How I Made $1 Million And Lost It In 9 Months
How it almost didn’t happen.
It all started in February of 2017. I noticed my friend posting on Snapchat about a new business he was starting (it was a dropshipping company). I replied to one of his Snapchat stories saying “dude looks like a cool biz.” He replied back saying, “It’s amazing and I need show what I am doing.” We met up for lunch and he told me all about it. I loved it! Over the years I’ve started several companies like a dating app, an iPad rental company, etc. I was looking for a new side hustle. I went to work and created my own Shopify store imported all the products I thought were cool from AliExpress. It was a website for dudes and I was selling everything wooden like sunglasses, ties, and watches. I ran some ads and thought I was going to make so much money. Unfortunately, I only sold three wooden ties in three weeks. I kept researching wondering what I was doing wrong. My buddy kept posting to Snapchat showing all the success he was having. I reached back out to my friend telling him what I was doing and what little success I was having. He then told me he wanted to meet up and show me behind the scenes. At this point, I told a coworker of mine about what I was doing and he wanted in. I set up a meeting between all three of us. My buddy outlined the specifics like how to set up your Shopify store to convert, how to find a product, and how to run ads via Facebook. My coworker and I went crazy creating a new website and testing new products. We found a winner! *I can’t disclose what I was selling (you’ll find out why later). The site gradually grew over 2–3 weeks to about $300 a day. One day, I was listening to the podcast “How I Built This” and Guy was interviewing Jim Koch founder of Samuel Adams, and Jim said something that stuck out to me. He said, “What was actually dangerous, but not scary, was staying and continuing to do a job that I wasn’t happy doing anymore. It wasn’t my passion. Continuing to do that for 30 more years, and getting to the end of my career and going: ‘Oh my gosh. I wasted my life,’ that’s dangerous.” I didn’t love what I was doing and I wanted to do something for myself full time. So, I quit my job. I wasn’t taking any money out of the business because it was breaking even and thought I had enough saved. It was towards the end of May I thought I was going to run out of money. I was so nervous and sick to my stomach that I made such a rash decision to quit.
In April, I went on a fishing trip to Lake Powell. The night before I drove down I was super stressed and knew I shouldn’t be going on this fishing trip because I had no money. On my drive down I couldn’t stop thinking to myself that I had one last ditch effort to make this work. So, I stopped off at a truck stop and turned on my phones hotspot, I pulled out my computer and created a bunch of new Facebook ads. For a brief time on the lake, I was able to escape the worries of money and just enjoy fishing. The next day we headed back to Antelope Point Marina and my mind started racing and I started stressing about money and the website. As I got closer to shore I finally got service and my phone started buzzing like crazy and making a cha-ching sound (sales were rolling in). I earned over $1,000 that Saturday and I thought to myself it’s game time!
Damn that hurt, but I’m free now.
My eCommerce site continued to grow and bring in money. I did so well people started to notice. My friend JB wanted to start a website with me (him and I started the dating app Tether a few years ago). I thought sure why not run two sites and make double the money. It took us about a month to find a winning product. The website blew up faster than my first one (I knew what I was doing at this point). We eventually started making around $6k-$8k a day on this new site. My first website wasn’t doing as well and I wanted out, because I felt my business partner was putting in very little effort. I didn’t know how to break this to him. I remember sitting down with him one day expressing all my frustrations and after our conversation he started working hard. I thought I would change my mind about wanting out, but a week or so later he went back to hardly doing anything. He just focused on other business ideas. Frustrated, I came up with an idea of selling my half of the business. I presented the idea to him and we started negotiating terms. While that was going on, I decided to build a competing website so I didn’t lose out on any revenue (shady I know). He found out about the website and wasn’t happy. He sneakily removed me from everything before paying the $15k we agreed upon (that was way undervalued). I had no access to any of my accounts relating to our website together and he wrote me saying, he found out what I was doing. I made no money off the deal but I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders (I was free). I know I only have myself to blame for what went wrong and I hold no grudges or ill will towards him (I am sorry how things went down). I learned valuable lessons on how important a healthy partnership is and how important communication is. Also, integrity is important and you don’t want to lose it just to gain a quick buck.*This is why I didn’t want to tell you in the first paragraph what we were selling #nomoredrama.
The Glory Days.
With all the drama and stress behind me, I went to work (literally putting in 16hr days). We were crushing it, making $10k-$12k a day! One day, we received a cease-and-desist letter from a local boutique. It was because we were using their photos. We got all our photos from our suppliers on AliExpress and being naive and new dropshipping we didn’t know we are committing copyright infringement. We stopped all the ads running those products and moved on. We found some new products and began crushing it once again. During Black Friday weekend we killed it making just over $75k. I was on top of the world. We hired my sister to process orders and hired a VA to do all our customer service. The website was basically on autopilot. We continued our success through December and January. In 8–9 months we made over $1 million in gross revenue. We thought there was nothing that could stop us.
The beginning of the end.
Remember that cease-and-desist letter? Yep, they were back and they wanted blood. I remember this day like it was yesterday, I was walking out of my house and a lady stepped out of her truck. She approached me and asked if I was Donny Harding and I said yes. She handed me a stack of papers and said you’re being served. Little did we know we still had a retargeting ad running with their images (yes, how stupid of us). I have never been sued before and I had no idea what was to come. We called around until a lawyer picked up and would talk to us. We were hoping all we had to do was respond and tell our side of the story and everything would be okay. But that was not the case. Their lawyer was stubborn and unwilling to work with us. We soon found ourselves in the middle of a lawsuit that looked like the only outcome was bankruptcy. We are now coming towards the end of the lawsuit and hopefully a resolution. It has caused so much stress and anxiety we ended up shutting the website down. We weren’t giving it the attention it needed and it was loosing a lot of money. It was a fun ride full of challenges, lessons, hard work, drama, and joy!
What I’m doing now.
I’ve turned my time and attention to a new startup I named 3AM Rebound, it’s a drink that cures the dreaded hangover. I’m still doing eCommerce, but I’m avoiding AliExpress like the plague. I want to create a product that is unique and solves a real issue. One that I could brand and build from the ground up. I don’t want to have to deal with international suppliers and outrageous shipping times. I hate when customers get angry because the product they received is poor quality or their item got lost in the mail (come to find out the supplier never sent it). For these reasons, I have chosen to move away from dropshipping off AliExpress. I am going down the road less traveled. One where I have to create my own formula, find a manufacturer, educate a market, launch a crowdfunding campaign, etc. I am happy to be on this path and look forward to the challenges that lie ahead.
Check out my new start up here: www.3amrebound.com
I would love your feedback.
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