15 year-old entrepreneur Will Deeth made $70,000 selling toys last Xmas | #396

Tim

Ah. So, it’s less it’s less to do with your age and more to do with the age of the business the fact that they won’t lend you the money is that right?

Will

Yeah.

Tim

Love it, Mate. What’s a house of a 15-year-old young man going to include? I’m guessing a massive man cave and cinema room.

Will

Well I wish (inaudible). But the first one is going to be an investment property. And so with this one we’re going to buy a property that I’ll then be able to knock down and turn into a triplex or fourplex.

Tim

I love it, Will. I love the fact that you said the first one you know. Genius, mate. Good on you, I mean I’m inspired already. I’m really excited by this. So let’s wind the years back because at the ripe old age of 15 which you are now, you’re two years in to running your toy importing business. How did this all start?

Will

So, this all started I guess with Mom. So she started, she was selling online and reasons came to even she realized that she wasn’t making enough money buying from wholesalers and she wasn’t buying enough. She wasn’t making enough markup to become a profitable business. And so she decided to branch out and found China. Now after a few years going to China and building up our team globally she got a good team. And additionally to that, I’ve got a brother and a sister. And so whenever any of us turn to the team, Mum would try and take us somewhere extraordinary to get us out of the regular lifestyle for a year and then just go any good going to school get good grades to go to university. So my opportunity when I was 13 was that I was able to go to China. Now, I’d saved up about nine hundred dollars when I went to China. And when I was there, because of minimum order quantity, I went to get there was just free for us. Mum had a picture. Fourteen hundred dollars which is a lot for a 13-year-old at the time. And so I got all those products. Mum was the first one I paid back. And so with those products, I then took them to some local markets and so I did market and I was making about 500-600 dollars a day. Out of that, we were very excited. It was the most mom has ever done at a market before and she’s sort of amazing, and one of our friends actually recommended that we should then try doing a pop up shop.

Tim

Okay Will, hold your horses my friend. There is. I’m sitting there listening to you guy, there are so many questions. So your mum’s already in the importing business, she’s got some kind of partnerships over in China. You’ve watched from a distance at the ripe old age of 10 11 12 and come 13. She says, “Right up, your turn to choose where you want to go.” You’ve gone, “Well I want to go to China” and say Will if it was me, I would have wanted to go to California and ride the roller coasters. Spend all my money, come back broke. You go to China, because you have in mind right there and then the idea of sourcing some toys and bringing them back and starting your first business.

Will

Yeah. (laughs)

Tim

(laughs) I love it. China is a big place. You know I’ve spoken to people who go to China and you hear some horrific stories too, of you know, people buying things in the boxes arriving back in Australia full of bricks. You know, heavy boxes full of bricks. So you obviously had some contacts over there?

Will

Yeah. So when Mum first went over there was one person at Tumulus, Australia that had a contact in China and she sided with them. But obviously they had dollar signs in their eyes and they want to rip my mum off as much as possible. And so this continues. She found, in most trips she had a brand new team because the previous person would rip her off like I was there once and we were with a lady on another team before this one. But we have at the moment which is our home and for team now which should be the most amazing people and we’re looking at the catalogue, and after how much…

Tim

(laughing) Did you say are they’re the most lazy people?

Will

No, they’re the most amazing people.

Tim

(laughing) Oh the most amazing, right. Okay.

Will

(laughing) Yeah. And with this, this light that we used here, and ask how much a product was and she add on about another 20 or 50 dollars per item which would just be just for her.

Tim

So you’ve got to have your wits about it right. Tell me, yeah. Tell me about that moment Will when you spotted the first item that you were going to import back to Australia.

Will

Well, there wasn’t exactly one specific item that I thought that I wanted because anyone that’s been to China, it’s ridiculous how many items there are right. I guess I went over there with, no I knew I want to spend my money and bring back a product but I didn’t have a great idea in mind of what that was going to be. Mom had already done some research to make sure that I wasn’t going to waste all my money. And yeah I just bought things like, I just bought three toys that I thought were fun, that I thought were good because I knew that if I liked them, because my market at the time were still in a round like the teenage boys. So I thought that if it’s me being a teenage boy like those products, then the other teenagers would mostly like it. (laughs)

Tim

That kind of make sense, marketing 101.

Will

Yeah, and so I just found products that I thought would be cool or amazing or could pop. There was one little toy, we called it the Clubby Hand. It was sort of like a little trampoline in your hand and just little things like that that made it fun and entertaining. So I guess it was going to sell, that one product that we found in that one moment.

Tim

So, you spend your 900… Yes. Hey, what’s your dog’s name?

Will

I’m sorry, they’re in the background. I’ve got two ones called Toby. Putting him inside because there so much barking. One is called Toby and he’s a little poodle. And then I’ve got another Staffie called Mesi.

Tim

right said like the Staffie eat the poodle, but that’s nice and quiet now, though I think they wanted to be part of the interview. So you’ve spend your 950 bucks, you come back with a box load of toys. You sell them at the market and that very first Christmas, correct me if I’m wrong, as you said you made 10 grands in one week was that right?

Will

Yes. The products that I brought back were sold in one week and made $10,000.

Tim

How did that feel?

Will

It was an amazing feeling and it was definitely worthwhile, all the long hours doing it.

Tim

You, could be, you could fall into the trap of going well this business things really easy which maybe it is for you. But did you or did you work with your mum to kind of keep a lid on the excitement and maintain some sensibilities?

Will

I did work with my mum to do it with the hard work. I think one of the days, I was there for 12 hours straight. So it taught us. Which almost killed me. But I’ve also never spent money. The only thing that I spent money off of that pop up shop afterwards was I got a gaming computer because that was the one thing that I really wanted and so and so I learnt to have a good value for money and try and reinvest all the money.

Tim

What’s your view on money, Will?

Will

I reckon it can be easy to get, depending on the methods and depending on your value of easy. And depending on your methods. Like I think it’s a waste to spend money on a simple product, like on simple things yourself. Although you do need to have something in it for you so you still need to be able to buy things for yourself.

Tim

It makes sense. So you’ve got your 10 grand, less expenses. You’ve gone, “this is pretty good. We’d better go and buy some more toys.” Is that what you do?

Will

Yeah. So I put that ten thousand dollars’ turnover and I reinvested it and off of that I manage to get about a 20-foot container full of goods, of more toys. And I got them and I booked another product shop, a slightly bigger shopping center and so that was for four weeks.

Tim

So, did you go back, Sorry I’m going to interrupt you so often because there’s just so much, it’s exciting buddy, you know. Like you talking to an old man here and I think things is wonderful. I just need to understand what you did there. So did you go back to China or did you have a contact that you could then now shop via their online at a wholesale store?

Will

So, we did yeah, I did go back to China.

Tim

Okay.

Will

I think we were there for, well, were there to do with my input. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We went back and while we were there, we got a few more products and that was I think 30 different products. Which was like crazy compared to the previous three and so yeah.

Tim 20-foot shipping and then you bring them back. You said you open up a pop up store because now that’s interesting in itself. What, did you go to a shopping center and talk to management or a real estate agent and ask was there any distressed stores around the place? How did you find a pop up store?

Will

Sales the same thing we did the first time so I think if people in America don’t know what it is, it’s like a kiosk anymore. So what it was is we went in this as same with the first time. So we went to our local mall and we asked the central management, so the management of that shopping center if we could have a pop up shop there and they said yes. And we contacted them, we emailed them, talking about the prices and like the intention of where we want to go. We want to be near, like escalators because we knew that there’d be a lot of traffic going up and down there close to two locations, because once again there’d be a lot of people a lot more traffic. And we look at it at Christmas time because we knew that there would be once again a lot more traffic going to the shopping centers. So we tried to get the best time possible so you get the most value out of it.

Tim

What did that cost you?

Will

I think the first year it was about $3,000 to the shop for that week, although we find that it’s included a lot of other expenses such as insurance, some banners like professional banners to have on some big black boxes which is a bit of another story at the shopping center.

Tim

Uhuh, was that another story?

Will

When you were running the pop up shop they can supply you or they usually supply you with big black boxes for storage and so they always try and they would recommend to have these signs on the front of it so that they feel like it will look nicer.

Tim

Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. So this is in Christmas 2016 like almost a year ago correct?

Will

Yes. The second one is last year.

Tim

Right. So let us know how much did you earn this time around.

Will

For the second time in four weeks I need seventy thousand dollars, seventy thousand dollars in turnover. Yeah it was awesome-mazing, outstanding. And a little bit of a funny story. If you don’t mind me sharing.

Tim

Go mate.

Will

It was for the first two weeks of it, I was actually really sick and so because I didn’t want to be sharing my cold around to everyone because you’re constantly shaking hands pending products and all that, I had hired my sister to work there for me and honestly that was one of the first times I’d ever experience outsourcing. And it was amazing to see that it completely revolutionized my world. And so what I did was I hired my sister and after it, what’s following was that mom walked in to my sister’s bedroom, and she said, “Okay Tiffany, he’d go where we put the couple thousand dollars that you were actually your wages” (had to pay-up) and so it’s just a bank account something like that and then mom walked into my bedroom and said “okay where do you want to be, like there’s fifty, sixty thousand dollars left over after the second pop up shop” and she jumped out of bed and ran in and started to say “why did Will get some like I was the one working”

Tim

Yeah I love it. What’s your sister’s name?

Will

Tiffany.

Tim

Did that motivate Tiffany to, did she have a business at this point or not?

Will

She was selling jewelry. But this Christmas her and my brother are both selling, their boycott their pop up shops

Tim

Is that Tiffany barking in the background?

Will

No, that was neighbor’s dog. (laughs)

Tim

Okay so sorry. And so now Tiffany and your brother, they’ve got pop up stores this Christmas?

Will

Yes, they were all selling same products although we’ve got a competition to see who can make the most money.

Tim

How interesting. So you’re selling the same products in three different stores at three different locations?

Will

So, my sister is actually on the level below me. The two of them are at the same shopping center but my brother is at the US shopping center that I have my first pop up shop.

Tim

And Will, why the same products? Is that just because it was easier that you go and buy a whole bunch of products and you split it between the three businesses or because they just gave you, your brother and sister have got well, “We’ll just do what Will’s doing. He seems to know, he seems to get it, right?

Will

Yeah. So we knew, So I guess why are we getting the same product is because we know that the toys work, we know that people to buy them. And there’s a fascination for them within their selves. And so yeah I guess that’s what why.

Tim

Are you pricing the same?

Will

Yes.

Tim

So, there’s an agreement is that, you’ve looked him in the eye and said “if you know that Hulk grip fist that we’re going to be selling, I’m looking at your website you’ve got one of those, don’t sell it for less than I am”

Will

Well funny enough is that you actually want to sell one of the products for more than what I’m selling for and what I would recommend as they had to sell that.

Tim

Wow. Okay. Well that will be an interesting kind of case study so and quite a bit of competition there. Is there a prize for the winner?

Will

Uh, more money. (laughs) Probably just bragging rights at this point in time.

Tim

Love it love it. What have you learned so far Will? What have you learned about business?

Will

So far businesses weren’t I guess it can be difficult to start off. Business itself is difficult. If you point to have it or trap or maybe you do your business slightly wrong, like you say you want to put your business in one aspect but then you find that a lot of the clients that you’re targeting it towards slightly so far are something else. So after a while I find that sometimes you can go down the wrong rabbit hole in a way. And so it can be difficult to get out. It’s always good to try and stay on track.

Tim

Has that ever happened to you? Where you have been targeting the wrong customer and sold nothing?

Will

Not in pop shops wise but our second business we’re starting to try and market it towards people that can benefit more.

Tim

What do you mean by, what your second business?

Will

I’m sorry after that second pop-up shop we’ve had a lot of people asking us how I did my business and how I manage to do it at such a young age. So we set up a business where we teach people to import. How import to China and we made that going and we started advertising it. Although we found it we’re holding it more towards casual everyday people side lost. Because what we did like, we’d love be able to see or enter. the way we, like the other people start off from nothing and be able to help them make a successful business so that they can get out of their jobs and do what they love doing and be able to sell something.

Tim

That business which is called “I will import” correct? Is sort of like a coaching business. Is that something that you’re particularly passionate about or is that something your mum’s moving into or away from the day to day importing?

Will

Oh, it’s I’m very passionate about it. It’s what got me started but if we didn’t have that, because Mum used to do it we rebranded, it we changed it, we made it better. And so that’s sort of what got me into the business and if we hadn’t done that, then I wouldn’t have been able going to China and I loved being able to travel there like be able to help people. I like being able to teach other people, what they can do and how they can get started and grow. And so I’m very passionate about I will import and yeah.

Tim

Fair enough. We are talking to Will Deeth who is a 15-year-old toy importer at a Brisbane. He is on his way to buy his first house. Will, I want to talk to you about mindset. Now you left school midway through this year and you’re now home schooling, correct?

Will

Yeah.

Tim

How’s that going?

Will

It’s going great. The method that I found is if I spend two or three hours a day on schoolwork then don’t take any days off apart my weekends, then I guess we get through all my school work on time.

Tim

Do you still enjoy the school work?

Will

I must for a regular school in the way that I would have a lot more time. I actually have a lot more and make a lot more out of my time. Maybe the only thing, the only disadvantage is possibly the social aspect but still events and everything where everyone gets to catch up. And I guess the only, once again it comes back to time.

Will

So, I do like doing it I’d much prefer although it comes back to yes it comes back to time. And so, I’m still not having enough time personally to be able to spend on the business. I want to be able to say, travel for six months promoting my importing business or I would like to be able to you know, travel around the world to be able to do different things running a business and travel a lot more people without….

Tim

Who wouldn’t? (laughs) That’ll come buddy, that’ll come. No doubt. Imagine there’d be a number of people who said to you and your mum, “You know what this is just a silly idea.” Would it be right in saying that?

Will

Yeah definitely.

Tim

Look, you don’t need to name names, but like any significant people?

Will

Oh yeah, they were significant in my life, in places like my previous school. One of the teachers in particular always told me that I shouldn’t try and do my own business, I shouldn’t try and buy my first house, I should go to university get a regular job because none of those would make me money. Even after my second pop up shop making all that money, they’re still telling me that it won’t do anything, I won’t be able to get anywhere. And yes I guess it’s sort of having to ignore them. I’ve tried to get away from them, I’ve tried to push myself away. It’s one of the other reasons why I’ve gone to homeschooling and it’s been good to be able to now put myself around more like-minded people and more business minded people because I’m sure everyone knows what it can be like. Even family wise, not many people in our family know much about the business because they don’t want to know about the business and so it can sometimes be hard to share stuff like, say somebody made a hundred thousand which with the new group that we’ve found. We’ll talk about it in a second.

Tim

Yeah.

Will

Like some of them have been making like hundred thousand dollars a month, million dollars a month. And so, it would be hard for them to go to someone that doesn’t really understand and just have a casual conversation about it without it sounding like you’re breaking away

Tim

So what you’ve found is that you are now surrounding yourself with like-minded people. There’s a great quote and I can’t remember who said. It might be from Stephen Covey book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Don’t know. But basically, we, each of us are the sum of the five people that we hang around with the most. So, you know if you’re hanging around with that level of people who are a motivated around their businesses are, doing good numbers in their businesses then that can’t do anything but pull you up to their level. And you’re finding that?

Will

Definitely yes definitely. It’s the best thing I found. Being able to talk about other people. We just, with the new group once again, they have. I’m sure everyone’s heard of it. Mindstorm? No, sorry, Mastermind. So they’ve come up with this definition in a way that when two people get together and start sharing information, talking, it sort of creates a third mind called the mastermind. Because say if you’re going through a business, if you just keep looking at different things, one of you might pick up something that the other one might not have noticed and like the other way back. And little things like that, just being able to mastermind a lot of people and to be able to share information, knowledge, help them and at the same time they can help you. It’s great.

One of the best ways I’ve done to grow my business.

Tim

So is this group that you found, a local group out of Brisbane Will? Or an online group?

Will

I wish it was out of Brisbane, time zone wise. But they’re actually in America. And so it is an online group in a way that we have online. We can call them online. We have online videos and all that. But at the same time there is also a catch up where we all get to catch up. Like I said, create a mastermind and look into the businesses. So, this one person, his name is Trey Wellen. He managed to create 20 million dollars in 90 days selling one product, which was a flashlight which is outstanding and amazing and completely blows my mind how he did it. And so now he is teaching other people how to do that.

Tim

What have you learned? I completely dislike and love this guy already. What was his name? Trevor? What have you learned…

Will

Trey Wellen.

Tim

Trey. What have you learned from him? What is the number one lesson you’ve learned from someone who’s made 20 million bucks in 90 days, selling a torch?

Will

It’s not the method that did it. So, using a website called Click Funnel then, you would definitely have to be… It’s so much stuff. (laughs) I guess one of the things because…

Tim

Just pausing on that, tell me about the so much stuff. What just went through your head then?

Will

Like he went this morning, he’s helping us with our importing business. So, he’s looked into it and says he’s got lots of ideas for it. He said “You’re doing this wrong, this wrong, this wrong. I can change it to benefit you guys and to be able to help you guys.” He doesn’t show us necessarily how to do it. Most of the time he doesn’t show us how to do it and say “This what you do. Do it here” But he tells me where to look out for things so that we can still do it and we got back his workshop. I think his workshop was two weeks ago or something like that. And well, he just shared so many invaluable tips. Like one is that, did you know that the NASA rockets when they take off on earth, they make 80,000 little minor adjustments. Because if one of those was off, then it would miss the moon, like if you’re travelling the moon then you would miss the moon by, I think two miles. And so in our businesses, we constantly have to make these little minor adjustments but only make them a little one at a time. Don’t try and change it by like 50 at a time and just to see if like you shoot rockets. We’re not sure if is one number or another number or so you like heading on a website wrong. If you change that and click it, then you might hit the moon or you might be off got.

Tim

I like that so the lesson there is constantly tweaking because I think a lot of people listening, a lot of business owners listening may well, get the website done and then leave it and not change your headline. Or they may well go with an email marketing campaign in which they literally have the same subject line every month they send an email out. That type of thing whereas what you should be doing constantly testing. Setting a benchmark, trying to beat it, all that type of stuff. Hey will tell you a secret. I think I bought one of that blog’s flashlights. (laughs) I got sucked into his click funnel! It was about 70 dollars.

Will

I know. You’ve actually and extensively bought and you know that 50, 70 dollars like that and I think he is buying them for like 5 bucks.

Tim

Oh Will, please don’t tell me that. And I got completely sucked in because his marketing was very good. It was a Facebook ad. Not only that, once I decided to buy, it was like “oh before you go, you know, do you want one of these up-selling and cross-selling” was absolutely James. I think I ended up with four lithium batteries and a travel case. And the funny thing is I haven’t even used it yet. (laughs)

Will

He is a master of selling, up-selling and cross-selling, all of that. He follows another guy called Russell Gunther who created click funnel. And mom bought a free book off of him that costs four hundred and eighty dollars.

Tim

That’s not a free book!

Will

He has sold and I loaded 80 dollars on this book.

Tim

Will, it’s so interesting you’ve got a mentor, that’s fantastic. I mean the fact that you are investing in yourself, I mean I know that last week you were in the States and you did the click funnels program and I mean that’s really impressive. With respect to your, you have an e-commerce website now so you’re not just doing pop up stores but you’re selling online over willbefun.com. I love the personal branding with your name. I’ve got a son called Will and it opens it up. It’s great when your first name is actually a verb.

Will

It’s a move.

Tim

With respect to your website, would it be fair to say, I mean what I love about it is it’s very basic. And I think it’s got so much upside. Would that be fair to say?

Will

Yeah definitely. And also, we have naturally well, the beauty and amazing thing about it is that we’ve got so busy coming to America and creating these funnels to make this ridiculous amount of money that we actually haven’t had time to lead traffic to that website yet. So not many people actually seen it, I don’t think.

Tim

So, it’s probably would be fair to say what, 10 percent of your income?

Will

Not yet. Not even half of shops are. But not the Web site of the moment.

Tim

Pop-up shop’s the majority of your income?

Will

Yeah. I think it’s a hundred thousand dollars turnover in the last 12 months.

Tim

Will where do you want to be? Tough question sort of. If don’t like this question I’m always going to retract it. But where do you want to be in five years’ time at the ripe old age of 20?

Will

I’m honestly not sure anything to change, anything that could change.

Tim

You know, I thought that might be the answer. I mean boy mate, 15. I didn’t know where I was going to be next week much less 20. (laughs)

Will

I guess if I had to answer, maybe because I’ve always been big on property, maybe in five–because I got a three-year goal, so when I’m 18 I want to have like 10 investment properties on my belt and other things like that.

Will

And so, I guess I want to be is maybe making ideally, maybe making two million dollars a month profit. A hundred or so houses investment property all around the world. I’m not sure.

Tim

Good on you, buddy. Well you know, I wish you nothing but massive success with that. I watched only last night a documentary, do you know the actor Jim Carrey from dumb and dumber?

Will

Oh yes. Yeah. Dumb and Dumber. I was watching a documentary on him and when he was a broke comedian in Canada where he was from, one day he decided to write a check to himself for 10 million dollars that he obviously couldn’t cash but it was for acting services rendered 10 million dollars. And he made a promise to himself that within the coming three years that that check would actually he would receive that from someone else and be able to cash it. And he did. He did it in like two and a half years or less. And so, might keep the dream alive buddy. I speak to a lot of business owners the ones that come on the show are generally successful and generally have the enthusiasm maybe not as much as you because they’re a little bit older and maybe a little bit more jaded but generally are excited by their business and the success that it brings. But I also speak to a lot of business owners who are tired and are no longer excited and may that never happen to you buddy. And if there is some way to capture and remind yourself on an ongoing basis of what you’re achieving now and how you are feeling now then I think that would be a great thing because I think the world needs more Wills.

Will

It is a pretty good name.

Tim

Good on you buddy! Hey listen how can people find your Willy?

Will

They can either go to iwillimport.com and contact my mom because I don’t have social media or it’s that I don’t check it. They can follow me on Facebook. Just Will Deeth, although I haven’t checked in a while. Or they can go to our website www.willbefun.com

Tim

Love it now. Well thank you for being the youngest person ever to be on the small business big marketing show and congratulations for not being sucked in to the world of social media. That’s another big tick.

Tim

Thanks, Will.

Will

Thank you. Thanks for having me.