His phone vibrated non-stop with sales notifications from his e-commerce store.
Everyone in the classroom had their heads down, writing furiously on their test papers.
So when his phone was buzzing repeatedly…
His teacher walked up to him and demanded an explanation.
And all he could talk about were the notifications of sales that he made from his dropshipping store.
The teacher – dumbfounded – couldn’t help but question whether it was even legal or not.
This is the story of Ramin Popal – the owner of a 7 figure e-commerce brand and multiple dropshipping stores.
Read on to see how Ramin went from just an ordinary school kid at the age of 14 with an interest in the world of internet selling…
To now living in Dubai, having access to a network of elite 7-9 figure entrepreneurs…
Despite all the toxicity he had to endure from the people around him.
The Rise of An Ecommerce Empire
Running an online store can be scary for the common person who hasn’t started yet.
But for Ramin, he has been in the game since he resold products on eBay and Gumtree at the age of 14 by buying low and selling high.
Running e-commerce stores became almost second nature to him.
At first, it was more of a hobby for him.
And at 16, he started a Shopify store where he made a few sales…
Not aware of the multi-million dollar potential that awaited him.
But as he mastered the game, his e-commerce businesses became an empire.
A multi-million dollar empire that has allowed him to live in Dubai at the age of 21.
An empire that has left his families and friends in his hometown completely dumbfounded.
Ramin has always been inspired by the reality that you could build entire stores just on your phone and make tons of sales.
And in a world where too many people are just scrolling through Netflix all day…
What most excites him is the exponential growth and power of the internet to design the life that you want to live.
Taking The Elevator To Ecommerce Riches
Growing up, Ramin didn’t have any mentors to show him the ropes.
Ecommerce wasn’t popular at the time.
You couldn’t just go on YouTube or Google and see an abundance of videos and articles talking about e-commerce like you see today.
He didn’t even know there were e-commerce courses that taught you how to create an e-commerce store from scratch.
So for years, he had built his ecom empire from trial and error.
But anyone who wants to start an online store is in a very fortunate position today.
You don’t have to figure it all out from scratch.
You don’t have to feel like you are stranded on a desert island with almost no direction.
Today, there are those like Ramin who have walked the path and made all the mistakes so you don’t have to.
Today, you can have a mentor that collapses the time it takes for you to succeed…
While saving you money from mistakes you could have made.
True mentors are people who have tested what works and what doesn’t work.
So getting one is essentially like taking an elevator towards your goals…
While everyone else who doesn’t is breaking their backs taking the long staircase.
It’s for these reasons that Ramin has an ecom mentorship brand called Ecomm Sharks.
We’ll talk more about this in a moment but essentially…
Ramin didn’t want to make his ecom mentorship program like anyone else’s…
Knowing that there’s already a plethora of ecom courses online.
5 Most Common Mistakes That Kills Profit Margins
- Bad Store Design
The store design is crucial to the life of your online store.
Unfortunately, too many people don’t put enough thought into it.
“People think they can just have this simple store and layout. To them, it looks really good.
But when you launch and market the store, it doesn’t look that good”
- Choosing products
There is no shortage of products out there that you can choose to build your dropshipping business.
But the mistake that a lot of people make is that they go after the most basic products that everyone else goes after.
Products like sunglasses and clothing brand stores.
There is already an oversaturated market for these products.
But then there are the lesser-known but trendy types of products.
Products like LED strip lights or sticky balls that you throw onto the roof.
Some of the products that do the craziest numbers are ones that people don’t even think about.
And there are trendy products coming out all the time.
“Not too many people are willing to take a chance and sell a product that’s not as popular”.
If you’re thinking that there won’t be enough of a market for your product…
How do you know if you haven’t tested it yet?
“Go where no one else is going. That’s where the pot of gold is”.
- Lack of Marketing Thought
A lot of people go wrong on Facebook/IG ads.
People boost posts instead of running them with an ads manager.
They also don’t challenge their own ideas.
It’s a standard for Ramin to ask questions like…
Why are you selling that particular product?
Why should people buy your product?
What makes your store different from competitors?
How is your marketing different from competitors?
You must be confident with how your store is planned out.
This includes why you chose specific product prices.
As well as the product descriptions you chose.
If you’re not certain about these factors…
Then how can you be confident that someone will come into your store and purchase your products?
Market research is super important to see if that product will sell or not.
One proven way to do research is by going to Amazon or eBay and see how competitor products do on those sites.
Look at the reviews, find what other people are saying, find the gaps and then take all that information and build your store around it.
- Lack of endurance
When it comes to succeeding in any field, ENDURANCE is key.
Ramin goes deep into this with his students in his mentorship program.
It’s super important because too many people jump into e-commerce only to give up too soon when they don’t see results.
“They do it for one week. They didn’t do $10K in that week so they shut their store down”
While it’s much easier to build a successful store when you learn what has worked and what hasn’t worked…
It’s still going to take some level of endurance.
- Lack of testing
One huge problem: store owners get too excited and invest too much money at the start but they get almost no returns.
They may put $20 in ads and then complain when they don’t make a sale.
That’s not how e-commerce works.
In order to not break the bank, you must take the time to test your product properly.
You have to do a lot of testing especially in a space that is always changing and moving.
You put some money into testing to see what works and what doesn’t.
When something works, you keep doing it on repeat until your business explodes.
When it doesn’t work, you move on and you test different tweaks.
You may have products and ideas that fail.
But when you land on a product that works, you can make a serious goldmine.
When To Dropship And When To Sell Your Own, Unique Products
Is it possible to develop a successful online store without seeing, touching, or shipping any products?
Well, if you start off with dropshipping then that is actually the reality.
The costliest mistake people can make is putting $5-10k on stocking product lines.
And then they get disappointed when they don’t sell.
Ramin was guilty of doing this when he was 18.
People fall for the initial excitement of having stock in front of them which is a big mistake.
Here’s the cheapest way to start building a profitable online store.
You start off with drop shipping which is basically making sales before a third-party supplier makes and ships the product.
And if it sells really well then you can use the capital that you gained, go to a supplier and make it branded.
You change the design of the store so it fits with your new branding.
At this point, when you decide to have physical stocks, at least you already know your product is already selling.
You’re not risking any money because you use the capital that you generated through dropshipping.
Dropshipping is great but you get to a level where you want the next big thing.
Ramin’s strategy is to create big brands so that he can sell them to private investors and make a big exit one day.
He’s currently running two online stores right now with $5k day combined and 30% profit margins for each store.
But the best first step that Ramin took was dropshipping.
It takes the majority of the risk out of running a store.
And it’s just a smart and convenient move to make when you know how to test your product for market validation correctly.
The Secrecy Behind Dropshipping Businesses & Why It’s Important To Have a Brand
$500k/month.
That’s how much one of Ramin’s friends made off of AliExpress.
This goes to show that yes, dropshipping can be done long-term as well.
But here’s the biggest problem with dropshipping…it’s unbranded.
People may buy from your store if your unbranded products are good.
But if someone finds out you’re doing $5-10k a day with your store…
They can easily clone your store within an hour or two and run ads.
Ramin has had friends clone a store similar to his and they ended up doing the same amount as him
“It literally takes me and my team 2 hours to clone a store when I find out someone is doing $5-10k a day with there’s”
So with dropshipping, it’s crucial that you keep your store a secret from potential competitors.
But when you have a brand, on the other hand, no one can copy it.
When you buy from Nike, you buy because of the brand.
And people would rather buy from a brand rather than a copycat.
If someone tries to copycat your products…
You could easily spread the word to your audience and they’ll just buy from your brand instead.
Building a branded store also helps with your personal brand as well.
Troy Candy is a great example.
He sold snorkels.
And he once did a $50k day just with one swipe up from his IG.
That’s the power of a strong brand.
You can list up nearly anything in your store and print money.
He’s also built his car brand around it as well.
In his IG, he showcases the fun life that most guys want.
So when people buy from him, they’re buying because they want that fun life that he has too.
The most important thing for personal branding is being yourself while keeping your message consistent to your niche demographic.
Ramin puts pictures of him working on a laptop in beautiful locations, hotels, etc.
People who follow him want that epic lifestyle that he has especially since he’s doing it at such a young age.
By age 21, Ramin is already living his best life in places like Dubai…
While most guys his age would usually be at uni living in their dorm rooms.
For years, Ramin was hyper-focused.
His mind, racing, focusing on the next project.
Sometimes, he has to take a step back and remind himself of the fact that he’s living in Dubai…
Printing money from his laptop at the age of 21 to fully appreciate what he’s done again.
Against All Odds: How His Haters Became His Motivation
Imagine going to school everyday…
Knowing that your entire year group is watching your every move.
Imagine even your best friends, talking behind your back just because you’re doing something different.
For Ramin, this was his reality.
And this would’ve been the advice he would give to himself at age 14…
“Don’t let the outside noise get to you”.
This is why if you check out his IG…
Ramin does a good number of posts on haters.
An experience like that would scare just about anyone at that age.
And Ramin would find it hard to fall asleep…
Knowing that he had to go back to a toxic environment where EVERYONE was against him.
There was even a period of time where he didn’t do any work.
He just played in his bed, not doing any work.
But 5 days in, he made a shift in his mind that empowered him amongst all the hate…
“Wait a second. You can either let every single person have something to say.
Or you can get up, get back on your laptop, stop being a wuss, smash work all day long, get on the routine and just prove everyone wrong”.
One of his affirmations that he wrote down was “prove everyone wrong”.
He used negativity as fuel to motivate him every day.
So he eventually dropped out of uni to go ALL-IN on building his e-commerce empire.
And against all odds…
At 21 years old, Ramin had made enough money to travel from Australia to Dubai.
But he didn’t just travel there. He lived there…much to the shock of all of his peers.
Today, he just laughs at all the hate that he got.
The ‘Dropshipping Model’ To A Successful Online Store in 2021
You can literally create a million-dollar business from your bedroom laptop.
And if more people realized the gravity of this opportunity…
They wouldn’t be binging through Netflix, show after shows just to fulfil their boredom.
People reached out to Ramin, wanting to know how he was crushing it with his online store.
From there, he decided to create an e-commerce education platform called Ecomm sharks.
Since then, he’s mentored and coached 1000+ students worldwide and he’s gotten tons of student successes which you can check on the Ecomm Sharks website.
You’ll see that one student did $500 in his first 5 days of opening up his store.
One 17 year old did $2K in his first month.
And another did $70,000 in 2 days.
Because here’s the catch.
He didn’t want to make his ecom program like anyone else.
Because here’s what happens with so many ecom courses that are out there on the market today.
You sign up.
You’re given around 30 videos or so.
And you don’t have access to the course creator.
This means you’re left stranded in the middle of a competitive online space…
Where what works today in e-commerce may be OBSOLETE tomorrow.
It doesn’t make any sense.
Going through a bunch of videos is not enough.
If you have questions, you should be able to get them answered by the course creator themselves.
The online space moves rapidly.
This means the demand for ACTUAL CONTINUOUS SUPPORT is even greater.
So when Ramin created his Ecomm Sharks program…
He set out to answer one and one question only…” what’s everything I would ever want?”
Because when you go through the process yourself without actual continuous support…
You’ll lose tons of time and money that you’ll never get back from making mistakes.
Your store layouts may be off.
Or it may be average at best so your store never stands out.
This lack of continuous support for bringing your e-commerce empire to life frustrated Ramin.
So he wanted to make a course that no one else could compete with.
And this explains why he has an abundance of students all over the world…
Showing screenshots of sales they are making by the dozens.
“We want to see you guys succeed. We don’t want you to just come in, watch some videos and not take action.
When you have questions, we don’t want to leave you in the dark”.
People wonder how he keeps going despite doing so well already but there’s always more that you can do.
Some of the guys in Dubai are doing $2 mill a month.
What you thought was good, to them, it’s a bad mark.
“It’s not even about being greedy for more money. You can always do better. You never want to settle”.
Interview by @wadefoxx
