I’m scared. Scared to be a failure, Scared to ask for help. All hidden behind ego. I wanted to start a business in the fitness industry, but I always thought that it was too saturated and that I didn’t have the skills to make it work. I’ve only ever sold door to door. There is no way I can run a fitness brand in this saturated market.
Things changed when I met my wife, Taylor. There I was sipping on a new flavor of pre-workout she bought me. Summer was around the corner and I filled up my shaker bottle with ice. This made it that perfect cold temperature ,the only way to make pre-workout taste good. After sipping I looked at Taylor and said " This reminds me of a grape otter pop.” She got excited and replied, ”Let's make some Pre workout ice pops.” Taylor ordered popsicle sleeves on amazon and the idea of Pre Workout Pops was born.
A year and half later my wife and I both lost our jobs due to covid. I figured this was as good a time as any to revisit our Pre Workout Popsicle idea. I assumed making my own preworkout formula would be easy. I looked on the back of a pre workout container and ordered all the ingredients listed. I whipped up a batch, mixed it with an otter pop and froze it. I woke up the next morning so excited to try my new creation. I opened the freezer, took out the pop and had my first bite… Then immediately spit it out and started gagging. It was the most bitter and unpalatable thing I had ever tasted. I tried a few more times with different ideas and they were all terrible.
Taylor came to the rescue with youtube and google to see how otter pops are made. This led me down a long rabbit hole of researching every ingredient listed, to learn what it was made for. I learned about pH balance, acid ratios, preservatives and thickening agents. After many hours of painstaking research I concocted something that tasted ok… I was ecstatic over this small victory. It gave me enough proof to keep going.
In the end I wasn’t smart enough to finalize a flavor. I found some food chemists for hire on a site called Kollab tree (heard about this from The Tim Ferriss Show). They finished the formula to the delicious tasting pops we have today.
Every step in the process I come across my own limiting beliefs smashed up against my ego. Remember I’m a college dropout who makes a living selling door to door. The wise thing to do was go be a student of someone who has built a supplement ecommerce business but I feared ignorance so I plowed on ahead thinking I can figure it out on my own. I paid the cost of my ego financially and emotionally.
Manufacturing:
I knew I needed manufacturing. I started googling and searching for manufacturing. I called and emailed so many places and typically got two responses. 1. We can’t manufacture ice-pops, we only powder/capsules/cans etc. 2. We have a MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) so high I couldn’t afford it. One manufacturing run would cost me at least 60k, others upwards of 250k. I still haven’t learned how to market. I thought about getting funding but I was too scared to go into debt for something I had no idea if I could sell. Depressed and anxious, I searched for popsicle machines online. I came across alibaba and found an ice pop machine for only 5k. I bought it on a whim at 2am.
Marketing:
My idea of marketing is to just post on instagram. So I started posting and got some traction. My first customers loved the product. I knew I needed to post more and more often but my content wasn’t that great and I didn’t see a good return. I switched strategies to affiliate marketing, I got around 200 affiliates fairly quickly but only a small percentage actually posted and an even smaller percentage got sales. It wasn’t working. The next thing I tried was paying influencers. Since affiliates didn’t generate revenue if I pay some influencers they should generate sales. So I paid an influencer $1500 and got 1 sale from it. Meanwhile my bank account is going down and my credit card balance is going up! Ads must be the key. I hired an agency and started running ads and my cost per acquisition was so high I was losing money on every customer.
After losing thousands of dollars, going through therapy I was finally able to start asking for help. I started learning. Every one of these strategies I’ve tried works for other people. You can build a multi million dollar company with each one. My problem was I switched strategies so many times I never got good enough at one of them for it to work. My level of input was too low. No wonder none of them worked.
After 3 years of losing in business I now have the mindset and the framework to start succeeding. I still have so much to learn, but you only truly lose in business if you quit. It's time to stop trying my best and instead do what is required.