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Before reading this post, check out the original post here.
Today is May 13, 2023. A couple days ago, on May 11th, it was my 3 year anniversary of running my herbal tea business full-time.
On December 12th, 2022, we crossed $1M in revenue, becoming a 7 figure business!!!! The following is a brief summary of the lessons I've learned building this business from scratch....
First, let's get the receipts out of the way!
Here is the day we hit 7 figures:
Wow... still crazy to see. This was achieved by:
1. Facebook Ads
2. Organic IG content
That's all. There's a few thousand that came from me testing Google Ads and Youtube ads, but nothing significant.
Now, how much did I spend to get here? Here's my FB Ads total from May 11th, 2020 - December 12th, 2022:
Now, before you say "yea but I don't have $350k to invest!!!", you were about to expose yourself for not reading through the original post
This all started with $150.
I want you guys to look at the date of my rental balance:
On May 1st, rent hit and I hit my peak at $9,452.58 behind on rent. My landlord said pay $1k a week or get evicted. Just 10 days later, our lives changed on that first day, May 11th. We went on to pay that $1k per week off:
Now, let's talk about some lessons I've learned over the past 3 years.
Work Smarter,Not AND Harder
I can't lie, I didn't work super hard for this. Especially in comparison to my Uber days. Lately, I've been thinking about this a lot. Like, back in those days, I would wake up at 4am and hit the road. I'd come back around 11am and eat lunch and then jump right back out there. Come back for dinner and then if I still had energy, I'd go back out one more time. I worked at least 12 hours every day.
I worked WAY harder for Uber than I have been working for my own business. When it was for Uber, I felt like I had no choice. I absolutely had to get up and out that early if I wanted to make a decent amount of money that day. I had no choice to stay out there because as you saw, I was almost $10,000 behind on rent so I couldn't afford NOT to be working.
On one half, I attribute this to the fact that this business model is A LOT SMARTER compared to driving people around all day for peanuts. Facebook Ads did all the heavy lifting, all I had to do was create content for ads and organic. 95% of my organic content has been creating simple IG reels.
On the other hand, it has been bothering me recently that I have never put in the same amount of "hard work" that I did for Uber. In theory, when working on your own thing, you should work harder bc why would you work harder to make someone else rich when you can work that hard for yourself? I feel like if I would have put in the same amount of hard work in these past 3 years, I would've been at multiple millions right now.
One change I am making going into this 3rd year is focusing a lot more on organic content to promote the tea. Instead of focusing 100% on IG reels like we've done, I want to start doing Tik Tok and Youtube. This will consist of 2-3 Tik Toks per day and 1-2 Youtube Videos per week on any topic close to health, healing, mindset, self improvement, etc.
Test New Ad Angles As Much As Possible
You know that video ad I talked about in the original post? We ended up running that ad for almost a year straight without doing much testing with different ad creatives. It was one of the dumbest things I've done in these 3 years. I should have been constantly trying to "break my record" by testing new creatives to see if I can find something that works better.
My results shockingly stayed consistent for longer than usual when it comes to Facebook Ads. Creatives die pretty fast there and at that point I didn't really understand how important it was to constantly introduce new creatives. Eventually that ad completely died and was constantly losing money and then that's when we started to launch different creatives more often. But it took a dip in our revenue and a lot of me not understanding what was going wrong before I realized how important it was to introduce new creatives AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.
This is for sure the case of Facebook Ads. I can't speak for Youtube Ads and Tik Tok ads because these two I haven't done much with. It's my plan to focus a lot on both of these over Facebook this year because I feel like costs on Facebook are getting pretty crazy and the lack of targeting options makes it hard to find the right people. There's so many interests that I used to be able to target that are non-existent now.
One of the easiest things I could have done was simply create a few different "hooks" or the first 3 - 5 seconds of the video. It's good to create a few different hooks with different angles and approaches to see which works best. You can just make a different 5 second hook three times and then have the same video play after the hook. Just an easy way to have variations to test.
The more ad creatives you have to test the better. You never know which will pop. I tried to do a similar "epic video" that originally blew up for us in the beginning but it tanked. I was surprised... and hurt. But that taught me to leave the feelings on the table when it came to creating new video ads. Just bc I liked it doesn't mean it will work so I learned to stop putting so much expectation on each creative we created. A lot of times it was an unexpected video or photo ad that would take off.
The same goes when it comes to IG reels. We grew our IG page to over 40k using mostly reels. A number of reels went viral but we weren't posting enough bc we weren't putting enough focus on being content creators just as much as being herbalists. We should be over 100k followers by now if we would have stayed more consistent in posting 1 - 2 reels per day minimum. We did too much overthinking on reels, trying to make a hit everytime instead of just committing to the process of posting 1 - 2 reels a day.
The More Struggles You Go Through, The Better Your Story
Never give up. Never let roadblocks and detours to make you give up on your desire for success. A life without problems would quickly become boring and meaningless. You've gotta realize that problems are awesome teachers. Awesome motivators. You just have to have a healthy perspective. The tougher your journey, the better story you have to tell. Our electric and water got cut off multiple times during my time struggle slaving for Uber. When I tell my story, that's a piece that can be added to help relate more to those who've gone through or going through the same thing. Trust me, you don't want everything just handed to you on a silver platter. It'll be fun in the beginning but will quickly become a source of depression.
When things aren't working, just know that it's going to make your story better. I personally plan on expanding out to public speaking, starting with schools and everything I've gone through makes for a hell of a story. But even if you don't plan to go that far, your story will still be something you'll be telling to your children or grandchildren!!! What's a story without some pain and heartache? Your success WILL come if you just stick it out through those tough times.
I don't want to make this TOO long. Let me know if anyone has questions!!!
Today is May 13, 2023. A couple days ago, on May 11th, it was my 3 year anniversary of running my herbal tea business full-time.
On December 12th, 2022, we crossed $1M in revenue, becoming a 7 figure business!!!! The following is a brief summary of the lessons I've learned building this business from scratch....
First, let's get the receipts out of the way!
Here is the day we hit 7 figures:
Wow... still crazy to see. This was achieved by:
1. Facebook Ads
2. Organic IG content
That's all. There's a few thousand that came from me testing Google Ads and Youtube ads, but nothing significant.
Now, how much did I spend to get here? Here's my FB Ads total from May 11th, 2020 - December 12th, 2022:
Now, before you say "yea but I don't have $350k to invest!!!", you were about to expose yourself for not reading through the original post
This all started with $150.
I want you guys to look at the date of my rental balance:
On May 1st, rent hit and I hit my peak at $9,452.58 behind on rent. My landlord said pay $1k a week or get evicted. Just 10 days later, our lives changed on that first day, May 11th. We went on to pay that $1k per week off:
Now, let's talk about some lessons I've learned over the past 3 years.
Work Smarter,
I can't lie, I didn't work super hard for this. Especially in comparison to my Uber days. Lately, I've been thinking about this a lot. Like, back in those days, I would wake up at 4am and hit the road. I'd come back around 11am and eat lunch and then jump right back out there. Come back for dinner and then if I still had energy, I'd go back out one more time. I worked at least 12 hours every day.
I worked WAY harder for Uber than I have been working for my own business. When it was for Uber, I felt like I had no choice. I absolutely had to get up and out that early if I wanted to make a decent amount of money that day. I had no choice to stay out there because as you saw, I was almost $10,000 behind on rent so I couldn't afford NOT to be working.
On one half, I attribute this to the fact that this business model is A LOT SMARTER compared to driving people around all day for peanuts. Facebook Ads did all the heavy lifting, all I had to do was create content for ads and organic. 95% of my organic content has been creating simple IG reels.
On the other hand, it has been bothering me recently that I have never put in the same amount of "hard work" that I did for Uber. In theory, when working on your own thing, you should work harder bc why would you work harder to make someone else rich when you can work that hard for yourself? I feel like if I would have put in the same amount of hard work in these past 3 years, I would've been at multiple millions right now.
One change I am making going into this 3rd year is focusing a lot more on organic content to promote the tea. Instead of focusing 100% on IG reels like we've done, I want to start doing Tik Tok and Youtube. This will consist of 2-3 Tik Toks per day and 1-2 Youtube Videos per week on any topic close to health, healing, mindset, self improvement, etc.
Test New Ad Angles As Much As Possible
You know that video ad I talked about in the original post? We ended up running that ad for almost a year straight without doing much testing with different ad creatives. It was one of the dumbest things I've done in these 3 years. I should have been constantly trying to "break my record" by testing new creatives to see if I can find something that works better.
My results shockingly stayed consistent for longer than usual when it comes to Facebook Ads. Creatives die pretty fast there and at that point I didn't really understand how important it was to constantly introduce new creatives. Eventually that ad completely died and was constantly losing money and then that's when we started to launch different creatives more often. But it took a dip in our revenue and a lot of me not understanding what was going wrong before I realized how important it was to introduce new creatives AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.
This is for sure the case of Facebook Ads. I can't speak for Youtube Ads and Tik Tok ads because these two I haven't done much with. It's my plan to focus a lot on both of these over Facebook this year because I feel like costs on Facebook are getting pretty crazy and the lack of targeting options makes it hard to find the right people. There's so many interests that I used to be able to target that are non-existent now.
One of the easiest things I could have done was simply create a few different "hooks" or the first 3 - 5 seconds of the video. It's good to create a few different hooks with different angles and approaches to see which works best. You can just make a different 5 second hook three times and then have the same video play after the hook. Just an easy way to have variations to test.
The more ad creatives you have to test the better. You never know which will pop. I tried to do a similar "epic video" that originally blew up for us in the beginning but it tanked. I was surprised... and hurt. But that taught me to leave the feelings on the table when it came to creating new video ads. Just bc I liked it doesn't mean it will work so I learned to stop putting so much expectation on each creative we created. A lot of times it was an unexpected video or photo ad that would take off.
The same goes when it comes to IG reels. We grew our IG page to over 40k using mostly reels. A number of reels went viral but we weren't posting enough bc we weren't putting enough focus on being content creators just as much as being herbalists. We should be over 100k followers by now if we would have stayed more consistent in posting 1 - 2 reels per day minimum. We did too much overthinking on reels, trying to make a hit everytime instead of just committing to the process of posting 1 - 2 reels a day.
The More Struggles You Go Through, The Better Your Story
Never give up. Never let roadblocks and detours to make you give up on your desire for success. A life without problems would quickly become boring and meaningless. You've gotta realize that problems are awesome teachers. Awesome motivators. You just have to have a healthy perspective. The tougher your journey, the better story you have to tell. Our electric and water got cut off multiple times during my time struggle slaving for Uber. When I tell my story, that's a piece that can be added to help relate more to those who've gone through or going through the same thing. Trust me, you don't want everything just handed to you on a silver platter. It'll be fun in the beginning but will quickly become a source of depression.
When things aren't working, just know that it's going to make your story better. I personally plan on expanding out to public speaking, starting with schools and everything I've gone through makes for a hell of a story. But even if you don't plan to go that far, your story will still be something you'll be telling to your children or grandchildren!!! What's a story without some pain and heartache? Your success WILL come if you just stick it out through those tough times.
I don't want to make this TOO long. Let me know if anyone has questions!!!
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