The Great Side Hustle: Where It All Started
By: Donavan Marais
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Side Hustle, Funnels, Clickfunnels

Besides having an amazing career and a well-paid job as a software engineer, I felt unprepared for my retirement one day. I started investing in my retirement too late in my life and I knew that if I continued in this vein, that I would not have enough money to have a comfortable retirement. I needed a way to duplicate my efforts, including how much money I was making. The problem was I had insufficient capital to invest in an existing business and I had no idea how to play the stock market, let alone take a gamble with my hard earned money. I had heard about how many entrepreneurs were making money from dropshipping businesses and I thought that would be a great idea.

If I could be successful, I could have extra funds to put towards my retirement, not to mention paying off my debts faster. But equally important right now, I would be able to take my family on vacations and give them a better quality of life.

Despite having years of experience building websites for many fortune 500 companies, I quickly realized that I lacked the necessary marketing and sales skills to be successful. Building a Shopify store was the least of my concerns. What would I sell? I tried finding suppliers in China that would best fit my dropshipping model, but it just wasn’t happening for me. How was I going to find a product that I could sell at a profit and get into the hands of my customers within days without laying out thousands of dollars? How would I compete against Amazon? It felt daunting and very risky indeed. I just couldn’t find the “perfect” product.

I felt inadequate and like I was wasting my time and precious resources. I felt like I was out of the loop and I couldn’t understand how others were succeeding with dropshipping. Worst of all, while I was successful in my career and had the achievements to show for it, I felt like a failure. Initially I was so excited about starting my own business and shared my passion with my wife. Now I felt like I had let her down.

I was fresh out of ideas. Nothing had worked for me. Without a product and a plan, I knew I was going nowhere. That’s when I realized that a more radical approach was needed.

The secret seemed to be having a better understanding of how online marketing works. I started doing research on YouTube and came across a digital marketers’ video talking about marketing funnels. I had heard of sales funnels before when I had tried telesales in a former life. Was it the same concept? Ironically enough, I came across a Facebook ad for ClickFunnels. I watched a video where Russell Brunson explained how websites were dead and that funnels were the way to go. The more I watched, the more excited I became. This was the radical approach I was looking for. I just had to be a part of this movement despite not having a product to sell. I jumped in head first and signed up for his 30-day One Funnel Away Challenge. Russell explained how websites can be so confusing, not to mention getting traffic to your website and then hoping they can navigate through your website to finally click the buy button. Now wonder I had not been unsuccessful in using websites to grow my business. You have to spend thousands of dollars on advertising and even then you have no guarantee your customers are going to find the right product to purchase.

My plan was to learn everything about building funnels and then hopefully I would figure out what product to sell.

Once I had a grasp on what funnels were and how to make them work for any business or any product, I began thinking about what product I was going to sell. I knew that it had to be something I believed in, something I was passionate about. But without the perfect product to sell, I again felt stuck.

That’s when I learnt that Russell’s affiliate commissions are very appealing, so that’s when I decided to start promoting ClickFunnels until I can come up with a suitable product of my own.

In the end, I finally feel more confident and empowered than ever before. I got the marketing and sales training I needed. More importantly, I felt a renewed sense of purpose and meaning. I am now part of a successful movement that has already helped thousands of other people, just like me. I was starting to make a difference. Now I know my purpose and that is to coach others to build an online business and to build successful funnels.