How I turned $400 to $40,000 | True Story

In this episode I tell a story of how I turned a $400 investment to $40,000 in one day. It's a great story that I feel many entrepreneurs can learn from. I myself use this as a daily motivation of how you can get super creative with your business. - Colin Wayne

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In the simplest way, it’s a Q&A show meant to provide as much value to the viewers as possible. This is a way for Colin to give back to his community in the most scalable way. The show is meant to share direct one-to-one answers to questions on a wide range of topics. Participants will Call in virtually and have a one on one conversation with Colin.

Call in with Colin Topics: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Email/SMS Marketing, Lifestyle, Fitness, Goal Setting, Mindset, Leadership, Cars, Military, Personal Branding, Making Money Online, and pretty much anything else. Colin is able to provide value based on a lifetime of building a successful "boot strapped 9 figure company, becoming a Staff Sergeant (E6) while serving in the US Military with 3 Combat Tours of Duty (Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanistan, becoming a successful Fitness Model with over 50+ Magazine Covers, among many others.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

I got to make it a mix. I gotta make it a mix. I've got a negative mega man.

Speaker 2: 0:27

All right, guys, on this episode, it's going to be a little bit different. Uh, we've got a submission that came in and he's not able to join us on the call. So what's going to happen is, um, I haven't heard the question yet. Jeff gave me the insights of it. Um, but he's going to read the question and what I like to do personally is kind of just whatever comes natural. I would rather not know until he actually reads the question. So that's kind of how all of these are formatted. Uh, the team they get submissions. So if you go to invite dot millionaire, creator.com, you can be on the show column with Colin. And then, um, you'll be able to ask your question, uh, here and my team will review these. And then at that, um, so what we're going to do for this episode, which is a little bit unique, it's our first time doing it. He's going to read the question from this person. I don't even know their name and, uh, I'll just respond directly with my thoughts on whatever question it is directly. So let's get this thing started. All right.

Speaker 3: 1:26

So the first question is something as this question has actually come in multiple times in a very similar manner. So I felt it was, it was a great question. If Colin, if you had to start from scratch zero daughters in your bank account, what would you do to get where you are today? Say you have no connections or anything, but, but, but an idea.

Speaker 2: 1:49

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's exactly what red line was when you think about it. Like, um, I, I just had an idea. I saw a big, uh, vision, had no clue on how to execute it, but I didn't have financial backing. I got creative. So this is what I would say one, uh, test the market, but test it without kind of a subjective, uh, subjects. So let me explain, don't ask your friends and family like, Hey, do you think this is a good idea? Ask a stranger, ask somebody that has no exact like knowledge of you. That's going to. You could shoot you straight because at the end of the day, if you're trying to scale and grow something, you don't want deceptive feedback, that could actually be like, no, that's a horrible idea. More than likely your friends and family members are going to first off say, oh, I love it. That's great. Go for it. Right. Um, or they're going to tell you the opposite. Nope, you should stay in school and just stay the course and be a doctor or a nurse. And that's it like at the end of the day, first off, knowing the distance direction that you want to go? Uh, I think that's the first part of the question. And then the second part, if I don't have the capital to get started, what are you do? And it's very simple bootstrap like get creative. This is what I did, and this is crazy. So true. Honest to God story. I reached out to Daniel auric, the founder of grunt style, um, multi nine-figure American patriotic apparel brand. And I, I basically cold message. Tim found him on Facebook, reached out, we set up a call. Um, I ended up acting as if I was a pre-existing business and I earned his business. So I tested it based on somebody that I didn't have any connections with. I got the right person on the phone. That's step two is to make sure that once you have a tangible product that you want to test the market, get the right person on the phone. And however creative means that that can be, um, I got Dan on the phone, we ended up closing him our first purchase order, which was, uh, I think around 3,500, um, AR 15 replicas, uh, 33 inch, you know, exact replicas, three different colors. And so I kind of use that along with some initial capital to get started, but it was essentially just that gave me a little bit of, um, internal confidence to go into a market that I knew, nothing of knowing that there's a demand, uh, knowing that I can approach someone and actually go to market with them. I got creative and I bought products that were samples, mailed them to him so he could see the quality behind it, launched my business and ended up fulfilling that purchase order, which helped bootstrap about 50% of our initial investment. And now, you know, we've done over a hundred million dollars here at redline steel, 150,000 square feet, but you can get creative, but it really just takes that mindset of, you know, making sure that before you launch have a focus group that is not going to convey something that could be false, like genuinely straight up and freaking they'll be on the show. I'll I'll shoot you straight. Do you think this is a good idea? And you know what? You may not like the advice that I've given you. Here's an example. I had a group that came down and paid me for consulting that came from Florida. I'm not going to mention their names, but they were wanting to start a sock company and it was going to be like customizable socks. And they gave me their business plan, told me how they could go to market. And they were wanting to essentially leave being a teacher and actually go and do entrepreneurship full time. Um, essentially by the time they left the entire model shifted and they're no longer doing socks anymore. And the entire thing shifted. Um, and now they're full time entrepreneurs, but they don't do anything in the sock industry. Now I've got nothing against and sock manufacturers, but at the end of the day, like the business plan had a lot of flaws and fundamentals. And so we were able to kind of realign, what is the overall objective? What is that? What is your physical cogs? What is your market strategy? What do you, you know, and looking at all of these different indicators to make sure that there's no flaws in the system. So guys, you can get creative. Don't put like, oh, I don't have, you know,$20,000 or$50,000 to get started or, uh, I'm going to wait until I get my degree. I'm going to wait until I take millionaire creators course to get started. Like, no, you don't have to do that. Just send, jump in with both feet and hope you swim, um, and get creative with the approach, get creative with what is the offset. This is the biggest nugget that I could tell you. It does not matter about you. What matters is the value to the consumer? That's it? Nothing else matters. What can you do to provide value for them to want your product, whether it's digital or physical or anything else provide value. That's how I landed. 50 plus magazine covers without a PR firm and, you know, bumps, Skalla, Bama provided value to men's health, muscle and fitness Ironman under Armour, Nike like provided value. I asked without the expectation of a return. And so they kept wanting to work with me over and over and over again. But the business model, the plan behind it was unique in the sense that now a dying industry doesn't have to pay a talent fee and you just get creative with that craft. You know, there's, there's hundreds. I mean, literally thousands of models, only 12 covers in a year. What can I do get creative? That's the same thing in business. What can I do get creative bootstrap and start like I'm a firm believer in timelines, making sure that short mid-term long-term goals, like make sure that you hold yourself to the fullest extent. There are no, I don't give a what's happening in the industry. I don't care what's happening anywhere else. If something's wrong, it's your fault. You have to pivot and make happen. Um, get creative guys at the end of the day, provide value times 10 and it'll come back. Don't wait on other people execute at speed. Less can go.

Speaker 3: 8:28

Yeah, just real quick before I, we missed this because I'm going to go back to the store with a grunt style and get that purchase order. Yeah. Just to be clear, you didn't have any manufacturing equipment. No, I didn't. You purchased your samples that you sent to them from your competitors.

Speaker 2: 8:46

Yeah, correct. That's a hundred percent. So it's kind of a Savage move. And, and honestly, like there was integrity behind it a hundred percent. And as a veteran, speaking to another veteran, you've got some of the core values. Um, it's not like I was trying to rip him off. I was trying to prove conceptually the business model internally, uh, provide confidence internally that I can do this. Um, so acquiring a purchase order for me, without even being a business, utilizing a competitor, um, and their own samples that I bought at retail, I was taking a gamble, but it was a calculated gamble. My gamble was, Hey, I'm going to send them this product. And hopefully likes it. Even though it costs me like$400. If he doesn't like it, I'm out 400 bucks. But if he likes it, that's like a$40,000 purchase order. So yeah, I'll take that bet any day. It's good odds. I mean, hopefully I can sell myself enough on this product that it makes sense and it did, and that gave us, uh, you know, some internal confidence to get started.

Speaker 3: 9:47

Awesome. All right. I'm going to move on to the next question because we're almost, uh, we're almost out of time, but let's say, um, okay. The question is when you started out, how did you create your first sales funnel? Did you do it yourself or did you hire people to do it for you? And uh, how did it change your business?

Speaker 2: 10:06

Let me just be very, very straightforward. You do not need a degree to be successful. I'm a high school dropout. You do not need a course. You do not need a book. You do not need a lot of to take on the world and do whatever you want to do. I did all of this stuff and the best way that I learn is from truly doing it. I see something, okay. Here's, here's a solution. Here's a market problem. What can I do? Like looking at Facebook ads, the minute that I turned it on, it's skyrocketed. I went from like 10,000,$12,000, uh, and gross revenue monthly to over almost 800 was over 800,000, uh, before refunds, it was like$782,000 after some of the refunds and just ma that's within 30 days period. Massive difference. And this is utilizing something that I didn't have any experience in. And you know what? I probably lost a lot of money along the way, but that's how I learned. Like when I look back at some of the fundamental issues, I'm like, holy. I don't know how this worked at worked. I could have saved a lot of money and probably a good bit of time if I just went to somebody that actually knew the challenge has always been, who do you trust? Like who, who who's doing? The that I want to do that is out there. Cause there's so many, like I don't want to call, I dunno, just gurus in general that, that claim all of these things. And I'm a firm believer you put your money where your mouth is, period. Like I firmly believe that and I'm not going to put my name on anything if I'm not a hundred percent. So that's been a big challenge, but you don't need to do any of that. If you just want to try it for yourself and you feel mentally, you have the fortitude to just be like, all right, here's my pain tolerance. I'm willing to wait this long. I'm willing to spend this much money before I can get a yielded, whatever that rate is, whatever you're trying to do as an objective, I'm trying to get this lead so that I can sell them on, uh, this house, right? Because you're a realtor I'm trying to sell cars. What can I do to bring awareness to some type of, uh, utilizing like, uh, landing pages, tripwire campaigns, I'm going to give away everybody that signs up here, I'm going to give a free car wash. And you do geo-fencing around of 25 mile area of your zip code. Um, every person that you know, and you can get creative with these types of things. Um, but it, it comes down to you just kind of conceptually either you gotta either see it from someone else and then implement it if you're that way, uh, or you find somebody that you can trust as a mentor and take them on. Um, but I'm, I'm, I'm here to tell you straight up. I don't do, um, I don't do courses. I don't do, uh, the only time I go to events or to speak at them, um, I'm not really much of a book reader. I'm super hands-on, uh, I like YouTube. There's a lot of free content out there at scale. Um, I'll just shoot you straight. You don't need it, but I'll tell you this. On the flip side, if I knew somebody that I could trust my business could probably be at, you know, much further within five years. I don't know if I could handle it from a manufacturing standpoint, but at the same time, I probably could have saved a hell of a lot of money, uh, at the end of the day. But that's how you learn. Like seriously. I learned from the very fast and if something doesn't work, I've got some form of pain tolerance, but I'll flip it and I'll learn from it. And I won't do that again. It's not going to be a bandaid on a, on a tourniquet. I'm going to apply it. I'm either going to cut off an arm and keep, you know, drink water drive on, or, you know, I'm going to chalk it up as a loss and it's not a lost cause it's a learning point. All right, guys, if you got value from this episode and you loved it, then do me a solid favor. If you haven't already be sure to leave us a five star review, it's a simple ask and it helps us spread our show to so many new viewers. If you also got value from this and you want to see it on video, go to our YouTube channel, call him Wayne. You'll see the show Colin with Collin every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, a brand new episode is here just for you. If you want to be on the show, go to invite dot millionaire, creator.com and you could potentially be on the show. Lastly, if you got value from this and want to share it with your friends and family members will be randomly selecting those that tag us and posting it across my social channels. So thanks again for your support. We look forward to seeing you on a future episode of Colin with column.