Robert Nikic, CEO of Why Unified is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. In fact, he’s probably the only millionaire I’ve ever met who truly made me feel at ease. The following interview with Robert Nikic, who is the founder and CEO of Why Unified, proves that it’s still possible to do anything your heart desires with hard work and determination.
Question: You’re not originally from the United States, are you? How did your family find your way here?
Answer: “No, my family is not American. We came from the country that used to be known as Yugoslavia when I was a boy – me, my mother, my father, my grandmother, and my brother. It was a tough time with the [Baltic] war going on, and my parents just wanted my brother and me to have a better life. We got to the US with nothing but five suitcases between us. It’s hard to believe how far we’ve come since then. I am grateful for the opportunities I’ve had.”
Question: Robert, you started working at a young age, right? What was your first job?
Answer: “My first job in the United States was as a server in a restaurant inside a luxury hotel. Later, I got promoted to a banquet server, and then a little while later, I got to manage the front desk. The jobs weren’t very luxurious, but I spent most of my day around millionaires when I was a teenager, and I just couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have that much money. I was curious, so I started asking questions, and these business people were very happy to talk to me about how they made their money. I learned so much from them.”
Question: How did you get into dropshipping?
Answer: “Dropshipping was a pretty new thing when I was working in the hotels, and a lot of the business people I worked around were excited about it. They talked about how it could be incredibly profitable and how people would be millionaires in a few years because of it. I just paid attention. I saved up some money from my jobs so I could provide my family with internet access, and I bought a computer with my paycheck. I started building websites at home in my off time and researching it all I could.”
Question: Is it true that you built some of your clients’ websites while you were working at the hotel?
Answer: (Robert chuckles and smiles.) “Yes! I was teaching myself how to make websites, and some of the business people at the hotel asked me to help them, so I did! When I had some down time between customers, I worked on the computer at the desk and built websites. I was also working on my own website in the dropshipping industry by this time, and I was so excited to see it take off. They were paying me to build websites for them, and I used that money to help; fund my own dropshipping business.”
Question: Your first foray into dropshipping didn’t go very well, though.
Answer: “Not at first, no. I spent a lot of time on my website and it was really good, but I couldn’t get any traffic, you know? I couldn’t sell anything because no one was coming to my store. I didn’t know anything about marketing, so I spent every spare minute trying to learn what I could. No matter what I did, my store was just sinking. It was a scary time! I worked really hard on that store and I was determined not to let it fail. I’m glad I stuck with it, because that’s how the original Why Unified came about. It was a marketing service designed for dropshippers, and I sold it as a platform as a service. It was more popular than I thought it would be, too.
Question: Why Unified isn’t just marketing now, right? It includes everything someone needs to dropship?
Answer: “That’s right! The original platform launched in 2011, and while the marketing definitely helped, I still kept finding problems with dropshipping in general. All the suppliers were in China, none of them offered any well-known brand-name products, it took forever for my customers to get their orders, and all kinds of other issues plagued my store. It was doing better than it had, but it was still not good. After Why Unified re-launched, I hired a team of marketers and product analysts and other professionals, and we sat down to figure out what we could do to fix these issues.”
Question: And that’s how Why Unified as we know it came about?
Answer: “Yes. Every time we came up with a solution to a problem, I took that solution home and applied it to my own store. If it worked, it became part of the new Why Unified. If it didn’t, we went back to work. I knew we had something that we had to share with the world. We launched it in 2018 and it’s been incredible. Tens of thousands of people are earning profits they never thought possible.”
Question: How has life changed for you since 2018?
Answer: “When I arrived in America with nothing more than what could fit in a suitcase with my family, I never imagined I would be a millionaire, but here I am! My wife and I have been together for 13 years, we have a beautiful daughter, and I’m so happy that I can provide for them. Our Clearwater, Florida office is home to just over 30 employees who are just as dedicated to seeing Why Unified succeed as I am, and I couldn’t have gotten this far without them. We are all excited about helping more people than ever create profitable online stores in the niches they know and love. We just launched our Amazon plans that allow people to dropship on Amazon for the first time, and that’s a huge accomplishment!”
“As long as there’s something that needs innovation, we will be there looking for ways to do it. If someone is willing to put in the hard work and they’re determined enough, we want to give them the tools they need to be successful. That’s what we’re doing.”
