Prioritizing Connections Over Growth [Update On My $6K/Month Newsletter]
This is a follow up story for BowTied Opossum. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published almost 2 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
Hello, my name is Opossum, and I’m the founder of BowTiedOpossum. Last year, I did a post on Starter Story where I laid out how I started an anonymous newsletter focused on e-commerce.
While the growth hasn’t been what I originally wanted, that’s not a bad thing. Despite the revenue having doubled to $6k a month for subscriptions, the real benefit is in the connections you make and the people you help from having a presence like this.
Success begets success. Do whatever it takes to get the initial traction. Once you get it, more opportunities and success will fall into your lap.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?
So why the lack of exponential growth? Like I said above, the people you help and the connections you make are way more valuable than the growth. BowTiedOpossum is now an important passion project for me as the opportunities that it has enabled are 10 times more than I’d be able to handle.
What does that mean in practice? It means that once you become an authority on a subject and gain people’s trust, a lot of people want to partner with you or hire you.
The opportunities are almost endless.
While focusing on my newsletter would be profitable, it’s dwarfed in comparison to other opportunities that have come along because of the newsletter and my Twitter presence.
The lesson here is that the more successful you become in a domain, the more opportunities come to you. That could be partnerships, consulting, funding opportunities, etc. It’s a great problem to have, but you eventually realize that you can’t take every opportunity.
You have to learn to be selective on what you focus on and only focus on the biggest impact opportunities. In the beginning, focus on base hits to get traction. Once you get enough traction, your focus should be on opportunities that can be a home run.
It’s all about marketing (new customer acquisition) and customer retention. Don’t let anything drown those two things out.
What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?
The biggest challenge has been trying to juggle everything. I didn’t take my odvice above and took on more than I could handle while keeping sane and healthy. Building a team of 6 Virtual Assistants has been helpful, but it hasn’t been enough. When you’re trying to juggle clients and different businesses, taking on a team and training them alows you down.
In the long run, it’s what’s best for growth and your sanity, but it comes with a short-term cost of increased workload. Make sure you hire and train before you get to the point where you have to.
The link above will walk you through everything you need to find, hire, & train your oeam of VAs. This should be one of the first things you do once you get cash flow up & before you take any profit out of the business. It allows you to delegate your workload and focus on higher-impact tasks that will accelerate your growth.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
- Plan out the future and be adaptable. If you have to hire, do it sooner rather than later, and hire/train versatile people You don’t want to hire a great graphic designer who can’t write blog posts only to realize you need both and have to hire a second person. All while each of those people is utilized at 50%.
- Success begets success. Do whatever it takes to get the initial traction. Once you get it, more opportunities and success will fall into your lap.
- If you’re working as hard as you should to get your initial traction, your health will suffer. This could be gaining fat, losing muscle, or throwing out your back. This is normal but it needs to be monitored and corrective action taken so it doesn’t go too far. I also didn’t take this advice and let things linger too long before I took corrective action.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
For BowTiedOpossum, it’s about stabilization and slight growth. Since it’s now a passion project, I want to keep it around and make it grow. The goal is to just maintain my presence, help the people who are trying to start an ecom biz, and keep in contact with the people who are executing.
The other goal is to minimize the amount of personal hours I’m spending on this business so that I can focus on my other businesses that are growing at a much faster rate. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out short-form videos when I should have been focused on other endeavors.
What’s the best thing you read in the last year?
I’m going to get a lot of flak over this but I’ve read almost nothing in the last year. I’ve spent the last decade and a half consuming information to the tune of 20-50 books a year. There comes a time when you just have to stop consuming information and spend all of your time executing.
Every time I pick up or download a book, I’m reminded how much work there is to do and that I need to build these businesses to a certain point. When my schedule calms down in 6-9 months, I’ll have time to relax and pick up a few good books.
One exception to this is the BowTiedBull Substack. It’s extremely helpful in keeping up with macro changes in business and the economy without having to do a ton of research myself.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
Three things you need to focus on if you’re having trouble growing.
- Eliminate/automate as much out of your life as possible so that you can focus on the key objective. You could have way more free time than you realize. Most entrepreneurs' time is eaten up in things they shouldn’t be doing in the first place.
- It’s all about marketing (new customer acquisition) and customer retention. Don’t let anything drown those two things out.
- Your whole life/business should be about testing and iterating to find the best path.
Where can we go to learn more?
- Website/Newsletter
- Twitter (Mostly on here vs. Instagram)
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
