Hey guys,
Well - I am back - it's been some time since I did my last post here. I wonder if the guys from back in the days are still active and if anyone remembers me. Anyway, I've been missing y'all!
I wish my first post here after quite some time was a bit more positive but unfortunately I think it fits best under the category "Failure, Mistakes and Goofs". However, in my opinion failures are just as valuable as success, even more at a young age like mine. This is why I want to share my story with you and maybe it will be inspiring.
To get you started, you might want to read how it all began. How in the springtime of 2009 a 17-year old high school student decided to take control over his life before he even gets the chance to be sucked into the rat race. You find the thread right here.
If you read this you will most probably be of the opinion that I was (and I believe that I still am) on a good way. But what went wrong? What happened? What follows is a reconstruction of the time between June 2009 and December 2010.
What I did not mention until this point - the business I founded is a webdesign and online marketing business. This may be good to know when reading through this article.
The big step forward: summer/fall 2009
After some hard times which I also mentioned in the other thread some better times followed. I managed to close a good deal with another company and it eventually brought many new clients to my company. By the end of fall I had kind of lost oversight and I decided to pause the customer acquisition until the beginning of 2010 and instead concentrate on the ongoing projects. Until then everything went quite well. I was satisfied.
The next big step and the beginning of a downturn?: late winter 2009/beginning of 2010
I stuck to the promise I had give to myself and I made some new great marketing efforts at the beginning of 2010 which turned out well at the beginning. However, it did not take long until some problems evolved:
Direction: Upwards!
And I did. Through a combination of persistence, luck and people I knew I managed to close another deal. This time with one really big webdesign agency in Germany. The deal looked simple and low-risk. They were interested in outsourcing some of their work to my company since they were convinced by the quality they had seen in our portofolio and by our competitive prices.
To start off they gave us 8 new projects at once which we had to work on and it was our common goal to arrive at about 60 projects per month. In $ this would have meant profits of 15.000$ monthly. Still not that much for a lot of guys on here but for me it was (and still is) and I was really euphoric about it. It felt like this was going to be the great break-through because with 15.000$ monthly I could have moved a lot more than before and used them to expand the business beyond my - until then - wildest dreams.
At that time my company even made it into the biggest German newspaper (and some others), an interview featuring a business partner and me went online on an important career platform and I was asked to give a presentation at some research center or something.
This all sounds very good but actually the company was not as far yet as the media was telling. The public reacted rather negative because they saw a not too big company which was the truth. Not what the media was trying to sell them. All in all the media presence caused more harm than it did good.
Damn it...
The 8 projects got executed in a fast pase and I was very confident it was going to go on like that. But then not my wildest dreams came true but rather my wildest nightmares. The person I had worked with was not really representing the company he said he represented. He was only a middleman making profit from taking outsourced work from the big company and then outsourcing it again to other companies like mine. The problem was: The middleman had screwed something up (I still do not know what exactly) and went into bankruptcy. I received not one cent for the work I had done and the big company was rather... not amused about the whole thing. And suddenly... yes - suddenly I had debts that I could not pay!
I felt very bad and what was really getting on my nerves was when the guys at school talked about how awesome it was that they earned 8€ an hour now working at gas station. And for a moment my mind was going to agree and say... yes - maybe I am just not made to be an entrepreneur. Maybe I should take the same way as everyone else. I can still make some decent money. People say that I am smart and in regards to marks I rank in the top 1% of my school without studying anything at home or doing homework regularly. But then I reminded myself again of what this all would mean. Waste another 5 to 6 years at university. Work until I am 67 or 70. Spend my time being commanded by incompetent jerks! And I said to myself:
Well - I am back - it's been some time since I did my last post here. I wonder if the guys from back in the days are still active and if anyone remembers me. Anyway, I've been missing y'all!
I wish my first post here after quite some time was a bit more positive but unfortunately I think it fits best under the category "Failure, Mistakes and Goofs". However, in my opinion failures are just as valuable as success, even more at a young age like mine. This is why I want to share my story with you and maybe it will be inspiring.
To get you started, you might want to read how it all began. How in the springtime of 2009 a 17-year old high school student decided to take control over his life before he even gets the chance to be sucked into the rat race. You find the thread right here.
If you read this you will most probably be of the opinion that I was (and I believe that I still am) on a good way. But what went wrong? What happened? What follows is a reconstruction of the time between June 2009 and December 2010.
What I did not mention until this point - the business I founded is a webdesign and online marketing business. This may be good to know when reading through this article.
The big step forward: summer/fall 2009
After some hard times which I also mentioned in the other thread some better times followed. I managed to close a good deal with another company and it eventually brought many new clients to my company. By the end of fall I had kind of lost oversight and I decided to pause the customer acquisition until the beginning of 2010 and instead concentrate on the ongoing projects. Until then everything went quite well. I was satisfied.
The next big step and the beginning of a downturn?: late winter 2009/beginning of 2010
I stuck to the promise I had give to myself and I made some new great marketing efforts at the beginning of 2010 which turned out well at the beginning. However, it did not take long until some problems evolved:
- The employees I had hired had gotten rather unreliable and they took much longer to deliver their work than at the beginning. It was, however, hard to replace them since they were already in the middle of the projects.
- Customers took their time until they payed me which led to a shortage of money and hence I was unable to continue the marketing efforts that had been really successful until this point
- The competition in the chosen way of marketing got more fierce and the ROI went down... and down... and down... and down.
Direction: Upwards!
And I did. Through a combination of persistence, luck and people I knew I managed to close another deal. This time with one really big webdesign agency in Germany. The deal looked simple and low-risk. They were interested in outsourcing some of their work to my company since they were convinced by the quality they had seen in our portofolio and by our competitive prices.
To start off they gave us 8 new projects at once which we had to work on and it was our common goal to arrive at about 60 projects per month. In $ this would have meant profits of 15.000$ monthly. Still not that much for a lot of guys on here but for me it was (and still is) and I was really euphoric about it. It felt like this was going to be the great break-through because with 15.000$ monthly I could have moved a lot more than before and used them to expand the business beyond my - until then - wildest dreams.
At that time my company even made it into the biggest German newspaper (and some others), an interview featuring a business partner and me went online on an important career platform and I was asked to give a presentation at some research center or something.
This all sounds very good but actually the company was not as far yet as the media was telling. The public reacted rather negative because they saw a not too big company which was the truth. Not what the media was trying to sell them. All in all the media presence caused more harm than it did good.
Damn it...
The 8 projects got executed in a fast pase and I was very confident it was going to go on like that. But then not my wildest dreams came true but rather my wildest nightmares. The person I had worked with was not really representing the company he said he represented. He was only a middleman making profit from taking outsourced work from the big company and then outsourcing it again to other companies like mine. The problem was: The middleman had screwed something up (I still do not know what exactly) and went into bankruptcy. I received not one cent for the work I had done and the big company was rather... not amused about the whole thing. And suddenly... yes - suddenly I had debts that I could not pay!
I felt very bad and what was really getting on my nerves was when the guys at school talked about how awesome it was that they earned 8€ an hour now working at gas station. And for a moment my mind was going to agree and say... yes - maybe I am just not made to be an entrepreneur. Maybe I should take the same way as everyone else. I can still make some decent money. People say that I am smart and in regards to marks I rank in the top 1% of my school without studying anything at home or doing homework regularly. But then I reminded myself again of what this all would mean. Waste another 5 to 6 years at university. Work until I am 67 or 70. Spend my time being commanded by incompetent jerks! And I said to myself:
Never will I prostitute myself by applying for a job. I am not going to sell my soul for a few € an hour and even if I do not make it big as an entrepreneur: I'd rather live in a trailer for the rest of my life working as a successless entrepreneur than to live in a little mansion working in some company from 9 to 5.
New hope: summer 2010
I managed to make deals with the developers. They understood my problems and agreed on relinquishing a part of the payment they should have gotten. Furthermore I contacted the big webdesign company and asked if they were able to give me a little compensation. And they did - they really did pay me some money and all in all I had arrived at 0 again. I had no money but I had no debts either. And I saw another chance: Why should this company not be able to work with me directly? I talked to the company's bosses a few times and in the end they agreed on giving me another test project.
At least it was worth a try...: late summer 2010
I was SO determined to finish this project perfectly. I put a lot of effort into it and even though it was a low-budget project and the information provided by the client were really stingy the result looked great and I was confident I had found a new big client.
Then the problems started again. The client asked for more and more changes to the project. The problem was not that it cost me money (I had already calcualted that in the budget). The real problem was that whenever one change was made it took about 1 - 3 weeks to get a reaction from the client.
Until now I have at least recovered from what happened this year, got some new clients by online marketing and some old clients ordered extensions for their website. On the 25th of April 2009 I started with a total neworth of 800€. My networth now is about 5000€. I don't know how to judge this. On the one hand I have all in all made significantly more than the I-am-working-at-the-gas-station-and-earn-8€-per-hour-guys. On the other hand I have made much less than I could have and compared to other entrepreneurs I have made close to nothing. I could blame it on the fact that I still have to go to school until 4pm everday (school in Germany takes 13 years) or on the fact that I started of with only 800€ in my pocket. But still I know that other people have succeeded in similar or even worse situations.
Hence I am not.
The reasons why things did not work out as I wanted to / what you should try to avoid or do different:
The present situation: Where am I going to?
If I may be honest - at the moment I feel quite miserable and from time to time I fall into depression. Not only because of the business but because I have no time to change the things that are going wrong. I still have to attend school from the early morning to 4pm. I have already abandoned doing homework or studying but we all need to write a scientific paper and there is no way I can get around this. My days lack fun, I hardly see my friends (if I ever had real friends) and my parents seem to have given up on me, as well. Ah yeah... and the weather sucks.
I am going to be done with school forever by the end of April 2011. About two years after starting my business.
I know I am the only one who can decide about my future but it would be great to hear some tips from y'all because y'all have always turned out to be a source of inspiration and new hope. What I have thought of:
It has taken me about 90 minutes to put together all these information and write the article. I hope it will be of help for some people who read this. Also I would like to thank you very much for taking the time to read this all (if you did not scroll down to the bottom... you little cheater :eusa_naughty::smxA
. If you have any advise to share with me or any questions or remarks - thank you even more.
I managed to make deals with the developers. They understood my problems and agreed on relinquishing a part of the payment they should have gotten. Furthermore I contacted the big webdesign company and asked if they were able to give me a little compensation. And they did - they really did pay me some money and all in all I had arrived at 0 again. I had no money but I had no debts either. And I saw another chance: Why should this company not be able to work with me directly? I talked to the company's bosses a few times and in the end they agreed on giving me another test project.
At least it was worth a try...: late summer 2010
I was SO determined to finish this project perfectly. I put a lot of effort into it and even though it was a low-budget project and the information provided by the client were really stingy the result looked great and I was confident I had found a new big client.
Then the problems started again. The client asked for more and more changes to the project. The problem was not that it cost me money (I had already calcualted that in the budget). The real problem was that whenever one change was made it took about 1 - 3 weeks to get a reaction from the client.
(Just a short side note: This project STILL has not been finished)
Then one day I got called and they told me they were not really happy with the delivered work. According to them the "design structure" had been to minimalistic. The weird thing was - the design structure was the only thing that had been given by them prior to the project start.
I cannot tell what is the real problem they had - maybe their company has stopped moving forward - or maybe they have decided to outsource less work. It does not matter - the result is the same for me.
So it began:
Looking backThen one day I got called and they told me they were not really happy with the delivered work. According to them the "design structure" had been to minimalistic. The weird thing was - the design structure was the only thing that had been given by them prior to the project start.
I cannot tell what is the real problem they had - maybe their company has stopped moving forward - or maybe they have decided to outsource less work. It does not matter - the result is the same for me.
So it began:
Until now I have at least recovered from what happened this year, got some new clients by online marketing and some old clients ordered extensions for their website. On the 25th of April 2009 I started with a total neworth of 800€. My networth now is about 5000€. I don't know how to judge this. On the one hand I have all in all made significantly more than the I-am-working-at-the-gas-station-and-earn-8€-per-hour-guys. On the other hand I have made much less than I could have and compared to other entrepreneurs I have made close to nothing. I could blame it on the fact that I still have to go to school until 4pm everday (school in Germany takes 13 years) or on the fact that I started of with only 800€ in my pocket. But still I know that other people have succeeded in similar or even worse situations.
Hence I am not.
The reasons why things did not work out as I wanted to / what you should try to avoid or do different:
- Make sure to be outstanding. Don't be just cheaper than anyone else but try to be the best.
- Only work with RELIABLE people who know what they are doing. Tripple-check this.
- Don't trust too much into business partners. Try not to put all one's eggs into one basket
- Stay focused
- Stay motivated
- Keep believing in yourself
- If you see that something is going wrong, change it
- Bring out true innovation
- Reduce the time you spend doing dirty work. Automatize processes or let the I-work-at-the-gas-station-for-8€-per-hour-guys do it.
The present situation: Where am I going to?
If I may be honest - at the moment I feel quite miserable and from time to time I fall into depression. Not only because of the business but because I have no time to change the things that are going wrong. I still have to attend school from the early morning to 4pm. I have already abandoned doing homework or studying but we all need to write a scientific paper and there is no way I can get around this. My days lack fun, I hardly see my friends (if I ever had real friends) and my parents seem to have given up on me, as well. Ah yeah... and the weather sucks.
I am going to be done with school forever by the end of April 2011. About two years after starting my business.
I know I am the only one who can decide about my future but it would be great to hear some tips from y'all because y'all have always turned out to be a source of inspiration and new hope. What I have thought of:
- abandon trying to be an entrepreneur, study at university and get a job at some big company working my a$$ off from 9 to 5 or even worse.---> Erm. How about..... no :smx8:?
- Turn my existing business into a real fastlane business
- Start another business with a different approach
- Do any of the above but leave the country and go to Spain where I could live with my girlfriend and enjoy sun and probably also "sunnier" people
It has taken me about 90 minutes to put together all these information and write the article. I hope it will be of help for some people who read this. Also I would like to thank you very much for taking the time to read this all (if you did not scroll down to the bottom... you little cheater :eusa_naughty::smxA
. If you have any advise to share with me or any questions or remarks - thank you even more. Believe me, this situation right now is not exactly easy for me and I really don't feel to well mentally. But I am not going to surrender!
I just don't know how to go on either...
I just don't know how to go on either...
Dislike ads? Become a Fastlane member:
Subscribe today and surround yourself with winners and millionaire mentors, not those broke friends who only want to drink beer and play video games. :-)
Last edited by a moderator:
Membership Required: Upgrade to Expose Nearly 1,000,000 Posts
Ready to Unleash the Millionaire Entrepreneur in You?
Become a member of the Fastlane Forum, the private community founded by best-selling author and multi-millionaire entrepreneur MJ DeMarco. Since 2007, MJ DeMarco has poured his heart and soul into the Fastlane Forum, helping entrepreneurs reclaim their time, win their financial freedom, and live their best life.
With more than 39,000 posts packed with insights, strategies, and advice, you’re not just a member—you’re stepping into MJ’s inner-circle, a place where you’ll never be left alone.
Become a member and gain immediate access to...
- Active Community: Ever join a community only to find it DEAD? Not at Fastlane! As you can see from our home page, life-changing content is posted dozens of times daily.
- Exclusive Insights: Direct access to MJ DeMarco’s daily contributions and wisdom.
- Powerful Networking Opportunities: Connect with a diverse group of successful entrepreneurs who can offer mentorship, collaboration, and opportunities.
- Proven Strategies: Learn from the best in the business, with actionable advice and strategies that can accelerate your success.
"You are the average of the five people you surround yourself with the most..."
Who are you surrounding yourself with? Surround yourself with millionaire success. Join Fastlane today!
Join Today
