How My 4 Startups Fared: First 6-Months Metrics Showdown

I'm 6 months into growing company #4 - Vital Velociti and I was sharing some of the results over a glass of vino with my friend, who asked, "What are some of your secrets - because this is the fourth startup you've grown from scratch?"

So I decided to put together some numbers to compare all 4 companies at the 6 month mark and share some secrets for getting Vital Velociti off the ground so fast.

This is also related to why you're reading about this on my new blog...

Fail Fail Fail Grow - and why I started this blog

My digital footprint is sprinkled everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

For all 4 companies, I needed to create content.

Content to generate leads, to tell the founder story, to share what's working, to generate revenue.

The good news is I enjoy creating and have created an estimated...

• 200 articles
• 100 landing pages
• 20 webinars
• 10K images

And most of my content gets absorbed into the entities I create.

The problem is - as I move onto the next entity, the people who enjoyed learning from me, get disconnected from me as the creator, and I also need to start my new list from scratch with each new venture.

For example, I was creating for my first company, OnTheGrid - and my 17,000 email list, my creative assets, my IP - everything was either rebranded or left behind since my energy was directed at growing the new company - Mint CRO. Which accrued around 50K subscribers, many of them paid. This was years of creating and growing.

In 2022 I began growing Mint Wellness and have a first party mailing list of 5K subscribers in the wellness space.

These are all mailing lists that I'm no longer driving. And none of them can come with me since Vital Velociti is a new entity.

In a way I'm starting over, but I'd like to think I'm getting smarter...

You see, growing lists are easy for me, but they take time, money, or both.

OnTheGrid list growth back in 2016 was only $1 per lead, so it was relatively cheap to grow that list

And over time I've watched lead gen competition and pricing go up. This chart doesn't compare apples to apples but you can see on average what I paid for lead gen over the years.

Where I'm at today

instead of rolling all my creativity and list building into the business entity I'm actively growing...

I'll be building my list via this blog, under Fail Fail Fail Grow brand - which represents me and my voice - no matter which company I'm focused on growing.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm building Vital Velociti in a way that has staying power and I may continue growing it for the next 10 years or more.

But anybody that chooses to subscribe and learn from me, can continue to stay connected over the long haul.

So let's dive in deeper to other metrics

Company #4 is the only one profitable at the 6 month mark

Compared to my last 3 startups, which leveraged paid list building from Day 1, I chose a different path which has paid off.

OnTheGrid and Mint Wellness were brand new entities where I had to start everything from scratch.

Whereas Mint CRO was built on the back of OnTheGrid, and Vital Velociti has some momentum from my credibility building Mint CRO. So I'm known and my credibility is solid. It's not a cold start.

Which helps.

I've been able to generate healthy MRR in the first 6 months, giving me runway to continue growing without investing my own funds or requiring outside investors or equity partners.

Three things come to mind that might stand out about how I grow businesses from scratch...

Lesson #1: I spend half of my time creating assets to grow the business.

For Vital Velociti, a B2B Services business - this means I'm spending half my time creating case studies and continuously improving my pitch deck and proposals.

It's not an after thought.

I might get a small client win one week, and next week it's already in my pitch deck.

Lesson #2: I operate with an abundance mindset.

I'm generous with the work I'm doing to attract new clients. I share and giveaway a lot. I do a lot of free work. Knowing that I may not get paid for it.

It's not a waste of time for me because I'm creating what's useful to my potential clients, and watching to see what they respond favorably to.

Anything that they eat up, I'm turning into repeatable frameworks and processes that will either continue to be free - I'll just optimize it so it's much faster for me to create at scale. Or it'll end up being a paid service, that I can learn how to price & sell.

Lesson #3: I optimize my schedule monthly - according to business needs and my energy.

Mornings is where I can jam thought a ton of focus-work, so the first half of my day is gold.

When we onboarded 3 clients in a row, I needed that time for client meetings and to connect to Trish Moleschi, my VP of Ops so we could sprint together and ensure we started all new clients off strong.

Now that each client company is settled in to their rowth rhythm, I shifted my meetings to the afternoon so I could leverage the morning hours for more creation.

Paid vs ABM

My first 3 companies, I used paid media to generate leads, and then used webinars and live events to turn those leads into revenue. So they all required cash to get off the ground.

With Paid media, once the codes are cracked and you know what your audience wants, it's possible to scale up efficiently.

You'll see in the chart that at the first 6 months mark for Mint CRO, we had only generated 0.25% of the lifetime revenue of $12M so we had only just begun.

With Vital Velociti, I'm doing ABM (Account Based Marketing) - selling services, with up-front payments so the business is generating cash from the beginning.

How am I doing this without a 1st party list?

I'm leveraging my Seattle network, my 2.5K LinkedIn connections and a 500 person 3rd party email list.

To scale or not to scale

One more lesson I'll share that jumped out at me as I was putting this data story together...

Notice in the list growth chart - how OnTheGrid mailing list was at 10K subscribers in the first 6 months?

Even though the leads only cost $1 each - I scaled way too soon. More leads did not equal more revenue (yet) - so I was growing my list without a way to monetize it.

Whereas when growing my next two companies, once I figured out how to generate leads, I waited to scale up until growing the list led to generating more revenue.

Want more data stories like this?

I expect to publish one article a month - My commitment to you as a subscriber is that everything published is authentically from me or from my close vetted circle.

If you'd like to follow me on my journey no matter which brand I'm working on for the next 10 years subscribe and let's grow.