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Two nights ago, I had a "straw that broke the camel's back" kinda moment.
I stewed on this for the better part of the last 2 days, and felt like I had to catch my breath, pause, and really think about what I'm doing. I figured it made the most sense to post my thoughts here, among my betters, to get the opinions of people who have achieved the life I desire, and who I believe are worth listening to.
This will be a long post.
I made this post back in August of last year: EXECUTION - Journey to $10k/mo and Beyond...
Basically, I decided I would create minimalist planners and trackers related to fitness and sell them for cheap on Etsy, after having read Lex DeVille's journey. I figured I could create them relatively quickly, and saw there were similar shops with a high volume of sales for these products. However, I found it very difficult to do something as simple as resizing a planner's content to accommodate different formats without distorting or ruining the aspect ratios and spacing of the original's content. This led to a failure to launch for quite some time, and I was losing motivation to compete so heavily on products I would be selling for $1-$3.
Around this time, there was a poster on here who was offering coaching and mentorship, building the same business he himself had succeeded with. I'll omit details and try to keep this vague since I don't know whether he wants the extra attention, along with the fact that these are MY failures, not his. I was familiar with his journey and watched his off-site content, so I reached out to him and started following his instructions on how I should go about replicating his business's success.
The learning curve was, and still is, massive for me. This business is not one where I have any significant experience. I saw something that had worked for somebody else in a proven market, and since I was currently lacking direction, I figured I could achieve the same results, given time. However, I felt like I was making the same mistakes I've made before; a massive upfront investment before having made any sales, significant ongoing expenses for a service that requires volume, and poor sales skills because I lack the conviction to sell something I didn't know whether I could do well - since I had never done it on a commercial scale.
It took me a long time to be able to afford the equipment I needed to get started - too long. The service this business is based around is seasonal for most people, and I'm late to the party, and most customers already have somebody providing this service. I'm still working my full-time job, so I run Facebook ads to talk to customers, stepping out of the office to make calls and give quotes. Probably 20% of leads don't pick up the phone, and I'd say 80% of the people I speak with are simply price shopping and will "talk it over with their spouse" before I never hear from them again. I understand that's a sales problem, and that I can likely improve on that over time by speaking with more people and getting better at making my pitch. However, that brings me to the next problem...
I don't like the work...I'm bad at it. Like really bad...I'm not familiar with equipment maintenance, the cost of upkeep, or proper utilization of my tools. I don't feel like I'm doing a good job, and I think that comes across when I try to sell people, because on some level, I feel bad about selling a service that isn't that great. The few customers I do have, I don't feel like I'm performing well for them either; in my first job, I had to leave and restock before driving back because I didn't bring enough materials to complete it. During another of my visits from this past weekend, I didn't have enough product to complete the job, so I will have to buy more and am taking a loss on that particular customer.
Speaking of customers, I only have 3. This business model operates on annual contracts, with monthly fees being paid, even during months where the service isn't required (explained as offering the full year's price spread evenly among those 12 months rather than increasing or decreasing the rate based on use). One of my customers is on the lowest-tier plan and has already expressed before the sale that he will be terminating before the end of those 12 months. Another I picked up early in the sales process and am not sure if I've properly informed her that they are year-long contracts, so I would release her if she disputed that, since that would've been my mistake. And my 3rd customer is also on the lowest-tier plan. Altogether, they're paying me only $269 per month.
My moment, listed at the start of this post, was this Friday night, when I'm troubleshooting and packing all my equipment to take care of the next morning's jobs.
My truck didn't start.
This was a used 2008 Dodge Ram 1500 with 122k miles on it that I picked up for just under $8,000. I had driven less than 200 miles on it since purchase, and it had already died on me twice, requiring a jump. But this time, when I thought it had been given enough battery to start, several dashboard lights came on, including the ETC and Check Engine lights. I did a quick search for the cost of repairing the ETC issue, since that was new to me - not that it mattered too much, seeing as it was the weekend and wouldn't be able to fix it for some time anyway - and found that a fix would likely cost me around $600 or so.
I slumped over in the chair, really unsure of what I was going to do. Not just in this moment, but as far as the big picture in terms of what I'm doing in this business.
Luckily, the truck eventually got enough battery power to start, and I was able to perform those jobs the next day without the truck dying and requiring a tow, though the Check Engine light remains. That moment was still extremely demoralizing for me.
I talked to my mentor about the issues I'm facing, as I'd done several times before. He doesn't have much patience for me, sometimes understandably so; I have required the most handholding of his mentees throughout this process because I have such little experience with what I'm learning how to do. Normally, I have pretty thick skin and realize that I ask and say dumb things, usually because I like to be granular and want to make sure I'm not about to do an even dumber thing. However, the fact that I'm hemorrhaging money, failing to a monumental degree, and receiving impatient and discouraging remarks from this mentor combined to make me feel exceptionally shi**y, and forced me to question what I'm actually doing and whether I'm making the right decisions; whether I'm just going through the usual "suck" of building a business, or whether I'm trying to force a square peg through a round hole.
By the numbers, since I started on this journey in mid-January, I have spent $16,991.04, before I account for recurring expenses beyond the initial month I paid for them, so that would probably add about $1,000 to this number. Because I have to run ads while maintaining a full-time job (at least until I can go door-knocking on weekends), I probably spend about $50-$100 per day on ads. I am now living paycheck-to-paycheck, with no overhead, while living in my parents' house, at 31 years of age, trying to build momentum for this business, despite a $1,000 stimulus from my mom to help me with equipment purchases. And while I struggle to close leads, the prospect of having more customers to take care of is its own problem, because I'm bad at performing the work and cannot afford to hire competent employees to do it for me. Meanwhile, each job I'm getting sunburnt, spending a lot of time around gas fumes, and slowly damaging my sense of hearing. All the while, I have to restock products and materials to do these jobs and fix equipment as it breaks, to the point where I won't be breaking even until I get several more customers.
If I had saved the money I'd spent so far on this, I would've been able to completely pay off my student loan. Now I'm living paycheck-to-paycheck, I'm late to the party and only have a few months to sell, and I'm struggling to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
So, I don't really know what to do.
I haven't decided to quit or anything quite yet, but I do think I need to start looking at options for making money on the side if I want to get by. I spent several hours on ChatGPT, having it feed me recommendations for businesses I can build with my skillset that wouldn't require significant upfront costs - things I can work on when I've stopped calling leads and performing jobs for the day. I reason that I may be better at selling something I know is good, as opposed to selling something I know is bad, while the customer essentially pays my tuition for me to learn. All with the added upside of being scalable if they take off sooner than this.
I've just been really demoralized and depressed about how I've performed thus far throughout this process. I feel like I'm drowning and that I've burned all the money I spent so much time saving up.
I'm posting this today to see what some of you think about all this and what your recommendations would be about how you'd suggest I proceed.
Are all these pains a normal part of growing a business, and I should just keep pushing forward?
Should I keep things moving with this business, but still invest a little time into a Plan B?
Do you think I should cut my losses and focus my time, money, and energy on something that would be a better fit for my skillset?
Or is there something entirely different that you would recommend?
I stewed on this for the better part of the last 2 days, and felt like I had to catch my breath, pause, and really think about what I'm doing. I figured it made the most sense to post my thoughts here, among my betters, to get the opinions of people who have achieved the life I desire, and who I believe are worth listening to.
This will be a long post.
I made this post back in August of last year: EXECUTION - Journey to $10k/mo and Beyond...
Basically, I decided I would create minimalist planners and trackers related to fitness and sell them for cheap on Etsy, after having read Lex DeVille's journey. I figured I could create them relatively quickly, and saw there were similar shops with a high volume of sales for these products. However, I found it very difficult to do something as simple as resizing a planner's content to accommodate different formats without distorting or ruining the aspect ratios and spacing of the original's content. This led to a failure to launch for quite some time, and I was losing motivation to compete so heavily on products I would be selling for $1-$3.
Around this time, there was a poster on here who was offering coaching and mentorship, building the same business he himself had succeeded with. I'll omit details and try to keep this vague since I don't know whether he wants the extra attention, along with the fact that these are MY failures, not his. I was familiar with his journey and watched his off-site content, so I reached out to him and started following his instructions on how I should go about replicating his business's success.
The learning curve was, and still is, massive for me. This business is not one where I have any significant experience. I saw something that had worked for somebody else in a proven market, and since I was currently lacking direction, I figured I could achieve the same results, given time. However, I felt like I was making the same mistakes I've made before; a massive upfront investment before having made any sales, significant ongoing expenses for a service that requires volume, and poor sales skills because I lack the conviction to sell something I didn't know whether I could do well - since I had never done it on a commercial scale.
It took me a long time to be able to afford the equipment I needed to get started - too long. The service this business is based around is seasonal for most people, and I'm late to the party, and most customers already have somebody providing this service. I'm still working my full-time job, so I run Facebook ads to talk to customers, stepping out of the office to make calls and give quotes. Probably 20% of leads don't pick up the phone, and I'd say 80% of the people I speak with are simply price shopping and will "talk it over with their spouse" before I never hear from them again. I understand that's a sales problem, and that I can likely improve on that over time by speaking with more people and getting better at making my pitch. However, that brings me to the next problem...
I don't like the work...I'm bad at it. Like really bad...I'm not familiar with equipment maintenance, the cost of upkeep, or proper utilization of my tools. I don't feel like I'm doing a good job, and I think that comes across when I try to sell people, because on some level, I feel bad about selling a service that isn't that great. The few customers I do have, I don't feel like I'm performing well for them either; in my first job, I had to leave and restock before driving back because I didn't bring enough materials to complete it. During another of my visits from this past weekend, I didn't have enough product to complete the job, so I will have to buy more and am taking a loss on that particular customer.
Speaking of customers, I only have 3. This business model operates on annual contracts, with monthly fees being paid, even during months where the service isn't required (explained as offering the full year's price spread evenly among those 12 months rather than increasing or decreasing the rate based on use). One of my customers is on the lowest-tier plan and has already expressed before the sale that he will be terminating before the end of those 12 months. Another I picked up early in the sales process and am not sure if I've properly informed her that they are year-long contracts, so I would release her if she disputed that, since that would've been my mistake. And my 3rd customer is also on the lowest-tier plan. Altogether, they're paying me only $269 per month.
My moment, listed at the start of this post, was this Friday night, when I'm troubleshooting and packing all my equipment to take care of the next morning's jobs.
My truck didn't start.
This was a used 2008 Dodge Ram 1500 with 122k miles on it that I picked up for just under $8,000. I had driven less than 200 miles on it since purchase, and it had already died on me twice, requiring a jump. But this time, when I thought it had been given enough battery to start, several dashboard lights came on, including the ETC and Check Engine lights. I did a quick search for the cost of repairing the ETC issue, since that was new to me - not that it mattered too much, seeing as it was the weekend and wouldn't be able to fix it for some time anyway - and found that a fix would likely cost me around $600 or so.
I slumped over in the chair, really unsure of what I was going to do. Not just in this moment, but as far as the big picture in terms of what I'm doing in this business.
Luckily, the truck eventually got enough battery power to start, and I was able to perform those jobs the next day without the truck dying and requiring a tow, though the Check Engine light remains. That moment was still extremely demoralizing for me.
I talked to my mentor about the issues I'm facing, as I'd done several times before. He doesn't have much patience for me, sometimes understandably so; I have required the most handholding of his mentees throughout this process because I have such little experience with what I'm learning how to do. Normally, I have pretty thick skin and realize that I ask and say dumb things, usually because I like to be granular and want to make sure I'm not about to do an even dumber thing. However, the fact that I'm hemorrhaging money, failing to a monumental degree, and receiving impatient and discouraging remarks from this mentor combined to make me feel exceptionally shi**y, and forced me to question what I'm actually doing and whether I'm making the right decisions; whether I'm just going through the usual "suck" of building a business, or whether I'm trying to force a square peg through a round hole.
By the numbers, since I started on this journey in mid-January, I have spent $16,991.04, before I account for recurring expenses beyond the initial month I paid for them, so that would probably add about $1,000 to this number. Because I have to run ads while maintaining a full-time job (at least until I can go door-knocking on weekends), I probably spend about $50-$100 per day on ads. I am now living paycheck-to-paycheck, with no overhead, while living in my parents' house, at 31 years of age, trying to build momentum for this business, despite a $1,000 stimulus from my mom to help me with equipment purchases. And while I struggle to close leads, the prospect of having more customers to take care of is its own problem, because I'm bad at performing the work and cannot afford to hire competent employees to do it for me. Meanwhile, each job I'm getting sunburnt, spending a lot of time around gas fumes, and slowly damaging my sense of hearing. All the while, I have to restock products and materials to do these jobs and fix equipment as it breaks, to the point where I won't be breaking even until I get several more customers.
If I had saved the money I'd spent so far on this, I would've been able to completely pay off my student loan. Now I'm living paycheck-to-paycheck, I'm late to the party and only have a few months to sell, and I'm struggling to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
So, I don't really know what to do.
I haven't decided to quit or anything quite yet, but I do think I need to start looking at options for making money on the side if I want to get by. I spent several hours on ChatGPT, having it feed me recommendations for businesses I can build with my skillset that wouldn't require significant upfront costs - things I can work on when I've stopped calling leads and performing jobs for the day. I reason that I may be better at selling something I know is good, as opposed to selling something I know is bad, while the customer essentially pays my tuition for me to learn. All with the added upside of being scalable if they take off sooner than this.
I've just been really demoralized and depressed about how I've performed thus far throughout this process. I feel like I'm drowning and that I've burned all the money I spent so much time saving up.
I'm posting this today to see what some of you think about all this and what your recommendations would be about how you'd suggest I proceed.
Are all these pains a normal part of growing a business, and I should just keep pushing forward?
Should I keep things moving with this business, but still invest a little time into a Plan B?
Do you think I should cut my losses and focus my time, money, and energy on something that would be a better fit for my skillset?
Or is there something entirely different that you would recommend?
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