After seven years, nothing I do in business is profitable and I'm broke

[savefox]

you should have started a carpet cleaning business 7 years ago. You'd be making 200k-300k per year by now!

 

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[Saad Khan]

@capybro why don't you tell us about your failures in detail on this thread? We'd be able to analyze shortcomings and mistakes for you. Plus, its free, personalized learning.

 

[Andy Black]

@capybro

"Money is proof you helped your fellow man." (MJ DeMarco)

Go help someone, this week.

Help someone for free if you need to get the ball rolling.

Hold doors open for people. Offer to help someone carry their shopping to their car. Reply to someone's thread and thank them (even thanking people can help them). Get that helping muscle working.

Find something people pay to get help with. Maybe start getting paid to help from the get go. Maybe help for free till you get good at it and start getting referrals.

The first row or two of links in my signature are for people in your situation. Some threads work on your mindset. Some are immediately actionable.

 

[P789]

It has been seven years in my entrepreneurial journey and nothing I do makes money.

All I do is just keep on losing my own money and other peoples money.

It doesn't matter how much I test or how long I work on a business, everything I touch loses money.

A friend partnered with me to run Tiktok ads where he funds it and I run the ads and I lost all his money.

Another friend is doing the same but with Facebook and I'm currently in the process of losing his money too - every single campaign I launch fails.

An app I just launched on Kickstarter completely failed and got nowhere near its goal.

Every ecommerce store I try, every affiliate marketing campaign, every Facebook ad or Google ad, every freelance gig or cold outreach attempt, every app, literally everything I touch is unprofitable.

It's been seven years and I'm no closer to my "early retirement" as I was when I started.

The only successes I've had was early on when friends let me copy their winning campaigns. When I tried running other campaigns on my own I just burned money. Now I only make a living from one copywriting client and haven't increased my income for a very long time.

A business friend of mine recently told me that I should just start looking at careers that pay six figures.

I don't understand why I suck so bad at business, I don't understand why nothing I do works.

Are some people just not meant for entrepreneurship?

About the application, my guess is that your app is smelling selfishness when it comes to how great the app is. Yes, the app is great, but is the app great for other people you are targeting?

The same goes with your Affiliate Marketing, FB and Google ads, freelance gig you have no control. Because you are addressing the problem that does not exist i.e. problems that the market thinks that they had.

Unless you know about what the market really needs through domain experience or a simple browsing through Social Media, you will never make whatever you wanted to make.

 

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[heavy_industry]

But then you realize the lower deck is filling up with water slowly... so there must be a small hole somewhere. Somewhere...

You know there's a leak but you don't mind it. It's not big enough to enter your worry zone.

A few days passed. Water fills up the lower decks. Instead of looking for the hole and plugging it up yourself... you decide to spend your time asking "Why is my ship sinking? Wasn't the hole super small? I just don't know what I should do". The other option is to get some wood, and nails, then walk around the lower deck and find the leak, plug it up, and scoop the excess water out. It hurts to admit you have made mistakes and learn from them.

So you just sit asking yourself "Why is the ship sinking".

Perfect analogy of bad habits and what they slowly do to your life over time.

If your ship has holes in it, the ship is F*ckING SINKING.

How quickly it is going to sink depends on the number and size of the holes.

But any hole, no matter how small, will cause water to enter the boat, which will eventually sink it. It may be 6 months, it may be 10 years, but the PAYDAY IS COMING.


Stop drinking, stop smoking, stop eating garbage, stop scrolling on social media, stop doing all the stupid shit that you know you perfectly well that you should not be doing.

It doesn't matter how smart you think you are, it doesn't matter how fast the ship is going. If it has holes in it, it is F*cking sinking.

Fix all the holes before it's too late.

The ocean floor is already filled with shipwrecks, and life offers no refunds.

 

[MRiabov]

Your problem dude is that you don’t have a process for identifying your assumptions, testing them and generating learning from the market.

And that’s basically because your vision starts and ends with money.

Wanting to make money is great, there’s no one who wants more money than I do.

The trouble is that you’re completely blinded by money, to such an extent that you don’t understand the PROCESS of generating it.

It’s like playing tennis and being 100% focused on winning, and 0% focused on how you play and improving.

So you need a big vision — what needed change do you want to bring to the marketplace. From that big vision, a strategy will emerge. That strategy will be supported by a series of assumptions about the market. You need to build a product/marketing that will TEST those assumptions as fast as possible.

Because guess what, if your assumptions are wrong, your strategy won’t get you to the promise land even with perfect execution! So you need to test them first and adjust.

Failure is actually a great thing, it’s how you learn and adjust. But what happens is that you have no vision, and therefore when your strategy fails, as it will inevitably, you give up, and onto the next idea.

Entrepreneurship doesn’t work like that. Only in the lottery do you buy another ticket if your previous one didn’t work. In entrepreneurship you iterate on what you did before.

There is a very powerful technique described in a book "Can't Hurt Me" - one of the books I honor the most, and it is an "After-Action Report" (AAR).

Essentially, it is a forensics tool used in US military which every single soldier writes after a certain event - be that good or bad.

It is a thing you do yourself, and it asks you 2 questions:
1. What went well? - "there are always plenty of things that go well. Be generous with yourself".
2. What could be fixed? - "now, what went wrong and what could be fixed?". Get real with yourself here. You've f*cked up and now you need to go (and write out longhand!) all the things about your journey
And then schedule the reparation steps as soon as possible.

For me these steps allowed to uncover very, very powerful information about me and my actions. You gotta try it.
And I also highly recommend the book.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Sounds more to me like he tried to become a famous musician by plagiarising popular songs after everyone was already sick of listening to them.

Very poignant and worth repeating.

Why are so many people, even those I know personally, or certain users on this forum, able to make millions and retire with ecommerce, dropshipping and affiliate marketing but not others?

I'd answer you, but I doubt you would understand my answer in one paragraph. I wrote 300,000 words over 15 years and if you read any of that, you clearly didn't comprehend it. The fact that you continue to drone on about "affiliate marketing" and "dropshipping" tells me you are utterly clueless.

Reminds me of the people who come here and want to "trade forex" and dabble in "crypto" after reading my work. WTF? What book did you read? It certainly wasn't mine.

I wish you luck repeating the same patterns and the same focus (which appears to be a distribution focus, not a product focus) while getting the same results. While I don't believe in luck, you will need it as that is the only lever you have available to you.

Or, you can reflect.

And change.

 

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[mabeor03]

Maybe you could tell us about exactly what did you do and what are your projects about? You seem too scared of showing your project ideas, like if someone was going to stole them. Remember, the ideas are not successful, the execution is what makes them successful

 

[biophase]

Why are the businesses where I do go out of my way to provide value (copywriting, email marketing, apps) not growing even though providing value should make them work?

Did you really provide them value? If you did, they would still be hiring you. Businesses will pay for things that bring value to them.

Why are so many people, even those I know personally, or certain users on this forum, able to make millions and retire with ecommerce, dropshipping and affiliate marketing but not others?

Because they are doing something different than the ones that fail. I don't know how you can't see that.

We both sell the exact same thing. But our websites are different. Even when you run the exact same ad, the user experiences something different when they go to both websites.

The obvious answer is that one website convinced a buyer to buy and the other one did not. It's up to you to figure that out. That's what we do.

So in your previous failure, what was the difference between your ads? If they were the same, what was the difference between your websites?

 

[biophase]

An app I just launched on Kickstarter completely failed and got nowhere near its goal.

Care to share a link so we can see it? How did you launch it? What did you do to drive traffic to your campaign?

Every ecommerce store I try,

Care to give us an example of one of the stores you had? We can't help without seeing any data. What were you selling? Did you dropship or stock inventory? Was it branded?

The only successes I've had was early on when friends let me copy their winning campaigns.

What was it about your friend's campaign that was better than yours? Did you do any analysis?

 

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[jclean]

as the owner of a window cleaning company I am a bit biased but nowadays everyone wants to earn easy money from home and preferably as quickly as possible. there are certainly people who succeed but most fail.

admittedly a service company such as window washing, lawn care, carpet cleaning is not very cool or sexy but if you do it right there is money to be made.

I looked it up in year 7 we had a turnover of 557,000 euros.

now in year 10 we will achieve a turnover of +- 1million.

after 10 years the most important thing is all that I have learned and especially what I have learned to apply!

you're going to have to change something drastic. and don't try to look too far and don't mirror yourself to those youtube wannabees with their dropshipping courses if you have to believe those numbers you would get discouraged for less.

you have already received a lot of good advice here.

get shit done and keep it simple

 

[Parks]

as the owner of a window cleaning company I am a bit biased but nowadays everyone wants to earn easy money from home and preferably as quickly as possible. there are certainly people who succeed but most fail.

admittedly a service company such as window washing, lawn care, carpet cleaning is not very cool or sexy but if you do it right there is money to be made.

I looked it up in year 7 we had a turnover of 557,000 euros.

now in year 10 we will achieve a turnover of +- 1million.

after 10 years the most important thing is all that I have learned and especially what I have learned to apply!

you're going to have to change something drastic. and don't try to look too far and don't mirror yourself to those youtube wannabees with their dropshipping courses if you have to believe those numbers you would get discouraged for less.

you have already received a lot of good advice here.

get shit done and keep it simple

You need to make a thread about your business man! Sounds like you could drop tons of info everyone could benefit from! Will you be scaling beyond one location?

 

[BellaPippin]

DeMarcolin. Where the Fastlaners live.

 

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[Matt Lee]

My mistake. I meant DeMarcoland. I was thinking of Vinland when I was writing. How Vikings would sail across the sea to explore the place.

But instead of sounding it out in my head as
Vin-land,
my mind short-circuited and went
Vin-lin.

DeMarcolin was the result of many late nights and too much coffee...

 

[Ismo29]

Perfect analogy of bad habits and what they slowly do to your life over time.

If your ship has holes in it, the ship is F*ckING SINKING.

How quickly it is going to sink depends on the number and size of the holes.

But any hole, no matter how small, will cause water to enter the boat, which will eventually sink it. It may be 6 months, it may be 10 years, but the PAYDAY IS COMING.


Stop drinking, stop smoking, stop eating garbage, stop scrolling on social media, stop doing all the stupid shit that you know you perfectly well that you should not be doing.

It doesn't matter how smart you think you are, it doesn't matter how fast the ship is going. If it has holes in it, it is F*cking sinking.

Fix all the holes before it's too late.

The ocean floor is already filled with shipwrecks, and life offers no refunds.

A guy once said something that stuck with me:

"People don't tend to be tortured by the full array of human flaws over the course of their lives. Instead, they spend their entire lives being tortured by the same one or two flaws"

I've found this to be very true. You'll often find that whatever flaw someone has was there a year ago, two years ago, ten years ago.

The sinking ship analogy paints this picture very clearly. Thanks @Matt Lee

This whole thread is full of gems honestly.

 

[Ismo29]

OP is convinced that his products/services provide value in spite of what the actual data says. What is the reason for this?

 

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[monnffffiiiiiii]

If you're not understanding why you're failing, you're not learning.

If you're not learning, you're not progressing. You haven't been failing for seven years...

You've been failing for 7*1 year.

I didn't get the impression reading your post that you have any particular skill or that you tried to solve any particular problem.

Maybe start there?

 

[WJK]

I get that my situation could be funny, but saying "I have some ideas why you haven't made any money money money" doesn't give me any better direction to go in than before I started this thread.

Why are the businesses where I do go out of my way to provide value (copywriting, email marketing, apps) not growing even though providing value should make them work?

Why are so many people, even those I know personally, or certain users on this forum, able to make millions and retire with ecommerce, dropshipping and affiliate marketing but not others?

Why was I able to have a handful of successes in those same industries but then never again?

I'm willing to accept any type of criticism, pivot and do whatever it takes, but at this point I would benefit most from actionable advice specific to my situation

You are looking for the magic bullet. I hate to rain on your parade, but no one can give you, or disclose to you, that magic secret. It's specifically personal rather than chasing external shiny objects. It comes from the internal grit to live through, learn from, and apply the knowledge gained through the business learning curve. And then there's the timing and influences of Lady Luck. Things sometimes work for a while and then they don't work. OK. Time to tweak the program or move on. Next!

 

[Gordon]

I get that my situation could be funny, but saying "I have some ideas why you haven't made any money money money" doesn't give me any better direction to go in than before I started this thread.

Why are the businesses where I do go out of my way to provide value (copywriting, email marketing, apps) not growing even though providing value should make them work?

Why are so many people, even those I know personally, or certain users on this forum, able to make millions and retire with ecommerce, dropshipping and affiliate marketing but not others?

Why was I able to have a handful of successes in those same industries but then never again?

I'm willing to accept any type of criticism, pivot and do whatever it takes, but at this point I would benefit most from actionable advice specific to my situation

Actionable advice, specific to YOUR situation. Something you can DO today. Right now. Get off the Internet and stay off for one week.

Although I already know this is IMPOSSIBLE for you. You've told us so much about yourself.

But, if you were to manage a week offline, then when you come back, DO this; QUIT. You are not cut out for it, and that's just the plain hard truth. Doesn't mean you can't be successful doing something else, although you have a lot of mind problems to overcome. And also, PLEASE, quit calling yourself a copywriter. Time to get real.

So, ACTION STEPS for you, 1) Go offline for week 2) Quit your nonsense

But, I could be wrong, I once was.

 

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[Katherine]

NOTABLE! - IDEA - EXECUTION - Go Fastlane with ChatGPT: Full Guide + Free Prompts (Zero Excuses to Succeed)

You probably have heard this "If you wanna become millionaire, find problems, and create solutions to those problems" But we need to be realistic here, this is "Easier said than done", if was easy to do, everyone would be reading this on their own private jet flying to Dubai. So, is this a...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

Have you read this?

 

[CrimsonNight]

It has been seven years in my entrepreneurial journey and nothing I do makes money.

All I do is just keep on losing my own money and other peoples money.

It doesn't matter how much I test or how long I work on a business, everything I touch loses money.

A friend partnered with me to run Tiktok ads where he funds it and I run the ads and I lost all his money.

Another friend is doing the same but with Facebook and I'm currently in the process of losing his money too - every single campaign I launch fails.

An app I just launched on Kickstarter completely failed and got nowhere near its goal.

Every ecommerce store I try, every affiliate marketing campaign, every Facebook ad or Google ad, every freelance gig or cold outreach attempt, every app, literally everything I touch is unprofitable.

It's been seven years and I'm no closer to my "early retirement" as I was when I started.

The only successes I've had was early on when friends let me copy their winning campaigns. When I tried running other campaigns on my own I just burned money. Now I only make a living from one copywriting client and haven't increased my income for a very long time.

A business friend of mine recently told me that I should just start looking at careers that pay six figures.

I don't understand why I suck so bad at business, I don't understand why nothing I do works.

Are some people just not meant for entrepreneurship?

Could you please list your workflow when launching the Ads campaign? Maybe we can provide some help there. For example, how do you test the ads? Ex: Creative (image/video), Headline, Texts, Targeting, etc

And the most important thing would be, do your two friends have success selling whatever product/service outside of fb/TikTok ads? We need more details, like the budget per day, what kind of product it is, b2c or b2b, and the price of it.

As I said, we need more details.

Tbh, I can see why other members are being harsh but let's be real, we are all in this for the money. At least in the beginning. A starving man will dropship stuff from China if he needs to make money, even if it doesn't have any "value".

 

[WJK]

I get that my situation could be funny, but saying "I have some ideas why you haven't made any money money money" doesn't give me any better direction to go in than before I started this thread.

Why are the businesses where I do go out of my way to provide value (copywriting, email marketing, apps) not growing even though providing value should make them work?

Why are so many people, even those I know personally, or certain users on this forum, able to make millions and retire with ecommerce, dropshipping and affiliate marketing but not others?

Why was I able to have a handful of successes in those same industries but then never again?

I'm willing to accept any type of criticism, pivot and do whatever it takes, but at this point I would benefit most from actionable advice specific to my situation

I am listening to "The Hero's Journey" by Joseph Campbell and I thought about your thread. He talks about running races when he was a young man in the sport of track. He talks about the difference between the intent to run a race and the intent to win a race. He talks about how the intent to win takes the magic out of the race and you defeat yourself. Nothing you do works. Applying that concept to your business experiences, I am asserting that by adopting this truism, you might want to think about this: your focus on the money, and how it's gonna change your life, you've stolen the magic before you even start. You might want to concentrate on the business rather than the results. I have to come to the understanding that when you are seeking money rather than focusing on the work, you have dollar signs in your eyes. That aura repels people like the stench of a skunk.

 

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[Oso]

I sold a marketing agency for 6 figures after having been open for 8 months. I didn't have a USP. I wasn't offering anything so crazy that "people would feel stupid for saying no." My services were the same services you can find with the other 6 billion agencies, and in many cases, I was offering far fewer services than my competition. How did my agency blow up so fast then?

1) Produced good (or better) results
2) Provided topnotch, phenomenal, hold-your-dick-while-you-pee-and-your-balls-while-you-cough customer support

That's all I did. And to be honest with you, even after 5 years of web developer experience, countless app and website projects, I believe my WordPress websites are just "slightly above average." There are probably people on this forum that have been in web design for 3 weeks and can make better websites than I can. Shit happens.

Your thread consists of some of the most well-known and respected members of this forum. People that have been around for years, and have achieved amazing things. I may not be the biggest fan of some of these people, but the fact is, their results don't lie.

If I were you, I'd stop looking for reasons to generate another excuse and start taking notes. Because based on what we've seen so far, it looks like it's the slowlane or the lottery for you.

Cheers.

 

[constant]

1) Produced good (or better) results

Congratulations on your success.

Did you do all the fulfillment yourself or did you use freelancers?

Also did you target a specific niche or was it more of a general marketing agency?

 

[Oso]

Congratulations on your success.

Did you do all the fulfillment yourself or did you use freelancers?

Also did you target a specific niche or was it more of a general marketing agency?

Thank you. Yes, when we launched, I had a team of 5 sales people that essentially handled all of my lead generation, which allowed me to focus on handling all of the actual developer work. I went into the business knowing I needed to hire a developer the instant we could, and about 2 months in, I was able to do just that. She ended up being the first person I hired on that was salaried.

I was a bit more broad in my approach as I have experience in a plethora of industries. But yes, we still had specific niches/personas outlined that we were primarily targeting, and I still believe in general, people/agencies should aim to find a niche or 3.

 

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[Vasudev Soni]

It has been seven years in my entrepreneurial journey and nothing I do makes money.

All I do is just keep on losing my own money and other peoples money.

It doesn't matter how much I test or how long I work on a business, everything I touch loses money.

A friend partnered with me to run Tiktok ads where he funds it and I run the ads and I lost all his money.

Another friend is doing the same but with Facebook and I'm currently in the process of losing his money too - every single campaign I launch fails.

An app I just launched on Kickstarter completely failed and got nowhere near its goal.

Every ecommerce store I try, every affiliate marketing campaign, every Facebook ad or Google ad, every freelance gig or cold outreach attempt, every app, literally everything I touch is unprofitable.

It's been seven years and I'm no closer to my "early retirement" as I was when I started.

The only successes I've had was early on when friends let me copy their winning campaigns. When I tried running other campaigns on my own I just burned money. Now I only make a living from one copywriting client and haven't increased my income for a very long time.

A business friend of mine recently told me that I should just start looking at careers that pay six figures.

I don't understand why I suck so bad at business, I don't understand why nothing I do works.

Are some people just not meant for entrepreneurship?

STOP chasing money, and doing many things at a time. Instead, start providing some real value to your customers.

Here is a blueprint of starting and running a successful business:

1. Find out a niche audience which is not too small and not too big. Just the right size.

2. Identify a problem that majority of people in your niche audience is facing. You can do this by joining communities, forums and talking to them.

3. Find a solution to their problem. This might be an app, website, a service or a product. Anything that solves their problem will be easy to sell. Make sure the CENTS principle is followed when finding out a solution.

4. Sell the solution to them. Use targeted ads to target people only within your niche audience, it will improve your chances of selling.

5. Build good customer relationships. Talk to them, build email lists and make them feel good about your product/service and they will become your loyal customers for lifetime.

Hope this helps you out.

 

[Matt Sun]

Yesterday I got a door knock, a client came and I'm somewhat grumpy had to interrupt my study and go out to give her 3 units of my product from which I got $40 bucks profit, and then came back inside to keep study programing.

This is a business I have pretty much abandoned for 1 year now since is local based and my country is in hyper inflation.

Yet, with business in auto pilot people come to my door and want to give me money. Why ? Because my product works, because it improves their lives. I saw a need causing pain and I saw a way to help, and as a result they come and put money on my hand. I do no marketing almost besides a IG story here and there.

I really don't think it's that much more complicated than that. By your posts It doesn't sound that your focus is helping somebody, at all, but rather money chasing to help yourself.

 

[Grazz]

It has been seven years in my entrepreneurial journey and nothing I do makes money.

All I do is just keep on losing my own money and other peoples money.

It doesn't matter how much I test or how long I work on a business, everything I touch loses money.

A friend partnered with me to run Tiktok ads where he funds it and I run the ads and I lost all his money.

Another friend is doing the same but with Facebook and I'm currently in the process of losing his money too - every single campaign I launch fails.

An app I just launched on Kickstarter completely failed and got nowhere near its goal.

Every ecommerce store I try, every affiliate marketing campaign, every Facebook ad or Google ad, every freelance gig or cold outreach attempt, every app, literally everything I touch is unprofitable.

It's been seven years and I'm no closer to my "early retirement" as I was when I started.

The only successes I've had was early on when friends let me copy their winning campaigns. When I tried running other campaigns on my own I just burned money. Now I only make a living from one copywriting client and haven't increased my income for a very long time.

A business friend of mine recently told me that I should just start looking at careers that pay six figures.

I don't understand why I suck so bad at business, I don't understand why nothing I do works.

Are some people just not meant for entrepreneurship?

Maybe you can start making money by sharing what not to do.
Mention the thought process and the actions you took. If others are thinking the same way or using the same tactics, they know they should do the opposite.
You could market it as some kind of reverse thinking.
Not a plan on what to, just what not to do.

 

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[Kevin88660]

I think business and entrepreneurship is a field where you shouldn't judge someone's progress purely by their result.

If you hustle and try a prototype for 157th time, and it works and gets sold like crazy, you don't become super smart or super hardworking overnight.

We will be underestimating the grit and skills that are developed over the entire process.

 

[Two Dog]

I'm willing to accept any type of criticism, pivot and do whatever it takes, but at this point I would benefit most from actionable advice specific to my situation

Actually, no criticism at all from me.

If you still have interest in succeeding after seven years of failure, you already own one of the most important skills. lt's "not giving up" aka tenacity, grit, fall down six times, get up seven, tenacity. I'm not at all convinced in can be taught or even learned. That's a tough one in the "anyone can be a entrepreneur" conversation.

All the other suggestions above are legit and necessary. However, I think the cardinal sin here is lack of outside feedback. I'm thinking you have never asked anyone for advice about WTF is wrong and what you could do differently. If you're only getting feedback from a bunch of random people every seven years, expect the next seven years to look pretty much the same as the past seven.