How She Went From ZERO To $2M in 18 Months

March, 2023, I got laid off for my tech job. That's really all I knew my whole career. So I was like, okay, what am I going to do next? Two years ago, Alina had no business. Today, she has a multi-million dollar business. So you were living off of savings while you were building the business. Savings and then pulled like my 401k money out. You were hanging by a threat. Pretty much, yeah. Are you scared? Oh, yeah. I was so scared. It's weird because you really don't know what's going to happen, like, ever when you launch a product. Alina is a case study of someone who came through this process and now has a seven-figure business that allows her to live life on her own terms. I couldn't imagine like having the life I do now. And I'm not like balling with a Rolex or anything. That comes when you sell a company. Today, I sit down with Alina to go through her business. How she built the audience of customers that wanted to buy her product before launch day. Are where were you collecting the email? In order to join the group, they put it in my club room. Oh, that's freaking genius. Wow. Alina. Hi, Ryan. Hey, tell me what your life was like two years ago. Two years ago, my life was quite different. So March 2023, I got laid off for my tech job. And that's really all I knew my whole career. And what were you doing in tech? I was working at this AI company. And so I did like project management, which is probably the most useful skill for entrepreneurship, because you have just a ton of moving parts at the same time. I happened to find a book called 12 months to 1 million written by some crazy guy that I didn't know. Sounds like a scam. And so I was like, 12 months to 1 million. Okay, like, let me see what this is about. Started reading it and just the framework really made sense to me. And I was like, okay, well, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. And this gives like started to give like a good blueprint that I felt like actually made a lot of sense. And I knew it was high level. But you knew you wanted to be an entrepreneur. Yes, that I did know your whole life. Internally, yes, however, like my family immigrated here from Ukraine when I was three. And so like the way that a lot of immigrant parent, well, he's mine was it was like the number one thing they want is safety. And so going into entrepreneurship, I never even like really thought about it, even though looking back like I've always wanted it to be an entrepreneur. But what was important was like having a stable job, having, you know, like income that, you know, is going to come to you. So being an entrepreneur was a little bit like against the grain or the norm. Even in college, like I was had an internship, but I was flipping robot vacuums that I bought on Craigslist, I was flipping them on eBay. I'm like, this is making me way more money. So I definitely always had that in me. Kerry Vaynerchuk once told me, that's the tell. If you can go back in your life and you find a time where you thought it was more fun to be shoveling driveways, then it was to be having snowball fights or flipping vacuums was more fun than going to parties. That's the tell. That's when you know that it's just in you. It's in your blood. So your in-between jobs was kind of your permission to explore that itch. It sounds like, is that right? Yeah, I spent a lot of time like walking around and probably listening to your podcast. And I came to this one that we're on right now. Yes, but it still sounds like a scam. A little bit surreal, but it almost, like I came to the conclusion that this was the universe, just it's like, if you're not going to be coming on, do this. I'm going to foresee to do that. Like go this path. And so that's what it almost felt like was happening with when I got laid off. You said that the framework made sense, but there's still this jump that has to happen from going from logic to okay, I'm actually going to do this. I'm actually going to take the risk, put up the capital. I'm going to take a sale. And that is a different moment than when it clicks logically. So when did it click for you that you were going to put both feet in the water? I just out there was just at one point I decided that because at first I was you know trying building the business and looking for a job. And then I got into the final round interviews of some job. And I was like, if I get this job, like I really don't want this job. Like even if I get this, like this is the sucks. And so is what I was thinking. And kind of at that point is when I was like, okay, you know what? Like if I'm going to think like this and I just have to I made a decision then to like believe in myself because I that was the hardest part in the beginning. And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs is that it's really hard to believe in yourself when you have like no track record of it. So I just like would tell myself every day, like I believe in myself and I basically force myself to believe in myself. And then once I saw traction going, then I actually like truly felt and started to believe in myself. So there was a space there where you kind of had to have faith. Until you actually did believe in yourself. Yeah. How did you develop that? Bob, like even if I get this, like this is the sucks. Yeah. And I don't see most people get through that. Most people quit there. Yeah. Most people have the logical methodology in their brain, but they don't actually believe that they can do it. That's probably the biggest place where people just quit is right at the beginning as they believe some doubt that they can't do it. You went through it and I got a million dollar plus business. So how did you get through that that period of faith? Well at first it's it's literally just like telling myself like every day like almost like an affirmation like I believe in myself and I and just doing the things every day that I learned like you know and I mean most of the things I learned of building my business was in the 1% so just I'm like okay I'm doing this. It was really nice having the community there and people just like supporting you. The coaches there like seeing like hey if you just keep doing this like at that time having the outside validation from the like the top 1% community really really helped because if there are certain things that people don't even know that they said to me like little things were like wow that was such a good video or like great job with this email that at that time like I really needed to hear that because I was really really doubting myself and so hearing that from like a community and having other people believe in me too made helped me in the beginning also believe in myself even though I was seeing like nothing going in the beginning. Other people's affirmation of your quality of work was the shot in the arm that you needed to keep doing the work that's what I'm hearing you say. Yeah especially at certain points it's funny to think that these people have no idea like this one little thing that they might have said to me I still remember and I'm like wow like that I might have quit then if I didn't have a community that can you think of one of those times yeah so we're in Austin and so a cup like a handful of us meet in Austin and so I've spent all day recording this video it was like my founder story is here's how I quit or here's why I quit AI to start a dog company or something along those lines and then there's some sort of hook like that and then I went to like that meet up that evening and I was just so exhausted I've been recording and editing this video all day and I'm like it's just I was just really exhausted it was really stressful back then and Julie was like oh my god I Julie is someone in the 1% and I was like oh my god she's like oh my god that video is so good like this is gonna be like like I can't wait to see where you are in six months something just like simple like that really kind of was what I needed to hear then and at that point you were exhausted doubting if it was gonna work doubting if you were gonna get any traction yeah and that comment was okay I'll keep going I'll give it another day I'll give it another week I'll keep doing the work yeah and looking at my bank account and seeing all the my savings go down so that's so you were living off of savings while you were building the business savings and then pulled like my 401K money out wow my inventory yeah were you scared oh yeah I was so scared so I started kind of building the audience in May and then when I launched the product in December I had like one month of round left so I like I I needed it to work you were hanging by a thread pretty much yeah so okay I didn't know that part of your story so you you started planning and building in May of 23 right yeah so let's say I like found though your book and like the framework the 1% community in March I started thinking about it for you know like a month and a half and then I started really like starting to I think I made my first video end of May 2023 and for six months I was you know documenting the journey building the audience until launching in December but because I was building the audience I felt pretty comfortable that I could at least get one time sales I wasn't sure about repeat sales but I knew like I had enough I built enough like awareness and enough of a community that at least some people would buy one time six months is a long time to stack the deck it's a long time to build the audience and the waiting list of people did you intentionally do it for that long or is that just how long it took to get product ready to sell um I don't think intentionally but I think intentionally probably yeah yeah it that's kind of how long it took to figure out because I the way I built it as I I went to the community I went to like different Facebook groups and was like what are your challenges of having a doodle which is what my brands for my brands for and then I started building that community and then it took me a bit to figure out what they wanted and then actually finding manufacturer then there were delays and so that's kind of it just occurred to me that I have not asked you what the actual business is so why don't you give a quick overview of how you chose the product and how you chose the name and what the business does so my econ brand is called DudeWoof it's for it's for a doodle owner so any dog mixed with a poodle is a doodle which is basically an unlimited amount and so the product that I have right now is a doodle detangler spray and so the whole brand kind of focuses on solving challenges for that specific dog breed so doodles get they have different hair than most dogs and they get matted and tangled really easily so when I was talking to my audience and asking them like what are your biggest challenges of having a doodle they were let they said it was really hard to brush their dog kept getting mad so kept having to get shaved down when they went to the groomer and so I went to Chatchee BT put in that challenge and then said what are some good products to create and then so one of the products that came up with was detangler spray and I looked at what existed in the market and I saw that the products that existed were filled with like harsh chemicals and just ingredients that I couldn't pronounce so I my product is like all natural human grade ingredients that's like the big differentiating factor between others and you've been in business taking sales for a year and a half is that right you launched in December of 23 what was the audience like right before you where before you took a sale because you're you're you're at one month's rent left in the bank you spent six months building up this audience you've heard this crazy dude on the internet saying you can do it too and you have a community of people who are giving you feedback but again you got a month's worth of rent in the bank and you're about to take sales you got a lot riding on this thing so what was the state of the audience and what was your mindset like in December of 23 um mindset straight like overwhelmed for sure um excited like just I was like once this launches it's going to whatever happens it's going to be a relief and it's it's weird because you really don't know what's going to happen like ever when you launch a product even if you have a giant audience right before because I knew this had to work I spent a lot of time like finessing my launch strategy and like how I'm like thinking about how am I going to tactically do this like what emails am I going to write how am I going to prep the audience before hands you were basically project managing your launch basically it sounds like you were taking your old skills from the tech world and planning out the entire system that you were going to use uh I feel like that's one of the best skills I could have had being an entrepreneur a lot of my best success stories have a project management background yeah that's funny how that works yeah there's just always a million moving parts going on and so knowing what is the most like impactful so I spent a lot of time figuring out like how am I going to prep this launch make sure it's successful make sure the audience is ready don't hear that much from the audience before but like they'll be comments on my Instagram like excited a couple like responses to the email can't wait to buy and then what really was really neat to see was the day that I launched I guess my coupon code didn't work for some people but I got so many emails being like hey just want to let you know that the coupon didn't work but I just wanted to buy this to support you and I got yeah I got and that's when I was like that's when I realized like how important it is to and how even if people don't say anything like there's a ton of people watching and like there was just so many people that were excited to support me just from documenting the journey as like someone who doesn't know e-com building it up it was Instagram it was going into other people's Facebook groups like doodle owners Facebook groups every day I'd search for posts that were like people struggling to like with brushing their dog out and you know whether this is allowed or not I would comment and be like hey well I'm creating this product here you should follow along if you're interested um and email sending them to my email and I would email like once a week until the launch and then I'd email like perfect so how did the first launch go you released the first product you have no idea what's going to happen mm-hmm you had a month through the rent in the bank what happens well I was able to pay rent that's good um the launch I think it was like it wasn't humongous right away it was maybe like 5k that week um 5k the first week in a bad week yeah a couple hundred sales then it it was really interesting how quickly because you know you build that audience you talk about this all the time it's so true you build the audience they start buying you start emailing them and asking for reviews etc and then it really just snowballs so by month four I was pretty steady on like 50k per month okay so one two scoop a few 50k a month but month one you launch I think I remember you did just over ten thousand dollars in sales the first month does that sound right to you what was your mindset like at that point are you excited are you disappointed are you what's going through your head when you do ten thousand dollars the first month now for for reference back in my day uh when I was coming up to the ranks the dream for most internet marketers is making ten thousand dollars a month that was the four-minute mile for a lot of people so people would work years hoping to get to ten thousand dollars a month now we you know we have people who launched product it's ten thousand dollars they're literally their first 30 days and it's nothing so I'm genuinely curious are you excited pumped disappointed what what's going through your head at that point I was a little excited less than I would have one like looking back I wish I was more excited because that's such a like it is such a good milestone I think I've just felt more of like a sense of relief because I that year was like a pretty stressful year for me and so just that was like a milestone like launching the product as a milestone and then after that I just could at least breathe for a little bit yeah you're not worried about this being a a big failure and being pushed up against the wall at least as much oh I still was okay but at least I love it you're an entrepreneur you're back is against the wall for the first year but at least I like launched the product and that was like okay I did what I could you know and so getting that 10k felt good it's not all profit obviously I think any entrepreneur in the way that I was thinking back then was like okay well what's next like now I have to get reviews 100 reviews etc etc so I wish I spent a little bit more time just like enjoying that at that milestone yeah yeah now that I'm building my supplement company for the second time I am enjoying those milestones just as much if not more as I did the first time which is kind it's weird because the business was starting over at zero again well you know I've already sold this company for sixteen million dollars why am I getting excited about the first three thousand dollar day but I but I know that I'll look back and those are the most fun days so squeezing the juice out of every one of those milestones is is something I wish I had I'm thankful I get to do the second time around you're one of the rare case studies where you didn't seem to slow down after launch most people will launch and there's a dip and there's a lot of mindset coaching that happens in that dip because they get the surge momentum from the launch and then that then the work starts then they got a climb back to consistent sales and profitability you were at 50k a month four months later so was there a dip for you where you had to throw more into it to get it moving again or did you just start to snowball week over week there I believe there was a dip like after launch right after launch maybe the next like one and a one and a half ish months and so I think though like because I was able to build that community and so my next focus after launch was reviews and the more reviews I got the more like they they were coming in pretty quickly and then a more organic sales came so I had like you know 20 reviews within let's say the first week and so 20 reviews is enough to kind of put ppc at spent going and then I was focused on creating user generated content so yes there was a dip but I think it was maybe a little bit smaller because I had like a raving fan base that was wanted to continue supporting as much as they could there's there's a few moments in which an e-commerce entrepreneur realizes that oh this is happening first is when you take the first sale which was you December 2023 then when the reviews start trickling in from strangers and they're positive that's a really important point and then when you see sales start to grow when you get repeat customers that's another point realize oh my goodness something's happening what were those moments like for you do you remember the first few reviews and the repeat orders as they kicked in I remember the first reviews that was really neat to see and I remember my first one star review just as well yeah but the five star like it was it was great it was well actually I'm remembering when I launched people reach my audience reached out to me some people and said they got leaky bottles so that was a little bit of a I was like oh no it was my business like do I have to shut everything down yeah this is fun while it lasted you to go back on LinkedIn now but because again like building that community they emailed me they were and I was able to send them a replacement it wasn't a one star review and so as soon as they got the replacement I could ask them like for a review now it's going to be a five star review and so so getting feedback from the audience and them being like I love it someone telling me that she has cancer and so she is like better it in and so she was really worried because she has to take her dog to the groomer and she doesn't really have the energy to brush them out but the spray helped her so much like it's I know the detainees spray is in like a world-changing product but if I it's it's so like nice to hear that I could even make someone's life even a little bit easier yeah it's it's weird when you realize that and I think that is the it's the magic that people miss when they only think about selling product on the internet and they miss the community behind it and they miss the person who is buying it they miss all of the good stuff that gives you energy and life to keep building the business at some point in your business you started building the audience more aggressively we call the strategy the traffic triangle but you started building a Facebook group and building your email list more intentionally and that seemed to be a big lift for the product line would you share a little bit of how you built that audience and what it meant for the long-term growth of the business the next kind of phase like the growing phase what really helped with the growth was the Facebook group so what I did there is I just created a Facebook group due to a community for doodle owners and so the point of that Facebook group was just to bring my audience into that group and so in order to join the group you have to like supply you you have to list your email in there and so now it's in and then I started running ads to it to the group and so I'd get like with for like $10 I'd get like 70 emails or wow maybe even more probably maybe like 100 actually I think it was more and so I don't that doesn't mean they're all it doesn't mean they're all buyers but I know that they're all like doodle owners yeah yeah they're part of the community they're part of the community and I don't know if they all like not all of them have problems with brushing their dog out but I do know that they're all like the niche that I'm targeting I'm just curious tactically running the ads to the Facebook group are you sending them to a like is that a Facebook lead ad or is what's the mechanism for which you're running ads to the Facebook group so I think there is a way to do that the way I did it was I created just a post on my like through my business account was like are you this is what it said are you a doodle owner join this Facebook group for doodle owners copies amazing that's what it said and then and you got 50 cent email leads from doodle owners probably yeah probably cheap that's absurd only now all my goodness it wasn't rocket science Alena even says this is not rocket science and it's not it's eight steps you choose your person you put a hundred people on an email list you'll launch you get a hundred reviews you get to 25 sales a day you put a hundred people on an ambassador list you launch more products and get to 100 sales a day that's the process and we put entrepreneurs through that process inside of the one percent that is our community for helping entrepreneurs launch and get to 100 sales per day a good next step for you if you want to follow an Alena's footsteps is to just download our free resources at capitalism.com/playbook that's where you will get our systems and our methodology for building million dollar businesses and if you want to work with us in the future we have a community that mentors entrepreneurs on their road to a million dollars is the same community that Alena went through when she was launching her business and growing it to the first million if you want to follow those footsteps a good first step it's to just download our free resources or at capitalism.com/playbook now back to the show where were you collecting the email in order to join the group they put it in and then there's a plug in that connects to my clavio so every like two hours it takes that it accepts them into the group and then puts their email into my email. Oh that's freaking genius wow that's so hot 50 cent email I haven't heard 50 cent email addresses on targeted traffic in a long time that's really fun so the Facebook group was a big deal for building the email list and for building engagements and spreading the name recognition as well sounds like that was a really big lift for the business. Yep and people just honestly like that's something this year that I want to dive more into is like how to utilize my Facebook group because right now I'm just utilizing really the email part of it where I got their email but I mean it's like people post like hundreds of posts a day of like their dogs or questions like people are really engaged and yeah they always see the name dude wolf in there so that was a big part for scaling and then the second part was when you started talking about TikTok shop I was like okay I need to get on this so a big part of like my strategy now is I do use TikTok shop I have a lot of creators that make videos and then the videos that work so first of all drive sales on TikTok shop but like the main thing is that the videos that perform well I then run the mess Facebook ads to send them to Amazon like landing page Amazon and then so that's like it's that's very nice because I constantly have an influx of UGC content and that's been working really well we were on a coaching call in I don't know early 2024 and I think you were at maybe 30 or 40 thousand dollars a month and you asked me the question when can I start paying myself and I said Alina in six months you're gonna be in such a different place please keep as much in the business as possible because this is your best performing asset and six months later you had a million dollar business I'm curious if that conversation changed your approach or if you adjusted anything about the business after that conversation because I know it was not the advice that you wanted to hear but you did cross a million dollars within about six months yeah you're right actually told me to Uber that's it so to drive for Uber so I did I kept as much as I could in the business that's true I also realized that I also learned about inventory financing because I that what that conversation made me realize is that I need also need to figure out how I'm going to get more inventory as this business is growing so I started understand like learning about different lending funding strategies etc and inventory financing was like the best thing I could have done for my brand because I already had a proven track record of sales I feel comfortable the interest pace for itself with you know buying in more quantities and then so but yes that I think having that conversation definitely pushed me to keep more in the business and the reason I was even able to pay myself a little bit is because building an audience I was able to have my product is double the cost of the competitors so I had I have like the little bit of margin or I have a decent amount of margin and I could take some of that out but only because I was able to build an audience that will buy at a premium price point yeah most people will try to be slightly cheaper than the next competitor if you build an audience you can and should be two to three times the price of the next competitor because they're you're making the products specifically for them you're not trying to extract from a platform you crossed you had your first I remember you sent me a Facebook message the first day you had a hundred sale day maybe July of 24 am I remembering that right that's probably pretty exact what was what was that like for you your first hundred sale day that was definitely excited okay we were that one gave you some dopamine yes that one gave me some dopamine well what's interesting is I was like okay this is it this will forever continue that's that's what I was thinking then I've made it I'm a multimillionaire now but no that was definitely exciting what that showed me is that so the reason that happened is because one of those UGC videos that I talked about one of the Facebook ads started getting a lot of traction and there was some organic stuff that also helped but what that made me realize is I was pretty much stuck for a while at I forget them units but maybe like 50 units a day and I was like well maybe I need to maybe like this is it this is the plateau like there's no more doodle owners pretty buying doodle detangler spray and so I started thinking about the product the next product and actually you told me to try to wait for to launch my second product until I hit about a hundred sales I told you that I've I vaguely remember that yeah which which is not the advice that I give most people but I think you had consistent growth month over month and that's it's it's most people are so ready to get the dopamine hit of the next launch the next launch the next launch I have to just get them to wait to 25 a day with you you were compounding so quickly that we'll let this ride like ride the hot hand so I do vaguely remember that and well that was a hundred sales day so but that also made me realize that there are more than that there are a hundred doodle owners at least every day that could be interested in the product so so then you started to realize the the market size yes exactly and it didn't stay at 100 a day consistently but you had your first one and then you came back to about 50 I think and I had to start working your way back yeah so it's kind of probably like a week of double what I usually would expect and then it went back down maybe not all the way to where it was like a little bit higher than maybe it was like 60 sales a day consistently when did you finally break the plateau of a hundred sales a day slash a hundred grand a month what was that milestone for you and what got you through that threshold? partially just doing the consistently doing the same things over and over again I think like the benefit of having one product is that I I now have like really good frameworks in the business I have frameworks for getting reviews for everything that new products it just can I can just launch products and they can easily come into these frameworks so just like consistently doing those things building those frameworks up also what pushed it over is I don't know why I didn't do the sooner but I that I was running ads and they were getting a decent row as but I was nervous to scale them and so I just started putting more money into those same ads and I was like wait a second if I if it has a it has like I'm getting five times the return and if I put more money into it that means that like I'll get five times that return so you started doing more of what was already working yes that's a good strategy find what works and do and do more of that you was it what was the time frame from going from zero to the first hundred came on 13 so if I was December 20 it was January 2025 okay so it was 13 months to 1 million instead of 12 months to 1 million do you plan to sue me for false advertising not today so we're now sitting here in spring 2025 and you're looking back two years when you had no business had no entrepreneurial experience at all and now you're sitting on what a two million dollar your business about if things probably at the end of the year yeah so how does that feel I'm really proud of myself for just sticking through it and just following like even when I wanted to give up and was like oh this is going nowhere for just believing in myself and being like okay fat I know I'm doing the right things like if I just keep doing them this will I know something's going to happen and then it also it's it's just it's life changing like truly like having like found finding your work and just like building this business I mean my life is like it's just so I couldn't imagine like having the life I do now and I'm not like ballin with a Rolex or anything but it's that comes when you sell a company you can ball you can ball with the Rolex in four years when you sell the company for a whack ton of money and you might not see that now but you're right on pace but but I do have like the freedom in my life that's that's like I mean that's to me that's why that's that's what making money is that's why I want to make money is to have freedom in my life to be able to do what I want to do what I want to do and having your own business like gives you you don't have to take pto off you don't like you just yeah it's nice the thing that I loved hearing you say there was that you feel proud of yourself for doing the thing when it was hard you didn't say I'm proud of myself for building a multimillion dollar business you didn't say I'm proud of myself for being able to sleep until 10 you didn't say I'm proud of myself for being able to travel to this place you were proud of yourself for doing the thing when it got hard and it reminds me of what you said at the beginning of this conversation of there was a period in which your brain's freaking out looking for safety and you just chose to bet on yourself and train yourself to believe in yourself and that was the hardest part and that was both the hardest part the most necessary part and the part that you're most proud of would you comment on that um it's it's true like I I feel like being an entrepreneur has it's the best like self-development practice like I I could or anyone really could ever do you just again like learn to believe in yourself you have to you have no other option and you just you just learn to trust yourself and trust that you'll like get out of if something is not going as well like you'll figure out how to um get out of that situation or make it better and it's just yeah it's just the best self-development tool ever can confirm what do you want to do now for a lot of people crossing a million or two million is making it I view it as the first it's for the first threshold then the game changes and it becomes a little bit more creative you can build in whatever direction you want what do you where do you want to take the company you haven't even launched the second product yet as we're sitting here right that's wild so I'm excited to launch the second product in like three weeks or in April um so I'm excited for that definitely gonna launch a third product already have an idea of what it is at the end of this year and then stabilize that and then um see how that goes and just like my long-term vision is I want one dude wolf to be the brand like if someone gets a doodle they they know that they can go to dude wolf so that will so what that means is I'll need to have trainings on my website so partnering with like doodle trainers um doing like affiliate partnerships with them it could be like acquiring other smaller brands like supplement brands for dogs to bring them into my uh the business under like for my commute doodle community but I do want like when people get a doodle they're like okay I know I can go to doodle for like the best quality products and the best training the best best best resources for my dog it sounds like the community that you built might be the most valuable asset that you had in the business it sounds like that's the nucleus of everything that you're doing you can buy a supplement company and plug it into the community you can launch another product you plug it into the community you need reviews you go to the community you need user-generated content you go to the community it sounds like it all came back to the Facebook group the email list the content that you had created is that is that a fair assumption 100% that's why it would make more sense to like my brand to acquire like other brands because I have that like brand recognition and that community that wants to buy from dude wolf specifically versus putting it on like my products under like getting acquired by another one I I see it working better with dude wolf acquiring other brands when you started this process two years ago going from zero to a million dollar run rate in about a year probably seemed unattainable or unreasonable now you've done it the the next milestone that I tell people is that they can have a multi-million dollar exit maybe an eight figure exit do you see or believe that yet or does that still seem way out there eight figure exit seems kind of way out there as as like as the business grows it feels closer and closer but it still feels like kind of out there now can see the path to getting there it just seems like such a big number yeah I mean it's a big number ten million dollars a lot of money it's a million I don't care who you are ten million dollars a lot money but it's it's totally doable especially once you cross that threshold of about two million bucks it's like all right I can take I can I can definitely double this and if I can double it once I can double it twice and then I'm right there and at that point okay I'm like four years away from ten million bucks it'll be really interesting to see what happens after you launch the second product because you've accomplished so many milestones with just one product and now you can take those systems and apply it to the second one and the business may grow 25% or it may triple you don't really know until you launch so you might have a a slight improvement in sales or it might just blast off into the next level we have no way I'm knowing so it'll be interesting to see what your mindsets like what so one one year in your goal was I got we built a community launch product get it 200 sales a day your second full year what are you shooting for this year in terms of the objectives that you want to hit um so I want to I'm launching the second product I want to get my third one launched that's a big kind of milestone because it took me so long to launch my second one that I want to launch my third one I want that process to be shorter and then I starting to like I have an EA now so starting to kind of like turn this into a not just me business so kind of the operations aside of things like having all SOPs written and just making this into like an actual business that can be sellable um where it's not just me running everything that's uh by the end of this year like I that's a big goal for me what do your parents think now my parents they're really proud of me they're still don't really understand like like what what happened I've been doing this two decades my parents still have no idea what I do for yeah they're like yeah my dad's like wait how did that happen do they know that you have a multimillion dollar business um I think so maybe I don't I don't get into the specifics yeah do you feel like a millionaire I'm not really sure what that feels like but I I feel like comfortable like in the way that I'm living and I'm happy with my lifestyle and I feel like I have a lot of freedom in my to choose my day in my life how I want it to be which is like the most important thing to say but the most important thing to me in life well I want to put this in your brain just so you're aware on paper you're now a millionaire you on paper now of course you can't you can't buy your lunch with paper wealth yeah but you could this business is probably worth at least 1.5 million if you were to do a capital raise you could probably raise it a three or four million dollar run or three or four million dollar valuation so on paper you're a multimillionaire and for me that changed my mindset about how to think about my business once I started honoring that I started to be like oh I'm a millionaire now I have a I have a business worth seven figures now I'm going to start thinking and treating and operating it like that and sometimes you just need to hear somebody say hey guess what you've done good you have a multimillion dollar business so I'm curious how that feels to hear that said at least on paper you're a millionaire it feels it definitely feels good it feels like I should think about this more often in the way I operate and like the way I think about growing my business and because you don't feel it from day to day I mean yeah you don't feel it but you just see the problems you do see the problems tell me about one of the worst days recently because it's easy to look at the highlight reel and say cool Alina read a book two years ago and now she's got a seven figure business tell me about one of the dark days so most recently actually I brought it up when we were at that capitalist the pigs meetup so I had one of my influencers had a video go viral and in that video he talked about he mentioned something about groomers that he was he it was really he was just using it as a hook he doesn't even think that but it was not the best well said thing about groomers and then he said use this product and said so he was promoting the product but the groomer community got a very upset and mad trigger alert yeah triggered and so they started giving like there is one star reviews all over like my website and there are some on Amazon and a ton of emails and so that was I honestly this was like three weeks ago I thought I was gonna have to shut everything down oh my goodness but it all yeah irrationally right you're not sitting there calculating okay I've got shut this down but but it was your first bad PR day yeah it's like the initial like reaction of oh no oh yeah I mean that stuff really eats at you makes you unable to sleep sometimes for a couple days at a time how did you respond to that how do you handle that well first of all is really again like back to the community that I'm a part of which is you know like the one percent community and going to that that pigs meetup so talking to people there and at they helped me like craft an email to the groomers and really I just said told the truth where it's like this I don't really have control over what people post on TikTok I definitely don't think and you like I love groomers I take my dog to the groomer this is meant to be used alongside going to the groomers this product and then I sent an email to my list and I got so many I at the end of the email I basically was like I'm getting a lot of a lot of one star reviews if you could take 30s if you love the news the product if you could take 30s to write a review it would mean the world to me and then I got like so many five star reviews on Amazon from that so it honest yeah so it again going back to now the community that I've built yes it's yeah I feel a community really is the theme so I have to ask did sales go up after that after the video after after the bad PR but then going to the community like all and all did that situation become a net positive I don't know sales went up but it definitely became a net positive just even from people responding to my email and being like I'm really sorry yet to go through that like in the sense of it's it built connection and humanized my brand my brand more probably increase your loyalty the customer loyalty that in the bomb that they had with you it probably increase that it's interesting there's a there's kind of an underlying theme and a lot of what you're saying of bumping up against these challenges and then growth happening as a result of going through them it started with you had six months of cushion and you didn't believe in yourself and you got through that hurdle and then you were down to a month's rent and you were worried about launch and you got through that hurdle and you were proud of yourself for growing through that and then in this case you have a dark day but you stick with it and now there's a net benefit on the other side of that I think that might be the best summary of entrepreneurship it's just running headfirst into a wall saying out that hurt and then trying to run again and you get better at it and you get through bigger and bigger walls as you crash harder harder yeah maybe you're running into a kind of freaking out for like a day yeah thinking everything maybe needs to shut down and be like wait a second yeah I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only person who thinks this is all going to go away tomorrow as a result of this set of times yeah when you launched and did $10,000 in sales the first month that's a big milestone but after that then you got to start doing the real work of growing the business and this is where we have to build that bridge of getting to 25 sales a day you obviously can't launch a new product all the time you got to build the system of getting to 25 sales a day so what did you prioritize and what did you focus on after the launch to start getting the consistent sales and eventually to 25 than 50 sales a day so I knew that no one's going to buy a product except for the audience that I built without reviews so and I needed people that weren't part of my audience to buy the product so prioritize definitely going to my audience and getting reviews and getting them to asking them to post pictures and videos of the product and then just figuring out how I could maximize the value of that one customer even though I didn't have like I didn't have another product to sell but you can still continue to maximize from that one customer as much value that isn't necessarily another sale okay I this is a genuine question I'm not tooting my own horn did I did did I tell you to do that or did you do that intuitively because the language that you're using of maximizing the value of that customer not in just the way of getting another sale but turning them into a review