The Failure Thread: How we lost $20K / month and other Business Mishaps!

[fastlane_dad]

So much of today's culture is focused on hustling / winning / displaying your accomplishments, that many of the failures, mishaps, trials of attempt and the struggle get swept under the rug.

I've always been fascinated and more curious about the wrong paths taken, the trials and tribulations that have NOT succeeded. The investments made that turned out to be a dud. Many of today's success stories are platitudes, with not a lot of actionable advice, much less anything you can deeply learn from.

I'm creating this thread to share, inform and spread your trials and tribulations in your business journey. The investment in Time, Money, Relationships and Education that did NOT pan out like you hoped. The investments that have clearly not turned into anything bigger, or just in some (or many ways) did not yield the results or expectations you were after.

It doesn't have to be big! The point here is to share your experience, and let others know that there are challenges along the way, and not every investment will pan out to be a winner (like the advertisements, social and mainstream media) portray it to be.

I'll go first.

One of the personal care products we used to carry, got mentioned by the hosts of a radio talk show. Shortly after that - they reached out to us, letting us know that one of the hosts loved our product, and think it would be an amazing fit for their audience. They showed us their demographic, and the audience count - which both seemed to be highly impressive. They proposed a package to broadcast and make small 'personal' commercials of our product at multiple times of the day. They originally wanted $35K for a month long promotion. That would include several facebook placements on their site. After a bit of negotiations, and bringing down the count of how often they would advertise us - we agreed on a sum of $20K to give this a trial run. We thought we had a sure fire hitter, with the reach on their platform.

Low and behold - the campaign started - and ... 'CRICKETS!'. Over the course of the month, and the follow up I believe we got a total of 4 referral sales from this campaign. This was our only radio outreach we have tried - and quickly did not pursue our relationship further. Maybe keeping it going for few additional months would of ramped up performance, or maybe not. With such few direct sales from that ad, we decided to call it quits and moved on to trying other facets of advertising.

This was a big investment for us at the time, and one made without much prior experience or knowledge about the radio industry, or what it takes to succeed in that space. We did not leverage their campaign to our advantage (which we could have), as we moved onto other projects and wrote this off completely. It would of been wise also to consult with experts in this field or area to get their perspective and input on moving forward with this large of an investment.

We have countless other examples of product launches failures, money invested and relationships that went nowhere, but for now I will leave this here and let others chime in on what are your failures and some of your key takeaways on how you would do something different ? Or not do at all ? Lessons learned? Curious to hear it all!

 

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[Eholic]

I am so sorry about the failures you experienced along the way. At the end of the day we must first remove the wrapper to get to the chocolate, the fun tasty part. My advice going forward is, always seek advice from the specialists/experts etc etc. A business can be full of ups and downs but if there were no downs, there would be no ups. Good luck and keep pushing!

 

[NeoDialectic]

I am so sorry about the failures you experienced along the way. At the end of the day we must first remove the wrapper to get to the chocolate, the fun tasty part. My advice going forward is, always seek advice from the specialists/experts etc etc. A business can be full of ups and downs but if there were no downs, there would be no ups. Good luck and keep pushing!

It's not always easy to find "experts" that can give good advice on things like these, unless you know other experienced entrepreneurs that have done similar... Even forums have come up empty for us...

Anyways, this is all water under the bridge by now!

 

[Antifragile]

It's not always easy to find "experts" that can give good advice on things like these, unless you know other experienced entrepreneurs that have done similar... Even forums have come up empty for us...

Anyways, this is all water under the bridge by now!

Entrepreneurship is about inventing new things, solutions to inconveniences and problems. "Experts" are by definition hard / impossible to find or reach. This may sound depressing, but it's just my opinion - prepare to be wrong and survive those bad moment. Having read about your 8-figure exit, sounds like you've done what you had to do to get to where you are today.

On the OP. There are a few threads on the forum similar in nature: NOTABLE! - MINDSET - What Are The Worst Mistakes You've Done In Your Entrepreneurial Journey?

 

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[fastlane_dad]

Entrepreneurship is about inventing new things, solutions to inconveniences and problems. "Experts" are by definition hard / impossible to find or reach. This may sound depressing, but it's just my opinion - prepare to be wrong and survive those bad moment. Having read about your 8-figure exit, sounds like you've done what you had to do to get to where you are today.

On the OP. There are a few threads on the forum similar in nature: NOTABLE! - MINDSET - What Are The Worst Mistakes You've Done In Your Entrepreneurial Journey?

Yes - similar idea for sure.

That is an older thread and I wanted to start a fresh conversation regarding this topic. With so much show of 'winning' all around us, to many it might seem like every little hiccup and stumbling block is a reason to stop or slow down on pursuing the dream. Looking (or scrolling) through events of everyones life everything always looks so 'easy' as if it just always comes naturally. Even in recap of my own stories, or conversations with others --- much of my own journey might come off that way! But ... that's far from the real story

I'm here to encourage repetition, trying, failing, and most of all perseverance to achieve what you want.

Even 'winners' from all walks of life have tremendous setbacks, failures and stumbles. I want to bring more of that to the surface as it's not highlighted (and celebrated?) nowhere near enough. I view stumbling blocks and failures as that much closer to getting to where I need to go and what I want.

 

[RicardoGrande]

I spent 5 months slowly building a following for an art/music-movement on instagram and feeding them new, original works so I could sell them... dropshipped t-shirts (this was in 2018).
I spent all of that time and effort, including maybe 250 hours re-learning photoshop and making art prints, got one or two samples on printful and plugged into amazon... and just gave up? I paid like 340$ in amazon fees without ever fully listing any of the products.

Why didn't I hit it home? Not really sure, I think I have a general lack of confidence in my own abilities to "be" an entrepreneur, but I also pay too much head to others and try to strictly follow formulas that "work". The other part is by that point in 2018, I got pulled away from the GaryV/Tim Ferris types and fell into the gravity well of TFF that taught me about value.
"What f***ing value is a generic printful t-shirt?" I thought. It also didn't help that the people who were loudly trumpeting the PoD t-shirt hustle seemed to have disappeared as soon as they came.

I will say, I do run into people that break the "PoD doesn't work" line. I ran into a dude who claimed to be doing 14,000$ months on etsy with his PoD shop selling pillows, mugs, and hoodies. I think I also faintly recall a tff member who started up a service relying on PoD clothes in 2020 and was on track to 100,000$+ year by last summer, so maybe the failure was in my own mindset the entire time?
Mindset is still something I fight, hoping the above experience will help light my way for my next venture.

 

[NeoDialectic]

I spent 5 months slowly building a following for an art/music-movement on instagram and feeding them new, original works so I could sell them... dropshipped t-shirts (this was in 2018).
I spent all of that time and effort, including maybe 250 hours re-learning photoshop and making art prints, got one or two samples on printful and plugged into amazon... and just gave up? I paid like 340$ in amazon fees without ever fully listing any of the products.

Why didn't I hit it home? Not really sure, I think I have a general lack of confidence in my own abilities to "be" an entrepreneur, but I also pay too much head to others and try to strictly follow formulas that "work". The other part is by that point in 2018, I got pulled away from the GaryV/Tim Ferris types and fell into the gravity well of TFF that taught me about value.
"What f***ing value is a generic printful t-shirt?" I thought. It also didn't help that the people who were loudly trumpeting the PoD t-shirt hustle seemed to have disappeared as soon as they came.

I will say, I do run into people that break the "PoD doesn't work" line. I ran into a dude who claimed to be doing 14,000$ months on etsy with his PoD shop selling pillows, mugs, and hoodies. I think I also faintly recall a tff member who started up a service relying on PoD clothes in 2020 and was on track to 100,000$+ year by last summer, so maybe the failure was in my own mindset the entire time?
Mindset is still something I fight, hoping the above experience will help light my way for my next venture.

I wouldn't put too much stock in "X doesn't work". It usually means something like "The low hanging fruit has been picked for new entrants"..... But that definitely doesn't mean you can't make money that way as long as you have a unique twist.

So unfortunately you may have sold yourself short and been onto something! Never know now, but take it as a lesson. If you already did most the hard work, why not give it a shot on the market.

 

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[Anon3x156]

Good to see a thread like this. Making mistakes and learning is a part of the process.
The Slowlane teaches us that we should only share our successes, put only good things in our CVs.
But in reality, you should hire the shipwrecked captain!

 

[fastlane_dad]

Good to see a thread like this. Making mistakes and learning is a part of the process.
The Slowlane teaches us that we should only share our successes, put only good things in our CVs.
But in reality, you should hire the shipwrecked captain!

+1 well said. The wins come from the countless failures and I wanna see that report card!

 

[woken]

I ran into a dude who claimed to be doing 14,000$ months on etsy with his PoD shop selling pillows, mugs, and hoodies. I think I also faintly recall a tff member who started up a service relying on PoD clothes in 2020 and was on track to 100,000$+ year by last summer,

Those numbers and PoD in the same sentence are not impressive at all.
It’s nice when you hear that someone is pulling $100k / year revenue. Then you hear it’s PoD and you start feeling sorry for them.

I’ve always wondered why people even bother selling these for $1-2 profit lol. And yes, most SELL for that profit.

Unless you’re have a large, engaged following ( youtubers for example) and sell that Hoodie at 2x what you pay for it, your time is better spent somewhere else.

@fastlane_dad The monthly listeners were in the tens of millions, if not over 100 million, I assume? Or am I blowing this out of proportion? Just trying to understand your decision making process.

 

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[WestCoast]

In just 15 years of business, I've lost money in a lot of dumb ways too:

- We needed truck drivers to ship our product. I loaned $22k to a contractor we liked - to buy a second truck.
I got about $5k back before he crashed it, got divorced, child custody problems... and I never saw $17k again.

- I committed to... gosh, $190k worth of fancy new carbon fiber products. Sure fire hot sellers!!
Margin ended up being less than 10%, and they were $15k each... and did NOT sell.
We ended up just barely surviving, and dumping them to get our cash back. Many sleepless nights there. MANY.

This inspired this FLF thread: "I've Made Major Errors and Put My Company On the Brink"


- I bought a business in the midwest, moved it to our main warehouse.
$25k + inventory. Shut it down 2 years later, liquidated the inventory.
Broke even on cash basis, but, so much time and energy wasted


--
At the same time, I am so glad I had those hard knocks then.
We're now a 40 person, $17M business with offices on both coasts.

Similar mistakes, would be much more costly in pure dollars...

I am sure more hard lessons will come, no doubt.
Making mistakes sucks. But, it's one of the best ways to learn.

Onwards!

 

[MJ DeMarco]

One of the personal care products we used to carry, got mentioned by the hosts of a radio talk show. Shortly after that - they reached out to us, letting us know that one of the hosts loved our product, and think it would be an amazing fit for their audience. They showed us their demographic, and the audience count - which both seemed to be highly impressive. They proposed a package to broadcast and make small 'personal' commercials of our product at multiple times of the day. They originally wanted $35K for a month long promotion. That would include several facebook placements on their site. After a bit of negotiations, and bringing down the count of how often they would advertise us - we agreed on a sum of $20K to give this a trial run. We thought we had a sure fire hitter, with the reach on their platform.

Low and behold - the campaign started - and ... 'CRICKETS!'. Over the course of the month, and the follow up I believe we got a total of 4 referral sales from this campaign. This was our only radio outreach we have tried - and quickly did not pursue our relationship further. Maybe keeping it going for few additional months would of ramped up performance, or maybe not. With such few direct sales from that ad, we decided to call it quits and moved on to trying other facets of advertising.

Interesting, I tried radio advertising as well and it yielded the same type of poor results. Don't ya love it when you spend $10,000 for 1 new customer?

 

[Andy Black]

Those numbers and PoD in the same sentence are not impressive at all.
It’s nice when you hear that someone is pulling $100k / year revenue. Then you hear it’s PoD and you start feeling sorry for them.

I’ve always wondered why people even bother selling these for $1-2 profit lol. And yes, most SELL for that profit.

Unless you’re have a large, engaged following ( youtubers for example) and sell that Hoodie at 2x what you pay for it, your time is better spent somewhere else.

@fastlane_dad The monthly listeners were in the tens of millions, if not over 100 million, I assume? Or am I blowing this out of proportion? Just trying to understand your decision making process.

I know a guys spending $100k/mth in Facebook Ads doing PoD. I think he’s doing very well.

 

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[woken]

I know a guys spending $100k/mth in Facebook Ads doing PoD. I think he’s doing very well.

Not saying there aren’t people doing it well Andy. Large volumes usually have personalised rates too.

All I’m saying is there are multiple other avenues.

 

[processnotevent]

Mine isn't a big loss, but wanted to share just the same. This was before I read MF and Unscripted BTW. I started a Big Commerce Store for custom tees (dropshipped) with some 'sacred geometry' patterns that I (keyword is I here) found very cool and meaningful. Aside from a few friends and family (embarrassed to say), I think I got one customer who I didn't know. Lost the year of e-store fees and my time, but I learned that 1) Learn what the market wants, not want you want or find interesting 2) low barrier businesses are tough unless have a very unique idea/product (straight from Unscripted ) and 3) unless you have an SEO guru, chances are slim anyone is even seeing your product. But even then if the product is not wanted/desired, all the SEO in the world wont matter. I learned a lot though, mostly what not to do going forward!