How We Grew From $12K To $45K/Month In One Year
This is a follow up story for Adrenaline Offroad. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 4 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
Mitchel Matthews here!
I'm a 23-year-old entrepreneur from Winnipeg, Canada and I’ve been obsessed with making my truck look awesome ever since I first got it almost 7 years ago.
Adrenaline Offroad is an eCommerce business for aftermarket vehicle accessories that currently specializes in delivering LED Lighting transformations!
Just over 2 years ago I was working a 9-5 job making about $1600 / month (after tax) and today my business brings in 35-45K / month and I’m only still just getting started!
Tell us about what you’ve been up to! Has the business been growing?
In the past 1 year, we have attained some incredible growth which is an absolute dream come true. $12,000/ month to now $45,000/ month and growing!
It's easy to run your business when everything is sunshine and rainbows, but when things become uncertain that's when you get the chance to build some character and see how dedicated you really are to becoming successful.
One very important thing I have learned and applied in the last year is automation and delegation. I have hired a full-time employee to manage social media as a whole and numerous other things that I used to do all by myself. At first, I was like, man how could anybody else do the specific job that I do the same way our customers expect it done? But really it's just a matter of creating a detailed system that is very easy to follow and comprehend.
Through doing that I have been able to free up my time from daily “maintenance tasks” and focus the majority of my time on “growth tasks” and finding new things that can really move the needle for us!
We have been utilizing more user-generated content on Instagram posted in the form of “reels” which has been a great help in growing our Instagram account from around 6,000 to now 39,000 followers in the past year! Being very active and posting about 5x daily has also worked in our favor with the Instagram algorithm.
Having a bigger presence on Instagram has helped to increase our credibility and of course the popularity of our company & products in general. Organic growth on Instagram can almost create a snowball effect because the more people that hear about you, the more people buy from you, and then the more word of mouth advertising you get (which is crucial) as long as you actually sell great products of course!
Another great thing for increasing sales that I have learned about and really built out in the last few months is “SMS & Email automation”. I use Postscript for SMS automation right now, then Privy and a Shopify app called “Follow up Email Marketing '' for email automation. Setting up automation is like having employees that work 24/7.
Here’s an example of SMS automation we have set up right now. When somebody joins our list through our website pop up they will be sent a series of informational text messages once every week for 4 weeks and at the end, we offer them a discount to purchase with. But it’s also set up so if they purchase before that week 4 text gets sent out then it cancels the rest of the automation set to go out and it sends the customer down a new automation journey based on the conditions of the order they just placed!
The options for automation are really endless and we are still building onto ours today!
Late 2020, We took a look at our best sellers, one of them being “single row RGB+W wheel lights” and we decided to make a new variation of it that had an extra row of LEDs making them “double row RGB+W wheel lights”. Since we released it back in November our customers have been loving it and it had become our #2 best seller of all time already!
Sometimes you don’t need an entirely new product, just look at what is already working well and expand on it or make it better somehow!
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
One thing we tried that did not work for us was partnering up with a Facebook ads agency to run ads. It was not a good experience. Most agencies make their money by taking a percentage of the sales they drive for you with the ads they run. The problem with this was that a lot of sales that were attributed as sales “they brought in” were not really because of the ads at all.
Anybody who simply saw the ad on their Instagram or Facebook feed and then purchased within the next 28 days was counted as a customer that was driven from the ads. This was because of how facebook's acquisition model works. And of course, the ad was shown to our existing customers and people we had been talking to already in DM’s, etc). So we ended up paying somebody else for “bringing in” the same customers we had already been dealing with! Needless to say, we still don’t use any paid ads haha
A cool update though, we are currently in the process of moving our main shipping/ fulfillment warehouse from Canada into Texas! With over 90% of our customers being in the USA, this will save us well over $1,000 a month in shipping costs and even more as we continue to grow! Not to mention faster shipping times and the ability to offer more shipping options such as overnight shipping at a decent price which will surely be a lot more inviting to potential customers!
Without a doubt it is a hard move to make, with having to get set up to do business out of Texas, knowing which states we have to collect and remit taxes in, getting set up with US customs broker and even just shipping all of our product from Canada to the US while maintaining the shipping demand to our customers at the same time. At the end of the day it's a business move that will lead to nothing but good things down the road so it's more than worth it to grind it out!
Here’s another lesson learned this past year. We had partnered with a couple of different custom fabrication companies to build and offer custom exhaust tips to our customers and even though the product was of good quality we had to terminate both partnerships.
The problem we faced with these fabrication businesses and also with a large majority of suppliers we test the waters with is reliability. I’ve learned that if a supplier does not meet the guaranteed delivery dates they give on more than one occasion within the first few months then it’s best just not to work with them.
Between the amount of time wasted trying to find out when the products will be ready to ship, keeping customers waiting for longer than we tell them and the stress it causes, in general, is just not worth it.
I would say that only 2 in every 10 suppliers we have come across have been solid long-lasting partnerships.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
We very recently expanded into UTV / ATV accessories which are going to be a really fun area to work at building a bigger presence in!
I have always personally tested our products while off-roading in my truck but I recently got a Polaris RZR and it has been nothing but awesome transforming that thing with our lighting products and not to mention putting them to the test constantly in some wild offroading conditions!
Offroad Rock lights durability testing:
The company goal for 2021 is to do $1,000,000 in sales. Personally, my goal in life right now is just to enjoy the journey of progression in every area of life (business, bodybuilding, mentally) and do as many fun & exciting things as I possibly can!
As fun and exciting as it is to chase huge goals, if you can’t enjoy life and be happy on the way to your goals then you should take a really good look at your life and all of the blessings you already have right now. Very basic things like having healthy working eyes, or being able to breathe freely without the aid of a machine in everyday life are always taken for granted so easily and once you really imagine what life would be like without the ability to see or not being able to walk, you’ll start to feel pretty damn good about your current situation!
One thing I have learned is that if you can’t appreciate what you have now, chances are when you finally get what you have been chasing after you’ll still feel uncontented and unhappy with what you have!
Have you read any good books in the last year?
I have read a good number of books in the last year, The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris is a really good one that allows you to see life and how we use our time from a really cool perspective and has helped me make certain business moves to get me doing more of the things that I needed to be doing and less of the things somebody else should be doing!
Another one I found very interesting was As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. This book does a really great job of showing us how much influence we actually have over the lives we live and it can easily change your entire life path in a very positive way if properly applied.
Also, read the book “Profit First” to dominate your finances and always have money where it needs to be. It's a game-changer.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
If it was easy everybody would be doing it.
It's easy to run your business when everything is sunshine and rainbows, but when things become uncertain that's when you get the chance to build some character and see how dedicated you really are to becoming successful.
Sometimes we still have $0 days and get no sales at all but then the very next day we make a couple of grand! That’s just what it's like being an entrepreneur and If you can’t deal with unsteady income for a few years to get to the big bucks in the end then you might not make it.
I think the hardest part of it all is believing you can really do it even when things aren’t looking so good. I learned that keeping a positive mental attitude when things get challenging can make all of the difference between success and failure.
No matter how qualified you are, if you don’t believe you can do it, you won’t and somebody less qualified who simply believes they can do it will make it instead!
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We are looking for somebody to help us beef up our customer service on (Instagram &,Email) on the weekends since we normally operate Monday-Friday only.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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