Build a £5k/Month Business Between Bedtime and the School Run (Episode 166)

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🗣 In this episode, ecommerce founders Lewis Smith and James Eardley dive into how busy parents are building £5,000/month UK ecommerce businesses without sacrificing bedtime stories, school runs, or family weekends.

They unpack the belief that you need long, uninterrupted four-hour work blocks to build a real business — and show why 60–90 minutes a day, used properly, can be more than enough when you follow the right high-ticket, UK-focused ecommerce model.

🎥 Prefer to watch instead? Watch on YouTube → https://youtu.be/PMXiv2Iownw

🧭 Topics Discussed
★ The Danger of Accidentally Building the Wrong Business
 • Why blindly following flashy TikTok/YouTube models (cheap AliExpress/TEMU dropshipping) often creates chaos at home.
★ How High-Ticket UK Ecommerce Fits Into a Parent’s Life
 • The Home-Turf Advantage model: high-ticket products, UK suppliers, next-day delivery, low refund rates.
★ Building a £5k/Month ‘Between Bedtime and the School Run’
 • Why 60–90 minute windows (evenings, lunchtimes, nursery/school hours) are the perfect amount of time.

🛠 Links & Resources Mentioned
Lewis’s Book → https://dropshipunlocked.com/book
Shopify £1-for-3-months Offer → https://dropshipunlocked.com/shopify
Free Trial of a Professional Phone Line → https://dropshipunlocked.com/circle

💡 Key Takeaways
★ You Don’t Need More Time — You Need a Better Model
 Long, uninterrupted 4-hour blocks are nice, but not necessary. With the right model and roadmap, 60–90 focused minutes a day can be enough to build a serious business.
★ High-Ticket + UK Suppliers = Calm, Parent-Friendly Business
 A handful of high-profit orders from UK suppliers with next-day delivery is far more manageable than hundreds of low-ticket orders with long shipping times and constant complaints.
★ Choose a Proven Roadmap Over Random Advice
 Trying to piece together TikTok clips, YouTube shorts and scattered podcasts leads to overwhelm. Following one clear step-by-step plan dramatically increases your odds of success.

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Website → https://www.dropshipunlocked.com

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Transcript

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The parents really who make that 5,000 pound per month from their online business and they do so fairly quickly, they're not the ones with the most free time, they're actually the ones who understand. That we see parents, that they, they say they need these long four hour work blocks to build a business. But something you may not know is. When you follow that approach, everything about your workload then just becomes a lot calmer and a lot more manageable. And that was the breakthrough that took me to £1.5 million in sales from this business. If you're thinking I barely have an hour a day to dedicate to myself and my own business, that's actually the perfect amount of time because what you can then do is. Welcome to the Dropship Unlocked podcast. I'm Lewis Smith, the founder of Dropship Unlocked and with me is our client success coach, James Eardley. Now, when we're not recording podcast episodes or running our own e commerce businesses, you'll find us helping aspiring entrepreneurs launch their own high ticket dropshipping stores. So if you're ready to build your own six or even seven figure online business, then head over to dropship unlocked.com forward/start. Now sit back, relax and let's unlock your potential with the Dropship Unlocked podcast. We hear parents assuming that you need long uninterrupted hours to build a successful online business. But the reality is different. So today we're going to be breaking down exactly how busy parents are building 5k a month e commerce businesses without having to sacrifice family time. Louis we speak to mums and dads who tell us that they'd love to start a business, but they just don't have the time. So let's start there because this is probably the biggest belief that holds a lot of people back. Why do you think parents feel like they have no time, even though they may have more time than they think? Well, I can absolutely empathise with anybody who feels stretched for time at the moment and is early into their parenting journey, or maybe a bit further into their parenting journey than me. Mine are still fairly young, but they do keep me very busy. So I can get that. And it's, it is the case. I mean, it's, they are an extremely time consuming element of life, but very rewarding at the same time. And I think one of the things to remember is that, I mean, I actually used my future hypothetical children before I even knew that they were going to be born, like a long, long time ago, before I even knew that I was going to have children. I Kind of used them as motivation for the future me to be in a position where I could spend time with them, where I could give them the time that they need because they are time consuming. And actually I want to be present for them because they are a priority in my life. I want to be a very present father and parent with my children. So, yeah, I think if you're in the midst of that at the moment and you have children and you're trying to kind of figure out, where do I carve out time to be able to do this? Take it back to the motivation. What is your motivation for doing this? Is if it's them, Partly because people will be motivated to do more for others often than they will for themselves, which is like an interesting psychological phenomenon that you can actually use to your advantage because you can latch onto that and be like, okay, well, if I'm going to do more for my. You know, you hear the storey about like the. The mum, like lifting up a car to like, save their child. And they'd find this, like, super strength. Like, it's a. It's almost like a force of nature. So harness that and use the power and the kind of drive that that gives you to say, I'm going to find the time here, even if it means staying up late after bedtime to work on a few course modules and go through this and call some suppliers at lunchtime and, you know, use the very limited hours that they're at nursery or school throughout the day to really get some of that focused, intentional work done and making sure that you're doing that in a way that we talked about in previous episodes, that is leveraged. It's the right vehicle, it's the right mechanism to get you to the end result you want to get to. Because it's very easy to accidentally build the wrong business. And I say that kind of half jokingly, but actually, like, people do it. They. They see something on YouTube of someone talking about, like, here's how you can make 10k a month with, you know, low ticket AliExpress or Temu or TikTok dropshipping. And so they go and do that and they dive into it and they don't really question it. They don't look around for like, is that the best model? But it was kind of the one that the people on YouTube were shouting about the loudest. And it was the flashiest marketing around it. So they did it that before they know it, they're inundated with like, refund requests, their living rooms full of boxes that they got to take to the post office and actually they've created just madness and chaos in their house that where they were already pressed for time. So I think if you want to preserve your time to be. Be present with your family and to be a parent with your children, that can really be there for them and be that role model. That's your most powerful advantage. It's your most powerful driver. So use that, harness it. But in the time that you can carve out, just be very intentional about which business model you actually choose to create, because what you create will then dictate the kind of life that you get to live once it's up and running. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. So you got to make that decision upfront with knowledge and using the experience from others to help make that decision, which is what this podcast is all about. But it's fascinating to hear about how you use the hypothetical future with having children to know how important it was for you to get that business off the ground. And so then you could use that as motivation even before you had children. And so for people that have children right now, they can use that to their advantage as well. So just flipping that around a little bit. Louis, if you think you had started your business when you were already a parent, do you think you'd have used it in the same way as motivation? Do you think you'd have approached starting the business differently? How do you think it would be different if you started today with two young children instead of a few years ago when you did get the business off the ground Initially? Yeah, I mean, I'm still on my journey. I'm still learning stuff every day. I'm still taking on new projects and we're starting new business ventures or even just new arms of a business. And it's still to this day the probably the number one motivator for me because it's just, it's not even so much like, legacy of, like, what am I going to leave behind for my children because they're so young and by the time they're adults, the whole world would have changed so much by then. But it's more about just that, that autonomy and control and time and freedom. Like, I'll be picking my children up from school later on today and going to take them out. We're filming this on a Friday, so I'm going to take them out for pizza afterwards.

And just being able to do that at 3: 6:53

30pm on a Friday is really important to me that I'm not going to be stuck in an office. It's not like someone's going to tell me, like, no, you can't leave early today for this. Like, I've been through years and years and years of being told that and knowing that it's just not even really appropriate to ask. Or even worse where you can do that. But you kind of have that dark cloud of guilt hanging over you that, you know, you're supposed to be working and you're working from home and like if your boss was to call and you were, you know, in the middle of a working day and you were out for lunch with the family, like they might not fully understand, they might not get the context. And it's that, that I couldn't shake. It was that feeling of like, guilt of like, oh, I know I should probably, you know, not go and do it, but I really, like, it's really important to me. And that kind of inner conflict, like, if you can relate to this, I'm sure you're probably nodding your head and thinking, yeah, I feel that too. Like that feeling of what if you go out the house and you bump into someone from work and they're like, shouldn't you be in work? And you're like, yes, but I literally just popped out to get a coffee. But like it doesn't now look good and it' whole kind of, you know, feeling of they think you're cheating the system. So for me it was just really important to be like, I should be able to just do that stuff guilt free. You know, life is too short I think, to be just on someone else's terms completely. Like you've got to have that freedom to be able to just say, I'm going travelling for the next, you know, five weeks with the family, we're packing up our suitcases and we're going like there's nothing that's going to be able to stop us. So that's really important to me, that autonomy. And so yeah, I still use it to this day to fuel me and to, to drive me towards the ends of projects that we're, we're launching. So if you're thinking about like what model can I create a business in that could generate £5,000 profit per month for me as an income replacing vehicle initially. Then using the high ticket E commerce domestic suppliers, what we call the home turf Advantage model, which is our trademarked system, you don't need hundreds of orders, one order a day, two orders a day will replace most people's full time salaries with this model. Because if you're selling a product that's £2,000 at a 30% margin. 600 pounds profit on each sale you make. How many sales do you need a day at 600 pounds net profit for you to replace your income and give you that freedom to be able to then do whatever you want on your own tab. So this is why this model actually works for parents, not against them. Because if that's what they're striving for and they follow the process of signing domestic suppliers who can offer next day delivery. They've got low refund rates. It's a calm, stress free business, minimal customer support because they can use AI and a virtual assistant in place to get things off their plate. Really that's then freed up your time. You've created an income generating machine that you could now duplicate and make more of a you could use and manage and grow and allow it to be your vehicle to get your time and family freedom back. Amazing. Yeah. So it taps into there, the emotional side which is huge to drive you forward knowing that you have that massive inspiration and motivation for the family that you're building. And also the tactical side which is making sure that you're building a business that allows for time off. So there's options when it, when it comes to building a 5k a month business, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of different business models to go down. But you've got to think about how can we separate that down to something that's going to work for me and my ideal lifestyle. So by starting with the end in mind, you can then work your way back to build a business that works for that ideal lifestyle in mind. And a lot of people suggest starting a service based business so teaching your skills but the, the thing about that is it's not aligned perfectly to a lifestyle business because your hours are still tied to, to how much you can earn. Whereas I think a lot of beauty around this e commerce business model. There is the home turf advantage model that you've brought to the UK and further afield is that it isn't tied to your time. You set up a system, you can generate orders whether you're on holiday in a different country, whether you're on a walk with your kids, whether you take them out for pizza on a Friday evening or whether you're in bed or asleep. Orders can still come in because it's not dependent on your time which is a huge factor for somebody who feels like they are very busy and they have to build something that allows them to spend time around their children which is the whole Motivation in the first place. I think there is another layer here. There's the tactical side, the business model, there's the emotional pull, the drive motivation that we've talked about, but also it's the day to day actions, the habits that separates the parents who succeed from those who stay stuck. So what would you say those habits are that people need to integrate into their lives and in order to make a success of an online business, especially. If you're a parent, the consistency over time is definitely going to beat just intensity or like burst of, bursts of intense working blocks. I think if you can just make sure that every day you're ticking a few things off the list and you're moving things forward meaningfully. Not like ticking off jobs that you probably shouldn't be even doing anyway because they're not going to generate a return on investment, but just like little gradual steps, you know. In our programme we have a progress tracker which literally cuts out the steps you need to do to the day and you can even choose your path whether you want to have your business up and running in six weeks, nine weeks or 12 weeks, depending on how much of an action taker and how much time you have as well. And you can literally tick those off every single day. Now we do that to keep people on track, but also we do it because we know that consistency builds momentum over time and it snowballs and it really starts to build and then you start to almost get used to being in momentum and it feels weird to stop doing those things. And so if you can follow one proven roadmap, instead of trying to like piece together bits and pieces from a YouTube video over here and then you hear a podcast over here and then you see another video over here and you see a TikTok short over here and it's like they're not really going to give you the guidance and the nuanced strategy that you need and they're certainly not going to hold you accountable to doing it. Part of this journey requires a bit of an identity shift from seeing yourself maybe as an employee, as someone who's never run a business before, but actually someone who, who has a right to be doing this. You know, like the way I used to think about it when I first discovered this model of E commerce, of, of like, well, I could sell products online. I remember thinking, well, I back myself to be able to do this. I don't necessarily have the answers now, but I'm confident in my own abilities and what I've seen evidenced by myself in prior challenges and Things in life in all aspects of whether that's like fitness and sports, whether it's corporate stuff, like I, I'm not afraid of a challenge and I'll learn something new and I'll just be a sponge and absorb it and figure it out along the way. And so once you can see yourself as a business owner, those little 60 minute windows that you carve out while the kids are asleep or while they're at school or whatever, they can feel like little powerful windows of productivity that you can put your business owner hat on and be like, right, today I'm making progress on this business and I, the people that I'm building this for are currently asleep or at school, but I'm going to really focus on doing this so that I can create the life for us and them that I want to have. And it's exciting because it drives you and it's like, I don't know, there's nothing more exciting than having like a real goal and a purpose for the thing that you're building. And for me, like family is that secret unlock. It's that secret key that just creates this, this just never ending fuel for it. So yeah, I'm passionate about that and I think it's something that we can really harness. It's almost like tapping into our evolutionary biology. Like we have a desire to want to provide for our family, so why not harness that and use it in business? So yeah, absolutely. If you're doing this, you're following it through, you're taking that consistent action day by day and then suddenly you make your first 500 pound sale or you make your first thousand pound or 15 or 5000 pound sale. Even the other day, one of our masterclass members, she posted that she just made one of her first sales. I don't think it was her very first sale, but it was for a sale for £49,000. Like a significant early sale, which creates a life changing amount of money to then be able to do the things that she wants to do to create that freedom and then maybe reinvest some of it into more ad spend to scale the business up so that it's making more consistent profit as well. So yeah, I think you have to use those things to your advantage, use those time windows and time pockets very intentionally to get things done meaningfully and don't get distracted 100%. But that motivation is there when we see these celebrations from members. And Axe is another example of a parent inside the community working hard alongside raising a family. And he made a sale for 22,000 pounds recently and shared that in the community as well. I think that happened within a day or two of the other success storey that we saw. And it's, it's moments like that that we get to celebrate together as a community that's so inspirational for everyone as they're all building things for the different reasons. But we do have quite a lot of parents in the community and I think for that reason there's like a shared awareness when people are building alongside growing a family as well. There's some camaraderie in there definitely. So Louis, for someone who's listening and they are thinking they want to get started, they see the benefits but they don't know where to start. Where would you say they should go to start? Well, it's, it's funny that you mentioned that, that we see a lot of those parent values, should we say, in our community. And I don't think that that's by accident. I mean that that is by design. That's because those are my, some of my core primary values. And when I was building dropship unlocked, I had to make a decision on what kind of place did I want it to be, you know, what kind of things did I want our community to stand for and stand against. You know, there's plenty of dropshipping courses out there that, you know, flaunt the kind of flashy lifestyle in front of you, but it was actually that I wanted something that was, that felt real, that was full of really like hard working people doing it for the right reason as well. They had a core set of shared values. And that doesn't mean you have to be a parent to join dropship or not. You know, we're not saying that at all. You're more than welcome. Whatever stage of life, life you're at, if this is something you want to do. There's people from all walks of life in our community, but I think specifically people who are, who want to be parents one day or who are parents and can kind of share that, that, that family first mentality, dropship, I'm not really is like that is. Those are our values, those are some of our kind of core beliefs in the community. And that just comes through in every live meetup we do, in every private dinner that we do with our clients. You just see it time and time again. We celebrate those wins, people posting photos of them with their family on holiday, enjoying life and enjoying the freedoms that this business has created for them. So I find it really rewarding and I'm glad now Looking back on this, having created this community years back to see what it's grown into and to see those kinds of values come into life. So yeah, it's, it's a nice moment to for sure. So in terms of getting started, I would say start off with small steps. Don't overwhelm yourself. If you've only got, you know, an hour or half an hour a day, don't, don't overwhelm yourself with all the options. Just choose a model that is proven, choose a model that has the end result that you're looking for and then follow a simple week by week plan. You must have that consistency. So you're ticking things off, but you're taking the right things off along the way. For any parents listening to this who are in that situation and you're thinking, I want to build something meaningful around my family life that supports me and my future, head over to dropship unlocked.com for forward slash start. There you can get the exact roadmap that our members use to build.5 to £10,000 per month UK E commerce stores in the little pockets of time that they already have around family life. Are you enjoying the podcast? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment or a review and we might feature it in an upcoming episode. And for detailed show notes and resources, visit dropshipunlock.com podcast. If you found value in any, any episode of this podcast, please could you take just 10 seconds to leave us a quick five star review on your favourite podcast app? It helps us more than you can imagine and who knows, you might just hear your comments read out on the show. Thanks for being a part of our community. Your support helps us keep delivering new episodes to you every week. Now it's time to answer a question that we've had in from a listener. So this is your opportunity. If you've had any questions come up while you've been listening to or watching today's episode, then simply comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode and not only will it be answered in the comments, we may also feature it in an upcoming episode. So this question is in from Michelle and I'm going to ask it to you now, Lewis. So she's asked, can you advise on affiliate links? I have a product that would be perfect to add to my store, but the supplier only offers an affiliate link. Yeah, so the affiliate link offer, and I know what they're getting at here is not quite right for what we're looking for. So we're looking for to become a retailer and Therefore, we will be selling the products through our own website and we're providing the customer support, we're doing the advertising, we're getting the customer to our business. It's just we need a fulfilment supplier partner to fulfil that. So it doesn't quite align. If they want you to use their website and just send an affiliate link to their website for them to then prefer, it's not really the right model because we can't then afford to run ads to it because we won't have a high enough margin. So no, I probably wouldn't proceed as an affiliate in that situation. If you're looking at these as one of your main suppliers. Instead, I'd just explain to them how much more we're bringing to the table and how really it's in their interest to partner with us and let us send them orders once we have everything in place. So, yeah, if they say no, move on. There's plenty of suppliers out there, especially if you've used our supplier validation framework, you'll have a list of UK suppliers that you be able to contact and work with on a dropshipping basis. It's a great question, Michelle. Yes, absolutely. I completely agree, Louis. And you'll get a much better margin when you go back as a retailer rather than an affiliate. So now we're going to highlight a recent review that we've had for the podcast as well. So a big thank you to Yamoa, who left this review on Apple Podcasts. Yamoa said a very clear look into how dropshipping works and a great strategy to use to build an additional income. Thank you so much for your review, Yamo. We really appreciate your kind words and you taking the time to leave that review. Now. If you found value in the discussion that we've had on today's episode, wherever you've been watching us or listening to us, we'd really appreciate it if you could take just 30 seconds to leave us a quick review as well. It'll only take you a very short amount of time, but it means the world to us if you can just pop your review in on whichever app or platform you're listening to us on. And a quick five star review means the world. It keeps this podcast going. And what's more, if you do that, we'll try and read out your review on our next episode. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Dropship Unlocked podcast. We hope you are leaving with new insights and inspiration to fuel your entrepreneurial. Journey to kickstart your e commerce business, head over to dropship unlocked.com start. It's the perfect place to start and get access to resources that will help you build your business from the ground up. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button for more episodes packed with strategies, tips and success storeys. Plus, if you enjoyed this episode today, a five star review would mean the world to us and you might even get a shout out on the next episode. Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us today. We can't wait to bring you more insights on the next episode of the Dropship Unlocked podcast.