Thinking about making stuff? I have some ideas on that.
Transcript:
(00:00):
Welcome to Wealth commander.
(00:16):
My name is not important. Thanks for taking the time to listen again here with Wealth commander. I have recently had requests to ask me, can you tell us more about making products in China? I can see that you are all ready to ruin your lives and free time and start your own business and Hey, it's your life. So if this is the road you must travel, then I shall be your noble guide. There are a couple of problems in the beginning that can make your new venture a real nonstarter. There's a lot to take in. I've been doing this for 10 years and I'm always learning something new. So let me share some of the common problems about when you know, doing this business, uh, in China. Are you ready? Here we go. One, you don't know where to start. So in the beginning there's so many questions, like, how do I make a product and what is this product made of and what I know about that stuff?
(01:15):
How do I find a supplier, let alone a good supplier? How do I know if the quality is good, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like anything you know, starting, will get you the answers you need. Start making mistakes and learn from them. Make small mistakes and calculated risks. Eventually you'll be out there making big mistakes and losing money, but Hey, you will get to learn from that as well. Experience number two, no self confidence and doubt in your entrepreneurial path. Hmm. You have not armed yourself with the tools to protect yourself. The tools you need are called knowledge and experience. Jake, the dog has wisely said, dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sort of good at something. Hmm. Right on. Dude, you are going to suck at this. Just be confident that you're going to get better. Well, unless you're hopeless, I can't help you. Then there’s fighting fires. You're constantly fighting fires. There's not a plan you're trying to pull, put out all the fires.
(02:27):
You try to put out all the fires at once, I called this firefighting.
(02:32):
The idea is to prevent fires from even starting. If you're not following a plan, this can lead to missing important timelines and it can cost real opportunities in business. Make a simple plan and stick to it. See where it goes wrong. Adjust rinse, repeat. Number four, giving up because it doesn't produce the results that you want right away. Now, in fear that this starts sounding like a pep talk, you got to put in the time and hard work to get you there and it just won't happen very fast. So you know what happens when we start facing, you know, mounting adversity. We run back to the previous method that worked or you know, we just kind of abandoned it all together. If you're just relying on momentum alone, this will make you a good sprinter, but a terrible marathoner. Sports analogies right now, does this sound like you? Let me help you break it down into small steps. Three simple things, three little nuggets about every project to get you back in control. I like a pencil and paper. You go ahead and get one.
(03:40):
All right. Okay, I got it. When we're ready, let's go. I will wait for you. Go ahead. Number one, prospecting. Number two, setting up for success. Number three, understanding manufacturing and getting your product done. Let's hit it with the first one. Prospecting is more about finding a product or a supplier, figuring out how it should work, how it all puts, gets put together. It's not sitting up a roadmap to follow. Now I think if you're a man listening to this, your first instinct is to open up the box, look at that instructions, and just throw it across the room and continue with a wild abandonment to get that screwdriver and start just putting things together. I'm with you, but in this case it costs you money. So I don't like losing money. I only have like three figure business, four figure business.
(04:31):
You know, that's uh, not enough taco dinners to go around. So you have to make sure you follow some directions, you know, at least go up to number five, look, a clear path to a goal will help you achieve a certain project. So let me list out some simple examples for you. What is your product? What is your timeframe to get this completed? What type of project is this? You know, are you just doing it one time or do you see like a long-term relationship with the supplier going forward? Or is this something you're going to have to repeat every week or month or every quarter? And finally you got to figure out what matters to you. When you're doing this. You might be thinking, wealth commander, isn't it just a cheap price and great quality is all I need. I suggest you think about four items.
(05:16):
Here we go. Quality, quantity, price and speed. These are going to be the ground rules that you're operating on, right? This will help you figure out how you're going to choose a product and choose your suppliers. I'm going to expand on that in a little bit later. For now, you should've been writing it down and you know you're going to be able to come back to it later. Now, if you're driving, maybe you can have your assistant write this down for you. Number two, setting up for success. Now I'm not talking about you know, some mental mumbo jumbo visualizing your success crap. We will save that for the next guided wealth commander meditation episode coming up. Well that's going to be a good one. Look, once you have written out the items for yourself from the prospecting section, you now have to move on to figuring out what items you need to get online now so you can move easily in the future.
(06:14):
It's like setting up for a game of checkers or strategy for connect for you know, what your project is or product. You need to know what the specifications are of that product. Now, so let's take an example. If we're talking about buying blank 3.5 diskettes for example, you need to know what material do I want that beautiful jewel case to be on the outside of cleared colored case or that boring gray. How many megabytes of stores do I need? Do I want a 10 pack, 50 pack, hundred pack, IBM or Mac? Take all these details and place them in a word, Excel notebook or your favorite CDR for easy referencing. You will need these specifications to send in your first email to suppliers. It's also good to keep these notes for yourself so you can always refer back to about what your specifications are. Now it's time to have a look on Alibaba or made in China for your product or supplier.
(07:16):
You now know that what you're looking for, how many and what timeline you need to achieve this in. So you should pat yourself on the back or pat me on the back. It feels pretty good at this point. It looks like you've actually accomplished something here, huh? Finding the right supplier is going to be in a whole other episode, but I'll promise I'll go over that in the future. You've got to be patient here. I don't think you're going to go and find someone here in the next couple of days anyway. So now that you've sent these emails out, all over these people with your specifications and duty data do about your junk, now you should be getting some responses back, some quotes. She'd taken all these quotes and putting them back together on, you know, one large Excel sheets. So you can kinda compare the pricing and get an apples to apples comparison or bananas to bananas or cat to cat.
(08:02):
The point is that you can reference the same information across some chart. Choose any object did you wish to prefer to use. In that analogy, it will be important that you can compare these prices easily. So then you can make the best informed decision. So next up is understanding manufacturing and getting your product done. Starts with getting a sample made of the product. Now remember, fast is bad, steady is good. Got to keep a fresh in the hood. You got to keep repeating this mantra. Fast is bad, steady is good, keep it fresh, Doug. Good. In the past, all the major mistakes I've ever made are from going too fast. Nothing good comes from rushing a complicated project. Getting a sample made of your product can range from, you know, just simply adding a logo or changing some packing items to complete the marketing. Um, making something totally custom.
(09:04):
And it could take like two months to make just to get a sample and it could also cost a lot of money. This should all been found out in prospecting section and setting up for success section. In the end, you should be getting a perfect or almost perfect sample before you put a deposit down on a large order, right? You need to make sure you and the supplier all understand the project and what potential problems it may have in the foreseeable future. I think this is a good place to stop. Hopefully you have taken some notes to review in the next podcast. I'm going to move on to the next steps. Let me know how you made out on these first steps. Having good time. It's 11 o'clock you bastard doubting this is for you or maybe you're just been distracted because you're hungry. If so, maybe after you eat, come back and listen to this again. Remember your pencil and paper. If you answered yes to any of the above, these are all acceptable answers. We will pick up where we left next time. Thank you for listening to Wealth commander.
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