Transcript
Yeah, I appreciate you being on the show Clayton. Thanks for having me. Oh, you’re welcome. You’re welcome. And you have a quite an impressive CV as well. I’ve got it here, the list here. So so you’re a registered, is this the right description? A registered Shopify expert. Would that be a good Yeah, that’s correct.
Yeah. There’s not very many of them in the world. No. I think there’s about 500 and I think maybe 30 in Australia. So it’s very, there’s lots of Shopify partners. There’s tens of thousands of them, but not, not many Shopify experts now. Yeah, yeah. They’re a rare, a rare, rare breed. Yeah. Hundred percent. So, so this is taken from your website, so if it’s not right, it’s not correct, , then it’s not down to me , so, yeah, no, all good.
So generated over 1 million online in revenue for myself. For yourself. Then, yeah, my clients have made a lot as well. Yeah. [00:01:00] But yeah, keep going. Sorry to cut you off there. No, no, it’s fine. It’s fine. A thousand plus page pages ranked number one on Google 200 plus websites redesigned worked on multiple six and seven figure Shopify websites owner and founder of Inspire Small Business.
Yeah, which is your website and as a registered Shopify expert and a Shopify partner registered a Shopify partner as well which is awesome. And I found it interesting. I did listen to on what some of your videos, it was interesting how you got to this point, like your journey as it were. So can you give like a, like a, like an overview of how he got into be, to be now a registered Shopify expert.
I like to think of it all come down to. Me buying a can of Coke at, at high school one day I bought a can of Coke at high school and the machine was broken and seven cans [00:02:00] fell out. And I sold those seven cans in like five minutes. And that’s what started me wanting to own my own business. So I ended up selling drink cans at school, made tens of thousands of dollars doing that over about four years.
And then went and did some jobs. I started a business selling trading cards. And here in Australia, not many people know this, but I’ve sold about a million dollars worth of trading cards. And I think I I got a lot of quotes for people to buy build websites for me in the old business. And I sort of looked at it, like, should I spend like four or 5, 000 on a website or should I learn how to do it myself and buy stock?
And I ended up learning how to do it myself, which. It took forever. It took ages to learn it myself. I probably would have made quite a lot of more money if I hired someone to rebuild my website. I was thinking about it the other day. I probably would have made 200, more if I hired [00:03:00] someone else instead of doing it myself.
But then I wouldn’t be in the position I am now. So yeah, basically. I think I was at a crossroads in my life and I didn’t know what to do. I was burnt out from selling trading cards and I had like a really good job. And then I thought about what I like about my business and I really liked building the website.
So I thought maybe I can start a business building websites. And that’s how I sort of, how I got to here sort of thing. Definitely it was a rocky ride to be right here now. Yeah. Yeah. Did you start off with any particular platform or have you always worked on Shopify? Yeah, pretty much only Shopify.
So I think 2009, I tried to build a website on some thing called SiteBuilder or something like that. And then I think. Later on, I, I heard Shopify was good in 2014 and I’ve just always used Shopify. [00:04:00] So I haven’t actually used any other platform before. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how do you rate Shopify in respect, in relation to like WooCommerce, for example, in terms of e commerce, do you, is it, it’s just a better platform in your opinion?
I definitely think I’m very biased to Shopify. pRobably because it’s Shopify has been really good to me. They’ve helped me a lot, stuff like that. But the way I always look at it is that, Nearly everywhere there’s a cheaper option than Shopify, but the problem is like, if you run into issues or you need certain things, most platforms don’t have a solution for e commerce for everything.
And Shopify seems to have a solution for nearly any issue you can run into. So just for example, I’m pretty sure from memory, like if you build a website on GoDaddy, you can’t add like after pay or clear pay. Like that’s just one little [00:05:00] tiny, tiny thing. So. Pretty much anything you can do in e commerce like you can do on Shopify.
So most people, they normally start out on like the other platform or not most people, but some people start on the other platforms and then maybe six months a year. And they realize that they have to go over to Shopify. So I’ve built a lot of websites where people have been on another platform and come over to Shopify.
And you described like Building Shopify sites as a adult Lego. Yeah. What you like about it is that you can put things together and… Yeah, I think I always liked Lego as a kid and my mum always thought I was like really creative, like building just the most random different stuff. And when I really sat down and thought about it, I was like…
It sort of makes me feel like a kid a little bit because it’s like [00:06:00] you are putting like certain blue blocks here and there and stuff. And it is a bit like making your own thing sort of, if that makes sense, you might get inspiration from other websites or other things that people built with Lego. Right.
And then you sort of put it all together yourself. So that’s why I thought it felt like that. Yeah. Because I, you said on one of the videos that you basically, you, you’re, you’re self taught and you went on to YouTube and just, just taught yourself. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. There’s a lot of things I’m self taught in like, even, even chess when I think I was like five or six.
I just randomly found like a book in the garage and I knew my uncle played chess, so I taught myself how to play chess and I ended up being like the best chess player in my whole school, like throughout high school and stuff like that, just from teaching myself. So there’s been a lot of things in my life where I feel like when you’re [00:07:00] really passionate about something, it’s easier to teach yourself.
Yeah, definitely, definitely. Also, you have a YouTube channel where you like pay it back and you have a lot of tutorials on there. On how to build a Shopify site and redesign it. Yeah, I was, I was posting a lot of videos about a year or two ago. And I think this year there’s been like a, a real push that I want to give back again and like start making those videos.
So I’ve hired like someone to do social media and just you know, help me a little bit. So I just have to film the video myself and then they do the rest of the stuff. Because I really believe in giving back like. Some of the best things that have happened in my business is because I gave a lot of value and expected nothing in return.
So a lot of things I do, I believe in that, like no matter who comes to you, you give value and don’t expect anything in return. And it always comes [00:08:00] back. Yeah. Cause you, you also do like free video reviews. Yeah. Shopify sites. Yeah. So if someone messages me, I’ll like do a video review, just going through give them some tips, suggestions, stuff like that for 10, 20 minutes.
Pretty much like in that video, nearly everything you need to know is like in that video to get off the ground and make more sales. And then you can either take that and do it yourself or hire us to do it, do it for you sort of thing. Thank you. And even if like you approach us to work with you with us and we’re not the right fit, we’ll find someone who is the right fit for you as well.
So it’s, it’s not always like yeah, just, yeah, just try to do the right thing by everyone, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. How’d you, how’d you fit that in? Cause you’re, I’d imagine you’re pretty full on doing, you know, doing the, the work, the paid work. So during the [00:09:00] reviews as well, even though that would supposedly to lead to more work do you have like a process during the day where you say, I’m going to spend a bit this time doing the reviews, this time working on current projects, et cetera.
Yeah. Yeah. Normally when I start, Oh, like. Go through all the leads and stuff. But I don’t think this would have been on my website, but Shopify experts send me about a hundred to 500 leads a week for free. Wow. So I’ll wake up and there’ll be like 50. Requests like in my, in my dashboard sort of thing for people who want to help.
So I’ll just go through see who’s good, good fit, stuff like that. Go through that and do the work and then maybe later in the day I’ll do that. I’m actually trying really hard to stop actually doing the work. And like, I’ve hired a few people and more just like advising, like which way we should go and they’re building the sites out.
So I can focus more on [00:10:00] growing the business and doing the things that I’m good at. So that’s even been a real, uh, learning curve. Like I’ve had staff for a few years now, but not, I haven’t fully a hundred percent like let go of everything. And I’m nearly at the stage to let go of all the work. You just do like the, the sales and then like the bigger picture things for the business and stuff.
Because I’ve definitely started to really think like I need to start thinking like not about next week and more about like next year and the year after that. So I’m, I’m thinking like long term instead of short term now. So that’s why I’m trying to focus more on the business and not do as much of the actual work.
Sure. I’m going back to your journey. Did you find that like a lot of marketers that there was, like, Pandemic and the, the lockdowns created a [00:11:00] lot of interest and demand for websites and Shopify in particular, when people, people suddenly realized they didn’t have a presence online and they needed to move over online and get started in e commerce.
It was a very weird experience when COVID hit. So. I was building two websites just before COVID sort of hit, and one person lost everything, their house, everything went bankrupt and the other person become a millionaire. So, and then like when it fully hit COVID, like the amount of people that were like building websites is just mental.
Like Shopify experts will send me two, two to 4, 000 leads a week, I think for people to build. Like needing help building a website. And I’m pretty sure there was a weekend where it was like Friday to Monday where Shopify merchants made [00:12:00] more money than the best Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale on some random, like four, four week, four days, just because of like all the lockdowns and stuff like that.
So it was very crazy when COVID hit, it sort of exploded my whole business as well when COVID hit. Yeah. Do you think a lot of people who maybe created a Shopify store, but maybe didn’t get the right, right advice and help a lot of those guys have kind of given up this, some of those people around? Yeah, there’s probably a lot of people.
I think even if there wasn’t COVID, there’d be people like that for sure. Because it takes a lot to run a business, I think. There’s a lot of ups and downs usually so yeah, and then some people don’t pick the right niche and all the right direction and stuff. So I think, yeah, there’s definitely people like that, but it would have been like that even if there wasn’t COVID for sure.
Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. I [00:13:00] mean do you, for example, with Shopify, when you do your Shopify reviews, uh, do you, is there, are there any issues that come up again and again, when you’re looking at Shopify websites that yeah, almost one for one. Yeah, there’s, there’s normally five issues.
Nearly everyone will have those issues. Like probably they’ll have three to five of those issues. Most people I run into will have like five of them. The first one is like they don’t understand how to build their homepage or their website. So they don’t really understand how to flow it, what needs to be there, who’s going there and stuff like that.
Just changing your homepage on your website, especially if you’ve built a following like on social media, it can make a massive difference in how much money you make on your website. If you’ve built that page out, right. So most people get that wrong. tHe next one would be product page. You just want to have like all the information there.
You want to build trust. [00:14:00] You want to have benefits things like that. It really depends on the niche, how you build up both of those pages, but those definitely important. The third one, site navigation, people don’t understand how to build out their main menu, their footer, things like that. It’s really important, especially if you have a lot of products.
So it’s like, Super important to really build that meant the main menu on the footer out correctly. Then the fourth one is the checkout. So this one really shocks me how many people make this mistake, but they don’t have their logo or the same colors in their checkout. So basically when you’re going through the website.
You get to the checkout and the page is like completely different to the rest of your website. So let’s just say your website’s got pink all over it and then you get to the checkout and the buttons are like blue, there’s no logo there. You know, people are about to give you their address and their, their, maybe their credit card details.
So it’s really important that that page is consistent with the rest of your website.[00:15:00] So a lot of people don’t do that. Or what they’ll do is they’ll have like they might start out with like a. A logo and all the colors and then like a year or two later, they change their colors and their branding and stuff, but they don’t actually remember to go to the checkout and do that.
So that’s definitely important. And then the fifth one is like just optimizing site for mobile. You know, most people are getting like 60 to 90 percent of their traffic mobile. So it’s more important that the site works well on a mobile than a desktop these days. Like when I started on Shopify, most like definitely my website was getting like 50, 50 split.
Sometimes I’d get more on desktop, like 60, 70%. And I think it’s flipped around now. It’s just like too much mobile, especially if you build a brand on like Instagram, Tik TOK, stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve heard that like with mobile, sometimes people go on the mobile, don’t necessarily buy on mobile, [00:16:00] but they browse on mobile and then maybe go back.
And purchase on desktop. Is that something you have any thoughts on? I think it’s more like, it depends on the price of the product. So what I’ve been seeing is like if people have products that are like over a thousand or probably five hundred dollars, like over five hundred their desktop views will be a lot higher than most other websites.
Definitely when they get to a thousand, when you get to a thousand dollars, the desktop is still pretty high, but probably under five hundred dollars, I reckon, Yeah, people do go, but not as much as you’d think. I think it’s about the limit where people are comfortable to pay, or most people. So the big purchases are done on desktop.
Still the big ones. But a smaller purchase is still going to be going to happen on a mobile. Yeah. Like if it’s 20, like 20, it’s not really a big risk, right? Sure. Like you don’t really have to look into the company most [00:17:00] likely. I don’t think. Yeah. Well, it really depends. Yeah, because talking of that, I know you talk about trust on the website, like reviews, things like that.
I mean, do you recommend also things like what we call in the UK, like, you know, your VAT registration number, tax, tax company, you know, your tax. Number, for example, or whatever the equivalent would be in Australia. It would be like AVN in Australia. Yeah. Some people might put it in the footer, like near the copyright thing, but not really.
You can have a page where it has that information as well. It really depends. Like, I think lately I’ve been putting a lot of like AVNs in the footers and stuff like that, but I don’t think it’s a massive thing really. Yeah. I’ve never noticed it to make a big difference. Because if you think about where, like, you would locate, like, something like that, it’s always in spots that [00:18:00] people rarely would make it to.
So, like, rarely people would go to the foot or rarely people would go to certain pages where that would be. So it’d only be, like, a very low percentage of people that would. even be in the right spot to see it I think. How about phone numbers? Should you have a phone number on there? A help type of phone number or is it, does it not make much difference?
I think normally when people get a lot of phone calls it’s because their website isn’t really Communicating everything properly. So what I’ve noticed is a lot of people when they come to me and they get a lot of phone calls, like just for example someone come to me with like something for, for boats, right?
And they used to get a lot of phone calls, but then we added a lot of like frequently asked questions, more information to product page things like that. And the phone calls went down quite a lot. So I think if you’re getting like a very large number of phone [00:19:00] calls, There’s probably something on your website where you could fix it and you’d get less.
But then again, like some people just don’t read on a website or anything. So they’re still going to call you anyway, but I reckon maybe it depends on the product and the price and all different things like that. Like if it was a thousand dollar product, yeah, I’d probably have the product, the phone number there.
Cause you know, if a quick call could get you that thousand dollar sale, two thousand dollar sale, you know, whatever it is sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And do you have any apps, Shopify apps that you recommend? Yeah. So there’s a few. So I like if you, I definitely like review apps. So I normally use Luke’s reviews.
That’s, that’s pretty good. I like to use this app called lucky orange. I don’t really use it as much anymore, but basically what this does. If you want an idea of like what people do on your website[00:20:00] if you download this app called Lucky Orange, it records what everyone does. So you can watch a few videos and you actually see like what people are seeing on their desktop or their phone and how it’s displayed and stuff like that.
That would like give you a really good understanding because if you think about it, if you build a website, especially if you build a website yourself, you’re only looking at it on your computer and your phone. So if you see a lot of these recordings, you’re like, Oh, it looks really weird on certain screens and stuff like that.
I probably watched like a hundred or 200 hours of recordings and stuff a few years ago that really helped me and opened my mind a lot to thinking about like different types of phones, different types of screens, stuff like that. So yeah, I really liked that. But yeah, there’s, there’s heaps of apps on the store that on the app store.
That’s really good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you, in your services, do you cover like shopping ads, Google shopping ads, how to get those set up? [00:21:00] And get that some, sometimes we will do that. Yeah. But most of the time the client will do that one. Yeah. Or we’ll like give them a direction or make a how to video or something like that.
Some some, some things are just easier if they do it themselves. Yeah. Like what would have to charge ’em extra and stuff where they could just do it in a couple of minutes sort of thing. So it really depends and then it depends on what we’ve agreed on and stuff like that. But there’s definitely some things we, it’s like a team effort when we build a website.
So it’s like, Hey, we’re responsible for all this. You’re responsible for that. And then if you need help with that, we can make training videos and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Shopify is pretty simple, actually, isn’t it? So set up shopping ads anyway. Yeah, that sort of stuff, the Google shopping channel or the Facebook, pretty much Facebook app.
Yeah. Yeah. So that’s why we normally leave it up to them. [00:22:00] More of a headache for us to do it was by the time they have to send us all the stuff and then it will take like four times as long all the passwords. Yeah. Etc. Yeah. Have you come across any issues with now that Google have, have sunsetted universal analytics.
We’ve come across any issues. With Shopify reporting in the new Google Analytics 4, is that something you’ve come across? Not yet, but it’s something we’re monitoring, so it’s probably too new to really give a really good answer to that. Maybe ask me in like three months, but yeah, it’s pretty new. So no, but it’s definitely something we’re thinking about and stuff like that.
We have a lot of clients asking us about that and that as well. So. And how about artificial intelligence? Because there’s a lot of people doing product [00:23:00] descript descriptions using chat GPT, for example, is that something you have any thoughts on, on using, on using AI to write product descriptions and website pages on Shopify?
Well, I think it depends on how you use it. A lot of people probably don’t use it the right way. So for example, like if I, if I wanted to write a product description, I’d probably ask it to ask me like 20 questions about my business and about my products and stuff like that. Then also give it lots of information about my business and stuff, then ask it to write me that product description.
But I think a lot of people are just like, Hey, I’ve got this product, I want a product description. Yeah, I’m cool with it. I actually think it’s a good thing because product descriptions, especially is like something that a lot of people don’t really focus on. So it’s actually made it quite a lot easier for them to have a really good product description.[00:24:00]
But you’d be very surprised, especially when people have Very large inventories of products, uh, how, how many people don’t put any effort into the product description. So I think it makes it, it’s a lot better for most people. I’ve tried to write, like write code and stuff with it. Basic stuff is like, it’s okay, but like really advanced stuff is like struggles a little bit.
But I think you have to evolve with the times, like if you don’t get on the wave of this, like. You’ll just be left behind in a year or two. So everyone’s moving that way. So you’ve got to go that way. Yeah. Yeah. And do you have any thoughts on email clients that work with Shopify? Cause obviously, obviously Shopify has its own native email marketing system, but you have Clavio as well.
And a lot of people recommend Clavio as being a really good partner with Shopify. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. So Shopify is [00:25:00] basic one is like their email system is okay. Like if I think at a certain level, like until you reach a certain level, it’s okay just to use up. buT once you, once you hit, like, I couldn’t tell you the right number, but let’s say maybe 10, 000 a month, that’s when you probably should jump over and use Clavio for this, like a thousand, a thousand times better, I think.
But I think if you’re just starting out, you don’t really need to need to use it like it just over complicates everything sort of thing, especially if you’re doing it yourself. But I really like Clavio. But I think a lot of things make sense at a certain level, you know, like one of my clients spends like 1, 000 a month on apps.
It doesn’t make sense if you’re making 1, 000 a month to spend 1, 000 on apps. Like it really depends what level you’re at on what you should do, I think. Yeah, I suppose, for example, Shopify Plus. That’s, yeah. The, [00:26:00] the, you know, the, that’s as far as you can go, isn’t it, in terms of Yeah. Paying of price and features.
Yeah. Yeah. So definitely like some of my clients, it makes sense for them to be on Shopify Plus. Are there any, yeah, this might be a, a cheeky question. Are there any apps which can give you some of the features of Shopify Plus without having to be in Shopify Plus? If you can’t, you’re not that level yet, or you have to kind of, sort of, sort of.
But to be, to be honest, like I’ve only worked on like maybe five Shopify plus sites, it’s actually not that common that people come through that have Shopify plus, I think there’s quite a lot of, a large number of people that are on like the level just below Shopify plus, because yeah, to be Shopify plus, you have to be like A lot of millions of dollars a year to make it be worth it sort of thing.
So most of the [00:27:00] people we work with, they make probably like 50, 000 to maybe 2 or 3 million a year. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, it’s hard to say. There’s a couple that bypass some things and stuff like that, but it’s not 100 percent as good as what like Shopify Plus would be. It’s a really flexible, especially in the checkout.
Yes, yes. The simpler the checkout, the better, I guess. Yeah, but even just one thing, like Shopify is rolling out the one page checkout and they’ve done a lot of like testing on Shopify plus with that. And they were saying the conversion rate goes up definitely when you change over to one, one page checkout.
So I think like they’re trying to take some of the features from there and like give it to everyone. I think Shopify is always just trying to make it better. Well, that’s what I like about Shopify. So, so if I heard you right, so they’re going to be rolling out one page checkouts to[00:28:00] everyone, not just for Shopify Plus.
Yeah, a lot of people already have it. So they would have got an email to change over to one page checkout. Any new stores that are made now have one page checkout. So if you create a store now, you have one page checkout. buT I think it’s maybe they started rolling it out in the US. And then there’s, they’re going to like all the other countries, like people that already have a Shopify store.
But yeah, like I just created a new store the other day and it had one page checkout. So I’m pretty sure all the new ones will have it now. So that’ll definitely make a big difference. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And with just going back to email, I mean, I’ve seen some clients make a lot of money just by sending emails you know, remarketing emails, abandon cart emails, et cetera.
And I think it’s relatively easy to set up as well, isn’t it? In Shopify. Yeah, it is. I would say like a lot of people don’t, don’t realize like how much money [00:29:00] they leave, they’re leaving on the table by not doing stuff like that. Yeah, I think a very large number of people are leaving a lot of money on the table because of stuff like that, like just not doing it.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think if you really went and like did massive survey on everyone using Shopify, it’d be like crazy how many, how much money is just like left on the table from not doing that. Yeah. I think it’s one of the last things people. Well, think about two or, or maybe they get like a lot of annoying emails.
So they’re like, Oh, email is annoying, but it actually works. There’s a lot of the clients that I work with that do a lot of email. They make a lot of money from the email, especially if they’ve got a good, like subscriber list. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Building an email list, I guess you would definitely recommend, and from the off, and social media following, [00:30:00] branding.
Yeah, it all, all like it all comes together, like it all works together sort of thing. So if you’re building it there, then a list, and then you’re just like, everything all together sort of thing. It’s always good when you do it like that, I think. Yeah, instead of being good in one, one place, like the thing I always think about is like, imagine if you just had a following on Instagram and then Instagram shut down, I don’t think it ever would be, would happen that way, but I think a lot of large people, you say with really big influences, they, they’re trying to put their following to all the platforms sort of thing, so I always think like that as well, because even some of my own clients, if like Instagram shut down, that would be like out of business.
There’s most people I work with, I really like working with people that have an Instagram following. I feel like you get the best results for those people. So that’s interesting. Yeah. Is that because the brand is very strong [00:31:00] and it’s, yeah, normally I like, yeah, I like building websites that are like lifestyle images and, you know, people smiling and using the product and stuff like that.
So I think, uh, like a lot of Instagram people that have built a following, I’ve got a lot of images and videos like that. So that’s probably why I like working with those people the most. Interesting. Okay. So now I’m going to move on to the next, next set of questions, which are more informal, just to kind of more fun, fun type questions.
And the first question would be when you’re not working, which is probably not, not, not a very long in the day, what, what would you do to chill out? Do you read books or listen to music? I bought a motorbike like about a year and a half ago. So I sort of ride my motorbike. I felt like that’s one of the best things I’ve done.
You have to focus so much when you’re riding a motorbike [00:32:00] that it’s hard to think about work because you’re like, Oh, is this guy going to pull out on me or not? Or, so it’s really switches my work brain off when I ride a motorbike. So that’s definitely something I love doing. I might like, listen to like motivational stuff on YouTube or music or audible podcasts sort of stuff like that.
Or go to the beach. Like that’s, that’s something I like to do as well. Cause you’re near the beach. Yeah. I’m about a half an hour drive, 40 minutes drive from the beach. So yeah, stuff like that. I really like to do. I started to read books again. Like the one thing I realized is like, when I, when I first started my business, I I read 50 books in the first year.
So I read nearly a book a week and I’d only, only read one book in my whole life before I started this business. But I, I was really in like, I wanted to learn, I did a lot of online courses. I was just reading like crazy, probably because I was scared to go get clients. [00:33:00] But I really learned quite a lot in that first year and I worked on myself quite a lot and then sort of not long later COVID hit and I was like pretty busy for like two years straight.
And somewhere along the line, I just had to stop working on myself, stop reading books and stuff. And I think about a year ago, I realized like how important it is to keep improving yourself and keep learning, keep evolving and stuff. So I’ve started to try to read more books now as well. I Think the only, the, the really good thing about a book is like, It teaches like really good discipline to actually sit there and just read it and not get distracted by your phone and stuff like that.
So that’s what I like about reading books. But like I always say, if anyone ever went to school with me and they’re listening to this. They would literally fall off their chair if I heard that I I’d read 70 or 80 books. Like, yeah, only once ever in my whole life, I read a whole book and yeah, before [00:34:00] five years ago.
So yeah, definitely think it’s helped a lot. Because I guess you had a purpose to, to read. Whereas before, I guess you were just reading for the sake of it. Yeah, it was, it was funny, but it’s like the only reason I read that one book as an adult is because like something happened in my life and I couldn’t understand it.
And it really helped me. It was like about relationships. I read a book about relationships and I couldn’t understand what happened. I read this book and it like, it sort of changed my life. And then when I started this business. I was like, Oh, if that one book had such an impact on my life, imagine if I read books about business.
So that’s what sort of started me down that road sort of thing. Yeah. Like it’s a bit cliche, but I suppose you, you learn from your problems. You need problems to, to grow. Yeah. If nothing bad ever happened, then you wouldn’t learn anything either. Yeah. Some of the worst things [00:35:00] in my life have made me the best have ended up being the best things that ever happened to me.
Like literally probably the five worst things in my life are the best things that ever happened. Yeah. Yeah. Not in the moment, but later, though, like the best thing that ever happened to me. Cause, cause I know you mentioned that when you went, did you go to Bali and you met someone who, uh, did website redesigns and that kind of steered you in the path you’re going now on that.
That was like a chance meeting almost. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, about a year before I started this business I went over there and I was like, I still had my Shopify website and I was making like, I was like laying on the beach in Bali making sales on my store. And it was like, I ran into this this woman and it was like the first person in years that understood what, what, what was happening to me, like none of my family understood like anything about what I was doing or anything.
And then, [00:36:00] yeah, she was like from Germany and she was like living in Bali and I was like, how cool is this? Like you literally can work anywhere in the world doing something like this. So that sort of put this, that was probably the first idea of like me wanting to do the website. And then probably about a year later, I did think about like what I liked about the business and I liked building the website.
I thought a lot about her when, when I when I left my job. Cause I was like, I really wanted to like, be free sort of thing. I guess you have big plans for the YouTube channel, like growing that, or maybe having like a membership or like a, like a website where people learn, would it go that far? Like yeah, so definitely YouTube.
Yeah, for sure. Like, cause I was, I was going really good probably in 2011 on it, but it was just. Consistency thing. And that’s really important for YouTube. [00:37:00] So I definitely really believe it’s really important for me to build that up for sure. I’m building a program, but it’s not for like anyone to, to, to join.
It’s only for my own clients. So it has like lots of training videos and stuff. Was that the moment I I send people like a Google docs, like after we build the website. And it might have like 10, 20 generic videos and then I’ll have like personalized videos if they ask me questions and things like that.
So. You know, by the, after years, you keep making the same videos. So that’s why I want to put it all into a program. And like, I’ve had 500 clients now. So you can imagine like, like how many training videos and stuff I’ve made. So I’m just trying to put it all into that. Maybe have like a lot of the basic stuff on YouTube.
So I can have links. For that, and then more the advanced stuff can sort of go into the program, but I think that’s really important, but you know, end of the [00:38:00] day, like I’d be happy to, like, give everything away for free on YouTube because I really think there’s like. It doesn’t really matter. Like if I do or not, there’s always two types of people.
Normally one that is going to go learn everything themselves and not pay anyone and someone who doesn’t want to learn everything themselves. And they’re going to, they’re going to pay someone, but there’s so much money in the world. Like it doesn’t really matter, but it’s like, just keep giving value and just don’t expect anything return.
And it just doesn’t really matter. It’ll just come back. Wow. That’s really cool. That’s really cool. Yeah. It’s just stand out from a lot of. A lot of people in your, in your sector. Yeah, a hundred percent, but I’ve been on calls where people are like, I can’t, like, it’s just obvious that we’re not going to work together.
And I’ll just spend another half an hour just like giving them tips and stuff like that. It’s just like, you know, and then later on they might recommend me to someone or [00:39:00] they might make some money come back. It’s just, yeah, just, I don’t know. It makes me feel good. I really think if, if all my bills got paid for, I’ll just do this for free.
Like if I didn’t have any bills, like it doesn’t really matter. Like that sort of thing. I really enjoy doing it. Yeah. Oh, that’s really cool. So, so for people watching or listening YouTube channel, is that under your, under your own name? Isn’t it? Yeah. Clayton bait Shopify expert. Yeah. So people subscribe to that and yeah.
And your website.
So if people want more information, I want, or want to review to go to that website for, yeah. Well, they can Google inspire small business and I’ll come up. Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. Yeah. They’ll say lots of our five star reviews when they Google it and then they can go to our website. Fantastic. Well, I think that brings us to the close of the interview.
Is there anything else you want to, want to add? [00:40:00] No, I just appreciate you having me on hopefully like something, even if I can inspire one person, it was, it was worth it. So, you know, probably the thing that I definitely believe in is like, you can do anything you put your mind to. What are you going to put your mind to?
That’s what I always think. So, um, hopefully someone does get a lot of value and thanks for having me on. You’re very welcome. I think of quite a few people off the top of my head that will get a lot of value from this, this interview, including me. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks very much. All the best. You too.