From an 8-figure e-commerce business to $280k in debt. What to do now?

[bella5]

I've had my ecommerce business since 2018. The growth and revenue has largely been driven by Facebook ads since then, and I can definitely say that it is getting harder and harder. 2018 to 2020 it almost seemed easy to make a decent profit.

You're right that 2020 was like a gold rush for ecommerce. Ads were cheap and it was the highest profit year my business has had. Since the IOS changes in 2021, it's been a battle making a profit from FB ads. That's because I've had a business that doesn't have the potential for a large % of repeat customers, so advertising is always necessary to grow revenue. I'm at the point of having to pivot as well, and am moving into an ecommece business that can be sustained more from repeat customers, word of mouth etc.

I think the skills you have are definitely still applicable, but they need to be used on a business that can maintain growth from other sources, not just advertising. So the advertising skills you've learned would be a part of the equation, but not the whole business.

 

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[TonyStark]

Hey man! Great first post, and it seems you got a lot of life ahead of you. Don’t stress, you’ll get there eventually if it’s meant to be. You sure as hell are doing way more than I was when I was your age (29 now).

I actually live in Austin! Born and raised. I’m a part time DJ now cause music has always been my thing, but I come from a business background if you ever wanna chop it up sometime; send me a DM!

 

[Guest1y4212]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1503472693529690114

View: https://twitter.com/callicrates_/status/1503472693529690114




Read the book below, because the author did exactly the same thing.

What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars (Columbia Business School Publishing): Paul, Jim, Moynihan, Brendan, Schwager, Jack: 9780231164689: Amazon.com: Books

What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars (Columbia Business School Publishing) [Paul, Jim, Moynihan, Brendan, Schwager, Jack] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars (Columbia Business School Publishing)

www.amazon.com

Trump declared bankruptcy what, 7 times? I think he's doing alright right now.

You took serious swings at a young age and even though you lost a lot recently, you still had major wins (the median household income in the US is like $70K, and you did 13-14x that in one year).

You're gonna bounce back dude.

@WillHurtDontCare - Thank you for the book recommendation. I read it and hold crap that was an amazing read.

And also thank you for the reassurance on my journey. It means a lot to heard this feedback from you.

 

[Guest1y4212]

Great story and you really achieved a lot in such a short time.

I'm in quite a similar situation right now, albeit with lower numbers. I started my ecommerce business at 19. Sales - year 1: $105k, year 2: $248k, year 3: $135k, year 4: $124k.


Same! In year 2 our sales were high because my niche was trending. I didn't realise the high sales were a temporary thing. As sales climbed, I assumed they would continue climbing or level out. I never thought sales would fall.

I had hired 2 employees, upsized to renting a bigger warehouse and essentially 'reinvested' any profit on overheads. As sales started falling I blamed it on marketing strategy so we tried different things. I ignored the real problem that the product we were selling were not as in demand anymore. Debt built up and sales continued falling.

I then re-read Profit First by Mike Michalowicz, which finally made me face the situation I was in. I accepted that the business would collapse if I didn't take the necessary action. I let the employees go and downsized to a smaller warehouse. It was a slap in the face and hit my ego/vision hard. I'm going to close my business at the end of the year because of the low demand and also I want to do something different.

It's hard knowing what to do next when you've just closed a business. There's no clear career paths when you take an unconventional route. Personally I want some time off. My plan is to travel for a while to reset. After that start a business but I'm not sure what yet. For you as @Simon Angel mentioned, there's an opportunity for you to teach others whatever topic you think you did best in and share your story.

Hey @Tony100 - Thank you for sharing your story as well. I'm glad this post found you at a good time.

These stories are some of the reality of what can actually happen when mistakes are made, but it's the most important that we face what's in front of us, learn from it, and get feedback from others further down the journey, then improve going forward.

Happy to connect if you'd like to chat through some things, or if you have any questions, feel free to pop it in here and I'll be happy to shed any insight, so you and others can learn.

 

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[Guest1y4212]

So how come your ecommerce business started off so strong, then tanked? I am in the real estate and landscaping business, so I am not familiar with this industry

I was utilizing the dropshipping model. And also was scaling up a product that had ultra-fast production time. Which basically allowed us to increase advertising budget like crazy. Spending $1 to make $3 basically within the same day. But we had limited control (which violates @MJ DeMarco and his CENTS framework). We did not have proper control of the supply chain. We did not have control over the advertising platform - Facebook - (CAC 'customer acquisition costs' went very high) -> which lead to the business spiraling out of control then "tanking". E-commerce can be very volatile if you let it.

 

[Guest1y4212]

I wrote earlier that you should search for something that has never been imported into the USA, but you will find it difficult to find such on Alibaba, because most eCommerce people in the USA don't think past Alibaba. Some will look at similar sites, but there they will find similar products.

If you do want to keep searching on Alibaba, at least make sure you are dealing with genuine manufacturers. If you find what looks like a good supplier, I would be happy to check them out for you if you send me their name via PM.

I would advise you to search in countries other than China. There are 40 countries that have exporters looking for customers, and I provide links to genuine B2B export sites in my book.

Walter

Hey @Walter Hay - thank you for this feedback. I honestly had no clue that this was even an option. Basically all of the other e-commerce sellers I know just use Alibaba for sourcing.

For my next ventures (as I will be sticking to the e-commerce space), I will send you a PM to vet through some of the suppliers I find (if that's okay with you). Thanks so much for your insight.

 

[Guest1y4212]

I loved your story man, congrats on being able to achieve such amazing figures at a young age. The fact that you're an execution junkie as you would call it is awesome, most of us are on the opposite end. With those skills, surely as a worst case scenario you could find a job that pays at least 100k? Most people don't have the experience that you do, they just worked on other people's businesses, but you have your own.

The way I see it is that there is 2 options, either just get a regular job and pay it off slowly, or start another business and make it successful. Both options sound painful, but in the long term sounds like the second option is more bearable.

@LiveEntrepreneur - thanks for this feedback. I really appreciate this. I have some resources at my disposal (although I did lose a ton of leverage from having get rid of my previous employees. Going to be going with the starting another business route (for now), and will keep you guys all updated on the progress.

I am hoping to come back to this thread say 1 year from now and have some positive news to share.

 

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[Guest1y4212]

Amazing story, thank you for sharing it.
First of all, congratulations. You are a very special kind of person and you clearly have the skills and know-how to be extraordinarily successful.

I don't have enough experience to give any meaningful advice on the business, but I will say something which applies to life in general:




Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody fails.
We just fail on different scales, depending on the level of success we achieved. Some get fired from their job, some lose millions of dollars, some billions.

When you fall down, get up immediately.
Don't spend to much time in the "I don't know what to do" phase. It only leads to inaction and self-destructive behavior.

Evaluate the situation, make a new plan, get back on the horse, and move forward. Because the alternative is worse.

Empires rise and fall, most businesses will fail. But it's important that you keep the lessons learned and save as much capital as you can to bankroll the next business attempt.

Thank you @heavy_industry - getting back up again is #1 on my agenda. Currently rebuilding. Will keep you updated on the progress. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Guest1y4212]

Thanks for adding your story as well Tony100! You are right about focusing on the wrong things, and I can tell you there are a LOT of folks here that went through the exact same thing. It wasn't something unique to you, when you don't know, you just don't know. With ecommerce and retail in general, trends def don't last. The ones that do are commoditized and they race to the bottom of the profit margin .

Y said you were planning on shutting down end of year... when just run into the dead end? Why not cut ties now, or make a dramatic and bold shift with the company to see what it has left in it? (just curious, no assumptions here!)

@Tony100 - To add to @LightHouse and his point. If the business is bleeding, the one advice I would have would be to make massive action and decisions immediately.

Whether that be cutting operational expenses. Looking to avenues to sell or salvage existing assets.

This is something I wish I did sooner. If I did this sooner, I would have probably been able to shift away from the business with a possible sale, and have brought someone else on who can revive things before it got really bad.

When making the decisions to shut things down, I gave myself 45 days and set it on the timeline to fix things (hail mary)

After I realized this was too big of a leak to fix, I jumped ship. Faced the reality, and ate the loses.

If you've ever heard of the short story that goes along the lines like this:

Tim just moved to a new neighborhood recently. He likes his house and the environment, but there is one thing he doesn’t get.

His neighbor has a dog that keeps howling non-stop. Day in, day out.

Initially Tim thinks that the dog is just going through a phase, so he ignores the howls, thinking it will eventually stop howling.

But the dog continues to howl.

One day passes. Nothing changes. Two days pass. Still howling. Three days. Five days. A week. A month. Still howling, with no signs of stopping.

Finally, Tim can’t stand it anymore. One fine day, he walks over to his neighbor’s house to see what is going on.

Sure enough, there is the dog, sitting on the front porch, howling pitifully to whoever is walking by.

On the other hand, his neighbor is sitting on his bench in the front yard, leisurely reading his newspapers and sipping a cup of coffee.

So Tim walks up to his neighbor.

Tim: “Hi, I’m Tim. I live next door.”

Neighbor: “Hi! I’m John.”

Tim: “Is this your dog by any chance? It’s been howling non-stop.”

John: “Oh yes he is. Sorry about the howls, I hope they are not bothering you.”

Tim: “Why does he keep howling?”

John: “Well… that’s cause he’s sitting on a nail.”

Tim: “Sitting on a nail??”

Tim looks at the dog, bewildered.

“Alright… why doesn’t he just get away from the nail?”

“Well, Tim……,” John takes a slow sip of his coffee before replying. “…… That’s because he doesn’t find it painful enough yet.”

Basically, don't be the dog in this story (which I was). Don't wait for it to be more painful if you know it can and will get worse.

 

[Guest1y4212]

I've had my ecommerce business since 2018. The growth and revenue has largely been driven by Facebook ads since then, and I can definitely say that it is getting harder and harder. 2018 to 2020 it almost seemed easy to make a decent profit.

You're right that 2020 was like a gold rush for ecommerce. Ads were cheap and it was the highest profit year my business has had. Since the IOS changes in 2021, it's been a battle making a profit from FB ads. That's because I've had a business that doesn't have the potential for a large % of repeat customers, so advertising is always necessary to grow revenue. I'm at the point of having to pivot as well, and am moving into an ecommece business that can be sustained more from repeat customers, word of mouth etc.

I think the skills you have are definitely still applicable, but they need to be used on a business that can maintain growth from other sources, not just advertising. So the advertising skills you've learned would be a part of the equation, but not the whole business.

Appreciate this feedback @bella5 - and I couldn't agree more. I believe a repeat purchase rate of over 30% and a product(s) that have an insane word of mouth referral will be the hedge needed to grow e-commerce business's of the future. The days of scaling s**t products or mediocre products on Facebook are over. The market matures, and that's fine.

 

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[LiveEntrepreneur]

@LiveEntrepreneur - thanks for this feedback. I really appreciate this. I have some resources at my disposal (although I did lose a ton of leverage from having get rid of my previous employees. Going to be going with the starting another business route (for now), and will keep you guys all updated on the progress.

I am hoping to come back to this thread say 1 year from now and have some positive news to share.

No problem, happy to help. I believe in you, you have done it once and can do it again. Only difference is that it will be easier this time because you know what to do and what not to do.

 

[Vinnland]

100% of my ecom clients that do between $5m - $15m revenue per year (at around 20% net margin) focused on one market.

• One market (that they are either part of or fell in love with)
• They make their products themselves
• They store their products themselves locally
• They focused on building a brand.
• Have fanatical audiences or consumable products

The whole "test products to find a winner" thing worked well between 2010 - 2016 when traffic was cheap. You could F-up and still make a profit. But even then, they are biz-ops... not businesses. The economics simply do not stack up...

I mean... look at the colossal mess that is Casper mattresses. They are a scaled-up version of this issue.

1. Poor economics.
2. Rely on ads
3. Poor re-buy rate.

"Will it be around in 10 years?"

^^ for my clients, their answer is yes.

 

[Guest1y4212]

100% of my ecom clients that do between $5m - $15m revenue per year (at around 20% net margin) focused on one market.

• One market (that they are either part of or fell in love with)
• They make their products themselves
• They store their products themselves locally
• They focused on building a brand.
• Have fanatical audiences or consumable products

The whole "test products to find a winner" thing worked well between 2010 - 2016 when traffic was cheap. You could F-up and still make a profit. But even then, they are biz-ops... not businesses. The economics simply do not stack up...

I mean... look at the colossal mess that is Casper mattresses. They are a scaled-up version of this issue.

1. Poor economics.
2. Rely on ads
3. Poor re-buy rate.

"Will it be around in 10 years?"

^^ for my clients, their answer is yes.

I agree with this entire argument. Couldn't be more on point with this.

I think it's of value to "let the market decide". And "let's test it and see if it works", but I think nowadays you need more than that to succeed, and also thrive.

There's so many intangibles when it comes to building a brand. Paid ads can get you to a certain point, and after that point, a real mission, brand, and purpose must exist. And consumers can smell that from a mile away.

 

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[Vinnland]

I agree with this entire argument. Couldn't be more on point with this.

I think it's of value to "let the market decide". And "let's test it and see if it works", but I think nowadays you need more than that to succeed, and also thrive.

There's so many intangibles when it comes to building a brand. Paid ads can get you to a certain point, and after that point, a real mission, brand, and purpose must exist. And consumers can smell that from a mile away.

Agree.

One thing that comes to mind is how "things change". Opportunities do not last forever.

The days of "FB ads only business" for low ticket products are over. This is why people sell high ticket things from ads.

Honestly, though, your point about intangibles is a great one. I am yet to reverse engineer that.

 

[Andy Black]

The days of "FB ads only business" for low ticket products are over. This is why people sell high ticket things from ads.

I believe low-ticket is the new flavour of the month, for courses at any rate.

 

[DarkZero]

I believe low-ticket is the new flavour of the month, for courses at any rate.

Yup for courses it's low ticket with upsell to high ticket.

 

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[DarkZero]

If you're diving back into ecom you want to do all of the things that were mentioned in this thread which you have already said like...

Build a brand
Longevity in terms of product
Raving fans

Focus on building moats around the business where the products will be bought for a long period of time. Focus on rebuys if you can.

And don't turn it into a "marketing" business. MJ talked about this heavily recently in another thread. If the business is built only on marketing, it will crumble when marketing stops or fails.

Use marketing to give it legs but after that, you should build a powerful brand.

Many of the popular DTC brands are still relying on marketing and riding a wave. Don't worry about being popular or trendy. Focus on being good.

Also, depending on the product... TikTok ads will be your best friend.

 

[Tony100]

Thanks for adding your story as well Tony100! You are right about focusing on the wrong things, and I can tell you there are a LOT of folks here that went through the exact same thing. It wasn't something unique to you, when you don't know, you just don't know. With ecommerce and retail in general, trends def don't last. The ones that do are commoditized and they race to the bottom of the profit margin .

Y said you were planning on shutting down end of year... when just run into the dead end? Why not cut ties now, or make a dramatic and bold shift with the company to see what it has left in it? (just curious, no assumptions here!)

Thanks for the encouragement! You're right it's part of the learning process you have to go through.

That's a fair question. I have a lot of inventory that I want to sell. I could try liquidating everything this month and close the business. However, I think I will get more money by continuing to sell products until the end of the year and liquidating whatever is left.

Hey @Tony100 - Thank you for sharing your story as well. I'm glad this post found you at a good time.

These stories are some of the reality of what can actually happen when mistakes are made, but it's the most important that we face what's in front of us, learn from it, and get feedback from others further down the journey, then improve going forward.

Happy to connect if you'd like to chat through some things, or if you have any questions, feel free to pop it in here and I'll be happy to shed any insight, so you and others can learn.

Thanks mate, yeah I do agree that it's an important learning process. It's better to make these mistakes early on so we don't make the same mistakes on our future ventures.

@Tony100 - To add to @LightHouse and his point. If the business is bleeding, the one advice I would have would be to make massive action and decisions immediately.

Whether that be cutting operational expenses. Looking to avenues to sell or salvage existing assets.

This is something I wish I did sooner. If I did this sooner, I would have probably been able to shift away from the business with a possible sale, and have brought someone else on who can revive things before it got really bad.

When making the decisions to shut things down, I gave myself 45 days and set it on the timeline to fix things (hail mary)

After I realized this was too big of a leak to fix, I jumped ship. Faced the reality, and ate the loses.

If you've ever heard of the short story that goes along the lines like this:



Basically, don't be the dog in this story (which I was). Don't wait for it to be more painful if you know it can and will get worse.

I wish I did it sooner too. I should have maximised profit while the niche was trending then exited like two years ago.

I have a lot of inventory. Waiting until the end of the year will allow me to sell more of it at full price then liquidate the rest. I should have a good amount to start a new business with and some to go travel with for a while too. I looked at the figures and it's better to do that than liquidate everything now. Though mentally I am ready to move on.

I hadn't heard that short story, I like it. Yes as above I wish I had moved on sooner but taking 6 months to sell all the inventory off will be worth it to me. I'm taking action now though to sell as much inventory in the rest of the year and prepare for closing.

Thanks for your insight.

 

[Vinnland]

I believe low-ticket is the new flavour of the month, for courses at any rate.

This is correct. Course sellers never show the economics across a wide spectrum of examples though.

Of course, if you have:

1. A fanatical audience
2. With a good product
3. in a market that you understand

Then there is a chance whether it's a high ticket or low ticket. Unfortunately, this is rare because most people are blinded by "making money" to build a business.

Fun fact - the most fanatical of audiences are online opportunists/course buyers or online money making... hence the course sellers.

"Do things differently and you make it for sure...!" <--- this is how they sell courses. I know because its how I used to sell courses

Fun fact 2 - if someone picked one online opportunity and stuck to it for 5 years (with the goal of building the three points above), it will work.

Final point - although I am responding to Andy, I am 100% sure he already knows all this. This is for people who do not.

 

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[Jpeveryday]

This is an amazing story -- you have such drive, intensity, speed & obsession that I am sure you will do well. You're only 21! This is a great first act to your story. Can't wait till the 3rd when you turn it all around.

PS - Dan Kennedy wrote a book can't remember the name but it was like Secrets of Being a Millionaire or something...
But he dedicates a whole chapter to something that the world's most successful business people all share in common: Bankruptcy. It's fascinating. Once you hit that financial rock bottom, a part of you can no longer subconsciously fear it and make overly cautious moves that hinder your growth.

You've been to the bottom, you've bounced back and now you're smarter & more resilient.

I see only bright things ahead for you my dude. No advice just props. For believing, for going hard, for executing for failing and for sharing it with all of us.

 

[Akil]

Ok so there's a lot to my story and want to give some background. Right now I am 21 years old based in Austin, Texas. I grew up in New York, went to college but then dropped out my 3rd year in after starting my ecom biz. The Millionaire Fastlane was one of those pivital books for me venturing down my journey, having read it over and over, then combing back through specific chapters. @MJ DeMarco, thank you for all of this, it had a huge effect of the trajectory of my life.

In late 2018 while in college I was exploring different business models of making money. One thing lead to the next, and I came across e-commerce, more specifically drop shipping. I was a speed and execution junkie. Testing tons of different products and marketing them on Facebook. Ended up scaling my first ecommerce biz to a little north of around $100k in revenue my first few months in the summer of 2019. The product was a mosquito lamp. Found a niche in the RV & Camping community for this product. I bootstrapped with absolutely no money by using friends and family Facebook accounts to join RV Facebook groups, and shamelessly promoted the product from their point of view, sending traffic to my website and getting thousands of dollars worth of free sales, then fulfilling this product on Aliexpress. After the end of this fiasco, not paying attention to profitability and scaling so quick, the whole thing blew up, and profit margins were close to $0.

During this whole time, I wanted to justify dropping out of college. And to me that number was $100k profit, in the bank. That was my centralized goal. Once I got there, I'd be able to drop out, move to Austin (where I am now), and my life as an entrepreneur would "begin"

Onto my next "working" venture in the end of 2019. I found a viral tweet online that got very political and carried in hog hunting to the topic of assault weapons with a whole debate alongside it.
View attachment 43650
Along with having seen a VICE youtube video of people going "helicopter hog hunting" in Texas, I knew this was a working idea I could capitalize on. With this I tested out another Aliexpress product, which was a night vision scope which I specifically marketed towards hog hunters, using marketing copy as such "What do you do if 30-50 feral hogs swarm your property? Hunt them at night... Get This Night Vision Scope blah blah blah". This amounted to me scaling up this product to around $350k in revenue very quickly, but then soon after it blowing up in my face, being banned off running Facebook ads, having my business manager and personal Facebook profile all going down. The logistics was also a complete mess with tons of faulty products, leading to chargebacks. Then again, I was left with pretty much $0 in profit. Ended up "selling" this website for $2,000 after the whole fact in the middle of 2020. Which shows how desperate I was at the time.

After this, I was back off to college for my 3rd year in 2020, having reading tons of books during this time, and having a firm belief that this is not what I was supposed to be doing with my life. I was fed up. I was testing dozens of products. From garden supplies, to fitness equipment, to plant prorogation kits. I was a madman to come across "success" so I could finally justify leaving school.

I was desperate, had absolutely zero capital, and came across a person in a Facebook group which I won't add their name in here. After a few months of back and forth, and me being at one of my lowest lows, I decided that going about this with him as a 50/50 partner would be my best bet. His background was in cryptocurrency, and Amazon FBA, and he had absolutely no knowledge of direct to consumer e-commerce, BUT he had capital. Over the next few months, partnering up with him will allow me the capital to freely continue this madman process of testing tons of products and dropshipping them using Facebook ads (still questionable how viable this approach is).

After months and months (with me doing most of the heavy lifting, and planning on ending this partnership) in August of 2020 we came across a new product we tested in the home decor lighting space. With me leading the growth and marketing, we scaled up the business to the following revenue numbers. These numbers we were able to do because we had very favorable supplier terms, and also were dropshipping these products... so no upfront inventory costs. August $30k~ in revenue. September $250k~ in revenue. October $600k~ in revenue. November $2MM in revenue. December $2.1MM in revenue. We ended the year with nearly $950k in pure profit under the business. Woah.
View attachment 43651

Then after this, we started down the process going into 2021 which will be one of the biggest years of learning in my whole life.

2020: We netted $950k~ in profit
2021: We LOST $601,920
2022: We closed the business

Holy s**t I was thinking looking back at this. How could I be so stupid? I thought I was on top of the world, until now. During the process so many racing thoughts going through my mind as this "success" was getting slowly and slowly torn away from me. Losing money nearly every single month of the year. "We'll bounce back" I told myself and my partner.

We were spending aggressively and acquiring customers at a loss. Trying to make paid ads work like they did so well for us in 2020. Clinging onto the past as if that would continue to happen. Thinking the same strategies and tactics that got us to X would get us to Y. It was such a foolish mistake.

Also during the year of 2021, I optimized for our overhead to sustain a $2MM/month business, but refused to cut back because I was fearful of change. I became content as the whole business I built was turning to shreds.. At one point we had our overhead around $80k per month. For what? We made terrible hiring decisions, were not innovating and pivoting, did not focus enough on customer experience, didn't diversify traffic channels, and did not have a real mission or vision for the business. It was an absolute mess.

I would literally go to bed everyday after losing a few thousand in revenue, with such a blindly optimistic view of the future of the business.

My business partner was also slowly and slowly checking out of all decision making activities during this year in 2021. Failing to step up and take ownership for some of the poor decisions, and help with new decisions that needed to be made. This left me feeling like I had a pound of bricks on my back. I made all of the tough decisions. I was upset at the time, but looking back now, I am happy that I did have to make those decisions, as there was so much growth in all of that.

With this $600k net loss on the business, and then accumulating near $280k in debt on the business from vendors, credit cards, working capital loans... I made the executive decisions to cease everything we were doing and close the business. I had to face the reality of the situation and move on. This was so difficult because I had such a large vision for this company as a whole. We wanted to enter new markets, spin up new brands, and leverage economies of scale that the growth allowed for us to do. But it needed to be done.

Looking back, this was needed. I was naive. I was working in a partnership where I was doing near 90% of all the work. And the business was bleeding.

All of this, I was going through at the ripe age of 19 to 20 years old. Being now 21 years old now, I know I'll probably look back at this and be so grateful for the lessons I learned. But the reality is, that I am still navigating a lot of this mess and wanted to share this with you guys.

So onto this next chapter of my entrepreneurship journey, I am trying to find my next steps, the next opportunities for myself. Having now incorporated and building up my new business entity, I am trying to figure out what to do. It feels like I was on top of a mountain with a smile on my face, then suddenly getting tossed off the cliff, head banged up and body heavily bruised and falling down slowly and painfully... now here, standing at the base of the mountain again, wondering how do I get back up there? Will those same strategies work that I used to get up there for that brief amount of time? And a whole slew of other questions coming to my mind in regards to my next journey to conquer.

What I am looking for specifically in this thread and post is to ask the community, and other (more seasoned) successful entrepreneurs, what they would recommend for me to do next.

Maybe this is more of a mindset thing that I need to solve from it's root, but over the past 3 months I have felt as if I was dropped in the ocean, with no clear direction on where to swim. I am in a spot where I currently don't have a business I am working on day to day. Sort of lost with where to move next. My circle of competence is in just mainly e-commerce.

With all of these data privacy laws and regulations, and Facebook being such an expensive platform, it makes me question if my skills are even still applicable in the realm of e-commerce. Am I just being naive again or should I question pivoting industries?

I also question whether my mad man approach to testing products like I did before is even feasible in todays landscape of e-commerce, with strict feedback scores in place for Facebook and the bans. And ad platforms being increasingly expensive.

I feel as if there was a gold rush in e-commerce which I was in at the time, but now it has passed. And I don't know whether it's smart to keep hammering the same nail, or if I am overanalyzing "getting back in the game".

As much as I have learned so much, and done so much from these opportunities I have created, it also feels like I am so behind of where I should be... And so behind from my goals.

So here are my questions to you guys if you have ever had a similar scenario:
1. Was there any point in your career, where you were at an in between stage and felt a little lost. If so, how did you deal with it?
2. If you were to test out a new e-commerce brand / product in today's climate, how would you go about validating and testing it? And should I even be focusing on this?
3. When you find yourself lost and not knowing what to do, how do you keep yourself on track?
4. Any resources anyone would recommend for this?

Thank you for reading this. This is my first post. I have been learning so much from these threads. It also helped me make my decision on my move down here and the cost benefit analysis of staying in NY vs living down here. I could say that was one of the best decisions I have made in my life thus far.

Incredible story. You took action from day one and just made it work. Amazing man.
I am starting my own online shop right now with my brother in germany and try to learn from your amazing story and experience.

 

[Niptuck MD]

good story
for your next venture(s), let me know if you need help with quality control, importing and shipments and all other things logistics. I can help streamline your costs which insurmountably will reduce overhead and additional wastage. I do recommend you reading @Walter Hay book(s) as a resourceful primer
and to mr.hays point, if you ever want to go off alibaba, and venture into other countries (due to the stupidity of geopolitics) I can lead you in the right direction there as well. (think manufacturing or products from india, indonesia, thailand, vietnam, malaysia and singapore).

 

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[DavidePaco00]

Hello!

Had You ever considered launching an e-commerce abroad?

Here in Italy facebook marketing costs are about 4-5 times lower than in U.S.A. and people don't buy online as much as in the states.

A partner of mine and myself are searching for products to launch on the italian market. While my friend is really good with facebook ads , I'm a pretty good copywriter.

Thanks to Your experience , we can launch a store that can easily surpass italiaan standard, also because , here in Italy we tend to pick italian trends 5-10 years later.

Let me know what do you think about this opportunity!

If You're interested, just text me on whatsapp at : +39 3296152039

Cheers!

Davide

 

[Johnny boy]

I look at e-com or crypto income as drug money.

And in the words of Master P...

"Clean up ya dirty money to good money
cuz legal money last longer than drug money".

You need to get better and being pessimistic and assuming things will always go wrong.

I ASSUME ads will get more expensive, customers won't pay, employees will not show up to work, they'll crash our trucks, etc. And when things do get messed up, we are ready, and when things go well, I'm pleasantly surprised.

Imagine you took that profit and used it to get a long-term SBA loan for a steadier business in another industry that was profitable and the profit could easily service the debt payments and then some. You could've bought a business that makes a couple hundred grand a year.

 

[Guest1y4212]

I look at e-com or crypto income as drug money.

And in the words of Master P...

"Clean up ya dirty money to good money
cuz legal money last longer than drug money".

You need to get better and being pessimistic and assuming things will always go wrong.

I ASSUME ads will get more expensive, customers won't pay, employees will not show up to work, they'll crash our trucks, etc. And when things do get messed up, we are ready, and when things go well, I'm pleasantly surprised.

Imagine you took that profit and used it to get a long-term SBA loan for a steadier business in another industry that was profitable and the profit could easily service the debt payments and then some. You could've bought a business that makes a couple hundred grand a year.

I 100% agree with you here and this is one of those things that I am kicking myself now for not doing. It was pure ignorance, thinking things would continue to improve and grow.

I believe there will be resurgence to more Randian, gritty, offline businesses. After being in the e-commerce space for a bit now, it's way too fickle for my liking. I see it as a way to make some massive gains and growth in business, but not even close to a steady and reliable cash flow source.

What are some ideas you've got with this? @Johnny boy

 

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[Johnny boy]

What are some ideas you've got with this? @Johnny boy

well, the appeal of ecommerce is location and time independence...so you want to retain much of that.

If you've made a chunk of change with ecom, I would look into a steadier business that you can still automate that you could buy with an SBA loan or seller financing and spread out the payments to give you a fortress of steady income that isn't going to turn unprofitable in an instant.

Something like a local service business has always been attractive to me since that's what I run now, but make sure it's something you can easily go hands off with that has little risk and maintenance required.

Just a random example could be a remote landscape design firm. Customer submits their info, a salesperson remotely signs them up for a design plan. They pay your company a grand or something, you have a designer remotely work on a design for their home. You could have two employees and be bringing in a hundred grand of profit with little overhead.

First thing I searched.

https://www.sunbeltnetwork.com/oklahoma-city-ok/buy-a-business/listings/listing-details/award-winning-landscape-architecture-firm-47058/

Imagine you get this company, have a designer or two working under you, and you buy the company with seller financing over 5 years. That's 100k a year paid to the seller, you bring in 228k of cash flow, so right away you are netting 128k a year remotely. Or maybe you do an SBA loan, sellers love those. Now you can play around with ecom and not worry so much.

Realistically, this may be a shit business that I linked to. It's likely the owner doing much of the work, only due diligence can give you the answer, but that was from 10 seconds of searching. Imagine what you'll find if you search intelligently.

Complimentary businesses are good. There's a reason so many people end up selling coaching, because they've already learned the lessons of an industry, so might as well add another layer of revenue to what you already know. But I would take any crypto/ecom/etc earnings and convert some of it to something more stable, then you can live off the profit of the stable business.

 

[Niptuck MD]

And in the words of Master P...

"Clean up ya dirty money to good money
cuz legal money last longer than drug money".

Mane whatchu know about robert Percy miller!
Straight OG businessman

 

[Patrickg]

100% of my ecom clients that do between $5m - $15m revenue per year (at around 20% net margin) focused on one market.

• One market (that they are either part of or fell in love with)
• They make their products themselves
• They store their products themselves locally
• They focused on building a brand.
• Have fanatical audiences or consumable products

The whole "test products to find a winner" thing worked well between 2010 - 2016 when traffic was cheap. You could F-up and still make a profit. But even then, they are biz-ops... not businesses. The economics simply do not stack up...

I mean... look at the colossal mess that is Casper mattresses. They are a scaled-up version of this issue.

1. Poor economics.
2. Rely on ads
3. Poor re-buy rate.

"Will it be around in 10 years?"

^^ for my clients, their answer is yes.

This is great insight. After losing a ton of money in Ecom last year. Using 3pl and someone else building our products. We are shifting to in house fulfillment, my team assembling and a low staff model.

 

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[Patrickg]

Ok so there's a lot to my story and want to give some background. Right now I am 21 years old based in Austin, Texas. I grew up in New York, went to college but then dropped out my 3rd year in after starting my ecom biz. The Millionaire Fastlane was one of those pivital books for me venturing down my journey, having read it over and over, then combing back through specific chapters. @MJ DeMarco, thank you for all of this, it had a huge effect of the trajectory of my life.

In late 2018 while in college I was exploring different business models of making money. One thing lead to the next, and I came across e-commerce, more specifically drop shipping. I was a speed and execution junkie. Testing tons of different products and marketing them on Facebook. Ended up scaling my first ecommerce biz to a little north of around $100k in revenue my first few months in the summer of 2019. The product was a mosquito lamp. Found a niche in the RV & Camping community for this product. I bootstrapped with absolutely no money by using friends and family Facebook accounts to join RV Facebook groups, and shamelessly promoted the product from their point of view, sending traffic to my website and getting thousands of dollars worth of free sales, then fulfilling this product on Aliexpress. After the end of this fiasco, not paying attention to profitability and scaling so quick, the whole thing blew up, and profit margins were close to $0.

During this whole time, I wanted to justify dropping out of college. And to me that number was $100k profit, in the bank. That was my centralized goal. Once I got there, I'd be able to drop out, move to Austin (where I am now), and my life as an entrepreneur would "begin"

Onto my next "working" venture in the end of 2019. I found a viral tweet online that got very political and carried in hog hunting to the topic of assault weapons with a whole debate alongside it.
View attachment 43650
Along with having seen a VICE youtube video of people going "helicopter hog hunting" in Texas, I knew this was a working idea I could capitalize on. With this I tested out another Aliexpress product, which was a night vision scope which I specifically marketed towards hog hunters, using marketing copy as such "What do you do if 30-50 feral hogs swarm your property? Hunt them at night... Get This Night Vision Scope blah blah blah". This amounted to me scaling up this product to around $350k in revenue very quickly, but then soon after it blowing up in my face, being banned off running Facebook ads, having my business manager and personal Facebook profile all going down. The logistics was also a complete mess with tons of faulty products, leading to chargebacks. Then again, I was left with pretty much $0 in profit. Ended up "selling" this website for $2,000 after the whole fact in the middle of 2020. Which shows how desperate I was at the time.

After this, I was back off to college for my 3rd year in 2020, having reading tons of books during this time, and having a firm belief that this is not what I was supposed to be doing with my life. I was fed up. I was testing dozens of products. From garden supplies, to fitness equipment, to plant prorogation kits. I was a madman to come across "success" so I could finally justify leaving school.

I was desperate, had absolutely zero capital, and came across a person in a Facebook group which I won't add their name in here. After a few months of back and forth, and me being at one of my lowest lows, I decided that going about this with him as a 50/50 partner would be my best bet. His background was in cryptocurrency, and Amazon FBA, and he had absolutely no knowledge of direct to consumer e-commerce, BUT he had capital. Over the next few months, partnering up with him will allow me the capital to freely continue this madman process of testing tons of products and dropshipping them using Facebook ads (still questionable how viable this approach is).

After months and months (with me doing most of the heavy lifting, and planning on ending this partnership) in August of 2020 we came across a new product we tested in the home decor lighting space. With me leading the growth and marketing, we scaled up the business to the following revenue numbers. These numbers we were able to do because we had very favorable supplier terms, and also were dropshipping these products... so no upfront inventory costs. August $30k~ in revenue. September $250k~ in revenue. October $600k~ in revenue. November $2MM in revenue. December $2.1MM in revenue. We ended the year with nearly $950k in pure profit under the business. Woah.
View attachment 43651

Then after this, we started down the process going into 2021 which will be one of the biggest years of learning in my whole life.

2020: We netted $950k~ in profit
2021: We LOST $601,920
2022: We closed the business

Holy s**t I was thinking looking back at this. How could I be so stupid? I thought I was on top of the world, until now. During the process so many racing thoughts going through my mind as this "success" was getting slowly and slowly torn away from me. Losing money nearly every single month of the year. "We'll bounce back" I told myself and my partner.

We were spending aggressively and acquiring customers at a loss. Trying to make paid ads work like they did so well for us in 2020. Clinging onto the past as if that would continue to happen. Thinking the same strategies and tactics that got us to X would get us to Y. It was such a foolish mistake.

Also during the year of 2021, I optimized for our overhead to sustain a $2MM/month business, but refused to cut back because I was fearful of change. I became content as the whole business I built was turning to shreds.. At one point we had our overhead around $80k per month. For what? We made terrible hiring decisions, were not innovating and pivoting, did not focus enough on customer experience, didn't diversify traffic channels, and did not have a real mission or vision for the business. It was an absolute mess.

I would literally go to bed everyday after losing a few thousand in revenue, with such a blindly optimistic view of the future of the business.

My business partner was also slowly and slowly checking out of all decision making activities during this year in 2021. Failing to step up and take ownership for some of the poor decisions, and help with new decisions that needed to be made. This left me feeling like I had a pound of bricks on my back. I made all of the tough decisions. I was upset at the time, but looking back now, I am happy that I did have to make those decisions, as there was so much growth in all of that.

With this $600k net loss on the business, and then accumulating near $280k in debt on the business from vendors, credit cards, working capital loans... I made the executive decisions to cease everything we were doing and close the business. I had to face the reality of the situation and move on. This was so difficult because I had such a large vision for this company as a whole. We wanted to enter new markets, spin up new brands, and leverage economies of scale that the growth allowed for us to do. But it needed to be done.

Looking back, this was needed. I was naive. I was working in a partnership where I was doing near 90% of all the work. And the business was bleeding.

All of this, I was going through at the ripe age of 19 to 20 years old. Being now 21 years old now, I know I'll probably look back at this and be so grateful for the lessons I learned. But the reality is, that I am still navigating a lot of this mess and wanted to share this with you guys.

So onto this next chapter of my entrepreneurship journey, I am trying to find my next steps, the next opportunities for myself. Having now incorporated and building up my new business entity, I am trying to figure out what to do. It feels like I was on top of a mountain with a smile on my face, then suddenly getting tossed off the cliff, head banged up and body heavily bruised and falling down slowly and painfully... now here, standing at the base of the mountain again, wondering how do I get back up there? Will those same strategies work that I used to get up there for that brief amount of time? And a whole slew of other questions coming to my mind in regards to my next journey to conquer.

What I am looking for specifically in this thread and post is to ask the community, and other (more seasoned) successful entrepreneurs, what they would recommend for me to do next.

Maybe this is more of a mindset thing that I need to solve from it's root, but over the past 3 months I have felt as if I was dropped in the ocean, with no clear direction on where to swim. I am in a spot where I currently don't have a business I am working on day to day. Sort of lost with where to move next. My circle of competence is in just mainly e-commerce.

With all of these data privacy laws and regulations, and Facebook being such an expensive platform, it makes me question if my skills are even still applicable in the realm of e-commerce. Am I just being naive again or should I question pivoting industries?

I also question whether my mad man approach to testing products like I did before is even feasible in todays landscape of e-commerce, with strict feedback scores in place for Facebook and the bans. And ad platforms being increasingly expensive.

I feel as if there was a gold rush in e-commerce which I was in at the time, but now it has passed. And I don't know whether it's smart to keep hammering the same nail, or if I am overanalyzing "getting back in the game".

As much as I have learned so much, and done so much from these opportunities I have created, it also feels like I am so behind of where I should be... And so behind from my goals.

So here are my questions to you guys if you have ever had a similar scenario:
1. Was there any point in your career, where you were at an in between stage and felt a little lost. If so, how did you deal with it?
2. If you were to test out a new e-commerce brand / product in today's climate, how would you go about validating and testing it? And should I even be focusing on this?
3. When you find yourself lost and not knowing what to do, how do you keep yourself on track?
4. Any resources anyone would recommend for this?

Thank you for reading this. This is my first post. I have been learning so much from these threads. It also helped me make my decision on my move down here and the cost benefit analysis of staying in NY vs living down here. I could say that was one of the best decisions I have made in my life thus far.

Ok so there's a lot to my story and want to give some background. Right now I am 21 years old based in Austin, Texas. I grew up in New York, went to college but then dropped out my 3rd year in after starting my ecom biz. The Millionaire Fastlane was one of those pivital books for me venturing down my journey, having read it over and over, then combing back through specific chapters. @MJ DeMarco, thank you for all of this, it had a huge effect of the trajectory of my life.

In late 2018 while in college I was exploring different business models of making money. One thing lead to the next, and I came across e-commerce, more specifically drop shipping. I was a speed and execution junkie. Testing tons of different products and marketing them on Facebook. Ended up scaling my first ecommerce biz to a little north of around $100k in revenue my first few months in the summer of 2019. The product was a mosquito lamp. Found a niche in the RV & Camping community for this product. I bootstrapped with absolutely no money by using friends and family Facebook accounts to join RV Facebook groups, and shamelessly promoted the product from their point of view, sending traffic to my website and getting thousands of dollars worth of free sales, then fulfilling this product on Aliexpress. After the end of this fiasco, not paying attention to profitability and scaling so quick, the whole thing blew up, and profit margins were close to $0.

During this whole time, I wanted to justify dropping out of college. And to me that number was $100k profit, in the bank. That was my centralized goal. Once I got there, I'd be able to drop out, move to Austin (where I am now), and my life as an entrepreneur would "begin"

Onto my next "working" venture in the end of 2019. I found a viral tweet online that got very political and carried in hog hunting to the topic of assault weapons with a whole debate alongside it.
View attachment 43650
Along with having seen a VICE youtube video of people going "helicopter hog hunting" in Texas, I knew this was a working idea I could capitalize on. With this I tested out another Aliexpress product, which was a night vision scope which I specifically marketed towards hog hunters, using marketing copy as such "What do you do if 30-50 feral hogs swarm your property? Hunt them at night... Get This Night Vision Scope blah blah blah". This amounted to me scaling up this product to around $350k in revenue very quickly, but then soon after it blowing up in my face, being banned off running Facebook ads, having my business manager and personal Facebook profile all going down. The logistics was also a complete mess with tons of faulty products, leading to chargebacks. Then again, I was left with pretty much $0 in profit. Ended up "selling" this website for $2,000 after the whole fact in the middle of 2020. Which shows how desperate I was at the time.

After this, I was back off to college for my 3rd year in 2020, having reading tons of books during this time, and having a firm belief that this is not what I was supposed to be doing with my life. I was fed up. I was testing dozens of products. From garden supplies, to fitness equipment, to plant prorogation kits. I was a madman to come across "success" so I could finally justify leaving school.

I was desperate, had absolutely zero capital, and came across a person in a Facebook group which I won't add their name in here. After a few months of back and forth, and me being at one of my lowest lows, I decided that going about this with him as a 50/50 partner would be my best bet. His background was in cryptocurrency, and Amazon FBA, and he had absolutely no knowledge of direct to consumer e-commerce, BUT he had capital. Over the next few months, partnering up with him will allow me the capital to freely continue this madman process of testing tons of products and dropshipping them using Facebook ads (still questionable how viable this approach is).

After months and months (with me doing most of the heavy lifting, and planning on ending this partnership) in August of 2020 we came across a new product we tested in the home decor lighting space. With me leading the growth and marketing, we scaled up the business to the following revenue numbers. These numbers we were able to do because we had very favorable supplier terms, and also were dropshipping these products... so no upfront inventory costs. August $30k~ in revenue. September $250k~ in revenue. October $600k~ in revenue. November $2MM in revenue. December $2.1MM in revenue. We ended the year with nearly $950k in pure profit under the business. Woah.
View attachment 43651

Then after this, we started down the process going into 2021 which will be one of the biggest years of learning in my whole life.

2020: We netted $950k~ in profit
2021: We LOST $601,920
2022: We closed the business

Holy s**t I was thinking looking back at this. How could I be so stupid? I thought I was on top of the world, until now. During the process so many racing thoughts going through my mind as this "success" was getting slowly and slowly torn away from me. Losing money nearly every single month of the year. "We'll bounce back" I told myself and my partner.

We were spending aggressively and acquiring customers at a loss. Trying to make paid ads work like they did so well for us in 2020. Clinging onto the past as if that would continue to happen. Thinking the same strategies and tactics that got us to X would get us to Y. It was such a foolish mistake.

Also during the year of 2021, I optimized for our overhead to sustain a $2MM/month business, but refused to cut back because I was fearful of change. I became content as the whole business I built was turning to shreds.. At one point we had our overhead around $80k per month. For what? We made terrible hiring decisions, were not innovating and pivoting, did not focus enough on customer experience, didn't diversify traffic channels, and did not have a real mission or vision for the business. It was an absolute mess.

I would literally go to bed everyday after losing a few thousand in revenue, with such a blindly optimistic view of the future of the business.

My business partner was also slowly and slowly checking out of all decision making activities during this year in 2021. Failing to step up and take ownership for some of the poor decisions, and help with new decisions that needed to be made. This left me feeling like I had a pound of bricks on my back. I made all of the tough decisions. I was upset at the time, but looking back now, I am happy that I did have to make those decisions, as there was so much growth in all of that.

With this $600k net loss on the business, and then accumulating near $280k in debt on the business from vendors, credit cards, working capital loans... I made the executive decisions to cease everything we were doing and close the business. I had to face the reality of the situation and move on. This was so difficult because I had such a large vision for this company as a whole. We wanted to enter new markets, spin up new brands, and leverage economies of scale that the growth allowed for us to do. But it needed to be done.

Looking back, this was needed. I was naive. I was working in a partnership where I was doing near 90% of all the work. And the business was bleeding.

All of this, I was going through at the ripe age of 19 to 20 years old. Being now 21 years old now, I know I'll probably look back at this and be so grateful for the lessons I learned. But the reality is, that I am still navigating a lot of this mess and wanted to share this with you guys.

So onto this next chapter of my entrepreneurship journey, I am trying to find my next steps, the next opportunities for myself. Having now incorporated and building up my new business entity, I am trying to figure out what to do. It feels like I was on top of a mountain with a smile on my face, then suddenly getting tossed off the cliff, head banged up and body heavily bruised and falling down slowly and painfully... now here, standing at the base of the mountain again, wondering how do I get back up there? Will those same strategies work that I used to get up there for that brief amount of time? And a whole slew of other questions coming to my mind in regards to my next journey to conquer.

What I am looking for specifically in this thread and post is to ask the community, and other (more seasoned) successful entrepreneurs, what they would recommend for me to do next.

Maybe this is more of a mindset thing that I need to solve from it's root, but over the past 3 months I have felt as if I was dropped in the ocean, with no clear direction on where to swim. I am in a spot where I currently don't have a business I am working on day to day. Sort of lost with where to move next. My circle of competence is in just mainly e-commerce.

With all of these data privacy laws and regulations, and Facebook being such an expensive platform, it makes me question if my skills are even still applicable in the realm of e-commerce. Am I just being naive again or should I question pivoting industries?

I also question whether my mad man approach to testing products like I did before is even feasible in todays landscape of e-commerce, with strict feedback scores in place for Facebook and the bans. And ad platforms being increasingly expensive.

I feel as if there was a gold rush in e-commerce which I was in at the time, but now it has passed. And I don't know whether it's smart to keep hammering the same nail, or if I am overanalyzing "getting back in the game".

As much as I have learned so much, and done so much from these opportunities I have created, it also feels like I am so behind of where I should be... And so behind from my goals.

So here are my questions to you guys if you have ever had a similar scenario:
1. Was there any point in your career, where you were at an in between stage and felt a little lost. If so, how did you deal with it?
2. If you were to test out a new e-commerce brand / product in today's climate, how would you go about validating and testing it? And should I even be focusing on this?
3. When you find yourself lost and not knowing what to do, how do you keep yourself on track?
4. Any resources anyone would recommend for this?

Thank you for reading this. This is my first post. I have been learning so much from these threads. It also helped me make my decision on my move down here and the cost benefit analysis of staying in NY vs living down here. I could say that was one of the best decisions I have made in my life thus far.

Thanks for sharing

Ok so there's a lot to my story and want to give some background. Right now I am 21 years old based in Austin, Texas. I grew up in New York, went to college but then dropped out my 3rd year in after starting my ecom biz. The Millionaire Fastlane was one of those pivital books for me venturing down my journey, having read it over and over, then combing back through specific chapters. @MJ DeMarco, thank you for all of this, it had a huge effect of the trajectory of my life.

In late 2018 while in college I was exploring different business models of making money. One thing lead to the next, and I came across e-commerce, more specifically drop shipping. I was a speed and execution junkie. Testing tons of different products and marketing them on Facebook. Ended up scaling my first ecommerce biz to a little north of around $100k in revenue my first few months in the summer of 2019. The product was a mosquito lamp. Found a niche in the RV & Camping community for this product. I bootstrapped with absolutely no money by using friends and family Facebook accounts to join RV Facebook groups, and shamelessly promoted the product from their point of view, sending traffic to my website and getting thousands of dollars worth of free sales, then fulfilling this product on Aliexpress. After the end of this fiasco, not paying attention to profitability and scaling so quick, the whole thing blew up, and profit margins were close to $0.

During this whole time, I wanted to justify dropping out of college. And to me that number was $100k profit, in the bank. That was my centralized goal. Once I got there, I'd be able to drop out, move to Austin (where I am now), and my life as an entrepreneur would "begin"

Onto my next "working" venture in the end of 2019. I found a viral tweet online that got very political and carried in hog hunting to the topic of assault weapons with a whole debate alongside it.
View attachment 43650
Along with having seen a VICE youtube video of people going "helicopter hog hunting" in Texas, I knew this was a working idea I could capitalize on. With this I tested out another Aliexpress product, which was a night vision scope which I specifically marketed towards hog hunters, using marketing copy as such "What do you do if 30-50 feral hogs swarm your property? Hunt them at night... Get This Night Vision Scope blah blah blah". This amounted to me scaling up this product to around $350k in revenue very quickly, but then soon after it blowing up in my face, being banned off running Facebook ads, having my business manager and personal Facebook profile all going down. The logistics was also a complete mess with tons of faulty products, leading to chargebacks. Then again, I was left with pretty much $0 in profit. Ended up "selling" this website for $2,000 after the whole fact in the middle of 2020. Which shows how desperate I was at the time.

After this, I was back off to college for my 3rd year in 2020, having reading tons of books during this time, and having a firm belief that this is not what I was supposed to be doing with my life. I was fed up. I was testing dozens of products. From garden supplies, to fitness equipment, to plant prorogation kits. I was a madman to come across "success" so I could finally justify leaving school.

I was desperate, had absolutely zero capital, and came across a person in a Facebook group which I won't add their name in here. After a few months of back and forth, and me being at one of my lowest lows, I decided that going about this with him as a 50/50 partner would be my best bet. His background was in cryptocurrency, and Amazon FBA, and he had absolutely no knowledge of direct to consumer e-commerce, BUT he had capital. Over the next few months, partnering up with him will allow me the capital to freely continue this madman process of testing tons of products and dropshipping them using Facebook ads (still questionable how viable this approach is).

After months and months (with me doing most of the heavy lifting, and planning on ending this partnership) in August of 2020 we came across a new product we tested in the home decor lighting space. With me leading the growth and marketing, we scaled up the business to the following revenue numbers. These numbers we were able to do because we had very favorable supplier terms, and also were dropshipping these products... so no upfront inventory costs. August $30k~ in revenue. September $250k~ in revenue. October $600k~ in revenue. November $2MM in revenue. December $2.1MM in revenue. We ended the year with nearly $950k in pure profit under the business. Woah.
View attachment 43651

Then after this, we started down the process going into 2021 which will be one of the biggest years of learning in my whole life.

2020: We netted $950k~ in profit
2021: We LOST $601,920
2022: We closed the business

Holy s**t I was thinking looking back at this. How could I be so stupid? I thought I was on top of the world, until now. During the process so many racing thoughts going through my mind as this "success" was getting slowly and slowly torn away from me. Losing money nearly every single month of the year. "We'll bounce back" I told myself and my partner.

We were spending aggressively and acquiring customers at a loss. Trying to make paid ads work like they did so well for us in 2020. Clinging onto the past as if that would continue to happen. Thinking the same strategies and tactics that got us to X would get us to Y. It was such a foolish mistake.

Also during the year of 2021, I optimized for our overhead to sustain a $2MM/month business, but refused to cut back because I was fearful of change. I became content as the whole business I built was turning to shreds.. At one point we had our overhead around $80k per month. For what? We made terrible hiring decisions, were not innovating and pivoting, did not focus enough on customer experience, didn't diversify traffic channels, and did not have a real mission or vision for the business. It was an absolute mess.

I would literally go to bed everyday after losing a few thousand in revenue, with such a blindly optimistic view of the future of the business.

My business partner was also slowly and slowly checking out of all decision making activities during this year in 2021. Failing to step up and take ownership for some of the poor decisions, and help with new decisions that needed to be made. This left me feeling like I had a pound of bricks on my back. I made all of the tough decisions. I was upset at the time, but looking back now, I am happy that I did have to make those decisions, as there was so much growth in all of that.

With this $600k net loss on the business, and then accumulating near $280k in debt on the business from vendors, credit cards, working capital loans... I made the executive decisions to cease everything we were doing and close the business. I had to face the reality of the situation and move on. This was so difficult because I had such a large vision for this company as a whole. We wanted to enter new markets, spin up new brands, and leverage economies of scale that the growth allowed for us to do. But it needed to be done.

Looking back, this was needed. I was naive. I was working in a partnership where I was doing near 90% of all the work. And the business was bleeding.

All of this, I was going through at the ripe age of 19 to 20 years old. Being now 21 years old now, I know I'll probably look back at this and be so grateful for the lessons I learned. But the reality is, that I am still navigating a lot of this mess and wanted to share this with you guys.

So onto this next chapter of my entrepreneurship journey, I am trying to find my next steps, the next opportunities for myself. Having now incorporated and building up my new business entity, I am trying to figure out what to do. It feels like I was on top of a mountain with a smile on my face, then suddenly getting tossed off the cliff, head banged up and body heavily bruised and falling down slowly and painfully... now here, standing at the base of the mountain again, wondering how do I get back up there? Will those same strategies work that I used to get up there for that brief amount of time? And a whole slew of other questions coming to my mind in regards to my next journey to conquer.

What I am looking for specifically in this thread and post is to ask the community, and other (more seasoned) successful entrepreneurs, what they would recommend for me to do next.

Maybe this is more of a mindset thing that I need to solve from it's root, but over the past 3 months I have felt as if I was dropped in the ocean, with no clear direction on where to swim. I am in a spot where I currently don't have a business I am working on day to day. Sort of lost with where to move next. My circle of competence is in just mainly e-commerce.

With all of these data privacy laws and regulations, and Facebook being such an expensive platform, it makes me question if my skills are even still applicable in the realm of e-commerce. Am I just being naive again or should I question pivoting industries?

I also question whether my mad man approach to testing products like I did before is even feasible in todays landscape of e-commerce, with strict feedback scores in place for Facebook and the bans. And ad platforms being increasingly expensive.

I feel as if there was a gold rush in e-commerce which I was in at the time, but now it has passed. And I don't know whether it's smart to keep hammering the same nail, or if I am overanalyzing "getting back in the game".

As much as I have learned so much, and done so much from these opportunities I have created, it also feels like I am so behind of where I should be... And so behind from my goals.

So here are my questions to you guys if you have ever had a similar scenario:
1. Was there any point in your career, where you were at an in between stage and felt a little lost. If so, how did you deal with it?
2. If you were to test out a new e-commerce brand / product in today's climate, how would you go about validating and testing it? And should I even be focusing on this?
3. When you find yourself lost and not knowing what to do, how do you keep yourself on track?
4. Any resources anyone would recommend for this?

Thank you for reading this. This is my first post. I have been learning so much from these threads. It also helped me make my decision on my move down here and the cost benefit analysis of staying in NY vs living down here. I could say that was one of the best decisions I have made in my life thus far.

Thanks for sharing. Never fun to talk about our losses. But I emphasize big time. Similar to my story the last couple years. Different numbers. But I’ve experienced similar problems. Especially, in crease in advertising cost, high overhead.

You’re gonna move on to do great stuff brother. You’re getting so much business experience so young!