Making $5 Million Dropshipping On TikTok Shop

0:00How much money do you make? A year? Yeah. A few million bucks. A few million bucks? just right away. Yeah, that's how I open every podcast. Yeah, last year I made like 2 million bucks. Well, you're a G and you have crazy cool cars and you just bought a dope house, so the money's real. Um What do you do? I started with drop shipping and then in 2017 I started creating content around that business and that's when I started to, I guess, really find my calling which was YouTube as well as business. Wait, so you were

0:28making drop shipping videos in 2017? Yeah, in high school. Dude, that's like the peak wasn't that like the peak of drop shipping? Like Uh yeah, in a sense like it was where it was super easy. We're seeing that now like this year with TikTok Shop, too. But like I am seeing how easy or I saw how easy it was back then where you can just, you know, hit up an influencer on Instagram and run up tons of money. So, for sure. Okay, so this is what I love the most about you and your story is that was like a huge mania of drop shipping 2017-2018, maybe

0:562019 as well. But then a lot of people once it got harder, it became a little less unpopular or a little less popular. Almost everyone switched out and switched to the next trend on YouTube where you like stayed in the drop shipping lane and just kept going and learning and building through the skill. And now you're like one of the few people that can like legitimately drop ship anything and you just know what the [ __ ] you're doing and even if you fail with one product, you'll find the next one and make a lot of money on that. So, explain why just explain that

1:29process for you. So, it's nothing fancy. I think I'm naturally not the smartest person ever and so like there's tons of other businesses obviously you guys were into crypto and stuff. I just personally like was not that educated with everything else and it's like you don't know what you don't know. So, I just always knew drop shipping. I knew okay, I could find products online. I have suppliers I've already built up connections with. So, it was just something that had always interested me and always made made money. So, I never even thought to look elsewhere cuz I knew if I already had this business that I had base knowledge

2:01for, if I could just keep, you know, growing 10% a year or 20% a year with knowledge, I will be light years ahead of if I tried to start a different business every other year and keep ping-ponging around from other stuff cuz that's what I did in the beginning and it just got me nowhere. And then I kind of talked to myself. I was like, "Hey, focus on one thing." and it worked. And so that's why like it's not anything fancy. It's just I saw drop shipping as a thing and I didn't really change my mind. I kind of just focused on it. What

2:28makes a successful drop shipper in 2023? Okay. I think it's important to focus on the fact that you stuck through drop shipping since like the start of the popularity, but you referenced that it's now becoming easy again with TikTok. Yes. So just walk me through your drop shipping process. Okay. So drop shipping in 2023 is insane right

2:49now. Like it's specifically with TikTok. I'll just tell you like talk to you. TikTok is ridiculous right now. So the organic content reach right now with TikTok Shop is ridiculous and I saw So essentially what TikTok Shop is, it's like Amazon. So they are trying to compete with Amazon. They're trying to have facilities that house their own inventory where brands like if you had a brand, you could reach out to them, house inventory with them, they will fulfill your orders, and you can sell

3:14your product directly on their platform. So that's what they're doing now and they are trying to use the overall reach they have on their platform to push people to just stay on their platform cuz they saw all these advertisers in the last few years run ads to external websites and it converted like crazy. Like that's how we've done again 5 million in the last 12 months is with TikTok ads pushing to our own Shopify store. But now what is happening is TikTok realized that and they're like, "Okay, let's keep it all in house." and

3:41that's why TikTok Shop is a thing now. So now essentially you can create your own store on TikTok and sell directly to those consumers on the app already in the app. [ __ ] so that's that's how it works. And the best thing is is TikTok manages their content. So, the organic like feed that you go through, that will be controlled by TikTok. And when they release new features like with TikTok Shop, every other video is a TikTok Shop promoting a product. And so, that's how powerful it is. So, essentially what we are doing is we are now finding products that we already sold with TikTok ads, literally just

4:13taking them, putting them on TikTok Shop, sending them out to creators with Amazon Prime. We're just priming them to the creators. They get it next day. And then they film content and they are incentivized to make the content because we give them a commission. Okay, I have some of this going over my head. So, what When you said Amazon Prime Yeah. Okay, okay, yeah, let me explain let me backtrack. So, essentially TikTok has a creator program where you can say, "Hey, I have this product." You know, creators can reach

4:38out to me. I can reach out to creators. And I can see if I can make a deal so that way they basically can get the product from us and make content for the product to push sales because excuse me, TikTok has an affiliate program where for example, you let's say you have a big TikTok following over 5K minimum, you can actually get my product and then you can film content with it and on the TikTok Shop Yes, and you will get 20%. That's You can set your affiliate commission, but we set 20. You launch a product on TikTok Shop, Sebastian. I have 50,000 followers on TikTok. I can then make

5:11reach out to you say, "Brett, I want you to make content. You know, we love your page." Whatever you want to say to convince them. And then say, "We'll give you 20% of every sale you bring in." So, I can make an basically an ad, but it's just a normal post on my account. And it promotes your product with a link to

5:26your TikTok Shop product. shop. It's not even like a URL. It's just directly on the app. So, that's the cool part. But if you think about it deeper, it becomes a lot more crazy in your head. So, you realize that every single creator who's making content for the TikTok Shop, subconsciously each viewer sees it and in their head they're

5:44like, "Okay, this isn't just an ad." Because in order to actually get that product and make a TikTok Shop video, this video that I'm watching that this person's talking about, I don't know, this mic stand, they had to have already gotten the product from this brand that is now being promoted. So, it's another layer of trust where you don't just see an ad and it in your head you don't automatically turn it as a scam or like a you know you have to buy one? Yeah, you have to actually get the product from the shop you're promoting. That way you can now promote it. So, if you get what I mean,

6:12like make you buy one? Yeah, well, they make you buy them or you can send them free samples and then they accept the sample. But overall, all of these creators have gotten a product from the shop. So, it's like this new layer of trust again to actually build into the overall platform to make it just next level. So, it's literally like if Amazon had creator profiles where you can make content first. Yeah, exactly. But there's a shop with it. That's pretty cool. That's actually crazy. We tried it out with a

6:36shop like I think we started a week ago. We sent maybe it's actually two or three products out. It cost us So, so hold on. So, it's like Amazon FBA. Like if you have a product, you have to send a pallet. for TikTok. It's not yet. We're in communication with them to see their goal and they want to do that. However, for now, it's just a platform. It's like eBay was and Amazon was back then when they didn't have the fulfillment. No, it's just like a platform, a marketplace

7:00where you can sell products. can still drop ship. You can still get a supplier on Alibaba. Okay. So, how do you get a product on TikTok Shop? You can just go on TikTok Shop, Google it, seller accounts, and then you create a seller accounts, you start listing your products, and you can have them all loaded up. So, like for one for instance, we are selling a women's product. I won't say it cuz we're still selling it and we plan to probably do a few million this Q4 with it. And so, we sent it out to a handful of people, maybe five. And of those five, it cost

7:26us, I would say, $10 to $20 per product to get to the actual people to make content. So, let's say it cost us 100 bucks. So, of that 100 bucks, we actually have generated 3,000 bucks in sales that has been generated. I think profit's around 1,500 bucks and there's no ad spend. So, it's literally 100 bucks and we profited 1,500 from just sending them out and people are making

7:49content promoting it. So, it's just like a baked-in affiliate program in a way. Yeah. Does TikTok take a percentage? They take 5%. Okay, so Amazon takes 15% but this system you can put a product on TikTok Shop, the creator that promotes the product it's 20% and then TikTok takes five. Yeah, the creator can get whatever. You can put five, 10 but I

8:07like to do 20. Oh, so it's just an affiliate system that you choose. Oh, cool. Yeah. And they can natively make content in the app and sell the product within the app. And once they do a good video, this is the killer part, you can number one talk to them and say, "Hey, look at how good

8:19you did. You generated us $1,000. Imagine if you did this once a week, like if you consistently post content, you can make so much money." So, that's number one. Also, if you want to launch other products and you already have creators that are doing well, you pull them off the platform, you put Well, I don't know if this is against TOS but you keep talking to them and you say, "Hey, we have new products to launch and all this stuff." They can now create new products, new videos for your products and make you tons of money for endless amounts of products. So, it's it's a

8:46win-win. like building that relationship with that creator. And then you can talk to them and promote anything in the future. This So, this is like UGC creators optimized. This is like influencer marketing optimized all in one platform. Exactly. It's like everything we wanted for Instagram that never happened. Like there was never a hub where you can directly just look up, "Hey, I want people over 5,000 followers who get this

9:08many views." Wow. TikTok has that already and you can't you weren't able to do that with Instagram. You can do it so in-depth. You can pick the category of content they make, what gender they are and everything like that and get a a huge list of creators that are willing to promote your product. Okay, there's so much to unpack. How long has this been around? A while. A while. What's up? Um it's been around for not actually a while, 60 days or so. I think they

9:31launched like two months ago. out two months ago? Yes, that's why I'm like so hyped about it cuz I think it's something where people are going to gap a lot of newbies if they don't start soon because TikTok shop is going to get bigger, which means that reps and everyone else aren't going to be as accessible. Uh you know, the creators are going to get bombarded with tons of uh requests and stuff to actually promote content. And so, you know, I think now's an amazing time to start. There's always an arbitrage with being the first one. If you're the first one on a certain platform, especially an

10:00ad platform, they're going to give you better CPMs cuz they want you to feel like it's doing good. And so, the fact that there's only been around for 2 months, like I'm sure there's like barely any products on there. Yeah, and it's only in the US. It's not even in the other countries yet, so.

10:13Yeah, it's pretty cool. Every time I do a podcast with people, I always like immediately want to ping-pong around at other business models. That's actually [ __ ] crazy. Cuz that makes so much sense. It's like the first platform that has video and the marketplace and the affiliate incentive. So, it's like a perfect

10:25triangle. Yeah, so now now essentially what we're doing is we have VAs just reaching out to tons of creators daily saying, "Hey, you know, once essentially our business model, I can kind of play it out. I think that'd be valuable. We pick five products to 10 products to test with TikTok shop where we basically say, "Hey, we're going to send out like five products per product." So, essentially we'll send out five units per product of each individual product that we're going to test, and we'll send them to all different creators. They all make content. Whatever product does the best, that's the one we'll focus on. And then

10:54once we do, then we have VAs literally copy and paste messages to tons of new influencers saying, "Hey, we have this product. Can you promote it?" And they can reach out to, you know, thousands a day. And then we can if we can find like 50 to 100 creators a day that will promote our product, you know, at a 10%

11:10win rate, we're making thousands a day. And there's no ad cost. So, that's why I am hopping on it and just absolutely capitalizing the hell out of it cuz I know how easy it is right now. This is like Did you see the podcast with Oliver? Uh not really, no. Tab sex shop, that one? This is literally his system, but now baked into

11:26TikTok. That's crazy. And are you reaching out to them directly on the TikTok platform? It's on TikTok seller. They have a communication platform on there. TikTok seller? Yeah, on the or sorry, on the TikTok shop seller accounts, you have a like it's like a messaging app that's linked up with it. I don't know what it's called, but yeah. But so so it's in

11:44the TikTok platform? in seller accounts. people to reach out to? What's your outreach strategy? essentially, like what are we actually saying? Or the filter or what? The filter. Okay, so that's just it depends on what product you're actually going to be using. If you're selling a product for men, obviously filter to men's influencers. We like to do over 10,000 followers. And then you can actually this is the crazy part. You can see the average views of the account. So it can say this girl has 20,000 uh followers,

12:11but on average she gets 200,000 views. That's a killer ratio, right? Like 10x her following. Really good engagement. And so that's what we do. We look for those valuable things that are over you know, 5x uh or view to follower ratio where they're getting way more views per follow that they have. And so we basically just do that and then tell our VAs to do that on

12:29a big scale. Interesting. Okay, and then what I'm assuming just the outreach message itself is just like, "Hey Hey, we love your page, you know, we have these few products. When we're testing, we say we have these few products. Would you be interested in promoting them for 20% or for 15% or whatever?" And then once we have a winning product, we're like, "Hey, we are selling this product and it's doing really well. Other creators are making this much a week or whatever. Would you be interested in selling it?" Okay, that makes sense. Very simple process. Now, how are you choosing what products to

12:58sell? Again, we're we're essentially looking at what products sold well in the past. So all we're doing is pulling our past winners. It's it's kind of easy for us, but if a newbie was trying to do this, I would just type in the term shop. I can actually Do you want me to show you real

13:12quick? Sure. It's actually really cool. Um you can pull up TikTok and type in the term shop. And then if you go to the shop tab, you can look at all of these different if it'll load, um all of these different products. This one had sold 8,000 units, 5,000 units, 395,000 units. the top sellers. So yeah, you look at the top selling products. Maybe don't sell that exact one, but you start to learn from what's selling well, and then what people can easily make content for. Cuz not every product is easy to make content for. If it's something super complex, not every influencer is going to be able to talk

13:43about it. So yeah, it's kind of combining those things, making sure the margins are good, and then Okay, so you find a product on TikTok Shop that's like working well, but then you have to go to Alibaba, right? Or For fulfillment, all we don't buy in bulk yet. We are going to, but for now, all we do is just we work with Zendrop. They can fulfill all of our orders. And there is one thing, you need to have US tracking. So you may need US suppliers if you want to have fast shipping, as well as TikTok requires you to input the tracking at most 7 days. So if you get

14:13an order today, you have to fulfill it within 7 days, or they will cancel all of the orders. Oh, so you can't like have a 2-3 week shipping time. Yeah. Well, you can. It's only tracking. You need to input the tracking within a week, which is not that bad. Like as long as you're on top of your stuff. But I think it's good. TikTok is like weeding out the scammy scumbags who do drop ship traditionally, and making it a very clean platform with with consequences if you fail to comply with everything. You know, you have a rating on your store, where if people are unhappy, they will start to kind of

14:43throttle back your performance and all of that stuff. So So they're kind of making it more trustworthy, like Amazon. Again, they're trying to do it. They're trying to be Amazon. It's smart. It makes a lot of sense. cuz they have all the reach. So Okay, so but you're using Zendrop to like search and find products? To fulfill the orders. So they're basically the supplier. That's how I'm I'm finding them by just again, like I showed you, on TikTok Shop, I'll look Sorry, sorry, sorry. How do you source a product? So say you find the product you want to use. And then you have to like talk

15:08get the supplier for it, right? That's the pricing. Okay. That's through Zendrop. We have their pro plan. It's like 50 bucks, and we have a Slack channel with 15 employees from Zendrop. So we'll just send the link from AliExpress. We'll say, "Hey, we want this product sourced. Here's our target cost." And then they will get a supplier

15:24or get a source. them. No, that's just a reference point to say this is the exact product we want. Get us actual pricing with shipping. Okay, so you see it on TikTok Shop, then you go to Zendrop. it up on AliExpress, and we get a link, and then we're like, "Yep, this is the one." And then we send it to our Slack channel for Zendrop and say, "We need

15:42this product sourced." Okay. Perfect. Crystal clear now. Thank you. Okay, so that's the product. Just one more point on this. What makes like a good product? Like how are you identifying what to sell? Cuz you have years in the game, and I know this is almost like the most important aspect of drop shipping. So, a winning product is I like to think of

16:03it as the audience you're selling to. So, first thing, you have to pick of what sort of audience are you trying to sell to? How niche are you wanting to go? Personally, I don't like selling super hyper-focused niches. I like selling to anyone. If I could sell someone If I can sell a product I can sell to women and female and any age, that's perfect cuz you know, it's it's scalable. You can scale it to 20 to 50K a day. So, that's first thing. I like to overall think of like what products or

16:27what overall categories can I sell in? So, for example, women's beauty. Most women wear makeup. Most women have hair. And so, for example, hair curlers, we've done millions of dollars with those products. Like there's one you guys can all look up. It's this little wireless hair curler. You can put it in your purse, and you can curl your hair in the car. That one did so well cuz again, every girl wants to curl their hair, and if they can take it on the go cuz they're always late ready, they can do their hair in the car, and they're good to go. And so, those sorts of products

16:54that number one, they solve a problem, and then number two, can be sold to the masses. That's all we pretty much look for. Obviously, there are some fine points like we need good margins. Needs to have a little bit of a wow factor. Um other than that though, like that's pretty much it. And you can like easily visually portray the value of the

17:11product. That's another thing is like the value has to be instant. We've tried to sell products that maybe the value like supplements or certain serums that take months to get results. Those are typically harder to sell just because there's no you know instant before and after. So So you seem to be this you this is the niche you mentioned beauty

17:29for women. Mhm. Is there any reason why you've gravitated towards that? So number one women are easy to sell to. They're happier to spend money than guys. Guys I had a tweet go viral where I posted my mattress set up and it was just a bed on the floor. Guys don't need a lot of stuff but girls they want to paint their face. They want to have their nails done. They want to do everything and so it's just easier cuz girls are naturally bigger consumers. So that's why but I'm

17:52not saying guy products don't work. We're actually selling one that we're starting I believe next week. It's a guy product. It's actually unisex but mainly guys and so we'll sell to both for sure but guys they need good deals or they need like a real reason to buy the product. Maybe it solves a good problem

18:06but yeah typically we sell to girls. Like they guys are going to view it as like an investment where they expect an outcome. more logical. Yeah girls are like ooh pretty. Yeah I want it now. Impulsive. That makes a lot of sense. Okay cool. So that's your ethos for products. Let's just stick with let's just use a hair curler in context for this example since

18:22you kind of know about it. Yeah. So what made what was the video that you're having these creators make? Yeah so essentially it's just demoing the product. It's nothing fancy. However the this was years ago too and the atmosphere has changed. It used to be like one creator can just say hey oh my god like look at this product it's super cool. Now with TikTok ads cuz we do both. We do TikTok shop and ads. Now for ads as far as TikTok goes we actually go ahead and we mash up like 20 different clips maybe 10 to 20 clips of people using the product cuz again it's like in

18:53the yeah it's in the back of their head you're baking in social proof into their minds and then they usually convert better that way. We do that with beauty products with clothing with all of that cuz you know what's better than one if you see 20 people using the product. So it's almost just like a montage of people using just in the car like mirror

19:09down. Is there any words on the screen? Uh yeah, usually so this is one thing specifically with TikTok ads, TikTok shop is a lot more simple but with ads, we always keep the offer in the first few seconds. So for example, if we're going to sell, I don't know, a crewneck, if we're going to do a buy one get one free, that offer will be in the first few seconds of the ad. The reason is is we have an insane sale and we want people to know about it. That way we can get the click-through rate up, which is essentially if you get a thousand impressions, a hundred people that

19:36actually click on that ad, that's a 10% click-through rate. So we want a high-ass click-through rates. In order to do so, you need to show what the actual value proposition is, which is in this case, buy one get one free or something similar. Okay, so is that just literally like buy one get one free

19:52words on the screen? Yeah. Is there a certain style, a font, like uh just the TikTok font. We can do it on InShot, uh that's the app we use, but no, that's it. Like do that and then you can narrate with text, like say this is the best the the the the. It's not difficult, it's just like

20:05What is that copy? What is that script? Like Like what do you mean? Like what is the exact there curly hair if you're on the go. god, I love this dress. Like I wear it everywhere. Perfect summer dress, you know, whatever. Get yours now." at the end. It's nothing fancy, but I think it's a combination of all of the clips, the audio, we usually have a very good genuine voiceover, and then the text kind of just subconsciously hammers home

20:26what we're trying to sell. music? Um typically there's not. If anything, it's played really, excuse me, really quietly. That Chick-fil-A's come back up. Playing really quietly or we just have a really quality voiceover, which now you can do with AI. Um I think 11 Labs is a killer one that we use and we plug in those actually really often now. So 11 Labs voiceovers and then just cut up montages of all these people using it,

20:49first two or three seconds your offer. So buy one get one or what maybe a discount or whatever. Is this Is there like still like headline captions, anything like that? that's it. Caption, they don't really matter. Get yours now, you know, buy this now, buy one get one free. It's pretty simple. offer So it's way simpler than Facebook ads where you're having to lay out this

21:08whole sales copy. So, So, yeah, dude. Honestly, TikTok, the main thing is content. And I think that's how it's going to go for the next few years with Facebook and TikTok, even with the TikTok Shop and everything. Ads and targeting and all the specifics are going to go out the window cuz I think AI is going Yeah, oh, for sure. We don't run any targeting with TikTok. We just turn on campaigns and the the actual video ads do all the targeting for us. And so, I think it's going to keep going into that area where we actually aren't doing any targeting at all cuz we're already not

21:36with TikTok. And it's going to be mainly content-driven where you just need to dial in your creatives and call out your audience in each video. That sounds way easier than what I had to used to do. Yeah, dude. It's It's literally just making good videos. It's not easy though. Like the videos are the hard part. But, with the TikTok Shop, it's becoming a lot easier cuz you don't even have to pay for videos like we used to have to Amazon Prime the product to to creators and then also pay them 100 bucks on top of the videos. Now, we're literally saying, "Hey, you know, get the product. We'll send it to you for

22:04free. Just make content and we'll give you commission." And it's a win-win cuz everyone wins and we get all that content now from the TikTok Shop that we can now link up with TikTok ads and run paid ads to the TikTok Shop, which obviously TikTok is now preferring their shop over external URLs, which we have been seeing a decrease in paid ad conversions compared to like weeks ago before the TikTok Shop was a thing. So,

22:27That makes sense intentionally though. Yeah, for sure. I mean, Twitter does that too. yeah. They're trying to dominate. Okay, so, but let's focus on TikTok ads. I just want to fully understand this. So, it's Obviously, now it's all about the creative. But, you said there's no targeting. There's no anything other than you just make the

22:42video and then may run an ad. So, there is targeting, but it's dog [ __ ] Like it just doesn't work. Yeah, yeah, don't do it. So, what we do is we turn on a campaign. We do, you know, 50 bucks a day CBO and then we'll plug in ad groups. What is CBO? Okay, so, CBO is a campaign budget optimization. I think of them as folders. So, the campaign is the

22:59objective level of what you want to do. So, for this campaign, we turn it on and we say, "Hey, we want to get conversions. We want website conversions." And so, that's essentially the main objective. And then, you say, "Let this whole campaign run $50." And then, inside here, you have ad groups. And each ad group has detailed targeting, which is the age, the gender, the language, all of the specifics, and

23:20what time you're going to run the ads. And so, you have five ad groups in this one campaign. So, you could either set each ad group at a $20 a day budget, or say, "Hey, this whole campaign, give it 50 bucks. If you want to spend 20 on one ad group and $5 on the other, you can be my guest." And then, that's basically how we do it. And then, you load up creatives. That's essentially how it So, are the ad groups is each one of those ads in the ad group a different creative? No, we will essentially plug in like three to I would say actually

23:45three to 10, maybe even sometimes 20, creatives in each ad group. Then, there's after the ad group, there's like ad groups another folder that houses the creatives. And in those, we'll plug in again, probably like five to 20 creatives. Yeah. No, the ad group and then the ad itself. It's ad sets. is like ad group for Facebook. Yeah. So, that's essentially how it breaks down. And then, yeah, we'll load up like five to 20 creatives. And then, from there, we essentially see what creatives work. So, you have ad groups. So, you

24:10have the campaign, which is the folder. So, it's like everything's inside this campaign. you want clicks, what do you want? going for sales, and that's what this folder's all about getting sales. And then, you have 10, 20 different ad groups. Five. Okay, so you have five different ad groups, but you're not doing any targeting. The point of the ad group is to tell TikTok which demographic to go after. But, you're just letting TikTok do its thing. You're creating five

24:32Sometimes we'll do like age, but yeah. Okay, but you're doing Okay, that makes sense. But, you're doing five different ad groups because each one of those ad groups is going to TikTok's algorithm's going to naturally target a different demographic. And so, you're letting TikTok's algorithm show you, letting it figure it out, the AI figure it out. And then, within each one of those ad

24:47groups, you have 10 different creatives. Video, photo, different offers. And so, TikTok by itself in one campaign is going to figure out how to five different demographics this one's the best and within each demographic this is the best offer combined with creative. Is that the process? Yeah, and then it delegates spend to whatever ad groups are working the best. And then and then literally all we do with TikTok ads is like if something's working that same day, we'll go on the campaign, we'll edit the settings and bump up the budget. So if it's at 50 bucks and let's just say I don't know, it's noon and

25:18with the ads are crushing it, what we'll do we'll just edit that campaign, bump it up from 50 to 100. If it still is working after another 30 minutes to an hour, we're still getting the same amount of CPA like same cost cost per acquisition. Um same cost or maybe it goes up a little bit, but it's still really profitable, then we'll bump it to 200, then 300, then 500 and we keep increasing it. We've bumped campaigns all the way up to 5 to 10,000 dollars a day uh profitably and so that's all we do and every single day we're launching more campaigns because TikTok, I wish it was easier, but it's

25:50always a test every single day and we're always hunting for winning campaigns. That's how I always like to think about it. So like if today, let's just say you and I, we get on our computer, we set up two campaigns that are $50 a day each CBO and one works really well. We start scaling that one up. We run it up to $1,000 by the end of today. At midnight, we'll crank it back to 50 and we'll

26:11launch Yeah, yeah, yeah, I promise. Yeah, yeah. Side note, TikTok will give you a free $1,500 in TikTok ads if you sign up in the next 30 days. So if you spend $300, they're going to match that and give you a free $300 in TikTok ads. This is literally free money, but it is a limited offer, so you need to get started as soon as possible. If you want to learn more, I'll leave a link to that right below this video. Just make sure you click on the link based on the

26:36country that you live in. Yeah, yeah. We'll crank it back to 50 at midnight and then for the following day. And then we'll also launch maybe two or three more campaigns to then go out and hunt again and see, okay, which campaign is going to perform the best? Cuz TikTok is not perfect. It's not Facebook. It hasn't been around for that long. So, there are some flaws that we've had to learn. And so, that's what we do now is we're like, "Okay, let's go and do this again tomorrow and see." So, it's

27:00definitely a lot of leg work, but yeah. So, it's literally by the day. And you have a you have a campaign, and if it just starts hitting one day, you're like, "Turn this up as fast as possible." But by midnight, you turn it all the way back down because you're worried that it's not going to work the next day and they're going to waste your

27:13money. Yep. It's like you're just finding I see why you call it hunting. It's like you're like finding these pockets of like consumers. Yeah. And you're finding that one pocket, but you're going to hit the top of that very quickly. And so, you don't just want to automatically let it keep spending your money. it. Holy [ __ ]

27:27It's weird, bro. That's like kind of stressful, but is. It's a lot more time in the ad accounts. does make sense like why that would work that way. And it's really cool that the tick you trust the TikTok AI to find this demographic way better than you just guessing. Yep. We tried it. We tried to use targeting and stuff, and it just did not perform. Like we split tested a campaign with no targeting versus a campaign targeting this

27:46interest and this age range and stuff. And most of the time, I would say 90% of the time, the campaign with no targeting works. So, that's what we stick with. It's interesting cuz you could say like it's a product for women, but maybe a lot of guys want to buy it as a gift. And so, like if you only target women,

27:59you're cutting off that entire market. And so, AI TikTok's ads can like just figure that out by themselves without having to limit it. Hm. Yeah, it's interesting for sure. really cool. And then, what are like good metrics for a TikTok ad? Like when you're bumping it up, like what are you specifically looking for? CPA, pretty much. Obviously, early signs, cost per acquisition, cost per

28:18purchase, whatever you want to call it. But early signs of a good product is going to be a CPC, which is cost per click. So, if you get 100 views on your ad and one person clicks, then you know, they'll spit out a number. You need that to be around 50 cents or less. So, if you're getting like a dollar CPC, which is a dollar per click, and let's say you're only generating on your store, you get 1,000 visits for the day and you generate 1,200 bucks in revenue, you're not going to be profitable cuz you spent $1,000 on ads. And you know, you got to

28:43spend money on the product. So, So, like to have a 50 cent CPC or lower and then CPMs, those usually range from like 8 to 12 bucks. Anything over that usually is going to be unprofitable. However, those are kind of vanity metrics. Like, they're good early metrics to look at, but once we start getting purchases, we mainly look at CPA. And if our CPA is like 8 bucks and we're selling a $30 product, we're probably at 30% margins,

29:09and then we just keep an eye on that. And if we our CPA goes to 10, we're still a little bit profitable, and so we just need to basically understand the target CPA that we're trying to hit and not go over that. Okay, so you want a $10 CPM, which means 1,000 people to see this ad, it costs $10 for 1,000 people to see the ad. And then your cost per click needs to be $0.50 per out of those 1,000 people who saw it, $0.50 per person to click, and so that's 20 people at $10. And then with that, you need like two of them or three of two and a

29:38half to buy at $8 cost per acquisition. Is that correct? Okay. Around there, yeah. $0.50 clicks, $10 every 1,000 people $0.50 clicks, or $0.50 $10 or so for CPMs, and then yeah, you want to get conversions at least or like you want to do 2.5 to 3x so a ROAS. 2.5 to 3x ROAS. Okay. At scale, we're

29:57usually at around 2.5. is based on, obviously, the type of product you sell. And so, you're assuming that this is a $40, $50 product. Mhm. So, for a $30 to $50 product, those are the metrics you're looking for. Yeah, if you're selling a $80 product, your cost per click, your CPMs, and your CPA, your cost per acquisition, cost per purchase, it's all going to be higher cuz you're going to have to reach more

30:17people cuz it's like more expensive. it's a $1,000 product, you're not going to get $8 cost per acquisition. Okay. But just for a general consumer product, beauty for women, should sell a product for 30 to 50. Maybe even 20. Like, we've sold $3 products on TikTok, and we maybe get into that, but like we've done 25k days with $3 products. So, it just depends like

30:35that make money if you ship it? That was when we were doing a low cost for the product plus shipping on the back end. So, essentially, we got sourcing from ZenDrop for I think around like $3 for this product shipped into the US to our customers. And then, essentially, what we did is we tested the product out with tons of different videos. It was this little swinging duck that you hooked into your middle rearview mirror in your car, and it swung when you're driving. It was pretty cool. And so, we ran ads for that and said, "Only $3." Like I mentioned, you put the offer in the first few

31:04seconds of the video. All the girls and guys, anyone that was younger, they ran to our website and bought the product, and then we would hit them with $7 shipping on the back end. And the product only cost us $4 to ship to the customer, so we actually We did really well with that product. making money based on the perceived

31:20shipping cost. Yes. Okay. Interesting. So, that's just like an irresistible offer, $3, but then they get their They have to pay for shipping. People are used to free shipping, but it's not that big of a deal. And $8 for shipping doesn't seem extreme. So, that makes sense. It's a strategy. Yeah, exactly. Also, when we're getting like $1 to $2 CPAs, it was It's really profitable, so it's killer. But, people are doing the same thing now on TikTok Shop. They're doing, "Hey, it's only $4 for this product." And then you get on the back end, and there's $6 to $10 shipping. So, the same thing's happening now with TikTok Shop. I think

31:50everything, honestly, with drop shipping is getting reinvented into the new and improved platform like every freaking day. Of TikTok Shop? Yes. So, explain the actual creative that you've seen worked with creators on the TikTok Shop. So, you have a TikTok Shop product? It's brutal how dumb it is, Brett, okay? I'm telling you, any video that for the most part, as long as the creator is somewhat competent, it will sell. Like,

32:13I'll show you the video after this. Send it to me. I'll show it on the screen. No, no, no, cuz it's a product we're currently selling. Yeah, yeah, I can't do that. Um but, the videos are dumb, dude. It's just like showing the product off, saying, "Oh, look at this, whatever." And that's kind of it. The thing that is killing it is the fact that TikTok is just pushing it so hard on the algorithm. So, it's like the video, it's skewed because it doesn't have to be good content, cuz they just want to get sales in to grow the TikTok shop so more people know about it and

32:39more people hop on it. And so I don't exactly know what content will work long-term. I think I know, which is why we're kind of trying to be ahead of the curve and improve our content and make it similar to like we did with TikTok ads and hopefully, you know, outperform the competition, but it's something as simple as you filming, "Hey, I just got this whatever and it's so cool. You can get yours below." It's like it's very dumb how easy it is. Yeah, so just showing what you're using naturally in your life and then people can click one button and buy it as long as they see it

33:08in the video in action. They don't really need much more selling. Yeah. That's so interesting. So this is like a really urgent arbitrage opportunity. Well, I'm glad I asked. I had no idea this was a thing before I even asked you to come on here. So watch this first 30 minutes over again because that is like the most valuable urgent information

33:25possible. Yeah. Agreed. Like you literally don't have to do you don't even have to make the storefront anymore, do you? Or is there like a science TikTok shop pages? no pages. It's just your product page. What are you linking? Like your the ZenDrop link or the AliExpress link or Not even that. You're just

33:38a photo and a description? It's just product photos, a price, a description and that's it. What's Okay, what's the description? Is it Keywords from AliExpress or ZenDrop link. even write your own? No, you don't Well, we are going to now. So we did that approach where we did the exact listing from AliExpress. We plugged it in and it worked, but now and we don't use AliExpress for suppliers just for listing sometimes. Now we're going to try and go at it from a brand perspective and write a better description, better photos and see if we can get a better visitor to revenue ratio. And right now we're getting like

34:07if we get 300K visits on our store, we're usually getting around 30K in revenue. So we're trying to bump that number up um cuz it's around 10% right now, but literally just a volume game of how many creators can you reach out to? And so you hire VAs. But you guys aren't gatekeeping any of this. Like you obviously came on here, but you literally have a free course, too. So you're not like selling drop shipping

34:27courses. Why do you have a free course? So it's a fun topic because I traditionally look down on courses when I started out. Like I was the guy who didn't buy the courses cuz I was like, I don't need that [ __ ] And so, I did I never bought any. And then I as I went through drop shipping, I realized that it was kind of needed. Like I was behind and it took me 3 years before I hit my first like seven-figure year. And so, it probably would have sped it up if I had some information that was actually applicable. But essentially, why we did

34:55a free one was because we did the math and we said, "Hey, you know, Sebb and I sat down especially in George you and we calculated like how many people would join our free course versus if we charged for it." And the number was dramatically lower if we charged for it. And so, actually, we have a few

35:10affiliates worked into the free course. I'll be transparent about that. And so, we make a little bit of money on commission referring people to TikTok ads, to suppliers, to Shopify. And then essentially, we are able to get compensated for our information that way. That way, no one has to directly pay us and buy a thousand-dollar course up front. And now, we can get you know, we can give hundreds of thousands of people access to all of that information. That's what we did last year. We did I think quarter million

35:35people joined our original free course. Yeah, and I just met someone this Saturday who came up to me and he like shook my hand. He was so excited. I was like, "What's up? Like how do you know me or whatever?" He's like, "Dude, we my girlfriend and I" and he was from Russia. He had just moved a few years ago. He's like, "My girlfriend and I, we used to work at a bookstore and we were making minimum wage and then we saw your guys' free course. We joined it. We started saving up money every single week and putting it back into drop shipping to give it a shot." And he's

36:01like, "Now we make 150,000 a month." He's like, "Thank you so much for your free course." So, I was like, "Oh my god. Like I need to make more content and put out more and more value." And so, that's why we do it. Like to be completely honest, that [ __ ] is crazy to hear in real life. Like it's nuts. That is a much better way to do things though cuz then you're not charging or gatekeeping the information. Anyone who's most people aren't lacking the information. They're just lacking the execution. Yeah, dude. And that it's funny like you're going to Yeah, and it's not like you're You use

36:31Shopify and TikTok anyways, so it doesn't matter. Agreed. I think the issue though is a lot of people will just watch and they get excited for a second and then they kind of fall off. I believe 90% of stores shut down without making a sale. So it's like all these people start and they get that initial excitement and then after a few weeks they kind of fall off. So that's also why I just want to keep posting content and stuff to make people understand that this is all still very possible and it's very viable. But you have Yeah, you know, you got to go through the [ __ ] so that way the

37:01universe can in turn, I guess, reward you. Yeah, there's almost like There's a lot of people that have the op- or the thought process that if you charge for it, people value it more. And so then they're more likely to follow through and take action. But I kind of agree with that. It It's objectively it's true, but at the same time like you could just make it free and then just motivate people and help them make sure it's possible because people will still pay a thousand dollars and fall off. So I I think you always have the right approach, but especially since the information's available already that

37:29it's just a much more win-win situation. Yeah, I agree. So what are you seeing as like the number one thing people should be jumping on right now? TikTok Shop. TikTok Shop. Okay, so like is this like it's only in the US though? And then is there like an application process or is it open for anybody or what No, as long as you have a social security or an EIN, you can plug it in and get a TikTok Shop up. Um yeah, I would say combining that with paid ads with TikTok, if you can do both of those, have a TikTok Shop pop off organically and then sync it up with

37:57TikTok ads, that's what we're doing right now and it's working really, really well. Um that's all we're going to do for Q4. We're obviously going to run some Google ads, some Facebook ads, but drop shipping with TikTok Shop is the new thing simply because of how much they're pushing it with their algorithm. Like it's actually gross how many videos I I scroll on the feed and see that are actually just TikTok Shops. Um so yeah,

38:17it's clear that that's their intention. They're probably making more money off that commission than off of their ads in general. Yes. Probably. So, they're literally incentivized to promote your product. Yes. Which is insane. Uh-huh. God, it's like wow. Yeah, dude. Once we found that this worked, we have like a few shops now launching and just we're just going to keep growing with it

38:35cuz it's so simple. products Have you seen high-ticket products work on there? Um the We're going to sell some for like 70 to 100, but No, like in the thousands or I've seen people post them. Like I saw someone post a couch that was like 6,000 bucks. It had zero sales, so I don't know yet. It's so new though. It's only been out for a few months, so I've no clue. Can you sell info products on there? Yes, you can sell digital

38:55products. Really? Yeah. Oh, brand. Yeah, this came out Yeah, you can sell digital goods. Okay. Interesting. Okay. Have you thought about cuz you have like a community? Yeah, but that one's like That one wouldn't do well on TikTok just because we only we either have a free course, which is for beginners and people who don't want to spend money, and then I'm going to be honest, we have one that's a few grand. That one's where

39:19I'm on three calls a week with my team. Yeah, with the inner circle, so it's like I'm not going to put that on TikTok Shop, and so there's no middle ground, so definitely not. What would a good digital product be on TikTok Shop? Like if you can do a guide for something that's super cheap, that's a I guess like a lead magnet in a sense that still can make tons of money. We're seeing

39:36that work. I I also have an idea though. I think like digital printable products are going to be really killer. Etsy's already done them with calendars, with other daily planners, and stuff, and I'm seeing actual physical daily planners do really well with TikTok Shop. I think digital products that you can print, like they're called printable products,

39:54those will do really good in the future. Digital printable. So, like they download the file, but then they can print it out themselves. Yeah, and have the actual tangible product. Whoa, okay. So, Hold on. I want to go deep on this digital info products on TikTok Shop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you said it's like basically a lead magnet, but you could charge for it. So, is the TikTok Shop Like say I have a TikTok Shop, yeah, I also have my TikTok

40:18personal account. Mhm. Those are separate, right? No, well, if you want them to be, but no. So, with TikTok shop, this is Oh, I haven't even told you about this. This is exciting news. Okay, so with the shop, you have one main account that you link with one main TikTok profile. So, you could do your main one, and then you have five marketing accounts. So, essentially, for example, my product is working well right now. We have a creator that's doing good. I could reach out to her and say, "Hey, you know, you're making this much every single week with commissions. What if I hire you and pay you monthly to, you know,

40:47sync up the shop onto your account, and then you just make a video a week or two videos a week pushing that product?" Or they like I've actually have seen a little bit of what Tabs does. They'll make tons of accounts. Right. You can have five marketing accounts. So, have people sync up to all these different accounts and sync the TikTok shop with that account. That way it's on the account and it's linked, and then they can just post organically themselves, and they're actually your employees rather than just random creators. So, it's a double, you know, whammy

41:14Okay, so you say five marketing shops. So, on my personal TikTok, I can have up to five TikTok shops displayed? No, other way around. On your one TikTok shop, you can make content for it. I can link to your TikTok shop. Brandon can, Seb can. Tons of five people can total. So, essentially, on your profile, if someone clicks on your profile, they'll see a shop. And then if you sync it with other accounts, they'll also see a shop

41:38on the main profile of your account. Like, you know, where you can see the followers, all the videos, and all that. Awesome. Okay, so the brand account. Yes. The brand account can have five people? The No, the TikTok shop is an entity, okay? The entity is linked to one single TikTok account that posts content, okay? So, that's how it is set

41:56up. account. Yes, but you can create five other brand accounts, hire them all to make content. So, now it's not just one brand account making content. Okay. It's five making content. five brand pages, basically. they're all the same brand with slightly different name, and different people can run them. Yes. Ah, okay. And those are going really well. Like we're seeing those go really viral. And again, it's all

42:17in-house. be What would be the purpose for having five different brand accounts? More virality, pretty much. Just kind of again, touch different pieces of TikTok's overall audience. So, each different account's going to have like a different subsect audience. Yeah, if you're doing different creators, they're naturally just going to hit different markets. Okay. So, is this account going to be like like Hair Curlers Co. Hair Curlers

42:39whatever? Like is it like that? it can be. However, I am like talking about the idea with my partner about having influencers just sync them up with either their main accounts or if they have another account because you do need 5,000 followers for this. Um and running it under themselves and almost acting like they are a small business owner. So, that's also like another angle you can go for this is show off the product and talk about it

43:03as a marketing person under the account. So, I can just make any product and put it under that shop tab. ship and sync it to your personal account if you wanted to. Whoa. So, literally just on my profile So, literally just on my profile now, there's a products section. Yeah. Not yet. You have to sync a shop

43:20and then you're good. have to sync to a shop. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So, you have to make a brand page and then on your personal account No, you don't have to make a brand page. I'm saying you create a shop and then TikTok's like, "Who the hell is this synced to?" And you're like, "Boom." So, you can't just sell other people's products right away. You can as a creator. So, you can either be an affiliate or you can be a shop seller. Like be a seller seller

43:40on the shop. I made a TikTok shop account, Yes. then I had listed my digital products. Then I can connect my TikTok account and sell my digital products on both of those. But the shop is not an account. Correct. But then you can make five brand accounts for that shop. Yes. But then you can also have creators

43:57And then you can have affiliates. Affiliates are a side are the affiliates. Okay. So, if you make a TikTok shop, you can then have five brand accounts and then any creator can be an affiliate to that brand account. Boom, I understand that. Okay, okay, okay. There we go. Thank you. That is so cool. Dude, it's the new thing. Like it's

44:14crazy. I almost don't even want to talk anymore and just like that's like everything people need to know and go start. Are there any other like clarifications like any other nuances that we haven't talked about cuz I just got that one out of you. No, I mean just understand that you need to have tracking within the US. So TikTok Shop will ban you if you try to drop ship out of China. So make sure if you talk to your suppliers, talk to Zen Drop or CJ Drop Shipping, they can both do this. Make sure you have US

44:41fulfillment. So that's the only thing. If you try to drop ship and the tracking number shows China, they will ban you. Because again, they're trying to be Amazon. They want fast shipping times. They want their customers to love them and come back to buy more and more and more. So to do that, they are trying to you know, eliminate Chinese drop

44:57shippers, which you could still do it. But um there's just a few hoops you got to jump around. Okay. And then so when you're making this your TikTok ad to your content, you're buying the product yourself first and then just shooting or you're doing YouTube I personally don't. My girlfriend will. I have other creators that will.

45:13UGC? Yeah. Where do you find UGC people? We've just have people now like that we've worked with over the years. But you could again, I would personally use TikTok Shop. Like it's free now. You don't have to pay them a thing. You just send them the product and they make content. And then you get their code for the actual video and you can sync it to their video. So that way it looks extremely native and it's synced to their account and to excuse me, to everything. And you run ads directly to the video that's already on their account. That way it looks trustworthy

45:40and clean. Explain what you mean by it looks super native. Okay, so instead of running an ad that says sponsored, that all the comments are hidden and there's like two likes and it's from this random profile that's not even a profile. It's just Yeah, it's just like a an ad account that's not even a real profile. So instead of doing that, you can sync the video that let's just say a TikTok Shop affiliate already posted. You say, "Hey, I need the TikTok access code or the ad code." I forgot what it was called, and they will copy it for you and send it to you. And then

46:07when you set up your TikTok ads inside again, the campaign, the ad group, inside the actual ad itself, you can paste that code in there and it will sync that actual video up. That way, you don't have to actually link it to an attic like an ad visual account that's not a real account. It actually links to the whatever the guy or girl's account that you're running ads for. So, it just makes it look so clean cuz that's what people are used to. They're used to seeing ads or videos that are just, you

46:33know, on the platform from an account. So, that's what it looks like on the Yeah. user's end. I guess the best way to think about it is it feels like a disguised ad. cloaking it, kind of. ethically disguised ad. And so, I think this is a really important note that I'm going to cover here is that there's people who are making Instagram story ads, and to make it look more native, they are using the format where you know when you post somebody else's story, like if they tag you in your story,

46:58Yeah. then you hit hit that to your story, then there's like it's like a little box, and then there's like the border. It's not like the full screen. Mhm. That's like a native story ad. It looks very native cuz you don't you kind of associate that format Yep. as sharing somebody else's story to your story, but now they're making ads that are mimicking that exact style, and so it's a native ad. And so, you want to match the format of the ad to match the style of content that does well on that

47:25platform. Yeah. it's a tick if it's like a Twitter ad, you'd want like a Twitter thread. You want to want to just make like a 16 by 9 video that you would use on a TV or something. So, I think that's a really important concept that Yeah. a lot of people overlook now. They think they can just make one video and

47:39then run it across everywhere. Yeah. But you need to literally think deeply on how to make each ad fit the style of content that does well on that platform. Mhm. So, I think that's a really important note. Sorry. I agree. I was going to tweet this the other day, never never did. we do as well. So, that's that's funny you mentioned that. think

47:55just like the advanced level like SMM A. Marketing, I want to ask about like if you're running a Shopify drop shipping store like CRO or your like landing page. we'll be here for hours. Yeah, let's let's be here for 30 minutes. Yeah, like cuz I think the shop is self-explanatory. Okay, so to go on your point that you just made about you want to have stuff be native. We do the same thing for our actual Shopify store. So, I'm going to make sure yeah, that camera's still going. Um so, what you just said like you need to make sure the content is tailored to the actual platform. We do

48:24that same thing with websites. So, if we're running an ad specifically on TikTok and we have a Shopify store that's made for TikTok ads, we literally create GIFs and or GIFs, whatever you want to call them, with the TikToks and we put them in our description. We make sure that, you know, we comprehend people are holding the product, people are showing it off on TikTok. And so, we don't want to pull them onto their website and have a white background photo with no one holding the product, no one showing it off, and

48:51having it be a natural looking photo. So, for our whole website structure, we keep in mind how TikTok operates and how user-friendly it is and how it just looks so fun and playful and there's people showing off the products and all that stuff. So, that's how we also design our websites is like keeping that fun creator-focused,

49:09you know, overall vibe onto our website. And I guess that's one of the ways that we optimize our conversion rates and overall average order value, the average amount someone spends on our site. So, those are simple things. Yeah, are you doing So, first off, you're just saying that if they come from a TikTok UGC style vertical video, some a girl using the product, they're going to see that exact same type of

49:30branding content on the website as well. So, they understand like this is a coordinated customer journey, basically. And so, they feel like it's all connected. Yeah, that's exactly what we're doing. Are you selling single product stores? Yes. So, it's just you make you pick one product and you make a whole website around that one single product. And then if they want to buy it if they want to buy a product, that's That's only product they can buy and they click on

49:51it and they buy the product. Yes, we have that, but most of the time we will add an upsell bundle or something like that. But yeah, that's pretty much it. the upsell bundle be? Um so, but for upsells, essentially we'll do that. Like we'll have a bundles upsell, or we'll do, "Hey, you know, you bought this two-piece cozy sweater with sweats. Do you want slippers to go along with it as the actual cart page?" And that's kind of it. Is that Is that pretty much any product though? Like if you find one product, you make sure you have like one or two like upsells that are

50:19complimentary? Most of the time. Sometimes if it's a product that people will more than happily pay or buy twice buy two quantities or whatever, we will just focus on that, and we'll just hit home with that. We'll have a post-purchase upsell. But yeah, if it's something where people are only going to buy it once, yes, we'll have a complimentary product synced up. Just depends. Okay, so let's say you have this hair curler, you're running a TikTok ad, you have the landing page that matches the same style of UGC, so they're reminded. Then if

50:43they purchase, they have an upsell. Uh-huh. Are there like any other sort of like email marketing campaigns? Are there Is there text message marketing? Yeah, we do everything. Okay, explain explain it. Um that's a deep conversation. So, uh for SMS, I mean, we do very basic stuff. However, what you can do So, essentially what we do on a beginner store that we're doing, I don't know, let's say 100k a month, cuz that's a beginner, like that's only a few grand a day. Keep in mind, we pump to 50 to 100k a day like with TikTok ads. So, 1,000 to few thousand dollars a day, we will do SMS

51:14for recovering abandoned carts. We'll say, "Hey, you left this product in your cart. Do you still want it?" And then if they don't reply, "Would you like me to try and get a discount for you?" And then it'll say, "Hey, here's 10%." You can use SMS bump. There's tons of different apps for that. That one's pretty simple. We'll also do Klaviyo,

51:29and we'll do pretty much the same thing. As well as doing something like, "Hey, here's our weekly discount, or here's our weekly new products." This is where we start to expand and go from like $1,000 a day to maybe $10,000 a day to 20k a day is we start to add in more products. That way our our doesn't look like a one-product drop shipping store. It looks like a brand and like a catalog. And so that's what we start to do as we grow and we will reflect that with our emails and our texts. We'll start to say, "Hey, we dropped a new collection. First 10

51:57people to use this code get 20% off or 50% off or something like that." And so we'll start to integrate that into the marketing, but that comes once we're already scaling pretty aggressively. So this is where I want to actually kind of go a little more in depth because I think most people listening, I think they understand and they think that you find a product, you run an ad, you sell it. But the real money is made in email marketing, text message marketing, follow-ups, building a list, and selling

52:24reselling the LTV basically. the actual company. We've done that a few times, too. great. And so I just think you're probably so advanced you forget what it's like to like be a beginner. And so what So text message marketing is one Where Where are you getting their phone number from? It's on the checkout page. So there's a little button that you will add once you add an app that says, "I agree to SMS and email marketing." And you add that and then essentially now you have their phone number, you legally can market to it. So Is this before they're purchasing or is while they're purchasing. They're

52:53checking out and putting their information. Yeah, that's where you'll collect their phone number and email. Okay. And then how many different text message chains do you have? Uh you can send as many as you want. This is where I go a little gray area. I personally don't manage this stuff anymore. I'm going to be honest, I don't do the texts or the emails anymore. But usually we'll send a few in the first few hours to try

53:13and really recover that abandoned cart. And then anything after that, I have people to to actually set up the flows and stuff. But you want to keep doing it. Like for example, I buy cigars online, so I have this company Cigars Direct. They text me like every week. And I originally forgot about their site and now I buy cigars like once a month

53:30cuz they're like, "Here's a discount." And so if you hit them and actually give them value and they liked your initial product that they bought and they actually enjoyed it, then you will consistently be able to sell them, which is why I think having a good supplier and all that [ __ ] is like square one. You need to dial that in. Otherwise, like you said, email marketing, SMS, retaining customers, those are all valuable, but only if the first touch is

53:52good. A good experience. they will say, you know, "Screw off." and they will hate you. And so, dial that in first and get a good supplier, get a good product quality, and then you'll kill it. And I want to add to that. So, the hair curler, like you said, that product only did good because we improved upon it. We paid like 40 or 50 grand to improve the battery life of it because the initial one was dog [ __ ]

54:12It was really bad and everyone hated it. And so, they that was like the number one complaint was, "Hey, I love the product, but the battery sucks." So, we had to pay a supplier on Alibaba to up the battery life, and that's when we started to actually have real success cuz we listened to our customers and kept improving the product. So, I think that is, you know, core value that you should implement if you plan to keep growing. How do you go about that process of improving the battery? Cuz like the suppliers across the world

54:40Yes. and it's their product essentially, and you're just selling it. I almost see drop shipping like affiliate marketing for physical products. Like you're just doing the marketing for these manufacturers. But how do you reach out to them be like, "Hey, we want a variation." and how did you have to like where did that 40 to 50 grand go? Like you had to pay them for like an

54:57engineer? you have to No, so essentially I've done this a few times now. So, essentially how it starts is you have a good track record with a supplier, like another instance, I you sold a thermometer in 2020 for COVID. I sold it to Chick-fil-A, banks, government facilities, all those big companies. And so, the product had a few flaws, and as we scaled it to like I think our first month we did a quarter mill. Profit was around 125k for those, you know, haters thinking there's no profit. And so, after that, I got data back from the customers and they complained and some people like certain features, and then

55:28you kind of figure that out. And then you just go to the supplier and say, "Hey, you know, we are selling this amount, we're doing really well, but this is what we need to improve on. How can we do so? What's the time horizon? How much will it cost? Will you charge me anything up front? And all of this other stuff. And then you just essentially keep communicating with them. Though, it's not actually that difficult. So, you're just literally

55:47tell like you have like a support email. And people are like, this is great, but the battery's [ __ ] Can I get a refund? Or whatever it is. And then you you just And you just tell the supplier, "Hey, we we're getting a lot of sales, but everyone's saying the battery's bad. Can you try to make to say, 'Hey, can you fix that?'" And they say, "Yes, but it cost to improve the battery?" And then they will tell us, "Hey, it's going to cost an extra dollar or two to actually make the battery last this long. And if you're willing to do it, it'll take us a few weeks." So, that's

56:12what they'll do. So, it's going to take a few weeks and you have to commit to a minimum order requirement. for a lot of people. So, you have to pay 50 grand up front in inventory, which is kind of the complete opposite mindset people have when they start drop shipping. As they don't want to do that. But, if you want to make real money, it's Sometimes sometimes a product's perfect as is, you know? It just depends. That's why we We're now very selective with what we sell cuz we don't want to do that long term. Like, we've sold clothing in the last 12 months, made millions from it. And we didn't have to

56:37touch the products cuz they were perfectly fine. So, it's like it just depends. So, what does it take to sell a drop shipping store? To sell a store, you don't need a whole lot. It's not as fancy as you'd think. Um you need your books in order. You need a good amount of revenue for the past 12 months preferably. If you're not going to sell a store or have a store running for 12 months, you're not going to have a good exit. And so, at least 12 months of good revenue. And that's kind of it. Like, you overall have to have a good

57:02blueprint for how to grow the company. Otherwise, no one's going to buy the product if it's some weird marketing scheme or by the store if it's some weird marketing scheme that isn't scalable and that the new owner can't basically replicate. So, that's uh surface level kind of all you really need. Um as far as revenue and stuff though, you're going to get terrible uh multiplier if you're going to be selling it like at the decline of your store, which is what we had done recently. It was just a store that was like sitting and we didn't really touch it and we ended up getting a little like a low

57:33six-figure exit for that store, which was still good, but it just like, you know, it was just sitting there. It was maybe peaked out like 600k a month and then it kind of fizzled out cuz So, if you're going to sell, you want to make sure sales are increasing month over month. Yeah, for sure, cuz then you sell based on the value, which is what you want to

57:48do. point out holes that like, "Hey, if you want to grow this, you could probably try these three different things." them a blueprint and sell them on the vision and then it's kind of easier. Is there a website? Yeah, well, there are brokers now that you can actually connect with if anyone wants one, you can message me. Um or you can do like Flippa. I know Shopify used to have a marketplace, they don't anymore. Um but Flippa is the first start or I would

58:07prefer you guys use a broker for sure. Where can they message you? Uh Instagram. What's your name? Sebastian. What's your What's your Instagram handle? Uh Sebastian Esquivel with two A's. That's literally your entire process. Have you Yeah, bro, that's drop shipping. That is pretty interesting. But is with TikTok Shop, like is What's your end goal right now? Is this just like a time to run it up and just have profitable stores? Or like what is like the 10 million, 100 million dollar strategy that you could go after? So, we're going to make a few million Q4 with drop shipping, not with core selling or anything else, just with drop

58:40shipping. And our goal right now is to test products, find what works with TikTok Shop, establish ourselves on the platform, get good reviews on our listing, and then brand the products. That's exactly what we're doing. That's our exact blueprint. Um because we understand that honestly, TikTok Shop is amazing, but they're probably going to update their policies and want shorter shipping times, want quicker, you know,

59:01shipping or uh what is it called? Fulfillment? Like processing the orders quicker. They're going to want that stuff eventually and I know that and so knowing that, it's going to be again, a competition with Amazon. Knowing that, I'm trying to pivot all of these new stores I'm starting into brands and then just kind of honing in on that and scaling. So, that's my overall goal and that's what I'm working towards right now. So, compare what you're doing now to what it could look like when you take quote-unquote brand. Like what does that

59:26look like? US inventory, the product is probably custom. We've probably improved a few things to build a moat around our business. That way we're not competing with drop shippers. We have a direct edge over them because our product is a little unique. And then tons of creators making content. We have hundreds of affiliates, maybe even thousands, uh pumping out content. And we're consistent Excuse me, consistently running TikTok ads. That's pretty much it. Okay. So, it's just basically drop shipping is like almost like your MVP of

59:52a software. Yeah. Like you're testing if there's like people interested in the market, if people want this. Then you launch it, get feedback, figure out a way to improve it. And then if it's actually something that sticks, build a brand around it, focus on optimizing conversions, do email marketing, text message marketing. But it all starts with just finding a product, getting creators to promote it, seeing if people

1:00:10will buy it. Yeah. And then you just elevate and grow from there as you have more resources. Yeah, and like double down. That's the thing I messed up with when I was younger is I didn't double down. I had, you know, I started making a few grand a week and then a month and then I was like, "Oh, this is so cool. I'm going to go spend all my money." But now it's like, "Okay, stuff is working. We need

1:00:27to double down. We need to keep growing. We need to improve." And that's what I think every beginner should do is they should learn what's working at low scale, improve, improve, improve, listen to the customer, keep perfecting your product, and then over time, you will have a sick brand. Cuz you're trying to build an asset that you can sell. And that's what the payday, in theory. Or most people are short-sighted and just want to make 10K a month and then they think they're rich. But if you can actually just actually focus on making this an asset that operates without you,

1:00:53then you can sell it. Yeah. That's always your goal now? Yep. Is your goal always to sell the company? What we're doing right now is we're trying to with TikTok Shop, I'll tell you what we're doing. We are growing our stores. We're having a lot of affiliates grow our product. And then we are probably going to package them up and sell them uh as a whole to people that actually see the value. And if we have a list of like a few thousand affiliates pushing our product, um it'll be pretty

1:01:17easy to kind of sell that to people. 100% and you're going to like is unknown. TikTok Shop could not work in like a few months. That's why like it's kind of weird for me to talk about it cuz I don't know, but that's our goal. But you're pioneering and it could be huge at the same time. So, this was first off, watch over the first 30 minutes, 45 minutes again because if you fully understand what you just said, huge opportunity, brand new [ __ ] But what I also, you are like full-on in the creator economy and you do much more than just the drop shipping side. So,

1:01:47hopefully we exhibited that you have expertise in drop shipping and you're literally doing this right now with TikTok Shop and it's so cool and I learned a lot. So, thank you for sharing that with me. But I also want to kind of show off everything else you do cuz we kind of foreshadowed you have an inner circle, you have a free course that a quarter million people joined. But you also have a YouTube channel with like 130 How many do you have now? 160. 160,

1:02:09yeah, sorry. You have a popping YouTube channel and you're like certified cuz you've been in the game since 2017. So, kind of map out your entire business or all the different verticals that you have right now. Yeah, okay. So, essentially I just wake up and money comes in. That's all it is. I'm just kidding. So, I have my TikTok Oh, I'll just say drop shipping businesses. Those are things that we've been running for a few months, a few weeks, a few years and there's a lot of those. I think we're running maybe six or seven stores right

1:02:41now. We're adding on three this week. So, we'll say 10 stores by the end of this week. So, I have drop shipping businesses. Those are, you know, one whole asset. I also have free course which makes us money with affiliates. So, that's another business. I also have my YouTube channel which makes me not much cuz I don't post that much. So, maybe a few grand a month. And then inner circle, that again I think we only add a handful of people a month. So, that's probably, I don't know, 10 or 30K a month. So, not much. A main The main income is from drop shipping and other

1:03:10stuff. But yeah, mainly drop shipping and then I look to get into real estate eventually. Um but right now I'm just kind of stacking cash and saving up for more stuff cuz I just bought a home that was expensive, so Very. got to re-reup the uh cash pile, but But, you also are talking about how you're building software. Oh, yeah,

1:03:27yeah. And we're building you one, too, so But, so you have two softwares being built. Yes. Explain that. Um so, one is going to be a Shopify store builder where essentially you can in a few clicks go from not having a Shopify store to having one that's up to our tier where we literally replicated our exact structure on this software where it will literally build you one exactly how we build our stores, and I say this with pure confidence cuz I'm seeing it right now. Um so, that's one of them. I want to make my life easier, and building stores is boring and like doing all that

1:04:00other stuff is boring. So, firstly, we just kind of wanted something to do it ourselves, and then we figured, "Hey, a lot of people other like a lot of others may use this and may benefit from it." So, that's kind of how they came about. It's not nothing fancy. Okay, so this is a cuz we have very similar approaches to business right now. And my biggest concern is that I do a lot of different things. As in like we're building a software right now, that's the main thing we're striving for, but we also have an agency where we develop other people's software, and then we also have like an educational community,

1:04:32and then I have my YouTube channel, and then there's like other tertiary random affiliate opportunities. And so, I feel like I'm running like four businesses. We have our media company, our newsletter, like all these different things. And so, part of me is like, "Am I doing too many things? Or is this the new like creator business product stack?" Yeah. That's like it's going to be standard. Like we have a YouTube channel, and you have the distribution, and then you just have these arms of your business. Like do you ever feel like if you said, "Screw YouTube videos, screw my Inner Circle, screw the software development, all

1:05:03this," and then went all in on TikTok Shop, do you think that would surmount all of this money combined? Do you ever think about that? Yeah, I do think it would, but I don't think it would be as fun. I don't care as much as other people about money. Like I wanted a lot of money but I also want to have fun along

1:05:19the way. I'm 100% sure. want to be an e-com like hustler and just do that. I want to meet other people who know me and who I can impact. I guess it's a little bit of my ego. Like I want to be known a little bit for what I do and so no, I I don't think Well, yes, I think I would probably make more money if I just did drop shipping but I don't really want to do that cuz I like meeting cool people and all that stuff and you have to do YouTube to kind

1:05:41of do that, you know? not all about making as much money as possible. And look at all the big brands. Like all the big brand owners end up getting on YouTube anyways. 100% There's a a void in all of them anyways. So, I don't know. I guess maybe we we started it first and then we did the business or I kind of did them side by side but no, I think having an audience is something even the big brand owners. Look at Elon

1:06:02Musk, you know, he just bought Twitter. Everyone wants it. So, I do brand is power. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I think I think it's valuable. Yeah, for me I always do it like I'm just I literally will go and like I'll learn something and have a new strategy for my business and I'll just go on YouTube and talk about it and then two months later, didn't work at all and then I just do the same thing over again. Like I've almost I feel like I'm sharing my what I'm doing live whether it fails or succeeds. I just like talk about what I'm doing and that's like an

1:06:28easy extension of my personal brand and it helps you hold you accountable to stuff. Like if you say something on YouTube, you feel like you kind of have to like you're like stating it to the world. You got to like live up to that now. So, I think I used to do that. I

1:06:40don't do that as much. Why not? I like keeping I so Alex Becker actually, he's been kind of controversial cuz he used to say that that's what he did. He used to say talk about what you're going to do and you know, then people will hold you to it and then he just said like shut up and don't say anything. So, it's kind of controversial. Like he's contradicting himself right now but I don't I I used to do that but I don't know. I just like keeping what I'm doing private and I tell it to like my inner circle. Like I'll get on calls. I'll be like, "Guys,

1:07:07this new YouTube video's coming out in 2 days, this documentary." But, like, everything else I keep hush-hush just cuz I don't know. I honestly, like, I'm naturally an introvert, and I don't want people asking me [ __ ] And I guess that's probably why if something fails, I want it to be like I know and I they don't know. And so, I don't know, I guess that's probably why, but maybe I don't want to give people that much of an edge, either. Like, my business is very very reliant on like products and winning strategies, and that's why we don't give away like everything in YouTube videos really

1:07:36ever. Um we like to keep some stuff for ourselves. That way, you know, not everyone can compete. Your YouTube channel's all drop shipping, right? And it hasn't been anything different ever. And so, you just keep it purely tactical. Yes, but I don't know. I would love to make other content, but people just only like drop

1:07:51shipping on my content. Well, that's like the that's where I get I have my reserves, cuz like if I like switch from Web3 to AI or AI to no-code SaaS or whatever on my channel, like, you're like your audience is like churning in a way cuz you're going to lose people, but then you attract a new audience. But then you're also like, is this a part Since it's your name, your channel's your name, too, is it like is this just a personal brand? Is this channel just about me? It's just one big old mind mess of like what should you do? Cuz I totally get it, cuz if you make a video

1:08:18on something different, your algorithm Well, sometimes I just want to film a video of my car or something. Your car's a No, I feel like you should, cuz I feel like eventually that's where it goes. And that's where I agree. That's why I we filmed this video where we built a drop shipping business for like since June, and it's been a few months, and you know, shoutout to Oh, he's not here anymore. Um How was I going to say? But, yeah, we filmed this video where we worked on a drop shipping business. We took it from zero to a quarter million dollars, profited around 60 grand, and

1:08:45we had someone filming us the whole time, which wasn't just like us sitting down. We were walking around, we were traveling. Yeah, it took months. Like, we were traveling, we were on a private jet. Sevan and I drove our super cars around. Like, there was so much cool content. And so, I think that's where stuff's going to go for sure. And if this video does well, we'll probably double down on that, you know. Yeah, 100%. Do you have advice for people trying to build a personal brand

1:09:06on YouTube? No, I don't. I mean, just stay consistent and don't think stuff's going to happen overnight cuz most of the time it's not. And be yourself. I see a lot of people, even people that are bigger, they don't know who they are and they try to be other people. Just be yourself, you know? Like, people will like you more and you'll feel like when someone's being genuine versus when they're trying to be someone they're not. Like, you can pick up on that energy. And so, no, I would just say, you know, post consistently and be yourself and don't be afraid to be different cuz that's what the world

1:09:34actually loves, even if people won't say that. Um you'd rather be different than look like everyone else, so. Yeah, authenticity is like very going to be more and more in demand as AI makes everything Oh, you're using Eleven Labs over Exactly. Authenticity will be much more important and it's much better to say, "Hey, I don't know anything. I'm trying to figure it out. Watch me learn." than trying to mimic an Alex

1:09:54Hormozi video. and you're [ __ ] living in your mom's house still. Scripting somebody else's content and trying to pretend like it's nothing worse than you see a 16-year-old saying like giving people business advice and like, "Dude, like you might be a super genius, but you're probably not." Like, so I understand completely. But, okay. I mean, I don't want to go too long just because I think that what you said in the first 45 minutes was super important. And that's enough for people to wrap their head around this week in general. But, just the last thing I always ask people, what is your like all the software tools you

1:10:23use? For like Yeah, every single software tool you use to make your business run. Okay, so right now for product research, we use PP Ads, we use Zendrop, I would call that a software, that's our supplier. We use Shopify to build our stores and then we use a few different apps on there. Join the free course also, like I I'm I'm going to happily plug it just cuz like I made a video overviewing all of those apps, so check that out for sure. But, those are the basic softwares and then I use Slack for communication with all of my team, Discord to house my community and then

1:10:52that's kind of it, dude. I'm I'm pretty simple. I'm not like you guys. You You are way dialed in with some other softwares and stuff, but I'm pretty damn simple with it, so Okay, yeah, we just build our own. Yeah, exactly. Okay, cool. Sebastian Esqueda, everybody. Follow him on social media. If you really want to learn the sauce of YouTube, go to his course. Where's the

1:11:08course? Uh, it's conquer-tiktok-dropshipping.com. Conquer TikTok dropshipping. Cuz look, we just we helped you guys discover it last year. Now it's time for you all to conquer it. And it's completely free course. Yeah, it's free. Goes in-depth. It's hours and hours long. Every detail. Even more detail than I can get into on this podcast, but hopefully this gave you the high level, but I appreciate you sharing the game, brother. No problem. Thanks for having

1:11:29me.