An amazing and inspiring speech by Apple co-founder CEO. 

This week I’ve decided to take a break from the story-telling to share some of my other business attempts that didn’t quite work out.

They say that behind every overnight success is ten years of hard work. This definitely applies to me even though we haven’t opened the doors to our first club yet. To get to the point where Carol and I now stand is an achievement in itself because we had to overcome countless setbacks. However, every aspiring entrepreneur has had their fair share of failures. If you think about it, in business you’re probably going to have more failures than you do successes. Before Anytime Fitness, here are some of the things I’ve dabbled in over the last 10 years:

• E-Commerce website:  After high school I became a computer programmer in hopes of building an e-commerce website that would allow customers in the Caribbean, specifically Guyana, to purchase products online and have it shipped to them. The site was built and functional, but Guyana was well behind the times when it came to handling transactions over the internet. Shipping to Guyana also posed a problem. This never took off.

• Import clothing:  Imported brand name clothes and shoes from factories in China, Taiwan and Malaysia and sold them on eBay and at my school (Seneca College). The first 6 months were great; my business partner and I were raking it in and getting more and more orders. The catch – Factories in those Asian countries disguised the shipments as cheap household items (coasters, table mats). Whenever we opened a box, we usually had to peel through a layer of plastic plates, or novelty calendars until we found the “hidden” brand name shoes and clothes. I didn’t want to do this forever so I cashed my chips in and walked away with a few thousand dollars. If you feel like the people you’re doing business with are not doing things by the book (like misrepresenting items being shipped), walk away. There are no shortcuts in life, nor in business.

• Clothing design: My friend and I came up with the idea to create a brand that caters to the Caribbean market. The idea was to have the clothing designs be specific to a certain country – highlighting national pride in a sense. The first design aimed to visually capture the words sung by Damian Marley in his song, “Welcome to Jamrock”. I’m really proud of this shirt because I saw it all the way through – from concept to design, manufacture to sale. I sold dozens of these on eBay.

 - This is the design. Thanks to Rustom who turned my vision into reality!

• : I tried to duplicate the success I had with importing clothing and re-selling it. This worked well for a while but it became a hassle to trek back and forth from my apartment to the post office every time I needed to ship something. So then I looked into drop-shipping. Drop shipping seemed attractive because I never had to order anything and store it. I went with a company called SIMPLX. Let me say that this was one of the worst things I’ve ever gotten myself into. Simplx is a huge rip-off. $248 to sign up, products already marked up making it very hard to mark up anything for your own profit, and they charged my credit card twice and refused to give me a refund. I eventually got all my money back after weeks or persistence. I was just happy to get my money back.

• : Some of you may have heard or even tried Amway. Amway seems great but really it’s just another pyramid scheme. I went to the meetings, signed up, tried them out, and lost about $200. They say that for every sale made from your website, you earn points. How much money you make depends on how many points you earn in a month. What they don’t tell you is that at the end of the month, your point total goes back to zero. So if you have bad month and you come 2 points shy of earning some money,  those points won’t roll over into the next month. In other words, if you need 100 points to get paid but get to 99, you get NOTHING.

• : I became an Amazon associate in 2009 and sold products online for a commission. Amazon has so many great products at discounted prices and in many cases, shipping is free. Also, since Amazon is such a reputable company, people never hesitate when purchasing from them. I made $5000 in 3 months and used the money to buy my first new car  

• Personal Training management website: When I started getting more private clients for personal training. I thought it would be great if I had a website that would allow clients to log in and keep track of their progress. I would be able to monitor their progress and upload new workout programmes to their profiles from my computer. They would be able to be anywhere in the world but still have the access to their file and of course, to me! There are a few website like this but they’re confusing to navigate and not as efficient as it could be. I started preliminary work with this but it requires a lot of work to get off the ground. This project needs a team of at least five dedicated people with knowledge of fitness and programming.

• Personal Training Studio: I started this project with Carol, my current business partner. We started the initial leg work required to get the studio up and running but it was difficult during the economic downturn in 2008. This never materialized but ended up being the most important thing that never happened. I’ll explain this in detail in its’ post.

• E-Book: I wrote a book in 2009-2010. It discusses the importance and connection of emotional and physical health. I talk about my personal challenges with weight and how a healthy mind is the key to a healthy body. This is what I was working on when Anytime Fitness came into my life. I’ve shelved this for now because the opportunity to co-own my own chain of gyms was too good to pass up. Who knows, I might get this book out one day

 So, have you ever tried to start your own business? I’d love to hear your experiences. Leave  a comment below!