Million dollar run rate in 6 months⚡
I love spreadsheet math. I happily forecast millions, not knowing how to achieve it. 8 months ago I gave a forecast of 1 mn run rate 😨. Today, we are very close. How did we do it? Let's find out.
👋 Hola! Welcome to Out of Singapore. I am Shantanu and I build businesses from Singapore. In October 2023, my first business (not owned, but run by me) inched close to the sacred million dollar (SGD) annual run rate. I am happy, also quite scared now.
Welcome to the team 🤗
To all the new subscribers, welcome! I started writing this newsletter in March 2023 when my first business failed to take off. I spent close to 2 years to launch it. It was quite a good learning journey. I underestimated the risks with capital and people, and overestimated my capabilities (which I would continue to do 🕶️). So instead of doing it all by myself, I joined a startup incubator to launch new brands. Today’s story talks about the first brand I launched in May 2023.
Beyond the business, I love Singapore. I will be building global businesses from here. Hence the name “Out of Singapore”. Here is how my newsletters are structured
Welcome write up
How my week went? I also check on you.
Main topic
Footer - more personal stories.
Jisoo GIF - Why? Because she is cute lah
I use easy and conversational language. Write ups are 2-3 mins long read. Somedays I am emotionally charged, so I write longer. It is rare, though. Welcome again! Let’s start.
This was a peaceful week ✌️
The week before was rough. This week - I kept it light. I had achieved the goals I had outlined. There wasn’t any inventory left to push. So I chose to focus on essentials.
Mid-week I sprained my hip, making it difficult to sit up. One night I fell down trying to get up from the bed. The pain was bad. I found it so funny that I kept laughing for a few minutes. So I rested this weekend. No run, only light stretch and loads of sleep. Also, replaced my sagging old mattress. It had made sleeping an athletic job.
Before I jump right into the topic, tell me 😬
A million dollars run rate? 🫢
It wasn’t all this rosy 6 months ago. In May 2023, we did 125 SGD in sales. Yes, after one month of launching we did only 125 SGD. One of the Facebook conversion ads we ran had a CPA of 1250 SGD. 🫨🫨🫨🫨🫨🫨🫨
Today we are trending to million dollar annual run rate (possibly lot more). We have grown at least 3x every month. We set new baseline every 1-2 months with livestreams and sometimes with aggressive advertising.
Are we profitable? Of course not.
How is our MER trending? Respectable. Took us 5 months to reach there.
How did we get here?
Up until July, I was scared. All my forecasts were wrong. Efforts not paying off. Everything looked so bad. I saw myself failing again.
Then, one on the last day of the month, a livestreamer sold out our entire inventory in 2 hours. I was shocked. This single livestream changed my outlook of the possibilities. First, it made me believe that the product was indeed in demand. Second, it pumped me and the entire team up to keep going. Third, it gave us cash to survive and test. 🤭
Now, back to the question - how did we get here?
Fine with imperfection - Our website was basic (functional, not beautiful), our product images were shoddy, copy was underwhelming (it still is, good part is AI generated with no edits) and ads in first months were not promising. We prioritised output and getting every intervention in place. This ensured every initiative moved out to customers fast.
Non-stop trying - We have tried most of the advice available on internet, newsletters and shared by colleagues and friends. We still keep trying. One of my fond interventions has been our pop-ups. We replaced pop-ups with flyouts, and replaced statics with GIF customized for every page. Performance - we increased submission rates by 1.5x.
Livestreams - Live sale have been killer. Facebook live and Tiktok Live has helped us set new baseline every month. Now we have gone big on livestream sales and engaging more creators and pages.
Omnichannel sales - Apart from our website, we listed on Shopee, Lazada, and Tiktok. We are opening up new channels every month. Next in line is Amazon. Having multiple sales channels drove awareness for us. When the growth came, the numbers added up across all channels.
Facebook Ads and creative testing- We got a full service marketing agency to create tons of creatives and continuously test them. Suddenly our ads started converting, we got good quality (high intent) traffic and the effect spilled over to other sales channels.
Support from the company - The company is full stack. We have production, warehouse fulfilment, production lab and a team of marketers. When the orders started trickling in, everyone chipped in. Production worked overtime on short timelines, finance was supportive with marketing money and initiatives, and the management excused mistakes. I get feedback and advise every other day, and I put them to good use.
This is just a start 🙃
What we have achieved till now is by no means a small feat. The foundation has been laid. The current numbers, however, don’t cover the costs of running the business. For the business to be meaningful and sustainable, we have to at least 5 times bigger within next year and 20 times within 2 years.
Here is what I need to get sorted
Put a proper team in place - I run with a team of 2 (one being myself), one intern and a few freelancers. While this was great for speed of execution in the start, this will start biting us. The demands on initiatives and deliverables is also growing each week.
Improve Facebook ROI - I track MER, but our ROI from Facebook attribution is bad. So bad that if someone looks at channel level data, I might just be fired tomorrow. 💀
USA needs focus and sales channels - Amazon, Walmart and local sales channels have to be leveraged. I am a noob when it comes to US market.
Pour gasoline on the ad spends - The next level of ad spends have to be initiated. Current ad spends won’t allow us to reach wider audience. This is financial jugglery. Starting the work on this.
Out of production capacity - The manufacturing production capacity has maxed out. We are now involving external large manufacturing capacity to meet the demand.
How do I feel?
This is an exact representation of how I feel. Remember how I told you that I rested this weekend. I just realised that I worked a lot. I have sent messages to a lot of WhatsApp work groups and slack channels. Guilty.
One can never guarantee what future holds. I will try my best 🙃
Thank you so much for reading today. Please do check your inbox for the next edition. I am grateful. Please do share this edition with anyone who might benefit or find it relatable. Thanks again, superstar.⚡
Last week, I cleaned up my subscriber list. Removed 30% of the subscribers who never opened an email in past one month. Maybe next time, I should send out a reminder first before deleting.
My goal is to have have a 1000 engaged readers who read at least one post a month. Personal goals. 💪
In another news, I am seeing decline in my workout ability. Part of it has been travel and lack of time. I don’t like it. I will be pushing myself again over next few weeks.
Coming to Jisoo. I have been so excited about her since last two weeks. One she is single and second, I will be travelling to Seoul soon. See you there, cutie pie!
She is expecting me, haha. Okay, hope you have a great week. Bbye! 👋