November Results + December (High Leverage Month)
The 5 Stages of Business & A very, very important month.
All in all, November was stressful but I think good progress and momentum was made.
December will let us know if this was true.
3 very important business related things will be happening in December:
Launching of Sharper Human. There will be a lot more on this in the blog in the coming days.
Massive sports betting volume + sizing + model improvements - which should equate to high profitability.
Supplement business re-build, solving cash flow and prepping for Q1.
I wanted to do this post almost to clear my head rather than anything actually useful or tactical (the reason I started the blog in the first place).
The one tactical/useful point might be around how to approach hard things when its getting stressful, there’s only a few tips I have for this that I’m trying to use.
Zoom out - Both physically (aka your problems are nothing in the scope of the universe) and time wise (this won’t be a big deal in a year or a decade).
Exercise - self explanatory.
Environment - Doing hard things but in an environment you enjoy (both physically and mentally) makes those hard things easier.
Some thoughts.
Sharper Human - Launching this new business has been tough, I’ve launched a fair few businesses through the years but I don’t remember it being this difficult before.
Whether Sharper Human is just more operationally complex or I just care more about it, or more things have gone wrong I’m not 100% sure. But after thinking it through for far too long, I think it might be down to the fact I just know more now and hence expect more, so the stakes feel higher and the bar is set higher as well.
Whereas at the start of business 1, the naivety level is incredibly high.
Closing every other business (aside from the Amazon supplements one) and going all in on Sharper Human is quite an unnerving feeling.
Obviously I think it’s an incredible product, idea and concept otherwise I wouldn’t have done it in the first place, but physical product or ecommerce businesses are just cash flow killers, which makes rapid success also pretty difficult.
Sports Betting - On the other extreme, you have the sports betting models, which have none of the same issues as any physical product business and feel so so close to creating massive profitability but still just aren’t quite there.
We still haven’t hit that mega month yet with good ROI + good volume. The bugs within these models are being fixed constantly, close to a dozen issues and bugs (of varying importance) fixed in November, which should make December onwards vastly more profitable, but we’ve yet to have the insane growth moments, where good luck + lack of bugs + volume of bets + high ROI align, hopefully it’ll be next month.
Futuro Labs - The Amazon supplement business has caused more stress and issues than I expected it to since taking this over.
It’s needed a fair amount of cash injections, realistically down to mismanagement in the past. Mix this in with Amazon’s absolute BS costing us a month’s earnings and losing some money due to negligence on their part, this has been another nice sprinkle of added stress in November.
But, I think we’re over the hump. The valley of despair in business is a real thing, most people quit in the “informed pessimism” stage, but the stages are surprisingly accurate in my experience.
This is the same reason you have a ton of naive energy when you first have a business idea or start a business. You just have uninformed optimism.
Sometimes referred to as the The Dunning-Kruger effect when it’s about knowledge of skills.
Simply put “ignorance is bliss”.
I think this can be quite dangerous for entrepreneurs though, as if these “valleys of despair” are at the same time aligning in multiple businesses/profits, and if you hit other non-business related issues at the same time, this is where resilience can take a massive hit and people can slide into depression and other bad shit, making it even more difficult to get out of the individual valleys of despair.
Which is why I think the zoom out + exercise (sweat it out) + Environment (physically get out) works so well.
It’s not surprising that all of those elements are linked to reduction in depression as well, it’s just if you’ve seen real depression (not the Instagram version), those people can’t even get out of bed, so getting them to sweat it out in the gym or a sauna is not really an option.
Which is why mental health issues / depression etc have to be solved chemically first, then mindset, then physically, but that’s a super complex conversation for another day.
Some exact stats:
Sports Betting:
Down £1k, which is not a big deal in the raw monetary sense, however, it is a big deal due to there being 624 bets made for only 0% ROI.
That high volume of bets equaling no ROI means either; 1.) A very unlucky month, 2.) The models are broken (some were but most are fixed) 3.) Underlying structure issue.
Slightly concerning, which is why December is so high leverage for this as well, volume will be even higher, likely 700+ bets, £350,000+ total wagered, so if that’s down/even we have an issue.
Sharper Human
Will launch in December, very excited but nervous too. Will update here once it happens.
Futuro Labs
Should have been a really good month but with Amazon causing a £3k issue and a direct hit to the bottom line we’re basically where we were before. Again, December will be key.
All in all, November was pretty stressful, more so than I would have liked but it seems a lot of underlying progress was made, the core issue, which is always the issue with businesses/projects, is that you don’t get to find out if progress was made straight away.
I think people know this intuitively as growth happens from pain, if everything is going great with a business or betting model then why would you change it? Just keep doing more of that thing, it’s only when you’re losing clients or lighting money on fire are you going to take massive action to fix this thing.
At least that’s been true with me.
But, we shall see in December how things go, will update on NYE.