The Dropship Unlocked Podcast

£0 to £7M Dropshipping | What We Learned (Episode 121)

• Lewis Smith & James Eardley • Season 1 • Episode 121

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🗣 In this episode, Lewis Smith and James Eardley share their personal journey of growing their dropshipping business from £0 to £7M in sales. 

They discuss the key lessons learned along the way, including the strategies that helped them scale quickly and how you can apply these insights to fast-track your own success in the world of e-commerce.

👉 Prefer to watch this on YouTube? Check it out here ➡️https://youtu.be/uJjMlWSXO-M

Topics Discussed:
★ High-ticket products: Why selling high-ticket items was key to their success and how it helped them scale faster.
★ Automation: How setting up systems early on allowed for efficient scaling and better business management.
★ Reliable suppliers: The importance of working with trusted suppliers to ensure smooth operations and satisfied customers.
★ Biggest early mistake: Reflecting on the early mistakes, including manual processes and scaling too quickly.
★ Location independence: How dropshipping enabled them to work from anywhere and why location freedom played a crucial role in their growth.
★ Mentorship: How mentorship helped them avoid costly mistakes and provided expert guidance that accelerated their success.

Links and Resources Mentioned:

Key Takeaways:
★ Focus on high-ticket items: By selling higher-priced products, you can make more per sale and scale faster.
★ Automation is essential: Set up systems early to make scaling smooth and reduce manual work.
★ Work with reliable suppliers: This will ensure your customers receive their products on time, and your reputation remains strong.
★ Mentorship is a game-changer: Learning from others who’ve been successful can help you avoid mistakes and accelerate your growth.
★ Location independence: Dropshipping offers the flexibility to operate your business from anywhere, giving you the freedom to travel or live wherever you want.
★ Marketing matters: Paid ads, consistent testing, and investing in ads early on can give you the boost you need to scale quickly.

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★★★ Dropship Unlocked - Lewis Smith ★★★


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But when we first started, we made some serious mistakes, and I think now we can safely say here's what we should have done instead. I've got a lot wrong over the years, but now I can tell people to never I've been through the ups and downs, the challenges. I've seen the light at the end of the tunnel and come out the other side, and figured out how to make this system work, and it's changed me, and I think the most surprising change is probably but there are not really many business models out there where you can generate millions of pounds worth of sales with such a low upfront cost, but as long as you high ticket drop shipping isn't some get rich quick model, but it does still have the potential to change your life, as long as you welcome to the dropship unlocked Podcast. I'm Lewis Smith, the founder of dropship unlocked, and with me is our client success coach. James Early. Now when we're not recording podcast episodes or running our own e commerce businesses, you'll find us helping aspiring entrepreneurs launch their own high ticket drop shipping stores. So if you're ready to build your own six or even seven figure online business, then head over to dropship unlocked.com. Forward, slash, start now. Sit back, relax and let's unlock your potential with the dropship unlocked podcast today, we're going to be talking about what we've learned and how we've changed as people since we started our drop shipping businesses. Now, Lewis and I combined have generated over 7 million pounds worth of sales through our E commerce stores, and that comes with its fair share of challenges, successes and stories that we want to share so you can learn from them, essentially, whether you're starting or whether you haven't started yet, or whether you're further down your journey, and you have a fully fledged e commerce business, we want to help you with a few shortcuts, tips and tricks that we've learned along with our journey. So Lewis, let's just start with the basics and go back in time. I think before you started, right at the start of your E commerce journey, when you first started, what helped you and what did you get right to make sure that you could scale so quickly? Sure. So putting myself back in time, a little bit back in those shoes of when I was first finding out about e commerce and thinking that this was an opportunity I wanted to create a business around. The first thing I remember thinking, and I remember where I was, like, walking down the high street of where I lived at the time, in London, and just thinking, like, do I want to also create a business that is outside of the country that I live in, and enter a new market as well as take on this new business venture? It felt to me like there were so many variables and so many new things I was going to have to learn. And I was almost clutching for familiarity. I was looking for something that was like, Okay, well, at least I know that, you know, but it felt like it was all so new. And when you looked on YouTube, everyone teaching this seemed to be in the United States. And so I would think, well, are all the customers of E commerce stores just in the United States? And then I thought, Well, no, I order stuff online, and so does my wife, and so do my neighbors and friends. And I'm just like started thinking to myself, I'm sure you could do this here, but perhaps there's less people, but then with that, there's probably also less competition, because I don't see loads of people on YouTube talking about doing this in the UK market. And so that was kind of, I think, one of the biggest advantages that that I discovered, and is now why I call the model the home turf advantage model, because the clue's in the name, it's like, don't just assume that, because the people teaching this are often in America, that you also have to do it in America if you are living in the UK, perhaps keep one thing the same when you're starting out on this new venture. And if you're familiar with the market that the language, the terms, you know, the way people speak and deal over here, the legalities, the banking, the laws, all that, the taxes, that stuff, maybe don't throw all of that up in the air as well as starting a new business. Let's keep those bits the same and start here. So that was kind of my train of thought, and I think that that helped significantly. Definitely, there's enough new things to think about when you're starting a new e commerce business and you didn't come from a business background. Did you lose it before you started? You never had run a business before? No, absolutely not. No. My dad was was a business owner, and I worked in like, medical device and diagnostics, sales and marketing. So yeah, it wasn't like, at the cold face of, you know, running my own business. I didn't have to deal with taxes and things like that, other than, like, what got deducted off my monthly paycheck. So yeah, it was very unfamiliar. But then the thought of like, okay, you're going to now become an entrepreneur, you're going to enter a new world of E commerce. Now you need to go to register an LLC in Wyoming or Delaware or something, and then pay like, foreign earned income tax and deal with like sales tax in different states of America. And like, to me, it just felt like, Okay, I don't think we need to over complicate this beyond what it needs to be. Let's just prove the concept here. So I guess. First, I almost thought of it as like, let's just prove it on home soil, first, home turf, and then, if we can make that work, maybe, maybe, then we expand internationally. And it turns out there was no need, because I'd probably just been entering a much more competitive market by trying to expand and compete internationally, especially as someone who wasn't in that market, I'd have a disadvantage versus just doing it where I I knew how things worked already to an extent, and I could learn. So I think that was the first thing the market that I chose in terms of like, the country, and the other part was like, not selling cheap products. That was definitely a trap I fell into, initially thinking that like, um, the cheaper the product, the easier it will be. Turns out, it's probably the opposite, because the cheaper the product, the harder you it is to make a profit, the more customers you end up having to deal with, the worse quality the products are in this like this vicious downward spiral of problems. And so selling higher priced items just meant bigger profits per sale meant that I needed fewer sales to replace my income, fewer customers to have to deal with. So again, like just trying to a lot of this probably came out of, like, trying to keep it simple. I just didn't want to over complicate things. I was like, I can deal with an E commerce business if it's in the UK and I only have to make one sale a day, like one email to a customer a day to say your orders. On the way, seems manageable at scale. Maybe I'll start selling items where it's 1000s of orders per day, but right now, I don't have a huge team. I just want it to be a nice lifestyle business, and so I guess that helped. Then automations, what kind of came into it. Once I was done fulfilling those orders and doing the emails to customers, I can started to install like apps that would do that stuff for me. And over time, set up those systems, both in terms of like actual automations, but also human automations, so like virtual assistant processes, where, where someone abroad who was working for me could help me do those tasks. And I guess as part of selling those higher priced items, it was where those items came from, so often, much more reliable suppliers meant that you had better quality control. Those products were good. The suppliers were always willing to stand behind their products. If something went wrong, they'd take them back. And that just then means that for you as a business owner, you've got nice, smooth operations, happy customers, and it's win, win. So yeah, most of it just came out of my desire for simplicity, really? Yeah, well, it's wise to have that desire for simplicity, because it's obviously helped you in your journey, because you went straight to, well, high ticket after a little bit of failure and kind of learning the ropes of low ticket, you then jump to realize that high ticket drop shipping was going to be the way that you could manage a business without having to sell 1000s of products every single month. And you learned that if you sign high quality suppliers again, it's going to be more simple, because those suppliers can make sure that the product quality is good and there'll be a lower return rate and less headaches to deal with. So I think actually going into a business and having simplicity on your mind from the start is a good way to go. They say simple scales that they say, I think you've used that mantra to your advantage when you first got started. Now, that went well, but no doubt there have been a few mistakes that went along the way when you first got started, looking back at your time, if you had the time again to restart your successful business, what mistakes would you cut out from the start? I think I probably spent too much time initially on low impact tasks. So like deliberating around I don't know things like worrying like about the configuration of the website and how color schemes worked, and like trying to optimize and tweak different things on the site, when really, I should have just been signing suppliers. I should have been out there on the phone to suppliers, emailing suppliers, going to meet suppliers face to face. Because if you kind of put a return on investment, like percentage on the activities that you've done throughout your entrepreneurial journey, there's a disproportionately high percentage return on investment from those very few occasions where I've just gone out there and interacted with suppliers. And I think that is key, and that's why, in the dropship unlocks program, I talk about that as like one of the best things you can do. But above anything else, the best thing you can do is just be in touch with suppliers. Go and reach out to them, Go and talk to them, build those relationships, build that trust. That's why I say like, if you're looking for a get rich quick thing where you just want to sit behind a keyboard and not do anything, and not put in any of the groundwork, go and look elsewhere. You know, I think you'd be looking for a long time as well, because I haven't heard of anything really that exists like that. But if you want to build a real, sustainable, defensible brand and build like a moat around your business, then 99% of people can't be bothered or will never step up and do those things. So if you're listening to this and you think I would do that, I would, I would, I would, um, step up and do that, then that was kind of the voice I had in my head. I thought, No, I've, I've, you know, I've got the guts and the. Termination and the willpower to just go and speak to someone and say, I'd love to sell your products on our site. So I think that was definitely one of them, and making sure as well, that I kept a close eye on finances. I'm someone who thinks like these things happen for a reason, and if I hadn't made those financial mistakes of like not tracking my finances, my ad spend, my taxes, like correctly. I would never have learned the lesson the hard way, and that now I wouldn't, kind of really, that wouldn't be instilled into me. But if, if I was kind of helping someone go through this process again from the start, which I am definitely something to make sure I was on top of from the beginning, which is why we have our like, profit and loss tracker that you can kind of track every the profitability of every order your ad spend your row as make sure you're you're on track from day one, and you're setting aside that money for taxes as well. Yeah, I think, I think a couple of things to dive in there to make sure that people avoid those because they are, they are paying for mistakes, and they do. It's like time that gets wasted that you could be living a different lifestyle if you can avoid these mistakes. The first one that the too much time spent on low impact tasks. I noticed that as well in my journey tweaking product pages, but in ways that really don't matter, like the color schemes or the dimensions of the images, things that really don't matter. But you think it really matters in the moment? I think it comes from we were employed in the past, and when you're employed, you get paid the same every month, kind of no matter what, unless you're in commission based roles. And so if you fill your day with low impact tasks, you're busy, you're not necessarily being productive, but you're busy, you're fulfilling your hours. And sometimes that can be pulled over that mindset into your own business, but it's different mindset, is it? Lewis, you've got to start to, when you have your own business, you've got to start to think about the return of your time, and how can you best spend your time? Essentially, yeah, exactly. And as that, it's funny that you say it like that, because I was in a commission based role previously, um, not, not directly before I went into entrepreneurship, but like in the past, um, in medical device sales and some of because that, because that can be an extremely highly paid profession, like for anyone that's not familiar like that, the medical device reps can earn a lot of money, and, like, well over six figures a year. And when I remember and think about some of the best paid reps that I ever met and was in teams with along the way, they often weren't the ones that were the busiest. They were the most effective ones. So they kind of knew where the money would come from. They knew how to get their stakeholders on board and like, speak to the procurement department that would put in the order for the products that they were selling. And they would like, whereas there were other guys that and girls that weren't as well paid, that would end up like, being so busy and like, oh god, I've been in the hospital from like, 8am to 8pm today, and they're helping nurses and helping doctors and doing all this stuff, and, like, doing the busy work, but they weren't that effective, and therefore there it wasn't reflected in their paycheck. And it's the same in entrepreneurship. I see. It's like the people that are like, God, I've been glued to my desk all day today trying to code this new thing on my product page, and so busy. I'm like, how many supplies Did you sign? How many products did you sell? How many phone calls did you make? And they're like, Oh, well, no, none. I didn't have time for that because I'm still not launched yet. And it's like, there are some ugly websites out there that make a lot of money. Just remember that, like, you don't have to have this amazing looking site to be profitable and up and running. You just have to do the work. You have to do the stuff that 99% of people are trying to actively avoid by putting these like procrastination distractions in the way of I'm just going to spend all day trying to do this. And I've got this app. I'm trying to configure this and make it good, and I just need to organize all my CSV files and stuff. It's like, okay, fine. But could you be out there signing suppliers? Because you sign one supplier that has products that are already in demand from customers where the brand is being searched for, suddenly, a load of that traffic is now coming to your site, and you get to benefit from it. So it's about being effective, not just busy. It is, yeah, no. It really resonates with my story, and those people who you used to work with used to earn more. I guess they taught you from from that age, that it's not about busyness, it's about effectiveness. It's about productivity. Doesn't matter how busy you are. You know the people that, in your case, that the medical device reps, they knew which, I'm not going to throw any accusations out there, they knew which people to take out for dinner, or they knew they knew what was going to come back in. There's very regulated industry. Yeah, you can, you couldn't ever, like, give gifts. We used to get scrutinized for, like, even bringing in a tray of dunkin donuts for the nurses in the coffee room. If you were doing, like, a staff training, it was really brutal, like, the amount of compliance in there. Um, but yeah. I mean, I mean, like, you know, they would know the procurement person to have a meeting with, and they wouldn't be sitting around all day, kind of like trying to do stuff and, you know, network and, like, just for the sake of it, they'd just be like, 9am going in to see this person, because they're the decision maker, get the job done, and then they'd be in, like, Costa by 11am you know, looking at the stats and seeing the orders come in. So it was just like, they just went straight to, kind of where they knew the money would come from. They were just effective. And we can do that. That with our own businesses as well. And I think perhaps they put that strict rule in place because they know, really, the nurses who get the donuts or not make the biggest decisions, they've got the biggest pulling power, so that, if you've ever seen films, I'm trying to think of, I think the film's called Love and Other Drugs with, is it Jake Gyllenhaal, where he he's like the Pfizer rep, I think Yeah. And it's really interesting like that. That kind of shines a light on what that industry used to be like. Used to be like in the past. And yeah, it's fascinating. Like, back in the day, the expectation used to be that they would take out the like, doctors and nurses on like, ski trips, and it would be like, Oh yeah, bring your wife and kids, and the company pays for it. It was crazy. So yeah, none of that happening now nowadays that I'm aware of anyway, no, but lessons that we can learn, no doubt, because you kind of work out which levers you can pull as a business owner, and they're very often the things if you're unsure about what to do. It's probably the thing that you're putting off. Like they always say that the success that you want is hidden behind the actions that you're not willing to take. And it's very true. It's often the things that feel outside your comfort zone, like signing suppliers, creating a marketing campaign, optimizing your campaign, things that feel new, but you know, with the right guidance, of course, we can make that a lot easier now that we know how to do it best and how to get the best return. And you mentioned as well, scaling too quickly. So I want to know what that looks like in practice. Like it is an easy mistake to make. So I guess you saw revenue numbers going up, and then there was a lack of understanding about the profit behind that, or what was the real reason that you'd help people to avoid doing the same? Yeah, it's exactly that. It's just spending money on ads and then seeing revenue come in, but not really tracking like, well, how much profit Am I making on each order? And the crucial understanding is your cost per sale. So your cost to acquire a sale on ads. How much does it cost you to make a sale is that? Is that less than the profit that you're making on every sale that's coming in on average? Obviously, you're going to be selling products of different price points, but yeah, if you're just kind of like getting even, for example, it's very easy to like, think that everything's going well because you're seeing revenue start to go up, and you're like, I think everything's fine because we're hitting a good row as but if your cost per sale is starting to, like, significantly eat into the profit that you're even earning per sale, because maybe you haven't negotiated great margins yet with suppliers, got to be very careful. I'd rather earn less revenue, but keep more of it. It's not what you make is what you keep, as they say, then just have this, like, huge amount of revenue, but not have generated much profit from it, right? So that's why we have the profit tracker, so that you can see at the end of every month, how much exact profit Have I made, how much did I spend on ads to acquire those sales, which brands were the most profitable? You know, which Which brand do I need to double down on? And then you can start looking at like even splitting out ad campaigns, and say, well, actually, that brand is not that profitable, that the margin is only like 20% so maybe I won't spend as much on that brand, and I'll set my return on ad spend target a bit higher for them, whereas on this one, it's like a 40% margin. So it's like, I can have a bit of a lower row as I can be more aggressive on ads, and I can split them out. And that's, this is a more advanced tactic that you do down the line and but I think when I first started, I was just overwhelmed. I felt like I was just doing everything. All of it was new, and it's, it's easily done. You just take your eye off the ball for like, a couple of months, and you're like, I think everything's going well. We're making sales. I haven't done the sales. I haven't done the stats this month, but I think it's fine. And you know, I was like, traveling the world as well at the same time, and doesn't take long before that stuff starts to catch up with you. So I've been very strict, uh, since then, yeah, that's it. You said you you mentioned before that everything happens for a reason, and I agree with that. I believe it as well, because now you're able to speak about it on a podcast and give people the warning signs, or as well, you're able to put it into your program. And when I joined the dropship unlock master class program, I didn't have to feel those same pains of missing the numbers, because I knew very clearly what my return on ad spend needed to be. You taught me how to find that in Google ads, and then I knew not to always focus on the revenue scaling and actually make sure that you're profitable at the very least, you're in the green every single month. And that's the be all and end all of these businesses that we're actually doing it to make profit. And then from that profit you can travel the world without having the you know that in the back of your mind, that fear of losing money each month, and I think that's something that's probably changed you. It's probably something that was a big part of your business. Not only that, that foundational lesson that you learned about tracking the numbers, but also about traveling and traveling the world that that came that became possible for you once you left your nine to five job and set up your E commerce businesses. So what role did that location, freedom have in your success? So was it something that you were always striving for when you started a business and when you actually were traveling around, and you've now got that location freedom? How does it affect you on a day to day basis? How have you changed because of it? Yeah, is that that ability, that freedom, that it gives you has, I guess it just has given me what I want. Said it was, it's given me what I was seeking the whole time, which was freedom, autonomy, control, like I've talked before about my underlying frustration when I was working in a job a nine to five that I couldn't just jump on a plane that same day and go anywhere in the world that I wanted, not that I necessarily even would have, but just, like, just the fact that I couldn't, I just felt this sense of, like, Who are you to tell me that I can't do that with my own life? Like, where I want to go and what I want to do? Like, surely, that's it within my control. Or should be, you know, otherwise, am I kind of a prisoner to this employer? Like, what's the what's the trade off here that I've given in exchange for my salary, that I can't do certain things with with my life that I want to do. And it just felt this kind of sense of this nagging, like sense, I call it the golden handcuffs. It's like they make it very, very good and comfortable to stay but ultimately, you are in handcuffs. You are locked. You are kind of trapped. And so yeah, the benefits of this kind of model meant that it was a fully online business. All I needed was a laptop and either a Wi Fi connection or a personal hotspot connection that I could just get on. And, you know, work on my business. I've worked on my business from planes with Wi Fi connections in the middle of the ocean flying above, or coffee shops in Southeast Asia, or, yeah, all kinds of weird and wonderful places, Airbnbs around the world, and the fact that I have no inventory to personally manage. So yes, you are selling physical products, but you never need to touch them. You never need to be anywhere near them. Really. You don't even need to be in the same country as them. And because you're effectively the retail middle person, you're facilitating the sale through your E commerce site, and then to your supplier, who sends the item straight out to the customer and also with a global reach as well. Although we did start out by just selling to the UK, we have had sales all over the world. We've had customers in America and Canada and Australia, and we are able to ship items internationally to them. Now, it's not the model that I necessarily advise and but, but you can, you can earn money from customers anywhere in the world if you have the products that they they want. And it is possible to do and although one of the prerequisites that we take in niche validation is just make sure that there's enough demand already in the market that you're serving for you to not even have to expand internationally to be able to hit your target income. And that's just a calculation. That's just reverse engineering the maths. Yeah, it's nice that we have that option with with the business that we run, to click a few buttons in Shopify, sign a few suppliers that can ship abroad, and suddenly we have this global reach if we choose to, obviously as complexity. And I'd argue it's not really necessary when you've got such a large market in the UK already to sell to, and I prefer to diversify product ranges or stores within the UK rather than going global. However, it's nice to know that with it being a global business, not just that we can travel everywhere and still run it, but also it's got that global appeal to soon as you can have the ability to take money over over through an E commerce business, you can start to serve the world with your store. We have a global reach at our fingertips, and it's like just us and our laptop, wherever we take it, we have access to to generate that income. I mean, some of the favorite places you've been to, Louis, then what would you say when you've been traveling and running this business? This business? I enjoyed life. I think it's changed a lot since, but I really enjoyed my time in Bali, in Changu, real kind of surfer, hot spot, very beachy. Everyone just on motorbikes, going up and down, walking down to the beach. I loved my time in Mexico. I was a little bit older when we went to Mexico more recently, that was the beginning of last year. But just taking the children out there, living in like an amazing service department, going for a run on the beach every morning, you know, with the UK time zone, that worked quite nicely as well. And just, yeah, I guess, like living in nice environments, nice weather. Enjoyed my time in Thailand then, then I've kind of been in more developed places as well for long stretches of time. So we've spent a couple of January's in Dubai, for example, which is very much developed, probably more developed than where we are now. And that's fascinating, too, for different reasons. It's not like you're there to benefit from the low cost of living. If anything, it's probably more expensive. But just again, like being able to get up, I think for me, it comes down to like, maybe it's like proximity to the ocean, maybe it's the weather, but again, up being able to go and run along the beach in the morning, listen to some music or a podcast, and then come back, spend time with the family, take the kids to the pool, work on the business in the afternoon, pay any suppliers that need paying, jump on a couple of quick calls with the team if needed, and then it's like out to dinner with the family. Like, for me, that's the dream. That's what I would do on holiday. And technically that's a working day now, it's almost the challenge then becomes, don't take it for granted, don't you know, don't forget what life used to be like before, and don't become. Pleasant about that, because that is an like, once in a lifetime, once in a generation, kind of opportunity to be able to set up a business like that, and, yeah, it's incredible to think of what people had to do in the past to generate an income, and how hard some of the manual labor jobs were that now you you just don't really have to do that if you if you can kind of engage your brain and think smart and think smart and create a system that allows growth without your personal brute force input the whole time? Yeah, exactly. That's right. It doesn't need you to be a manual labor to do any drop shipping. It's not like you have to pull the products at all. It's just tapping away at your keyboard. And of course, there's challenges, and it's more so challenges mentally rather than physically, in order to keep going when things are tough and go through those challenges that you've been through. But, yeah, I just think it's just, you know, gratitude always comes across from you, Leo, so these experiences that you've had because we are fortunate in that the generation and the tools that are available to us now allow us to be able to generate income wherever we are. And it's still not that it's not very common. When I come back, I'm in Shrewsbury, in my hometown now, until we go away again soon. And it's not it's very uncommon to have remote work. And even something that came to mind recently was Rianne, who I travel with my girlfriend, she is paying student loan back. And when you go onto the website to let the student loan company know that you're going away for three months. Over three months, the plan is, is there's no option for you to still be earning when you are going to be abroad for over three months. There's this supposition. They just expect you okay, you're going on a sabbatical, or you've got a traveling period, or your employers let you go, or it's like, it's not, I didn't realize until you come back into hometowns necessarily, because I was speaking out in digital nomad communities when I was traveling Europe at the end, traveling Europe at the end of last year. But we're still early. We're still very early on this list. It's still not very remote work. It's not that common here. Yeah, I totally resonate with that, that that was my exact experience as well dealing with like HMRC and student loans and all this kind of stuff. And they're just, you're on the phone to someone in a call center in the UK, you know, who's kind of sitting there, and they just don't get it. And they're just like, well, you don't tick any of the boxes, like, you don't fit into any of my drop down categories on my list, on my computer here. So like, what's your like? What do you do? Are you on holiday? Are you, are you working for a company? You're on a sabbatical? Like, what you're like? No, I run the business, and I can run it from anywhere. So I'm just currently living here. If I want to live at somewhere else, I'll just move somewhere else in a little bit. You know, obviously, make sure your visas and stuff are set up. But like Thailand, for example, has the the tourist visa, I think it is, or the digital nomad visa. And so your company can just still be running in the UK, and you can just be there traveling and just kind of check in on it occasionally. It's not like you're there to work, is it? You're just log in and do a bit of work, just like you do a few emails while you were, you know, on holiday somewhere. You're not necessarily there to work, but you can do a bit of work while you're there, keep the business running, but the business runs in the UK still and but that doesn't fit in any of the categories on any of the kind of traditional systems, does it? So I still struggle with that kind of stuff. Even to this day, I know that, like, yeah, there's, there's all kinds of online forms and stuff that you fill in. You're like, I don't really fit into any of these, these boxes. That's right, it's so true. It's probably like, part of a wider conversation. Is it that society as a whole kind of want to have you in simple boxes? And it's kind of pushed onto us as well. We like to label people or jobs, or where people live, the job they do, the personality that someone has is when you describe someone to a friend, you often go to the job that they have. Is because labeling is so common in everything, but there's only when you step outside the box, you suddenly become difficult to put into a box or put a label on when you're not somebody that's that fits into that usual path of if you're if you're at home, you're working. If you're abroad, you can't be working. You must be on holiday or taking a sabbatical, or picking strawberries in Australia, there's like those are two extremes. If you're abroad, you must be picking grapes that you can't possibly be making money any other way. There. It's interesting observation, and I think that's going to continue for a while, because I think we are still early on this, but listen to this podcast, 2030, years time, I just can't see how it won't be so common of remote work, and how it's very usual for people to have the same jobs, but doing them from anywhere in the world, because the worlds are getting a smaller place and much more accessible as we as we Continue and onto sort of the business as a whole. And when you got started with ads, and I want to talk about the role that mentorship played within your business in terms of running ads, how were you able to learn running ad campaigns for the first time when you had no business experience? And do you think that mentorship was really crucial to the growth of your business? Yeah, definitely. I would seek out courses, mentorship coaching from people who knew what they were doing in this industry. So for example, like I've learned from a lot of the time they were in America just purely because there wasn't really anyone in the UK doing this. So it would be like American mentors around the concept of drop shipping. And then I'd be trying. Like, translate those things to how that applied to the UK market. So they talk about, like, state sales tax, and they think, VA T or they talk about, like, LLC, I'll be like, I think that's a limited company. And then they talk about, like, you know, you've got to do this and that and science applies this way. And okay, well, I definitely won't use the script that they're providing, because that would never go down well. But maybe if I go and meet them for a cup of tea, that might, like, kind of be the the UK equivalent of, like, the way that they would approach them. So it was trying to kind of take all of this information, consolidate it, pick out the good bits, adapt the bits that I thought weren't quite right, and then, like, make it fit. And the same with that as well. You know, I absolutely had to learn the process of, like running Google ads. And back then, they didn't have things like a performance Max campaign. So it was like you started with an upside down Google Shopping funnel, where it was like broad traffic, top of funnel, then it was middle of funnel, then it was bottom of funnel. And you used to have to do these, like reverse negative keyword lists to kind of filter words out, to get them down to your highest spending, highest bid, low bottom of funnel. I mean, it hurts my brain, even like trying to describe it, compared to now, where it's like the AI system can kind of take over, and it knows roughly what you want to do, and you set your target row hours and let it do the job. And so, yeah, definitely learning from experts, learning from people on YouTube, learning from different courses, investing in mentorship early on definitely helped. And then obviously, like, just as well not being too worried that, like, I didn't know the niches that I was going into, because I knew that the suppliers. Did you know, those suppliers have dedicated their, their lives, their professions, to becoming experts in their field. And for me, that's fine. Like, the the customer support person that you call it Argos, isn't necessarily an expert on the TV system that you're thinking of buying, like the sound system or whatever, but the company that make the system is so like, that's the way you have to think about it, like you're the retailer. The expectation when they contact you isn't that you know all the ins and outs of every brand and every product that you sell. Although you might have a general idea, it's absolutely fine to say it's a really good question. What I'm going to do for you is check in with our product specialist, find out the answer and then get back to you later today. If that's okay, can I just take your number and I'll give you a call back shortly, or I'll drop you an email later today, and within half an hour, you've got them the answer, and you can probably close that sale. And I think sometimes people get caught up on that and they think, oh, but I'm not the expert. I don't know, how am I going to do it? And it's this sense of imposter syndrome, but it's like, you've got to remember, if every retailer felt like that, no one would ever go into business, because no one's an expert in the thing that they're going to sell before they start selling it. So you have to start somewhere. So just jump into it, and then, yeah, I'd say probably the other thing is just making sure that, like I had accountability and a set of goals when things didn't work out always, because they don't always work out as you expect them to. And sometimes you work on projects and they kind of fall apart, or they start to crumble. And I think being around a group of supportive entrepreneurs, which we've now created we have that kind of accountability group at dropship unlocked is one of the most helpful ways, because you might kind of go off the rails a little bit and get sidetracked with a really busy project at work, but if you're still in the community, and you check in and you know, a month later after having not logged in, you see all these people that started the same time as you starting to make sales and starting to celebrate their success, and you're like, I should be doing that. I'm going to hold myself accountable to get back on track. And it's one of the most powerful things, like going through with a cohort of other people that are in the same boat as you. I think that's really underestimated. When people try and start businesses on their own on the internet agreed, it's like, really healthy accountability and people holding you to be the person that you aspire to be. Because you make it clear when you first enter the community, you often tell people what your goals are, who you want to be, the success you want to see within the next six months, 12 months. And so people remember that, and then they check in with you to say, are you on your way? And it can be really helpful when it's easy to fall off track, especially when it's something so new, but you've got the accountability and expert guidance and it, yeah, just makes everything a lot easier as you build a business, especially when you're being introduced to things that are completely foreign to like Google ads. When I came into the masterclass layers, I was straight into performance Max campaign, which is fantastic because it's a lot more simple to set up, but I can imagine being introduced to an upside down Google Ads sales strategy and thinking, Well, I don't even know what one looks like, the right way up, let alone upside down. So how are you meant to learn that? You know? I mean, it's like, Well, okay, suddenly I've got to learn all this new, new tactics to bid strategies and bid calculations, etc, etc. We are lucky. I think in where we are now, Lewis that it's more simple to create a business than it than it's ever been, for sure. Yeah, exactly. Trying to, like, convert features into benefits with, you know, copywriting and how do I even start writing a blog post? Now, there's, like, a button in Shopify that just says, generate posts with AI, and you just click it and it does it. It's like, I would have given anything to have that button, you know. Five years ago. So I think it's really, really moved on. And actually, the barrier to entry is even lower than it was now. So like, really, now is at the best time ever to get started with something like this, because you've just got that. You don't even really have to fully engage your brain. You just need to do the work. You just need to follow the actions and the steps. Like, we'll guide you through the process. Just turn up and do it, yeah, and just keep doing it. And just turn up. You use the accountability from people and and just hold yourself to what you say you're going to do. And it more simple. Now there's challenges are still there. It's not easy. It's never going to be a get rich quick scheme. The challenges are still the same as they were when we started, but in terms of the tools, and, crucially, the information that you touched on at the start of the episode, Lewis, is that the information now is UK specific. If you are in the UK, there's people like us that will tell you how it is, whereas the content space, the information space, more broadly, is dominated by the United States. But nowadays, if you are in the UK and thinking about starting, we hope we've gone some way in helping people know how to get it, get it done in the UK? Yeah, definitely. Fantastic. Cool. So just to wrap that up, then, for somebody that does want to get started, and perhaps they want the mentorship or accountability that we do offer, where would you say is the best place for them to start? Yeah, if you've heard anything today that speaks your interest, and you think this sounds good, but I don't have the full picture yet. I'd like to understand a bit more about how this works, if it's right for me, how it would all fit together. Best place to go is head over to drop ship, unlocked.com, forward slash, start. That's where you can get all the resources that you'll need. We'll talk to you about the mentorship, all the mistakes that you should probably avoid, and how you can scale up quickly. Are you enjoying the podcast? We'd love to hear from you leave a comment or a review, and we might feature it in an upcoming episode, and for detailed show notes and resources, visit dropship, unlock.com forward slash podcast. If you found value in any episode of this podcast, please. Could you take just 10 seconds to leave us a quick five star review on your favorite podcast app? It helps us more than you can imagine, and who knows, you might just hear your comments read out on the show. Thanks for being a part of our community. Your support helps us keep delivering new episodes to you every week. Okay, now it's that part of the episode where we will answer a question that we've had in from a listener of the podcast. So thank you very much to Rich, who has left a question for us. And remember, if you have a question that's come up during this episode, simply leave a comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode, and it will be answered in the comments, and it might be answered in an upcoming episode as well. So this week, Lewis, the question has come in from rich reviews, 1279, and he has asked, hi, Lewis, this is inspirational. I'm from London as well. But I wanted to ask, when it comes to ads for drop shipping, what should your daily budget be? Great question, rich reviews. So I'd say, I mean, we recommend, when starting out with a daily budget a good place to gather enough data, but not, you know, blow through money unnecessarily would be between, say, 10 to 30 pounds per day when you're getting started with ads for drop shipping. So if you're not there yet where you could afford to do that for at least a few weeks, just wait. Just save up. Just make sure that you're kind of accumulating money in the meantime. That's why it's good to still have an income while you're launching this business. So you can fund it initially and treat it as an investment. You know, if you can follow proper guidance and make sure, like I talked about earlier, that you're able to measure your return on ad spend, and know how much you need to get back for every pound that you spend on ads, once you can zoom out and look at that, over the course of 234, weeks, you'll start to get some some data that you can actually use. Don't expect, you know, the first pound that you spend to give you that return on ad spend back. That's not how it works. These are kind of laws of average. It's you have to let enough data accumulate to get your first few sales, and then you can kind of start to figure out, tweak, refine things, improve your site. There's lots you can do, but just keep in mind that your ads are helping to test and validate your products, your brands, and that brand and product market fit as well. So don't expect massive results overnight. Certainly don't expect massive results if you decide to run ads and you've only got one brand signed that's risky, all your eggs are in one basket, and you're kind of just hoping that basket has the answer. You want to make sure that you've got a variety of brands, a variety of products, you're diversified within your niche, before you start running ads, in my opinion, because then you are more likely to start seeing results, and you can let the market tell you where those sales are going to come from. It's a whole different topic. It's a whole kind of module and week inside the program. So for more detailed advice on ads, maybe check out one of our previous episodes related to advertising. We've got plenty of them on the podcast. Just search our YouTube channel for them, and for more specific guidance on setting up your ads, you can head over to dropship unlocked.com. Forward slash, start. Fantastic. Yeah. Thank you. Lewis, great question, rich, and now it's time to answer or not. I. Answer, but read out a review that we've had or the podcast. And we love to do this. We love to highlight when people leave a review. So thank you very much for those of you who have left a review, either a comment on YouTube or a review on the podcast platform that you listen to us on. So a big thank you to Jason Lark 71 for sharing your thoughts. Jason said, very helpful and interesting content, great. Thank you for your review. Jason lark, we really appreciate it and glad to hear that you've been enjoying the podcast and found it interesting. Thank you very much for listening to you as well. If you enjoyed today's episode, maybe you could share it with a friend or a colleague. It's a great way to spread the knowledge and maybe help someone else out on their e commerce journey. And we appreciate every bit of support you can give us. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the dropship unlocked podcast. We hope you are leaving with new insights and inspiration to fuel your entrepreneurial journey. To kick start your E commerce business. Head over to dropship unlocked.com. Forward slash, start. It's the perfect place to start and get access to resources that will help you build your business from the ground up. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button for more episodes packed with strategies, tips and success stories, plus, if you enjoyed this episode today, a five star review would mean the world to us, and you might even get a shout out on the next episode. Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us today. We can't wait to bring you more insights on the next episode of the dropship unlocked podcast. You.