She Lost Her Job... Then Built a $2M Business

Every once in a while, a client or a student looks at our 8-step framework to building a million-dollar business and decides to follow it exactly and builds a 7-figure brand. One of those students is Alina, who launched her pet supplies company, Dude Woof, to the tune of about a $10,000 launch in the first 45 days. Over the next 18 months, she grew that to a 7-figure brand and is now one of the shining examples for our students and clients inside of the 1%. In fact, many of our students reference Alina as one of the people who inspired them to go bigger or inspired them to follow the plan or inspired them to finally take the action to get into the game. And I hope that this conversation with Alina does that for you. What you'll discover in this conversation, though, is that it was not all roses on the way to $100,000 a month and $150,000 a month. It was not a clean ride. In fact, there were a few times that she almost quit. So if you're struggling to get the results that you want or you're wondering if this plan is going to work for you, then my hope is that this conversation gives you the inspiration and the belief to go all in and sprint towards your first $100,000 month.

Alena.

Hi, Ryan.

Hey.

Tell me what your life was like 2 years ago.

2 years ago, my life was quite different. So March 2023, I got laid off from my tech job, and that's really all I knew my whole career. So I was like, okay, what am I going to do next?

And what were you doing in tech?

I was working at this AI company. And so I did like project management, which is probably the most useful skill for entrepreneurship because you have just a ton of moving parts at the same time. I happened to find a book called 12 Months to $1 Million. Written by some crazy guy that I didn't know.

Sounds like a scam.

And so I was like, 12 Months to $1 Million. Okay, like, let me, let me see what this is about. Started reading it and just the framework really made sense to me. And I was like, okay, well, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. This started to give like a good blueprint that I felt like actually made a lot of sense. And I knew it was high level.

You knew you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Yes, that I did.

Now your whole life?

Internally, yes. However, like, my family immigrated here from Ukraine when I was 3, and so, like, the way that a lot of immigrant parents— well, at least mine was— it was like the number one thing they want is safety. And so going into entrepreneurship, I never even, like, really thought about it, even though looking back, like, I've always wanted it to be an entrepreneur. But what was important was, like, having a stable job, having income that, you know, is going to come to you. Being an entrepreneur was a little bit like against the grain or the norm. Even in college, like, I was— had an internship, but I was flipping robot vacuums that I bought on Craigslist. I was flipping them on eBay. I'm like, this is making me way more money. So I definitely always had that in me.

Gary Vaynerchuk once told me, that's the tell. If you can go back in your life and you find a time where you thought it was more fun to be shoveling driveways than it was to be having snowball fights, or flipping vacuums was more fun than going to parties. That's the tell. That's when you know that it's just in you. It's in your blood. So you're in between jobs was kind of your permission to explore that itch, it sounds like. Is that right?

Yeah. I spent a lot of time like walking around and probably listening to your podcast.

This one that we're on right now?

Yes.

Which still sounds like a scam.

A little bit surreal. It almost like I came to the conclusion that this was the universe just, if you're not going to become an entrepreneur, do this, like I'm going to force you to do that, like go this path. And so that's what it almost felt like was happening with when I got laid off.

You said that the framework made sense, but there's still this jump that has to happen from going from logic to, okay, I'm actually going to do this. I'm actually going to take the risk. Put up the capital, I'm going to take a sale. And that is a different moment than when it clicks logically. So when did it click for you that you were gonna put both feet in the water?

There was just at one point I decided that, because, uh, at first I was building the business and looking for a job, and then I got like into the final round interviews of some job, and I was like, if I get this job, like, I really don't want this job. Like, even if I get this, like, this sucks. And so is what I was thinking. Kind of at that point is when I was like, okay, you know what, like, if I'm gonna think like this, and I just have to— I made a decision then to, like, believe in myself because that was the hardest part in the beginning. And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs is that it's really hard to believe in yourself when you have no track record of it. So I just, like, would tell myself every day, like, I believe in myself, and I basically forced myself to believe in myself. And then once I saw traction going, then I actually truly felt and started to believe in myself.

So there was a space there where you kind of had to have faith until you actually did believe in yourself.

Yeah.

How did you develop that? I don't see most people get through that. Most people quit there. Yeah, most people have the logical methodology in their brain, but they don't actually believe that they can do it. That's probably the biggest place where people just quit, is right at the beginning, because they believe some doubt that they can't do it. You went through it, now you got a million-dollar-plus business. How did you get through that period of faith?

Well, at first it's, it's literally just like telling myself every day, like almost like an affirmation, like, I believe in myself, and, and just doing the things every day that I learned. I mean, most of the things I learned of building my business was in the 1%. So just, I'm like, okay, I'm doing this. It was really nice having the community there and people just like supporting you. Um, so the coaches there, like seeing like, hey, if you just keep doing this. At that time, having the outside validation from the, like the top, uh, 1% community really, really helped. Because if there are certain things that people don't even know that they said to me, like little things, we're like, wow, that was such a good. 'video' or 'great job' with this email that at that time, like, I really needed to hear that because I was really, really doubting myself. And so hearing that from like a community and having other people believe in me too helped me in the beginning also believe in myself, even though I was seeing like nothing going in the beginning.

Other people's affirmation of your quality of work was the shot in the arm that you needed to keep doing the work. That's what I'm hearing you say.

Yeah, uh, like, especially at certain points. It's funny to think that these people have no idea, like, this one little thing that they might have said to me, I still remember. And I'm like, wow, I might have quit then if I didn't have a community that—

Can you think of one of those times?

Yeah, so we're in Austin, and so a couple, like, a handful of us meet in Austin. And so I'd spent all day recording this video, um, it was like my founder story is Here's why I quit AI to start a dog company or something along those lines.

That's a good hook.

And then it was, there's some sort of hook like that. And then I went to like that meetup that evening and I was just so exhausted. I'd been recording and editing this video all day. I was just really exhausted. It was really stressful back then. And Julie was like, oh my God, I, Julie is someone in the 1%. And I was like, oh my God. She was like, oh my God, that video is so good. Like, this is gonna be like, I can't wait to see where you are in 6 months. Something just like simple like that really kind of was what I needed to hear then.

And at that point you were exhausted, doubting if it was going to work, doubting if you were going to get any traction.

Yeah.

And that comment was, okay, I'll keep going, I'll give it another day, I'll give it another week, I'll keep doing the work.

Yeah. And looking at my bank account and seeing all the— my savings go down. So that's—

so you were living off of savings while you were building the business?

Savings and then pulled like my 401 money out.

Wow.

My inventory. Yeah.

Were you scared?

Oh yeah, I was so scared. So I started kind of building the audience in May and then when I launched the product in December, I had like one month of rent left. I needed it to work.

You were hanging by a thread.

Pretty much. Yeah.

Okay. I didn't know that part of your story. So you, you started planning and building in May of '23. Right?

Yeah. So let's say I like found your book and like the framework, The 1% Community in March. I started thinking about it for, you know, like a month and a half. And then I started really like starting to, I think I made my first video end of May, 2023. And for 6 months I was, you know, documenting the journey, building the audience until launching in December. But because I was building the audience, I felt pretty comfortable that I could at least get one-time sales. I wasn't sure about repeat sales, but I knew like I built enough like awareness and enough of a community that at least some people would buy one time.

Did you catch how Alina talked about the fact that she had just enough of an audience that she knew that she could sell a product at least one time? She didn't know if they were going to come back and buy again and again, but she knew that she had enough to to be able to at least take the first sale. That is why audience is such an important part of the 7 Figure System. You need to have a great product. You gotta have exposure on sales channels, but you have to have at least a little bit of an audience to guarantee that your product is gonna have some life of its own. It de-risks the process so that you can launch the first product and have really strong, high margins. One of the things that we do is we will occasionally host regular workshops to help our clients and our followers work on their audience and the other parts of our 7-figure process. If you wanna be on the waiting list for the next time we do one of those, you can go over to Capitalism.com/bootcamp and enter your best email address and we'll let you know when we have the next workshop. Now in this next part of the conversation, Alena breaks apart how she built the audience and what types of content she created in order to have the raving fans that were ready and willing to buy her products.

6 months is a long time to stack the deck. It's a long time to build the audience and the waiting list of people. Did you intentionally do it for that long, or is that just how long it took to get product ready to sell?

I don't think intentionally, but that's kind of how long it took to figure out, because I— the way I built it is I went to the community, I went to like different Facebook groups and was like, what do you your challenges of having a doodle, which is what my brand's for, who my brand's for. And then I started building that community, and then it took me a bit to figure out what they wanted and then actually find a manufacturer. Then there were delays.

And so it just occurred to me that I have not asked you what the actual business is. So why don't you give a quick overview of how you chose the product, mm-hmm, and how you chose the name and what the business does?

My e-com brand is called Doodwoof. It's for, it's for doodle owners. So any dog mixed with a poodle is a doodle, which is basically an unlimited amount. And so, uh, the product that I have right now is a doodle detangler spray. And so the whole brand kind of focuses on solving challenges for that specific, um, dog breed. So doodles get, they have different hair than most dogs., and they get matted and tangled really easily. So when I was talking to my audience and asking them like, what are your biggest challenges of having a doodle? They said it was really hard to brush their dog. It kept getting mats. It kept having to get shaved down when they went to the groomer. And so I went to ChatGPT, put in that challenge, and then said, what are some good products, um, to create? And then, so one of the products it came up with was detangler spray. And I looked at what existed in the market and I saw that the products that existed were filled with like harsh chemicals and just ingredients that I couldn't pronounce. So my product is like all-natural human-grade ingredients. That's the big differentiating factor between others.

And you've been in business taking sales for a year and a half, is that right? You launched in December of '23. What was the audience like right before you took a sale? Because you're, you're, you're at one month's rent. Left in the bank. You spent 6 months building up this audience. You've heard this crazy dude on the internet saying you can do it too, and you have a community of people who are giving you feedback.

Mm-hmm.

But again, you got a month's worth of rent in the bank and you're about to take sales. You got a lot riding on this thing.

Mm-hmm.

So what was the state of the audience and what was your mindset like in December of '23?

Mindset, stress, like overwhelmed for sure. Excited. Like just, I was like, once this launches, it's gonna, whatever happens, it's gonna be a relief. And it's, it's weird cuz you really don't know what's gonna happen like ever when you launch a product, even if you have a giant audience. Right before, because I knew this had to work, I spent a lot of time like finessing my launch strategy and thinking about how am I gonna tactically do this? Like what emails am I gonna write? Um, how am I gonna prep the audience beforehand?

You were basically project managing your launch.

Yeah, basically.

It sounds like you were taking your old skills from the tech world and planning out the entire system that you were going to use.

I feel like that's one of the best skills I could have had being an entrepreneur.

A lot of my best success stories have a project management background. Yeah, it's funny how that works.

Yeah, there's just always a million moving parts going on. And so knowing what is the most like impactful. So I spent a lot of time figuring out like, how am I going to prep this launch, make sure it's successful? Make sure the audience is ready. Don't hear that much from the audience before, but like there'll be comments on my Instagram, like excited, a couple like responses to the email, can't wait to buy. And then what really was really neat to see was the day that I launched, I guess my coupon code didn't work for some people, but I got so many emails being like, hey, just want to let you know that the coupon didn't work, but I just wanted to buy this to support you. Amazing. Yeah, I got, and that's when I was like, that's when I realized like how important it is to, even if people don't say anything, there's a ton of people watching. There was just so many people that were excited to support me just from documenting the journey as like someone who doesn't know e-com building it up. It was Instagram. It was going into other people's Facebook groups, like doodle owners Facebook groups. Every day I would search for posts that were like people struggling to brushing their dog out. And, you know, whether this is allowed or not, I would comment and be like, hey, well, I'm creating this product here, you should follow along if you're interested. And email, sending them to my email. And I would email like once a week until the launch, and then I'd email.

Perfect. So how did the first launch go? You released the first product, you have no idea what's going to happen. You had a month's worth of rent in the bank. What happens?

I was able to pay rent, so that's good. The launch, I think it was like, it wasn't humongous right away. It was maybe like $5K that week.

$5K the first week ain't a bad week.

Yeah.

Yeah. A couple hundred sales. Then it, it was really interesting how quickly, because, you know, you build that audience, you talk about this all the time and it's so true. You build the audience, they start buying, you start emailing them and asking for reviews, et cetera. And then it really just snowballs. So by month 4, I was pretty steady on like $50K per month.

Okay, so 1, 2, skip a few, $50K a month. But month 1, you launch. I think I remember you did just over $10,000 in sales the first month. Does that sound right to you? What was your mindset like at that point? Are you excited? Are you disappointed? Are you— what's going through your head when you do $10,000 the first month? For reference, Back in my day, uh, when I was coming up through the ranks, the dream for most internet marketers is making $10,000 a month. That was the 4-minute mile for a lot of people. So people would work years hoping to get to $10,000 a month. Now we, you know, we have people who launch a product, get to $10,000 a month, they're literally their first 30 days and it's nothing. So I'm genuinely curious, are you excited, pumped, disappointed? What is— what's going through your head at that point?

I was a little excited, less than I would have wanted. Like, looking back, I wish I was more excited because that's such a— like, it is such a good milestone. I think I've just felt more of like a sense of relief. That year was like a pretty stressful year for me. And so that was like a milestone. Like, launching the product was the milestone. And then after that, I just could at least breathe for a little bit. Yeah.

You're not worried about this being a big failure and being pushed up against the wall at least as much?

I still was. Okay. But at least I learned.

Yeah. You're an entrepreneur. Your back is against the wall for the first year.

But at least I, like, launched the product and that was like, okay, I did what I could, you know? And so getting that $10K felt good. It's not all profit, obviously. I think any entrepreneur, in the way that I was thinking back then, was like, okay, well, what's next? Like, now I have to get reviews, 100 reviews, etc., etc. So I wish I spent a little bit more time just like enjoying that, hit that milestone.

Yeah, yeah. Now that I'm building my supplement company for the second time, I am enjoying those milestones just as much, if not more, as I did the first time. Which it's weird because the business was starting over at zero again. You know, I, I already sold this company for $16 million. Why am I getting excited about the first $3,000 day? But I, but I know that I'll look back and those are the most fun days. So squeezing the juice out of every one of those milestones is something that I wish I had. I'm thankful I get to do the second time around. You're one of the rare case studies where you didn't seem to slow down after launch. Most people will launch and there's a dip and there's a lot of mindset coaching that happens in that dip because they get the surge of momentum from the launch and then that— then the work starts, then they got to climb back to consistent sales and profitability. You were at $50K a month. 4 months later. So was there a dip for you where you had to throw more into it to get it moving again, or did you just start to snowball week over week?

I believe there was a dip, like after launch, right after launch, maybe the next like 1.5-ish months. I think though, like, because I was able to build that community, and so my next focus after launch was reviews, and the more reviews I got, like they, they were coming in pretty quickly., and then more organic sales came. So I had like, you know, 20 reviews within, let's say, the first week. And so 20 reviews is enough to kind of put PPC, uh, ad spend going. Um, and then I was focused on creating user-generated content. So yes, there was a dip, but I think it was maybe a little bit smaller because I had like a raving fan base that was— wanted to continue supporting as much as they could.

What Alina just described there is what we call the flywheel, and it's step 6 of the 8-step process. The flywheel works like this. You take your proof or your feedback from your audience. That's your reviews. That's your positive feedback from friends who try your product. It's any good thing that someone says about you. We turn that into a piece of content and then we link that content back to an opt-in form where we're going to nurture those leads and turn them into sales. Those sales are going to end up becoming repeat customers who leave us more reviews that turn into more content, that turn into more leads, that turn into more sales. And we do that over and over and over again until a product is doing at least 25 sales a day. This is step 6 of the 8-step process, and this is where every day we're getting some momentum in the right direction. We're getting more followers, we're getting more leads, we're getting more traffic, we're getting more sales. If we do those things consistently, then it's inevitable that we're going to have progress. Now, if you want to see where you are at in the 8-step process and get some recommendations about what actions you can take in order to grow your sales towards your first $100,000 a month, then go to Capitalism.com/100K. Our AI tool will ask you a couple of questions and diagnose where you're at in the process and where you need to put more attention. And you'll follow the same 8-step roadmap that Alina and all of our other clients use in order to build 7-figure brands. That's at Capitalism.com/100K.

There's a few moments in which an e-commerce entrepreneur realizes that, oh, this is happening. First is when you take the first sale, which was you December 2023. Then when the reviews start trickling in from strangers and they're positive, that's a really important point. And then when you see sales start to grow and you get repeat customers, that's another point where you realize, oh my goodness, something's happening. What were those moments like for you? Do you remember the first few reviews and the repeat orders as they kicked in?

I remember the first reviews. That was really neat to see. And I remember my first, uh, 1-star review just as well.

Yeah.

Um, but the 5-star, like, it was, it was, it was great. It was, well, actually I'm remembering when I launched, people reached, my audience reached out to me. Some people and said they got leaky bottles. So that was a little bit of a— I was like, oh no, is my business— like, do I have to shut everything down?

This was fun while it lasted.

Need to go back on LinkedIn now. Um, but because again, like, building that community, they emailed me. They— and I was able to send them a replacement. It wasn't a 1-star review. And so as soon as they got the replacement, I could ask them like for a, a review. Now it's going to be a 5-star review. So getting feedback from the audience and them being like, I love it. Someone telling me that she has cancer and so she is like bedridden, and so she was really worried because she has to take her dog to the groomer and she doesn't really have the energy to brush them out, but the spray helped her so much. Like, it's— I know the detangler spray isn't like a world-changing product, but It's, it's so like nice to hear that I could even make someone's life even a little bit easier.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's, it's weird when you realize that it's the magic that people miss when they only think about selling product on the internet and they miss the community behind it and they miss the person who is buying it. They miss all of the good stuff that gives you energy and life to keep building. The business. At some point in your business, you started building the audience more aggressively. We call the strategy the Traffic Triangle, but you started building a Facebook group and building your email list more intentionally, and that seemed to be a big lift for the product line. Would you share a little bit of how you built that audience and what it meant for the long-term growth of the business?

The next kind of phase, like the growing phase, what really helped with the growth was the Facebook group. So what I did there is I just created a Facebook group, DoodWolf, a community for doodle owners. And so the point of that Facebook group was just to bring my audience into that group. And so in order to join the group, you, uh, have to like supply, you have to list your email in there. And then I started running ads to it, to the group. And so I'd get like, for like $10, I'd get like 70 emails or so.

Wow.

Even more, probably maybe like 100. Actually, I think it was more. And so I don't— that doesn't mean they're all— it doesn't mean they're all buyers, but I know that they're all Doodle owners.

Yeah, that was like, yeah, and they're part of the community.

They're part of the community. And I don't know if they all— like, not all of them have problems with brushing their dog out, but I do know that they're all the niche that I'm targeting.

I'm just curious, tactically running the ads to the Facebook group, is that a Facebook lead ad? What, what's the mechanism for which you're running ads to the Facebook group?

So I think there is a way to do that. The way I did it was I created just a post on my, like, through my business account. This is what it said: are you a doodle owner? Join this Facebook group for doodle owners.

Copy's amazing.

That's what it said.

And then, and you got 50-cent email leads from doodle owners?

Probably. Yeah, probably cheap.

That's absurd, Alina. Oh my goodness.

It wasn't rocket science.

Where were you collecting the email?

In order to join the group, they put it in, then there's a plugin that connects to my Klaviyo. So every like 2 hours it takes that, it accepts them into the group and then puts their email into my email.

Oh, that's freaking genius. Wow. That's so hot. 50 cent email. I haven't heard 50 cent email addresses on targeted traffic in a long time. That's really fun. So the Facebook group was a, a big deal for building the email list and for building engagement and spreading the name recognition as well. Sounds like that was a really big lift for the business.

Yep. Honestly, like that's something this year that I want to dive more into is like how to utilize my Facebook group. Because right now I'm just utilizing really the email part of it where I got their email. Uh, but I mean, it's like people post like hundreds of posts a day of like their dogs or questions. Like people are really engaged and yeah, they always see the name DudeWolf in there. That was a big part for scaling. And then the second part was when you started talking about TikTok Shop, I was like, okay, I need to get on this. Um, so a big part of like my strategy now is I use TikTok Shop. I have a lot of creators that make videos and then the videos that work. So first of all, I drive sales on TikTok Shop, but like the main thing is that the videos that perform well, I then run them as Facebook ads to send them to Amazon landing page, Amazon. And then that's very nice because I constantly have an influx of UGC content, and that's been working really well.

We were on a coaching call in, I don't know, early 2024 and I think you were at maybe $30,000 or $40,000 a month. And you asked me the question, when can I start paying myself? And I said, Alina, in 6 months you're going to be in such a different place. Please keep as much in the business as possible because this is your best performing asset. And 6 months later you had a million dollar business. I'm curious if that conversation changed your approach or if you adjusted anything about the business after that conversation, because I know it was not the advice that you wanted to hear, but you did cross $1 million within about 6 months.

Yeah, you're right. Actually, you told me to Uber. That's what you told me to do.

To drive for Uber?

Yeah. So I kept as much as I could in the business. That's true. I also realized that I also learned about inventory financing. Because I— that what that conversation made me realize is that I need to figure out how I'm going to get more inventory as this business is growing. So I started understand, like learning about different funding strategies, etc. And inventory financing was like the best thing I could have done for my brand because I already had a proven track record of sales. I feel comfortable. The interest pays for itself with, you know, buying in more quantities. And then I think having that conversation definitely pushed me to keep more in the business. And the reason I was even able to pay myself a little bit is because building an audience, I was able to have— my product is double the cost of the competitors. I have like the little bit of margin, or I have a decent amount of margin, and I could take some of that out, but only because I was able to build an audience that will buy at a premium price point.

Yeah, most people will try to be slightly cheaper than the next competitor. If you build an audience, you can and should be 2 to 3 times the price of the next competitor because you're, you're making the product specifically for them. You're not trying to extract from a platform.

You had your first—

I remember you sent me a Facebook message the first day you had a 100-sale day. It's maybe July of '24. Am I remembering that right?

That's probably pretty exact.

What was that like for you, your first 100-sale day?

That was definitely exciting.

Okay, that one gave you some dopamine.

Yes, that one gave me some dopamine. Well, what's interesting is I was like, okay, this is it, this will forever continue. So that's what I was thinking then.

I've made it, I'm a, I'm a multimillionaire now.

But no, that, that was definitely exciting. What that showed me is that— so the reason that happened is because one of those UGC videos that I talked about, one of the Facebook ads started getting a lot of traction, and there was some organic stuff that also helped. But what that made me realize is I was pretty much stuck for a while at— I forget the units, but maybe like 50 units a day. And I was like, maybe like, this is it, this is the plateau. Like, there's no more doodle owners per day buying Doodle Detangler Spray. So I started thinking about the product, the next product, and actually you told me to try to wait to launch my second product until I hit about 100 sales.

I told you that. I vaguely remember that. Yeah. Which, which is not the advice that I give most people, but I think you had consistent growth month over month. Most people are so ready to get the dopamine hit of the next launch, the next launch, the next launch. I have to just get them to wait to 25 a day. With you, you were compounding so quickly like, well, let this ride, like ride the hot hand. So I do vaguely remember that.

Mm-hmm. Well, that was a 100-sale day. So but that also made me realize that there are more than that. There are 100 doodle owners at least per day that could be interested in the product.

I tell most clients and most followers that you can move on to product number 2 or 3 once you're at 25 sales a day. That's the point at which you can just math out that if you've got 4 products at 25 sales a day at a $30 price point, You've got a million-dollar business. Now here's the truth behind that. Most niche markets, most, are big enough to have one product doing 100 sales a day. Now it's kind of more predictable to get 4 products at 25. It's more believable that you're gonna get there. But once you're there, you start to believe that you can take one product to 100 sales a day. The market's big enough now. Amazon is big enough now. TikTok is big enough now. The internet is big enough now. There's enough shoppers in almost every market to where most products can get to 100 sales a day. That was the case with Alina, where she thought she had kind of capped out at 25 or 50, and then she went up to 100. My first product, I thought I capped out at 25 sales a day. By the time I sold the business, it was at 200 sales a day. Most markets are big enough to do way more than 25 sales a day. And I just wanted you to hear a little bit of a truth bomb behind the factoid of 25 sales a day. You can believe and picture that 25 sales a day is possible, but most markets are big enough to be way, way bigger than that.

So then you started to realize the market size.

Yes, exactly.

And it didn't stay at 100 a day consistently, but you had your first one and then you came back to about 50, I think, and had to start working your way back.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's kind of probably like a week of double what I usually would expect. And then it went back down, maybe not all the way to where it was, like a little bit higher than maybe it was like 60 sales a day consistently.

When did you finally break the plateau of 100 sales a day slash $100 grand a month? What was that milestone for you and what got you through that threshold?

Partially just doing the consistently doing the same things over and over again. I think like the benefit of having one product is that I now have like really good frameworks in the business. I have frameworks for getting reviews, for everything that new products— it just can— I can just launch products and they can easily come into these frameworks. So just like consistently doing those things, building those frameworks up. Also what pushed it over is— I don't know why I didn't do this sooner— but I, that I was running ads and they were getting a decent ROAS, but, but I was nervous to scale them.

Mm.

And so on, I just put, started putting more money into those same ads and I was like, wait a second, I'm getting 5 times the return and I put more money into it. That means that like I'll get 5 times that return.

So you started doing more of what was already working?

Yes.

Yeah.

That's a good strategy.

Find what works and do, and do more of that.

Mm-hmm.

What was the timeframe from going from zero to the first $100K month?

It was January 2025.

Okay, so it was 13 months to 1 million instead of 12 months to 1 million. Do you plan to sue me for false advertising?

Uh, not today.

So we're now sitting here in spring 2025, and you're looking back 2 years when you had no business, had no entrepreneurial experience at all. And now you're sitting on, what, a $2 million a year business? About?

Probably at the end of the year.

Yeah. So how does that feel?

I'm really proud of myself for just sticking through it and just following, even when I wanted to give up and was like, oh, this is going nowhere, for just believing in myself and being like, okay, I know I'm doing the right things. Like, if I just keep doing them, I know something's gonna happen. And then it also, it's, it's just, it's life-changing. Like truly, like having like found, finding your work and just like building this business. I mean, my life is, it's just so, I couldn't imagine like having the life I do now. And I'm not like ballin' with a Rolex or anything, but it's, um, that comes when you sell a company.

You can ball, you can ball with the Rolex in 4 years when you sell the company for a whack ton of money. And you might not see that now, but You're right on pace.

But, but I do have like the freedom in my life. That's why I want to make money, is to have freedom in my life, to be able to do what I want to do when I want to do. And having your own business like gives you— you don't have to take PTO off. It's nice.

The thing that I loved hearing you say there was that you feel proud of yourself for doing the thing when it was hard. You didn't say I'm proud of myself for building a multi-million dollar business. You didn't say, I'm proud of myself for being able to sleep until 10. You didn't say, I'm proud of myself for being able to travel to this place. You were proud of yourself for doing the thing when it got hard.

Mm-hmm.

And it reminds me of what you said at the beginning of this conversation, of there was a period in which your brain's freaking out looking for safety, and you just chose to bet on yourself. And train yourself to believe in yourself. And that was the hardest part. That was both the hardest part, the most necessary part, and the part that you're most proud of. Would you comment on that?

It's true. Like, I, I feel like being an entrepreneur has— it's the best, like, self-development practice anyone really could ever do. You just, again, like, learn to believe in yourself. You have to. You have no other option. You just learn to trust yourself and trust that you'll like get out of— if something is not going as well, like you'll figure out how to get out of that situation or make it better. And it's just, yeah, it's just the best self-development tool ever.

Can confirm. What do you want to do now? For a lot of people, crossing a million or 2 million is making it. I view it as— it's for the first threshold. Then the game changes and it becomes a little bit more creative. You can build in whatever direction you want. What do you— where do you want to take the company? You haven't even launched the second product yet as we're sitting here, right? That's wild.

So I'm excited to launch the second product in like 3 weeks, or nice, in April. So I'm excited for that. I'm definitely going to launch a third product. I already have an idea of what it is at the end of this year. And then stabilize that and then see how that goes. And just like my long-term vision is I want one— DudeWolf to be the brand. Like, if someone gets a doodle, they know that they can go to DudeWolf. So what that means is I'll need to have trainings on my website. So partnering with like doodle trainers, doing like affiliate partnerships with them. It could be like acquiring other smaller brands, like supplement brands for dogs, to bring them into my the business under, like, for my community, Doodle community. But I do want, like, when people get a doodle, they're like, okay, I know I can go to Doodle for, like, the best quality products and the best training, the best, best resources for my dog.

It sounds like the community that you built might be the most valuable asset that you had in the business. It sounds like that's the nucleus of everything that you're doing. You can buy a supplement company and plug it into the community. You can launch another product, you plug it into the community. You need reviews, you go to the community. You need user-generated You go to the community. It sounds like it all came back to the Facebook group, the email list, the content that you had created. Is that, is that a fair assumption?

100%. That's why it would make more sense to like my brand to acquire like other brands because I have that like brand recognition and that community that wants to buy from DudeWolf specifically. Versus putting it on like my products under like getting acquired by another one. I, I see it working better with Dudolph acquiring other brands.

When you started this process 2 years ago, going from zero to a million dollar run rate in about a year probably seemed unattainable or unreasonable. Now you've done it. The next milestone that I tell people is that they can have a multimillion dollar exit. Maybe an 8-figure exit. Do you see or believe that yet, or does that still seem way out there?

8-figure exit seems kind of way out there. As, as the business grows, it feels closer and closer, but it still feels like kind of out there. Now can see the path to getting there. It just seems like such a big number.

Yeah, I mean, it's a big number. I mean, $10 million is a lot of money. 10 million. I don't care who you are. $10 million is a lot of money, but it's totally doable, especially once you cross that threshold of about $2 million. It's like, all right, I can definitely double this. And if I can double it once, I can double it twice. And then I'm right there. And at that point, okay, I'm like 4 years away from $10 million. It'll be really interesting to see what happens after you launch the second product. Because you've accomplished so many milestones with just one product and now you can take those systems and apply it to the second one. And the business may grow 25% or it may triple. You don't really know until you launch. So you might have a, a slight improvement in sales or it might just blast off into the next level. We have no way of knowing. So it'll be interesting to see what your mindset's like One year in, your goal was like, we got— we build a community, launch product, get it to 100 sales a day. Your second full year, what are you shooting for this year in terms of the objectives that you want to hit?

So I want to— I'm launching the second product, I want to get my third one launched. That's a big kind of milestone because it took me so long to launch my second one that I want to launch my third one. I want that process to be shorter. And then I have an EA now, so starting to kind of like turn this into a not just me business. So kind of the operations-y side of things, like having SOPs written and just making this into like an actual business that can be sellable, um, where it's not just me running everything. That's, uh, by the end of this year, like, I— that's a big goal for me.

What do your parents think now?

My parents, they're really proud of me. They're Still don't really understand, like, like what the— what happened.

I've been doing this 2 decades. My parents still have no idea what I do for a living.

Yeah, they're like— yeah, my dad's like, wait, how did that happen?

Do they know that you have a multi-million dollar business?

Think so, maybe. I don't, I don't get into the specifics. Yeah.

Do you feel like a millionaire?

I'm not really sure what that feels like. But I feel comfortable, like, in the way that I'm living, and I'm happy with my lifestyle. And I feel like I have a lot of freedom in my— to choose my day in my life how I want it to be, which is the most important thing. It's like the most important thing to me in life.

I want to put this in your brain, just so you're aware. On paper, you're now a millionaire. Now, of course, you can't— you can't buy your lunch with paper wealth. Yeah, but this business is probably worth at least $1.5 million. If you were to do a capital raise, you could probably raise it to $3 or $4 million run or $3 or $4 million valuation. So on paper, you're a multimillionaire. And for me, that changed my mindset about how to think about my business. Once I started honoring that, I started being like, I'm a millionaire now. I have a, I have a business worth 7 figures. Now I'm going to start thinking and treating and operating it like that. And sometimes you just need to hear somebody say, hey, guess what? You done good. You have a multimillion-dollar business. So I'm curious how that feels to hear that said, at least on paper, you're a millionaire.

You just heard me say that on paper, Alina is a millionaire because if she were to sell her business or do a capital raise, she would theoretically be a millionaire. Because of the enterprise value of her company. When you are growing a business, most entrepreneurs only are measuring their success on cash flow, how much money is left over at the end of the month. But sophisticated entrepreneurs are looking at enterprise value. That is, what is my company worth? It's a hard adjustment to go from thinking about cash flow, thinking about enterprise value. But the faster you can think about how much my company is worth, the faster you'll be able to raise your net worth. Because if you focus on enterprise value for like 18 to 36 months, you'll generate enough wealth that you'll never have to worry about cash flow ever again. But it is a mindset shift, and it's one that I only recommend people start to think about once they're at at least $100,000 a month.

It definitely feels good. It feels like I should think about this more often in the way I operate and like the, the way I think about growing my business.

And because you don't feel it from day to day, I mean, yeah, you don't feel it, but you just see the problems.

You do see the problems.

Tell me about one of the worst days recently, because it's easy to look at the highlight reel and say cool, Alina read a book 2 years ago and now she's got a 7-figure business. Tell me about one of the dark days.

So most recently, uh, actually I brought it up when we were at that Capitalism.com, uh, the PIGS meetup. Uh, so I had one of my influencers had a video go viral, and in that video he mentioned something about groomers that he was— it was really, he was just using it as a hook. He doesn't even think that, but It was not the best well-said thing about groomers. And then he said, use this product instead. So he was promoting the product, but the groomer community got very upset and mad.

Trigger alert.

Triggered. And so they started giving like, there was one-star reviews all over my website and there were some on Amazon and a ton of emails. And so that was, I honestly, this was like 3 weeks ago. I thought I was going to have to shut everything down.

Oh my goodness.

But it all—

yeah, irrationally, right? You're not sitting there calculating, okay, I'm gonna shut this down. But, but it was your first bad PR day. Yeah, is that right?

It's like the initial, like, reaction of, oh no.

Oh yeah, I mean, that stuff really eats at you, makes you unable to sleep sometimes for a couple days at a time. How did you respond to that? How'd you handle that?

Well, first of all, it was really— again, like, back to the community that I'm a part of. Which is, you know, like the 1% community and going to that, the PIGS meetup. So talking to people there and I, uh, they helped me like craft an email to the groomers. And really I just said, told the truth where it's like this, I don't really have control over what people post on TikTok. I definitely don't think any, like, I love groomers. I take my dog to the groomer. This is meant to be used alongside going to the groomers, this product. And then I sent an email to my list. And I got so many at the end of the email. I basically was like, I'm getting a lot of, a lot of 1-star reviews. If you could take 30, if you love the news, the product, if you could take 30 seconds to write a review, it would mean the world to me. And then I got like so many 5-star reviews on Amazon from that. Again, going back to now the community that I've built.

Yes.

It's, yeah, I feel like community really is the theme.

So I have to ask.

Mm-hmm.

Did sales go up after that?

After the video?

After the bad PR, but then going to the community, like all in all, did that situation become a net positive?

I don't know if sales went up, but it definitely became a net positive. Just even from people responding to my email and being like, I'm really sorry you had to go through that. Like, uh, in, in the sense of it, it, it built connection and humanized my brand more.

Probably increase your loyalty, the customer loyalty that— and the bond that they had with you. It probably increased that. It's interesting, there's a— there's kind of a, an underlying theme in a lot of what you're saying of bumping up against these challenges and then growth happening as a result of going through them. It started with 6 months of cushion and you didn't believe in yourself and you got through that hurdle. And then you were down to a month's rent and you were worried about launch and you got through that hurdle and you you're proud of yourself for growing through that. And then in this case, you have a dark day, but you stick with it, and now there's a net benefit on the other side of that. I think that might be the best summary of entrepreneurship. It's just running headfirst into a wall, saying, "Ow, that hurt," and then trying to run again. And you get better at it, and you get through bigger and bigger walls as you crash harder. Harder.

Yeah, maybe running into it, kind of freaking out for like a day. Yeah, thinking everything maybe needs to shut down and then being like, wait a second.

Yeah, I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only person who thinks this is all going to go away tomorrow as a result of this setback.

Sometimes, yeah.

When you launched and did $10,000 in sales the first month, that's a big milestone. But after that, then you got to start doing the real work of growing the business. And this is where we have to build that bridge of getting to 25 sales a day. You obviously can't launch a new product all the time.

You got to build the system of getting to 25 sales a day.

So what did you prioritize and what did you focus on after the launch to start getting the consistent sales and eventually to 25 and then 50 sales a day?

I knew that no one's going to buy a product except for the audience that I built. Without reviews. So, and I needed people that weren't part of my audience to buy the product. So prioritize definitely going to my audience and getting reviews and asking them to post pictures and videos of the product. And then just figuring out how I could maximize the value of that one customer, even though I didn't have, like, I didn't have another product to sell, but you can still continue to maximize from that one customer as much value that isn't necessarily another sale.

This is a genuine question. I'm not tooting my own horn. Did I, did I tell you to do that or did you do that intuitively? Because the language that you're using of maximizing the value of that customer, not in just the way of getting another sale, but turning them into a review, a raving fan, a repeat customer, a piece of content that is You probably said it better than I have said it. And I've been doing and teaching this stuff for a long time. But that is the exact mindset that I try to instill into every company that I advise or start. So did you learn that from me or did you just intuitively know that that was the right approach?

Mm. Probably learned it from you. I mean, you always talk about, you know, the next step is getting reviews. So maybe, maybe a combo, but definitely for me as well.

It changes everything.

Yeah.

I mean, when you, when you start looking at that, that person is not just the $30.

Yeah.

That they spent, but that review that they post could convince 5 other people to buy. And the piece of content they give you is maybe an Instagram post that gets 5,000 or 10,000 views. It's, it's, it just completely changes the mindset of how you show up. For each one of those people.

Yeah, I think people are too quick. They're like, oh, only 5 people bought my product, and then they get disappointed, even if it's like their mom or their friends. Yes, it's 5 sales, but if you maximize the value of those 5 sales, then this is definitely something I learned from you, this part where it's like can turn into like, again, so much more. Like, you don't need that, that many people to really start the snowball, right?

I'm curious if you leveraged the community and the audience to share the UGC that you were getting. For example, if somebody posted a review or if someone posted a piece of content of them using the product, did you amplify that to your own audience by emailing it to the list or posting it in the community, posting on Instagram? Did you, did you do any of that to amplify that content?

Yeah, always. So I, every other post on Instagram is a screenshot of the review and then in all my emails in the PS section, I typically ask for a review and then post like almost like example reviews, like as easy as I can make it. So maybe I'll give them idea of like, you can write a short review. That's fine.

Yeah.

That's, that's what I try to do with the reviews.

It makes a big difference when, when you start seeing the combination of your own community and then the public reviews in UGC and you combine those two things. That's what we call a flywheel.

Mm-hmm.

And that is what I've seen be the, the fastest way to compound to 25 sales a day. It sounds like that's pretty much exactly what you were doing.

Yeah, exactly.

Plus getting reviews, plus running a little bit of pay-per-click traffic.

Yep. I still do, or me or like my executive assistant do, like the things that I was doing back then, we're, I'm still doing, it hasn't stopped. It's because I know it works.

Yeah.

So. I'm, and I'm probably going to keep doing it, or someone on my team is going to keep doing it forever.

I'm so glad to hear you say that. I don't know why, but it actually gave me goosebumps. The thought that most people have is, I'll do these grindy things for a while until I get enough momentum so I don't have to do them anymore. But it's those grindy things that build the connection with your customers. Chewy didn't stop sending handwritten birthday cards to people's dogs when they became a billion-dollar company. No, that's what allowed them to become a billion-dollar company. So they just got better at sending people handwritten cards. And in the same way, you don't stop sharing the reviews that you get with your audience. You get better at sharing the reviews with your audience. You create systems for it. You may have an EA do it, you may have a customer service person do it, but you get better at amplifying the stuff that works.

And I think like the more you can treat your community as people and show them that they're like, like, I see you like as like an individual human, the more they really connect with you and the brand and want to support you versus just that they're like a number in pile of emails.

People think that there is just numbers on a screen that are going up. But what the truth is, that there's people behind every single one of those numbers. If you treat them as people, the numbers move real quick. A couple of weeks ago, there was a moment that we had in person at our last masterminds that I felt really proud of, and I would love to hear your experience of it. What I experienced was we were at this mastermind and we were sitting around the campfire, and it was, I think, just my team and Alina and maybe one or two— one person's spouse. But it was mostly like the team and Alina. And I felt so proud of this moment because I remembered that you were still somewhat new to the Capitalism.com world, but you got so involved and took things so seriously and prioritized this business. You made a name in a community for yourself that it was just, yep, Alina's hanging out with us by the fire. And it didn't feel weird at all. There was no client-service provider relationship or mentor-mentee. It was just, you're hanging out by the campfire with the rest of the community. And it was, it was a cool moment for me because I always wanted to create a community where if someone decided that they wanted to just go for it, that there was room for them at the table. And you did that by just deciding to get very involved in coming to the meetups and coming to the masterminds and showing up for the calls and doing the work and posting about your progress. And that was very edifying for me to just have you sitting at the campfire. That's what that experience was like for me. I'm curious what your experience has been like being involved in the community and now becoming one of the more recognized people in the community?

It's so fun. It's like just being part of this community. I just met so many amazing, smart, driven, just kind people, entrepreneurs. And these people I didn't know 2 years ago, genuinely, they want to see you succeed. They want to help you. And being around that campfire, it's like the reason that that happened, it was just 2 years of like relationship building. Not, not like I'm— not like I'm building this relationship to sit at this campfire, but, but it's like, you know, I wanted to go to these events. I went to these events. I want to provide value to the community. So when someone has questions in the Facebook group, like, or people reach out to me, I'll do my best to like answer and like provide feedback, etc. And it's just, it's fun. It's outside of my core friend group. Like, this is like a different type of friendship that kind of intersects on a lot of other levels that I don't get in like my other core friend group outside of like the business setting.

You, you have a whole new group of friends.

Yeah, exactly.

As a result of just being plugged in. That, that makes me really happy to see.

Yeah, it's so fun.

I, I have one more question for you, and it's just something I've observed about you now that I'm— I've gotten to know you a little bit personally. You seem to be very powerful at making things happen. You get an idea in your head and it just seems like it happens. I, I think I remember you saying that you had two things on your goals list for 2025, and they were be on a reality show and be on the Capitalism.com podcast. Am I remembering that right?

That was, yeah, in 2024, 2025.

And both of those things happened.

It did happen, yeah.

So I'm curious, from your perspective, Is that woo-woo shit? Is that you just have a way of deciding what you want and going for it? What do you make of that powerful skill?

Um, well, I'm pretty into the woo-woo shit, so it's like, it's definitely part of that. But also, it's take it as it is. But every year I'll write, like, I'll have a vision board. I'll make it on like January 1st or whatnot and put like the things that for that year that I want to accomplish or attract, things like that. I've seen a lot of those things come into fruition. I think that kind of also, if you have a goal in mind, just with any, like with anything, if you work, if you have, start with the goal and then work backwards, you just end up doing certain steps that help get you to that spot instead of feeling like dispersed all around and your energy in a million different directions.

Alina version 2023, sitting here, owner of a 7-figure business, leader of a community of customers who prioritize your brand over the competition, en route to a multimillion-dollar business and exit, what would you tell the version of you that was scared and nervous and worried about paying the rent and thinking about running back to security? What would you tell that version of yourself?

You're at the right place at the right time. Just surrender and trust what's coming into your path. Just follow your gut and keep doing the things.

Alina, I'm super proud of you. Thank you. You've done really good work.

Thank you for building this community.

You're welcome. Thank you for being part of it. I'm excited to see what you do next. I'll be here for the whole ride.

Alina followed a very predictable playbook. It is the playbook that we give our clients, our 8-step framework for getting to 100 sales a day. And if you've got a price point of $30 $3 or more, then 100 sales a day is a million dollar business. We made the 8-step framework so that it could be a step-by-step process that you could follow and know exactly where you were in the process and what you needed to do in order to make progress towards a million dollar business. A free resource that you can use is over at Capitalism.com/100K. If you go there, it has our playbook, our best case studies, and an AI tool that will diagnose where you're at in the process and make recommendations for what you can do in order to get momentum and route to 100 sales a day. And it'll give you a customized playbook of what you need to focus on right now with some case studies that are relevant to where you're at. That's at Capitalism.com/100K. Now, Alina is one of our members inside of the 1%. And let me tell you what was different about her that allowed her to get to 7 figures. She showed up on calls. She did the work. She came to our masterminds. She met with us in person. She took took every opportunity possible to be around the successful people in the group and to get personalized advice. And as a result, we're just like homies now. That is what is possible when you get into a group that has been to where you are and you just milk it for everything it's worth. That's why Alina is a shining example of one of our million-dollar success stories and why the path isn't that hard. You just go in, Follow the process and take every advantage of each opportunity that is given to you. If you want to follow in her footsteps, Capitalism.com/100K is a good place to start. My name is Ryan Daniel Moran. I help people like Alina and people like you build multimillion-dollar businesses and have life-changing exits. And if it would be supportive on your journey for me to mentor you, hit the subscribe button. I'll be here for the entire 7-figure ride. Thank you for watching.

I'll see you guys on the next episode. Take care.