"Just as more people started to gain energy from CaffJuice, I was losing mine for it."
SO. This post is long over due, but here it is...
As a lot of you know, I formerly had a start up Company named CaffJuice which was the first caffeinated fruit juice, aiming to be the healthier alternative to coffee and energy drinks. I fucking loved it. And I still do love it and still firmly believe it is not only a great idea but a marketable and successful idea.
I loved having purpose to my life, I woke up every day with purpose and endured the roller coaster of feels that they call entrepreneurship for around two years. I inhaled the highs, I inhaled the lows but it was becoming increasingly overwhelming for myself and my business partner Caleb Hinton.
Let me tell you why...
To put it simply, I failed. There is no excuses and there are no excuses in business. I failed in what I wanted to do which was bring this drink product to market and use profit in a way which would better people a lot less privileged than myself.
Despite it taking off in regards to bottles sold and it appearing as if it was doing tremendously well, scaling it up without any initial investment was becoming increasingly harder and harder. We were at the max amount of bottles we could hand produce and bluntly put, all of the time and effort that was being injected only resulted in enough profit to buy some Honey Roasted Peanuts. So what did it need in order to be successful? The concept needed infrastructure which would free up time so energy formerly spent on manufacturing could now be energy spent on sales & marketing (things that really mattered for scalability).
There were two logical ways in order to attain infrastructure - CaffJuice needed to be earning enough profit to save in which that money could be invested on machinery (but you all know we went down the CO-OP and got our pack of peanuts) OR we needed investment.
Investment
"£50,000 Offered to Exciting New Drink Company CaffJuice"
50,000 pounds was offered to us and 50,000 pounds was turned down. That's right.. we got our investment offer and we turned it down. The investors were great people and they were willing to put their neck on the line and risk a lot for us, but without going into all of the boring details we decided the offer was not for us and negotiations fell through. We had other potential investors interested and we had enough behind CaffJuice in terms of sales figures to get investment from people that aligned with the brand's fundamental values.
Heart Problems
Shortly after this, I was training to run 7 Marathons in 7 days. I formerly had heart problems so I requested a check up before I started. The ECG tests showed abnormalities on my heart rhythm, so bad that the Doctor told me to stop exercising and stop taking caffeine immediately. Ironic news when you've got a caffeine based start up which was marketed as the healthier alternative. (FYI the heart problem was obviously not induced from CaffJuice it ended up being a genetic variation which is not as detrimental as originally perceived).
I felt like a fraud during this period, I was marketing a drink as being "healthier", yet I wasn't able to drink it because of my health. Whether it be speaking to business owners, investors, customers, everyone would always ask me if I drunk CaffJuice in the morning in which I would look them in the eye and say yes. Now, I was having to explain my situation which was straight up ridiculous due to my honest nature. Just as more people started to gain energy from CaffJuice, I was losing mine for it...
Desire to Travel Before It's Too Late
So much time and energy had been injected into CaffJuice that at times, it quite literally felt like my baby boy. My social life went out the window because I had no time. My love life went out the window because (again) I had no time (*cough cough* poor game) and I couldn't do everything all my mates were doing at this age like buy cars and houses (not that I ever needed that, but there was something I wanted to do with money which was travel). Travelling is something that ideally needs to be done when you are young. Nobody gets married, has a couple kids then fucks off to Aussie for a couple years leaving their family in the shit.
So I needed to travel soon, but I wasn't earning any money to actually save and I knew that at some point I was going to have to give CaffJuice up (or at least put it on pause to travel).
My productivity output started to decrease. The cocktail of CaffJuice lacking profitable income, coupled with the fact I was no longer drinking the product and my understanding that I needed to travel first meant I was no longer enjoying the process. And just like that, I stopped. I gave up. I failed.
Consequently, you cannot beat a man that refuses to give up, which is why I need to take this on my shoulders rather than find excuses. Accepting allows you to move on and improve for future ventures - hence taking full accountability.
"WhAt a wAsTe Of yoUR TiMe !!"
I've always had the mentality of fuck what everyone else thinks and do what truly makes you happy. Not what will make your parents happy, not what society thinks will make you happy but actually have the self-awareness in life to determine what the fuck matters to you. Everyone has different values and if you are doing something that goes against your own values then you've hit a wrong turn and you've gotta reverse that shit up. What the fuck matters to you? Seriously answer that shit before time passes by.
So, I failed. And I'm still spilling motivational shit trying to get you to better yourself but I genuinely believe that is my nature. I not only want the best in life for myself but I want the best out of people's lives, I want everyone to maximise this opportunity. I've had a lot of memories during this phase of my life and I have absolutely 0 regrets. I had the balls to give CaffJuice a go, I learnt so much about the real world implications of sales and marketing and I know that I can apply these skills to my Personal Training career and be a success.
In life, there is no failure. You either win or you learn. I learnt a fucking lot and that's all there is to it.
Soon I'll be going travelling to see the beautiful stuff this world has to offer and maybe at a later date I'll be back pursuing CaffJuice. Never say never. But for now, it's time for me to chase another thrill in this thing we call life with something else I am extremely passionate about.
I would just like to say a massive thanks for everyone that followed CaffJuice, shared their posts and thanks to everyone that purchased bottles in shops and literally went out of their way to help myself. It was unbelievably overwhelming that people I didn't even know were offering a helping hand where they could. That meant the world to me. The feedback I got and the people I met truly made it worthwhile, so thank you so much for the memories.
Do More. Be More.
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