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For many people, working in retail is enough. They work hard in that business and move up the ladder of success. However, working nine to five is not for everyone as well as working for someone else can be difficult. For Mike Hernandez, this was a problem for him. He did not want to continue to work day by day from nine to five every single day for the rest of his life.
“I started working retail 5 years ago and I knew I couldn’t spend my life working for anyone else. I looked up on the internet “how to make money online as a teenager” and I came across the e-commerce market, more specifically, dropshipping.” recounts Mike.
Though Mike was only a teenager, he was able to make lots of money and do it quickly from the comfort of his own home. He did not stop there. He did more studying and reading to make himself even better than the rest of his competition, so that he could make even more money from the e-commerce world.
“I invested countless hours and about $600 and I only made back $80. If this happens to anyone else, they would probably give up, but this opened my eyes because I realized if I can make $80, I can make much more. I quickly started reading, implementing, reading, implementing, and then I noticed I began understanding the e-commerce market from multiple angles. I was dropshipping for about two years, and then I decided that it was time to leverage my skills of understanding the e-commerce industry through my eyes and help develop brands out there into more well-established brands by implementing techniques that worked for me.” Remarks Mike.
Now, Mike is the owner of Scale You Marketing and the co-founder of Ecommerce Development. Scale You Marketing is a digital marketing agency. His company helps scale other brands by acquiring more customers through specific techniques he implements. The company he co-founded, Ecommerce Development, also helps with building brands.
“My prize possession is my main company, Scale You Marketing. This is a digital marketing agency. We sit down with brands and help them scale via paid traffic, ambassador program concepts, strategic social media campaigns, and through the concept we call the “Scale You Maneuver Plan.” This plan focuses heavily on dissecting the vision of the brand owner and implementing a series of specific techniques to scale the brand.” says Mike.
Other than trying to avoid the normal day to day grind, one of the things that got Mike involved in the ecommerce business was the allure of the digital world. Like many other businesses, the digital world has brought people into a whole new world and allowed people to do all the work that they want from home.
“I have grown up in the digital age. What really inspired me to get into the industry is that I have pretty much everything at my fingertips. The power of e-commerce is honestly not yet fully realized. I think there is so much more that we can accomplish with the amount of access we have and it really pushes me to continue to grow and figure it out everyday. I am most certain that e-commerce is going to drive the future forward and well beyond my lifetime. I want to create generational wealth which pushes me to strive and truly try my hardest to see how I can fully maximize the power of e-commerce so I can create something long-lasting for my family.” states Mike.
For anyone looking to start their own business, Mike says that you do not need to know everything to be successful. There will always be learning on the job and constant improvement. This is just part of the process.
“If you want to build something BIG for yourself, you need to understand that you DON’T need to know how to do everything in your business but you DO need to know how every single moving part of your business works.” advises Mike.
To find out more about Mike, you can follow him on Instagram @elitesalesman.