Dropshipping Mentors: Where to Find One for Your Business

Getting into something new can be scary.

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This is especially true if it is something that impacts your bottom line. When you are looking at a new profession or considering starting your own business, you might feel completely lost.

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“What am I missing? Am I doing something wrong?” you may ask.

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These questions keep swirling around your head as you troubleshoot problems in your new business.

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That’s why many business owners assume that it’s essential to have a mentor. Like a shepherd, you may think a mentor can help you follow the right path. He/she can guide you through technicalities, provide time-saving tips, or send you words of encouragement to save you from despondence.

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If you are wondering whether to reach out to dropshipping mentors or not, this guide will help you. Now, let’s explore!

What is a dropshipping mentor?

A dropshipping mentor is an individual who has experience in the dropshipping field and may even be considered an E-commerce expert. Especially, a mentor has the unique experience of running a successful dropshipping business.

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Dropshipping is a way to find success in the E-commerce industry, and you may want to find someone who understands the field thoroughly. This includes your niche. For example, if you plan on dropshipping coffee, you should find a mentor who has experience selling coffee online. As you’re dealing with a 3rd-party vendor and a different way of running an online store, this poses a lot of challenges.

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A dropshipping mentor has already put in their time, money, and effort into the industry and has gained knowledge of what worked and what didn’t. It’s someone who has that “been there, done that” kind of mindset. Ideally, your dropshipping mentor can share their experiences and what they’ve learned to help you know what to look out for along the way.

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Rather than waste time reading articles and how-to books, why not directly talk to a real person who cares about your success for guidance?

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A dropshipping mentor is beneficial for the professional development and management of your online store.

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Do you really need a mentor to learn dropshipping?

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The short answer is yes!

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Let’s think of it as walking on a hiking trail. Previous hikers created and enforced that trail because it was the best way to move through mountains, forests, or wherever you’re hiking. This path is already free of obstacles for you to move faster and safer.

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If you don’t want to choose this option, you probably would veer off into the unknown, bushwack through brands, avoid holes, and even end up on a cliff. Even though it can be fun to explore uncharted territory, as long as you know the path and stay close, you can always come back for stability.

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Quite similar to this hiking trail, dropshipping mentors can clear the path to your business success. While it does not mean you always follow it, it’s one of the best resources to have for guidance along the way.

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Such experienced dropshipping mentors will inform you early on of typical errors. They’ll solve your troubling issues and help shape your business. Besides, you’ll discover your full potential in the dropshipping market. This is the most clever way to accelerate your progress, a lot more than with rigid self-learning methods alone.

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A dropshipping mentor’s possibilities are limitless, and can ultimately mean the difference between your success and failure.

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Top 6 dropshipping mentors for your reference

According to a study from the US Small Business Administration (SBA), small enterprises that receive mentoring early in the business’s development achieve higher revenues and increased growth.

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Indeed, finding a reliable dropshipping mentor will make the process less stressful.

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We’ve searched and compiled this list of the top 6 dropshipping mentors for you. Please keep in mind that each mentor has a unique method and approach, so pick those you can identify with. And if you are not on them and what they are saying, keep looking!

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1. Wholesale Ted

Wholesale Ted is a well-known website and YouTube channel run by Sarah Chrisp. She teaches people the actionable steps involved in running an online store and making it profitable.

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A popular question among those following her channel seems to be why it’s called Wholesale Ted. Sarah explained that it’s named after her mentor - Ted. And because this is a team effort, she decided to call it Wholesale Ted. Sarah takes charge of videography while Ted deals with newsletter copywriting.

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The Wholesale Ted Youtube channel was created in November 2014. As of the time of this writing, the channel reached a subscriber count of more than 960 thousand and has raked in over 40 million views.

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The channel contains nearly 200 videos on various topics related to dropshipping and E-commerce in general. Its content ranges from E-commerce tips and advice on building a print-on-demand store to “Sarah Chrisp’s life stories.”

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The “About section” details the channel in the following manner:

Case studies on successful businesses
Low-cost, beginner-friendly product sourcing methods (dropshipping & print on demand)
Sales psychology tactics to boost conversions & get customers to buy from you
Videos to help you with the “legal stuff” (e.g., copyrights & trademarks)

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On the Wholesale Ted website, the book titled “The 6 Steps That 6-Figure Stores Follow” is offered for free. The book covers 6 steps that successful online stores use, including:

Step 1: Pick a great niche for your store
Step 2: Pick & create great products to sell
Step 3: Build a semi-automated online store
Step 4: Use psychological triggers to upsell customers to big orders
Step 5: Get customers & traffic to come to your store & spend money
Step 6: Grow, manage & scale your new business

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Besides, Wholesale Ted offers a premium online course named “The Ecomm Clubhouse” on a membership base. It’s designed to “help beginners who are launching their first store and who want curated tutorials.” The official website also claims that the program is Shopify-approved.

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According to Wholesale Ted, here are the main features that you can benefit from when signing up:

Enjoy more than 10 hours of premium video training
Learn how to sell phantom items that don’t even exist yet with their extensive print-on-demand training video library
Learn how to find & sell super-popular, hyper-viral products with dropshipping
Learn scientifically-proven sales psychology techniques
Get access to tutorials not available on the Wholesale Ted YouTube channel (e.g., the step-by-step tutorial on creating video ads)
Learn how to get free traffic & customers from Google using SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

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To join The Ecomm Clubhouse, users need to pay $67 USD/month (plus local taxes if applicable). With its refund policy, users can leave the course with a full refund within 7 days of signing up. The Wholesale Ted team state that they have “some of the lowest refund rates in the industry” because they have “some of the happiest customers.”

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2. Kevin David

Kevin David is an E-commerce coach, entrepreneur, Internet marketer, YouTuber, podcaster, founder of THATLifestyleNinja, as well as the author of the best-selling book - “Unfair Advantage.”

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His motto is “Freeing entrepreneurs from the corporate grinds.” If you take a look at Kevin’s official website, you’ll see thousands of success stories.

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Kevin started this career working as an accountant for PWC and then a privacy consultant at Facebook. Being unsatisfied with his 9-5 job, he started his business venture on Amazon and quickly unlocked the secrets of leading sellers. After his great success with Amazon FBA, he founded THATLifestyleNinja.

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His company was established with the mission of teaching people business skills and freeing them from boring 9-5 jobs. This campaign goes viral on social media channels and inspires thousands of Kevin’s followers to become entrepreneurs who live by their own rules.

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Due to great achievements, Kevin has been featured on Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Inc.

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Kevin has been running a number of online courses. It’s estimated that he earns as much as $120,000/month from his courses. As you’re running a dropshipping store, we believe these two courses are great fits for you.

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The Amazon FBA Ninja Course

If you’re managing an online business but want to reduce your costs, consider having Amazon fulfill the orders for you. You do not need to pay for storage or shipping; just give Amazon its cut of the profits.

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The course covers all the basics:

Researching products
Setting up an Amazon FBA account
Advertising on Amazon with PPC (pay-per-click ads)
Listing optimization tips and tricks

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You will also get access to the course community with more than 500,000 members. You can pay a one-time fee of $1,997 or 5 installments of $599.

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The Shopify Dropshipping Course

Dropshipping is believed as one of the most lucrative business models, but it is easy to fail when you don’t know the right thing to do. With a lot of experience in this field, Kevin will teach you everything you need to know.

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The course offers:

Step-by-step Shopify dropshipping training
Tips on product and supplier research
Tutorials for building and optimizing your Shopify store
Marketing advice for your business (FB ads and influencer marketing)

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This course’s pricing constantly fluctuates, with the lowest price being $997.

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In addition, he offers other helpful and informative courses, such as Digital Course Secrets and Facebook Ads Ninja Masterclass Course.

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3. Steve Tan

Steve Tan is a Singapore-based entrepreneur who built a nine-figure E-commerce empire. He partnered with Evan, his brother, and they quickly became known as the Super Tan Brothers. They conquered the E-commerce game by selling more than $100 million worth of products from their dropshipping business.

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As a way of giving back, Steve Tan established LeapVista to create a global education platform to deliver business training for one million aspiring entrepreneurs. Besides, he aims to equip them with the right mindset and skills to succeed in E-commerce.

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Steve Tan offers a “The Ultimate Dropship System” course, a detailed four-week introduction (90 videos) to the dropshipping world. In this course, you’ll:

learn about highly recommended apps, themes, tools, and more
learn how to find the best products for your store
learn top tier tips and tricks from guest experts
get lifetime unlimited access to this course, including updates

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4. Jessica Guzik

Jessica Guzik is an entrepreneur, owner, and mentor of E-commerce businesses. She is the main creator and coach of Oberlo 101 - a course developed and launched by Oberlo. Other collaborators like Harry Coleman, Scott Hilse, Paul Lee, Yuliya and Mike, and Chris Wane are also included in this course as they participated in some details and lessons.

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The primary purpose of this Oberlo 101 course is to help beginners launch their brands by building online stores using Shopify as the main option. You’ll need an Oberlo account to access the course, and you’ll get lifetime access to it after deciding to enroll.

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The course is structured in 7 hours and with 5 modules in which you’ll be accompanied by Jessica most of the time. The main idea is to bring out the basics and essentials about dropshipping, but ensure you are still able to understand how everything runs and get started without delay.

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In this course, you’ll learn:

Module #1: Getting started with Oberlo 101
Module #2: Which products to sell?
Module #3: How to set up an online store?
Module #4: Facebook Ads
Module #5: Scale your business

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5. Fred Lam

You won’t find a lot of information about Fred Lam online.

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Actually, you cannot even find his age, but according to his Facebook page profile, he’s received the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.

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On the About page, he starts off the story by saying he used to work as a dishwasher. Nowadays, he’s been generating $40 million in revenue through his ventures, including Water Liberty, iPro Academy, ZeroUp, and The Traffic Trilogy books.

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Fred Lam has also written 4 books, including:

Dropship Leads - In this newest book, he promises that his strategy will disrupt dropship lead generation as much as Uber disrupted public transport.

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The Traffic Trilogy - This book covers different types of media (e.g., traffic sources) that can help you generate leads.

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Starting from Zero - This book explains a 5-step system for starting an online business without a lot of cash on hand.

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The Email Machine - This is Lam’s foray into the world of email marketing

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In addition, he offers a dropshipping course named Zero Up, which consists of 10 different modules, with videos and additional resources.

Module #1: Store creation
Module #2: Inventory arbitrage
Module #3: Turbocharging your store
Module #4: Creating a sales funnel
Module #5: Advertising your store
Module #6: Store management
Module #7: Traffic genius
Module #8: Zero up jewels
Module #9: Weekly bootcamp
Module #10: Bonus trainings

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6. Lewis Smith

Lewis Smith is an entrepreneur, dropshipper, and content producer from the UK. He’s also a public speaker with one of the most prominent speaking opportunities in the Nomad Summit.

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Lewis claims that he built his business from scratch with no previous experience, and reached a revenue of $1 million within 15 months. Dropship Unlocked has since been created; an online training company that aims to teach others how to do the same.

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With the Dropship Unlocked course, you’ll get access to 6 weeks worth of content that guides you through setting up and launching your online business.

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The course is designed in such a way that it should take you about one week to finish module 1, one more for module 2, and so on. Lewis suggests that you take time and master each consecutive module before moving on to the next one.

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Besides, you have a bunch of bonus content, like the best ways to contact suppliers, unlimited access to private Facebook groups, weekly coaching calls, live Q&A sessions, and many more.

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3 places to look for mentors

1. Networking platforms & events

When looking for a dropshipping mentor, you should try GrowthMentor, which is a curated platform of invite-only marketing mentors with proven experience in their respective fields.

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From social media to PPC strategies, you can filter and choose the mentor that you think best fits your needs.

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Another similar platform is Ten Thousand Coffees, which allows you to browse through an entire database of mentors, view their profiles, and reach out to appropriate mentors.

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Some event planning platforms, such as Meetup and Eventbrite, are also excellent places to look. These sites organize events spanning across a number of topics.

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Even though they are not created to connect you with dropshipping mentors per se, it is an amazing way to connect with like-minded people and experts.

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While these events are often held in-person, nearly all have gone virtual due to COVID-19. That removes physical constraints, and you can attend sessions and virtually connect with entrepreneurs all around the world.

2. Social media & blogs

On social media, people often follow those they are inspired by. So, just as you are following specific dropshipping mentors, they have their own sources of inspiration.

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You are able to see who they are connected to, and this means going one tier up and getting to know (or follow) more successful dropshipping business owners.

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In addition, you should follow these Facebook and LinkedIn groups when looking for a mentor:

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3. Dropshipping courses

We’ve mentioned several courses from top dropshipping mentors above. But in case you want more, below are some popular dropshipping courses.

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Tip: The best approach to reaching out to mentors is just to ask.

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Whatever difficulties you are encountering with your dropshipping business, they have probably gotten stuck where you have.

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Even if they do not officially run a mentorship program, or it is just a story that you found motivating, why not just reach out to them?

To quote Nora Roberts, New York Times bestselling author, “If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.”

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Conclusion

Finding a mentor is invaluable for the long-term success of your dropshipping business. Good mentors can help you learn from their success and mistakes, and move much faster.

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However, don’t feel like they’re miracle cures for your dropshipping ailments. You should also avoid relying on dropshipping mentors to do your work for you.

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Eventually, the success of your dropshipping business depends on one person: you. Remember that you are the one who is going to live with the success or failure of your business, not your mentors.

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So, learn from them, but don’t depend too much on them. Doing so, your success will taste so much sweeter when you have earned it yourself.

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Finally, as usual, good luck with your dropshipping venture!

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Dropshipping Mentors: Where to Find One for Your Business

What is a dropshipping mentor?

Do you really need a mentor to learn dropshipping?