Okay I think the 2 things that are really getting to me lately is that
- I have been running 50% off sales and I feel like if I can’t make sales during this time of the year, then I truly am a failure.
- I have a 0%apr credit card that goes back to having interest in January and I still have 6k to pay off (I recently put 6k on it that was not made by my business so really had 12k debt)
I am a very blessed person. I’m a sahm and our family is not balling by any means but we aren’t dependent on my business succeeding for bills or groceries.
Things have been going really well in my life outside of my business but I cannot move past how hopeless I feel because I’ve failed to even make 6k after nearly 9 months of putting in so much time and effort.
I try and dwell on the positive - like how my husband is supportive and how I really like having a project to work on anyway so doing this has kept my mind sharp and I’ve learned so much But i still feel like I’ve encountered SO much bad luck, like spending 2 days trying to take professional looking photos and they looked great on the camera screen but came out blurry in Lightroom - that’s just one example but it’s a LOT of stuff like that. Things that even though I try to have a positive mindset and tell myself - you’ll really only fail if you give up now. Anyway, I know it’s wild because there’s so much competition but in the most consumer driven, spendiest time of the year I still can’t get it right And now my only options are take money I didn’t earn to pay off my bills or transfer my balance to ANOTHER 0%apr credit card with a transfer fee. Either way all I see is the finish line ahead in the distance and knowing that I’m not going to get there. I guess I’m just looking for a sympathetic ear and anything I can do to be more positive! I hate being sad around the holidays!
Businesses fail often. People say it all the time but very few people listen.
The question you have to genuinely ask yourself is: How hard are you working at your business everyday? Are you putting in 4-6 hours a day to make it work? Or did you put in 4 hours one day and expect stuff to just magically happen? My typical work day is me working consistently 7 hours a day. Some days it’s more. Some days it’s less. Most days I work 7 hours consistently. 7 hours is not a lot for many business owners. Some are grinding 10-12 hours a day between various things.
So if you’re not grinding at your business, consistently putting in 4-6 hours a day, then maybe you have to consider the reason things aren’t working as you expected is simply because you had unrealistic expectations going into things.
There’s nothing wrong with that either. I did that with an adjacent business I tried. It happens. But it doesn’t mean you’re a failure either. Just means you’re unwilling to invest the time necessary to make the business successful. That’s a choice, not a failure.
I do put in those hours pretty consistently
9 months is nothing. Some businesses take years to become profitable. Can’t really offer much other advice because you don’t say anything about your business. Stop looking at your sales and how it applies to the holiday season. You want sales overall unless you sell Christmas trees. Little stuff like blurry pictures is nothing. Who cares? Take them again, now you know to check them every few pics instead of waiting two days. All setbacks are an opportunity to learn.
Being sad around the holidays is a choice 🤷
Businesses taking years to become profitable bc of the economics of scaling and an Etsy store being funded by a credit card not making any sales are two different things.
I don’t really know enough about your particular business to say anything useful but I will drop something about the 50% sale and you not making sales.
Depending on your business and demographic sometimes costing more will boost sales. People either look for deals or they look for quality. Since they don’t typically know good from bad quality they base quality off of price. Back when I did sales we would sell above our competition and just say something along the lines of “you get what you pay for” and it would work. People would assume you were better because you cost more and they’d be happy thinking they have the best product in the market. It all depends on your demographic though.
Totally get that and that is why I was pricing myself higher but I wasn’t getting sales that way either lol. Also I have a 4.9 for reviews. And going against that line of thinking - recently in my due date group a mom posted a “deal” of where those super trendy hand embroidered sweaters were going for like $20 which included free international shipping. Very clearly a scam - but the person had 75 sales in the last couple of weeks that they opened. So something that was very clearly too good to be true still got a lot sales. I thought my items were good quality and main stream while still being a little different enough to set me apart from those selling similar items, but maybe I’m wrong. I would love to get to the bottom of why I suck and I even know some reasons already. The issue is that I need to get over the fact that I suck because it’s really just making me depressed when my life is pretty good.
I can’t give much advice without knowing what you sell or how you market it.
I do know this:
- It’s simple & inexpensive to take high quality photos
- Marketing is how you make sales. Discounting 50% is not. If you discount 100% but your marketing sucks, you will sell nothing.
- The original 3 P’s of marketing: Product, Price, Placement are still important as are the new 3 P’s: People, Personalization, Privacy.
- The 3 C’s of marketing: Customers, Competition, Company which are components of your marketing strategy. 5.You need a marketing strategy.
I made $240 in the first year. I spent $46,000. It’s about persistence and passion. You’re never gonna be successful if you don’t start a business you at least have some interest in. For me I always found that even if it takes 5 years, if you’re passionate about starting a business do it. Although, I tell people to not start a project, start a business. Start a business off of a previous project. Off of something you’re obsessed with. For example, streamers. Most of those kids were obsessed with video games and because of their true love for it, the fame and money wasn’t a want when it wasn’t there. But when it was, it was great to see your passion paid off.
First thing first, it’s WAY too early to say if your business is failing or not. The average length of time before a new business becomes profitable is two to three years, you are nowhere near that yet. I know it can feel like the sky is falling with so much to do and being so new to it all. You should be working as hard as you can to make your business profitable, but it’s VERY rare for it to happen over night, so don’t panic.
It may sound rather ‘new agey’ but start a gratitude journal, I’m a hypnotherapist and frequently get my clients to do this if they are in a slump. It’s so easy to overlook the positives when you are worrying so much about the negatives. Every day take a few moments to list what’s good about your life, it doesn’t need to be massive things like winning millions on the lotto, but obviously do list it if that happens, but all the little things add up too. Just being inside when it rains for example. The more you look for these things the more your brain will learn to find them too. You are welcome to DM me (actual DM, not the chat thing, I have that turned off), if you want to talk one on one away from public eyes.
Thank you so much for the helpful tips. I definitely think it’s a case of expectation vs reality. I studied competitors including the amount of sales they were making and their margins and thought it would be easy to at the very least make my money back if not more than that. However I’ve spent about 10k and have maybe made $300 in sales so I was just blindsided. And the thing that’s really pushing it to the front of my mind is not being able to pay off my cc before I have to start paying interest. And yes I can borrow the money from my husband (we’d have to pull from assets) or family or even open a new 0% Apr credit card and pay a 3% balance transfer - which is what I’ll likely end up doing as I still have good credit. But not meeting that marker of paying off the credit card when I really really thought I was going to is killer. I have tried the gratitude journal before but it didn’t stick. I should look into that again. I really do want to be positive about all this. I know I haven’t failed until I quit but dang it’s hard right now. I might take you up on that dm offer. Thanks so much!
I’m just like you. My small business starts gets slow then my anxiety and stress rises. Suddenly we get a little money in and I’m in a good mood. We have to base our emotions on reality and not what we “think” will happen. I hope the year finishes strong for you!
Don’t throw good money after bad. If it’s not working, move on. Shut it down and maybe you’ll feel relieved.
I am curious what type of business you have, what kind of market you are in, and what your sales expectations of “success” are.
I ask this because some people go into business because they want to be entrepreneurs, but never really sit down and do the “math” to figure out how much business they need to do to be profitable, and by “profitable” I mean after paying your business expenses including your owner salary.
I do consulting for people who are interested in getting into business, not necessarily rescues of failing small business. Good example of this is people want to open coffee/breakfast shops. They want to make $50,000 a year for themselves, have one or two employees, and be open from 7am-1pm six days a week. I look them in the eye, and go “Don’t do it,” and they immediately ask why. I show them the spreadsheet of expenses and receipts broken down by month for 12, 24, and 36 months and they immediately go, “Oh, I see it now.” and then we try to work up alternatives and options. The number of businesses I’ve walked into on opening day and say to myself, “This place won’t be open next year.” is shocking.
Thanks so much for the suggestions. I sell baby and children’s items. I originally wanted to only do gift boxes and to do them for all ages. But I kind of niched myself into babies with the money I spent on the items. And then when the boxes weren’t selling I thought, okay I need to sell things individually. Which still isn’t really working out lol. And I did study what I thought were my competitors but they’re successful and I’m not so I guess I studied the wrong people lol. I was hoping to make like 1-2k a month and thought if it gets a little bigger, great! But I don’t need 6 figures level. I thought I would at least be able to start paying off my credit card but I’ve only made like $300 in sales through those items. I did also think that I would even be busy enough during q4 that I would hire someone to help me package orders and such. Lolz.
Thank you for your insights on what to do next. You always hear about everyone blowing up on TikTok and their stores going crazy. But I know that’s nothing to rely on and you DONT hear about all the people that didn’t happen to. I do really need to put myself into my local market more.
Wondering what you’ve done for marketing? What platforms are you selling on? Is it a direct Shopify store or are you using marketplaces?
What are you doing for advertising?
I think you’re fighting against problem #1 when it comes to business – your niche is “too niche”. According to statistics, the birthrate in the USA (as a whole) is about 60 births per 1000 women of childbearing age. If you add in the grandmothers and aunts and friends, you -might- be targeting “a few %” of the population as potential customers. Then, you have the task of convincing those potential customers that your product is valuable and unique and a good gift idea.
I would think first about expanding the footprint of who your gift box ideas are aimed at. I used to be a partner in a small business decades ago that did gift boxes, hand-delivered to college students at exam time and holidays at local colleges. Candy bars, stuffed animals, books, etc.
Yes I niched myself much smaller than I wanted too. I wanted to do gift boxes for all ages but when I was doing inventory I just hyper focused on baby stuff and spent all the money I had allotted on baby items so I said eh I guess that’s what I’m doing now
I read a lot of the comments and noticed that you get overloaded with information in regards to marketing and so I would like to recommend you Dan Kennedy NO B.S. books. Start with these two “Ultimate Sales Letter” and “Direct Response Marketing for Non Direct Businesses” - from these two you will get a very clear idea of what marketing is. There are basically 2 overarching categories of marketing 1. Traditional/Big Corp Marketing and 2. Direct Response Marketing.
Your focus should solely be on number 2 at the start before moving to number 1 otherwise you will get yourself confused. Essentially Direct Response Marketing is this: A product, a story, and an offer. The beauty of direct response makreting is that its trackable. For every piece of marketing you do in this field, you can accurately see what worked and what didnt by the sales number.
A few ideas to sell your product not involving marketing…
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Approach businesses that sell complimentary products/services to yours and ask them if they would include your product as a free bonus for in their offers in exchange for % of profits they make using this deal. Yeah you will make less than if you sold it yourself, but you arent selling any so, nothing to complain about I guess. Anothet thing and more importantly, this way you get your product out and potentially will recieve new customers (worst case potential hot leads).
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Since you sell baby stuff, you can contact people who work with pregnant women like yoga, newborn classes (where ppl teach you about newborns) and whatever else is there. So you contact those folk and tell them that for every product they sell, they get 50% of the profits…
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Host “tupperware” type parties and sell your products there. This is a fairly simple and effective method of gaining sales and new customers. The run down of this idea is as follows - invite friends/acquitances to your home for a homeparty sale. Make sure that you explicitly state that there is going to be product pitching/selling involved and that there is going to be FREE alcohol and food (many ppl wont pass this up). This “bribe” is so effective that you can even get strangers who you have known for 5 minutes to agree attending your party. So you host the party, and first start with shittier products or products that you have no intention of actually getting sold. This way the folk will ease in and alcohol will hit in as well. So you do that with 2 shitty products and it should take you 30 to 45 mins. Now finally the 3 product which you have every intention of selling. Make sure your sales script is as best as it can be and make sure to devise some “theatrics” when revealing this product… then you just basically do a sales pitch. Dont wuss out on asking for the sale nor become wimpy/timid when speaking about that subject. Make sure to list the benefits/features and guarantee…
Whats also great about method 3 is that you can get others to join in with you and basically “work” under you.
I hope a few of these ideas helped. If you got any questions let me know.
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I’ve seen multiple people tell you it’s too early to know yet. I disagree. It may be too early, but not making sales at a 50% discount during the holidays for your market is real market feedback.
When you feel tension as an entrepreneur, listen to it, and be honest with yourself. It may be a business, but if you’re body is telling you no and it’s making you unhappy, it could be denial.
As to the $6k, 3% to kick the can down the road is a bad investment. If you have the cash, pay it off. It will have the added benefit of making what you’re doing more real.
It also depends how many people even saw that 50% discount though. It could be a problem of not enough eyeballs coming across the sale or site or product at all.
I saw previously she had difficulty running a Google Ad campaign which means she could be making sales if she gets ads running correctly and on the right platforms.
What is the business?
It’s only money. It’s not that important in the relative scheme of things in life. Life is about friends, family, health, fun. And you can still have a great life even if things dont’ work out financially. Put things in perspective. Think about the + things in your life. This doesn’t matter that much IMHO.