Shadowing Practice: How Much Money My Importing Business Makes - Learn English Speaking with Video
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This is a warehouse holding millions of pounds worth of stock.
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One of my companies imports and manufactures teddy bears and children's arts and crafts, and we sell it all over the UK.
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I import from China, Turkey, and India.
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And in this video, I wanna break down exactly how one of these businesses works, how much money they make, what's the cost of running that business, and how do we get our products to market?
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Let's go.
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For context, I just wanna show you some of the products that we're really proud to create.
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So we create creative products, things that kids can do.
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So we don't just make normal teddy bears, we make crazy looking teddy bears and traditional looking teddy bears, but the kids actually stuff them and make them.
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And then they put their voices in a sound box and put them inside so they feel like they've got some ownership.
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Then we do all of the outfits that the teddy bears wear.
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My personal favourite, I've just designed this myself.
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I'm like Donatella for Sartre.
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And then we do pipe cleaners, all the colours of the rainbow.
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We do colour feathers and we do foam stickers and these pom-poms that you use in the craft world, all designed for kids to be really active.
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And then we started doing sand art as well.
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So these pictures, you pull off each piece of paper and then decorate it with different colored sand.
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This is our sand, and we make all the colors of the rainbow on sand as well.
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What I wanted to get over on this video is the harsh reality
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that I know people are going to say, comment on.
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They're going to say, James, why don't you do this stuff in the UK?
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Why do you need Turkey?
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Why do you need China?
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Why do you need India?
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Well, you just can't find the workforce to make all this stuff in the UK.
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We've got 170 staff in India that run the factory, and they found those people within one week.
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You couldn't do that here in the UK.
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It'd be impossible to do.
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And then there's the raw material problem.
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Even when we manufacture stuff in India with our own workforce or in Turkey, the raw materials are coming from China and the Far East.
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So you want to make this teddy bear in India, the actual material comes from China.
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It just gets finished in India.
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You can't get away from it.
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You need to use China and the Far East because that is the world's factory.
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And when we can manufacture stuff in the UK, yeah, absolutely, I do it.
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Manufacture on my own ice cream.
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I don't import that from Italy.
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We'll make that here.
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Manufacture our own signage because we can do that here because we can get the workforce to do it.
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So that gives you some context of the business.
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Now let's break down the numbers.
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How do we make money?
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What does it cost to run?
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And what's our route to market?
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Let's do it.
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Okay, total lifetime sales.
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The business has done about £7 million since its conception.
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What I really need to do is get that happening in one year
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and really get it to £10 million a year so that there's really positive cash flow all the time.
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The last financial year, we did £1.7 million.
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So you can really see how it's grown, because it's been going about seven years, and we've done 1.7 of that seven million in the last 12 months.
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There is a degree of seasonality to the business as well.
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For example, in January, we did about 30,000 pounds worth of sales.
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And this month in March that we're recording this video, we'll do about 200,000 pounds worth of sales.
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So there's definitely some seesaw in terms of cash flow into the business.
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Let's talk about the routes to market, because the £200,000 worth of sales we've done in March, £190,000 of that was wholesale.
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So these are about 40 to 80 customers that buy from us each month.
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And sometimes that fluctuates digger ending on the seasonality.
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We supply zoos and holiday parks and those types of guys.
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So 40 to 80 people are driving £190,000 worth of turnover
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and £10,000 worth of turnover comes from our direct to consumer sales.
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This is Amazon, eBay, Etsy and on our website.
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And that's about 400 people that drives the £10,000 worth of sales
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and only 40 to 80 people driving £190,000 worth of sales.
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So that's our route to market.
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And obviously what I've got to do is, yeah, we want to keep growing our wholesale because that allows us to buy in volume.
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But the real trick is to get that 10,000 direct to consumer sales up because they pay straight away.
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Whereas our wholesale customers, some of them are on 60 day terms.
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So we've done 190,000 pounds worth of sales, but actually probably only 30 to 40 grand of that money is in our bank account.
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We won't get the rest of that for another 60 days.
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So we've got to cash flow that through the business.
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Let's now break down the profit and loss.
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We've done about 200,000 pounds worth of sales.
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Where does all that 200,000 pounds go?
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A warehouse.
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You need to have a warehouse.
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You need to have a big warehouse.
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You've got deliveries in, big lorries, and you've got DPD collecting stuff and raw mail every single day.
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You've got forklift trucks, and that really does take up a lot of space.
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That, I think, will cost you about 12,000 pounds a month to have a decent warehouse minimum to run this type of business.
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Now, the advantage that we have is we own our warehouse.
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We own the freehold.
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We have a mortgage on it, but we don't have to find a big rent allow yourself £12,000.
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Shipping is another big cost.
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It was massive last year.
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We spent about £370,000 just on shipping, importing all our goods from around the world.
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The great news is that is now coming right down.
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So a £20,000 bill on a 40-foot shipping container, £20,000 is now only £2,000.
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So it's gone back to pre-pandemic levels.
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That's great news for us, but for the purposes of this workings out, I've allowed the shipping to be at the higher level because we're talking about what's happened in the past in actuals.
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So we spend about 30 grand a month on shipping.
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12,000 on the warehouse, 30,000 on shipping, that's 42,000 pounds so far.
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I've allowed for about 10,000 pounds worth of R&D, that's research and development.
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When you're creating products and you're doing branding, all of that really adds up.
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You've gotta hop on a plane, you need to go to India, you need to go to China, you need to go to Turkey.
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I've been doing that with a number of members of my staff.
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I'm doing that every single year.
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That costs a lot of money, it's a lot of time.
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Then when you're back in the UK, you're tweaking all those products, so you've got to allow yourself a decent amount of cash for R&D.
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Add another 10,000 for that.
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So 12,000 for the warehouse, 30,000 for shipping, 10,000 pounds for R&D.
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Then let's talk about labor.
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We spend about 17,000 pounds a month on labor.
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Now that's our warehouse team.
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That's all the people picking and packing the products, getting it out.
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And then we've got a couple of sales trainers and sales reps that go and train all of our customers.
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I told you at the beginning, we've got lots of wholesale customers.
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We actually go to their craft shops, their holiday parks, their zoos, and train them how to use our products.
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that comes with quite a big cost, about another 17 grand there.
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Then there's travel and all those other bits and bobs.
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But stock, obviously, if you're selling stuff and you're making between a 20 and 50% gross profit, that's got to come out of that 200,000.
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I've allowed for about another 100 grand's worth of stock.
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So 170K out of the 200,000 is the costs.
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So we've made a 30,000 pounds profit for the month.
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You might think that's really flipping fantastic.
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But the problem is we're growing the business.
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I don't want it to be 200,000.
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I need it to get to like 800 to a million pounds a month to shrink the R&D costs, to shrink the warehouse costs, to get the stock moving faster.
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And so all the profit just gets reinvested back into stock.
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Because last year, we lost all of our consumer business because we didn't have enough stock.
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And that is one of the big problems with this business.
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You just have to hold lots and lots of stock.
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The good thing about this business is we're not in fashion lines.
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We're not doing stuff that's going to be here today, gone tomorrow.
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We repeat all of our lines.
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So we just need to hold more stock.
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How do we improve this business?
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So that's the big question.
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Now the big challenge here is we did £200,000 worth of sales.
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But £190,000 of that £200,000 comes from our wholesale customers.
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And what's the problem there?
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They might not pay us for 30, 60, 90 days.
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So we're sending the stock out.
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We're running the business.
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We've only had £10,000 of the £200,000 in the bank.
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That's our direct to consumer business.
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And we let that really go to pot because during coronavirus, we couldn't get stock in and we prioritised our wholesale customers
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because they were the people buying regularly from us and they were buying in bigger bulk.
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But now we've got our stock levels back to normal, back to normal.
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We can fire on all cylinders, get the marketing going and continue to build that direct to consumer business
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because that gets us instant cash flow on better margins.
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Now, look, people might only be spending 30 pounds average order value on
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our direct to consumer business via the 500 to 10,000 pounds average order value
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that we do get on some of our trade customers.
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But we want to get that instant cash flow.
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So I need to build up
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that our direct to consumer business is 50 percent of the turnover and wholesale is the other 50 percent.
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So we've got more regular cash flow so
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that we're not just investing all of our profits and not keeping any for shareholders or ownership of the business.
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So that's one of the ways that we're gonna improve the business.
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We also need to widen the range.
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That's really gonna help the business.
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Now we've taken some steps to do that.
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We now make slime.
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Kids love slime.
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So we do all the kits to make slime and all the creatives that go with that.
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We're making more teddy bear clothes.
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We're making pipe cleaners and googly eyes and PVA glue and paint.
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We're doing all of that stuff as well to widen our range so that people can buy that from us as well.
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And all of our trade customers are begging for us to do it.
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We've now got the space and the resource to do that.
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And that's increasing the average order value on our wholesale business, but also increasing our direct-to-consumer market.
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Talking about that, markets.
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We need more markets.
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Now we're doing arts and crafts.
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We can go to day-nachters and schools that probably didn't want to buy our teddy bears, but we've got all the shipping and the resource to do this.
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So we need to get more customers, more markets on wholesale and direct-to-consumer.
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And the widening of the product range has allowed us to get into more markets.
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Improving GPs is the fastest way to keep more cash in your business.
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If you're thinking about building an importing business, and you're working to 20, 30% GPs, which some of our products are,
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it's very difficult if you're not getting paid for a long time to actually start keeping some cash.
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And I wanna talk about timelines in a moment.
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So if you can put in some stuff that's got really strong GPs
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and you sell that regularly and you think about a blended gross profit.
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So if you can get to a blended gross profit that's much higher than 30%
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and start thinking about a 50 to 60 to 70% blended gross profit margin,
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you really start keeping more of your cash because if you're waiting to get paid and you've got low gross profits, it's going to be years and years and years
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so you can actually pay yourself some dividends
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and get some cash out of the business because you're just always continually investing into stock.
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Let's talk about that.
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If you're thinking about setting up an importing business, I really think the fun begins at year 10.
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The first years, you're just learning how to import stuff
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and find the factories and find good trusted suppliers and build some customers.
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Then the warehouse comes in, then you need more stock because you start getting some big hitter customers
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that don't pay you on time and it just takes time.
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So allow yourself 10 years if you want to build an importing business and focus on getting good, strong gross profits so that you can stay in the game.
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Now, if you like this video, there is a part two coming out.
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We're actually flying into Turkey and we've made a little documentary about sourcing products in Turkey, meeting partners out there.
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So if you want to start an importing business, watch out for that video because it's coming up here on the channel very soon.
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If you'd love this video and you'd like me to help you grow your business, then why not come along to one of my seminars?
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The one you want to come to is Business Masterclass.
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This two-day event in London is designed to help grow your business.
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I go through every facet of running a business, how to scale it, grow it, and turn it into profitability.
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I'd love to see you there.
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Tickets are only a few hundred pounds and you can buy them on my website, jamesinclair.net.
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There's a link in the video description.
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I'll see you at Business Masterclass.
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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección
Esta lección de conversación de nivel B2 se basa en el vídeo “How Much Money My Importing Business Makes”. Las palabras que más se repiten: pounds, stock, sales, worth, warehouse. Este vídeo tiene 196 frases y 2361 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 11:03. El hablante habla rápido, unas 214 palabras por minuto, así que espera sonidos enlazados y reducidos. El 89 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés, por lo que el vocabulario es fácil de seguir.
Vocabulario clave de este vídeo
Las 15 palabras más avanzadas del vídeo, con su pronunciación y significado:
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| warehouse sustantivo | /ˈwɛə(ɹ)haʊs/ | almacén, depósito |
| wholesale sustantivo | /ˈhoʊlseɪl/ | venta al por mayor, mayoreo |
| import sustantivo | /ˈɪm.pɔɹt/ | importación |
| slime sustantivo | /slaɪm/ | limo, cieno |
| turnover sustantivo | /ˈtɝnoʊvɚ/ | cifra de negocios |
| workforce sustantivo | /ˈwɝk.foɹs/ | mano de obra, fuerza laboral |
| blend verbo | /blɛnd/ | mezclar, licuar |
| seasonality sustantivo | estacionalidad | |
| cleaner sustantivo | /ˈkli.nɚ/ | limpiador |
| zoo sustantivo | /zuː/ | zoo, jardín zoo |
| coronavirus sustantivo | /kəˈɹoʊnəˌvaɪɹəs/ | coronavirus |
| decorate verbo | /ˈdɛkəɹeɪt/ | decorar, engalanar |
| forklift sustantivo | /ˈfɔɹklɪft/ | montacargas, carretilla elevadora |
| profitability sustantivo | /ˌpɹɑ.fɪ.təˈbɪl.ɪ.ti/ | rentabilidad, lucratividad |
| seesaw sustantivo | /ˈsi.sɔ/ | balancín, subibaja |
Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| break down verbo | descomponerse, averiarse | |
| add up verbo | adicionar | |
| come out verbo | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | revelarse, salir a la luz |
| come up verbo | salir a relucir | |
| go through verbo | atravesar | |
| pull off verbo | llevarse el gato al agua, poner una pica en Flandes |
Frases que vale la pena repetir
Frases cortas y completas del vídeo que puedes reutilizar en la conversación diaria:
- My personal favourite, I've just designed this myself.
- You can't get away from it.
- How do we make money?
- And what's our route to market?
- How do we improve this business?
Gramática en este vídeo
Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:
| Estructura | En el vídeo |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — una acción que empezó antes y continúa | it's been going · I've been doing |
| Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora | I've just designed · has done · we've done |
Pronunciación a tener en cuenta
El hablante usa 86 contracciones y formas reducidas, como we've, we're, you're. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.
- Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: shareholder /ˈʃɛəˌhəʊl.də(ɹ)/, conception /kənˈsɛpʃən/, harsh /ˈhɑɹʃ/
- Palabras largas — cuida el acento: coronavirus /kəˈɹoʊnəˌvaɪɹəs/, profitability /ˌpɹɑ.fɪ.təˈbɪl.ɪ.ti/, continually /kənˈtɪnjuəli/
Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:
- s + consonante al inicio — sin añadir una “e” delante: slime /slaɪm/, sticker /ˈstɪkə/
- /v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: turnover /ˈtɝnoʊvɚ/, coronavirus /kəˈɹoʊnəˌvaɪɹəs/, dividend /ˈdɪvɪdɛnd/
- /h/ — una aspiración suave, no la “j”: warehouse /ˈwɛə(ɹ)haʊs/, wholesale /ˈhoʊlseɪl/, hitter /ˈhɪtɚ/, shareholder /ˈʃɛəˌhəʊl.də(ɹ)/, harsh /ˈhɑɹʃ/
Cómo practicar con este vídeo
- Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
- Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
- Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como warehouse, wholesale, import.
¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.