I wanted to do something completely new, something to shift my current reality. There had to be more than what I was doing right now.

I have a decent day job. It pays my bills. However, I felt like I wasn’t growing, and the work routine was slowly turning stale.

How could I get out of this limbo?

I reread Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, one of my favorite business books of all time. Kiyosaki mentions four types of people in his book: employees (E), the self-employed (S), business owners (B), and investors (I). If you wanted money to work for you, you’re better off as a business owner and an investor.

I was ready to make the leap. My mind was brimming with exciting ideas: affiliate marketing, real estate investing, and buying stocks for dividends.

I never thought of dropshipping until a Youtube ad answered my desperate pleas (or so I thought).

WHAT IS DROPSHIPPING?

Dropshipping is the process of your store products sent to customers without you having to worry about the shipping and handling.

You set up an online store. Customers purchase their desired products; you pay the wholesale price, and your supplier ships the product directly to your customers.

Sounds like a fun, easy project, right?

WHAT DID I DO NEXT?

The entrepreneur behind the promising Youtube ad lured me into his dropshipping class. The price was a bit higher than the usual budget I would buy for any online course. I settled with paying $500 for four months. I could handle it.

The faster I started my store, the quicker I receive the profits to pay back the course payments and replenish my wallet.

Haha, WRONG!

THERE WAS MORE UNDER THE SURFACE

There were many extra things I had to do to set up my dropshipping store: purchase a domain, create a business e-mail address, create a business Paypal account, and more the course barely mentioned beforehand. Oh yeah, you need extra money to pay for your store’s Facebook ads.

Never written product descriptions before? Yeah, that’s your job unless you find somebody from Fiverr or Upwork to do it for you.

I was in a deep hot mess. I followed the course’s steps and learned from other dropshippers in the private Facebook group. Remember, I was balancing all of this with my day job and writing on the side.

When it came to the point where I was taking money out of my forbidden savings accounts, asking my family to help pay my health insurance bills, and worrying about grocery money, it was time to stop.

I jacked up starting a dropshipping business. Let’s start over.

LESSONS LEARNED

I never looked back after telling the course’s customer support I was leaving. I felt free, happier too!

The top lessons I learned from this dropshipping drama:

1. If you’re starting a business, you better have a decent business nest (about $500-$1,000 depending) set up.
2. Focus: Follow One Course Until Successful. As appealing as the dropshipping business was, I’m a writer first. I might as well continue building my writing skills and make money from it before anything else.
3. Avoid shiny new objects (or ideas in this matter).

CONCLUSION

I’ve been doing better since my rocky dropshipping journey. My financial health is happier now than before.

I don’t blame myself or the Youtube entrepreneur who had drawn me into this path.

Starting a business doesn’t come without a line of failed attempts. Think of Bill Gates, Jack Ma, and Walt Disney. They all had their failures, but they kept moving.

Failure is part of the process. Giving up is permanent failure.

In the meantime, I’m diving deeper into writing and seeing where it will take me.

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