Come and watch me make FU money: Over $100K/mo now.

[MythOfSisyphus]

Great update!
Wow, if your doing 195k in average month currently, then your November/December monthly sales will likely be way beyond 200k, probably closer to 250k than 200k per month.
FU money edging closer and closer.

Really inspiring thread, had to read it all over again just now.
Thumbs up!!

Thanks.

Growth seems to have slowed a little this year (to be expected at the 4 year mark) so 250k might be a stretch but it's definitely possible based on the kind of jumps around November in previous years.

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

We ended up hiring a developer/designer from Under Armor for our gym product, and it came out great, but for the cost (3.6k for a few hours of work and 3 or 4 zoom meetings for feedback/input), I wonder if we could have done better (or spent less I mean)...

You possibly could have but if you're happy with the design and it's a one off cost then I don't think that's too bad. Much better than paying a lot for something that didn't come out so great.

When launching a new product or SKU, I'm assuming you have an email list that you blast? How else do you get it to gain traction at launch? Do you do much with buying Amazon reviews or running FB traffic to AMZ to get it to rank, etc? Or are you only on your own ecom store?

Yes, we have an email list of around 20,000 now and for most products we do a launch email. For smaller products we usually just do a social media post though.

We don't sell on Amazon at the moment for a couple of reasons... 1) They still don't have much of a foothold here in Australia (but I predict the eventually will) . 2) It's a real hassle to get chemical products on to Amazon and our own brand of products have to have barcode numbers (which aren't necessary to us for any other reason than getting our products on Amazon). If we only had a handful of products and Amazon was more popular in Australia then this would be fine, but as it is currently, it's just not worthwhile for us.

99% of our sales are via our website and ebay accounts for the other 1%. We invest quite heavily in Adwords for our traffic, but also do very well from organic traffic. Instagram is huge in our industry so we do a lot of paid ads on there and facebook to generate interest in new products.

You said you sell in multiple countries. We are planning to sell 70% in USA and 30% in AUS (at least that's how we're going to ship the initial MOQ order. Any advice here? We're doing Amazon and ecom store, but pushing Amazon at launch. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

As I said before, Amazon isn't anywhere as big in Australia yet as it is in the US so you might find your Australian traffic is better directed to the ecom store. Also... shipping between US and Australia is terrible at the moment due to covid but that's probably not as much of a concern in your niche as it is in ours.

Thanks for the thread. Really inspiring stuff.

You're welcome. Just really happy the thread is still helping people.

Also... I'd love to see your product once you've launched and would highly recommend doing your own progress thread if you haven't got one already.

 

[CivilianCone41]

2018 FINAL UPDATE

December Revenue Goal: $163,623

Actual Revenue: $173,788 (Down 27k from previous month)

Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000

Final Revenue: $1,760,166

WooHoo!

Made the monthly target pretty comfortably in the end but to only hit the overall goal by 10k over was ridiculously close. To be honest though, I wouldn't have been upset or disappointed if I missed the goal. The point wasn't the final figure or the goal itself, but to get the business to the point it needed to be at to reach that goal.

If the business stays at the point that it's at right now without any further growth then I'm making enough money to put away a few million in assets and investments over the next couple of years and then potentially sell the business for around 3 million or so which gives me more than enough FU money for my family and I to live off for the rest of our lives. Not that I think I would want to, but retiring at 40 is an option now.

What went wrong

• Not much at all really apart from sales slowing down as they do over the Christmas period.
• A minor issue is that the new hire is struggling a little and not quite packing as fast as is required and still makes some small mistakes.

What went right

• Hit the monthly and overall revenue target.
• Things ran smoothly in my absence. I only need to do around 1-2 hours of work answering a few customer emails while I was away. I'm now handing over a lot of the customer service to my employees so that next time I'm away I'll hopefully only need to do a few minutes of work.

Plans for this year

I haven't set any overall financial targets or goals for this year and I don't know if I will. However I would think around 2.6 million in revenue would be a reasonable target although I'm expecting that growth might become a little tougher to sustain this year.

Plans for the business include launching a new logo, a new website and moving into the new warehouse which will help me expand the product range a little faster. At the moment the backyard warehouse is pretty much full capacity.

I'll also be looking at expanding the product line a little further to include some other products in a slightly different but still related cosmetic niche.

Anyway... thanks to everyone who followed my success last year and contributed to the thread. I'm not sure yet if I'll keep providing regular or formal updates this year but I'll definitely try and keep the thread alive and keep you updated on my progress. While the business is going well, I haven't reached that final FU money stage just yet so I'll keep you all updated on that.

A big congratulations. I sat and read the entire journey for the last 2 hours. Lots of good info. I am clapping outloud for you. #Inspirational

 

[Kid]

Wow - serious money. I don't know why you ran this like a sideline for so long. I'll focus on that with the comments below...



A picker will free up two days for you? Big problem there. There is an elephant in the room. Why are you picking? Do what you do best, and avoid menial tasks. Work smarter, not harder - print that out as a large one-line mission statement and tape it to the top edge of your computer screen so you see it 100 times a day.



Delegate. I'm glad I saw your income post early on. Combine tasks for your employees so they are much more well-rounded instead of doing menial repetitive tasks. Once they know more, they can do more, and you can assign the small fires to them to put out. How much is your time worth per hour? What are THE top three most important tasks that bring in the most revenue? Do those three well and offload the rest.



Ah yes. What a breath of fresh air! Offload as many tasks to your employees as possible. This will free you up to do the truly important stuff while improving your efficiency by leaps and bounds. Give your people a path to grow and pay them well for what they do. Good people are hard to find. Utilize them to their potential. Appreciate them.



Glad to hear you are using a powerful app. Earlier on you said you were using a spreadsheet for accounting and had no barcoding. You can easily squeeze 20% more profit by being efficient and organized. Did you hire a consultant from Upwork? Get serious. Why are you using an amateur to build out your company? I have been down this road, and I hired the best damned accounting firm I could find. I want a top-tier accounting program that is as automatic as possible and will generate things like bar codes and pick lists - and shipping labels, too. When you have all of that, your shipping dept should have handheld bar code readers to check the order - which will also feed your inventory status program so you can reorder automatically. Man - you HAVE to use technology if you want to maximize profitability. With your profits, there is absolutely no excuse to wing this flying by the seat of your pants.



Think how much more you could do if you detached yourself from managing small potatoes tasks - and automated everything. Speaking of automating - I see a lot of shelves stacked side by side in your warehouse picture. Put them in a single line to eliminate steps zig-zagging back and forth between rows. Color code areas for fast and easy identification. Add signs - you need BIG signs so things can be found. Anyone should be able to use your system - Row B - Section 12 - Shelf 6 - Box 6. Strive for pinpoint accuracy. If your software puts a picking list in numeric order AND calculates the size of the box(s) you need, you can fill an order by walking down one or two rows super easily - no backtracking - and no looking for an item in the "general area." You want fast - precise - and failproof results. Software, man - software can perfect it for you.



B2B doesn't need social media - and probably a ton less of SEO. You are not finding consumers that will come and go - you are finding established businesses! THOSE businesses are looking for consumers, so let THEM use digital marketing. Your job should be finding those businesses. Google should be able to do that for you with a simple search - then use a CRM drip campaign and one on one direct marketing. You should be able to identify your customers very easily and capture 80% or more. Focus. They're already there - just search them out - you don't need a mass campaign to cover the market. If I were selling car parts, how hard would it be for me to find car dealers to sell to? Name a city - I'll have every one of them in less than an hour. Think like a skilled hunter. Track your prey. I'll work on a commission of 14% of whatever my new customers buy. I can MAKE you money, and not be an overhead expense - and I'll make a ton of money for myself in the process. Don't just hire me - hire three of me! The world is a big place - don't waste your time saving a buck by using a bag, instead of a box, for shipping. Think big! Or, better yet, as @Kak would put it - KILL bigger!



B2B. Search and destroy. The substantial funds you are wasting on mass advertising could go into direct marketing instead. How many new customers could I - for example - find for you in one day? A lot. Be effective - quit shooting in the dark.



Email marketing is an art unto itself. This is another gold mine that you could mine. Make your emails WORTH reading. Make your customers look forward to getting them. I buy from several companies every month - based purely on what their emails promote. When I see their emails, I know they have something good going on. Make them an offer they can't refuse - and they won't.



Are smaller products smaller orders? Get your customers to order more at one time. They will still be buying the same amount but in fewer orders. Give them a reason to buy more - tiered pricing for quantity - specials they can only get if they order X dollar amount - and add on products. You already have the customers - so why not save on order processing - shipping - and tap into additional products? Milk this baby. So many companies only look outward to grow their business - I bet you could increase your existing order sizes by 30%. More profit - fewer orders - less work - built-in promotions that cost you NOTHING to run to your already sizable customer base. Gotta love this! Work it!



Your posts and progress are nothing less than fantastic. I too am clapping my hands for you! I just love a good business - and yours could continue to double in size if you pushed in the right areas and relieved yourself of the work part of your business. Plot that course - sail your ship - and prosper. Everything else is just details, and that's what you pay other people for. Congrats on a great business! Here's to your continued success!

This is condense!
Great post @Real Deal Denver

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

Wow - serious money. I don't know why you ran this like a sideline for so long. I'll focus on that with the comments below...



A picker will free up two days for you? Big problem there. There is an elephant in the room. Why are you picking? Do what you do best, and avoid menial tasks. Work smarter, not harder - print that out as a large one-line mission statement and tape it to the top edge of your computer screen so you see it 100 times a day.



Delegate. I'm glad I saw your income post early on. Combine tasks for your employees so they are much more well-rounded instead of doing menial repetitive tasks. Once they know more, they can do more, and you can assign the small fires to them to put out. How much is your time worth per hour? What are THE top three most important tasks that bring in the most revenue? Do those three well and offload the rest.



Ah yes. What a breath of fresh air! Offload as many tasks to your employees as possible. This will free you up to do the truly important stuff while improving your efficiency by leaps and bounds. Give your people a path to grow and pay them well for what they do. Good people are hard to find. Utilize them to their potential. Appreciate them.



Glad to hear you are using a powerful app. Earlier on you said you were using a spreadsheet for accounting and had no barcoding. You can easily squeeze 20% more profit by being efficient and organized. Did you hire a consultant from Upwork? Get serious. Why are you using an amateur to build out your company? I have been down this road, and I hired the best damned accounting firm I could find. I want a top-tier accounting program that is as automatic as possible and will generate things like bar codes and pick lists - and shipping labels, too. When you have all of that, your shipping dept should have handheld bar code readers to check the order - which will also feed your inventory status program so you can reorder automatically. Man - you HAVE to use technology if you want to maximize profitability. With your profits, there is absolutely no excuse to wing this flying by the seat of your pants.



Think how much more you could do if you detached yourself from managing small potatoes tasks - and automated everything. Speaking of automating - I see a lot of shelves stacked side by side in your warehouse picture. Put them in a single line to eliminate steps zig-zagging back and forth between rows. Color code areas for fast and easy identification. Add signs - you need BIG signs so things can be found. Anyone should be able to use your system - Row B - Section 12 - Shelf 6 - Box 6. Strive for pinpoint accuracy. If your software puts a picking list in numeric order AND calculates the size of the box(s) you need, you can fill an order by walking down one or two rows super easily - no backtracking - and no looking for an item in the "general area." You want fast - precise - and failproof results. Software, man - software can perfect it for you.



B2B doesn't need social media - and probably a ton less of SEO. You are not finding consumers that will come and go - you are finding established businesses! THOSE businesses are looking for consumers, so let THEM use digital marketing. Your job should be finding those businesses. Google should be able to do that for you with a simple search - then use a CRM drip campaign and one on one direct marketing. You should be able to identify your customers very easily and capture 80% or more. Focus. They're already there - just search them out - you don't need a mass campaign to cover the market. If I were selling car parts, how hard would it be for me to find car dealers to sell to? Name a city - I'll have every one of them in less than an hour. Think like a skilled hunter. Track your prey. I'll work on a commission of 14% of whatever my new customers buy. I can MAKE you money, and not be an overhead expense - and I'll make a ton of money for myself in the process. Don't just hire me - hire three of me! The world is a big place - don't waste your time saving a buck by using a bag, instead of a box, for shipping. Think big! Or, better yet, as @Kak would put it - KILL bigger!



B2B. Search and destroy. The substantial funds you are wasting on mass advertising could go into direct marketing instead. How many new customers could I - for example - find for you in one day? A lot. Be effective - quit shooting in the dark.



Email marketing is an art unto itself. This is another gold mine that you could mine. Make your emails WORTH reading. Make your customers look forward to getting them. I buy from several companies every month - based purely on what their emails promote. When I see their emails, I know they have something good going on. Make them an offer they can't refuse - and they won't.



Are smaller products smaller orders? Get your customers to order more at one time. They will still be buying the same amount but in fewer orders. Give them a reason to buy more - tiered pricing for quantity - specials they can only get if they order X dollar amount - and add on products. You already have the customers - so why not save on order processing - shipping - and tap into additional products? Milk this baby. So many companies only look outward to grow their business - I bet you could increase your existing order sizes by 30%. More profit - fewer orders - less work - built-in promotions that cost you NOTHING to run to your already sizable customer base. Gotta love this! Work it!



Your posts and progress are nothing less than fantastic. I too am clapping my hands for you! I just love a good business - and yours could continue to double in size if you pushed in the right areas and relieved yourself of the work part of your business. Plot that course - sail your ship - and prosper. Everything else is just details, and that's what you pay other people for. Congrats on a great business! Here's to your continued success!

Thanks for the advice. Some of the suggestions you've made were based on posts I made a few years ago and have since been implemented (For instance I hired a 2nd picker and stopped picking/packing myself, hired a bookkeeper etc.).

A lot of your suggestions though I can still definitely take on board. There's a lot to unpack here but I'll go through it again and see what I can implement.

Much appreciated insights!

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

This is all fantastic, well done. I actually had a question that you kind of touched on here. I might have missed it reading through everything else, and if I did I apologize.

When you started, you said your wife was a beautician and you saw an opportunity in the market. To start did you simply find existing products that were selling well and find a supplier that could provide you with the same? Or did you end up finding the factories that manufactured it and worked out your own deal to provide the products in your own packaging?

At what point did you start doing your own product development to make your own new products? That seems like such a leap from being an online reseller to developing your own line of products.

Thankyou!

From the very beginning I found factories that could produce what we wanted with our own packaging. There were several products though that we couldn't find factories capable of producing quality better than what was already on the market for certain products so for these ones we used existing suppliers with their branding (and still do for several products).

Regarding developing our own products... we weren't exactly coming up with anything completely new in most cases. It was more about taking an existing product and changing it in more subtle ways... different colours, sizes, quantities, shapes etc. It never really seemed like a huge leap, just a gradual change.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

hings haven't progressed as well as I'd hoped lately. Covid has had an impact on both our customers ability to trade and our suppliers ability to provide us with stock.

Really appreciate the update, in growing times and slowing ones.

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

Really nice story man! I sell beauty products, too. In Germany and Europe. I build my own nature cosmetic brand at the moment. Maybe we can connect us and talk about problems in this niche?

Sure. Send me a PM

 

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[ALC]

The 4,000 was spent on multiple products (around 600). There are thousands of products in this niche and most cost around 5 dollars to import and retail for around 20.

In the beginning most of the sales came from ebay and it took around 10 months for the shopify sales to overtake them.

Thanks for your reply ! That's helping

 

[ALC]

His barrier to entry wasn't that high imo, he just saw that the market was not fully served by the actual businesses so he went for it, while having a little bit of cash to invest in product stocks.

He also improved each time his websites which a lot are not doing, even now, that's a massive plus if you can rank to the top pages.

As others niches, you need to have a bit of cash if you want to create a brand, you can't dropship. (At least not in this case)

 

[scottyg packfan]

I’m starting this thread to document my journey from “good money” (you can read my intro story here) to FU money.

I aim to do this in the next 5 years by getting my online salon supply business to the stage where it’s profiting 7 figures a year and then hopefully selling it for several million. I’ll then have enough money invested to live comfortably off interest and investments for the rest of my days. Or at least that’s my plan. Let’s see what happens.

I’m documenting this for a few reasons...

First of all I hope that sharing my successes and failures will be of some value to you on your own journey.

Secondly I see it as a way of holding my self more accountable to my goals. Not that I think I’ll slack off or give up, but I this will add some extra motivation for me in hitting my milestones.

Thirdly, because while I’m confident in what I’m doing , it never hurts to get a fresh point of view. Hopefully your feedback can help me see things I might be missing.

And lastly, all I seem to do lately is work on the business and learn about business. This thread will give me a much needed creative outlet.

I’ve decided that I won’t be giving away any major details about my business apart from what I’ve already stated in my intro thread but I will try and be transparent as possible regarding what I’m doing and my progress toward the financial targets I’ve set.

Goal for 2018: $1,750,000 in revenue
I aim to make $1,750,000 in revenue (a figure more than double what I made last year) and I’ll start setting financial targets to hit each month in order to get there.


Monthly totals so far:

January: $101,992

February: $103,041

March: $50,689 (At the halfway point)


Considering I need to average $145,000 every month to hit my goal I’m a long way behind where I need to be. But while the start has been slow, I think if I put in the hard work now, I will see my efforts start to pay off in the back half of the year.


I’ll set my goal for March at 108k which would be a good result considering my position at the halfway mark.

The goal for April will be 118k and if I can grow revenue at around 10k per month thereafter I might be able to hit the annual target by years end. It’s an unlikely goal, but why not shoot for the moon?


How I plan to grow revenue:

1. Hire & Outsource – Until 2 weeks ago I was handling everything on my own. I have since hired someone part time to assist with packing & shipping which will free me up to spend more time growing the business. I’ll also be looking for other opportunities to outsource work to VA’s and other contractors.


2. Expand the product line – I’m currently talking to 2 new suppliers in China after ordering samples of some new beauty products and am about to put in large orders with both of them for variants of some products we already stock that have been extremely popular. I’ve also just started stocking some new aftercare products (products that the salons we supply can retail to their customers) and so far they’ve generated around a thoursand dollars worth of sales within the first week or so.



3. Improve marketing campaigns – I’ve been spending around 5k per month on advertising on adwords and facebook but haven’t put in the time and effort required to really test and tweak the campaigns. I spent my nights over the past 2 weeks doing an online adwords certification and completely overhauled the old campaigns and set up some new ones. They’ll need time to settle but once they do I’ll continue to tweak and adjust to get a better ROI which will mean I can increase the overall marketing budget and generate more traffic and more revenue.


4. Increase Social Media Presence – This has probably been the most neglected area of my business. I keep meaning to post more regularly but always seem to find other things to work on instead. I think this is partly because as a guy selling beauty products, marketing them doesn’t come naturally to me and I’m not an avid social media user outside of work either. Having said that, Instagram is huge in my niche and other brands are taking advantage so I need to step up my game here. I did try to outsource the social media work by advertising on upwork however I couldn’t find anyone with knowhow in both B2B and the beauty industry.



5. A heap of other stuff - I use Trello to track all my various to do lists and I probably have well over 100 changes planned for the business from website tweaks to improving my email campaigns to improving ad copy. Basically anything that will 1) Increase traffic, 2) Increase conversions, 3) Increase order value. These are the things that will grow revenue.


So that’s my first post done. I’m not sure how often I’ll be providing updates. I’ll at least do a run down for the end of each month documenting how I measured up against the financial goals and what changes I made. What went wrong, what went right. I’ll also try and provide updates and answer any questions each week as well.


The plan is to keep coming back to this thread and setting new goals each year, all the way through until I make that sweet FU money and drive off into the sunset in my new lambo.

thanks for doing this. I'll keep an eye on it for sure.

I have a question. I'm a software developer, and as such, I use Trello quite often. I know how I use it in my field and it works great for that but how are YOU using it? Do you have any examples of your boards and cards. It might help some people out to see a tool to organize their thoughts and tasks. I could dump a bunch of questions on you but I'll not burden you with my silliness. What ever you want to tell us would be great! Thanks.

 

[jcvlds]

The business grew slowly and steadily enough over the first few months that I was able to simply re-invest the profits in new stock without any need to dip into the pool of savings that I was living off.

Looking back though, if I knew how well the business would go, I probably would have immediately branched out into different products types using my savings to fund it.

Hey @MythOfSisyphus nice updates. I’m sure you will kick the gears these months and will get close to your annual goal, good job!

Would you mind sharing how you approach your targeting method to sell to retailers, vs a direct to consumer approach?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

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[jcvlds]

June Progress Update:

Things a looking good so far. Had a mid-year stock take sale last week that provided the biggest week ever in sales by a fair way. Not sure if I'll hit the target but should hopefully be close.

I've also put in a bid for a warehouse and office that is currently under construction and will be ready early next year. Hopefully I won't run out of room in the home office and storage shed before then. The main reason for this move is that I'll most likely be bringing on a 2nd employee within the next 7 or 8 months and I don't think having 2 employees working from my backyard is sustainable.

My biggest concern at the moment is trying to keep the overheads from blowing up. The warehouse expenses won't help and I've just switched to an online accounting system that will most likely require me to hire a part time book keeper, in addition to a digital marketing expert some time in the coming months.

I'm also in the process of going from being a sole trader for tax purposes to an actual business operating through a family trust. This will help protect my income, however will also incur further costs.

I'll provide a full update at months end.

Amazing update! Congrats on the killer month.

I am not, nor have I have been, in your current level but I think you are making the right moves in expanding your team and operations site. Although it may dip the bottom line in the short term, down the road it should allow you to let the team do more of the day to day and you focusing on increasing sales and expanding the business. Very inspiring!

Are you in the US? By sole trader do you mean sole proprietor (operating under your own social security/name vs an LLC or Corp)? If so, another great move in my opinion.. let the business be it’s own entity, you have limited liability, and thus protect your personal assets if someone ever tries to go after the company


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

Interesting! I am rooting for you. One question. Did you start your sales off exclusively online and if so how did you get Salon owners to trust using non recognizable brands on their customers head and skin? I am assuming you private labeled them.

Thankyou.

Yes, I started exclusively online and still am. We sell to quite a few salons and businesses in my town and are often asked by customers if they can buy in person but I really don't want the hassle of having to do face to face sales.

Yes, I had private labeled most of our products (I still sell some from other established brands)

To establish trust there were a few things I did...

1) Registered with NICNAS (Australia's body for importing chemicals into Australia) and advertised this fact on the website.
2) Advised our customers that all products were safe to use and had been hand selected and tested by a professional.
3) Made sure the website, copy and product photos were all top notch.

Before I went into this venture I noticed there were many other sellers doing well, despite not being reputable or recognisable brands in the industry so I knew gaining customer trust wouldn't be too difficult.

 

[Vincent_Vega]

When it came to beauty products from China, I was always concerned about the quality. Like what if they put shitty ingrediends into their products and my customers get a rash or worse. How did you combat that? Did you got all products tested?

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

Agree that free shipping, even with slightly higher prices to offset it, might be a good idea. People LOVE their free shipping and their feeling of getting some kind of "discount", even if the original full price amount is pretty much arbitrary to them.

Definitely. It seems to give listings better visibility on ebay too which helps.

 

[Yussef]

To be honest, in the beginning, no, I didn't have a branding strategy, and didn't really know what one would even look like. I knew a little bit about marketing and the importance of professional looking products, logos, websites etc but didn't have a strategy (although I have developed some strong rules around the brand along the way). In the beginning my basic strategy was to simply out-do all the existing competitors I could find in the niche in every way I could. I started off beating most of them on both product price and shipping price, and also made sure I had a more professional looking website, better copy, and more professional looking product photos. I also put a huge emphasis on customer service as this is a niche that thrives on repeat buyers.

I guess from these things I put importance on a brand kind of organically grew as opposed to being intentionally put in place from the outset.

If you read my intro thread (there's a link in the first post of this thread) I go into detail about how I gained traffic in the early months.

Awesome mindset man!!! I love how streamline you keep your strategy. I believe it was Earl Nightingale that said "get good at one thing at a time." Sounds like you identified competitive pricing as your first "thing" and pressed go. Love it!

 

[johnnyfriendly]

A couple of annoying issues that cropped up yesterday:

1) A shipment of new products Im expecting has been held by Australian customs due to a dispute over the price of the goods and their slice of the import tax.

2) A shipment of another new product from a different supplier arrived from China which is great, however the labels have a printing error. Some only a minor error but others it is fairly major and they can't be sold this way (we're talking around 2000 products). I got pretty pissed about this and ripped into the supplier. They will be sending replacement labels, however doing the relabeling will take a few days and cost me hundreds, if not thousands in wages for my employee to fix.

A very frustrating day over all.

Slightly confused here MOS. You mentioned that the products are mostly your own brand. Do you have a massive manufacturing plant? Beauty/Salon products are generally produced in fairly hefty industrial factories, no?

 

[Tanu1234]

June Revenue Goal: $155,000

Actual Revenue for June: $146,409.43

Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000

Revenue so far: $733,025.60

Didn't hit the target this month but managed to keep up the strong sales from the previous month. June/July are generally the worst months of the year so I should see some pretty solid growth toward the end of the year. I now need to average 169,000 in sales each month for the rest of this year to hit the target so it's important that I at least stay around the 145-150 mark for the next month in order to not have that average increase too much.

What went right:

• The new products stocked in previous months continued to sell well and sales stayed solid
• I began shipping internationally which saw an extra 3k or so in revenue. Not an impressive figure by any means, however building up repeat international customers will be a long game and I expect sales from overseas to increase month on month
• Agreed to a deal to purchase a warehouse for the business to move into next year.
• My small business that started in a 3 by 3 metre spare room, officially became a company.
• Finished the financials for last financial year and realised I did just over 1 million in sales.

What went wrong:

• I made the decision to stop sending items on ebay in envelopes and use the same system as our website orders in order to streamline our packing process. In order to do this I started charging a small shipping fee on ebay and sales on there immediately halved (ebay loves free shipping) so that cost about 5k in the short term and potentially might cost a bit more in the long term. I'm still weighing up my options here and may simply go back to free shipping (but boost the cost of my ebay products by 10% or so) and take a small hit in profit margins in order to get the revenue and potential of long term customers back up.

• I paid a guy 1k on upwork to help set up an online accounting system. He is a charted accountant and charges $65 US an hour. He seemed to know what he was doing during the interview, but as time dragged on I realised I should have simply set it all up myself as most of the work he did was pretty straight forward and it wasn't possible to integrate with shopify the way I had hoped (and someone who claimed to have done this kind of work before should have been aware of this from the outset). Anyway, lesson learned and not a major issue in the end.

Plans for July

I've been making some pretty big changes over the previous months, however in July I'll be focussing on some minor improvements here and there including:

• Hiring a marketing expert to assist with the ad campaigns (I ran out of time to do this in June)
• Potentially installing a new website theme as the one I'm currently using is a little dated and doesn't have a lot of the built in functionality I want like built in currency conversion.
• Spending some time reviewing and improving internal processes and putting rules in place for customer engagement. Reason being that I see the business expanding pretty rapidly in the next 12 months and realistically I will need to delegate many of the tasks I'm currently performing. I'd like to be in a position to have rules and processes around almost everything we do in order to reduce the potential for human error.

Revenue goal for July: $150,000

July is a very slow month traditionally so 150k will be tough to hit but I'm hoping international sales will continue to increase and might plan a sale toward the end of the month to try and get closer to the target.

Really inspirational.

 

[Tanu1234]

August Revenue Goal: $165,000

Actual Revenue for August: $176,447.97

Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000

Revenue so far: 1,043,716.38 (as of today, not end of August)

Sorry for the lack of updates lately but August was a massive month, much bigger than expected so I'm now well on my way to that FU money. Still need to average around 175-185k a month for the next 4 to hit the target but I think it's pretty achievable now.

The bookkeeper and digital marketing expert have helped free up some more of my time and hopefully I'll start seeing some additional revenue coming in from our adwords campaigns. I've also advertised for a 2nd picking/packing assistant to aid with the increase in orders expected over the busy period from November through February and also to cover for my existing assistant who will be having 3 weeks off during the peak period.

I'm finding it hard to set new goals or know exactly where to take this business next. There are a tonne of small improvements I can make to everything, but apart from 2 or 3 new products which I'll be getting in soon there aren't a lot of other popular products in this niche to target.

I've been considering starting a 2nd business in the beauty niche. Different products, however many of the salons we already sell our existing products to would also be using these as well so I could leverage the existing customer base.

I've also been spending a lot of time learning about investing so that I'll actually know what to do with all this money once I've done the basics like pay down our debt.

The funny thing is, I'm earning around 60k a month now after expenses and still haven't splurged on anything for myself (I did just take the wife away to a fancy hotel for the weekend though). I love the feeling of freedom and the excitement that comes with seeing the bank account increase but stuffed if I know what to actually do with the money. I still drive a second hand car and we still live in a modest house in one of the poorer parts of town. We're looking to build a nicer house but even with our current means it will still be relatively modest and should be paid off in a number of years (I still stress about borrowing an amount that I can easily repay)

I'm keen to invest the money and snowball it into even bigger monthly income, but I wonder at what stage I'll actually feel secure enough to start and spend it more freely. And yes, I'm quite aware of what a stupid problem that is to complain about. I just find it interesting how my mind hasn't quite caught up with the reality of the situation.

Revenue goal for September: $165,000

Congrats for your achievement.

Please update us when you buy new house. I think one treat to wife in fancy restaurant is ok. Lol

We are excited to know more about your journey!

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

I am happy to see a fellow Australian having success, i am following your thread closely congratulations so far!

Thanks Timmy. Much appreciated.

 

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[Xeon]

Hi @MythOfSisyphus , just came across your thread. How could I have missed this!
It's so inspiring to know you are making 6 digits monthly.

I read in one of your posts that you're using AfterPay. Does AfterPay greatly increase your sales and orders?

From a theoretical point of view, it seems like a magic potion, because it totally tempts customers who're hesitating to part with their wallet. A product that's $80 might be hard to swallow for some, but what if it is just monthly installments of $20? Sounds like it will attract customers like bees to honey, lions to meat. I assume it significantly lowers your cart abandonment rate.

And the best part is, merchants get the payment upfront fast with no risks, and that small commission that AfterPay charges seem reasonable. Heck, we can even add that fee to the product cost to offset it.

 

[Tim001]

I love this thread, thank you for sharing. I’m amazed at your numbers with afterpay, this is interesting. Are perhaps more of your customers actually individual employees renting chair/booth space at a business.

I like your idea on adding stickers for your customers on the bottom flap of the box.

The other day I ordered packaging and received a note my order was packaged and awaiting pickup WITH a photo of the package at the warehouse. The tool used was “visual confirm”. As a consumer this stood out as being different - just an idea.

Tim


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[NaPal]

Fantastic updates and congrats on your success @MythOfSisyphus ! This is one of my favorite progress threads.

 

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[_abuelreem_]

October Revenue Goal: $180,000

Actual Revenue for October: 183,624 ($25k Up from previous month)

Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000

Revenue so far: $1,385,558 ($364,442 to go)

Average per month required: $182,221

October went pretty well and ended roughly where I expected it to. Sales in December suffer because of the Christmas week so November will need to be a pretty big month to get me over the line.

What went wrong:

• No major issues but after the Adwords campaign performing quite well in September, October was relatively poor with an increase spend but stagnant returns. I'll meet with the campaign manager next week to address this.

What went right:

• Sales continued to trend upward.
• Hired a new employee and they've started pretty well which has freed up an extra 2 days a week for me to focus on other things
• Most products remained in stock throughout the entire month
• I managed to actually post to our social media pages quite regularly and should be able to continue to do so

Plans for November:

As November is the busiest month of the year I don't have anything major planned. Just hoping to stay on top of the day to day things and put out fires wherever they start (that's basically 50% of my job now anyway). I have around 50 small tasks on my radar that I'll try and get through including doing an overhaul of the slightly dated website.


November Revenue Goal: $200,000

i know it's your busiest month, I am just too anxious to know what November numbers are.... any updates?

amazing post by the way...big ups

 

[Timmy C]

Hit the monthly and overall target a few hours ago while on a cruise around the bay. And only 3 days to spare. It's been a good year.

Congratulations.

 

[jcvlds]

Hit the monthly and overall target a few hours ago while on a cruise around the bay. And only 3 days to spare. It's been a good year.

Congrats!


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[jcvlds]

2018 FINAL UPDATE

December Revenue Goal: $163,623

Actual Revenue: $173,788 (Down 27k from previous month)

Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000

Final Revenue: $1,760,166

WooHoo!

Made the monthly target pretty comfortably in the end but to only hit the overall goal by 10k over was ridiculously close. To be honest though, I wouldn't have been upset or disappointed if I missed the goal. The point wasn't the final figure or the goal itself, but to get the business to the point it needed to be at to reach that goal.

If the business stays at the point that it's at right now without any further growth then I'm making enough money to put away a few million in assets and investments over the next couple of years and then potentially sell the business for around 3 million or so which gives me more than enough FU money for my family and I to live off for the rest of our lives. Not that I think I would want to, but retiring at 40 is an option now.

What went wrong

• Not much at all really apart from sales slowing down as they do over the Christmas period.
• A minor issue is that the new hire is struggling a little and not quite packing as fast as is required and still makes some small mistakes.

What went right

• Hit the monthly and overall revenue target.
• Things ran smoothly in my absence. I only need to do around 1-2 hours of work answering a few customer emails while I was away. I'm now handing over a lot of the customer service to my employees so that next time I'm away I'll hopefully only need to do a few minutes of work.

Plans for this year

I haven't set any overall financial targets or goals for this year and I don't know if I will. However I would think around 2.6 million in revenue would be a reasonable target although I'm expecting that growth might become a little tougher to sustain this year.

Plans for the business include launching a new logo, a new website and moving into the new warehouse which will help me expand the product range a little faster. At the moment the backyard warehouse is pretty much full capacity.

I'll also be looking at expanding the product line a little further to include some other products in a slightly different but still related cosmetic niche.

Anyway... thanks to everyone who followed my success last year and contributed to the thread. I'm not sure yet if I'll keep providing regular or formal updates this year but I'll definitely try and keep the thread alive and keep you updated on my progress. While the business is going well, I haven't reached that final FU money stage just yet so I'll keep you all updated on that.

One of my favorite threads of 2018. Huge congrats, and thanks for sharing so much with us


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[SIDI]

2018 FINAL UPDATE

December Revenue Goal: $163,623

Actual Revenue: $173,788 (Down 27k from previous month)

Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000

Final Revenue: $1,760,166

WooHoo!

Made the monthly target pretty comfortably in the end but to only hit the overall goal by 10k over was ridiculously close. To be honest though, I wouldn't have been upset or disappointed if I missed the goal. The point wasn't the final figure or the goal itself, but to get the business to the point it needed to be at to reach that goal.

If the business stays at the point that it's at right now without any further growth then I'm making enough money to put away a few million in assets and investments over the next couple of years and then potentially sell the business for around 3 million or so which gives me more than enough FU money for my family and I to live off for the rest of our lives. Not that I think I would want to, but retiring at 40 is an option now.

What went wrong

• Not much at all really apart from sales slowing down as they do over the Christmas period.
• A minor issue is that the new hire is struggling a little and not quite packing as fast as is required and still makes some small mistakes.

What went right

• Hit the monthly and overall revenue target.
• Things ran smoothly in my absence. I only need to do around 1-2 hours of work answering a few customer emails while I was away. I'm now handing over a lot of the customer service to my employees so that next time I'm away I'll hopefully only need to do a few minutes of work.

Plans for this year

I haven't set any overall financial targets or goals for this year and I don't know if I will. However I would think around 2.6 million in revenue would be a reasonable target although I'm expecting that growth might become a little tougher to sustain this year.

Plans for the business include launching a new logo, a new website and moving into the new warehouse which will help me expand the product range a little faster. At the moment the backyard warehouse is pretty much full capacity.

I'll also be looking at expanding the product line a little further to include some other products in a slightly different but still related cosmetic niche.

Anyway... thanks to everyone who followed my success last year and contributed to the thread. I'm not sure yet if I'll keep providing regular or formal updates this year but I'll definitely try and keep the thread alive and keep you updated on my progress. While the business is going well, I haven't reached that final FU money stage just yet so I'll keep you all updated on that.

Just awesome. Thank you for sharing.

 

[_abuelreem_]

I had a few people ask for progress updates so here goes (I'll try and do at least a couple more before the end of the year)...

Progress Update:

The business is still going quite well although month to month revenue hasn't changed a lot since the heights we hit late last year. Having said that, this is pretty standard as in previous years sales are fairly consistent from Jan through Oct before jumping massively in November. At the moment an average month is around 195k in revenue.

Despite not setting a solid goal revenue-wise for this year I believe I said that around 2.6m would be a pretty good result. It's currently sitting at around 1.7m so it's highly unlikely that I'll get there. Having said that, the business is now 4 years old and still experiencing pretty solid year on year growth so I can't complain.

Changes This Year:

The re-branding, while a pain in the a$$, went really well and the new logo and products with it look fantastic. Looking back, branding is something I would take more time to completely nail in the very beginning to avoid having to go through this process a couple of years into the business.

The move into the warehouse still hasn't eventuated as the build took far longer than expected. The warehouse is now basically finished but I still need to wait on some formalities before I get the green light to move the business in. This delay has probably cost me quite a lot of money by preventing expansion into as many new products as I would have liked and looking back I should have either purchased or rented an established warehouse. Lesson learned.

A couple of months ago my second employee (who handled shipping and inventory control) resigned. This however turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The new employee has been much faster at packing orders, rarely makes mistakes and always shows up on time. So I now have 2 extremely dependable employees who I can trust to do 90% of whats required to keep the business moving day to day. I also have a team of contractors that I rely on for many of the other tasks.

I recently branched out into a new type of product that's not exactly in the same niche we're currently in but a very closely related one that many of our customers buy from. The manufacturer would only agree to a minimum of 1000 units and they have an expiry of 12 months. This was at a cost of around 65,000 AUD so a pretty big risk to take for an untried product.

But, in business everything is a risk, and it's all about playing the odds the best you can. I figure if it falls flat and I only sell a few hundred units then I lose maybe 30k and learn something. If it does really well and we sell out ahead of schedule then I'm potentially making an extra 100-200k a year in profit. The end result will most likely be somewhere in between so that kind of risk sits pretty well with me.

Lessons Learned:
The idea of taking smart risks is something that's really hit home with me the past year. Almost every decision I make in managing my business has risk involved and I've found that being successful comes down to how you decide to play the odds. Not everything comes off but if your potential upside is always bigger than the potential downside then in the long run you come out on top despite a few losses.

Awesome progress... congrats

 

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