Handwritten notes grew this biz to $3M/year + Passive income: myth or reality?

Dear starters,

Pat Walls here, creator of Starter Story. 

I’m hitting your inbox to share with you the best ideas and insights we've published over the last week.

P.S. I'm also offering a limited-time deal on Starter Story premium for just $1.51/week, our best deal ever (see below).

📝 Handwritten thank you notes? They work

Stu created his own supplements brand because the ones he tried either had a load of synthetic ingredients or tasted like dirt. He mixed the first pounds of ingredients in his own kitchen without any previous experience.

He hustled like a pro to sell the first $30k, now his business is doing $250k/mo.

Biggest takeaway? A great customer experience pays big.

Since the early days,  he’s included handwritten thank you notes to all customers and sent an email after they placed an order to personally thank them.

He even hand-delivered a misplaced replacement of a lost package on a Sunday. That client still orders to this day. You can’t beat that level of dedication.

This is still one of the businesses that blow me away the most, just check our guide to start a supplements business, most of them make BIG money. Just to name a few that we have featured:

• Jigsaw Health - $1m/month, 1,3k Amazon reviews, 80% revenue from direct-to-consumer
• Lost Empire Herbs - $300k/month (only 15% from Amazon), email marketing generates 50% of the income 
• VADE Nutrition - $500k/mo, Shark Tank appearance, sold 40% of the business for $700k

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🏝️ Does passive income exist?

A few days ago, Pieter Levels published this tweet:

Passive income doesn't exist. It's a daily effort and challenge to keep getting sales, ranking on Google, getting traffic and keeping customers happy. My revenue is anything but passive.

Seems to me that “passive” rarely has to be taken literally and more like a synonym of “spending little time”. In the past we have spoken with many people using the term, like Paul, who runs a $2,5k/mo handcrafted wooden bow ties; Anslea, that makes $1k/mo selling temporary tattoos on Etsy; or Tony, who developed an online diamond price tracker and search engine and generates income through affiliate links.

Although, I’m not sure all the above businesses are truly passive income. They still need some level of attention. The popularity of the term is completely understandable: it’s catchy, attention grabbing and something everyone would love to achieve.

But, dealing with customers, manufacturers, accounting, marketing, fixing bugs,... that sounds quite active! 

Even though these businesses have done a great job outsourcing and delegating - aiming to have more free time and delegating the more tedious tasks are good things, but having a completely passive source of income seems kind of impossible.

Do you know any examples of truly passive income businesses? I’d love to hear about them.

P.S. I wrote a small guide on how I’ve outsourced much of my work at Starter Story.

⌚️ $2.5M luxury watch marketplace

First of all, I love how Pablo refers to used watches as ‘pre-loved’. He says that this market is growing +20% year over year and is expected to surpass the ‘new market’ in the next 10 years. So you better keep an eye on it.

His marketplace, Chronoexpert, has already generated over $2.5M in sales. How? Nothing special, they have mastered Google Ads and Shopping to achieve a positive ROI and are betting big on it.

Watches are always a hot item.

In the past we featured DelrayWatch, a tech-driven watch dealer that started with $4k and now sells over $3.5M every year. Does your marketing strategy involve video? They used Youtube as their main growth channel.

Christian took a break from law school (even with $200k in debt) and founded Theo & Harris, a $2M/year vintage watches business. Guess what? Youtube also plays a big role for them, with 100k followers, it brings 60% of their referral traffic.

🗣️ Quote of the week

Hire people that love things you hate - those tasks you really don’t like? Hire someone to do them for you… this frees up your time to work on building a better, more profitable business.

Tom Hunt from Fame, a $17k/mo podcast growth service

☝️ Job Opportunities

Some of the starters that we have spoken to are looking for talent:

• In the last year, the people at SmartMail have partnered with Shopify and reached 12k merchants using their email marketing solution. They’re looking for someone to lead the video content.
• Liz needs writers, assistants, project managers, and website builders for her business consulting company.
• The super cool food supplements for martial arts athletes ATH Organics ($250k/mo) have open positions for Controller/finance and Creative Director (Wanna see something cool? Check their web's source code).
• Spain’s Chronoexpert are selling luxury watches like hot cakes ($2.5m so far) so their team is growing and would like to hire senior developers, B2B sales senior, and a creative marketing head.

P.S. Huge thank you to Klaviyo - our exclusive sponsor at Starter Story. By using Klaviyo, we've grown our email list to 60K and added thousands of dollars in revenue per month through email marketing. Get Klaviyo today!

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