I’ve always seen myself as a free spirit. But, that didn’t prevent me from doing all the things I was “supposed” to do. I graduated from high school, got into a good college, and got a bachelor’s degree and my MBA.
This hard work landed me in corporate life. The American dream right? But something funny happened – I started working 80 hours a week and became frustrated and disappointed with life. I was supposed to be on cloud 9 at this point, right?!? I did everything I was told to do by society, my teachers, even my family.
Is This All There Is?
So why wasn’t I happy, and getting rich? Was this the life I had to look forward to for the next 40 to 50 years until retirement? I wanted more out of this life!
Interestingly enough, I ended up meeting a guy named Alex who was just as eager to find more in life between weekends. About seven months after meeting he started really getting interested in launching a business. I wasn’t convinced, so I kept working for my crappy paycheck, while drowning in coffee to stay awake.
But, Alex’s enthusiasm was infectious, and I finally jumped in to help. We created a website with recipes, got drunk often, and took all kinds of silly photos in the name of creating a way to get rich.
Reality check
Working on Alex’s concept was so much fun. There was just one little problem. After countless nights and weekends, it sunk in that this wasn’t making any money.
Fancy lights and pretty photos don’t mean a thing if you’re creating crappy stuff that no one wants. Luckily, we saw the writing on the wall after just three months. I have seen some entrepreneurs fail for much longer before calling it quits.
We could have given up at that point. Thank goodness we didn’t though. As they say, the breakthrough can happen around the time you feel like quitting.
We wanted to try again, but knew we had to go at it with an actual plan this time. We were going to figure out this world of entrepreneurship once and for all, and make it work – even if it took everything we had in us.
Escaping Prison #2 Before #1
Alex and I had to stay in the prison of our day jobs a while longer. Still, I felt like we escaped the prison of entrepreneur failure quickly just by forming a plan to try again.
We realized that there was a demographic we could create products for in the health and wellness space, and we were already knowledgeable about the topic. This time we committed to creating things for our ideal customers instead of for ourselves.
Though we didn’t immediately get a million-dollar idea, we did start to build a community. So, we decided to ditch our corporate prisons and dive into entrepreneurship full-time! With no back-up plan, our only option was a success.
“You Gotta Risk It To Get the Biscuit”
Alex likes this saying, and risk it we did. We risked everything. In January of 2016, we pulled the trigger and quit our full-time jobs. We sold everything we owned until everything that was still left to our names fit into just a few bags. Then, to save money on rent, Alex and I moved into his dad’s house. Steve Jobs building computers in his garage anyone?
Our First Real Sale
You know the saying if you can make $1 you can make $100, and if you can make $100 you can make $1,000, all the way up to a million? I may be inaccurate as to the exact quote, but you get the idea.
Our first real sale came about four months into our full-time business experiment. After all the lessons we’d learned, we finally made a sale. Our take-home was $5, but it felt like becoming a millionaire.
Fast forward to about our seventh month in, and we had created our own product that was doing pretty well. Then, thanks to our promotional efforts on Pinterest we suddenly had a win that changed the game. A pin went viral and ultimately lead to $5,000 in revenue in a single day. It didn’t stop there though! That month we earned more than $40,000.
Pay dirt!
We finally felt like we were free. Free from two prisons, and we could now make our own rules. We’ve done just that ever since, and you can too. We’re nothing special. You can do what we’ve done if you set your mind to it. So, chase your dreams, and you might get lucky enough to catch them!