Jungle Success Story Pre-Sleep: How I Started My Business in College

Level 2 - Value Investor

Welcome Avatar! This is a full guest post from a new E-com winner from the Jungle. All of this is in his words. Enjoy!

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First off, I would like to thank BTB for allowing me to use their platform to share my story. If it wasn’t for them and the entire community they built, I would probably be a poverty-stricken gym teacher. Thank you for sending the ladder down.

Now for the journey of PreSleep.

PreSleep may seem “new” to most of you reading this, but the journey began over a year ago when I was a broke college senior.

I subscribed to BTB, and I started investing in BTC and ETH, thinking I’m well on my way to Degen Island.

Only to soon realize that even a 20x moonshot on $1,000 of ETH wasn’t going to make a life changing difference.

I began to notice every other post wasn’t just about crypto. It was about starting a business and how to create multiple income streams that make money while you sleep.

I knew absolutely nothing about Ecom, marketing, sales, logistics, website design, or copywriting. You name it; I didn’t know how to do it. College certainly didn’t.

All I knew was that I had to start.

The Idea

As a college athlete, I had to wake up at 5am daily for morning workouts. This schedule was really taking a toll on my sleep.

I turned to melatonin, which would help me fall asleep, but I never reached quality sleep. I would feel like I had been hit by a truck when I woke up in the morning. Not ideal when going to lift at 5am.

I began to do some research and realized there were better ingredients that I could use to get quality sleep. As I dug deeper, I found that most sleep supplements thought leaders were using:

Magnesium

Glycine

L-theanine

I started taking these supplements, and I noticed my sleep got significantly better. I felt much more refreshed when I woke up.

I couldn't find a product that had all of these ingredients together in efficacious doses. Then it hit me.

Why not make it into an all-in-one formula that you could drink and that tasted good? Liquid supplements will also dissolve faster and, in turn, absorb quicker. This process allows the liquid supplement to work faster than pills.

This is when the idea for PreSleep was born. I knew I had a lot of work to do to get this going. I paid someone on Fiverr 70 dollars to do my logo, and I got my LLC up that same week. I was off to the races. Please don’t overthink this part.

Demand Test or Lack Thereof

After reading Efficiency by BTB, I knew the optimal way to test demand would be:

Set up a landing page

Run ads to the page

See if you get sales

If you don’t get any sales, abandon the product or adjust copy, creative, etc

I didn’t do any of that. I was broke and had $1,000 to my name because I was still in college. Instead, I devised a balling on a budget demand test.

I decided my version of a demand test would look something like this:

Buy the ingredients of PreSleep in bulk and blend them myself

Cold outreach to Instagram influencers via DMs

Send the homemade version to Instagram influencers

Ask them to post and drive traffic to my email list

It wasn’t perfect by any means, but after doing influencer outreach every day for the month of January, here were the results, by February:

I got calls from a professional sports team to buy PreSleep for the whole team

I had multiple influencers who had positive reviews

107 email subscribers

My DM’s were loaded with people begging me to launch

At this point, I had enough confidence to feel that the idea was validated and could be scaled. My dad had taken notice of how much work I had been putting in day in and day out.

He was also using the homemade version of PreSleep every night and loved it from the very beginning. He felt comfortable funding the initial capital for inventory from an FDA approved supplier to get me started.

PreSleep was finally moving from my parents kitchen blender to a real production operation.

Navigating the Manufacturing Side

What I should’ve done:

This is something I wish I had done a better job of selecting, to be completely honest. Many headaches would’ve been saved if I had selected a better supplier from the beginning.

The best way to find manufacturers is NOT through Google.

There are some quality manufacturers in the USA, but they are extremely hard to find unless

You have an existing relationship with a supplier

You get a referral

Hire a consultant to help with this

If you are looking to find a manufacturer, I highly recommend working with someone who has a wealth of knowledge in the space.

I used Blue Ocean Advisory to help me find a new supplier, and it has saved me so much time and energy.

*Not affiliated, I just think they do a great job.*

The Launch or the Splatt

After working for 7 months straight, seeing no results, the hard work finally paid off, and I made $1,700 that first month. At the time, I was ecstatic, but that excitement would be short lived.

Because here’s how the next few months of revenue went:

Sept: $1200

October: $900

November: $850

Ruh roh! Not a great trend, kind of like when a shitcoin launches and slowly fades into irrelevance.

At the time, all sales were coming from one channel: organic TikTok content.

I learned this entirely through BowTiedTikTok’s discord.

Note: If it hadn’t been for joining BowTiedTikTok’s discord, I wouldn’t have sold any units, so shout out to him for coaching me through creating viral videos. I mainly use his discord now to find quality UGC creators. Check out his discord here *Disclaimer*: This is an affiliate link because I believe in capitalism, and you should too.

Anyway, back to PreSleep. This whole 4-month period was the largest gut punch since starting the business.

At this point, I was out of college and working a full time job as an SDR, doing the typical 9-5 grind of ripping dials and hustling meetings.

Once I was off the clock, I’d begin to grind out work for the business, and during that period of time, it was mostly working on getting more eyeballs on the product by creating TikTok content.

The bulk of the time would be spent creating TikTok videos every night until 1am or later.

I spent everything I earned at my W2 on PreSleep and reinvested all of the small profits back into the business.

I hardly saw any results. I would get a sale every other day if I was lucky. I’ve had my fair share of 0 sales days/weeks which would only add to my stress and anxiety.

I desperately spent $4,000 on TikTok creators to help promote PreSleep. That turned out to be a total waste of money.

I honestly thought about quitting every day. I had so many negative thoughts swirling around my head.

Is this the right niche? Am I working on a lost cause? Does my product suck? Do I suck at this? Did I waste my dad’s money? Why didn’t I do a proper demand test like BTB said!

At this rate, I wouldn’t sell out of inventory FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR.

I was on the verge of slipping into depression. I had so much hope going into this, but I was failing to get any sort of traction at scale.

Worst of all, it wasn’t my money invested, so I felt even worse, but I had no choice but to wake up everyday and continue to try. I owed it to my dad.

This is probably where most people would give up. It’s not sexy to wake up and do the same thing every day with 0 results.

Looking back, I realize that this was just one of my many valleys of despair.

A Glimmer of Hope

Out of slight desperation, I decided to listen to my good friend TJ of Ramp Health on advice he had been giving me for months: promote PreSleep on Twitter/X,

It proved to be one of the greatest decisions I made for the business.

BowTiedNeuron posted the first PreSleep review on Twitter/X and I revealed that I was the owner behind the brand. After that post, my phone blew up with sales like I had never seen before. My first big break. Almost exactly 1 year from starting the business.

That night was truly one of the craziest experiences of my life, and it was the most amount of money I had ever made in a single day at the time.

My girlfriend and I packed orders all night, but it didn’t matter, I was riding high like no other.

This is when I knew I could make it work. We finally had a winning strategy. Painfully simple yet effective.

But this doesn’t mean that there are no more problems in the business…

The Supplier Fiasco

Once I had about half of our inventory left, I placed another order with my manufacturer and was so excited because I knew we would sell out of our first round of inventory fast.

This excitement was short-lived.

This next batch of inventory tasted completely different from the first. It was a massive punch in the face. I knew I couldn’t ship these units. It would’ve been a disservice to everyone that purchased to give them something I myself wouldn’t use.

This obviously left a bad taste in my mouth (literally and figuratively). This is when I knew I needed to find a different supplier, and thankfully I did.

This has ultimately been the main reason why PreSleep has had so many delays due to inefficiencies and empty promises by our supplier.

But being sold out is “such a good problem to have,” right? No, not at all.

It’s been extremely stressful, and it could’ve been avoided by finding the right manufacturer in the beginning.

The Future of PreSleep

Leaning on affiliates has been the biggest mover so far for PreSleep.

I rinsed and repeated this strategy of finding Twitter accounts who met the following criteria:

Find an account in the health/fitness niche

Make sure they have an engaged following

Verify they have an audience of at least 5k followers

Send PreSleep for no charge

If they like it, I would ask for a post

Offer an affiliate code so they can get a cut for their support

It’s simple, win and help win. Momentum grew, and similar results occurred.

Now I have my VA do most of this, so I can free up my time to work on other aspects of the business.

I have also outsourced fulfillment after many late nights of fulfilling orders with my girlfriend, mom, and dad. They were very thankful I got a 3PL. They were overworked and underpaid.

Our supply chain is currently in shambles due to having to switch manufacturers, but I promise this will only be temporary.

Overall, the future of PreSleep is bright:

I have a massive announcement that is coming up, and I will be able to talk more about it in the coming months.

Let’s just say I don’t think we will be selling out for too much longer…

Concluding Takeaways:

Just start; it’ll never be the perfect time

Do not stop.

Test demand for your product before buying inventory

Once you find a winning strategy for getting customers, triple down on it.

I’m not a genius. To get this far, I showed up every day, didn’t get paid for it, spent thousands of dollars on an unknown outcome, and willed it into existence.

When I was doing 0 sales a day for weeks, I would daydream of moments where my Shopify notifications would blow up my phone.

For those of you out there only doing a couple sales a week, and struggling to get traction, do not quit. It sucks, and it’s painful working every single day and seeing no results, but this is the right of passage.

Having this mindset is the only way to continue on. Don’t dwell on it. Just keep getting better, one day at a time.

This attitude has legitimately been why I was able to get PreSleep where it is today and have legitimate exit velocity to work on PreSleep full time (soon).

That’s my story, I hope someone out there can find some value in this and learn something.

You can find me on Twitter/X BowTiedVampDeer and if you’re interested in checking out PreSleep you can find it here and if we’re sold out at the time you're reading this, don’t blame me; blame my supplier.

The goal of this post was to show you the raw work it takes to bring a brand to life. The path isn't easy, but god damn, it's worth it.

-BowtiedVampDeer

Special Thanks to those Supporting PreSleep:

• Again, huge thank you to BowtiedBull for letting me share my story with their audience

• My dad for supporting my business without him PreSleep wouldn’t exist.

• My mom for making a million post office runs for me while I worked my W2

• My girlfriend for being the most supportive person in the world.

• Tommy Salami for being a great friend and mentor throughout this entire process.

• BowtiedQuoll for editing this post and his help with copywriting.

• BowTiedTikTok for showing me how to create viral content.

• BowtiedCommoner for having me on her podcast “Common Sense”.

• BowtiedJester for keeping me focused on content creation.

• BowtiedFawn for always being available to offer her valuable insight.

• BowtiedOpossum for reframing my perspective on supply chain.

• BowtiedCocoon for helping me get a W2 sales job.

• Everyone that has purchased PreSleep and supported my dream.

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BTB Notes

This is another incredible story! More impressed that Vamp Deer did this without even getting the initial money via W-2. More proof that if there is a will, there is a way.

We expect more and more winners and if you have something legitimate be sure to reach out to us. We want to see you win!

As usual Stay Toon’d!

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