I'll start off by saying that I know maybe 80%+ of business owners were hit bad by COVID and had to deal with a drastic decline in business, but I'm grateful mine did the opposite and hit all time highs during 2020 carrying strong throughout the year. So big props to all of you physical business /restaurant owners that made it through 2020, I hope you all are thriving now.Also, for those who have not been entrepreneurs or are not yet seasoned (I'm hardly there), understand that the lows will occur even after highs. You'll eat humble pie right after being on top of the world one way or another.So here's my story of how that all played out, I hope you guys find this useful/informative.~~~WINNINGI was making $200-$1000 per day mostly passively, living the 4 hour work week as my website selling digital products and making ad revenue with a subscription on the backend.The business just grew and grew, I thought it would never stop.I remember on Black Friday, I sent out an email and made almost $1600 within 30 minutes, and then proceeded to sell even more products and have ad revenue on top of that.Offers were being made to acquire my business, and I turned them all down, all would have been life changing money.I was living an absolute dream, travelled the world, lived in paradise, and I kept thinking I was tripping because damn, this is what I dreamed about when I was broke years ago, I FREAKING MADE IT !!!THIS TOO SHALL PASS...Then things turned.I forked up big money to an SEO guy in Dec 2020, and it ended up being a huge mistake. The project dragged on for months and eventually failed and I left the guy a bad review and then he proceeded to mess up my website, taking it down from the server that only he had access to and charging all my subscribers out of their billing cycles, causing tons of chargebacks, refunds and general lack of trust in my site.To fix this, I had to spend a bunch of money on developers while putting the subscription on hold and continuing to give out free months and refunds as the problem continued.I was able to recover an older version of the site which was missing nearly 100 posts that were ranking well on Google, so soon enough, my traffic ended up tanking because of these lost posts in combination with recent Google updates.My business declined a bit up until April and then totally tanked since.HUMBLE PIESo, here I sit and I am looking at about $1000 in profit this month after a loss the previous month, and am still sinking money into technical assistance to getting my business back. I was making more than this 3 years ago when I was just 4 months into my business. 1 year ago today, I was doing about $15K /month. Now my sales, along with my Google traffic, are down nearly 80%.To make things worse, this decline timed with racked up medical bills from a surfing injury requiring surgery last year and big L's in the recent crypto craze, so I basically completely ran out of money after having made more money than most people do. I recently overdrew my bank account a few times and borrowed money from friends and family and took out a loan.Honestly I can't afford my rent anymore so I'm subletting out my place and living with my parents for a bit again then going off to Bali (it's super cheap there) on a free flight from points I racked up last year on my biz card for the next few months as I work on reviving my business.Although part of my downfall was due to this bad contractor, I can do nothing now other than make due with the situation I'm in now. I'm still taking full ownership and responsibility for my business and where it is and where it's going.I'm eating humble pie and working the most I ever had for my business and making the least I ever had since it's gained traction.LESSONS LEARNEDHere's a psychological truth that needs to be experienced to be understood fully, but losing money feels way way worse and is a stronger sensation than the highs of making tons of it. Think minus 100 vs plus 10. Or how bad it feels to get stabbed vs how good it feels to get a massage. Sure, it's good to be winning, but you get used to reeling in stacks and become numb to and normalize it, but when you're down bad and losing money it eats at you big time.The silver lining is that now I'm laying out a more solid foundation for my business and creating more of a process and tracking and analyzing more data than I did when things were gravy-- when sales are low, I find out where they're all coming from and how to do more of it and how to increase conversion rate, when sales were high, ironically I never took the time to see how I was even doing this, just sort of riding on luck and intuition--so I should in theory bounce back higher than I was before in due time.Although I have faith I'll get back to my past highs and go even higher, I have doubts sometimes, thinking it's all gone.This is an enormous lesson in patience: I have no idea if I've even seen the lowest lows yet, but this is absolutely the lowest I can afford to before needing a job, something I swore I'd never do again--but...Because I was so low on money, I took the first job (a one time gig) I had in years and it was manual labor helping a guy clean his house and doing yardwork (found this gig on Craigslist) and sold a bunch of my possessions.So I'm hungry and scrappy again, something that was missing when I was riding high and reeling in dough.GRATITUDE AND HAVING SOLID HOBBIES OUTSIDE OF BUSINESSTruthfully I was and still am a bit depressed about this, but I'm taking as much action as possible to get back, which is part of why I haven't totally given up or picked up a bad habit.The biggest thing that saved me is gratitude for other things in life I have, and life in general.I'm so grateful I have the ocean and surfing which my previous business success afforded me the free time to pursue nearly full time to get good enough where I am today. This is something totally unrelated to how much money I make, so I think it's an absolute necessity that entrepreneurs and business owners have some sort of hobby that has nothing to do with business but with a higher force of nature that keeps you balanced. Something like boxing or hiking or drawing or writing or whatever. I don't recommend golfing or road biking or car racing because these are hobbies where you hang out with wealthy people one upping each other. Surfing and boxing etc puts everyone at a level playing field in relation to their skill--money and business success is irrelevant in these contexts.I'm still not a slave employee of someone else, I simply hold full responsibility for my actions and my business which I'm choosing to work hard on now, and I'm grateful I'm in this position even though it's not currently profitable--I'm still the owner and creator of a cashflow machine, something some people will never produce in their lives.Now, when I run into money in the future, I'm going to cherish it and save more.Also, I expect that regaining what I have lost in terms of money will feel just as good as or honestly maybe better than making my very first consistent online dollars.NEVER GIVE UP!Maybe I'll update you guys later on in my journey if there's interest, and either way, I hope you guys have the strength to continue along with your journey in entrepreneurship if you're struggling in the beginning, middle, or thinking of ending.Also, for those of you riding high, don't take it for granted, and develop and foster that healthy hobby that has nothing to do with money ! Don't become a chazzer (Scarface), which I kinda did.And most of all, never give up ! This is an incredible opportunity for me to grow as a person and an entrepreneur, and I'm happy that I'm on such an exciting ride :)TL;DR:Went from making more money than some people dream of while working very little and travelling to not being able to afford rent, moving back to parents for a bit and taking a manual labor gig and selling possessions to get by after overdrafting my bank account, all within 1 year.To survive this, take full responsibility, have a healthy hobby completely outside of business (even when you're successful), and be grateful for everything and never give up! see hubwealthy.com/wealthy
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