 What's up guys, welcome to a new video. So in this one then, I'm gonna take you through the eight main things I've learned from being a dropshipper now for three and a half years. It was actually June 2016 in which I started and then I got my very first order on the 24th. So I was on a call then with a friend of mine last week, I'm helping him set up a store and he said what would be valuable for a video idea is to take people through the kind of things that they might not expect is involved with dropshipping. The sort of things you don't really hear people talking about. You'll hear people talking about Facebook strategies all day, products, et cetera, but you don't really hear many people talking about things actually going to run in a business. And trust me, when I first started, there were so many things I didn't really expect, so many mistakes I made. So hopefully by the end of this video then, you'll be more knowledgeable about what you have to do, the kind of things to expect so you'll be better prepared. Before we jump into the points then, just a very quick recap in case you are new to the channel. This was the very first store that I created, built, designed, added products to, ran Facebook as to, essentially, I did absolutely everything myself because I was on a shoestring budget. I decided to do everything. Things were very slow in the beginning and to be honest, it probably benefited me in the long run. So it was cool to shop Omnia anyway then. Omnia is Latin for everything, so hence shop everything, i.e. it was a general store. And as I've already mentioned then, I started in June 2016 and this turquoise bracelet then that you can see down in the top product section was the very first product I tested that I was actually able to make a sale with. There were five or six products before this that just completely tanked, didn't make a single sale. And just to prove that in fact, if we go all the way back to January 2016 and include June again, you can see that absolutely nothing in between. So this was the very first product in which I found some success with. Just to show you the next few months then so you can see how they went for me. July 2016 was nothing special, 360 pounds. I think if I remember rightly, I was pretty much just running one, I'd set out time on like five, maybe 10 pounds per day. Like I said, I was pretty tight on money when I first started. So the idea was to take things slowly and try and be profitable from day one so I didn't run out of money. I think that's one of the biggest mistakes I see beginners making is they try and go too big too quickly. They lose a ton of money, they get really disheartened and then they want to give up. Whereas if you start slowly and try and be profitable as much as possible from day one, then you're gonna be able to stay in business for longer. Anyway, 1200 pounds for August, September was a bit better, I believe of three and a half grand, again, not too bad. And then October was actually when things just started to go crazy for me in which I think, yeah, nearly 20K. So I think I hit my first four figure day as well. I did under 20 seconds. So as you can see, at that point, I was pretty happy with what was going on. And then I believe it was actually in December in which I left my job. What you'll notice as well is if you take a look at this top product section you'll see that it's the same product. So this was all with one potential product. Trust me, if you find that one product that does really well, it really can change your life. As corny as it sounds, it really can. And just to give you an idea then of how many orders I made for this store, obviously I'll block out the customer names, but you can see nearly 6000 orders. And if I just scroll down, just as bit of proof really, there's just pages and pages of different orders. So yeah, this was my first store then. If you wanna, in fact, if you wanna check out the link, the store is actually still live. So you can head over, see what kind of products I was selling. You can see the product page of my best selling product, which is here. And what this section is here that, where it says this Facebook comment is no longer available, it's because the page on Facebook has been unpublished. But basically what it was was people, when they bought a product and it arrived and they really liked it, rather than come on my store and leave reviews, more often than not, they would leave a comment on the post with an image or something. So what you can actually do with custom coding is embed those comments. And in terms of social proof, there's nothing better because obviously it's really legit. And people can see the comment, they can click on it, which will take them to the ad. They can see it's a real person that has bought the products that has left a genuine review. And in terms of social proof, then there's just no better than that. So that was my first store then. If you enjoyed the first half of the video before jumping to the points, please do hit that like button. And I do upload four to five videos a week as well. So if you haven't subscribed to my YouTube channel yet, please make sure you do. And with that being said, then let's actually get into the content of this video and move into the points. So point number one then is put yourself in buyer's shoes. What I mean by this then is that especially in the beginning, if you've never advertised a product or had any success within a certain niche with any kind of products, then it's gonna be really difficult to do, to judge whether somebody will actually buy a product or not. Even to this day, there's products in which I will see is almost like a guaranteed win and I'll spend 500 pound, maybe more advertising a product, trying to hang on to that one product because I believe it to be a winner in the case that it's just not. And it's just a waste of money. And vice versa too. There's products that I've tested for the sake of it because I've come across it and I've never seen it before. So I've tested it just for the sake of it, thinking not really knowing what's gonna happen and then it's done really well. So to kind of summarize this point up then is never make any assumptions until you actually test an audience or test a product or test an ad creative, then you'll never truly know whether it's gonna be a success or not. And this kind of leads me on to point number two. In fact, if I just get rid of the highlight, which is be emotionless. There's so, I've probably wasted thousands of pounds because I've been too emotionally invested in a certain product. You've probably seen it all the time. If you watch Dragon's Den, if you're in the UK or if you're in the US, the equivalent is Shark Tank, there'll be people that go on there and they've remortgaged their houses, they've spent their pensions on this product which at the end of the day just gets completely shot down by the investors. And it's because they become emotionally attached, emotionally invested to kind of translate this into drop shipping terms. The amount of times where I've ran ad sets and then increase the budget and I thought, I'll just run it for an extra day or just run it for an extra two days or an extra three days, hoping that it's gonna turn profitable when it just never does. So the best thing to do in this case is just completely cut your losses, move on to the next audience, move on to the next product and just take the hit but make sure that when you do, that you know why it's lost, why you've lost that money because the worst thing you can do is make a mistake and then not learn from it. Moving on to point number three then, if I just remove this highlight, is take immediate action. So don't wait for all the answers. I speak to probably 20 people a day on across all social platforms and one of the biggest reasons I see people not achieving what they want to achieve is because they just don't take immediate action. They try and prepare and find out all the answers before they just start. When in reality, when it comes to running a business, there's certain things that you'll just never be able to prepare for and the only way out to deal with them is just cross that bridge when you come, when it comes to crossing it essentially. Problems are gonna spring up all the time. There's gonna be certain things you don't expect and you just have to deal with them when those sorts of things happen. At the end of the day, there's always gonna be problems that come up. To give you an example then, when I was dropshipping those colors from Aliexpress, all the orders went through one particular supplier and there'd be anywhere from kind of like 100 to 150 orders per day and then all of a sudden the store just completely disappears from Aliexpress. At this point, I had the supplier on WeChat. We used to talk daily about order fulfillment, any problems, et cetera. And I basically just sent them a message saying like what the hell is going on? We've got like 300 orders that are essentially just canceled now. What the hell do you want me to do? And they said they were setting up a new store and it was gonna take a week before they got it ready, before they got product listings and essentially could start sending my orders again. It doesn't matter how many YouTube videos you watch, like nothing's gonna prepare you for things like that when they happen. So you may as well just start today, face your problems sooner rather than later because in the long run, it's gonna make you more resilient mentally. It's gonna make you more experienced and it's better to do something now rather than be a year down the line and then regret that you didn't do it sooner. Just to give you another example of where this applies. With drop shipping and the delivery times, you are gonna get those customers that just won't accept them and angry customers that won't be happy. And at points in the beginning, because I was inexperienced, I used to procrastinate on replying to those customers because I would always dread what their replies would be. And sometimes I would bury my head in the sand to be honest when that's just the worst thing you can do at some time. You're gonna have to face up to what's going on and deal with the problem. And trust me, becoming somebody who can take immediate action, whether it's for the positive or the negative, it's gonna, number one, it's gonna make you better at making decisions. So later down the road, when you have an even bigger decision to make, you're gonna be more prepared for it. And in general, it's just gonna make you a more efficient and a better business person. Moving on to point number four then, which is cash flow is king. So in the beginning then, it's probably something that never even comes into mind but trust me, it's something that you're gonna have to be prepared for and something you're gonna have to get good at. So for example, then that month in October, which I showed you, which I went from three and a half K to 20 K almost, pretty much like within a space for a week. All of a sudden I had thousands of pounds worth of orders to fulfill and no money to do it. And that was actually when I got my first ever credit card because that's pretty much the only option I had was to get a credit card so I could afford to pay for those orders. Another reason why cash flow was so important is because if you don't do it correctly, then you're gonna end up letting your customers down. And trust me, as a small business, your reputation and your customer service is everything. If you provide a poor service, especially to a significant amount of people on Facebook, in today's age, anybody can go on any of your social media platforms and comment on every single post saying that you're a scam and you've provided bad service and that is bad for business. Trust me, somebody coming in onto the page of a small business they've never heard of before, they're going to be skeptical as it is. If you let customers down and they start posting negative comments on your page, then it's just an immediate switch off and people are just gonna leave your page, they're not gonna trust you and they're not gonna spend money with you. So trust me, providing a good customer service is key to the longevity of your business. Moving on to point number five then, which is outsourced tasks that aren't skillful. So this was something that I struggled with in the beginning because I found it difficult, especially hiring people online to actually trust that they would do a good job. But when you do and you have somebody that can take a job off your hands and save you two to three hours a day so you can focus on the more important things, then it is a complete game changer. This is one of the most important things you can do in your business. Perhaps not in the beginning, I recommend everybody run their own business till they get to the point where they don't have the time to do so. The better understanding you have of order fulfillment product selection, advertising, then the better. So in the beginning, do everything yourself. But trust me, when you get to the point where you're struggling for time, as soon as you start outsourcing the tasks that aren't skillful. So for example, then one of the first tasks you should be outsourcing is the order fulfillment. It's not a very skillful job, pretty much anybody can do it. And it's quite a time consuming job too. You're looking at about 40 orders per hour. So if you're getting 120 orders per day, then that's three hours per day of your time that is spent just maintaining your business. Whereas if you bring somebody in to actually take over that job, it's gonna three up three hours that you can then dedicate to actually growing your business. And trust me, it's one of the most important things you can do. But it's a necessary thing, especially if you wanna grow your business to decent numbers. Once you hit about 100K in a 12 month period, that's a significant amount of time you're gonna be spending on just doing order fulfillment, especially if you're working in nine to five alongside that, you're really gonna struggle. So the more you can outsource like order fulfillment, like customer service, the more time you're gonna have to dedicate to actually growing your business. Moving on to point number six then, which is relationships are key. And this includes supplies and customers. So for example, then there's a Chinese holiday coming up early next year. One of the things I do is every Chinese holiday is I will contact everybody I know within a certain supplier. So there's usually probably one, maybe two guys that I'll speak to or women. And I'll always send them a message on WeChat just saying happy holidays, have a nice week off and look forward to speaking to you next week or just something along those lines to build those bridges, build that relationship. Because when they come back after a week off and they've got 10,000 orders to fulfill and a thousand of those are yours, then which ones are they most likely to process first? It's going to be the people that they actually like the most. It just makes sense. If you've had quite a few jobs, you've probably had quite a few different bosses. Think about all the different bosses you've had. Think about the ones that you didn't like. You probably didn't do your best work for them because you didn't like them. Whereas the bosses that actually are friendly with you and you see more as a friend rather than a boss, they're the people that you're going to do your best work for because it's just natural. It's just human instinctual thinking to be like that if that makes sense. It applies to customers too, especially as a small business. One of the biggest advantages we have over the likes of Amazon and eBay, et cetera, is that we have that more personal contact with the customer. And the better relationship we can build with them, the more friendly we can be. Ask them how their weekend was. Ask them if they're going on holiday this year, what they're up to over the holiday period. Then the more likely they are to actually like you, the better relationship you're going to have. And then if there is a problem later on down the line, because you already have built that initial relationship, then they're more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt. And trust me, it can make all the difference. Good example of this then is if you've ever been shopping for a car and you've been to many different dealerships and you've spoken to the salespeople that come out and try and speak to you about the car, if you get a rude one that doesn't really listen to what you're saying, it's just trying to throw a car down your throat and make the sale. Then it's going to put you off and you're not going to want to spend your money with that person. Whereas if a salesman comes out, asks you how you are, asks what your plans are for the day, what you've been up to, what sort of cars you've been looking at, what you're looking for in a car, then you're going to be more likely to spend your money with them because they've spoken to you, they've built that bond with you, they've listened to what you want. And when somebody is good and nice to you, then it's human instinct to be nice back. So just consider that next time you're talking or thinking about your supplies or your customers. Point number seven then, which is the customer is always right. And as it says in brackets there, unfortunately, the amount of emails I've received from customers and they just have opinions that I just don't agree with or just ridiculous comments or they're even lying, like customers will lie to you. They'll say one thing, completely change your mind in the next email or they'll pretend they haven't received an item and the amount of times, trust me, that I've wanted to send back a really kind of stern email and point out all the reasons why they're a bloody idiot, then trust me, you just can't do that. You have to be the bigger person and you have to write a friendly email back. You have to try and diffuse any situation because trust me, it comes back to the previous point. If you're nice back to them, it makes it that much harder for them to be horrible to you. So just stay professional at every point because the last thing you want to do is annoy someone even more, anger them even more and then just go out on some sort of like hate rampage and go on to your Facebook and comment on every single post for the last three years, every single post on Instagram because trust me, I've seen customers do it and it's not worth it. It's just not worth it. The best way to combat an anger customer is just to be super nice back to them and try and diffuse the situation. So just keep that in mind next time you get a customer that's annoying you. Moving on to the eighth and final point, then if we just get rid of the highlight once again, always be on the look for new products. So any successful business has to be growing. One of my favorite sayings is if you're not moving forwards, you're moving backwards and this ultimately links in with number five as well. If you can outsource tasks that aren't skillful, you'll have more time to grow your business and one of the ways you can do that is always be on the look for new products. The next best thing that nobody else is advertising because Facebook is a limited space. It's a massive huge space, but it's limited. So if you can be one of the first people that actually brings a product to Facebook that nobody's seen before, then sales can just completely explode within a space for a week and then all you've got to worry about is actually cash flow in your business which is point number four. So with that being said guys, that is all eight points. I hope you're still stuck with me the whole way through. I hope these points prepare you better for your journey into dropshiping. If you enjoyed the video, please do hit that like button. Any questions whatsoever, I read every single comment. So comment your questions below, I will add to them. And then finally, please do hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Once again, thanks very much for watching. I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you in the next one.