How to Lose $500k and Rebound to Create a Million $ Brand Within 12 Months
* Title is click-baity for fun, but it is actually true! This is my 2016 year review.
TLDR: It’s been a hell of a year, , I’ve lost 100s of $1000s (a single $500k ‘contract’ then some) in business, and then turned it around to make a $1m+ brand. Phew, lol.
Somehow in 2016 I built my 3rd million $ revenue company.
- While living in a van for 3 months. Lol.
- And in between losing a few 10s of $1000s, and then even 100s of $1000s (see the full business review below).
- Then finally back to bali.
- Getting back into surfing.
- And finding some meditation that cleared my head.
I’ve made this post public as throughout 2016 I was behind closed doors, now I’m stepping out more than ever. I want to talk more publicly about business and what we are up to.
Let it go.
If you choose not to be harmed and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.” — Marcus Aurelius
2016 Full Year Business Review!
TLDR; this year a intense hell of frustration, delays, thefts, setbacks, but it’s been a hell of a learning experience;
- 9 months of intense business hell
- Frustration, delays, thefts, setbacks, but it’s been a hell of a learning experience…
- Losing a few $100k.. (*$500k annual ads earnings ‘contract’’)
- Pulling through to make a $1m brand.
- Giving away $850k+ worth of bitcoin!
- Getting some stability back.
- Making some EPIC plans and coordinating business in a different way.
So we’ll do Losses first.
Losses
1. DDOS Attacks! Stress!!!!!!!!!!
As CoinAd.com really started to grow in Jan-Feb this year we got attacked big time and went through 2–3 months of ddoses (hackers/competitors attacking our website, and taking it offline). We probably lost $20–50k during this time, (probably more, through loss of business and slower growth?).
I went right through epic stress and out the other side — ultimately resolving to playing Fallout 4 with my laptop on the sideboard while our developers resolved and periodically going to answer Skype messages if needed.
Fallout 4 didn’t solve things, so I bought a van, covered it with our Bitcoin Aliens mascots, and moved to a lake in wales and surfed every day while stuck in the UK.
Lessons:
I also learn that I wasn’t personally able to fix these problems so there’s no point in stressing and watching the screen waiting — strategise and manage and overview.. but release it to other people who have expertise.
And it wasn’t fun at the time, but wow, the thick skin and “crisis coolness” I got from this is EPIC — now when people ddos us and take our site offline I don’t panic, it’s just Tuesday (not that it happens as much now due to better security etc).
2. Criminal and Fake Developers
I hired 3 Fake/Sociopathic Developers in a row. I’m not a very good first judge of character i GUESS.
This year I hired a Meth addict Filipino developer who stole 11 bitcoins from me (*$7k at the time, **$9k+ now.), and we believe 100s of bitcoins worth $300k? $500k from online casinos (*other people, not from me).
We got close , I even welcomed him into the Bitcoin Aliens family and made an alien of him, an especially good/funny one too!
Then I hired a guy who quit before he started which would be a worthwhile story if the other 2 weren’t so good lol.
Then Jack who absolutely was in over his head, I would say incompetent, but just a fake developer, after 1–2 months of NO work, coding commits or progress (while getting increasingly frustrated) he finally said he recorded a video walk through of clicking around the site he built for us.. it was 1gb, he said too big to send online. After informing him that we lived in 2016 and he could infact get a 1gb file to me, he finally sent me a 1gb blank black screen video file. LOL
Lessons:
This really taught me to grow up. I’m now not trying to hire cheap. I was also too trusting and open. This isn’t a silly game. I’m stepping up and hiring quality people as the main objective rather than price.
I want to build the best <insert whatever im working on> in the world — this isn’t done with jokers like those ^.
Step up. Mature. Do it properly. What would <insert actual business leader> do?
3. Losing $300k? $500k?
Our business was growing massively despite the development challenges and we got up to earning $25–30k monthly from our main source of revenue — google adsense — and growing.
One day, while we had alexa ranked 9k, 11k, and 25k and a 40k site (the 9, 11, 25 and 40th thousand most popular websites in the world) we suddenly got banned from google adsense.
As I read the email I thought I had thickened skin (from the above staffing challenges), I decided to instantly “go swimming to preemptively de-stress”. I did. I got back and later that evening shock hit me. It was properly post traumatic. I was living in Soho, London again temporarily, and I went out to sit in Starbucks and work. It seemed like every gay guy in Soho was out on a date, all around me, but for me, time slowed down, I couldn’t move as I realised I had essentially lost a $300k? $500k? (more if we grew, and it would have been easy to grow more) advertising client.
Wins
The losses we’re so epic that it should be hard to find the wins, but it’s not.
- Win 1 — Money
Despite all this insanity going on during 2016, I’ve built my 3rd million $ brand.
* I sort of didn’t really think about this until writing this and looking for the wins… it’s made me kinda think “ok, if I can do this while going though negativity and chaos.. what will happen now that I’ve cleared my head and got stable in 2017!” Cant wait!
I don’t talk openly much about money, it’s a secondary goal, but at the same time, the final measurement of everything. (Set the goal to reach 200k people, and it isn’t success if you blow $100k and have no ROI in sight).
The adsense ban was a blessing in disguise after a while — all of our rivals got banned too, and we really focused on our bitcoin advertising network; CoinAd and grew to be the best/highest paying ads network within our “micro bitcoin” niche.
A long story short, we matured here and did things properly too — no playing about, real goals, and running the site in a mature way — with rules for publishers and active ads management for clients, and listening to clients and giving them features they want.
2. Win 2— $928k worth of bitcoin given away
More than the company profit and value, this gets me excited! Our company, as a whole, has now given away 966 bitcoins, which is worth $928k at current value.
* Nearly. 1. Million. Dollars. WOW :D ** This was my personal secret stretch goal, but now its basically within reach, so I want to give away $10 million dollars worth of bitcoin now — should push me to go bigger!
3. Win 3 — Rhino Skin
I actually wouldn’t change 2016 for the world.
To experience and push through all we did and come out of the other side in a big way was an amazing experience.
I literally can’t think what could actually de-rail me now, I’ve lost it all in 6 figure amounts and bounced back stronger 3x this year.
Even crippling, business ending negatives are just “Tuesday” for me. 2017 is going to be a blast!
Even more than the money, earned or given away — its this one thing that’s the biggest win of all from 2016. I absolutely KNOW, inside-out, 100% that I could lose it ALL and start again and grow something big… That I could start from scratch — I did initially in this bitcoin space anyway, but now I really know I can build big/good stuff, over and over and over (*but not to think negatively, I also know I grew a lot from this year, skills which will really help me not to lose everything — stress and crisis management, leading a team, making a strategy, mapping it out, project managing it through obstacles big and small).
The Future
Loreal (Peter Thiel), because I’m WORTH IT!
My entire history in online business has taken a path of;
Niche research > competitor analysis (in-DEPTH) > business plan formation, but basically just creating a similar version of something already in existence (the perfect example is creating a store to sell hypnosis mp3s, while I’m still proud of this and we reached a lot of people, it was a duplicate of our rivals, with the aim to do better marketing).
Did I think I wasn’t worth it? That was all I was capable of?
Probably.
* but I don’t mock this business model, it is a solid A-B-C business model and there SHOULD be a focus on marketing. It’s a great way to start, strong and other people smarter than me can take it further, and of course I’m not setting a rule not to do anything like this, a lot of my brands will still look to what is working and what the market is doing, but we will build at the very top level some unique stuff!
Introducing Peter Thiel, Zero to One
A life changing book.
The premise is that truly world changing or million/billion $ companies create something new — they don’t “re-develop the 1 and do better marketing”, they create; going from 0 to create the 1, and take a monopoly position, create positive change in the world, and profit.
To do this, they have to create something actually innovative, valuable and needed.
It made me realise I would never hit those big numbers or create the truly viral business just by copying others.
Reading this was a big stimulus towards creating our own advertising network and especially in pushing it bigger — basically our own niche version of google Adsense.
This was essentially still just copying..
But the first thing Zero to One has done for me is given me the bigger vision, and the self belief. Initially self belief that I can create the advertising network and be the leader in our niche.
This was the jump from: I can be ONE OF the publishers in the bitcoin space. To: I can build THE advertising platform for all of the publishers. A better platform than currently exists. The platform that all of the publishers use and profit from. 12 months ago I wouldn’t have the ability to think this big…. or believe in myself to be able to do it I guess.
2017 Goals
1. 10x In business reach (reach 10x as many people) and revenue.
This is gentlemen for Daniel.
Usually I try and aim to double my business, it’s happened before, but not always.
This year, 2017, is Zero to One, 10x in size aim.
If you don’t believe it, I don’t care, it’s just the cap you think you’re capable of, not any more an accurate a reflection on what’s possible for me ;)
Next, currently in development, but now in private beta testing is our new platform “Digital Artists Online”. This V1 release isn’t too groundbreaking, but later versions have some actually unique features, some “never before done” things — and the goals set around each release/aim are EPIC.
2017 is going to be an intense year too, I’m trying to do some ridiculous things, and 2016 is just the preparation needed for what’s to come.
2. Systematize EVERYTHING!
A real focus this year is systematizing.
Written documents; policies, procedures, and SYSTEMS for how everything in the business is done — even from brand new things, drafting them in “what was done” even the first time and formalising into systems as soon as things are repeated or figured out.
I don’t think we can achieve 10x without systematizing. We do some of this already, but just not fully, or often not maintaining or updating — we will go really intensive into this in 2017.
3. Grow My Team
In 2017 I want to grow a larger team than ever before. Especially hiring more developers. The growth we achieved this year was due to large scale development, CONSTANT new development, it was a bit of an experiment in 2016… it worked… In 2017 I will really dive into further new development and hiring developers on a larger scale.
4. Learn more about leading a team and project management.
I often hire, but then don’t have formal systems in place and things can be a little chaotic, or just micro managing developers; they report in to me with every small change and I check things live and set the next mini task.
I’m going to grow the fuck up here and seek out books and processes for managing teams and projects.
This falls within growing a team and systematizing really, but I wanted to note it down, if only just to remind myself that I’m not “just hiring lots of people”, but hiring within a structure, with systems, and with an organization hierarchy — which includes one solid CTO / lead developer who takes a lot of the day to day project management away from me and lets me set the bigger picture (I’m often not best to be bug checking as I can’t read the code or tell whats wrong anyway, it should be bug tested fully before it gets to me).
Stretch Goal
To give away 10 million dollars worth of bitcoin. I’ve got a lot of ideas, but I can’t quite visualize the path fully — so this will keep pushing me to think bigger each time I make a new project/element and think back to this goal.
