Today, Feb 2, 2021, is the 10 year anniversary of leaving the corporate world. You can read more about my departure
here and my Jerry Maguire moment
here.
This milestone snuck up on me today, as with most of the world, the COVID pandemic has taken center stage for pretty much everyone. My business is showing the same revenue as last year, which in a normal time would be disappointing, given that previous years I’ve grown the likes of 50% or even 5X. But, in this time, I’m very thankful and blessed to be at 0% growth and not a 90% drop. I really hope the restaurant, travel, entertainment, and events businesses hang in there because I know there’s a lot of pent up demand for these things. I for sure am feeling it!
Every once in a while, I play the “what if my business would go to zero” thought experiment to prepare me for the worst. I never would have imagined that it might have become reality. My business was set up perfectly in this pandemic, low overhead, work from home, and cleaning products for Pete’s sake. Despite that, supply chain issues almost made me have to start executing the plan that I had war gamed out. Namely, sprayers for spray bottles had gotten scarce, being gobbled up by governments and big companies who needed to disinfect their space. Ironically, BECAUSE I was in the cleaning space, I almost lost access to all my inventory, which would then leave me with no products to sell, and BAM… business going to zero.
First plan for my e-commerce business going to zero was to work on a completely different product. A product so different it should be able to hedge against an e-commerce cleaning products business. And that would be a football office pool picks site, confidencepoolpicks.com. Well, COVID threatened the football season as well, and with no football season, there would be no need for football picks. At least the football season continued on this year, even though revenue dropped by 50%. It’s just amazing how far reaching this pandemic was. I had two very different businesses that were both threatened by it.
But I count my blessings every day that I was able to keep things going. My life wasn’t as adversely affected as much as many others were. As we hopefully see a light at the end of this pandemic, with vaccines coming through, things hopefully are starting to get back to normal and I can resume my quest to become a $1 million business again!