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Reaching the Fastlane - My Goals

JRTX

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Feb 7, 2011
16
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I just discovered MJ's book about 4 days ago. Downloaded and read the first 3 chapters and I could not read it fast enough. Finally someone speaks my language and had the same desires in life. Then I discovered his Blog and this forum. Wow...there are others out in the world that think like I do. MJ's book is on order and I can't wait for it to arrive to read past the first 3 chapters.

I've read a several post on this section of the forum and I'm going to use this post to list my goals and hopefully hold myself accountable. And maybe my post will help someone out by giving them motivation.

First some background. I've always been an entrepreneurial person but have yet to find a way to quit my day job. I've ran a few successful online shops in the late 90's but nothing that ever hit big. In 2005 I got into the screen printing business by starting Houston Screen Print. The first year I manage to do $55k in sales out of my garage. The second year I hit $77 and in 2007 with help from a military contract I boosted up to $147k in sales. Again operating out of my garage. I was 37 years old back in 2007 and finally had a good chunk of change in the bank from a business I started. In 2008 I looked at moving out of my garage but the city said the spot I was trying to lease was zoned for commercial, not industrial. Who knew screen printing t-shirts was industrial type work, come on really? But I guess it was a blessing in disguise because it's been good keeping my operating cost low printing from the garage. I average $50k to $80k per year depending on how much I advertise outside. I have a pretty good book of business and have a lot of repeat orders from customers over the years. But my MPH in screen printing has a limit and it's obviously not a fast enough for the Fastlane.

In 2010 I started to get involved with affiliate marking using websites and articles posted on article sites. But they really haven't produced, and I found the commission to be on the low side even if you are not involved with the product delivery aspect. I did create my own Internet Marketing product recently which I released as a WSO on the Warrior Forum. It obtained good reviews and has made about $200 so far. It's cool to get emails saying someone purchase my product and even better that they get added to my email list. I have 32 people on my email list so far from my product. I have a few more products on the drawing board and I really should use some of MJ's suggestions and use my time more wisely.

So my goal right now is to create a couple of eBiz stores using the suppliers I'm already setup with from my screen print company. Once they are up and running with products listed I will work on driving traffic to them. I have some more eBiz store ideas I just need to connect up with some suppliers so I can purchase the product or drop ship. Of course I need to first make sure the product is in demand. But I'm trying to reach a goal of clearing $30.00 a day from my eBiz stores and my Internet Marketing products. Once I reach $30.00 a day I'm going to set a goal for $100 a day. If I can consisting reach $100.00 per day I can bring my wife home and start to scale up.

Long range goal is to bring my wife home, have her run the business as we scale up. Move the operation from our home to a warehouse and hire a few people to handle day to day operations in which my wife and I will oversee. If we can grow the business income to surpass my income by 2 times, I plan to then leave my day job and continue to scale up.

At least that my plan to date.

JR
 
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Davidla

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May 30, 2009
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Welcome JR!

Goodluck with your goals!

While reading your introduction I kept thinking the following thought:

why start something new from scratch if you already have a business that is running well?

I dont presume to know anything about the screen printing businesses, but I kept thinking about the fact that a businesses generating 150k in rev with +-50% profit margin (I dont know if taxes are involved in it) while being operated as 2nd "job" from your garage has potential to grow much bigger.

Perhaps try to find ways to grow and scale it? Hire your own marketing sales people who work on commissions? expand your geographical sales area? start scaling it and sell through the internet? Use sub contractors? Train kids who work on min wage to do the printing job, and spend your time getting more contracts with big organizations?
Perhaps create affiliate programs on the web to promote the products you are currently selling?

From what you have been describing your business was slowlane until now - how about using your past experience and knowledge with a different mindset, to turn it into a fastlane one?
 

JRTX

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Feb 7, 2011
16
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Texas
Davidla,

Thanks for replying to my post. While my t-shirt business is doing well I'm just tired of spending time in my garage printing shirts. In the beginning it was fun and exciting. Each new job brought in a different set of challenges. But after you've printed pretty much everything it becomes more of a job and gets boring. It's like going to a new restaurant and then trying everything on the menu. You soon find a few dish that you like, but after you continue to eating them over and over again they no long taste good. Plus my kids are now out of the house so it's only me printing.

Since I only have a manual press I have a MPH of about 100 shirts per hour that I can print. In order to increase speed I have to hire a person or two and perhaps buy an automatic press. But that comes with more cost. Currently I own all my equipment outright so if I'm not printing I have almost a zero burn rate. Which is really good cause I also enjoy outdoor activities such as Flying, Fishing or Boating. I guess you can say my screen printing business has given me a lot of "fun" money but not Fastlane money.

I'd much rather sit in my air condition office and work on the computer then sweat in my garage. Because I feel the time I spend in my office creating sites or whatever will eventually continue to pay me back over and over again. Plus printing t-shirts is more of skilled labor vs manul labor. Showing someone how to put this in a box and ship it somewhere doesn't require much of a learning curve.

I've also read the 4HWW and my screen printing business model currently relies with me having to be in the center of everything to keeping the business going. I'm hoping to be able to create other businesses where I don't have to be in the center 100% of the time.

Tonight I'm working on setting up products for my first eBiz store in Excel. Once I get them entered I will work on programing a VB macro to generate the HTML code on the fly so I can have the flexibility of changing my product pages with hardly any effort. Once I get the first spreadsheet coded I can use it again for the other eBiz stores I have in mind to create.

Thanks again for commenting.

JR
 

JRTX

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Feb 7, 2011
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Update 2-11-11

Today I coded the VB code to work with my Excel spreadsheet so I can generate HTML code for listing my products. It feels good once again to have the ability to create HTML pages automatically. I did that very same thing before with an online Hobby Shop I was running for a while, but it was using a different shopping cart back then.

Now I need to go through and enter in all the product information from my supplier. They have a spreadsheet listing all there products so for the most part I can copy and past over that information. I just need to setup my mark up margins and a few other things.

About to register my domain name for this first eBiz after I make this post. The product I'll be selling on my site is just a small selection from a larger niche market of products. Google is claiming 5400 searches a day for my niche which should be about 180 per day. I'm pretty confident I can rank on the first page for my niche's search term. The overall goal for this product market is to create a few more selected products from this larger niche market and then one big super store. I plan to link all my eBiz stores together because they will be selling products related to the niche. And hopefully I can generate some link juice this way too.

I'm going to try some PPC marketing to get things going and setting my monthly budget for each site at $200 initially. Based on the amount of traffic and orders I'll decide if I need to increase that or not. But once I get ranked on the first page I may actually do away with PPC. We will see.

So that's it for now. It's time to get that domain name and start building my first eBiz store.

Later,

JR
 
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JRTX

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Feb 7, 2011
16
5
Texas
Received MJ's book yesterday and I'm pumped! I can't believe the amount of common sense in the book, yet we have been sold a different bill of goods all our life. No wonder we have such a high chance of only being mediocre. I've always followed the mind set of we become what we are from the books that we read along with the people we meet.

I would have never gotten into the screen printing business if it was not for meeting my friend Chris at the local radio controlled air field I use to fly at every weekend when I was into them. At the time I was running an online hobby shop and I knew he owned a t-shirt shop. I inquired about the cost of getting some shirt printed and he started asking me questions about selling stuff online afterwards. Shortly after that he came by my house asking if I would help him create an online t-shirt shop selling biker related shirts. I offered to build his web store in exchange for him helping me launch an apparel line related to aviation. He said sure. I dumped $500 dollars in t-shirts to print 5 designs in which I went around to local flying events to sell shirts. I also created an online store named Bail Out Apparel which did ok, nothing great but it made enough money to keep moving forward.

I soon realized that Chris was not into my apparel line as much as I was and I had been going to his shop a lot to help print my shirts. One day I decided to ask him if I could try printing? He said sure and after that day I bought my first hobby press. That press was such a joke, but I managed to turn out a few jobs to generate enough cash to buy a starter professional press. And that started my journey into the screen printing world.

So meeting Chris that day has made a great impact on the life I've been able to live since I have a business that generates cash to allow me and my family to enjoy some perks in life. Had I not read books prior to meeting Chris about building websites and setting up eCommerce sites I would not have had the knowledge necessary to make this all work.

I can't imagine what will be in store for the future after I finish MJ's book and who I might come in contact with that could change my life once again. I'm alway looking for opportunity and how I can take advantage of it. Oh well, sorry for the rambling in today's post. Time to get back to work on my eBiz site.

JR
 

JRTX

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Feb 7, 2011
16
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Texas
I got my 800 number from Kall8.com for my eBiz store. Actually I picked up 5 of them because they were consecutive numbers and I figure I might as well get enough for the other eBiz stores I'm plan to create.

My HTML store template is also set and now I'll be adding products into my Excel spreadsheet so I can load up my eBiz store with products. I'm getting excited about launching it. I just hope I can get all the stuff uploaded before big Google finds out about my site and tries to index it.

JR
 
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JRTX

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Feb 7, 2011
16
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Texas
Got my $100 Google Adwords card in the mail yesterday. I presume it's because I resumed my Adwords campaign for my screen printing business. I know that once you open a new Adwords account they usually send you a $100 card good towards a new Adwords account. So I figure once I use this on my new Adwords account for my first eBiz store I will get another one in the mail which I can use for my next eBiz store. This will be great so I can get a PPC campaign driving traffic to my first eBiz store.

Last night I was able to get one of my product categories uploaded to my website. Today I'm working on my other standard pages like Contact Us, About Us, Shipping, Returns, etc. Something I will be using from MJ's book on my Contact page is listing fictitious people for various departments. I thought it was cool that he used the same people his teacher always used. Kind of a neat idea and it definitely will help make the company look like a much bigger company. Something I think is important when doing business online since your website is the only thing that can make an impression on your customer.

So I plan on using my two dogs and cat's name along with some made up last name for my Manager of Shipping, Manager of Sales, and Director of Marketing. I'll probably take on the title of Customer Service & Support.

JR
 

JRTX

New Contributor
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Feb 7, 2011
16
5
Texas
Well I wish I had more to report, but I haven't done much more with my first eBiz store lately. I've been busy with my screen printing business. I guess I can't complain too much as that is what will be bank rolling my eBiz stores until they turn a profit.

I did receive an email today for $75 in Google Adwords credit from some business cards I purchase from Vista print for my daughter who is a hair stylist. I'm saving that to go towards a PPC campaign for my second eBiz store.

Oh and I've finally gotten to chapter 19 in MJ's book. Glad to have finally reached the meat of the book or least so far from what I've read. I like the be a producer instead of consumer train of thought. Just need to focus more on finding ways I can transfer over to the producer side of things and put that Wealth equation to work towards my benefit. Great stuff MJ!

JR
 

JRTX

New Contributor
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Feb 7, 2011
16
5
Texas
I'm on page 177 of MJ's book but skipped ahead and read chapter 44 on "Choose monogamy over polygamy". Wow, what a perspective he shares and something I've been guilty of a lot. I'm now having to rethink the direction of my eBiz stores. I mean I don't want to be just throwing mud on a wall hoping they will stick and make money for me.

And I know my screen printing business is making money for me so perhaps I need to find ways to increase this business. I certainly agree that having ten businesses generating $10k is not as good as 1 business generating the same amount. I'm going to have to take some time and consider the direction I'm heading.

On a side note my first eBiz store got index by Google and is ranking #3 for the domain name search. It's a 3 word domain name with the first two being the actual keywords I want to target. It's kind of a competitive niche, but I know having good content and building back links will get it ranking soon for the 2 keywords I'm targeting. It was indexed naturally instead of me forcing it. I much prefer my sites to get index naturally then forced because they generally don't go through the Google dance after they are indexed.

JR
 
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