My business journey (10 months of failures)

written by:
TIM SCHREIBER
date:
June 14, 2024

I remember it like it was yesterday.

March of 2023.

I’d just returned from the astonishing landscapes & panoramic views in southern France.

The beautiful beachfront of Nice.

The mystifying greatness of Pont du Gard.

The breathtaking lavender fields in Provence.

But one place stood out: Monaco.

The yachts, the supercars, the casinos… 

But most importantly the dream of chilling out in the sun, being able to do whatever I want, inspired me to finally say: 

Fuck it.

It had been more than 6 months since I got into online entrepreneurship.

Every day I consumed at least 3 hours of:

  • Alex Hormozi
  • Iman Gadhi
  • Sam Ovens

And many more businessmen alike.

But I’d always put off starting my own business.

“I’ll do it once I’ve graduated.”

Graduation came and went.

“I’ll do it once I have more clarity.”

The clarity never came.

“I’ll do it once I have a job.”

I got a job but I was still paralyzed.

On the 17th of March 2023, that changed.

I started my first ever business: An ads agency.

I didn’t even know how the fuck ads worked, all I knew was that I needed to attract clients (somehow).

So I started sending cold emails to local cafes.

That’s why I ceremonially named my business “CoffeeAds Media”.

Just about 10 cold emails later… I’d already given up (lol).

“Not a single reply? This must not be working.”

Onto the next thing.

This cycle repeated itself a few times with a few other business models.

None of them gained any traction.

One day, however, I realized my mistake:

I didn’t stick to it for long enough.

I wasn’t putting in the reps.

For the next couple of days, I thought long & hard about what service to sell to whom.

That’s when a stroke of genius hit me:

“Why don’t I do webdesign? I’ve always liked designing and creating stuff.”

Swiftly I pulled up a YouTube tutorial and got started.

I designed my first website and had a fucking blast doing so.

“This must be it!”

The next day I scraped Google Maps for every lawyer in my hometown.

(Don’t ask me why I chose lawyers…)

I now had a list of over 200 prospects I could email.

And so I did.

I even cold-called a couple of them.

Hours of laborious work for …drumroll please… 1 response.

A friendly family lawyer who lived near me.

He didn’t want me to design a new website. He merely wanted me to fix some stuff on his existing one.

I did that for free and got my first ever testimonial.

Eventually, he did end up paying me for maintenance services.

I’d made my first dollar online! Yay!

The problem?

I hated the work. 

I couldn’t care less about some lawyer's website.

This wasn’t the purposeful business model that I was looking for.

Slowly but surely, I fell into a rut. 

Every day I was doing tasks that I absolutely despised:

  • Scraping Google Maps
  • Sending cold emails to people I didn’t like
  • Working on a shitty WordPress website

The worst part?

I was gaining ZERO new clients.

“What am I doing wrong?”

“Why am I even doing this?”

One day in October, I was so frustrated that I didn’t want to work.

Instead, I sat down, opened my laptop, and wrote an article about biohacking.

Why did I do this?

I don’t know for sure. 

But I must have craved some creative outlet after months of strenuous busy work.

What started with 1 article turned into a 5-part series.

Every time, I was in the flow state for HOURS.

It was genuinely magical.

I didn’t care about the quality of the article, I just wrote. And wrote, and wrote.

By pure chance, I also discovered a blond guy with a deep, mysterious voice on YouTube.

Dan Koe.

He sold the dream of making money by simply writing about things you enjoy.

“This is too good to be true!” I thought.

But I gave it a go anyway.

I opened my Twitter account (which I’d created a couple of months ago) and started posting daily.

That was about 4 months ago.

I still haven’t quit.

I have about 1.7k followers.

And I’m making about $1000 per month just by writing some words in a doc.

It’s funny to look back and see how inexperienced I was.

All the mistakes I’ve made.

But they were all part of the journey.

Sure, I could have made progress MUCH faster.

But I needed those lessons.

If I could go back, the only thing I’d change is that I would have stopped worrying so much.

I was going here anyway – No need to stress out. It’s never been worth it.

Enjoy the journey and build some epic fucking businesses.

Your biggest fan,

Tim <3

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