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Burned down my slowlane political career for entrepreneurship 17 months ago

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

CareCPA

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Even if I wholesale 100% of my remaining inventory, I still take home less than half of what a 3-month contract position would give me.
Right, but the wholesale route should be repeating orders. Plus, as you add new products, you already have an established relationship with them. Current effort-to-pay ratio is high, but gets dramatically lower as time goes on and you have the relationships developed.
 
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Cat Lady

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Right, but the wholesale route should be repeating orders. .
Yes, good point. Short term brain says "but I don't have money to restock because I need that to pay myself." But long term brain says "building a business takes time and also you do have more money in savings." It just feels like quite a treadmill.

Relatedly; I just had a call with a talent agent who specializes in audio. They are interested in representing me. This could be a big deal as it outsources ad sales and affiliate (radio station) sales for me.
 

CareCPA

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Yes, good point. Short term brain says "but I don't have money to restock because I need that to pay myself." But long term brain says "building a business takes time and also you do have more money in savings." It just feels like quite a treadmill.
A data point on this: for a lot of product-heavy e-commerce businesses, the owners take very little money out and reinvest the cash back into their products as they're growing. I know you probably don't view yourself as an e-commerce business, but I would argue the concept is the same.
 

Cat Lady

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I know you probably don't view yourself as an e-commerce business, but I would argue the concept is the same.

I actually kinda of do, with a sideline in content marketing for the e-commerce!

I still need to pay myself, though. That's the issue. I need to pay rent and eat food. At 2 years into building my tiny empire, I would like to stop taking other jobs to pay the rent, but I'm still not there, and I'd really prefer not to whittle into my savings. I'm very cheap, but $600 a month is not enough to cover my expenses.
 
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WestCoast

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@Cat Lady - no one can tell you what to do here, but I try to offer one single question:

'Do you believe in what you're building?'

Deep down, does it get you fired up to get your book/message out to the people?
Does it motivate you to help spread whatever your message is?
Or is it just a business grind where you are thinking you might be able to grind elsewhere - more profitably?

If it's a calling - a true passion to tell people about your concept/idea/story - that counts for a lot.
And two years of business isn't that much, you might suffer for 5-10!

In my experience - when it's a mission - I can grind through a lot, for a long time.
If it's just a job, I'm not motivated to grind at all.

--
Related. I know you said your partner was well off/financially successful. Are you connected with other entrepreneurs in town? Are you getting together with others to discuss issues like you're going through in more detail?

I've found that to be immensely helpful to my own enterprises. Just hearing others are going through the same thing, listening to how they did it, etc. (not just friends and people giving you advice, but, just being around other business owners who share experiences?)

I know there are various ones in town - I've found a lot of value in one of them, personally.
 

Cat Lady

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@Cat Lady Related. I know you said your partner was well off/financially successful. Are you connected with other entrepreneurs in town? Are you getting together with others to discuss issues like you're going through in more detail?

I've found that to be immensely helpful to my own enterprises. Just hearing others are going through the same thing, listening to how they did it, etc.
My partner is back to the world of working for a corporate job (remotely/on the road a ton) so while he's there for me to bounce ideas off of, he's less connected to the current entrepreneur scene. His company got acquired several years ago.

Of course I believe in what I'm building and the value I provide. I get to see clients/listeners lives changed all the time. It's freaking great. Drive or passion has never in my life been something someone who has met me in person has doubted I have. But I've also rarely had a job I'm not passionate about (side effect of working in non-profits and inventing my job my whole career!)

Passion doesn't pay the bills right now. Nothing disputes the fact I need to pay my bills though and the business isn't doing it right now. I've had many non-profit projects where I've had to string together side jobs while I wait for funding to come in; I'm used to the passion vs practicality balance hustle. I'm questioning if I can balance it for 10 weeks to get more money in the door to buy myself more runway.

To answer your question about networks, I was doing more entrepreneur networking things and talking with folks especially when I had a free co-working space that was filled with entrepreneurs, but I stopped since it takes a lot of my day to head downtown just for a short meeting. Plus most of these things involve meeting during my working hours (I do shift work and radio work, can't move things around) so I haven't sought them out as much. Right now I'm stretched pretty thin and have been on the road about 1/3 of the past few months so I haven't really sought out more people time.

Mostly excuses, I should probably reconnect with more fellow entrepreneurs. I've been pretty socially isolated both personally and professionally, and been dealing with some mild depression that makes social stuff seem especially hard. Easy to "turn on" for work events but I'm knackered after 13+ hour days of it many days in a row as I have been.

Relatedly I had the 3rd interview for that contract job today and found out they're launching a new product vertical my business/me could provide content for. Now I kinda want the job.
 

Cat Lady

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I took the gig. The corporate financial education was too interesting. This should put enough in my coffers that it will force me to get my sh*t together around automation and outsourcing.

Hopefully my business will be okay in 12 weeks with only 10-15 hours a week of focus. I think it'll be fine because making business decisions in the face of scarcity sucks. Now I can reinvest what the business makes back in. I need to find a VA for social media ASAP.
 
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Cat Lady

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I guess I'm back? Update since I was last here 1.5 years ago:

I survived the Fall 2018 12-week contracting gig we left off at, but just barely. I ended up averaging about 70 hours of work a week for 12 weeks - shipping packages before work, doing media after work, and every weekend I was giving a talk, including giving a TEDx talk, about half of them flying to other cities.

-After the contracting gig, one of my listeners/friends issued a challenge to me: don’t work another job for a year. Just live off the savings you accumulated (about $8000 from that 3 month gig) and focus on your business. Which I did. From December 2018 - December 2019 I worked only for myself. I grew the business.

During 2019, I spent more than a quarter of the year out of the US. I milked the "working for myself" perks to go anywhere in the world I could justify as a work expense. I ended up renting a shitty flat within walking distance of a coworking space in London for a month to do some video collabs and some episodes about Brexit. I spent 3.5 weeks in Japan filming budget tourism content. I went to Singapore for conference, and did a book tour in Australia where I met a bunch of listeners.

Things that happened
- I opened up a monthly membership program for listeners which covers all my overhead each month including paying contractors.
- I almost bought a smaller website when it was set to shut down, but the deal fell through at the last minute.
- I had to reprint the book (I sold out of first print run) which involved another kickstarter (over $20K raised)
- I launched a few new smaller products (a planner, more sticker lines, etc)
- I moved my online commerce to shopify from woocommerce (good choice, I like the marketing integrations better)
- Got a wholesale distributor (they are great)
- Signed up with an ad network for the radio show which brings in totally passive income for me and deals with the nightmare of ad contracts.
- Launched an online community for listeners, which just celebrated 1 year and gets about 220K pageviews a month and has a fabulous vibe. I currently don't take ads for the forum - just give special perks to the members for my own business but have been invited to several ad networks, none fit
- I also expanded my weekly radio content to include more video content (something I like doing but is very time consuming) and we now do livestreams and monthly challenges as part of the membership program.
- I also personally taught 217 low-income homeless or transitional youth about personal finance, supported by our pay it fur-ward program, which customers round up their purchase to donate a book to the youth.
- My business hit its 3 year mark in November 2019.

That being said, by the end of the year, I was ~ done ~ working just for myself. I was tired of being siloed and not solving problems with a team. Having nowhere to "go" and no one to see. Making enough to live, but not quite enough to hire anyone else, and still taking home less than I would at a day job. I wanted to be saving more money and have coworkers. So I took a day job, 15 hours a week at my home radio station. Then I got offered a full-time data position for what is a lot of money for me ($50K a year) and I took that, too.

For the past month I've been running my business (I hired a lot of people to get the show out/support the online community while I'm doing this), working at the radio station 15 hours a week (I direct finance there), and working at the data day job 40 hours a week.

The schedule is flexible for all these jobs, but I've averaged 74 hours a week of on-task work for the past 5 weeks between all three, and I'm kinda dying. I want to hold out for at least another 5 months for financial reasons but not sure my body can handle it. I'm not 20 anymore!

Long term, the plan is to move me into a more full-time role at the radio station (it's a start up station so it has a lot the elements of entrepreneurship), but we need to get the station's finances to the point where that make sense. There is a lot of operational stuff there that needs work. I think my ideal situation is working at the station part-time as my social connection and element of working for a team, and growing my own business slowly as I have been doing.

But I do have a lot of money for once since I quit politics, so that's nice. Saving about 70% of my income right now, tho I'm not taking anything out of the business, but it's paying all its bills and saving for me to do some "fun stuff" (new inventory lines, a conference I'd like to go to).

2019 Gross Receipts + Sales for my business: $35,436
  • Membership Program (less processing): $4,841
  • Speaking: $3,550
  • Amazon Seller: $2,056
  • In Person Book Sales: $502.30
  • Amazon Royalties (ebook): $179
  • Kickstarter (less processing): $17,142
  • Add-ons to kickstarter: $3,820
  • Shopify Ecommerce (only one month on platform): $1,779
  • Radio Ads: $227
  • Wholesale: $647
  • Online Course (no promotion, old course that just gets an occasional sale): $360.83
Expenses:
  • Cost of Goods Sold including SHIPPING ($3,188): $12,889
  • London Coworking Space Rental: $525
  • Contract Labor: $1,591
  • Depreciation (camera/hard drives): $954
  • Software and Hosting Costs: $2,299
  • Bank/Credit Card Fees: $727
  • Amazon Fulfillment Fees (wtf): $1,021
  • Phone: $531
  • Travel Costs, including flights, train, and hotels: $1,728
  • Deductible Meal Costs (mostly travel): $612
  • Printing/Office Supplies: $829
Big areas for opportunity/growth I'm missing out on, that would like to expand on when I have time:
  • More aggressive instagram marketing for ecommerce. I do VERY well on instagram because my brand is F*cking adorable, my conversions are great. I just haven't had time to focus on it.
  • Educational video on youtube. It's an area I enjoy doing the creative part of, the niche is there, it's just time consuming. But I'm good on camera, and it is where my target audience is doing their learning and free time searching.
  • A few product expansions. We've had request for tarot decks, christmas sweaters, various things in our brand.
  • Marketing/PR simply to grow the show. We're consistently in the top 200 podcasts in our genre, but we could probably be in the top 100 with a serious push.
  • Underwriting contracts for the radio show. I'd like to get a few affiliated businesses to underwrite some of the series we're doing, as I think we're great marketing and lead generation for the right products (200,000 downloads a month, mostly liberal middle-class women and queers in english speaking countries in big cities - excellent target marketing)
  • Affiliate income. My business is part of a high-tier affiliate program, but I haven't gone through our forums and made all the links be my own affiliate links, etc. I also could be doing a better job of presenting "guides" to different budgeting software that have referral links
  • Referral portal. People want recs of financial professionals that fit the values of my brand. But ugh... it's a lot of work to vet and find and build. It hasn't been a priority.
  • Possibly another book. My book agent has some interest from one of the big 5 publishers about me expanding the cat brand outside of finance to dating, friendship, etc. I need to think about it.
Things I do not want to do:
  • any one on one work. Not my area, but I get requests all the time.
  • more paid e-courses. I think the gold rush is over in that area and it's a LOT of work and you either need a massive audience or a high price point.
 

Bekit

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Wow, this is the first time I have come across your thread. Inspiring hustle! Thanks for the transparent sharing of your process!
 

Cat Lady

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Wow, this is the first time I have come across your thread. Inspiring hustle! Thanks for the transparent sharing of your process!
Thanks! To be fair, I've been dormant on this board. I guess, getting back into working for other people, I felt like it was time to remember what I like and love about entrepreneurship.

I'm also struggling with a lot of business decisions right now, and while i love my own online community, they are my audience/customers, and sometimes I think it's not the best place to talk through things on the business side.

Maybe this board will inspire me to quit doing the two jobs + a business thing because I am ~dying~ right now! It's too much work, too many masters. I like work, but I need some downtime each day that I don't spend asleep. I'm putting in 13+ hour days every day of the week, and I have no idea how I did this when I was younger.
 
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Cat Lady

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Well, I'm having an extreme life set back due to health insurance F*ckups on healthcare.gov's, looks like I'll be on the hook for $8K or so or more if this doesn't get worked out, which is rather unfortunate when I'd rather just focus on my business.

I'm likely winding down the "working a full time job and a 15 hour a week job and running a business" thing before April 1, and I'll get back into the "reasonableish hours" territory down from 75 to 60 or so.
 

Cat Lady

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I'm really struggling to stay on top of my business right now while I'm working two other jobs, I've only grossed like $3,231 for the year thus far on the business side. The great news is I am saving a significant cushion right now working 2 other jobs, the bad news is I'm kinda dying. I can't put in these kind of hours much longer.

The big issue with my business is that I haven't put in enough energy into marketing and PR, and my production systems (contractors and automation) are breaking down when I don't have the energy to focus.

If my editor gets sick, editing falls back on me, and that is a big struggle right now as I don't have enough time to edit unless I lose sleep. I haven't been focusing on retargeting, either, which I know REALLY works, but I haven't prioritized the time to deal with it.

That being said, the online community is still doing well, the show is still getting out every week, but I need to cut the hours at the full-time job and only do the job that helps the business (the media job). It's just hard to say no to a job in a recession-proof industry that lets me work remote 90% of the week that has benefits and pays real money to rub together. Really making me be in slowlane right now.

When can I make the jump though? I make $2,400 EXTRA dollars every month I keep up this schedule, which sometimes I make during a week in my business, but only in the good weeks.
 

ChrisV

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OP is awesome. This post in and of itself is a lesson in branding.

First, the username made my laugh out loud.

Then she had these awesome little graphs that are aesthetically pleasing and actually match the vibe of the username.

0h00JUh.png

bruJFmW.png

I don't have any advice regarding the question, but I just wanted to drop that in there.
 
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Cat Lady

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Aww, thanks Chris. Branding is one of my strengths...when I use it.

This is my new show artwork:
30971
 

Cat Lady

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Well, I identified a need in the market in the midst of C0VlD-19. I have no idea how i'm gonna pull it off considering that I have two day jobs and a weekly show.

But, I decided yesterday that someone needs to make a daily podcast/radio show that explains the economic and fiscal policies around C0VlD-19 and the bear market- aimed at regular citizens. NOT aimed at economists or business people. I'm an economist and journalist who has a knack for explaining scary F*cking things in understandable ways, and I have access to everything I need for radio journalism from my house where I have to self isolate.

I'm launching thursday right now. I already have some revenue streams, but I'm bankrolling the small initial investment myself and trying to get some money into gig workers and local economy.

In the past 24 hours I have pulled together:

  • a daily audio editor/engineer
  • a daily transcriptionist
  • a copyeditor
  • a fact checker
  • someone to do sound design for the intro
  • a social media manager
and
  • 5 drafts of podcast artwork from a designer
  • a tentative person to make the “jingle”
  • two domains, a twitter, an instagram
  • and put together a 1-page website
plus
  • PR commitments from a few big names for launch day to promote (Thursday I believe)
  • a commitment to feature the show to stations on my radio syndication platform PRX (small stations like mine are struggling for content right now because of C0VlD-19 meaning content makers and DJs having to isolate and they don't have enough evergreen content)

Distribution strategy is: podcast, alexa briefings, radio segements on the station I help run, which gets me 4 signals that reach 2 states (about a total range of 150 miles and possible ears of about 2 million). I then need to reach out to radio program directors and ask them to feature it on other stations with a quick email. I could make about ~$100 a week if I get on 10 stations as a regular segment. It's feasible to get up to 50 stations within two months, which would be even more.

The show will be about 8mins,22 seconds to fit the morning timeclock that most small stations.

Omfg I have to do this and do my day jobs and also not leave the house. But also, it's important, it's a need.
 

Cat Lady

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Whoa, it's been awhile since I updated this thread or been on these forums.

I launched a new product line as a trial in October, limited run, a tea line. It did really well, my first trial sold out in less than 1 hour of the private launch to my Patreons, and within 48 hours overall.

I love being in the physical good world, as mentioned. I hate selling "courses" or something else that's ephemeral. I'm currently renting a commissary kitchen from a vegan food company and doing all the packing myself, but I am paying myself out of the business for my time as well as a profit of cuts. My first run was only 300 as a trial, which yielded about $4,000 gross, and the profit margins on tea are great, especially since they are very light to ship. I've ONLY been doing direct to consumer from my own website, and it's awkwardly under my financial media brand. I just wanted this specific product to exist, and I didn't overthink it. Might as well a trial run. Sales have been good through the holidays and I expect a January bump as well due to the type of product.

The tea flavors itself are pretty unique mix, but the marketing is the differentiator, and while supply chains have been been f*cked up lately I have been doing okay (had a coconut access issue for one flavor).

Anyway, I'm trying to decide if I have the energy to go with a co-packer and try to push this in 2021 into a bigger brand. File a trademark, get shelf placement in local stores, etc. The big issue is time.

I'm still working the full-time job I got temporarily at the start of the year, and it's been great for my savings but a full-time job, plus a 15-hour a week job for 6 months, plus running my own business (which now includes my financial media brand AND a tea brand) is really taking its toll. I'm really really really burned out. My day job is lovely and low-key but I'm in rough shape doing both right now and I don't know how much longer it is sustainable to work 55-65 hours a week. ***Even if I am saving a good $28,000 a year.***

I'm finally hiring an editor right now, I got great applications. So looking forward to stopping doing that myself.

I'm waiting for end-of-year profitsharing and January reviews, and then I will see about going part-time at work. The reasons I wanted a "non working for myself" job still remain: teamwork, a little bit more income stability. But I am turning down opportunities on the financial media side and not sure I could do more with the tea without less time at the day job.

I'm also in the process of applying for grad school to go September 2021 which is a whole nother process. The reason I would go is that it's fully-funded, only a year long, gets brand names on my resume/portfolio, and gets me a visa to live in the UK, which is hard to come by otherwise. The program is very small and specific to what I do (financial media). I mainly want to live in London and this is a way to facilitate that. We'll see if it works *shrugs*

(Oh the business has grossed over $25,000 this year with relatively low COGS this year and about 10-12 hours a week average work from me, so not bad!)
 
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