Accountability Journal: September 28

September 28, 2015: Progress to date

  • Last 30 days: $29K (with women’s ring promos, real number somewhere around $25K)
  • Etsy: $2K
  • Knot Theory website (just the rings): $0.6K
  • Total minus promo: $27.6K
  • Overview:
      1. Knot Theory Silicone Wedding Rings
        • Men’s: New designs coming soon. New colours coming in less than 2 weeks.
        • Women’s: New colours coming in less than 2 weeks.
      2. Period Panties
        • Got manufacturer’s fabric samples. Lookin’ good!
      3. Umbrellas
        • Ordered competitors’ products.
      4. Cashmere scarves
        • Ordered competitors’ products and Aliexpress samples
        • I really just want to use up my 500 expensive (~$3K) Knot Theory boxes originally made for neckties.
        • They take up so much space in my room and I hate sleeping with them next to me lol.
        • Sales of top competitor rapidly went up, now that winter is coming: Clothing: #850 (~1621units/month) #7964 (~327units/month)
      5. Quick Dry Towels
        • Tried out competitor’s product. Already great, have no big way of improving it further other than slightly better branding.
        • Fairly competitive niche. Seems like many people are thinking to do it too.
        • Will find out more about MOQ and margins before deciding if I want to proceed. Low MOQ also means low barrier of entry though.
  • Business Goals for 2016:
    • Hire 1 VA to delegate tasks to; focus more on developing new brands and scaling the businesses
    • Achieve 150 product sales a day average for year 2016; estimated 5~8 product lines needed to achieve this.
  • Milestone Celebration
    • Will celebrate when my total monthly profit reaches $25K! Current profit ~$16K including bow tie sales.
    • Not sure how to celebrate. 6 years after quitting my job as a software engineer and making way less than all my ex-coworkers for most of those years, I think I’m finally making on par with my friends who are now at Google. Prefer to keep a low profile always, but will be harder to celebrate milestones with friends.
    • Will probably celebrate by hiring my photographer friends, paying them real money for once. I do want good bald pics of myself. It’s a personal mission to re-brand alopecia as attractive, raise awareness, and encourage confidence. Maybe for future milestones I’ll fund other alopecians’ shoots, to help build their confidence 🙂
  • This week’s goals for accountability:
    1. Activate my Google ads vouchers before they expire on Sept 30th
    2. Get new ring packaging cards updated and printed.
    3. Come up with a list of holiday strategies
  • Current Challenge:
    • Can’t get women’s rings on page 1. Last promo just finished. Can start playing with prices I suppose. Will optimize ads too. Any other good ideas?