I Make $1M/Month From Bed

this guy made $1 million a month selling bed sheets online and the crazy part is he literally does it from bed I work from bed all the time actually this is definitely the office I flew out to Denver Colorado to ask him exactly how he got started and the unconventional marketing strategy he uses to make millions of dollars a year I sponsor that I love and I sponsor that I watch before the money Colin worked three different full-time jobs but he couldn't keep any of them so he decided to start his own company and in the process found a special hack to make $284,000 in his first 30 days we got $450 customers at a $100 aov did $45,000 on day one and that snowballed into a $284,000 campaign in this video Colin shares his exact blueprints on how to build a million doll per month brand how to name a million doll per month brand and how to find and validate a million dooll business idea the easiest way to do it is to build a so they can really visualize and understand the company that they're building I'm Pat walls and this is starter story Colin great to meet you in person after all these years so it's awesome to see the growth of starter story thank you man thank you for having me tell me about yourself and what you built I am founder and CEO of sheets and giggles and if you haven't heard of us we sell bed sheets I Incorporated the company October 20177 shipped our first box in in October 2018 and then about 25 months later November 2020 we had our first million doll month at about $1.2 million in sales so it was pretty medior at the beginning yeah it's awesome yeah all right can you tell me a little bit more about your business and how it works sure so we're a directed consumer brand we sell mostly through our website sheets giggles.com which is a Shopify backend and then we also sell on Amazon at amazon.com sheets we do about 9010 or 8020 Shopify burs Amazon in terms of sales we started in 2018 with just sheets comforters and dubet covers and pillowcases since then we've added throw blankets pillows crib sheets mattress protectors and all stuff and we actually launched a mattress in 20 late 2022 we started with five colors and five sizes and now we have seven sizes and 17 colors and hundreds of skews and shipping 100 PB mattresses every day so it's crazy yeah all right Colin tell me a little bit more about your backstory how did you come to the point where you wanted to start your own company I've been fired twice and I've been laid off once um and it sucks every time no last week's pay have to buy back your laptop lose your health care I was like man like all my friends are in New York working at Banks like I can't believe I was just done with it I was I was super done working for other people I was so tired of having to take orders that I disagreed with and my friend gave a phone call it changed my life she said hey we're we're doing a Kickstarter for my wearable tech idea that I have do you want to help with it I said yeah sure I threw a launch party for her in Seattle that changed my life because the mentorship I got there is completely life-changing for someone especially in their 20s who's kind of directionless or or feels like they're directionless my best advice I can give people is do you think someone's going to be a good Mentor say Hey you have an hour a week that I can maybe spend with you and buy you lunch every week and ask you questions and that's exactly what I did I had three people that I bought lunch every week and I asked them as many questions as I could I've been working for myself for 6 and a half years and it's the best gift I've ever given myself how did you find the idea how did you come up with the idea for sheets and giggles and why did you decide to build it after working in direct consumer company and wearable technology I really wanted something that was a direct consumer brand and I really wanted something that be proud of something that was in a big space I carve my own nichan so I actually started to like write my business model before I knew what the product was for people who are thinking about starting a business if you have a problem other people have that problem too I think that logic is great and I think it's fine the question is whether or not they're willing to pay for a solution to that problem and so I really encourage people to build a business model first that they really feel strongly about that makes sense for them their skill set what they're best at in the world I think business model first product second or at least tweak your product to make sure it fits really well into the business model yeah instead of finding a problem find what I call founder market fit which is the business that fits the best within your existing skill sets and that's actually something we talk about on our Workshop that we run about how to find a million-dollar business idea idea which you should join if you go to the link in the description we talk about how to look at your own skills and your own passions to identify a potential problem that you can solve that you can turn into a million-dollar business it it's really that simple I think that people think that they have to have some like doorbuster like blisteringly intelligent novel never-before seen idea to start a business and that's just not true if people ask themselves what am I best in the world at it's a great place to start for like what business they should start yeah that's what I always say too yeah let's talk about that period of trying to figure things out you had this idea for sheets and Giggles how did you validate the idea the easiest way to do it is to build a brand identity map that should be the first thing that everybody does actually is a brand identity map so they can really visualize and understand the company that they're building it is also a great like foundation for everything that follows so those are the three things brand identity map financial model business model then take those three things or especially the financial model send it to people you respect and say hey like does this make sense am I forgetting about a cost somewhere am I am I charging too much and if the people that you respect are like hey I look at your financial model and yeah makes sense like I think you could you could do this once you get that first validation then you move on to trying to validate with actual customers and my advice to everyone is to sell before you build you can sell a wireframe you can sell an idea you can sell a signup form an email capture the simple steps are like build a tactile something that you can really promise them like a like a you know sign up now and on May 1st when we launch you'll get the best price that you'll ever lock into into for the best set of sheets you'll ever have for us we were selling a set for $100 but if they signed up first they get them for 69 bucks and we ended up capturing 11,000 emails 46% email capture then you send them surveys what colors do you want how much would you pay for this you get them involved and if you get people feeling like they're building a product with you they become emotionally invested in it and they're if they're not going to buy it they might share it with someone and be like check out this new product company launched that's the ultimate validation so yeah then once you get those sales you know people will pay for it yeah okay so you have this validation yep you have these people that are ready to buy they're ready to buy then you parlay that into massive sales tell me about those moments and how you did that if you want to do $100,000 campaign for example you need 30% of your total that you want your goal on day one that's how the crowdfunding math Works spikes plateaus little Spike at the end you then need on day one $30,000 300 customers at 100 bucks where do you get those customers from you get them from an email list you need 10,000 emails cuz an email list reasonably converts at about 3% 2% of you're doing something wrong 4% if you're doing something right I did the calculations I was like all right great we're going to do $70 price on day one 1 and a half units per order I assumed so about a $100 aov and I assumed that if our 10,000 person email L converted to 3% we get 300 customers $330,000 we were on our way to $100,000 campaign what ended up happening is our email is converted at 45% we got $450 customers at a $100 aov did $45,000 on day one and that snowballed into a $284,000 campaign and I attribute a lot of that to like the content that we were sending out it was so different than any email they'd ever gotten yeah I advise this to any founder listening is I had a one-on-one connection with thousands of people I answered every single social media comment myself I responded to every customer care email myself I you know wrote every email I wrote every word of copy on the website for years I can't recommend enough that Founders take the time to engage with people extremely personally on a on a granular level yeah so you launch you have this massive launch then how do you get to 1 million a month what's the special sauce of marketing things that work are like I think everyone's going to know works right Facebook Instagram Google Amazon ads all that has worked for years and it continues to work and then the ones that have worked that have surprised me have been the podcast channels I sponsor podcasts that I love and I sponsor YouTube channels that I watch if you the founder of your company and you love something you love a radio station you love a podcast you love a YouTuber odds are the people who also like them are like you they're going to resonate with your personality and a lot of your personality is going to come out in your brand so it all lines up you have viewers of people who are like you who are going to resonate with a brand that's like them that watch a channel that you speak the language of that you can make inside jokes for that you can write compelling copy with that you can build a whole landing page p in that brand voice the conversion rate on that is insane versus every other page on our website same with the content make sure the content makes you make sure the content's interesting to you betting is a crowded space and very boring um how have you differentiate yeah exactly how have you differentiated your brand and why has it made it successful I use my friends as models not just because they're cheaper which they are but also because I don't think that you can fake friendship and chemistry and so I always try to get stuff like that bleeds off the screen that just feels like you're in the room with us and overall the the ideology is you can't be everything for everyone so make sure that you're like at least something for someone if you're not pissing like at least 20% of people off you you're probably not doing it right for example one rule we have is we never iron the sheets the longest short of it is if it's been done before I don't want it I don't want to do it yeah let's talk about how you came up with the name for sheets and Giggles how' you come up with that well so I have four rules to a good brand name it has to be spell sharable and memorable that's one rule spell sharable and memorable rule number two it has to connote or denote what you do sheets and Giggles we Den knowe what we do we sell bed sheets rule number three is that you have to have good SEO around it try not to pick words or combinations of words where they find not you or worse a competitor and Rule Number Four is that if you're going to sell to Americans you got to have a do com because Americans don't buy from anything that's not a doom those are my four rules and if you have four for four you're a bullseye and if you're three for four go go forward if you're two for four two and a half nope try again that's epic so yeah Pat very important question would you like to get in the bed with me I don't know man we've been in bed together for 5 years all right interview from bed first time for everything I love it let's talk about the most bad thing you can imagine what tools do you use for your business so Shopify big one um of course Google analytics Google AdWords I love uh Reby for incard up cells I love after sell for post-p purchase upsells I really like okendo for our reviews so I use okendo we use a lot of shoing f apps tracking more for order tracking site gbt which is a chatbot for with AI that you can train on your website I really like this kid that built this he's one a solopreneur you should interview him actually we have actually wait the GPT guy oh he's so nice he's in our community dude he's super nice okay he's like some 20-year-old kid like just like dude he really nailed it with that and I'm really happy for him um it's like 50 bucks a month and it cut down our customer care tickets by like 30% um it's also our best salesman cuz we tell the AI bot if you have a great conversation with people and it's able to judge if it's a good conversation offer them code AI for 10% off and it's one of our best little discount codes that we use yeah it's great pays for itself and then I use uh stock IM for image creation as well as Dolly use a little bit of chat GPT for for blank page problem I really obsess over copy so I try not to use chat gbt for like copy copy but as someone with 88 HD like the blank page problem can be really overwhelming sometimes and so it's really nice to solve that problem yeah yeah I usually just tear it up anyway but yeah let's talk about uh Team what does your team look like well we have on a daily basis about 40 people who touch the business and that's everyone from Logistics and warehousing to uh Amazon ad agencies to Performance Marketing agencies affiliate agencies full-time folks in marketing in product and operations in customer care we work with tons of folks I think my favorite people people that are part of our team are the folks at Mile High Workshop here in Denver it helps lower our local recidivism rates and our local homelessness rates and it's one of my favorite things that that we do on our team is have those folks a part of it cool yeah tell me about the day in the life of Colin day in the life of someone building multi-million dollar business from home I work from bed all the time actually um this is definitely the office but I think everyone can tell you four walls start closing in after a while when you're in the same space so I love working from the river I go out there with Harvey my little Jack Russell I sit right in the water up to my chest and I put my laptop on a rock I set up hot spot and I just work from the river and I do that probably like 3 days a week in the summer wow and it is the best it's the most healing mental Wellness thing that I can recommend from someone is to spend more time Outdoors look man I'm I'm slacking I'm sending emails and I'm on the phone whether I'm in the water or I'm in my bed or I'm in the office you know so my job is mostly at this point meetings coordination followups analytics and Reporting and then you know content creation as well which really helps to get into a new environment to be more creative last question if you could sit on Colin shoulder when you you know work in that full-time job when you were laid off what advice would you give to him what what advice would you give to someone like that it's not fun shouldn't be glorified but I would tell myself as a 25 26 27-year-old kindness plus hard work plus intelligence leads to good things and you're kind and smart so keep working hard and eventually it'll it'll pay off stay with it yeah thank you man dude thank you for inviting me this is amazing the company you built thank you follow this advice and you will have a multi-million dollar bed sheet eucalyptus comp it's very easy don't don't let anybody tell you different super super easy all right guys I hope you got some good nuggets from Colin story that you can apply to your own business but if you're feeling a bit stuck and maybe you don't have an idea yet or you just want to go deeper on how to actually make your first dollar well I got something special for you I'm hosting a free workshop for all of our subscribers where I'll be sharing how I built a million-dollar business on Just 2 hours a day I'll walk you through exactly how to find your own million-dollar business idea how to execute on it and how to make your first dollar from it it's all Frameworks coming from personal experience because it's the exact path I took to build starter story and eventually quit my 9 to5 just a few months after I started so head to the first link in the description to save yourself a seat I hope to see you guys in there much love and I'll see you in the next one peace

Channel: Starter Story

Views: 104,009

Keywords: starterstory, starters story, starter story, starter stories, starter story ideas, ecom business, bedsheets business, colin mcintosh, sheets and giggles, sheetsgiggles, $1M a month from bed

Id: dphK9rh2F5U

Length: 15min 17sec (917 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2024