I made ₹22 lakhs and lost it all (big mistake)
I had found something that was working. Then I made the mistake of walking away from it.
I started my business in 2016.
At that time, I had launched my first course: Google Ads Mastery.
I had an email list of around 10,000 subscribers. When I launched the course to that list, I made ₹2.5 lakhs in revenue.
For me, that was a big moment.
But what I did next was even more important.
I did not take that money out of the business.
I did not go and buy something fancy.
I reinvested the entire amount back into lead generation.
At that time, I had a lead magnet called the Free Digital Marketing Course. It had 25 videos, and I promoted it using Facebook ads. With that money, I generated another 10,000 leads.
Now I had a bigger audience.
Then I launched my next course: Facebook Ads Mastery.
This time, I launched it to both my old leads and the new leads I had generated. That launch made ₹4 lakhs in revenue.
Again, I took the entire amount and put it back into ads.
That generated another 30,000 leads.
Now I had 50,000 leads.
Then I launched my third course: SEO Mastery.
That launch made ₹8 lakhs.
Once again, I reinvested the money into ads.
After that, I launched the 100 Day Blogging Course.
That course made ₹22 lakhs in revenue.
Everything was working.
The model was simple.
Create a course.
Build an audience.
Launch the course.
Make revenue.
Reinvest into lead generation.
Launch the next course.
Repeat.
It was not glamorous.
It was not complicated.
But it was working.
And that is exactly where I made my biggest mistake.
I Got Distracted by Success
When ₹22 lakhs came into my bank account, something changed.
Instead of continuing with the same model that was already working, I started thinking bigger.
I thought:
“Why not start an agency?”
At that time, I had this desire to have an office.
I wanted employees.
I wanted a team.
I wanted to serve big clients.
I thought there was a lot of money in working with large companies and Fortune 500 clients.
So I started an agency.
And that decision became one of the biggest mistakes of my career.
Because what I did not understand at that time was this:
Just because one thing is working does not mean everything you touch will work.
When we get early success in our careers, we start becoming overconfident.
We start thinking we are smart.
We start believing that whatever we do will become successful.
But sometimes, we are not successful because we are geniuses.
Sometimes, we are successful because we got lucky enough to find something that works.
The real intelligence is not in finding something that works once.
The real intelligence is in recognizing that it is working and staying with it.
Be Smart Enough to Know When You Are Getting Lucky
Most of us are not smart in every area of our career.
We are usually dumb in many areas.
But if we keep trying things, something may eventually start working.
At that point, we have to be smart enough to know that we have hit something valuable.
We have to hold on to it.
We have to go deep into it.
But instead, many entrepreneurs do the opposite.
The moment they see success in one thing, they get excited and start ten other things.
That is what I did.
I had a course business that was working.
I had a lead generation system that was working.
I had an audience that was growing.
I had launches that were making more money each time.
[Watch this on a YouTube Video]
But instead of doubling down, I started something completely different.
I started bleeding money.
Office rent.
Employee salaries.
Team costs.
Client servicing.
Unpredictable projects.
Demanding clients.
The projects that came in required a lot of my personal time and energy. And because of that, I could no longer spend the same amount of time creating courses, running ads, building my audience, and launching new products.
The entire business got stagnated for almost two years.
If I had taken that ₹22 lakhs and reinvested it into ads, maybe the next launch would have made ₹40 lakhs.
Then I could have reinvested that again.
If I had just continued doing what was already working, my business and net worth could have been far ahead of where they were.
But because I got distracted, everything went haywire.
Some Businesses Are Easy to Start but Hard to Close
One of the biggest problems with starting an agency, setting up an office, or building any business with employees and infrastructure is that it is not easy to shut it down.
It is easy to start.
You rent an office.
You hire people.
You announce it to the world.
You feel like an entrepreneur.
But when it does not work, closing it becomes painful.
You have responsibilities.
You have salaries to pay.
You have clients to manage.
You have contracts, systems, and commitments.
[Watch this on a YouTube Video]
The same applies to businesses that involve manufacturing, logistics, inventory, or a large operational team.
Once you create that structure, it can take years to clean up the mess if things go wrong.
That is why focus is so important.
Before starting something new, ask yourself:
“Am I starting this because it is genuinely the next logical step, or am I starting this because my ego wants something new?”
In my case, it was mostly ego.
I wanted to say I had an agency.
I wanted an office.
I wanted a team.
I wanted the feeling of running a bigger business.
But bigger is not always better.
Sometimes, bigger just means more headache.
What I Did Differently Later
In 2020, I launched the internship program.
By that time, I had become a little smarter.
This time, when something started working, I did not get distracted.
I stuck to it.
We ended up doing 35 batches of the internship program.
For the next four to five years, that became the core of the business.
Yes, we did other things around it.
We had mastermind programs.
We had high-ticket programs.
We did events.
But the core of the business remained the internship program.
I did not abandon the main thing.
I did not run away from what was working.
I stayed with it until it stopped working.
Eventually, the margins started decreasing.
Ad costs increased.
We trained more than 15,000 students.
The market became saturated for that specific style of digital marketing training.
So we had to move on.
But this time, I moved on after fully extracting the opportunity.
That is very different from getting distracted too early.
There is a time to persist.
There is also a time to pivot.
The mistake is not in changing direction.
The mistake is in changing direction while something is still working beautifully.
[Watch this on a YouTube Video]
The Shiny Object Trap
A lot of entrepreneurs suffer from shiny object syndrome.
We start one thing.
It begins to work.
Then we see another opportunity.
Then another.
Then another.
Soon, our energy is scattered across too many directions.
We overestimate how much work we can do.
We overestimate how many things we can manage.
We overestimate our ability to succeed in multiple things at the same time.
Very few people can run multiple large companies successfully.
People look at someone like Elon Musk and think, “He is running a rocket company, an electric car company, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and more. Why can’t I also do multiple things?”
But that is the wrong comparison.
We should not take inspiration from extreme outliers and try to replicate their model at our level.
For most entrepreneurs, especially in the early stages, focus is the real superpower.
Apple Won Because of Focus
Look at Apple.
One of the reasons Apple became one of the most valuable companies in the world is focus.
The iPhone drives a huge part of Apple’s profit.
And for years, Apple focused intensely on making that one product better.
Version one.
Version two.
Version three.
Version four.
And now, many generations later, it is still the iPhone.
Even when you look at Apple’s product line, it is not confusing.
For laptops, they have MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
For desktops, they have Mac Mini, Mac Studio, and iMac.
For phones, it is still centered around the iPhone.
Compare that with brands that create too many models at too many price points.
The customer gets confused.
The company gets diluted.
The brand loses clarity.
I remember the days when Nokia had so many different phone models. You would walk into a store and see dozens of options. It became confusing.
Buying a phone is not like buying clothes.
People do not need 50 different designs of the same thing.
They need clarity.
Focus creates clarity.
Dilution creates confusion.
Don’t Try to Become Tata on Day One
In India, we have examples like Tata.
Tata is into software, cars, steel, hotels, consumer products, and many other businesses.
But Tata has history.
Tata has capital.
Tata has leadership depth.
Tata has hiring power.
Tata has decades of brand trust.
A new entrepreneur should not look at Tata and say, “I should also start ten different businesses.”
That is a dangerous comparison.
As a new company, your job is to find one thing that works and go deep into it.
If something is working, you have found a gold mine.
Do not leave the gold mine and start digging somewhere else.
Dig deeper.
The Borewell Analogy
Think about digging a borewell.
If you dig in one place and go deep enough, you may hit water.
But if you dig ten different borewells, each only 100 feet deep, you may never hit water anywhere.
That is what many entrepreneurs do.
They start ten different businesses.
They try ten different strategies.
They launch ten different products.
But they never go deep enough in any one direction.
If you have been trying something for three years and it is still not working, maybe it is time to try something else.
But if you have already hit water, why would you abandon that spot?
Why would you go and dig somewhere else?
When something is working, that is the signal to go deeper.
Not wider.
The Ego of Multiple Businesses
Many people want to say:
“I have a restaurant business.”
“I have a travel business.”
“I have an agency.”
“I have an ecommerce brand.”
“I have a coaching business.”
It feels good to say that at a family function.
It gives a sense of pride.
It makes you feel like a big entrepreneur.
But business success does not come from having multiple visiting cards.
It comes from building something that works, serves customers well, and makes consistent profit.
A single focused business can create more wealth than ten distracted ventures.
The goal is not to look successful.
The goal is to actually succeed.
And actual success usually looks boring from the outside.
It looks like doing the same thing again and again.
It looks like improving the same product.
Serving the same market.
Solving the same problem.
Building the same system.
Refining the same funnel.
Talking to the same audience.
That may not sound exciting.
But it works.
The Lesson I Learned
The biggest mistake I made was not starting an agency.
The deeper mistake was that I abandoned something that was already working.
I let ego and ambition pull me away from focus.
I wanted to do more.
But doing more made me achieve less.
Now, when I start something new, I remind myself of this lesson.
Some things will start working.
When they do, I should not get distracted.
I should not assume that I can do everything.
I should not try to become an entrepreneur with ten businesses just because one business started succeeding.
I should hold on to what is working.
I should go deep.
Because focus is where the money is.
Focus is where mastery is.
Focus is where trust is built.
Focus is where long-term success comes from.
So if you are building something right now, ask yourself:
Are you going deep into what is already working?
Or are you getting distracted by the next shiny object?
If you have found something that works, protect it.
Respect it.
Double down on it.
You may have already found your gold mine.
Now your job is to keep digging.