What Caused My First Business To Fail

To properly explain what my first business was and why it failed I have to explain what I did after high school. I joined the Marine Corps as an Infantryman as soon as I left highschool in 2014(I am front row 3rd from right).

Like every kid who plays with Army men action figures growing up I wanted to go to combat and fight. Unfortunately I was medically discharged after just a few years in due to back problems. It was during this time in rehab that I decided to start my first business.

I called my #business Dunn Right Technologies and it fit great because my last name is Dunn after all! My plan was to build drones for a wide variety of uses from surveying to #real estate. I also built drones for racing which was my true passion in this business but I unfortunately did not market it and never made much money off of selling or flying racing drones(I will be doing more posts about racing drones especially later). Right from the start my business was doomed to fail as I did not have a solid plan as to where my revenue was going to come from after one large contract fell through.

Let me rewind a bit to right before starting the business. I actually hadn't even thought about starting a business until one day an opportunity fell right into my lap. I had been building and messing around with drones for awhile and at this point I was still in the military but waiting to be discharged. I had been talking with a surveying company in town about doing surveying with drones for them but nothing too serious yet. One day a friend who was the manager of the local RadioShack invited me to attend a build a drone event for kids they were holding there. I of course wanted to attend and there was a bit of ego involved as I brought my drones as well. At this event I happened to meet a non profit organization called Declab. Declab was an organization dedicated to 3d printing and showing its capabilities to the world. They thought my drones were very cool and we swapped numbers after talking for a few hours.

A few weeks later the leader of their organization called me up with what sounded like an amazing opportunity. Apparently their organization had been contacted by the Marine Corps to see if Declab could build a hobby 3d printing lab on base for anyone to use. Somehow in that conversation drone racing came up and the Marines expressed an interest in developing their own drone racing team.

As Declab really had no knowledge of drones they kindly asked me if I would like to head up this project. I eagerly said yes. At this point after talking with a lawyer friend of mine who was extremely kind I decided to start my business with his help.

Unfortunately as months went on and the Marine Corps got wrapped up in other things and did not pursue this drone racing team seriously. At the same time there was infighting amongst Declab and the organization split up. I was given offers from one of the fragmented groups of Declab to head up a sort of community drone racing camp but declined. Their main goal was profit and I did not see the profit in what they were suggesting.

As I slowly realized that the #drone racing team would not come to fruition I had to come to terms with losing the potential main source of my #revenue. I turned to real estate as my next cash crop so to speak. At this point I was finally discharged and had no pay coming in from the military and had to solely rely on my business(only 3 months old at this point).

Many factors contributed to my slow failure but I ultimately take responsibility for it all. I have come to terms with the core reason for the failure and I will try to explain it properly. I grew up in a middle class family, I never went hungry and never saw my parents really struggle to provide for us. I believe this directly contributed to my work ethic and procrastination. My lawyer friend was kind enough to let me use an empty office of his for a fraction of what the rent cost and although I would spend 17 hours there a day I was not doing all I could.

I emailed and called at least 300 realtors in the area. I was invited to speak at two real estate group's offices. I messaged realtors on Facebook. After all that work I got 2 faithful clients and another client that didn't have much work. I honestly did create great videos, some of the houses sold within a few days of posting these videos. I used drones for the outside and filmed inside as well.

Here is an example of one video if you are interested.

The reason why my business failed was because I didn't have a passion for real estate film and I did not work my face off as #Gary Vaynerchuk says to make my business successful. I slacked off when I should have been picking up the phone and calling every realtor in the phonebook. I watched #Facebook videos instead of spending time strategizing my advertising approach on social media. I only capitalized on opportunities if they fell in my lap. I had a major revenue problem and I knew it.

The interesting trend that I noticed myself doing and many other young entrepreneurs today doing is that we constantly front that our business is going amazing even if it isn't. When my family would ask how's the business going I would say
"Amazing, it's going great!", when in reality it was doing horrible.

The final nail in the coffin was when DJI (the company who's drones I used for real estate videos) issued a firmware update to their drones which made it impossible to take off in restricted airspace. The entire town of Jacksonville, NC where I was was Restricted Airspace as Camp Lejeune (where I had been stationed) was there. I essentially lost all of my revenue overnight.

I had been thinking of going to college to be a #pilot for awhile. At this point I decided it was the best opportunity that I had. So I moved across the country to Utah to go to #college for Aviation Science.

It wasn't long however before I decided to start a new business, one that hopefully will succeed. One which I will learn from my mistakes in the past.

I will talk more about this business in my next post, hope you enjoyed this short #narrative of a chapter in my #life!