So I haven't posted any updates in a while and it's basically because I slipped along the way of building up this new business.
Mental health, I guess? To be honest, I think I still haven't processed falling down from $250K/month to almost nothing within such a short amount of time.
What happened?
I was able to get a couple of clients on board, but the churn was too high, which put me into a never ending cycle of having to do sales just to sustain a relatively minor monthly cashflow.
At least in Europe (TikTok Shop not available yet), it is very hard to provide measurable results to client. So most of them just tried out the platform for 1-2 months and then decided to drop it again. Because while the content we produced for them did perform reasonably well on the platform, it hardly translated to improving their bottom line.
I probably could have iterated from there and figured something out, but I think that I literally burned out for the first time in my life. Or maybe I just got depressed? Barely was able to get out of bed in the morning, seriously questioned how at any point in my life I had been able to make a living at all and just had this profound feeling of senselessness. Felt really ashamed of myself as well.
To this point, I'm still unraveling what's really going on inside me and I feel like I'm slowly recovering, thanks to journaling and sharing my feelings with some people.
Something unhealthy I probably did with this TikTok business, was attempting to "recover my losses" as quickly as possible, kind of like a gambler. I think it would have been a better approach - although it is SO hard - to really, mentally start from 0. What I really need is a mini prototype of something that works. Could be a (physical or digital) product, could be a service fueled by a business process.
Is there a better way?
When I started my first really successful business, it started out so innocently. I had this prototype of a website asset that was turning in some $200/month. Then I simply formulated a repeatable process to build these types of assets and scaled it. Along the way, as I was learning, the formular got more sophisticated and while some assets turned out to be losers, some single websites would rake in more than $20K/month.
But it all started with this one small and innocent prototype that showed me that there was "something" scalable and that I saw a certain beauty in.
What's next?
I will gift myself some room to breathe. I've made enough money with my last business to be able to live comfortably and support my family for at least 10-20 years.
So I'm putting some pressure off myself now and will hand myself the freedom to experiment again. I'll go back to a more playful state where I just try out different things, meet people from different industries and build stuff for fun and maybe profit.
--
THANK YOU, for reading this and I apologize for not having followed up any sooner.
Mental health, I guess? To be honest, I think I still haven't processed falling down from $250K/month to almost nothing within such a short amount of time.
What happened?
I was able to get a couple of clients on board, but the churn was too high, which put me into a never ending cycle of having to do sales just to sustain a relatively minor monthly cashflow.
At least in Europe (TikTok Shop not available yet), it is very hard to provide measurable results to client. So most of them just tried out the platform for 1-2 months and then decided to drop it again. Because while the content we produced for them did perform reasonably well on the platform, it hardly translated to improving their bottom line.
I probably could have iterated from there and figured something out, but I think that I literally burned out for the first time in my life. Or maybe I just got depressed? Barely was able to get out of bed in the morning, seriously questioned how at any point in my life I had been able to make a living at all and just had this profound feeling of senselessness. Felt really ashamed of myself as well.
To this point, I'm still unraveling what's really going on inside me and I feel like I'm slowly recovering, thanks to journaling and sharing my feelings with some people.
Something unhealthy I probably did with this TikTok business, was attempting to "recover my losses" as quickly as possible, kind of like a gambler. I think it would have been a better approach - although it is SO hard - to really, mentally start from 0. What I really need is a mini prototype of something that works. Could be a (physical or digital) product, could be a service fueled by a business process.
Is there a better way?
When I started my first really successful business, it started out so innocently. I had this prototype of a website asset that was turning in some $200/month. Then I simply formulated a repeatable process to build these types of assets and scaled it. Along the way, as I was learning, the formular got more sophisticated and while some assets turned out to be losers, some single websites would rake in more than $20K/month.
But it all started with this one small and innocent prototype that showed me that there was "something" scalable and that I saw a certain beauty in.
What's next?
I will gift myself some room to breathe. I've made enough money with my last business to be able to live comfortably and support my family for at least 10-20 years.
So I'm putting some pressure off myself now and will hand myself the freedom to experiment again. I'll go back to a more playful state where I just try out different things, meet people from different industries and build stuff for fun and maybe profit.
--
THANK YOU, for reading this and I apologize for not having followed up any sooner.
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