 Hello, everyone. Glad to have you here today. Today, I have a very special interview with Vetan, a very experienced dropshipper, and he's also leading his own dropshipping communities in Bulgaria. We're going to go over all of the details. So, as you know, I'm Liron, the content manager from AutoDS. Let's go ahead and begin this interview. Vetan, how are you? I'm great. Thank you. What about you? I'm also great. Thank you very much. Let's start off. Go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself. Okay, I'm starting with my dropshipping business seven years ago. Seven years ago, I was working as a software engineer. This is my education. And I started to sell some items in eBay. One of my best friends said, can you help me to sell these items? I have a supplier in the USA. We were having actual hiccups in that part. At that time, having a friend in China that sent items to the USA. And we started selling. A few months ago, we were finding DS Domination. Do you remember this software? Do you know it? DS Domination? No, I haven't heard of them. It was one American course, how to dropship from Amazon, from Walmart to eBay. But it was so hard. It was not having any software platforms. And my friend said, okay, let's buy the course and try it. We tried to sell from Amazon and Walmart. Everything starts going very well. Then a few months later, he told me, okay, let's create one electronic table that showed the out-of-stock products. And we were starting to create our first platform in the past. And I am the creator of the SM Pro. This is something that I created five years ago. A lot of people locally in Bulgaria, we have a very huge community in Bulgaria with dropshippers. Over 10,000 people follow me only on YouTube. Then we created the SM Pro. And a few years later, we started working to other tools. And because the market changed very often, and we also change our business very often, then we stopped supporting this platform. It's still working with some functions, but it's not repricer anymore. Then I started with the dropshipping, sell the items from China. After that, we start selling from Amazon. And in that, we start with building the software for dropshippers. That with from dropshippers to dropshippers. And this is my beginning of the dropshipping. It was seven years ago. Okay. Okay, so that answered my next question, which was how you started dropshipping. So you were actually, you just started your career as a software engineer. And so you had some friend actually come up to you and tell you, hey, come help me sell some items on eBay. And then you researched it, found an online course that probably doesn't exist anymore. And then you started actually getting your hands dirty with dropshipping. You started it also for yourself. And you also tried and you also had some software that's being like you said, SM products being discontinued in the Lister, but maybe doing other things. Yeah. The idea was pretty similar to be like out to DS. Just with the years, we take a lot of new projects and we grow in the dropshipping in Amazon FBA and we take decision to stop it because the competition is very high here. You know that a lot of softwares, a lot of platforms on the market and we just take that decision. It was very hard. This is something like to kill your baby to stop your software that you work for these years. Right. But we find actually we will learn a lot from that. Okay. So you started, you said it was seven years ago actually dropshipping when it was actually, even today it's a good time to start because you know it's obviously still working. Many people are still profiting, but starting seven years ago was actually a very, very good time to start. There wasn't a lot of competition, but on the other hand, you didn't have the automation. You couldn't scale, like you can scale your scores today. So it's different, it's different. I remember that when I started the dropshipping, the first year when I started with sale from Amazon and from Walmart to eBay, this is the second model that we start choosing after the course. I remember that every morning I wake up and start watching the Excel file, Excel table and start checking my products on hand one by one. And this was the beginning of the beginning. Actually it was pretty, pretty hard to start from my location at times because no information, how to create AOC in USA, how to find very good suppliers, a lot of things that you need to do, but no information at all. Now it's full with information only with your channel. I watch a big part of the movies in your channel. And only with your channel, some dropshippers can start and learn and also Lyle tell me that you have a mentorship program. Right. Then only with a few bucks and you can take all knowledge on the world and to start in this business. It's very easy to start. Definitely. So like you said correctly back then, not only were there not any programs to help you, any software to help you with price monitoring, stock monitoring, you used to use Excel file to check the prices, to check the stock and there was also no knowledge. So you want to look up new suppliers, like you said. You want to open an LLC in the United States. No information at all how to do these things and how to go about it. So you learned the hard way. Yeah. But you also learned at a good time. So, okay. So that's very interesting. So you came across AutoDS how long ago? Because I know that you are also a dropshipper but you also have a community of dropshippers in Bulgaria. So I know that recently maybe you started the AutoDS but how long ago was it? Actually, to be honest, once after we stopped the support of the hour two, I drank a lot of the tools of the market like a screw grid, a lot of tools. I will not say any anymore. I don't want to do any advertising here. And I tried them. But after some of our friends in Bulgaria also have the platform for a Lister, with Lister and Repricer. And they are not having any new futures last year. And in the beginning of this year, I start and ask my students here. I have 13,000 registered people from Bulgaria in free course for online business, how to start in dropshipping, how to start with your own web store. And I ask my community, how is there any good tool that they are okay with? And most of the people that sell a lot tell me about your platform. And they tell me, okay, test it. To be honest, I didn't test it before. I know about how to just maybe from three or four years, but I started using the platform four months ago. The first thing that I like here is that you can do the orders for me because the main problem of my community is that they didn't have LLC in USA. And they didn't have an option to buy from Walmart, from Home Depot, from websites that you support. Right, because they cancel their orders after they do them, even if they can. It happens for us too. Yeah, they try with weeks, I'm sorry, with transfer wise. It's wise right now with Pioneer, with a lot of Revolut and other companies, but most of my students still have problems to buy with the Bulgarian or European cart. And this is the best solution that we find. Your platform that have ability to buy the items for the dropshippers. This is always some options. We, to be honest, I was using other services before test out to DS, but out to DS is the best service that I find for the dropshippers. This is the reason that I start to record some videos and to show to my community how they can join and can use your software. Okay, well, I'm glad to hear it. First of all, thank you. And I can also relate to that. Like I said, for international sellers buying from Walmart and Home Depot and places like that, if you don't live in the United States, like me, like you, like thousands of other dropshippers, either you won't be able to put your order at the supplier's website or you can put the order, but after that they will cancel it or so many other problems. So one of the things is really the order automation like you mentioned. Not to talk about Amazon locking so many accounts two years ago, that's when I found out about order automation. And I am also a customer of AutoDS before I started working in this company. And that is just, I would just start it as a regular customer. Even today I'm a regular customer in AutoDS. I have my dropshipping stores there. And order automation, once that came in, it really changed a lot of things for me too. So I'm glad that, you know, what the things that I'm going through, I see that people around the world are also, you know, going through it and we find the solutions and it's great. Okay, so when you are going on to product research for your stores, how do you conduct product research? How do you know what products you need to sell or your students? How do they look for their products? How do they find them? Before I start using your tool, in the beginning of the beginning, if I can say that, we use them manual. Go to eBay, start seeing what seller or go to the category and start checking the products with right click of the mouse, search by image or with the title, go to the Amazon. Try to find the source, yeah. Yeah, this is the beginning of the beginning. Yes. Last few years, another guy from Israel, Nahar, he's my friend, supports maybe one of the best tools, Zika Analytics. And I hope to my community with that, because the Zika Analytics do a very good job. Actually, they have new features every year, new version, a lot of new stuff that you can test. They are not very expensive. And most of my students, especially the new one, that don't have a lot of experience, use the Zika Analytics. Also, my team use the Zika Analytics. Mainly here is that, because my main mission in Internet is to help to others also. I'm owner of the stores on WooCommerce, FBA, we have a manufacturer, and maybe 60% from the items that I sell are in my own stock or are manufactured for me with my brand. Then only 40% or less than 40% are dropshipping right now, to be honest. And we search them with Zika Analytics mainly. This is the platform that helped me a lot to search them with Zika. Okay, so you are selling on WooCommerce, you're selling on Amazon FBA, 40% of the products are dropshipping products, 60% of the products you're actually manufacturing, branding, and holding in stock. And let's talk about the structure. So do you think that it is right or is this what you are doing? First, you are testing dropshipping products, you're seeing what sells, and once you start to find products that are selling well, then you are contacting your manufacturer and trying to create that product, like you are starting from dropshipping products and then learning what you should bring to stock. Yeah, and also I want to say something very important here then, as I told in the beginning, the market changed very often. If you ask me, is the dropshipping in Amazon working good one year ago? Maybe my answer was in that part one year ago, was to say no, no, totally no, they stop all the dropshippers. If you ask me same question two years ago, I will say, yeah, it's definitely worked very well because we was dropshipping from Amazon to Amazon and we do a lot of profit two years ago. But if you ask me today, is it work? Yeah, it's work again. It start working, we find some tracking software, your software also have tracking option, and yeah, it start working great. And I start with the Amazon FBA, but with my own white label a few years ago, it was working with great, great profit. Now, mainly I resell the items that are cheap in UK. They are small and light. Did you hear about small and light? Small and light? Maybe you didn't know in Amazon Co. UK. You have ability to sell the items that are pretty small, that are less than nine pounds. You can sell them and you have very, very cheap delivery from Amazon. And you have very great, very good profit. And my main profit now from Amazon in UK is from our FBA with small and light items that I resell. I just find the wholesaler and buy the items and move them in the stock, in Amazon stock. And this is the something that I find and it's working very well. Then I manage the stores, I manage the dropshipping in eBay, dropshipping in Amazon. And the main reason here is that I want to help to the people. And if you want to help to the people, you need to sell different ways and just to check, is it work? How it's work? How it's changed? I can tell you something that I'm sure that one year after, it will work very good. AliExpress, start delivery items in Europe with free shipping that are three times cheaper for three, four, five days. Because Jack Ma creates the stores in whole Europe. Then after a year, Amazon will not be the main supplier here in the dropshipping in Europe. People that sell in Amazon, UK or Germany, they will use AliExpress because AliExpress will be three times cheaper with five days delivery and it will not have any problem and quality is same as the Amazon one. Then after a year, if we speak again, and you ask me which is the main source of income that you have, which is the best model that you follow, maybe the model will be totally different because model change all the time. Very good points. Very good points and very good tips. The market is changing all the time. What's happening today is not what's happening last year. What's happening last year is not what happened two years ago. That is very, very true. And I think I would like to say that it's very nice to, I like seeing mentors, tutors, people who are teaching other people, but from experience. That is also, of course, what we are doing, but I'd like to see that happening too because you know how we said that a few years ago, there was not a lot of information out there. And today there's way too much information if you look, if you search for dropshipping right now on YouTube, you're going to get so many videos from so many experts and professionals. And I can tell you that most of them are not really doing it or they did it in the past and now they're just teaching, but you are doing everything from experience. You're testing different markets, different regions, different products, and you're giving this information to your community. I think that that's a great thing and you are actually a role model for dropshippers and that is very, very nice to see. Thank you. And also the tip that you gave about Amazon UK, which is something that I never know. So you learn something every day with light products up to nine pounds, very, very fast shipping in the UK. Also very, very interesting. Everybody can find this when right in the Google small and light Amazon Co UK, he will find the program, what's the specification because the item need to be light, not big. And less than nine pounds. They have exact specification in the Amazon. You can read it and just find the products that are, I will share one more secret here then. We searched the items that are below 50,000 rank also. 50,000 what? Amazon rank. Amazon rank? Yeah, 50,000, below 50,000 and maybe they will have 10 or 15 people that sell same item. But Amazon periodically just changed the drop box, a buy box, I'm sorry, the buy box. The buy box. And just if you have 50 items in stock and they are small and light, you have big chance to have a lot of sales every day. Just you win the buy box of some of the items, you lose it from some of the items, but every day it's rotating and you have a really good chance to sell a lot. Yeah, you'll definitely get some of those sales. Okay, okay. Okay, very nice. Let's move on to our next question. So we talked about product research, drop shipping when you are using, when you are looking for suppliers or when you are testing your suppliers, what suppliers do you use mostly? We talked a little bit about Amazon and Walmart, mainly in the beginning. Are there other suppliers that you are using today? I'm talking for drop shipping because of course when you're using the manufacturer, then that's your only one supplier. But for drop shipping suppliers, are there any other suppliers that you are working with, you or your students? Yeah, when I start in the drop shipping, this was only Amazon and Walmart. Right. But now we use a lot of sites that are not listed anywhere. With the time we find different places, contact them, ask them, is it possible to buy from them? Are they working with the drop shippers? Actually, when somebody starts in the business, it's very good to use Aliexpress, Amazon, some proven supplier that have three days delivery option. Right. Yeah, the price is a little bit high and the competition there is much higher. Right. But you have great service. Good. In Amazon Prime, you have two days delivery. Then I suggest everybody when start in the drop shipping to use the main suppliers just for experience and just for the to have ability to rise in eBay because it's very important in the beginning to not have any negative feedbacks, any cases in your account. But right now I use around 20 suppliers from USA. Some of them are not listed anywhere. In UK, I have few one, maybe three or four websites that nobody in the internet say I use them, I drop ship from them. And they have some items that sell very well, but you can find them in Amazon, in Walmart. They are special items that I know that they're working very well, to be honest. Then I use a lot of suppliers. I use support, maybe more than 25 suppliers. Right. If I remember this, right? Yes. And I suggest everybody when have some experience to start to test, to find some products. And as you tell this early, it's full with the information in internet. Yes. But the main thing here is everybody need to find his own way. Then take something, test it. It's working or it's not working. Even if I ask 100 people from my community, which is the best dropshipping tool, maybe I will receive 30% one tool, 30% another one, 30% the third one. Some of them will say non-API, some of them will say API software, some of them will say I use only the tables, no software, software do the market very bad. Then everybody need to find his own supplier and put this. Everybody needs to find their own way at the end of the day. Like you said, there is many suppliers out there. And like you said also, for dropshippers who are just starting out, use something that's easily accessible to you. Like we just mentioned, Amazon is a great place to start. AliExpress is a great place to start and it's better to go US to US, for example, and not China to USA. Don't start with long shipping times. You want to get, like you said, strong feedback at the beginning. And so when you are looking for your suppliers in the beginning, use something that's handed to you. Like for example, if you got 25 suppliers here with price and stock monitoring, most of them with auto ordering, start with something that you already have. Once you start getting sales and you want to take it to the next level, not after five sales more. When you have good sales in your store, do you know what products are selling? Then you can start doing the next things that you were talking about, which is try reaching out to new suppliers, suppliers that nobody knows about, that nobody is talking to them and try to work with them. Find suppliers who are selling products that are selling well for you and look for private suppliers. But once again, that is the next step. If you start drop shipping and you start looking for suppliers, you're sending emails, waiting for answers, it's very, very difficult to start this way. So like you said, start with something that's out there for you, like Amazon Prime, two-day shipping, easy returns, easy to manage your business this way. So it's a little bit harder to sell. You have to work hard on product research on finding the right products, but you will sell if you put in the right work, if you put in the right time and you do the right methods for product research. So like you said, also, there's so much information out there today, YouTube videos, mentors from here until there. But if you're taking the relevant information, take a little bit from here, take a little bit from here, take a little bit from here. Like you said, test this, test this, test this. The more testing that you do, you'll start to see the results. Nobody can work on this so hard and not see results. Only lazy people who are trying for one week and they see that it's not working and then they say, okay, it's not working. And actually I have one big tip here. It's like when you have a pain in your head, if you go to one doctor, he will say, take these pills. But if you visit 10 doctors, you will receive 10 different receipts for 10 different pills. Good point. Some of them will say, this is from stress. This is because you don't sleep enough. Another one will say, you have migraine. You know how it's working, actually. Then the most important here is to give the time to the thing that you test. Don't listen to everybody in the internet. Just find one person that you like. It's the main reason when somebody asked me, why to pick you as a mentor? Why to pick you not the other one or why to buy your course, not the UDM course? And I always say, if you don't like me, if you don't like what I'm saying or if you don't understand what I'm saying or if you feel uncomfortable to listen to my voice, don't pick me, please, because you will need to listen to me 10 hours, 12 hours and we'll interrupt you. Then the first and main reason is to, when you follow somebody to like him, to say, okay, this is somebody that will help me. And the second main thing is to follow him enough time to take the advices and to test them. Because everybody want perfect body and take the steroids. But who does not take the steroids? After five years, still have the perfect body. The other one, maybe after one or two years, he will fucked up the body and will stop having good results. This is very important. Right, right. Nice tips. I really like that. I really like that. Okay, what is your main, I think you mentioned this a few minutes ago, but what is your main mission here? How do you see the future? What are your real future goals? Where are you going from here? Okay, it's my main mission or? Yes. Okay, then I'm from very small country. Where will you live now in Tel Aviv? Close, yeah. It's close to Tel Aviv. How much people have in this city? Where in Tel Aviv? Yeah, around. A lot. I don't want to give the wrong answer and embarrass myself a lot. It's the most popular city in Israel. How big is Israel, actually? I think we got about nine million civilians today in Israel. Nine million? Okay, then Bulgaria is a smaller country with six million people. And if you go in USA, you have 200 million, 280. If you count the Mexico and Canada, then I'm from a small country. And if I lie to people, if I do something wrong, if my mission is to help them, but actually to steal them, to take the money from them, to lie to them, to say I sell, but really to sell only the curse or something like that. Everybody will know that it's you. Yeah, after a year, everybody will know me as a person. That is Cheetah. And my main mission in my life at all, not only in the dropshipping, in every business that I do, is to do the things that I can do every day of my life without feel boring, without feel tired. Then the life is not a sprint. It's a marathon. It's something that you can do all your life, not only two or three months. And my main mission is to help people, to do the stable business, only stable business. I know that the dropshipping is not the stable business model. You know, all the time, some Amazon account will be stopped, some eBay account will be stopped. You need to reboot again to create a new account, new store. After that, they stop you again. Dropshipping in Amazon is same. FBA is same. Market change all the time. And you need to adapt, to adapt, to adapt again and again every next day. And my mission is to help people to have ability to adapt easier. Just to go and to say, okay, this is the exercise that you need to do. This is the way that work now. And I love to be in my community because I learn all the time from my friends. They are my friends, my community. We do meetings, we do seminars, we do a lot of events here in Bulgaria. And when I give some information to you today, now I share my experience, after a week you will come and will say, okay, Vitan, show me how you do this. Can I also find some items to sell them in FBA? And I will show you. But after one year you will come and you will say, okay, do you know, I find one way that can sell much more in Amazon. And I want to share with you. And my main mission is to give to the others without expecting anybody, anything from anybody. And everything come back one day. Just when you help, you are happy. I completely agree with what you're saying there. And also on the fact that your main mission is really to help others, but you're not just helping on a general level, you're really getting down into a low resolution and helping people not just create your dropshipping store and just base the guidelines, but also how to adapt to changes. Like you said, there are many changes that happen in dropshipping. And in my five years of dropshipping, I've had quite a few changes almost every year where I thought at least two times that maybe it's not going to work. Maybe it's not, but I worked, yes. And then you work really hard to overcome that. And then everything is stable again. Everything is good again. You found the solutions. Now everything is good. So you're also helping your students adapt to the markets, adapt to the things that are going on. It's not just general things. And then after a couple of months, it's like, okay, you know everything, goodbye, good luck. So, okay, so that answers the question of what actually your main mission is. And that's... Did you know when I'm starting with the dropshipping, because my friends say, okay, let's do this, let's start selling. And when I find the course, how to sell from Amazon to eBay, in the first moment, I was thinking like maybe every other person in the world, why somebody will buy this glass from me for $10? If he can buy it from Amazon for $5? And I go and can ask my friends that they never see the dropshipping. They just hear about this or they hear from me. And a hundred percent from my friends say, man, nobody will buy something from you more expensive. Yeah. If he can buy it more cheap, it's no other opinion here. And I asking my friends. And if I listen my friends in this part of my life, I will never start with the dropshipping. That's right. When you ask for advice from somebody, just see him and think, do you want to be like him? Or is he has some results in the same thing? Then if I want to invest in the real estate and I come to you and I ask you, before I ask you what to think about this, I will ask you, do you have your own house? Do you have investment here? If you don't have investment, I will not listen to you about that. Exactly. Yes. This is the most. You're not going to ask someone for real estate tips if he's not into real estate. Just like you're not going to ask someone who is not dropshipping what he thinks about dropshipping or ask someone who tried and failed. Also not a good idea, because many people do try and fail, but you also have the other side of people that try and succeed and they're still doing it today. Like me. Yeah. And I do. I do this all the time in Bulgaria for regret is in Bulgaria and because most of my community is in Bulgaria, I find people that already sell in Etsy, in eBay, in Amazon and I say, OK, OK, come here in my channel and share your experience and they come and share. And do you know, I start with this one year ago and I'm very glad to say that only for last one week, I have 10 people that call me and say, yeah, I watch you for Etsy and I want to share my experience also here. Then help help. They start thinking and start seeing that if you share, you feel good. You help to others. Yes. Yes. I know what you mean. My point here. Thank you. OK. OK. Next question. Also you answered, but I will ask anyway, are there a lot of people dropshipping in Bulgaria? I think you said around how much? 20,000 in in my country, my YouTube channel is watched from around 50,000 people. Well, on my education, in my platform, my free book and my free course for e-commerce. It's not only for dropshipping because I sell in my stores also. Yeah. It's around 30,000 people. Then I think that it's full with dropshippers in Bulgaria. It's full with people that sell not only in eBay and Amazon. I met with people with friends yesterday from my city that sell in Facebook groups, in Facebook Marketplace also, in Shopify. Yes. It's full with people that sell everything. OK. Nice. By the way, we started supporting Facebook Marketplace I think one month ago. Today we have anyone who wants to dropship on the Facebook Marketplace, also with price and stock monitoring. And this is really profitable. I don't know if you tried it, but it's very profitable. We have a couple of accounts. We have virtual assistants running them. And I'm making a live case study on the Facebook Marketplace. I'm recording and I'm showing them everything. This is the product. This is where I'm buying it from. This is what I'm selling. This is how much I'm profiting. I'm not blurring anything. I really want people to learn about the Facebook Marketplace. I will share with you some of my experience. Marketplace here, Facebook Local Marketplace in Bulgaria starts a little bit more than a year from this point. In the beginning, without any advertising, just list something and start selling. It was very, very good. But after that, with the time, you know, the competition started rising. And maybe the last seven, eight months, it's not moving very well, actually, with the sales. And people here, I don't know how it's in Israel. I know how it's in USA. In USA, it's totally different. In UK also. In Bulgaria, we start, we have manufacturing for, how to say it, when to sell the glasses. Print the t-shirts. Print on demand. Yeah, we have print on demand here in Bulgaria. I have partners for that. And we start selling the print on demand for the people that's driving a truck, big machines. In the beginning, we're asking for a debit card. And no sales, just a lot of money for advertising. Everybody see it, nobody buy. And I say, okay, let's try to click, just to put one button, not buy it, write us. And they start writing and one button for call us. And they start calling and say, I am in this village, just send me the two t-shirts here. Then people in Bulgaria still didn't buy online. They buy offline. Okay. But this is something that I say before. It's very important to fill the market, to test the market and to see. Now with a five dollars budget, I sell much more than in the beginning with a hundred dollars per day. For sure. For sure. Only because I changed the buy it now with the call me. And one person just take the phone and say, okay, where to send it. That's a very good tip. So every location has its own market. They have their own personality. How they're going to respond to whatever call to action button you have. Some like to click on buy it now. And some will want the call button. Some will want something else. So like you said, test the market is definitely, definitely one of the best tips that we can really give here in this interview. And just to finish off on the Facebook marketplace, because you said you don't know how it is in Israel. You know how it is in Bulgaria. Of course, if you're going to list something on the Facebook marketplace, it's only going to be locally. So you have to find like the best method to try to sell locally. But what I meant was actually dropshipping on a Facebook marketplace and having all of the United States, 50 States, see your listing. So not just one small location, but 50 States to see your listing. And then there's lots of views and there's lots of sales and the competition is really, really low. You don't have to do any competitor research. Just go to Amazon or Walmart, take the best sellers and add them and it's working. But you have to have a US IP address. So if you don't have a US IP address, you're only going to sell locally. Is it work from a proxy or VPN? Did you test it? Yes, yes. That's what I can't really get into the details. I'm sure you can tell why because it's like, you know, business practices. But yes, you can do it. But anyway, once you reach $600 in sales, Facebook wants social security number verification. So if you don't have one or if you don't know someone in the US who can give you one, you won't be able to continue after $600 in sales. Can I use my LLC in USA? I have AIN number and EATIN number also. Yes. Is it possible? Yes. But if you want, I can talk to you about it after this interview and I will help you set it up. I will share something. I have a few partners in USA, American that work there. Then it's not a problem. Just I will say to my partner, create this and give me the address. So you won't have any problem and I think you're going to be surprised with when 50 states are going to see your listing. With the results. Yes, yes. I will test it. Yeah, I definitely will test it. I never sell in the Facebook marketplace in USA before now. I only use the local market. Yeah, I could tell from your answer. So that's why, okay, we'll talk about it after. Okay, so the dropshipping stores and also the inventory stores, all of the stores that you have, are you managing them by yourself? All of them by yourself or do you have? Go ahead. No, it's not possible. I have a little team in Bulgaria with people that help me with the clients, with customer support. I have office in India with actually 17 or 18 people right now. I am not sure how much they are because they are also in lockdown and they work from home. My manager from India, I show him all the time in my channel in Bulgaria, in my English channel. We record a video last week because he also managed the other people stores. He helps other people to start in Amazon and help them with research on hand products for Amazon FBA. Okay. And yeah, they manage all my stores. They manage all my business. They help me a lot with the orders, with the customer support. Because before I find out to DS, as a tool that can place the orders for me, this was something that I do on hand. I was having first a crew in Bulgaria with six people here locally in my city and a few partners that helped me to write a software, to support the software. Because if you have software, the work is never done. Right. You always have something that it's not working or something that it's changing. And this is the reason that I stopped with the software. It's too much work. And I find better ways for business. And I have around a little bit more than 20 people, actually. If I count this in Bulgaria, programmers, designers and people that edit the videos for my channels, then a little bit more than 20. Wow. And that just proves to show that anyone who wants to start scaling your stores or your business at one point, remember that you only have 24 hours in one day and there's a limit to how much one person can do in those 24 hours. You also need to sleep. You also need to eat. You also need to do other things. So at the end of the day, there is a limit to how much you can do. And if you want to pass that limit, it's only by getting workers, only by getting employees. And this is a good thing. You don't have to be afraid to share your profits in order to help your business grow. And the right time to do it is, of course, once you start profiting on your first day, don't get workers because you're just going to lose money. You can't have someone run your business if you don't know how to run your business yourself. So you're running your business. You're starting to get the profits. Once you have enough profits to get your first employee, do it. And then your business will start to grow. OK. So that answers the question if you manage your stores by yourself. And you have, of course, a good answer there. So we start with my manager in India. Five years ago, he was freelancer, one guy. After that, he said, OK, I will put my brother here. After that, we start going well. They say, OK, we can put one friend here again and again and again. And now before the virus, it was an office with 20 places, with 20 computers. But now everybody works from home. They're for a great deal in lockdown from two months. And they will be locked down maybe a lot of time. But they're still working. It's a little bit hard to manage the people from Bulgaria in India in the beginning. But after that, we use some very good tools. I want to give some tip. We use Gira before I was using Asana because I was working. I have a lot of experience with the software business. And you know, everything needs to be split on tasks. Everything needs to be run after that to be tested. And I do this in the dropshipping. The business model that I found and I follow, actually, is a McDonald's business model. Then one guy only research, one guy only list, one guy only serve the orders. And it's very easy when somebody say, I don't have time to work or I will not work anymore to find somebody because you need to teach this guy only on one thing. He needs to do only one thing. And it's very easy to change the personnel from VA from one to another. If you try to teach one guy to do everything, whole business for you, it's not good because if he say, I will not work anymore, this is some process that you need to spend three months again. Yes. And also when I work with my guys, always when I work with my guys, if this is a business meeting and you will be my VA, I will record this session, we will put it unlisted in my YouTube. And if I want to hire some one person, one more person to do same, I just will send him the record and will say, OK, open task in Jira. Create the notes, watch the video, give me the task with the notes and I will decide are you hired or you are not hired. This is the thing that I do. This helps a lot to manage the business, to delegate it, right? It's great tips. I can't say it's enough. It's great tips, what you're saying. The things that you are saying are actually things that we are also implementing in our company on AutoDS. And this company is being run in a very organized way, very organized fashion from the top to the bottom. And many things that you said are very relatable for what's going on here, too. So really, again, great tips. And like you said, it's much better to have each person to have their own profession on your store, on your business. In the beginning, of course, when you hire your first virtual assistant, they will have to know more than one thing. But once you're starting to grow and you have more workers, each one needs to do their own thing, have pre-recorded videos, pre-recorded guides, PDF files, whatever. And that way, it's much easier to also switch them when they want to leave the job and you want to hire someone else. So I'm saying this to liar, but I will say it here again. And I will say it every next time when I speak with somebody from your team. I'm impressed from your 24-7 support. We test it because I record video in Bulgaria and say, okay, guys, they say 24-7. Test them in the morning, at the lunchtime, at the evening. Is there anybody to reply? And yes, you are 24-7. And the second one, as I thought, I don't want to lie anybody. I don't want to say in my video that you have big crew, you have support, you put the orders, 30,000 people to see my video. And after two months to come back and to say, Oviton, you lie me, you say that they have support, they not place my orders, and they fact my business and now it's your fault. I live with the problems of my friends here and I want to be clear, I want to not lie anybody. This is the first rule in the life. If you want to grow, to not lie anybody, to be honest. Yes, and it's a very, very good approach. Same thing as we're doing also, we're trying to show people that we're not trying to sell them dreams or something that they really cannot do. We're always trying to teach the newcomers to the dropshipping scene that it's not easy. You have to learn, you have to try, you have to test, and you have to keep going. Those that stop after a week are going to go and tell all of their friends that dropshipping is dead and it's not working and they tried it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but like I said, and all of your tips here, really you are spot on. And just so you guys know, for all of our listeners, we didn't go over the answers or anything or what we're going to do before the interview. Of course, we did a review on the questions, but not any more than that. So I completely agree with your approach of complete honesty. You don't want other, in one or two months from now people are chasing you telling you, hey, in the video you said this and it's actually that and you're a liar and all of that, nobody wants that on their record. So yeah, we're definitely working out of pure honesty and I'm glad to hear that from you. And when I was a customer in Autodesk, like I also mentioned in the beginning of this interview, when I was only a customer and I didn't even think about maybe working here or I had a full-time job and I was also dropshipping on the side. One of the things that I really noticed here is the customer service. And for me, not just in dropshipping, but everywhere I go and I'm buying something from somewhere, I'm looking for customer service. It's something that's very important for me. So it's one of the things, yes, sure. Something, is it possible to, if your community have some questions to me, just to put them in the comments below in the video, just I will come here after a week and after two weeks I will not forget. I will put this in my schedule and will answer them because I think that it's very important when you give values to someone, when you say I want to help, just to have to spend some time to help him, really to help. Then if you have some questions, how to start with something that you hear in the video and if you have some personal questions to me, just don't hesitate to contact me below the video in the comments. I will be here for you to help. Great, great. So there you have it guys. Anyone who's here on YouTube, ask your questions below and if Edwin will just come and answer in a week or two, maybe less. But either way, you'll get a notification when he answers. Go ahead and ask your questions guys. For those of you listening on the podcast, just go to our YouTube channel, find the interview and ask whatever questions you want and just get the answer from a true honest person, the one here that I have in front of me. So thank you for that. I also appreciate it. We also very much believe in giving this value to our viewers too. We are also personally answering our viewers questions if you saw our videos. Almost everyone who's replying to our videos is getting a reply from us if they have questions, if they have problems, things like that. So I also believe of course in this approach of being active and also answering your community and not just one-sided where you are giving information but it can't go also the other way. Yeah, I waiting for the feedback and for the questions. Great, so go ahead guys, start writing them below. Okay, let's see what other questions we have left for this interview. When you were dropshipping or not just dropshipping but all of the e-commerce businesses that you have handled in the last seven years, do you remember any specific troubles, any specific struggles that you had, something that was really hard for you to do, to work, to pass? I make sure you remember things that if I share everything that I remember maybe it will take us 10 hours or more. One main thing. One, okay, you want the main thing that, like problems? Yeah, some problem that you had sometime along the way under the last seven years of your e-commerce journey, just give me any problem that comes into your mind and what you did for the solution, how you solved it. So I will give you, not one, I will give you the two. Two main. The first one was with the gift cards. As you know, a lot of people use Spaxful or some other sites to buy the gift cards and one morning I wake up this year at the beginning of the year, March month and all my Amazon accounts was closed. This was a little bit before I give trust to your software, a little bit before that, maybe two weeks. Sorry, this year it happened? Yeah, in the beginning of this year. I was still buying with some discounted cards, not from Spaxful, from other sources, but they was working very good. And I just woke up with a lot of orders and all my Amazon accounts was stopped at the same time. With the money inside, all the money that you had inside, the gift card money? No option to buy the items. Some of them are limited. You can buy only one or two from one Amazon account. Then it was a very big nightmare, but thanks to my community, I just write in my group, I say I have 300 orders for the last two days. Please, somebody to help me. A lot of people say, okay, send me money here, send me money there, I will buy them for you. And they helped me to just to keep going. I will stop my stores for a while, just double the prices for my items. And we start and find the solution. And the second one was actually, this problem finished one week ago. I was stopped from UK, from eBay, to review my managed payment to all my stores at the same time. And they say, everything is fine. We will not send you any money, just we will confirm that you are really you. And no problem, we will unlock your money after that. Okay, but you wait one week after that, one more week, one more week, everything is locked. You keep selling, you don't receive your money, you keep buying. And one day they can say, oh no, you are not legible. And we will close your account with the money with 20,000 or with 10,000 pounds inside. They can do this. And I was very worried about that. And one week ago, they send me the message. I stopped for a short period too. I was scared a little bit. And I stopped for a short period to sell. I have LLC in UK also. And they unlock my money and send my money to my bank. Then the thing that I want to share here is the main thing with these two problems is that every problem have a solution. When you have a business, you are solution guy. You are the person that find the solutions. Then all my team work like that. Somebody started the video, start list, diet and start speaking with the wholesale. He has a problem. If he don't have ability to fix this, he go to the manager. If manager don't know, they go to me. If you want to have a business, you need to be ready to have a problem and to solve it. This is the difference between the people that have success in the dropshipping and those one that say always, this don't work. And also listen. I give up, I give up. They just give up. Like I have this problem. Not sure how to solve it. This is not going to work. Bye-bye. When you hear from somebody, this don't work, just hear him, not for one minute, for 10 minutes. And you will see that, he will say that for any other thing in the life. He will say, the gym don't work, the other work don't work, this cryptocurrency don't work. He will say this to any idea that you have. Then this is the difference between success guys and the haters that always say this don't work. I cannot agree with you more. And I had the same problem with you with the gift cards, not this year though. I wish you would have seen our YouTube channel before that because it happened to me, I think two years ago. And this is one of the biggest problems that I had too. This is one of the times where I thought that's- Two years ago. This is the end, yeah, two years ago. If I'm not mistaken, a year and a half at least, I remember this was a huge, huge problem. We were buying discounted gift cards. I was buying them for $75 and I was getting a $100 gift card and I was using them and I was profiting really, really well. And I thought that this is the best way to profit. And like you said, just woke up one morning, the Amazon accounts are not working, all of my money is locked inside. I can't tell what's going on with the orders that I had on those accounts. And then I had a choice to make, either I'm going to give this up or I'm going to try to fight it and find a solution because it was working so well and it would be such a waste to throw it away because of a problem. Even if I cannot fulfill my orders for a few days until I found solutions, and then we started to find solutions. First, I found a solution. I found someone who was creating Amazon accounts that work. So you can just get the account, log in, put in your balance and start issuing the orders. And then I started dropshipping his services for other dropshippers who need accounts. So I started profiting from this also. So I was dropshipping his service to other people that needed it. A lot of people needed it. I made great profits for two months. And after that, his accounts started to stop working too. Now I figured that I need to find another solution. And then I found automatic orders. I'm not just talking automatic orders where it's using your buyer accounts, but automatic orders where the system is using their buyer accounts. So it's not, because the first automatic orders that we had, we were using your buyer accounts, your payment methods, and we will just do the order for you, process it for you. But today, like you know, you don't need to have any accounts. Everything is being done for you. So it's much easier. So yeah. Everything is saved. Then you just need to focus on the sales. And you know that you have somebody to do the orders, the rest. Yes, the orders, the returns. So... This is the main reason that I prefer FBA. The main reason. Then I need to focus on it to find the product that is so very good. And the rest is done from the Amazon. This is the main reason that I like FBA. I also have some items on FBM. And in the past, I was doing to, I was working to create my own brand white labels, but it's a lot of resource. And you can buy some cream, Hilton Beauty. This is still my main category. You find some cream, you buy the cream for 10,000 euros. This is the minimum quantity from the manufacturer. They put this in Amazon. You have two years or one and a half year. After that, this product is not useful because it will expire. And if you don't sell it, just you will lose 10 or 15,000 euros. This is the reason that I start suggest to the people. Find something that already work. Do it. The profit is not so big. The profit is only 20%, 30%. The profit is not 70% like your own brand. Yeah, but if you don't sell it, you buy only for small and light 25 items. Then also for the drop shipping, you find the product, list the product. It's not sell. Okay, stop it, no problem. Just find another one. You don't lose money for that. This is only one business in the world that first you receive the money, after that you pay for the product. Yes, that's why it's interesting for a lot of people that want to learn how to do it. Yeah, and I work with a lot of businesses here in my country and a lot of businesses work a lot and didn't get the money from the client at all at the end. Then this is very good business model. This is something that will never die. Very often people say, yeah, drop shipping will die next year. Drop shipping will never die. It exists before me and you even know about it. It exists before me and you know about it. Yeah, it's always going to be there. eBay didn't have any stock. They didn't have any service like Amazon. If they stop the drop shipping, this means they need to stop the whole site. Whole eBay because they didn't have any other option. It's all about money and it's making them so much money that they can't just flip a switch and forget about this amount of profit that they're making every month. It's not only the profits. I mean, I'm sure that they love the profits, but they also have a bigger catalog, more products on their platform. So it's helping them a lot, this drop shipping. And even in their policies, they say, they don't mind that you drop ship. You can drop ship all you want. And then they say another line, don't do it from retailers, but me and you both know that you can do it as long as you know what you are doing. You're taking care of your customers. You care about your business. You're taking care of customer service. You're shipping out your products on time. There shouldn't be any problems. And even if you do have problems like we learned in this interview, there is nothing that you cannot overcome. You can overcome any problem. There's a solution to every problem. It's really no problem as long as you're here to learn and to work and to know how to find solutions for your problems and not say, okay, if this is what I'm going to get, then nevermind, I give up. I don't want it. Like you said, it's a personality. So everyone has their own personalities. And I hope that the people who are listening to this interview have the stronger personality of not giving up so quick and really trying to find solutions to problems. So we talked about some of the problems that you had and how you solve them. I want to wrap this interview up. I think it was longer than we expected, but I really do enjoy this interview with you. I enjoy talking with you. A last question for our viewers and this one is for beginners. People who are just beginning, want to begin, are interested. What's one of the best tips that you can think of for someone who is just starting right now? The main mistake that I see in the whole business entrepreneurs that want to start is I see it everywhere, not only in the business. They want to start running before they have the ability to walk. And my tip here is don't want to grow too fast. Don't want to go to buy FBI items. Don't want to create a creation of your own brand. Yes. Trademark, before you start from the lower position. Start with the dropshipping. Start from the simple things, from Amazon, from Walmart. Feel the market. Start seeing the things, learn a lot. And after that, do this slowly. Because if you want to do something fast, it's like I told this like a steroids in the fitness. You do it fast, but you lose it fast after that. Then my main tip is to find the simple business model, like a dropshipping, to find the stable suppliers and to start slowly. After that, to try to run, to do the FBI, to do research, to create online items, to manufacture items, to do marketing, to spend a lot of money for marketing. Because I have clients that, before they come, they spend 10,000 for a courses, for a mentorship, 10,000 to buy items in the FBI, a lot of money for own websites in Shopify, some other people build them with plugins, a lot of money in the marketing in USA, but they didn't know how it's working. If you don't know how something works, you will lose money. And it's not okay to spend ready money. You can start without money with a two, three, four hundred dollar budget. Do this slowly, slowly, because as I thought in the beginning, in this interview, I want to do this to the rest of my life, but I don't want to rush myself to work 14 hours a day. I want to work every day as much as I can to work without feel tired, without feel bored and to have progress year after year, not to do everything at the same time and to burn out and to stop with the business. This is the most important rule in the life, to be consistent, not to try to rush yourself. Great, so wonderful tips once again. So in the beginning, the faster you run, the faster you'll fall. So start slowly and work your way up. And I really couldn't recommend anything better than that. That's just a great tip. I really hope that you guys will really implement the things that Vetan is saying here in this interview, because it's all being spoken out of true honesty, and I can really see it and feel it also in this interview. And the tips are really things that I'm also taking for myself. Many of the things that you said in this interview is things that we're already implementing also as an organization and also me personally in my small business that I'm also running on the side while I'm dropshipping. And you guys can also learn to be successful in any niche. So just because you are good in health, you said in health products, that is your niche. My personal niche I'm making great profits from in the last at least two, three years. Only one niche for me is the outdoor niche. Even in the winter, I'm doing a great job in this niche when people are not going great outdoors. So there is many categories that you guys can be successful at. And Vetan, I really enjoyed this interview with you, I must say. And like he said, guys, if you guys have any questions, doesn't matter what part of your journey you're on, if you're in the beginning, if you're in the middle, if you're doing it for a long time, if you're not doing it at all, any questions that you guys have, write it right down below and he will personally answer them. I'm sure that you guys will appreciate the answers. Thank you once again, I really enjoyed this interview. Thank you very much that you asked me to be your guest. I'm very excited. I hope to ask me again in the future to share my experience again. Thank you. Yeah, looking for future cooperation. Thank you. Bye-bye.