I'm Shutting Down My Business: Experience Worth Sharing
I lost my money, though I feel happy about it. Running a business that smacks your fundings like a cocktail is not easy, especcially if the only revenue it brings is an entrepreneur status (well, having business cards with your company e-mail, telephone and your name is cool as hell). Still, to go on you need a flame burning inside, a desire, a passion to continue so that you're full of inspiration and new ideas. Unfortunately, I lost the starter's eagerness and heat. Though, I don't worry about that as I know that after a serie of failures there will difinitely come success.
In this post I would like to cover some of the reasons for why I failed and share the valuable experience obtained. I hope that there can be some future entrepreneurs to read the article and draw conclusions so that they don't make my mistakes.
It was not that easy from the very beginning
...as I chose the neiche with extremely tough competition on the market, namely nail polish, scrabbs and stuff like that. Not being a typical chick myself it was quite difficult for me to get how they think and what criteria is decisive for them to buy a product. I tried to organise the content in an unusual and beautiful way and they found it too complicated; I designed a dark website myself so that it looked original but they considered it to be too exotic. A seria of trials, public polls and consultations didn't give my the wished answers: I still have it difficult to understand how their mind works.
Never use wix.com constructor,
... I mean. When I thought of creating a website I had really little money and that's why I decided to use an online-constructor wix.com. That was actually my crucial mistake. Designing the fashionable dark website I could hardly imagine that there was a mistake in its Java-Script and it would not function properly. I learned about the thing when I paid for the Wix services and published the website. Though it took some time for me to realize that it was not me to be responsible for the bugs and the site's being slow as hell. Furthermore, it was very difficult to organize the long rows of items and products we sold and so we decided to make two lending pages (still another mistake) on wix.com.
Here come the links so that you can enjoy the greatest Frankenstein webmonsters ever :'(
www.luckylakishop.com
www.luckylakigoods.com
www.luckylakiset.com
One good item in the showcase is better than a row of trinkets
... especcially in the very beginning. We tried to offer as many goods as possible and that was our mistake. It's much better to choose one good item to sell and advertise it properly (that would be much cheeper btw) than to spread your fundings on cheep and ineffective advertising of many goods.
I lost my money and I feel happy about shutting my business
... simply because I got tired of the bugs, mistakes, silly quiestions of my customers and beauty-industry. My payment is the experience obtained: now I know the laws of targeting ads, can manage an Instagram campain, know how to report accounts and where to find copywriters. I've learned so much about SEO, SMM, PR and can be a bit more objective in the future.
They say a good businessman fails seven times on average before they launch a good start-up. And this seems to be my first failure. Not bad at all, is it?
I have always been fascinated about entrepreneurship and I'm deeply impressed by those who jump in. Success and fails are part of the journey. Thank you for giving an insight on your experience. As you say, in the end, experience is the real reward.Thank you for sharing. My blessings on your next business move.
Congratulations! You are 12.5% of the way toward your successful startup. Only 6 more failures and you are there.
Truth! Thanks, made me chuckle & feel better. I have a couple under my belt : )
No worries I failed 4 times before I finally found my successful business. All I go to say is don't give up, eventually you'll find that one successful idea that will bring that dream to life. My recommendation is don't go into a niche that has tooooooo much competition (especially the cosmetic business). I would suggest you try to narrow it down to a very specific niche on your next venture. As they said on Shark Tank Once, would you rather have a crumb of a pie or would you like to have a small pie but the hole pie ;)
@steemingnow - I guess now you feel more FREE then you did when you were trying to keep the dead horse alive. I recently shut down one business initiative and it was a good decision. I gained more time to dedicate to better projects.
You say: "I've learned so much about SEO, SMM, PR and can be a bit more objective in the future." THATS'IT this will be worth a lot to you with your next business project.
Focus on the positive elements you can take with you.
Remember the negative element so to not make the exact same mistakes again and MOVE TO BETTER THINGS!!! :) Good Luck.
I just wrote an article about starting a business and plan to continue sharing more regarding what has brought me success and what has not... You're right though, as at least my first 4 businesses failed. There were probably less formal pursuits before that also. Stick with it, find and hone your idea, and eventually you will succeed.
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm"
I don't want to plug my own stuff with a link here, but check out my post today about business. It might help you with future ideas & markets in your next attempt :-) Cheers,
Was having a conversation this morning with my wife about my business failures. But I am at it again but this time around I am letting the business cash roll itself. With all my previous knowledge I should be able to scale in as it grows with my cash flows and not by taking on debt.
Totally agree with you as for the debts. That's not a source that lets you launch a good project, by no means. What is your neiche by the way?
I enjoy cooking and my daughter loves horses so to pay for her horse we started a salsa business. We did weekend trades shows but now I am in a handful of local stores. I hope to double my stores this year and add at least two more products.
Your face impression in your picture also shows that you are upset by losing your money and you shutting up your business? this was your first and last lost in business? you should try once or to another.
Do I look upset on the picture? That was meant so anyway. Just the other way about, I believe that it's possible to achieve good results passing a hard road of trials and failures. That is experience anyway, valuable experience, you know
This is universal truth that losing any thing make you worry and worry make you upset so it's o real that you will upset as you have lost some money in business. and in my opinion this is not worthless experience as you always learn from your mistakes or your work and any one who get experience always loss something it may time, it may be money or it mat health or friends.
sounds very familiar, @steemingnow !!! half a year ago my wife closed her shop of ecological goods, unfortunately web site is not working so I can`t show you, but here https://new.vk.com/ecoln. she made everything like you did (besides WIX), started from zero, made good site and so on. She worked for four years, than decided to stop and now she is happy too)))) saying hello to you)
I know about your feeling, I have just closed my shop...., but keep going on... You will find a better future :)
Thank you for writing an article about how you failed in business and what you learned from it. While success posts have their place, I think in many ways, they come up short on being relatable. I have had a few small businesses, some with partners and some on my own, and each of them changed me in a positive way. Thanks for the great content. I have upvoted and plan to feature it on my blog later this evening.