It was 2012 and I was 24, married and had a kid. I was also broke, in foreclosure & on food stamps / borrowing money to pay bills.
Fast forward 10 yrs, everything is different. I built one of the fastest growing bootstrapped co’s in the US.
A🧵on how things turned around…
In 2011, I resigned from a salaried job at a church. It’s a complicated story, but it wasn’t the right place for me to be. I start job hunting.
As a college dropout, I have no degree to and finding work post 2008 was rough for me. I looked for positions in marketing, but everyone turned me down for others more experienced. Desperate, I turned to retail and worked at REI selling clothing.
I was a great employee and went above and beyond everywhere I could. I believe hard work pays off, and I worked really hard. I remember being sat down one year, told I qualified for the highest rate increase I could because of how well I was doing.
My manager said they’d never given anyone this kind of raise…
It was a $0.75 raise for exceptional performance. The most they could give. I went from making $12.25 to $13. I kept pushing, applied for low-level management positions but always got overlooked for those with degrees or retail experience.
I needed to get out of retail. I kept working hard, applying for better jobs, and slowly losing all my money as I tried to make it all work. It was dumb, but I even liquidated my ROTH IRA in hopes that I’d get a promotion and be able to afford the house and bills.
But time went on and nothing seemed to work. I went into default and started applying for government programs for health and food assistance.
One day, I meet a young guy my age shopping for a black t-shirt at REI. He wants to put his company logo on it. I ask some questions and become fascinated by his story.
He works for his parents insurance company, but was getting into filmmaking. For fun, he designs a camera gimbal for smooth footage and puts his design on Kickstarter. Wants to raise 15k but raises 85k all of a sudden has a product fulfillment problem on his hands.
Wanting to learn about Kickstarter, I ask to interview him for my own research. He agrees, but only if I help assemble gear while we do the interview.
I learn a lot during my 3 hours of assembly. I go back to selling clothes with no idea for what’s next, more determined than ever that I need to escape the slow climb of retail management.
More desperate than ever, I offer to work for him for free. I agree to spend 5 hours a week running his social media accounts and increase his followings. I wanted to get exposure to building a business.
He said yes. So 5 hours turns to 10 hours. It’s not paid work, but it’s interesting to me and I love it. Eventually I make myself useful enough to get hired on part-time. I’m officially employee #2.
Over the next 2.5 years I keep grinding. I work hard and eventually become full-time and leave my retail job. I become the Marketing Director and then COO of Rhino Camera Gear. I get to see firsthand how you can bootstrap and build a 1M+ business.
I’m more inspired than ever and start my own company (more of a side hustle) with my brother while working there.
We call it Snapbar. It’s a photo booth company for weddings and parties. Because we have full time jobs, we work on Snapbar during evenings and weekends for 3 years (from 2012 to 2015). The weekends are when events happen, so we made it work.
We grind 40 hours a week at the main job and keep at it all weekend.
We’re thinking our little side hustle is good for side-income, but are still waiting for ‘THE’ idea we really want to go all-in on.
After 3 years of this, we realize ‘THE’ idea has been right in front of us the whole time. We determine we can make a big business out of our little photo booth side-hustle. In 2015, we quit our day jobs at Rhino and go full time with Snapbar.
Things change fast when we have time to focus on our business. From 2015 to 2018, we market, promote, and modernize everything we’re doing. Snapbar expands from the 2 of us to a team of 40 plus. We grow at over 1000% in those 3 years and land as #473 on the Inc 5000 list.
It’s a whirlwind, we’re one of the fastest growing private companies in the country.
2019 is our best year ever, we grow to $3.2 million in revenue with huge profit margins. It’s only been 7 years since I had nothing, a feeling I’ll never forget.
2020 is gearing up to be even better than 2019. We planning to open 5 new markets, we’re working with the worlds biggest brands. We’re so excited…and then it ALL crashes down in March. Overnight, the pandemic makes events illegal, and we’re 100% reliant on them.
Our revenue vanishes overnight. Our company savings go into free fall. And then our team does the incredible…
There’s more to share, but I’ll save it for another thread.
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I’m trying to do a better job of sharing my story in hopes it will encourage others.
Sam Eitzen 🚢
@sameitzen
Bootstrapped Snapbar to #473 on Inc. 5000. I've taken 6+ products from $0 to over 7 figures each. Now I talk about how others can do that...high, lows and all.