The Dropship Unlocked Podcast

What’s Possible with Dropshipping? Setting Expectations (Episode 77)

• Lewis Smith & James Eardley • Season 1 • Episode 77

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📞 Ready to Take the Next Step? https://dropshipunlocked.com/training-watch-apply?el=podcast-77-whats-possible-with-dropshipping

🗣In this episode of the Dropship Unlocked Podcast, hosts Lewis Smith and James Eardley discuss the possibilities and realistic expectations of starting a dropshipping business. 

We provide insights on setting achievable goals, understanding the journey, and implementing effective strategies for success.

👉 Prefer to watch this on Youtube? Check it out here  ➡️ https://youtu.be/1Ht2mIk7C4M

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Topics Discussed:

★ Understanding Dropshipping: Explanation of dropshipping and its appeal, including financial and location freedom. Benefits of not holding inventory and the flexibility of managing a business from anywhere. Importance of choosing the right model and suppliers for a successful dropshipping business.

★ Setting Realistic Goals: Initial steps for new dropshippers, including setting up a store, understanding a niche, and running first ads. Importance of investing time and money initially and treating dropshipping as a serious business. Achieving small wins like the first sale or £1,000 in revenue as motivating milestones.


★ Defining Success in Dropshipping: Stages of success, from initial sales to scaling operations. Importance of achieving consistent daily sales and optimising operations. Setting short-term and long-term goals for sustainable growth and customer satisfaction.

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Links and Resources Mentioned:

Pick up a copy of Lewis’ book: https://htabook.com 

Get Shopify for £1 a month for 3 months: https://www.dropshipunlocked.com/shopify 

Get a free trial with a professional phone line: https://www.dropshipunlocked.com/circle 

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Key Takeaways:

★ Education is Key: Start by thoroughly educating yourself about dropshipping and its nuances.

★ Set Achievable Goals: Set realistic short-term and long-term goals to stay motivated and measure progress.

★ Consistent Effort: Success requires consistent effort, learning from failures, and adapting strategies.

★ Community and Mentorship: Engage with communities and seek mentorship to accelerate learning and avoid common mistakes.

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FOLLOW:

Thank you for listening to the Dropship Unlocked Podcast! Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review on your favourite podcast platform.

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★★★Dropship Unlocked - Lewis Smith★★★

🌏Watch Our Free Training ➽ https://www.dropshipunlocked.com/training?el=podcast-77-whats-possible-with-dropshipping

We want to make sure that if you're considering this as a business model, you're coming into this eyes wide open. And we'll tell you how it really isn't. But when you do get started, you're it's unknown, isn't it? You don't really know what to expect. Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely vital to set the right expectations from the start that drop shipping. But you shouldn't hold yourself back. You shouldn't think oh, what's realistic, what's not realistic, you set what's realistic in your own mind. Okay, can go and work on this business from Thailand or Bali or Dubai, or Vietnam or wherever, and just have a laptop and just run the business from a cafe. I remember when I first started, you were so unclear about what to expect and it's a big question that we hear a lot of people ask, or one of the best levers or strategies you can use immediately is just focus on ox. Welcome to the dropship unlocked Podcast. I'm Louis Smith, the founder of dropship unlocked and with me is our Client Success Coach James Eardley. Now, when we're not recording the podcast episodes, we're running our own e commerce businesses and helping aspiring entrepreneurs launch their own high ticket drop shipping businesses, keen to build your own six or even seven figure business. My book, the home turf advantage is your blueprint for launching a profitable online store. Grab your copy at HT a book.com to date, and let's get you started. Now sit back, relax. And let's unlock your potential with the dropship unlocked Podcast. Today we're diving into a crucial topic for anyone considering drop shipping. It's all about what is possible with drop shipping. It's a question we hear a lot for people that are considering starting Louis. So today we're going to talk about setting realistic goals, what success looks like, and really lay out the path and what people can expect when they get into a dropshipping venture today. So Louis, you have deep experience with this subject, don't you? Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely vital to set the right expectations from the start that job shipping because it can be incredibly rewarding. But obviously, it's important to know what you're getting into and certainly understand what's achievable, as well. So looking forward to breaking that down. For our listeners today. I know when I first started, I remember thinking dropshipping was potentially this kind of quick path to easy money. I was quite naive and early on in my journey, certainly entrepreneurship. And I definitely had a shock when I went in with that mindset because hard work, dedication, graft, the you have to put in like with any business, and you create a business, that means eventually you never have to trade your time for money by working a job again. So that's the kind of the balance right? Yes, there is a lot of effort, the choices, you either work hard for someone else in your job from now until you retire. So through your entire career working incredibly hard grafting away. Or you work hard now, for yourself, you front load the effort, you build a sustainable business to step back after 678 months. So I believe that truly understanding the journey ahead better prepares you for the hard work that's inevitably going to be required. So we want to make sure that if you're considering this as a business model, you're coming into this eyes wide open. And we'll tell you how it really is in today's episode, we'll really break it down for you so that you fully understand what the road that lays ahead of you looks like. Yeah, exactly the clearer picture you have what's ahead, the more likely you are to attack it and really be successful. We know what to expect. I love the point you've mentioned already, which is similar to something I've heard recently where when you start a business, it starts harder, and then gets easier. Whereas if you continue a nine to five job starting in a job starts easy and gets harder over time. I definitely agree with, which is something that we'll touch on, I'm sure in this episode today. But we'll start off with the basics, Louis, there's a lot of people that approach us they want to get started in dropshipping. They're looking to achieve financial and location freedom. But can you give us a breakdown of what dropshipping actually is? And why does it appeal to people looking to achieve financial and location freedom, ghosts. So in its simplest form, drop shipping is just a retail fulfillment method where a store doesn't keep the product so that it sells in stock. Instead, when we sell a product, we just purchase it from a third party and have it shipped directly from them over to the customer. So that means that we never have to handle the product directly. So when I first kind of found out about this, it was actually in the four hour workweek Tim Ferriss book, I remember reading about the concept of drop shipping, and I just remember the relief of thinking. So I can start a business and I don't have to invest huge amounts in inventory upfront and order these like container loads worth of stock, because there's a inexperienced entrepreneur that will Risk felt huge to me what if I ordered it? And there was a manufacturing mistake with a lot of the products? Or what if it didn't meet certain requirements? Or what if there was a quality issue or, you know, there's so many What if it got damaged or I got scammed or like, there's so many worries with that. But I realized that with drop shipping, it would allow me to start with limited capital, I didn't have 10s of 1000s of pounds in savings, you know, I've worked in a decent job. But like many people, I'd probably only put aside the five to 6000 pounds that I had in like disposable cash that I could use to do this. And so I'd built a bit of financial buffer, but I didn't have hundreds of 1000s to pour into buying a load of stock and launching a brand from scratch. So I wanted to do it right the first time, I didn't want to put that money into stock that may never sell or that may sell but the at a terrible margin, or, you know, all of the different downsides that come with doing that. And aside from the risk of doing that, the flexibility of running my business without having to hold any stock was also a huge game changer for me, because the flexibility meant that I could do it from anywhere in the world. So yes, there's no, there's a lot less risk, because I'm not putting money into stock. But it also means I don't actually have to worry or think about stocks. So the the physical space that I save not having to have a warehouse or clutter my house with with goods, but also the headspace that I save mentally by knowing that, okay, I can go and work on this business from Thailand, or Bali, or Dubai, or Vietnam or wherever, and just have a laptop, and just run the business from a cafe with a coffee, you know, really like low overheads, but also like low mental strain, because I have my brain is not cluttered with all these thoughts of, you know, where's the product, how's the inventory going to work, where's the third party fulfillment center. And it just becomes this kind of really cluttered start to business. I think as an entrepreneur just starting out, you want to keep it simple. They think of this business model, like managing an online catalog, you remember the Argos catalog, right that you see, and you walk past August, and they've still got it in there and sort of laminated now. But imagine you're running an online version of that. And customers browse them, and then they buy them. And when they buy the products, your supplier handles the rest much like Argos do in many cases, they're often drop shipping with many of their suppliers as well. So our model of the home turf advantage, unlike traditional drop shipping, that you might have heard a lot of bad press about the kind of Aliexpress cheap products from T mu and China and stuff. In our model involves higher priced items, they get delivered from UK distributors. So you can offer next day delivery to your customers, which means really simple business model, much fewer sales, higher profit per sale, and happy customers because they get their products. They're good quality. They're nice and fast. So I think the main lesson that I took from doing all of this, and then kind of figuring out the business model I wanted to go down was that choosing the right model and the right suppliers is one of the most critical factors to achieving the results that you want in business with the lowest stress possible. And that's something that we guide you through step by step inside our masterclass program, we help you navigate all those choices effectively give you the personalized guidance that you need on our q&a calls that we help with, and really just helps you get set up for success right from the start. And that's right, because ultimately, there's going to be work per day, which he made clear. But if you choose the right model, and for reasons that you've explained, you are putting yourself on the right path towards success if time location and financial freedom is your goal, but it's key that obviously dropshipping comes as 70 He terms and reasons why we would get into dropshipping, so long as you adapt it into the type of dropshipping that we see working well now, not necessarily the most common form of dropshipping that you might come across when he first started researching. So I think people can understand, I certainly understood when I was looking at it, why dropship been made so much sense. But when you do get started, you're it's unknown, isn't it? You don't really know what to expect. So can we set some some goals? Can we that sort of set out for people what they should expect when they're starting out in dropshipping. Of course, it's difficult because everybody's journey and pace and hunger for success will be different. And even their definition of success will be different. So if you're listening to this and thinking that you need to replace your income, and maybe your incomes only two or 3000 a month, they'll be very different to someone's definition of success, who's making 10 15,000 pounds per month already from their job. And that's a different income to have to replace a success will be different for each party. But I think the the put it tactically the first few months involves setting up your store, understanding your niche getting to grips with the market that you're in, and then running your first app. So that's kind of the basics. So that's the front loading, we talked about building the foundations of your business. I remember the first few months in my business, we're all about like learning and just testing different strategies. It's kind of like you're going back to school, you're just absorbing everything again, like a sponge, except it's fun because you're thinking this is building my feet. Usually the skills I'm learning here are going to pay my bills for many years to come. So that initial phase is kind of filled with these small victories because you got to celebrate them as you go. It's like you sign your first supplier amazing like go and celebrate, you set your answer life, big milestone, you know, made your first sale, that's huge post about that in our community, if you're part of it, making the first 10k malt or first 50k, or first 100k, eight, eight, these are all great milestones that you've got to mark the occasion of. And I know they all certainly kept me motivated. But it's kind of like learning a new language when you first join, when it first it just feels foreign. There's all these new terms, especially if you haven't had much experience with E commerce before. But eventually, by being around the right people, you know how they say the best way to learn a language is just move to that country and immerse yourself in that culture. You after a while, you start to pick it up. And eventually you become fluent. We had a member in our program recently, my key posts the other day that made me laugh. And he was saying a few weeks ago, he didn't understand any of this stuff. And suddenly, he's speaking to his friends about top of funnel and conversion rates and ao V and abandoned cart sequences. And it's suddenly like he's learned to speak the language of E commerce. So I think you've got to accept that when you first start, that won't be you know, it won't come naturally it doesn't to anyone, but you'll pick it up over time. And the best method for that is just immersion, get around a community of other people speaking about it. The other expectation that I want to make sure it's very transparent here is that you, if you're running a serious business, you have to expect to invest both time and money initially. So you treat it as a serious business. And it will pay you as a serious business. It's not some get rich quick scheme, like we could not be more clear about that. You got to aim for those small wins initially, like you make your first sale, or you make your first 1000 pounds, or I don't know, it's it's just more of a marathon than a sprint, you've got to just mark those milestones as you go. And I think if you set achievable enough milestones along the way, that helps keep you motivated, because you haven't got to delay the gratification until you're like, Okay, I've done it, I've replaced my 15 grand a month salary or whatever, like the success milestone for you is, you can say I made my first sale today. That's cool, right? Maybe you only made 400 pounds in profit. But still, that's cool. That's maybe that's what you would have made if you've gone into your old job. So I think it's just doing that that's exactly what we've baked into our master class. By the way, we make sure that each of these milestones are kind of items that you can check off in a very step by step, sequential, bite sized process because it can feel overwhelming. If you're just trying to piece this together, we put this in a very clear success path, so that you kind of tick these things off individually as you go, you hit these targets efficiently, and it just keeps up your momentum. So eventually, you get to the point where you are hitting the bigger goals. But you've kind of had fun along the journey as well, if that makes sense. It does. Yeah, it's okay to have fun and enjoy the journey along the way. Because that's what keeps you motivated. So you're not just thinking about your big goals that you've got to like replace your your salary, you just look at the incremental steps that you're taking the wins along the way. And you're just enjoying the whole way. And as you say, I was fortunate to be part of the masterclass program. And so I was clearly shown that it was important to keep celebrating these wins all along the way. Because it means you just keep pushing on to the next one, and you get that momentum that builds. And so I remember clearly when I, when I came in, I had to be so open minded because I was learning things I'd never come across before. I had no experience of E commerce, no experience of drop shipping, I didn't know what to expect, I didn't know what I didn't know, as well as learning things that I never thought I'd need to learn that I was open minded, I was willing to learn, understood that I was going to invest time, and as I was gonna invest that money to get started. And then with that mindset, I was able to just be a sponge, take it all in, and then enjoy all of the wins along the way. I remember even night when I had my business email address signed up, I pat myself on the back, celebrate because it was it was a winner along the way. Saying up your phone number, seeing your store, come live on your on your website for the first time signing your first supplier, it's a great feeling. And these are all steps on the way to those big goals that you have time location freedom, and it makes the whole thing enjoyable and motivating to keep pushing on. Like defining success is difficult, as you say, because it's got to be individual and difficult and different for everyone for people to to define. What do you think success looks like in the dropshipping world? Can you give us some milestones and realistic milestones that people should be aiming for? Yeah, of course, I'll try my best. So I think success in dropshipping can be measured in stages, essentially from the initial sales that you make through to like scaling up your operations, building our team automating processes. So I guess to break it down reaching my first consistent daily sales was a huge milestone, obviously your first sale it was this amazing feeling you never forget where you are and the sound of Shopify going to Ching and you're like, I've just made 500 pounds or whatever. But it's I think that that's great. But then when you start me consistent daily sales, then you realize like, oh, wow, we've got momentum here. Like I've built this, I built something real that's paying every day for work that I did six months ago. Like that is the definition of front loading the work. So that's cool. And I think I felt like I'd really found my footing when you're making like 800 to 900 pounds per day, because you're making maybe like a sale every day, then suddenly, you hit the next tier, when it's like, two to 3000 pounds per day. And then that equates to like, Okay, now I'm making 1000 pounds a day, suddenly, I'm at 30k per month, and then making three sales per day, I'm at 100,000 per month. And it kind of just happens like that. And it very, sometimes very quickly, but often, it's a little more gradual scales up and you're, you're at the point where you're making multiple sales per day, you're optimizing your operations, and then suddenly, you're, you have enough profit in the business to start looking at hiring a team. And then you kind of become the like, conductor of the orchestra. Your job is not to get in and like answer customer service emails or tweak things on your site, your job is to find the right people who can do those things by their saying, Dan Sullivan's book is it who not how you're looking for here, who are the people I can put in place to help me with the high leverage activities that I no need doing. But that there are people out there who are far more skilled at me than doing and it's having the humility to admit that and not being too proud and stubborn and saying, I'm just gonna do it all myself, I think that's the key to really unlock scaling. In a business like this. It's a bit like if you're writing a book about your ecommerce journey, you're the main character, you're scribbling down notes every day, every page that you write in your book is progress towards your final story that eventually is the book of your E commerce journey that you've published, whether that's hitting your first 10k months, or 20k months or 30k months, like these are all different pages of your journey as you go. So hopefully, that breaks it down a little bit into kind of those those chunks and those milestones, I think it's good to have both short term goals. Like, for example, achieving your first sale or reaching a consistent daily sales number. Or maybe it's like, breaking even on adspend. For example, maybe you start off and spending a bit too much on ads, and then you kind of bring it back and you're like, Oh, I'm now breaking even. Now I've just got to start to, you know, tweak the ads and tweak my margins, maybe and start making a lot more profit. And then balancing those short term goals with long term goals as well to that might be scaling up or optimizing operations or saying I want to build a real brand, you know, maybe one of your long term goals coming into this, which is a great goal to have is exiting your business. Maybe it's saying my goal from this is to build something that in two, three years, I want to sell my business, I know a friend of mine has literally yesterday just closed on the sale of their online business. And it was for 36 times monthly multiple of the profit that they were making per month. So that's 36 times the average monthly net profit that the business was making an investor bought the business because they can do lots of all of it and get it much higher, right. And they'll make their money back within 36 months if they don't do anything to it. So even quite a good investment for them. But if you think about I think they were making like 13,000 net profit per month with the business, so they've just sold that business for like, I think it's like half a million, just under half a million. So that's an amazing goal to come into. And it's totally possible with this kind of business model as well. Especially if you come into it with that as your goal from the outset. Because you can go in thinking, everything I set up I want standard operating procedures for I want a very clear list of actions. So that I'm not the business, the business is a set of processes, its relationships with suppliers, it's, you know, spreadsheets automations, it's things that can be sold as a bundled unit and transferred over to an investor or a buyer. Later where you say, okay, that business is yours, it runs like clockwork, the team can come with the business, you know, I can like us to kind of sell it as a package. And so the team keep their jobs and remain employed. And yeah, I think that that for some people is is the goal for other people, it might just be they want to keep their business as a cash flow business that pays their lifestyle as they travel the world or go through retirement or go through university or whatever that might be. So I know when I was first starting out, I was just focusing on the sustainable growth, making sure customers were satisfied, like taking the basics, the foundations, because once you have those things in place, you can really build success compounded from that. And these are all things by the way we guide you through inside the master class, we've really helped you build that solid foundation, set up the processes. So you're setting yourself up for long term success with your brand. And eventually you have a nice saleable asset, something you could cash out 36 months worth of profit upfront in one lump sum transaction. You can't do that with a job right? Exactly. There's no way you'd be able to sell your job for that level of money. And we're building assets here for the long term. And that's why it's something we put work into to get to that stage. But you shouldn't hold yourself back, you shouldn't think, oh, what's realistic, what's not realistic, you set what's realistic in your own mind. And that's why we're setting you these long term targets to have because they're absolutely possible with E commerce business. Something I think is useful to shout out now as well is for those of you who are looking to delve deeper about the initial phase initially, so like the first 90 days, and we've done a episode that specifically about that, which is episode 59, of the dropship, or not podcast to queue up after this one. And that is called navigating the first 90 days drop shipping to really go into detail about what that looks like that. Yeah, I think breaking up into short term goals and long term goals is important. Because I mean, the successes you've seen Louis with drop shipping, you've done 5 million in sales. Jared, who's been on the podcast a couple of times has done 4 million in sales, I've done a million pounds in sales myself, we've got so many other success stories in Suraj, I'm forgetting a lot of people that are on the YouTube channel that people can check out as well. But these goals are all being achieved by people that came into it with no dropshipping experience beforehand. So it does show what's possible. But when they produce these results, we're not suggesting that they're done in the short term, they're not done within a month or two months of starting these businesses, their short term goals, you set out, you decide you're going to make your first sale within the first couple of months. Amazing. Once you hit that you can scale to the really big goals. And you can ultimately set what's realistic, as long as you put the work in to get there. So strategies then for people that are keen, ready to go hungry to get to these big goals that people are achieving all the time. What strategy should people be looking to implement to influence their level of success, or one of the best levers or strategies you can use immediately is just focused on optimizing and scaling your profitable paid ad campaigns. You know, that is the shortcut to getting a flood of sales quickly, if you can just switch on the tap of traffic ie paid ads, that that can really like take things to the next level, I found that and honing my ad campaigns. When you do it right. It is just like turning on a tap. If I were to turn off all my ad campaigns right now, yes, we'd have a trickle through of like organic traffic coming through that the the the way of doing it profitably. And being able to control your scale is to make sure that you can run ads profitably, not to spend money and hope. But know that for every ad you run for every campaign you run, you're making sales at your target return on adspend or, or lower, or higher, sorry, and so that you're making a sale at a lower acquisition cost in ad spend than the profit that you bring it in. And at that point, you're making profit on every single sale that comes in. So if it cost me 100 pound to make a sale, and I make 600 pounds in profit on that, that product sale, I've now made 500 pound net. And I could do that all day long and keep spending 100 pounds to make those sales on that. That's one of the benefits with high ticket drop shipping using the home turf advantage model. So I think that's definitely one another would be investing in great customer service early on back and help you build a loyal customer base. But also it just pays for itself so quickly. It's such a great return on investment. People think, Oh, I'm not ready to hire a virtual assistant at this stage. I'm like thinking sometimes I think you're not ready not to. Because if you can bring someone in, who answers every call that comes into the business, who answers every email, who answers every live chat request that comes in who calls back voicemails, who calls back abandoned carts, people who like you know, didn't complete the checkout. If they make two or three sales extra per month, they've probably made you a profit because they'll have paid for their salary plus more. And so it's yeah, not to mention the headspace that it frees you up as well as an entrepreneur because you're then not having to do all of those things, which means you can focus on being a business owner, not kind of wearing all of the hats in the business and working in the business. So that's definitely one it's Yeah, I think having a pay a flow of paid traffic coming in. And great customer service is like you're setting up a storefront on a really busy street and you've got a great team of store attendant in the in the store helping people come in so not only have you got traffic coming in, but they're also having a great experience. I can say those two things if you put it into the physical world that you're achieving by doing that. The customer service in our business, I think of it like the glue that holds the business together. It just keeps everything running smoothly. I try and have my team provide amazing customer experience and customer service to build loyalty because then customers want to come back but also they want to recommend others that word of mouth to family to friends. They'll just go and post about you on social media. They've had an incredible experience. it. So that's another one. And then also, I'd be making sure that I'm staying updated with industry trends and just continually honing and improving my skills as an entrepreneur, I want to always be learning I've never done, you know, if I'm not learning, I feel like I'm decaying, my skills is becoming outdated. So keeping in a community where I'm constantly able to absorb new lessons, new tactics, like I would do that. And I would see that as my competitive advantage. And I do do that. And of course, that's exactly the reason why we put together the dropship unlock to Launchpad as well, that's just a way for those people who are in the position where we first started. They're just starting out, and they want to get around other like minded entrepreneurs, but they need somewhere to congregate, to be able to talk to others, share ideas, learn about the latest tactics at the forefront of E commerce, get that step by step guidance, and then keep up to date with what's working now and just get their business off the ground without the expensive and time consuming guesswork really to keep them ahead of the curve. Yeah, that's a brilliant strategy. I've been around the community, finding people that have already succeeded, is always going to be a shortcut to success. So wherever your goals aren't getting around other people that have achieved already, they'll help you to set your expectations, they'll help to push you in the right direction. And it really is a hack, I think, to get into success more quickly. So this has been incredibly insightful. Louis, thanks for sharing your story again, and getting Yes, to understand what we can expect. I remember when I first started, it was so unclear about what to expect. And it's a big question that we hear a lot of people ask. So by laying out the pit, what people have achieved, the mindset to go in with, and also the strategies, There's been loads of people to get their teeth stuck into and reach the goals that we've achieved quicker and beat us to it. So have you got any final thoughts then for listeners who are inspired and and thinking about getting started soon? Yeah, certainly, I think the first thing would be just to start with educating yourself thoroughly. You don't know what you don't know in business. And sometimes that can be our biggest downfall. I know, our episode 26 of the dropship unlocked podcast where we covered the concept of high ticket dropshipping in real detail, and is great one to listen to. So yeah, Episode 26 at checkout. And then as I said, engage with communities possibly join a community like ours, consider mentorship to avoid those common and expensive and time consuming pitfalls. Remember, as well, success is not overnight. It's a result of consistent effort, learning from failures, picking a proven model to follow, and just making sure that you treat the journey along the way as part of the reward. And if you're looking to buy these strategies, effectively HTA book.com is a great place to start. By picking up a copy of my book, you'll also get to jump into our dropship unlocked Launchpad community, where our community are all gathered together. We're all there to help you. And we host courses in there, we support you, we can help you on q&a calls, and really help me get your business launched. Yeah, thank you, Louis. I think if people are worried or unsure about what to expect from starting drop shipping, reading a step by step book that they can get at Hga. book.com. Your book, the home turf advantage, it lays it all out. So it takes away the guesswork and you can really understand what the comprehensive strategy is that you put in place, so they know exactly how to get to success. Enjoying the podcast, we'd love to hear from you leave a comment or a review. And we might just feature it on an upcoming episode. Also, for detailed show notes and resources, head to dropship unlock.com. Forward slash podcast. If you found value from any episode of this podcast, please take just 10 seconds to leave us a quick five star review on your podcast app of choice. It helps us more than you could imagine. And who knows, you might just hear your comments on the show. Thanks for being part of our community. Your support helps us keep delivering a new episode every week. Okay, now it's time to answer a question that we've had in from a listener. And remember, if you have a question that you'd like to ask to myself, and Luis, all we need to do is leave a comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode. Now this week, the question has come in from Dan reinter 7251. And Dan has asked a question similar to what we've been talking about today. And it shows how popular this question is. So Louis Dallas asked, I'm new to drop shipping, and I'm trying to set realistic goals. What kind of success should I expect in my first year with high ticket dropshipping in the UK? Thank you for your question, Dan. And yeah, hopefully we've covered a little bit of that in today's episode as well. But in answer to that, the initial months that you start out will involve a steep learning curve. So you're going to be setting up your store you got to understand your niche. You got to start running ads, signing your suppliers building your site. And I remember those early days vividly. I was spending late nights tweaking my store I'm learning from every mistake I'm you know, hoping that after a night of ad spend and setting my ads lives that there's going to be sales there in the morning. I'm crossing my fingers that often They weren't in those initial days. And it was nerve racking, it was worrying. And I quickly learned that the speed of my results and how high I could achieve depended on the supports that I had and the tactical knowledge that I had as well. Remember, we talked about applying the right model, we're not just going into it blindly. So if you're in a program, you're much more likely to see fast results, because you're not having to guess every single step. And there will be many, many steps along the way. So it's exactly why I created the masterclass, the more time you can commit to growing your business, the faster you're going to see results as well. So just make sure that you have got that time carved out, really give it your all in that time. At first, it might be evenings, weekends, but eventually as you start to see it replace your your salary, perhaps you start to say a couple of weeks of holiday work on it during that time. And then eventually, you can go full time. Now after the first few months of getting everything in place, you should start to see some steady growth, start getting some consistent sales, and improving your marketing strategies. As you go all of this by the way, I have to caveat by saying you have to take action, you know, the business won't just build itself will lay out the strategies for you. But you very much need to apply those strategies and ask when you get stuck. Like that's the benefit of being surrounded by hundreds of other like minded entrepreneurs who can help you at every stage. I know you wanted a realistic goal though down so very difficult to say. But I'd say something like anywhere between 10,000 to 50,000 pounds in monthly revenue by the end of your first year, you'd be in a really good place, you know, you'd have taken it seriously. If you followed the process. You're selling high ticket products, maybe averaging just over a sale per day. And the idea of the dropship unlocked masterclass is designed to fast track your progress and help you achieve those milestones much, much earlier than a year in that we've laid it out as a six week program, in fact, so if you've got six weeks of time, and you can really go all in, you know, you can see if you can beat the record for getting up and running in the fastest time possible. But remember, slow and steady wins the race, you want to get it right, you don't want to rush the foundations of your business. And yeah, we continue working with you for the full 12 months. So you've got plenty of time to get up to that point. Perfect. Yeah, that covers that question perfectly. Thanks for Dan. And just to comment on that, as well as the expectations you set there for Dan is exactly what I found, for a lot of work in made a lot of goals, I had to work on weekends and evenings initially. And but with the hard work, it really paid off. And so by the end of the first year, I've done 250,000 pounds in sales, which as you say was somewhere between 10 and 50k a month, and within the first year. But yeah, the action had to be put in. So thank you for your your answer there, Louis, we're now going to answer a review, or read out a review rather for for the podcast. So a big thank you to Bailey 899, for sharing your thoughts through an apple podcast review. So Bailey 899 said, inspirational, so grateful that I stumbled across this podcast, your past situations resonate with my current. And you've made me take the leap into becoming an entrepreneur. And I'm so excited about life again. Thank you. Wow, amazing. That's really powerful to hear. Thank you for the review, Bailey. And it's just I find it funny the power of a podcast and how like, we can share our experiences and our stories. And someone out there somewhere resonates with that thinks that that's the situation I'm in right now, while they're listening to it in their car, in the gym, or the way to work or whatever. And that. I mean, it's almost like being able to talk to our former selves in the past and be like, hey, it's you from the future. And like, life is good. By the way, here's is the path to take. And I don't know, I just find it fascinating that the power of podcast technology's amazing. So thanks very much for the review. Bailey really glad to hear that you've been enjoying the podcast and that you're inspired by it. And yet, your review means a lot to us like. Now it's reviews, like Bailey's that keep us motivated to share our best insights. So if you're finding any value in this podcast, consider passing it on to a friend or a colleague who might benefit from this as well. And if you can think of someone in your network who has been curious about perhaps starting their own business, perhaps sharing this episode with them could be the push that they need to get started. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the dropship unlocked podcast. We hope you're walking away with insights and inspiration. to kickstart your ecommerce journey. Grab a copy of my book The home of turf advantage at HT A book.com is a distilled guide based on real experience to help you build your E commerce venture. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button for more strategies and success stories. If you like what you heard a five star review would mean the world to us and you might just get a shout out on an upcoming episode. And finally, thank you for deciding to spend your time with us today. We can't wait to bring you more insights on the next episode of the dropship on Rob's podcast.