Entrepreneurs Must Fail Forward!

I was watching some of the videos in the social currency course on one of my entrepreneur mastermind academies and it spoke about opening up. Opening up and being completely transparent which is something that is a little hard for me. To just open up.. Lots of the times I have these good opened up talks with friends after we’ve been drinking some wine and we’re feeling pretty darn good. I thought that it would be better to not make a video explaining to you all the things that I’ve done right, I think that a video kind of talking about the things that I have learned and the failures that I’ve had would resonate with a lot of you because as entrepreneurs we know that not everything is going to be a success. No matter how smart or how present you are, and how much you want it. It doesn’t really matter. You can put in all your effort but at the same time it’s not always going to be a success. With that being said, I want to get into some of the things that I’ve learned. I’ve learned a lot through my failures, not only the success.

I think the failure is the one that teaches the most for sure. It’s not a cliché when people say so, it’s the ultimate truth. Long story short, I started a private labeling business back in college selling on Amazon (FBA) . I started off first with retail arbitrage. Going to publix and buying products that were on sale, then I would resell them on Amazon. I did that for a while, that was great. I thought I was killing it in business, my friends were like, “Wow, Nico what are you doing with all this Oreo cookies and reselling them, making money off of Oreo cookies.”

Then I went onto find my own brands and my own products. I went to China, I started sourcing from there and I had a couple brands that I launched. One of my brands … Well actually the first brand I launched I ordered 500 units, and that was around three thousand dollars. That was like what I had in my account, and I spent it all on this. When they got to my house from China, they ended up being worthless and they didn’t really work correctly so that sucked. I ended up still wholesaling them on Ebay like 50 units per order.

Every unit sold for pretty much what I got it for, but I got some of my money back. That’s one of my first real ventures into the online world of things and the entrepreneurial world. That was a hard lesson to learn, so then I went onto a couple different products. Some Mac Book accessories, which I called Mac Tatt, and that business worked for like a year or two. I was killing it, selling a couple hundred dollars a day, which was amazing. Until one day Amazon sent me a message said they blocked all my listings because of the name Mac Tatt, it wasn’t compliant and obviously Apple had a problem with it. They ended up killing all my business with that brand and I still had like five thousand units of the products that I was selling, which was painful. Another one was an infuser bottle, which I bought, I was one of the first ones in the market with this specific infuser bottle. A year later I’m making a killing, I’m making good money with this thing and all of a sudden new sellers start coming in. Even the manufacturers from China started their own brands with their own bottles and selling them on Amazon and just completely cut the prices on me and killed my market.

Then I went on to get my real estate license. I did that for a while, I never sold a property or anything but it’s that I never had the passion for selling real estate, it was more of the passion for real estate investing itself. Which is still a big passion of mine and I love making money off of real estate. I remember when I read “Rich Dad Poor Dad” back in the day by Robert Kiyosaki, and he explained the concept of passive income. Now I do some work with AirBnB and I rent properties out. I rent them and then I rent them on Air BNB, which is a concept that I really like, I really enjoy, I really am passionate about that.

Other than that, I started a exotic car rental business, I acquired a couple of cars, I noticed there was an opportunity on Turo.com and I started renting the cars out. I started with one, and then I noticed that I barely even got to drive it because it was always rented, so I went and got another one. That one was always rented as well and I went and got another one, same thing with that one always rented and then I went and got another one.

At this point I had my first personal car, which is the mini that’s right there, and then I got a Porsche and then I ended up getting three other Porsches so I have four Porsches and one mini. It’s all flowing perfectly and I’m on top of the world, I’m balling at this point because I mean you can rent these cars for 200 dollars a day, and a lot of the times they’re always rented. I have four of them that I’m renting over 200 dollars a day, I’m killing it.

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Then you know, with business as an entrepreneur you never know what could happen. Memorial weekend I rented my Panamera out to this guy who was pretty freaking sketchy, and I ended up just going with it. I rented it, I was like you know it’s 800 dollars for a weekend, I’m going to rent it anyway. It hit me man, it hit me. I got punched in the face by business that weekend. That car ended up getting stolen and I’m still in the process of figuring out insurance and how they’re going to pay it, and they’re trying to give me less than what I owe on the car because I only had it for three months.

It’s a hassle trying to go through everything right now. Another one was getting towed and as it was being towed the tow truck got into an accident and the car was damaged. Off the market, I couldn’t rent it for a month and a half, two months, that’s lost income. Another one, the third one, around three weeks ago this guy was driving it and hit a sidewalk and completely shattered the front axis. The wheel was banged up, the whole car needs like 25 thousand dollars in repair and I’m just dealing with insurance trying to get them to cover that now. I mean, it all looks … From what I post on Instagram, it looks like everything is balling and to the people that follow me and to my friends a lot of the time they’re like, “Damn this guy’s made it. He’s 24 and he’s doing all these different things,” but in reality a lot of the time I feel like I’m failing a lot. I do find success here and there from moment to moment and then failure comes. It sucks but I’ve come to realize that it’s a reality of being an entrepreneur. It’s not all, you know, golden roses and beautiful things how some people paint the picture.

Fail forward, don’t be scared to fail. That’s what I keep telling myself. You know, whatever failures you have, learn from them, move on, and keep evolving.

Much love to you guys and peace.