Seek failure, suffering and jump when you're ready.
I've been failing all my life, starting around 3rd grade when I was held back in school. Prior to founding Sticker Art I worked the same job for 8 years and in my 5 - 9pm attempted to start and build multiple businesses, all failing and some in more spectacular fashion than others.
The TV you see is a digital signage company I helped start, next is a CAD design of a travel mug and third a long-range drone. I spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars of my savings attempting these businesses and many others.
They were creative and all could have worked with proper execution but didn't for a plethora of reasons. The drone I simply crashed into a class 5 whitewater rapid while filming some climbing, the digital signage company had too many people involved early on and the CAD design was too expensive to create a prototype of and we had no capital.
When I thought of the idea for these stickers while on a climbing trip in California I nearly immediately knew the idea had credibility because I had previously failed so many times. And it was a business centered around enjoying the outdoors which I love.
So again, I jumped in and started a new business. Fast forward 9 months to August I quit my job of 8 years and now I'm doing this sticker thing full time attempting to make ends meet and adventure as much as possible.
I still fail daily.
Recently I posted to a subreddit called "ShutUpAndTakeMyMoney" and was quite surprised at the feedback. Some asked if the characters in the sticker illustrations were going to do erotic things, others simply stating my product was shit. I still however made a number of sales from this post which was pretty cool. I learned that I should explain the product a bit more and I shouldn't expect much from a community that is mostly into gaming. Know your demographic! I'll try to re-post something more genuine in there next month to see how it goes, I'll probably fail again.
"I wouldn't wipe my ass with this product"
This business certainly isn't going to break the bank but I connect with it which is why I think it's working and you guys can feel that connection. The more we adventure the more ideas for rad stickers we get.
It's a beautiful thing that I'm so excited to work on and share with you all. So, take a jump and fail a bunch. It's fun and you'll have some great stories to share. Thankfully the jump below didn't fail but I was indeed very ready for it. [warning explicit language!].
- Bryant
- Bryant AuCoin
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