Ben Knegendorf, Dropship Breakthru

[00:00:00] Sanjay Parekh: Welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business Podcast, powered by Hiscox. I’m your host, Sanjay Parekh. Throughout my career, I’ve had side hustles, some of which have turned into real businesses, but first and foremost, I’m a serial technology entrepreneur.

In the creator space, we hear plenty of advice on how to hustle harder and why you can “sleep when you’re dead.” On this show, we ask new questions in hopes of getting new answers. Questions like: How can small businesses work smarter? How do you achieve balance between work and family? How can we redefine success in our businesses so that we don’t burn out after year three? Every week, I sit down with business founders at various stages of their side hustle to small business journey. These entrepreneurs are pushing the envelope while keeping their values. Keep listening for conversation, context, and camaraderie.

Today's guest knows a little something about formulating a dream and executing it. At 29 years old, Ben Knegendorf was driving a forklift at a Walmart Distribution Center and knew he needed to make a change. He's had quite the journey since then - doing everything from flipping real estate, selling items on eBay, to selling tiny house products. Today, Ben is here to share the story of his current business Dropship Breakthru. He's an eCommerce consultant, podcast host, and speaker. Ben, welcome to the show!

[00:01:24] Ben Knegendorf: Thanks for having me.

[00:01:26] Sanjay Parekh: So I'm excited to talk to you, because I'm hoping to glean some stuff from your from your brain here. Because I've just recently started a side hustle doing physical products. But before we get into all of that, can you give us like a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are now?

[00:01:41] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, look I probably existed like many people existed. I was living what my parents did. So in my twenties I was married. My dad was working at a warehouse. My mom was a CNA and wouldn't you know it. In my twenties, I was working at a warehouse and my wife was a CNA. And I was working at a Walmart Distribution Center and this Distribution Center had only been around 20 years and so anyone who was on first shift stayed there, right? So it was very hard to get the first shift, but that was the holy grail in this building. So after like seven years, I got there, and I remember it specifically, I went in I was working 4:00 AM to 2:00 PM, four days a week. And I walked in and it just, everyone looked dead inside. And like, that was the day I knew something had to change. I was like, this can't be it. At 29, this cannot be as good as life's gonna get. Maybe I'll work to be a, you know, a coach they call it. Everyone's a team there. Right. So you're a coach. But I knew there was more and I think I've known that my whole life. I always knew that I was capable of a whole lot more and I just wasn't trying. But that was the specific moment where something needed to change.

[00:02:33] Sanjay Parekh: So what was that something? Like, what, how did you come to the realization of like, this is the something that I'm going to do after this?

[00:02:40] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, I don't think I knew right away. Right. I just I had heard, I had a buddy who was selling random things on eBay. And so that's what I would go around to garage sales and look for things to flip on eBay, quickly realized this wasn't going to be scalable. I couldn't go to garage sales forever, I couldn't go to the clearance aisles forever. And I stumbled on the term drop shipping. Which if you've ever been on the internet looking at business ideas you probably heard this term. But specifically, I was targeted for something called high ticket drop shipping. And that intrigued me more than anything. So if you think about drop shipping, that's simply like a method of fulfillment. Somebody is drop shipping the product on your behalf. High ticket is selling high ticket items that are being drop shipped on your behalf. And what really stood out to me was the difference between drop shipping some random item from Alibaba or Ali Express that would get shipped in 40 days in a heavily taped box from somewhere in China and be, you know, honestly a crap product.

And where you had to interrupt someone's social feed, where they're looking at what their friends are doing this weekend, or what their grandma's eating for dinner and like, get them interested in this product in the first place. To selling a product people have already heard about and, you know, it's high ticket, right? You're just going to have less touchpoint. So I'm happy to go into like all the details of how that works. But it intrigued me knowing that I was building a real business, a sellable asset. That intrigued me. I decided to take the plunge. Honestly I was $40,000 in consumer debt. My wife and I were. And a magic card showed up with a $1,000 credit limit, which is all you get when you're $40,000 in debt. The course was a thousand bucks. And so, she's now my ex-wife, but my wife at the time, I said I'm going to take a chance on this. If I fail, I'll go back to school, something to help our family. But I got to give this a go. And she said, okay. And so I bought a course in very early 2015 and that's where my journey started.

[00:04:15] Sanjay Parekh: So when you took the course, were you still working full-time at that point? Were you still the forklift operator or were you somewhere else at that point?

[00:04:23] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, so I actually built and sold my first high ticket drop shipping business while working full-time. So this is the definition of a side hustle and small business. And so yeah, I built that first business in the first year. And I ended up selling it for one year's salary at the Walmart Distribution Center, which was like, you know, unbelievable to me at that moment. Looking back, it doesn't like, seem like that much. But believe me in that moment, it was huge. I thought I was going to quit. I was like, oh, here we go. I've got this all figured out. And they offered to let me stay on two days a week and I could keep my insurance, which seems like a bigger deal than it is, I think, in America to keep your insurance. So I took that deal and quickly, within a few months, I became the worst employee that probably has ever existed. And they said “sounds like you're having more fun doing that cute little internet thing. Why don't you hit the road?” I'll remember that day forever. Yeah.

[00:05:09] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So okay, so you built this while you were working. How did you split your time? So like, were you were still doing the 4:00 AM to 2:00 PM shifts as the forklift operator and then doing the side hustle after that? Like how did you split up your day?

[00:05:26] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, so I, I switched to second shift pretty quickly as I was doing this. So I was working 3:00 PM to 1:00 AM. And if I'm dead honest with you, I'd come home at 1:00 AM. I'd get home about 1:30 and I'd play Call of Duty till like 4:30 in the morning. I'd sleep till I woke up, you know, maybe 10 or 11. And then I'd put a couple hours into building the business, and answering customer inquiries, and I'd go to work, and then even then at work if a customer was calling and they left a voicemail or they had a chat, I'd drive to the front of the building and then I'd walk outside and I'd get yelled at. I'd get in trouble every time I did this. But I knew, you know, in the beginning  you got to hustle. You got to make all those sales. So, whether it was the couple hours at home or the couple hours at night, which rarely happened. It was mostly Call of Duty at that point. Or, you know, just stepping outside while at work. You know, I was just hustling. Just trying to make something happen.

[00:06:08] Sanjay Parekh: What did your coworkers think that you gave up the holy grail? The first shift to go to the second shift? Like, did you get any comments when you did that?

[00:06:17] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, I think. I mean, this is going to be a reflection on a lot of people's lives I would imagine. Have you ever heard the term crabs in a pot?

[00:06:25] Sanjay Parekh: Crabs in a pot? I don't think so.

[00:06:26] Ben Knegendorf: So if you boil crabs, they're going to try to get out of there, right?

[00:06:29] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah.

[00:06:29] Ben Knegendorf: And as they try to get out of there, the ones that are boiling, grab the other one and pull them down because they're trying to get out. So nobody ever gets out. They all boil alive. And so this happens a lot in real life and it happened there. Right? Anyone who was working there considered this to be a pipe dream. Oh yeah, good luck with that, you know, you'll never get out of here. That's the family I was raised into, like, we were poor. You'll never go to college, just, you know, a lot of negativity. And so whether it was coworkers telling me, “Dude, you're leaving first shift, what are you doing?” Or you know, or “Good luck starting that pipe dream of a business.” Or your family saying, you know they support you, but you can tell that they're just like, you know, good luck with this kind of thing. Right. I feel like that's a lot of surroundings and that's unfortunate, right? But you got to push through those things. And so yeah, it existed a lot. There was a lot of crabs in the pot everywhere I went.

[00:07:11] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. You know, it's funny you say that because now reflecting back the same exact thing happened to me when I was quitting my first job to start my first startup. I had a lot of comments from people that were not even directly coworkers, but just people in the same company like, Oh yeah that's not going to work. You know, that like not even knowing really fully what I was even working on. And just kind of casting it aside. And I think you're right. I think it's, it is, it's probably the crabs in the pot right there. And probably one of the biggest challenges that founders like you and I have to deal with because it's hard to get past that negativity and kind of focus, because then you start, you know, having that self-doubt. So thinking about that how did you pull yourself out of that? How did you pull yourself out of that self-doubt? And kind of push through and say like, No, I know what I'm doing and I'm not going to listen to you.

[00:07:58] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah. I think I'm just stubborn. If I have one gift, it's being stubborn. I was definitely very big into Gary V. Still have that. I love Gary V you know, if you're watching on video, you can see one of his V friends behind me. I'm a huge fan and he would tell you. That's a reflection of them. The people that are telling you that, you know, this isn't going to work or good luck with that little, that's a reflection on them. They're disappointed in themselves and they don't want to see you succeed because that means that they're not succeeding or they're not going after it. Right. And so really number one, very stubborn. I would put it in a stubborn bucket more than anything. But also, you know, just realizing that I'm not like these people. I think I've known that my entire life that I'm not normal. I think any real entrepreneur knows this deep inside that we're weird. We're not normal. We can't turn it off. We don't know why anybody would want to and so I think I realized that very early on that I was headstrong and I was going to make this work no matter what.

[00:08:42] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So thinking about that you know, one of the things that's often said about doing these things is that, you know, you just got to work, work, work to be successful. And we were talking before the recording that you know, things have changed for you. You're now a dad and now you've got to think about how do you balance work and life. And so how do you think about that? And how are you balancing, you know, the hardships of having to build a business with the things that are important in life? Which is, you know, family and kids and all of those things.

[00:09:13] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah. I think. Look, there's too, there's definitely too much out in the zeitgeist, I guess, of people telling you that business is super hard. It doesn't have to be it, it certainly doesn't have to be. Is it a lot of work? Of course, it's a lot. Everything's a lot of work. But I think too many people view business as “I'll be happy when”, rather than you should be happy right now. Like the ability that I have to work when I want to work and build when I want to build, and build in my free time. Or spend time with the kid, like, that's what we're all striving for. Right? So as you go through this journey and you're trying to make your way to that end point where you'll eventually be happy, which doesn't exist by the way you have to realize that you, you're in the happy. The doing is the happy and that you get to choose your life. So if I dip out early on a Friday to go golfing with my best friend, who's also my employee who works here with me. That's exactly what I want to be able to do. Right. If I want to leave and spend time with my son or my wife or my step kids, I should be able to. Like, that is the dream, right? There is no, there. It's not like you're going to get somewhere and be happy. It's enjoying it. So you know, it's a long winded answer to say I don't know. I'm still trying to figure it out. If I'm honest with you, right. We just moved to this office. I've been working from home for five years. And the very first day I got here, I saw my son for two minutes in the morning. Worked, went to golf league, came home, saw him two minutes at night, and then I cried my eyes out on the couch, because like, this is not what I've been trying to build. Right. I know the dream I'm going after with the few businesses I run. But at the same point, nothing's going to matter more to me in my life than my family.

[00:10:32] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's easy to lose sight of that for not just, you know, those of us that are founders, but the people before, right. Like before they become founders and really thinking about what's important to you.

[00:10:45] Adam Walker: Support for this podcast comes from Hiscox. Committed to helping small businesses protect their dreams since 1901. Quotes and information on customized insurance for specific risks are available at Hiscox.com. Hiscox, the business insurance experts.

[00:11:06] Sanjay Parekh: In this journey that you've had, things have been probably different than what you expected. What's the one thing that was the most different than what you thought it was going to be? And what's the thing that now reflecting back on this journey so far that you would've done differently than how you did do it?

[00:11:24] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah. Two great questions, right. I'm off here thinking about them as well. I would say different was kind of related to that last question. I always thought, like when I reach this financial goal, I'm going to feel differently. Or when I reach this. And it's just not true. Entrepreneurship is the greatest self-development tool that has ever existed. So whatever stories you tell yourself, whatever limiting beliefs you have you can avoid those in I'll call it air quote, “normal life.” Right? You go to your work, you go home, you binge out on Netflix, and you kind of avoid the things. Maybe you have a few drinks at night, you just kind of avoid them. When you're an entrepreneur and you're running your business, those limiting beliefs and those thoughts in your head, they boil up to the top in your business, right? You'll find yourself sabotaging your business for no good reason, because you're scared of success, or you're scared of failure, or you don't believe you deserve it. And so I did not expect to go through such a transformation as a human being through this journey. But that has been the greatest gift that has come through entrepreneurship to me.

Just working on all sorts of things that I had no idea were affecting me from my childhood or the belief system that... you build your entire belief system between like ages four and seven. That's wild, right? We're all seven year olds trying to attack this world. And so going out there and understanding, I had a fear of failure. I had a fear of success, because if I'm successful, what does that mean to how I interact with my family? Understanding that I do deserve this, that I do belong, that I am talented. Like we all, I, think personally, I had a way too much negative thoughts going on in my head. And they were instilled there by people who were doing the best they could with the life they had as they were teaching me. But it's just not what I wanted to believe or what is actually true. And so that's the most surprising thing to me is the journey I went on. And then looking back, one thing I would change is I would tell everybody, go get a coach. Whatever you're trying to learn, there's somebody who's already done it. Just go pay them. And it might sound like, you know, I charge $500 an hour for my consulting. Many consultants charge way more than that. And you might be like, Oh my God, that's so much money for an hour. But it's not, right. In, in that one hour that could change your life. That could make you avoid the next seven you know, hiccups or hurdles that are along your way and be able to jump way further along. So I have I have a mindset coach. I have a business coach. I've got multiple coaches going on at all times and I can't recommend that enough for anyone. Just go find someone who's done exactly what you want to do and pay them to show you the way.

[00:13:23] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So at what point did you realize that you needed a coach? Like how was that something that you discovered? Did somebody tell you? Or did you realize it on your own?

[00:13:32] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, so  I signed up for a Mastermind that was way out of my price range, if I'm honest it made. Me feel very uncomfortable. And I went there because this guy was on stage. He was so mesmerizing. He was great at marketing and I'm like, and he shared my values. I was just like, Oh, I love his authenticity. I want to go learn from this guy. So I went to his mastermind and at his mastermind, he had a guy named Elliot Roe. Feel free to look him up ElliotRoe.com. He coaches some of the, know, the top poker players in the world, the top UFC fighters in the world, top entrepreneurs in the world. And for some strange reason he singled me and another guy named Kavon out of the room and just really focused in on us and was like, I can help you guys. You guys are, have something different and I can help you. And believe me. And when I met him, I was like, why are you singling me out? I don't belong here. Since then, he's invited me to his masterminds where I definitely feel like I don't belong in this room of really heavy hitters. But for some reason he singled me out and we kind of hit it off, we talked to UFC, we talked to some of the fighters he's been working with, we talked poker, and he said, you know, how about I give you a free call and just see if you like it? On that free call, he blew my mind. Absolutely blew my mind. He took me back to a memory that, I don't consciously remember, but it totally makes sense that it existed. You know, via hypnotherapy, which is just guided meditation. And resolving that, and then going to talk to my dad about that memory and resolving it, our relationship between him and I. Profound changes in how I viewed the world and how I showed up every day. And I was just like, All right, take all my money. Like whatever that is, take it all. I want to continue going on this journey. And yeah, so I would say happenstance, right? I went to a mastermind thinking I was going to learn marketing and I ended up crying for three days straight working on personal development stuff that I didn't know I needed.

[00:14:59] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. That is fantastic. And not that you know I want you to cry or anything. But that you've been able to resolve some of these things and be able to move forward from that. That's fantastic that you've been able to go on that journey. So let's kind of switch gears a little bit. You've kind of given us a lot to think about and so if somebody is on the cusp and on the verge of taking that leap into turning their side hustle into a full-time business or even starting a side hustle, what kind of advice would you give them about, you know, when to take that leap? Or if, to take that leap or, you know, you know, anything?

[00:15:36] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, look, if you're listening to this and you haven't started, the answers start. It doesn't matter what you do. Like, are you going to fail? Probably. But is that like the end all be end, you hit this failure and then it's over? I try to view this as a lifelong game and so, of course, there's going to be... I fail many times a day on the different marketing tactics we try and different things. Like you're going to fail, right? So if you haven't started yet, just start. And if you're on that journey, just don't quit. That's as simple as it is, right. You're going to run into hurdles every single day where someone in the pack, so imagine you're running this entrepreneurship race with a hundred other people. Every hurdle you encounter, one of those people is going to be like, no, you know what, that one's too hard for me, I would rather go back to something a little easier or work a nine to five where I don't have to think about this.

And so if you can just keep pushing over hurdle after hurdle solving every problem you're eventually going to end up in rarefied air where this all pays dividends. So you know, I think a lot of people listen to folks like me and we haven't even went into my story that have been successful and they think, you know, either he has something I have, or he has knowledge that I have that I don't have, or it seems like an overnight success. Oftentimes when you hear on podcasts, it seems like somebody just figured this out. The reality is I've been doing this since 2015, right. And that first business, it took a few months to get going. It took a few months for me to call suppliers. It took a few months to actually make some money. And eventually I got it to, you know, $1,500 a month profit and I sold it for 40 K, which was life changing back then. But, you know, since then I've gone on to take businesses to seven figures and eight figures and have seven figure exits. And like, those didn't happen overnight. Those happen with an accumulation of knowledge and mistakes and failing a lot, and learning here, all right, don't do this, let's try this. And, you know, you have a lot to learn and there's never a point where you've learned it all and you keep... It's a constant journey and so just keep going.

[00:17:13] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. What like looking back you know, we talked about what you would've different, but done differently and everything. Is there one mistake that you made that you feel was the worst mistake? You know, how did you deal with it? How did you recover from it? And what did you learn from it?

[00:17:29] Ben Knegendorf: I don't know. don't know if I could pinpoint one and say it was the worst. But right after I sold that first business, I went to a conference for the course that I had originally purchased that was putting on and at this conference, two gentlemen were presenting on a different business model than I do. So I teach high ticket drop shipping. That's the, where I came from, they were teaching something called Amazon FBA, fulfilled by Amazon, and I enjoyed their presentation, and then we'd go out to dinner, and I would sit whatever table I sat at, they would sit next to me. And then the next night, my wife and I would sit at a different table trying to meet new people and they would sit next to us, and they kind of took shining to me. They knew I was selling my business and they convinced me to take part of that sale and invest in their new company that hadn't started and just kind of bet on them. In hindsight, they were just looking for the seed money to get started. I spent a year not being able to do anything in that business. It was one of the worst partnerships I've ever had. They didn't let me do anything huge. We had a successful business of adult coloring books and sold that. But I was not allowed to do anything. I even had a course on one of the marketing methods we used and instead of asking me how to do it, they went and hired a company that ended up losing us like $40,000 over the course of three months. And just like, I felt so slighted. And I learned a lot about partnerships and like how to have relationships and who you do business with. And even after that, they once we split apart, one of those partners copied the next thing that we were doing, that I took to eight figures they blatantly copied it. And I was just, you know, like there's a lot of, I don't want to say there's a lot of snakes in the grass out there. And so I learned a lot about partnerships. Back then, I really thought I needed somebody to do this with, right? To share the load with me. And I was very unsure of myself and that being the first partnership I was in, it was the worst one I've been in, and it taught me a lot of lessons about how do I want to view this going forward? And realized that a business partnership is just like a marriage. And there's a lot to think about there.

[00:19:14] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah, , unlike a marriage, you can get a divorce. But in a business partnership, a lot of times you can't get a divorce. You are locked in until whatever happens. So have you thought about that? How's that informed you moving forward? Like, do you have co-founders, partners, in your businesses now or have you avoided them?

[00:19:32] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, so I, I do have partners now. I learned a lot from that, right? First off, if you're going to do a partnership with somebody no matter who it is, get divorced while you're getting married. So before you begin the partnership, outline exactly what that looks like to, to break it off.

If one of you, something's going to come up, money's going to get between you, something's going to come up, or you're going to want to solve problems a different way. You have to have a path through that. And so I always tell, you know, our students: get divorced before you get married. So I've definitely done that. Worked very hard on operating agreements and yeah, I cared more about the human, right. So again, that was my first success. These two were on stage talking. They were up on this pedestal of me. They must know more than me. They want to take my money and start this. But they must have a great idea. And just, I fell into the whole trap of guruism, if you will. And now it's more like who do I actually want to spend time with on a daily basis? So you know, I own a pet supplement company, paramount pethealth.com. I have a business partner named Leanna Patch. She owns punchlinecopy.com. She's one of the best, funny copywriters on the planet, in my opinion. She did a ton of work for us. She's also a crazy cat lady. So she fit right into this pet business. And then I met Layton Taylor. He runs envision.io. He’s very great at design, wanted to start operating, and just him and I connected on a human level of like, we view the world the same way, and I was like, of course, this is a no brainer partnership. Right. And so and then same with Dropship Breakthru. John and I have been friends since 2016. Just chatting once a week connecting with each other. And again, sharing value, sharing how we view the world, and understanding that we here's how we like to market. We want to talk to people, not sell them products. We just, we want to help a human. And we share same family values and how we think about the world and so it, that informed me a lot of how I should view partnerships and the gravity of the situation when you have a partnership.

[00:21:09] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that. And it sounds like basically everybody that you have this partner you had as a friend before you had them as a partner. And I think that's really smart. Okay, so last question and then I have a question for you on, and for like advice for our listeners. Let's think about, and talk about stress and doing all of this stuff, super stressful, right? Like thinking about payroll and paying the bills and revenue coming in. How do you deal with all of that? And kind of think about stress and manage your stress? We know already that you are a shoot 'em up guy, playing Call of Duty. What else do you do that helps you manage the stress of running business?

[00:21:50] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah. So a Call of Duty's gone, thankfully. I'm not thankful for that. I, I used to play it every once in a while now. It's yeah, it's definitely gone. There's just no time for it anymore. Look, stress is a weird thing. I would challenge you to sit down and ask why you're stressed. Like what is actually stressing you? If it's the amount of work, that's never going away. Like the work will fill the time you give it and there will always be something more to do.

So if you can view it as, Here's what I got done. I try to do one big thing a day. So I have one big, if I get that one thing done and the rest of the day, I'm scrolling Twitter, reading baseball news, or watching the Twins on my side screen over here, I still got that one thing done. So, try to ask yourself where that stress is coming from. On top of that I do try to do things to mitigate that. So I'm a big fan of float tanks - sensory deprivation tanks. If you've never done that, I highly recommend it. Just go float in that salt water in the darkness and your brain will go to some very creative places and you'll be able to solve some problems that have been, you know running your mind for a little while. Also a big fan of saunas and then, you know, I don't look par, but I've been trying to get healthy for about a year now. I work out every single day. And so I can't say enough about that. I wish I started that health journey a lot sooner because that's definitely helped. But yeah, I don't know. I tend to go back to why are you stressed? And if you're stressed, because again, if it's too much work, there's always going to be work. Right. So it's just shifting your frame of view there. But if it's like, are you stressed because you don't like the audience you're serving? Or you don't like the business you're running? Then pivot. Right. I think too many people stay stuck in this, that whatever they're doing now has to work. And that's just not true. Like if you're not happy, what are you doing this for? There, there's no point in doing this. So don't ever get yourself stuck where, you know, a job where you're relying on that income and you can never leave that job because you need this income. Like if you don't get yourself into that situation, it allows you to pivot and really focus on who you're serving every single day. Because if you wake up and you're passionate about the people you're serving and how you're helping serve them look, you're still going to be stressed. But you'll be a lot less stressed. You'll be a lot more motivated every single day to work on this project.

[00:23:38] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. I, I love that. I tell people often I, I haven't worked in over 20 years because I love what I do. It's not work to me. I really enjoy it and I enjoy every day and getting to solve problems.

[00:23:48] Ben Knegendorf: We just, I just moved into this office and I don't call it work. The kids started calling it, You're going to work today. And I squashed it on day one. I said, we're going to call it fun. I  love what I do every single day. So when you say, Ben, are you going to work? I want you to start saying, Ben, are you going to fun? Or how was fun today? Cause, I enjoy every second of this.

[00:24:06] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I love it. Okay. So the last kind of like special question here for our listeners. If they're thinking that they want to get into drop shipping, what's the one secret that nobody else knows, that you're going to share with us, like what's the one thing that somebody needs to know that's really going to help them get into this and be successful?

[00:24:27] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, I mean if I had to narrow it down to one, it's simply like stop thinking products. Like whether you're selling low ticket trinkets, which I wouldn't recommend, or whether you're selling something high ticket, like I've sold 3-D printers, pellet grills, standing desks, golf products, wellness products, all over the place. Right. So tiny house products, as you heard. Whatever your set, like stop thinking product and start thinking of the human you want to serve behind there. And what does that person purchase? So. I've shared a on our paid Patreon podcast. I've shared Ben's Big L I bought a business where I was confident, because I had consulted this person, I could grow this business.

I didn't factor in that people behind there. And I had to learn my own lesson. I got 13 chargebacks in the first two months running the business. It was serving an older demographic, a poorer demographic. And that's not who I want to talk to every single day. So I would encourage you to, if you're going to start selling physical products, think less about the product that you want and think more about the person you want to serve and the problem that's actually solving.

[00:25:22] Sanjay Parekh: I love that. I love that. Ben, this has been fantastic. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

[00:25:27] Ben Knegendorf: Yeah, you're welcome. If anybody is actually curious about drop shipping, high ticket drop shipping specifically, we literally give away the whole business model. I want you to be able to start without ever having to spend a penny. Just go to dropshippodcast.com and binge from the beginning. You'll learn everything you need to do.

[00:25:41] Sanjay Parekh: Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business Podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit hiscox.com. That's hiscox.com. And if you have a story you want to hear on this podcast, please visit Hiscox.com/shareyourstory. I’m your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find me on Twitter at @sanjay or on my website at sanjayparekh.com.