5 Things Going Right with My Company
It’s been 2 weeks since I’ve written and the reason is I’ve been getting punched in the face everyday (figuratively). It has been hard to focus. I’ve wasted so much time and I am willing to try anything to get back on track.
One thought exercise I have used in the past is to think of who I was 2 years ago and how much progress I’ve made since then towards becoming who I want to be. Although it has only been 5 months since I opened this company, applying this exercise to it will help me overcome or at least mitigate some of the emotional turmoil I’ve been going through.
So here are the things that I love about my company —
Customer Satisfaction & Retention —
All of this gathered in less than 5 months of being open for business. I’m also showing very high customer retention.
The take away from this is keep doing what I’m doing. My customers love my level of service and attention to detail. These are things I could not accomplish if I were to outsource the laundry to another company. By doing the work myself I’m developing a scalable process.
Dedication —
I’ve put myself into a situation where there is no other road to take. There’s no going back to my old life and there’s no trying something different. I’m committed for the long haul. No matter how hard it gets, no matter how low I get, I can’t quit. I won’t quit.
Branding —
Last week I got a great compliment. I was making a delivery and chatting with one of my customers. He was surprised when I told him that I was doing the laundry myself. He asked “so how does it work, you buy a franchise, they do the marketing and you do the work?”
I said “no, I’m the founder, I’m building it from scratch.”
He was dumbfounded that I was doing the marketing too.
Another customer asked me who I hired to create my website and he was also surprised when I told him I did it myself. He was super impressed.
I’m pretty happy with my website, my logo, and my branding efforts.
Bookkeeping —
My books are accurate to the penny. I have a budget spreadsheet that keeps track of every transaction. I enter them manually. Eventually I will have to get it automated. The reason I do it manually is because numbers are easy for me. The benefit is by writing down every transaction I have better insight into my company.
I cross reference my spreadsheet to match both my bank account and my Square account, so that no transaction is lost. I love having accurate raw data, especially when it comes to cash flow.
Boot Strapping—
So far this company is 100% owned by my brother and I. Together we have put in $17k of our own money and there’s $11k in the bank. We are almost half way to profitable.
To be clear, I count the point of profitability as the point when the business can pay for all of its expenses including my salary of $800 a week. That comes out to about $5k a month in net sales. For the last 3 months we’re doing nearly $2k a month in net sales consistently.
Once we get a physical retail location the point of profitability will jump to about $7k a month. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Conclusion —
I needed to write this piece because I’ve been wallowing in negativity lately. I’ve let the things that are going wrong dominate my mind. I let the negativity feed on itself and grow out of control.
I know myself well enough to know this is temporary. I will grow out of this phase. I hope writing it out will accelerate that growth.
This story is part of a series documenting the journey of a 2016 Dallas startup called Feather. For your reference here is the Table of Contents for the series.
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