a journal of small victories

Ok. it’s 7:46 am after my second shot at joining the 5am club.

This morning felt a lot better. Likely because my diet yesterday was considerably more dialed in than it was on the day before. I didn’t wake up in a total grog. I still feel like it’s taking a bit to get into the routine.

Although, I got to the cafe early this morning, and it’s very refreshing to watch the sunrise over the city skyline.

The core of the 5am club is the first hour split into three different twenty minute sections:

1. Move- Exercise and breathe heavy. Sweat!
2. Reflect- journal, reflect on gratitude, meditate.
3. Grow – do something that helps you move forward: read a book, review your goals.

Move: I have yet to convince myself to get a workout done in the morning. at 5am I just am not all that motivated to sweat. But I have been doing the Wim Hof breathing method which is definitely something that gets my body moving and active right away.

Reflect: I’m mostly journaling and planning my days here. Being sure to list out some things I’m grateful for.

Grow: Currently I’m reading 10 pages of a book, and also spending a few moments reading over a list of my current goals.

Yesterday I was in a daze after the Power Hour finished up, I didn’t really know what to do with my time between 6am and 8:30, today I just decided to get to the coffee shop sooner, and I spent some time organizing my finances, as it it had been some time since I had done some budgeting / bookkeeping. I have a little time to work on my coffee business before getting into client work with Dauntless.

Excited to keep going, yet I know I need to get into bed sooner than I did the last two days, or I’m going to start needing naps to get through my day.

Onward.

I have always loved day one of a challenge.

I finished reading the 5am club last week and i have immodestly started reading it again.

The book is by Robin Sharma and weaves a story of two people learning about a morning routine to help them channel their inner greatness. I know for me that there’s a lot that I’ve done right in the last 5-6 years, but also a lot that I’ve left on the table. Maybe there’s something here for me.

There’s a 66 day challenge that Robin has put together that walks you thru your first 66 days of joining the 5am club. And this morning, my alarm started waking me up shortly before 5 and wow was it a challenge.

I woke up groggy.

I nearly went back to bed 3 times. But I did it.

Two foreseeable challenges:

1. Getting to bed on time. – waking up early isn’t the hardest thing for me, but with how busy my schedule tends to get, i relish those moments in the evening where I can relax and unwind. A 5am wake up call alongside my body’s need for a full 7.5 hours of sleep means that i need to be heading towards bed at 9pm, and oof that sounds early.
2. What do i do with my time? The core teaching of the 5am club is a routine for your first hour of the day, however that leaves me finished and onto my day at 6am, where my current work doesn’t start until 8. Even this morning I’ve found myself a little aimless, but that’s likely due to the shock of being up so early.

I’ll be popping onto this website as often as possible over the next 66 days to update progress. I know that there’s a greatness inside of me, and I intend to start taking that seriously.

Strangely enough, it’s been almost two years since I’ve published a blog post. Yet, i’ll admit sitting down to write feels natural, like it’s certainly been missing for a long time. Logging back into this website and playing around and making some changes this morning felt vaguely like coming home.

I’ve been freelancing, or whatever we can call my experiments with this self employed life for more than 3 and a half years. But I have yet to really thrive in this, and I think it’s because I’ve allowed myself to repeatedly get disconnected with what really matters to me in this industry.

Business is personal, and many of the business owners I’ve worked with over the last 3 years are some of the best people I’ve met, and I want to do whatever I can to help them reach the level of success that they desire.

Right now, my greatest skillset for that is within the digital marketing space, and that’s what I’m looking to start rebuilding this freelance business around:

1. Websites focused around a larger sales funnel objective
2. Digital Marketing Services.

I want to create ongoing relationships with my clients, not just be very involved with them for a few months only to become acquaintances after launch, I don’t really do relationships like that.

I want to help business owners take their businesses confidently into the web and social media spaces thru beautiful websites, strategically curated social media campaigns, and being mindful of search visibility.

Starting a business isn’t without risk. This might not work, I might find out that I don’t have the stuff to really create a business that can exist beyond me, that can really create change in clients, that can become known for creating stellar results.

It’s possible it doesn’t work, and I’m going to try anyway. The last few years of not having a reliable boss have been a learning experience, yet I haven’t thrived up until this point. Ultimately I’ve been content with playing safe and small, and
I believe I was put here for more, and I’m going to step up to that proverbial plate, and I’m going to take my swing.

It’s going to be a lot of work, it’s going to be a lot of long hours, it’s going to be a lot of weekend work, I’ll never catch up on every show that every friend says I need to watch. But it’s worth it.

Let’s get after it.

One of the goals I have for 2018 is to build two additional streams of income beyond my web design business 5espressos. One of the business models that is most intriguing to me right now is dropshipping, but one of the first decisions I have to make before I proceed with testing ideas is a crucial one. Do I use WordPress or Shopify for my dropshipping business?

Lets define a few things before we dig in.

Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a style of order fulfillment an e-commerce business can use to deliver goods to a user without actually holding inventory. A customer visits a website, places an order, and then the business owner works with a supplier to get the product sent directly to the customer. This style of business isn’t without it’s challenges, but not having to handle a lot of inventory is certainly an advantage.

Shopify

Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows users to easily set up an online store and get selling. Because the service is focused around selling online, everything that they include in their service is geared around what you might need to manage your store.

Their plans start at 29 per month for a startup ecommerce platform, but their plans can scale up to fit the needs of a business as it expands.

WordPress

WordPress is a CMS (Content Management Service) that a webmaster can use to build websites. It was initially a blogging platform, but has expanded into a bit of a monster. It’s currently the most popular CMS to use for a website — commanding 60 percent of the market share of websites that are using a CMS for their building blocks.

Simply put, WordPress can do just about anything. But that being said, it doesn’t necessarily do E-commerce better than a specialized service like Shopify.

In order to replicate what Shopify offers for 29 a month, one would need to tap into multiple different resources in order to piece together a WordPress-based Shopify Experience. And before I make my decision on whether or not I use WordPress or Shopify for my dropshipping business, I wanted to give a breakdown of what it would take with both options.

Oh, and primarily I’ll be using services that integrate with WooCommerce- one of the largest e-commerce solutions built for WordPress.

Note: 5 espressos primarily uses the WordPress platform to build websites for our clients, and even though I have experience with building e-commerce solutions for our clients, this is still a helpful breakdown for me to research.

The Breakdown:

 

	Shopify	WordPress
Monthly	29 / mo	This will vary a ton, but for 5-10  dollars a month you can get a reasonable host. Siteground is a host I’ve used and recommended in the past.
Transaction fee for Card	2.9 % + 30c	2.9 %+ 30c (using Stripe)
Number of Products	Unlimited	Unlimited
Staff Accounts	2	The World is your Oyster
File Storage	Unlimited	Based on Hosting Plan
Retail Package	49 per month	79 per year (Woocommerce extension — ~6.58 per month)
Shipping discount	Yes	I’ll discuss this below
Print Labels	Included	I’ll discuss this below
24/7 Support	Included	Support is largely dependent on the quality of your webhost
Fraud Analysis	Included	Included with Stripe Payment Processing
Manual Order creation	Included	Doable
Discount Code	Included	Included
Website and blog	Included	It’s WordPress, yes!
Free SSL	Included	Yes, with Lets Encrypt — most webhosts these days are getting better about offering this to clients
Domain Name included?	No.	Some Hosting Plans include a domain name, other wise most .coms will run 10-15 per year.
Design?	Free and Premium Themes	Free and Premium Themes, also 5 espressos 😉

Order fulfillment with WordPress —

So this seems to be one of the biggest hangups with using WordPress as you an e-commerce platform. Integrating in real-time shipping costs can be done, but only achievable after investing more money in an additional 3rd party plugin. The same goes for printing shipping labels. One service i’m interested in is called Shipstation that would take care of any of these issues, but at the cost of an additional monthly subscription — starting at $9 per month.

That being said- this all might not be that big of a deal with a dropshipping business in mind, as shipping orders is the responsibility of the supplier!

The Verdict: Will I use WordPress or Shopify for my Dropshipping Business?

So before I started preparing this post, I didn’t actually know whether I would want to use WordPress or Shopify for my Dropshipping business, I don’t necessarily think there’s a wrong choice here.

If you’re looking to scrape by on the cheap, you can likely find a way to make WordPress fit your bill exactly, but if you’re looking to completely replicate all of the things that Shopify offers to you right out of the gate, it doesn’t take long to justify the 29 per month they are charge.

I think if I end up starting two dropship experiments this year, I’ll do one on Shopify and then one on WordPress, but if I only do one, I’ll be giving it a shot on the Shopify platform.

A couple reasons for that.

1. I’ve never built a website using Shopify, and i’m a ridiculously curious person.
2. I’m not looking for a robust setup, so I’m confident I won’t be limited by Shopify’s offering.
3. Where WordPress can offer anything, you have to tap into several different plugins and support teams to achieve your goal, with Shopify it’s all under one roof, and for a side hustle, I’m not sure you can really beat that simplicity.

So what do you think? What did I miss? and are you going to start a new income stream in 2018?