Sarah’s journey
Sarah Khelifa majored in accounting in high school and studied English in University. However, early on, she finds out that she doesn’t really like literature and quits University after 2 years. In 2015, she decides to find a job to pay for her driving license in a fast food and works there for a whole year. While working, Sarah Khelifa still lives at her parents house and starts being a little depressed watching all her friends in University living by themselves. Sarah is now 21 years old and is not happy with her life and starts questioning her decision. Is she ruining her life? While she isn’t satisfied with her work, Sarah Khelifa still gives it her 100%. Her boss notices her hard work and decides to promote her to the role of manager, however Sarah knows very well she doesn’t want to spend her life in a fast food and rejects the offer. She continues working at the same place part time as she was already doing. Despite all of this, Sarah Khelifa realises that it’s possible to run your own business and make it in life. Sarah has hope and decides to quiet her job and go back to University.
E-commerce, the path to Sarah’s financial independence
A year into University, Sarah Khelifa doesn’t travel for the summer holidays and stays home. The young woman spends a lot of time on her laptop and starts learning about trading. Sarah takes up an online trading course and while spending all her energy on this new found passion she lands on e-commerce related videos. Sarah Khelifa spends time watching videos on the matter and quickly realizes that she probably has a better chance at making money doing e- commerce rather than trading. It also seems to be much less risky for her. Sarah Khelifa decides to focus on YouTube videos related to online business in the US as it’s 2017 and it seems that the concept hasn’t really caught up in France – the French videos don’t have any great content. She finds a US YouTuber who offers a free online training and tutorial. Sarah Khelifa decides to copy his entire strategy and try it out but it was a mistake. She needs to finds a new strategy. Sarah lands on a well known e-commerce expert) first videos. She decides to copy his entire online shop and try it again. Sarah Khelifa has 100 euros in savings and pays 400 euros to her first influencer in March 2018 to market her product available in her online store. 24 hours later she makes 7,500 euros in sales. She decides to re-invest the proceeds into the online store. The young entrepreneur, pays a second influencer for 1,500 euros and subsequently manages to generate 15,000 euros in revenue in April 2018. At the same time, the well none influenceur releases a paid e-commerce course for which she enrols in. A few weeks later her online store is being copied by other people, after all she herself had copied it. Sarah then realizes that she can’t go on with her product anymore, she needs a new idea or a new market. At the same time, there is a lot of bad publicity in France with regards to ecommerce.
E-commerce in the US – a new found success
Sarah Khelifa, now known as Sarah West decides to shift gear and applies her same strategy to the US market and starts paying US influencers to market her online store. She explodes in the US! E-commerce is little known in this market and very few pay influencers for their products. In 8 months, she generates USD 800,000 in sales! Sarah Khelifa realises she can actually live from her e-commerce business and decides to quit University to dedicate herself full time to e-commerce. She launches other online stores with other products in the US and its all a success. A year later, Sarah Khelifa meets with her future partner. They both get along and in February 2020 decide to partner to launch their first online store selling their products in the US and the UK. They sell more products together than separately and the tie up is a real success. In the first four months during lockdown they manage to generate USD 2,500,000 in revenue! Talk about success! Since summer 2020, they both live in London in the same building and teir 2021 goal is to both invest in real estate – stay tuned !
https://www.instagram.com/sarah.ecom/