The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

From a broke Uber Driver $9k behind on rent to $30k Per Month...QUESTIONS?

todonelist

Silver Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
1,114%
Oct 2, 2018
79
880
I'm happy to be able to make this post and hopefully share some inspiration and motivation to you guys.

First off, I found MJ DeMarco while driving for Uber. I'd work 12+ hours a day so listening to music became annoying after a while so Audible became my best friend. I read Millionaire Fastlane and Unscripted audiobooks about 3 times each along with a ton of other books that really helped me push through the shitty time I'm about to briefly cover in a second. So, first MJ if you're reading this, THANK YOU because your books rank at the top as far as ones that woke me TF up. I related to your story of your limo days, that night in the snowstorm. I had many of those nights out there working for Uber. IT SUCKED. Your book came at the right time because hearing your story as a limo driver really gave me a lot of hope to keep going on numerous days where I felt like I wanted to just disappear off the face of the earth.

I'm gonna be 32 on July 30th. I've been doing internet marketing for about 10 years now... not very successfully but still, I've learned a few things. My first success way back when was with CPA marketing. My first sale was a $2 CPA offer for Free Diapers. That was cool but I went on for a few years trying a bunch of things and failing. I eventually started learning Facebook Ads back in 2014. Then, I found a website called Teespring. It was blowing up at the time and several of the people in my I.M. circle were doing well. I had been studying FB ads for a while so I tried it. And this was my real first success w/ Internet Marketing. The next 4 years, I lived a very average I.M. lifestyle by selling t-shirts w/ Teespring and selling little $47 info-products based around teaching FB ads or selling t-shirts. For the time being, this was great. Looking back, I now realize how little money I was making. I was working 100% as an internet marketer but I was only making enough to pay my bills and have all the basic necessities I wanted/needed. Every once in a while, I'd hit a big Teespring campaign or have a nice product launch and be able to save up more money than I'd ever seen before growing up. At one point, I had $18k saved. Problem was, I wasn't building a business at all and there were way too many times where I'd go forever without a winning t-shirt OR a good product launch. I had no idea what to do with $18k so it just became my source of income when things were slow. Well, that $18k eventually dwindled down to $0.

I was burnt out selling t-shirts and products about t-shirts. It was way too much up and down and after 4 years I ended up with basically nothing to show for it. About 3 months after I had moved into a new house, EVERYTHING started going wrong. Nothing was working. Nothing was selling. For a while, I was only down to selling FB ads courses and helping a couple small businesses run their FB ads. This stuff kept my lights on for a while but at this point EVERYTHING collapsed. Problem was, I was now in a house paying $1,500 a month in rent and I didn't have ANY income coming in. This is when Uber came into the picture. I had to do something FAST, so I applied for Uber, hoping to get in, pay up some bills and save up some money to invest in a business idea I had brewing in my head for a while.

Well, two years passed and I was still doing Uber and I was in the WORST position I have ever been in. I was doing Uber and a couple Internet things here and there to keep my head above water but IT WASN'T WORKING. Now, I know you're probably wondering how the hell can someone get $9,000 behind on rent? The answer: I don't know lol. Maybe I had an angel as a landlord but he was extremely cool and worked with me because I communicated with him the entire time. I told him the truth about everything. Don't get me wrong, he got pretty pissed by the time I started approaching $9k. During this time, Coronavirus was just hitting the U.S. He gave me one last chance to catch up and told me I had to pay $1k every week PLUS be on time w/ rent for the next two months or he would be filing for eviction.

I guess this was my back against the wall moment that I needed to kick my a$$ into action. I have 3 daughters. 2018 - 2020 doing Uber was one of the hardest times of my life. I was soooo broke, not living paycheck to paycheck but living daily payout to daily payout. I had my water and lights turned off multiple times. I messed up my credit. All while working long hours with Uber/Lyft and getting nowhere. So like I said MJ's book and other Audible treasures kept me hopeful enough that this wouldn't be forever...and it wasn't :)

So about that business idea I said I had brewing in my head for a while. It was time to go balls to the wall with it and there was no more excuses. I had two months to pay back $9,000 in rent to make sure I had a place for my family to stay. Up until that time I had let fear of failure/success stop me from doing many things, but at this point the fear of losing EVERYTHING outweighed fear of success by a long shot. I didn't care about a pandemic, riots, recession or anything... it was time to stop bullshitting.

So, I'll just put it out there. I know people want to know. I sell tea. Herbal tea. My wife experienced health issues many years ago. After she suffered with this condition for over a year, we eventually put together the right pieces of information and she was able to heal herself with mindset exercises and changes in diet, including the use of specific herbs. So that was that, she recovered completely and we went on struggling financially for the next few years.

One day, I saw an interview with a lady named Greta, CEO and Founder or SkinnyMeTea.com. Great interview btw, she's a beast and gives out tons of knowledge related to eCom/Shopify. After I watched the interview, I ran to get my wife and we watched it again together. At the end of it, we both knew what we were going to do. She was already drinking the same tea that she used to recover years before and at this point, my knowledge in Facebook Ads was quite proficient. I had the product. I had the knowledge to market it. I just needed a budget and some balls. For the two years of me doing Uber, these two important "B's" eluded me and my idea sat dormant.

Fast forward back to my landlord's final, mission impossible payment arrangement. So he gave me a week to get things together. I was about to make a partial payment of $1,000 to bring my balance down to $8k, but since he gave me until the following Monday to start with the arrangement, I decided to risk it all and spend $1,000 on Facebook Ads. Side Note: Before this, we did sell a few bags of tea w/ FB ads but it didn't make any profit. We had sold maybe 10 bags of tea of the course of a year before this last ditch effort. So it's important to note that while that didn't make any profit, it DID get us a couple great reviews, which would come into play later on.

So it was time to get cracking. I knew I needed a better creative if I was going to throw $1,000 at ads in a one week span. I had never scaled that high before, I used to run a lot of punk $5 adsets and rarely ever surpassed a total of $50 in adspend a day. The current photo ad I was using only had gotten me 10 sales for negative ROI so I knew I wasn't going to spend my money on that creative. So, one day, my wife and I went out to the park and shot a video promoting the tea. All she did was basically look badass and work out at a natural trail, I wrote a script telling her story. We recorded it separately and I put them together with some cool music and voila. At that park, we were in the worst position ever but after shooting the last scene and looking over the footage, I felt something. I knew this was going to be it.

I posted the video May 11th, 2020 and started running ads right away. I didn't come to play. The first day, I launched a few ads at $50 per day each, so I would be spending $150. This was a huge risk to me at this time, as I said I had never surpassed $50/day in adspend so this was a big jump for me. It was scary, but I've believed in our product for a long time and this was the time to show and prove.

Here was the results:
34117
$340.87!!

I damn near sh*t myself. I had made almost $200 profit. It would literally have taken me 14 - 16 hours driving all over my city to make that much profit w/ Uber. That first day, I knew it was time for my life to change. I was done having a limited mindset, fearing failure, procrastinating, I was going to drop everything else and focus 100% of my time on this business. I quit Uber that day.

Well, long story short. It's currently 9:17 EST on July 19th, 2020. It's been the best couple of months of my freaking life. Today, I'm sitting at $1,347 in sales. I had my biggest day a couple days ago hitting $1,800 in sales in single day.

For the past 3+ years, I have obsessed over the number $25k per month. I wrote it probably a million times. It WAS my password for everything. Well, now it's time to set my eyes on a much higher goal because I'm here. Here's our numbers in the past 30 days:
34118
$34,437.57!!!!!!!!

We're on course to do $50k in the next month and I want to hit $100k/mo in the next two months. Of course, I say this not to brag at all. I know people doing $50k a day! I dream of reaching that level, too! One thing I learned for sure is that only YOU set your own limits in your mind.

Here's some tips from the top of my head and I'm also open to questions.

1. Find something that solves a real problem. My wife's health issues + learning about Greta's story opened my eyes to the fact that we had a solution to a HUGE problem sitting under our noses the entire time. Look closely at the problems you or your loved ones are going through or have gone through. If there's a big enough problem, your ticket to freedom is in finding that solution(and marketing it correctly).

2. When you find something that solves a real problem, if you believe in it, FOCUS ON IT. Give it your 100%. I had a bunch of little stupid Internet Marketing things I was trying to do and I had to drop it all to focus on building a real brand. I highly recommend niche stores where you build a brand around a product that either solves a huge problem or has a great story behind it or preferably BOTH.

3. Creatives and copy are the kings. The change from photo ads to a video ad was the best thing I could have ever done. People nowadays love to SEE and HEAR about the product. We focused on writing a captivating script that people could relate to and shot a simple but clean video. It changed everything by gaining trust far beyond what any static image could do.

4. It takes money to make money. Sure, old tired saying but damn is it true in my circumstance. I was always scared to spend a lot on testing. I held myself back a lot, for many years. On May 11th, I made a leap and spent $150. The next day I spent $250. I dropped my fear because that was my only option. Don't let yourself get $9k behind on rent before having that wake tf up moment. (Though, I don't know if your landlord is as cool as mine so I wouldn't try this at home)

5. Use very targeted audiences when testing on Facebook. 100k to 1.5M audience size is good. Being really tight in targeting will train the pixel a lot faster.

6. Lookalike audiences are everything. I used to hear this all the time but never got into Lookalikes. Dumb mistake. The Facebook machine is incredibly, freakishly good at finding customers who are more likely to purchase(Always optimize for purchase). The more data you give it, the better it performs. Right now, I'm using only Lookalike audience and ads with absolutely no targeting or lookalikes.

7. NEVER. GIVE. UP.

I'm gonna grab some dinner now...

Any questions?
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

healthsupps

Bronze Contributor
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
293%
Dec 15, 2015
41
120
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Incredible read. Very happy for you! Must have been a wonderful feeling going for being in debt to actually seeing real money come in.

One suggestion though, I would maybe remove some of the details of your product.. This part of the forum is public and you might entice some people to replicate it exactly... using X to solve X... Your business doesn't have a high barrier to entry, so it might bring some people into your market. Don't mean to sound cynical but just trying to help avoid a headache.

Best of luck and continued success!
 

sparechange

Platinum Contributor
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
161%
Nov 11, 2016
2,804
4,502
Canada (Vancouver)
Yes, one question.

How do you read an audiobook?

Great story
 

Bearcorp

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
237%
Jul 2, 2012
711
1,684
39
Australia
Awesome read and congrats on your success so far!
 

todonelist

Silver Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
1,114%
Oct 2, 2018
79
880
Incredible read. Very happy for you! Must have been a wonderful feeling going for being in debt to actually seeing real money come in.

One suggestion though, I would maybe remove some of the details of your product.. This part of the forum is public and you might entice some people to replicate it exactly... using X to solve X... Your business doesn't have a high barrier to entry, so it might bring some people into your market. Don't mean to sound cynical but just trying to help avoid a headache.

Best of luck and continued success!
I wanted to bring some level of transparency especially because it was important part of the story. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. But if someone can take a similar health experience and flip it similarly, I’m happy with that. I’m quite sure we’ll be dominating this area in the next few months.
 

door123

Bronze Contributor
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
107%
Apr 4, 2020
177
189
West Coast
Love this, such an inspiration!
I am kinda in the same situation. I have a cushy self employment situation, but want to level up in life. I am currently sitting on a wonderful idea, but missing the balls to go implement it! arrhhh.

Again thanks for the post.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Simon Angel

Platinum Contributor
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
291%
Apr 24, 2016
1,189
3,455
Congratulations! I was in a similar boat in 2017, having only $50 to start with (sold unneeded stuff) and I got luckty and ended up doing 15-20K per month on average with around 30% profit margin for sometime just dropshipping an AliExpress product like everyone else. Unfortunately, I found this business model to be way too hard and competitve for my small budget this year and shutdown my 3rd or 4th store (lost count).

Your story was great to read and imagine in my head. I know exactly what kind of intoxicating euphoria you felt once you saw that $340.87, realizing you are profiting on Day 1. And I love the approach you had with writing a story and selling something that helped your wife's health condition. I have some pretty interesting genetics myself and a pretty serious disease, which I'm also ever-healing and managing with mostly my mind, a number of herbs and supplements - some swallowed others inhaled. I also drink a certain type of tea which I've found very anti-inflammatory and calming to the mind, providing much better sleep and peace of mind, etc.

I really wonder how you have been promoting this tea with Facebook Ads, I've been doing them since 2016 and I've been left with the impression they're normally very picky against health supplements, cures and etc. Not sure about teas. I'm thinking you probably just made a cool video like you said, added the "wow" story of your wife's recovery and how she was AIDED by the tea, but not healed/cured by it. Am I close enough?

Also, are you buying this tea and then rebranding the box or picking it by hand on a romantic walk near sunset with your wife, pleasantly relieved how you've managed to start a business with something so close to you?
 
Last edited:

Ronak

Gold Contributor
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
317%
Sep 13, 2013
573
1,814
Awesome story. Oftentimes, the journey includes doing things that aren't fastlane, but help build your skillset. Selling tshirts on FB is not high on the fastlane totem pole, but you were able to leverage that knowledge into your own product. Very rarely does the first step lead immediately into a fastlane opportunity, it's a gradual process.

Do you have a private label manufacturer handling the product for you or are you actually making and shipping the stuff?
 

todonelist

Silver Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
1,114%
Oct 2, 2018
79
880
Nice!

TL;DR you made your own blend of herbal tea, put it on Shopify and promoted it via FB ads?
Precisely!

Love this, such an inspiration!
I am kinda in the same situation. I have a cushy self employment situation, but want to level up in life. I am currently sitting on a wonderful idea, but missing the balls to go implement it! arrhhh.

Again thanks for the post.
Go for it!!! You could be sitting on a goldmine! Just jump!!

Wow! Great story and wish you all the best for your family and your business. :smile2:
Thank you so much!! Same to you. Much luck and success in your future!

Congratulations! I was in a similar boat in 2017, having only $50 to start with (sold unneeded stuff) and I got luckty and ended up doing 15-20K per month on average with around 30% profit margin for sometime just dropshipping an AliExpress product like everyone else. Unfortunately, I found this business model to be way too hard and competitve for my small budget this year and shutdown my 3rd or 4th store (lost count).

Your story was great to read and imagine in my head. I know exactly what kind of intoxicating euphoria you felt once you saw that $340.87, realizing you are profiting on Day 1. And I love the approach you had with writing a story and selling something that helped your wife's health condition. I have some pretty interesting genetics myself and a pretty serious disease, which I'm also ever-healing and managing with mostly my mind, a number of herbs and supplements - some swallowed others inhaled. I also drink a certain type of tea which I've found very anti-inflammatory and calming to the mind, providing much better sleep and peace of mind, etc.

I really wonder how you have been promoting this tea with Facebook Ads, I've been doing them since 2016 and I've been left with the impression they're normally very picky against health supplements, cures and etc. Not sure about teas. I'm thinking you probably just made a cool video like you said, added the "wow" story of your wife's recovery and how she was AIDED by the tea, but not healed/cured by it. Am I close enough?

Also, are you buying this tea and then rebranding the box or picking it by hand on a romantic walk near sunset with your wife, pleasantly relieved how you've managed to start a business with something so close to you?

Your thoughts are on point! We make it clear that the tea alone isn't a cure(even though it is curing people by itself) and we also give away a free mindset & nutrition program with tea purchases. I'd say tea is the safest health/supplement type of product to push. My Facebook Ads rep is impressed with our campaigns and assured me that everything is safe. The story was definitely a huge part of the success because it was detailed and only people who have suffered with this would relate. It sounds like you could do something similar to us with your experience!

We buy the herbs wholesale and create the blend in-house. Get our bags from Clearbags and I designed a label in Photoshop and boom.

Awesome story. Oftentimes, the journey includes doing things that aren't fastlane, but help build your skillset. Selling tshirts on FB is not high on the fastlane totem pole, but you were able to leverage that knowledge into your own product. Very rarely does the first step lead immediately into a fastlane opportunity, it's a gradual process.

Do you have a private label manufacturer handling the product for you or are you actually making and shipping the stuff?
Very true! The things you can learn along the slow lane can absolutely help tremendously once you have a fastlane business idea ready to go. We are currently making and shipping ourselves since it's only been a little over 2 months. It's not hard to keep up with orders at this point. Around 30 orders a day is $1k in sales. Super easy to package and ship 30 orders a day.
 

TheGreatGatsby

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
158%
Sep 20, 2018
24
38
Inspiring story ! you said that you blend different herbs together and package it, you do not need to test the herbs by a lab before selling online ? Is there not a food law for product made at home ? because I was interested in buying a raw material in big quantity, package it at home in is raw form without transformation and selling online as a cosmetic product.
 

todonelist

Silver Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
1,114%
Oct 2, 2018
79
880
Inspiring story ! you said that you blend different herbs together and package it, you do not need to test the herbs by a lab before selling online ? Is there not a food law for product made at home ? because I was interested in buying a raw material in big quantity, package it at home in is raw form without transformation and selling online as a cosmetic product.

We deal with a huge supplier of organic herbs, already tested in a lab. You should have extensive knowledge on herbs before making blends. We developed this over the span of some years naturally, only to help her personal experience, not knowing it would be useful in the future. We also recently became certified in holistic nutrition. There's no law against selling herbs from home.
Hi, how did you find the right interests?
That was easy. I just typed in the specific condition/illness into Facebook ads and went off their suggestions. There are plenty specific interests and pages for almost any disease or illness people experience. Go from there and use Facebook suggestions. Then, start with LAA as soon as possible using whatever you have with the most data. Video views, view content, whatever.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Chasta_tea

Bronze Contributor
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
507%
Jun 30, 2020
29
147
41
United States
I'm happy to be able to make this post and hopefully share some inspiration and motivation to you guys.

First off, I found MJ DeMarco while driving for Uber. I'd work 12+ hours a day so listening to music became annoying after a while so Audible became my best friend. I read Millionaire Fastlane and Unscripted audiobooks about 3 times each along with a ton of other books that really helped me push through the shitty time I'm about to briefly cover in a second. So, first MJ if you're reading this, THANK YOU because your books rank at the top as far as ones that woke me TF up. I related to your story of your limo days, that night in the snowstorm. I had many of those nights out there working for Uber. IT SUCKED. Your book came at the right time because hearing your story as a limo driver really gave me a lot of hope to keep going on numerous days where I felt like I wanted to just disappear off the face of the earth.

I'm gonna be 32 on July 30th. I've been doing internet marketing for about 10 years now... not very successfully but still, I've learned a few things. My first success way back when was with CPA marketing. My first sale was a $2 CPA offer for Free Diapers. That was cool but I went on for a few years trying a bunch of things and failing. I eventually started learning Facebook Ads back in 2014. Then, I found a website called Teespring. It was blowing up at the time and several of the people in my I.M. circle were doing well. I had been studying FB ads for a while so I tried it. And this was my real first success w/ Internet Marketing. The next 4 years, I lived a very average I.M. lifestyle by selling t-shirts w/ Teespring and selling little $47 info-products based around teaching FB ads or selling t-shirts. For the time being, this was great. Looking back, I now realize how little money I was making. I was working 100% as an internet marketer but I was only making enough to pay my bills and have all the basic necessities I wanted/needed. Every once in a while, I'd hit a big Teespring campaign or have a nice product launch and be able to save up more money than I'd ever seen before growing up. At one point, I had $18k saved. Problem was, I wasn't building a business at all and there were way too many times where I'd go forever without a winning t-shirt OR a good product launch. I had no idea what to do with $18k so it just became my source of income when things were slow. Well, that $18k eventually dwindled down to $0.

I was burnt out selling t-shirts and products about t-shirts. It was way too much up and down and after 4 years I ended up with basically nothing to show for it. About 3 months after I had moved into a new house, EVERYTHING started going wrong. Nothing was working. Nothing was selling. For a while, I was only down to selling FB ads courses and helping a couple small businesses run their FB ads. This stuff kept my lights on for a while but at this point EVERYTHING collapsed. Problem was, I was now in a house paying $1,500 a month in rent and I didn't have ANY income coming in. This is when Uber came into the picture. I had to do something FAST, so I applied for Uber, hoping to get in, pay up some bills and save up some money to invest in a business idea I had brewing in my head for a while.

Well, two years passed and I was still doing Uber and I was in the WORST position I have ever been in. I was doing Uber and a couple Internet things here and there to keep my head above water but IT WASN'T WORKING. Now, I know you're probably wondering how the hell can someone get $9,000 behind on rent? The answer: I don't know lol. Maybe I had an angel as a landlord but he was extremely cool and worked with me because I communicated with him the entire time. I told him the truth about everything. Don't get me wrong, he got pretty pissed by the time I started approaching $9k. During this time, Coronavirus was just hitting the U.S. He gave me one last chance to catch up and told me I had to pay $1k every week PLUS be on time w/ rent for the next two months or he would be filing for eviction.

I guess this was my back against the wall moment that I needed to kick my a$$ into action. I have 3 daughters. 2018 - 2020 doing Uber was one of the hardest times of my life. I was soooo broke, not living paycheck to paycheck but living daily payout to daily payout. I had my water and lights turned off multiple times. I messed up my credit. All while working long hours with Uber/Lyft and getting nowhere. So like I said MJ's book and other Audible treasures kept me hopeful enough that this wouldn't be forever...and it wasn't :)

So about that business idea I said I had brewing in my head for a while. It was time to go balls to the wall with it and there was no more excuses. I had two months to pay back $9,000 in rent to make sure I had a place for my family to stay. Up until that time I had let fear of failure/success stop me from doing many things, but at this point the fear of losing EVERYTHING outweighed fear of success by a long shot. I didn't care about a pandemic, riots, recession or anything... it was time to stop bullshitting.

So, I'll just put it out there. I know people want to know. I sell tea. Herbal tea. My wife experienced health issues many years ago. After she suffered with this condition for over a year, we eventually put together the right pieces of information and she was able to heal herself with mindset exercises and changes in diet, including the use of specific herbs. So that was that, she recovered completely and we went on struggling financially for the next few years.

One day, I saw an interview with a lady named Greta, CEO and Founder or SkinnyMeTea.com. Great interview btw, she's a beast and gives out tons of knowledge related to eCom/Shopify. After I watched the interview, I ran to get my wife and we watched it again together. At the end of it, we both knew what we were going to do. She was already drinking the same tea that she used to recover years before and at this point, my knowledge in Facebook Ads was quite proficient. I had the product. I had the knowledge to market it. I just needed a budget and some balls. For the two years of me doing Uber, these two important "B's" eluded me and my idea sat dormant.

Fast forward back to my landlord's final, mission impossible payment arrangement. So he gave me a week to get things together. I was about to make a partial payment of $1,000 to bring my balance down to $8k, but since he gave me until the following Monday to start with the arrangement, I decided to risk it all and spend $1,000 on Facebook Ads. Side Note: Before this, we did sell a few bags of tea w/ FB ads but it didn't make any profit. We had sold maybe 10 bags of tea of the course of a year before this last ditch effort. So it's important to note that while that didn't make any profit, it DID get us a couple great reviews, which would come into play later on.

So it was time to get cracking. I knew I needed a better creative if I was going to throw $1,000 at ads in a one week span. I had never scaled that high before, I used to run a lot of punk $5 adsets and rarely ever surpassed a total of $50 in adspend a day. The current photo ad I was using only had gotten me 10 sales for negative ROI so I knew I wasn't going to spend my money on that creative. So, one day, my wife and I went out to the park and shot a video promoting the tea. All she did was basically look badass and work out at a natural trail, I wrote a script telling her story. We recorded it separately and I put them together with some cool music and voila. At that park, we were in the worst position ever but after shooting the last scene and looking over the footage, I felt something. I knew this was going to be it.

I posted the video May 11th, 2020 and started running ads right away. I didn't come to play. The first day, I launched a few ads at $50 per day each, so I would be spending $150. This was a huge risk to me at this time, as I said I had never surpassed $50/day in adspend so this was a big jump for me. It was scary, but I've believed in our product for a long time and this was the time to show and prove.

Here was the results:
View attachment 34117
$340.87!!

I damn near sh*t myself. I had made almost $200 profit. It would literally have taken me 14 - 16 hours driving all over my city to make that much profit w/ Uber. That first day, I knew it was time for my life to change. I was done having a limited mindset, fearing failure, procrastinating, I was going to drop everything else and focus 100% of my time on this business. I quit Uber that day.

Well, long story short. It's currently 9:17 EST on July 19th, 2020. It's been the best couple of months of my freaking life. Today, I'm sitting at $1,347 in sales. I had my biggest day a couple days ago hitting $1,800 in sales in single day.

For the past 3+ years, I have obsessed over the number $25k per month. I wrote it probably a million times. It WAS my password for everything. Well, now it's time to set my eyes on a much higher goal because I'm here. Here's our numbers in the past 30 days:
View attachment 34118
$34,437.57!!!!!!!!

We're on course to do $50k in the next month and I want to hit $100k/mo in the next two months. Of course, I say this not to brag at all. I know people doing $50k a day! I dream of reaching that level, too! One thing I learned for sure is that only YOU set your own limits in your mind.

Here's some tips from the top of my head and I'm also open to questions.
1. Find something that solves a real problem. My wife's health issues + learning about Greta's story opened my eyes to the fact that we had a solution to a HUGE problem sitting under our noses the entire time. Look closely at the problems you or your loved ones are going through or have gone through. If there's a big enough problem, your ticket to freedom is in finding that solution(and marketing it correctly).
2. When you find something that solves a real problem, if you believe in it, FOCUS ON IT. Give it your 100%. I had a bunch of little stupid Internet Marketing things I was trying to do and I had to drop it all to focus on building a real brand. I highly recommend niche stores where you build a brand around a product that either solves a huge problem or has a great story behind it or preferably BOTH.
3. Creatives and copy are the kings. The change from photo ads to a video ad was the best thing I could have ever done. People nowadays love to SEE and HEAR about the product. We focused on writing a captivating script that people could relate to and shot a simple but clean video. It changed everything by gaining trust far beyond what any static image could do.
4. It takes money to make money. Sure, old tired saying but damn is it true in my circumstance. I was always scared to spend a lot on testing. I held myself back a lot, for many years. On May 11th, I made a leap and spent $150. The next day I spent $250. I dropped my fear because that was my only option. Don't let yourself get $9k behind on rent before having that wake tf up moment. (Though, I don't know if your landlord is as cool as mine so I wouldn't try this at home)
5. Use very targeted audiences when testing on Facebook. 100k to 1.5M audience size is good. Being really tight in targeting will train the pixel a lot faster.
6. Lookalike audiences are everything. I used to hear this all the time but never got into Lookalikes. Dumb mistake. The Facebook machine is incredibly, freakishly good at finding customers who are more likely to purchase(Always optimize for purchase). The more data you give it, the better it performs. Right now, I'm using only Lookalike audience and ads with absolutely no targeting or lookalikes.
7. NEVER. GIVE. UP.

I'm gonna grab some dinner now...

Any questions?
Both brilliant and inspirational! Thank you for sharing!
 

Thoelt53

Gold Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
293%
Dec 8, 2016
826
2,419
Boston, MA
Congrats on your accomplishment thus far.

What is your plan for manufacturing your tea bags as you grow your company? As you grow toward your goal of $100k a month, how are you going to keep up with demand? A little math based on what you’ve said looks like you’ll be making nearly 2,000 tea bags per day to hit $100k/month.
 

100k

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
149%
Oct 20, 2012
1,529
2,284
You can't go wrong with Tea (and Biscuits)

Put the kettle on is the answer to everything in the UK :)

Dan

Me in the UK: Bloody hell, I broke my leg.

Everyone in the UK: Blimey, put the kettle on mate.

LOL, not go to the hospital... haha LOL

=====================

Well done OP.

I keep telling people, focus on a super niche audience first (super targeted, stacked with interest - must also like...x) and then when you have 100 conversions from them, build a lookalike audience and go broad. If you have a good offer, you'll get conversions.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

todonelist

Silver Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
1,114%
Oct 2, 2018
79
880
Both brilliant and inspirational! Thank you for sharing!

Thanks! My pleasure to share.

Congrats on your accomplishment thus far.

What is your plan for manufacturing your tea bags as you grow your company? As you grow toward your goal of $100k a month, how are you going to keep up with demand? A little math based on what you’ve said looks like you’ll be making nearly 2,000 tea bags per day to hit $100k/month.

Not quite 2,000. This is considering our AOV as we have multiple products besides the flagship blend we started with. I'm just going to hire and upgrade equipment. Right now it's just me and my wife doing everything manually. There's machinery that we're about to purchase that will speed that up tremendously. Then, I've always been interested in having a team around me so I'll be hiring locally to help keep up w/ demand.

Me in the UK: Bloody hell, I broke my leg.

Everyone in the UK: Blimey, put the kettle on mate.

LOL, not go to the hospital... haha LOL

=====================

Well done OP.

I keep telling people, focus on a super niche audience first (super targeted, stacked with interest - must also like...x) and then when you have 100 conversions from them, build a lookalike audience and go broad. If you have a good offer, you'll get conversions.

Lol, I didn't know it was like that in the UK.

Yep, they should listen to you lol, exactly the ad strategy I used. Simple but deadly w/ the right offer and creative.
 
Last edited:

Simon Angel

Platinum Contributor
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
291%
Apr 24, 2016
1,189
3,455
Thanks! My pleasure to share.



Not quite 2,000. This is considering our AOV as we have multiple products besides the flagship blend we started with. I'm just going to hire and upgrade equipment. Right now it's just me and my wife doing everything manually. There's machinery that we're about to purchase that will speed that up tremendously. Then, I've always been interested in having a team around me so I'll be hiring locally to help keep up w/ demand.



Lol, I didn't know it was like that in the UK.

Yep, they should listen to you lol, exactly the ad strategy I used. Simple but deadly w/ the right offer and creative.

Good to know you can be earning 35K a month and having the fulfillment done by just you and your wife! I've done similar numbers but it was dropshipping and lower profit margins, so fulfillment although a HUGE pain logistically, it wasn't exactly physically draining. However, back in 2016 I was fulfilling 20-30 orders per day manually in AliExpress since we didn't know better and it sucked.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Lucky Lu

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
99%
Nov 2, 2019
247
244
Newport Beach, California
Amazing journey brother. We really appreciate your post, really. It inspired me to take a different point of view on Ads and the idea of going all in.

Me and my wife would love to try the product!!! We are big tea drinkers.

Congratulations!!

Let me know if you need any help with your trademark at any point, I will be happy to be of consult for anything you need.
 

Ceremony05

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
150%
Jul 20, 2020
2
3
Turkey
I'm happy to be able to make this post and hopefully share some inspiration and motivation to you guys.

First off, I found MJ DeMarco while driving for Uber. I'd work 12+ hours a day so listening to music became annoying after a while so Audible became my best friend. I read Millionaire Fastlane and Unscripted audiobooks about 3 times each along with a ton of other books that really helped me push through the shitty time I'm about to briefly cover in a second. So, first MJ if you're reading this, THANK YOU because your books rank at the top as far as ones that woke me TF up. I related to your story of your limo days, that night in the snowstorm. I had many of those nights out there working for Uber. IT SUCKED. Your book came at the right time because hearing your story as a limo driver really gave me a lot of hope to keep going on numerous days where I felt like I wanted to just disappear off the face of the earth.

I'm gonna be 32 on July 30th. I've been doing internet marketing for about 10 years now... not very successfully but still, I've learned a few things. My first success way back when was with CPA marketing. My first sale was a $2 CPA offer for Free Diapers. That was cool but I went on for a few years trying a bunch of things and failing. I eventually started learning Facebook Ads back in 2014. Then, I found a website called Teespring. It was blowing up at the time and several of the people in my I.M. circle were doing well. I had been studying FB ads for a while so I tried it. And this was my real first success w/ Internet Marketing. The next 4 years, I lived a very average I.M. lifestyle by selling t-shirts w/ Teespring and selling little $47 info-products based around teaching FB ads or selling t-shirts. For the time being, this was great. Looking back, I now realize how little money I was making. I was working 100% as an internet marketer but I was only making enough to pay my bills and have all the basic necessities I wanted/needed. Every once in a while, I'd hit a big Teespring campaign or have a nice product launch and be able to save up more money than I'd ever seen before growing up. At one point, I had $18k saved. Problem was, I wasn't building a business at all and there were way too many times where I'd go forever without a winning t-shirt OR a good product launch. I had no idea what to do with $18k so it just became my source of income when things were slow. Well, that $18k eventually dwindled down to $0.

I was burnt out selling t-shirts and products about t-shirts. It was way too much up and down and after 4 years I ended up with basically nothing to show for it. About 3 months after I had moved into a new house, EVERYTHING started going wrong. Nothing was working. Nothing was selling. For a while, I was only down to selling FB ads courses and helping a couple small businesses run their FB ads. This stuff kept my lights on for a while but at this point EVERYTHING collapsed. Problem was, I was now in a house paying $1,500 a month in rent and I didn't have ANY income coming in. This is when Uber came into the picture. I had to do something FAST, so I applied for Uber, hoping to get in, pay up some bills and save up some money to invest in a business idea I had brewing in my head for a while.

Well, two years passed and I was still doing Uber and I was in the WORST position I have ever been in. I was doing Uber and a couple Internet things here and there to keep my head above water but IT WASN'T WORKING. Now, I know you're probably wondering how the hell can someone get $9,000 behind on rent? The answer: I don't know lol. Maybe I had an angel as a landlord but he was extremely cool and worked with me because I communicated with him the entire time. I told him the truth about everything. Don't get me wrong, he got pretty pissed by the time I started approaching $9k. During this time, Coronavirus was just hitting the U.S. He gave me one last chance to catch up and told me I had to pay $1k every week PLUS be on time w/ rent for the next two months or he would be filing for eviction.

I guess this was my back against the wall moment that I needed to kick my a$$ into action. I have 3 daughters. 2018 - 2020 doing Uber was one of the hardest times of my life. I was soooo broke, not living paycheck to paycheck but living daily payout to daily payout. I had my water and lights turned off multiple times. I messed up my credit. All while working long hours with Uber/Lyft and getting nowhere. So like I said MJ's book and other Audible treasures kept me hopeful enough that this wouldn't be forever...and it wasn't :)

So about that business idea I said I had brewing in my head for a while. It was time to go balls to the wall with it and there was no more excuses. I had two months to pay back $9,000 in rent to make sure I had a place for my family to stay. Up until that time I had let fear of failure/success stop me from doing many things, but at this point the fear of losing EVERYTHING outweighed fear of success by a long shot. I didn't care about a pandemic, riots, recession or anything... it was time to stop bullshitting.

So, I'll just put it out there. I know people want to know. I sell tea. Herbal tea. My wife experienced health issues many years ago. After she suffered with this condition for over a year, we eventually put together the right pieces of information and she was able to heal herself with mindset exercises and changes in diet, including the use of specific herbs. So that was that, she recovered completely and we went on struggling financially for the next few years.

One day, I saw an interview with a lady named Greta, CEO and Founder or SkinnyMeTea.com. Great interview btw, she's a beast and gives out tons of knowledge related to eCom/Shopify. After I watched the interview, I ran to get my wife and we watched it again together. At the end of it, we both knew what we were going to do. She was already drinking the same tea that she used to recover years before and at this point, my knowledge in Facebook Ads was quite proficient. I had the product. I had the knowledge to market it. I just needed a budget and some balls. For the two years of me doing Uber, these two important "B's" eluded me and my idea sat dormant.

Fast forward back to my landlord's final, mission impossible payment arrangement. So he gave me a week to get things together. I was about to make a partial payment of $1,000 to bring my balance down to $8k, but since he gave me until the following Monday to start with the arrangement, I decided to risk it all and spend $1,000 on Facebook Ads. Side Note: Before this, we did sell a few bags of tea w/ FB ads but it didn't make any profit. We had sold maybe 10 bags of tea of the course of a year before this last ditch effort. So it's important to note that while that didn't make any profit, it DID get us a couple great reviews, which would come into play later on.

So it was time to get cracking. I knew I needed a better creative if I was going to throw $1,000 at ads in a one week span. I had never scaled that high before, I used to run a lot of punk $5 adsets and rarely ever surpassed a total of $50 in adspend a day. The current photo ad I was using only had gotten me 10 sales for negative ROI so I knew I wasn't going to spend my money on that creative. So, one day, my wife and I went out to the park and shot a video promoting the tea. All she did was basically look badass and work out at a natural trail, I wrote a script telling her story. We recorded it separately and I put them together with some cool music and voila. At that park, we were in the worst position ever but after shooting the last scene and looking over the footage, I felt something. I knew this was going to be it.

I posted the video May 11th, 2020 and started running ads right away. I didn't come to play. The first day, I launched a few ads at $50 per day each, so I would be spending $150. This was a huge risk to me at this time, as I said I had never surpassed $50/day in adspend so this was a big jump for me. It was scary, but I've believed in our product for a long time and this was the time to show and prove.

Here was the results:
View attachment 34117
$340.87!!

I damn near sh*t myself. I had made almost $200 profit. It would literally have taken me 14 - 16 hours driving all over my city to make that much profit w/ Uber. That first day, I knew it was time for my life to change. I was done having a limited mindset, fearing failure, procrastinating, I was going to drop everything else and focus 100% of my time on this business. I quit Uber that day.

Well, long story short. It's currently 9:17 EST on July 19th, 2020. It's been the best couple of months of my freaking life. Today, I'm sitting at $1,347 in sales. I had my biggest day a couple days ago hitting $1,800 in sales in single day.

For the past 3+ years, I have obsessed over the number $25k per month. I wrote it probably a million times. It WAS my password for everything. Well, now it's time to set my eyes on a much higher goal because I'm here. Here's our numbers in the past 30 days:
View attachment 34118
$34,437.57!!!!!!!!

We're on course to do $50k in the next month and I want to hit $100k/mo in the next two months. Of course, I say this not to brag at all. I know people doing $50k a day! I dream of reaching that level, too! One thing I learned for sure is that only YOU set your own limits in your mind.

Here's some tips from the top of my head and I'm also open to questions.
1. Find something that solves a real problem. My wife's health issues + learning about Greta's story opened my eyes to the fact that we had a solution to a HUGE problem sitting under our noses the entire time. Look closely at the problems you or your loved ones are going through or have gone through. If there's a big enough problem, your ticket to freedom is in finding that solution(and marketing it correctly).
2. When you find something that solves a real problem, if you believe in it, FOCUS ON IT. Give it your 100%. I had a bunch of little stupid Internet Marketing things I was trying to do and I had to drop it all to focus on building a real brand. I highly recommend niche stores where you build a brand around a product that either solves a huge problem or has a great story behind it or preferably BOTH.
3. Creatives and copy are the kings. The change from photo ads to a video ad was the best thing I could have ever done. People nowadays love to SEE and HEAR about the product. We focused on writing a captivating script that people could relate to and shot a simple but clean video. It changed everything by gaining trust far beyond what any static image could do.
4. It takes money to make money. Sure, old tired saying but damn is it true in my circumstance. I was always scared to spend a lot on testing. I held myself back a lot, for many years. On May 11th, I made a leap and spent $150. The next day I spent $250. I dropped my fear because that was my only option. Don't let yourself get $9k behind on rent before having that wake tf up moment. (Though, I don't know if your landlord is as cool as mine so I wouldn't try this at home)
5. Use very targeted audiences when testing on Facebook. 100k to 1.5M audience size is good. Being really tight in targeting will train the pixel a lot faster.
6. Lookalike audiences are everything. I used to hear this all the time but never got into Lookalikes. Dumb mistake. The Facebook machine is incredibly, freakishly good at finding customers who are more likely to purchase(Always optimize for purchase). The more data you give it, the better it performs. Right now, I'm using only Lookalike audience and ads with absolutely no targeting or lookalikes.
7. NEVER. GIVE. UP.

I'm gonna grab some dinner now...

Any questions?


Really good story of success :clap::.

I got one question,
about 6-7 months ago I was thinking to buy Greta's course and I coudn't dare to buy it was too expensive for me. Do you recomend that course or is it just another money trap?
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Fr33zerPop

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
135%
Jan 14, 2020
52
70
Portland, Oregon, USA
I've spent years "collecting info", reading, studying, watching the "free" portion of webinars and dreaming of pivoting at the worst possible phase life (40s, with kids), during my worst possible year (2020). My wife also has an auto-immune disease (resulting in joint inflammation) so I appreciate your story. I only hope one day I can write something similar, but I can't seem to identify and conquer the hurdles keeping me back year after year. Thanks for your inspiring story, and congrats.
 

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top