What It Takes To Be A Solo Ecommerce Entrepreneur

As the brand owner, that's not what you want to build, right? If you want to build a long-term sustainable brand, that's just like opening up your inbox every morning and kind of building anxiety, thinking what's going to be there this morning? What disaster is waiting for me? So today we're going to be talking about a topic that we feel is close to our hearts. It's all about starting a business on your own. So Lewis, I mean, the journey of starting a business on your own, it's full of highs and lows, isn't it? Absolutely is. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's starting a business by yourself can feel like tackling a big project without a clear plan at times, and it can be tough, but whilst tough, it can also be very rewarding as well. So today we'll talk about what it really takes and how to handle it. Perfect. Very excited to discuss this one and go back into our journeys so we can give people a headstart essentially when they do start their own businesses. So let's break it down then for people listening and considering starting a business. What is your experience with starting a business on your own initially? Well, not great. When I first started in the early days of launching my first e-commerce store, I kind of thought that I thought there was no reason why I couldn't just do everything myself and just work it out on my own. So in the early days, I tried to piece things together. I remember spending countless hours trying to create a rather underwhelming looking Shopify store and thinking that that was the business. Like that was the bit that I can build that, you know, build it and they shall come as they say, which we all know isn't true. And then also thinking, okay, well, I've got a basic store now, but now I need to run some out to get some traffic to it. So then thinking, okay, well, I'll do that bit too. I'll build some ad campaigns and I'll watch a couple of YouTube tutorials and that I'll piece it together. And trying that with my first niche that I went into, which was using the low ticket model and sourcing products from AliExpress, I'm sure you've seen many YouTube videos about it where it's a very low barrier to entry model. But I started out trying to sell these men's ties, these like neckties. And I remember building a Shopify store, running Facebook ads to it, and then actually making some sales and then immediately realizing, oh dear, I've built something here that's kind of like a house of cards, it's all going to come crumbling down because the suppliers were pretty difficult to contact. You know, they weren't working at the same time. There was a language barrier. You're dealing through like a little messaging portal. You know, you're not actually speaking to anybody. There's very low quality assurance. So you don't really understand if the products are going to deliver and be in good condition when they arrive. Very poor profit margin on them because these are low ticket sales, long delivery times, just overall a really poor customer experience and actually a poor entrepreneurial experience. Because as the brand owner, that's not what you want to build, right? If you want to build a long-term sustainable brand, that's just like opening up your inbox every morning and kind of building anxiety, thinking what's going to be there this morning? What disaster is waiting for me? So I definitely faced a lot of hurdles when I first started with the dropshipping and because of, I think it was because of the fact that I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't know what I didn't know, every mistake that I hit was this like huge epiphany and realization of, oh, okay, so don't work with suppliers like that. Oh, so don't just sell low ticket products. And it did at times, if I think back to how I felt then, it felt like I was hitting a brick wall every time I ran into a problem like that, but starting on your own in business, it can feel overwhelming because you feel like you're juggling all of those roles. But huge lessons come out of those, really valuable lessons emerge from what feel like hurdles and brick walls at the time. And obviously you're wearing every hat when you start as well. You're the CEO, you're the marketer. I remember feeling like one minute I'm the customer service rep, the next minute I'm the accountant bookkeeper, the next minute I'm making strategic partnership decisions with suppliers. Like it's overwhelming. So yeah, it's important to know that while you might feel like you're on your own at the moment, you're not alone in your experiences because there's many other business owners out there, even in the UK who have walked the exact path for that you're walking and they found success as well. So I think if I was talking to my former self and trying to impart a lesson to myself earlier in my entrepreneurial journey, I'd say, be open to learning and adapting quickly, don't hesitate to spend time understanding the basics and really getting the fundamentals down before you start diving in at the deep end and working on other aspects of the business and it's exactly why we provide our members at Dropship Unlocked that kind of essential step-by-step path, all of the knowledge to help them navigate around the pitfalls that we fell into and just get started right, saving them a lot of time, preventing them costly mistakes along their journey and just getting to the destination of being a business owner or a much smoother path. Or as smooth as possible because when you first get started, you're right, you've got to get the basics right first, but if you don't have people around you and if you're going out on your own, you don't know what the basics even are, you've got to try all these different things out to work out what is the fundamentals to a business and still now with my e-commerce businesses, I still have to return back to the basics that I was taught initially in the Dropship Unlocked masterclass about, you know, just focus on signing suppliers, adding good quality products and optimize your ads to continue to increase the performance. But like you mentioned as well, you don't know what you don't know when you first get started. And the only way you can ever know that is by going in, you know, go straight through that steep learning curve or by getting around others who have been through that steep learning curve, who can impart some knowledge back to you. So for solo entrepreneurs then, as we mentioned, there'll be hurdles because we're going into an adventure, we're starting a new business, what would you say would be the first major hurdle that people will come up against when they're starting a business on their own? I think you can encapsulate this one as just overwhelm because there's probably a lot of things within that that just build up to the overwhelming feeling of overwhelm, right? You're, you're just wearing all the hats. You're, you're the CEO, you're the marketer, you're the customer service rep all at once. And I remember feeling extremely overwhelmed by the sheer number of tasks that were building up on my to-do list. And I was looking at them, trying to balance it with also having a job. So doing this like evenings, weekends, early mornings. And I'm thinking, right, so I've got to respond to emails. Then I need to do my bookkeeping to make sure I'm profitable. Then I've got to manage my ads, make sure I'm making sales at a healthy cost per acquisition. Then I've got to deal with obviously the customer support, because that's kind of the keeping the customers happy core of the business, then I've got voicemails and calls starting to build up, and then I've got to speak to suppliers and make some payments, and then I've got to design my website. And there's so many things. And unless you have a clear strategy for each of them and a roadmap and templated approaches to this and the automation tools that can, can actually extract you from needing to do a lot of that stuff, you just feel like you're spinning your plates. And I was just trying not to let a single plate fall, but eventually that's a recipe for overwhelm and even burnout as well. I used to work late into the evenings. Just trying to keep up with everything, but it wasn't a particularly enjoyable experience. Even though I knew my why, why I was doing it, my vision, the long-term to create freedom for me, my family, be able to travel at the time. It was extremely difficult. And it's like trying to cook a multi-course meal in the kitchen and it's just chaotic. You know, you've got so many dishes happening all at once. You're definitely going to burn a few dishes along the way. So for me, I found that the key for me was learn to prioritize tasks based on the impact. And then if I could try and find automation tools that would help me handle those repetitive tasks. And if I couldn't automate it, then I'd outsource it either to a bookkeeper or to a web designer or to someone who specialized in that area, that skillset that I needed. And it then just helps you manage your workload and it keeps you focused on growth and actually growing this business into something that can be life-changing rather than being caught up in the busy work is exactly why we work with our members of Dropship Unlocked to provide them with the right tools, the right strategies to effectively manage these tasks, but also most importantly, help them avoid burnout and overwhelm at the beginning. So they can stay focused and get the business up and running. Yeah, because overwhelm is the biggest enemy, really. That's what's going to hold you back and stop you taking the critical actions that you need to take to keep things pushing forward. So it is an adventure and that learning curve is steep when you first get started. But of course, whenever we're going for large goals, like scaling a business that allows us to leave our job and work for ourselves, there's going to be challenges along the way to achieve something so monumental as that. So it's all part of the course that we found as I went through. And I have a similar story to yourself, Lewis. I initially got started learning YouTube videos about traditional dropshipping and selling products from AliExpress. Went out on my own, didn't really tell anyone about what I was doing. Just followed a YouTube course, set up some Facebook ads and yeah, found out that it wasn't as easy as it looked to get sales coming through from a Facebook ad platform to your Shopify store with cheap products from AliExpress. It all came crashing down for me as well. And I was just looking around, looking for people to help me and tell me, okay, what's the next step that I need to take? But it wasn't there. So you have to go through that learning curve on your own and pivot and be resilient to ensure that you carry on. But yeah, we can make this so much easier for people now if they just know what basics to focus on from the very start. So people haven't got to go through that same heartbreak that we went through when we realized that we failed our first businesses.