I had a birthday last month and I bought myself a present- a course to learn how to start a drop shipping business.
I had published a blog back in January talking about how I was thinking about drop shipping as a possible side hustle and I was looking into some courses (see my blog at https://thesidehustlejourney.com/jdlt). After researching options, I decided that I would go with Anton Kraly’s Drop Ship LIfestyle course (see more information at https://www.dropshiplifestyle.com/).
I had listened to a free webinar about the Drop Ship Lifestyle course in January, which was a quick teaser about it. At the end, Anton offered a discount for those who signed up right away. He said the value is $10,000 but if you sign up the day of the webinar, you’ll get it for $1,495. I know this sales tactic of “act now or lose it” but I thought it sounded like a fair value at $1,495 if it does what he says it does, which is teaches you how to create a profitable drop shipping business. When I listened to the free webinar in January, I wasn’t ready to pay the money nor did I have the time or energy to start this side hustle so I emailed Anton (which is actually one of the many people he has working for him) and asked if they would consider extending the offer until the end of May. I wasn’t sure if May was the right date but it’s my birthday month and I often make a big decision or commitment/resolution during that month. They didn’t promise to extend the offer but they said they would try to.
Fast forward four months and the whole world had changed. Coronovirus was spreading like wildfire around the world and especially in the U.S., people were losing their jobs at an alarming rate and the country was divided on many things (and this was before George Floyd was murdered). In April my company furloughed a large portion of its employees for 3 ½ months and, even though I wasn’t furloughed, my pay and hours were cut by 20%.
My wife wisely mentioned that this might be a good time to start this process while I’m still employed so that if I get laid off I would be ahead of the game and not have to start a square one. So when my birthday rolled around in May, I decided it might be the time to act on starting this side hustle. I emailed my contact at Drop Ship Lifestyle and said I’d sign up immediately for the course if they would honor the $1,495 price from January. They did honor it and so I signed up two days before my birthday.
My life was busy with a full time job (even though I was only getting paid for 80% time, I was still working hard ~4.5 days a week) and three kids who were doing distance learning at the time but I knew I’d have to make time to take this course and then take this side hustle seriously. I decided the only way I could do this was to wake up 45 minutes earlier during the work week to do my online classes. One advantage of the pandemicI was that I was working remotely 100% of the time so I didn’t have to commute other than from the bed to my home office so I thought there might not be a better time to do this.
Since mid May I have kept the commitment of getting up 45 minutes earlier 5 days a week to take Anton Kraly’s Drop Ship Lifestyle class. I won’t give away all of his secrets but here is the overview of what I have done/learned.
There are 7 modules with 9-13 lessons within each module. I really like that in the first module he had a lesson on ethics and had three rules he expects his students/members to follow:
- I will not disrespect any members
- I will not steal the work of others.
- I will not falsely represent myself or my business.
He follows it up with a mission statement and core values. I won’t put them all here because you can take the course to see it but I was happy that Anton had been so thoughtful about thinking through ethics and values and that he states that he expects all of his community to follow his well thought out code of conduct.
I have always been ethical in business (and I’m in sales, no less) and so I really appreciated that Anton spelled out up front that you have to do business ethically to be part of the Drop Ship Lifestyle community. Thank you, Anton, for making ethics a priority for your community.
I have my MBA and ~30 years in business so I didn’t know what I would learn but I have learned a lot and really like the way Anton lays out his classes. I am new to the drop shipping business (and have never had my own business) and found the way that Anton goes step by step on how to set up your own drop ship business very helpful. It is a very practical course to teach you exactly how to set up your own business and you have to complete one course/step before going onto the next. The lessons are ~5-30 minutes long and sometimes there is homework to do between lessons.
By looking at the overview of the modules, I think I’m about a ⅓ of the way through the course and I’m almost exactly one month into it. My goal is to be up and running by the end of August and I think I can do that if I stay with my waking up early five days a week to take the classes.
With the help of my consultants (i.e. my family), I just decided on a URL/business name which I’ll buy today. I’ll report more later but so far I am happy with the Drop Ship Lifestyle training class and I hope it will be worth the investment. If I do get laid off at work in the next 6 months, I hope that I will have a solid foundation around the drop shipping to see if it has any legs to pursue as a full-time opportunity or if it was a good idea but not something I could do full time to pay the bills. Too soon to tell but as my mom always says I’ll have to “keep on keeping on” to find out.
