The Dropship Unlocked Podcast

Top 5 Dropshipping Mistakes That Cost You Thousands (Episode 101)

• Lewis Smith & James Eardley • Season 1 • Episode 101

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📞 Ready to Take the Next Step? https://dropshipunlocked.com/training-watch-apply?el=podcast-101-top-5-mistakes

🗣Hosts Lewis Smith and James Eardley dive into the top five mistakes new dropshippers make—mistakes that can cost thousands and derail progress. 

Lewis and James share actionable insights on how to avoid these pitfalls and ensure your dropshipping journey is set up for success. 

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

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Topics Discussed:

★ Lack of Full Commitment: Treating dropshipping like a side gig instead of a real business limits growth.

★ Choosing Products Based on Emotion, Not Data: Emotions can cloud judgement—just because you like a product doesn’t mean customers do.

★ Focusing on Low-Ticket Items: Low-ticket items require high sales volumes for minimal profits.

★ Working with Poor-Quality Overseas Suppliers: Low-quality products lead to unhappy customers, high return rates, and reputational damage.

★ Trying to Do Everything Alone: Doing it all solo limits growth due to limited knowledge and experience.

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Links and Resources Mentioned:

Watch Lewis build a new dropshipping business from scratch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHo4XdRN3dc

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

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

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

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Key Takeaways:

★ Commit Fully: Treat your dropshipping business like a full-time job to unlock its true potential.

★ Data-Driven Decisions: Let market research and data guide your product choices, not emotions.

★ High-Ticket Focus: Fewer, high-ticket sales lead to larger profits and less stress compared to low-ticket items.

★ Choose Quality Suppliers: Working with reliable local suppliers improves customer satisfaction and streamlines operations.

★ Don't Go It Alone: Seek support and guidance to fast-track your success and avoid common mistakes.

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★★★Dropship Unlocked - Lewis Smith★★★

🌏Watch Our Free Training ➽ https://www.dropshipunlocked.com/training?el=podcast-101-top-5-mistakes

It's like building a house based with with cheap materials. You know, it's it might look the part, but then it's going to start falling apart over time after a couple of years. Sometimes it's just a small tweak in one direction, but it saves you from lots of headaches and lots of pounds. To me, it's too much of a risk to pin my family's livelihood too. I was learning before I was spending money, so when I started spending money on ads, that's a dangerous game to play if you're doing this for the first time. Bad idea. Bad idea. Definitely heed our warning on that one the most successful dropshippers that we see time and time again come through our program, they welcome to the dropship unlocked Podcast. I'm Lewis Smith, the founder of dropship unlocked, and with me is our cloud success coach. James Eardley, now, when we're not recording the podcast episodes, we're running our own e commerce businesses and helping aspiring entrepreneurs launch their own high ticket dropshipping businesses keen to build your own six or even seven bigger business, my book, the home turf advantage is your blueprint for launching a profitable online store. Grab your copy@htabook.com today, and let's get you started now, sit back, relax, and let's unlock your potential with the dropship unlocked Podcast. Today, Lewis and I are going to be discussing a topic that could literally save you 1000s on your dropshipping journey. We're talking about the top five mistakes that new dropshippers make, mistakes that can derail your progress and hit your wallet hard. Yeah, absolutely. James, these mistakes are more common than you might think, but the good news is that with the right approach, they're totally avoidable. So let's jump in and make sure our listeners are set up for success. The goal for this episode is to highlight how making even small adjustments can have a huge impact on your success in dropshipping. So it's about turning those small tweaks into big wins, something that we help our community do every day. That's right, sometimes it's just a small tweak in one direction, but it saves you from lots of headaches and lots of pounds and dollars wasted. So a mistake that we see all too often, is one that you really highlighted for me because you love using the term dabbling. So it's something we see all too often, as I say, it's people that are dabbling in dropshipping without fully committing to it. So why do you think this is such a costly mistake? Well, it's something that I think once you've made the change to go from dabbling to committing, you could only really look back on with hindsight and realize the transformation that occurred in that time. Think the easiest way to visualize this, if you're at that early stage, and you're you've not yet fully committed, is that if you treat your business like a side hobby, then that's all it will ever be. It will become this self fulfilling prophecy. It will remain a capped at whatever earning that you're comfortable a side hustle could bring you. However, when you go all in and it becomes your main business, you give yourself the best shot at success, but also you've removed all of the other excuses. And so, because this is your sole focus, you you build it up to what you believe your sole focus could earn you. And so when I first started that, I think there was a person I spoke with that where this became very clear for me, and I was hesitant about putting all my time into something initially, because I was very early into the journey. Had just learned about dropshipping, wasn't sure, you know, saw all that bad press about low quality products from China and the traditional model. And so it wasn't really sure. And I remember I started to kind of dabble, probably with this, like high ticket approach of selling higher priced, higher value items from UK suppliers. And I was just testing the water, seeing how it was going. And we used to rent out a room in our Airbnb in our apartment in London. So we used to have a spare room, and used to have like guests come and stay. Come and stay from time to time. It's quite an interesting way of meeting people who are, you know, traveling around the world. And we have one lady who was there from, I think she was from America, and she worked as, like a PR agent for business owners. So interesting person had her own business was very successful, and I was telling her about my side business and my E commerce business, and I was saying, I'm still working in a job, but I run this business like evenings and weekends. And I was I felt like I was juggling so much. I remember telling her at the time, I feel like I've got so many plates spinning. And I remember her saying, the day that you go all in on it, and you leave your job and you you commit to this is the day that you'll free up so much headspace that you'll realize was capped before, and your focus and attention can all go towards one thing, and you'll break through, and you won't believe what's possible at that stage. And I didn't really understand it when she said it, because I thought, well, I'm giving it all my attention. I can in the evenings and weekends that I can dedicate to it. But what about all those hours in the daytime that I wasn't and it was very true when I look back now, the moment that I left my job, although the business was already up and running, it was generating sales. I've probably replaced my income already. It was really when it took off in terms of like, where I could just pour all my time and energy into it, and I've seen that many of our members at dropship unlocked see this same transformation. We see posts in our community where someone will say, Today's the day I leave my job because I've replaced my income, and now I'm making that switch, that pivot, where this now becomes their full time thing, and at that point, that's when we start to see their results really ramp up, because they're all in they've dived in the pool. Now it's time to swim. And so I think diving in too early can be a mistake. You know, diving in before you can swim by quitting your job, but before you have replaced your income, is possibly a bit of a dangerous game to play. Some people like the pressure of lighting the fire. It does, however, in my opinion, make you, force you to make quite short term decisions sometimes, but I know that when I first started, one of my early mistakes was thinking that I could dabble my way through to the type of success I wanted to see with this business in the long term. And it wasn't until I shifted my focus and decided that, no, this was going to be my business like this was it. This was going to be my main focus, my main source of income. That's when I think I changed from thinking now I wonder if I could do it, to believing that it's possible, because now I have to make it work. And that's when the progress really started. And so it's like working out once a week, you know, and expecting to see results. Without commitment, the progress is going to be painfully slow, if any at all. So when you're not fully committed, you miss out on these, these growth opportunities. And I think it all comes down to the simple phrase of you get what you put in right. Commitment and consistency are going to be crucial for growth, whether it's in business or any any skill, right? Exactly, yeah, the more you put in, the more you get out. And if you treat it like a hobby, you'll be paid like a hobby. If you treat it like a business. You'll be paid like a business. I think the mindset around dabbling comes from trying to avoid risk and trying to protect yourself just thinking, Oh, just give it a go. I won't go all in, because if it doesn't work, then I'm protecting myself, and I'm not given too much time and effort and thought into it and money into it. But what happens is, actually it's more a risky option to dabble, because it's very rare when I hear people talk about, I'm going to get started. Get started, but I'm going to see if it works or not. It's very rare that those people actually succeed. So if you're going to be dabbling, as I discovered myself when I first dabbled, it was very, very difficult to see success. If you're just seeing if it had worked, or if you just had faith, or you just hoped that it was going to work and work out, if I just put in half an hour here, half an hour there, but eventually, that's never going to lead to success. And so that's a more risky strategy to take. If you've identified something that you know fits your ideal lifestyle and you really want to give something a go, then that's when you go all in and you commit, and then that's when you see success. So it's a less risky strategy, I believe, but it's, it's that protection that we want to perp ahead of ourselves. We want to put a barrier and put a barrier in front of ourselves before we get started, because we're always thinking of protecting the downside, but it just holds you back. The obvious story that I remember always comes up when I think about dabbling and not going for it is the idea of burning the ships. So when the Spanish fleet commander landed on an island, and he turned around and told all his troops to burn the ships behind them, so they had no option to carry on and invade that territory. They had no option to turn back. Inevitably, they would win that war and they would take that territory, because they gave themselves no other option. And there's something very successful about that mindset, and it's the mindset that I had to take as well, once I realized it was drop shipping that was going to be my route to financial freedom. Then I set up a limited company business bank account. I put my time and effort into it, on weekends, on evenings, I knew it was going to be my way to success, but I had to have that moment, which can just be done, in a moment where I decided that this is going to be my route, and it was going to take it seriously, and then the the results were so different compared to when I was dabbling with Chinese products from Facebook ads before. The next big mistake that we see a lot of people make, Lewis is choosing the products that they're going to be selling based on emotion, or a hunch, rather than actual data. What's the danger here, then, for people, if they're just choosing products to sell based on emotion? Yeah, the thing to remember is, just because you love a product doesn't mean that the market does. So we have to separate our own biases, our own preconceptions, our own assumptions, from the facts. And it's a hard thing to do, because the nature of a assumption and a bias is that they're kind of internally hidden within our minds. You know, they're not something that we can immediately point to and say, Oh, I have a bias towards this. Because the nature of the bias is, it's kind of is under the radar. So just because you love a product and you think, hey, this would be really popular. I love these, therefore there must be a huge market for them. Could be you. Could be that it's quite you know, could be that it's too niche. And equally, just saying, like, I think this is going to be huge, but having nothing else other than a gut feeling to base that upon is, to me, it's too much of a risk to pin my family's livelihood to, you know, I want to know that there is stable, proven, consistent demand. And it's a bit like, imagine you're, imagine you're a chef, and you're like, right? I'm going to prepare this unbelievable feast, this huge bag that I'm going to get the barbecue grill out and create all these, like, nice racks of ribs and steaks and all of this great stuff. And you show up to the party and they're like, oh, you know, it's a vegan party. And you're like, oh, yeah, I did not do my research here. Like you've you've gone all in, you were so passionate about the thing, and then you realize there's just no demand for what you're trying to sell, right? It doesn't matter if it's your favorite, if the audience and the market doesn't want it does, doesn't matter. You're not going to sell anything. So market research, to me, is, is non negotiable, like I I start with the data, start with the research, and later I can overlay emotion on it. Once I have proven concepts that I say, yeah, that stacks up from a data standpoint, but so do these other four options. Which one do I like? Which one? Because there is a place for gut feeling in business. I'm not saying you have to just be like a rational robot and do nothing but make rational decisions. Sometimes it's quite nice to say no, but I really feel that that would be good, and I'd lean into that, and I'd be good. Sometimes that inner voice is worth listening to, but don't let it be the dominant voice that guides you down a rabbit hole that takes you two years to discover that it's a non starter in the first place. You know, decisions need to be backed by data, not just feelings. The most successful dropshippers that we see time and time again come to our program. They follow the data, they follow the nine step validation criteria that we have, ensuring that there's proven demand before they invest. And by the way, demand, market demand, is just one of the steps that we validate a market on. So we've done episodes in the past where we talk about all of the other steps for niche selection. That's a whole separate episode. But yeah, market demand is really figuring out how many people are there at the barbecue that are going to want to eat the type of food that I'm going to make, or what do the people at the barbecue want now, let me base the food I'm going to create around that. So think of it as well. Like maybe investing in the stock market. You know, you're thinking, right, I'm going to invest. You wouldn't just go and put your money into a company's stock just because you like their logo. You know, that's the level of, like, superficial decision we're talking about here. We say I've got a good feeling because, you know, like, their yellow and blue logo, it's like, at least look at the numbers. If you're going to do that, at least look at what's their what's their track record, like, what's what the, what's the news articles related to that company? Like, do some under, um, some deeper level research, and try and figure out if there's anything more to it. So just a couple of examples there, but that that's why it can be dangerous. Yeah, hopefully that that drives the point home, absolutely. I mean, it comes from trying to take a shortcut. Certainly, what I was doing initially, when I wanted to start dropshipping, I just wanted to find a product and start running ads. And there's almost like an impatience to get sales. But what that leads to is you do all of the learning, then after you're spending money, and you learn, because your ad account is telling you that you're not making any sales, and so your bank account dips because you're learning after you're running ads, whereas if you're a bit more patient, and I had to learn to be more patient and do some research upfront, then when I started running ads, I knew the products were always already in demand and already selling, so that I was learning before I was spending money. So when I started spending money on ads, I could see results straight away. So it's just about patience. I think I needed to teach myself that. And also, I think people try and go into products that they are passionate about, or perhaps they bought it recently. If you've been out and recently bought a new tent or new load of camping gear, and you kind of just convince yourself, well, if I did it, there must be 1000s of people doing it, but there's always needs to be that period of checking the data, making sure that it will make sense and lines up. And then when you do start investing in ads, building a store, taking time to sign suppliers, you know, it's all validated in that those products are selling already. So that's a big one that really cost me 1000s when I just started to pick products off the shelf in Aliexpress virtually and decide that I was going to start selling random things because I just thought the margins were good and they were available. So Bad idea. Bad idea. Definitely heed our warning on that one. I think there's we've done quite a few episodes on finding products based on data. So check out the backlog of dropship unlocked podcast episodes. And also Lewis has built a dropshipping store from scratch in a YouTube series. So if you just search for building a store from scratch on the dropship unlock YouTube channel, you'll find that Lewis shows you exactly how he finds products based on data to start dropshipping. So another common mistake that we need to touch on today. Is that we see entrepreneurs and new dropshippers focusing on selling low ticket items. Why is this a bad strategy? Well, low ticket Firstly, when we say that, we just mean low ticket price. So low price, we're talking items below 100 pounds, for example, you know, 2035, pounds, whatever like lower price, fast moving, high volume products that are kind of more impulse buys, and that's the traditional model, but with low ticket items, they require such a high volume of sales to see the same net profit at the end of it that it's just like the numbers don't pan out for you as a first time e commerce entrepreneur. If this is your first adventure, it can be done. But you're looking at trying to make a profit, probably on your second or even third sale. And that's a dangerous game to play if you're doing this for the first time. So there's a much, much easier way to make this work and the numbers pan out so that you make a profit on day one of your sale. So imagine trying to, you know, you've got this swimming pool in front of you. You're like, right? We need to fill this empty swimming pool up. You're looking at it, and you think, what's the fastest wake you could get a teaspoon and go to the tap and then just fill up a teaspoon and go and, like, pour a teaspoon at a time into the swimming pool. Or you could just get a fire hose and just fill it up that way, right? The end result will be the same. You'll make the same profit eventually. But how many more teaspoons full of water are you going to need to pour into the pool to get the same output? That's the point. Like we're not saying here that you can't fill a swimming pool with a teaspoon. You can. But do you really want to like it? There's no reward at the end of it that is greater. It's just that you end up with a lot more work to do, a lot more customers, to have to tend to a lot more orders, to fulfill a lot more returns, to deal with a lot, you know, a lot more complaint. I think that's the main problem with the low ticket items. And the other thing is that it's, it's very, very saturated, because there's this kind of psychological concept that people assume that because the items are cheaper and there's a lower barrier to entry, that they should just do that, but because the masses think like that, it makes it very hard to stand out, because everyone's doing it, because they all think, well, I couldn't sell products that are 1000 pounds. I'm maybe it's to do with like, a deeper like, self worth belief or something. But I think I'd encourage you try and break through that glass wall, because it's not real. It takes the same amount of effort to sell a product for you as a seller, you know, a 2000 pound product as it does to sell a 20 pound product. You've uploaded the photos and the videos to Shopify. You've uploaded the product description. You know, maybe you had to take a phone call to close the 2000 pound sale, but your virtual assistant can do that, so you're not actually taking any calls. And so the danger with the low ticket items is that you're competing with so many other sellers, it becomes a race to the bottom on pricing. You know, it's like if you're a busy Music Festival and I've got these water bottles I'm going to sell, and there's another person there selling the same water bottles, and then another person and they drop their price from 10 pound down to seven pounds. And then you're like, I gotta, I gotta do mine at six pounds now. And then the person over there drops theirs to five. And now you're like, Well, I've got to do four pounds to compete, but I buy these at trade price for three pounds, so I'm hardly making any profit now. And so suddenly you've got no leverage because you weren't selling any when you were double the price as everyone else. So you had to drop your price to compete, and suddenly you're making no sales, or you're making no profit. Maybe you're making sales, but what's the point? If you do it now, the difference with higher priced items, or high ticket items, as we call them, you need far fewer sales to hit your revenue goal. So you decide what your revenue goal is, and then just work backwards and figure out, okay, well, you know, assume 30% profit margin. How many sales do I need to make of a 10 pound item to hit my target of 5k a month profit, 10k a month profit. How many items do I need to sell at 2000 pounds with a 30% margin? You know, if you're making 600 pounds net profit per sale? Are you going to need far fewer sales? Because each one contributes such a higher chunk of that overall profit goal that you're striving for that you don't need as many rather than chasing hundreds of those small sales, you can instead just focus on high value sales that make a real difference to your business and to your customer as well. Remember this like we're not just saying this because it's easy for you as the business owner, the unwritten kind of read between the lines. Bit of this is that the end customer can be served to such a higher standard. If they are only one of three customers per day that you have to deal with, you could give them the most VIP experience. You could give them a call, you could send them a nice email. You could send them a nice little gift hamper. You know, if you're making 600 pounds profit on the sale, you could you could do all kinds of great things to wow them, get a great review, and leave them with such a great experience that they they kind of have no choice but to recommend you to their friends, versus. Going to do that if you're needing to make like, two, 300 sales per day at a low 10 pound or 20 pound item, you're just not going to be able to you're going to be overwhelmed with admin, with complaints, with refund requests, with issues. Your supplier in China is not going to help you with any of that. And so for me, when I realized that it was just a no brainer. I I lent in the direction of making that, that smart decision, and I had to see it as well to believe it, to realize that selling a high ticket item is exactly the same effort as selling a low ticket item. And it doesn't, it doesn't sound like common sense. You have to see it to really understand that it's exactly the same, but the rewards are so much higher. And this is a mistake that I wish I knew earlier, because if I had done I could have saved so much headaches, and also I was working so hard to generate some sales, but because they were so low ticket all of that hard work I was putting in, I was getting no reward at the end of the month. And I looked back at my statement, and I could see that I made like a decent number of sales, but because the profit was so low per sale, it was wiped out by ad spend very quickly, and all of that work. You know, every customer still needs a lot of attention. And even if you're, you know, selling low ticket items, you're still having to serve lots of customers, fulfill lots of orders. And, yeah, it's, I think you need to be a much better operator to sell and start running a low ticket business compared to a high ticket business. So that's the success that I've seen is much more in high ticket rather than low tickets. My experience all the way. Another mistake that we see, and it's quite closely tied to selling low ticket items, is working with suppliers for products overseas who are poor quality. So poor quality suppliers? Why is this mistake such a big pitfall? Yeah, well, first thing to say is, I'm not necessarily suggesting that all suppliers who are overseas from the UK are poor quality, but there are some that are, so let's just talk about those for for a start, right? If you're dealing with overseas suppliers who are also poor quality, in terms of, you know, low quality checks on products and stuff's going out that's broken or, you know, it's got product issues already, then you'll often end up with those products that are leading to high return rates, because customers will just say, well, I want to return the item. It's no good, and they have a legal right to do so. But you try sending that item back to your supplier in China, or having the customer send it back to them in China. Firstly, they're not going to do it, because the customer because the customer won't want to pay for for shipment. The supplier is not going to cover that price of shipment. Are you going to you're probably better just taking a loss on the product and saying to the so that's why, if you've ever ordered anything that's like, really cheap and nasty and has probably been drop shipped to you from like an Instagram ad you saw and you've asked for a refund, sometimes the seller will just say, just keep it. It's fine, just keep it. And you'll see that happen quite frequently. And the clue is, they were drop shipping most likely, as they don't have anywhere for you to return it to, and it just doesn't make economical sense for them to do so to think, how many of those you're going to have to just keep passing out and refunding and refunding and eventually, this is another bit. They don't tell you when your refund rate gets too high. Shopify the system that you're using, or whichever payment processor you're using. Don't like that, and so they see a spike in your refund rate. They're going to put a hold on your account and hold your funds and say, well, we don't want to take the risk that all of those sales that we've paid out to you suddenly end up in refund so we're going to hold back 10% 15% 50% of your funds, or they might just say, We're closing you down altogether, shutting down your business, right? So it's really, really short sighted to do it. And it's like building a house based with cheap materials. You know, it might look the part, but then it's going to start falling apart over time, after a couple of years, if that. The other thing is, the suppliers might be good. So I said that there. That doesn't mean just because they're overseas, that they're necessarily poor quality. Some are but some could be good. You could actually have a really good, poor, sorry, great quality overseas supplier. But the issue with that is that no one wants to wait forever for their order to arrive. You know, if you go to a really like Michelin star fancy restaurant, and you sit down and you're thinking, this is going to be amazing. It's going to be so good, the food's so highly rated, and you order, and you're sitting there and you're like, I'm getting really hungry now. And it's like half an hour's gone by, 45 minutes has gone by, an hour's gone by, like, hour and a half, two hours, and your food finally comes out after like, two and a half, three hours, and you're starving. Doesn't really matter how good the food is at that point, does it? Because your experience has been soured. You were the customer and the supplier took too long, even though the quality was good, right? So it's the same thing in E commerce, fast, reliable shipping is going to be key to keeping customers happy. That's why, if you work with UK suppliers, or certainly domestic suppliers who are in the same country as the customers that you are shipping the items to, there's no ships involved. It just goes on land. It just goes in a back of a courier van or something, and the supplier just send it directly out so it can be there the very next day. Makes it so much easier. It for you, you know. So the other thing is dealing with suppliers in different time zones, different language barriers, you know, lacking accountability because there's no like, face to face trust, or you're not speaking to them. You're not meeting them. It's all done over like a translated messenger, chat on Aliexpress or something, and it's just, you know, suddenly they they disappear for Chinese New Year or something, and you're just left without any supplier who can fulfill your products for that time period. So there are all kinds of issues that arise once you're in that that business model. So we're just trying to kind of point those out to you well in advance, if you're if you're at that current fork in the road and you're thinking about going down that route, working with local suppliers not only improves the customer communication, but it's also your communication with your supplier, which you will rely on as a business, because you'll need that supplier from time to time. It also ensures that they have accountability. You know, I could pick up the phone to my supplier and give them a quote. In fact, I did yesterday. There was an issue with them that a customer was having, and I thought, I can't let it's been back and forth on email. I'm just going to call the supplier. Just call the director. Supplier. Just called the director, and just had a quick chat. And we're probably one of their best retailers. It was fixed within five minutes. Like that can't happen with a supplier from China, especially if the items are causing problems frequently, because they're low quality. So quite a few things there to unpack, I think, lots of reasons why, even if the supply is really great quality, you've got great quality products, loads of quality checks, even if they have the fastest possible shipping time from that side of the world, even if they've got the best people working for them, there's still going to be things that are consistent. No matter what you who you work with overseas, there'll still be longer delivery time compared to if you're working with domestic suppliers, and there'll still be a more difficult language barrier, and I've got stories about that. When I work with overseas suppliers, I had a return that went so the product was ordered from China to Canada, and obviously I was based in the UK, so had this product sent poor quality. Customer didn't like it or it broke the first time they used it, it was in Canada that I asked. The only place they could possibly return it to was me in the UK. So I asked them to return it to me in the UK, which because I didn't know what I was doing at that time or how to handle returns, and it had done this big round trip, I lost a load of money out of all of it because I had to refund the customer. Didn't get a refund from the supplier, because they wouldn't accept the return back in China. And the whole process was time timely. It cost me time, it cost me money, and it give me headaches, and it was a poor quality experience. But that is very difficult to overcome. You know, there's, there's not many ways to go around that if you are working with products that are being sent around the world. And also, I remember sending emails to overseas suppliers with that language barrier, and sometimes I would send an email and the response would be to a completely different question, or would be in a new thread, and it just wouldn't be consistent. And I can say that now, because I know what it's like working with domestic suppliers with the same language and you can just go back and forth easily with them to get a real good service for your customers. When your customers have a great service, you've got a great business that customers will return back to. So some lessons learned, and something that we can say upfront now is best to avoid, because you do have the luxury of choice, and you can work with suppliers in the same country as your customers. So finally, one of the biggest mistakes that we see a lot of new dropshippers make is that they try and do it all alone, and I definitely fell into this camp. So what is the risk of trying to do everything on your own? Lewis, we're not saying it can't be done. You know, again, these things will come with cabinets. You can certainly do it alone. And going solo means relying solely on your own interpretation and your own understanding and your own experiences and the, oh, your own challenges that you've faced. So it's very one dimensional. It's like, if you haven't encountered the problem before and you come up against it, that's where, where you get stuck. I think the other thing is, having no support system. It's it's easy to get discouraged and lose momentum. I know this morning, I went out for a run, because we recording this podcast quite early in the morning. So I went out for a run, and it was like dark. It was raining, it was bright, and whilst I still did it, that was driven by, like my own willpower. You know, whereas when I go to the gym, most mornings, I get there and it's bright, there's music on, there's loads of people working out, you almost forget that an outside world exists when you walk into that environment, because everyone else is doing they're all up at 6am they're all in the gym, they're all working hard, and so you almost feel like guilty if you're not, you know, and it just you rise up to the standard and the level of the other people in the room. Same thing with the community. If you're the one who's running out in the dark, 5:30am rain on your own Yeah, you can do that. Yeah. You can train like that if you want to, but you don't have to. You know it, yes. You can rely just on your own willpower to get you through to seeing results. You will come up against many, many challenges along the way. Or you can just be around a supportive group of people that make it fun, where you can enjoy the journey, where you can meet chess. Stories, share challenges and get past it like that. So I think that's the difference between trying to make it alone, and that's where so many people fall down, because willpower only takes you so far. There's only so many days I'm going to go and run out in the pouring rain before I eventually get just disheartened and miserable for that. And so that's the thing. Collaborating with others opens doors. It opens doors to partnerships. There's new insights that you'll take on board resources that you just wouldn't have even had otherwise. There's you know what they say about you don't know what you don't know. That's the danger, I think, with working alone, you go through it in this one dimensional tunnel vision approach, and you don't know the things that you're missing on the sidelines that could double, triple, quadruple your business, because no one ever showed them to you because you weren't around the right people. I think that's the danger it is. I think ego comes into this thinking that you can work it all out on your own. It certainly was for me. I thought I could watch a few YouTube videos. I work it out. I do it all my on my own. I don't need to ask for help, and I will just sort it out. I'll work it out. But it makes it so much more difficult for you. You lose out on all of those shortcuts. It's like going to a supermarket and deciding that you're going to find all of the products on the shelves yourself, when you could just go to somebody that works there shop assistant and ask them to to show you where things are and how much quicker you can get around the shop. It's like building a fantastic e commerce business. It's also a lot more fun. I mean, having friends that you that you make, or partnerships that you create through getting communities makes the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. And that's important, because then you'll keep doing it, and it's the consistent action over time that gets amazing results. So to recap some really common mistakes that we've seen that I wish I'd have seen this all before I got started to avoid some real common pitfalls. We'll recap those now. So Don't dabble. Was a big one. Take it seriously. Base your product choices on data, not just a hunch or emotion. Avoid low ticket items and prioritize making a lot of profit with every single order. Next one is to choose reliable suppliers from the start. And finally, don't go it alone. Make it a more enjoyable process the whole way through, because building an E commerce business should be enjoyable. Should be great fun. You should enjoy it, and the whole time, you should be making a lot of profit for having a good time, so you don't have to make it difficult for yourself. You know, there is a better way than struggling through it and trying to work it out on your own. Yeah, well, summed up, James, I think implementing some of the strategies that we've talked about today can set anyone on the path to building a successful and profitable drop shipping business. Not saying it's going to be easy, but the path to do so can be very simple, and it can be a lot easier than trying to figure it all out yourself. So if you want a bit of a head start, and the strategy that that we've talked about kind of fully laid out for you, I've written a book called The home turf advantage. That's the model that we teach, and that covers everything from setting up your store to picking your niche picking which products to sell, the different criteria we talked about for niche validation, all the way through to scaling up your business effectively, while avoiding the common mistakes and pitfalls, the unknown, unknowns that we talked about and some of the ones we've discussed today, so you can get your copy of the book at h t a book.com and when you do so, you can also join our supportive community of like minded entrepreneurs, all striving for success, so that you are surrounded by other people on the same journey as you enjoying the podcast. We'd love to hear from you leave a comment or a review, and we might just feature it on an upcoming episode, also for detailed show notes and resources, head to dropshipunlock.com forward slash podcasts. If you found value from any episode of this podcast, please take just 10 seconds to leave us a quick five star review on your podcast app of choice, it helps us more than you could imagine. And who knows, you might just hear your comments on the show. Thanks for being part of our community. Your support helps us keep delivering a new episode every week. Now, let's answer a question that we've had in from a listener of the podcast. Remember, if you're listening now and you have a question that you'd like to ask, simply comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode, and as well as getting your comment answered in the comment section, we might just answer it on an upcoming podcast episode as well. So this week's question comes in from Anthony green, 1190, and he has asked, he said, great video. Nice to see how you called the suppliers, but it would also be nice to see the email content that you send to new suppliers. Thanks for your question, Anthony, glad to hear that you enjoyed the video on the YouTube channel where I recorded myself calling suppliers. So if you haven't seen that one, we'll link that one in the show notes for this episode. It's part two, I believe, of our series, or part three of our series that we did a three part series of building, of creating the store, picking the niche, calling the supplier, signing the first few suppliers. So I went through it. For anyone that wants to watch it. It's called, I started a new drop shipping business from scratch, so you can access that on YouTube. Now start with part one and work your way through it. It's a good series. Took a lot of time to put together, but to answer your question, there are two types of emails that I would send. Suppliers to get them signed up with us. Now, the first one is if the phone call. And I always start with a phone call, because that's just the best way to get to the top of the pile for suppliers. Get front of mind if the phone call had been successful and they're just now asking for our business information. In this case, I'll provide my company details with contact information. So just a basic, standard template email we provide that for you inside the dropship unlock program like the exact templates to send. Second type of email is if we need to provide a bit more information, maybe they aren't quite sold on our proposal. At this stage in that email, I'd simply just introduce myself and explain my E commerce business. I'd express interest in partnering with the supplier. I'd explain that maybe we plan to use various marketing strategies to promote their products and operate by selling directly to customers through our website, with the supplier handling the order fulfillment. But the key thing is that I would very, very clearly articulate what the benefits are for them, like, what's in it for them, we can provide another source of revenue for you. We'll pay you cash up front for every order that comes through, because, remember, we'll have sold the product first, so we'll have the cash from the customer ready to pay for it. We will make it really easy for you to deal with, and we'll make sure that we're selling, you know, at a level price with your other retailers, so that we don't upset any of them, All things that the supplier wants to hear. So you highlight those things, request any necessary documentation to set up the partnership. And at that point, I try and then follow that up with a phone call again in the next few days, try and, you know, speak to them. Sometimes I'll go meet the supplier. They'll say, yeah, why don't you just pop in? You know, might be a two hour drive. Might be just down the road, either way, I'm probably going to do it, because you only have to do that once, and then you've secured that relationship, and you might work with that supplier for the next decade, or because you got in the car and made a trip that someone else couldn't be bothered to do. That's the difference. So sometimes it's as simple as that, you might go back and forth a little bit while they're kind of figuring out answers to a few of the questions. And yeah, I think that should really help you sign some some top quality suppliers. So I hope that helps. Perfect. Yeah, great question. Anthony, thanks for your answer. Lewis, knowing exactly how to sign these domestic suppliers that we're talking a lot about in today's episode. So we'll also highlight a recent review that we've had for the podcast as well, because we love seeing the reviews, and also it's nice to give you a shout out if you do leave a review for us at the end of this episode. So a big thank you to Shan for sharing your thoughts in an apple podcast review. And Sian said, great insight into the world of E commerce. Some good advice on how to break the nine to five shackles. Thank you so much for your review. Shan, really glad to hear that you've been enjoying the podcast. Before we wrap up today, I wondered if you could help us with a quick favor. If you've enjoyed today's episode, could you take a moment to leave us a review? Your feedback helps us reach more listeners and improve our content, plus we might just read your review out in our next episode. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the dropship unlocked podcast. We hope you walk you away with insights and inspiration to kickstart your E commerce journey. Grab a copy of my book, the home of turf advantage@htabook.com it's a distilled guide based on real experience to help you build your E commerce venture, don't forget to hit the subscribe button for more strategies and success stories, and if you like what you heard, a five star review would mean the world to us, and you might just get a shout out on an upcoming episode. And finally, thank you for deciding to spend your time with us today. We can't wait to bring you more insights on the next episode of the dropship unlocked podcast. You