The Dropship Unlocked Podcast

How We QUIT Our 9–5s… Then Made £7M Online (Episode 172)

Lewis Smith & James Eardley Season 1 Episode 172

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0:00 | 30:35

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🗣 In this episode of the Dropship Unlocked Podcast, ecommerce business owners Lewis Smith and James Eardley rewind the clock and share the real story behind quitting their 9–5 jobs and building over £7M in online sales.

They break down what life looked like before the wins, the doubts they had, the mistakes they made, and exactly what they’d do differently if they were starting again today — in the current market.


🎥 Prefer to watch instead? Watch on YouTube → https://youtu.be/r2VV29rRAPI

🧭 Topics Discussed
★ Why the 9–5 was quietly draining freedom, time, and long-term happiness
★ The mindset shift that made quitting feel inevitable rather than risky
★ Lewis’s journey from corporate career to ecommerce freedom
★ James’s motivation around autonomy, travel, and controlling his own destiny
★ Why ecommerce (specifically high-ticket) was the chosen vehicle
★ The danger of shiny-object business models and platform dependency
★ How buying behaviour has changed post-pandemic (and why that matters)
★ Using AI, VAs, and systems to remove yourself from day-to-day operations
★ What starting from scratch today actually looks like (step-by-step)
★ Whether it’s realistic to build a high-ticket ecommerce business alongside a full-time job


🛠 Links & Resources Mentioned
Lewis’s Book → https://dropshipunlocked.com/book
Shopify £1-for-3-months Offer → https://dropshipunlocked.com/shopify
Free Trial of a Professional Phone Line → https://dropshipunlocked.com/circle


💡 Key Takeaways
Freedom Comes First — Money followed once the right motivation and model were aligned
Boring Businesses Win — Timeless, proven models beat trendy online “opportunities”
High-Ticket = Leverage — Fewer sales, higher profit, less chaos
Start Before You’re Ready — Both hosts built their businesses alongside full-time jobs
Clarity Beats Hustle — A clear roadmap matters more than working longer hours
The Opportunity Is Bigger Than Ever — More online buyers, more open suppliers, less friction


📲 Follow Us
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/dropshipunlocked/
X / Twitter → https://twitter.com/DropshipUnlockd
LinkedIn → https://uk.linkedin.com/company/dropship-unlocked
YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/c/dropshipunlockedlewissmith
Website → https://www.dropshipunlocked.com


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I had to quit my 9 to 5 stable job as soon as I saw what was possible with this. So the very first thing that I did was if I had never left. That job, I never would have gone on to build a seven figure store and travel the world. And it all came down to the. Key to success online today is. So a lot of people see the numbers now. They see that we've made a combined 7 million pound from our stores, Lewis. They see the freedom, the lifestyle, but they don't see what came before all of that. They don't see the uncertainty that went through all of the doubts and the fact that both of us were stuck in normal jobs at one point wondering if any of this was even possible. So today I think we need to rewind the clock a little bit and talk about when we were in our 9 to 5 jobs and how we actually were able to quit those, what works, what didn't, and what we would do today if we were starting again from scratch. So Louis, let's start back from the beginning. Before the revenue and the wins. What really pushed you to walk away from the nine to five in the first place? It was a feeling that had been building, I think, for some years behind the scenes, and it was knowing that my time was capped and that I wasn't truly free. I wasn't able to just go and get on a plane tomorrow, travel to some exotic destination without having to apply weeks in advance for annual leave and convince a boss that it was something that I would be able to, you know, that they should permit me to do and allow me to do. And so the effort that I was putting in to the job, to the nine to five, to the corporate ladder, climbing, that the path that I was on didn't feel like it was going to eventually equate to freedom because the harder I worked, the more chance there would have been of maybe earning more in that, that job and getting a promotion. But then with a promotion would have come more responsibility and more stress and probably longer hours as well. And I think you always saw this dream of like, oh yeah, but once you reach like the upper echelons of management or you become a partner or you know, you really get high up the corporate ladder, you get a lot of that free time back. But do you really? Because I used to see people who are at that point and were equally stressed and were working really long hours and were in the office till late in the evening and missing their kids, bedtimes and their family time. And I knew that I just something Inside me. And I didn't know about this online business world at the time. I didn't think really that it was something that would be possible to me. But I would have loved to have control over my, my time, but also control over my income where I wasn't beholden to a company to pay me a monthly income, salary, paycheck. And also if I could have worked from anywhere in the world and just worked from my computer, owned my own schedule, like that would have been a really nice, compelling thing. So that was before I even knew that E Commerce was the model or the vehicle that I wanted to look at. And it wasn't really until I read the four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and then kind of started going down the rabbit hole on online forums and reading things about like the new rich, as he calls it, and digital nomads and this whole world that's since become quite prevalent and well known nowadays. But back in 2017 this would have been, it was quite new. And just I guess seeing that if I were to go into this, like what, having that mindset of why, if I, if anybody can do it, why can't I do it? Like what makes other people that have figured this out better than me? There must be a path to figuring this out. And it wasn't until I decided I'm going to do this and I gave myself the internal permission that for some reason I thought I needed to just say, I'm not going to continue down this path. I know that I'm not supposed to be locked in this box for the rest of my career until retirement, only to then enjoy my time. You only get one life. I want to make it count now. I want to enjoy being a father that's present with his children when I eventually decided to have children. And yeah, I think it was that first exposure through the four hour work week that just made me think, yeah, I'm doing this. And it's hard to explain, but it was a realisation that I don't have all the answers right now, but something has just flicked in my mind, some switch has just been turned on when now it doesn't matter because I'm going to figure out those answers. So like, it's like a complete mental, unlimited limiting belief that for some reason was just lifted from one minute. I was like, no, I could never do that to the next minute. I'm going to do that and I'm going to figure it out. And that kind of determination and certainty of like, I will get there. It's Just a matter of time and how expensive and how many failures there are going to be on that path, but making sure that I saw it through and actually did it. Brilliant. So you're able to channel that energy that you were building up in your job, knowing that something was off and wasn't right about the direction you were travelling in. And then it really, the four hour work week just translated all of that energy into something you can action. Because now you had the confidence in yourself that you could make it work because you can see what others are doing all the time. And then you channel it into your e commerce business model that we'll get into in a second. But trying to say it's inspiring to hear about how you were so driven to be present with your children and that was a really driving force. Something I came across yesterday, Louis, which I don't know if you've come across this before, is that by the time your children are 12 years old, you've already spent 75% of the time that you're going to spend with, with your children. I think that says something about how important those early years are to be spending time with your children. I don't know if you ever come across that before. Yeah, I didn't know the exact stat, but yeah, I mean, it's scary how I was just dropping my eldest son at school this morning and like every day that you do it, they're becoming more and more confident, they're more and more independent. You realise that they need you as their dad less and less like by the day. Which is both is bittersweet because it's amazing to see them growing into this human and eventually going to be a man that can look after himself. But at the same time you're like, oh, but that was my baby yesterday. Like they, I brought them into the world. Like I, you know, nurtured them in their early years. And so there's this kind of dilemma of like, I want to spend as much time as I possibly can now in those really precious moments and like showing them the world, showing them what's possible, having those conversations and those things that you do around the house where like, I don't know, like just, just helping them understand the concept of how the world works. It's just so fascinating. And yeah, I have a, and all parents have a very pivotal role to play in those early years. So the more time, in my opinion, that you can be there and be present and be part of their life and read to them and teach them and show them it's so powerful and you just can't get that back. As you say, if you missed that 12 years because you were busy trying to climb a corporate ladder to get partner or the next promotion, that's it. That's gone that time. So, so powerful and such a source of inspiration for you and motivation every day because you've connected to something that really matters. So for you as a parent of young children, knowing how valuable precious time is with them is a huge source of motivation to make sure that your work and your business is something that you can mould around your life. So it's life first and then the income stream can be generated without needing you all the time or getting in the way of children, which is perfect for you as a motivation source. For me, my motivation source is slightly different and I'm sure for people listening now, they'll relate to different motivation sources that give them the same amount of energy but for a different reason. And for me, my one of my biggest values is about freedom and being able to be be the master of my own destiny. So choosing where I am in the world is really important. And how I spend my time and not being told where to be and what to do all the time is really crucial to me. And that's why I was grating against my 9 to 5 job the whole time I was in it, which I joined straight after doing a HNC at university. The whole time in that 9 to 5 job there was something off. I had that same feeling and that's because I needed to lean into something. That was going to allow me the. Freedom that an E commerce business has done for me. So let's talk about what works then. There's. For people that can tap into a good motivation source, they also need to have something that they can put their energy towards that has shown clear signs of success repeatedly for lots of different people. So why was it that you chose E commerce and why do you think that worked so well for you? It's. Yeah, it's interesting. I was, I was chatting with a guy at the gym this morning and he was saying that he has just got back from Thailand and he's about to move to Thailand permanently. And he said I'm going to work online. And I was like, what you, what are you going to do online? What are you planning? And he said, oh, I might do forex. Like, you know, investing, trading. I'm going to do a bit of maybe Amazon, fba. I might try a bit of Airbnb renting, you know, rent, rent to rent I think they call it like all these different kind of schemes. And it was interesting because I kind of thought, well, yeah, I guess those types of options are the way that someone views like the options on the table to them. If they've decided I'm going to become a digital nomad or I'm going to go and work online, the next question becomes how do I now fund that lifestyle? And obviously then it's like you get flooded by the ads of all the different business models that you could do. To me, I think I, I don't think I was really inundated with those ads. Maybe when I started in 2017, maybe the algorithm was less potent and like, I don't know, able to pinpoint somebody quite as well as it does today with, with ads. But back then, yeah, I don't, I don't remember seeing those other models that were not quite so tangible and really being tempted by them. Like if I put myself in the, my own shoes back then, it was, it just made sense because the physicality of the products, you know, they are tangible. Like item. Like for someone that's never really done anything online before, the concept of item gets purchased by customer, item arrives at customer's doorstep, customers happy. Like it's just so kind of easy to understand and it's like dumbed down to the point where it's like, that's just how business works, that's how retail works. That's how when I buy something from the shop or from Amazon or whatever, it works. And then realising that, okay, so I could do that, I could provide customers that service. And also knowing that when I did a bit more research and started digging into the different types of e commerce, realising that, God, if I sell higher value products, I could make, you know, enough profit to live for a month in Thailand from one sale. If I sell a product for 600, for a £2,000 at 30% net profit margin, I make £600 in profit on that sale that pays for my rent in like a penthouse apartment in parts of Thailand. So I was like, okay, well that's, that seems like a good way to know the amount of effort and sales required to build this business. But also then like looking at things like Amazon as a model and seeing the horror storeys where people were just booted off the platform or told that you've broken the terms of service, you can no longer sell on Amazon. And I just thought, I've got such stability at the moment with my job and my income and the pension and, you know, all the Nice things, they look after you with all the perks. But do I really want to trade all of that to then be kind of on someone else's platform, only to maybe have the door slammed on me or the rug pulled out from under me after six months and then I'm starting from scratch. So I kind of knew if I wanted to build a business, I wanted it to be on my terms. My own website, my own brand, I wanted to own the customer list and I wanted to be able to make sure I made real relationships with suppliers, especially if I lived in the UK at the time. Could set up a UK company, sell to UK customers, source from UK distributors or suppliers. It like it just made sense and then run a few ads, make a few high ticket sales and then that replaces my salary over the course of a month. That's something I could get my head around. It didn't require me to become some like trading guru, you know, wizard where I have to go and go and figure out all the different terminology that I've just never understood before. Like I just got it and it was like, yeah, that makes sense. People buy stuff online. I'm now just a retailer that sells that stuff. I kind of, I'm in the middle really. So yeah, I mean we dive a lot deeper into this exact model and how it all works. And also the transition that we took from getting these up and running in episode 136 of the podcast, which was called Insider Lessons from 7 Million Pound Dropshipping Sales. So if you haven't already, I'd highly recommend having a listen or queuing up episode 136 before. After you've listened to this one. Yeah, brilliant. We've gone through the process of how to set up in a separate episode, lots of content out there on the channel to watch, to learn how we did it specifically. But it's important initially to understand that the decision that you have to make is which model to go into and why you chose E commerce. For me it was a bit different because you had now set up and you brought the home turf advantage into the UK model. So when I was looking to start and make money online, your face was there with an ad Lewis and you're teaching me about how to set up an E commerce business. And everything clicked for me because I knew that I wanted to make money online but not have too much admin to do that. And also I was a first time person ever making money online. My 9 to 5 job was completely different from anything in the world. The realms of online E Commerce. So I had to have something that was easy to get a grip on quickly. So when I came across your model, which is UK suppliers for UK customers, and it was talking about high ticket items, so lots of profit per single sales. I didn't need to make loads of sales and have loads of different customers to make the same amount of profit. Things were slotting into place and the questions I had in my mind about how was I going to fund this lifestyle that I was dreaming of started to make sense. And I could see it and I could picture myself doing it, because not only was it simple to understand, but I could see people had already achieved it following the exact same method. Not just yourself, but the videos on the channel of people who had been in the exact same situation, had done an interview with you and talked about how they had achieved the same success that you had. And. Yeah, and it was just inspiring to. To do it. So I took all that energy about what was important to me and I put it into a channel that had been proven and that that proved to me to be the key for how to push on and really get off the ground. But for somebody that was starting today, so it's a different economy, different landscape. So let me put you back in those shoes, Louis. If you were starting in today's market and you didn't have any sales under your belt, it was your first time starting over and over again, what would you do this time round? If you were starting, you wanted to build up to the level of sales that you've made today. So when you saw that, it's really interesting that you felt that there was now a very clear path that tapped into that desire for freedom, but then didn't just kind of leave you high and dry, it gave you the clear steps to do it. And I guess the. The advice I'd have to someone who's in that situation today is if. If, James, if you thought the steps were clear back then and were, you know, simple to follow, imagine how clear they are today with over 3,000 people now who've gone through our programme, whereby every single time someone's tripped up on one of those steps along the way we've gone in, we've smoothed it out, we've made it way, way more step by step, straightforward, simple to get this up and running so that now, like, it's. There's very, very rarely anything that comes up that we can't answer or we haven't seen many times before that we can just help people overcome. So that's the Thing about it, it's like today is the best time to start because if you were starting before, some of those steps were a little bit slippy. Some of them, like sometimes, you know, there were bits missing or whatever. But we've just firmed it up over time, kept innovating, kept iterating, made it better and better so that now you're benefiting from all the mistakes that everybody who came before you made to now just have the most straightforward path to do it. Also, the opportunity is bigger now because suppliers are more open to the model because we've seen them like move online. The high streets in the UK have like just basically shut down, you know, in a lot of towns. So now those same suppliers that used to supply goods to your local high street stores that don't exist anymore are still looking for routes to market. They still need to sell those products. So now they go online. So now they're way more willing to work with us as Internet only retailers and the demand from the customers as well. Like everybody shops online now. It's just so much more prevalent and over the coming years it's going to grow again by ridiculous amounts. When you see the graphs, it's just going up and up. So when you've got such a rising level of demand increase and it's like the, the market and the consumers are just shifting to buying online, the suppliers are opening up and are more prevalent than ever, the steps are clearer than ever. Like, it's like the stars align and you're just thinking, well, now is the best time to do it, because if you were doing it previously, any one of those things would have made it slightly harder. But having said that, even when it was harder, I made it work. You made it work, we got through it and did it. So I think if, if we can have done it in those times, if you're starting today, you can definitely do it and we can be by your side every step of the way. That's, that's what we do, right? Exactly. And we've recently added AI modules into the programme as well, which is a whole new area that just makes things so much more simple. And there's so many different ways to speed up the process now because of AI being so easily accessible. And think about all of the work and the budget that Amazon has to get people to shop online. We benefit from that because when people come to our website to purchase, it's no longer the first time that they've purchased something online. A few years ago you'd have people sign up and they would buy things from you but you would be the first time they bought online and they were more hesitant to purchase. That very, very rarely happens now, especially post pandemic times. The fact that people are putting car details online is so normal compared to a few years ago. So we can benefit from that. As E commerce business owners. There's a lot less resistance for people to buy online, which wasn't there previously. Yeah, exactly. And you used to speak to customers when, when you were selling products online and they'd be like oh okay, I've got to pay online and you know, wait till I get home and I'll get my card out and then I'll be able to give you the card details. Or they'd only want to read out the card details on the phone and not put them in on a. I think people were like in the car making purchases for thousand £2000 products using Apple Pay and it just goes to ding and they just face idea and it's done. Or Google Pay if you're an Android. Like the friction to transfer money across the Internet is just lower than it has ever been. Which to us as the recipients of those funds as E commerce retailers in our community is amazing because it just means that like customers are so much higher in terms of their familiarity with the process. Willingness to buy trust is higher because they're just kind of, I think when, especially when you're using a checkout like Shopify and you've got the right trust signals and you know, secure checkout and badges and things like that in place. It's. And you open up the different payment gateways that they can use so they can pay by Klarna, they can pay by Shop Pay, they can pay by Apple Pay, Google Pay, whatever. It just makes it so much easier. Or PayPal or whatever. And then, and then suddenly, yeah, they've got five, six, seven different options to pay with. Like the, the objections to make that purchase are gone as long as you can offer a good service and a, your offer of the product is good. Like it's an equivalent price to anyone else who's out there selling it. You just captured the click because you were running ads as per the instructions inside the programme. You get that person to the website, they have a couple of questions. Maybe they ask on live chat to your AI chatbot or your virtual assistant, maybe they give the business a phone call and then they decide to go ahead. Super simple. And so yeah, it can just pretty much be done without you even being involved nowadays. Yeah, that's it, that's, that's what we can tap into now is, is we can set the business up and it can be handled externally from us, which is a great business model to get into because there are lots of different options for business models online nowadays. But if you, if you have ever purchased something online, which you will have done a physical product online, I'm sure people have used Amazon before and therefore you already have an experience of an E commerce website. You know, the process which really helps, I think, to get into a business, you know how it's all going to map out. And also you don't need to have any expertise in any single product or any expertise in, in anything really. I came into this with no expertise of making money online or marketing or anything like that. So it's all something you can grasp pretty quickly because we've all been customers of an E commerce website before and I think there's something to be said about that and how quickly you can pick things up because we kind of get the whole idea of getting a product delivered to your door after purchasing it online. But yeah, so just going back to the point of starting today, would you do anything different if you were starting today or what, what would be the foundations that you'd be looking at to start a new business today? I think just making sure that I'm starting with a proven model, so I'm not going into experimenting. There's a lot of noise out there on forums on, you know, the different blogs and stuff. I just, I, I would be very, very hesitant about believing any strategies that are, you know, written out but not clearly documented, you know, because anyone can say anything on like Reddit or different forums, but if, if they're not kind of like standing behind the model and clearly showing it and they don't have longevity and you, you know, it's very difficult to know if you're just going down the rabbit hole on some weird random online business path and then just, you know, fizzles out and nothing materialises. So try and avoid those shiny objects. And actually I. Something I quite like about the Hometown Advantage model is I say it's not, it's not new. This is a model that has existed since before the Internet is what the Argos catalogue used to do. It's what Wayfair do, it's what Homebase do, what John Lewis do. For a lot of the bigger items that they don't maybe keep in stock on their warehouse shelves, they will use a supplier fulfilment model or a direct dispatch model, AKA Dropshipping but they maybe just didn't call it that. So it's really nice that it's a consistent, timeless business model and it's kind of a boring business model which are the best kind because it's not just going to. It's not here just because AI is shiny and sexy at the moment. It's here to stay for the long term because those suppliers are going to need their products get delivered to customers. So it's going to be important that you're part of that. The yeah, making sure that before you decide what to sell you validated the different criteria for picking a product. So like making sure there's enough demand there. Don't just dive into it because you may be like your. Your heart's telling you to data first. Try and remove ego or feeling from it if you can because you'll set yourself up for success in the long term. I'd much rather have a business that works based on the numbers, even if I'm not that passionate about it. But it's just super profitable because remember I'm not going to be the one running the business. I'm going bring in virtual assistants to take care of the day to day so I can just be passionate about the fact that it pays for my lifestyle and it delivers a great service to customers. So as we talked about, instead of following bits and pieces from YouTube and trying to piece this together from a conversation with ChatGPT that doesn't have any of the context or nuance that maybe we need here, having a roadmap in place that you can follow step by step where you just literally cheque off the actions every day and you are going to following in the footsteps that are well trodden of 3,000 plus people who've been through the process before you with every single one of the hurdles removed, it's got to be the most straightforward way to do it. So if you can start that, keep things lean low overheads, use Google Ads to appear for people that are already searching for the products. Make sure you're going after those types of clicks with your marketing, not just using TikTok ads or meta ads or whatever like following the strategies, the search intent marketing strategy we talk about and then you're going to be up and running in a matter of weeks. I mean we have different plans. Inside our programme we have a progress tracker that allows you to map it to either 6 weeks, 9 weeks or 12 weeks to get your store up and running. So it depends how much free time you have to put into it. But those are our kind of three speed tracks that you can choose from when you first join us and start working with this. Awesome. Yeah. And I think that's the key is that we've got the structure laid out. Now and that's what I needed when. I was starting my e commerce business. I had the motivation, I just didn't know what to put that motivation into. And so a six week plan that I followed to get up and running and start making sales was exactly what I needed to get off the ground. And yeah, just back onto that point of longevity that. This is episode number 172 of the podcast now. So we've been around for a while talking about how to do this model and we're still running these businesses to this day. So it's something that doesn't, isn't just a flash in the pan. And you know, you see these models that come up and die away. This has been here for the long term and it will be continually because we're just selling physical products online. This business model is something that is going to stand the test of time and in fact it's growing year on year as the e commerce industry grows year on year. So that's the real takeaway for people to take away from this is that we've been through this process but this opportunity is very much still here at the moment. So if anyone is thinking, okay, I've got an idea of I need motivation, I need a clear system. I've got an idea of the model that you guys use to get to where you are. But how do I actually take that first step? Because it's a big intimidating goal to reach. So what would you suggest people start by doing? Sure. So it is just that first step you've got to take. You don't have to suddenly go from having this huge lofty goal of freedom and hundreds of thousands of pounds in sales from zero to that you take the first step on that path and then you just get. That's how everybody that reached that eventual goal got there. It was by taking the first step. Now the first step to working with us is heading to dropship. Unlocked.com forward/start. So that's where we've laid out the exact roadmap that our members follow to build these types of high ticket UK e commerce businesses. And yeah, we go through all the same principles that took us from our 95 jobs to the £7 million collectively that we've made in sales so far. Yeah, that's it. That's the exact same process that I went through because I had the benefit of learning from you, Louis, as a mentor. And so we take people through the same process. So yeah, that's it, that's how we went through that process. And now what we want to do now on this episode is highlight a question that we've had in from a listener, which is quite topical for the discussion we've had so far. And also because we like to answer questions that come in from listeners. So if you've been listening to this today and you've got a question that's popped up into your mind, if you comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode, then we will potentially feature it in an upcoming episode. So, Louis, I'm going to ask you this question now. It's coming from Tom H. And he's asked, is it actually possible to build a high ticket e commerce business alongside a full time job? Yep, great question, Tom. And yeah, that's been the topic of today's episode. So hopefully that's pretty much already answered your question. But yeah, that is exactly how both James and I started. And neither of us quit our jobs on day one. We did it alongside our jobs, evenings, weekends, mornings, before work. If it's important enough to you, you'll find the time. I think you have to trust yourself on that one. You don't need endless time, you need consistency, you need a clear roadmap and you need focus to know what to do in those small pockets of time to maximise the output and really get the most from it. So carve out a minimum of maybe one focused hour a day and you'll be surprised at what you can do when you have the right steps and the right progress tracker to be able to tick off the actions as you go. You know, if you're really busy. That's why we have our 12 week progress tracker timeline, because that might be a fewer number of hours per day that you can put in or per week that you still try and take one meaningful action per day. Whether that's niche research and niche validation at the beginning, or if it's supplier outreach, if it's setting up your products or running your ads, that momentum really compounds quickly and you'll be surprised that a few weeks later you'll be looking back and think, wow, I've built the foundations here of a business. You know, I'm making sales. The fact that high ticket sales as well means that you don't need hundreds of orders to get a high level of profit from the business. The nice thing is you can then use some of that profit to reinvest to like a website developer to help make your website incredible without you having to do anything or a virtual assistant to answer all of your customer service emails and the phone calls and the live chat so that you never have to do that. So very quickly you can disconnect the kind of the link between your time input and the business performance. And as soon as that's done, your scaling is uncapped. You can, you know, the moon is the limit. Like you take it as far as you want to. So the, the goal from this is to progress it alongside your job for the time being until the business proves that it can replace your income. My advice, James's advice as as we always did, is like to let it do that consistently so you're not just, you know, riding your luck or maybe having done that for a few months, but you see that it's really starting to work now. You're banking some savings, you've built a bit of a Runway as well and then at that point you are up and running and a business owner. So hopefully that answers your question, Tom. And yeah, you absolutely can. So before we wrap up this episode today, I'd love to ask a quick favour of you. 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