The Side Hustle Show - Full Episodes - High Ticket Dropshipping: From $40K a Year to a $40K Payday

From 40 grand a year to a $40,000 payday. What's up, what's up? Nick, a loper here. Welcome to the SideHusle Show because your earning power doesn't have to stop with your paycheck.

Today's guest is your friendly neighborhood forklift driver turned e-commerce entrepreneur who over the last almost 10 years has started grown and sold several different online stores. And in this episode, we're breaking down the path to get your online business up and running in the next 30 days. And Kineke Dorf, welcome to the SideHusle Show. That might be my favorite intro of Everhead.

Thank you for having me. I love it. Well, thanks so much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, I think you'll like it here.

The SideHusle Show, I like to say it's the entrepreneurship podcast you can actually apply. And I'll warn you, the archives run deep. So to help get you started, I want to get you set up with a personalized playlist based on what you're most interested in. All you got to do is go to hustle.show, answer a few short, multiple choice questions, and I'll give you a custom curated playlist that you can add to your device.

You can learn what works and you can start making more money. Again, that's at hustle.show. But then, so E-Com comes, it really in a lot of different flavors, ranging from eBay flipping, to Amazon arbitrage, to private labeling, and everything in between, right? As a spectrum.

Now you advocate for a model of, quote unquote, high ticket drop shipping, where you act as the virtual retail storefront for brands, and then those brands or their suppliers, distributors, ship those products to your customers without you ever having to touch the inventory. And you've seen a lot of success with this model, and I'm excited to geek out on the, you know, selection, niche research process, the supplier relationships, the marketing. But drop shipping has, I call it a complicated reputation online. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, I think it gets a bad wrap there. There are way too many young folks standing next to a rented Lambo telling you how they did, you know, $1 million in revenue. It's in the last 30 days, not speaking of the profit, of course, and how you can do a two and you can make a bunch of money. And I think it gets a bad wrap.

Like if you'd seriously dive into that model, the idea is that you're going to go find something on Alibaba, right? So it's a generic. It's not that high quality, and it's shipping from China. And then you are going to take that product, manufacture in some margins and go acquire a customer through Facebook ads, TikTok ads, social media ads in general, get somebody exciting enough to click through, buy your product.

And then honestly, probably forget they bought it until the box shows up 40 days later in a heavily taped box with Chinese writing on it. They pop it out. It's a terrible product. It's a terrible experience.

They go to complain to you and they see that it's, you know, Joe Bagadone, it's 96 at gmail.com is the support thing. If your website's even still around at this point, right? Because it's a very turn in burn business model. And so you're not going to be around very long and you're not going to have a business that's an asset.

Whereas when we talk high ticket drop shipping, you're selling products from brands. Everyone listening to this has definitely heard of before. In fact, they probably searched some of these. You're becoming a real retailer of all of these products, a source of knowledge on the web that people want to go to when they want to learn about this type of product.

When you're building a real, sellable asset that you can then sell on Empire Flippers or quite Lightbroker or any of the brokerage sites out there and, you know, get a nice big payday after you've built this business to a nice profit. Yeah. And that's kind of the path that you went down for the first project was building something up, proving out the concept, you know, having a track record of revenue and orders and profit and then ultimately selling it from making 40-year-old a year at the Fortcliffe Driver Job at Walmart to this $40,000 payday with the first exit. You talked to me about that.

I mean, I guess at a high level of building and growing and selling that store with that ultimately meant for you. Yeah, I think so. Look, you go way back and again, I was driving a forklift. There was days I was driving, call it a PE, like a motorized forklift and I'm stacking dog food all day.

I've driven the yard truck. I did a lot of stuff at Walmart thinking, all right, I'm going to, you know, level up here. This is all I knew, right? My mom was a CNA, wouldn't you know that I was working at a warehouse and my wife was a CNA at the time, like that was the framework for life that I knew.

And so I was trying to level up inside of Walmart. The main thing to get to into that building was to get to first shift. Everybody wanted to get to first shift and it was very hard to get there. Seven years in or so, I made it to first shift and I was like, heck yeah, I'm working 4am to 2pm, 4 days a week.

This is the Holy Grail, I'm finally here. And I remember that. Yeah, you made it. Yeah, I remember that first day I walked in and everyone was dead.

I just everyone looked like they didn't want to be there. And I was like, oh, oh, like this is it. This is, I'm 29. And I've, you know, quote unquote, made it in this building.

I've got the first shift and maybe I'll become a coach someday because we're all a team there, right? There's no managers, there's coaches. And I just remember like something had to change. And it was shortly after I moved the first shift that I took an extra bathroom break that day and I wrote a note on my phone.

I still have it on my website that just says I must begin setting goals and formulating a plan for the future. Starting for this place is slowly driving me insane. Find your passion and begin set goals set an action plan, begin the first steps immediately. And I knew I had a change and I'm sure there's people listening to this.

They're, you know, they're looking for that side hustle that's going to get them out of whatever pain they're in. For me, I was $40,000 in consumer debt with my wife at the time. Just credit card. Yeah, credit card that.

And, you know, and I didn't really like where I was for a job. I knew I was smart. I knew I had really never applied myself in life in that at 29, this couldn't just be the end. And it really felt like the end.

So I knew I had to make a change. Yeah, I know that resonates with a lot of people just being like, is this it? And there's got to be another path. There's got to be something else.

So now you're helping people with the dropship podcast and through dropship breakthrough.com to help people, you know, find that path through this model of dropshipping. But let's talk about from the point of writing that note, let's talk through, you know, maybe if you're starting over today, something that, you know, niche research product, you know, what makes a good storefront to go out and try and build here? Are there any, you know, high, you know, high, high profit low competition niches that still exist? Or how would you go about thinking about it?

And I just started listening to podcasts similar to this. Just like, what can I do? How do I make money online? What can I learn that can become a leverageable skill so that I can grow?

And I started hearing about high ticket dropshipping. And that's where my journey began. So like you said, I took a course and I built and sold my first business in less than a year. And I sold it for one year's pay at the Walmart distribution center.

And that was a big deal. And so you're right on the dropship podcast or dropship breakthrough. We're trying to do the same thing. We're trying to give you criteria to help you understand this business model, which is simple.

It's not easy, but it's simple to answer your question. We don't do, here's the next hot product list simply because I don't know you, Nick. So like you could ask me, Hey, what's the next hot product? And I might say, you know, Pelic Grills are super hot this year.

And that's the one you should go after. But you might not even eat meat, Nick. I have no idea anything about you. I have no idea if you're interested in barbecuing.

And the truth is the person listening to this right now who wants to do this and loves smoking meat and loves pellet grilling. Like they're going to crush you because they wake up every single day wanting to talk about this. They wake up every single day wanting to serve the person who also wants to do this stuff. They're willing to go that extra mile and film their dinner every single night and put it out on social media and make recipe books and do the copywriting.

So I was part of a golf business. The biggest business I've been part of was a golf business. I love golf. My two co-founders love golf.

And so when we would talk to the person behind the screen, it was very easy to speak their language. It was very easy to understand their pain points and speak directly to them and solve their problems. Whereas if I was somebody who had never touched a golf club in my entire life, would I have fallen in love with the marketing? Probably.

Marketing is fun. It might be the greatest game I've ever played. But if I don't understand the person behind the screen, it's not going to be as fruitful as somebody who understands that person and loves marketing. They're just going to have an edge on me that I don't have.

So I hesitate to give you products to do. But I'd love to give you some criteria to help you think through what you might choose as a business that you want to run. Yeah. Let's hear it.

What I'm hearing is, let's use these upcoming product guidelines or research guidelines. But really to cross, pollinate with what you're already interested in, curious about, excited about what, maybe some expensive hobbies of your own that you could breathe some unique personal advantage into this niche versus competing because you're going to be competing against somebody who likely does. Yeah, the world's about it. So look, whatever you're into, there's other people into it.

There's other people selling to those people and there's no way you could reach everyone. I like to bring this back to the hoop. John and I teach the who here rather than the product. Too many people dive right into the product.

What product am I going to sell? Okay. Reality is you're selling to a human, right? So to reference this, I'll say we talk about any commerce like the average conversion rate is 2%.

So if 100 people come to your website, 2% will buy from you. That's like the average standard metric across the commerce. But those 100 ticks on your screen are people, right? So that's 98 people who are raising their hand and saying, I'm interested in what you're selling, but you didn't help me.

And like if you had focused on the who behind there, you might change that number two to five or 10, right? Or you know, work your way down the road. And I would encourage you to start thinking of the who. So when you go into deciding your niche, I don't want you to think about products quite yet.

I want you to think about the person that you would choose to serve. So going back to that golf reference, I am a golfer. I knew the exact pain points. These products were going to solve for these people.

And so I knew how that would help me. I knew how I would like to speak to those people. Whereas if I had chosen archery or something like that, I've never hunted a day in my life. So I know that's like a sin to say and Wisconsin, but I've never hunted a day in my life.

And like I don't know anything about this. And again, so I could fall in love with the marketing. I could fall in love with the product, has low competition, is the right price point, cheap to ship. And the margins are fantastic.

And that might get me a certain way down the road. But like I'm trying to build a real business here. And I would encourage you to build one that isn't just something that's going to patch your pockets and take up some of your time, but something that you truly enjoy. Like happiness, as Gary Vee would say, happiness is severely underrated.

I want you to be thrilled running this every single day. I want you to wake up excited about what you're doing. And that comes by serving someone you're excited to serve. Very good.

What are you, I guess that's all well and good. It sounds great. Happiness is underrated. But at the end of the day, like the conversion rates do matter.

Like the products do matter. So are you able to speak to what, you know, how am I narrow down the breadth of, just things to sell out there that might might even be worthwhile to put on my short list here? Yeah. So we have some criteria to go after that, right?

So like, not you're not just finding a who and then saying, good luck. Here we go. Like I want you to find the who and then think about the products that they purchase, right? And so I took a spreadsheet out of our course here of like, let's say you want to target people who love fish as pets, right?

What products do they buy? Aquariums and fish keeping products. Then we're going to want to actually sort by price. So I'll give you a couple more and then we'll work through the price, right?

So horse riders, right? If you're big into horse riding or you work on a ranch or hesitate to name any other occupations inside of horses, I just don't know enough about them. But like there is horse riding equipment that would fall into some of the rest of the criteria, right? So start with the who.

Here's the people I'd like to serve. Now what product types do they buy? And then we'll move to price. And so what we don't want to do is sell low ticket products simply because there's just not enough margin there to move the product.

So I'll give you this analogy, right? If you want to do 30,000 in revenue next month, Nick, and you sell a $30 products, you're going to have to sell a thousand of those $30 products. Whereas if we can find a product in that market to the who that is $3,000, you're only going to have to sell 10 of those products. And it's just as easy to sell a $3,000 product as 30.

It's just a different type of marketing, right? It's demand capture versus demand generation. But for a thousand orders versus 10 orders, how many employees are you going to need to process a thousand orders versus 10? How many damages and returns are you likely to have in a thousand orders versus 10?

How much overhead are you going to have? You're going to have less risk. And so like we set the bar at 800. I think 400 and below is low ticket.

I would stay above $400 if you can. Now you can sprinkle those in as part of accessories and things that come with your product line. Okay. 400 to 800 is no man's land.

So there's just enough margin for you to make sales, but no margin left for you to make profit. I actually know quite a few people who have landed in no man's land. And their revenue looks fantastic. They might be one of those people standing next to their rented Lambo on TikTok because their revenue looks amazing.

I was part of one of these businesses. StandingdeskNation.com is one. We did $1 million in revenue and made $0 in profit. Zero.

So we sold a lot of standing desks, but there was no profit to be made at the end because the market was so saturated, the cost per click was high. And there's just no margin left in sale. Again, if you sell a $500 product with 30% margins, you have $150 to pay, shopifies, fees to ship the product to the customer to go acquire that customer. Oh, yeah, we're running a business.

We want to make some profit here. Yeah. So if we use those same margins on something 800 above, I like to go even higher. Let's use that $3,000 mark.

You now have $900 to pay your Shopify fees, your credit card fees, your shipping, go acquire the customer and take a profit home. So if it cost you high end, we'll say $300 to acquire that customer. It might cost you $200 to ship the product. We still have $400 left over that we can actually put in our product.

So pocket rather. And so like when we say, all right, find the person, find the product, now start sorting those by price. We want to see the higher the price, the better in this scenario. Yeah, I'm thinking of like the skiing niche and even, I don't know if skis would be particularly easy to ship, but they've got to be at least as easy to ship as a giant standing desk.

There's certainly certainly some things where you could spend $800 on a pair of skis. And so maybe that's something like the higher ticket items that people in your hobby or niche or peer group, who that's involved in that space are making purchases of it. It's maybe it's the in-home sauna or you mentioned the people who keep fish as pets like that really nice aquarium setup or I don't know what not like the cleaning mechanism. I don't know what have any concept of what these things might cost, but this is kind of narrowing it down like the big golf, I mean golf is a fantastic niche because like high income demographic and it's like these big garage golf simulator setups.

I can picture that these might cost $1,000 or more. Yeah, there is an easy way to work backwards if you want to, right? So I call it the touch point test. Just simply start looking for things that are above $1,000.

You'll start seeing them, then your brain will go, oh, we want to see these things. It was already seeing them. It just wasn't pointing them out to you, right? There's way too much reality for your brain to process, but when you tell it to look for something, it's going to start seeing them.

And so you can create the list of products, then work back to the person. And the reason I say the who is so important here is like you said, golfers are fairly easy to sell to. Like they're usually affluent. They will spend any amount of money to gain one more stroke on their game.

They're men who buy things laying in their bed on their phone at night instead of researching looking for coupons, going to honey, doing all this stuff, no offense to women. You're much harder to sell to than men in my opinion. I'll give you one more example. I had someone approach me to go get on a, like a group call for us to do a mastermind.

Me and him are the only two that showed up. He was selling composting toilets. And if you know me, I'll get on any call and I'll give you about a thousand ideas. And so that's what I did.

I gave my thousand ideas on this call. And he was like, wow, that's a really good idea. Let's go build this. Give me half his business and we turned his composting toilet business into shoptinyhouses.com serving all the people who want to buy tiny houses.

Wouldn't you know it? That's not the best audience to serve. These people want to live on very few amount of dollars. They want to do things DIY when they can and cut corners and just like not a great audience to serve.

We scaled it. We did well. But like, that's not who I would choose to serve in the future. So when he bought me back out of that, I made sure I wasn't going back into that audience again in the future.

This is like why I think the who is important because you got to wake up every single day wanting to serve that person, whether they buy from you or not, you should be super invested in that human behind the screen. Okay. Yeah, that's helpful. And it's a Japan attention to what level of search volume is going around around these primary product keywords or whether or not this is available at Amazon, at Walmart, at your local home depot.

Like, does any of that come into play? Yeah. The next thing you want to do is like understand how crazy might shipping be for some of these products. And so you can imagine shipping somebody a small thing that costs a lot of money is going to be much easier than shipping them something that needs to go on a freight truck.

They're going to need a forklift to get it off there. While that's not a no in my book, certainly you might want to lean towards the easier, especially if this is your first business or your first side hustle. You just you don't want to dive off the deep end into freight shipping right out of the gates and have to manually do everything. That said, that also keeps everyone else away.

And so there's a lot of opportunity there, right? If you are willing to solve problems that other people aren't willing to solve, you're going to bring value to the marketplace that wasn't there before and you're going to be rewarded handsomely. So I would lean towards easier if this is your first go around lean towards the easier shipping products. Again, don't be afraid of freight shipping, but I've sold things that would take a half a freight truck.

I had to convince the customer to go rent a forklift and it was just like this is not it's not worth my time. So stay away from the things that are just insanely hard to ship. Also, you're going to want to think through some things and maybe this is just my background. Some things just get damaged in shipment.

And I learned that working at a Walmart distribution center furniture is one of those things. Treadmills are one of those things like they are not fun to ship that boxes get damaged. A lot of things get damaged just in freight in general because often it's being shipped from one company going to an LTL company, getting taken off that truck, getting set on the dock, getting ran into by a forklift, getting put into another trailer. And so I've seen all this and so I don't know if you're going to know this from the outside, but again, just know that going in with freight, it's going to be harder than things that aren't freight.

So if it's a smaller item that doesn't need to go well, freight, great. If it's going to go freight, just understand you're going to have some challenges ahead of you. Okay. The next thing I would ask is like, is this an enthusiast market?

And the reason I asked that is like, if it's something someone absolutely needs, you're kind of going to be talking to them differently than if they want it. So go back to that golf analogy. Does anyone need any of the golf equipment that you could sound golf simulators, a putting your head? No one needs that, right?

But the guy wants it because he's an enthusiast. He loves this stuff. Woodworking would be another example, right? No one needs woodworking equipment, but there are people out there who want this equipment, right?

And so if you can lean into an enthusiast market, I want more than you can lean into a need. I have found that that is going to be an easier market to which to sell. And that's a really interesting point I want to pause on that because a lot of especially when you're starting a service business, we've always said, look, it's easier to sell pain pills and it is to sell vitamins. Like, so it takes somebody's pain away.

This is something that they need to stop versus, okay, if we're going with this higher ticket drop speed model, like, oh, it's going to be easier to play in the in the wants space in the, you know, aspirational, hobbyist, enthusiast, desire space, then, you know, make my pain go away. Yeah, I think you can do both. No question. I've just found it easier in the enthusiast market personally.

Also, like that lens to you, hopefully being the who you're marketing to, then you're an enthusiast, right? And so again, you understand the customer, you understand their pains, so on and so forth. The next thing that we're looking for is like, are there enough brands to sell? So typically when people hear dropshipping, they think, allie, boba, you're going there to find a product.

We're selling real brands. So a business I used to own, pelletgrillproz.com, actually, John and I just bought it back. We're going to keep this live and show everybody on that store. Probably not pretty if you're visiting right now.

We just bought it back. It still looks like the site I built in 2016. Please don't laugh at shop-domized, brutal theme. But like, you have to know there's enough brands though.

So if you go to pelletgrillproz, there's Memphis, there's other brands that like real brands. I'm not going to allie, boba or some manufacturer or some distributor and just looking for a no-name thing. I'm looking for the brands that exist in the market. And so when we say suppliers and have you look through, is there enough suppliers here, you're going to want to make sure there's enough brands.

So if you're selling so many of them, five to ten is probably, if you're super niche, five to ten, but if you can be above ten, even better, honestly, you can't go too small. If there's like two, that's probably just not going to work out for you, right? There's just not enough competition there or enough search volume really. If there's low suppliers, there's also going to be low search volume.

And so I hesitate to put a number on search volume two, but if there's a thousand searches a month for woodworking equipment, which there's not, right? There's going to be a lot more than that. Like, obviously, there's just not enough going on there. Okay.

And that's how that kind of gets my marketing gears turning. The more suppliers you have, the more kind of comparison content that you could create, this brand versus this brand, this model versus this model. But yeah, if it's a monopoly, you do an monopoly situation, you're like, you know, this thing versus this. Yeah, you're a little bit limited there.

You've got a certain risk. Like if that supplier ends their relationship with you or they, you know, start doing, you know, just taking care of the retail side on their own. All of a sudden, you're kind of like, well, now I'm host because I was half my business. I love SEO.

The way that I've scaled the biggest business I've been a part of is SEO and you just nailed it, right? The beauty of running a retail business like this is I don't have to generate demand. If I'm selling you a widget that I found on all of Bob, I have to get you interested in it. The beauty of high ticket drop shipping is you are selling brands.

People are already searching for. And when they go to Google, they are comparing brand versus brand product versus product. And most of those keywords are being underserved. And so you can win really quickly by hitting those bottom of the funnel keywords like you just mentioned, Nick, and really be able to take advantage of the demand that those brands have already created for you.

You're just simply capturing. Yeah. Anything else on that product selection criteria list? Yeah.

We want to like, eBikes is a good example. If you go to Google and you search eBikes and you go down the rabbit hole of what competition exists out there. And again, we're not talking competition as far as brands. We're talking competition as other retail sites selling this.

E-Bikes is one of those that has just gotten bananas. I would recommend zero people going to eBikes as a niche because it is so competitive. There's just so many people inside the industry. But you're not going to want to have more than 20 to 30 other people selling this.

If you're just going to look like 20 to 30 other sites, you're going to have a tough time doing this. Now, if you can find five to 10 or less people competing against you, then there's opportunity to grow there. I want to keep this basic. Are you counting the manufacturers?

Are the manufacturers themselves or just other stores that look like they're dedicated e-commerce stores targeting that same buyer demographic? Yeah. So you can count the manufacturers again. If they're in the Google shopping window, that's where we're going to make our first sales as in Google shopping.

So if you want to go into Google shopping and see who's competing with you there, that's a good place to start. If I search brand and product type, so Memphis, Pelicryl, how many people are actually showing up? Is there a lot in the Google shopping box cool? Then I'll start going down that rabbit hole we just discussed of Memphis versus.

You can just do this in Google. Just go to Google, type in Memphis, enter. So search is right. Then hit Memphis, Vs, space, and you'll see, oh, they're already suggesting Memphis versus this brand.

Memphis versus this brand. So I get an idea, and I'll start searching those. Is anybody serving those? And so I'm looking for opportunities right out of the gates.

But even at like, you know, the 15 to 20 range, is there still opportunity for me to come in and either buy up market share through Google ads, which is how you have to start because you're never going to get respect for SEO out of the gates. So is there, is the Google shopping full of nine other competitors? And I click the shopping tab and there's 40 others get out of there, right? But if there's five to 10 to 15, you're probably going to be in good shape.

And then I'm going down that rabbit hole of different type of keywords people are searching and just seeing if there's opportunity there. Yeah, and there's different, you know, curl extensions that you can use to kind of gauge that perceived domain authority of these different sites that might be ranking. I've heard like, okay, if there's a, you know, a sub a forum or a sub reddit, you know, or a core thing like ranking in the top of like, okay, that's not a site dedicated to this. So that might be an opportunity to carve out some space on page one for that long tail keyword variation that you're looking at.

Okay, so let's say it was anything else on the criteria list here. There is. So there's one more thing I want to meant obviously traffic volume. If you're, you know, in the low thousands, that's going to be tough.

If you're in the hundreds and hundreds or millions and millions, uh, likely that's going to also root like show you competition too high. The other thing I do want you to think about though Nick is like the idea that you're going to have a site where you sell one product that no one ever comes back and buys anything from you is very difficult, right? So it costs a lot of money to acquire a customer, whether you're selling a low ticket product, a high ticket product, a digital product, anything you're selling, it costs a fair amount of money to acquire a customer. And so I would encourage you to think through how can I sell more things to that same human that would fit inside of this industry.

So I'll go back to that tiny house example when he was just selling composting toilets, how many composting toilets are you going to buy? You're going to probably buy one, right? Maybe, maybe buy two. Then you're done.

You're never going to buy from me again. And so you could add like the stuff that goes in there, the coconut core and the other things that you need to put inside of the composting toilet that that could work or we could pivot to selling to everyone who is buying this composting toilet to put in their tiny house. And then we can sell them the stove, we can sell them the wiker wave, we can sell them solar panels, we can sell them ventilation. There's all sorts of things that that human is buying.

And so rather than just sell one thing, I'd encourage you to look through the lens of like, what else could I sell here? So that when I've spent the money to acquire a customer, which again, it's expensive to acquire a customer. Now I have their information, they trust me. How else can I help serve this person down the road through other products?

Okay. Before that traffic volume metric, are you looking at a similar web data from other competing stores? Are you looking at search volume metrics? What goes into that?

Yeah, I'm a big fan of a keyword planner. It doesn't work when you don't have running ads. Like it gives you different data. But why I would want to go to Google itself.

So if you have a Google AdWords account or ads, whatever they call it now, Google ads, I would use Google keyword planner because they're going to give you the best data. And there's paid options such as like HFs or SEM rush. Uber suggests is a cheaper paid option. There are free options like you suggested that can give you some data, but they're all kind of guessing.

So take them a little bit with a grain salt. Yeah. Yeah, but basically trying to show that if there is search volume around this because you don't want to go through the trouble of building these supply relationships, building out the storefront and then oh, turns out nobody is really looking for this stuff. Like, I don't know, is there a minimum where it's like, no, not going to touch that.

I mean, just to save people the trouble. If it's too niche. Yeah, it's hard to give a number. But again, all of these things are going to be related, right?

So if you land on something that has like 10,000 searches a month as a category, you're likely not going to find many suppliers serving this industry. You're likely not going to find many competition either, right? And so like everything's going to kind of tell you a story. That's why I hate to give you like one metric that had all of these other ones and then failed on this metric.

Do they all kind of fall in line together and they're likely going to tell the same story? Like again, if there's low traffic, there's low suppliers, there's low competition. If there's unbelievable amounts of traffic, there's going to be way too many brands that exist in the space and there's going to be way too many competition, right? And so just trying to find something that falls in the middle.

All right. So let's move on to the finding suppliers side of things where, okay, now I've got my product idea. I've got this idea of who I want to serve as a customer. And now I got to pick up the phone and call these suppliers up or send them a note through the contact on their website and be like, hey, what's that initial outreach like or what's that pitch like?

I will tell you that this is one spot that trips up a lot of people, including myself. So entrepreneurship is the greatest self development program you will ever go through. Your own self limiting beliefs are what will stop you from having the business you seek and having the life you seek. And it's just programming built into us.

I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. Work fear of fail you're fear of success is a real thing. All of this stuff is going to show up along your journey.

And so when something gets hard, really pay attention to what's going on. So this like listen to the voice, the narrator in your head what they're saying, because this was a this was a thing for me, I remember I built a brickfire bdq.com. I never launched it because I was too scared to call suppliers. That's the first sign I ever built.

I just couldn't get myself to call suppliers. brought me back to the same feeling I had. I, uh, third grade, I was so like, I really wanted to date Sarah Peevy. Sarah, if you're listening, how's it going?

And I, I'm in the, I'm in the laundry room in my basement just pacing, pacing. I finally work up the, you know, like the gusto to make the phone call. And she says, no, by the way, spoiler alert. But like that feeling is the same feeling I had when it came time to call these brands.

Like, who am I to be calling this? Are they gonna like me? Yeah. I'm just some guy who built a website.

I have no experience. And so it's a, it's a, it's a spot where a lot of people, they're just done, right? And for me, rather than quit, uh, someone posted in one of the forums I was in that they had a business with four suppliers on board. It was the, uh, the 3D printer guy.com.

That's the first business I actually, like, you know, built and scaled in the first year. He had four suppliers. I bought it for $400, thinking that was my way of not calling these suppliers. And the main one dropped me the day I took over.

He was like, yeah, we're not doing this. He dropped me. He dropped them back. They're one of the biggest brands in the space.

And I was stuck at square one. I had to do it anyway. So, uh, I'll be honest, it took me like a month to muster up the courage to call these brands. And I called them that day after about a month.

And I landed 20 out of 20 that day. And so, um, do I think that's gonna be, uh, what's gonna happen to you? I don't know. I was fortunate enough to land 20 out of 20 that day.

But the, the, there's two months there in that story where I didn't do anything because this really tripped me up. And so I can imagine this is scary to somebody listening to this of like, what am I gonna say? I'm just, you know, again, I'm just some guy who heard a podcast, uh, where they told me to go do this, um, how am I gonna land a supplier? So I want to give you a couple tips to like help you like really think this through.

We went way deeper on our podcasts. It's like episode 15 or something. We did a three-parter, well, really deep on this. But high level, you're doing them a favor.

Um, you're doing them a favor because you're helping them sell products. So you have to come from this place of I'm in control here. It's easy to feel like almost like you're calling your parent and asking permission and like a teacher or an authority figure. It's really easy to feel like you're not in control here, but you're in control.

Like you're doing them a favor. You're wanting to market them. So come from that position and then realize that so one thing that's going to be a red flag is like, you're not going to sell on third party sites. So we don't sell these products on Amazon on eBay.

Anywhere else we sell on our website and only on our website because we're building a real brand here. And so the line I like to use is, Hey, my name is Ben from my son of site. calm. I'm wondering who I can speak to about becoming a retailer for your brand.

That usually gets you to the right person that gets you past the front one. Sometimes they say we're not taking on new dealers and you can simply say, that's great. I'd love to like start building that relationship for whenever in the future that comes to be and just get yourself to that person. You have to get past the gatekeeper.

And if you get to that person, you have to immediately let them know that you're not the guy who just saw a tiktok or an Instagram real or something like that and let them know, Hey, here's what I'm building. Give them some background and don't be shy to let them know this is your first business. We all had a first business. Everybody had a first business.

You're not alone in this. It just let them know like, Hey, this is what I'm trying to build. Hopefully you've chosen something where you actually care about the human behind the screen. Or maybe you are the human.

So you can relay that. You can show them, Hey, I'm I'm very much interested in serving this person. I want to build this site. Here's where I'm thinking of going with that.

I let them know. I let them know that my team and I are skilled in Google ads and SEO and content marketing. Again, that's what we teach in our course. So if you come through our course, you should be able to say that because you're going to learn these things, right?

And so you do have to be a little grandiose, but I don't like to lie. And I think there's some other gurus out there that tell you to lie. They tell you to build a website, put their competitors up there and then call them and say, Hey, I'm selling all your competitors. I'd sure like to sell you and try to like con them into this.

I think that's wrong. I think you should come from an honest place and let them know what you're doing so that you can build an ally here who wants to support you, who wants to help you build what you're trying to build. I feel like there's a little bit of a chicken versus the egg problem here where you need the website or at least a version of it to be able to show these prospective suppliers. But you also need those suppliers to be able to have product on the website to be able to show them.

Like how do you go about that? What I like to do is yes, build the site. I do think you should build the site. This is one of the things that sets you apart from the guy who's just calling who doesn't have a site.

So yes, buy your URL. Build the site on Shopify. Get some branding up on there. Again, this is going to cost you, you know, 50 bucks, 60 bucks, 100 bucks, whatever it is.

Make your site look real. And then I actually upload the brand I'm calling. I let them know that this site, we're not sending any traffic here. So they're not worried that we're trying to sell them without their permission.

But I upload their brand and I say, this is how I'd like to represent you online. And if you go to standingdesk Nation.com and hover over shop and go over to the right where it says brands and click FlexiSpot, I like to build out these collection pages as landing pages. Not just a site with a carousel on it. Like I really want to represent this brand well.

I want to talk to a human. I don't want to just copy and paste stuff from their website on here. I want to think about, okay, who's the person who's looking to land on this page? What are their problems?

Can I talk directly to them on this page? Rather than just say, this brand does X. This brand, like that's not marketing, right? That's just, it reads like a book.

I want to show them that I'm going to represent. I'm going to spend time on this website. I'm going to talk directly to the customer. I'm going to represent their brand well.

The things they care about is you don't ever break map. So make sure you bring that up. You're like, we love map pricing. I think that makes a fair playground.

Map pricing is minimum advertised price. So nobody can go below that. If you break that, they're going to drop you off as a supplier. And a lot of people break that.

And that's why they, that's why they have a checkered relationships with people who have called them in the past. Because people just, it's a race to the bottom. And so, minimum advertised price. Let them know that you like to honor minimum advertised price.

You don't sell on Amazon or eBay. You only sell on your website. Here's one or website it's going to look like. So we can represent your brand well.

Here's how we could feature you. Here's how we could write articles about your brand to drive traffic. Give them an opportunity to say yes to you, rather than an opportunity to say no to you. Are you looking for brands that are not selling directly through their own website?

You know, so why do we need? Why do we need Ben? If we're, you know, working on these efforts, driving traffic to our own site. Do you read reviews online, Nick?

Sure. Do you trust them after being a marketer? I'm going to guess the answer is nobody. Do you trust them?

Some more than others. But you wouldn't just go, okay, I heard about, you know, brand B went to brand B dot com. Read their reviews. I'm good to buy, right?

You're going to go somewhere else and look for, look for information on this. Likely, if you're buying a high ticket product, you're going to do even more research. You're going to go deep around this because you're spending one, two, three, five thousand dollars on this product. And so this is where you can become the authority online and really build out that content that allows somebody to come into your world.

Again, serve the, serve the crap out of that person. And that's why they're going to buy from you, right? So nobody, nobody like goes from a problem aware. I want to smoke meat to I'm buying a trigger, whatever, you know, 600, whatever it is, right?

Like they don't just go from here to there. There's this long customer journey in between. And if you can meet that customer where they're at, along the way and provide them the resources they need, of course, they're going to buy from you rather than buy directly from the brand. Now, you will lose some sales to the brand.

They're going to make their sales too. But there's retailers all around you. Why does anyone go to Best Buy? Why does anyone go to Walmart?

Why does anybody go anywhere else? One is convenience. And then two, when it comes to online world is because they're bringing way more value to the table. You can't go to Amazon and ask them a question about the thing you want to buy on Amazon.

No one's going to answer you. There's no one there to help you. There's no customer service. And so with a high ticket dropshipping business, if somebody calls one of the businesses I own, there's someone that's going to answer and hopefully be able to answer correctly and informatively and be able to walk you through the process and not just shuffle you along, like actually bring real value.

Yeah, I was going to ask, are people really buying $3,000 things from some random site that they just never heard of? But it's like you describe building that trust and relationship through, I mean lots of different trust signals that you can do through social proof and secure settings and the depth and value of the content there and the customer support phone number because yeah, I'm likely to do my homework and then I can see people bouncing back to the brand or manufacturer site and say, oh, you know, thanks, thanks for all that information. Now I'm good to go. But if you can capture those people through live chat or through an email offer or some way, yes, some way of communicating with them.

Or create a better offer too, right? So if I sell the Pellagrill, can I throw in the cover for free? Can I throw in a year's worth of pellets for free? Can you craft an offer around the product that is different than the offer they see on the manufacturer site?

That also is going to draw people away. Okay, that's helpful. I can't break map pricing, but I can add bonuses on top of that. Yeah, bundles do extremely well.

Okay, cool, that's helpful. That was one point of, well, how am I going to differentiate myself from other people doing the same thing that I am. They're selling the same products from the same suppliers, same suppliers at the same price. And what's going to be my point of differentiation here?

And it sounds like, you know, being a part of that niche, you know, first and foremost, like, hey, look, we are the Pellagrill guys. And this is what we're super into. And we can build out that content and authority. And then, you know, several other different factors there as well.

After you, so you're having this, you're trying to get to this decision maker, hey, can I become, how do I become a retailer for your brand? They say, sure, you know, we follow this process. Like, we're talking about the logistics. So, like, okay, now I've got these people signed up.

I, you know, import their product catalog into my Shopify store. You mentioned a 50 to 100 bucks startup cost for the website for Shopify for hosting, et cetera. And now, and how this thing is live. And if, if, and well, I want to get to the marketing stuff, but like, if somebody does get an order, you know, now they have their own process for, you know, how to submit that order.

Is it like all automated? And all, you know, just, okay, how ultimately, how's that going to get to the customer? So, there's a few steps in there, right? Number one, the beauty of this model is you don't have a thousand orders.

We went through the math earlier, right? If you want, if you did 30,000 in sales, that's 10 orders, maybe 20 orders. And so, while I wish there was automation here, there just, there isn't a lot of automation in this industry. So, you are getting the order from Shopify, sending the email off to the brand.

But before all that, you got to get it, yes, right? So, you got to, yes, you're probably going to have to follow up for the paperwork. They told you they were going to send over, right? They're busy.

So, follow up, get the paperwork over. Sign the paperwork, you're going to need, you don't need an LLC in America. You can be a sole proprietor. You could do an LLC.

You're going to need an EIN, which is free. You just got to go to get an EIN number. And then you're going to fill out their forms. Some brands require those things.

Some brands are a little more nonchalant. And you just, you know, it's more of a, here's our pricing. Good luck, kind of thing. And then they're going to send over their pricing.

So, you understand, here's what shipping is going to cost. Here's what my margins are on these products. I would encourage you if the margins aren't where you hope they would be in the 20 to 40 percent range that you reach back and just say, hey, here's what I'm thinking of the math here. I'm going to sell this product.

I'm going to pay Shopify fees. I'm going to pay shipping. Also, I need to pay my team. And I'm a business owner.

I'm trying to make profit here and kind of push back on those margins. Just a little bit again. They're going to, you know, you're new. They want you to prove yourself.

And so sometimes you'll have to swallow margins. You don't want to swallow right away. Other times they, they might move them for you. Other times they might say, sure, if you want to, you know, take some stock in.

We'll give you better margins. Now, again, we're drop shipping. We don't want to do that right on the case we could. We could get a 3PL.

I have one near me that I recommend to our students. That'll take one, two, three, 10 products if you need to, versus the big boys who want, you know, thousands of products. But you can just say, like, look, if I bought a minimum order quantity from you or whatever they're asking to get better deals. And I had to do that across my site.

I'm going to spend all this money stocking a warehouse full of products. I don't know I'm going to sell yet. Yeah. And not have any money left for marketing.

So what I'd rather do is start out drop shipping with you. Let's see what sells and then revisit this in the future and see if we want to come back to stocking products to get better margins. And at that point, you should be open to that opening a 3PL and ordering 20 of the one you know you sell a ton of to get, you know, way better margins. So they'll tell you up front, hey, here's the, you know, retail price.

Here's your cost. So here you can back into. Here's the margin and then they'll tell you, well, here's how much it's going to cost to ship. So you can say, okay, on every order, I'm going to make that $500 or I'm going to, you kind of, you have an estimate of that going in.

And every brand's different. So some brands might ship everything for you for free. Some brands might say we can ship on our account or they might say, shipping's on you, you got to solve this thing, right? And so every brand is completely different.

That's why it's very hard to automate this process. Okay. Because every brand's there, they have their own systems. And so you kind of have to do what each brand says.

I would encourage you to build out, you know, documents in your Google drive for each brand. So that you have an SOP of like what the steps are for each brand, how that works. But yeah, they're going to send over typically a spreadsheet with their pricing. And then at that point, you are uploading products.

I would encourage you to do them less import. So a lot of times I'll give you a CSV where you can just import them. I would encourage you to, you know, take some time to personalize those. So you're not just looking exactly the same as the other people who have done the exact same thing who have just imported this, who are also running Google ads.

So think of your customer, right? They narrowed down the product they want to buy. They search it in Google. They click on your, or they click on a different site.

They read the description. And it's the same one they read on the manufacturer site. And they go back to Google, they click on yours. And it's the same thing again.

Yeah. No one's going to want to buy from you if it's just the same stuff. So I would encourage you to take your time on that step and upload the products, personalize them. We have a very long SEO checklist in our course of like, hey, you got to make sure that you, you know, change the title, the product image file name and Alt tag the file name.

And here's how you do that and make sure you hit your H1 and your H2 and your H3. I know this might sound confusing to someone who's never been in a website. But like, this is standard, straight from Google. Here's what we want from you.

And you just give Google what it wants. Okay. Yeah, that's all helpful. And to revisit or reiterate that was 20 to 40 percent, a profit margin was kind of the sweet spot there.

Yeah, so I mean, that's the the Belker. For sure, I've sold pitching machines where it was like 5 percent brutal. Brutal. I love baseball.

Like, love that I'm a junkie for baseball. And so I really wanted that one to work. The margins just weren't there. And then not to play with.

Yeah. And I've got other students who sell things that fit in a box. You know, you could hold in your hands that are 60 percent margins and they're $2,000 a piece. And you know, there's there's both ends of the spectrum.

There's no diamonds like what I'm trying to think of like what could be that? You know, like, I love this student. I love this student. So I'm not going to say he's the only one I know in there.

So good for him. But, you know, I've seen both ends of the spectrum. I would say the majority is in that 20 to 40 percent range. And again, sometimes that's shipping included at 20, which is more like 30 or 40.

And then sometimes it's 30 or 40 and shipping's not included, which, you know, brings it down closer to 20. Yeah. Do you ever run into the issue of those brands that you really needed to make this project work? They're just like, hey, we don't we don't drop ship.

Or we're, you know, we don't we like you said, we're not looking for any more dealers at this time. And then the road kind of runs dry. Like, there's going to be brands. They're only direct to consumer.

That's just the way it is. I really would like to challenge your misconception of like, you think this is the biggest brand. And maybe even numbers tell you this is the biggest brand in the market. That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be the biggest brand for your site or like make or break your site, right?

So that Pellegrill site, Trigger doesn't let anyone else sell them. I didn't have Trigger back when I ran that business in whatever 2015, 2016, before I sold it. You don't need Trigger, right? There's other brands out there that are just as good.

They might not have the reach. But they're also not like the price hasn't been driven into nothing because they're huge and they do volume, right? So think about Walmart. Walmart has really crappy margins because they do volume.

Whereas some of these other brands, they make a more custom product, more high quality product. If I'm honest with you, certainly Memphis is much higher quality than Trigger. But you've heard of Trigger and you haven't heard of Memphis, right? And so, yeah.

I would push you away from saying, I need this brand or this industry won't work. Now, there is some industries where that's the case. I would say Sonas is one of them. Clear Light is the brand and they are the best brand.

And so if you care about quality and you care about like infrared wavelengths going into you and actually whether someone's test is legit or not legit in that industry, I would encourage you to make sure you have them on board rather than sell some of the other brands who are, you know, they're tests are questionable, I would say. And so, like, all right. So some of them are going to say no. And you just have to like suck it up.

Some of those you are going to be able to go back to over time and say, great, let's revisit this. Let's keep this relationship open. You might not be taking dealers right now, but down the road, I want to show you what I can do in this industry and then circle back to them. Some of them are just a hard-known forever.

And the example I like to give you that super nerdy is like, when I was in the standing desk industry, the word veridask is searched way more than the word standing desk. That's how good of branding they did. Wow. And so that's the little like tabletop adjustable thing, right?

Right. It's a converter. Yeah. And it's terrible by the way.

Don't buy veridask. Anyway, so like we, right before I left the company, we designed this whole idea, based on someone else that we saw doing this, that was like, how can we attract the customers of their desk and then let them know, hey, this might not be the best product on the market. You've definitely heard of it because of the VC dollars they got pumped into this. There are other better brands at better price points that are going to serve you better over the long term.

And what we saw was somebody, if you, I believe you've searched veridask, you'll find this. It said like five reasons veridask socks are like top five reasons to not buy a veridask or something like that, right? Yeah, you can see the, the, the, the, you know, the veridask alternatives, you know, that people might be searching for it. Correct.

So like in e-commerce, the beauty of these retail businesses is like, if you've never heard of cluster content, go to Google search HubSpot cluster content. You'll see how I like to think about SEO. And so in an e-commerce business, especially these brands, it's our, like Shopify is built for this. Your collection page is your hub.

And then all of the products are already the cluster around it. And then of course, you can layer club like actual content around that as well. We wanted to do like a, like a negative cluster of you. I don't know how to say this, right?

So like top five reasons veridask socks or something like that. And then all of the brands that we did carry, the keywords were there for veridask versus brand A. Veridask versus brand A. They were all there.

So then we could support all of that with these, you know, supporting content that is going to drive people to who are comparing the two brands. And we could let them know, hey, by the way, we mentioned top five reasons veridask socks. Here's an overview of that. Here's our overview of brand A that we actually do like.

And then send them over to our collection page for that brand. And move them down the funnel. And just they weren't a very good product. And so we were like, oh, number one, we can't sell them because they're only to D to C to your point.

Some brands you just can't sell. But we know that they drive more awareness in this industry than anybody else. How can we capture some of that awareness and drive it back to products that we actually would recommend to our customers? Because we love our customers.

We're not just trying to sell them a product, you know, tying it back to that AliExpress conversation. Gotcha. So you're playing the SEO long game, you know, creating this in-depth product review content, product comparison content, product alternative content. I love all of that stuff because that's, you know, kind of the fun stuff to create.

And it feels like alchemy in a way, like driving, creating traffic out of nowhere. Like that's very cool. And piggybacking on the, you know, search volume that's already happening around these brands. So not like you said, with low ticket, you're trying to create this demand from scratch.

Hey, do you need this new fidget spinner or a little hover drone thing? That was the thing that my dad bought off of Facebook. And, you know, that was less alert. Don't buy anything on Facebook.

Shows up 60 days later. Oh, I totally forgot that I ordered this. Yeah, super random. The, so playing the SEO long game.

But then in the near term, once a site is initially launched, you just said, this is the Google shopping or Google ads. Based on those keyword variations, if you're allowed to bid on those, trying to show up in that kind of shopping carousel. Yeah, there's, I haven't ran a new brand that says, don't do this, right? Like that, to me, that would be a red flag.

You can't run on our keywords. Well, I mean, that's, that's, we want to show up for those keywords. That's exactly how we set up our Google ad. We want to handpicked these keywords, right?

So this is like where my, my love for SEO kind of began, was like, I see everything through a keyword lens thanks to Google shopping. So when you first start, you're going to get a lot of your sales on Google shopping. Basically, you're isolating the keywords you want to show up for. So that you pay very little for the ones you don't want to show up for.

The Google thinks you should show up for. And you pay a lot more for the long tail keywords you choose. And so that ended up like driving me down this SEO rabbit hole. And to your point, like that is the fun part.

Traffic shows up that you, you know, you built something once and it shows up forever. That's how you really scale too. So, you know, Google ads is going to get you started. And you got to get, go to Google ads.

SEO is what's going to take you to eight figures. So barbecue or telegrills, like that's an example. People, someone very top of the funnel, they're just beginning their research here. I don't want to advertise to these people necessarily.

Because it's going to be super expensive to convert that into an actual sale. But if they're down to, you know, Memphis model XYZ versus this thing, like, okay, now this is the person that I want to serve. Because they're just about ready to make their buying decision. Correct.

So you might pay five to 25 cents for pellet grill, hopefully five cents. Then you might pay 50 cents for somebody searching Memphis pellet grills. And then you might pay two dollars for somebody searching Memphis 700 pellet grill stainless steel. Right?

Something very, very, don't fail that you know, hey, they're ready to buy. They're at the bottom of the funnel. Is there a target? I mean, obviously the lower the better.

But a target cost for customer acquisition that you like to be in. Varys Burbrand. Some brands just have more margin for you. I tend to play more in the, I believe, in the Amazon world, they call it tacos, like just your total ad spend over your revenue.

And so if you can keep that at like 10% of your revenue is your ad spend, and you can continue to scale, certainly while pruning the keywords that don't make sense and escalating the keywords that do make sense, that's where I try to stay less specific than this number needs to work in this way at this conversion rate. That to me, that's just like, you end up cutting everything by the end of the day. Because you'll go through these stretches where that keyword didn't do anything. And you'd be like, well, for two months, it didn't do anything.

I'm going to cut it. Whereas if you zoom out and look over a course of a year, it did look good, right? So some of them you can't zoom out far enough to make it work. And those are the ones you'll have to prune.

Yeah, it's a big volume. It's hard to get a critical mass of data to say. But 10% of sales is a rough rule of thumb. So if I'm selling a $2,000 product, realistically, can you expect to spend $200 to acquire that customer through ad channels?

Yeah, and I think if you talk to some other marketers in different avenues like direct to consumer, and you said, we're shooting for a 10X row as they would laugh you out of the room. And like, that's impossible. But the reality is we're not creating demand. When you have to create the demand, your row as is probably going to be closer to 1.8 or two, right?

You're going to turn on ad spend. Return on, yeah. So like, you spend $20, you hope to get a $40 sale. Like, that's realistic in the lower ticket or direct to consumer amount, where you have to generate this demand.

But we're capturing demand. That demand already exists. And so we can target people who are much further down in the funnel. And hopefully have a much better row as because of that.

I've had businesses that are in the 15 to 20X row as like, it's not impossible when you're capturing demand versus creating it. Yeah. So you mentioned this a couple of times when stuff gets damaged in shipping or I don't know, maybe that supplier, you know, they never get the order. They just never ship it out.

There's this huge delay. Like, what happens when there's customer service issues? And you're like, hey, man, I'm sorry. I genuinely feel bad, but like, I never touched the product.

So like, now I got to pass this along. You're just kind of the middle man here and trying to coordinate a customer support request. Yeah. Sometimes you're the middle man and it's out of your hands and sometimes it's on you, right?

Like, you are the business owner of the book needs to stop with you. This is a customer service and marketing business, right? You have to capture the demand to get the traffic and then you have to do the customer service on both ends. Like, your phone's going to ring.

People want to talk to people when they're spending $3,000, $5,000. They might have questions around this. They might need your help to walk through the different options or what you recommend because you're the smart business owner. They're just someone searching this stuff.

So, answer your phone on the front end and then on the back end, you're right. Like, there's going to be times where something is damaged or they want to make a return. And so, this comes down to you creating a policy that works well for you. So, we've done multiple podcasts on this because it's such a complex subject.

Like, every supplier's different, right? So, you might have one supplier who says zero return. We don't do returns. Good luck.

That's pretty restrictive. Whereas another supplier might say, yeah, we'll take the return. We'll send them on a new one. No questions asked.

And then you'll have another one somewhere in the middle. It's like, yep, we'll do it. 20% for stocking fee. You handle shipping.

And so, you have to decide as your business owner, how do you create a damage and return policy that fits all of that and understand, you win some, you lose some, like there is a cost to doing business. Now, there is like upside here, right? Let's say someone falls into that return window and you have to take the return back. Maybe you lose a couple hundred bucks on that shipping.

How about you get that thing shipped to you, right at your house, so that you can take pictures that are unique to you. Now, you're no longer in the Google Shopping window with nine of the same photos. You took your own photos, right? Like, you borrowed Nick's wife's nice DSLR that he's sitting there with right now, right?

And then you took really nice photos and you made them your product photos. Or made a review video for you. Like, there's opportunity for you to get that product in your hands, do some cool stuff with it. And then, you know what, either sell it open box and recoup most of your money or send it back to the manufacturer and eat that 20% restock and feel like there is a cost of business here.

If anybody tries to sell you on a business model that's all roses, they're out of their mind. So, you know, look, there's going to be times this sucks. I know the very first order I ever had ever. I sold a 3D printer to Duke University.

And to this day, that might be the worst order experience I've ever had. And so, like, I went through trial by fire right out of the gate. It was a custom 3D printer. It got shipped to Duke.

It was damaged on the way. Professor sent it. You know, I had to handle that, right? He called me.

It's damaged. I called them. They gave me a return authorization number. I sent it back to the guy who got it back on a freight truck back to them.

They recreated a new 3D printer. It happened again. We had to go through this process. I sold it in April and he didn't get his unit until August.

And so, you know, there's going to be times that it sucks. And like, you're signing up for this risk. There's a reason like, you want to be a business owner. You're willing to take more risk.

You're willing to take more risk, which inherently brings more return if you can solve the problems that come in with that risk. So, it's not all roses. There are going to be times that chargebacks happen to and returns and damages. And, you know, you're just going to have to grit your teeth and push your way through that.

Because they don't come very often. But they do come. Yeah. I mean, this is true, really, of any business model.

Like, the headaches and the hurdles and the obstacles. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it. So, I resonate with Adidas was curious to like, well, yes, you know, it's kind of like, it's out of your, like you said, the buck stops here. But it's out of your hands in a way.

You're like, okay, how do I handle this? We're all playing a game. So, which game are you choosing? I choose to play this game where like, those are the problems I know I'm going to run into.

Here's how I'm going to solve them. I can set up routines around that. Some of the people might choose a game where they want to work 9-5. Really hate their lives.

Go to bed every night, dreading having to get up in the morning. Barely see their kids because their boss asks them to work late. You have your own game. And whatever you're playing right now, it sounds like if you're listening to this show, you probably don't like that game.

There's a reason you're listening to Nick show about wanting to find a side hustle. And so, like, this is the game I've chosen. This is the game I started with. I do think it is the easiest business model to get started.

But it comes with its own ups and downs as with any other business model you're going to choose. That's all perspective. I'm always reminded of my conversation with Michael Esick a few summers ago. He was in the print on demand business where he's uploading t-shirts designs and it's kind of like, it's a bit of a tedious process.

You know, uploading thousands of designs and it takes time and he's like, but he kind of paused. It's like, but for perspective, my grandparents generation had to go into the earth and pull coal out of the ground. So, you know, it's all a matter of perspective. Then I was going to ask if anything has surprised you over the last 8-10 years of doing this?

When Brian Angel and I own Standing Destination, we had a brand who we were selling who was owned by a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. And they decided, hey, this brand of Standing Dest isn't going to work for us anywhere. They brought a new CEO who was like, we don't sell anything related to this. Why are we selling this?

So, they decided to cut the brand. It was doing quite well. We stepped in and said we'd like to acquire this brand. So, we acquired that brand for no money down in a simple royalty, acquired all of their back inventory, all of their everything that they've done.

They poured a lot of money into this business and we acquired it for virtually nothing and started selling that brand. And then we found a Standing Dest treadmill company who we really, really liked and we went and acquired them too, again, in a structured deal with no money down. So, now we turned in this asset of being a retailer into selling our own brand. Same thing in the golf company, we ranked number one and number two for golf simulator.

You can imagine that does pretty well for you when you ranked number one and number two for your product type. And we simply said what we're selling isn't what it could be. So, we went and created what it could be. And then we listed ourselves as the, you know, the number one golf simulator on those pages that we're ranking number one and number two and that turned out pretty well for the company, right?

And so, like, there's a lot of ways that you can do this that isn't just retailing other products. Like, there's a lot of upside here and a lot of surprises along the way of like, what you can go acquire, where you can turn these skills that you're gonna have to learn. Like, you're gonna have to learn Google ads and SEO and conversion rate and copywriting. Over time, you're gonna learn a lot of skills that you can leverage in a million different places.

And so, yeah, there's been a lot of positive surprises as well, including people who started this journey, built a store, sold it, and now they're doing something completely different, leveraging those skills that they had. So, that's really interesting. Yeah, the idea of, almost this is like the toe dip into the entrepreneurial waters and then you kind of see what's selling, what you get customer feedback on, what are people complaining about? Like, okay, could we create a better mouse trap in the same niche?

And we've already got the traffic and the authority. And no, that's really fast. We see people do that in the affiliate space. Like, oh, I'm already recommending this product.

It's doing well with my audience. But, you know, here are the three or four things. Like, I would tweak to improve it. And I'm gonna come out with the private label version of that.

Some people go down that path. That's actually really interesting. Yeah. Okay, and you've got the portfolio of different storefronts.

Appreciate you sharing several of the, of the URL's past present with us today. You've got the dropshaped podcast. What else are you excited about going into the rest of the share? It's just continuing to try to change lives.

So, currently working through putting on our first live event for dropshaped breakthrough. Holy cow, don't ever get into live event space. It is a lot to think about. Thankfully, shout out to Mira.

She's one of our students who is volunteering to help me with this. And so, I'm excited to meet in person. Some of the biggest changes, some of the biggest improvements I've seen in my life is by getting in person. So, what you will see as you do these side hustles as you start your own business, it's lonely.

There's just not a lot of people doing it. The people you do know are stuck in their ways. And they're trying to pull you back into something they think is safe. And you're trying to change your life.

And so, getting around other people who are trying to change their lives. And again, going through that self-development journey that you're going to go down, whether you want to or not and getting around people to work through that, that has been the biggest improvement I've seen in my life. And so, if I can throw this amazing event in Minneapolis in July this summer, and bring people together and form a community of people who you don't want to change their lives to, I think that's going to be really special. I'd be lying if I said I'm not super stressed about it.

It is a lot to think about. It's a lot to think about. It's the logistics of something like that. But that'll be a ton of fun for everybody who attends.

Again, check it out at dropshipbreakthrough.com. Check out the Dropship podcast. If you want to learn more about this business model, hit up dropshipbreakthrough.com. It's slash side hustle.

We've got an evergreen webinar teed up for you over there. And there's been awesome. I took a ton of notes. Thanks so much for joining me.

Let's wrap this thing up. The number one tip for side hustle nation. Just take action. Choose one of the things and just go do it.

And you might fail. And that's fine. But the time's going to pass anyway. And why not leverage that into not just learning and thinking about doing, but actually doing.

That's where the biggest learning will come from. That's where the biggest roadblocks in your self-developed journey are going to show up. And you've got to get through those one way or another. So just take action.

And it's on you to make that change. There's a certain sense of, a lot of too busy chopping down trees to sharpen the saw. And tomorrow is going to look like today. Unless I go and do something about it.

So you can make that tiny first step. And maybe hopefully listening to this in some way, shape, or form is that tiny first step. Then again, really appreciate it. I took a lot of notes.

Some of your little one liners were great as marketing is the ultimate game that totally resonates with me as a marketing nerd. Entrepreneurship is the greatest self-development program that absolutely hit home. And I like this call because it was counter to a lot of the stuff that we're typically talking about is starting with the who do you want to serve? How do you want to help them?

And playing into this hobbyist or passionate interest market rather than just selling band-aids. Like, okay, who can I serve in a way that they're really excited to spend that money? They don't have to do it, but they really want to because it's kind of a fun addition to their life. And then the other thing that I wanted to touch point was what you called it the touch point test.

And this is something that we've hammered home really kind of in the service business arena. I'm just paying attention to the different things. You're talking about paying attention to high price products that you might come across day to day. But I will do this, like just drive it around town and paying attention to the different trucks that you see.

And what is painted on the side of that truck? Like, what service business are they? And like, oh, we do lawn fatching or we do gutter cleaning. I saw one the other day was like, we do mobile bike repair.

And I was like, shoot, I gotta give these guys a call. My bike definitely needs a tune up. So, as you know, you just, you come across these different ideas by paying attention. I think that's a really underrated entrepreneurial skill.

Again, if you're new to the side hustle show, I'd love to get you your own personalized playlist. So you can start making more money and figure out the business models that most resonate with you. If you hit up hustle.net show and answer a few short multiple choice questions, I'll give you that. You get that added to your device.

Again, hustle.net show. Big thanks to element notion and for sponsoring it this week. If you hit up side hustle nation at back on slash deals, you'll be able to find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that support the show.

That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the side hustle show.

Hustle on.