I’m a 26-year-old who’s been working full-time since 19, jumping between jobs. Anyone out there who’s ditched the 9-5, how did you do it? Any advice on how to start breaking free from the rat race? Thanks!
I’m a 26-year-old who’s been working full-time since 19, jumping between jobs. Anyone out there who’s ditched the 9-5, how did you do it? Any advice on how to start breaking free from the rat race? Thanks!
Commercial HVAC guy here - I have toyed with so many times starting my own biz, always turned off by seeing owners bust their ass for so little return on so many hours and stress.
The funny thing is everyone seems to have this conception they are making bank (and they probably are to an extent) - but for a 24/7 never ending slog, no thanks.
Very encourage to see some one from a similar back ground “make it” in another sector.
Did u start this whilst working FT as an electrician? Also would you care to dive more into your selection thought process? Where you nervous going into something that is not your back ground? Did you try several things until something “stick”?
Yeah I hear you there, one of my last year in the trades I was making around $60hr, worked a lot of overtime and at the end of the year on the W2 it looked impressive but I was downright exhausted physically and mentally and knew I just couldn’t do this another 20+ years.
Moving into something else was scary but I also knew that if I kept at it I would find something that worked. I don’t like to share that exact product or our brand because frankly it wouldn’t be that hard to replicate, now we have a good moat with the product variety and “expertise” I’ll just say it has something that is welded together and powder coated. The first few years was out of my garage and just myself, my first hire was actually my UPS guy who was always curious what I was doing and saw that I was growing, I first had him help out on his free days and a year later he came on full time and we moved into our first industrial space.
I paid him before I paid myself, and yes I was working my regular job at the same time. We sell a lot of B2B -business to business and had a customer reach out from my Craigslist ad, he bought one and then after seeing the quality asked if we could make a hundred or so in different sizes and colors. We did and we’re off to the races, I discovered how to sell on Amazon in 2013 and that’s been our biggest marketplace next to Home Depot and our general b2b sales.
I did try many things, mostly focusing on products as I liked the idea of selling stuff and not relying on my physical input to make money. I flipped items on eBay and even did wholesale for awhile but I quickly realized the real winners were the brand owners so I decided I needed to make my own brand of something. We now have 5 successful brands, with our lowest sales one just pulling in $300K a year, has high margins though of 40% and we literally don’t touch it, we contract out in Taiwan, it gets shipped directly to Amazon 3 times a year.
I’ve also failed at several lol, I tried some kids toy stuff only to get letters by patent owners, also had some electronics that worked well for awhile but found they were a fire hazard and so I just divested myself from them. I was chasing the next big thing instead of focusing on what I already have.