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5 years ago I set a goal of building a business to $1 million... I did it.
Tom W Brown
21.8K posts
Tom W Brown
@TomBrown
Started with $60. Sold millions of protein bars, safety alarms, bottles of gin @jamesmaygin, deodorant @docandglo
Strategy, sarcasm & unsolicited advice ↓
- Ecom software I'm most bullish on this year: • Junip • Replo • Novel • Siena • Recart • Platter • Soona • Archive • Lifetimely • RE:INVENT • Black Crow • Social Snowball • Aftersell + Upcart To name but a few. All are fantastic products with even better teams.
- The UK is fascinating. You fall outside of the "norm" for a moment and you're excluded. Earn extra income on the side? There's no box for that. Run a business and have a job? Here's 37 forms to complete for your tax return. The place kills entrepreneurial spirit.
- Last week my little one-person ecommerce side hustle crossed £1.2M / $1.5M in revenue. It took 740 days and operates at ~30% net margin. Here are 8 steps of my nutty journey. Really hope it's helpful to someone. 👇
- Where Shopify merchants try to save money: $7 app subscriptions Areas that actually matter: • COGS ($50K+) • Product line ($50K+) • Negotiating contracts ($25K+) • Acquisition costs ($20K+) • Loan interest ($5K+) Stop asking $7 questions & start asking $70K questions
- I used influencer seeding to scale my "side hustle" to its first $2M. The only outlays: • The cost of product • Time to manage DMs But it's easy to think Influencer Seeding is manipulative. Below is the exact method I used to drive my 'little brand' to its first $2M
- Not gonna lie, we started building Canva ad templates internally last year with the intention of selling them later on... Creative OS crushed it. This isn't even a competition anymore. Not gonna be the dude to post an referral link but if you want it, my DMs are wide open.
- Completed it! 🙌 (Yes, this is nuts – this started as a side gig in February)
- My ecom side hustle has done over $1.5M / £1.3M in 2 years. I outsource as much as humanly possible. Via apps, agencies and tools. My 10 "must have" tools:
- If these are your numbers at $100k, you drastically need to relearn operations, accounting and get your hands dirty. $3-5k tops on agencies, $1k tops on apps. Otherwise go get a job and stop being taken to the cleaners.100k/month in ecom means ur poor. - $60K meta ads - $25k COGS - $20K agencies - $2K VAs - $5K shopify apps Whens the course coming BRO?!
