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Earlier this year I left my job working at the digital marketing agency and I posted about the experience there.
Just to recap my entrepreneurial journey:
My first product ever was called MacroPlans - a software for planning macro nutrients for people who count macros. I didn't know anything about business, start-ups, marketing, etc. I went really intense on this for 4 years. I kinda wish I'd have continued on this path because I found a software today that I knew was around when I was building called MacroStax, or something like that. They're running ads all these years later. It was a viable plan but I just didn't stick with it. I didn't know how to validate a business idea at the time.
Next I started UltraInbound - a simple version of what is GoHighLevel today. I partnered with a digital marketer and we made money with it. My biz partner got busy with his agency, and GoHighLevel took our customers. So I joined the marketing agency.
I worked for the agency for 3 years, helped them go from $300k-ish/year to over $2M in annual revenue.
In Feb of this year I left the agency and partnered with a group of 3 other digital marketing agency owners in an effort to make a new agency targeting financial advisors. Our agreement start out with me doing the start-up concept of a low equity start with a 4 year cliff - something I proposed. Then after like 1 week of strategizing and talking through what we should do, the three of them decided to make me their "Integrator" and announced it to all the staff they had brought in from their previous agencies as well as make me an equal partner from the get-go. In the end I didn't agree with the ethics of some of these founders, so I left. What really opened my eyes is how some of these marketers literally just shamelessly lie in their offers and ads just to be able to sell something even if they can't deliver. I think this is disgusting behavior. Worst, these same people go on social media and talk about success and put on this show trying to build a following.
In April I found a girl with a really solid start-up idea she'd worked on for 3 years prior. She was lost in terms of execution and strategy in general. I spent the next 4 months working with her, and flew to Colorado for 2 months to do an accelerator program with a company called Antler in an effort to get funding. We never got the funding, but we found a path to profitability and sustainable growth - something she didn't have prior - and I helped with some design, marketing, process design, etc and that helped get us like 100x the "assets" we needed in the business to resell than she had prior to meeting. In the end I found her to be incredibly difficult to work with, and decided to part ways, once again.
Before I started with the colorado project I had made a post about my story in a Facebook group that landed me two consulting clients by happenstance. After the Colorado project I decided to go harder on consulting for agencies just like the ones that reached out to me. So I'm currently learning how that model works. I'm trying to figure out how to go from me doing the work to it being scalable to $100k/mo in profits for myself. As I do this, an old colleague from the agency I worked at reached out to me who wants to partned up on a software project that he was able to validate through google spreadsheets. He sold 8+ of these spreadsheets for over $1k each. The ideal scenario for me would be to focus all my energy on the things I love like marketing and selling, and not have to work on fulfilling work as much - as I would be in consulting.
With the spreadsheets project I'm workout out how to set up cold email setup because I was able to get a giant list of targeted customers from the old agency I worked at by cutting a deal with the owner. For the consulting, I'm planning out my simple funnel to get prospects to book appointments with me. I picked up "Ultimate guide to facebook ads" from Perry Marshall.
Not gonna lie, writing this out is kind of therapeutic for me. These stories spans about 10 years. I'm 32 now.
The #1 thing I struggled with mentally is the "should" idea that "I should be a millionaire by now". And I sometimes have regrets regarding the mentors I've accepted. And that spirals into blaming others - instead of just pointing the finger at myself. As think and grow rich says, "Failure permits no alibis".
I think trying and trying is simply part of who I am. I keep swinging the bat. And I learned each time I do.
Core lessons I've learned this year are these:
1. Start a business that has competitors you can analyze and find a way to beat them through a differentiated offer. I believe this is much safer and faster than trying to create an idea from scratch, a "zero to one" idea when it comes to speed of earning an income.
2. Dig your wells before you're thirsty because you will eventually need others in certain areas to help you advance.
3. If you're not sure what to start on, it's best to write down your criteria of what you want, and then assess all the options you can to find one that meets your criteria, and then from there stop trying to find the perfect thing, just start doing the doing, as Hormozi says. As you get into action, new doors, idea, and opportunities start to open. It's kinda like sitting in your driveway with your car on and not going anywhere. Just get an idea of what's important to you, choose a destination, and then put the car in drive and start going. Your plan will change but it will self-correct as you go.
4. Business partnerships shouldn't grind your gears. I know John D Rockefeller made his initial fortune working with assholes. But I find that working with people I like to work with who complement my skills and who I can seriously trust deeply is much more efficient and better for sanity.
5. great new opportunities come around about once every 2 months if you're searching from scratch. Use Y-Combinator co-founder matching tool if you want to find a co-founder that's searching for co-founders and you want to work on a high-growth startup.
- N
Just to recap my entrepreneurial journey:
My first product ever was called MacroPlans - a software for planning macro nutrients for people who count macros. I didn't know anything about business, start-ups, marketing, etc. I went really intense on this for 4 years. I kinda wish I'd have continued on this path because I found a software today that I knew was around when I was building called MacroStax, or something like that. They're running ads all these years later. It was a viable plan but I just didn't stick with it. I didn't know how to validate a business idea at the time.
Next I started UltraInbound - a simple version of what is GoHighLevel today. I partnered with a digital marketer and we made money with it. My biz partner got busy with his agency, and GoHighLevel took our customers. So I joined the marketing agency.
I worked for the agency for 3 years, helped them go from $300k-ish/year to over $2M in annual revenue.
In Feb of this year I left the agency and partnered with a group of 3 other digital marketing agency owners in an effort to make a new agency targeting financial advisors. Our agreement start out with me doing the start-up concept of a low equity start with a 4 year cliff - something I proposed. Then after like 1 week of strategizing and talking through what we should do, the three of them decided to make me their "Integrator" and announced it to all the staff they had brought in from their previous agencies as well as make me an equal partner from the get-go. In the end I didn't agree with the ethics of some of these founders, so I left. What really opened my eyes is how some of these marketers literally just shamelessly lie in their offers and ads just to be able to sell something even if they can't deliver. I think this is disgusting behavior. Worst, these same people go on social media and talk about success and put on this show trying to build a following.
In April I found a girl with a really solid start-up idea she'd worked on for 3 years prior. She was lost in terms of execution and strategy in general. I spent the next 4 months working with her, and flew to Colorado for 2 months to do an accelerator program with a company called Antler in an effort to get funding. We never got the funding, but we found a path to profitability and sustainable growth - something she didn't have prior - and I helped with some design, marketing, process design, etc and that helped get us like 100x the "assets" we needed in the business to resell than she had prior to meeting. In the end I found her to be incredibly difficult to work with, and decided to part ways, once again.
Before I started with the colorado project I had made a post about my story in a Facebook group that landed me two consulting clients by happenstance. After the Colorado project I decided to go harder on consulting for agencies just like the ones that reached out to me. So I'm currently learning how that model works. I'm trying to figure out how to go from me doing the work to it being scalable to $100k/mo in profits for myself. As I do this, an old colleague from the agency I worked at reached out to me who wants to partned up on a software project that he was able to validate through google spreadsheets. He sold 8+ of these spreadsheets for over $1k each. The ideal scenario for me would be to focus all my energy on the things I love like marketing and selling, and not have to work on fulfilling work as much - as I would be in consulting.
With the spreadsheets project I'm workout out how to set up cold email setup because I was able to get a giant list of targeted customers from the old agency I worked at by cutting a deal with the owner. For the consulting, I'm planning out my simple funnel to get prospects to book appointments with me. I picked up "Ultimate guide to facebook ads" from Perry Marshall.
Not gonna lie, writing this out is kind of therapeutic for me. These stories spans about 10 years. I'm 32 now.
The #1 thing I struggled with mentally is the "should" idea that "I should be a millionaire by now". And I sometimes have regrets regarding the mentors I've accepted. And that spirals into blaming others - instead of just pointing the finger at myself. As think and grow rich says, "Failure permits no alibis".
I think trying and trying is simply part of who I am. I keep swinging the bat. And I learned each time I do.
Core lessons I've learned this year are these:
1. Start a business that has competitors you can analyze and find a way to beat them through a differentiated offer. I believe this is much safer and faster than trying to create an idea from scratch, a "zero to one" idea when it comes to speed of earning an income.
2. Dig your wells before you're thirsty because you will eventually need others in certain areas to help you advance.
3. If you're not sure what to start on, it's best to write down your criteria of what you want, and then assess all the options you can to find one that meets your criteria, and then from there stop trying to find the perfect thing, just start doing the doing, as Hormozi says. As you get into action, new doors, idea, and opportunities start to open. It's kinda like sitting in your driveway with your car on and not going anywhere. Just get an idea of what's important to you, choose a destination, and then put the car in drive and start going. Your plan will change but it will self-correct as you go.
4. Business partnerships shouldn't grind your gears. I know John D Rockefeller made his initial fortune working with assholes. But I find that working with people I like to work with who complement my skills and who I can seriously trust deeply is much more efficient and better for sanity.
5. great new opportunities come around about once every 2 months if you're searching from scratch. Use Y-Combinator co-founder matching tool if you want to find a co-founder that's searching for co-founders and you want to work on a high-growth startup.
- N
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