Going Back to Square One... (i quit my store)

What's going on, guys? This is kind of a hard video for me to make, but as you guys know, I want to be real out here. I want to be fully transparent with you guys about every step of my journey and really, like, kind of just film it, document it, put it out there, and just kind of live on here so you guys actually see, you know, what kind of goes on with E Comm and stuff like that. And, guys, this month has been rough. It's been a rough month. Obviously. Last month, you know, know, hit my highest month ever. You know, $1.1 million in sales, which is crazy. But this month it's been terrible. It's been real bad. The month of January, we're still profitable, but the margins were, you know, not great. They were like, maybe, I think below 10%, which is really, really bad for E Comm. Even on the front end. What a lot of people don't tell you is, like, even if you, like, even if you make, like, 10% margin, like, and you're like, oh, okay, I'm still technically making money, it's good. But you have. If you're running something, like, at the volume we were just running it at, we have all those fixed costs from, you know, agents from VAs, you know, agencies, like, all these things that come in and that take out of that profit. So we probably didn't make any money this month, to be honest. Like, I'm just gonna be fully honest. I don't think we actually profited this month. And now it's just gotten worse and worse, which is crazy to say. Like, literally had a hold when I was in Hawaii, got it resolved, and we were doing well. And then recently, I got another hold on top of that. Our ads have really been fatiguing, been struggling to break through that. In my opinion. I didn't do a good enough job at implementing a good system when it comes to, you know, testing new concepts and, you know, really testing new ads and stuff like that. And so basically, we kind of just. We went. We were just reusing the same creatives, you know, trying to, you know, revive those instead of, you know, testing bunch of new concepts. And it completely backfired, guys. So that's rough. Your profitability is down. We just got a second hold earlier this week, which is kind of really messed up our cash flow. And then on top of that, guys, about. We had about $4, 4 to $5 added on to our cogs from our tariff. So that completely erases the $10 margin we had or the 10% margin that we had 10%, probably not even a 10% margin that completely erases it with the holds, with all this, you know, nonsense going on, like, probably won't even be able to exit the store, which sucks. And honestly, guys, I turned off as day. I had to turn them off. It just profitability, like, it's just not. It's not working out right now for the store. And there's. There's some good and there's some bad things about that, so. Good things about it. Right? If we're looking at the positive side is definitely. I've definitely learned so much from this. I made a lot of mistake, guys. Like, this is my first time doing this kind of volume running a real business. You know, like, there's a lot I have to learn from, but I'm happy because at least I know going into my next, you know, product, my next endeavor, that I'm going to be able to, you know, fix those mistakes. And that's really good. That's. That's for me, it's exciting. Another pro for you, you guys specifically, is you guys are going to be able to see a case study on the store now. So I'm actually going to be able to, like, because I'm not running the product anymore, I'm going to be able to make content about it, you know, show it off, kind of show you guys exactly what I did. So stay, you know, stay tuned for that. But yeah, guys, like, we're kind of back to square one here. We're back to square one. Back to testing products. It's kind of exciting. At the same time, guys, I'm not gonna lie, it's very stressful. It's been a very, very stressful month and a very rough month. And the tariff thing just really put a fucking nail in the coffin, man. Doesn't mean that drop shipping still doesn't work or anything like that. It's completely possible to make it work. If anything, these tariffs are gonna knock out all these, like, you know, drop shippers, like, dudes who are not really, like, econ guys, like, dudes who don't really want it. They're gonna flake, they're gonna go to something else, and then the real econ guys are gonna stay here. We're gonna figure out a way to make this thing work. And like, to be honest, guys, like, there's a lot of prevented preventative stuff I could have done to, you know, evade this, but this is where we're at. So, yeah, it's. It's rough. You know, I got My first Shopify plaque, but not gonna be getting the second one on this store. I don't believe. Not gonna be getting that hundred thousand. $100 thousand orders. I think we did like 40,000 or something. That ended up doing that many. Yeah, I just wanted to be raw with you guys. Like, be authentic. Like, it's not always gonna be sunshine. Like. And I was not gonna lie. I was in a rough spot. I'm feeling good though. I have a lot of exciting things coming up. I'm gonna be moving for one, into an E. Comm house with a bunch of dudes. So that's going to be really exciting. You know, getting to learn from them and just kind of be around that and be in a really, you know, positive environment when it comes to, you know, my thinking and everything. Very excited about that. Yeah, guys, it's, it's, it's been rough. There's a lot of, A lot of mistakes I've made. Like, you know, even operating at the margins, we were operating at, at scale, like 15% ish, maybe a little below that. Like, that's something that you shouldn't really be doing. And that definitely hurt us in the long run for sure. I would say that I didn't have the best advice given to me about certain things, but you live and you learn and this is part of life. Like, honestly guys, I felt a lot of shame almost like coming on here and talking to you guys about this. But this is part of life. Like, I did it, you know, I made the mistakes and then you got to move on. You got to move forward. You can't. I can't just sit here in my room and sulk all day and, you know, just feel sorry for myself. I can't do that. I need to get back up, get back to what I've been doing. You know, we're testing products again. We're going to find something 100%, we're going to get some scale out of it and we're going to be back up and running. And then I would like to, you know, even get into potentially some sort of supplement. Supplements are really cool. Obviously. Monthly recruit, mrr, monthly recurring revenue. Like that's something that's super interesting. So I definitely going to be looking to that like as soon as possible. Gonna be testing a lot. But yeah, guys, that's just a quick update. You know, it happens. But like I'm, you know, I, and I, like, right now it's easy for me to be low and be down and I have been. But I need to like, take a step back, like, put myself out of, like the current situation and just look at my journey so far. Like, I'm doing fine. Like, I have. I'm not broke. Okay, I'm not broke yet. I'm just joking. I'm not broke. You know, I don't have the store really that's working, but you know, I have. It's going to open up all these windows of opportunity for me, all these doors. I'm going to be learning from some really cool people when I move. And like, it's. There's going to be so much opportunity out there for me and I need to keep that mindset and not be so focused on this and just kind of move on and like, it's. It's part of life, you know, it's part of life. Failure is part of life. I'm going to continue to fail, probably going to fail probably another time and another time. And I'm going to keep going, guys. I'm not going to ever give up. I'm going to keep pushing. And you guys are gonna see. I'm gonna be up again. All right? I'm gonna have a store at, you know, a million dollar a month, 100% within the year. 100%. So just gotta keep pushing. I've learned a lot. I've made mistakes, but that is the reality, you know, That's. That's reality. You see all these. These dudes who are posting, you know, like their success stories and they had, you know, 1.5 million dollar store and it was all, you know, all this great stuff. Like, that's not reality. There's always going to be something. If you're not running the store anymore, then that means something went wrong. So. Yeah. But thank you guys for watching. You know, I love you guys. I really appreciate all you guys who tune into my videos. I'm going to be making that full case study hopefully pretty soon on the store. So that's going to be cool to show you guys. Show you guys what I was thinking when I tested the product, you know, how I scaled it, you know, all the upsells, like all the things, little things I did, like the whole site and everything. I know some of you guys see it, but I've already seen it because I've leaked it. But I'm very excited about it. So thank you guys for watching and I hope you guys have a wonderful day and a wonderful night. Peace.