How I Failed At My Side Business(es) and Why I Keep Going

In my late 20’s I decided to take on some side hustles. As I get older, the more I realized how important it is to have additional streams of income. Also, my family has grown considerably and their needs continue to change. As a father and a husband, I feel it’s my responsibility to provide them with a comfortable lifestyle and quality time. I realized that the typically 40-hour work week is not conducive to maintaining a close connection with your family, although not impossible. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic I was able to work from home. During this time, I was able to watch my two little ones at the time (2 years old and a 6-month-old) learn to walk, hear their first words, and spend quality time with my wife. Prior to the pandemic I would be exhausted after work and the gym, not having enough energy to give my family. However, during the short period of working from home I was slightly more productive with my work while simultaneously engaging in family activities. Then, I began to think how much more time I would have with them if I could start a side business or hustle that supplemented my income and allowed me to work part-time at the most. Sure, I just made the case for working from home, but I also wanted more autonomy over my earning potential. So, I researched a couple of ideas that I thought could solve these problems. I came up with starting an FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) business and a gym clothing brand: https://www.topnotchapparel.shopping/ TopNotchApparel. Below I will talk about some things I did wrong that led to failure and why I still keep trying.

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When I first started out with my FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) business I didn’t know what product to sell. In case you didn’t know what FBA is, it’s basically a model that Amazon has set up that allows ordinary people to sell products on their platform and take advantage of their customer base. You also have to pay a monthly fee for this service. In order to familiarize myself with the process, I signed up for a course on Udemy. The course did a really good job in teaching the basics of what I needed to know to set up an account and gave a few suggestions on what to sell. I also took another course that was more intensive and covered more granular topics such as product research, marketing, creating product variability, differentiation, and using research tools and techniques. I didn’t finish this course because of the sheer number of videos (over 300) I would have to watch. Instead, I opted to go on what I already knew and sourced a product that was already selling. The mistake I made here was assuming that if I sold the same product that everyone else was selling, that I too would produce similar revenue. This was completely wrong. In fact, I did sell a few items, but ultimately, I ended up operating at a loss. FBA is still a good model. However, because I didn’t fully undergo the rigor of learning how to be competitive in that market, it severely reduced my chances of being successful. Also, many business ventures fail. It’s not only possible to fail in business, but it’s actually probable. So, I temporarily redirected my focus elsewhere, which I will discuss next. I put this business to the side for now, and will revisit my FBA business after I have sourced a great product, created a brand, and a more thorough understanding of the Amazon markets. The moral of the story: do product research, analyze the market, and differentiate your product.

I Didn’t Have a Big Following on Social Media????????????????

The second venture I decided to get into was Spring (Formerly known as T Spring). Spring is a “print-on-demand” business model that allows users to post their unique designs on various styles of apparel within their catalog, then market your unique designs to an audience. This was a relatively easy thing to get into because of low capital investment upfront. So, I created a few designs oriented around physical fitness and motivation, then posted them on my Instagram (IG). Later I found out that I didn’t have enough followers on my IG in order to generate traffic to my Spring page. My IG account was brand new and I had almost no followers lol. In order to balance my low followership, I ran ads. The ads were successful in driving traffic to my Spring page, but I couldn’t generate any revenue. I still didn’t understand the problem. I was under the impression that if I could drive enough traffic to my Spring page then I would get sales as a result. I was stumped for a long time until I realized that the ads were more than likely not targeting the right audience. I reevaluated my ads and narrowed down to a more specific audience. I still couldn’t generate the desired result for my business. After, polling the web and with some advice from friends I learned that my IG page wasn’t big enough to get enough eyes on my brand. One of my buddies who is better versed in social media said “people usually have a cult like following before they launch anything”. She also told me that in her opinion this is what made them more successful than I was. Taking this into consideration and further research it appears that my problem was: low number of IG followers, ads not targeting right audience, and little brand awareness. If you are using social media for either of your businesses, I recommend you make sure the aforementioned is in order before launching anything on social media.

Why I Keep Going

At this point in my life, I’ve had many successes and failures. Looking back on all of my failures, I learned that failure is a natural part of the process of starting anything new. We only truly fail once we decide to stop the pursuit of a worthy ideal. In business/entrepreneurship sometimes we fail and that’s ok because its normal. The goal should always be to learn from those failures and use different approaches to be successful. Sure, I encountered some “bumps in the road” with the ventures I started. But I remain optimistic about the future because usually businesses take some time to gain momentum. It’s extremely rare for a business of any kind to be a success overnight. It’s possible of course, but the overwhelmingly successful businesses come with time. I understand this wholeheartedly, which is why I’m not too worried. For instance, Gym Shark is one of the most well-known gym brands today. Most people don’t know that Gym Shark was created in 2012 and didn’t gain popularity until about 2016. It took about 4 years before their brand grew and blossomed into a thriving organization. At the time of this writing, Gym Shark is valued at approximately 1.3 billion as a company. If the creators of the Gym Shark brand given up after a few bumps in the road, then they wouldn’t have enjoyed everything that comes with owning a billion-dollar organization and gym brand. Will my brand be as big as Gym Shark? Probably not because I operate on a “shoe-string” budget like most startups and I don’t have groups of people willing to invest thousands if not millions in my gym brand. Even though this is the case, it doesn’t stop me from moving forward. People all over the world have accomplished great feats without million-dollar financing. The reason I keep going is the possibility of building a viable business and additional streams of income. If you too are on your journey, don’t give up. Learn from your mistakes, switch it up, find a mentor or get counsel if you need to. Remember things take time and you will be successful. #strategicthinking #strategy #motivation #newblogpost #newblog #growthmindset #personaldevelopment

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