Andy Jenkins and Audrey Kerwood are successful veteran filmmakers living in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. They’ve been in the film business for 14 grueling years in just about every capacity you can imagine. About two years ago, they decided they needed to have an alternate way of making a living.

They didn’t want to quit the film business, just have the ability to choose the jobs they wanted and build something of their own that would give them a life beyond the film industry. The results of an interview with Andy and Audrey are shared with Home Business Magazine to describe how they did it.

Question (Q): What made you want to start your own home business?

Andy Jenkins and Audrey Kerwood (AJ): Audrey and I had very interesting, financially rewarding careers in the movie and TV business. If you’ve ever had any kind of experience in this field, you will be able to relate to how “All Consuming” this sort of career path is.

As a matter of routine, film production days are usually scheduled for 12 hours, and it’s common to see a 16-hour day during the course of a larger project. That kind of schedule left us little time to do anything but work, and when we were not working, we were out pounding the pavement, looking for the next project.

The plain and simple truth was we wanted our lives back. We wanted both the financial and scheduling flexibilities to take the best projects and leave the dreck untouched. I remember, very clearly, the day we decided to give it a go. We sat across one another at the kitchen table just fantasizing about what it would be like to have the time to learn the guitar, or to re-do a room in the house. And that’s how the dream began. We had had enough.

Q: So how did you get started?

AJ: The first month of our plan was pure research. We decided that the Internet, specifically, some form of e-commerce was the business strategy we would pursue. So, after some very focused web surfing, email correspondence, and phone conversations, we came to an unnerving realization:

The Internet is full of bad “how so start your own business” information.

So our development phase was, in a word, awful. So much so that we devised a back up plan involving a franchise opportunity that would have set us back around $40,000. You have to understand, we were serious about this -- so serious, that we were prepared to invest heavily to make it work. Fortunately for us, it never came to that.

My grandmother owns a successful antique shop in Michigan. I got on the phone with her one day and picked her brain for hours. We talked about merchandising, wholesalers, advertising, overhead –- just about every conceivable consideration that a brick and mortar store would need to make before it could open its doors.

I asked my grandmother what I thought was the most important question of the bunch, “Meema, what should we sell?” She said, “Andy, the minute you work that out, give me a shout because I’d love to know! Anyway, just go ahead and find some drop shippers first and then it won’t matter. You can find out if that product is a hot seller before you spend any money on it.”

Drop shipper? What’s a drop shipper?

Meema explained what a drop shipper was 2 times. The second time, I had her on the speakerphone with Audrey listening in and my personal recorder rolling.

We knew that day that drop shipping was the answer to our start-up problems.

Q: So what did she mean by “drop shipping”?

AJ: Drop shipping is as old as the catalogue business. It’s been around forever. Simply put, it is the process whereby a manufacturer or wholesaler drop ships (delivers) a product directly to a customer who ordered the product from a website, catalogue, or some other kind of information source. The great thing for the website owner is that he or she never has to buy inventory of the product or stock products in a physical space.

Q: So how did you find out more about drop shipping?

AJ: Started with Google. I quickly came across a site called The Dropship Source Directory . Of all the sites, I found this one to be the most intriguing.

Q: What was different about the site?

AJ: Well, that’s a funny story. You see, I need to refer you back to the beginning of the story where I discovered that the Internet is full of a lot of bad information. At this point, Audrey and I had already spent several thousand dollars on truly terrible “how to make money on the Internet” systems. So, we had adopted a standard policy of “You need to prove you’re legitimate before we give you a dime."

Frankly, I think Chris Malta [Drop Ship Source Directory creator] has been through the same Internet meat grinder that we have. The Drop Ship Source Directory site was not the typical, over-hyped sales site that we were accustomed to. But what really got our credit card out was his willingness to share information before we spent any money. There is a free download on the site called “Starting Your Internet Business Right” that we took advantage of. It’s an e-book that gives you a tremendous guide to using drop shippers and points out many of the pitfalls and scams one might encounter. About 3 hours later, we were members of the Drop Ship Source Directory.

Q: What did you do next?

AJ: Between my Grandmother’s revelation about drop shipping and the drop shippers in Chris’ database, we started building an e-commerce store based solely on the Drop Shipping Business Model. Based on Chris’ advice, we chose Yahoo! Stores as our e-commerce provider.

Just as an interesting aside, Chris’ material helped us develop our own sense of value judgment when it came to evaluating other niche Internet marketing information. So, as we began to educate ourselves about e-commerce and Internet marketing, we were always able to refer to Chris for his opinions and guidance.

My background in Direct Response Television taught me immediately that there is only one way to successfully sell a product to a consumer –- you need to create an environment where a transaction of value can take place. That “Old School” philosophy, coupled with Chris’ Internet marketing savvy, helped us evaluate other forms of Internet marketing information with great accuracy.

Q: What were the results?

AJ: Life Changing. I know that sounds trite, but it’s true. Audrey and I have achieved financial independence. If we stopped making money tomorrow, we would have just about 2 years before we would have to go back to work because we couldn’t pay our bills.

In the first 12 months, we created several e-commerce stores that generated $110,000 in revenue, and 95% of our products are drop shipped –- meaning we have virtually no inventory, which means virtually no overhead, other than our e-commerce Store fees and our advertising. Audrey and I comprise 100% of The A Squared Artifacts, LLC. work force.

We are now at a point where we can field just about any product that has a reasonable amount of demand, all with very little financial risk. Because we rarely own inventory, if a particular type of product is too competitive or sells poorly, we close the store and go searching for a drop shipper for our next product line. That’s the beauty of e-commerce.

Q: How do you build on your initial success?

AJ: We did exactly what Chris Malta did –- we decided to share our information and published our own “how to” e-commerce manual. It’s called “Yahoo! Store Profits, A Step-By-Step” System.

We learned early on that making money on the Internet really depends on 2 things:

1) Marketing to a niche audience.

2) Creating an environment where a transaction of value can take place.

The rest of your success is just a numbers game.

So, we bottled our formula, wrote a 400 + page set of instruction manuals, and set them for sale on the Internet. The results have been extraordinary. We just recently got a testimonial from one couple that opened a Yahoo! Store using drop shippers –- that store did $40,000 worth of business in September.

Q: So how has your home business been fruitful?

AJ: Well, for starters, we quit our jobs. We bought two kittens. We started playing the guitar AND the bass. We installed a wireless network in our home, bought two laptops with 17-inch wide screens, and we wander around most of the day pretending to work so our friends and family don’t get too jealous!

I still keep my fingers in the movie business, and in fact, I just edited a feature film. But I did it because I wanted to do it. Not because I needed to. Most of our business runs on autopilot (Technology Rocks!), so we can pick and choose what we want to do and where we want to do it.

Q: Any advice to other home business entrepreneurs?

Keep at it and really do your home work! In an internet filled with 30 million web pages, where scams, crooks, and thieves are constantly trying to separate you from your money, there are genuine USABLE resources available. We found the business model of drop shipping to be very successful for us, and that is due in large part to the quality of the resource we found.