#entrepreneurship #businesssuccess #failureispartofsuccess #learnfrommistakes #businessadvice
Hey everyone!
I’ve been lurking here for a while and I feel like I’m totally out of place here. It seems focused on internet startups and such, but I wanted to share my story anyways.
## The Rollercoaster of Entrepreneurship: From Success to Failure and Back Again
In 2015, I took a leap of faith and started a scratch insurance agency. With a friend who loaned me $50k, I built my book of business from zero to $1.5m in 4 years. I had a small team of 2-3 employees, and we were able to generate around $30k a month in revenue, with a take-home income of $120k per year. Eventually, I sold the business in 2019 for $200k and bought myself a house. 🏡
In late 2019, I ventured into the car rental business through Turo with 10 cars. Initially, things were going well, and I was making a profit of $400-500 per month per car without any employees. Unfortunately, the unforeseen circumstances of Covid-19 hit, and my business took a major hit. Adapting to the situation, I sold the cars and filed for bankruptcy. It was a tough blow, but I knew I had to persevere. 💪💸
Feeling the need for another fresh start, in late 2020, I joined forces with 3 other individuals to create an OnlyFans page. The income from this venture was lucrative, with a peak monthly earning of $12k. However, as the sole male actor and juggling various roles like marketing, communication, filming, and editing, burnout eventually caught up with all of us. It was a valuable learning experience about the challenges of collaborative businesses. 🎥💔
## Rest, Reset, and Rise: The Journey to Success
In 2022, I took a pause from entrepreneurship and worked for a year at a small hotel startup. It was an eye-opening experience, but I realized that the high overhead costs in the hospitality industry weren’t aligned with my business goals. 🏨💼
Late in 2023, I found my niche in the automotive industry. Working for a retiring mechanic, I observed the business operations and eventually took over as the manager. Through hard work and dedication, I was able to increase the revenue from $50-60k to $90-100k per month, with an improved profit margin of 52%. My take-home income has seen a significant boost, with the last 4 weeks bringing in $30k. 🚗💰
## Embracing Failure, Learning, and Growing Stronger
My journey as an entrepreneur has been a rollercoaster of successes and failures. Each setback has been a valuable lesson that has helped me grow stronger and more resilient. Embracing failure as part of the entrepreneurial process is crucial for personal and professional growth. It’s essential to learn from mistakes, adapt to challenges, and keep pushing forward, no matter how many times you fall. 🌟🚀
So, to all the aspiring entrepreneurs out there, remember that failures are not the end but a stepping stone to greater success. Keep pushing your limits, learning from experiences, and never be afraid to start again. Success might be just around the corner, waiting for you to seize it. 🌈✨
Anyways, AMA!! 🙌
With resilience and determination,
[Your Name]
If you had to boil it down to one thing, what would you say was the biggest contributor to growing the mechanic business?
And as someone who started a painting business at the beginning of the year I feel the same way (out of place here). The service industry has so much room for improvement it’s insane. Also shout-out Denver!
I own a 3 bay mechanic shop and am doing around 60-70k a month depending on the season.
How big of a shop have you got to get to that $100k mark?
Dude….they should study you at the Harvard school of business as a case study. What an amazing journey so far!!! I hope it’s all real.
Just commenting to stay on. Nice job so far
From insurance to OF to mechanics, sounds like you’re collecting business genres like Pokémon. What’s next, space tourism?
This OF shit is ridiculous. People are making bank off it, makes you think how lucrative the adult industry is.
I don’t support it and can’t bring myself to associate myself with it but to make anything successful requires serious effort.
Why did you not go back to previous fields like the insurance agency?
What is your education?
What did you update at the mechanic shop? Almost doubling revenue in six months…that’s crazy.
Impressive hustle! Ever dabble in web startups?
I know everyone is interested in the OF part 😉 but I’m more curious about the insurance business. Can you share what it was and how you grew it? Why didn’t you go back to it?
How did you go about meeting the mechanic that wanted to retire? I can’t imagine that was a coincident…or was it? did you just end up working for a mechanic and it just worked out?
Any blowback (no pun intended) from the OF content creation? Taking in 7k a month to be a corn star doesn’t sound like the juice is worth the squeeze. I’m sure it was fun, but seems like family, relationship, and even building business partnerships would be tarnished with this on your resume.
If you were making 120k a year with your insurance company why would you only sell for 200k?
You should write a book, your life seems very interesting. Im really inspired by your ability to find a market, study it, bring it to its best form, and move on. I hope you find more success
Before 2023 did you have any experience as a mechanic? Or were you at least a “car guy”? Wondering how much hands-on experience you had, as your business acumen seems to be second nature.
Lol this is a crazy story. I have many questions lol.
1. Why did you sell the insurance business for only 200k if it was making 1.5 million?
2. How did you find the girls for the OF? What did you say to get them to agree? Most importantly how did you market a business like that from 0?
3. What’s the plan with the mechanic shop? Are you gonna stay there and grow it, or plan to sell it in the future?
4. These are all very different businesses. What is your main skill sets to be able to get into so many industries and be able to grow and make money in all of them?
Wow, your entrepreneurial journey is wild! It’s inspiring to see how you’ve tackled different ventures and found success despite the challenges. From insurance to adult content to managing a mechanic business, you’ve got quite the diverse skill set. Keep hustling and thanks for sharing your story!
More of a general question here. I am quite risk-adverse as a person, but really want to be a business owner at some point (I know, it seems conflicting). I always tend to talk myself out of ideas due to financial risk and whatnot. For example, buying 10 cars for Turo seems super risky for me especially since they are depreciating assets as soon as you buy them and are already starting off on a loss.
Did you ever get the same fears when starting a business? How did you overcome this?
This is truly inspirational. You should definitely do a podcast you’d be a great guest to have.
Finally an actual real business on this sub. Good for you. My first business was about 95 percent held in a note to the seller. I’ve used that strategy a handful of times in both real estate and commercial blue sky businesses. There is a real need for millennials to take over boomer businesses and a lot of those sellers would be happy to carry a note instead of shutting their doors.
I like reading non-Internet ventures and experiences. Really inspiring.
Was the bankruptcy with a corporate structure? Or was it personal? If the latter, how did it affect your ability to do business after?
What sort of insurance company was it? Did you have any experience/expertise in this insurance industry before you started the company? How did you gain this experience, and how long did it take you to learn enough to give you the confidence to start your own business?
Where did you get your skills in marketing? How can one learn them?
Congratulations! As someone who has been unemployed for a little while and trying to figure out how to make £1.5k a month to survive this is really inspiring.
I wanted to start a management company for OF creators. I know some and they struggle with the marketing and creating more revenue. Would you be willing to give me some advice and show me how you learned the marketing part of OF? I assume you also used other SMs to funnel potential users to your OF
Hey do you need a social media manager 😅
I’m interested to know how you made these different diverse businesses work. How’d you manage to accumulate the knowledge required to grow these businesses in different industries or did you have experience in all of them including your first venture? Was it mainly marketing or applying different strategies to increase the income specifically in the last business?
How did you do the OF, sounds interesting
OP, only….oil pans
You should teach business to everyone here who’s struggling
Great job with the businesses! It’s actually very inspiring how someone can diversify like you. 🙏
How did you start and grow your insurance business? What was your overhead? Thanks for sharing.
– What’s your insight that let you start a reinsurance company? (apologies if I don’t understand reinsurance vs captive)
– What’s the economics behind Turo? I browsed a bit and looks like it’s only for nice cars, but what are the segments and how big are different segments (nice/event cars, car for travelers, car just to get around)
– What insight that make you choose OF? (maybe your looks, the skill that makes video good, or maybe people don’t care about quality and just pay for whatever is available?) or did you just do it because OF was on the rise during pandemic?
– What kind of service do you perform for customer who schedule online? It seems people still pull up to the mechanics for an oil change/light service or leave the car there for days for big services.
How can one get more out of the employee mindset and more into the entrepreneur one? How to overcome fear?
How many hours a day do you work on business, on average, regardless of day or place? Even better, how much of your waking time do you dedicate to your business?
Insurance made $120k a year and sold for $200k?
Why so low?
Very interesting! How did the car rental thing end in bankruptcy? Were the cars depreciating very quickly and that wasn’t being accounted for in the profit? I can’t remember what happened with used cars in early covid- were they down before the price jumped?