 What's going on guys, welcome back to another video. So in this video, I'm gonna take you through a eight step checklist of the things in which you need to be doing before you actually start dropshipping. I try and be a bit more active now within my YouTube channel in terms of the community posts. I like to put out polls to try and find out kind of like what position my audience is in. And a couple of weeks ago then I put out this post here that says, let's scroll down a bit further. I used to have a Shopify store in 2022. As we can see from the 90 votes, 50% of people said yes. So this video is for those people who are starting. I get questions or approached by people quite a lot. In fact, asking what the kind of like initial steps are. What do we have to do about bank accounts? How much money do I need? All those sorts of things. So think of this as kind of like your eight step game plan to start a dropshipping business. These are all the things you need to do. These are all the things you need to worry about. And we're gonna be covering them and answering those questions in this video. So that's it. Thanks for tuning in. Hope you guys enjoy it. And let's jump straight into it. Okay, so the first thing you need when you start dropshipping is realistic expectations. This might sound like a bit of a cliche one but it's actually really important. It's really easy to look into dropshipping, look into Shopify, look into pretty much any online business. And when doing your research, come across videos of people who have said they've tried dropshipping. You can see screenshots on Facebook groups and I tried dropshipping for four weeks and I made X amount of thousands of pounds or thousands of dollars. But the harsh reality is unless you have experience of doing product research and picking products, unless you have experience of building e-commerce websites, unless you have experience of running in marketing campaigns, then the harsh reality is in those first kind of like six months, then you probably won't make any money at all unless you have the guidance of somebody who has that experience or unless you get a little bit lucky. So if you've been following my channel for a while, some of my earlier videos from a way back now, in fact, I documented the first few months of doing dropshipping and back then I was always like pretty good with computers so building stores came pretty easily to me. I was always good at maths and things like that at school. So when it comes to running Facebook ad campaigns, as long as you know what kind of like pieces of information and data to read from and understand what they mean, then marketing is gonna be easier for you. So it always was. And then when it comes to the actual product selection thing, I think the product that first made me my money, I think I've discovered it watching a video actually by a guy called Adrian Morrison. And that was kind of like what got me started on my journey. That's what saw those initial results and that what kind of motivated me and spurred me on to keep doing it. And here we are nearly six years later. So number one is to have realistic expectations. In those first three months, you're gonna be finding your feet, you're gonna be experimenting, you're gonna be testing, you're gonna be developing your skills in all three of those areas. So if you don't make loads of money in those first few months, try not to let that deter you. Just make sure you stay persistent. Make sure you stay positive and keep trying at this. At the end of the day, what you have to keep in mind is that if it was that easy as all the videos make out or the screenshots make out, then everybody would be doing it and everybody would be making lots of money. So just to quick recap, then number one is have realistic expectations. It's good to have big expectations and high expectations but I suppose the key takeaway here is that if you don't meet those in those first few months, then just give yourself a bit more time to try and test a few different products, develop your skills, your knowledge and so on. Moving on to point number two then is, let's get rid of this, is vision. So these might sound like cliche things. After this one, we'll get into the more practical stuff but vision is important because I feel like a lot of people get into dropshipping for the wrong reasons and they don't really understand what's involved in running a dropshipping business. So before you actually get into this, it's important to have a vision of what you want your lifestyle to look like and like how much freedom, how much spare time do you want? Where do you want to work from? Do you have a family? Do you not have a family? What sort of materialistic things do you want in your life? How much spare time do you want? Does that all match up and marry up with what dropshipping can offer you? Because at the end of the day, the worst thing you could do is invest all this time and invest all this money into dropshipping to get one year down the line and realize that it's not the business that you thought it was. And I think that's really important for a beginner getting involved in dropshipping because it can be portrayed in a completely different reality to what it is actually like. So try and do your research as much as possible, listen to people who are actually running dropshipping businesses, learn from those people and then you'll soon get a realistic kind of vision of what it is actually like running a dropshipping business day to day. Number three is the starting budget. So to start a business, then you do need money. You can do it extremely cheaply. That is one of the kind of beautiful things about dropshipping is that if you think of any business in the world really, then dropshipping is definitely up there in terms of the cheapest and easiest businesses to get started with. Hence why it gets so much attention online because it pretty much applies to anybody. In terms of the recommended budget, then I would say really good budget to get started with is a thousand pound or a thousand dollars. This would give you lots of freedom to really kind of invest the amounts of money that you need to to do everything really, really well. So this will cover everything from store design and cover sampling products and paying influencers to film some user-generated content or actors or some sort of video creation software. And it will also give you enough budget to test a few different products. A couple hundred dollars, maybe a little bit more per product until you find one that kind of gets that traction that you're looking for that you can then reinvest your profits or keep investing more money into and doubling down on those products that are actually working. So you can start scaling up to the bigger numbers. That is one of the beauties of dropshipping is that when you really do find what works, then you can scale things super, super quickly. It's just getting to that point, which is the most difficult thing. So one of my favorite quotes, it's to do with how bamboo grows. Now, just bear with me for a second is that I can't remember exactly, to be honest. It's something like it takes six months or 90 days or something. It takes a really long amount of time for bamboo to sprout like the first inch. But then the second it kind of breaks the surface in the next 90 days, then it will grow like a crazy amount. And dropshipping is the same. It takes a long time to get to that point. Where you have a product that has that potential and has that promises and bringing in consistent results. It's just finding that product and testing that product that takes the time. And then once you actually get to that point, then you can scale things super, super quickly. So when you see all these screenshots and things of people who have scaled stores super quickly, it's because they have experience of doing those things. So their product selection rate, instead of one in every 30 products they're testing being successful, because they have the skills and because they have the experience they probably won in every five. So the hit rate can be a lot higher. They've obviously built a few more Shopify stores as well than the average beginner. So when it comes to putting a store together, it's a lot quicker. And of course, when it comes to having a strategy in a Facebook marketing campaign strategy, then obviously they have that experience of how Facebook ads work, what their ideal audience is looking for and how to put that in front of their audience. Now, if you're watching this video thinking there's no way you could get together a thousand people, or a thousand dollars, there are cheaper ways of doing it. However, they are much, much slower. That $1,000 is mainly for people who are looking to try and see results as quickly as possible. And they have the money to risk to invest into their business to run ads. If you don't wanna run any ads, then you can do it organically by just building a following across social medias. And it is like a domino effect. So it'll be super, super slow in the beginning. But over time, and when I say time, over six months, 12 months, 18 months, as you build that following, you will start to see organic sales that you've essentially acquired for free, purely by building a following across your social medias. Point number four is a separate bank account. This is something I would recommend everybody get in, regardless of whether it's drop shipping or some other business. Set up a separate bank account. It could be a business one. It could be a personal one, completely up to you. Put in a chunk of money, whether it's a thousand dollars, I can mention it in the description below. Put in a chunk of money, whether it's a thousand dollars, I can mention it in the previous point, whatever it is you can afford to lose. And then stick to that, stick to that and use that bank account as kind of like your profit and loss spreadsheet. Because if you try and run it from your personal account like I did when I first very started, the numbers get very hazy. It can be very difficult to know whether you're actually making a profit or not, because next to a Facebook ad bill, you might have your own home electricity bill and it can be really difficult to keep track of your finances. If you keep them in a separate bank account, every time you see that bank account go down and get closer and closer to zero, it will force you to take notes to realize that bank account is getting lower. Look at why it's getting lower. And ultimately, it will stop you from investing too much money that you can't afford to lose as well. If you're running it from your personal bank account, then the last thing you wanna do is get to two weeks to the end of the month and not have enough money to pay your personal bills. Whereas if you keep everything separate, you'll know exactly where you're at and you won't run into those sorts of troubles. It's also good practice to do if you're running a business as well. If you're serious about this and you should be setting up a business bank account anyway. So definitely, definitely, definitely set up a bank, a separate bank account before you start spending a penny on your business. Put in what you can afford to lose or what you're willing to invest into this business. And like I said, every time it will force you to take note and keep track of your finances and spend your money wisely. Another massive mistake I did in the beginning, as soon as I started seeing some traction, I just assumed I had loads of money. I didn't consider taxes. I didn't consider accounting fees. I didn't really have a genuine idea of like where my bank accounts were at cause I was still running it from a personal bank account. So I went out and I was buying like stupid stuff for the business that I up to date. IMAX, which you just don't need as long as your computer is functionable, that's all you need. And I just ended up wasting money on stuff that I didn't really need. And it got me into lots of trouble in terms of where my finances were at for my business because I was just spending pretty much what I didn't have and I didn't know I didn't have it because I was running it from my personal bank account. So let that be a lesson. Just make sure you set up a separate bank account for your business. So once you've done steps one to four, then you're pretty much ready to start your business. But before you start building out any particular store, before you sign up to Shopify, then my recommendation would be to start the product research stages. Typically people approach this with two different approaches. So approach number one is that you know what you wanna sell basically. You know what you are interested in. You know what sort of business you wanna run. You know what sort of brand it is you wanna run. If that is the case, then you know exactly what sort of products you're looking for. You probably already have some products in mind. If that isn't the case, then start the product research stages. Make sure you focus on product validation. I've spoken about this in maybe videos a couple of weeks ago. So make sure you go check that out. Product validation is by far the most important thing when it comes to doing product research. If you wanna guarantee or at least increase your chances of finding the products that has that potential to be really successful for you. The reason why I recommend everybody start at this stage is because the products you find will dictate what type of business you start going forward. If you jump straight into creating a Shopify account and build a store and then find out that the product isn't working and you need to sell a different product, then you have to redesign, rebrand, redomain, whatever it may be and essentially start from scratch. Whereas if you make sure you do a good job at the product research stages, you'll avoid all of that. It will save you lots of time and potentially it will save you lots and lots of money as well. Point number six to start drop shipping. You obviously need a store. Typically I recommend Shopify. It's one I have most experience in. It's the one that comes with the most third party apps and the best themes. To be honest, I'm not spending too much time talking about this. I think Shopify hands down is just so much better than all the others. When it comes to actually building this store, then I seriously recommend a paid theme. The free ones from Shopify, they can work, but the way I look at it is that if you're serious about doing this and making your business work, why would you not spend $20, $30 a month on a custom theme, a third party theme, which looks super professional, has 10 times the amount of customizations and will literally can or can literally transform your store overnight, will transform your store overnight. And all those little things that kind of you get from these custom themes, they all make a super big difference to your store. It will increase your conversion rate. And trust me by having a paid theme, if you're getting a significant amount of traffic and when I say significant, then I mean anywhere over 10,000 visits a month and you're using a free theme by installing a paid theme. As long as it's a good one, of course, then I will pretty much guarantee that the cost of the theme will be outweighed. The return on investment will be like 10x from having a paid theme if you're getting that sort of traffic each and every month. Now, when it comes to building a Shopify store, it's a tricky one to, if you have no experience doing it, it can be sometimes difficult to know if you've got a good store or not. So this is where in my opinion, it can pay dividends to try and get feedback from people who will give you an honest review. And the sorts of things you need to be asking yourself is, would you yourself buy from this store? Send it to your friends, send it to your family, ask them for the most honest review and opinion as possible, ask them if they would trust your store better yet, send them a store, send them a link to a product page on your store and say, hey, I'm thinking about buying this product, but I'm not really sure if this store is trustworthy or not. What do you think? And then see where they come back. Don't tell them that you've built it and then that way you'll get an honest answer. It's super important that you get this step right because a dodgy looking store will get you dodgy results. That is just a fact. When I put out a post, if we take a look, what's the hardest part about Shopify Dropship in? 120 votes and only 3% of people put build in a Shopify store, which I found quite surprising to be honest because the amount of really amateurish Shopify stores I see is quite a lot and it will suffer your business. Your business will be harmed by a Shopify store that isn't up to scratch. Point number seven is you need a strategy. More specifically a marketing strategy. Before you start spending a penny on ads, then I recommend, I'm talking in reference to Facebook ads here, I would recommend spending a solid two weeks, if not four weeks, watching as much content and videos you can to do with Facebook ads until you have an understanding of what they are, how they work and what the data means. The amount of people that I speak to and they don't know what a CPC is or how to influence the CPC or what it means or what a good CPC is and you shouldn't be spending money on things that you don't understand. So I'd recommend spending as much time as possible that you can afford learning about it, getting to a point where you feel comfortable and have a solid understanding of how they work before you start spending money on them unless you have the guidance of course of somebody who does. Before you start spending money on Facebook ads then it's really important that you have a strategy and a clear strategy of what it is you're trying to achieve. Yes, everybody's trying to make sales, everybody's trying to make a profit but how are you going to do that? What is the strategy in which you're going to use? Which is going to let you do that? What's your testing strategy? Are you going to test five ad sets? Each of those ad sets is going to have one interest or five interests. What sort of audience size are you going to go after? What sort of placements? Why are you choosing those placements? Why aren't you choosing other placements? If you get three ad sets that are performing badly and two that are performing well, which ones do you scale out? If you do scale out then what sort of scaling strategy are you going to apply? Now, it can sound quite daunting. There are so many different factors and variables but this is something that you need to have at least a general understanding of before you start spending money on Facebook ads because if you don't understand it then Facebook will just become a money pit. It will just become an endless money pit that you keep throwing more money into and not seeing a return from. And then last but not least, we have persistence. Arguably one of the most important pieces to this kind of starting checklist if not the most important piece. I'm a big believer in that if you persist at something for long enough and you're smart about it and you make sure that you learn from your mistakes then eventually you're always gonna reach that final destination which is having a successful business that's bringing in regular income for you. The difficulty with persistence is it's difficult to know exactly how long you need to be persistent for. This can be completely different for everybody based on your current levels of experience, your current levels of skills and your current levels of knowledge. For some people they'll only need to persist for three months before they find that winning product and start making money. Some people it'll be three years. But the most important thing is that when you go through those rough times because you will, even when you have a well-established business which has given you a comfortable life there's gonna be hurdles and things that you have to overcome. And it's important to know that when you go through those times to refer back to why you got started in the first place what is it that you're trying to kind of make better or improve or get away from? And just having those motivations of why you started in the first place is what's gonna help you keep going, keep trying and never give up until you do reach that final destination. And trust me, through all the heartache, through all the sleepless nights, through all the gray hairs, through all the thousands of pounds that have been wasted I suppose, I can tell you right now that it's 100% worth it. So whatever you do, just make sure you keep going. Don't let anybody else tell you. Otherwise, if you wanna make this work then make sure you make it work for you and not for anybody else. And so with that being said guys, I'm gonna wrap the video up. If you're still watching with me then thank you very much. I really do appreciate the support on the channel. I really hope this video has helped motivated some people to get started and take that step. The only way you're gonna make this business a success is actually by starting. The best way to get better at this business is by actually running a business. So if you're watching this video now and you haven't started your Shopify store then get started today. Otherwise you'll never know. You'll never know if this will be the best thing in your life until you actually started today. One final quick message then before you go. If you are looking for somebody's help to help you with all of these things, avoid those mistakes that I've spoken about in this video. And you're looking for somebody to work with you one on one, hold your hand through the whole process. Take you from day one from literally nothing and after 60 days. And in 60 days have a fully set up business that's bringing inconsistent sales on a daily basis. Make sure you check out my Accelerator program. It's a one-on-one mentorship with myself. We are full at the moment but there is a waiting list. Spots tend to come up maybe one or two every week. So to make sure you don't miss out on those, make sure you join the waiting list. If you want the link to that, comment the word Accelerator down below and I'll send across the information. Thanks again for watching guys and I'll see you in the next one.