At the moment we're doing 100,000 a day and that's sometimes even on a bad day. These guys used to make two dollars an hour picking flowers in a village with just 700 people and now they built an online store that's making them over 30 million dollars a year. So I flew all the way across the world to spend a weekend with them and learn exactly how to do it. So I started it in 2018 honestly it started as uh yeah just a simple drop shipping store I didn't have no uh no plans to make it something long term. I was just desperate for change to make money and yeah.
How much are y'all bringing in every day with this brand iKON? Well we can show you. So let's do the last 30 days we did I think around what is it 3 million because this is one of the stores we also have a UK store and a US store so we now do around 3 million every month so the numbers don't lie guys. And it's crazy because these boys literally started from the mud.
came from nothing and got it to this level so we're gonna spend the whole day together man i want to get a tour of the crib and by the end of this video i want to give the people a full blueprint for starting their own store hey first things first man we gotta check this villa out this place is crazy let's get it before we show you guys the mansion we gotta start with the toys right so we don't have one lamb ball no we got two of them and For all the people straight away going through the comments, no, they are not rentals. You see these yellow plates here? Break these down for the people that's not really in the cars, you know? Sure, sure thing. So this was the first one I got.
This is a Lamborghini Urus Pro Capsule Edition. So I like it because everything matches. This thing is crazy.
I heard it got some crazy exhaust on it too. Oh, this exhaust is mad guys. So what we did is we put the Capri-Steel exhaust below it because... with people typing in the comments, put the Capri-sto below it. But we were like, what the fuck is a Capri-sto?
But it's like the best Italian exhaust there is. So cameraman, you should check this out. Capri-sto.
I'm gonna see exhaust styles on the whip. 15,000. So let's put it on the sound shift. Let's see if it was worth the 15 vans, yo, come on.
We're the lovers here, you know. We wake him up, we get him out of bed. This one is a whole new level, right? Definitely. This one's crazy.
It's the perfumante with the... Perfumante spider. Yeah, so perfumante spider of...
everywhere, there's forged carbon. Bro, you're just balling in this. And the funny thing is, because the roof is up, you can hear everything people say, right? So you hear them whispering, you hear them gossiping.
Drug dealer, drug dealer. What's that, what's that? Does he have a Shopify store? Nah, the cars is crazy, but we gotta see the rest of the crib. And this is one of the best villas I've seen out here, bro.
This crib, I booked it already like months ago, you know? I almost even forgot that I was gonna stay here, but I've been here for three weeks. It cost 80,000 for three weeks.
So about 100K a month for this thing. But this thing is mad, you know? Every day I wake up, I walk outside here, I take a little snap with my phone. Because, bro, you just can't get tired of it, you know?
Massive swimming pool. It's very modern, futuristic, what I like, you know? And, yeah, we're going to leave today.
And what this owner told me is that the day after, even the prince of Oman is going to be staying here, right? Because this shit is, like, really baller, baller level, you know? Now you're moving like royalty. Like, you got to comprehend this shit is that in Dubai, I have, like, the mansion where I live for most of the year.
And that thing is... it costs 75 000 a month you know and i'm away all summer but i still pay 75 000 a month so and the same with amsterdam you know we also have the penthouse in amsterdam pay 10k a month for that but in amsterdam that's like real serious money because most scripts in amsterdam are like thousand thousand a month or something so we have that even office in amsterdam as well where we pay good money for so and can you believe people still say drop shipping is dead bro so what was the beginning like for y'all was you guys both working on this business together were you both doing different things did you have a job like how did you get started with this e-commerce game so i was 18 years old when i uh stumbled across e-com i was really very desperate you know to change my life because i had like 20 bucks in my bank account and i don't know as if uh i got blessed you know with like the internet i was on youtube and i saw some guys making money online stumbled across e-com drop shipping print on demand as well tried print on demand but it took too long to get designs and stuff and then I saw drop shipping And I was obsessed from the get-go, you know? Opened my store straight away.
Like, I didn't start, like, checking and procrastinating, and I need to know if this is the right thing for me, if it's the right time. I was still in school, bro. It was not the right time.
It was not the best moment. I didn't have the money to start. I started anyway. Because that's what you need to do if you want to win, right? Then, after a couple months or so, I had my first small success.
I started doing, like, 10k a month. in revenue which is like nothing if you compare it to what i'm doing what was the first product that popped up for you first product were actually headsets so like headphones like this but then um with like a camouflage type uh design on it and back then there was a trend that was fortnight everyone was playing that shit the headset i called it a fort mike and it took off now looking back i could have done hundreds of thousands if i knew more bro i didn't even do facebook ads man But after three or four months doing that, I was like, I want more because I was still stuck at 10k a month. And I got like an ad of someone dropshipping fashion.
And yeah, that led me on a whole new journey. Opened a store and it took off straight away. Jumped in one jump from 10k a month, 75k a month. A couple months later, started doing six figures a month.
And first appropriated a million, then two million in a year, four million in a year, six million in a year. And then last year, all the way from six to 20 million. and this year we're going to do a 30 million.
When I hear both of y'all's stories, there's one thing that stands out, and to the people watching, y'all need to listen up to this. The first store that you guys started is not the one that you went on to make millions and millions of dollars with. And I think a lot of people start that first store, and they run into the same problems you did or the same problems you did, and it doesn't pop up because things pop up, and then they just stop.
They stop running the store completely, and that was their ticket that they missed out on. Even for me, I had four stores until I found my brand that I built and sold. I think people really do not have the patience to keep going and keep building, you know? If you test one store and you quit, you don't want it bad enough, bro. Honestly, you don't want it bad enough because failing is a part of growth.
Honestly. Second thing, and that's why I see many people fuck up. Don't take much risks from the jump.
Don't start buying a shitload of inventory because you don't have the knowledge yet. Yeah, that's real. A lot of people are just not putting the time into it. If they start this, they try to get it to pop up in three months.
it really till you made your first million with this like actual cash in the bank million how long did it take you how many years it took you i i became a millionaire when i was 21 years old you know and um then i started living the crazy life man and that's also what i want people to to really understand like there is a life you can live that in your wildest dreams you cannot even imagine before i was hustling now it's a real business yeah the real ceo ruben is like a real business owner as well and That's what needs to change if you want to go to the levels we are at right now. I'm at the best resort of all my beer. We're heading out for lunch now because I'm hungry bro. You asked too many questions. I'm hungry too dog.
I didn't even eat yet. So let's get right. Let's eat something. So tell me a little bit about the backstory. Where did you guys actually grow up at?
Yeah so. I grew up in the top of the Netherlands, in the north, a small tiny village. To be honest, growing up there, I grew up without my dad, because my mom and my dad split when I was about four years old.
My dad went back to Nigeria, so I grew up mostly just with my mom and also my stepdad. But yeah, I grew up in a really, really small town, so me and my brother were basically the only mixed-race kids out there. And there wasn't too much people to look up to, right? No inspiration, so there were no millionaires around me, no people making real big money. So from when I was young, I always felt that I was a little bit different, you know?
And yeah, I worked many different jobs, not the best ones. Like when I was 13, I worked on a farm for two bucks an hour. It was like... like really really shit like what about you whatever job you had yeah i uh first yeah my first job was also on a farm and then i went on the other job and that was cleaning holiday homes because in the netherlands you have a lot of people from other places that come to the netherlands to visit it in these yeah luxury holiday homes so i was cleaning them on my bike i got paid like 10 bucks an hour so for me back then that was good so do you think if somebody wants to be an entrepreneur they shouldn't go get a job and they should just lock in on the business?
Or do you think that it's important for people to get a job? In the beginning, it is. In the beginning, you should always have a job. You should always think by yourself and need to make money.
And it doesn't matter on which way it is. You can even do like Uber Eats or something. Never feel too good for a job.
Never feel too good. Exactly. That's the most important thing.
I knew to build a business, it would cost some money, right? And the first couple months... I was just grinding, working this shitty ass side job, but after month four, I hit my first real winning product, quit that side up straight away, and the rest is history, bro.
Even though a lot has changed for you guys, like in the last couple years, what stays the same? Like after all these years, what stays the same? some things that y'all do every day after becoming multi-millionaires that stays the exact same first of all our ethics you know the way how we stand in life and the things that we stand for and that we always want to to be honest to do people want to be good for people that are like that the ethics that really my mom gave me and of course always trusting in God so that didn't change and of course the habit. You know I've never made any money doing something unethical you know I cannot do it. Crazy how far you boys came, literally coming from nothing to this level, but we got a long way to go.
And we got a lot more to do on this trip, man. What are we about to get into? Yeah, so the first thing is, of course, today we needed to show you Marbella, but tomorrow, because it's our last day, we're flying back to... Amsterdam so we have a crazy weekend in Amsterdam. But we are not flying like no economy on this little bird okay we got something really lined up for you people okay so it's gonna be crazy crazy private jet lined up.
For now we enjoy the chill here the calm before the storm Hey, you see what it is, man. We out here on the runway. Just a couple of kids who clicked some buttons on a laptop for long enough. Made all of this happen, right? I've flown too much jets this summer.
I think that's jet number 10. And that just shows how quick things can go, you know. Especially with... become once your store is blowing up bro at the moment we're doing 100 000 a day and that's sometimes even on a bad day right but it are all our blessings and i look back sometimes right now i i'm still 25 right started at 18 years old And yeah bro, this just should show you that the normal kid, if I can do it, no degree, no nothing. I'm not book smart, I'm not the smartest, but I just have the ability to think bigger, to execute, to create a vision in my head, and to grab on it with both fucking hands and I will never back down.
When I look at this, if you would have shown like the old kid, like the 19 year old Samuel this shit, he would also say like, what the fuck, never bro. So, it's all our big... do you allow yourself to dream right you think about people who are saying like when you get money you gotta penny pinch and like save every single cent because you guys is more like not on a frugal tip like you spend spend spend what do you think about frugal people and how should you act when you start making a little bit of money you will never get rich by saving money it's easier to increase your income than to to save your way to to big numbers right so for me all the expenses i've made even from the beginning when i got for example my first little apartment in in amsterdam the thing cost 4k a month right and i was stressing i was sweating about that payment and my mom said don't do it well what that did is it pushed me to a new level right because sometimes it's very good to increase like your expenses because then you Gotta keep making that kind of money, right?
Literally the first thing I did when I got some money was I got an apartment. And it was pretty big for me at the time. And that was what kept me going and kept me grinding. Because it was like now I had expenses. If I was still at mom's crib, I would have been happy with 10k a month.
And I was really balling. But when you get some expenses, it really helps you a lot. Because it's very easy nowadays to get complacent, you know, and get comfortable.
But if you burn the ships, if you get that expensive apartment, then... you have to keep making money, right? And that was it for me.
And even when later I got like the penthouse, it was 10K a month, everyone told me don't do it, but that pushed me so much to go bigger. And right now, bro, my goal is to spend a million a month, right? You know what they say, scared money don't make money.
And people get some bread and they hold on to it like it's the last they're ever going to have. But putting that right back into the business, putting that into your lifestyle so you can think bigger, that pushes you hard. And you know what I've seen, and that's why I'm here.
most people they see a jet they see you spending hundreds of thousands on lambos or when you go out and you buy bottles they cringe it hurts them right but you know why it's really it's really because they work nine to five bro and they trade time for money i don't trade time for money i trade creativity for money creativity is infinite right time is not so i know that with a couple of more choices the amount of money i can make the amount of growth i can accumulate is endless because you got to change your environment you got to surround yourself with bigger stuff people making more money uh the expensive stuff to think bigger and to to to do it right so staying in the same place keeping saving money and that uh you really think that that won't make you make you rich right get you some money and get around People that got money and it's gonna change how you look at the world I'm not a subscriber of this thought that you only have to eat Everything super healthy all the time. What do you guys think about eating junk food sometimes? How would you say L? If sometimes we can as long as 95% of the time you're doing your thing you're L be you're sticking to your routine yeah there's sometimes a piece that doesn't uh doesn't matter you know it's the same with going out and partying you know it's not good for you alcohol's not good for you but then again well um sometimes you just have to uh yeah Also, just fucking a little bit. And I don't know.
I'm a bit reckless myself. But as long as you control yourself, as long as you're disciplined, it doesn't really matter. When you're outside celebrating something, it's way more special than trying to, like, fill some void.
You know, feeling like you're not successful, but you're drinking just to, like, numb the pain. That's a good one. What Jordan just said, bro, most people, they are trying to push away something.
You know, they're trying to escape reality with eating garbage, with drinking, with alcohol, with... parties, but that's not how it's supposed to be. If you're getting that amazing meal after you crushed the complete day or when you had like a record day, that's how it should be, right?
But don't escape reality, you know? Always be honest with yourself. I think that's what made me and my brother very different. We were always able to look in the mirror, okay, where are we lacking?
Where should we improve? And still today, bro, still today, we can be partying all day, but what would happen? They say like success leads to comfort, comfort leads to failures.
So at this level, the most important thing is to keep chasing discomfort, where everyone is basically chasing comfort. Everyone is on their phone, dopamine all day, TikTok, ordering food, wanting right now, right now. Bro, the very good strategy, to be honest, can be where everyone goes left, just go right.
Where everyone goes right, go left. Because if you want a different life, if you want to drive Lambos when you're 25 or fly jets, well, you got to do different stuff. Nobody wants to connect with.
for nobody so step number one actually before that is get your value up bro start reading books start becoming better get in shape start working on that business model just change one thing in your mind and that is the thought process of why is this happening to me to what is this teaching me because if you just make that one shift and that took place with me your whole life will transform i noticed on your phone background you got a cross y'all mentioned god a bunch of times in this video how do you look at god and how he's impacted your life and have you always been connected to God have you always been religious or did this start to come later in your journey yeah so our parents were always religious so we group in a very religious household we always when we're young we needed to go to the church on the on the Sunday but when we were young we thought like why do we go to church what is this what is God what is Jesus we like we didn't care about it because we start caring about God and and Jesus is like once we started with with our journey When I was just, I turned 18 and I was really lost in life and I was desperate. I wanted to change. I was ashamed of myself and I didn't know where to go.
I had nobody around me, right? So my last resort was really to start praying. And I was in my bedroom, on my bed, like, God, please, I want to change my life. I want to change my life. Please give me an opportunity.
If it comes, I will grab it with both hands. And, you know, it didn't come straight away. But a couple months later, you know. know I picked up a book I started reading it and it teach me like the principles of like delayed gratification and also instant pleasures we were just talking about and it just hit me that all those times I was doing shit wrong and just row a couple weeks after that all of a sudden I found he come right on YouTube and I'll end up for me was really God like providing me with this opportunity so that was like my first instance like I I was obsessed because to me this was the gents I was not gonna let myself and got down right and then later on in my journey actually maybe still pretty recently like uh a year no two two years ago right now i went through the hardest times of my life right the darkest darkest periods ever and that was when the business was completely crashing down icon was failing i didn't know or i didn't see no future with it no more so i thought okay i i want to exit this business at the same time my business crashing down, I got hit with health issues, but like severe, you know, I couldn't get out of bed at times. I wasn't with myself.
I couldn't think straight. My body was in pain. I had shortness of breath. I had memory loss, like everything you could imagine. I had it, you know, and you have to imagine I'm dealing with that.
And the same time I have to save a failing business. And yeah, I, I can't lie. you know it was like if i look back it was just very dark a dark period and it was extremely hard for me and i tried everything i was desperate for a change fixing myself trying to save the business and yeah at one point if shit ain't changing and it's not working out yeah you you go to god you know because there was the only thing left for me and later down the line i i understood it was not why is this happening to me it was all happening for me it was happening to build me it was happening even to build my business to to shape it in a way that it was necessary for it because icon was not like long gone from where it is right now right we didn't even have systems we didn't track profits properly right so later down the line even what happened i almost exited the business i i it almost happened but it didn't work out and i didn't understand bro i was like it needs to get exited and that moment you were probably mad that it didn't sell crazy i woke up with like nightmares even like like i it needs to get exit because i i don't know i saw my life just crashing down and it didn't happen but you know what happened ruben came into the business as well at around this time period because i needed help i i i didn't have the energy myself i had health issues saving icon as well well we started working together like as real proper business partners how it should be and we completely turned icon the auto By the way, Ralph, right? We started making profits.
And I remember, bro, you have to just imagine this for yourself. The first asking price I had for Icon was $2 million. $2 million. And I can't lie to you.
At times, I would have sold it even for a million. That's how desperate I was. And it didn't work out, right? Well, fast forward about 10 months after that. We picked up back the business.
It started succeeding again. We managed to grow to a million a month again. like consistently and you know what happened my advisor who was like helping me all the time with exiting the business he called me he said Sal well what we've now got this this what the you've been praying for I'm like what's that he said we got a buyer from New York who's who has bid millions above asking price I'm like how much did he bid he said he almost bid 10 million dollars for the business because you know in the in the meantime when you saved it like like the B&L was looking so good, our assets were growing, and they just saw like the business was just exploding, right?
And that was also, that led to one of the hardest decisions of my life I had to make. Am I going to sell it or not? And, you know, I had this conversation also with Ruben, and I saw also how he had completely transformed to a new type of entrepreneur, and he said, I don't want to sell it. So we decided to keep going. And also, to me, Icon is special, bro.
I mean... I built this literally for my bedroom at my mom's house, right? Nobody else is going to take care of it the way you guys do.
But I think the biggest lesson from hearing you guys share this story is that when you pray for something, God don't bring it to you in the exact way that you asked for it. He's going to bring it to you in a way where you might not even see what he's trying to do. But those experiences that y'all went through shaped you into the man that you are today.
It made you stronger. It made you smarter. It really made your business dialed in, too. You delegates. It gives me fucking goosebumps because it means so much to me, you know.
Often God wraps like a gift in the form of a problem to make you better. It doesn't come easy. You know what the thing is? I ask for growth.
I ask God to become better, to improve my life, right? Well, next thing God did is, okay, here are some problems. He gave me difficulties to overcome to make me stronger, right? So now looking back...
at that I thank God every day every day every morning I wake up I go to bed with it throughout the day I try to pray because he has done it all for me you know After making tens of millions with your Shopify store, if you had to go back to zero and start a new store from scratch, how would you do it? I would first definitely go with general dropshipping, you know. You don't want to come up with all these crazy ideas from the get-go. to keep it very simple and that is testing a shitload of products because where do you learn the most from that's testing products because you don't want to be like working on a website for months and months and you think yourself that it's going to work but you are not the customer you don't know what the customer wants So what you want to do is just get quickly your website up.
That's also what we recommend to our students, like in one to max two weeks. And then it's just testing, testing, testing. We recommend five products a day. And then you know quickly, okay, what's working and what's not.
So that's the easiest way. And also what I want to add to that, and this is going to piss some people off probably, is... Leave your emotions out of this shit. Yeah, but I really want to start a brand and I have this idea and that.
No, bro, you just want to make money. Like nobody wants to work on a nice brand concept and make fuck all. And you have to be honest with yourself that in the beginning...
you are at zero you don't have the knowledge yet you don't know what the markets want yet you don't have proof of concept yet so you're working on an ID creating this ideation for months or months you believing in it doesn't make it good right so in the beginning exactly like Rubens said general dropshipping is extremely good because you test a lot of products you start to get a feel for what works what doesn't work how do the people respond to it you know and once you have that knowledge you can build a brand around that right because i didn't start icon because all of a sudden i had this amazing idea i started icon because i saw an opportunity in the market you know i saw that it was working for others but they were leaving a lot of opportunity and like untapped I connected the dots because a good idea often is for example a brand from Australia as a nice product but it's not yet being sold in the US or a brand from US as a nice product not being sold in Europe yet that's an opportunity an opportunity doesn't mean you need to find that one golden egg that's what people are looking for bro no no no the the world is so big everything exists already everywhere I see ideas I grab it and I try to make it better you know And that's how we still do it. That was the biggest turning point in my journey with dropshipping was when I stopped trying to come up with stuff from scratch or sell products that I thought were cool, and I just looked at the stuff that was already going viral and tried to make it a little bit better. That's when everything took off. And for you guys, when you're helping people get started, what do you think is some of the best ways to find products right now? Yeah, it's very easy nowadays.
There's one place, that's the Facebook ad library. That's what everybody nowadays uses. That's just pure gold. You can just go.
Go into there, type in type words. For example, you can type in free shipping. You can do translations of free shipping so you can see it in multiple countries.
You can type in 50% off and then you see all those ads. Right now you can literally see what's working for others, copy it, copy it or make it better. Whatever you want, right? But you don't have to find everything out yourself.
So you think most people are overcomplicating the game. You need to find what's working and really stay consistent. test as many products as you can until you find some networks and then try to build a brand off it once you get that knowledge don't jump straight into that to me it's funny because you know i i see them people who think they know it all they got them university degrees they are now building a an e-com store and i have uh guys in my program zero education or working a was working a nine to five job that are completely destroying them in all areas simply because there is a a written fucking blueprint right see what works for others copy it make it a bit better execute that's it but most people they overanalyze the shit out of this ecom game yet it's just it's just selling or buying a product for very cheap at a chinese vendor selling it for more and you are stupid in this day and age if you cannot buy a dress for for for seven bucks in china and sell it for 40 online bro i don't know but it's it's all marketing it's all perspective it's all creating good offers most of them people will be sleeping on this they are like they don't understand how big this opportunity is and someone asked me the other day like the same type of question you just asked Ruben like what would you say to the the younger you like the younger Samuel like who was just starting out I would really scream to him like bro this opportunity is 10 times bigger than than what you right now think because I thought it was just a little fun hustle drop dropshipping, make some money so I didn't have to work for a bus.
Bro, that first fucking Shopify store that later became a branded dropshipping store became a brand, and that brand is right now worth multiple eight figures. Which, to me, when I look back, mind-blowing. That's the best blueprint I ever heard when it comes to starting a store. It's a lot of the same stuff I be saying and it just goes to show that this game is still alive and well.
So if you guys are thinking of starting a store, don't hesitate man. Get it going as soon as possible. But now, it's time for the big night. It's time to wrap up this Euro summer. It's time to wrap up this Amsterdam trip with a big party.
So we're gonna change up, head to the venue right now. Let's get it. 10,000 likes for a nexus lock Here's how it's together with Jordan in Miami 10,000? Let me get 30,000 30,000? 50,000 Together, naked with Jordan in Miami That's fucking good Let's see what's next