STORYTIME!

When I was 19 or 20 years old I was broke and penniless. I was working as a "character entertainer" for events and birthday parties and making $300 on a good week.

Eventually I partnered with a girl with rich parents and we started our own company. One problem...

the girl with rich parent's didn't actually want to run the company or manage employees or deal with marketing or collecting invoices... so I ended up doing everything.

I had named the company, and hand-made most of costuming that we used (I use to be a cosplayer) and set up

the website, etc.

Things started off ok, but quickly unraveled. I was not allowed to make any decisions essentially -which meant that I needed expressed approval to make any operational or strategic changes. If I wanted to tweak pricing, I had to get approval, if I wanted to

order or make a new costume, if I wanted to change the typeface on the website, book an event, invoice a client, hire employees, incur marketing expenses yadda yadda. Second problem: It often took me weeks to get a response. If I needed to invoice a client, and it took a week

to get permission to invoice them -I often lost the booking.

After a few months I approached the rich girl's dad about either buying or earning out full ownership of the company. Originally,we had a handshake deal that they would fund the costs, & I would fabricate the costumes

and manage the company.

So he invited to this pricey restaurant to talk over the terms over dinner. I was not prepared for the farce of a business meeting that would ensue.

His first and final offer was that I buy the company outright for $25,000 usd

Keep in mind- I was suppose to own half of the company already since I did all the work setting it up, made all the costumes, managed the employees etc.

He pulled the whole "didn't get it in writing though did you?"

And then justified part of the $25k to include "back rent"

since the company operated out of a commercial space that he owned. He was essentially selling back to me a company that I built. I had very little money & much of the work I put into the company wasn't billed at an hourly rate (since I was supposed to be earning sweat equity)

To this day, I'm not sure if it was a serious offer. What kind of 19/20 year old from a poor family has $25k lying around?

Also we split the bill for the expensive restaurant.

So the real decision for me was -do I continue working for them, or do I start my own company with meager savings and little in the way of prospects? I walked.

Made a new website (see the pic in the first tweet), Had to come up with a new name (I put everything into the first one), and I was so drained that I even opted to buy the costumes from a cheap oversee's supplier (with some minor customizations), instead of making them myself.

I bought 2 costumes (all that I could afford), and began by approaching a few local businesses doing promotional events (to increase exposure since I was literally starting from zero).

Pretty soon I made about $300. (deposit from 3 bookings)

I noticed that my competitors were starting to use google adsense/adwords to advertise against relevant searches.

At the time facebook was trying to onboard small busniesses to try their ad platform. They had these little dinky credits they would offer you.

So I gave it a shot

My competitors advertised on google (if they advertised at all).

And I reached people organically via an ad hoc facebook and instagram page I set up for the company. And leveraged nascent facebook's advertising suite...

Keep in mind, facebook wasn't taken very seriously back then. If you told someone you were advertising via facebook they would scoff and say "I've never bought anything from a facebook ad."

I've always believed that experimentation is the mother of innovation.

It only

cost me $20 to run my first "boosted post" with an ignorantly bad Call-to-action.

within the hour my biz email was flooded with booking inquiries

$100 of advertising was bringing in $1500-$2000 of bookings. Booking revenue is pull forward, and let me invest more into advertising before having to even do the event that was booked.

See this thread to learn more: https://twitter.com/wildkait/status/1263016124624654337

It wasn't long before the company was generating close to $100,000 usd/year net of costs (employee pay, costuming costs, advertising etc).

This was quite an achievement for someone who grew up in a bad neighborhood to parents who never made $50k combined.

When I started my social media career, the CPMs on facebook ads were still bonkers. Back then you could advertise a youtube video you had made via facebook and almost break even re the amount you spent on facebook ads and the amount of monetization your video would make in views

I grew my P@TR3ON largely off the back of facebook ads. Again, very accretive to profitability.

Imagine spending $20 on a facebook ad to get $200 of income.

I also advertised my twitch stream via facebook ads

very quickly after that facebook advertising became more crowded. As more advertisers elbowed into the space, the CPM rates started climbing (they use an auction system).

The red sea closed.

Today my character entertainment party might spend $90 to pick up a

$100 booking (which is a money loser after having to pay employee compensation, etc).

--

I didn't know at the time that learning how to start a business from scratch would result in me paving the way for my second act as an influencer.

learning to copywrite (writing compelling call-to-actions) and using social media for my biz (with an eye towards decipher what the analytics were telling me) turned out to be instrumental skills that transferred over.

Learn everything you can, BE ENGAGED, pay attention. You never know what seemingly irrelevant and boring detail might be pivotal to your future success. You can't connect the dots apriori

“For some reason, I had an early and extreme multi-disciplinary cast of mind. I couldn’t stand reaching for a small idea in my own discipline when there was a big idea right over the fence in somebody else’s discipline. So I just grabbed in all directions for the big ideas.."