Gotta Think Bigger... Back To The Drawing Board?

[SeanBissell]

Hey everyone,

Hope you're doing great.

My name is Sean Bissell, and I'm a... FastlaneMillionaholic?

Well not really, even if that was a real thing

But according to Amazon Kindle I'm 54% through the book and I wanted to step in here and get started before my "drive" possibly wears off.

I'm not exactly new to "building a business" and at the same time, this book is opening my eyes to the fact that I should probably be thinking a bit bigger than I am currently.

Right now my most successful business venture is in a pretty small market.

We've been in business for just over 2 years, and it's bringing in a little more than 100k a year revenue.

About 40% of that is profit.

So far, we've engineered it where it's pretty darn hands off. I can spend just a few hours a week (or less) doing anything with it, and it just chugs along, and hopefully it keeps on doing that and only gets better, makes more money, and gets more hands-off. (I have one business partner, and 1 part time contract employee.)

But we're pretty maxed out right now in getting new customers "passively" through advertisements.

It seems if we want more customers, the law of diminishing returns is gonna kick in, and the extra revenue may not be worth it.

We're working on doing a monthly membership thing, and at the same time, that's a ton more work than we were expecting, and I'm not 100% convinced it's worth the effort based on the "sell for a big lump sum" idea.

Soooo, I'm trying to mentally switch gears to get into a bigger market, and "serve millions" instead of "tens of thousands."

That somehow is breaking my brain, because it seems the costs to getting into that type of market are much higher, and I'm not exactly sure what the heck to do honestly. And starting something new is sorta intimidating.

Product creation seems scary due to the high costs, I don't like physical location type stuff due to start up costs either. Internet is cool, and I like info products. But I can't seem to "think big" enough with that type of market yet.

Gotta get my brain conditioned better.

Gotta finish the book

Gotta get moving.

I'm 30 years young, and this book is really making me feel OOLLLDDD!

Some random stuff about me (if it even matters.)

I'm a big "nutrition junkie" and somehow can spend *way* too much time learning/debating nutritional topics. And I really enjoy cooking and making my own recipes. I also enjoy hitting the gym.

Photography and making videos are also something I really enjoy, but just for fun at this point, as those don't seem to be very "leverage-able" skills.

Here's my YouTube channel if you're interested in spying on me SeanBissell's channel - YouTube

So that's my official introduction.

Hope I can offer some advice, and inspiration, and hopefully get some from you guys as well

Happy Tuesday!
-Sean

 

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[PatrickP]

I only read the first few sentences but something jumped out to me.

You are 2 years in and making approx 40K a year. That is not too far off where I was with my business at 2 years. Now 3 years later and it should end up this year at over a mil. that is with zero advertising. zero pay per clicks nothing but posting on forums and offering free samples on fb.

You SURE you are filled up without doing advertising?

 

[SeanBissell]

Patrick,

Thanks for the quick response, much appreciated

I'm not sure that we're at our "growth potential." At the same time, we're very dependent on advertising.

If we stop advertising, we stop sales. Almost instantly.

This is basically a very "direct marketing" style set up right now. It doesn't need to be, and at the same time, that's how we're essentially getting our traffic, and sales.

Because of the size of the market, there's not a *huge* amount of areas to expand, and there's not a real "distribution hub" or anything.

Maybe I'm not seeing something, or thinking clearly about the issue though. That's a total possibility.
-Sean

 

[SeanBissell]

And by the way, awesome job on the revenue growth, especially with no advertising, that is *very* cool!
-Sean

 

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[PatrickP]

What sort of business is it? No need for details, just what sort of industry.

To give you an idea my company is in an industry with approx 300 total companies.

It is sometimes so surprising how small a niche can be and yet there is still room for quite a few companies to all make some nice money.

My company is in a small niche in the health supplements industry.

 

[SeanBissell]

Whoops! I just realized I totally posted this in the wrong area. Oh well

But Patrick, it's a subsection of gardening/agriculture actually. And it's an info product.

And awesome that you're in the supplements industry. I'm a bit of a supplement junkie myself

Probably too much of one really
-Sean

 

[SeanBissell]

I should add, that we tried to sell physical products, and sold quite a few at $600+ orders, but they were difficult to ship and not very profitable. Maybe $100 a unit. Not worth the hassle.

 

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[ChickenHawk]

Nice to meet you, Sean!

It sounds like you have a great foundation for the Fastlane. It will be interesting to see where you take it from here, and I wonder if you'll get any more insight from the last half of the book. For me, that was the real turning point, because it discussed fastlane criteria in-depth. I saw clearly where my previous ventures didn't exactly work, so now I'm onto something I might not have pursued otherwise.

(BTW, I love that percentage feature of the Kindle. In fact, I pretty much love everything about the Kindle. Never thought I'd go electronic, but here I am.)

 

[DustinG]

Sean and Patrick, what are your companies?

 

[PatrickP]

Sean and Patrick, what are your companies?

My company is in a small niche in the health supplements industry

 

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[SeanBissell]

Sean and Patrick, what are your companies?

Dustin, mine is in a subsection of gardening/agriculture.

 

[SeanBissell]

ChickenHawk,

Thanks for the encouragement

I'm powering through the book, and yea, Kindle = awesome

I don't have the actual device, I just use my phone and cloud reader though

Happy Wednesday!
-Sean