A web video blog about lifestyle design, passive income, real estate, vending machines, used cars, and eustress challenges.
Grant and Alan talk about their latest Featured Failure, then share the latest contest they will be entering.
Runtime: 12:51
A quick rundown of the episode:
- Welcome to Episode 50.
- Our Failures.
- SHOPIFY Contest.
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
The RenMen are human and not invincible? What!????
I just caught up with episode 49 and 50. That is pretty discouraging. Next you’re going to tell me you’re dropping out on your goal to reach 10% body fat because you took to eating ice cream every night. You know, to drown your sorrows from so many failures. When you reach 10% I dare you to enter a body building contest.
By the way, I hope you are working on some information product launch strategies. I’m sure Adam can help you with that.
Here is some cheap advice from someone who is still in the rat race…you guys seem to grasp onto projects without thinking it through lately. It seems like your rental empire at least gives you a buffer to do so and you have some capital to test things out. I guess you are living up to the ready – fire – aim mentality. But it seems more like Fire – Fire – Fire.
Like I said, cheap advice. Since you guys are so open and honest I thought I would return the favor.
I’m in the middle of watching episode 48 (where have I been?) and I realized something. You guys are definitely doing the right thing to “fail fast” I can’t imagine how much you’ve learned from the vending, auto group and rv trip projects because you gave them an honest effort. That knowledge and experience with be useful for your next big success. I’m looking forward to the awesomeness that will come now that you are moving on because I know from the moment both of those started they were headaches. Let’s hope the online retail will prove different. I would almost recommend not doing the shopify store but really focus on making the info product and its launch a huge success because that will help the renmenshow grow the most. You also have those mentors for info products and books to leverage. You don’t really have great mentors for online retail…YET.
Good stuff! We are getting closer with the information product every week. We should be finished filming next week!
We appreciate your honesty Micah.
Nice to see that you’re not perfect. I’m sure the video is therapeutic, but takes courage to keep the inter-tubes behind the scenes when things don’t go as expected.
As you said, keep taking shots and one is bound to take off like you never thought it could.
We can’t score 35 points without taking shots…
Awesome transparency once again. You guys jumped in and got that business going quickly and made a really solid run with it. I think it would be very valuable to your audience to share specific business lessons learned from your experience with the RAG. I heard you both agree that you had times where this business made solid money and that it was the type of business that could be around for a long time. What are things that made you say, “This isn’t going to work as a business.” and what did you learn from that to take into your next business? Obviously, not being able to sell cars is the ultimate reason but I assume there are many contributing factors to that. For some of the factors you probably say, “I would have done X,Y, or Z differently.” That’s the stuff I think your audience would eat up in the “What did I learn today?” section.
TO,
Thanks…
We didn’t sell enough cars, to be profitable, that was the number one thing…we thought we had everything set up to succeed and we didn’t…we were just too lazy when it came to the cars…bottom line…
Hey guys,
Another great episode. 2 ideas came to mind.
WWTFD? Remember his kickboxing strategy for winning the gold? Know the rules and exploit them. If the contest is for sheer volume/dollars, what could you sell that would be high dollar amount and is in high demand?
1. How would using aspects of your housing strategy look if applied to high-demand auto sales? If profit were not the main concern, you could potentially kill it with $ amount sold.
2. What about houses?
There is a lot you can do if you know how to buy wholesale and are not interested In profits.
Costco does huge volume from selling high demand quality products at no more than 14% markup on any item.
High dollar
In demand
Low to no profit margin
Up-sell to satisfied customers
Affiliate – have partners sell and advertise for you.
When I worked as a supervisor at Best Buy we sold over $1m in PCs over a holiday season and profited about $300. We concentrated on up-sells and huge profit peripherals (wireless, hard drives, mouse pads,etc.)
If winning is the goal
Contest Rules first
Cash in pocket second
If building a profitable business is the goal, it may prove to be more difficult to do so in a few months.
Best of luck to you guys.
ah ha. matt is on to something. liquidate your car lot and have your buyers checkout on your shopify store!!!!! That is high dollar stuff. Keep RAG going with very little markup just to gain $100K at the end of the year!
Sounds like a plan…
MP,
I love the WWTFD reference, classic…
We talked about trying to sell ridiculous priced stuff, then you only have to sell a handful of items…We need to look into the rules of shopify as far as what exactly you can sell on there…thanks!
RIP to the RAG. Sad to hear this one didn’t work out. But as Robert K. says, if one in ten businesses fail, you just have to start ten of them. So on to the next one. An online retail type store may be the way to go for you guys though…passive and more like the muse that Tim talks about in 4HWW. I just started working on an online store muse myself last month (non-shopify) so can’t wait to see how it works out for you all. Best of luck!
Thanks Luke…What is your store selling? How did you set it up?
Are you guys still alive? I’m a little slow in replying myself. The site sells green cleaning products. Set it up using wordpress and ejunkie. Didn’t do much with it for a few months there, but now it is up and running and fully functional.
R.I.P. Crazy Willie
He will…
Welcome back guys. You’ve given me the needed motivation to crank out some good ideas for the remainder of the day.
See you on Shopify
- JC
JC,
We’ve missed you, bud…good luck…
IMO, you guys shouldn’t do the Shopify store.
Why? You’ve got an information product in the works. One that I believe could be very successful. You should focus all your energies on that launch before the last video is shot, before the video is completed editing.
- Build your reputation as a team of successful real estate investors who are succeeding in a really hard market
- Give out tasty morsels of REI goodness to build awareness and buzz
- Develop a mailing list of interested people who you feed more tasty morsels while you finish cooking the main course (which they’ll have to pay to receive)
- Identify the linchpins and make a connection with them. Their trust and authority can be co-opted to sell your stuff.
- Test your product out. Do a beta of your product with some early people (linchpins included) and get feedback on the product.
- Launch your information product.
Your info product has a much much higher probability of making you guys $100K than going into a contest into straight up retail. It’s better to own the product. Heck, maybe you can sell your info product on Shopify. But really, I think your energies are best spent focused on marketing your info product even before it’s completely ready. The lessons and failures you learn from that process would be interesting to your audience as well.
That’s my 2 cents.