Hi Everybody,
First post here so bare with me - this is a long one. I've put a tldr at the bottom if you want to skip my story. In short I left my $2-4k week job to pursue entrepreneurship. Aiming to build this into a progress thread so the other forum members can see my progress from sub $1k/week and to give myself some accountability.
Only just got done reading TMF and have been reading the forums, to get a feel for things. I was hoping the community may be able to help push me in the right direction as I expand my avenues.
I've been a full time entrepreneur for about 2 years now. I left my former job as an industrial electrician in December of 2015. While working my job I saved hard, worked hard and learned about investing in stocks and real estate. As a result, I have 3 rentals(with mortgages) and a 90k stock portfolio. These provide a tiny income when combined, circa $150/week. I own my own home where I live with my long term girlfriend who chips in $150/week for 'rent' and halves all bills and food with me. She only work part time so helps me run the more boring parts of my business while I focus on new opportunities and growth. She also has a small jewelry ecom biz that is slowly growing, though we're talking about putting that under my umbrella and giving it a capital injection. As it stands it's working for now, but I'd love for her to be able to quit her part time job to help me full time. She's absolutely awesome and I'm so fortunate to have her in my life to support my endeavors. While all my friends and family doubt my decisions, she stands by me with love and support.
I left work with a $4k/month adsense portfolio, lost it same day when I left my job thanks to google. Yes, no control, of which I'm now aware. Though the loss was my fault for perhaps messing something up on the site, or the sites I had bought had some issues. It's in the past now anyway, no big issue.
As it stands now I have a small electrical contracting firm(ie, just me), mostly doing sub contracting work for my father's business, I call this my seed capital. I don't really count income like this as real income as it's tied directly to my time.
My current sources of income:
$200 Profit/week: A business I bought about a year ago that produces a premium gourmet product, all outsourced save for shipping/storage.
$50/week: Old subscription business I bought a while back, tired niche and not really worth revamping. Occasionally I'll blast out an email and get affiliate commissions (extra $150-200/month).
$350 profit/week: Business utilizing my country's equivalent of ebay.
$25-50 Profit/week: Vending Machine sited at a factory(only just got this as an experiment, may do a couple more yet, not sure)
All of my profits are getting turned over into more stock, marketing, different ventures(eg buying the vending machine)
I've always liked the idea of getting 'chunks' of money or trading up front work to build long term income. When I worked my job, this was what I was doing. At one point, I was averaging 90 hours a week for one year(hit 119 hours in one week once!). I was taking my 2-4k weekly and investing it into property and stocks while living with my parents and killing myself (30 min van naps in between jobs). These have worked OK for me, they pay for themselves with a little to spare to support my lifestyle along with my entrepreneurial activities.
At the moment I'm considering my next move. In terms of growing my enterprise, I'm unsure of how I should proceed. I'd like to create a business that is scalable and doesn't directly take my time if I were to leave it.(wouldn't we all) I like the idea of web based businesses, but have a hard time visualizing creating this type of business in sustainable fashion.
I have a couple of affiliate sites that are slowly gaining traffic and earnings, though I'm only really actively working on one. It's still costing me for Link Building and content, though I'm considering doing this myself.
There's always room to grow my ebay type business, but it's always scraping for dollars and there's little control. I'm moving towards higher value/profit products as I get more free cash and will see growth, albeit gradual. It's labor intensive too, packing copy writing, pictures etc - hence moving to larger items.
I could work on my branded product further, I have been fairly weak here, but there is only so far you can go with this product, it is incredibly niche, and my countries population is sub 5mil and we're in the middle of the ocean, so export for this is pretty unfeasible. My product is priced the highest with good reason, but price is a huge driving factor in this industry/country. Still room to grow sales and I will be working towards this regardless. My point is, it isn't the million dollar business I want to create.
Vending machines seem good in principle, but ultimately they're a time sink. Don't mind it for now as the one I have is keeping our heads above water and it's interesting to tweak stock and see how it impacts sales. At the end of the day there's only so far you can go, unless you franchise. Minimum wage here is incredibly high and makes hiring skill-less staff the crux of small business. Minimum wage, minimum effort (not $16.50/hour worth of value, like a free wage market would invite).
TLDR:
All this said, I'm looking at buying/building another business, preferably online. Currently looking at purchasing an ecommerce business. Specifically, currently I'm looking at a local ecom where the sellers are asking 90k and it makes 30k/year, this is far too much and they've been made aware of this. They're spending 20 hours/week on it, and there's room to automate/outsource a large portion of it to a VA and 3rd party logistics company, making it fairly hands off(they're old and don't really grasp the concept of this completely). I'm running the numbers on the impact in earnings after that and will be making an offer based on those figures. This will free up my time to apply my skills in SEO and adwords to propel growth.
I like the idea of buying a business as you're skipping the concept idea and looking for areas where you can apply your skill set to drive growth. I'm not great at starting new concepts for things. Namely because once the money is gone, it has to come back as I don't have a job, and hate electrical work honestly, despite being great at it. Buying a proven business has this insurance somewhat built in. Ideally I'd like to own a portfolio of businesses that have elements which are cross compatible(packing staff, sales staff, bulk buying, freight discounts etc).
Interested in hearing everybody's thoughts. Particularly about buying vs building, or if it's better to 'work with what you have'. Thanks for reading!
I'll update this thread with my decisions and execution and well as reply to any offers of criticism or advice.
First post here so bare with me - this is a long one. I've put a tldr at the bottom if you want to skip my story. In short I left my $2-4k week job to pursue entrepreneurship. Aiming to build this into a progress thread so the other forum members can see my progress from sub $1k/week and to give myself some accountability.
Only just got done reading TMF and have been reading the forums, to get a feel for things. I was hoping the community may be able to help push me in the right direction as I expand my avenues.
I've been a full time entrepreneur for about 2 years now. I left my former job as an industrial electrician in December of 2015. While working my job I saved hard, worked hard and learned about investing in stocks and real estate. As a result, I have 3 rentals(with mortgages) and a 90k stock portfolio. These provide a tiny income when combined, circa $150/week. I own my own home where I live with my long term girlfriend who chips in $150/week for 'rent' and halves all bills and food with me. She only work part time so helps me run the more boring parts of my business while I focus on new opportunities and growth. She also has a small jewelry ecom biz that is slowly growing, though we're talking about putting that under my umbrella and giving it a capital injection. As it stands it's working for now, but I'd love for her to be able to quit her part time job to help me full time. She's absolutely awesome and I'm so fortunate to have her in my life to support my endeavors. While all my friends and family doubt my decisions, she stands by me with love and support.
I left work with a $4k/month adsense portfolio, lost it same day when I left my job thanks to google. Yes, no control, of which I'm now aware. Though the loss was my fault for perhaps messing something up on the site, or the sites I had bought had some issues. It's in the past now anyway, no big issue.
As it stands now I have a small electrical contracting firm(ie, just me), mostly doing sub contracting work for my father's business, I call this my seed capital. I don't really count income like this as real income as it's tied directly to my time.
My current sources of income:
$200 Profit/week: A business I bought about a year ago that produces a premium gourmet product, all outsourced save for shipping/storage.
$50/week: Old subscription business I bought a while back, tired niche and not really worth revamping. Occasionally I'll blast out an email and get affiliate commissions (extra $150-200/month).
$350 profit/week: Business utilizing my country's equivalent of ebay.
$25-50 Profit/week: Vending Machine sited at a factory(only just got this as an experiment, may do a couple more yet, not sure)
All of my profits are getting turned over into more stock, marketing, different ventures(eg buying the vending machine)
I've always liked the idea of getting 'chunks' of money or trading up front work to build long term income. When I worked my job, this was what I was doing. At one point, I was averaging 90 hours a week for one year(hit 119 hours in one week once!). I was taking my 2-4k weekly and investing it into property and stocks while living with my parents and killing myself (30 min van naps in between jobs). These have worked OK for me, they pay for themselves with a little to spare to support my lifestyle along with my entrepreneurial activities.
At the moment I'm considering my next move. In terms of growing my enterprise, I'm unsure of how I should proceed. I'd like to create a business that is scalable and doesn't directly take my time if I were to leave it.(wouldn't we all) I like the idea of web based businesses, but have a hard time visualizing creating this type of business in sustainable fashion.
I have a couple of affiliate sites that are slowly gaining traffic and earnings, though I'm only really actively working on one. It's still costing me for Link Building and content, though I'm considering doing this myself.
There's always room to grow my ebay type business, but it's always scraping for dollars and there's little control. I'm moving towards higher value/profit products as I get more free cash and will see growth, albeit gradual. It's labor intensive too, packing copy writing, pictures etc - hence moving to larger items.
I could work on my branded product further, I have been fairly weak here, but there is only so far you can go with this product, it is incredibly niche, and my countries population is sub 5mil and we're in the middle of the ocean, so export for this is pretty unfeasible. My product is priced the highest with good reason, but price is a huge driving factor in this industry/country. Still room to grow sales and I will be working towards this regardless. My point is, it isn't the million dollar business I want to create.
Vending machines seem good in principle, but ultimately they're a time sink. Don't mind it for now as the one I have is keeping our heads above water and it's interesting to tweak stock and see how it impacts sales. At the end of the day there's only so far you can go, unless you franchise. Minimum wage here is incredibly high and makes hiring skill-less staff the crux of small business. Minimum wage, minimum effort (not $16.50/hour worth of value, like a free wage market would invite).
TLDR:
All this said, I'm looking at buying/building another business, preferably online. Currently looking at purchasing an ecommerce business. Specifically, currently I'm looking at a local ecom where the sellers are asking 90k and it makes 30k/year, this is far too much and they've been made aware of this. They're spending 20 hours/week on it, and there's room to automate/outsource a large portion of it to a VA and 3rd party logistics company, making it fairly hands off(they're old and don't really grasp the concept of this completely). I'm running the numbers on the impact in earnings after that and will be making an offer based on those figures. This will free up my time to apply my skills in SEO and adwords to propel growth.
I like the idea of buying a business as you're skipping the concept idea and looking for areas where you can apply your skill set to drive growth. I'm not great at starting new concepts for things. Namely because once the money is gone, it has to come back as I don't have a job, and hate electrical work honestly, despite being great at it. Buying a proven business has this insurance somewhat built in. Ideally I'd like to own a portfolio of businesses that have elements which are cross compatible(packing staff, sales staff, bulk buying, freight discounts etc).
Interested in hearing everybody's thoughts. Particularly about buying vs building, or if it's better to 'work with what you have'. Thanks for reading!
I'll update this thread with my decisions and execution and well as reply to any offers of criticism or advice.
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