In the hope of bringing more value to everyone who is a part of the OVROUT family and community, I wanted to share this entry on building your dreams so far. This is real, no fluff. I am not an extremely successful person, but I consider what I have accomplished and have currently success to this point.
In building your dreams you first have to believe in what you are doing and building. Because the world will crumble around you at least once, and try you every step of the way. If you don’t believe in yourself and that dream unequivocally, then you are doomed once the road gets tough.
The next part of building your dreams requires dedication and hard work. You have to realign your priorities. If it doesn’t help you get towards your goal of what you want to achieve, then it’s a distraction. However, don’t lose your way in this journey. This doesn’t mean cutting your spouse out because they don’t see what you see. How can they? Prove it to them through hard work.
Sacrifice. Are your dreams that important to you? Then sacrifice going out every night or spending money on material things you don’t need. In the Army I trained for SFAS, which meant no longer going out Friday and Saturday nights, instead I was working out or studying. When I was close to leaving the Army, I started college. All of my extra time was dedicated to schoolwork, instead of watching movies or staying out at the cigar bar I loved to frequent. Fast forward to my post Army career. In order to learn more about construction and become a sales rep, whenever I had spare time at work or a few minutes after I would study more about concrete or just product knowledge in general.
Now, in starting this business in 2018 I had a revelation that I could juggle family, career, a full time MBA and this. So, I dove right in. Some advice from the get go. Legally protect yourself. This means research your company name, logo, and make sure they are available. Check through the government on their trademark website, google the domain name and all. Then execute right then and there. Don’t just kick the can down the road. Hire a lawyer and trademark your brand. I did this at the same time I did the bank accounts and legal documents for OVROUT. This allowed me to prove when someone else tried to trademark my name and logo that I was first to market. Save yourself a lot of headache down the road.
The money part. Everyone wants to know how you can get your business going? For me, I had some money saved up that I put into the initial start, a credit card I opened up, and a little bit of my GI Bill money. You can get loans, credit cards, investors, kick starters, etc. Its out there, just do the work and figure it out. Be patient, have resiliency, but don’t be afraid to put in work every day. Even the days you are tired and don’t feel like it. From there, reinvest your profits. Don’t just pull the money out asap otherwise you will not be able to effectively grow and scale. When you have your products set, you need to figure out the costs. If you sell your shirts for $28, what is your break-even cost? This figure will help you to build your roadmap of how much do you have to sell to truly turn a profit. Figure out after a few months your customer acquisition costs, and your average order values. This will help you immensely. Say your avg order value is $22. The customer acquisition cost is $17. Its going to be very difficult for you to grow only making $5 every time. Most importantly, trust the process, have fun, enjoy the ups and downs, the victories, and learn from the failures.
More to come…
-Andrew
OVROUT
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