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How An Ex-Con Turned His Life Around And
Built an $80k per Month Ecommerce Business
Being the founder of a successful ecommerce website isn’t
something I would have predicted for myself. One year ago, the idea wasn’t even
in my peripherals. It wasn’t something that took me a lot of planning and
preparation coupled with years of experience to carry out.
Creating National Parks Depot and getting it to a
recognized level of success basically took one month. During that month,
I came up with a product to sell, created a store,
and promoted the product to about one
million targeted prospects. Sales were so great that I had to pull in an
investor to help get inventory.
Building National Parks Depot using Shopify is one of the
easiest things I’ve ever done. I don’t have tons of experience in sales or
marketing, so it’s not as if I was destined to be successful at this. In fact,
with my history, success seemed unlikely. But with all the right pieces in all
the right places, what seemed to be most unlikely actually became a reality.
Early Life and Incarceration
The early part of my life was spent incarcerated. From the age
of 11 to 27 I was in and out of juvenile and adult correctional facilities for
various crimes. I was addicted to drugs, lost, and hopeless. At that time, no
one would have guessed that decades later I’d be so involved in business,
sales, or marketing. Like I said, I wasn’t a likely candidate for success.
In September of 2007, I was released from California State
Prison and have never looked back. My life was different from that day forward,
but how drastically different it would be surprises even me at times. Fast
forward seven years. I now have a family, a business, and am working on a
college degree.
There is something about ex-felons that make us good candidates
for being entrepreneurs. There’s a drive that makes us want to be different and
to stand out among the crowd. When I decided that I would never go back to
crime and prison, my drive didn’t leave. It was just refocused. From then on,
my drive and motivation would be success for me and my family.
While that sounds all good, it wasn’t all easy. Over the last
few years, while also being a full-time engineering student, I attempted to
launch many business ventures. Most failed immediately. Some were sustainable
for a short period of time. But only one stands out as an immediate success,
and that one is National Parks Depot.
When I started this store, I wasn’t in the greatest financial
position. My family couldn’t afford our rent and had to work out arrangements
with our landlord in order to keep a roof over our heads. We even had to rely
on Government assistance. It was a low point, and I was almost ready to give up
on my ventures.
At the time, I had a small
Facebook page that was dedicated to sharing images from National Parks
around the world. I sold t-shirts through this page and began to think that I
could sell even more products to this audience. There was one issue – I didn’t
have any products of my own to sell. I had heard of something calleddropshipping and
thought I might try it out.
So that is what I did.
Getting Started With Dropshipping
Finding drop shippers was frustrating and even scary at times.
But once I got the hang of it, it really wasn't that difficult. The key was to
have a product in mind first. I simply looked for items that were selling well
elsewhere. Once I found a product, I would create my own offer for that item
and see if it was something people would buy from my online store. If they did,
I'd find a supplier that was willing to dropship that product for me.
The mistake that many other people make is that they look for a
drop shipper and then try to sell what that supplier has. When you do that, you
limit yourself. Once I identify a product, I simply email the retailers that
are selling the item already and ask if they are willing to drop ship. I was
surprised at how many actually said yes.
In just a few days, I had National Parks Depot set up on Shopify
and ready to promote. I’m not the best marketer on the block, but through all
of my failures over the last few years, I was able to learn a few things that
would help me promote this store to success.
Facebook Advertising
The Facebook page only had a few thousand fans, so if we wanted
to get any sales at scale, there would need to be paid advertising. But as I
mentioned earlier, I couldn’t even pay rent so an ad spend was almost out of
question. Almost.
I figured I would try it with a small budget of $60 and
determine from the sales if it was worth going further. That $60 ad spend
brought in nearly $1,000 in sales on the first day, giving a great return. I
was ecstatic! On day two, I decided to double the budget and see what would
happen. Sure enough, the sales nearly doubled as well. Over the next few days,
I would repeat this process several times – every time the sales would just
grow.
Then I came to a roadblock. Since I was dropshipping, I never
had control over inventory. After about a week of great sales, my suppliers
began to run out of stock and I was stuck with tons of sales and no product. I
scrambled to find the products elsewhere, but didn’t have enough capital built
up in order to purchase inventory in bulk.
That’s when I had to get help from an unlikely source – my
landlord Shawn. He knew of my financial situation; it was to him that I
couldn’t pay my rent. But we’ve worked together in the past, so he also knew of
my drive for success. I told Shawn about the sales going on in the store and
let him know that I needed help if this was to continue. He decided to come on
and help out in the areas where I lacked. That would get us past the roadblock
and move on to more sales.
Over the next several weeks, we spent thousands of dollars on
Facebook ads to drive traffic to the store. Just like when I first started,
every dollar that went out brought a few more back in. Less than two months
after launch, we’ve had nearly $80,000 in sales come in. There have been a few
hiccups to overcome, but that comes with learning anything new. In the end,
it’s well worth it.
Even though I wasn’t a likely candidate for success, I’ve made
it. I’ve learned that there are resources out there that will help us do
anything we want. We just have to find them. For National Parks Depot, our
success is dedicated to the Shopify platform and to Facebook. Without either,
it would not exist.
About
The Author
Robert Nava is a father, electronics engineering student, and
entrepreneur who started his life with rough beginnings. After years of
struggling to create a successful business, Robert founded National Parks Depot in
2014.
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