In October I mentioned I wanted to re-start my monthly brag posts, where I’d post about my wins from the previous month.
I love having these to look through at the end of the year and it’s a nice way to stop and smell the roses.
Although my intention was to post a new one every month, my warehouse got very busy in December. I didn’t have time to eat or sleep, much less blog.
I’m going to combine November and December in this post so that the momentum keeps rolling.
Here are all the big wins I can remember:
1. Although not perfect, Christmas at the warehouse this year was WAY better than last year. We learned a lot from the year prior and orders were a bit more seamless. We still had some issues, but 98%-99% of orders went out on time.
2. My warehouse printed, made, and shipped out well over 150,000 unique items in just under a 6 week period.
3. For our first Christmas in December 2015, we went from 0 to 10 employees. In December 2016, we went from 7 to 22 employees. This year we went from 15 employees to 70+ at one point. Pretty cool.
4. I went on Santa’s Little Helpers on Reddit and helped out a few families with getting gifts for their children.
People would post their children’s Amazon wishlists and I went and cleared a few out. It was a ton of fun and based on the responses, helped a bit.
By the way, if you ever feel like randomly helping, these are my favorite spots on Reddit.
5. Before living at the warehouse for the Christmas rush, I got to spend tons of time with my nephew.
The picture to the left is a picture of him putting a toy in the donation box a Toys ‘R’ Us. I love showing him that it’s important to give back to others.
6. We spent Thanksgiving with my family and went to Wichita for Christmas. That was really fun. I love Don’s friends and family.
Here’s a picture from Thanksgiving with my mom, nephew, and I:
7. I purchased a second investment home in December. My first one has proven to be a great investment, so I thought I’d try another.
I’ve actually never been to either of my investment homes. I have a realtor I trust to vet the houses, a property manager, and a great contractor. It’s all pretty hands-off.
I was so busy with the warehouse that I didn’t even make the closing on the second house. I gave my sister power of attorney to purchase on my behalf. Ha.
8. A pure-content webinar I ran as a bonus for Low Hanging System made it to the top 100 GoToWebinar webinars in 2017.
A Low Hanging System webinar hit the top 100 before that.
9. Tons of results rolled in for LHS students during the Christmas season.
We had everything from “my first 5 sales!” to $59k in 30 days and a ton in between.
10. My ecom sales did pretty well this year.
There are a bunch of selling channels I use, but some of the top ones:
Amazon – $516,594.21 in 2017. Of that, $205,317 was from November 1 to December 25.which was 39.74% of total sales.
Etsy store #1 – $8,677.68 for the year, $4,484.31 from November 1 to December 25.
Etsy store #2 – $8,955.20 for the year, $6635.40 from November 1 to December 25. (This store opened in May 2017.)
Etsy store #3 – $1,823.70 for the year, $1,292.70 from November 1 to December 25. (This store opened in May 2017.)
Etsy store #4 – $10,287.97 for the year, $8,558.80 from November 1 to December 25. (This store opened in May 2017.)
Etsy store #5 – $9,354.25 for the year, $7,885 from November 1 to December 25. (This store opened in May 2017.)
That’s a total of $39,098.7 for the year and $28,856.21 for November 1 to December 25.
The stats aren’t entirely scientific since many stores opened later and products were added in over time, but the pure numbers say that 73.8% of sales were from November 1 to December 25.
eBay – There are people in LHS doing far better than me on eBay, but my numbers were $6007.47 for the year (1266.48, 827.97, 632.26 3,280.75) $2915.85 was from November 1 to December 25. That’s 48.54% of sales during November 1 to December 25.
11. I still have to run the numbers for my other businesses, but it looks like all my businesses combined did between $5m-$6m this year.
12. I have a couple crypto investments that I did very well on.
A few alt-coins got over a 1000% return, I invested money for my mom and got her a 465% return, and my sister has gotten a 177% return so far.
Of course crypto is very volatile and we’re in a bubble and all that, but if you pull money out responsibly and invest the rest, it’s pretty cool.
13. These are in no particular order, ha, but we also had some AWESOME results from Holiday Jumpstart.
One woman told me she was able to pay off a $6630 debt that had been causing her a bit of anxiety. Other people sold out of their FBA boxes. Others told me of all the sales they made, the majority were from the designs we made them.
That was spectacular to see.
I feel like I’m missing a couple, but I’ll update this if I think of more. For now – here’s to an awesome 2018! And please feel free to share your wins. :)
