The Dropship Unlocked Podcast

Lewis Smith: Why I Started Dropship Unlocked (My Story) | Episode 87

• Lewis Smith & James Eardley • Season 1 • Episode 87

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🗣In this episode, James interviews Lewis Smith, the founder of Dropship Unlocked. Lewis shares his personal journey from the corporate world to becoming a successful entrepreneur, and the reasons behind starting Dropship Unlocked. 


This episode aims to inspire you to take control of your entrepreneurial path.


👉 Prefer to watch this on Youtube? Check it out here  ➡️ https://youtu.be/mla4AsuoXdk


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Topics Discussed:


★ Upbringing and Early Career: Discussing how Lewis's upbringing influenced his initial decisions. The traditional career path and early experiences in the corporate world.


★ Transition to Entrepreneurship: The pivotal moment that inspired Lewis to consider entrepreneurship. Exploring various online business models and the challenges faced.


★ Developing the Home-Turf Advantage Model: Partnering with UK suppliers to ensure faster delivery and higher quality products. Overcoming challenges with traditional dropshipping methods.


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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:


★ Importance of Autonomy: Seeking autonomy and control over one's life can be a powerful motivator for entrepreneurship.


★ Overcoming Challenges: The journey involves facing and overcoming numerous challenges, which ultimately lead to growth and success.


★ Building a Supportive Community: Creating a community around your business can provide support and drive greater impact.


★ Continuous Learning: Success in entrepreneurship requires continuous learning, adapting, and updating strategies to stay relevant.


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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-87-why-i-started-dsu

I started to realize that my autonomy, ultimately called the shots, I didn't have control over my life. Ultimately they did. It's more inspiring actually to hear about the difficulties, and to be able to resonate with you as as just a normal person that went off to start their own business. And now you've gone on to the obviously over 5 million pounds, the weight of the loss and the memories of that conversation were overwhelming. And I just had to take a step outside at one point and I just went out and sat in my car outside and I thought back to my nan's encouragement, and I just don't know, I felt this surge of determination, despite the fact that it would have been, I'm sure, terrifying to leave such a stable job. And since that day, I, I've never looked back. And I've been able to go and do whatever we want, whenever we want without answering to anyone that's given you the freedom that's given you a control back over your time. And surely, you could just continue building and growing a drop shipping business and not have to open up dropship or not. So I was like, Okay, I've got to do this. And I remember driving into the office and just looking down at the envelope on the seat next to me and just thinking like, my life's about to change. Is this a mistake? I don't know any like that. Welcome to the dropship unlocked Podcast. I'm Louis Smith, the founder of dropship. Unlocked and with me is our Client Success Coach James Adly. 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 dropshipping 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 HTA books.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 going to be diving into the personal journey of Louis Smith. That's right, our very own Louis, my co host of the podcast and the founder of dropship unlocks, we'll be exploring how you Louis got into running online businesses and why you went on to start dropship unlock this, I want to ask you all about your journey so far to inspire people to take control of their own entrepreneurial path. So do you feel ready to share your journey today? Thanks, James. Yeah, excited to share my experiences and the reason behind starting dropship? I'm not hopefully this one will resonate with many of our listeners as well that are looking for their own breakthroughs in E commerce. Fantastic. Well, let's start with the foundations no better place to start than finding out really what was the foundations for your working life? Which would have been your upbringing? So how do you think your upbringing impacted your initial life decisions? Yeah, I think growing up I had a really happy childhood. My upbringing, I was very fortunate. I was the eldest of three, three children in total. So I've got a younger brother and a younger sister. And yeah, growing up, my parents had a really strong work ethic, a real strong focus on financial security. And I presume that that came probably as it often does, from their own childhoods where maybe they their families didn't have that much money. And therefore, they had a very humble upbringing. And so they really wanted to kind of turn that around and focus on making sure we had financial stability and security as a family. So I think that set that work ethic was instilled into me, I from a very young age, my dad was an estate agent in London started off working for another state agency eventually handed in his notice, much like I did later on in my journey, and then went on to set up an estate agency and grew it to multiple offices all around London and build big chain and eventually sold it down the line. And my mom was a flight attendant, as well. So you know, they were very physically tied to their jobs, there was no working on Zoom or working online for them. Obviously, the Internet didn't even exist back then really, and they just couldn't have worked remotely it was that they had to be there in person. For my mom, it was days on end, she'd be go to do a Sydney trip, but four days, and then she'd be in New York twice a week, and then she'd be back to that. So she was constantly on the move and traveling and then dad, like, you know, many people did back then and even still now work in London until seven, eight in the evening. And sometimes he'd not get home until I'd gone to bed. And so I remember some of my most joyful childhood memories actually involve spending time with my parents because it was a luxury you know, it was like they would work hard in the week we'd be at nursery or then eventually school. But then when my dad would take us to football training on a Sunday morning, I remember that being really special time and he'd get roped into like refereeing the games that they'd asked him to run the touch line and he used to get frustrated that standing there in the rain, but then we'd kind of have a chat in the car. I was always like covered from head to toe in mud, you know, after all the slide tackles in football, and he just asked me how I felt the game went in to give me some like tactical advice and I just remember like really latching on to that and yeah, just idolizing my My dad and his role that he played in my upbringing. And then also with my mom, some of the great times and memories with era, like her job enabled her to have a staff travel as a as a benefit. So we used to be able to travel around the world to some really incredible destinations all over the planet, and often in the business class as well, which was amazing. And it was such a fortunate thing that I had only until I was 21 years of age, and then you lose that as a family as a child of staff. Well, that was the rule back then anyway. And so I was very lucky. And it really, I think, when it did that ability to travel the world so early, obviously back then I didn't fully appreciate it. But I think it just broadens my horizons. You know, it showed me what was outside of my town, and my country. And it showed me like the different cultures around the world of what, how people live. And I think those experiences just taught me the value of hard work, the importance of financial stability, and highlighted the sacrifices as well that my parents needed to make to achieve it as well. So yeah, initially, that kind of set me on the path of going through school going through university, I had a great biology teacher at school, and Mr. Morgan who inspired me in the subject of biology, and there's, it's sometimes you'll have experienced this, if there's a teacher that you specifically remember, just really like lighting up a subject for you at school. And for me, it was him. And that encouraged me to say, Okay, well, I'm not sure what I want to do for a living. But I really liked this subject. So I'm gonna go and study something related to human biology. And I went on to study medical microbiology at university, which was a completely kind of random shift from where I thought I might end up and but did that and then went into the corporate world followed that route, went on to a medical devices and diagnostics graduate training scheme live around the UK worked for a huge American corporate, and worked in that company for probably eight and a half, nine years, something like that. And yeah, various different roles being in operating theatres, helping with medical devices, help them with, like train doctors and nurses and procedures for using the specific devices that we had. So yeah, it was a really interesting journey. But it's not the traditional corporate path of being like a cubicle, where you're speaking to your co workers either side of you a little bit different, but still came with its drawbacks which we'll we'll dive into onshore in this episode, absolutely no fascinating upbringing. No doubt, your dad's work ethic showed you the value of hard work and what you can do to provide when you go out on your own, as well. And also, no doubt from your mum, you saw that the other side of the world and even saw business class, I think, to see that at a formative age, I guess you started to realize the impact of financial stability, there's really a bit of a key theme that was built for you. And so that went on to to build a career that you've got now. But of course, that sounds like the start of your career has got nothing to do with the current situation that you're in at the moment. So I'm interested to dive into that. Why do you think you went into the corporate world? And then you were seeking something different? Why did you look for an escape from that initial corporate life? Yeah, well, you're right on that first point about being able to travel in such style. So it wasn't a hit. It's funny, sometimes it was business class. Other times it was jump seats. So like I've had trips where I've traveled to Rio in Brazil or to Thailand on a fold down jumpsuit with the the four point harness or the three point harness that you wear on one of those staff, jumpsuits, and that is incredibly uncomfortable. And you're sitting there like basically the coat cupboard with no window for like 12 hours or something ridiculous. So it's funny, it can go one way where you're like, oh, wow, flatbed and a movie. And a few really nice meal to like sitting in a coat cupboard for 12 hours is a real kind of contrast. But you know, when you're young, you don't care do you as exciting either way you're traveling. But you're so right, like seeing the people who were in business class, paying for that fare, made it open, it changed my perspective on money. And it made me think I could do this one day, like What the What do these people do for a living? I wonder what businesses they own? What do they do any kind of that proximity to wealth, I think really expanded my belief in what would be possible one day, so this is probably happening on a subliminal level, the whole time. But I do think it really expands your horizons. So yeah, to answer your question, what what was it about the corporate world that made me want to seek something different? I think the big thing that's that I've learned about myself in recent years is my desire for more freedom and autonomy. So one of my huge values is desire for autonomy, I want to be able to control and have spontaneity and have freedom over my time, both in terms of where I spend my time, what I do, where I travel to I hate the thought of someone being able to dictate to me where I have to be and when I just I don't know what it is, but something about that just grates against every fiber of my being and I rebel against it. And it's probably just the deep rooted entrepreneurial spirit in me from my, you know, my parents and my upbringing. But I remember a really pivotal moment when a colleague I was with and we walked into this hotel for a meeting Ustym kind of meet up in central London sometimes to discuss different projects we were working on. We walked into this Hotel and we saw all of this group of like entrepreneurs sitting there drinking nice coffees and like looking really cool and relaxed working on their MacBooks. And we kind of looked at them and we were in our, like corporate attire, they were all in their casuals. And she turned to me, she said, I'd always seen you as someone in that world, that kind of startup world. Have you ever considered that? And I just remember that it really stuck with me. And I thought, no, I hadn't ever seen myself in that world. But then you know, when some of that just rings through your head for hours and days afterwards. And I was like entrepreneur startup, I was quite entrepreneurial at school, I wonder why I hadn't considered that maybe I'd thrive as an entrepreneur. And I went home that evening, and I searched on Audible for entrepreneurship. And I found Tim Ferriss Four Hour Workweek book. And that was really interesting and opened up my eyes, because it was the way he talks about in that book that has been, it's a bit of a clickbait title for the book, because it's not so much about squeezing a traditional workweek into for hours, it's about creating a life and a business that works passively from your own time, so that you only have to put in four hours, if that have worked per week to maintain it, you've built a system, right, but over steak, it's a cool title that catches people's attention like it did to me. And it was interesting, the concepts of that book, are so in contrast to what was happening in my career at that point. So I was getting demands of my time from my boss, and from co workers in the corporate world who were well meaning, you know, they weren't like doing this maliciously. But it was like a get an email through in the evening saying, oh, we need you in Leeds tomorrow morning. And I'd be like, Okay, right. That's the waiver of 5:36am Train, I've got to get into central London, you know, to get that train up. And then they tell we need you in Scotland for three days for this conference, Kate rack and fly up, spend time away. And then they'd be like, right, we need you in a hospital at in central London tomorrow at 9am. And you got to be there until 6pm. In my case, that's like Rush Hour into some area of London. And you know, it just started, I started to realize that my autonomy had been taken away from me. And it was gradually happening without me realizing it kind of creeps day by day. And I just felt it slipping away. And the pay the you know, the salary, the Commission, the benefits were great. But that didn't really matter. Because it was the fact that I didn't ultimately call the shots. I didn't have control over my life. Ultimately, they did. And yeah, it didn't sit well with me. And I wasn't sure at the time quite how to articulate it. But I remember saying to my fiancee at the time, Becky, now my wife about this four hour workweek book by a guy called Tim Ferriss. And I've just listened to it. And it's amazing. There's this thing called digital nomads, and they live anywhere. And they have a thing called a muse, which is like a side business. And, you know, they earn their money online. And you can imagine, like, when you're hearing this information secondhand, like Becky was, it doesn't quite hit home as as much as it does. And you're hearing it directly from the horse's mouth. So I remember one day as sitting in my apartment in London, on the edge of the sofa, I remember it vividly in the in the kitchen. And Becky was sitting at the breakfast bar. And I had been talking about this concept to her for the last few days. And to my surprise, she she just said, Okay, well, what if we move our wedding earlier in the year? So that, you know, the the grandparents who many of whom were kind of ill at the time, and we're, you know, not that well. So we were like, well, let's bring it earlier so that as many people can attend as possible. And then after that we could move to Thailand and quit our jobs and take the leap. And I was like I don't, I don't know what to say because I didn't expect her to actually say it and call my bluff on it. I talked about this as a pipe dream. But then she actually said it. And I was like, Okay, well maybe that's the push I needed to actually make this happen. And so that was a really interesting turning point. For me the idea of being able to balance work and family life, which was a core value of mine, having that family first mentality, even though back then I didn't even have children of my own. I just had a very strong vision of myself as a dad in the future. When I would talk and think about my future life, I'd say I'm going to be a good father for my children. And I'm going to show them what's possible in life. And so when the opportunity arose, I thought, I'm going for it, I'm going to do this. And I realized that at that point, the traditional corporate route, just wasn't aligning with that the path I was on or wasn't aligning with it anymore. And so although back then I was at a very different point in my life I wanted one day, when I did have children, which I do today, I wanted to back then to be able to show my children that they could control their own destiny, that they could control their time, and that they didn't need to submit to this default system in society that just controls and sucks up their time and eats up their autonomy all the way through life until retirement just because that's what people do. You know, that kind of cliche, the freedom to be able to work from anywhere and spend more time with the people that matter most for me, my family that for me became the new definition of success. Even if I was going to earn less money. I was I was happy with with going down that route. Yeah, well, you knew what your values were, and you push for those despite the fact that it would have Been, I'm sure terrifying to leave such a stable job with a good income, and you'd set yourself onto that path of a good life. But you realize that it wasn't going to be aligned with the values no matter what the pay was or the benefits. And the security that came, your values were clearly around freedom, control autonomy. And that wasn't going to come from the traditional corporate route. So but it still takes a huge amount of courage, no doubt. So that push from Becky I'm sure was huge. And suddenly like, oh, no, I'm actually Oh, that you got to do this. Now, as terrifying as it is, you got to go through what really is true to your core values. So there's definitely some bravery involved with that decision. So from that position, you realize that there's this new world has been exposed to you by The Four Hour Work Week, there is a different way of living than the default, traditional corporate path, but you know that you've still got to earn money while you're traveling. So you've seen that idea of muse in the four hour workweek? How did you actually start exploring the different business models that were available for you, for you to be able to travel and earn, earn at the same time? Can you tell us a little bit about your early experiences with those business ventures? Yeah, I mean, in the book, he doesn't necessarily explain how to do it, it does. He just talks about it as a concept and say, Oh, you can do these Muses and earn money online and sell information or sell physical products without actually holding stock? It's called Drop Shipping. He doesn't say, here's how you do it. So I kind of went down the YouTube rabbit hole back then. And you know, like it does today, it had so many distractions, so many, so much conflicting advice and information, that it just kind of forces you it is almost like you're a deer in the headlights, you just don't know, you don't know what to do. You don't know which way to turn what what information is true. And this was back in like 2017. So there's only more confusion out there today. Or the conflicting advice. I know that he mentioned the model of dropshipping. And he gave examples of digital nomads running the business model. And I think at the time of thinking the book, even he ran a business like this himself at one point. So I searched on YouTube, and I found this one channel of a guy that was kind of showing how to do this. And he was like, Oh, you just set up a store. By the way, this model was horribly flawed, so don't necessarily follow this advice. But he said, set up a Shopify store, and you just bought you go to a website like AliExpress, or an app like oberlo or Teemu. I don't think Timo existed back then. But it's kind of the equivalent now, isn't it, and you just set up some ads and you run ads to the products that you found for cheap, you mark them up to a higher price, and then you sell them and you ship them from China and you don't have to touch the products. And it's that structure being in your watch the millions in profits start to pour in. So I was like, okay, cool. Now anyone who's tried that route knows that's not quite how it pans out. Right. So I was excited to get the site selling and up and running. And I set up this site selling men's ties, neckties. And I was thinking that's going to be my niche. That's where I start. It's a really good audience, I can target them specifically with Facebook ads. So set up the site, I'm really proud of it set up my Facebook ads live one evening, like targeting them showing the images like giving a discount whatever and went to sleep but fingers crossed ready to go and then woke up in the morning and had made a sale for 19 pounds 99 I think it was or it might have been $90 choreography sold in dollars on that and and I actually still have the WhatsApp messages that I send to my family. I was going through them this morning in preparation for this episode. And it's really interesting because the customer had bought the tie that he tried to use a 15% discount code that I'd set up and advertised on the site. But I'd obviously set it up wrong. For some reason I'd messed up the settings or something. And he left this scathing review on our Facebook business page saying that I've been scammed. They said it was a 15 pound 15% discount, it didn't work. I've ordered it but this company is a rip off. And I was like I woke up and there's this bit this mixed feeling of like elation. Like I've made my first sale and then devastation like my reputation has been tarnished. And it's all come crashing down and managed to reply to him. I wrote this long email really over thought it was like if I just offer him the discount that he wanted, maybe I can placate him and he took the review down. And you know, it was very grateful for the customer service. It took me half an hour to deal with this one customer. And it's funny, when you're using that model, you end up realizing that that's just the first problem, you encounter the issues with the customers that buy stuff at like 90 pounds and their level of expectation being like way up here. What then happens is you have the problem of the long delivery times, you know, it then takes like two weeks to a month for the item to get put on a ship sent from China to the customer. And it arrives in this Trump pulled out little package covered in plastic and like right Chinese writing, and then it says on it the trade price usually that you bought the item at like $2.99 instead of 20. And so it's sending all of this like mixed messaging to the customer. And it's yeah, it's just a flawed model because the item is often not even as high quality as you saw in the photos on AliExpress. And then the item that arrives is awful quality. It took ages to get there and that then leads to more customer complaints and then items getting delayed at the border due to needing to pay customs duties and taxes. That's another cause for delay. And I ended up realizing that I've made no profit on the order, I'd actually lost money after the amount that I'd spent on Facebook ads just to make that sale. So needless to say, that was a disaster. And I just shut it down fairly quickly after that. And I looked at all these other models, because I thought there must be another model out there that we can use to, to create an online income. And I looked at things like affiliate marketing, and but just I don't know, I found it, like, I didn't own the business. It was like I was just promoting other people's businesses, but I wasn't building an asset or anything stable that I could one day sell, you know, or a secure income system. And also things like policies change affiliate scheme, policies change, Google's search ranking algorithm changes, and then suddenly, your business is wiped off the face of the earth. So I just think that I wanted something I had a bit more ownership over. And I looked at things like print on demand, but I didn't want to be like churning out new designs constantly to try and stay relevant. And also, so much of your margin gets eaten up by the company that's actually doing the printing is often pretty poor quality. Again, you're not really building an asset or a saleable business. So that was kind of ruled out for me, I looked at Amazon FBA and I did so much product research, I was I'd ordered samples from China, I arranged inspections at the factory in China, I was ready to go ahead, our products ready, but I just couldn't justify risking 1000s of pounds of my own money to order a huge quantity of stock that may never even sell, it wasn't proven to sell and, you know, may get rejected by Amazon, you hear these horror stories, someone spends 10 grand on stock, and it arrives and Amazon just say sorry, no, there's something wrong, there's a label missing or something, we have to reject it. And even if they accept it, as we know, Amazon takes such a huge cut of the price, that it just becomes very difficult to make a profit. And so especially, you know, when you get competitors jumping into the same listing, and then undercutting you, so I was getting overwhelmed by all of these different models, nothing seemed to be working, and I was starting to lose hope. And I just thought, Is there even a legitimate way out of the corporate life here, all these promises from people online about replacing your income, I just felt like I was running on empty, there was no clear path forward. But I think a lot of people can resonate with that feeling. Because it's not a scenario, from every success story that I hear. And the same, it's the same with yours, Louis, is that it always is preceded by a period of learning mistakes, difficulties, but having to pivot and having to be resilient anyway. So clearly, you're resilient, despite having those initial failures. So what was the actual turning point for you? Can you pinpoint a moment or time when you came across a different type of dropshipping. And What initially attracted you to that model? Yeah, so I realized that selling cheap products from China was probably not going to be the way to make this work. But I really liked the concept of paying a supplier once I'd already been paid for a product by a customer. It just, it felt like such a reduction of risk on my part, not having to shout out 1000s for products that may never even sell. So I took an American course on high ticket drop shipping, which was quite a popular concept in the US. And I kind of saw the potential for it to work in the UK couldn't really find anyone doing it in the UK successfully. But there were major adaptations that I would need to make to actually apply the model from the US into the UK, you know, the markets are very different. The rules, the regulations, or laws are very different. And so kind of combined with that at the time, my grandma was quite ill, and she was in a hospice, and it was this end of life Palliative Care Center. And I used to go and see her after work, I was still working the job at this point. And he used to take my laptop in and you know, do some emails and stuff and chat to her. And I remember, I tried to just involve her as much as I could, because it was a really depressing place, as you can imagine. And I'm trying to like inject energy into this environment and try and help bring excitement into her her world. And I tell her about my plans for this new high ticket business and how I was planning to do it in the UK and use it to replace our incomes as a family and eventually wanted to move to this place in Thailand called Chiang Mai where lots of entrepreneurs go and meet up and then maybe spend time and barley. And my mom was a huge source of success and belief in me, she really supported me and she was told me to just go for it. She'd say things like if anyone, why not you and so she'd always support me and push me to go friend her was really resonated with me during those challenging times. And I remember telling her, these were my parents, I was going to do this and it would be amazing. And unfortunately, she passed away before our wedding. There's Becky and it was really difficult period of time for me. And I remember a few days after she passed away, I was there with my family. We were clearing out her house, and we were you know sofa was being lifted past me and taken out, you know, they kind of moving everything out of the house. And the weight of the loss and the memories of that conversation. were overwhelming. And I just had to take a step outside at one point and I just went out and sat in my car outside. And I thought back to my dad's encouragement, and I just don't know I felt this surge of determination. And I just thought right there. I'm going to make the call to a potential supplier. I'm going to call them and I don't know why I've been building this up into such a big thing. It doesn't need to be I'm going to do it. I could kind of hear her voice saying like, go for it. And it was a really tense moment. I called the supplier on my phone. I remember where exactly where it was parked outside of that. And the supplier answered. And I was like, hi, we run an E commerce business. We'd love to sell your products. I've been looking into them, I think they'd sell really well with our market. Could we open up an account with you? Can we work with you? And the line just went quiet for a bit. And I was like, I can hear my heart pounding. And then he said, Yeah, that sounds great. Just had a look at your website looks really good. I'll send the forms over, could you get them signed in, we can begin supplying you. And I just realized that that moment, I'd been building this up into something that it needed a bit. It really wasn't that big a deal and went on to sign many more suppliers since then. And yeah, it was, it was a big adaptation that American course provided a solid foundation, but obviously adapting it to the UK market involved overcoming challenges, like finding suppliers in the UK, understanding the UK specific regulations, UK specific taxes, VAT corporation tax, the laws, the contracts, the distance selling regulations, the all the different terminology, it's very different market different regulations. And the process of adapting it was tough, but I knew that it was essential, because I didn't want to have to also adapt the market that I was in. So I thought, well, let's just keep one thing the same. I'm in the UK, let's just run it here. Like there's enough Peter 66 million people arrows that I'm sure we can find some customers here. And so yeah, it was my nan's encouragement that for me, it was a big driving force, especially during the tough times. And her belief in me gave me the strength to persevere, and then sign in that first supplier. For me, it was a pivotal moment, and it set the stage for future success. And, of course, her passing was really hard. But it also propelled me to honor her memory and really push forward and make the business a success. So I always think about her in that moment. And that sometimes that's the nudge you need. Yeah, it's amazing, amazing story. I mean, she had some really wise words to say to you, I'm sure now she's obviously very proud of the success that you've you've gone on to achieve. And sometimes we do we go through very, very difficult things in life, don't we, and it puts things into perspective, that the fear that we've got around calling a supplier or building a business, registering a limited company, whatever it is, that fear that we've got, sometimes we go through difficult things, and it puts things into perspective about what really matters. And just going for it, in her words is yeah, really, really powerful. To know that you get, we get one chance, and we can really make the most of it. Or we can, you know, just accept for mediocrity and the life that's more by default. So you've gone out on this journey, and you've been inspired by that moment. But of course, there's going to be loads of hurdles, no doubt along the way. So you still have to practice that resilience while you're building this incredible new life for yourself. So what challenges can you remember a few that you faced while you were building up? The new dropshipping? Business? Yeah, I think the majority of challenges that I can remember actually came from the flawed model the model from China. So obviously, you've got a long delivery times, you've got poor quality control, it's you're really building your business on shaky foundations. If you're running it that way, the customer service thing really starts to get you down. You know, if you're running a low ticket dropshipping business from China using the model, everyone talks about running a Shopify store with products from AliExpress, or team or whatever. And in the morning, if you dread opening your laptop, because you know that in the inbox is going to be full of complaints and refund requests and all those issues. And you can't refund the well you can't have the customers return products because they're not going to take them back to China or they're on a boat halfway across the ocean coming to the UK, it just means you're always putting out fires every day. So I think those were the most problematic times, the moment that it shifted and actually became a lot smoother sailing was the moment that I realized there's a better approach to this. And when I adapted the model from America, but I now refer to as the home turf advantage model, which is the model that I teach inside dropship on lot, which focuses on freemium UK suppliers, selling products that can be delivered to the very next day, or certainly in one to two working days, because the suppliers are in the same country as the customers that nothing has to cross borders, it's really quick delivery. And it means that you as the retailer, accept the money from the customer first and the retail price. And then you just go and buy it at trade price from your supplier who you have contracts and agreements with. And those suppliers don't sell directly to the public themselves. So the common question is, why wouldn't a supplier just sell directly they don't they use a retailer network, and we are just one of those retailers. I think that made my life and my business runs so much smoother, because due to those reasons, you end up getting happier customers and it's far more enjoyable to run as a business. You open up your laptop and you've got like five orders and you've made five grand because you've got five orders for 1000 pounds. That's five emails, you've got to fulfill five products that will go out and be with the customer tomorrow or the next day. You take the profit from those and even if one of them goes wrong, that's one thing you've got to deal with. You know, it's so much better than needing hundreds of low ticket orders and 1000s of men's tie orders on which you make no profit on any of them and you've got a disastrous inbox full of complaining customers, just not the kind of business I would want to run, I think I'd prefer to have a job, I can certainly vouch for that. I think the model that is taught more frequently than traditional dropshipping is flawed. And I certainly found out that in in lots of different ways with the low ticket items, and then long delivery times and the headaches, ultimately what it leads to is the end not wanting to open up your inbox, because you're the model that you're trying to push isn't backed by quality isn't backed by really high quality products. And there's so many different issues that come with it. So you can make some short money from the short term, but the long money and the real sustainable business comes from a model that you can actually stand behind and believe in for the long term. So that's where your home turf advantage model comes in. Which of course, I'm a huge fan of because that's how I operate my businesses. Now, after learning from the drop shipper, not masterclass program, but tell us about why you really push home the home turf advantage model, how did it actually transform your business? Yeah, it was a huge transformation. I mean, partnering with UK suppliers, it firstly ensures faster often next day delivery, also higher quality products, because the supplier or the distributor in the UK has done their quality checks, their quality assurance, the items may be manufactured in the UK, that's a common misconception about the home turf advantage model. And that they have been checked there in the UK, by the time we're buying them at trade price and having them shipped to it means nothing has to cross borders, everything's there, it's in stock, it's ready to go. We don't have to buy anything upfront or risk any money because the only time we're paying money to a supplier is when we've already been paid the retail marked up price to the customer, which is what everyone in the public buys the product at. So it was interesting, because it was almost too good. I almost didn't believe it when it first came through. As I say I was reading back through some texts earlier. And I was going back through some texts in late 2017. And one of the texts was a screenshot of an order for thing. It was like 700 pounds or something. And I remember looking at it and reading it did like sending a message to my family at the time that said, just watching Netflix and made 270 pounds like is this? Is this real? Is this a real thing, I almost felt guilty because I was like, well, that's more than I used to add in a day at my job. But I used to work so much harder for this. But I had to shift my understanding of like the delivery of value, because yes, I hadn't worked at that moment for the 270 pounds. But I had to remind myself that the night before and the night before that I had been sitting in Cafe Nero in London, near to where I lived until nearly midnight with my laptop, uploading products and preparing my ad campaigns. So I had worked for that 270 pounds, but it was front loaded, I'd worked. And then because of that work that was kind of locked in, I was now leveraging that hard work I'd done before to earn a passive income, but it's not really passive, because obviously, you have done the work for it before. And so it was really interesting, it improved the delivery times because customers were getting items very quickly. The product quality was good. So it led to a higher customer satisfaction, better customer reviews, which then is a nice positive feedback cycle because people see nice reviews. And then they go and say, oh, I want a product like that as well. So I'm gonna buy one. And so because of this, you're finally starting to see the results that Tim Ferriss talks about in the book. And yeah, the business really started to take off rapidly. And shortly after that my life changed quite a lot while we got married. So it was funny, we were at the wedding. And not many people at our wedding knew that I was running this side business in evenings and weekends and was soon going to be moving to Thailand. So we were there. But we were like we can't really talk about it. But we know what's about to happen. And like, you know, we can't announce it because we haven't officially quit our jobs yet. And the business was doing really well that allowed Becky and I to say okay, I think this is it. This is the week we hand in our lotus and we quit our jobs. And then Dave we'd had we handed in our notes is Becky had handed in her notice earlier that day, she was an editor in London. So she she had it in hers and kind of texted me saying it's done. So I was like, Okay, I've got to do this. And I remember driving into the office and just looking down at the envelope on the seat next to me and just thinking like, my life's about to change. Is this a mistake? I don't know. And like nothing can really prepare you for that moment where you've been in this stable corporate job with a nice perks and you've got the company car and the laptop. And I'm like, thinking I'm going to hand back the keys to the Mercedes and the laptop on the phone, that company private healthcare, like all the nice cure things that they keep you in those golden shackles in exchange for autonomy, they control your time, you know, because of it. And so they effectively own you and your time because they're taking the bulk of your day to day life and using it to make them a profit. And so it was a really nerve wracking moment, I walked into my boss's office and I was like, I've got something I really need to say. And he just looked at it. And I remember he just kind of looked up and he was like, Is there anything we can do to change your mind? And I think he thought I was going to a competitor or I was going to do something you know similar related to move industry, and I was like, No, I've started my own business. We're going to move to Thailand, we're going to become digital nomads, we're going to run up his this from there. And he's just his face is just like, I've never heard anyone say that before. No one's ever left the company and said that, and it was really nerve wracking. And I just felt like I was suddenly like in space out on my own. And that evening, I remember Becky said, to come and meet her at the park. And we were in, she was in Holland Park on this bench in London. And she had these two cans of m&s g&t, and we just opened them up. And we just sat there. And we were like, cheers thinking that we I think we celebrate, but we just made a massive mistake, I don't know. And we said that night, like, let's go and celebrate, we need to mark the occasion. So we went to a sushi restaurant in London, to kind of mark that occasion. And since then it allowed us to go and travel and live in Thailand, live in Bali, live in Vietnam, moved to Dubai for six weeks, Mexico for six weeks. And it was breaking free of those golden shackles. And it felt good, because finally I had the autonomy back. And since that day, I, I've never looked back. And I've been able to go and do whatever we want, whenever we want without answering to anyone, or any company ever again. And I think the reason that feels good for me, and it might be different for you listening, is because I knew that that was in alignment with one of my core deepest values. And as soon as I understood that, I realized I'd made the right decision exactly when your boss was a thought you were crazy when he came home with that story in that reason. But it's because you had totally done months and months of building a business up you that time spent, I'm sure going through it all with Becky making sure that was the right decision for you, and the long term future that you had. But those initial results that you'd seen with your business clearly gave you that confidence that you were making a calculated decision to move out. And in the end, it became the most common sense if you wanted to live the life that you wanted to live that again, bravery to make that decision. So people often ask you know is why did you actually then decide to start dropship or not? Obviously, you built the dropship business up that's given you the freedom that's given you the control back of your time. And surely you could just continue building and growing a dropshipping business and not have to open up dropship or not. So what was it that actually made you decide to start dropship or not your elearning business to teach people and build your community around the model that you were implementing? Yes. Funny that that question has come up before and I think it's the misconception is that the only reason you would start a new business is just for additional profit, because there are other factors that come into it. And living in Chiang Mai in Thailand was amazing. Like being able to be a digital nomads. Beyond that scene, go to the meetups, I met lots of amazing, inspiring digital nomads who'd come out there. And were at various stages of their business. But some of them had not even started yet. And I was there making a good stable income, having, you know, had a nice ecommerce business. And I remember I spoke at a few of these events and meetups, and I kind of got in with the network there and would do these weekly meetups and I came in and spoke at a few of them. And I remember meeting two specific friends out there one who was teaching a so we had an online coaching business teaching people how to learn different languages. And that was quite interesting to me. And another one who taught people how to earn money with blogs. So like creating online blogs and monetizing them. And they both said to me one evening at dinner, you know that the way that you've adapted this model, that you have to work in the UK, you should consider teaching it to others because think of the other people who are like you where you were a few years ago, that would add a huge amount of value to the market. And it hadn't really been on my radar until that point. But suddenly you're speaking to to people who run coaching businesses like this and say how fulfilling and rewarding it is. And I just thought about that. And I realized that, you know, like I said before, the reason I left the job was because my values and like my autonomy, desire was not being met, when I realized that this kind of business dropship I'm not ticked another box for me that now I realized was missing. And that's once you replace your income, sometimes you start to feel a little bit unfulfilled in terms of purpose, you feel like there's a need for something more, something more fulfillment, because, you know, people dream of like retiring early, but the reality is, if you literally retire like at 30, you're probably going to be very bored 3040 50 years of your life unless you have something else to fill that that gap. And if it can be something that fulfills you and lights you up like helping other people achieve the same kind of freedom that you know you were able to achieve. That's really exciting. And of course if it can also be a profitable business as well, that's even more exciting as you know as well. So I wanted to pay it forward. I wanted to share what I'd learned and I kind of felt like it was a duty to help other people who were in the position I was in like the former me if I could help the former me from a few years earlier. take that first step. Apple, the first rung of the entrepreneurial ladder, and avoid the disasters that I went through that nearly wiped me out at the beginning, that would be an amazing feeling. And so I again, I remember the day I was sitting in the apartment in Chiang Mai, looking out over the mountains and talking to Becky and I said, I think I'm going to start a business teaching other people how to do this. And that's where dropship unlocked was born. And I worked with a small group of people initially, just over zoom, we had a very informal setup, it was like zoom calls, and then a Facebook group. And over time, I realized they're asking the same questions here. And like, I'm helping them with the same things. I wonder if I could start to piece together a program out of space. And so I built my own program. And I figured out all of the points where everyone was getting stuck. And I just refined it and refined it until eventually, it was working like clockwork. And now I've built our team, we've got an incredible team at dropship unlocked, we've built an amazing culture, we have meetups with our members in person, we've helped 1000s of people go through our program and get started with E commerce. And dropship. A lot has grown into the UK is best reviewed e commerce education company now. And my mission is to empower as many people as possible to build their own freedom businesses. So I'm now at a different chapter in my life. I've I'm now based back in the UK, for now, at least for the time being, we'll see how that goes. And I have a family with two children now. And you know, I now am the kind of dad that I envisioned, envisaged myself being years ago. And I thought one day, I'll be that dad that has freedom over his time. And now I do. And that's why this ecommerce business model is so great, because it provides an option for people wanting to replace their job income with an online income. Yeah, no, so inspiring to hear your journey, Louis. And no, I completely get it, why you'd build another business, even though you've satisfied your initial needs. So that is that Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs conversation where you've got you looked after yourself, you've got a roof over your head, you've satisfied that feeling of control and autonomy. But you had that craving of really giving back what you've learned and helping other people out because you've been through that transformation. And we both know that so many people also resonate. I know I certainly did, but I came across you guys with that feeling of wanting that freedom wanting that control over our lives. So thankfully, you did turn to opening dropship unlocked as well. Otherwise, you could have disappeared into the distance into the hills of Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, and never heard of it from you again. But thankfully, you decided to share what you've learned so that people in the UK could also implement the high ticket dropshipping business model that you teach. And so yeah, I'm very, very thankful for that. Also, so inspiring to see what dropship or not just become, I mean, the community that we've built now is like an incredible place to be people that in their everyday activity online. And then when we do the in person meets, we've just built just a great culture of people that are all building businesses, that allows them freedom. So for people that are considering pursuing freedom, really wanting to learn from your story, what advice would you give to somebody listening right now about how they can pursue their own entrepreneurial journey? Well, success doesn't happen overnight, all the mistakes and the failures that we talked about in today's episode that I came up against, they're just distant memories now, but I'm always learning, I'm still making mistakes to this day, and you just have to embrace it as part of business and part of entrepreneurship, I think you have to see this as a marathon, not not a sprint, it's not going to be this smooth sailing thing right from the start. Now, if you can work with people to avoid as many of those pitfalls as possible, and make it as smooth the journey as you can, that's definitely going to work to your advantage. But don't expect it to be a really easy, straightforward route, there will be zigzags in the road, always try and keep learning and adapting, the journey is going to be full of lessons that will help you grow. And things evolve and change in this industry. You know, this, this e Commerce Industry is always moving. And so it's why inside our dropship unlock program, we're constantly updating the content, we gotta keep it sharp, gotta keep it relevant. And we want to be at the forefront of what's working today. And so that's why we do what we do. And finally, I think the other thing is just don't wait for the perfect moment to start. Start now. Adjust along the way. And if you feel like me, like you'd like full autonomy and control over your own time in your life, then just take that first step on the path to freedom and you won't regret it. It all begins with that first step and getting advice from somebody as well like, like the advice that you got from your noun, and putting that into action until you succeed. I always love hearing about your story, Lewis it, it's more inspiring actually, to hear about the difficulties, and to be able to resonate with you as as just a normal person that went off to start their own business. And now you've gone on to the obviously over 5 million pounds in sales with your E commerce business. So it's incredibly inspiring. It shows that there's always going to be a bumpy road, which is inspiring for anyone to hear that hasn't had a smooth path already. It's good to know that that's not what you should expect anyway, so I guess for somebody that wants to learn more, learn more from you You're about the UK system that you've implemented and created. Where would you recommend that people actually go and start? Yeah, well, I hope it does. I hope that the journey that I've shared today does inspire you to take control of your life and build your dream business. If that's what you want, then let's let's get you on the road to success and get you doing it. I hope you found this discussion valuable today. And if you are ready to start implementing some strategies to build your own business to take control of your autonomy and your your income. Remember, you can learn how all of this stuff works, and connect with us inside our community. All you have to do is visit H T. A book.com. 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 unlocked.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. Now let's answer a question that we've had in from a listener. So remember, if you want your question answered on the podcast, all you need to do is drop a comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode. And it might get read out and answered by Louis or I on an upcoming episode. So that's exactly what John our 9082 has done. So thank you for your question, John. He has asked, How will I know if this drop shipping model will work for me as well, like it is working for others. Thanks for your question, John. So it is interesting, because it kind of comes back to the topic we've discussed today. And it's because I've seen all of the points that people get stuck through coaching 1000s of people to do this, that I've created a path that answers all the questions that you'll have as you go along the journey because it's very rarely a question that hasn't been encountered by someone before and been overcome by our community. So just remember, many have succeeded with our home turf advantage model from complete beginners who've got no experience in E commerce through to seasoned entrepreneurs who've tried lots of different business models and run successful businesses in the past. Our community has people from various different backgrounds, all achieving success, we've got people like Suraj in our community, one of our members who generated 12,000 pounds in his first two months. And then members like Phil, who generated 160,000 pounds in his first four months. And then there's Julia, another one of our members who generated just under 20,000 pounds in her first couple of months of running ads. So it's it's because we have a step by step program that provides clear instructions and support at every single stage. If you just follow our proven roadmap, the idea is that it minimizes your trial and error, you're not asking questions along the way, because they're already being preempted and answered, because we know the 1000s of people who've asked them before and we've updated and adapted the training to kind of tick the boxes for you before you even encounter those questions. You've also got access to twice weekly coaching calls, and an incredible supportive community. We have live meetups with our members in person, we've got one coming up soon. And those really bring the relationships to life and the supportive community that you can remain around for many, many years to come a dropship a lot. Now we teach thorough market research as well. So if you're thinking, well, would it work for me because I might not be able to pick a niche or find products to sell, we have a nine point data validation system like niche selection criteria, and that you run your ideas through and we show you how to generate like infinite source of ideas in week two, so that by the time you pick the products that you're going to sell, you know that there's enough demand there, you know, that there's adequate suppliers that are willing to dropship in that niche, you know that it's stable all year round, you know that the products are not going to be problematic, like there are all these things that we look at ahead of time, so that you can make informed decisions based on solid data. So hopefully that instills some confidence in you, John, you're not going to be the first person to go through this with lots of questions. Those questions will be answered along the way for you at the right time. We don't overwhelm you. And so yeah, thank you for your question, John, if you want to learn more about how dropship and lots can help you and your individual situation, then apply at dropship unlocked.com. Forward slash apply the fantastic Yeah, great question, John, are they easy to fall into that mindset or having those doubts about whether it worked for you, you know, because you can see is working for hundreds of other people. But it's like you felt like you might be different and it might not work for you. And but the way I like to think of it is if you can see that somebody else has succeeded, then that is proof that they can make it work and it's proof that you can make it work as well. You know, why is it that if somebody can do it, why can't you do it as well? Okay, so thanks for that. St. John, and your answer, Louis. We're now going to highlight a recent review that we've had in for the podcast as well. So a very big thank you to Silbert swing golfer for sharing your thoughts in an apple podcast review. So they said thank you for the inspiration to get started to launch a drop shipping business. Thank you so much for your review, silver swing golfer love the Navy as well. We're really glad to hear that you've been enjoying the podcast before we end this episode. Can we ask just a small favor of you? Leaving a review for our podcast helps us a lot and it takes you just a few seconds to do. Your support keeps us motivated to bring you the best content. We'd love to hear what you think and share your review in our upcoming episodes. 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 E commerce journey. Grab a copy of my book The home of turf advantage at H T 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.