Started My First Company Right Out Of College, Ready For Biz #2

[hobbsie]

Thanks for the kind words, I've definitely learned tons!

And now it's time to aim bigger. Way bigger.

I recently read @Kak's post "Think Big, And Then Think Bigger Than That" and it seems I've done a great job at making myself a thousandaire haha.

To borrow from both Kak and @GPM :


With this project, I aimed WAY too small.

My fall-back goal starting out was that I just wanted to earn $100k per year from my own company. I didn't pay attention to the reality of the small numbers in front of me, so I came up short and essentially empty-handed.

Now, I want to focus on building a company or portfolio of companies generating $1,000,000 per month in owner's pay with quarterly profit on top.

That would mean creating something that generates at least 7.5m -11m of revenue/month depending on the margins/structure. Given my inexperience, I'm doubling those numbers just to be sure. (So 14-22m target revenue/month)

I have a few ideas on how to get there - e-commerce, local service companies, real estate, acquisitions, etc. - I just need to make something happen.

Once I escape the "Thousandaire" status I'll say I've done a good job haha.

They're serious numbers.

What industry are you in?

 

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[xShepherdx]

They're serious numbers.

What industry are you in?

Yeah, no more playing little league for me

Won't say the specific industry but the current company is digital eCommerce.

 

[hobbsie]

Yeah, no more playing little league for me

Won't say the specific industry but the current company is digital eCommerce.

Nice work

 

[woken]

That would mean creating something that generates at least 7.5m -11m of revenue/month depending on the margins/structure. Given my inexperience, I'm doubling those numbers just to be sure. (So 14-22m target revenue/month)

Nothing wrong with thinking big, but how will picking numbers out of the hat help you?

Can’t make more than a few thousand a month? No problem, just build something that makes 10million a month.

What have I missed here?

 

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[thejessecarr21]

Hey all,

I'm 28 years old and started my first company right out of college. In the two years since, I've grown the company to a whopping $1k profit per month with revenues averaging about 2k monthly.

While the amount is pretty laughable compared to other stories I've read here, I'm EXTREMELY happy that I took charge and started my own business. I've learned so much more than I could ever put down in writing, and I'm still learning more and more every day. I consider the two years I spent building as my personal master's program...except I actually got paid to learn all the stuff LOL.

That said, I think it's time to move on from this business, so I'm putting it on autopilot for a bit while I try out some other business ideas and get to know like-minded people. Which brings me to...

It was about a year ago that I read @MJ DeMarco's book Unscripted and it immediately grabbed me. Mostly because it pointed out all the things I was doing wrong haha. Unfortunately, I put off joining the forum until I had spent an additional year trying to squeeze water from a rock, but after registering and reading through a bunch of the recommended posts, I am incredibly glad I joined.

I look forward to talking to everyone and hopefully sharing a success story of my own someday.

It seems I have a similar mindset to you and thought I would add to this because it kind of in a way affected my progress. Not sure if it truly applies to you, but maybe someone else will also get value from it.

Be careful jumping around too much. I am an entrepreneur and always have a mind full of ideas that I want to try. Which is great, but also a curse. I started a marketing agency 3 years ago. Got it to $5k in revenue per month, of course due to the nature of service businesses most of that was profit. Which is great. I was happy with it but then wanted to try something else, so I did. I still managed clients and they still paid me, so I was still making money passively (almost), but I wasn't growing the business.

Worked on the new thing I was interested in for a year. It didn't work as expected. Clients dropped off from the agency. Then was left where I started before the agency. No $ coming in. I went back to work on the agency and found that the entire space has changed in a year. All of my old methods of getting clients didn't work anymore. So it was literally like starting over. If only I would have taken that $5k I was making and expanded my business I would be way further along. I would probably be at 5x where I was and have a full team. But it is what it is. Don't get caught up in jumping from idea to idea or business model to business model. ESPECIALLY if you are only basing your idea off of youtube gurus talking about this "new business" that is so much better than others.

What i've learned is once something works, double down and scale it. Get tunnel vision with that one business. Then maybe once you scale it and have a team in place doing most of the work, then look into adding another idea to the mix. Today I have a different business, but I didn't start REALLY growing until I realized this.

Now if you totally hate the business and don't care about starting over to find something else you enjoy more, that is a different story.

 

[thejessecarr21]

Nothing wrong with thinking big, but how will picking numbers out of the hat help you?

Can’t make more than a few thousand a month? No problem, just build something that makes 10million a month.

What have I missed here?

I feel like this implies that if one business is not making the amount you strive for, then you hop to another idea that you think will make more. But honestly, you should be thinking in terms of, ok your current business is making $3,000 a month. How do I expand this current business and add more value within it to 10x what I am making? Too many people fall into the loop of starting businesses and not scaling them.

 

[xShepherdx]

Nothing wrong with thinking big, but how will picking numbers out of the hat help you?

Can’t make more than a few thousand a month? No problem, just build something that makes 10million a month.

What have I missed here?

1) They're not random numbers, I picked them because they have meaning to me and reflect my goals in life.

2) If I know that's my goal, I need to pick a space where I have the potential to make that kind of money. Not at first, obviously, but eventually.

Like MJ says, you have to look at the numbers. And the numbers on this business just don't equal a Fastlane opportunity.

I can probably turn this into my full-time income ($70k/year) with the business being mostly automated/passive, but anything beyond that just isn't going to happen.

Hopefully, that makes more sense.

I know this thread is basically one big back-and-forth between starting something new and sticking to the existing company. I still don't know what to do but knowing where I want to go has been a big help.

 

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[xShepherdx]

It seems I have a similar mindset to you and thought I would add to this because it kind of in a way affected my progress. Not sure if it truly applies to you, but maybe someone else will also get value from it.

Be careful jumping around too much. I am an entrepreneur and always have a mind full of ideas that I want to try. Which is great, but also a curse. I started a marketing agency 3 years ago. Got it to $5k in revenue per month, of course due to the nature of service businesses most of that was profit. Which is great. I was happy with it but then wanted to try something else, so I did. I still managed clients and they still paid me, so I was still making money passively (almost), but I wasn't growing the business.

Worked on the new thing I was interested in for a year. It didn't work as expected. Clients dropped off from the agency. Then was left where I started before the agency. No $ coming in. I went back to work on the agency and found that the entire space has changed in a year. All of my old methods of getting clients didn't work anymore. So it was literally like starting over. If only I would have taken that $5k I was making and expanded my business I would be way further along. I would probably be at 5x where I was and have a full team. But it is what it is. Don't get caught up in jumping from idea to idea or business model to business model. ESPECIALLY if you are only basing your idea off of youtube gurus talking about this "new business" that is so much better than others.

I really appreciate you sharing your story!

Shiny object syndrome is definitely something I've had to deal with a lot since posting this initially, so I'll keep what you've said in mind.

And definitely avoid YouTube/social media gurus, they'll make you hate your life no matter how successful you are. (Not just in business, but in other areas as well.)

What i've learned is once something works, double down and scale it. Get tunnel vision with that one business. Then maybe once you scale it and have a team in place doing most of the work, then look into adding another idea to the mix. Today I have a different business, but I didn't start REALLY growing until I realized this.

Now if you totally hate the business and don't care about starting over to find something else you enjoy more, that is a different story.

Doubling down is 100% the correct idea when something is working. This is how I plan to go from $1k/mo to the equivalent of a full-time paycheck.

As Steve mentioned in this thread, "When was the last time you ran your best promotion?"

My answer was never LOL. But that's changing ASAP.

 

[xShepherdx]

Wow, I haven't posted since October! I guess it's time for an update then.

Ever since first posting here, I had been in a state of constant burnout/depression and really felt like I was wasting my time on this business idea. In fact, I first joined the Fastlane Forum because I was desperate for help and wanted to learn what I was doing wrong.

Fortunately, I ended up finding this thread which literally changed my life.

It sounds corny, but it's true. I spend months looking at myself in the mirror and determined I was not who I wanted to be. I had let my confidence slide and I was no longer someone who was fun to be around. I took things too seriously, and I ultimately lost all belief in myself. The last two years were a dark time for me.

Watching that video was a turning point for me. I've watched it several times since October and it encouraged me to seek out pain, embrace struggle, and enjoy pushing myself both mentally and physically.

I started working out seriously for the first time since I was 18. I began reading great books again. I started questioning all the stupid stuff around me. I stopped taking life so seriously, yet simultaneously I became very serious about the things that actually matter to me. I wrote down my goals and have since worked every day to achieve them. I feel like a whole new person.

Looking back now, so many of my posts in this thread were super wimpy. My industry is NOT bad. I CAN market my products profitably. My emails do suck, but I CAN fix them. (And, I actually profit off my emails now. Just slightly!)

With fresh eyes, I can see that this business is more of a 4HWW type of business than a Fastlane business, but it was a great place to start regardless. And it can definitely provide a good income that allows me to have the freedom to pursue other business ideas, travel, etc.

Since October, I haven't really done much on the customer-facing side. My ads and emails are still the same, and I haven't released a new product since October, though I'm sitting on a few that are good to go minus marketing materials.

However, in that time I was able to hugely improve the back-end customer experience by making some key changes:

1) I hired someone to speed up my website.

The site went from Lighthouse scores of 30-65 to 100 across the board, and most importantly my checkout pages are actually faster than my competitors. Since this change went live, revenue increased 160% compared to the same period last month (which was pre-speed up). I also saved a ton of money because the guy found cheaper plugins that did a better job, and he let me know my VPS wasn't set up right and gave me instructions to pass to my web host.

So, not only is my site faster on the front end, but I can handle WAY more users than before because everything from the server to the front end was optimized. Overall, this cost me about $350 or so but saved me a huge amount of time and effort. It was worth every penny.

Key Takeaway: A fast website is a good website. It's worth paying someone to speed your site up. Heck, it's worth paying someone to do almost any important task that will take you a ton of time to learn, implement, and do without error.

2) I completely customized the account pages.

For a long time, I just used the generic Woocommerce account page and it was awful. I think like 10 people saw it each week out of the thousands that visited my site.

Now, customers are forced to create or sign in to an account at checkout. Once they do, the thank you page thanks them for their order, tells them to set a password (they can do this immediately), and informs them if they've earned rewards points. There is a button below all of this that leads them to their downloads within the account, where there are hugely obvious links for viewing past orders, joining our affiliate program, reading our FAQ, submitting testimonials, and more.

By routing customers deeper into my site, I was able to boost the amount of traffic to my shop page, FAQ, testimonials page, and affiliate program by an average of around 140%. This was completely free and only took a couple of hours, some YouTube tutorials, and some code from ChatGPT to accomplish. I've also experienced more repeat customers since making this change, which helped ease the "I'm so f*cked" stress that I was feeling before lol.

Key Takeaway: Make sure every page on your website is well-designed and benefits the customer and their many needs. Also, make sure you open the loop as much as possible. Traditional "thank you" pages can close the loop, so get creative, open the loop, and keep them engaged in your product/service as much as possible. The people who see these pages are your most valuable customers & leads, so don't let them just walk away if you can help it.

3) I spent time testing different offers & deals

Being an eCommerce site, I had quite a few tripwires and upsells available. I invested some time testing different offers, messages, and funnels until I found a fairly good recipe that was netting me 3 sales each day on a consistent basis. This is TINY, but it's the proof I needed to validate the idea and continue working on the company. I've also noticed a single tripwire sale can create a burst of other sales due to a new social proof widget that shows recent sales in the bottom corner of the site.

Key Takeaway: If your offer isn't great, iterate & split-test things until you have a winner. For me, the biggest difference wasn't even the actual offer though. It really was getting the right offer to the right person at the right time. I had to set up some semi-complex conditions to find my winning combo, but it was worth all the time I spent testing different approaches.

4) I hired a small company to run my FB/IG ads and manage my social posts

I tested some new ads new with hugely improved images and copy and was able to get a few sales with a very tiny daily budget. I'm only spending a few dollars per day, but the proof is there that my products can be marketed through this medium, so I'm doubling down.

Just this week, I hired a small company to create/manage my ads & social posts. Now, my job is to feed them content created by myself or affiliates to make new ads. I have almost a dozen YouTube videos for them to use, and I'll be asking affiliates to share more with me as we go. This is going to be a huge time saver and hopefully, they will be able to get a positive ROI on the ad spend much faster than I would have alone.

Key Takeaway: I'll report back with results, but just knowing that my ads and social media accounts are handing is a huge weight off my shoulders. This ties in with Key Takeaway #1 though: "It's worth paying someone to do almost any important task that will take you a ton of time to learn, implement, and do without error."

5) Finding & Fixing WooCommerce Errors

Because I had built my site primarily using Elementor, many WooCommerce error messages simply weren't showing up. For example, the error that tells someone their password is incorrect during checkout was simply gone. Instead of getting a "Your password or username is incorrect" message, the page would simply refresh and leave the potential customer confused.

I spent a few days using ChatGPT learning how to diagnose the problems and then display custom messages that were actually useful to the end user. Since implementing all the fixes, support requests have dropped and sales have increased. I didn't measure the impact of this one as it occurred during the account page updates, but the site now works and looks like a million-dollar site, which can only be good.

Key Takeaway: Don't let stupid stuff like this mess up your conversions. Test your site regularly. Have your spouse test it. Have your parents and grandparents test it. People will do unexpected things, so be sure there's a way to either prevent that or handle it once it comes up. Simple pop-up messages will usually do the trick.

Wrapping Up & Final Thoughts

I was wrong before: I should NOT jump ship into a different business just yet. The grass is definitely not greener on the other side, like my burnt-out, stressed, and depressed self previously wanted to believe. Eventually, I'll start something bigger and new. But for now, this company is poised to perform really well.

With the right marketing and systems in place, I'm very optimistic about the future.

I have a new product coming out in a few weeks that I'm excited about. I put a ton of time and effort into the marketing for this one and I think I've stacked the deck in my favor. I'll report back after the launch, as I'm expecting things to go significantly better than the last launch.