Collective different example since I love your fans yeah so I saw your co-founder Ming initially raised cannot be aware awareness is it hi guys and you target people are interesting programming hi guys yes then yeah here I come together if you a small group we want to share and teach I teach coding programming from staff development so that's awareness next in the next and its audience nurturing them and also closing the sales he said that if you guys are interested in 3k and and at end of the whole program you will be able to go out and get a job a lot of IT companies that people really see for you because you really have practical skills all you do is go out there and execute it's not so much like you need Steve a it's study three or four years and once it go you're like what I study no and I thought he rewrite so that that's your simple final to Stefano which I really really like and going to like what you say or immersion rate optimization of course familiar format CRO has a lot of technical aspect to it because at the back end of Facebook or Instagram or young Google you need to tweak online targeting demographics you didn't need to have a proper strategy you need to make sure that every single Technical expect is done right that is where that is where I I put a lot of time and effort to to to to study and make sure that I'm a master in you know else was everything like the whole crate if your images your videos autumn and the copywriting amazing in a smooth flow

What's a typical day like for you now with those back then?

Oh my god I meant like after MCO that started about two weeks ago right, weeks ago businesses are not doing well, I know and times are bad right but you're really thankful and grateful to have a lot of clients because right now I see clients are like on the last leg already, they say that we really really need some digital marketing to push and sustain our business if without that we all just died. So we can really feel a very heavy responsibility put on all our shoulders and we tons of clients coming in by begging us to pull out a miracle for them and all that so we've been working quite piously for the past two or three weeks trying to make sure that all our services are top-notch at the same time.

Internally we are a new company so I and my company have thing saying like "we work from 12AM to 12AM" because we need to set the system set the processors make sure the team is all in place like I tell them no politics no nothing anything wrong because when we growing we constant have issues coming up in and out yeah but a daily routine would be like I would wake up around 8-9AM get a breakfast then I'll just head for office so from like 9-1PM we have meetings discussions on like how we plan to carry forward because right now system is like super important to me. Then from 1-4PM I would either be meeting clients or carrying out the work like actually delivering the services for them, yes I like to manage business and all but I still strongly believe in my skills for media buy and advertisement so I still actively run campaigns for all my clients so that's what we do and drink maybe late like afternoon, we would just have a debrief and just chill and make sure that everything in check for the day and we will proceed with the next day, it's quite hectic actually because I have a lot of clients breaches here and there, meetings, interviews and all but it's good occupied.

So I read your post somewhere that you've won quite a bit of money when you're exploring Amazon FBA, mind to share with us how much?

So basically one of my first and largest investments into e-commerce was that I wanted to fully learn e-commerce and like really put myself into it. So what I did was I don't want to do drop-shipping because what you do is get a product from China and you run marketing behind it to show high GTP countries like America, Canada, and Australia and if someone orders, you ship it up from China to US. I didn't really want that because it's not a sustainable model so I was like okay let me do it different way, let me buy the products, warehouse it in Amazon and then I will run marketing dollars behind it.

So I think it was 2017 I was about 20 years old I put in almost about 80,000 Ringgit buying stocks so what I did was I went into the kids' niche, most western countries is compulsory for kids to sit on a car seat if they're below four years old and when they are in the car seat they always cry, they more here and there and it's quite annoying for the parents so I said okay any prior solution use this car seat put it on them and then they can play an iPad, they can eat, they can do drawings.

So I bought 80K of stock shipped it from China to America and then stored it in the Amazon warehouse. I created a website, and marketing on Amazon and I did all the fulfillment all the shipping, and all the tactics I know the whole flow of it from A-Z but there was a thing that I didn't factor it was that if I could do this everyone can do it, there's not much differentiation to it so after awhile I only broke even, I spent about 80K and got back on 70ish and yeah we lost a few but I learned a lot in e-commerce, I know the whole flow the whole process, no one can lie or cheat to me.

So when a new startup wants to do e-commerce email it my whole head I know and many tell me okay I'm having issues with logistics, okay I know this is a solution for you and that's a really good experience for me and right now still my product is still on Amazon tag about 50 units left, I just want to like sell it and totally forget about it.

So I think a lot of beginners who want to understand where do you even get this idea from, what technology stack that you used to build your payment? Maybe you could share with us a few?

I think maybe the team of this could be how you can actually start and do what I just did okay and you can learn from my experience. I'm sure you guys like entrepreneurship you guys see a lot of free courses, 99% of those courses are cheats, scammers, fakers. What I did was I went on YouTube I just learned just search for "How to spend an online business in 2017 and just watch, there's tons like infiltrate marketing, there's digital marketing, e-commerce drop-shipping, choose one.

Let's talk about fulfillment let's say you have some money in your pocket and you have partner maybe total 30-40k budget, let's develop a product. There are so many software out there if you watched those videos they were all in very deep and I don't think there's enough time for me to be going so deep, hence there will be software to help filter good products and a bad products they will show sales volume for products.

I think moving forward 2020 right, everything is just about branding, if you don't have branding right you just want to create a quick buck, I don't think you can do it for long because it's just like back then you could do things like you know wholesale wrong you can just go on faceplate you can do like drop shipping. Let's say you put in so much effort on branding your marketing campaigns, you get influencers, you get people to speak about your brand and then you started to use those contents and run tax on it, you could really really blow up like so many brands out there. So I think the only advice the takeaway here is that always focus on our brand and make sure that the quality is good.

Anything else you want to share with our community before we call it a day?

Everything I achieved till now is because of my hunger for knowledge, basically just grow . I put 100% of my focus on every single youtube videos or youtube channel when I was zero knowledge about digital marketing. Community, speak to as many people in the digital marketing space, the more connections you built will help you on building your startups or career.

Thanks for the awesome interview!

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