How this business owner is making big money From Dropshipping in 2024 with Shayne CC

me as a dropshipper, I'm just putting and piggybacking my price on that listing that is already doing so well on Amazon. People come to Amazon not necessarily for the price because it's the lowest. They come to it because it's fast, it's convenient, it's easy.

Hello and welcome back to the Owner Meeting Podcast. I'm Christian Osgood, your channel host, joined today by Shane Cannell Cohen. We'll just call him Shane, Shane CC for this so that I can not get tongue-tied every time I say your name. But Shane, Awesome having you here. The channel is all about talking to actual operators in given fields. We want to actually meet with the owners who are doing the thing. We don't want online gurus here. We don't want these like random influencers. This is someone who has tactically done something that's very interesting and very popular right now. You're in the Amazon dropshipping space. I have seen, I would say, probably more scams and courses and fake gurus in this space over the last 3 years than probably any other space. I want to hear a little bit about your business because I, I got to talk to Shane a little bit before. There's something about the way he does this that's a little bit different, but you actually built the business. You've been successful in the business. I want to talk about two things primarily. Talk about the actual core business, how you got started and why we're there. And then I actually do want to dive into why this got so popular in the fake online guru space, because this is— this model is everywhere and people who are doing it correctly and actually making money it's a much different business than the way it's presented. So I'm excited to dive into this. I've had a lot of thoughts about this for a long time. Shane, we're going to open it up to you. First question, when did you get started in this business?

So the moment I got started— and first things first, obviously, I appreciate you having me here. The moment that the pandemic hit, right, was when I started to realize like I was in a position where I was so reliant on other people or other factors for me to be able to produce income. And the moment that the government kind of like swept that away from me where, you know, I no longer was able to go to school, I, I couldn't, you know, work my regular job that I wanted to be able to work. I started to realize that, you know, that, that was not a position that I wanted to be in. So when the pandemic hit in 2020, I decided, you know what, the one thing that was continuously running while everything stopped was Amazon, right? So that kind of like changed my perspective wherein like Amazon had their best year throughout the pandemic just because everyone was home, everyone was on stimulus checks, and the only thing that was open literally was Amazon. So people were just buying products day in and day out. So I thought to myself, like, look, if I'm spending money on Amazon, if so many other people are spending money on Amazon also, why can't I flip the switch and also make money with them as well? And that's when I started to realize, like, over— it was 61% of Amazon's revenue is generated by third-party sellers. And that changed a lot for me and my perspective.

They have a very good business model. This is something that I hear all the time on the channel, by the way. Hey, my largest company started during the pandemic. I actually bought like hundreds of rental properties during the pandemic. And it's because I had the time to sit down and think, and this is what happens with most people. I don't think we actually take any time outside of the workday to actually think about what we want to do. As entrepreneurs, so many of us had our startups here because we actually had dedicated time where the government said, hey, go to your house and work's gonna be really hard and painful. And a lot of us got these ideas of like, well, what do I actually want my life to look like? What opportunities are out there in front of me? This happens so much. One of my big takeaways here is you don't need a pandemic to have that moment. You can also just take an hour out of your day instead of watching Netflix. And imagine what opportunities are in front of you and what you want your life to look like. Um, for most of us, including myself, this seems to be the timeline where we all like woke up and went, wait a second, I don't have to do a 9-to-5 grind. What were you doing before that in 2020? Like before you had this realization that there's a business model that's right in front of me? What were you doing before that?

Yeah, so at the time that that happened, I was 22 years old. So I'm 26 now. And Well, I just kind of grew up in a regular family, you know, I followed the same path. I was, I went to college, then I decided I'm going to go to university to study to, you know, major in finance. And I was working part-time as a valet as well to kind of have a little bit extra cash on the side. You know, it was a fun job also, you get to drive nice fancy cars that you don't own. So that was kind of what I was doing before that. And, you know, as a university student as well, it's pretty much like I had a very hectic schedule. I was devoting a lot of my time towards it. So I was very much just working part-time, maybe earning about like, I don't know, like $300 or so a week from my valet job, which at that time for me sounded like it was, you know, amazing. But then when I got all of that kind of swept out under me, I was kind of like, okay, you know, tough spot to be in now.

And that's when you go, hey, what other opportunities are in front of me? Of all of the things out there— actually, before I even ask this question, for those who are hearing this concept for the first time, and I think the internet's done a pretty good job of talking about this, uh, you know, a lot, but for those who are hearing this model for the first time, explain Amazon dropshipping in layman's terms, what it is that you do with Amazon to make money.

Yeah, so all we basically do is we're— we have to think ourselves like the middleman, right, like the intermediary in this certain aspect. So my supplier that I'm connecting with, and by, you know, a quick little note, like, we're not sourcing overseas. So the traditional dropshipping business model that everyone oftentimes is so used to, AliExpress, Alibaba, like, we're not touching those things. We're only sourcing within a domestic marketplace. So if I sell in the US, I'm utilizing US-based suppliers that are on US soil. If I sell in Canada, in the Canadian marketplace, I'm using Canadian-based suppliers. And with that, it's basically the same concept of like, look, like buy low, sell high. But I'm trying to find products that my supplier has from big brand names like Nespresso, Keurig, KitchenAid, and whatnot, and trying to see if they're selling on Amazon at a markup. And that difference is basically where I make my profit. Now, the only thing is, is that I'm never placing bulk orders. I'm never utilizing Amazon Fulfillment Services. So no Amazon FBA. And I'm never buying the product before it actually sells. So the reason why one would actually want to dropship on Amazon is just because it's mitigating as much risk as you possibly can. So you only ever spend money once you know that someone has purchased an item from you first. So the moment that someone buys something from you, then you go to your supplier, you purchase that product utilizing your credit card at a lower price, but you have that product sent directly to the customer's doorstep for you. That way you just earn the profit that you've been able to earn from the product that was actually sold.

Now, what drives someone to a storefront? So you create your online storefront wherever that is and it lives on Amazon, but you were able to find the supplier at a lower price. What drives someone to your platform? How are you getting the traffic there to say, hey, they're going to buy from me at a slightly higher price that I can order from someone else and do the trade? Like being essentially How are you driving the traffic to where you're making a margin being the middleman here?

So all you're really doing is, like I alluded to in the beginning there, you're reselling preexisting branded products that are already dominating within their specific niche, right? So like, for example, you know, Ninja and Ninja Creamies were all the hype throughout the summer where those products just took off. So me as a dropshipper, I'm just putting and piggybacking my price on that listing that is already doing so well on Amazon. Now, it's not that people come to my storefront. It's just people come to Amazon, not necessarily for the price because it's the lowest. They come to it because it's fast, it's convenient, it's easy. And so that ignorance that a lot of Amazon customers oftentimes have, that's where, generally speaking, I'm able to leverage. And people don't realize that, you know, there are other places that they can get the products at a cheaper price, but they only go to Amazon just because That's what they know, like, and trust.

So when you're posting on Amazon, I expect— so let's take, let's take a super premium item like the Ninja Creami. That's a great example. My little sister got one. She loves it. This is, this is a relatable topic. What keeps 30 different vendors rushing to the same product at the same price? When you have something that is hot and trending, this feels like something that doesn't have a large economic moat. If you're going to— so if I'm understanding correctly, there, there's a, there's another site you can get this item less expensive from another vendor. You can place the order yourself, you can order it somewhere else. How are you ranking on Amazon in a way where they're purchasing from you and not having 30 people sell the same Ninja Creami at the same price? How are you winning in this business? It seems like there's such a low barrier to entry. How do you compete on a product?

Yeah, so I mean, like, look, that kind of gets answered in two separate parts. So there was a stat that came out that there's about 900 million products sold on Amazon US today, right? So the idea of like, you know, being— it's hard to compete, or there's too many, you know, people out there doing the same exact thing— that's kind of like just a frame of mind wherein I view the world of selling on Amazon as abundant. Like, there's 900 million different opportunities for me to be able to make a shitload of money on Amazon. But to the other side to that is also about we're not only focusing on listing a Ninja Creami type of product, we're focusing on diversifying our storefront because we never have to buy a product before it sells. That means that I can list literally anything and everything that I want, and whenever an item sells, that's when I know I only have to spend money. So 70% of the products we're going to list are going to be Ninja Creami products, KitchenAid products, let's say. Or small appliances, but they're also going to be focused in toys and games, tools and home improvement, you know, certain things like health and beauty as well. And the 30% are going to be focused on seasonal factors, right? So certain things like Christmas, Halloween, whatnot, certain items like that. So from other vendors, how are we able to compete with them on one particular product listing? Yeah, it's about price, but it's also about other factors where you have a feedback rating, right? So What's your rating on your Amazon store, right? If you go to Amazon, you see someone has a 1-star storefront review over the last, you know, 6 months, their product might be $100, but then the guy that has 5 stars is $150. You're probably going to buy from the guy that has a 5-star review even though he's, you know, $50 more expensive. So there's certain factors that we play into account like the price, like the feedback score of every single Amazon account. The shipping times as well, and also certain factors with perceived value methodology. So sometimes we can influence the way in which people perceive a product listing to be for the price that we're offering at in a way that's superior to what our other competition is actually selling that same exact product at, at a certain price point.

One thing you mentioned in there that, that comes to mind— shipping times. If you're dropshipping, you don't necessarily have control over that. What What things can you control in a listing and what do you do when you have a lot of products, a lot of vendors, you're dropshipping? How do you maintain quality control while not being in physical possession of the item?

Yeah, so maintaining quality control, what that really comes down to is first things first, not ever going overseas. Like people have this preconceived notion that going to like AliExpress is the holy grail just because they have something for like $0.50. Yeah, but especially with Trump now in office as well, like there's going to be imports, there's going to be duties, there's going to be taxes on all the products that are coming overseas. So by sourcing from a domestic marketplace, so if I sell in the US, I'm using US-based suppliers, I know that the supplier I'm utilizing is what we call dropship friendly. So generally speaking, they have a good track record of having at least, let's say, 2 to 5 day delivery times. And also to that point, ensuring that they have a verified supply chain. So meaning that they're actually a verified distributor of selling authentic products of, I don't know, let's say Keurig machines or any sort of DeWalt drill sets, let's say, for example. So the quality control factor really stems from ensuring that you're using the right types of suppliers. That's the really number one key point, not just any and every supplier that you find out there.

That makes sense. And so you're tailoring down your list, you're getting this. How do you— how does one decide, hey, I think this project, this product has a margin and I can get people to come to my store to purchase this? I imagine there's more factors than just I found a cheaper spot, they can ship fast. There has to be some analysis of, hey, people aren't selling this in bulk already on Amazon. There has to be a reason you believe that you can compete in the space and get your price. In a nutshell, like the 30-second elevator pitch, you can go over 30 seconds, but what is it about a product where you see this product and you're like, this checks all the boxes. I can get it for the right price, I'm getting the margin I want, and I have the correct amount of competition where I think I can make money on this.

Yeah, so generally speaking, what you're first going to want to look at is something called the bestseller rank. So the bestseller rank is what we abbreviate as the BSR, and that's basically a ranking system for every single product that's sold on Amazon. So the lower the bestseller rank, that means that, the more the product sells on a day-to-day basis. So that's the number one numerical value that we look at to say how good is a product doing within its product category. And this is literally something that every single person has access to. If you scroll down to the bottom of an Amazon product listing inside of the product details, you'll see it there. It's kind of hidden to a certain point, but it's labeled the bestseller rank and every single item will have a BSR. Now it could range. What we always try to aim for is anything below 200,000 of a bestseller rank. Could allow me to know that, okay, it's a really good selling product. It means that it's actually selling more than like once per day, let's say, for example. Yeah. The other factor to that is really just ensuring ourselves that we're listing items wherein there's not 10 sellers, but there's also not zero sellers, right? So usually like 2 to 5 different sellers on a product listing is the sweet spot. And what we try to look at to know that there's healthy competition, there's no price wars is what we might call it. And that way I can have some room to be able to compete on that product listing.

And you can still do this with major name brands. You can do this with a Ninja and a DeWalt, and there's still room that you're finding consistently to compete on some of these products. 100%.

Yeah, because there's 900 million products sold on Amazon.

This is really interesting. And I can think of examples of where I'm like, this is a product that I expect to find on Amazon. And I go on Amazon and I can't find it. I'm like, huh? Well, that's a bummer. I'm gonna get— but I understand the psychology of this. I'm like, I would rather have it from Amazon because it's going to ship relatively quickly. It's going to be consistent. They already have my payment method. It's so convenient. This is the genius of Amazon, right? It's ridiculous amounts of customer loyalty. And I can see how there's a niche of products. Are there products that just aren't allowed to be sold on Amazon? Or for the most part, if you have a product, can you more or less get it on Amazon?

Well, to put it in context, um, you could pretty much sell anything and everything on Amazon to a certain extent. Like, you know, obviously things that have hazardous factors to them, like Amazon does take a look at those with a finer comb. But, you know, there's a $20,000 item that's sold on Amazon that's kind of like a, it's a mobile home. So it's kind of like packaged in like a delivery box and people can kind of build it out on their own.

Yeah.

So yeah, you can literally sell as much as you really want. And price point-wise, like Amazon doesn't put a limit on the price points that you list the products at, as long as obviously it's within a reasonable range depending on the competition, of course.

And this is one of the genius things about Amazon in general as well, is because you have more or less an open marketplace, you do have actual competition. It is a— it is, it is as good as it is at as great a pricing as it is with fantastic shipping and all this stuff because it's a massive store that allows for actual entrepreneurial capitalistic competition. You're not going to get— you can't just come in and overprice an item for an extended period of time because if it starts doing well, other people are going to see, wait, this product's doing really well, I can undercut them, and they'll just get wiped out. So it's a beautiful ecosystem. It's a beautiful ecosystem. I have seen probably more than anything else in the last 4 years courses on this, and a lot of it, you're right, a lot of it is Amazon FBA, right? It's the, you know, Direct fulfillment, it's going to be overseas, all the ball— like, and you see this in my industry, you see this in real estate all the time. Right now, the sexy thing is like buy dumpy houses off of these cheap websites and put Section 8 in them. And I'm like, I've made millions of dollars in Section 8, but there's bad ways to do the same model. And people pitch the stupidest, easiest, simplest way to package a course, and you end up with two camps. You end up with people who are doing it correctly making lots of money running the business. And you have people who've been able to put together a cheap, palatable package that doesn't really work. We've seen a ton of that specifically in your industry. What is the difference between the business model of what an online guru is going to sell you on and what an operator is going to actually do in Amazon dropshipping? Yeah.

So all it really comes down to is Ensuring that, you know, from one perspective, that that person has actually done what they're teaching you to do, right? Like, that's the biggest thing at the end of the day. Um, you know, without saying names, like, there's a very, very prominent Amazon guru out there that loves to post his, uh, that loves to post his Stripe dashboard screenshots as his Amazon sales, right? So there's two wildly different things. He's promoting his coaching revenue and positioning it as though it's his actual Amazon revenue. So there's that perspective where like on my Instagram, I've literally shared my whole entire journey from 4 years ago when I was still working in my parents' bedroom. Like I've just shared every single step of the way still to this day about my success with my Amazon store. But also to that point, it's the amount of direct communication, direct handholding that you can have with that owner-operator. A lot of people like to package a course, put it in a PDF document or like an ebook or film a couple videos and then tell people that they're going to be successful with just those videos. But there needs to be real application, right? So the job as a coach is not only how to tell you to do something, but to literally physically show you how to put it all into practice. Yes. So that's the biggest key with all of this, is people miss that real application because everyone's different, everyone's got different goals, every— everyone learns in different ways. And now for myself, like, after coaching 516 people, I've realized that not one person learns in a certain way or learns the same way as another. It has to be very catered. It has to be very tailored to each and every single individual.

One of, one of my main companies, Multifamily Strategy, uh, we have a saying, uh, information is one thing, application is everything. And when you're coaching, yes, you do have to actually have the information, right? You have to have somewhere where people can access the knowledge, but What we see with a lot of these course providers is they'll, they'll either outsource the coaching, like they're like, I just want time freedom. They'll outsource the coaching to like a random successful mentee who may or may not be good at teaching. But it's all about like, hey, the information's at your fingertips and they have a conversion rate, like a success rate of less than 10%. Like you can have the knowledge, but that doesn't mean that you're gonna be successful in the business. When you blend that with practical application, with actual coaching or with a community model where you're in people, you know, you're around other people doing the thing and you're being taught by someone who is actively in the business and has been successful. All of a sudden you see success rates where like people actually build these businesses. You can have online courses and mentorship groups or communities with success rates up like upwards of 50%. Like you sign up, more than half their students are successful. And it only happens when they do exactly what you just said. I mean, you said the magic words is application. How are you coaching and getting people to practical application? I'm really curious in your program, uh, what is your program called again, by the way?

So the program, um, the company that has, that I've built out over the last 4 years is Leading Digital Ecom. The exact program is Amazon Selling Secrets Unlocked.

There we go. So for those in Amazon Selling Secrets Unlocked, obviously there's information in there where people can access the actual how-to. What does application look like for you as a coach? How are people going from, hey, I have the base knowledge, to I'm actually going to be successful running this business? What, what is that in-between step for the application?

So what we do is the way in which we structure it, 20% of what they learn the video, the knowledge part, that's kind of like the redundant stuff, setting up the Amazon store, the stuff that you don't need me for. Now, application side, that's where 80% of the real results is going to be generated from. So a lot of people accumulate this knowledge in the beginning, and they're like, okay, how do I put all of this together? So instead of having them try to do it on their own, we literally have something called a 30-day Amazon accelerator. And what that is, it's a mandatory one-on-one mentorship process between me, myself, um, the assistant coach that they have, and the student also. And we're just basically going to do 90% of the work for them. The other 10%, they're just required to implement on the blueprint that we establish. So that only takes place after they complete a certain percentage inside of the program. And what we do in the first call, we're going to set out their store foundation. So we'll give them 3 to hot selling product categories that we've done the data research for. We'll give them 4 to 5 specific suppliers based on whatever marketplace that they're selling in. We'll talk about the product that they're selling. We'll walk through the 30-day revenue target and also build out a day-to-day workflow on what a day-to-day checklist needs to be depending on what their schedule is for them as an individual. So sometimes we might have, you know, 9-to-5ers. Sometimes we might have mom and pop, you know, different people that have different time constraints. So all I really ask for my students is maybe 1 to 2 hours a day. But the only reason why is because they don't need a lot of time. What they need is the right information. That's the most important key factor. So because I'm structuring a blueprint for them that's basically physically impossible to fail on, all they got to do is implement. So in the second call, what we're basically running through, we list products for them. So we're literally going to list their first 2 to 5 products on their Amazon storefront, really ensure that, yeah, they make money from those products we sell them, but It's the most important factor. We're showing them how to do it on the live call. I share my screen, they ask questions, you know, hey Shane, what'd you see in this product that I didn't see? Or why'd you list it at this price and not that price? To really help them understand, okay, this is how Shane does it, then I do it. So then we go into an inventory audit. We audit the first 5 products that they list themselves, give them some feedback. And then in the last call, we do a live product research audit, which is where we audit their product research process specifically.

By the way, for those listening, this is the type of stuff that you need. These are the questions that one would ask if you're trying to learn how to do anything, is how does implementation look? If you were to interview a, like, all online hype— and so I'm thinking like online guru, they're probably gonna be flashing a sports car, a boat, a super house. Uh, they're probably gonna be wearing a Rolex or a— some— I, I don't know watches at all. That's the only one I know. Uh, they're gonna be wearing expensive clothes, expensive watches. They're usually gonna be loud. They're gonna be like, Oh yeah, you're gonna get all the information that you need, and they're only selling info. And what's gonna happen is you're gonna get in your own head at some point along the way. There's gonna be a step that you're gonna feel stuck on. You're not gonna have support, you're not gonna be successful, but they're gonna fall back on like, oh well, all the information was there. When you talk to someone who actually knows what they're doing, they answer very much like Shane does. Here are these steps in which we're gonna do this. Here's what I'll build for you, but at the end of the day, you're making sure that they actually have the knowledge to do the thing. Like, sure, you'll build out stuff for them, but you're making sure that they have these steps to replicate what you have done. And that's all it is. If you are looking at joining any— sorry, whatever it is you're excited about, one, find someone who's done the thing that you want to do. Number two, make sure that the information is actually there. And from application doesn't matter if there's no information to apply, right? Information is 20% of it. I think that's probably the right, the right metric there. It's a small piece is also a necessary first step. And then how is the application going to work? And this, this makes sense. I'm going to build out some of it for you. We're going to build it together. I'm going to do 90%. You're going to do 10%. And along the way, we're applying the information together through this on a relatively simple business model. Someone can learn how to replicate this, set it up correctly, and make less mistakes than they otherwise would have if they tried to do it on their own, which makes the cost of admittance worth it every single time. If you do the thing, you'll make more money than what you paid to learn the thing. That's how mentorship's designed to work. We just happen to be in industries where people just absolutely come in and scam the daylights out of people. Passionate about this, if you can't tell.

I love it.

So when you're building a business, this is a question I ask every time, every owner, I think more valuable than how to do things in the right steps oftentimes is what pitfalls can we avoid there? When you're new to a business, I call this the stupid tax. There's stuff that you don't know, you don't know that costs you money. It can cost you, oh, it can cost you friendships, it can cost you money. It can cost, there's always a cost to not knowing what you're doing when you get started. In your business over the last 4 years as you're learning this game, what do you think the most expensive stupid tax was for you where you were learning from go from a newbie to an expert?

Really thinking that I can take the time to learn it on my own, right? Like I thought that I was being so smart and so knowledgeable in myself and saying like, you know what, I'm actually going to save the money and I'm going to all of it is out there on YouTube and all of it I can just freely learn myself. There's no problem. But what I come to realize is I'm like, okay, well then there's a year later, I'm like, well, I didn't make that much progress that I want to be able to make. So then I recognize like time is the most important asset that we all have. So if I could invest my time, invest my money to help me buy back more of that time, that's something I will do tenfold. Because a lot of people when they're first starting out their business, you know, they might not look to mentors, they might not look for, you know, the people that have been doing what they want to be able to do. They want to try it on their own for the sake of saving money. And that's fair. I understand your perspective. But understand the trade-off of it is, look, you're going to go through headaches, you're going to waste a lot of time. And at the end of the day, like, the reason why we're all doing businesses is just to buy back more of our time. That's really why we're in this business. So we don't want to, you know, have something that's just treated as another job, right? Because then that's just the booby trap of entrepreneurship is you start a business just to have another job and it doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense from that point. Might as well go work.

And often the job that you create for yourself is dumber than the job that you're trying to leave. I see that happen a lot of times. People are like, I now have a sales and marketing job selling a product I'm not excited about. I'm like, well, great. That's, um, you, you literally gave yourself a worse job than you had.

They do it all the time.

Exactly. That's a really good takeaway. I can think of times in my business where had I had— if I had my own course, I did a deal, and it is a deal that made $2 million, by the way. But I structured it in a way where I had an extra $225,000 of cost because of the way I put together some of the contracts. So it's awesome that I made a lot of money. But also, had I taken a few thousand dollar course, I would have saved a quarter of a million dollars. When you're starting a business, I don't care how many millions you make, a quarter of a million dollars is a lot of money. There is no universe in which I wouldn't have paid, you know, 5 or 6 grand to save a quarter million dollars. That would have been the best money I ever spent. But I thought I was awesome. And I was like, oh, I get this creative finance thing. I have a great mentor. I don't need to get more content on this. I understand the concepts. You move faster and you move smarter if you know, if you know what you're doing, you learn from others. What did you end up doing later? Did you just end up doing it all by yourself? Did you end up finding a mentor at some point? How did you get from, hey, I'm not quite where I want to be in my first year to like, hey, this business is really, really working for me and I can help others replicate it?

Yeah. So it really just came from investing in someone that was truthfully, like, yeah, I achieved what I wanted to be able to achieve, but was also coming from a relatively similar position as to what I came from. So in that, you know, when I first started out, it was like, the first mentor that I decided to take up was, you know, previously university student, you know, comes from a traditional background of having his parents really wanting him to follow along with the regular steps, climb the corporate ladder. And I felt like I could resonate with that individual. And he can also understand the pain points in which I'm currently in so that way he can provide me with the appropriate solutions at the end of the day. So for me, like I started investing into him and then I recognized immediate growth, right? Like I recognized like, okay, you know what, this is what happens when you actually pay someone to help you get to where you want to be in a much faster timeframe. And then like, don't get me wrong, I've also made horrible investments with investors where I paid, you know, $35,000 for like a 6-week intensive consultant and he literally did absolutely nothing for me. So it's two perspectives where like one, I did my due diligence, but the other one I didn't do my due diligence. And then that led to me obviously losing, you know, $35,000 in a 6-week time period.

Which is also a lot of money. That's not fun. If you can avoid those little mistakes. I mean, that is really, I think mentorships are more valuable and that's why I run this this podcast, by the way. I built everything that I did from meeting people who have done the thing I want to do and learning from them. That is, that is, uh, is not just isolated to real estate. That is true for every single business. There is, unless you're Elon Musk and you're trying to put people on Mars, there is always someone who has done the thing that you want to do. And there's usually a lot of someones. Go find those people and learn from them. That's why I run this podcast, is I'm going to go interview owners and do the owner meeting for you so you can learn from other people. I think the most valuable thing that people learn, because you can figure out a lot of stuff on YouTube, is the mistakes and the pitfalls that you avoid getting an actual coach. And I'm talking paid or free. But you get in a community, you get around people doing this. If you can reduce that stupid tax, it is always worth the cost of admission. I've learned that. Shane's learned that. We hear that on almost every single episode. It's like, boy, had I known this, You know how you know it? You get into a group with someone who does this professionally. Absolutely love it. Shane, final question for you. Someone is, say, similar position where you started. They're like, hey, I'm not, I'm not doing what I want to do. I see an opportunity. Any industry, someone sees an opportunity like you did. What would your advice be to someone who is in the beginning phases of like, hey, I want to start this entrepreneurial adventure? What's one piece of advice you'd give that individual?

Well, it's hard to narrow it down to one piece of advice, but what I would, what I would really say is like, look, the stress and anxiety that a lot of people oftentimes have in their day-to-day lives is not more so coming from the decisions that they've made, but more so from the decisions that they did not make. Because at the end of the day, the worst thing that someone wants to think to themselves is, what if I did start that? What if I did decide to begin this journey? And looking back on those types of things, that's what provides, that's what really gives people the motivation to take that step forward. Because at the end of the day, you don't know how something is going to work out until you try. And if you have any business model, any industry that you're in, if you have something that can stack the odds in your favor of being successful, without you having so much of a downside, give it a shot. Because the last thing you want to say to yourself is, I didn't do it because I was scared, rather than you saying, you know what, at least I tried it. It didn't work out how I wanted it to be able to actually work out. Let me move on to the next thing.

Shane, awesome having you on, man. Awesome having you on. I like the business. I like the way that you've explained it more than I've ever heard it explained because of all of the marketing to this. And this is why I wanted to have Shane on, by the way. Because of all the marketing that I've seen for similar business models and how many just like fake coaches that are out there. This was one where I'm like, I really want to break this down with someone who actually understands how it works. Uh, I mean, every answer was what I want to hear from someone who's passionate about what they do, they do, and knows what it is that they're actually doing. This business model makes sense. I didn't ask him easy questions and I didn't tell him what the questions were going to be like. You had to explain like, okay, this is how you'd compete and this is how you can actually take a name brand product and still make a healthy margin on it competing on the world's biggest platform. That is super interesting to me, man. The business that you built is interesting. You've been able to do this at a high level. It's absolutely awesome.

Thank you, man. And I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to come on here, share my experience. And same to you. Everything that you've built, everything that you're doing here as well is nothing short of literally just inspirational.

Oh, that's awesome. Well, hey guys, check out the show notes below, but in the description or in the notes, you guys can check out how to get in contact with Shane. Shane, what's the easiest way to find you or find your coaching program?

Yeah, so people can just find me on Instagram at Shane.Ecom. If not, you can head on over to my website. It's called leadingdigitalecom.com. Where you can find everything about me, my journey, um, everything in regards to my students, our, our live case studies that we've done. And if you feel like you want to be able to actually take a look at what the program's like in a much deeper look, um, just don't be afraid to book a call. I mean, I always want to be able to see how I can help people the best.

And yeah, perfect. Shane, awesome having you, man. For everyone else, we'll see you on the next episode.