my name is Chris Heckman and this is my story of how I went from zero dollars in my bank account to over 25 million dollars in e-commerce sales over a period about five years I want to share this with you because people have a right to know the good the bad the ugly what goes into starting a business not just the stuff that like gurus and course sellers are telling you out there because it's not all Roses and Rainbows there were a lot of times I got knocked on my ass knowing some of this stuff
might help me out if you're considering starting a business maybe you already have a business this video is for you [Music] I'm just a normal everyday guy there's nothing special about me I graduated with a 2.88 and I wasn't one of those Wonder kids that you know started their first business in diapers and uh by the time that everyone else was taking like their summer job they were in a corner office no that was not me I was just like everybody else I had no idea what I wanted to do meanwhile all my friends that
I graduated with they were going off to work in New York these big fancy jobs and banking that sort of thing I'm sitting there with no clue all that I did know was I did not want to have a nine to five I knew from the one or two internships that I did have that that was just not for me if I was there in 30 years I would be miserable and I knew that there had to be a better way but I didn't know what that was so when I graduated my parents asked me
what are you gonna do with your life and I was like fair question I have no idea but I'm gonna figure it out that to them was like all right our son might be crazy but let's see if he figures it out I even went so far as to tell them that I would rather live in a cardboard box on the side of the road than I would rather have a nine to five that's how adamant was about this and I couldn't even tell you why but I just knew that it wasn't for me graduating
with 2.88 no idea what to do with my life where do you turn Google and I started Googling like a madman how to start a business did that for about six months 10 12 hours a day every single day for six months Googling and learning everything I could possibly get my hands on about starting and operating an online business and I was reading books like Rich Dad Poor Dad four hour work week richest man in Babylon all awesome books that helps lay a foundation for me to understand that there was a different way I did
not have to go the typical College route job to plug in for 30 40 years and then you die which sounded terrible to me I knew that there was a better way from what I I was learning so the first business that I tried starting I maxed out my credit cards to join this course this course was on how to start an Amazon FBA business and when I joined I didn't realize till like the second or third lesson that you know you needed money for that and I had nothing I had no money I think
the course is like five or six grand that was all sitting on my credit cards not only did I not have the money I need for inventory I had negative five grand I was like well this sucks I decided to start a different kind of business I sat there and I thought what's the type of business that I could start that cost no money doesn't require any skills requires literally nothing but time I stumbled upon starting an agency the thing with starting an agency is like as long as you have one skill that you can
get good at and there's people that need that skill with business owners you can be profitable you can build a real business I want to make something back from this course I spent five grand on I did Facebook ads for Amazon owners and that was my first business and it was slow to get started it took a ton of time time but I was able to get my first couple clients move out of my parents house kind of get started for myself that was huge that really felt like I had more bosses it didn't feel
like Freedom by any means I was looking for something else around that same time a guy that I went to college with reached out to me and he had seen me posting in some Facebook group reached out to me and said like hey what are you doing I told him what I was doing and he's like cool I'm getting together a group of guys that are all entrepreneurs we're gonna live together in this house in the suburbs of Philadelphia I was like awesome that sounds great so I moved into this house and it was the
craziest couple of years of my life by far for business and personal life just everything all together it seems like a blur now looking back on it I've learned from all these other guys who were running these businesses and I was like I've learned how to run Facebook ads because now I've worked with a couple dozen clients got put some money nothing crazy in my pocket like why not apply what I know to my own brand because then I'm building an asset building like a real business it's not just trading time for money that sort
of thing why don't I give that a shot all the while we're living in this house with 12 entrepreneurs you'll come down at eight in the morning there'll be six other guys at the kitchen table setting up their Facebook ads for the day like everyone's talking sharing strategies like what's working what's not you would take that and apply it to your own business you share what's working with you and then other people are able to use that we all benefited as one guy would figure something out the other 11 would adopt it starting to become
more and more successful as we're learning from each other we were learning at the speed of 12 rather than at the speed of one and that's something that I can't overstate enough learning and having a peer group around you was one of the smartest things that I ever did without realizing what I was doing it was not intentional at all as people are starting to make some like serious money we start throwing these parties and throw an event that was awesome we literally had a pet alligator at one point stuff was just crazy if we
had been more focused and had done less of like the partying stuff we would have been even more successful but like we were just you know young 20s making money hand over fist we didn't really seem to care that's where I started my own e-commerce brand I took what I was learning from all the other guys started a brand it was like jewelry and apparel Home Goods that kind of thing we launched this brand and it ended up doing 1.3 or 4 million dollars inside of three months I was like this is awesome I can't
believe that this is going so well it almost seemed normal because everybody else was doing that well our peer group was all being so successful that furthered us once I had that first win under my belt I made the biggest mistake it's taken me years to learn this lesson after I had that first win I thought well if I did it once why not do it three more times at the same time free businesses equals three times the profit right no nothing could be further from the truth whereas when I had one business and I
was able to put all of my focus into just that one thing and I was able to go really deep and be effective in it with three businesses that was not the case the ads were not performing as well all that I did was create more headaches more problems more expenses more overhead for myself and so finally I grabbed my business partner I was working with and I sat down and I was like dude what the hell are we doing we are hemorrhaging money we have like 25 customer service agents we need like two what
are we doing we need to get our he saw the same thing that I did and so we did probably one of the hardest decisions we ever had to make the 80 20 principle to a t where's 20 of our effort going that's yielding 80 of our returns and we identified that opportunity and then we cleared everything else out of the way everything and it was super painful because we already put time money and effort into these other opportunities we clear everything out focus on just one business and what do you know almost overnight it
started taking off again that was strictly because we put our focus into one thing it's not rocket science kind of took me learning it myself rather than like hearing about it in a book it doesn't really have the same effect at this point like the group had kind of split up people are getting married that sort of thing fast forward a couple years then covered hits our sales just skyrocketed we were just primed to take advantage of it what happened when covet hit that not many people may realize is that there was an increase in
supply of AD space because more people are just sitting at home scrolling with nothing else to do you have companies that are like getting into trouble like financially that are turning off their ads so there's less competition more Supply than there's just us sitting there this is perfect at one point we were doing 30 to 40 Grand per day for about five to six months straight it was crazy we were in a really good spot financially and we just put a lot of the money back into the business to scale it up even more once
we got to that point I started like thinking like is this what I want to do for the rest of my life where do I see my career going and that's when we made the hard decision to sell the business started getting our financials together hired a broker but I thought that it would be like yeah three four months I would have the business sold 13 months later we're finally signing the documents to sell the business that was another big lesson that I learned which is that when you think of things in terms of how
quickly can I get it done and you place an emphasis on like the speed at which you want it to get done it very rarely happens that speed whereas if you flip that equation and you put an emphasis on I want to do this thing better than anybody else can possibly do it and just really seeing that through to the end it completely changes the game that's that's a lesson I'm still trying to learn only just recently sold the business I was living in Florida with my girlfriend at the time and we just decided to
get out of our lease and travel we were playing more for our monthly rent than it would cost us to travel the world that's what we're doing instead we just threw all of our stuff in a storage unit and we're traveling the world and just working from our laptops that brings us to present day we've just gotten back from Europe and then we're on a two-week cruise and that's why I want to make this YouTube channel is to share some of the things that I've learned along the way I think there's a huge missed opportunity
in the education space from people that have been there and done that and genuinely just want to share what their experience has been without trying to peddle some course or make a quick Buck off of people that are just starting off if there's anybody out there who's considering getting started I can tell you this it will not be easy you will fall down you will fail at your first business hands down no doubt about it but I see too many people that associate failure with trying something and then failing at it because that's growth that's
not failure that's you learning how to not do something like Thomas Edison he tried and failed to make the light bulb 999 times on the thousandth time is when he got it right the true failure is to just not try it all the people that get analysis paralysis and say no I don't have enough money you can start a business with no money then other people say oh I don't have enough time you do have time you work a nine to five I have an extra hour two three four hours at night just don't watch
Game of Thrones for the fifth time instead of starting instead of starting your business or I don't I don't know how to start a business Google it time money knowledge those are the three most common excuses I'm making this channel to show you that you have everything that you need and not only do you have everything you need to start a business you deserve it you deserve to take that chance on yourself you deserve to put in the work and the hard days to be successful and to give yourself the option of another path even
if you decide not to take it just see what it's like going down that path that's also why I'm making this channel is to share everything that I've learned without any exceptions you can reach out to me anytime if you go to my website which will be linked around this video somewhere giving away everything that I know completely for free I'm not selling any course or any of that kind of crap if you like the content hit the like button subscribe and I'll see you in the next video foreign [Music]
