July Report and August Goals

Here are the goals I set out at the beginning of July:

1. Sign a lease on the retail location and begin renovations.
2. Send out a special offer via email to all current customers.
3. Design and create a back window decal for the delivery car.

Bonus: Make a partnership deal with at least 1 apartment complex.

1. The retail location fell through. It was too good to be true. They told me they took an offer from someone else. I’m suspicious that they turned me down because of my mediocre credit and the fact that my company is only a few months old. I’m back on the hunt for a commercial space.

2. The only 2 people who took me up on my email offer were my weekly regulars. I took it a step further and began sending the offer in text messages and that created a nice boom of 4 orders in 1 day. I also heard back from some older customers that no longer use the service. Turns out they moved.

3. I procrastinated this item until the last day of the month, but got it done. Now I’m waiting for the decal to come in the mail.

Bonus: In July I made a similar deal to the one I have with the Mosaic Luxury Apartment building in Dallas. This building is called 3700M. I learned something important. Not every deal will have the same great return on investment as the Mosaic deal. This place is slightly more upscale. They wouldn’t put my flyers in their elevators or mail room, but instead emailed it to people. That hasn’t worked at all, and I doubt it will.

Milestones

I did not hit any of my listed milestones in July. In fact you could say that I went backwards a little bit since my expenses were higher than before.

I’m up to 88 total customers now which means the 100 customer threshold is on the horizon.

What I’m starting to understand is that these milestones are somewhat arbitrary. It’s nice to have a road map and celebrate the small wins, but really the only milestone that truly matters is profitability. Until my business reaches that point, it is in constant danger of going extinct.

Sales

I’m sad to report that sales dropped in July by about 8%. The silver lining though is that there was growth in the number of transactions.

In both May and June the numbers were somewhat inflated because I had a few orders over $200. The average transaction was higher.

I have a long way to go to reach the point of profitability, which I estimate to be about $7k net sales per month (including the expenses of a retail location which I have yet to acquire).

Marketing

How do I get in front of more people? That is a question I’m asking myself everyday. I have a 3 pronged approach right now — online ads, print ads, and biz dev.

Online Ads

This is my #1 source of new customers. I’m running ads on Google and Instagram and both are producing results. Eventually I’ll get back to running ads on Facebook as well but I know that I have to create video ads for Facebook. I also need new ad images. Instagram just launched a business product which I’m going to convert my account to this month.

Print Ads

The prime real estate with print ads is on elevators in high rise apartment buildings and mail rooms. I recently had the idea of putting my flyers up anywhere I see an outdoor mail room because the worst thing that could happen is they throw my flyer away.

Biz Dev

Short for business development, which basically means making mutually beneficial partnerships, especially with apartment complexes. I can feel myself starting to come out of my nervous funk and can see myself attacking this aspect of the business.

Cash Flow

My brother put in another $10k investment into my business in July. This money is specifically intended to help me get a commercial space. But the cash in the bank account had significantly dwindled before this infusion due to the $1k loss the business took and the $1k I took out to pay my bills.

I am determined to get the cash flow stabilized. The only way to do this is to increase sales through my marketing efforts.

Profit and Loss

We lost almost $1k overall in July which brings our year-to-date loss to nearly $6k. This of course still factors in the fact that I have not paid myself much through the business. Using the payroll to pay myself costs more in taxes so I prefer to withdraw from my original contribution instead.

August Goals

At this point I’m singularly focused on customer acquisition. I know the customers I have love my service. I just need to find more, faster. How do I get in front of more people?

In August I’m going to put most of my effort towards marketing.

1. Instagram — convert to business account and create new ads.
2. Print and post flyers at outdoor mail rooms (at least 10).
3. Find a new retail location and begin the process of acquiring it.
4. Update the Square account by entering the customer information for each transaction to date.

Bonus: Make a new partnership with an apartment complex and really try to get in the elevators.

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.

Previous Story:

5 Things Going Right with My Company

Next Story:

100 Customers