6 min. read
Leo Cosineau, also known as SouljaEcomChapter 01
Starting point
Leo Cosineau started buying and selling online long before he built large ecommerce stores.
As a teenager, he bought Jordans, restored them, and resold them for more. That early side hustle gave him a feel for online selling, margins, and customer demand before he ever started Shopify dropshipping.
He began Shopify dropshipping in 2017, when he was around 16 years old. Like many beginners, he was drawn in by seeing other people online making money with ecommerce. Instead of buying expensive courses, he learned through free YouTube videos and absorbed as much information as he could.
The early motivation was simple: if other people could make it work, he wanted to see whether he could too. But the path was not instant. Leo describes the journey as one that required time, belief, and repeated execution before the bigger wins arrived.
Chapter 02
Opportunity
The opportunity Leo saw was not tied to one specific product. It was the ability to use dropshipping as a fast testing model for broad-appeal products and offers.
He learned that almost anything can become a winning product if the offer, ad strategy, creative, backend, and fulfillment work together. Instead of searching only for a "golden nugget" product, Leo began thinking about the full system around the product.
For beginners, his product criteria are practical: start with products that have broad mass appeal, can reach a wide age range, and either solve a problem or connect to an emotional angle.
He also emphasizes speed. Many beginners overthink product selection for too long and never get enough data. Leo's view is that sellers should build the store properly, launch, and learn from the market.
Chapter 03
Breakthrough
Leo's first major breakthrough came near the end of 2018, when he had his first $100,000 month.
At the time, he was focused on Facebook ads. He committed to learning the platform deeply, reinvested what he had, worked a job, and kept spending on ads until the system started to click.
Once the campaigns became profitable, that momentum continued. Leo says he had $100,000 months for three months straight when he was 17.
That breakthrough gave him confidence that the model could work when the ad platform, product, offer, and backend all aligned. Over time, he scaled much further, reporting one store that generated more than $7 million in 365 days and broader eight-figure ecommerce results.
Chapter 04
Supplier and product lessons
Leo's supplier lesson is direct: dropshipping breaks down when fulfillment cannot keep up.
As stores scale, logistics become one of the biggest risks. Slow shipping, weak fulfillment, poor communication, chargebacks, payment processor issues, and overloaded customer service can quickly turn a promising product into an operational problem.
Leo strongly recommends moving beyond basic AliExpress-style fulfillment once a store has traction. His view is that sellers need a real supplier, private agent, or bulk-buying setup if they want to scale seriously.
He also recommends moving into bulk buying once a seller has found a proven winner. For Leo, the transition does not need to start with a massive inventory order. Once a store reaches around $20,000–$30,000 a month, he suggests buying a small quantity, such as 50 or 100 units, to get a foot in the door.
The supplier lesson is not just about speed. It is about protecting the business from the operational problems that appear when sales increase faster than fulfillment systems can handle them.
Chapter 05
Marketing and growth
Leo's marketing approach is built around offers, backend systems, and platform-specific execution.
He says many beginners think scaling means simply increasing ad spend. In his experience, that is when problems start. Stores need to be prepared like real businesses before aggressive scaling: payment processing, supplier readiness, customer service, funnels, upsells, SMS retargeting, email flows, and backend apps all need to be in place.
He compares dropshipping to an orchestra: if one instrument is off, the whole song can suffer. A product may have demand, but if the offer is weak, the ad creative is poor, the backend is missing, or fulfillment cannot keep up, the store can still fail.
Leo has used Facebook ads and later shifted heavily into TikTok ads. For TikTok, he sees SMS as especially important because users are already on their phones. Email still matters, but the channel mix depends on the platform and audience.
For beginners, Leo recommends keeping the first tests lower-ticket and controlled. Smaller ad budgets can produce more data without exposing the seller to large losses too quickly. His emphasis is not on spending more for the sake of scale, but on building an offer and backend that can support growth.
Chapter 06
Result
Leo reports scaling to eight figures in ecommerce, including one store that generated more than $7 million in 365 days.
He also describes million-dollar months, million-dollar weeks, and periods of $100,000–$200,000 per week in sales. Leo is careful to separate revenue from profit, saying those sales numbers are gross business revenue and that he makes about 20% of that in profit.
The result is not only financial. Leo says the biggest outcome after reaching those levels is confidence: knowing he can enter a business, execute, and build a system that works.
His path also changed the way he thinks about scaling. Earlier in his journey, he scaled too fast and learned how quickly problems can appear. Now, he prefers more gradual, controlled growth with the right backend, supplier, customer service, and fulfillment structure in place before pushing volume harder.
Chapter 07
Where SaleHoo fits
Leo's story shows why supplier access becomes more important after a dropshipping store starts getting traction.
He recommends buying in bulk once sellers have a proven winner and enough sales volume to justify the next step. That transition is exactly where many dropshippers get stuck: they know a product can sell, but they still need reliable sourcing, faster fulfillment, and better supplier options to scale without breaking the customer experience.
Leo speaks positively about SaleHoo because it supports that move from beginner dropshipping into the next stage of ecommerce.
For sellers following a similar path, SaleHoo fits into the supplier-research and scaling stage. It can help sellers compare vetted suppliers, explore dropship and wholesale options, and think beyond the first few sales toward a more durable backend.
The takeaway is simple: test lean, but prepare to scale properly. Once a product starts working, supplier quality and fulfillment systems become part of the growth strategy.
