Digital Social Hour - How I Scaled to $1.7M in 6 Months WITHOUT Paid Ads 📈 I AC Hampton DSH #480

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

🚀 **How I Scaled to $1.7M in 6 Months WITHOUT Paid Ads 📈 | Digital Social Hour** 🚀 In this episode of Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly, we dive into the extraordinary journey of AC Hampton, who skyrocketed his e-commerce business to $1.7M in just 6 months—all without spending a dime on paid ads! 😱 Tune in now as AC reveals his secrets to leveraging organic marketing through TikTok, SEO, and more. From navigating the turbulent world of Drop Shipping in 2018 to building a massive community on Discord and Instagram, this episode is packed with valuable insights you won't want to miss! 💡 AC shares jaw-dropping success stories, including his student Michael, who achieved $560,000 in sales within just a few months! Learn how to transition from Drop Shipping to branded e-commerce, master the art of organic growth, and harness the power of social media without breaking the bank. Join the conversation and discover how to treat your e-commerce venture like a real business, ensuring long-term success and profitability. 📈 Don't miss out! Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 #DigitalSocialHour #SeanKelly #Podcast #Ecommerce #Dropshipping #TikTokMarketing #SEO #OrganicGrowth #ApplePodcasts #Spotify #Entrepreneurship #AC Hampton #AcHampton #InternationalSuppliers #HighProfitMargins #TopEcommerceStrategies #DiscordCommunity CHAPTERS: 0:00 - Intro 0:34 - How AC Started 4:10 - Supreme Ecom’s Discord Server 7:34 - Is Dropshipping Still Working in 2022 10:51 - Using Domestic Suppliers vs International 12:31 - Selling Your Dropshipping Store 15:18 - Is the Facebook Pixel Still Powerful 16:58 - Your Ad Creative Process 22:00 - Apply to be on the Digital Social Hour Podcast 22:23 - How to Properly Target Your Ads 24:03 - Credit Card Points 26:00 - Would you ever live outside the US 28:46 - Why'd you move to Dallas 30:45 - What happened at your first job out of college 33:20 - Starting a Dropshipping Business 38:33 - Going from $0 to $1.7M in 6 Months 40:25 - How to Learn from Arie 41:34 - How to Join the Ecom Freedom Course 41:44 - Outro APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/D2cLkWfJx46pDK1MA BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2018, 2019, 2020, organic marketing for dropshipping was like not a thing at all. But now with TikTok shop, you know, all the different TikTok pages, SEO, and just really just the opportunities that are out there. I mean, you can really still make it even if you don't have a lot of money with paid ads. Yeah. Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe. It helps a lot with the algorithm. It helps us get bigger and better guests,

and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting, and here's the episode. All right, guys, from Dallas, we got AC Hampton. We're going to talk dropshipping today. Thanks for coming on, man. Yes, sir, man. Appreciate it. Yeah, that's how I started.

Easy, man. I love it. Everything comes full circle, right? Yes, sir. It always does. I know we were talking back a couple years ago, too, so excited to come back and everything comes full circle right yes sir it always does i know we were talking about back a couple years ago too so excited to come back and uh you know bring this full circle in vegas it's cool cool to see you tough it out because a lot of people left that space and a lot of people did but the only reason why they left is because perseverance but also not focused on treating it like a business honestly that's the main reason right yes sir man it's been great though how's everything been with you dude can, can't complain. The podcast is fun.

I have on a lot of the brightest minds, and I can't wait to dive into your world about e-commerce, dropshipping, and see what you've been up to. Yeah, man, I'm excited for it. Yeah, what's been the main focus lately? Yeah, main focus has been just continuously building up my brand.

So I have a couple e-commerce brands that we've been building up, but also just growing ourself on socials and Supreme Ecom. So now I own a marketing agency called Supreme Ecom, where we teach own a marketing agency called Supreme Ecom where we teach people every day how to start, build, and run

profitable e-commerce businesses and just teaching a lot of free education on YouTube, Instagram, and different platforms. So it's been great to be able to get the word out there growing. I mean, we have thousands and thousands of students.

So being able to create that impact has been great so far. So that's kind of what we've been focused on. Any cool testimonials or stories from some of your students? Man, we have some amazing testimonials. I mean, we just had another, we had a student named Michael who came to us in November of last year. And from November of last year till February this year, he did around 560,000 in sales, profiting right around like $75,000 from that. Man, we've had amazing testimonials. Like, so every week or every two weeks,

I post a testimonial on my YouTube channel. So we've been pumping these things out. So a lot of our students have been able to get some great success. And it shows that, you know, when we value what efforts that we put in, it shows it in our students as well. So it's been definitely been doing its thing.

And you've been crushing it on the social media side on YouTube, right? Yeah. So, I mean, social media, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, everything's been organic thus far. We haven't spent any money on paid advertising. Wow. So, yeah, the organic growth has been amazing. Being able to create the impact that we've been able to do organically has been great. So YouTube's at around 450,000 subscribers and Instagram is like right around like 170,000.

So over the last couple of years, it's been growing. That's impressive, man. Why do you choose to only go organic and not do paid ads? I understood the legitimate, legitimate-ness of having a business that doesn't require paid ads can long, last a lot longer. I'm not against paid ads. It's something that I'm going to start rolling out in the next couple of months, but I wanted to create a foundation in the business first. I wanted to make sure that no matter if we didn't spend a dollar or not, that knowledge was going

to continue to keep having the business grow itself. The testimonials, the student success, investing into the students and our program and our services is what I wanted to spend the money on instead of spending on paid ads. And investing in a strong product was kind of, you know, where majority of the money came into. So I really was just focused on that upfront. And then now that the product is doing really well, we're seeing a lot of great success. I want to be able to reach more people. So, um, now we're going to start running paid ads in the next couple of months, but past five years, I mean, we've been able to do everything organically. That's crazy. That's actually unheard of, to be honest. Yeah. Not, I mean, I don't have a single person in my space who doesn't do paid

ads i get those daily yes literally multiple times a day i mean it shows like the legitimate of our business but also shows like the longevity too you know if we've been able to continue to grow year after year and i mean grow for real yeah and we've never spent a dollar shows you know what we put our efforts into you know is getting us into that position absolutely where does the community reside on discord yeah so we're in discord right now we started we we've done all types of things we had slack last year uh we ended up getting rid of slack because the expenses were like just overly just crazy they charge a lot i didn't know they charge like 29 per user holy i didn't know that dude yeah and that's not worth it i had people

flooding like this slack so i was like okay we're not gonna do that we're gonna come to discord i started discord in july of last year yeah and we have 30 000 people in our discord right now so it's been growing like really really really quickly and those are just you know the free students in there we also have a paid part of our discord yeah where our paid students are also in so building that community has been just insane like we have a little section inside there that says the the success feed and my paid students are able to post in there yep and you can just scroll literally all day every day and it's just result after result result that's so being able to kind of

have people who may have never had experience or maybe never seen success in this space being able to join a community and see people succeeding every day i think it's really motivating for them and it's going to continue to keep them going you know even on the harder days that's inspiring to be like surrounded by that it's important because when i was drop shooting i was alone and i didn't have community and And I feel like having that, because you could also hit them up for advice too, right? Yeah, I mean, our channel, like our, so I have, we have 35 staff members now at Supreme. Yeah. So in this, you know, we have community moderators.

We have a bunch of mentors, consultants, people who are actively engaging with these people on a day-to-day basis. So if you join this community, you're going to notice that like my staff doesn't just talk to only our paid students we have multiple free channels where you can come in ask pieces of advice get your store reviewed etc and be able to learn from people who are actually doing what you want to do in this world so um i'm even in there like i'll pop in inside the free channels i'll be like what's everybody's motivation today or hey here's the tip of the day or, you know, anything like that. So growing that community has been something that's been very important for us. Because like you said, in the dropshipping space, 2018, 2019, 2020, there was nothing.

Like no YouTube videos, no one to learn from. So I really put that as a big emphasis that, you know, once I was able to gain the knowledge and be able to create that success, that I was going to be able to grow a community with it. Yeah. Back then it was Facebook groups. Ecom empires, baby. And a lot of scammers in these Facebook groups too. They post their screenshot and say,

DM me and sell you something. So yeah, Facebook groups are not as big anymore, more of like in the Discord, but it's faster and it's more attentive than Facebook groups. It's a new meta because groups are so like ineffective for communication. You got to make a whole post and then read the comments and message people individually. That's literally exactly how it is.

Yeah, Discord is so clean. I like Discord. Discord is big in the crypto space. So I'm familiar with it. But there are a lot of hacks on Discord too. There are. There are. I mean, obviously, like you said, community like moderations.

Like you have to have a photo ID, a driver's license, a phone number, an email. Different types of moderation so that the people who are joining your server, you can really control it a lot better. Because when I started my Discord June of last year, I had no security on it. And there was just all types of crazy people in there. I remember my server got hacked or something. My Discord server. Oh, it did. And from probably just some crazy people in there. So yeah. I remember my server got hacked or something. My Discord server. Oh, it did.

Yeah. And that from probably just some scammer out there. Yeah. You click the wrong link. They have ownership of it. That's crazy. Yeah. It's part of the game, man.

So is dropshipping still working like in terms of running Facebook ads or is it a new model? No, it's 100%. I mean, working. I mean, it's growing. E-commerce itself is growing. I think we're not even close to the peak of what dropshipping, e-commerce, and what all of this availability is able to get us to.

So, yeah, I mean, people are doing a little bit of omni-channel marketing. So they're focusing on, you know, doing Facebook ads, TikTok ads, Google ads, SEO. My company focuses specifically on TikTok and Facebook. But majority of the success I'm really seeing is still on Facebook. I mean, higher quality products that you can sell, you know, people who have more disposable income because the age demographics are like 30 to 70 on Facebook. So I'm still scaling my brands every day, spending probably 80% of my ad spend on Facebook ads. Wow. Yeah, still.

Yeah, I have heard recently it's making a comeback. It definitely is. I mean, there's other great things like TikTok shop and ways that you can grow organically now. Like I grew Supreme Ecom 100% organically, but I grew my dropshipping career 100% with paid ads. So I understand like both, you know, I understand how to grow a service-based organically, but I understand how to grow a service based organically,

but I understand how to sell a product with paid ads and organically. So, um, with paid ads, like I said, Facebook is going crazy, but there's a lot of other ways that you can start driving sales organically. Like when 2018, 2019, 2020 organic marketing for dropshipping was like not a thing at all. But now with TikTok shop, you know, all the different TikTok pages, SEO, and just really just the opportunities that are out there. I mean, you can really still make it even if you don't have a lot of money with paid ads. Yeah, I think it's important to have both the paid ads and organic these days. It is. It is. I mean, you have to diversify yourself.

And if anything ever shuts down or anything ever happens, you should still be able to have your business driving revenue. Facts. Is that still a common issue with Facebook? It's not as big of a common issue because of the security measures that go before actually running ads. Like for our students, we have a whole, you have to warm up your account. You have to be able to set these type of measurements. You cannot run ads for the first seven days. You have to like, share, and comment on these amount of posts.

We do a lot of warming up accounts that protect our students from getting banned. So for us internally, I'm not seeing it. But I do hear the horror stories on YouTube and things like that of people getting banned. But I just don't think they're doing the right precautions up front. Yeah, I've seen people, they get their accounts hacked

and then they run up the ad spend on their credit cards. Yeah, I mean, that's Facebook. I mean, you'll lose your account. You'll get banned. They're not turning your ads off. So your ads are still running. Oh, you're going to get banned? I've been in that position many times where I've seen my account, like, especially when I first started my career, my account was banned.

I had no access to the account. They locked my Facebook. I couldn't even log into it. It was non-existent. They deleted my Facebook profile. Like, nothing showed up, but the ads were still running. Yeah. So you have to like do a lot of things like having multiple admins on your account. You know, nowadays I have like 10 to 15 different people that I can log into at any moment and still access my ads. So, um, just for security, but yeah, there's been many times I've lost my account,

um, which I've taught so many people how to recover now because you know, that, that whore that comes from that. Yeah. That's nuts. Are you using domestic suppliers or international mainly? We use both. So, um, you know, one of the people that came actually on this podcast a couple of weeks ago was Lior. Um, and Lior is one of my major partners. So they have domestic and they have international. We work with a bunch of different private suppliers and private brands that are in the United States, too, that allow you to be able to do private labeling, branding, be able to get molds. You can get like three to six day shipping. So what we teach is we the whole purpose of my curriculum is to teach how you can turn yourself into a drop shipper, into a branded e-commerce store owner. So we're scaling students up, like I said, Michael, right?

Or, you know, like my student Francesca, to over 100,000. We try to find products, we try to scale them up to $100,000. Once you get over $100,000, we then try to transition you into a branded store. So the whole purpose of why people start dropshipping is because no inventory you have to buy up front, you, you know, less you know less you know risk so you can really get into a market that's favorable for you yeah and you know without the risk that comes with it then once you do scale up in that market you find out who your ideal audience is you understand who your customer is you understand what the type of product quality you're looking for you scale this up to you know 50 to 100 000 and more we then go and reinvest that profit into inventory in the united states with the type of product quality you're looking for. You scale this up to, you know, $50,000 to $100,000 or more.

We then go and reinvest that profit into inventory in the United States domestically. So, you know, and you didn't have to start off by buying product, by buying any product up front, but this is how you're going to be able to get yourself into that point of creating a legitimate brand. So you get your profit from the dropshipping store.

You then create a brand. You order products and inventory. You then ship it to the United States and then you're able to, you know, create that product any way that you want. Get the best shipping and be able to continue to keep growing your business.

That makes sense. Have you seen any dropshipping stores be able to sell? Yeah, I mean, like just being able to sell just like products in general? No, sell the company. Oh, yeah.

So that's something that we teach as well and it's what I first started. So there is a company called, what was that company. So, um, there is a company called, um, what was that company called? It was, um, there's like multiple companies out there that you can go ahead and sell your dropshipping stores for. And the main thing that you're selling is you're not selling the store, you're selling the pixel. So the most important thing is, is the data that you have gained from, you know, your customer's activity all the way from their email to, you know,

every activity that they took on your store. So you can sell it for up to 2.5 times your profit. The website's called Flippa. That's one of the websites that you can sell your businesses to. So when I first started my business or started dropshipping, I sold a product, BabyBed. I ended up scaling it to right around like 1.7 million in seven months. And I did about 350,000 profit off of it.

Not the biggest profit margin, but it was like one of the first products that I was able to scale up. And I remember I was like, hey, I want to go ahead and continue to keep dropshipping, but I don't think I want to stay in this realm anymore. So I took my store and I went to Flippa.com and I ended up selling the brand and they were like, you know, we'll take the website

but the main thing we need is the pixel. And like I said, they were able to give minimum 2.5 times the profit that we made off of it. So that's almost

a million dollars. Literally just off the pixel. Damn, that's actually really good to know. The store basically comes for free. Like the store

just comes with it. They can build the store out in less than an hour and make it look just as similar as yours. But the biggest advantage is having the data and the consumer behavior behind it. And it makes sense from their point of view because they can use the pixel on their ads now

and they could probably make an ROI on it if they have the right guy running ads. Yeah, and I mean, even for myself, right now I've been able, I have a general dropshipping store that I still run today, but I still have multiple e-commerce brands. And the reason that I have this general dropshipping store that I still run today, but I still have multiple e-commerce brands. And the reason that I have this general dropshipping store is because I've tested out like every niche that you could think of. I've tested out baby niches, health and

wellness, beauty, et cetera. And every time I test out a niche, I have a specific pixel that goes with that niche so that if I do want to go ahead and start testing out within that, I already have such a competitive advantage over everyone else in the market because I have so much more data than everybody else. Wow, dude, I wish I knew that when I had Jersey champs, I probably could have sold that pixel. Yeah. I had no idea either until somebody was like, have you ever thought about selling like your pixel at all? I'm like, the thing that's collecting our data, like they're like, yeah, they're like, well, businesses want that more than a website. Businesses want that more than anything. So that, that's definitely something that we teach our students.

Like if you want to exit out and you don't want to keep this business and you want to go into starting another brand or start another store, you still just went and did the hardest thing that majority of companies do and spend the most money on, which is data collection. Is the pixel still as powerful after the iOS updates? Yeah, it's very, very, very powerful. I mean, with the iOS updates, there's been other things that I've been able to roll out to help with collecting data still. So there's things called UTMs that you can be able to track on the Shopify side and still see all the data. You can also use things, other like databases and CRMs to track your data better. But I will say like, you know, 2020, 2021, the data was really kind of iffy when it came to the iOS updates, but now it seems like everything's back. It seems like either option A, everyone is opting

in and it's just like not a big thing anymore. Or B, they just have so much data that it's not affecting it because they've been able to collect it since his iOS update for the last two to three years. You know, like you would see back in the day, your ads dashboard say like you would you would know you would have to purchase but it wouldn't even show you a purchase like you would click on the breakdowns and try to see what age and demographics were buying your product the most and it would show like the metrics that are happening on facebook with your video but you weren't really seeing it on the back end now you you see everything again so it kind of seems like it's not being affected anymore, to be honest with you. All the data is readily available

at your fingertips. Yeah. During the pandemic, Hyros blew up. Yeah, Hyros went crazy. But now it seems like they're not needed. Interesting.

They're not needed as much. And honestly, for what they're charging, you can go set up a thing called, like I said, UTMs on the back end of your Shopify for absolutely free. That will do the same thing

that Hyros, you know, does. So don't get me wrong. I even tried Hyros. Like in 2020, 2021, I was using Hyros because I was like, I got to still keep ads running. But like I said, I run all my ads strictly on the platform itself now. Yeah. What's your ad creative process?

So the ad creative process is the number one, like determination of getting success now with dropshipping. Back in the day, when I first started, you could find a product. You could find an ad that's working, start running ads, and you'd start making money. It's not like that really as much anymore. Content is king. Data is queen. As much as I've been speaking about data, content is even more important to this as it will determine your success.

My ad creation process is similar. It's just as easy as this. Basically, I find a market. I find the product that I want to sell. I find three to four people who are currently scaling the product in the market. I create a strength and weakness list of everything that they're doing right versus what they're doing wrong. You know, things that they're doing right could be their scroll stopper grabbed my attention. Maybe the video was only 30 seconds, so it wasn't too long. Maybe they showed men and women using the product. Maybe they highlighted the features and

benefits really well. Maybe things that they're not doing well is maybe the quality of the video is not that well, or it's not grabbing my attention, or it's not giving you a call to action on what direction to go. So I create the strength and weakness list, and I basically just understand everything they're doing right, everything they're doing wrong. I send it over to my video editors at Drop Ship Media and I just send them the list and I tell them like, hey, everything that you're seeing on this list, this is what I want for my video. I understand that these people are not content directors. These people are content creators. So I have to give them the direction. So being able to do that analysis of these people's content really allows us to be able to stand out. That's one way. And then the second way is just understanding all the different demographics that would buy your products. So, um, one thing that really went crazy for me is like, I was selling this backstretcher, right? Like about like a year ago. And, um, we did zero to 480,000 in 27 days. And the only thing I did different is I just looked at all the competitors.

I understood one competitor was targeting fitness people. One competitor was targeting office workers. And another competitor was targeting like physical therapy. Like this is why you would buy the product. And I was like, okay, well, who, what are all the people who would want or have lower back pain? The only thing I did different was target older people who drive cars long distance. Wow. And it's the same product, has the same features and benefits, does, solves the same type of, you know, problem.

And I just tested out a different demographic. So with testing nowadays, not are you just creating strength and weakness lists of your competitors, but if you just target different angles that your competitors are not testing, that also allows you to stand out and be able to tap into an audience that may have never even bought the product in the first place. That's brilliant because it's so easy to see what your competitor doing these days. I remember when we first started, it was before Facebook ads library came out and you could just see all the ads. Now you can just see whatever people are running. And more importantly, there's like barriers to entry now having like lower barriers to entry on certain platforms.

So like another big thing that went crazy for me is I noticed that there's like this there's this product that can help with red light therapy. You'll be able to like really release the muscle tension. And everybody loves being able to have something that can release muscle tension. But anyways, I saw like four or five people scaling this on TikTok. I saw one person scaling it on Facebook. So as much as, you know, trying to find a new angle is really great. Also understanding the barriers to entry in the platforms that you're selling on. So if I notice five people are on TikTok and only one on Facebook,

if I just take that same type of approach and just come to the Facebook side, the market share is way more readily available. And so you can just go into hopping into that market as well. So it's a favor when you can see like, okay, how much competition you have on each platform and where is it going to be the most favorable for you? I love that. TikTok is so good at blowing up products, man. Man, yeah. I get the oil pulling one every day. Every single day. I mean, you got to understand, it's like they're just tracking all your consumer behavior. You know, if you're watching a video for more than three seconds,

they're going to show you the more ads like that. If you even like it, if you click on the comment section, all this is just consumer behavior that they're tracking with their data. So yeah, one of the easiest ways I try telling students all the time is like, if you want to go find a winning product, just go out there and act like a shopper. Like go on your social media, go to your Facebooks, your Instagram, your Tik TOKs for at least an hour a day for two weeks of straight, like engage with every ad that you see. Because if you engage with every ad,

this platform is going to start thinking that you're a shopper. So you're going to keep showing you more shopping ads and ads can only show up on your platform if they're being ran that day. So you're not focused. You're not putting yourself in a position of reinventing the wheel if you are just transforming your entire news feed to being all ads. Yeah. And then you just get to choose and pick and choose which direction you want to go with. That's smart. I actually like that.

I'm going to start doing that for real because I get so many ads that I don't engage with. So it doesn't show. You know, I say engage. I mean, go all the way through like comment. Like, the shop now button add to car initiate checkout do everything do everything but purchase okay because the further that you go with your consumer journey on the actual like from the product to all the way to their website are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest we'll click the application link below in the description of this video we are always looking for cool stories cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life click the application link below and here's the episode guys

the more you're going to look like a shopper in which they're going to show you more like reasonable ads for that yeah um so yeah it's like a huge trick if you want to find some amazing products that go that direction yeah what's your stance on stance on targeting? Because I see some people keep it broad because they think the algorithm is so good and then some people go insanely detailed. So actually I go broad, but I allow the data to make the decisions for me. So with Facebook ads and TikTok ads, you're able to do a thing called breakdowns. So with my ads, I typically run towards audiences that are like five to 50 million or more. And to be real with you, like the sweet spot is like 50 million or more. Like I go broad nowadays, but I use these demographics to start niching and finding out who my audience is. So let's say I find an audience

like health and wellness, which has like 120 million people. If I'm targeting that for, let's say a back stretcher. Yeah. If I start and I get like 10 purchases on that ad set, I then can hit the breakdown and the breakdown is going to give me a couple of things. It will tell me the age and gender. It'll tell me the mobile device. It'll tell me the platform they bought it on. It will tell me the country and it will tell me the state that they live in.

So once I start broad and I start finding out, okay, everybody is an 18 through 24 female who has an iPhone that is on Facebook, that lives in California, that lives in this zip code, I can then start niching my way down based off of the data. So I don't like to use my opinions a lot to be real with you. I like to go as broad as I can and then make my, my opinions off of the data. Um, so that's kind of like my approach with it is just allowing that to tell me who my customer

is or allowing me to understand who my audience is. And I do that with my ad creation as well. Like if I notice that, you know, 25 through 34 women in Miami are buying my product the most and my ad shows 90% males, like my next ad that's going to come out is going to come out towards those specific people who are buying my product the most.

So it helps out with ad creation too. That's cool. How many credit card points you got man i like the american express is i'm at the 1.6 mil now holy but but it's like when you're running ads you're getting and you can with your american express you can select which like like what you want to get the most points with so i select mine with ads you know so you get 4x yeah 4x 4x every single day so if you spend 400k that's 1.6 yeah yeah so you you could fly anywhere right now yeah well i i fly everywhere and i go to hotels for free like all day every day like i booked this

to come to this podcast today i booked this flight last night yeah i didn't book the hotel until i got here everything was free from the american express Express points. And that saves you a lot in the long run. It does. Even Amazon, too. You can use your points on Amazon. Really? Yeah. So, you know, my girls always shop and everything.

I'm like, don't use the card. Use the points. Yeah. There's actually some travel hacks. I don't know if you know this, but you can transfer your Amex points to other sites and get 5X points. Ooh. Now you might have to show.

Yeah. I'll pull you on. You might have to show me that. Yeah. If you fly internationally, it's really nice. Yeah. I just got back from dubai last week damn how was that it was great it was uh i was in maui like three days before that so i was six hours behind and then i got back to dallas and the next day i went to dubai which was nine hours ahead holy crap so i was like on a 15 hour weird gap of like just trying to figure out life but dubai was great yeah i mean there's a lot of

amazing business out there um there's a lot of just a different culture than what we see here um so being able to open my eyes to different sides of the world was something that was important to me could you see yourself ever living outside the u.s and if so where i could i definitely could um dubai could be one of the places definitely um i could see myself in cabo as well. I think the mountain, the beach with the desert, I kind of like the full combination. I could definitely see myself living outside the United States,

but I got to build my foundation here first. So, yeah, I could see myself in those two different places. Make like 50 mil and then head out. Yeah, dip out. Nobody's ever sees me again. You'll see me post a couple of things here and there throughout the year, but you won't see me back in the United States for a while. It's tough for me because I'm a podcast host,

so I kind of got to be here, but I would do it for probably months out of the year. Yeah. Take like three months off, go to Dubai or something. Yeah, have you been? No, I just, I've heard nothing but great things. It's amazing, man.

I've heard you could just leave your watch on the dining room table at the restaurant you're at. I was saying that when I was out there, I was like, I'm going to leave my phone on this table. And I was like, I'm going to go and just, I had to go and like run inside and go grab something from the front desk. And I was up there for like an hour. Came back. And I don't even know why I tested this.

It's just because I see it all the time on TikTok. Dubai is the safest place in the world. Your phone's a risky one. And I came back. It was just sitting right there. Yeah, phone's a risky one. It was a risky one. You lose that, you're screwed. Yeah. And I came back, it was just sitting right there. Yeah, phone's a risky one. It was a risky one, for sure. You lose that, you're screwed.

Yeah, and I have like, I have like my cards like on my phone, you know, so I was like, I don't even know why I was risking it, but I was like, I got to test this Dubai theory out. Do it for the ground, baby. Yeah, got to do it, man.

How was the food there? Amazing. I mean, I like Mediterranean food. I like, you know, a lot of like any type of Arabic food as well. So the food was really, really great. I mean, the prices are not even bad out there as well because it's in Durham. So you're getting like everything is four times the price.

So if you spend like $400 Durham, it's $100 USD. And meals are like $150 Durham, like $180 Durham. So you're spending like $20, $30. Yeah, it's not bad at all. Yeah, the meals were fire, bro. I'm not going to lie. Dude, when I travel, I realized how rich I am in other countries. For real. Especially like Thailand, Jamaica. I mean, you're living. I've been to Jamaica. I noticed it there. I need to go to Thailand. I haven't, I haven't been to like a Columbia or Thailand where like your dollars stretched insanely. Um, but like, I know people will

have like nannies and like they'll have like people come and clean their house every day for 15 and i'm like yeah i gotta live like a king in thailand i gotta you've been there yeah and bali nice yeah i gotta check that out how long was that flight uh too long dude especially with my height yeah you gotta go first class you have to yeah yeah you're miserable anything over like eight hours or six hours you gotta yeah do first class yeah domestic first class kind of sucks it's not you're not getting anything new the only thing you're getting is the fact that they can bring out some juice early for you i don't even drink it so for me it's like not even worth it yeah it's not it's like a thousand bucks but with your points i

guess now the emirates to dubai i heard that's nice that's it's definitely worth it was that the flatbed it was a flatbed it was like a whole open bar upstairs i mean you could walk around it's like a little mini club in there okay um like it made the experience a whole lot better i mean you get massages and there's a spa in there's a you can take showers in there damn that is dope yeah it was it was an experience you have to definitely if you're gonna go to Dubai, you got to fly first class. Why did I go out there? Yeah. It was just for a wedding.

Yeah, just for a wedding. And why did you choose Dallas to live up? So I ended up graduating college in 2018. So I went to the University of Missouri or Mizzou. And I graduated with a degree in marketing and computer science engineering. Whenever I graduated college, I had three job offers. I had one in Dallas, one in Baltimore, and one in Oakland. And I was like, I don't know, Baltimore.

I don't know if I could see myself living like that in the East Coast. Oakland, I mean, when I graduated college, I had like $500 in my account. So me living in Oakland, marketing and computer science engineering so i had five hundred dollars i was like i don't think i'm gonna be able to make this stretch in oakland like the standard the house living was just insane so i ended up taking a job out in dallas texas um and it was for a company called enj gallo winery so i was doing wine sales and i joined the first day they said you're going to be a huge contribution to the business you're going to be able to sell and market and use your degree and everything you've been working towards and you're going to make a huge change and at this moment i'm making uh 22 000 base salary damn yeah i'm like my my yearly admission for college was

more than this but but i'll take it you know i, I'll do it. I'll figure it out. The biggest perk was they moved me to Dallas for free. Okay. So, you know, growing up in Kansas City where I'm from, it's like drugs, violence. The same people are doing the same thing every single year. Damn. I mean, it's like the death capitalism of the United States. So I just knew when I graduated college, I was like, I don't want to go back and put myself in that situation.

And just for everybody watching, you know, one of the things I will say, I'll attest to why I was able to get the success that I was able to achieve is because I moved away from my hometown. I always say that. It changed everything. So I moved to Dallas.

No friends, no family. I didn't even know a single soul in the whole state of Texas. Holy crap. I worked this job for three months and then they fired me. Um, what'd you do? Uh, I w I, well, one, they, I told you I was, I was going out there to do sales and marketing. And the day one I get there, it's, I do a whole training of manual labor. I'm like, why am I doing a training of how to pick up boxes, cutting manual labor? Like I thought I was doing sales and marketing.

And I found out very quickly that my job was not sales and marketing. It was going to be building displays in the Walmarts, the Targets, all those wine displays. So the last day, it was November 24, 2018. It was the day before, obviously, Thanksgiving. So that's a big wine holiday. We started working that day at 8 a.m and uh at 9 p.m so this is 13 hours later i asked if i could take a break because they still didn't give me a break i don't know how that you're able to let a worker work 13 hours in a

row without letting them eat yeah but they were like you can't leave until the job is done this is 9 p.m i was only supposed to work till 6. And I was like, well, I'm going to leave because I'm starving. I have a headache. I don't feel good. It's been 13 hours. I haven't ate or drank anything. So I left. And then the next day they wrote me up and suspended me. Holy crap. And they said, if you come back, because I was doing outside sales, they said, if you come back, you have to check in with us every 15 minutes. Oh, my God. So you have to call and check in with us every 15 minutes. Tell us where you So you have to call and check in with us every 15 minutes. Tell us where you're at, what you're doing. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to

decline and I'm good. You can have all your stuff back. And so this was on a Thursday. So the next day I already had lined up interviews for myself. I lined up like seven interviews, like every all day, just stacked myself up. I ended up getting six out of those seven job offers that day in person um that quick I thought they take some time though I don't know maybe I'm good at interviews uh but they were like uh the start dates on Monday so all these were start dates on Monday so I had that weekend to choose which job I wanted to choose and I was sitting there on that weekend I'm seeing an ad show up on drop shipping my friend in college already kind of was doing drop shipping and uh this is a year after that but when we're in college he's buying sections every night you know when you're in college you're broke so I'm

like how is this man buying sections every night like how are we going out to eat and he's paying for my meal and stuff he talked to me a little bit about drop shipping i attempted it in college for about three hours i built this i tried to build a store i was like no this is way too much for me so i just gave up within like three hours but that day that weekend after you know fast forward an hour or a year i had that weekend to choose a job and an ad showed backup to drop shipping and this is 2018 this is like you is 2018. This is like, you know, before dropshipping is even really, you know, became huge. And I saw and I was like, man, I could, I was like, I remember my friend did this, I could probably figure this out myself. And I was like, this is gonna be easy.

So I was like, I'm not gonna go to my job at all. I'm not gonna take any job. I have like, maybe $1,300 at this point. And I'm like, I'm going to go all in on dropshipping. And I failed on like my first seven products. I lost that $1,300. I ended up going in debt. And I was like, okay, that did not work like it was supposed to be planned. So I had a friend who was doing credit in Dallas. And he was like, I could hook you up and get you a credit card, even though you have zero credit. And I was like, I could hook you up and get you a credit card. Um, even though you have zero credit. And I was like, okay. So he got me a credit card in the, in the credit limit was

like 2000. Um, so I was like, okay, I'm now back. I'm now negative 2000, basically like, let me figure out if I can spend this last 2000 and make it work. So instead of jumping back into it, I evaluated why the last seven products didn't work. I understood that I was trying to sell products that I liked, and I wasn't basing myself off of data. I was basing myself off of my own opinion. I was like, maybe I would buy this, or maybe I thought this was cool. I wasn't focused on, is this something that's actually working in the market? Does it have market share? Does it have great features and benefits behind it?

I stopped what I was doing. I focused on the knowledge for about a week or two. I came back in the market and then, um, I ended up finding a, uh, product called a mobile phone screen enhancer. And everybody that was, uh, showcasing the product was showcasing it towards people who wanted to watch like football games on their phone or sports on their phone. And again, I just did the same thing I did three years later. I was just telling you about it, of just doing a different audience. So I targeted older people, like older people who just can't see their phone. And it blew up.

And this was on December 24th, 2018. So this is now exactly 30 days after. I now found my first winning product. I did $110,000 in 30 days. And with 15% profit margin, I thought I was on top of the world. I made like $15,000 in 30 days. Um, and with a 15% profit margin, I thought I was on top of the world. I made like $15,000. I had no, like, I literally felt like I was on top of the world. 30 days go by. I learned my next lesson, which was you got to treat your business like a business. You cannot just sell products and not fulfill them with good product quality. Um, so out of

that 15,000 profit, I lost like 12,000 of it from chargebacks within 30 days, lost all of my money. Like I thought I was on top of the world. Now I'm back down to 3000, but 3000 is better than negative 2000. So I took that. I understood that I had to focus on quality. I had to focus on, you know, putting my emphasis into running this business like a business. I didn't find another product for about like three months. And then I'm down to maybe like $1,000 at this point. And I don't know if you heard about the Dallas crane collapse. Have you heard about the Dallas crane collapse?

So I have $1,000 in my account. My first thought process was I'm going to put myself in a new apartment because my last apartment I just got robbed. So I got robbed. In Dallas? Yeah, I got robbed like maybe two weeks before quitting my job or getting fired from my job. I got robbed and they basically said you either come to work

today or you get fired. So I was like, I'm going to come to work because I already lost everything at that moment. This is three months into Dallas. Fast forward again, I found this product this product three months go by i can't find another product and i move into a new apartment at this point because i didn't feel comfortable in my apartment that i just got robbed in and um basically i'm living in there i move in there on a monday on a thursday there's four days after living at this place a crane falls on my apartment complex and kills like 10 different people crap the whole

the whole apartment complex like collapsed down and you were in it yeah it leaves all of us homeless nothing to our name i didn't have anything besides the shirt on my back damn and um they ended up red cross flew in and they put us at a church across the street so i'm sitting at this church across the street it's like day four day five they gave us like a little uh sleeping bags that we can live in or start sleeping and i'm sleeping there and i'm like looking around it's like three o'clock in the morning and i'm noticing they gave us sleeping bags but they didn't give babies like anything to sleep in and there's families in here that have babies sleeping on like top of their stomachs and all this weird like it was just like not convenient yeah weird enough i'm scrolling on my facebook and a baby bed shows up huh a portable baby bed one you can take anywhere it helps with like flathead syndrome it helps with like keeping

the baby not rolling over at night and just gives them somewhere that they can sleep you know portably and i'm like this is i was, this would solve the problem of every single person that's in this church with me right now. Right. Sleeping on this floor. And I'm like, but it could also solve the problem of just portability. It could, you know, being able to just have the parents feel more comfortable with being able to have their baby in a different type of bed than a crib. Anyways, end up selling this product like two days later. And I was like, okay, I got to sell day one. Day two, I just got like five sales. a different type of bed than a crib anyways end up selling this product like two days later and i

was like okay i gotta sell day one day two i just got like five sales day three i got like 10 sales i'm like what is going on this is crazy uh this is june 18th 2019 at this point yeah december 15th 2019 within that time frame six months i did 1.7 million in sales. Holy crap. Yeah. Just off of that one product. Off baby beds? Off of one baby bed. Damn. No other upselling, no other anything. And, um, you know, my life changed forever. Like I said, I ended up making like $350,000 profit off of it. Um, that's the first business I ended up selling that I was mentioning to you, um, which got me up to right around like 900,000 at that point. Yeah. And then, And then I was like, wow, this is great. I was like, I can do this again and again and again. All I had to do is just keep following the same formula.

It happened again, again, again, again. And then I started posting results on YouTube or sorry, on my Instagram. And I was just like traveling every week and seeing different. I never even got on a plane growing up, bro. Like I never even got on a plane until I was just like traveling every week and seeing different I never even got on a plane growing up bro like I never even got on a plane until I was 22 first time I ever got on a plane was whenever I had my first success with my dropshipping product so I had this moment I'm traveling different weeks like every all seeing all the cities that I never thought I would ever see yeah um and everyone was like how do you do what you do I want to learn from you um can you

do a course and I was like I'm not doing a course. I'm not selling anything. You got like, I don't want to do that. I just didn't think myself as an education type of person. And then like, well, if you don't do that, can you at least do YouTube? Like, I mean, I'm getting DMs like 20 times a day about this. And I realized that, you know, businesses grow the fastest when they listen to the consumers. So I was like, maybe I need to stop being hardheaded and maybe I need to listen.

So I was like, I'm not going to do the courses, but I'm going to do the YouTube. And I'm just going to teach everybody about what I do. And I'm going to give them everything I got. I mean, I showed them the profit, the stores, the products. I gave them like I was just giving them the full transparency. And then it blew up. And then people were like, I was just giving them the full transparency and then it blew up. And then people were like, I really want to learn from you. So I was like, okay, I'll start, you know, trying to do this myself. I'll start taking calls, did a couple of calls and then it

blew up. And I was like, I can't do any more calls. I need to teach other people who could do it. So, um, I scaled one student up to, uh, right around 250 four months and i said move to dallas and you're gonna be my first teacher and he moved to dallas and he was my first teacher wow yeah and then he started teaching people what we were already learning ourself and then we scaled up another student and then we hired him and have him come in he's got up another student hired him and told him to come in so we just kept scaling students up and getting a mass success and then giving them the opportunity to teach others how to do the same thing. And then we were able to grow Supreme Ecom that way. I love it, man. Where can people find out more about Supreme Ecom, your YouTube and all your

mentorship? So follow me on my Instagram, my YouTube or TikTok at AC underscore Hampton. And then if you want to learn more about my mentorship or Supreme Ecom, you can check it out at Supreme Ecom dot com. Perfect it out at SupremeEcom.com. We only have limited spots. We don't try to focus on what all these other people try to do, taking thousands of people. We only take about like 10 people a month, but you can always apply and you'll get on a call with myself and my team. We'll figure out kind of your goals, what you want to achieve and tailor our entire mentorship around you and kind of get you to the point that you want to get to. Awesome. We'll link below. Thanks for coming on, man.

Yes, sir, man. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, bro. Thanks for watching, guys, as always. We'll link everything below. See you next time. Yes, sir. See you next time.