What It Was Like To Build 5 Startups In A Year.

Building multiple startups in a single year is something that not many entrepreneurs would recommend. You often hear advice similar to “Pick one thing and focus fire on it”.

This is certainly valid advice that I would also recommend.

So why would I ignore this advice and build multiple startups instead?

And the answer is simple: I was developing expertise and building a portfolio.

I have been successful with affiliate marketing and made good money but I also discovered that making money without a purpose quickly becomes unfulfilling.

After learning this ugly truth, I made the decision that I would build a new career teaching other people how to build their own startups.

In order to provide my future customers with the best and most relevant information possible, I made a decision to take an entire year and dedicate it to mastering my craft.

I wanted to immerse myself in the world of online development and really push myself to the limit by going against the grain and building 5 unique startups in a year.

And somehow, we did it!

But it wasn’t easy.

It was a very difficult year filled with a tremendous amount of fear, loneliness, and failure. Which might sound weird but is exactly what I wanted.

It was my plan to push myself very hard, to go to that deep dark place where other people will quit, and to push through to the other side.

Somehow I managed to pull it off, but I’ll admit, it was ugly.

I noticed that when you push yourself to full capacity, your character flaws and inadequacies will magnify and move closer to the surface.

For example, I found that I had become extremely aggressive, impatient, and anxious. I had always had some of these characteristics before but now it was as if they were on steroids.

Only by pushing myself really hard was I able to finally identify and acknowledge these as a potential problem and begin to work on improving myself in those areas.

On the flip side, I grew more as a person, developer, and as a man, than I did in the last 5 year combined.

By operating on the front lines of the startup world I was able to gain a tremendous amount of knowledge and real world experience that could not be found anywhere else.

Additionally, I was able to set a new benchmark and standard for myself and my businesses with regards to what can be accomplished with commitment and hard work.

My standards are different now…

I expect more out of myself now than I ever have before and it feels good.

Was it necessary for me to launch 5 startups in order to feel qualified to teach others?

In some ways no, and in some ways yes.

There are a lot of fake gurus out there making false promises and teaching courses that simply don’t work. I know because I have taken a few of them myself.

I wanted to make sure that I avoided this situation and created something of real value to the customer that could potentially change their lives.

Being able to achieve this result is how to really achieve fulfillment with your business.

What I wanted to avoid was rushing out something that was not as good as it could be in order to make money. If I wanted this result I would just use my affiliate marketing skills to sell these kinds of products or expand my operations with Unacell, my mobile affiliate marketing company.

Obviously, this is not the direction I want to head in for the reasons I mentioned above.

Another part of my strategy is to have real-world examples that allow future students to see exactly what they will learn how to build by incorporating my teachings and techniques.

No fake promises or phony story required, just real examples and lessons from a guy deep in the startup trenches.

So what did we build?

Well, today I won’t be going into deep detail about each individual project as there will be a new section added to the site shortly with in-depth breakdowns of each build.

But here is a quick summary of each startup:

Alpha Male Blueprint
www.alphamaleblueprint.com

This is a blog and community that I am building for men that share the same goals of self-improvement and personal development. There is an old saying that you are what you eat and I wanted to make sure I surrounded myself with as many like-minded individuals as possible.

Over the last year, we have created a great looking brand and built a large social media following of over 100K individuals all interested in entrepreneurship.

https://www.facebook.com/alphamaleblueprint (43K followers at time of writing)
https://twitter.com/alphamalebp (28K followers at time of writing)
https://www.instagram.com/alphamaleblueprint/ (13.5K followers at time of writing)
https://www.pinterest.com/alphamalebp/ (29.4K followers at time of writing)

And yes these are all real followers! Over the last year, we have developed a very sophisticated social media system that allows us to achieve results on not only AMBP but also all of our other brands at the same time, as you will see later.

We also created a YouTube channel where we produced some very cool content including motivational videos and even our own original music and music videos all using the word “Alpha” in the chorus to fit the brand.

The Alpha Male Blueprint will serve as our first customer base and future community as we begin to release our first products.

UnlockFood
www.unlockfood.com

Launched Feb 8, 2017, UnlockFood is a brand new app that has been designed to fight world hunger.

The simple app places an advertising banner on the user’s lock screen which generates revenue every time the user unlocks their phone. This money is then used to feed hungry people all over the world.

This project is awesome because it is very simple to understand and to be a part of.

We have successfully taken the wasted of action of unlocking your phone and transformed it into a wonderful act of giving.

Currently, we are trying to secure a strategic partnership, to properly roll out the project, while we also focus on product improvements and media attention.

https://www.facebook.com/unlockfood/ (11K followers at time of writing)
https://twitter.com/unlockfoodapp (576 at time of writing)
https://www.instagram.com/unlockfood/ (438 at time of writing)

DopeCoin
www.dopecoin.com

DopeCoin is a cryptocurrency, similar to Bitcoin, that was designed for the billion-dollar marijuana industry.

This digital currency has been featured on Fox, Huffington Post, Business Insider, PC Mag and others.

The value of the entire currency is currently at $142,113.00 (at the time of writing) and we are working at creating a new marijuana-based advertising system that operates entirely on DopeCoins in order to increase it’s functionality and user base.

We just recently rebranded and relaunched this project as DopeCoin Gold in Jan, 2017.

https://www.facebook.com/dopecoin/ (3679 followers at time of writing)
https://twitter.com/dopecoinGold (8727 followers at time of writing)
https://www.instagram.com/dopecoingold/ 2095 followers at time of writing)

Magick Multimedia
www.magickmultimedia.com

This is an offshore umbrella company that was set up to process credit card payments for the other projects on this list.

As a digital nomad, it is important to set up a tax structure that makes sense for your businesses. As I am no longer living in Canada it makes very little sense to pay taxes within that jurisdiction.

My solution was to set up a residency down in Panama and operate out of that country while I continue my travels around the world.

Magick Multimedia is a part of that structure and is setup to allow international payment processing for my businesses.

https://www.instagram.com/magickmultimedia/ (5255 followers at time of writing)
https://twitter.com/magickstudio (2798 followers at time of writing)

Unacell
www.unacell.com

This project is actually something that I created 2 years ago, however this year, in particular, we built 19 new products in 6 different languages.

We even created a Pokemon Go product in 6 different languages that we were able to secure a licensing deal with one of the industry giants. Pokemon Go turned out to be a fad and the profits did not last long but it was a very interesting experience.

This year we successfully added affiliate partners as well as expanded our marketplace into 2 new countries.

Although this is our main source of income it is the business model that I want to move away from.

It has been included to this last due to the sheer volume of development that has taken place this year within the mobile affiliate industry.

Astrology Revealed, Fancy Gals, Celeb Supernova
www.astrologyrevealed.com
www.fancygals.com
www.celebsupernova.com

So we actually built 8 startups this year.

I decided to abandon these products due to the business model. After getting deep into the project, I realized that the monetization strategy was very much the same as affiliate marketing and would rely on generating AdSense revenue, selling unnecessary products, and generally wasting people’s time and money for my own benefit.

We still have the brands plugged into our social media system for the time being and they have been placed on the back burner for now.

Here’s a look at some numbers:

Astrology Revealed

Facebook (10K followers at time of writing this)
Twitter (15.3K followers at time of writing this)
Instagram (14K followers at time of writing this)
Pinterest (14,933 followers at time of writing this)

** Astrology Revealed was the only FB account we used PPC on within this group) **

Celeb Supernova

Facebook (108 followers at time of writing this)
Twitter (4501 followers at time of writing this)
Instagram 9815 followers at time of writing this)
Pinterest (23,129 followers at time of writing this)

Fancy Gals

Facebook (252 followers at time of writing this)
Twitter (7759 followers at time of writing this)
Instagram (12.7K followers at time of writing this)
Pinterest (14,374) followers at time of writing this)

As you can see it has been a very busy year!

So what’s the next step?

Well, now that the startups have been built it is time to start the next phase of the mission.

Building products and selling them.

We will still be putting effort and resources into our existing projects as we work to develop and further monetize our existing infrastructure.

However, the majority of our focus will be on creating, releasing and teaching our first courses while simultaneously growing the Alpha Male Blueprint brand.

Stay tuned for a more in-depth breakdown of each one of our startups and keep on the lookout for our master class coming up later this year.

I’ll be headed to Asia in early March and will be hanging out in Thailand for a few months. While there, I plan to network like a maniac and look for exciting opportunities and adventures.

The moral of the story is YES, you should focus on one startup at a time, but you should also recognize that you likely are not operating at your maximum potential. I know I wasn’t and the truth is that I still have a long way to go.

Push hard and set high standards for yourself, you might be surprised by what you can accomplish.