If you are like me, your brain just doesn’t shut off. Maybe I have ADHD? Who know. So who am I?
So Who am I?
Hi, I’m Tim, and Im a shiny object addict. I say Im a serial entrepreneur with a couple of small businesses that we currently own. Im a huge fan of the My First Million (@MFM) podcast. Shaan and Sam are my kind of people. Always looking at shiny objects. I’m a nurse by trade though healthcare sucks. I wish I was out of healthcare but Im still there because I have a pretty good gig working from home and we need the health benefits for the familia. With so many business ideas in my head, I decided to finally put this down on paper (or a blog). Hopefully you guys and gals will join me along this brain dump of a journey. Pray that one day, healthcare will be in my rearview mirror (unless its in a cash-cow business 😀 )
Shiny Object Syndrome
Squirrel! Always coming up with new ideas and pushing old ideas back to the back burner. I can’t stop thinking about new business ideas and how they could be successful or maybe not. Thinking about the ins and outs of different businesses. Lots of ideas I’d love to run down but don’t have the time or money. As life goes by, I find more and more businesses seem easier than what we are currently doing.
Where Did This All Start?
I think being an entrepreneur has been something I have had in me since I was little. Starting with selling toys in elementary and middle school to friends, I knew from a kid selling stuff was fun. I didnt really realize where I’d be now at…….40ish.
All the businesses
- Selling toys – hustling as a kid. I don’t know why or how…but I remember selling toys to kids at school that parents wouldn’t buy them. Their lunch money was spent on toys.
- Working on cars – always loved working classic muscle cars. When I was 17 there was nothing more I wanted to do that to build cool old cars for a living. Well…like most things when you’re 17, they don’t work out. I took out college loans and buy a 1969 Candy Apple Red Mustang Mach 1. The idea was to restore it and flip it. It got about 75% there when it was sold. While I made some money..I sure didnt pay back that loan with it. When you get older you look back and say THANK GOD that didn’t work ou.
- Insurance – Selling paper..Young (21-22ish) me thought insurance was a great idea. Got my property and casualty insurance license and we joined an independent insurance agency helper company. This company helped you get into contracts with big insurance companies like Hartford or Travelers Insurance. We had our own office and it was game time…or thats what we thought. What did we not know? Distribution.
- Amazon 3rd party seller – A few years into nursing I ran across a dude on Youtube (Scott – The Bearded Picker) and saw he was killing it selling Monopoly for Millennials. Running from Walmart to Walmart, he made $4k in 24 hours or so. This led me down a rabbit hole and my wife and I started our Amazon business. We sell a few million dollars a year via Amazon FBA. We rent a warehouse with a handful of employees. Amazon can be a great business…they solve that distribution problem. While it’s a good business…I found other shiny objects that I’d rather push into. This business isn’t going away until we really do well somewhere else. This business pays the bills.
- 3PL and Prep Center – The Amazon business led to expansion. Who doesn’t want to make extra money with the employees you already pay and have the warehouse space you already pay for? While we grew this business some, when we moved to our bigger warehouse, we shrunk this business. Looking back, this was a Shiny Object that distracted us some from our Amazon business. If you have the space, running a prep center can be a good idea as you have more control, but be aware of the trade offs. Also…that damn distribution thing is hard to overcome. We will start to regrow this business soon…. when our software is ready.
- Amazon SaaS – So this launches today (Jan 1, 2024). Over the last few years of doing Amazon we found a huge crater in selling on Amazon. Having proper tools to run your business. While there are good Saas products out there, no one connects to each other. We used 6 different softwares to run our company. After a few costly mistakes, we decided to build our own software (that and I wanted something no one offered). So,3 years later of full time development (4 developers) we finally are at the point we are going to launch the Saas. Knowing what we know now from previous bad experience…distribution is the key. We are offering free stuff (education and a small tool that no one else makes). We will see how it goes. With distribution, we are launching a youtube/insta/blog to help keep content pumping. E-E-A-T is the new thing Google likes. If you’re into SEO, you know what that is. If you don’t it stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust. Social media solves this. BTW SEO is big for any business and many people don’t pay enough attention to it… Do I hear another shiny object calling my name?? SEO agency?
- Shopping website – Shiny Object for sure. This was a side project. We needed to find more profitable products for our Amazon business but realized there is a better model here. I watched a MFM podcast and they talked about a guy who automated taking sales emails and basically databasing them so businesses can look back and see what their competitors are doing. This guy was killing it. How can I get in on this automation business that’s killing it? Shopping website…thats the answer. We already have tons of info…we just need to share it with other people. If you like Slickdeals or Dealnews, you’d like our website. 50% off or more…all day long. The website itself is basically automated though Google is a hassle and we will need some curated content and blog articles to appease them for Google Adsense. Affiliate marketing…here we come! The website is live..but ads start today as well.
- New project (current) – this one is a secret until we launch. So this is one of my “BIG” ideas. Something I see being worth millions if not hundreds of millions. This is the first business we brought on partners. Why partners? Well, eventually if this works out, the pie will be way bigger than any one person can eat. We have some good friends (I know this could be a bad idea) but they are solid entrepreneurs. They have run multiple businesses and they excel where I am a little weak. Execution. Im a huge ideas person, always chasing shiny objects. I do fall back at the actual execution and running the day to day business. Our friends will be the ying to our yang. I read a book a while back that talked about this and it hit me like a slap in the face. I’m a great ideas person and need someone solid to push those ideas all they way through. I have that CEO mentality and suck a the COO responsibilities. This business involves sweaty jobs. Think plumber, electrician, etc.
Future Projects
I think I have planned ahead for the next lifetime as far as businesses is concerned. These are serious business ideas…while I wont tell you exactly what they are…we can discuss issues and the problem they solve.
Healthcare labor costs – We all know that healthcare costs are insane. With inflation, corporate lobbyists, and the desire for money…healthcare is one of the most inefficient things out there. And its by design. If you can’t see it, you have to be blind. Our government wastes tons of money, doesn’t reimburse for crap to hospitals, thus driving the increased healthcare costs onto us. Can we fix it? Hell no…but can we dive in and take a part of the pie…hopefully.
So the idea is finding a way to reduce employee labor costs. No fancy AI things…I’m not talking about reducing staffing numbers and increasing workload to employees. There is a little sliver there that can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Its a “disruptor” type business that would change the way things are done. Bringing together a marketplace to decrease costs.
Manufacturing – If we didnt learn anything from Covid…we are doomed. Massive backlogs in the ports of California, the lack of trucking, Chinese companies shut down due to massive lockdowns. How in the heck did we become so dependent on China over the years? Globalization sounded good in the short term. Corporations got greedy and outsourced to China where labor was less than 1/10th of an American wage. We capitalized on cheap labor and the Chinese government has been subsidizing the industry for massive growth for decades. With the demographic cliff China is heading towards, the huge swell in Chinese labor costs, the expensive tariffs placed up Chinese goods…there has to be a better solution. That solution is just South of us. The average unskilled labor wage is now cheaper in Mexico than in China….how can we capitalize on that?
So What is this Website?
ShinyObject.io will be my random business ideas and deep dives into different businesses. As I research and grow ideas, I want to share these ideas and knowledge I learn along the way. Hoping to have a new post each week of a business idea or segment where I analyze the business…the ins, the outs, the financial prospect. There will probably be some posts about business in general that hopefully will help anyone in any small business. Hopefully ya’ll will follow along and learn something new. There is a giant world of business out there and crazy ideas you never knew existed. Let’s explore those ideas together.
Tim
