Day 413 - Reaching For Value

Day 413 - $8,913 made, 26 events held, 7 products designed, 50 twerkflows made. Decided to pull the trigger on my first pop-up location at the Gibraltar Market. Starting Apr. 6th.

Throwback to Day 48 - 0$ made, 0 events held, 0 products designed, 15 twerkflows made. Changed my company name on Instagram from themiiru to Miiru Trades, which has now become Miiru Trading.

I am struggling with the idea that revenue is the best marker for how my company is doing. It is the marker I have set, I am taking the leap that I can begin with finding and curating beautiful fabrics from the other side of the world and as long as I am finding buyers for these at a reasonable price I have proven my business model assumption. My second assumption is that generating revenue is more important in the early days than securing profit. I expect a certain amount of mistakes and failed margins, which I can always shore up and squeeze tighter in the coming months and years.

Tech startups race to get user adoption. Often using a freemium or another low-barrier design to get early adopters to stream onto their platform. I wonder when they begin do they have a set number of customers that marks their business model as proven. Or is it an on going assume-prove-assume cycle until they land in the mystical realm of profitability?

I now have 5 manufacturers / suppliers from which I purchase and 5 wholesale customers whom I sell to. Halfway to my annual goal for new regular wholesale customers. Which is an amazing and encouraging landmark. And which has taken me a full year and two trips to Asia to accomplish. The fabrics I found a year ago were simply just not interesting enough. So the year has had minor accomplishments and incurred major costs. This can only be judged in context of the entire scope of my company's "mission" to use a dead-horse of a term. Or how I talk about it, what am I trying to do at 7:01am of my business.

Here is where the other markers come in. There are all kinds of other feedback. Emails from teachers who students have glued on to knitting after taking one of my workshops, or messages from fans who ran into someone wearing my products and they could not stop raving about it. Visual, tactile and experiential enjoyment of the output from my labors.

It's not money in the bank, but to say that feedback is valueless is also wrong. Overvalue it and I will run my company right into the vortex of $0.

Check out my other posts on Steem @

• https://steemit.com/risk/@almostfitz/day-411-you-vs-the-ledger
• https://steemit.com/pareto/@almostfitz/day-404-the-pareto-demon
• https://steemit.com/problems/@almostfitz/yeah-sure-wake-up
• https://steemit.com/problems/@almostfitz/solve-interesting-problems
• https://steemit.com/work/@almostfitz/bringing-it-home
• https://steemit.com/timing/@almostfitz/timing-is-everything
• https://steemit.com/startup/@almostfitz/today-is-free
• https://steemit.com/funding/@almostfitz/think-local-act-global
• https://steemit.com/revenue/@almostfitz/day-4-369-the-wheel-turns-all-ways
• https://steemit.com/insurance/@almostfitz/day-3-368-what-aren-t-you-insured-for
• https://steemit.com/startup/@almostfitz/day-2-find-funding-day-367-find-customers
• https://steemit.com/startup/@almostfitz/the-day-it-all-started
• https://steemit.com/startup/@almostfitz/experimenting-with-the-bogo-3-0-business-model
• https://steemit.com/startup/@almostfitz/why-this-business-data-confidence-and-shit-testing
• https://steemit.com/startup/@almostfitz/why-this-business-set-your-anchors-deep
• https://steemit.com/travel/@almostfitz/tourists-pull-your-head-out-of-your-ass
• https://steemit.com/worst/@almostfitz/the-potential-freedom-in-being-the-world-s-worst-entrepreneur-
• https://steemit.com/business/@almostfitz/open-for-business-11-pictures-about-launching-a-startup-speak-11-000-words

Check out my posts on my other blog on my Shopify store @

• https://miiru-trading.myshopify.com/