Why My Business FAILED. What I learned.

well you know never really the video you want to make but I've talked plenty about business so let's go ahead and talk about this too in my opinion whenever you have an experience good bad otherwise it's really important to look back on it and figure out what you did right what you did wrong and then you can figure out what you could have done better so that's what I'm trying to do here I can basically boil down what went wrong with my business and why it failed to three things one a lack of repeatability and automation the second was a lack of capital and the third was inconsistent sales and an inability to predict because of that we'll go into each one after the break and stay tuned I've got some other news that you might be interested in foreign [Music] so a lack of Automation and repeatability from a CNC guy right a little weird but it's really important to be able to repeat your work be able to make a product again if it's not just a one-off thing and if you can't do that you're always fighting for time that you really could have saved yourself and I wasn't now lack of capital that really just comes down to not having enough money laying around to do the things that needed to get done you know if you're always buying things in onesies and twosies you're not getting any deals if you're buying by the ton you're going to get a lot better deal and it is really going to add up for you when you're shaving off 10 15 20 of what you're doing every day and the last bit which may be the most important is inconsistent sales which really hampers everything else you're trying to do if you don't have a good idea of what your income is going to be based on your sales it's hard to hire it's hard to plan it's hard to make investments it's hard to get a loan if you need that not that I suggest going that route very important to be able to predict what's going to be going on and build your business around that yeah so the long and the short of it is uh I guess I just wasn't cut out to make chicken coops or planter beds or greenhouses alrighty so clickbait aside if you thought this video was going to be about why 42 Fab's dead I got news for you we're here it's been good to take a break had some family stuff to deal with but we're back and for the loyal people that are jumping right back in on a video the first in over a year I want you to know we appreciate it and hit that notification Bell because later on today when our Cyber Monday deal comes out the first hour or so we are gonna have the biggest sale we've ever offered on them 20 off everything including the over 100 new kits that are available this year now let's go inside and jump through those three options in a little bit more detail so hopefully you can learn some of the lessons I learned the hard way without doing it the hard way so automation that doesn't have to mean a machine it can just as much mean automating your processes I was working in my garage in college didn't really have the tools I could have didn't have a CNC probably didn't need one didn't have a table saw or a track saw for breaking down sheets of plywood and I didn't even have a miter saw station set up so I was inefficient every time I was going to go break down some plywood or cut up some two by threes two by fours I was pulling measurements and doing layout I've done a couple videos on this channel about the importance of Jigs and I had not learned that lesson at that time so I was laying everything out every time even if I was making two or three of the same part or the same Chicken Coop or the same planter bed it was not efficient and even though I had pared down my offerings to about four different models of chicken coop I still didn't have jigs or anything set up to make that process faster so it was a struggle every time so what I've done with 42 Fab and especially with the well that yourself kits is gone through everything we do and make it systematic and repeatable for example when we're packing up our flowers we've got this little insert goes right into the Welding Table you can put some flowers on it and take a little heat shrink bag get them in there and you're good to go that fast you're not putting these in one at a time you're not trying to find a space to do it we have a space that's ready to go repeatable it's automated foreign okay so lack of capital as number two you see my metal pile is actually pretty low right now uh because we've been prepping everything for Black Friday but when I buy metal now I am buying by the ton and generally by the five tons which gets me prices that are sometimes as much as half off what I'm paying at my local Steel Yard I'm buying directly from the mill in this case when I was doing chicken coops cold out here when I was building chicken coops and planter beds I was paying the exact price anybody else best I could hope for was like the five or ten percent off you got with their Pro cards because I wasn't buying in volume to where I was a contractor or able to get any of those benefits I didn't have money laying around to buy plywood and have it on hand every time I got an order I had to run to the store get the materials I needed I might be able to do two or three at once but that was about the best it ever got that takes time you're not saving the money on the materials it just adds up and that money that you didn't save is now not available to do things like upgrade your equipment to get a track saw a table saw a miter saw like I just mentioned in the automation part a lack of capital also limits how much you can invest in future opportunities in trying new things out and experimenting in coming up with new products all of this right here is about three thousand dollars worth of tools I had to buy because don't tell anybody but for Cyber Monday the video here in a couple hours we're coming out with these wall mounted tool holders for every brand out there that's an investment I've got you know thousands of dollars into because I think that I can sell it it's it's not something you could do if there's not money laying around to do that with or at least it makes it a lot more difficult to do you know living a little bit below your means and reinvesting in the business will build up that Capital to let you do the things that you want to do to let you buy equipment you know I paid full Freight for my plasma table because I didn't want to have to talk nice about whatever whatever company wanted me to do it's 20 grand you know it's not cheap I've got two thousand dollars worth of belt sander here I've got almost four grand in my shelving setup just here so we can have a work table that's convenient to work off of and organize things into you can just keep going around and pointing at things that's something that I didn't have the ability to do back in the day because I wasn't running my business in a way to build up that free Capital to allow me to and if you're interested in plasma cutting get subscribed I will be doing a full review on the plasma table that I decided to buy I've had it for two years now and I've put over a hundred thousand pounds of sorry a hundred Tons of Steel across it so it's got some time I think I could actually give it a real review now the the final major hurdle that I can identify as a big problem with my first goal of running the business was consistency now that of course could be product how you manage your bank account any of that but in this case I'm talking specifically about the consistency of sales chicken coops planter beds greenhouses they're all spring early summer products same thing applies with sign making very few people are going to start a business in the middle of winter so signs are end of winter spring and into summer as people get ready to launch their business so I knew coming into this that I needed to diversify I needed to have things to do in the winter one of the reasons we do uh such a big winter sale for the well that yourself kits that gives us something to do in the winter if we're not already busy last year we were busy we didn't do the big Christmas sale so if you're into running the CNC plasma table and doing wall art you really need to think about what you're going to do when it's not craft fair season flea market Season Sports whatever you've got you know the holidays where you can sell you've got warm weather what are you going to do the other four or five months out of the Year think about it come up with a plan or just let it stay a hobby I guess it's the same sort of reason you see the people that do Lawn Servicing also doing Christmas lights and leaf cleanup and snow plowing their business is seasonal so they've Diversified you need to as well we all do alrighty so I hope this maybe helped you learn some of the lessons I learned the hard way not have to go through them as painfully maybe I also want to thank all the folks on the screen here the patrons who stuck by and have supported the channel for a couple years now some of y'all there's going to be some more information some of the links here and don't forget to stick around come back later on today for our Cyber Monday sale on all of the well that yourself kids including flowers if you want flowers they make a great Christmas gift until next time thanks for stopping by

Channel: 42Fab

Views: 15,174

Keywords: maker, metalworking, metal, weld, welder, welding, metalwork, cnc, cnc plasma, plasma cutter, plasma cutting, cnc plasma cutting, cnc plasma cutter, plasma table, CNC Plasma table, plasma, signmaking, sign, signmaker, plasma sign, cnc metal sign, plasma cut sign, metal sign, 42fab, business failure, bankruptcyy, bankrupcy, broke

Id: _iKO4DCyfSQ

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 28 2022