Former Forklift Driver Makes Millions Dropshipping
How a Walmart forklift driver with no ecommerce experience started (and sold) a series of successful dropshipping businesses. In this episode, Ben lays out his practical and repeatable approach to building legitimate high-ticket dropshipping businesses all while breaking through limiting beliefs and mindsets.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
1/18/2022
Kurt Elster: Hello, and welcome back to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. I’m your host, Kurt Elster, AKA:
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: And today, we are going to talk to a gentleman who is going to share with us all his journey from Walmart forklift driver, I kid you not, to scaling a store from $1 million to $11 million in just two years, along with trials and tribulations along the way. Now, here’s what’s different about this guest for our show. He’s a serial entrepreneur. We’ve heard that before. He’s selling online. Obviously, that’s why we’re here. But it’s all dropshipping and that’s not necessarily something I cover a ton on this show, just because I like the consumer product goods. I like manufacturing stuff. And one of the places I came from was Kickstarter. And so, I’ve got someone today, Ben Knegendorf from DropshipBreakthru.com, who is going to share with us his journey with dropshipping, his successes, his learnings, and a ton of resources, because he’s incredibly transparent about like, “Well, here’s what I did. You could do it too. What’s the big deal?”
Really a great, casual guy. You’re gonna love it. Ben, welcome. Thank you for joining me.
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I love the Tech Nasty sound bite. That is by far and away the greatest podcast you do every single year with Ezra.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: It’s tradition. It’s one of my favorites. I’m gonna keep it going for as long as Ezra will keep showing up. So, Mr. Knegendorf, that’s like the… I love that name. That’s so good. Is it Swedish? Is it German?
Ben Knegendorf: It’s very German. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: How did you get here? When did you start selling online?
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah. I think for me, I didn’t really know to sell online. I just knew I needed something different. So, if you rewind my story back to 2014, 2015, I’m seven, eight years into a Walmart distribution center doing everything I can to get to first shift. That was the holy grail at Walmart, was once you get to first shift, you had it made. You’re working four 10s, working 5:00 AM to 3:00 PM, and I got there. I made it to first shift, and I remember one of the very first days I got there, I looked around and everybody was just dead inside. I was like, “This is it? I’m 29 and I’ve made it?”
And so, I knew right then and there something had to change, and I took a little bathroom break and took a note on my phone that just said, “I gotta get out of here. I gotta start making a plan and get out of here.” And so, that led to me flipping a few things on eBay, going to garage sales, and scanning stuff, and looking up stuff as you’re there. Flip life, as Gary calls it. But I knew there had to be a better way, and so right around that point I was targeted for a course on drop shipping and that led me down a rabbit hole of what is drop shipping, how does it work? Learning all about the stigmas that I’m sure many people listening to this have heard before, and just really diving in on that business model, and January 11th, 2015, I bought that course, and that’s where I dove in and started building my first business.
Kurt Elster: Interesting. All right, so 2014, you really have no experience with eCommerce, but you have your, “Screw this,” moment, where you looked around and said, “All right, something has to change here.” And I love that many people can often pinpoint that time. Like for me, I know. It was I was tying my shoes to go to work, and I just started crying. I broke down. And I knew like, “Well, this isn’t gonna work.” So, I quit my job with no plan, but I knew I was gonna start a business, and that eventually evolved to today.
So, you have that moment, and oftentimes that… It’s emotional desperation where you’re like, “I gotta change something, here.” And so, you start trying things, and I love flip life. If we want to make it fancy, we’d call it retail arbitrage. What can you get and sell on eBay? It’s such a great, pure form of eCommerce, but it’s tough to scale, because you have to get individual things, and so you’ve got the taste for it. You’re like, “All right, there’s something here.” You got the Instagram ad, the Facebook ad targeted for a dropshipping course.
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, so I dove right in, right? The funny part is like my wife and I were $40,000 in debt at the time, like consumer debt, and so to buy that course even, a credit card showed up with a $1,000 limit, which is all you get when you’re $40,000 in debt, and it probably had like a 26% APR or something, right? So, I literally pushed everything we had. I took a chance here on this course. And so, I gave it everything I had. I built a store. I got scared to call the suppliers. And thankfully, I guess, someone in the forums of that course said they were very ill, they had four suppliers on board, and they wanted to get rid of their store for $400, and that was my escape to not call suppliers. So, I bought it for $400 and then I ended up losing the main supplier. As soon as I took it over he sent emails to before. I lost the main supplier and here I am back in the same boat. I had to call suppliers.
It took me about a month to actually push through the resistance of, “Hey, I gotta call and sell myself.” I called 20 that day. I landed all 20 suppliers and that was on The3DPrinterGuy.com. You can look that up on Wayback Machine if you want to check that out. And so, I slowly built that, right? The first month, maybe I made a couple hundred bucks. The second month, maybe I made $300 or something like that. But by the end of the year, I had a business that was sellable. And I was introduced to Justin Cook from Empire Flippers, who convinced me to sell that business, and so I sold that first business in February of the following year for one year’s pay at that Walmart distribution center.
So, I was still working my full-time job. I built and sold that for one year’s pay. And that was a real catalyst moment for me of like, “There’s something else here.” I don’t need to be doing this job. Upon selling it, I mentioned maybe quitting to my boss, which… By the way, I should have just paid off all my debt instead of quitting, and they were like, “Hey, how would you like to work two days a week and keep your insurance?” So, I continued on at two days a week. Became the worst employee known to man and within about three or four months, they called me into their office, and they said, “It looks like you’re having more fun doing that little internet thing. Why don’t you just go home and not come back?”
And so, they fired me. I wish I had some like, “I quit,” story, like I walked out the door and flipped everybody off or something, but yeah, they told me to go home that day. And I would say that was the moment where I really knew it’s time to go, right? I had experience here. When you have a big win like that, or even a small win of selling your business, it comes with a lot of confidence building. It makes you feel good, but it also is like, “Oh, crap. Can I do this again?”
And so, getting fired was real-
Kurt Elster: Right. Yeah, was it lightning in a bottle the first time? Can I repeat the success?
Ben Knegendorf: Getting fired was that moment where it was like… I drove to the lake where my mom’s ashes are buried and I just kind of sat there and meditated, and I was like, “Why don’t I care that I was fired?” And that’s when I really… I knew I could do this and that’s where I really leaned in hard and started building more of these dropshipping businesses.
Kurt Elster: It’s interesting that a lot of your initial journey, the impediment and the thing you needed to overcome was lack of confidence, right? You had to initially… A, you had to have the confidence to try it in the face of adding additional debt at the time, which… That’s scary, right? Because if it doesn’t work, like all right, I’ve just dug the hole deeper. It would scare me. I’d think twice about it.
And then, all right, so calling the suppliers, that sounds like a little bit of either some imposter syndrome there, or maybe social anxiety disorder, I don’t know. Maybe both. But it’s like mindset stuff you have to overcome to get going. But then you get that win and it like… Oh, you got the suppliers on board. Oh, the business grew. Oh, you’re making sales. Oh, you’re able to sell the thing. Oh, you got fired from your job and you don’t care. Suddenly you realize like, “Man, I’m not faking it anymore. I made it. I did it.”
And now it’s, “Well, can I keep it going?” And so, where do you go? You’ve sold your business. You don’t have a job. Where do you go from there?
Ben Knegendorf: So, first off, the whole thing’s in your head. I want to touch on that. It’s all mindset. Everything. And it’s still there. I bet Kurt still has imposter syndrome some days, and everyone listening to this has the, “I’m not worthy. I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough. What if I fail?” It’s all in your head, right? And so, if you can get past that, happiness lies beyond all of that, right? If you can, as Gary Vee would say, just kiss the girl and move forward, and so there’s a lot of moments as you highlighted there, and there’s a few more coming, right?
So, after I was fired, I was doing a podcast, really sharing my story, talking about my journey so far, and sharing that. That led to some consulting opportunities with other people who were doing this, as well. One of them led to a mastermind call. It was supposed to be four of us on the call. Ended up only being two of us and I ended up giving this guy a ton of tips on his business during that call. By the end of the call, he gave me half of his business and we ended up implementing all of my ideas. We scaled that 5X. He bought me out a year later, so that paid off all of our debt, and then again, there’s lows with this, Kurt, so the moment I came home and said, “I sold this business. We’re out of debt,” my wife asked for a divorce.
Kurt Elster: Ooh!
Ben Knegendorf: So, here I was back at square one again. A lot of ups and downs in my story, but that one was pretty hard, as well. But from there, those consulting opportunities led to some opportunities to be part of businesses, so one of the businesses I consulted on, I helped them get to a quarter million dollars in sales in their first three months on their dropshipping store. We remained friends for nine months and then shortly after my wife and I split ways, they asked me to come on board and be part of the business, and so that’s the business that I came on board and in two years, we scaled from $1 million in revenue to $11 million in revenue two years later, and that was the real big, first, huge win that I had in dropshipping.
Kurt Elster: What was the store?
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, so this one I try not to talk about too much. I still have a little bit of a non-disclosure agreement going on there, and so it was in the golf industry. I’m happy to talk about some of the stuff, but out of respect for those two gentlemen who are absolute crushers, I try not to talk about it too much.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And so, you’ve got it sounds like the other unspoken advantage here that you were able to gain earlier was a network, right? You were able to meet some people through a forum, and then through a mastermind group got involved in a consulting capacity, and then brought on board, it sounds like with equity, to this dropshipping business that scaled quite nicely. Is that right?
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, no, a lot of it came from podcasting, right? Just sharing my story. Just getting out there. And so, I had a couple different podcasts in the beginning. One on my own, one with a couple gentlemen, where we really talked about this business model and shared everything we had, and that led to some consulting opportunities, and then… Yeah, so we scaled $1 million to $11 million in two years. Those guys bought me back out at that point and that was a personal seven-figure victory for me, so that’s a huge day, for sure.
Kurt Elster: Whoa! Yeah, I’ll say so. Suddenly that like 40 grand in credit card debt seems pretty minor.
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: When you see what the payoff later became. So, our mindset was a thing we had to get over. Network, a network we had to gain. Experience. And then the other, you were using podcasting and sharing your story and your wins allowed you to gain both the network, but also authority, because when you got that consulting gig, really it sounds like you had the one successful dropshipping business and were able to move on, but you were educating yourself on this stuff, as well, and were able to impress someone enough to get in on the action.
From there, because you’re a serial entrepreneur here. All right, so now you got a million dollars in your pocket. Now what do you do?
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, and so to your point, it was a few, and I don’t want to leave people hanging, like I’m hiding things. So, the first one was The3DPrinterGuy.com. You can see that on Wayback Machine. I also ran PelletGrillPros.com, ShopTinyHouses.com I was part of, StandingDeskNation.com I was part of, and so upon exiting that business, we also had another friend who saw what we were doing in that business, and he asked me to come on board, so that was Standing Desk Nation. Through Standing Desk Nation, we were able to acquire a brand we were selling, so InMovement, we acquired InMovement and started making that our own brand. From there, we acquired a brand called Unsit, so if you go to InMovement.com, you’ll see their standing desk and their treadmill desk. Those are all brands we acquired from which we were selling on our dropshipping business.
Yeah, and then the last two years, really, after that exit, I exited like a week before COVID, and shortly into COVID, my wife lost two family members, and so we didn’t… I honestly haven’t done a whole lot in the last year, and that’s when my friend John approached me and said, “Let’s do this Dropship Breakthru thing together.” We both have a ton of experience in this field, we think the business model is something incredible, and I’m happy to share, literally just give it away on your show here today, Kurt, and so I just want people to get started. eCommerce changed my life and I want that for everybody listening to this. I want their life to be changed. I want them to push themselves to a limit they’ve never seen before and reap the rewards.
Kurt Elster: Obviously, you know what you’re doing. I have faith in you. I trust you. Your experience, I love. Who does not want incredible success that you’ve experienced? Define for me what is dropshipping? What makes… How is dropshipping different within eCommerce? What is special about this? Why do you love it?
Ben Knegendorf: So, I think clear up some misconceptions, right? I think when most people think of dropshipping, there’s no shortages of 20-something “gurus” standing next to their rented Lamborghini, talking about how they’re dropshipping stuff from AliExpress and doing amazing, and I’m sure there’s some cases where they’re doing great, right? Whoever discovered the first fidget spinner on AliExpress is probably doing amazing, and I’m sure you can think of some other examples who are doing well. When I think of dropshipping personally, I think of high ticket dropshipping.
So, first off, dropshipping is simply a method of fulfillment. If I’m selling the microphone in front of me here and I have PodcastMicrophones.com as my store, and you come and buy this from me, it’s going to ship from the manufacturer to you with my label on it. That’s dropshipping, right? So, I’m not actually even buying the inventory until you purchase from me, so there’s no overhead, there’s no cash flow issues, and then they’re shipping it on my behalf, so I don’t need to warehouse either, right? So, that’s dropshipping in a nutshell.
And specifically, I do high ticket dropshipping and there’s a reason for that. So, just do some quick math. If you sell a $10 widget that you got from AliExpress and you have 30% margins on it, you’re gonna make $3 every sale. If I sell a $1,000 product, which is just as easy to sell as the $10 product, believe it or not, I’m gonna make $300 per sale with 30% margins. Now, let’s scale that, right? How are you gonna get to any reasonable profit? If you want to make $3,000 this month, in low ticket you’re gonna need to sell 1,000 items at $10 to make $3,000. I’m gonna need to sell 10 of those items with $300 profit.
So, what do you think? Big profit difference there, there’s a big order difference there. Do you think I’m gonna need a big team or a little team in order to fulfill 10 orders, right? Compared to your thousand orders. You’re probably gonna need a team of VAs to handle this. You’re likely gonna have more returns to me. You’re gonna have more damages than me. You’re gonna have more customer service issues than me, so this is why I like high ticket the most on the profit size. It’s just so much less work to have the same rewards, and I don’t know about you, Kurt, but I’m not trying to work a whole lot harder to make the same amount of money.
Kurt Elster: With dropshipping, we eat into… Since we’re not the manufacturer, we don’t necessarily have the highest margins on our orders, and so the workaround here so that we don’t get eaten alive by little issues is to seek out a high average order value. So, I don’t want to sell bike helmets. I want to sell bikes. No, I want to sell eBikes. Actually, we had John Murphy on here, who had a wonderful success with exactly what you described. He had a high-ticket dropship store selling eBikes.
For you, what’s your threshold that you’re like, “This is high ticket, and this is not.” I bet there’s like an AOV number you shoot for.
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, so there’s… You know, zero to 100 I would consider low ticket. There’s kind of this no man land in like 100 to 300, 100 to 400 range. A lot of people would put it $500-plus, but I would encourage anyone listening to this who’s considering it, how high can you go? If you get too high, you’ll start having issues with Shopify. If you’re selling $20,000, $30,000 items. But I’ve sold things up to $10,000 consistently. One of the best sellers on a business I was part of was $10,000. That’s amazing.
Kurt Elster: That’s huge.
Ben Knegendorf: Think about that with 30% margins, you’re doing very, very well on every single sale. So, I would encourage anyone to think about the $1,000 mark, but certainly you can go lower, and it’s not… Everything on your store is not gonna be above $1,000. It’s gonna have some accessories that are below it and things like that. But yeah, think above $1,000, and think about… A big misconception is a lot of people go to AliExpress and they just get this no name junk, right? When we’re selling high ticket items, we’re selling real brands. People are already searching for these brands and these products. Again, 3D printers, or pellet grills. People are already searching for these brands and we’re simply going to those brands and becoming a retailer for them and selling them online.
Walmart is just the retailer of a bunch of brands, but they do it brick and mortar as well as online. We just do online.
Kurt Elster: In 2015, what did a 3D printer cost? Like 800 bucks?
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah. My best seller was $5,000 from Airwolf.
Kurt Elster: Whoa!
Ben Knegendorf: And I made roughly around $1,000 every single one I sold.
Kurt Elster: That’s really good. Who doesn’t want that business? I just bought a 3D printer. I quite like it.
Ben Knegendorf: Nice.
Kurt Elster: Let’s see. Where was I going? Where am I going from here?
Ben Knegendorf: Look, I’d love to give a few more reasons why I love this business model. Literally, I could just tell you how to do this. The other reason I love it is like you can start for 500 bucks or less. So, think about when you’re selling a low ticket, or starting your own brand, how much are you spending to get started, right? First, you have to find the product, do all the market research, that’s a lot of your time. You’re gonna need to order samples, deal with manufacturers in China, probably order multiple samples, iterate on them, order multiple more samples, right? That’s 70 bucks, 80 bucks air shipping to get each sample over.
At that point, you’re gonna need to place a large order and you still don’t even know whether you really are going to be selling this or not and you need to create demand, right? There’s no one searching for this product. If they are, they’re not searching for your product, and so there’s a whole lot of investment up front and demand generation up front when you start your own brand, versus this one, let’s use pellet grills for an example. The main brands that are out there, Traeger, Memphis, you already know who’s existing in the market and you can simply set up your business and call those retailers and say, “Hey, I’d like to become a retailer for your brand. How do we go about setting this up?” Upload them on your website and start running Google ads immediately, right? You can start this whole process for $500 or less and we have a video on exactly the pieces you need on our YouTube channel.
I love that you can get a marketing degree while you’re making money in this business model. Basically, like there’s no cash flow issues, so when you’re selling your own product, number one, you have to make that huge investment up front, and then as soon as you start making sales, you have to think about ordering your next batch and you probably have to take on debt in order to not run out of stock, which is a big thing at Amazon, obviously.
And so, this one, you don’t have any cash flow issues. I’m not actually buying this product until you buy it from me, so my investment up front is minimal to get the website up and get the suppliers on board, and then I’m running Google ads, which Google happily gives you $150 up front to get started, and if you can make your sale in that first $150 and continue growing on your profits, you’re gonna learn marketing in the process. You’re gonna have to learn how to run Google ads. You’re gonna have to learn how to do some coding in your store. You’re gonna have to learn some SEO. You’re gonna have to learn how to send some emails. You’re gonna have to learn a ton of marketing, which is just par for the course as far as learning how to run an eCommerce business. Why not actually get paid to do it rather than being stressed out, and in debt, and worrying about stock issues?
Kurt Elster: All right, so the big advantages that you see here are we derisk a lot of the initial process, because you’re right, if I’m manufacturing a product, even if I’m making something, like I want to manufacture a single phone case, I have to have tooling made. And so, for that initial run of product, I may spend $10,000 just on tool and die manufacturing, and that’s for one unit, and I better hope I got it right. Oh, I want to come out with another phone case? More tooling. And so, there’s a lot of expense there.
And because I’m a brand-new brand, potentially with a brand-new product, and maybe I even created a new category or solved a pain or problem no one had solved before. Well, no one necessarily knows to look, so then the other problem is I have to generate the audience, and what you’re saying is hey, you can skip those two steps by going for existing higher end known products. And so, we want to sell premium stuff, like 3D printers, as opposed to garbage from AliExpress. And I think that’s where you’re right, dropshipping does get a bad rep. A, because of get rich quick gurus with leased Lambos, and the nonsense that you see people trying to sell from AliExpress that’s very inexpensive.
You know, the thing that always gets me with dropshipping, how do I know what to sell? Because now, the way you phrase it, suddenly it seems like I could set up a store and sell just about anything so long as I could find someone who will fulfill it for me. And the chances are I can if I look long and hard enough and knock on enough doors. So, what’s your approach?
Ben Knegendorf: For me, I do the touch point test is something I recommend to everybody. You have your phone on you at all times. Just open a note and everything that you see above $1,000 throughout your day, just put in your list. You’re likely gonna come up with the same list that everyone else in the world comes up with, but over time, you’re gonna start seeing more and more opportunity. I’ve seen everything under the sun. I’m shocked at some of the ideas come up with. Commercial trash cans is one that blew me away. I would have never thought of that. But it works, right?
And I’ve sold, again, 3D printers, pellet grills, standing desks, tiny house products, I’ve sold a lot of things, and so really I think people just aren’t thinking outside of the box, and also it’s like inherently… People think inherently that it’s gonna be more work to sell something expensive than it is less expensive, and I’m telling you, it’s the exact same amount of effort, and you don’t have to create the demand. The demand’s already there. People are already searching for these brands and searching for these products, and so simply getting in front of them helps.
And to your point, let me tell you a story. You can still sell your own brand here, but when you’re first starting out, if you’re doing your research by going to Amazon and looking at poor reviews and figuring how I can make this product better, right? That’s how you’re learning it. What if instead you sold all of the other brands on the market for a while, you built this marketing machine, you’re ranking for all the keywords in your niche, and you’re driving all the traffic. You are the authority on pellet grills. And in this time, you’re selling a lot of pellet grills. You’re hearing a lot of complaints from your customers. You’re hearing a lot of, “Man, I wish this existed in the market.” And you’re profitable this whole time and then you introduce your product and simply put your product at the top of the list and say, “This is the best pellet grill on the market and here’s why. We addressed all of these concerns. It holds the heat.”
I mean, I could go on about some of the concerns I heard back then, but that’s the process you should go through in my opinion, is like why not start out profitable in the beginning? Why not start out with cash flow, which is the only thing that fucking matters in the whole game? And then move into addressing your customers’ concerns and put a product in front of them that’s gonna go bananas because you already have the traffic and you’ve already solved all the problems.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. You’ve earned their trust. You’ve gained the experience. You have an audience. You’re the authority. And now you know what does and doesn’t work and you’ve probably… You pretty quickly develop opinions on like, “Wow, this would be… If I could take this grill, but change these features, then oh, suddenly I would have the best grill for everybody.” And at that point, you should have the relationships where you can go like, “I bet I can get that manufactured.”
A company I have no association to but comes to mind as someone who probably took this path and did a really great job, and we don’t think of necessarily as dropshipping, is Planet of the Vapes, which I love the name, Planet of the Vapes, it’s fun. They sell vape batteries, and vaporizers, and accessories, but they… It’s like clearly it’s all dropship stuff, or maybe stuff they stock and resell, and then they start selling their own private label vapes, and they start selling their own vape that gets good reviews and magically pops up at the top of many search results.
When you look at it that way, you’re right. So, there are probably many legitimate businesses that you have bought from that you didn’t think about as a dropshipping business in the traditional sense.
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, and I think there’s a lot of big businesses doing that same thing, Kurt. You can go to Walmart and walk just any aisle, and you’ll see they have ibuprofen, and they have their Equate version, right? They started small by private labeling products they already knew were selling and bringing it in themselves, and so you can do the same thing. You’re selling big products with accessories. Start with the accessories. Bring in your own accessories that make sense to the brand that put your brand name out. You can start really small and do so from a place of cash flow, which is of utmost importance.
Kurt Elster: The way you have presented dropshipping to me, I love the concept, and I love the idea. I love everything you’ve given me. All right, one thing I’m skeptical of is I’m able to dropship the product, I don’t have to worry about inventory, I don’t have to worry about the initial cash flow, and I can just drive qualified traffic from Google with a mere $100, a mere $500. That’s the thing that I’m skeptical of. Convince me otherwise, Ben.
Ben Knegendorf: Okay. I wish I was prepared with a document pulled up here to walk you through literally every step. We have a YouTube video on this, but first thing you need to do, you need to figure out what you want to sell. So, I think the example we use in that video is infrared saunas. Let’s say you wanted to sell infrared saunas. You’re gonna go to Google, type in infrared sauna for sale, click the little shopping tab and look at all the brands that populate there. There’s SunRay, there’s Golden Designs, there’s all kinds of brands, right?
So, now you’re like, “Okay, this obviously works. I can see other companies, as well, that they clearly don’t have a physical location. They must be dropshipping.” You can also just go to… SunRay is a good example. If you go to their website, it’s like, “Dealer application. Dropship for us.” And so, that one’s very, very easy. And so, now you need to go buy a domain. What does that cost, $13? Maybe even less? By the way, just search Namecheap coupon. They run their own ad for it, and you can get it for like $9, so we’re starting at $9 with a domain. We’ll call it MyInfraredSaunaStore.com.
Then, you are gonna need Shopify, which is $29 a month, and I believe you can get started as free. As soon as you connect the domain, you gotta pay for it, so we’re at $9 and $29. You’re going to need to actually call these suppliers and get them on board, but before you do that, you’re gonna want to build out your Shopify store just a little bit, and the reason you do that is you don’t want to just call them with a blank store. You want to upload a few of their products. Call them and say, “Here’s how we’re gonna represent your brand online.” Don’t pretend to be some store that’s up and running. Don’t pretend to be anything you’re not. Don’t upload their competitors and say, “We’ve already got your competitors. We want you on board.”
Just be honest with them and say, “Look, here’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to build this website. Here’s how I’m gonna represent your brand.” You’re going to get some of those brands on board. Some of them are simply fill out the application and they just add you. They might not be the best brands to sell at the end of the day, because everybody’s selling them, but you can get started that way, right? You’re gonna make some sales. You’ve spent $9, $29, and you’ve done some work on your website. You called these suppliers, got them on board. You need to upload the products.
You may need to go to Fiverr and get a little bit of branding, which might cost you $5, $10, $25 to get a logo made, maybe get some homepage banner images made. You’re going to need a phone number. We recommend Grasshopper if you’re in the United States. Again, it’s like $30, $40 a month.
Kurt Elster: We use Grasshopper. I like it.
Ben Knegendorf: Love Grasshopper. So, you’re at 30, 40 bucks there. At that point, you’re ready to go. You just need to run ads. And so, you can sign up for Google… You’re gonna need G Suite as well. I think they call it Google Workspace, as well, so that you have info, or your name at MyInfraredSaunaStore.com, rather than MyInfraredSaunaStore@Gmail.com, which is not professional.
And so, at that point Google is gonna start sending you coupons. Hey, you should probably run ads. Here’s a coupon, right? And they’ll give you something like spend $25, get $100. Spend $75, get $75, or spend $150, get $150. Bing will do the exact same thing, which… Don’t sleep on Bing. It’s only about 10% of the traffic and it’s mostly old people, but it absolutely crushes, especially text ads over there. And so, all of this is under $500, and you should in that first $150 you spent, and the other $150 Google gave you, be able to get your first sale if you set up your ads correctly.
We teach in our course how to run a priority funnel, which is simply run one shopping campaign at a high priority, run a second one at medium that’s the exact same one, a third one at low that’s the exact same, and use negative keywords to push the good keywords down lower in the funnel where you bid more. And since people are already searching for these brands and already searching for these products, you know what they’re searching. You know what the bottom of the funnel keywords are, and you can simply choose to bid more on those and not pay so much for somebody searching infrared sauna.
And so, within that first $300, if you set up your ads correctly, you’re likely going to get a sale. If you set up your website in a way that’s going to convert, it doesn’t look terrible, you’re likely gonna get a sale and you’re gonna make some money on that sale, which is gonna allow you to reinvest back into more ads, and hopefully you can get that snowball rolling and start generating real profit. But that first sale is gonna be the difference maker. If you can just get that first sale, I promise you, you will never turn back. Making your first dollar online while you’re not doing anything… In fact, for me, I was laying in bed at midnight one night, butt naked, got my first sale, and I ran out in the living room dancing like a little girl. I’ll remember that moment the rest of my life because it’s such a powerful moment.
So, really, you can get started for less than $500 and you should get started, and then when you make that first sale, you’re never gonna look back.
Kurt Elster: You know, what makes it magical is the imposter syndrome. Because you know you’re just some guy who has not made a sale. You’re some person. You want to make a sale. You haven’t made a sale. And a random stranger on the internet, somewhere in the world, found you entirely on their own, and said, “Here is my credit card. I will buy this item from you.” Your system, this person gave you potentially hundreds of dollars. So, just having… When someone puts that confidence in you, puts their confidence in you for the first time, it really is quite empowering, isn’t it?
Ben Knegendorf: It’s an unbelievable feeling. And it’s more than just confidence. It’s just like you made money while not having to punch a clock, right? So, back then for me, I was going to work. 4:00 AM to 2:00 PM was my schedule back then. And so, to be making money at midnight selling a 3D printer to Duke University, that was amazing, that I’m laying in bed here. It was Sunday night, so I was like, “Fuck, I gotta go to work in like four hours.” And so, to make that sale was incredible. It's a moment I’ll never forget. I guarantee anybody who ever comes on your show, Kurt, if you just ask them, “Tell me about your first sale,” everyone will remember their first sale.
Kurt Elster: I remember mine. I sold a WordPress website, a custom WordPress website. I think it was like 700 bucks. I couldn’t believe it. And then the first time I sold one for several thousand I was like, “Is this even legal?” I’m like, “How is this happening?” I was shocked. But you’re right. You’re absolutely right. I remember it and I remember just like the disbelief that it worked. Like, “Huh.” And then sure enough, everything went fine, and worked well. It was great.
On that first sale, did you have anxiety? Like, “Is there gonna be a chargeback? Are they gonna try and return it?”
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, so funny story is that was to this day one of the worst sales I’ve ever made, and not like because Duke University was terrible. They ordered a very, very custom 3D printer, and wouldn’t you know it, when it shipped from I believe Idaho all the way to North Carolina, it got damaged. And so, I didn’t know what to do. This was my first time going. I didn’t know how to handle damages, so I’m working with the supplier, they send it back, they have to build them a whole new custom machine, send it back to Duke, it’s damaged again. Has to go all the way back to Idaho. They build them another custom machine and this time it arrives safely, but this was almost six months later, and so… Yeah, little did I know that first sale, while being joyous, would also be a lot of learning lessons for me on how to handle disgruntled customers, and damages, and returns, and how to work with suppliers on those things.
Kurt Elster: Looking back, what are some of the things that surprised you about this process?
Ben Knegendorf: Boy, that’s a really good question. I think…
Kurt Elster: It’s a good question that’s tough. What stands out when you think back on it?
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah. I think I was shocked at initially… I hate using the word easy. Simple. How simple this process actually was. So, when I grew up, I was a… My dad was a warehouse worker, and my dad was a CNA. When I bought this course, I was working at a warehouse and my wife was a CNA. I didn’t know any better, and so I assumed whoever was running these businesses, and making all the money, they were bad people. I was poor, and so I was taught to look down on the rich people, and I assumed they knew something I didn’t know.
And so, surprises along the way were how simple this process actually is. It’s a lot of hard work. You have to put a lot of time in, but the process itself is simple. And then meeting some of the people I looked up to along the way who I assumed were these amazing gods or goddesses, and I put them up on a pedestal, and then you meet them, and they’re just not the person you wanted them or needed them to be, and realizing that we all have the same limiting beliefs in our head, that we’re all doubting ourselves most of the day, and the people who can push through that and get the work done are the ones who succeed. I think those were some big lessons for me.
Kurt Elster: So, to put an extreme example on it, supposedly just like total psychopaths make some of the best executives and CEOs because they are freed of a lot of those limiting beliefs. So, I’m not saying that you should go out and be a serial killer. Please don’t. But if you really sit and interrogate yourself as to some of why you think you can’t do some things, oftentimes it really is just like you’re saying no to yourself. And the workaround I use for this is I go… When I’m doubting myself I go, “Well, what would someone smarter than me do?” And when you phrase it like that to yourself, often you know the right answer. It was in front of you the whole time, but you were looking at it through that lens of your own perception.
And so, trying to get yourself outside of your own head by going, “What would someone smarter than me do,” works pretty well.
Ben Knegendorf: Oftentimes, your internal voice is always telling you you’re not good enough, or you’re not smart enough, or this won’t work, or what if I fail. Just the one phrase that my performance coach, Elliot Roe, taught me, is just say, “Is that true?” So, anytime you’re hearing that stuff, or you’re laying in bed and you’re beating yourself up, just is that true? And say it out loud and you will probably laugh at whatever phrase is repeating in your head because it’s all bullshit. It’s all bullshit.
Kurt Elster: It is. It really is. And you’re right about meeting really ultra-successful people. Sometimes they’re in the right place at the right time and they may not even realize it. And so, it’s like if you try and build a network, and you can make those opportunities occur for you, and you were able to do that by really trying to establish a network and authority, and you did that through forums and podcasting it sounds like. And that’s very powerful. And that’s what a lot of successful people have. It’s not necessarily that they’re smarter than you or more experienced. It’s that they have that network that creates opportunities for them.
And I think dropshipping and getting yourself into entrepreneurship, into owning your own businesses, is one of the early steps to doing that. It gets you into that insider’s club where, “Ah, suddenly other opportunities start to arrive.” And so, I really… I’m sold on this idea. I love this as a really… an easy, a much derisked, defanged entry point into eCommerce entrepreneurship. I need resources. Obviously, you’ve got a course you’ve put together. Pitch me on it. What do you have for me? How do I learn this?
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, so a long time ago I took a course to get started, and along the way I had to learn a lot of things. SEO, Google AdWords, coding, all kinds of stuff, and so when it came time for me to actually want to create this course with my partner, John Warren, we needed to have the full package in there, and so I think actually getting started, that process is simple, and we literally give it all away on our YouTube channel or our podcast, called Dropship Podcast. We also have a Patreon version of that, as well, where we go really deep on things.
And so, that, the beginning part, how to get started, we walked through some of it here today, and we definitely go deeper on our podcast and things like that. Now, if you want to learn how to actually take your business to the next level, that’s everything that we put in Dropship Breakthru, and so it’s getting started is building your website, calling the suppliers, running some Google ads to get some sales, and then from there you need to scale, right? You need to learn how to do some email marketing, learn how to do SEO, learn how to scale your ads, learn how to love your customer, and send emails, and get them to use your product, and refer other people, and so we put all of that inside of Dropship Breakthru.
We try to give away the what and the why on Dropship Podcast and on your YouTube channel, and then if you want the handholding step by step, we’d love for you to join us inside Dropship Breakthru.
Kurt Elster: Cool. Where do I go? What’s my first step? Go DropshipBreakthru.com?
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, if you’re a podcast-
Kurt Elster: I’ll put the stuff in the show notes.
Ben Knegendorf: If you’re listening to this, you’re likely a podcast junky, so go check out Dropship Podcast. The beginning episodes are very beginner. Answering all the questions. What is dropshipping? How does dropshipping work? How do I find suppliers? Things like that. And so, listen to that. We’d love to have you on Patreon, as well. It’s $5 an episode. We put out maybe two episodes a month and John and I are really able to go much deeper on that side of things, longer form content. And then you could find us, our YouTube channel is also Dropship Breakthru, and then our course is at DropshipBreakthru.com. It is spelled T-H-R-U, but the formal spelling redirects there, as well.
Kurt Elster: All right. I’ll include this in the show notes. It sounds like fabulous resources for people who are looking. And what I want to know, if you had to start over, this is my last question for you. If you had to start over, what would you have done differently? What would you tell yourself?
Ben Knegendorf: Yeah. I don’t know if I would have done anything differently other than move faster. I really got hung up on like I built… Just taking it all the way back, I built my first store. It was called BrickfireBBQ.com. It was because my wife’s uncle was the national sales rep for Memphis Pellet Grills, and so if we went to her uncle’s house for dinner, we ate on a Memphis. If we went to her dad’s house, he sold him a Memphis, we ate on one. And so, there was Memphis everywhere in my life, and I was just like, “I’m gonna create this.”
And somebody posted in the forums, “Hey, I tried pellet grills and that niche doesn’t work.” And I bought that hook, line, and sinker, and I reached out to as many people as I could and they were all like, “Look, just because that person didn’t succeed doesn’t mean you can’t.” But I spent months doubting myself, feeling like I built this website for nothing, that this is never gonna work, and that this whole… Why did I even take a chance on myself? This is why you don’t buy $1,000 courses.
And when I finally bought The3DPRinterGuy.com and I lost that supplier, it was just another kick in the ass of like, “Fuck, you lost the biggest supplier. Now you still need to call suppliers. You don’t know whether this one’s gonna work.” And I spent way too long doubting myself and being a perfectionist, making sure the website was just perfect before I even called suppliers. And in reality, if I had just moved faster I would have learned a lot of lessons along the way.
And so, I think too many people think when they start something it’s gonna be this get-rich-quick scheme, and in six months they’re gonna be a millionaire, and that’s just not how business works. You have so many lessons you need to learn. You have such a long path in life. Anything you’ve learned in your life or anything you’ve gotten good at in your life, you didn’t get good at it overnight, right? You took a lot of practice. It took a lot of effort. And the same thing applies to business, and so I would have just told myself to get moving faster and realize that there’s hundreds of lessons I need to learn, and the faster I learn them, the further along I’m gonna get.
Kurt Elster: I love that that’s the takeaway. Obviously, move faster is an easy one when you’re successful looking back, but it’s also… I agree. I would have told myself the same thing. I just hired a full-time W2 designer developer and within days of doing it, I already knew I should have done this a year ago, right? I knew immediately. I shouldn’t have doubted myself. I should have just done it. And I think the other nugget of wisdom in there is there really… I don’t think there’s such a thing as an overnight success. I think often when you hear about an overnight success, it looks like an overnight success to you, or maybe it’s been presented that way, but the reality is there was probably a ton of failure and missteps and second guessing that led up to that. That overnight success really just… and if it does happen, it’s lightning in a bottle. It’s so hard to reproduce events like that.
But this has been really great. I’m so glad you came on the show and talked to us and really convinced me of the merits of high ticket dropshipping. I love the idea. Thank you so much. Ben Knegendorf, DropshipBreakthru.com, check the show notes. I got all the links he mentioned, I put them in there for you.
Ben Knegendorf: Thanks for having me, buddy.
Kurt Elster: Thank you.
Sound Board Clip:
Ben Knegendorf: Love the soundbites.