[R] $500K/Month Dropshipping With Bill

Alright, let's be real for a second. You've thought about starting a business, maybe you've even tried dropshipping. And it's probably felt like you're just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks, right? You're dropshipping some cheap junk from a sketchy website, praying it gets there, and then you're making $12 cents on the dollar. It's a grind. What if there was a different way? A playbook. A blueprint. What if you could skip all the nonsense and build a real business selling high ticket stuff I'm talking products over a thousand bucks from trusted suppliers. Look, John and I distilled 21 years of ecommerce experience into six simple checklists. It's the battle-tested blueprint that over a thousand students have used to launch in 30 days. No more guessing, no more costly mistakes. We're giving you all six checklists, plus a video walkthrough for each one for just $9. That's a no-brainer. Go to dropshipbreakthrough.com/checklist to get the ultimate high-ticket dropshipping checklist bundle and stop doing things the hard way. That's dropshipbreakthroughspelledthru.com/checklist Last month, which was July, was our biggest sales month ever, and I know it's in sound funny. I don't remember the exact figure, but it was over half a million. Welcome to the dropship podcast, where you'll learn how to build and grow a high-ticket dropshipping business and hear stories from successfully commerce entrepreneurs. Let's kick this thing off. Hey, welcome to the dropship podcast and today I'm here with one of our students, Bill, who I believe we spoke about you on the podcast a few times. Sometimes calling you out in good ways, sometimes calling you out in, I believe in the need to hire episode, John mentioned your name, but you're one of our most prolific students and genuinely, I just wanted to know more about your story, and so I ask you to come on here. I'm thrilled that you said yes. Welcome to the show, Bill. Thank you so much, Ben. I appreciate you having me on. I'm grateful to be here. I looked up your most recent show off message, so we have a channel in our private Slack group where you can kind of post off things that you want to show off about, and sometimes in your real life you can't show off and get the right response you're looking for, but in our community you can, right? The other people are here to root for you, and so I looked up your most recent one is when you hit two years in business and you hit almost $3 million in sales. That was a little bit back. Is there any update you'd care to give on where you're at now just a few months into that third year? Sure, I could tell you, last month, which was July, it was our biggest sales month ever, and I know it's gonna sound funny, I don't remember the exact figure, but it was over half a million. That's amazing. It's amazing. I hope you take a second to be like holy crap, that's amazing, but that doesn't come without like loads and loads of work on the front end to get there, and so I do want to hear about your story, and I want to understand how, you know, I believe a lot of the time this was just you, how you were able to get some of that work done, but I think the first place I'd love to start is really like, how did you start? You know what's funny, and before I even ask you how you did start, I've seen your face chase me around social media on a post from a different course talking about their case study in Bill, which is funny because sometimes I'll see my face chasing you around from that course as well, but I see your face, but I also know you've been in our community for quite a long time, and so like, take me back to how you, how did you start? What made you want to get in two business in the first place, and what, be through how you started? Well, first it's interesting to know that I'm part of a course is marketing materials on what's to me. I'll be sure to screenshot the next one for you. Yeah, please do. So how did I get started? I mean, it's sort of interesting to me that I'm here. This is not a place I ever, I think in my life, expected I would be, I was never the kid who had the lemonade stand or, you know, bought stuff and went back to school and sold it to my friends for an increased price, and I was never into any of that stuff. I was very pretty, like, straight-laced and just followed the rules and, you know, did all the things that I'm told I should do. So I never have considered myself entrepreneurial or a business owner of any type, but I had reflected on this much later in life, like when I was a late teens, 20s, I was a musician, and, you know, as a musician, you kind of are a business owner, right? You got to call the club, you got to book the gig, you got to go perform, you got to collect the money, you know, all the things that are, that go into being a musician. I mean, I effectively was a business owner, but I never at that time considered myself one. It just was something that I did, like, oh, I want to play music, so I got to call the club and I got to do all these things. But I was a business owner, even if that wasn't something that recognized myself as, but I left that world a long time ago, and I went and had an office job for about 14 years. It was for a company that actually produced music tours for, like, choirs and orchestras groups like that, so it was, like, related to what I had done, so it felt like a good transition to me, and I enjoyed it for the time that I was there, but after a while, there was a certain period where I just, it's hard to put my finger on it, or at least at the time it was, but I was just feeling a lot of dissatisfaction. Like, I had this job, I had the money, I made a great income, and I had the big house and the truck, and, like, everything was good. But as soon as I had all that, and I was accumulating more and more, I just felt an increasing sense of unhappiness, which is sort of the antithesis of what you believe should happen, or what you're told should be happening. So this was going back, you know, over 10 years ago now. I just had gone through several years after that of searching. Like, what is it that I'm missing? Like, what's the source of my dissatisfaction? I really couldn't put my finger on it, and I tried to, like, fill in that void in some ways. Like, I loved to learn, so I would spend hours and hours in bookstores just reading books. To be frank, I'd spend a lot of time dating women, you know, trying to fill the void that way, which is fun, maybe, in the short term, and, you know, maybe not in the long term the best thing. But in any rate, I did that. You know me, I'm a runner, so I spend a lot of time, like, running just more and more. So just finding things to fill the void, but never actually getting to the point of realizing what this source of dissatisfaction was. And so one day, I was in a bookstore doing a little wandering down the aisles, and I saw this book called The Four Art Work Week. And like so many people who have seen and read that book, like, it just totally shifted my perspective. I devoured that book. I still remember it was Memorial Day weekend, 2014. I still remember when it was, and I just totally devoured that book that weekend, and I finally figured out, like, I was dissatisfied, dissatisfied, because I was following a course that I thought I should be following, but I really was not happy following it at all. So what ended up happening is I spent the next, like, four years reading every blog, consuming every business podcast, trying to come up with ideas to build a business, like he describes in the book, to somehow extricate myself from this life that I thought I should leave. And you know, I probably would be best described during that time as a entrepreneur, you know, I read a lot and consumed a lot, but only acted to a certain degree. And I never really, you know, I tried some things, but nothing ever really got off the ground. Finally, in 2018, I found a drop shipping. And I don't remember now where I found it, but the first thing that I did to learn more about it was to, as I was often doing at this time, was I purchased a course. So I found a course, and you did me for, like, 20 bucks or something like that, how to drop ship. Here's how you do it. This was back in the heyday of Oberlo, so it was based on all Oberlo related stuff, which is essentially shipping from China, right? So I did go through the course and I build a dropship store on Shopify and I ran that business for a little while. I don't no longer have it, and the domain's available, then I know you love domains. So I'll give you a little tip on it. If you want to pick it up, it's called MySilverHearts.com. This is a ludicrous to even say out loud, but, you know, I was in marketing. I was a marketing director for the company I was at at the time, so I knew something about avatars that wasn't new to me. So my avatar for this business was 15 to 25 year old girls who are interested in silver heart jewelry. Right? Like, I know anything about that. Absolutely. I'm way back machine as we talk right now because I don't want to see this. I haven't even looked in years, so it'd be funny. Is it plural? Is it hearts? Or heart? Hearts plural. MySilverHearts.com. Way back. Way back has no concept of this, unfortunately. What? Yeah, I would love to see your Andy work. Did you do well? I think a lot of people started low ticket dropshipping. In fact, my barber, he asked me what I do, and I told him, and he was like, "Oh, I tried dropshipping. It doesn't work. That was a scam." And I was like, "Wait, what?" And he's like, "Yeah, I tried it once. You know, got this product from China. It didn't work. That's interesting that you feel that way." And so, how did you start? Did you do well? Did you just run out of money on Facebook eggs starting, you know, 15 to 25-year-old girls or how did that work out for you? If you're listening in and you'd like to take the first steps towards building your own high ticket dropshipping business, head to dropshipbreakthrough.com/go where we've got a free training waiting for you that's going to walk you through the first steps you need to take to start your own high ticket dropshipping business, and I'm going to walk you through an actual example of what one of these businesses looks like. You know, it didn't work out great, as you would imagine. I did make sales shockingly, and even more shockingly than like, nobody complained about the three-week lead time to get anything, or nobody tried to return anything, which I wouldn't even have known what to do with, right? What do you do with that point when someone asks for a return? But I did make a few sales in here and there. It was definitely an educational experience, but nonetheless, as you would imagine, it's really not very fulfilling. It didn't feel good selling stuff from China. It didn't feel good having to make customers wait so long for the products. It didn't feel good not really even knowing what they're receiving. I mean, seriously, you don't really know what's being shipped, so it just was not. It was a great educational experience, but I would never, ever recommend it for anybody. So I shuttered that sometime in 2019, and at the same time, I realized that this was still an interesting business model, and I wanted to pursue it further. I just knew that the way I had been doing it was not the correct way. So I did a lot of searching, and of course, it came across that other course, and it was dropship lifestyle. I signed up for that course, and I built a store, and I really, for once, followed everything that they said to do, and I got the store to the point where I should call suppliers. That took me into early 2020, right around the time that COVID broke out, and I got sent home like so many people did, and found myself with some free time, so I thought, this is perfect. This is the time. I'm going to launch this store. I'm going to be this huge success, so I contacted a total of three suppliers. They all rejected me, and I immediately said, "This is terrible. This doesn't work. I'm done." And I just quit. Like, I totally quit right there. It was awful. So because of COVID, and everything that was going on at that time, the whole world sort of turned upside down, and the fact that I was now working from home, at this point I had a different job, a job that I truly, truly did not enjoy at all. I really wanted to get out of that, but now that I'm working from home, it became somewhat more tolerable, so I sort of hung in there for a little while, into 2021, and then eventually I did find myself in a position where I could quit that job, and I quit, and I decided I would give myself a year to build a business into 2022, and if I didn't get something built, I would go get another job. So it was a thing where like, the pain of having to go back to a job, the thought of that was just so much that I knew I finally had to get serious and do something. Like I just needed that. So that's what I did, and I spent several months trying a whole bunch of different things, and ultimately I came back to the job ship lifestyle course. Went through it again, picked a different industry this time, and I finally launched my store in 2022, and really then that kind of takes us to today. I'm running that store now, and it's been going great ever since. I'd love to like fill in some gaps there, right? So to recap, like 2018, now 2014 you read a book, The Four Over Work Week, right? Which like, if anyone hasn't read that book, go read that book. It's cheap, and it will open your mind up to really a different reality that maybe you didn't even know existed, that there is a different way that you could live your life. And so there's four years there, at least in your timeline, right? Where you read that book, and you got excited. Did you dabble in other courses? Did you dabble in other opportunities, or what did you do for those four years other than I know for me, and again, I'm interrupting here of course, but there was a good year there where I just got excited in my head, and I was talking about all the things I was going to do, or I could do, and then I didn't do any of those things. I just sat there and was excited for a year. So was there four years where you attempted things or four years where you like, you know, hiked up in your head? Yeah, I think you nailed it. There was a lot of getting excited about things, and purchasing courses, like I remember, I purchased, I followed a lot of Pat Flynn at the time. I purchased one of his courses, Ramit Sethi, I purchased one of his courses, and they both do great stuff, but I never really took a lot of action on them, like I would always start and get sidetracked, and I don't know if that was just like shiny object syndrome or what that was, like I would see something else that I thought would be better, and I would drop that and move out of that. So to your comment, yeah, it would be a lot of getting excited about things, but not really doing a lot. I mean, I did some things, I had one point, created a blog, and did some content, and tried some a little bit of affiliate marketing, but that didn't go anywhere. Probably the craziest thing that I did, other than the silver archery, was that I was convinced I was going to create the world's first coffee energy bar, but not an energy bar with caffeine in it, 'cause like every energy bar has caffeine in it. I'm talking like real coffee, so I spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars at the grocery store buying all these ingredients, Ben, I can barely cook pasta, right? I am like, I'm in my kitchen, like a mad scientist trying to cook this thing up, and I would just create the worst tasting things you would ever eat in your life. They're horrible. I had spent so much money, I did this multiple times, by the way, like I kept experimenting with different ingredients, but I had spent so much money, I forced myself to eat these things. They were so bad. But I thought the idea was genius. Like literal beans, just throwing it in there, grinding up beans, or how are we doing this? Walk me through one recipe if you have time. Sure, yeah, like I tried that. I would grind beans, or I even tried at one point just doing liquid coffee. I'm like, oh, what if I could create a solid enough of an exterior where the interior could be like a liquid, like a cool brew kind of thing, I mean that was a disaster too. So yeah, I would look up ingredients that would, I can't even remember now, but like certain ingredients that would actually hold the bar together, so it wouldn't fall apart. Yeah, it just did now work. It was just a big, loppy, disgusting mess that I can't even put words like together to describe how bad it all tasted. So anyway. Simon, right, could you put the coffee in a mason jar with a bunch of chia seeds, right, and turn it into like a, you know, coffee gelatin, if you want? I see. I should have called you. You've got the idea. That's a, so four years, you're kind of dab, but look, Alex Ramose calls this lady in the red dress or something like that. He talks about this often. The grass is greener, always, right? And so like whatever you're doing, the moment you hear about another business, you, I believe he calls it uninformed optimism. So you think like you've only heard the good shit about this other business model and you're like, oh, that's going to be way easier. And then you get in there and then you have informed pessimism. Like you immediately realize that every business sucks, every single one of them. There's not one business out there that doesn't suck in some way. They just all suck in different ways, right? And so I do remember going through that process personally as well early on in the journey of like, oh, this must be more fun. This must be more fun. And really, when it came time to just focus on one thing, I got really good at that one thing. And that made all of the other stuff kind of irrelevant at that point. So it's interesting that you went through the same journey of kind of, you know, dabbling here, dabbling there. It does sound like you pick at least good mentors, which I can't say is the case for everyone I've spoken with. Like Pat Flynn, very good guy, very good content. Remeads that to you, very good guy, very good content, whereas, you know, I think over the course that you've been doing this, there's been a lot of, you know, air quote gurus that have come and gone and aren't necessarily weren't necessarily teaching the greatest things. But it sounds like you found some good people and, you know, I'd like to believe that still continues today with you finding John and myself, but walk me through a little bit more timeline cleansing here, if you will. So you did the silver heart thing. I'm assuming that lasted about a year. And then it sounds like you called suppliers pre-COVID or during COVID, like early 2020. And three of them said no and you were like, I'm done. What did you do for that next year? Do you just like dwell in the fact that they said no and this must not work and you need to find your next thing? Or what was that next year like? And I know it was a very, very weird year for all of us, but what was that year like for you after you first decided this doesn't work? Yeah, to be honest, I felt like I was in a real comfort zone at the time and that's often the worst place to be when you want to make a big change in your life. And truth be told, even that four year timeframe we talked about earlier from 2014 to 2018 is not dissimilar. Again, I had a great income, a great job. I mean, everything in my life was really pretty solid. And I don't think that can work sometimes. I think a lot of people are in that position and feel the dissatisfaction like I felt and they don't always know why that is. But if you don't feel enough discomfort to make change, you're probably not going to make change. There has to be some trigger in there. For some people, maybe it's easier than others. For me, it took a lot more pain. I was too comfortable. So from that period of calling those three suppliers in early 2020 until the point of me leaving my job a year later and then building the store and launching it a year after that, there was just a lot of comfort. And truth be told, I think even underlying that, Ben is fear, right, we're afraid to try something different. We're afraid to step out of that comfort zone. For me, that's very much the case. I have a lot of issues with anxiety if I'm being transparent. And anytime I step out of my comfort zone, even a little bit, like literally can be like going to a different coffee shop can make me feel anxious like I experience anxiety over so many things. So the idea of, okay, I'm at home every day now, thanks to COVID, which makes it very comfortable. And I can just work from home and that's really nice and like I got my same income and I don't really have to, I'm not wanting for anything and everything's just nice and cozy and relaxed. Like that's very comfortable and it's hard to escape that. It's actually a big reason why I feel like I had to leave my job because without doing that, I don't think I, and I recognize this at the time. Without doing that, I don't think I would have felt enough pressure to actually build something if that makes sense. But you jumped out of the airplane with no parachute, right? Like you completely jumped out and said, I'm going to work on this for a year, which I think is a bowl, it's a bowl strategy cotton. But you had, you put the wall against your back. You put your back against the wall on purpose, which I think is a, not something everyone's willing to do. So can, like, is there something in that decision that allowed you to jump out of the airplane and build your parachute and the way that? What allowed you to do that? Was it simply like the knowing you had enough money to cover your expenses for a year that you could do this? Was it more like midlife crisis, if you will, of like, I have to do this for me kind of thing or like, walk me through that decision because that's an interesting decision that I think, you know, some people make and some people don't. I personally work full-time while building my first building and selling my first business. And so what, walk me through that decision if you could. Sure. And I will preface what I'll say with this disclaimer, like, if anybody asks me if they should quit their job and jump into building a business, I actually would not recommend doing that, unless they really, yeah, it's, it's very risky and unless you have a lot of runway. And I was very fortunate and then I had a quite a run away, like I probably could have lasted several years. And part of that was just, you know, money I had set aside. I also too, we haven't gotten into this, but I had this vision of, like, just living out of my truck and traveling and from place to place and, like, you know, living out of Arabian bees or camping and not really having a permanent residence, I just wanted to travel. So I did sell my house too at the same time and that also afforded me additional funds. So full transparency, I did have plenty of runway to last me quite some time. So if you want to really launch a business, I would say either stay at your job where you're covered. Don't leave that job. Don't just quit if you only have like two months of money, that's a terrible idea. Or make sure you have something that's really going to get you through for a while because, you know, have a plan B, have a plan C. Like I had plan Bs and plan Cs in mind, right? I knew I could maybe go back to certain jobs. I knew I could pick up other jobs. I did pick up an odd job with a friend of mine for a while just to make some extra money. So, you know, I just wanted to make that comment because I think a lot of people dream about doing that. But, you know, it's the odds of success, I think, are challenging because you're going to wake up every day with an additional pressure to make money. And when you are launching a business with the concept that you need to make money sooner than later, I don't think it's a great mindset to be in. You want to be in the mindset of building something that's sustainable, that serves your customer, that provides value, and all of that will bring you money eventually, but you're not necessarily going to get it in the short term. So, I just feel like that had to be said then because it's important to know. So I think that- Very well said, too, right? It takes a long term thinking to get this done. The short term thinking will be, often will be your demise and you'll watch other people that pass you because you're making a decision for next month's paycheck versus, you know, two years from now enterprise value, which is very different in the business. Precisely. And even once you have a business and it's working and you're making money, you still need to continue to think long-term. You can't think day to week to month, like, oh, I need to make this much this week or this month. You have to always, I've discovered this, too, because it is all too easy to focus on your day-to-day sales. But I've really, really, really made an effort to say, no, I'm only thinking long term here. Even now, after having some degree of success, it's just so critical. It's an important mindset. And if you could start off with that, then I think you're going to be on starting out a better foot. Absolutely. So, if I take you back, you said you started a store, you called three suppliers, and then you said the new store when you came back was a different industry? Is that accurate? Totally. What made you a band in the first one just out of peer curiosity? I convinced myself it wouldn't work, not only because of the supplier issue, calling them and being rejected, but just kind of running it through what that course has you run through, the different checks to see if it actually be viable. Looking back now, Ben, I actually think it'd be pretty cool. And furthermore, I've never heard anybody talk about this particular one, so I might talk to you off loud about it. Yeah, please do. And if you're willing to go public, John and I will happily do a good niche bad and a niche episode on this one. This is like one of the few things I might keep close to the vest, because it's such an interesting idea. I definitely need to hear this now, Bill. Okay, we'll talk. So you pivot to a new industry, 2022, is that accurate? Correct. Was it early on in that year? I know there was still quite a bit of supply chain issue happening throughout 2021, people who were starting businesses and getting, yes, and we have no stock. So don't worry about selling our products, you can be a dealer, but we have no product to sell. So we'll get back to you kind of thing. Were things more started in 2022, once you got the ball rolling again? They must have been because no one gave me that feedback, no suppliers that I contacted. And I started contacting suppliers in May 2022 and continued in a June and officially I launched on July 1st. So at that point, if there were issues in the industry, at least with these particular suppliers, I contacted they didn't say anything, and it kind of went the other way, right? So I went, everybody stayed home, bought up all the stuff, vendors had to then order way more than they expected. And there was all these delays and containers pricing was going crazy. And then they got all their stock and then all of the kind of stimulus ran out, right? And now everybody's sitting on too much stock and they're saying, yes, everyone who's reaching out, because they're like, please sell my stuff, I have way too much stuff happening. And so maybe, maybe you didn't even realize that that's, I think you caught the back end of that wave in the middle of 2022, just like, hell yes, please come bring us value, because right now we have way too much going on here and we can't move products. Yeah, that's interesting. That might well be the case. I definitely talked to some people at the live event in Salt Lake a few weeks ago, who kind of went through that roller coaster you just described. And maybe I just came at the back end of that. Way back when I was thinking about starting a high ticket drop shipping business, I was bingeing podcast, probably like you're doing right now. And the one thing I was looking for was someone to show me what one of these sites looks like. So John and I have done that for you at DropshipBreakthrough.com/Go. You can see a free training where John walks you through one of our businesses and shows you what the site looks like, what the process is for setting up one of these stores, and how you can take your next steps to setting up your own high ticket drop shipping business. So head to DropshipBreakthrough.com/Go and watch the free training. Well, that seemed to have worked out well, right, you relaunch, you were following, again, you were following a different course at the time. What happens there? What does your first month look like? What does your first year look like? And just out of peer curiosity, when did you find John and myself and actually make a choice to come over here? Yeah, happy to talk about that. So I made my first sale on July 1st, the first day. Like I turned on my checkout, I turned everything on. I got on a plane because I had a trip plan to see family in North Carolina. So I turned everything on, drove to the airport, got on the plane, landed in Charlotte, North Carolina, turned my phone on and I had a sale. Like I could not believe it. It was insane. I, how I didn't leap out of my seat on the plane is, I don't know, it was so, I'm so excited. Of course, I had no idea what to do at that point, like what do I do to die? So, but it was cool. Yeah, that, so that first month I did, I think like 3,000 or 2,500, I don't remember the exact figures right now. I made it, it's five or six sales and really the first four months, I kind of bounced around sort of between low thousands up to 10,000 in sales, I never really broke through that. And you know, that course, I love that course. It got my store launched. It was awesome. Like I have nothing but wonderful things to say about that course, but the fact is that once you're done and launched, there's sort of, there's, there's not a lot of support after that, right? I kind of left to the winds and anyone who's watching or listening right now who's in their first year of this business journey knows that all the sun, you start to encounter all sorts of things that you don't know how to deal with and you had never anticipated. And that certainly is the case with me. And I really, really felt like I needed some kind of support somewhere. So actually the first thing I did was use their mentorship program to work with a coach for several months. And that coach was Brian Angel. And really Brian was like my lifeline during that period because I don't know what I would have done otherwise. I had no idea what I was doing. Like he taught me how to correctly do Google ads, how to like build a decent product page which I definitely did not have at the time, all kinds of other things that we worked on. Like I just listened to his advice and I got up every day and literally every single day, seven days a week. I just cried it. Like I just worked my butt off. I literally did not take a day off for over a year of my business being an operation. I just kept working at it. And that kind of took me from that sort of five to $10,000 range to sort of the 15 to $30,000 range. So it sort of brought me up to the next plateau. So by the time we were done working together, that kind of brings us into about March of 2023. And I started feeling that sense of desperation again, right? Like, okay, I need help and I still don't know how to do a lot of things. And I don't know, like where do I go? So I just went to Google and I just kept searching a number of things and I came across you and John and your podcast. I started devouring it and really didn't take more than a few weeks for me to realize that oh, these are the people I need to be working with. This is the community I need to be part of. Like it was so, so exceedingly obvious that just based on the value you guys provided solely on the podcast that I knew whatever it was that you had in the course had to be even better. So I booked a sales call with you. You probably don't remember because it's a while back now, but we talked for not very long. And I really, I was 99% there already. It was just like, hey, you need to book a sales call first. So I did and we talked and I'm like, yeah, okay, now I'm 100%. And I literally hung up with you and purchased the course right there and I've been part of it ever since. >> What a sales guy. I genuinely don't remember that bill I followed it was like, I had quite a few of those, but yeah, I must have done our, no, usually the sales calls, honestly, back when John and I used to do them, people would get on and be like, holy crap, I'm actually talking to Ben. And then it would, there wasn't much selling happening there. It was just like they couldn't believe they were getting a genuine person on a sales call like that. And so I don't know, I must have said all the right things, but you started with us. Where did you dive in? Talk about that. Because I think there's a lot of people listening here. Heck, we've done episodes comparing us to other courses and I look at 2015, I took drop ship lifestyle as well. John took it in 2014, like you said, the launch part, like that's the, here's how to start a business kind of thing. And I think what we do really well at drop ship breakthrough is, you know, yes, launching your business, we kind of give that away on the podcast. How do we actually grow from there? So like when you jumped in, obviously you've seen quite an inflection in your business sales since you came over here. Can you pinpoint anything that you found in the course or maybe just heard from us talking or found in the community that you went a little bit deeper on that really started moving the needle in your business? Yeah. So one of the first modules that I watched when I joined the course, I'm forgetting the name of it to be frank, it's one that John did all on his own, but it has to do with prioritization, time management, has to do with hiring, which is something I waited for too long to do and we can talk about that if you want. It has to do with just really how to organize your day and what to focus on and not really spending too much time on things you shouldn't be spending time on. And I think also there was like a video on like tracking your time. How much time are you spending on this task? How much time are you spending on that task? Because usually when you do a time audit like that, at least for me, you realize you're spending time more time on things than you thought you were spending time on and oftentimes they're not necessarily the most important thing. So that was the first thing that I watched and it really hit home for me. So every day I'm always thinking about how I prioritize my tasks because it is far too easy to get caught up in about 50 different things. When you're building a business like, okay, do I work on my emails, do I work on my ads today, do I work on SEO, there's so many things. So having a narrower focus is really critical. It's just so important. I can see John listening to this smiling right now. You might be the first person who's ever brought up that module, usually people want to go tactical, tactical, tactical. But the reality is like, you know, Elliot kind of said this that are less than that. If you don't know what to do, you need a business coach to tell you what to do. And if you know what to do, you're not doing any mindset coach, right? And this sounds a little bit more like mindset. Like you just weren't focusing on the right things. Whereas like, you know, for the most part, the information is out there. There's a ton of it. For free, if you want to sift through all the garbage online, you can find it. There's a ton in our course, obviously. But it's interesting that you went right to, hey, maybe I'm just not putting my effort where the lever is biggest in my business. That is how I felt. And when I saw that module, it's like, I just dove right for it. And, you know, to me, I actually will rewatch it maybe three times, perhaps. In case you'll just go back to watch a video here and there, just to refresh my memory of certain things because it's just, for me, it was super helpful. And sure, I definitely dove into some of the tactical stuff after that because there are things that I wanted to improve. But to me, that's still my favorite one of all the ones that I've watched. And by the way, for anyone who's listening who's not in the course, there's so many videos in there that even over a year into it, like I haven't watched everything yet. So there's a ton. I appreciate you pumping the course, but I appreciate it very, very much. There's a few things I've noticed about your business that I kind of want to call it. I'm just curious if you have any explanation for that. So you've posted a few different screenshots in our private Slack channel for our members. And one thing that stands out on all of those screenshots is your conversion rate. And so often what you'll see in a, you know, higher ticket industry as a retailer is sub 1% conversion rates. In fact, I've been part of many businesses. Some that went to eight figures where our conversion rate was less than 0.2. And so really think about that, right? Like, that means a hundred people are coming to your website, 99 and a half of those people are more raising their hand and saying, I'm interested in what you have and you're not serving them in some way. And what I noticed about your business is your conversion rate is over one. And I genuinely don't think I've seen that. And if I have it, I can count it on one hand and how many businesses I've seen that. Is there something that you could point to as a reason why you think your website converts at such a better level than most of the other people that you would call peers? You know, I wish I had a magic wand to wave to say, this is all you got to do. I really don't. I have spent an inordinate, I guess I will use the word inordinate amount of time looking at my competitors. I have a task every Thursday. So a weekly thing that I do is to go to my competitor's spreadsheet where I list all my competitors out. And in my industry, I constantly adding new ones. There's more coming in. It seems like non-stop, but it's a great exercise, I think, to really understand what's going on in your industry and to really have a touch point as to what people are doing. Because every time I do that, I find that my competitors are doing something that I'm not doing. It'd be something really small. Oftentimes it's just like, they're doing an email sequence, like, I'm on all their email lists and I'm looking at what they're doing. That's unique. And I'm like, oh, I would like to do that. Or something in the offer on the product page that is better than mine. I'm just studying what they're doing and trying to at least match or win up it. And that could be anything. Like right now, we're in the middle of completely rewriting our return policy. Like, whole from top to bottom rewriting it because it's okay, but I think it could be significantly better. And I see it as a better offer on many of my competitors' sites. So that needs improvement big time because I want to have the best possible return policy for my customers that I can provide while also not losing my shirt. So we're really doing an analysis of that. How do we do that without, how do we do that and be competitive and still not lose a ton of money? So just as one example. I guess the only answer I can provide is I'm really in touch with what my competitors are doing. And I try to do my best to match that. And sometimes that's price, frankly, like if I need to do something with price, I'll offer a better discount. And I'm not a fan of having to do that, but that definitely works. But it's not the only thing. Like there are many things you could do on a product page to make the product more attractive to a customer who's looking at multiple stores at once. Well, I don't want to do John Soren when he's not around, but I'll do it for him. That's also in the course, right? The competitor analysis, going to see what offers your competitors are creating and finding a way to make a better offer, including risk reversal, which is what sounds like what you're working on now. I don't want to call out one of your pages, because I don't think that's fair to you. But there's something I try to teach, and I genuinely don't know how to teach it well. But the moment I went to your bestseller, you were doing it perfectly. And I would call it like CRO conversion rate optimization for headlines. So for most people, when you go to a website, or most of the world, maybe not us marketers, and they go to a product page, they're not reading your description. But maybe if you have some cool photos in the middle, they're looking at your photos. But for the most part, they're reading headlines. And now those headlines could be product test feature. And then underneath it might be a paragraph of how like that feature might benefit them. There, I think if you make your headlines more benefit-driven, so they don't even need to read the paragraph, to know what that paragraph says, that alone is going to make your website way better than almost all of your competitors, because not many people do this. But when you see it, you fucking know and you see it, because you read it and you go, "Oh, like you get, I get tingly when I read your site." And it's your bestseller bill if you want to understand what page I was looking at. And so, I felt like I've talked about this, and I still don't know how to teach it, and I'm not really good at it on my own website for the most part. Where do you think you learned that skill? First off, do you know exactly what I'm talking about here as far as your ability to craft those headlines? Can you point to any resources where someone could learn how to be more benefit-driven in their headlines? Because again, if they went to your bestseller product, they don't need to read any of the thousand words that are on there. They need to read 50 words that are just your headlines, and they would leave there knowing exactly what the product does, how it's going to benefit it, who exactly you're speaking to, and why that person should buy the product. And so, honestly, I was blown away when I saw that product, and I was simply doing some research for you and I are going to have a call here shortly, and I wanted to do a little bit of research. And that was the first place I went to, and I was absolutely blown away. I shared it with John, and I was like, "We have to talk to Bill about this." What can you put? You can put your finger on something as a good resource on where you learn this, or where you can kind of cut your teeth, you know, failing, trying to figure it out, and getting there. Well, thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. Honestly, you helped a lot with that. We had a call you and I very early on after I joined Drops With Breakthrough, and that was something that was part of our very long winding conversation where I took, I can't remember how many pages of notes, and I probably still haven't implemented half of that because you are so full of great knowledge, that's a lot. Sure. But that came up in that call. Basically, what I remember you saying was you kind of want to tell a story with your headlines, which we all shop online, so this is actually pretty easy to relate to, right? We're looking for a product. We go to a product page on whatever store, and like you said, nobody actually reads all the copy, right? I mean, very, very few people, like many people I have Microsoft clarity installed on my store, so I do watch a lot of videos, and you can very, very obviously see, and nearly all of them, you know, they're just skimming down the page, right? They're just skimming, skimming, skimming. They're just reading the headlines. Maybe they're looking at the pictures, but that's all they're doing. So the number one thing is to just tell a story with those headlines, right? Can you tell a story of the product, what it is, and what it's going to do to solve your problem just right in the headlines? That's all. That's literally all I think about. I don't really think of anything special. I don't know how well or not so well I do with that, but that's what I think of when I put the headlines together. And I have an employee now who does all this for me, and she's more than just a product uploader. I mean, she actually goes back. I have her go back and do these sort of updates on other products that I uploaded earlier in the store's existence to kind of refresh them. And this is what we talk about too. It's like, hey, we need to have the story pop in the headlines. So that would be what I would tell somebody is like, can you tell the story of this product? The journey that someone's going to go on with it from problem to solution just within the headlines. I forgot about our call. I think I gave you a, it was like, you know, buy a ticket to our Minneapolis live event or first event. And we'll give you a free hour of coaching. I believe it's where that call came from if I remember correctly, but I do remember I remember being very, um, a bit of imposter syndrome. It's kind of early on. You know, we're just trying to sell these tickets. And I remember giving you an hour of just, I just like, I gave you everything I had. You were done and you were like, you showed me four pages of notes. And I was like, all right, I think that's good for an hour. So that's very interesting that you're still working on that stuff. But I do kind of remember how maybe I spoke to you or spoke to others. And it's, it's two words. It's so that, right? So I'll try to use a, I'll use a pellet grill example. A pellet grill is a grill that uses wood pellets that are augured, you know, you know, twisted if you will through this, this auger into a small pot of fire that creates, you know, some heat mostly smoke for you to grill things or smoke things on a pellet grill, right? And so when someone's searching around for a pellet grill, they're looking for different features. They might buy grill A because it has this feature versus grill B not having this feature. And what you'll often see is people will put on grill A, let's just say it's like a, we'll call it slimmer auger. So it uses 50% less pellets, but people will just put new slimmer auger as their headline. Now that doesn't really fucking tell me anything unless you've actually sat there and read the description, which most people aren't going to do. And the people that do, they're probably going to buy from you, right? Because they're going to get the value. But if your headline simply said uses 50% less pellets so that you can save money at, you know, the hardware store or home deep or wherever people buying these pellets, that tells them everything they need to know without having to read the paragraph, right? Now let's say pellet grills are mostly known for smoking the newer ones have like a tiny little box that has a fire where you can actually see or so a pellet grill you can't see or unless it has this little box, you can get those cool grill lines on your stake that don't really matter. They just look cool, right? If you were comparing a girl that had the sear station and the girl that didn't have the sear station, you might put, including new blah blah blah sear station, right? Like that might be your headline, which is often what people do because again, it's just a feature of the product, whereas if you wrote, never grill without grill lines or something along the lines of like guarantee grill lines, sorry, somebody walk by the window here, guarantee grill lines forever, I'm trying to think of a good line again. This is where I actually struggle. I can't think of the good lines where I think tools like Claude, Chechi, PT, Lama, Groc. If you can go explain this to a large language model, they're going to help you with this because if you can put, it has this so that this happens, write me, you know, 100 captivating headlines or write me 10 different hooks that I can use on my website or in an ad, it's going to come up with that hook for you. And if you could do this throughout the whole page, people are going to remember your page way more than they're going to remember the person who simply copied from the manufacturer or simply wrote all of those feature headlines. And so I just wanted to call you out, Bill, because the product I look at blew me away, like I can see why that's your best seller because those headlines like genuinely made me smile as I read them. I have no interest in the product. There's no need for that in my home, but my goodness, did you do a really good job on that product? So I just wanted to shout you out there, Bill. And I was curious if you had any tips, are you using Claude, Chechi, PT? Is it simply your employee who's helping with this? What are you doing to kind of come up with those hooks, if you will? We actually just started using Claude this week, interestingly enough. So I'm using it and she's using it now. And experimenting with different prompts, right? Obviously, different prompts provide different results. So we definitely use that. I think you nailed it earlier, tactically speaking, using the so that, or we like to sometimes say four, like x, four y, this has x, four y and y being the benefit for you, right? So we're trying to incorporate more and more of that sort of language into the features in particular, right? Because features are interesting, but they're not really the reason people make a purchase. So you have to tell them why this feature is interesting to them and using the so that, as you said, or the four approach is a great way to do that. So yeah, you could definitely use an AI to help you figure that out. Really the best way to do it is to have conversations with your customers, because you're going to hear the same questions and same problems over and over again if you do it long enough. And it really for nearly two years in my store, I answered all the calls. So I've had a lot of customer conversations and I know where they're coming from. I can almost predict what they're going to say when they start a sentence. You know, I could kind of finish it for them sometimes. So understanding those problem points, those pain points will allow you to write better headlines period, because you could just plug that pain point into the X4 Y. The Y is the pain point, you're going to boom, just plug that in, you're good to go. Well, I wanted to make sure I called you out on that publicly, because that page, and I'm assuming the rest of your website is very similar, you're doing a fantastic job there. It's likely that it's contributing to that abnormal conversion rate. I'm very excited to dive into your business and learn a little bit more. Like, I think I'm going to learn some from you, Bill, so I appreciate that very much. Look, I have a few more questions that are just around your journey and like, how did these little inflection points help you or hurt you in any way, shape, or form? I guess they all help you, but you know, I've watched you join a couple different masterminds inside of our community, where you've gotten with a group of people who are all impressive human beings in their own right. I've watched you by consulting from John, just recently purchased some from me. Like, where would you put each one of these things, and forgive me, I'm not sure if you would raise your hand publicly and say you work with Valentino or don't work with Valentino or even if you do, I'm not even sure. But like, there's a lot of little pieces to the puzzle that have helped me along the way, and I'm curious like in your own words, how has been in a mastermind? How is buying some consulting? How has perhaps doing some mindset coaching assisted you in your journey? So, they've all assisted me in their own unique ways. I do work with Valentino, I'm happy to say that publicly, I have no problem with that because she's terrific, and I know she's working with a lot of folks in the community, and she would be a one inflection point for sure, because as I referenced earlier, I do struggle a lot with anxiety, it's been a lifelong thing for me. It expresses itself in interesting ways sometimes, something that I've learned since building this business, and I know you've talked about this before, and I really appreciate your openness and vulnerability when you do talk about it, is that running a business can be a personal development journey, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. What I've learned about myself is that so many of the things that cause my anxiety, I've been able to successfully keep below the surface over the years, because when you're in that comfort bubble of a nine to five job, and you don't really have to step out of that if you don't want to, you don't necessarily need to face those demons very often, if ever. And when you're in a business, all the sun, those bad boys come right out and they want to play. So, you've got to face the demons, and working with her has really helped me do that, and I feel, you know, honestly, I'm not only like deeply introverted, but painfully shy if I'm being frank. So, doing an interview like this, I would say even as recently as a year ago, probably would have been challenging for me, whereas now it's not so bad. I feel good. Of course, I've gotten to know you too that helps spend your great guy, which is beneficial. So, yes, definitely that's been an inflection point, and maybe the number one, it's hard to say. So much of what we do in business is just what's going on with our mindset and our brains. And I think just getting the mindset correct is so critical, because everything else can kind of follow after that, right? You'll have less, you know, going back to my first experience, calling suppliers, why did I quit after three? I mean, I look at that now, and that's just ridiculous. Who knows, that store might have been huge, and I would have started it a couple of years before I started this one. Now, everything has worked out as it is, but who knows, right, I'll never know, because I quit, and I quit because of my own insecurities, right? And kind of getting that straight is just so important. So, I would say that if you're about to start this journey, or you're early on this journey, you know, strap yourself in, because like whatever you've kept below the surface is going to come up and want to talk to you, and you're going to have to talk to it. So, working with someone, it could be a mindset coach, it could be a therapist, anything that works for you. I mean, if you're religious, that could be a spiritual leader in your community, just someone to help guide you through that is so important. So, I didn't mean to go on so long about it, but I just think that's an important point. So, that's been important, definitely, you know, working or rather being in a couple of mastermind groups, with, as you said, outstanding human beings, every single one of them has been so awesome. Just, the sense of community is, I think, so, it's so comforting, right? Like, if you've got a problem, you can share it, and someone else there has probably had a similar problem, and they can help you with that. That is just a very warm, comforting feeling that you don't otherwise feel, because most of the time you're sitting on your laptop by yourself all day, right? So, that makes a huge difference. So, if you can be part of a community in any way, shape, or form, it doesn't have to be a form of mastermind, per se. It can just be one other person you know who's running an e-commerce business, or any kind of business, and you just want to bounce ideas off that person, and you can be there for them too. That is so meaningful. So, from a community standpoint, that the mind, or rather the mastermind groups, have been great. And then, of course, the course itself, you and John, you know, you both come at things from different perspectives, so taking things, learning tactics from your different perspectives has been so critical as well, because you can't just do, I don't think, anyway, you can't just do things one way, you have to understand how to do things multiple ways, and then you pick the way that works for you in your business. So, all of those have been important inflection points for me. Well, I love that you highlighted Valentina more than the rest of them, because I might be the biggest Valentina fan there is. I love, you know, having a mindset coach in my corner and the ability to offer that to our student base, and then just see so many people take that opportunity and run with it with Valentina. Valentina has been amazing, because I haven't heard one person say, you know, I got on the phone, got on the Zoom call with Valentina, and I just haven't heard that, right? Almost everyone that I've spoken with has been really blown away by having to do a little deeper on themselves, and seeing that that change makes a difference in their everyday life and their business life and things like that. So, I love that you, you built her up here, I'll make sure I send her a little clip of this, this chunk of the episode. Bill, look, I appreciate you coming on the show, I know this isn't something that you, like you even mentioned, you would normally do even a year ago, I appreciate you as a person, I appreciate you as a friend, and I'm really thankful you did this, buddy. Ben, I'm so thankful that you had me on, this has been great for me, it's always fun talking to you, and we'll have many more great conversations soon. Thanks for listening to the Drop Ship Podcast. You can find all the show notes for this episode at dropshippodcast.com, and if you're ready to take the next step in your drop shipping journey, we invite you to join us inside Drop Ship Breakthrough, where John and I will walk you through step-by-step in starting your own high-ticket drop shipping e-commerce business, but that's not all, Drop Ship Breakthrough will also teach you everything you'll need to know to grow your business and take it to the next level. So head over to dropshipbreakthrough.com and sign up for our free training that will help you take the first steps towards building and growing your own profitable high-ticket drop shipping business. John and I both love business, think about it all the time, can turn it off, and don't know why anyone would want to, and because of that, we started a second podcast where we can talk about everything we've ever wanted to talk about in business, not just drop shipping. We like talking about all things business. So if you want to hear John and I talk about all sorts of stuff from camel meat drop shipping businesses to PDF drop shipping, to a guy gambling $100 every single day on YouTube shorts to how only fans taught us lessons in business, we're all over the place over there, but it's a really fun podcast. So if you're a podcast listener, you love John and I, head over to your podcast player of choice and look for the low bar podcast. You'll see a blue image and you'll see a cartoon version of John and myself and go back and start an episode one. I promise you will not regret this. This is one of the more fun projects that I have done recently. I know John's having fun too, so we'd love it if you joined us. Check out the low bar podcast on YouTube or wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts.