Yup. Started mine by doing research and working on my website in between the 400 phone calls I had to make per day selling insurance. Once that was done and I had my launch night and made more money in a night than I would all week, I quit. That was the stupid, risky part. But that was nearly 3 years ago now and I don’t regret it.
For the most part, I’m still wearing all the hats. Hired a sales rep, didn’t work out. My wife occasionally helps me label and pack our products, but with a toddler she has to spend more time with him.
I’m tired.
My business consistently profits over 5 figures a month, but I’m in a position where there’s really no hiring I can do right now to take the load off. I’ve been considering using 3pls for a bit, but that’s just not the bottleneck that needs to be taken care of first. I’m taking a few days off after some big markets this week to sort of enjoy the holidays and refresh and then I have to get the rest of my end of years purchase orders out. After that, I’m hibernating and changing the way we do business to squeeze more profit with less volume as well as starting another business to help people in my position.
My sales are up this year overall, but it’s not due to normal business. We had some expansion and special projects that made a difference. Comparing events that are pure retail, shoppers were more conservative from august to now and our holiday markets were down by about 33%. Cost of materials also increased this year. Some as much as 60%.
I believe it’s because we are coming up on an election year and our economy is fairly uncertain going into the holiday season. On top of that, there are wars going on which has people overall more cautious of how they spend right now even if that isn’t a conscious decision. Hopefully this trend doesn’t persist into next year.