Today Is my birthday and it usually forces me to reflect and look back at where I am in life. Business/entrepreneurship has been a huge constant and I wanted to keep a chronicle of my journey and Latest Business (#3) in hopes that I can help people along the way as well as be able to look back and see how far I have come. My current goal is 1m personal income annualy.
The journey really starts 9 years before this post when I opened Business #1.
Business #1:
Gross: $600k
Profit: 25%
Employees: 5
Years Owned: 6
I was 26 and had no real vision in my life other than drinking in bars and picking up women. It was a lot of fun and provided instant gratification however I wasn't building any wealth and I couldn't continue on that path forever waiting for something to magically happen in my life. I started working for a guy and bringing in business for commission. I did that for about 6 months while learning the business. Eventually, I didn't agree with his business practices and decided to open my own shop. I had 9k to my name and put 6k down on a lease. In my first month, I had to sink or swim and it forced me to do whatever it took to survive. Over the next 6 years, I built the company up to 600k in annual gross revenue at a 25% profit margin. I had 5 employees, 150 5 star reviews on Yelp (which was a good amount back then), and the company required only a few hours a day of attention.
Before I closed business #1 I had started my second business or Business #2 with a friend of mine. It was in a different industry but everything I learned from business #1 could be applied to business #2 and my new partner already had a decade of experience. Business #2 quickly grew and we did 1m in gross revenue in our first year. At this point, we were making good money and Business #2 was much more scaleable than business #1. The landlord for business #1 was forcing me out of my location and it was extremely difficult to find a new location so I decided to close /sell the assets for Business #1 and put all my focus on Business #2 and scale.
Business #2
Gross: $2m
Profit: 14%
Employees: 8
Years Owned: 4
Business #2 and my partner taught me so many hard lessons. Mainly in cash flow, trust, communication, and knowing your craft. I will try to make this as short as possible. My partner constantly wanted to take out more money than we were making. We got into debt because of cashflow and put us in a bad situation that left us waiting on a miracle. Fortunately, we ended up getting a miracle and we survived but it was too much for me to take and not repeatable. After that I found him taking money for his own projects out of our bank accounts. I bought him out of his share of the company and took on the business myself. I did that for 3 months which was the worst of my life. Our overhead was 130k a month (which was mentally crushing me) and when my partners left we had 13k in the bank. I grew the company back to 160k in the bank account but I didn't have enough industry-specific knowledge to run the company efficiently myself. I had made the most money in my life so far at the point and was completely miserable with stress and anxiety. I'm talking about rushing out of the office at 5pm holding back tears because all the pressure was so intolerable for me. After a certain point, I had enough and realized that I didn't have to do this. There was no reason other than my own mental state that was forcing me to continue. No amount of money was worth the mental pain I was in and I'd rather make 5k a month doing something I love than 30k a month hating my life. I called my old partner up and he ended up buying the company from me. An understatement when I say it was a HUGE RELIEF.
Business #3
Gross: TBA
Profit: 41%
Employees: 2
Years Owned: 1
Business #3. Another friend of mine and I started Business #3 to coexist and get referrals from Business #2. It did about 100k annually just on the referrals from Business #2. Unfortunately, we lost all the business referrals from Business #2 when I sold it. It didn't matter because I decided that I could do Business #3 completely differently. My friend/partner handles the day-to-day (which was usually my responsibility) and I was free to do sales, grow the company, and use my experience to set systems and automation in place. Enjoying my newfound freedom I started working on business #3 part-time in March of 2020. I would do the cold calls/outreach myself about 2-3 days a week. Our clients were other businesses exactly like Business #2 so I knew their pain points and what they were looking for. Everyone I reached out to really like my background and I got a few big accounts pretty quickly. In March 2020 the company was doing 7-8k a month. By August we hit 27k cash income and in Dec hit 39k. In 2020 we grew 130%. In Jan we hit $59k gross and were operating at a 41% profit. I recently hired my first part-time sales assistant. He works 2 hours a day and handles my outreach and books me meetings. He is reaching double the amount of leads I was when I started and we're getting a lot of traction. At the moment I'm going through a rebranding to really hit home with our target clients. With the new rebranding and more meetings, it's my goal to him 1m in gross revenue in 2021. This new business is extremely scalable and provides me the freedom that I desire.
I wouldn't have gotten to this place without going through the difficult last 9 years. I made huge mistakes when jumping at shiny objects and jumping into business with the wrong people doing the wrong business models. Hard lessons that I narrowly escaped. I have plenty left to learn, especially with marking and sales, email marketing etc and I know I'll make a ton more mistakes but I'm very excited for the future. All of these lessons have made it so much easier the third time around and should enable rapid growth.
Thank you to everyone for the help along the way and I'll keep updating this month or so if it's interesting for you guys to follow the growth. I'm happy to answer any questions or help anyone I can.
The journey really starts 9 years before this post when I opened Business #1.
Business #1:
Gross: $600k
Profit: 25%
Employees: 5
Years Owned: 6
I was 26 and had no real vision in my life other than drinking in bars and picking up women. It was a lot of fun and provided instant gratification however I wasn't building any wealth and I couldn't continue on that path forever waiting for something to magically happen in my life. I started working for a guy and bringing in business for commission. I did that for about 6 months while learning the business. Eventually, I didn't agree with his business practices and decided to open my own shop. I had 9k to my name and put 6k down on a lease. In my first month, I had to sink or swim and it forced me to do whatever it took to survive. Over the next 6 years, I built the company up to 600k in annual gross revenue at a 25% profit margin. I had 5 employees, 150 5 star reviews on Yelp (which was a good amount back then), and the company required only a few hours a day of attention.
Before I closed business #1 I had started my second business or Business #2 with a friend of mine. It was in a different industry but everything I learned from business #1 could be applied to business #2 and my new partner already had a decade of experience. Business #2 quickly grew and we did 1m in gross revenue in our first year. At this point, we were making good money and Business #2 was much more scaleable than business #1. The landlord for business #1 was forcing me out of my location and it was extremely difficult to find a new location so I decided to close /sell the assets for Business #1 and put all my focus on Business #2 and scale.
Business #2
Gross: $2m
Profit: 14%
Employees: 8
Years Owned: 4
Business #2 and my partner taught me so many hard lessons. Mainly in cash flow, trust, communication, and knowing your craft. I will try to make this as short as possible. My partner constantly wanted to take out more money than we were making. We got into debt because of cashflow and put us in a bad situation that left us waiting on a miracle. Fortunately, we ended up getting a miracle and we survived but it was too much for me to take and not repeatable. After that I found him taking money for his own projects out of our bank accounts. I bought him out of his share of the company and took on the business myself. I did that for 3 months which was the worst of my life. Our overhead was 130k a month (which was mentally crushing me) and when my partners left we had 13k in the bank. I grew the company back to 160k in the bank account but I didn't have enough industry-specific knowledge to run the company efficiently myself. I had made the most money in my life so far at the point and was completely miserable with stress and anxiety. I'm talking about rushing out of the office at 5pm holding back tears because all the pressure was so intolerable for me. After a certain point, I had enough and realized that I didn't have to do this. There was no reason other than my own mental state that was forcing me to continue. No amount of money was worth the mental pain I was in and I'd rather make 5k a month doing something I love than 30k a month hating my life. I called my old partner up and he ended up buying the company from me. An understatement when I say it was a HUGE RELIEF.
Business #3
Gross: TBA
Profit: 41%
Employees: 2
Years Owned: 1
Business #3. Another friend of mine and I started Business #3 to coexist and get referrals from Business #2. It did about 100k annually just on the referrals from Business #2. Unfortunately, we lost all the business referrals from Business #2 when I sold it. It didn't matter because I decided that I could do Business #3 completely differently. My friend/partner handles the day-to-day (which was usually my responsibility) and I was free to do sales, grow the company, and use my experience to set systems and automation in place. Enjoying my newfound freedom I started working on business #3 part-time in March of 2020. I would do the cold calls/outreach myself about 2-3 days a week. Our clients were other businesses exactly like Business #2 so I knew their pain points and what they were looking for. Everyone I reached out to really like my background and I got a few big accounts pretty quickly. In March 2020 the company was doing 7-8k a month. By August we hit 27k cash income and in Dec hit 39k. In 2020 we grew 130%. In Jan we hit $59k gross and were operating at a 41% profit. I recently hired my first part-time sales assistant. He works 2 hours a day and handles my outreach and books me meetings. He is reaching double the amount of leads I was when I started and we're getting a lot of traction. At the moment I'm going through a rebranding to really hit home with our target clients. With the new rebranding and more meetings, it's my goal to him 1m in gross revenue in 2021. This new business is extremely scalable and provides me the freedom that I desire.
I wouldn't have gotten to this place without going through the difficult last 9 years. I made huge mistakes when jumping at shiny objects and jumping into business with the wrong people doing the wrong business models. Hard lessons that I narrowly escaped. I have plenty left to learn, especially with marking and sales, email marketing etc and I know I'll make a ton more mistakes but I'm very excited for the future. All of these lessons have made it so much easier the third time around and should enable rapid growth.
Thank you to everyone for the help along the way and I'll keep updating this month or so if it's interesting for you guys to follow the growth. I'm happy to answer any questions or help anyone I can.
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