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John shop runs a six figure business selling dollhouse furniture over website. He usually works between ten and twenty hours a week. It took him roughly three years to get to this point, but he did it.
He had two supplier, one for kits and one for dollhouse miniatures, but the majority of hassles come from the miniatures. In his store, he has everything you can imagine, a dollhouse sofa, dollhouse food, actual dolls and all kinds of other random items. He even has miniature electric chairs. It is a much more popular hobby than many realize. Most people who shop at his store are hobbyists, primarily older women, although there are men as well. The men tend to buy more dollhouse building supplier, so he is added baseboards and electric kits to his store.
He chose this niche of dollhouse while doing keyword research. It kept coming up as a competitive keyword compared to his sped sheet of other briskness ideas that he was entertaining. When he looked as his company’s sites, they were not done very well and he saw an oppornities to do it better. He had an affinity for the niche but it was not the only thing he was interested in. He had passion for the product but there as a lot that he had to learn on the business side of things.
He does the customer service, fulfillment and everything in between. The business is all drop ship which means he done not have to deal with any fulfillment or warehousing issues. It is all handled by a third party. His supplier has a warehouse not too far from his house, about a two hour drive and he has been about to visit several times. He views the workers there as part of his team even though they are not technically his employees. There are now three thousand items in his store and he would easily add another ten thousand if he wanted.
Like many entrepreneurs. John’s goal in starting his store as all about her personal freedom. He had been in corporate America for fifteen years and always felt like a fish out of water. As a talented and hardworking person, he got promoted regularly, which kept his stuck in the employee wheel of success. In his last five years, he worked in insurance and had all of the top designations. Even with these achievements, though he just never liked any of his jobs. He did not enjoy taking orders and never understood why he had to work an eight hour day if he would get the same amount of work done in four hours. He realized that he never would be happy on going term working in a corporate environment, it must was not for him. If he would simply switched jobs, the same response would be somewhere else.
Sometimes, John think about having his own warehouse and employees but right now he is chosen to limit the growth of his company, because it is just not the right time in his life to do that. This is an important discipline for many family first entrepreneurs, it is not that they are opposed to growth, just that they understand everything come with a cost. As the saying goes, you can have anything you want, you just cannot have anything at least not all at once. Getting clear on his is what we all need to do. You do not want to chase a certain kind of growth only to discover that you have sacrificed the one thing you really want. Right now, John is only speeding about five hours a week on their store and he rest is spent with family.
