Mickey 00:00
We're super casual around here. So it's just like an easy conversation. I'll do an intro later and we can kind of get started. So Ben, you know, I find e-commerce to be a wild world. From my perspective, as a marketer, there's so many things going on but you have basically taught hundreds, if not more people how to build successful e-commerce businesses. So can you give the audience a little bit of a breakdown of what you do?
Ben Knegendorf 00:22
Yeah, I think what we teach is a little bit different than most people, right? So you can kind of break down e-commerce into you know, starting your own product or selling other people's products, or God forbid, finding arbitrage from Walmart to Amazon, or whatever it is, right? There's a lot of different ways to do e commerce. And so yeah, we teach a very specific method. One in which I've had extreme success and I would say, I was able to be part of a company that went 1 million to $11 million in two years. And I've built and sold half dozen of these at this point. And so like, I think we teach something different. And I think that's what I bring to the table. It's just like a different view on how this could look in some ways are definitely harder than others, in my opinion.
Mickey 00:54
Ah, so why don't you give us a little bit of a breakdown of what makes your method different from what typically we see with e-commerce businesses.
Ben 01:02
I'm gonna guess that in this title, you put the word dropshipping and that's already going to turn some people off here, right? So, I think dropshipping in general gets a bad rap. Most of the time, when people think dropshipping, they are thinking, AliExpress and drop shipping things from China and a heavily taped box that shows up 40 days later and disappoints the customer. And then they shut down their website, go find the next hot product and do it all over again. That's simply not what we teach. So first off, dropshipping itself is just a method of fulfillment, that is somebody else fulfilling the order on your half there on your behalf. They're drop shipping it for you. And I would say probably half the internet works this way. Like that's just what Ecommerce has been for 20 years. It's been around a very, very long time and sort of move away from those bros that you've seen on Tiktok or YouTube or wherever standing next to their rented Lambo and move it towards something that's actually sustainable. I'd like to pose you the idea that you should sell high ticket products. Like high expensive products from suppliers that are local to you, from brands that you've definitely heard of. And I think that's a different take than most people. I've heard that, again, they're looking for, you know, $20-30-40 item that they can run TikTok ads or Facebook ads. I'm suggesting sell brands you've already heard of, ad prices that give you enough margin to actually go find a customer and from brands that people are already searching for. So, the low ticket products, your own brand, whatever it is, you're often doing demand creation. You have to interrupt Mickey while she's scrolling, TikTok and say “Look at this cool product I just found” and hopefully get them interested enough to go purchase from you. Whereas what we teach against selling from brands you've definitely heard of, there's already demand in the marketplace, you can just go to Google step in front of them with shopping ads, or search ads, or SEO, and then garner the sale that way. And to me that sounds easier. Capturing demand sounds far easier than generating demand.
Mickey 02:42
Yeah, I love the idea of choosing a higher ticket product, especially when you're first starting. In service we talk about all the time, you're better off selling one or two really high ticket products instead of trying to sell a whole bunch more, because it's all sales anyways. And if you're attracting the right people with the right demand, you're going to be better off. So it sounds like there's a lot of similarities in that. When we're looking at those products and at least for me, logistically, the idea of fulfilling that demand feels complicated. Is it as complicated as it looks from the outside?
Ben 03:13
Yeah, I don't think it is. So to your point, to your first point, I would love to talk economics, this is why this is so much more important, right? So if you want to make $30,000 in sales next month, and you're selling a $30 item, which is pretty reasonable for AliExpress, or anybody selling their own product, you're going to need to sell 1000 units of that product. Whereas if you sell a $3,000 item, like a pellet grill, or some things for a tiny home, or any 3D printer, a lot of things that I've personally sold, you're getting to sell 10 of those items. So like you're gonna need less employees for 10 orders than you will for 1000 orders. And I know this podcast is all about doing you know, doing less and profiting more, right? You're gonna have less damages and returns just from a mathematical standpoint on 10 items versus 1000, you're gonna have less overhead, less risk. And that's, to me the economic side of it. Like if you sell a $3,000 item with 30% margins, you have $900 to go acquire your customer, pay your team. Also, we're running businesses here, we'd like to make a profit at the end of the day. And so to me, I would rather focus on selling that $3,000 item than selling a whole bunch of $30 items and constantly having to take my profit and buy more stock that I'm gonna sell in six months and just be in that never-ending cycle of no cash flow.
Mickey 04:17
The old rat race there. Yeah. So when it comes to customer acquisition, I feel like a lot of people assume that with lower-priced products it's easier to acquire customers, is that actually the case?
Ben 04:28
Yeah. Thank you for refreshing my memory on what the actual question was before I diatribe. I'm very good at going off-topic. Alright. So I think it's more of a perceived thing that it's harder. Just in general, you're thinking it's more expensive, it must be harder but there are buyers for everything, right? And so just like there is a buyer for I'm trying to think of something silly like we bought a bubble guns for the kids that were like $40. They shot millions of bubbles. We thought it was AMAZING again, and it showed up 40 days later it was not a great product. And just like there's buyers for those type of products. There's buyers for expensive products, right I've sold 3D printers, or standing desks, or tiny homes products, pellet grills. Have sold a whole lot of different types of items. And there's people searching for those products. So, it is though a different type of marketing. Again, the lower ticket products, you're creating demand, you're on social media interrupting somebody. Trying to get them interested in your product, or you're paying influencers to create videos for you and generate demand. Whereas if I'm selling a, we'll call it a Memphis Pro Pellet Grill. I'm simply going to Google building out a funnel in Google Shopping, which is just simply their priority levels so that you can isolate keywords. And I'm going to pay money to someone searching, I'm going to pay extra money for someone searching Memphis Pro Pellet Grill, and I'm gonna pay a little bit of money for someone searching Pellet Grill. Very, very small right? To fill the top of the bucket, but you are able to isolate keywords that people are already searching and just simply pay to step in front of those people and hopefully close the sale. If you built a decent website and you have a good offer.
Mickey 05:54
You know you mentioned the word influencer there and I was like, oh my goodness. I think a lot of people when they think e-commerce, they assume if you're going to be running your own e-commerce business. You need to be an influencer. Or you need to be on social media all the time. What it sounds like is that it's not necessarily the case,
Ben 06:08
I would say with this model. No. And honestly, other ones like certainly. If you have the ability to create a character like Liver King’s in the news right now right? Shocking. He's on steroids. So obviously he was right. But like, if you can create a character like Liver King, You're, of course, you're going to do better than someone who's not front facing. You can also do that by hiring somebody to be front facing. But no, for this business model. Honestly, I don't think you need to do much with social media as far as like being a presence out there. And certainly the more you post, the more you can interact, the more you can build a community. That's going to work better in any business model. But I don't think this is paramount and in this particular business model. In fact, that I think you need to get good at traffic acquisition, which again, is Google ads, Bing Ads, remarketing on all of the channels, SEO is my favorite channel by far. And then you need to get good at customer service, because that's basically what this business model is.
Mickey 06:55
Would you say that having at least the general knowledge and marketing in general, so understanding what traffic and acquisition is, and like the technical side of Google ads is essential for someone going to start a business like this?
Ben 07:07
Yeah, I mean, you need to acquire that traffic, right? So I think we teach that quite well, in our course, you know, but you can learn that online. I think the problem with like Google ads, and like trying to learn that from scratch is one, you're gonna go to YouTube, and you don't know whether you're getting a video that you should trust or video you shouldn't trust. And if you just avoid all of that, and just go to Google, Google wants you to use all of their new products, which some work some, and they're only gonna get better, of course, it's only gonna get better. Technology is a one-way street. Moore's Law says we're gonna get there faster than ever. Some work, but I would say the majority don't, and the majority don't for high ticket products. So I've tested them. I also want to, pet supplement brand. My funnel, beat all of their stuff until smart shopping came around. Smart shopping beat that and our performance max does not beat that. They are very good at getting sales on your brand name. And so like, if you're going to trust Google, Google's going to be like, yeah, here's a great way to spend a whole bunch of money with us, but not necessarily what's best for your business. So I do think you need a foundation, but you're going to need that in any type of business model right? You're either going to need to hire somebody who actually knows what they're doing. And there's no shortage of people who don't know what they're doing, who are out there marketing themselves for that either. Or you need to spend time learning this. I would encourage any business owner and the business model, like at least get an understanding of what you're doing. Put 10-40 hours into it. Really understand it before you go hire somebody because if you don't even understand what you're doing or understand the lingo or understand any part of it. You're just ripe for somebody to abuse their power over you.
Mickey 08:35
Made a great point. I think a lot of us as business owners in particular, we assume that the outside experts know everything. Yeah, that's definitely not the case and that brings up the question of credibility. I think one of the things you mentioned just recently was searching on YouTube and not sure if you're gonna get credible information and it made me think of those high-ticket products that we're talking about too. Do you think that the credibility of the product helps the business reputation as well compared to choosing a lower quality product that maybe doesn't have that credibility?
Ben 09:03
I think certainly you are a little bit of a parasite on those brands. When you're selling those brands. When REI is selling those brands you trust REI because you trust the selection of brands that REI brought in there. You trust, like Wayfarers. The best example of high ticket dropshipping there used to be hundreds of high ticket dropshipping stores, they came together to be one Wayfair company. Still a lot drop shipped and like you trust Wayfair because they have a collection of products that you trust. So like certainly, if you're carrying some amazing brands, they can make you look better. Specifically, in this business model, the more well-known brands might actually not be the best-paying brands for you to sell, there's a lot more demand, there's a lot more competition. Sometimes they're not a pleasure to work with in my experience, whereas some of the smaller companies that don't have quite the footprint—you might be their only reseller online which opens up a wide opportunity for you. Smaller businesses tend to have their hands more in the business and so the products usually slightly better and there's not so much bureaucracy going on. And so while the big names can bring you some clout, if you will, and possibly make your shoppers feel more confident in shopping with you, those brands might not actually be great brands for you to retail.
Mickey 10:14
What a great point, I think, at least for me from the outside, right? You would think, Oh, I'm gonna pick the biggest and the best and the most well-known product, But I like that you mentioned that because we've I think sometimes we forget to weigh the opportunity with the risk or the challenges. We just see the shiny object and assume it's the right choice, but not necessarily.
Ben 10:32
There is no shortage of shiny objects everywhere, right? Whether it's brands, or whether it's a new business model, or whether it's. I heard this Ben guy talking about high-ticket dropshipping on the podcast today, right? Like, there is no shortage of opportunities in this world. And so yeah, they're just they're not all as cracked up as they seem.
Mickey 10:48
Can you walk us through like a general idea of the framework that you bring your clients through and teaching them this methodology?
Ben 10:55
Yeah, so we break this down pretty well. I think one of my favorite parts of this is like, you can get started pretty simply, and for honestly, around $500. Which is harder to say, for any business model. So if you look at some of the other, like, franchises are gonna cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to get going. And you're, you're kind of a wantrapreneur when you're a franchise. I don't know, you're not, you're not a full entrepreneur. I'm not trying to diss you, it's just like, you're not, you know, I don't know, you're not, yeah, we'll move on. Anyway. Like, if you launch your own brand, you're gonna need to do research, you're gonna have to get samples, you're gonna have to place a probably decently sized order, you're going to launch and hope somebody likes your products, and that you're moving them. And again, the whole cash flow thing, I'm well aware of having my own brand. Like, if you order 1000 units, you sell 500, when you sell this 500, you take that profit, and you go buy 2000 more units, because you're on pace to grow. And when you sell 1000, you're just in this vicious cycle of never actually seeing your profit and your business looks great on paper. What I like about high ticket dropshipping being a retailer of products is you can start for less than 500 bucks. So you're gonna need a domain, right, you're gonna need, you know, mickeyanderson.com, you're gonna need Shopify, that's $29, you probably want a paid theme. I don't think you actually need when my first business, I didn't use a paid theme on Shopify. But of course, the more you pay, the more, the better, you're gonna look. So that could be anywhere from $180 to $500. Nowadays, things are getting crazy out there. You're going to need Google workspace, you're going to need [email protected], that's $12. You're going to need an 800 phone number, because you're a real business, right? And so Grasshopper does this for $40 a month, you might want to get a little branding done for your homepage, your carousel, your logo, your colors, things like that. Maybe $50- $100 on Fiver, tops. And then your biggest expense is going to be the Google ads. As we mentioned before, Google wants you to spend money with them. So they'll give you a coupon that is spent 150, we'll give you 150, or spend 500 will give you 500. That is your biggest expense outside of your time, which you're gonna have to invest time here, calling those brands, uploading their products, building our collection pages, setting up your Google ads, setting up Merchant Center, doing all the things you need to do in your business. So that you can utilize that free money Google gave you to hopefully, grab a couple sales in your first 150 plus 150, or 500, plus 500. And then kind of roll that in your business. And so that's the steps like this business model is quite simple. But that doesn't mean it's easy, right? Like you still have to do work, you are still building a real business one that becomes an asset that is sellable. You can go find these on Quiet Light brokerage, or empireflippers.com. It's not a turning bird website. You're building a real business and that's going to take some investment on you from your pocket, mostly from your time.
Mickey 13:25
Yeah. And it's funny that you mentioned that because I think a lot of us start off in entrepreneurship thinking I'm gonna have so much more time. But that's not necessarily the case. And I think a lot of it is just about, like putting time into getting the experience to because you only learn as you do for the most part, right? We can read all about it. But until you actually get your feet wet, it's really hard to know. Now, I'm curious about product collections and curating those products on your site. When you're first starting out, do you recommend starting with like one primary product? Or do you recommend starting with the collection,
Ben 13:59
So John and I. John is my business partner on this, we actually don't recommend talking about products too much. Products will come after you find the person you'd want to serve. So when we're in E commerce, oftentimes we're looking at numbers on the screen, right? And I'm sure you've heard the phrase 2% is like the average conversion rate on an e-commerce store, right? So that means two people, two numbers on the screen. That's actually you know, that's a person behind the screen. 98 of those people are raising their hand saying I really liked what you're offering here, but you didn't do something for me, we're just letting those 98 people walk. And so you got to focus on the person you have to serve the... I don't know if I swear on you, you have to serve the shit out of a person and hopefully give them a better solution. Whether they buy from you or not. They'll likely buy from you if you give them their solution whether they buy from you or not. It really focused on a human. So, if you can focus on the human behind the screen, who's the person you want to serve? For me, I like to focus on me. Like what do I like? Where are the places I hang out? What do I like to do? Because I'm going to know the lingo. I use, I used to…one of the biggest companies we built was in the golf industry. And so I'm a golfer. I know the language I speak. I know that I literally pay any amount of money for me to get one more stroke. I know, the places I hang out online, I know the influencers that are cool. The influencers that are not cool. I understand the keywords I would search to find the products I have. I understand all the problems I have. And so marketing to me made a ton of sense. Now, what are the products that fit into the criteria of high ticket, if you will, that, you know, we teach in our course that a golfer would purchase. And then just kind of work through that. And now we have our products, how can we be different? We create a you know, a unique offer around those products, a unique selling proposition that they aren’t going to find on any other website. And that's honestly as simple as it is but you got to focus on the who. I give this advice a lot. I went against my own words, once. I bought a business from a consulting client who was ready to move on and it was like, Oh, this business is right for the picking. I love every, all the metrics, and I started selling products to older people who were not affluent, not fun customers. That's not me, I don't want to deal with them. They complain a lot. There's a lot of returns on a lot of chargebacks. And I learned my lesson, the hard way of like, you know, practice what you preach here. Choose the person, whereas again, in the golf industry, that was really easy to wake up every day and be able to speak to them, and write emails, and write ad copy, and run ads, and do customer service because those were my people. I knew exactly how to handle them.
Mickey 16:12
Yeah. Anytime you're feeling like you need some inspiration, you just go and go out and play.
Ben 16:17
While making content to your point of the social media. Really making content for that was quite easy. As you know, we just were playing golf and you get to write off all of your golf rounds and your golf membership. Like it ended up being a great thing too.
Mickey 16:31
I love it. One of the things we hear all the time, and I'm sure you've heard it a million times is like the riches are in the niches, right? Niche down whatever way you want to say it. Do you agree that in this kind of a business, you also need to niche down?
Ben 16:43
Yeah, I think the human you should niche down to right not necessarily the products. You can go pretty wide, right? So in the beginning, I did subscribe to that like, you know, niche product idea. That's where I learned way back in 2015. So I only sold 3D printers and I had a pellet grill side and I only sold pellet grills. And then the next business was somebody got in a call, he was selling composting toilets. And he was like, how do we grow this? And I was like, I think we have to sell more than…who's buying these composting toilets? And that's really where the WHO sparks. So he said, it's people who are building tiny homes or living in a tiny home who are looking for these products. And I said, why don't we, why don't you sell everything that's in a tiny home. And he gave me a half his business on the spot and said, let's go do that thing. So we did. So we opened shoptinyhouses.com. Started selling everything in there because we were selling to one human who needed way more than just that toilet. And so I would say focus on human, understand their needs. They're likely going to have more than one piece of their needs, and then sell all of those things so that you can have somebody not just can purchase from you one time. One Pellet Grill, and never come back to you. Hopefully, they can buy a toilet and buy a stove and buy some solar panels. If you get my drift. They're like, so don't go super wide, you can't serve everybody. But you can serve one human who certainly has more than one product as an interest.
Mickey 17:56
You know, customer retention is one of my favorite things to talk about because I think there's so much opportunity that is missed in so many businesses, right? You've got that customer, they said yes to you and then usually we wave and say bye, see you whenever. But I love the idea of choosing that human and just continuing to find ways to serve them.
Ben 18:14
I think I'll take it back a step and like… Not even you got them as a customer, and then continuing to serve them. There is a wonderful stat inside of your Google Analytics and I hesitate to try to like walk you through how to get there. But there is a stat in there where you can see new visitors versus returning visitors and what they're worth to you. And it's a shockingly low number of people who have come one time who have purchased from you no matter what you sell. But if you look at that line below it, maybe a 10th of those people or a fifth of those people have come back twice, but they are worth 10 times more to you just by simply getting in front of them again. And so you know, yes, when you get them as customer you should continue serving them. And even before that, if they've stopped on your website, if they've raised their hand and said I kind of like what you have to offer you should be everywhere. Jay Abraham calls it 3d marketing. So if you can throw your pixel, your Snapchat pixel, your Pinterest pixel, your Twitter pixel, all of your pixels onto your website and then just run remarketing on all of those channels and simply step in front of them as they peruse the internet, and just gently remind them that hey, we're still sitting over here with this product, how can we help you. You're likely going to see a much higher rate of return on that remarketing than you ever will in your cold prospecting
Mickey 19:17
I love it. I'm such a big advocate for starting at the bottom of the funnel and working your way up. And so anytime we can talk remarketing and kind of working at conversion optimization, I get very excited. But one thing I really want to make sure we talk about you mentioned that USP right? That, how can I stand out compared to all of the other retailers online? All of those other e-commerce businesses? How do you help those customers coming to you saying okay, I have this as my client, how do I make sure that I stand out compared to the competitors?
Ben 19:46
It's a question we get often, right? Like you can kind of morph that into, why would I sell this one? The brand can already sell this or why would I? Why would anyone buy for me when there's 14 other retailers selling this thing? And so you do need a unique selling proposition. You can get it as simple as you know, free shipping and easy returns. Like just risk reversal can be part of this. Otherwise, what has worked best for me in the past has been bundles. And so one company I was part of, we were selling from three different vendors how to get one product basically right? And no one, somehow no one on the internet was like, why don't we just bundle these together and sell these. And so we actually came up with a name for it. We made a name for it, we still use the brand name from the main product, and then call it like the platinum, and then the gold and then the… Can’t remember some of the other names that we made up but it didn't take long before there was search volume on those keywords. We have invented this and that's exactly what people were looking for, right? And so if you can just simply bundle products together that should already be together, and name it and brand it. That's a very simple way to do this. And I'm sure there are many, many others that you can go through depending on the business that you're in. But yeah, you do need to be a little bit different. You can't just be another reseller online. You will, of course, you'll get sales doing that but you're never gonna grow a giant business by just being another seller on the internet.
Mickey 20:59
It reminds me a little bit of the concept of kind of like this subscription box almost where you're trusting somebody who's more of an expert than you are to curate exactly what you might need for whatever it is you're doing. So, it could be for fitness or for health. But here, I love that you're choosing that product. And okay, what naturally would a person also need or want to go along with this? I'm going to make it so easy that they're not going to want to resist.
Ben 21:20
Yeah, I mean, a good example that's kind of popular nowadays, at least in entrepreneur circles is, you know, Andrew Huberman’s out there telling you to get in a sauna everyday, right? If you go four times a week for 30 minutes, that lowers your all cause mortality by 50%. And then on the next podcast episode, he's telling you also wake up in the morning and hop into your cold plunge. And so why wouldn't you build a hot and cold package, if you were on a wellness side of that type, and call Andrew Huberman and be like, “Hey, I'm willing to give you 5% of every single one of these that we sell, we're gonna call it the Huberman package, we'd love for you to promote it”, right? There's a lot of opportunity out there to bring something unique to the market, even if you're selling other people's products.
Mickey 21:53
One of the things that I'd like to chat about that you just mentioned, there was, you know, reaching out to either experts or people out in the field, who you can leverage their name, their advertising and kind of name the package around them for a percentage. Can you talk a little bit more about that process?
Ben 22:06
Yeah, this is something that I've only recently mess around with and it's only because I was put it into room. So this could turn into a long story, Mickey, but basically…
Mickey 22:16
Down for it.
Ben 22:17
Entrepreneurship ends up being the biggest, like self-help program you'll ever be, but like the best self-help program out there. So you might think business is hard, that's not necessarily true. You've heard people tell you business is hard. It's effort, but I wouldn't say it's hard. What is hard is getting through the blocks that are in your way that you put there, they're going between your ears. And so through this process of entrepreneurship, I've done some cool things. But along the way, I realized, man, there's a lot of work I needed to do on myself. That introduced me to Elliot Roe. He’s my coach. He's my mindset coach, he coaches some of the best poker players in the world, some of the best CEOs in the world, just elite people. And for some reason, he thought I belong to that group. And so he invited me into these rooms, and I met a lot of big influencers. And that's really where this really kind of clicked of like, not necessarily, you know, pay to play, which is what I think the influencer world is currently. But how do you actually build real relationships? And so sitting down with, I don't want to name any names here, but sitting down with some of the people in those rooms and being able to meet them. And then it turns out my family and I had winter in Florida, and one person in that room lived in the same town. And so we connected even further. And now she sends us quite a few sales on one of the products that we have. Just recommending us on her website. Whereas, if I did cold outreach, and said, how much would it cost for a guest post on your site? Here's what I'm willing to pay. They’re not even gonna, you know, respond to that email, right? And so I would encourage building real relationships there. I think, you know, the Huberman example. I'm going to need to find a connection to Andrew and not just send him a cold email, because he's gonna laugh it off and not even discuss that. So my friend George says relationships beat algorithms. He nailed it. Like you have to go build relationships in this business.
Mickey 23:43
What great advice. I think just like you mentioned earlier with serving that customer, right, choosing your person, and then selling to them. I think it just speaks volumes to the fact that regardless of what business you're in, you're in the business of people. And the better you get at dealing with and building relationships with people, the better your business and your life is going to be.
Ben 23:59
100% I think you nailed it.
Mickey 24:01
So when you go to these rooms, and you get to speak to these incredible people, do you come in with a pitch in mind? Are you like, one of those people who has mad scientist plans in the back of your mind when you hear a name? Or are these things kind of happening naturally for you?
Ben 24:15
For me? Honestly, I didn't feel like I belong to that group. Right? So the self-help, like listen, anyone listening to this, you have the voices in your head that tell you either you're not smart enough, you're not good enough, it'll never work, or what if it doesn't work? It just, like we all have, honestly, issues from our childhood that hold us back. We have boxes that were built for us between the ages of three and seven that dictate how we live our lives, like 90 to 95% of your decisions are on autopilot. And that's from things that were implanted in you as a kid, watching your parents live their life. And maybe you love your parents, but I bet you don't want to be like your parents, right? Like, they were great in their time and you want to be great in your time. And so, there's a lot of limiting beliefs that were holding me back. So, I didn't go into the room with agenda. Number one, I was like, I was very nervous about going into a mastermind with Elliot and some of the people that were there and just leaving there. Just kind of being your authentic self and Elliott has a way of his mastermind is simply like, get up on a hot seat and talk through your problem. And then the room's gonna see what your real problem is, and they're gonna tell you about and then you're gonna work through it. And there's a whole lot of crying going on. And so working through those processes leaves you very, very vulnerable. But that also connects you deeply to the people that are in the room who share this experience with you. And so I think, honestly, I would just be thankful to Elliot Roe for having me in that room. I didn’t go in with agenda. I came in being myself and, you know, flaws, and all and by other people showing their flaws, and all of us just like exposing ourselves to being vulnerable. We all became much, much closer. And that's what led to real relationships. I think if I was coming in there to be transactional, I don't think I would have belonged in the room. I think everyone would have seen that you being transactional, and nobody would have connected, right? And I probably wouldn’t have been invited back if that's the way that I entered the room like that.
Mickey 25:44
You know I've met so many entrepreneurs and business owners when they're first starting out. And I think, I think back to when I first started out, I thought I knew a lot of stuff. Right? We all have this ego where we assume we know it all, or at least we know most things. And so we get a little bit vulnerable or closed to taking in other people's advice, or seeking out mentors, or building those relationships. But I think with age and wisdom, we start to learn that Codie Sanchez has this great saying it's: “You’re one person away from reaching your next level.” And I like that idea of kind of accumulating people in your life who are going to help you grow.
Ben 26:18
Yeah, Codie’s awesome. She presented at E-commerce via live. Blew me away. She's a very, very smart human. I would agree with her. That, like you go get a coach. And I don't understand, look, I do understand that the payment side of it because that was me. I was like, Oh, I can't afford this, right? And then you realize that, like for me, right? I tried to charge like $3,000 a month to do consulting, cuz I found you just one keyword. And you're, again, you're selling $3,000 products. If that one keyword made you 4 sales, your money got returned, right? And so, like coaching can be an absolute jumpstart to anything you're doing. I've had many coaches. I currently have many coaches, and I can't recommend it enough for anyone who, at any stage of business. Like, go find somebody ahead of you who can help you just avoid the potholes and bring you to that next level much, much faster. You might think it's like not in your reach right now financially, but if it is, like somewhat in your reach, just pull the trigger. That, a lot like that, that feeling alone. Oh, I can’t afford this. That's going to push you to actually like, take their advice and implement their advice and make it work right. Just come from a place of abundance, knowing that this person knows a lot more than you and they're going to help you along the way. Don't come in there with a scarcity mindset of like this has to work today or else I need my money back kind of thing. It's, that's not gonna work. But go find a coach 100%
Mickey 27:21
Yeah, I think patience is one of those struggles. It's like a constant battle, right? We want to have trust in patients. But we also want to know and have it yesterday.
Ben 27:29
I don't think any business owner does enough of turning around and just taking a second to be like, Look how far we've come. Because we're, at least for me, I'm always what's next? What's next? What's next? And often I've seen it with a lot of people I've consulted with they're kind of delaying that happiness as well. Like, I'll be happy when I get here. And so rather than like every single day realizing that… You know, for me, I contribute, right? I answer students questions, I'm doing content online. Like that fills me up, that makes me happy that I'm helping others progress in their business lives. And so it's not like when John and I sell X amount of courses, or when we get to X amount of revenue, that's when I'll be able to be happy. No, it's every single day I get to be happy. And so I hope anyone listening to this decides to serve who they are. Find their person. Find like, you can be in love with the marketing. But if you can also be in love with what you sell and what you do, like then you can every single day be truly happy. And it's not when you hit seven figures, or when you hit eight figures that you'll be able to be happy.
Mickey 28:18
I love it, you've kind of reframed it. So it's not like the achievement or the thing. It's the act of doing and being that really should be the thing that sparks joy.
Ben 28:26
Being. That's like you have to be it before you can do it. And you have to do it before you can have it, right? And so like how can you be it every single day.
Mickey 28:32
For those of you listening, I think you should rewind and re-listen to that a few times as we all need to hear that at least once a day right there.
Ben 28:40
Believe me, I still need to hear too. So I might be spotting it off because I'm currently working through it. But I promise you I'm not perfect either. No one thinks anyone on your show here's got it all figured out. Because we don't, we're all just winging it every single day. We're all trying to figure it out. But just keep going.
Mickey 28:53
Yeah, one foot in front of the other every single day for sure. Ben, for the listeners who may be interested in starting an E-commerce or maybe they have one and they're ready to take it to the next level. Where can they learn more about you and your services?
Ben 29:03
Yeah, if they're listening to this, they're a podcast junkie like myself, honestly, maybe not as a junkie as I am but if you want more podcasts to listen to come check us out. Dropshippodcast.com or just search Dropship Podcasts on any of your favorite players that's the best place to start. If you start at episode one, John and I literally start with great keyword research. What is drop shipping? What is high ticket drop shipping? High ticket versus low ticket drop shipping. Just walking you through the process. And we've had many, many people who have started the business and like have successful businesses just by listening to our podcast which is fantastic. So, like I don't want, I'm not here to pitch my course. If this interests you, come check us out on the podcast and go from there. But like, anybody can do this. Anyone listening to this, you can start a business whether it's what I'm teaching or what someone else is doing. And it might seem hard and you might seem fearful that it might not work but that's just like your lack of preparedness right? And so how can you go be more prepared and take more action and fall on your face more often and realize this game is fun.
Mickey 29:54
I love it. You're just pushing the comfort zone one little bit at a time.
Ben 29:57
You have to! So, I think about this a lot, right? Too many people come especially reaching out to us about joining our course. And like, what if it doesn't work? And we tell you, you can get a business started in 30 days, I mean that you can get started in 30 days or less than this business models. Just put in the work. And then they're like, Yeah, well, will I replace my salary in the next month? Of course, you won't. Like, that's not realistic, right? I'll use golf again, if you had never golf. Mickey, have you ever gone before?
Mickey 30:22
I, a few times.
Ben 30:24
Okay, a few times. So maybe these people listening have dabbled in E-commerce a few times, right? Or they've tried a couple things. But if we go back to golf and you told me then, we're willing to buy your instructional golf course but if I'm not Tiger Woods by the end of 30 days, and I want my money back. Like that's. First off, you're never going to be as good as Tiger Woods. Not realistic. And he's put in the 10,000 hours, probably 10 times by now, if not more than that, right? And so like, it's the same thing, you just have to put in the hours. I think it really clicked for me when my almost eight-year-old twins, they turn 8 tomorrow. When they were learning to ride bikes, they would fall off once and just throw the biggest fit, and they're like, I quit, I suck at this, I'm never going to…. Well, you tried it once, what do you mean, right? And so like, if you can frame e-commerce, or whatever you’re trying. Affiliate marketing, FBA, whatever you're doing. If you can frame it the same as those little kids riding a bike and realize, Oh, of course, I'm not going to be good the first time. Of course, I'm gonna fall off my bike and realize that it's just a game that you just need to get better at by putting in the reps. If you can minimize that in your head and realize that it's not that big a deal and it's not that big of an investment, in most cases, like then you probably won't quit. And that's really the only way this is not gonna work, businesses might fail. But the entrepreneur never fails if they never quit.
Mickey 31:30
I love that. That's that is a quote right there, Your business might fail but the entrepreneur never fails if they don't quit. I'm like writing that on the wall that is outstanding. And I think a lot of it gets perpetuated by… There's a lot of gurus and advice givers out there who claim to know it all, or at least seem like they know it all, or they've just magically became amazing things. But the truth is it’s skill mastery, like you said. They've just put in the hours, right? They're just further along the line than you are. And so don't compare your 1 to their, you're 20 or 30.
Ben 32:01
Compareritis is a real thing. Something I struggle with greatly. Even to this day was much bigger in the beginning. I think whoever said don't meet your heroes, don't meet your gurus either. Like your, for the most part, you end up being very disappointed in what they actually know. Or you just tend to frame them as up on this pedestal or are greater than you in some way. And believe me, no one's greater than you. Whoever you are listening is, no one's greater than you. We're all the same. We're all again struggling with this every single day. And so, I started with the guru thing too. Like, I'm a big fan of long-form content, because you can't fake it. So if you and I were to talk for four more hours, this would still sound the same. Whereas, if you go ingest 4 to 40 hours of your favorite influencer guru, whatever, you should be able to call some bullshit on the ones that deserve to have bullshit called upon them. And so go spend more time. I think it's easy to get sucked into a motion. To seeing someone run an ad to you that tells you…. Like I see ads nowadays that “I'll build you a $10,000 a month YouTube channel by the end of next week”, and then it'll cost $2000. What? If you know how to do that? Why wouldn't you be building all of these for yourself? What are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense. Or a fully functional e-commerce store in the next 13 days. Like what?t None of that makes sense. So, just throw your bullshit detector up there and ingest as much as you can and I think you're gonna realize who's real and who's not real.
Mickey 33:17
I think that's great advice. Not just when you're looking online, but also when you're looking for a coach or a mentor, right? The quick and rapid impulse by jumping on a coach too quickly, can sometimes not be the best for you. So take the time to actually do your research and investigate and listen to the podcasts right?
Ben 33:34
For a coach, specifically, I would want like, a referral. I would want to talk to, if you go ask a coach, hey, I'd love to talk to five of your clients. First off, make sure that they're not like best friends, like all of the internet is just one big circle jerk. Everybody's just like your five buddies will do the reviews on your site, and you'll do a review on their sites. And so like first of all, make sure it's not just their buddies who left the reviews and who they're scheduling calls with. But honestly, the fake ones probably won't even give you anyone to call. And so, like, go ask for three references and find someone. Or better yet, hopefully you're in these communities like I love e-commerce fuel. If you're an E-commerce, you need a million-dollar business at this point to be in there. But there's a lot of groups where you can get in the trenches with other people doing it and have them recommend somebody. Be like, this person really worked for me or this person really didn't work for me, stay away. So, for coaches, specifically, I'm looking for a referral.
Mickey 34:17
Love it. Love it. Noted for sure. I've done it before. And I will absolutely do that before. And that's one of the things for me as a consultant right and working. I love when people ask for portfolios and reviews or referrals. It makes my heart sing. It's like people get a little bit nervous, like, hey, let's see if you referrals or have some numbers. And I'm like, yes, let me give them all to you because I'm proud of the work that I've done. But also it means you're doing your due diligence, which means we're probably on the same level.
Ben 34:43
And the coach should genuinely care, right? Like if they don't have an internal call with you before you purchase. That, red flag right there, right? They should want to call and tell you, hey, I don't need your money. I want to make sure I can help you. Let's make sure this is a good fit kind of thing. And even in those calls, you can get kind of you know, bullied over by sales pitch so you know, pay attention. Just keep your, again, keep your bullshit meter in hand as you're researching.
Mickey 35:04
Love it. Awesome, Ben, thank you so much. I feel like we got so many amazing sound bites and amazing quotes. I'm so excited to go through the transcript here. But thank you so much for your time. For anyone listening, make sure to head over to Dropship podcast. Check it out. Check out Ben online. I'll put all the links in the description box today. Thank you so much.
Ben 35:22
Yeah, thanks for having me. This was fun.
