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  • Why Shopify Stores Fail 1

    Shopify stores are just like any other business. It’s not that the Shopify store itself is failing, but rather the business is failing. And most businesses fail. Thousands of businesses are started each week, and very few ever succeed.

    It comes down to the Entrepreneur who’s running their business. The abilities, knowledge, experience, and resources of that person. A lot fail – especially recently due to lack of information, people completely underestimate what’s involved with running a business, so most fail.

    People just don’t understand how to get quality traffic who are willing to spend money at the store. Marketing is a huge pitfall and not many people realize the work that goes into it to succeed.

    With the surge of Entrepreneurs starting their own businesses in the last couple years, many ‘fake gurus’ online have been boasting about starting a business, and how easy it is. Social media is flooded with people showing off the ‘easy’ businesses. Due to all the hype online, there is tons of people starting businesses lately.

    Here are some things they don’t tell you. Much of this can contribute to reasons why businesses fail.

    “Working Your Own Hours” is a very common saying, and catch phrase. Truth is, starting a business requires a lot of hard work. Most people who want to be successful are doing 70–80 hours a week minimum. You don’t really get to work your own hours. You eat, sleep, and breathe your business. It’s not until you find success and have a team that can take over workload do you get to cut-back and choose your own hours.

    “Financial Freedom” is another catch phrase used in the hype the last couple years. It takes a while to earn money in business. Most of it needs to go back into the business for growth, and you can’t really take money out right away. Everyone online is telling people that business owners make millions, this isn’t true. It could be months, and years for most before they are able to take money out. Again, it’s not until you’re successful where you have earned enough to take money out and reap the rewards.

    “Work Smart, Don’t Work Hard” – this is one of the biggest BS lines I’ve ever heard. Working smart is not enough, working hard is not enough. Whoever thought it was smart to tell Entrepreneurs not to work hard, but work smart instead should be kicked off the internet for causing such damage to the Entrepreneur world. If you want to make it in the business world, you need to do both. You have to be working hard everyday, and work smart. After-all, your competitors are doing both, if you want to compete and stay alive, you need to do both. Doing one is not enough.

    “Be Your Own Boss” – This is only partially true. This is good for the solo-Entrepreneur starting a small business, and keeping it small. You get to dictate your own business. However, once you grow your business to where you either have investors, or staff, you’re not really your own boss anymore. You are working for your company. Your money is not your own. Any mistake you make costs other people their jobs/lives, and other peoples money. When you take on investors, your investors are your boss. When you have staff, you are working hard to ensure you keep your staff employed. For most companies, you need the staff, you need the investors to grow/save your business. You need them, they don’t need you, so they are your boss.

    “How Easy It Is” – It’s true, starting a business is easy. Anyone can start a business. Every self-appointed business guru explains to everyone that starting a business is easy. But that’s the easy part, and no one ever tells you the rest. What they don’t tell you is that running, and growing a business is hard. Running a business and trying to make it successful is extremely hard. For 99.99% of people, it’ll be the hardest thing you’ll ever do in your business/career life.

    “Chances Are You’ll Succeed” – Fact is, most people fail. Most people fail their first time, sometimes their second time, sometimes even their third time. Failing is good, failing is learning. Fact is, 8/10 businesses fail in the first couple years, and only 3% last longer than 5 years. People always forget to mention this when teaching/coaching others, especially online and on social media. They want to sell their product, so they leave this out to encourage everyone to buy their product that teaches them business. Negativity and the truth doesn’t sell their brand/lifestyle product.

  • China Club Incident – 2011

    Back in 2011, I was in China. On this particular night I was having drinks at a club. This was more of a high end private setting.

    I was with a couple guys, talking business, closing some deals. Most the clientele there that night was locals; rich business kids, business ‘wall street’ type, government officials, etc.

    Place was pretty packed, there was only one other group of 4 or 5 foreigners (to China); either investors or buyers from the US that was seated along one of the bars (behind me), where as we were at one of the raised tables like 10 feet away.

    As the night went on, they were drinking heavily. They were definitely wanting to get hammered. As for myself, and most other people, it’s mostly casual drinking there. I had a couple beers and maybe a mixed drink while I was sorting through business proposals and contracts, and trying to make heads or tales of the Chinese letters that couldn’t read back then.

    The group of Americans, were there before I got there, I wasn’t paying attention or really watching them, but I’d estimate they were downing beers, shots, mixed drinks, the works for a long time. It got to the point where they were talking loud (even for Chinese standards, and Chinese people naturally are loud). But they started getting very drunk. Cussing in English, talking about American differences to China, they were talking shit about China, Chinese culture, and Chinese people.

    Now, in Chinese culture, even the ones who understood English, which most people there that night probably did too, they don’t pay attention or ‘care’ about what the guy is saying, it’s none of their business. They don’t typically get involved.

    Of that American group, there was this one guy that stood out above the rest. He was completely racist, and a pig. Every Asian woman in that bar, was a complete sex object to him. Even his buddies in his group were trying to get him to settle down and stop being ‘too much’. Other people weren’t paying them any attention other than the bartender getting paid for drinks.

    That one guy, was a pretty big dude. Not big as in overweight, but just tall, broad shoulders, muscle, that T/Triangle shape. Now I’m within earshot of their group, so some of the things they were talking about, especially that guy, I could hear. And some of it was over the top even for me.

    It got to a point the guy started being handsy with some of the girls passing by him. He would turn around, spew stuff in English (sexual comments, wanting to pay for sex, etc) and brush up or try to fondle a woman passing by him. This wasn’t the type of establishment for that, this was more high end, high class… it was completely inappropriate.

    His group were kind of trying to get him to stop by making him face the bar. But he kept doing it. Some girls would comment in Chinese to him, not to touch them. Even the bartender said in English to the guy not to touch customers. But the guy wasn’t stopping.

    Well, he made a mistake. (To be honest, any girl he touched was a mistake.) But a particular woman he tried to grope was a really big mistake for him. The lady went over to her table, in the VIP section in the corner and told the table what happened.

    I first should mention that in China, Chinese do not like when foreigners get drunk and cause issues to local people. Many foreigners (to China) get beat up, stabbed, killed etc, because of this, especially in student bars.

    When a gentleman from that VIP table stood up, everyone in the bar stopped talking. It was instantaneous. Everyone turned to look because in the back of their minds, they knew what the foreigner guy was doing. I remember muttering under my breath “oh shit”. Like something was about to go down. My party at my table said we should leave, but I wanted to see, this was sort of all new to me. My younger self was curious as hell to see what would happen.

    I knew the Chinese guy that stood up. I’ve never seen him before, or met him myself. But I knew of him, and his reputation, I recognized the area of the VIP section, the tattoos he had, and the ring he was wearing. His Guanxi (his social status) in that area of China was well known. I don’t think a single person who lived there didn’t ‘know of’ that guy or the guys network. It took me a couple seconds to realize who it was. People started leaving, customers. Girls were grabbing their purses and just making for the door. No way these foreigners knew of this guy. They weren’t in the area long enough, they probably didn’t even know what Guanxi was.

    So the Chinese guy has stood up, and he reaches into his back waistband/belt and takes out a glock or something (a gun) from it, and he hands it to one of his friends who then conceals it on himself. For those of you who may not know, guns are completely banned in China except for Police, Army, and certain Government officials. The only other people who can even get their hands on guns are organized higher end crime organizations/families (think triad). It’s 1000x harder to get a gun in China than it is in Canada or the USA. Penalties are 1000x more severe if caught.

    The Chinese guy walks over right up beside the foreigner group behind me and asks them in (pretty perfect) English, with a Chinese-Asian accent “who is touching my girls?”. He’s right up in their personal space.

    The American on the end, closest to the VIP tables was the guy causing the issues, who happened to be right up beside the Chinese guy said for the Chinese guy to “F off.” And the American gave him a shove. Big mistake. And I mean, the biggest mistake he’ll ever make in China.

    The Chinese guy grabs the stool from under him, and the big guy falls back hitting his head on the floor. He grabs him by the collar of his suit, and shoves him across the floor like a bowling ball. He picked up the stool off the floor, walked over to where the guy was now (where he stopped sliding), and starts beating him, his legs, arms, shoulders, head everything with the metal stool. The guy on the ground is screaming, wailing loudly and protecting his face with his arms.

    His friends/party at this point are on their feet watching (probably in shock). I’m standing up too. There are tables knocked down, chairs knocked down, drinks spilled everywhere. The American group made the decision to go help out their buddy. They didn’t even make it two feet towards the completely one sided beat down and the bartender girl goes “no, no, no, no, no”, like saying no as many times as she could in a short amount of time and she grabs one of the other guys arm to stop him from interfering, which stopped everyone from going to help.

    I was standing right beside them and I said to the rest as well “I wouldn’t mess with that if I were you guys, just watch and learn.” Even the building security didn’t interfere, they knew better.

    The beat down didn’t last very long. I’m sure to the guy on the floor, it felt like an eternity. But in reality it was less than a minute. The guy on the floor was covered in his own blood, crying like a baby. Honestly I was more worried about the nice suit the guy had on. May that suit rest in peace, it didn’t deserve it. The guy was still alive, and deserved it. Probably had a ton of broken bones, especially his arm. That guy definitely picked a fight with the wrong person.

    The Chinese guy went to the washroom to wash his hands after. Then he eventually sat back down in the VIP section.

    One of the building managers came over to the American group and starting saying “Money, Money, Money.” “Give Money.” “You damage place, you give money fix.” (or something along the lines, it’s been a while since this happened, I don’t exactly remember her words). Which they did, quite a bit too. Probably was their play money for the rest of the night.

    They helped their friend to his feet and security pushed them out. The guy was lucky, obviously he caught the Chinese guy on a good day. Waitresses started cleaning up and mopping the floor and picking up chairs and straightening tables up.

    It was quite an experience to have witnessed that myself. The Chinese guy never actually said “You just picked a fight with the wrong person.” But the smirk on his face when the American pushed him… definitely said it for him. Sometimes you know exactly what a person is thinking of by their face expression. And that is exactly what he was thinking.

    Police were never called, they would have arrested only the American foreigner anyways. I checked the local social media the following couple days, it never made the news. I doubt any taxi would take them to the hospital, because of the blood. And they had no money. So I assume to this day that they walked to the nearest hospital which would have been like 30 minute walk away. I didn’t go outside for at least another hour so I’m not sure whatever happened to those guys. Never saw them again in China.