How Suraj Bought a £3M/Year Business (Episode 170)

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🗣 In this episode, Lewis Smith and James Eardley sit down with Suraj for his third appearance on the podcast — and this one is a full-circle moment. After building two high-ticket dropshipping stores and passing £200k+ in revenue, Suraj went a step further and acquired one of his own suppliers — a business doing around £3M+ per year.

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🧭 Topics Discussed
★ Why Suraj Chose High-Ticket Ecom — Moving from service businesses (where time is the bottleneck) to a product business that can scale without him.
★ His Path to £100k+ Sales — Launching fast, learning the hard lessons (like not tripling ad spend overnight), and using Store #1 as a “testing ground.”
★ Building a Second Store Faster — What changed the second time around: simpler site, fewer “conversion gimmicks,” clearer niche criteria, better decision-making.
★ The Supplier Acquisition Story — How strong supplier relationships led to a surprise invitation: “Would you like to buy the business?”
★ What Changes When You Become the Supplier — Warehousing, logistics, cashflow timelines, and why the top-line-to-bottom-line journey is very different.
★ How DSU Skills Transfer Upstream — Using core ecom principles (ads, CRO, email flows) to optimise a bigger business that hadn’t implemented the basics.
★ The Real Secret: Supplier Relationships — Why suppliers need you too, how to stay top-of-mind.

🛠 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
★ Progress Beats Perfection — The winners aren’t designing logos for 6 months… they’re launching, learning, and iterating fast.
★ Your First Store Teaches You Everything — The second store becomes quicker and more profitable because the skills compound.
★ Suppliers Are Partners, Not “Vendors” — Take them on the journey, communicate wins, show up, build real relationships — it can open doors you don’t expect.
★ Skills Scale Further Than The Model — Once you understand ads, offers, ops, and systems, you can apply them to bigger opportunities.

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Website → https://www.dropshipunlocked.com

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Transcript

0:00

I want to talk about a big development that's happened in your storey recently, Siraj. It's your decision to acquire a supplier in your niche. So tell us more because this is not something you hear every day. The business probably generates 3 million plus in top line revenue. In today's episode, we're catching up with a member of dropship, or not, that you might recognise. His name is Suraj. He's been a long standing member and his journey has been nothing short of remarkable. He's crossed the 200,000 pound in revenue mark with his initial stores and now he's taken the huge leap to acquire a 3 million pound a year supplier. This is one of our best podcast episodes to date. Yep, Siraj's storey is a really, really nice example of what can happen when you follow the process, you learn the fundamentals and you just keep levelling up as you go. So he's gone from a beginner who had no experience with this kind of thing to just running a 200,000 pound drop shipping brand to now stepping into ownership of a supplier business that is set to become a multi million pound operation. So it's a really big milestone that we're delighted to be able to celebrate with Suraj and it's a massive mindset shift as well. And today we're looking forward to diving into exactly how surprising Suraj made it happen. So let's get into the conversation. Suraj, welcome back to the podcast for your third episode to showcase your journey with dropship unlocked. So for listeners who don't know your full storey, perhaps I haven't heard the first two and by the way, I would highly recommend going back and having a listen to those so you can hear Suraj's full journey through this business. But maybe you could tell us a bit about what was your initial motivation to get started with a high ticket e commerce business. Yeah. Thanks, Lewis and James. It's great to be back for the third time. Hopefully I've said some something right for the first two episodes and you're having me back for the third, but I love sharing my journey with you and your audience and the DSU community, so it really, I feel honoured to be invited back. The motivation to get started a few years back with drop shipping, I think we're two and a half. Coming on to three years now was really a bit of a challenge for myself. I, I've been in the service based industry for a number of years. I've run other businesses that are not e commerce and not product based, but very much Service based and that's been my experience in business, that's been my background and I always wanted to challenge myself and over the years I've always kind of had that in the back of my mind to say, well, I've kind of done okay with the service industry and the service based businesses. I'd love to try my hand and challenge myself at a more traditional margin based product business. And of course, you know, I wasn't going to go and open a shop on the high street somewhere. We won't get into the state of our UK high streets. But I did want to try doing a product based business or building a product based business online. And of course that leads to E commerce and inevitably that leads to dropshipping as an option for as a business model to get into E commerce. Of course we know it's not the only E commerce business model out there and we can always lump in digital products with E commerce and stuff like that as well. But I really wanted to challenge myself and take myself to the next level in business with a physical, tangible, product based business. Dropshipping was the lowest, I guess had had the lowest barrier of entry to trying my hand at it and taking a little bit of a risk. And what you know, ultimately started off as a bit of a side hustle to my side hustle, if you will, ended up becoming a bigger business than everything I've ever done in the last 20, 20 years. So, you know, I found you guys online and started to dip my toe into the dropshipping model that DSU teaches. I do want to add, it wasn't my first experience of dropshipping. I have done some of the more traditional dropshipping that actually gives dropshipping a bad name in some schools of thought. You know, with long delivery times, really poor quality products, high refund rates and you're looking at products in the 5 to 15 pound range. So really low ticket and you're relying on extremely high volume of sales and of course the pitfalls of that model. And I recognise that's not what you both were talking about and what your model looks like. And that's really what attracted me to DST3 in the first place. Fantastic. Now it's exciting to hear about your storey and you've obviously gone on to turn it from a side hustle to a side hustle all the way through to now. Very much the full hustle with some recent big moves which I'm excited to get into as we have this conversation today. But just to set the scene, I think it's really important to know your, your motivation behind why you started. So you'll see you already had some business experience but what would you say was missing from that situation in your life? Why was it that you wanted to go and try out product based business with E Commerce? Yeah, so the initial motivation was like I said, to challenge myself and to see if I can do what I've done in the service business with a product business, but also to take advantage of a more streamlined business where I don't have to be involved in every part of the process. In a business. With a service business, it largely was about me. If I wasn't there to deliver that service, there's no business. And yes, I had a team to help with that, but ultimately people were coming to that business because they wanted to work with me and they wanted me to work with them directly rather than someone on my team. So I felt there was always going to be a ceiling and it's not very scalable. And I knew with a product based business it doesn't have to be about me. People are, people are buying the product. They're buying a solution to a problem that is a productized, a tangible product to solve that problem regardless of whether it's me selling it or you, Louis or James or someone else. And that's what really attracted me to that. It kind of takes me out of the, the spotlight in a way. And I can sell products through systems, through good operations, through good marketing and I can literally be behind the scenes and I can scale up and down without it being linked to my time. You know, you hear these things all the time where time is money and you only have so much time that you can sell it. As in a service based business, even if it's, even if there are automations and even if there is a recurring revenue subscription of some sort, it's still a service and your time is limited. So that's where I had a big motivation to say, how can I unlock that ceiling or break through that ceiling and scale regardless of how much time is available from me. So those were the two main motivations to get into the product business. Other than that it was, it was a case of, well, I've learned a lot of stuff in the service business, let's see, what of that I can apply to a product business as well. So I would say overall a real personal challenge and a way to test myself and take what I've learned and build on that. Yeah, they're very transferable skills, aren't they? But like you say the two business models are very distinct in certain ways and I can speak from experience on this. In running an education company which is very much linked to kind of time and time input versus a product, almost like a faceless e commerce company where you know the brand owner isn't the person behind the transaction and therefore you've just like you say you can scale it up based on how effective and scalable your systems are really. So it's quite liberating and it's a bit of an unlock I think because if you've made it work in that you've proven the model maybe by selling your own time and services to then kind of take that shift like you did over to products, it's game changing because then you can think all this software I can put in place and automations and like I'm unshackled now from the time input. So from that situation of deciding to, to go down that route, could you give us just a kind of a brief overview because I know we've talked about this on previous episodes before but just an overview of your journey from like the point of joining dropship unlocked through to say reaching your first £100,000 in sales. Because I know you were, you were a fast mover in that and respect. Yeah, so when I joined I was, you know, a pretty quick start. I worked my way through all the modules, got my first store, my first website on Shopify up and running pretty quickly, got it launched, got some ads launched and I think in the first like two months, three months maybe, I was, I was, I'd cleared about 20k in revenue right out of the gate and I was like, wow, this is amazing. But that website was really my, my, my, my, my guinea pig, if you want to call it that because it taught me about product fulfilment, about suppliers and managing suppliers and relationships and Google Ads and pixels and tracking and all that sort of good stuff. And about six months, six to eight months later, I thought, okay, I've kind of poked and prodded this guinea pig enough and run enough tests on it. I've learned so much in that period of time. I now want to almost start afresh on my second website where I was now six to eight months or so, more experience. I knew which corners to safely cut that worked. I knew which corners to very much avoid cutting. Second store started and again I applied all the learnings that I took from the first store and that started to outdo the first store. That second website was doing far greater numbers. Do you want to say actually slightly less margins on that second niche, but the volume was much higher. So I ended up having a slightly lower margin but a bigger pie if you will. Whereas in, on the previous store I had really good margins but fewer. There were fewer suppliers available, there was far more competition. So I had a bigger percentage but of a smaller pie. I was a much smaller player in that niche. Whereas in the second niche ended up learning from my niche research and what to look out for and all of those sorts of things. Not just the operations of the business and the Google Ads, but actually the foundation of what niche to go into, how to recognise an opportunity with how much competition there is and all of that good stuff. So that second store very, very quickly outgrew that first store and the became my primary focus. That's where most of my ads were going. And that was hitting the 6 figure revenue mark, projected 6 figure revenue mark within a few months. When you extrapolate that across the year so you know, 10k plus per month reasonably quickly. So I knew within that year I would hit at least a hundred thousand for that second store. It ended up being I think about 170k for the, for the full year in the end. So you know, we were doing really good sales on that second store. The ads were humming. I wasn't cranking up and doubling my budget or tripling my budget overnight anymore. So I was doing things very incrementally. I was taking things slowly, if you will, and not making the same mistakes as previously. That first store carried on. I just, I just had a very basic low budget running just to keep things sticking along there. But that is the store that I ended up using to test things. So where I did want to test the different type of Google Ads campaign or I did want to test some different conversion strategy on the website, that's where I would, I would test and continue using that website as, as a guinea pig. That's how we ended up two years in two, two stores, a couple hundred grand between them and lots of lessons along the way. Yeah, it's really good to hear that you took all the lessons from the first store implemented into the second store and you grew so much quicker with that, that second store with all the lessons. How much more quickly could you build the second store compared to the first? So much quicker, James, It's a great question. And the reason it's quicker is again, not because I rushed it or because I cut corners, but because I knew what I didn't need to spend as much time on the second Time round. And something that you learn, which is the ethos of dropship unlocked, is when you learn from experience, you can then do something so much better more quickly the second time, which we then pass on to members. And another way that you're able to deploy so quickly into a second store was because you were able to have another niche to quickly jump into and set up a website around, sign suppliers and start running ads. So did you have another niche in your back pocket ready to go into as soon as you were ready? Yeah, again, I'd done all of that the first time around in my, in my niche research. Um, I just happened to choose the, the first one based on getting momentum and picking something and not obsessing over it at the beginning. That that experience of doing that niche research upfront allowed me to have some in my back pocket, allowed me to continue to refer back to that, and truth be told, I could have chosen any of those niches. It's just a matter of which one I had a little bit more interest in or a little bit more knowledge of. Not that that matters too much, to be honest. So I genuinely think any of those niches could work. Anything that I researched that, you know, had the right numbers and was showing the right data could work. It's then just about putting the right systems and processes in place. Of course there are nuances between niches. Some have more competition, some have less competition, some have higher priced products, some have more dropshippers in there and so on and so forth. But I think at a high level, and as a, as a general rule of thumb, all those niches that tick the boxes and have the right data or giving you the right data in your research phase could work. There's nothing to stop this from working. Yeah, you see a lot more the second time around, don't you? Because you've been through the process of not just selecting the niche, but actually seeing why the criteria area that we set out at the beginning matter. And so I think later on when you're going through that process for the second or third or fourth time, it's much easier to come to a decision faster because you see those signs and you, you kind of trust the process a bit more because you're not just doing it blindly because, you know, a video module says to you actually now understand the rationale behind each of those criteria because it's going to set you up for success later. So it sounds like, yeah, you're much faster in your decision making the next time around, which is good. Now I want to talk about a big development that's happened in your storey recently, Siraj, something that you told us about and kind of gave us a bit of a sneak preview that was in the works behind the scenes at one of our last live meetups in the Dropship Unlock masterclass. And it's your decision to acquire a supplier in your niche. So tell us more because this is not something you hear every day. The ultimate sort of full circle moment where I got into this to be dropshipping and to be a dropshipper and to have that as a model to test myself like I talked about earlier, to challenge myself in a new business model. And the journey that it set me on ended up coming full circle and actually becoming the supplier like you said. So the way that that came about was in my second store. I have, you know, a number of suppliers, a number of, of distributors who I was working with to dropship their products. And a key part of my mindset, a key part of my business model, even if it was dropshipping and it was kind of faceless, which is a great way of describing these types of businesses, I think there still you have to add some face into it. A big part of my philosophy and my work on, on the second straw was building those relationships with the suppliers and maintaining those relationships with suppliers, which was again a massive learning curve for me because traditionally I'd only have to maintain and build relationships with my customers or my clients even in the service based business. And now I'm doing the opposite. I don't really have to build that one to one relationship with every single customer from my website, but I do have to do that with my suppliers. And again, that's a new, that was a new world for me because in the service based business didn't really have any suppliers. When the suppliers that I had were, you know, my software systems, my invoicing software or my email system. There was no person that I was being, I was buying from, I was the only person there. So massive learning curve, but a complete sort of upside down where I'm now maintaining relationships with suppliers who I'm buying from rather than who are buying from me. And I would go and see them, I would see them at trade shows, I would ask them to say which trade to tell me which trade shows they are going to this year or in the next three months, four months. And that would be my way of figuring out which trade shows are actually important and where my suppliers are going to be. Because if they're there, it's likely others will be there as well that I could sign up. So again, a bit of a shortcut there, rather than me googling and searching for trade shows in my industry or in my niche and not knowing which ones there are. Because when you start searching for trade shows, you go down a rabbit hole and there are tonnes, there are big ones or small ones or local ones or international ones and you could end up getting lost in trade show world because you don't know which ones are right for you at your level. So I just asked my suppliers to say, hey, Lewis, you on one of my suppliers, hey, Lewis, going to any trade shows in the next few months. And you know, cheekily, because I need that information, I didn't know which ones to go to myself. So asking you which ones you're going to and then you'd say, oh, yeah, hey, Suraj, I'm going to trade show X, Y Z in two months time. What about you? And I'd replied saying, oh, that's great, I'm going to the same one, never having heard of it before, but now I know which one you're going to. So I've gone and signed up for it, recognised that that's where lots of other suppliers are going to be. And I'll say, great, I'm going to be there as well. Let's arrange to have a coffee or have a catch up. I'll come, I'll come by your, your exhibition stand and we'll have a chat. It'll be great to put a face to them because of course you generally don't meet people face to face. Very often. It's all over a phone call or even email. And that's really how I focused, you know, at least a year of, of that business on, on building relationships. Travelled up and down the country to trade shows and luckily they were mostly on the weekend. So you kind of make a weekend out of it as well and go and meet some people. And I found that that really unlocked access, it really unlocked higher margins and often they would come to me and say, hey, we want to kind of reward you for the effort that you're putting in. We know how the business works. If the margins are a little bit lower than I'm getting, we know you're probably not going to be able to put as much into ads for our products. You seem like you kind of know what you're talking about, you know what you're doing. We love your website, you've got all the right things there. Do you want to try a certain range with a higher margin and see if that works better. And turns out suppliers actually want you to sell the products. And you know, that's something that I think initially out of the fear of approaching suppliers, you miss they need us just as much as we need them. And so I continued doing that with all my suppliers. Then earlier this year, again on a pretty routine supplier catch up call, I was speaking with one of my suppliers and they shared a little bit about a life update that they were going through and they said look, we're looking to sell the business. I said oh that's, that's, you know, I was happy for them. And I said it's a shame we won't be working together anymore. But you know, whoever the new owners are going to be, please put a good, good word in for me because we'd love to continue working with the new owners. Hopefully they, they are still open to continuing working with, with us or with me on, on a dropship basis. But yeah, keep me posted and congrats on getting to that milestone. I think it's quite a great milestone to achieve in life to be able to then sell your business. And they said, well actually we were telling you to see if you would be interested in taking over. I said oh, we're not really looking for a job. I've got my business going and it's not really what I'm looking for. And I said oh no, we meant would you like to acquire our business? We invite you to, to, to, to that process. I thought about it for, for a while and I, I, I then got back to them a few days later. I said actually yeah, that, that sounds like a great opportunity. It's an evolution from just drop shipping, say just, but just drop shipping products to actually supplying products to other dropshippers and owning a piece of that market. Everything that I then researched into the niche and I kind of went back backwards to double down on my niche research just to make sure this was a good opportunity to pursue everything. Kind of ticked the boxes again the second time around, you know, over a year later. And that got me really excited, fully knowing it would mean a whole new challenge, a whole different way of, of doing business and actually a whole different business model. And, and that was a really exciting moment for me when I, when I, when I started putting the pieces together, but also really daunting and not something I had planned for. Just two years into the drop shipping, that was a real turning point, a real pivotal moment for me in, in this business. It was, well, it was definitely scary. It was Definitely daunting, but ultimately ended up working with them over, over the, the following few months to figure out what it looks like, how it would work, what the, the business operations are like, what my responsibilities would be. And a few months later, just a few weeks ago, before we recorded this, finally took over that business and became the supplier. Amazing. Yeah, no. Congrats, Suraj. So exciting to hear about the recent acquisition that you've made and always nice to see where members go after they learn the skills, build a dropshipping business. And clearly having those strong supplier relationships has paid off for you because now you were a name on their mind when they were thinking of, of selling. So what was it that excited you when you heard that on a, on a, on a regular catch up with your suppliers, they mentioned the potential of buying their business. What was it that really excited you about that opportunity? The same thing that excited me when I first got into dropshipping, which was this is going to be a great challenge and I'm going to be able to test myself and I'm now going to be able to put everything I've learned over the last couple of years into an adjacent business model. Not completely different as I'm not doing a full, you know, a full 180 and going on a different path. It's a, it's, it's, it felt like evolution of where I was already at and that, that was one of the biggest things that excited me, but also giving me that opportunity to not just grow myself personally, but to grow a business that's already running. Obviously I'd worked with this supplier for a while now and I'd always recognised some opportunities or optimizations that they could have made to make my life easier as a dropshipper. And that's not a criticism, but it's one of those things that I always spoken to them and other suppliers about to say, hey, look, this would really make it easier for me to continue working with you. And it's not just about margins, it's more about systems and operations. So I recognise these opportunities and that's something I was excited about, James, because I saw that as something I could add value to an existing business. It wasn't necessarily that I knew exactly how to double their revenue or change things up or disrupt it, but it's like, actually there's a handful of things, if I tweak in this business, I can probably scale it without disrupting it or turning the whole thing upside down. Yeah. It's funny how you say breaking out of your original comfort zone and transitioning from the former career that you were in through to this. And then suddenly that evolution snowball just picks up pace and you start being like, well, I learned all of this, you know, in the space of two years, how much faster you are then to, to take a jump into the unknown, you know, and be comfortable with doing that and taking that risk. Your risk tolerance grows, I think, doesn't it, as your experience and your learning does as well. So something that a lot of our listeners won't have experienced, I imagine, and won't have seen the behind the scenes of is that in our conversations we've had you mentioned about during the acquisition of this supplier, you had a period of, I think it was about two months of negotiations before the offer was like landed on and accepted. I mean, what's that process look like behind the scenes? It's taxing in terms of, you know, your, your, your, your mental bandwidth. Because there's a lot of things that I was learning along the way that I'd never done before. I'd never acquired a business before that had stock in place, that had staff, that had premises, it had suppliers all over the world for their products. You know, in, in China, in Europe, it had logistic or logistics operations with freight forwarders, with shipping companies. It was all new to me. So then on top of that, the, the, the, the finance and the accounting side of things that needed months and months of due diligence. So the, the, the, the process was, you know, I, I spoke with them, they gave me a bit of a high level overview. They had an advisor I had to take on and hire an advisor to, to help me make sense of a lot of the accounts over a number of years to understand what I was actually looking at and what I was buying and what I would be buying and what I would get on day one. There's loads of nuances to buying a business compared to starting a business because you first have to kind of untangle some of the, the operations to, to understand what it looks like. And that's not, again not a criticism, but when someone's run a business for 20 years, it's all in their head. So you know, you have to first get out of their head onto paper, onto spreadsheets, really understand what the day to day operations are like, what the day to day sales are like, what the day to day costs are like, and gives you the day to day profits. And that's really when you then start to get a real clear picture of what business am I actually buying. So I'd like to ask you all of the skills that you learned through Dropship Unlocked, how have they helped you now to take on the role of a supplier and what individual skills are going to be most valuable in increasing the value of the business that you've now purchased? Yeah, so, yeah, and this is where I saw a lot of the opportunities with the supplier business because they weren't implementing some of the, let's call them basic e commerce principles that are taught inside Dropship Unlocked. And I'm talking as basic as, you know, abandoned checkout emails for example, or an email capture on the website. Whether it's, you know, to give away a discount or just to nurture an email list for repeat purchases. They weren't really set up to scale their dropship network of which I was a member of or a small part of at least. Um, in terms of the Google Ads setup, you, you, you, you find people are kind of using agencies or they're using, using third parties. And when I look at the Google Ads they're probably more complex than, than they need to be. The website itself probably a bit overkill and over overly complicated and that's probably hurting conversion rates. So all of these are, you know, modules in, in, in Dropship Unlocked that you go through and the principles still apply even to the supplier business. So a handful of things that I'm implementing straight away is making sure we have the right email automations in place, we have the right Google Ads structure in place with the right campaigns, how we are including and excluding and segmenting products in various campaigns, what we're looking out for. And again that's not a criticism at all of the previous owners because they've obviously done something right. But that's where I see the value that I can add from the lessons I've learned in Dropship Unlocked because they are pretty universally applicable. It happens. And that's where I was coming in with sort of fresh eyes to say let's do these five, 10 things at a basic level, keep everything else ticking along and running as it is and then see how that changes the business or impacts the business and then over time we'll make tweaks to other things. It's a really interesting step up and kind of evolution into the next phase. I mean as you now take over as a UK supplier and you put your UK supplier hat on, how do you think in your personal life, how are day to day operations going to change or what's your day going to look like now? Like what are your, what are Your new responsibilities. What does a week look like for you nowadays? Yeah, and again it's, it's, it's a strange transition because when I was running a dropship business, just me and, and one other t. One of the VA or one of the team member, the, the biggest shift is now there is a rock solid team in place with, with the supplier business who are completely customer facing. Um, it's been just coming up to a month since I took over the business at the time of recording this and you know, I haven't had to do any of the customer service work or the sales work or the chasing up a delivery or finding out with a supplier where, where the box has gone and why the courier has lost it or why they've left it at the neighbour's house. I can focus on what my skill and what my passion really is, which is the strategy, the operations, the systems, putting in place automations into the business and seeing where there are opportunities to scale. I think I'm really excited to be able to work on that which is kind of behind the scenes. It's not completely customer facing. It all affects customer facing experiences for our audience and our partners but it allows me to really think at a slightly higher level and trust that there is a really solid team in place who are handling website inquiries and calls and emails and things like that. Now just looking back over the whole journey, you're in a unique position to teach us and teach listeners what to focus on if they're going to follow in your footsteps. So what do you think has been maybe a key ingredient for you that's taken you all the way from when you made your first sale through Shopify to, to getting to 200k with your first two stores to now acquiring a seven figure business. Any key lessons that you'd want to give to other people that, that are keen to, to follow in your footsteps. Take your suppliers on the journey with you. And I'm not saying that now I'm biassed and I am a supplier, but changing your mindset from it's an us versus them mindset where it's like a us being the drop shippers and them being the suppliers and really changing that, that perspective to say your suppliers need you as much as you need them to start a dropshipping business and without partners, without retailers like dropshippers, a suppliers business is, is, it's. Unless they're selling themselves directly, which most of them do, it's limited. So that would be my, probably my number one lesson is take your suppliers on the journey with you, celebrate the successes with them. Great advice. Yeah. I think another way to look at that is make your goals so big that other people's goals will fit inside them. So if you want to start a dropshipping business, you want to do a million pounds in sales in within 12 months. If you've got five key partners, then you're going to be making them 200 grand each worth of sales over the course of that 12 months as well. Is it aim high, bring them on the journey and think about how your business is going to impact other businesses if you get them on board and heed Siraj's advice to have a relationship with these suppliers, that's really healthy. So just to give us a bit of a flavour then, Suraj, in terms of your goals and some of the numbers that the business is hitting now, so we get an idea of the scale that you've got to and that the goals that you've got moving forward, where are we at now with this, your current business and its new incarnation? But in terms of the numbers out of 14, 1500 SKUs being sold across our own websites as well as partner websites and marketplaces, the business probably generates, you know, 3 million plus in top line revenue. And a chunk of that does come from dropshippers, which of which I was one of them. So we know that the products sell through third parties like dropshippers, like marketplaces. And that's the exciting thing because I now know I now need to replace myself as a dropshipper for the, for the business to find another someone else to replace what the sales I was doing because I also have to shut down my previous websites, but just to focus on this one. But the opportunity there is huge because there's probably a handful of dropshippers that they've worked with and that's not because they don't want to, but because the infrastructure isn't in place. It's a manual process. And this is why one of the opportunities I see is to say, well, let's build out the infrastructure to work better with other dropshippers, make it a lot more streamlined, a lot more turnkey, a lot more automated and, and then go out and find more dropshippers who are looking to get into this niche. And yet someone said to me the other day, doesn't that just create more competition for you directly because you're now having to sell at a lower margin to a dropshipper and on paper and in theory, yeah, it does create more competition for me, but actually the mindset has to change from that to you're actually taking more people on the journey with you. There's plenty of space in the market, there's plenty of customers in the country, there's plenty of scope and actually that's where opportunities came from for me when I took my suppliers on that journey with me. Not seeing them as competitors even though they were selling the products directly as well, not seeing them as, you know, far away arm's length relationships but keeping them really close and taking them on that journey because you never know what kind of opportunity will come from keeping dropshippers. Maybe one day I have a dropshipper who is quote unquote one of my competitors because they're selling my own products but maybe I can sell my business to that person in a few years time or I can buy their business if they're doing really well. So I don't believe in, in that sort of secrecy. Obviously there's commercial things to think about but if you're partnering with people and everyone's taking a bit of the pie, so to speak, I think that's a good thing. Definitely. And you're coming at this from a really unique perspective and I think it's fascinating to see that you like the way that you view and the potential of partnering with other dropshipping retailers like ourselves, like our members, like many of our listeners, I think that's music to a retailers is and actually you've created, you essentially are going to now become the dream supplier that a retail and dropshipper would want to partner with because you understand this model better than anyone having been in that and see the potential of it. And like you say that abundance mindset of the more people that are there shouting about your brand and putting ad spend into your brand, the more your brand is going to grow as a, as a result of that. So it's a really unique perspective. I think you're, you're in a great position to do this. I wish you the best of luck with the next chapter of your journey and, and I guess any parting thoughts for anyone who's maybe listening to this back where you were two, three years ago, who's maybe just starting their journey and thinking about maybe joining us at dropship Unlocked or like what would you want someone like that to know about what is possible over the next one or two years? I'm a big believer Lewis, and thank you by the way for your very kind words and all the support you both have given me over the years that's got me to this stage and I feel very fortunate to be able to kind of give back, not just in my insights and my knowledge and experience, but actually say, hey, I'm actually looking for, for dropshippers now, actually looking for partners and retail partners to help take on this journey with me. But going back to your question, I think the main thing that helped me was getting out of my own way. And what I mean by that is just let go of the perfection. Let go of the need to make everything look exactly how you want it to look. And that's really what my advice would be to someone just getting started. Care about the important stuff, cut the corners on things that are not going to directly impact yourself. I say that and I know, I really appreciate you don't know what corners you can cut when you, if you've not done this before. But the way to learn that is to actually, in my opinion, do it quickly, build momentum, cut some corners, take a punt on some corners, read, learn, watch videos, ask other people in the community to say, hey, is it okay if I kind of cut this corner just for the sake of moving forward and building momentum very, very quickly, your business and your audience will teach you whether that was the right corner to cut or whether you get to go back a couple of steps just to fix something, tweak it and then move forward. So for me, it's all about progress over perfection. And that's not a phrase I termed or I coined. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's pretty common to hear people who have, who've got success quickly to say, I just got started, I just did something, I did something every day. And we have members in our community that we see every day saying, I just did something every day. If it's an hour a day, perfect. I love seeing that because it's progress over perfection. And the risk is someone saying, oh, I've spent nine hours on this today. And unless you're, you're using those nine hours to, to really push through everything because most people are not, most people will, will say, who say that when you, when you dig a bit deeper, are spending those hours trying to make it perfect and trying to make it the best thing since sliced bread, you don't need to do that. And that again, just reiterating and reinforcing that. That would be my, my number one piece of advice for someone getting started is try and build up your momentum quickly. Ask around in the community and drop ship unlock to figure out which are the safer corners to cut and which are not. And they may work for you, they may not. But there's only one way to find it. You're not going to learn anything by having an unpublished website. Amen to that. Yeah, incredible advice. And it's clear through your journey that it's all about taking action and innovating, pivoting to get to the next level which you are just continually climbing and growing. And no doubt when we have another conversation in a few months time, there'll be a new stage that you're at, new lessons that you've learned and yeah, just super impressive. Thanks so much for sharing your journey today to get to know from being just getting your first sale to now operating and owning a multi seven figure company and inviting more dropshippers on the journey with you. And then also the support that you provided inside the masterclass community, still a very much active part of that. It's a pleasure to have been part of your journey and also to see where you go from this position. So thanks for sharing everything with us today. No, no, at all. It's, it's it. Not to sound so cheesy, but remember my roots is right where I or I learned it all myself. So it's only right that I'm now kind of looking back and pulling people up and helping people along who are, who are where I was two and a half or so years ago. Amazing. Thank you, Siraj. Been a pleasure. Well, what an incredible conversation that was with Suraj. Every time he comes back on the podcast, his journey has taken another massive step forward. Absolutely. Yep. Loved hearing Suraj's latest edition of the Storey today and it just shows how far you can go when you master the basics, you follow a clear roadmap and you stay consistent. Suraj is really proof that you can start lean with a business like this, build a high ticket store, gain real traction and then open doors you never imagined might open at the start. If you've been listening to Suraj today and thinking, I want to start my own e commerce brand, now's the time. But I just don't know where to begin then. The first step is very simple. Head over to dropship unlocked.com start there, you'll find the exact roadmap that Suraj and hundreds of other members have followed to build their own high ticket e commerce businesses. Fantastic. And hopefully when you do that, in the future you'll be joining us on a dropship or not podcast episode as well to share the journey that you've been on and the success that you've made. So we'll Put that in the diary for the future. And it all starts with a single step. So now what we're going to do is answer a question that we've received from a listener of a recent episode of this podcast because we like to give you a chance to have your questions answered and it will help others as well. So if you have a question that's come up while you've been listening to Suraj's interview today, feel free to comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode and it might be featured in an upcoming episode. So this week the question has come in from John Robson. Now, John's question. I'll ask over to you now, Lewis. He said, what actually separates the most successful Dropship Unlock members? Thank you for your question, John. So the people with the most positive, resilient mindsets, I'd say they, they come in, they expect challenges, they're not expecting it to be easy or to be, you know, spoon fed a business. Even though we'll walk them through step by step exactly what to do, they know at some point they're going to hit hurdles and it's about the resilience. They have to overcome those when they inevitably arise and just push through them so they show up consistently. They're always asking questions on our Q and A calls, they're coming to our live events, they're using the support system that's available, they're following the step, it's a proven roadmap and they're just trusting that process. They're not kind of stuck in the mud and having to make the same mistakes that hundreds of our members may have made in the past and that therefore we've adapted and updated the curriculum to ensure that no one new coming into this will make any of those, those mistakes. It's that kind of trust in that process to know that they don't have to reinvent the wheel. They get to benefit from all of the mistakes that have come before them and just not chase shortcuts, but just follow a roadmap step by step. So hopefully that gives you a bit of an insight into what makes a successful member in Dropship Unlocked. John yeah, I agree. The approach is so important and very topical after you brought Suraj on today. I think if you've listened to Suraj, you start to get an idea of what makes a successful member. Clearly he's somebody that wants to take on challenges, learn from other people, learn from his own experiences and keep levelling up. And that is now something we've seen consistently across the most successful members. And if you just listen back to the podcast episodes we've done with other members, you'll start to get a feel for what people are doing that are getting to these massive results. And quite often it's the mindset and also some of the lessons that they take away from individually from from their own experiences. Now what we want to do as well is highlight a recent review that we've had for the podcast. So a big thank you to Kristal for sharing your thoughts in an Apple podcast review. Kristal said thank you for the great content discussed on the podcast. Just the information I need to start my dropshipping business. Well, thank you Kristal very much for your review. Very kind words there. We really appreciate it and we're glad to hear that you've been enjoying the podcast. So if you found value in today's discussion, we'd really appreciate it if you're you could leave us a review just like Crystal did. It only takes you a few seconds, but it means the world to us and it just helps us keep this podcast going. We'll always reply to all of your reviews and we really look forward to hearing your thoughts and we might even be able to feature your review in 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 dropshipunlocked.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 checking. 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.