You have a business idea, you share it with some mutual connections. There’s synergy all around, and you decide to go into business together with one or even a few of them. It’s happening, what would have taken you 1 year with uncertainty, may now possibly take 4 months with a collective force of individuals bringing in their individual expertise.
Things begin to go wrong, visions start to misalign, people aren’t pulling their weight. Does it always work out or should you have started on your own in the first place?
Serial Entrepreneur Eric Y. Chen shares his story on how he took every precaution before getting into a business partnership, then knowing when to disband, and where to go from there. How do you let go of a 7 figure portfolio that you helped build and leave it all behind for something unknown.
“There was a mental struggle on pursuing my own path, create my own vision, or leave the clients that I had worked so hard to build up”
– Eric
Perseverance That Got Him Through
A few years ago, Eric’s life took a turn after his friend fell asleep at the wheel and ended up crashing into a tree. The accident had ruptured Eric’s intestines and after going through a few operations, he slowly regained his core strength after months of recovery.
Still working for a corporate company, he realized that this wasn’t where he wanted to stay.
While he was planning marketing strategies and selling Google Ad solutions to businesses he soon found himself more interested in learning about business ownership rather than selling the product.
This new outlook on life sent him on a path of entrepreneurship, all he knew was he wanted to have freedom to have something of his own he could be proud of. Now this was something he would have to work to find for himself.
After starting his first ecommerce business on amazon, he linked up with a few others to unite their talent and resources to start a product incubator. But before getting into bed with others, Eric wanted to work with his potential partners before making a huge commitment. After 7 months of working together, he caved and followed through with these people as he realised that this was enough time to understand everyone’s strength, offering, and value to the business.
Uphill Battle That Led The Way For Success And Change In Stance
Over the course of two years, clients were coming in and business was doing well. With a mix of companies coming in and going through incubation, equity was a form of payment and a few clients paid in cash.
Being able to experience taking clients from product inception, to market, and scale them from $20,000 per month to $180,000 per month in sales was something he never thought. However, the balance of clients were beginning to tilt, and those that needed more time to prototype were taking much longer to get to market as anticipated.
They were reinvesting their profits into their incubation clients. As the team continued to grow and scale, finding more paid clients had to be the focus to continue sustaining payroll. The bet on long term equity would not turn around fast enough.
In Eric’s perspective bringing on more clients at a rapid pace didn’t allow the proper vetting they normally did with incubation clients. Thus began the unraveling of being able to allocate proper attention to new and old clients alike.
“I soon realized that I couldn’t give proper attention to the clients who were onboarded quickly, without fully understanding their business, though paying, we were a slave to quick deliverables.”
Eric
Eric says that looking back, the new clients were manageable, but he wasn’t as passionate as the incubation clients he and the team were investing their cash into. He felt as though running the incubator which serviced existing business made it seem more of an agency.
How different is running an agency to the work he was doing at Google. It ended up clashing with his beliefs and vision for wanting something of his own that he could continue to build equity and value towards.
Cashing Out On His Vision
As Eric and his team rolled into 2020, they assessed where to continue growing the business. With existing clients and the infrastructure they had, a lot of the money was being made through the logistics and distribution side. His two partners wanted to convert the business to bringing on more clients and focus on shipping products for large clients.
From there, Eric knew deep down, if he continued down this path, he would be part of a successful business no doubt but it wasn’t true to him. After working at one of the best companies in the world, then building up an incubator and servicing existing clients, he knew he could take that experience and create something in his own vision.
Eric believes that every person trusts their gut, on the partners they work with, and the clients they cater to. In the end, its all about, listening to your voice when you know it’s time to leave.
Whether it’s your own business or with clients, he recommends reducing as many external stress factors as possible, like needy clients with demanding deliverables, or jumping into unfamiliar industries.
With more time, freedom, and a balance of exercise, Eric is able to spend his time with selective clients that he believes in, and actively engaging as an investor and advisor to various brands that trust him.
With his experience in product concepts, prototyping, manufacturing, launching and scaling clients to 6 figures per month, he was ready to reset, rebuild his team from scratch, and create the company he envisioned for himself.
In less than one year, he’s created a consumer product media company called needthat.com, where they write shopping guides, product reviews, and have collectively driven over 20 Million in views through their video content.
At the same time, he’s created what’s claimed to be the most exciting fast casual tabletop card game in the world of Boba, a popular dessert drink that came from Asia. They’re set for an exciting launch on Kickstarter February 16 which can be found at bobacardgame.com.
