Fantastic updates and congrats on your success @MythOfSisyphus ! This is one of my favorite progress threads.
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Free registration at the forum removes this block.September Revenue Goal: $165,000
Actual Revenue for September: $158,217 (Down 18k from previous month)
Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000
Revenue so far: $1,201,933 ($548,067 to go)
Average per month required: $182,689
So September was a bit off where I wanted to be at this stage but the target is still achievable (just). October will hopefully see a spike in revenue and November is traditionally a very good month, as is most of December, however the Christmas period hurts sales at the end. Hitting this target will basically mean that the business is capable of earning around 1 million (profit) a year going forward which is staggering considering where I was only a few years ago. I'm also looking forward to a couple of weeks after Christmas driving along the coast with my family and planning what will come next.
What went wrong:
Some of our search engine rankings for major keywords went downhill. Some investigating revealed that we lost positions on a few different keywords to the same competitor. They look to have outsourced their SEO to someone or some company that is using a bunch of spammy blogs to create artificial banklinks. I won't be doing the same, however I will be putting a focus on SEO and doing what I can to get the rankings back.
We also had some delays in restocking products due to switching the supplier for our bestsellers. Some variants of the products we supply were new to them and took longer to deliver. Hopefully they'll be faster moving forward.
What went right:
The campaign manager I hired to work on our adwords campaigns has done well so far by attaining roughly the same revenue as we had previously but cutting the monthly ad spend by around 3-4k. No impact on revenue, but there's a full time wage worth of savings there.
I negotiated a new shipping rates contract with Australia Post which didn't seem to be great value initially, however they have just announced that there will be price changes to their standard delivery costs very soon (which I am assuming means a price hike)
I finished reviewing resumes and interviewed for a new picker/packer who should start in the next week or so and once trained up should free up an extra 2 days a week for me to focus on more important matters.
The loose ends of transition from a sole trader to a company have pretty much all been tied up now (this was quite a time sink for me over the past couple of months)
Thanks to the tax man and mortgage brokers I no longer have that pesky issue of all that surplus cash sitting in the bank that I was learning how to invest
Plans for October:
Apart from a sale or 2 and some good marketing there's not a lot I can do to impact sales over these last few months of the year. I basically have to hope that the hard work I've done throughout the year pays dividends. So this month will mostly be about long term planning...
- Getting the new employee hired and trained up before things get hectic around here
- Rearranging what little room we have left in the backyard office and storage facility to make space for said employee
- Contacting suppliers about new products to stock early next year
- Focusing on SEO to regain rankings on the more competitive keywords in my niche
- Continuing to focus on social media
October Revenue Goal: $180,000
Around $4000 AUDHey mate,
How was your initial capital to start this business? I am not sure you posted this in this thread.
Thank you.
September Revenue Goal: $165,000
Actual Revenue for September: $158,217 (Down 18k from previous month)
Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000
Revenue so far: $1,201,933 ($548,067 to go)
Average per month required: $182,689
So September was a bit off where I wanted to be at this stage but the target is still achievable (just). October will hopefully see a spike in revenue and November is traditionally a very good month, as is most of December, however the Christmas period hurts sales at the end. Hitting this target will basically mean that the business is capable of earning around 1 million (profit) a year going forward which is staggering considering where I was only a few years ago. I'm also looking forward to a couple of weeks after Christmas driving along the coast with my family and planning what will come next.
What went wrong:
Some of our search engine rankings for major keywords went downhill. Some investigating revealed that we lost positions on a few different keywords to the same competitor. They look to have outsourced their SEO to someone or some company that is using a bunch of spammy blogs to create artificial banklinks. I won't be doing the same, however I will be putting a focus on SEO and doing what I can to get the rankings back.
We also had some delays in restocking products due to switching the supplier for our bestsellers. Some variants of the products we supply were new to them and took longer to deliver. Hopefully they'll be faster moving forward.
What went right:
The campaign manager I hired to work on our adwords campaigns has done well so far by attaining roughly the same revenue as we had previously but cutting the monthly ad spend by around 3-4k. No impact on revenue, but there's a full time wage worth of savings there.
I negotiated a new shipping rates contract with Australia Post which didn't seem to be great value initially, however they have just announced that there will be price changes to their standard delivery costs very soon (which I am assuming means a price hike)
I finished reviewing resumes and interviewed for a new picker/packer who should start in the next week or so and once trained up should free up an extra 2 days a week for me to focus on more important matters.
The loose ends of transition from a sole trader to a company have pretty much all been tied up now (this was quite a time sink for me over the past couple of months)
Thanks to the tax man and mortgage brokers I no longer have that pesky issue of all that surplus cash sitting in the bank that I was learning how to invest
Plans for October:
Apart from a sale or 2 and some good marketing there's not a lot I can do to impact sales over these last few months of the year. I basically have to hope that the hard work I've done throughout the year pays dividends. So this month will mostly be about long term planning...
- Getting the new employee hired and trained up before things get hectic around here
- Rearranging what little room we have left in the backyard office and storage facility to make space for said employee
- Contacting suppliers about new products to stock early next year
- Focusing on SEO to regain rankings on the more competitive keywords in my niche
- Continuing to focus on social media
October Revenue Goal: $180,000
I'll post an update within the next week with the final tally but currently sitting about 6k short of the monthly target with a day and a bit to go. I'm confident I'll reach the 180kAny updates for October??
Cheers,
-Eric
October Revenue Goal: $180,000
Actual Revenue for October: 183,624 ($25k Up from previous month)
Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000
Revenue so far: $1,385,558 ($364,442 to go)
Average per month required: $182,221
October went pretty well and ended roughly where I expected it to. Sales in December suffer because of the Christmas week so November will need to be a pretty big month to get me over the line.
What went wrong:
- No major issues but after the Adwords campaign performing quite well in September, October was relatively poor with an increase spend but stagnant returns. I'll meet with the campaign manager next week to address this.
What went right:
- Sales continued to trend upward.
- Hired a new employee and they've started pretty well which has freed up an extra 2 days a week for me to focus on other things
- Most products remained in stock throughout the entire month
- I managed to actually post to our social media pages quite regularly and should be able to continue to do so
Plans for November:
As November is the busiest month of the year I don't have anything major planned. Just hoping to stay on top of the day to day things and put out fires wherever they start (that's basically 50% of my job now anyway). I have around 50 small tasks on my radar that I'll try and get through including doing an overhaul of the slightly dated website.
November Revenue Goal: $200,000
Hit the monthly and overall target a few hours ago while on a cruise around the bay. And only 3 days to spare. It's been a good year.
Congrats man, very well deserved indeedHit the monthly and overall target a few hours ago while on a cruise around the bay. And only 3 days to spare. It's been a good year.
Hit the monthly and overall target a few hours ago while on a cruise around the bay. And only 3 days to spare. It's been a good year.
Awesome! And congratulations. I've just gone through you progress thread and do you know what really struck me (other than the impressive numbers)...it's the interesting fact that stuff like redoing your logo, and the website redesign are being done when the business is well on it's way and churning thousands of $ a month in contrast to how some focus on stuff like that in the beginning, wondering whether the colors are right etc....Great lessons in your progress thread mate! Thanks for letting us take a peek into your cash machine!NOTE: I'm taking off on Holiday straight after Christmas so I don't know if I'll get time to do a full update for the end of year until mid Jan. I'll at least try and give the final tally at some stage.
Awesome! And congratulations. I've just gone through you progress thread and do you know what really struck me (other than the impressive numbers)...it's the interesting fact that stuff like redoing your logo, and the website redesign are being done when the business is well on it's way and churning thousands of $ a month in contrast to how some focus on stuff like that in the beginning, wondering whether the colors are right etc....Great lessons in your progress thread mate! Thanks for letting us take a peek into your cash machine!
2018 FINAL UPDATE
December Revenue Goal: $163,623
Actual Revenue: $173,788 (Down 27k from previous month)
Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000
Final Revenue: $1,760,166
WooHoo!
Made the monthly target pretty comfortably in the end but to only hit the overall goal by 10k over was ridiculously close. To be honest though, I wouldn't have been upset or disappointed if I missed the goal. The point wasn't the final figure or the goal itself, but to get the business to the point it needed to be at to reach that goal.
If the business stays at the point that it's at right now without any further growth then I'm making enough money to put away a few million in assets and investments over the next couple of years and then potentially sell the business for around 3 million or so which gives me more than enough FU money for my family and I to live off for the rest of our lives. Not that I think I would want to, but retiring at 40 is an option now.
What went wrong
- Not much at all really apart from sales slowing down as they do over the Christmas period.
- A minor issue is that the new hire is struggling a little and not quite packing as fast as is required and still makes some small mistakes.
What went right
- Hit the monthly and overall revenue target.
- Things ran smoothly in my absence. I only need to do around 1-2 hours of work answering a few customer emails while I was away. I'm now handing over a lot of the customer service to my employees so that next time I'm away I'll hopefully only need to do a few minutes of work.
Plans for this year
I haven't set any overall financial targets or goals for this year and I don't know if I will. However I would think around 2.6 million in revenue would be a reasonable target although I'm expecting that growth might become a little tougher to sustain this year.
Plans for the business include launching a new logo, a new website and moving into the new warehouse which will help me expand the product range a little faster. At the moment the backyard warehouse is pretty much full capacity.
I'll also be looking at expanding the product line a little further to include some other products in a slightly different but still related cosmetic niche.
Anyway... thanks to everyone who followed my success last year and contributed to the thread. I'm not sure yet if I'll keep providing regular or formal updates this year but I'll definitely try and keep the thread alive and keep you updated on my progress. While the business is going well, I haven't reached that final FU money stage just yet so I'll keep you all updated on that.
2018 FINAL UPDATE
December Revenue Goal: $163,623
Actual Revenue: $173,788 (Down 27k from previous month)
Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000
Final Revenue: $1,760,166
WooHoo!
Made the monthly target pretty comfortably in the end but to only hit the overall goal by 10k over was ridiculously close. To be honest though, I wouldn't have been upset or disappointed if I missed the goal. The point wasn't the final figure or the goal itself, but to get the business to the point it needed to be at to reach that goal.
If the business stays at the point that it's at right now without any further growth then I'm making enough money to put away a few million in assets and investments over the next couple of years and then potentially sell the business for around 3 million or so which gives me more than enough FU money for my family and I to live off for the rest of our lives. Not that I think I would want to, but retiring at 40 is an option now.
What went wrong
- Not much at all really apart from sales slowing down as they do over the Christmas period.
- A minor issue is that the new hire is struggling a little and not quite packing as fast as is required and still makes some small mistakes.
What went right
- Hit the monthly and overall revenue target.
- Things ran smoothly in my absence. I only need to do around 1-2 hours of work answering a few customer emails while I was away. I'm now handing over a lot of the customer service to my employees so that next time I'm away I'll hopefully only need to do a few minutes of work.
Plans for this year
I haven't set any overall financial targets or goals for this year and I don't know if I will. However I would think around 2.6 million in revenue would be a reasonable target although I'm expecting that growth might become a little tougher to sustain this year.
Plans for the business include launching a new logo, a new website and moving into the new warehouse which will help me expand the product range a little faster. At the moment the backyard warehouse is pretty much full capacity.
I'll also be looking at expanding the product line a little further to include some other products in a slightly different but still related cosmetic niche.
Anyway... thanks to everyone who followed my success last year and contributed to the thread. I'm not sure yet if I'll keep providing regular or formal updates this year but I'll definitely try and keep the thread alive and keep you updated on my progress. While the business is going well, I haven't reached that final FU money stage just yet so I'll keep you all updated on that.
One of my favorite threads of 2018. Huge congrats, and thanks for sharing so much with us
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Just dropped by to say thank you so much for sharing your progress.
Considering you are doing B2B sales, I have a couple questions:
1. How do you decide how much inventory to hold?
2. Why not use a pre-order system so that you do not have to hold inventory? So for example, you bring a sample of your product to a customer. If they like it, they order 500 units. Only then, you order 500 units from your supplier and ship it to them. This way, you are cash flow positive.
Just dropped by to say thank you so much for sharing your progress.
Considering you are doing B2B sales, I have a couple questions:
1. How do you decide how much inventory to hold?
2. Why not use a pre-order system so that you do not have to hold inventory? So for example, you bring a sample of your product to a customer. If they like it, they order 500 units. Only then, you order 500 units from your supplier and ship it to them. This way, you are cash flow positive.
Awesome progress... congratsI had a few people ask for progress updates so here goes (I'll try and do at least a couple more before the end of the year)...
Progress Update:
The business is still going quite well although month to month revenue hasn't changed a lot since the heights we hit late last year. Having said that, this is pretty standard as in previous years sales are fairly consistent from Jan through Oct before jumping massively in November. At the moment an average month is around 195k in revenue.
Despite not setting a solid goal revenue-wise for this year I believe I said that around 2.6m would be a pretty good result. It's currently sitting at around 1.7m so it's highly unlikely that I'll get there. Having said that, the business is now 4 years old and still experiencing pretty solid year on year growth so I can't complain.
Changes This Year:
The re-branding, while a pain in the a$$, went really well and the new logo and products with it look fantastic. Looking back, branding is something I would take more time to completely nail in the very beginning to avoid having to go through this process a couple of years into the business.
The move into the warehouse still hasn't eventuated as the build took far longer than expected. The warehouse is now basically finished but I still need to wait on some formalities before I get the green light to move the business in. This delay has probably cost me quite a lot of money by preventing expansion into as many new products as I would have liked and looking back I should have either purchased or rented an established warehouse. Lesson learned.
A couple of months ago my second employee (who handled shipping and inventory control) resigned. This however turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The new employee has been much faster at packing orders, rarely makes mistakes and always shows up on time. So I now have 2 extremely dependable employees who I can trust to do 90% of whats required to keep the business moving day to day. I also have a team of contractors that I rely on for many of the other tasks.
I recently branched out into a new type of product that's not exactly in the same niche we're currently in but a very closely related one that many of our customers buy from. The manufacturer would only agree to a minimum of 1000 units and they have an expiry of 12 months. This was at a cost of around 65,000 AUD so a pretty big risk to take for an untried product.
But, in business everything is a risk, and it's all about playing the odds the best you can. I figure if it falls flat and I only sell a few hundred units then I lose maybe 30k and learn something. If it does really well and we sell out ahead of schedule then I'm potentially making an extra 100-200k a year in profit. The end result will most likely be somewhere in between so that kind of risk sits pretty well with me.
Lessons Learned:
The idea of taking smart risks is something that's really hit home with me the past year. Almost every decision I make in managing my business has risk involved and I've found that being successful comes down to how you decide to play the odds. Not everything comes off but if your potential upside is always bigger than the potential downside then in the long run you come out on top despite a few losses.
Great update!I had a few people ask for progress updates so here goes (I'll try and do at least a couple more before the end of the year)...
Progress Update:
The business is still going quite well although month to month revenue hasn't changed a lot since the heights we hit late last year. Having said that, this is pretty standard as in previous years sales are fairly consistent from Jan through Oct before jumping massively in November. At the moment an average month is around 195k in revenue.
Despite not setting a solid goal revenue-wise for this year I believe I said that around 2.6m would be a pretty good result. It's currently sitting at around 1.7m so it's highly unlikely that I'll get there. Having said that, the business is now 4 years old and still experiencing pretty solid year on year growth so I can't complain.
Changes This Year:
The re-branding, while a pain in the a$$, went really well and the new logo and products with it look fantastic. Looking back, branding is something I would take more time to completely nail in the very beginning to avoid having to go through this process a couple of years into the business.
The move into the warehouse still hasn't eventuated as the build took far longer than expected. The warehouse is now basically finished but I still need to wait on some formalities before I get the green light to move the business in. This delay has probably cost me quite a lot of money by preventing expansion into as many new products as I would have liked and looking back I should have either purchased or rented an established warehouse. Lesson learned.
A couple of months ago my second employee (who handled shipping and inventory control) resigned. This however turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The new employee has been much faster at packing orders, rarely makes mistakes and always shows up on time. So I now have 2 extremely dependable employees who I can trust to do 90% of whats required to keep the business moving day to day. I also have a team of contractors that I rely on for many of the other tasks.
I recently branched out into a new type of product that's not exactly in the same niche we're currently in but a very closely related one that many of our customers buy from. The manufacturer would only agree to a minimum of 1000 units and they have an expiry of 12 months. This was at a cost of around 65,000 AUD so a pretty big risk to take for an untried product.
But, in business everything is a risk, and it's all about playing the odds the best you can. I figure if it falls flat and I only sell a few hundred units then I lose maybe 30k and learn something. If it does really well and we sell out ahead of schedule then I'm potentially making an extra 100-200k a year in profit. The end result will most likely be somewhere in between so that kind of risk sits pretty well with me.
Lessons Learned:
The idea of taking smart risks is something that's really hit home with me the past year. Almost every decision I make in managing my business has risk involved and I've found that being successful comes down to how you decide to play the odds. Not everything comes off but if your potential upside is always bigger than the potential downside then in the long run you come out on top despite a few losses.
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