The Little Known Deadly “Secret” That’s Holding Dropshippers Back From Scaling To 7 Figure Months

Every dropshipper knows that the best way to scale a dropshipping store is by increasing the number of products you test each week. The more products you are able to test, the higher the chance of finding your winning products. In addition to that, the more winning products you’re able to find, the faster you’re able to scale up.

This is why the 6 to 7-figure dropshippers usually build great VA teams to help them test as many products as possible each day — from product research, video editing, copywriting, up to media buying. Whereas a 5-figure dropshipper usually works on his own or only has a small team of 1 to 2 members to help them.

Whenever a 5-figure dropshipper finds a winning product, they focus all of their attention on that winning product, whereas a 7-figure dropshipper will scale the product, and continue testing more products to find even more winning products.

As we know, every product has a life-cycle, and if you only focus on one winning product, your business will die as soon as the product dies. Even if you’re able to scale to 7-figure months previously, the moment your product dies, your revenue will fall back to zero. Until you’re able to find another winning product again.

However, when you have multiple winning products scaling concurrently, you will be able to scale quicker, have a more stable stream of revenue, and use that cashflow to test even more products and scale your business to the moon. 

Ever wondered why most dropshippers are stuck at the 5-figure level? Most of the time it is not because of the ad strategy or how they test their products. It’s something called the “Superhero Syndrome”.

What is Superhero Syndrome?

Superhero Syndrome is a condition in which someone thinks that they must be involved in every single task. It is either they think that others are not as good as them, or they don’t trust other people to get the job done for them. The business simply cannot move without them being involved in the process.

This is the most dangerous in dropshipping, as you end up being the one that prevents you from scaling faster. Any type of inefficiency brought by you only creates delays and higher costs. Allowing so would limit the number of products that they are able to test per week — all because of the Superhero Syndrome.

This is truly one of the biggest things that prevent many dropshippers from scaling to 7-figure.

Do You Have Superhero Syndrome?

So, how would you know if you have it? The easiest way and quickest way to identify if you have the Superhero Syndrome is to ask yourself these questions:

Are the systems and processes in your company built around you? Your team needs to get approval for every single step of the process of launching a new product, from product research to copywriting, to video creation, to media buying. 

Are you micromanaging your team? You interfere with their tasks, and constantly try to coach and teach them how to execute their roles better. You don’t trust your team to complete their tasks without your help. Furthermore, you constantly teach your product research team on how to find products even though you have already given them a framework to follow.

Are you holding yourself back from hiring more people because you think that they will not do a better job than you? You are reluctant to hire a VA to help out with writing product descriptions because you think that they do not have good copywriting skills. Likewise, you afraid to hire product researchers because you think they won’t do as good a job as you.

If your answer is “yes” to any of the questions above, then you likely have a Superhero Syndrome and it’s one of the biggest bottlenecks that’s stopping you from scaling to 6 or even 7 figures.

How You Can Solve It

Problem: Your systems and processes in the company are built around you, which means that your team will not be able to launch a product without you giving approval every step along the way. If you are doing this, you are very likely the bottleneck of the business.

Solution: Create systems and processes that do not require you to be inside at all, and importantly, ensure that the system can still work even if you scale from testing 1 product a day to over 20 products a day. It’s extremely important to have the foresight of scaling when creating such processes.

At our Operations agency, one of the ways we help dropshippers to scale three times faster without them being the bottleneck. We create for them a system with an automatic feedback loop and scorecard metrics that their team can use to self-evaluate whether they are doing a good job that is up to your expectations.

The metrics help them to know whether they are performing well based on a set of criteria you set for them while improving their skills at the same time with the continuous feedback loop. From there, we continue to optimize and improve this system so that the team can get better faster automatically.

While this system may sound simple, the impact can be huge!

One of our clients was able to scale up his team from a five-man team to a thirty-man team in just 3 months. The best part was we were able to extract him out from the system, which frees up his time by up to 80%. This means more time to focus on scaling the business rather than working in the business — what every business owner should actually be doing.

Problem: You are constantly interfering with your team’s work and micromanaging them, it’s very inefficient and reduces the pace at which your team can launch new products. On top of that, not only will your team feel suffocated, but they also feel like they’re not trusted by you. In return, create a bad working environment for the entire company.

This will affect morale and productivity and makes it harder for the team to hit their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Solution: Select great team leaders, focus on training them and allow them to lead the team. This creates motivation and trust. As minor as this may sound, whenever we help dropshippers to train up leaders and lead the team, we always see a big improvement in efficiency and effectiveness.

If your team is from the Philippines, it is encouraged to train someone from the Philippines to become the team leader. This allows for better communication and cultural understanding.

In addition to that, create a good reporting and communication system. The reason why most people tend to micromanage is that they are not aware of what’s happening in the company. This creates a lot of fear and no sense of control.

One solution is instead of using communication apps like Skype, Whatsapp, or Telegram, use project management tools and apps like Monday, Asana, Slack, or ClickUp. This allows you to have a clear view of what’s happening every step of the way in the company, without having to micromanage. 

At our agency, we usually help our clients to set up Slack for communication, and Asana or Clickup for project management

Problem: You are holding yourself back from hiring more people, and it’s most likely because you think that they will not do a better job than you. Perhaps you’ve tried hiring someone and they turned out to be a nightmare.

It is not uncommon to have bad hires that randomly disappear or constantly fail to hit their KPI, but one way to reduce such hires is to have a good hiring system that filters out the potentially bad ones.

Solution: At our agency, we help our clients to get great hires by using this S.A.R.V Framework: Seriousness, Ability, Resourcefulness, and Values.

➤ Seriousness –  In the job posts, you would put in a simple question for them to answer. So, in the first interview, if they would have given the job post a serious read, they would know to answer me that question.

You can also give them an assignment/task that would take a maximum of 2 hours to complete, and let them have 4 hours to do so. These two tests would have helped me disqualify 80% of the bad hires.

➤ Ability – You need someone capable enough to help you if you are hiring. By capable, it does not always mean people with experience. It could also mean people who have the ability to perform almost as well as you.

If they are able to perform at least 70% of your standard from the tests that you give them, then they should be great candidates for the job.

➤ Resourcefulness – One of the most important criteria is the ability to solve issues that arise within your business.

So what you want to do with the candidates is to give them a scenario-based question, or ask them an open-ended question with no right or wrong answers (eg. What is more important to you, Wealth or Knowledge?), and get them to FAX their handwritten answers to you. Yes, FAX their handwritten answers to you.

This is one of the most important steps and the secret to helping our clients get great hires. When you present to them a real-life problem to deal with that doesn’t have a straightforward answer, they would have to think of a way to be resourceful enough to fulfill your requirements.

➤ Values – This is the final stage of our agency’s hiring process and the most important of all 4 stages. If they uphold a different value system from you and your company, they won’t be able to fit into the company’s culture and will likely leave you eventually.

Whenever we onboard a new client, we would ask them what are the core values they would like their team to have. Then, when we help them with the hiring, we will only accept hires who fit the values.

To understand what values the candidates have, we usually use scenario-based questions. Here are some example questions:

• Is there anyone you met in your life that you really respect and admire him/her? What do you admire that person for?
• Are there any instances you fell out with a friend or ex-colleague before? Could you share with me what happened?

The first question is to find out the characteristics or values that the candidate already has in them or is striving towards growing it within them.

The second question is to find out if the candidate lays blame on the other party without reflecting on themselves. If they do, then be wary. This is a good sign of how they are going to deal with problems when it happens in your company.

Ultimately, the answers you get from them must be something you or your company would accept. Because no matter how good you think the values they uphold are, as long as you or your company is not aligned with those values, then the candidate will not be suitable for the job.

If you want to learn more about the S.A.R.V framework, we wrote an in-depth guide on it. You can check it out here.

Conclusion

At Atomatic Operations Agency, we’ve developed a lot of strategies and systems to help dropshippers to remove bottlenecks while improving the efficiency and output of their team. 

We work with 6 figure/month clients and scale their business up to 7-8 figures/month. Our clients are able to achieve consistent revenue, and turn their business into a consistent cash cow with less effort, and in a short timer period.

Ready To Automate And Scale Your Business?

If you’re a 6 figure/month dropshipper that is serious about automating your business and scaling consistently, click on the button below to schedule a call with us.