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What was your worst strategy, lose money, avoid failure ?!

by SEOscholar
7 replies
Hello.

Well, everybody is asking how to be rich, what they need to do, but I want ask you guys, who lost money, guys who made start - up or long time business, but now it is gone. What mistakes you made, what steps are bad to do and how avoid failure?

Because you had customers, but what happened, why you lost profit?
Thank you for every shared experience !
#avoid #failure #lose #money #strategy #worst
  • Profile picture of the author Dot Commoner
    The worst thing any marketer, student or businessman can do is not take action - aka procrastination.

    You see all the reading and study in the world doesn't help you unless you take action! Up and until the point in time where you take action: everything you've learned is simply hearsay - and regardless of how correct it sounds or seems: it could all be lies, b.s, or out dated.

    As soon as you start taking action you gain True Knowledge - that is knowledge gained from actual experience and practice - rather than knowledge based in hearsay and conjecture.

    Trial and error are the number one tools for learning anything - you establish certainty of what works and what doesn't - so, my advice is: take action and find out for yourself what works.

    Furthermore - when I first started making money online I quickly understood: there is no time limits for a business you love.

    Some of my best info products were crafted by starting work at 11:00pm and writing non-stop (except to make cups of tea) until 6:00am the following morning.

    Just my 2cents, hope I answered your question,
    Peace and blessings,
    Dot Commr
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    • Profile picture of the author CaRTmAnBrAh
      Originally Posted by Dot Commoner View Post

      Up and until the point in time where you take action: everything you've learned is simply hearsay - and regardless of how correct it sounds or seems: it could all be lies, b.s, or out dated.

      As soon as you start taking action you gain True Knowledge - that is knowledge gained from actual experience and practice - rather than knowledge based in hearsay and conjecture.

      Trial and error are the number one tools for learning anything - you establish certainty of what works and what doesn't - so, my advice is: take action and find out for yourself what works.
      I enjoyed reading this post. Points very well made without a load of waffle. If you had a list, I'd opt-in.
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      • Profile picture of the author Claude Whitacre
        Perhaps 25 years ago, I bought a distributorship of carpet cleaners. It was a store, that rented carpet cleaners, and we sold them in people's homes, after offering to clean a room of carpet for free.

        There was a hiring, training, compensation program that I followed.

        When I went into that business, I had $200,000 in the bank, and I left a thriving sales business. Why? Because it was a shiny object, and I was stupid.

        So....I opened a store, hired "reps", put them all on a salary, put up signs.....and went to work.

        In 8 months, I had personally made perhaps 5 sales. My reps, maybe 8 in all made zero sales. My money was gone. I kept tweeking it, and tweeking it. I finally had to admit that it was simply a bad idea, and a terrible business model.

        I visited the home office, and realized that the guy that crated the business plan, did it without any testing. And it was just his way of selling carpet cleaners in bulk...to guys like me.

        It was the only time I lost money in a business. And it was because I bought someone else's plan. But it was my fault. I saw a shiny object, and all critical thinking went out the door.
        Signature
        One Call Closing book https://www.amazon.com/One-Call-Clos...=1527788418&sr

        "Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a great battle" Ian Maclaren
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        • Profile picture of the author CaRTmAnBrAh
          Originally Posted by Claude Whitacre View Post

          My reps, maybe 8 in all made zero sales. My money was gone. I kept tweeking it, and tweeking it. I finally had to admit that it was simply a bad idea, and a terrible business model.

          I visited the home office, and realized that the guy that crated the business plan, did it without any testing. And it was just his way of selling carpet cleaners in bulk...to guys like me.

          It was the only time I lost money in a business. And it was because I bought someone else's plan. But it was my fault. I saw a shiny object, and all critical thinking went out the door.
          Great post Claude. Damn I bet you had some sleepless nights over those sales figures.
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          • Profile picture of the author Claude Whitacre
            Originally Posted by CaRTmAnBrAh View Post

            Great post Claude. Damn I bet you had some sleepless nights over those sales figures.

            I honestly thought it was me. I must have been doing something wrong, not following the program.

            At about the 3 month point, I saw obvious problems. It was a sinking ship. But it was my ship, and I had put so much money into it.

            One day, one of my guys was telling me, "Claude, I had a great week cleaning carpets. I made over $2,000 this week!"

            My stomach twisted in a knot. Sure, he had no sales. Sure, I was out two grand for nothing. But the part that killed me, was that none of the "reps" ever talked about sales. They had all convinced themselves that our business was cleaning carpets for free. And at our sales meetings, they had learned to ignore all my talk about selling.

            The program was built to take non-salespeople, have them clean carpets for free, pay them well for each carpet they clean, and not pay a commission. Somehow, sales would just "happen"

            So I ended up with very nice, thoughtful, team of non-salespeople who never thought about selling at all. The last month or so, I went into the field myself, after firing the lot.

            And then is when it hit me. These machines were almost impossible to sell. And cleaning someone's carpet for free, was a huge barrier to selling them.

            Years later, I realized that the lessons I learned while losing money, were worth far more than the money I lost. You learn to think very clearly, when you have lost everything..and it's your fault.
            Signature
            One Call Closing book https://www.amazon.com/One-Call-Clos...=1527788418&sr

            "Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a great battle" Ian Maclaren
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  • Profile picture of the author Ron Lafuddy
    Yeah, we've had the "millionaire's" thread.

    Now, we need the "money lost" thread.

    Hoo boy! Painful to think about, even today.

    My biggest downfall in business, was picking
    a bad partner. I also picked him for the wrong
    reason: money.

    His personal problems, crept into the business
    like a spider weaving a web. By the time I figured
    out the depth of trouble, there was only time to
    react.

    Culminated in him being arrested on the premises and
    me, because of some fast paper shuffling, being able
    to walk away with the shirt on my back.

    I was/am grateful.

    Thank you, Jack...wherever you are.

    Many lessons learned.

    The biggest takeaway: be extremely careful what you sign
    in the way of personal guarantees and notes.

    Ron
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  • Profile picture of the author longrobnc
    This is a pretty embarrassing story. Some people have failure stories that have blame that can be layed in a lot of areas. My story is a simple representation of one simple lazy A-hole, me.

    I once owned a seamless gutter company. My wife and I did the sales. My mom owned a siding company so I had a lot of connections. I bought a used machine from my buddy on a nice trailer. He tossed in some material= $12K. I financed a used Silverado for $15K and bought about $2500 in material. I hired 1 installer. Some jobs were hard for him to do alone, but he managed or I stopped by and helped for a few minutes. While I was in the area I would knock on a few doors and hand out cards. Most mornings we hit the street and started knocking on doors and showing up at job sites. I net about $6k my 1st month and I was not logging that many hours.

    About 8 months in, I had 2 new Isuzu box trucks going and I was selling out of the Silverado. I had even started selling some garage doors and siding to my customers and was getting kickbacks on that end also.

    Then, I got really lazy. I stopped looking for ways to expand and I started screwing off instead of selling. We started having slow times and I lost two great installers. Things stagnated, so I sold the company. I had enough coin left to live conservatively for a few years. I spent all of the money by sitting on my butt and had to get a sales job for someone else. That was the wake up call.

    Now, the folks who bought that business do well over $1MM a month in home services in my area. Now, every time I see one of their trucks I feel like Dee Dee Sharp is doing the Mashed Potato on my testes.
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