The title says it all…who doesn’t want to get rich fast with the least amount of work? I’m no different than most of you, but at the same time over the years I have learned that there really is no shortcut and how much wealth you build is correlated to the amount of work you output. Honestly, starting small is actually the best thing that could ever happen to you as a entrepreneur because trust me…the journey and experience will give you the skill that can make you income into perpetuity. When I first started selling sneakers my goal was simple…I wanted to make enough money to cover my expenses and compliment my 9-5 day job income. As I slowly attained that goal, my next target was to make enough to eclipse my 9-5 salary so I could eventually quit or atleast not rely on it to live. I eventually eclipsed that goal and now…I don’t even know what I want at the moment, but the goal of today’s blog post is to get your mindset right and keep you focused.
I’m not going to lie…when I first started selling sneakers I was super envious of SoleSupremacy and was questioning how on earth can they move so much volume. At the time I didn’t just sit there be envious and salty, but rather I kept thinking 24/7 how I can do the same thing. I still remember seeing those posts where they had an entire UPS truck full of packages every Monday. At that time, my goal was just to sell 1 pair of sneaker a day and when I saw posts like that my next question was how do I get to that level? The question of HOW is what really drives you as an entrepreneur to think outside of the box to make it happen. Business by nature is not easy because there is just SOOO MUCH competition out there…where everybody is literally trying to do the same thing as you…so how can you beat the competition and be profitable? If you are not thinking about how you can create business 24/7 on your mind and I really mean every day, every minute… then maybe you are not meant to be a businessman. What goes through my mind every day is how can I improve the business and what are new and innovative ways to sell sneakers. I think about it when I’m in the shower, when I’m taking a dump and even while i’m watching TV. I miss the days where I can watch a movie without having to think about the business and be able to zone out.
However, I do hope the sharing of my experience can help you gear your mindset of where you want to take the business. I’ll be upfront…there is no get Rich Fast formula, and even if there was, you won’t stay rich forever and here’s why. I build Netmag from nothing…literally nothing…so the skill set and experience I have learned over the last 6-7 years will stay with me forever. I learned what works and what doesn’t work…sure the market keeps changing, but I also learned to adapt well to changing environments. Even if I stopped doing shoes today…this same skill set will stay with me forever and I can easily apply it to a different product and earn money elsewhere. This also explains why some people that win the lottery end up being broke because they don’t have the skill set to make money in the first place after they blow their fortune. Easy come, easy go.
Putting things into perspective, had Netmag was handed to me on a silver platter from the getgo, I may have already fucked things up because I wouldn’t know what to do if problems started arising. I wouldn’t have the experience to handle situations. Here’s why starting small is the best thing that can happen to you. Firstly when customer volume is low, you are able to attend to issues on a 1 to 1 basis. Nowadays, I get so many emails a day that I can probably honestly get through only 50% of them, but as I know this is a problem, I try my best to streamline everything to minimize the amount of emails we get from customers so that my time can be used efficiently elsewhere.
If there are problems that arise from the business (oh and trust me…you’ll have 1 trillion problems come your way – if you’re a business and you don’t have problems…i think it might be safe to say it’s not a business), they would be considered small problems and you can actually spend the time to solve it. Similarly, if you are small and make a mistake…the mistake is probably smaller in nature and can be solved and prevented in the future. If someone gave me a business that moves 1000 pairs of a shoes a month…I would literally die because I would be bombarded with customer emails and I wouldn’t even be near ready to handle and ship 1000 packages a month. So the moral of the story is don’t be envious of what other have built because for the most part they got there for a reason in the first place. You don’t see the work that happens behind the scenes so it’s not fair to judge one’s success without seeing the other side of the story. However, I do suggest is use it as motivation to learn and create so you can be at their level because if you don’t have this mindset, then I hate to be frank….but business isn’t for you.
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