Find the energy to run your online shop

For me, having the energy to run your online shop is about knowing where you want to go and continuing to work in that direction. The techniques in E-pusher help you run an online shop, but you also need courage and persistence. You get good at what you work hard and purposefully at.

The video is from April 2009 and introduces the Thorborg’s Pocket Philosophy chapter in E-pusher. I talk about both patience in running an online shop and some of the toughest years of my own life.

Having the energy to run your online shop requires a long-term perspective

When you start an online shop, I think you need at least a three-year horizon. If you expect results after three to six months and stop when they do not come, you have not given yourself the time it takes to build a business.

In the video, I mention an entrepreneur who did not earn a penny after three or four years, but who by that point had built a business generating twelve million kroner. If he had stopped after three years, he would have returned to his previous work installing toilets.

That is not meant to talk down to people who want that kind of work. If you think it is a good job, that is absolutely fine. But if your goal is to build a business that can support you and your family, let you travel and experience the world, and create the life you dream of, you need to think further ahead.

There is no point sitting there getting annoyed from one day to the next over little things. You need to look far ahead and say: That is where we are going. Everything we do needs to point in that direction. Sometimes we make mistakes and things go downhill. Other times they improve. That is how it is.

When you are feeling low, the whole idea of the chapter on my pocket philosophy is that you can read it again and find the energy and courage to keep going. You can also watch the video again. I have been further down myself than you might imagine.

We lost everything and were left with four million in debt

When we started the shop in 1995, we were four young guys around 25 years old. After a year, things went wrong. We lost everything we owned and, on top of that, were left with a debt of four million kroner.

Two of us were bankrupt and had nothing. That left two of us. I had a flat worth 300,000 kroner, and my partner had a house worth a million. That was what we had. It looked as if the two of us would end up paying the debt.

I stood with my girlfriend, who is now my wife, looked her in the eye and said that, at best, I owed a million kroner. At worst, it was over two million. I had no idea where I would get the money.

We went bankrupt and spent two years paying back every krone. Those were the hardest years of my entire life. I worked from eight or nine in the morning until eleven or twelve at night. Every krone I earned went back to the creditors.

I did not feel it was my fault, apart from having chosen the wrong people to go into business with. We lived on my wife’s salary of 17,000 kroner gross a month for those two years.

It was really hard. But it also showed me something about myself: I can get back up. You can take my money away and knock me down, but I want to get back up and show that I can do it again.

The harder I worked, the luckier I got

When we succeeded with Jubii, people came along and said I had started the right thing at the right time. Of course that is part of doing business too. But I worked fourteen hours a day, and then they called it luck.

The harder I worked, the luckier I got. I thought that when I was done with Jubii, I would start a new business from scratch. Back to a little basement, with some good friends, no capital, and then build it into a success.

That was one of the reasons we built Spamfighter. We worked our arses off. In the video, I say that by that point nobody was coming along and telling me I was just lucky any more.

I do not see myself as particularly lucky. If we played dice, I would probably lose. But I am persistent. I keep going all the way and do not give up until I have won. That is the difference I point to myself.

Picture the life you want to create

I have an image of success in my head: Standing on the podium, having the fun life, the house and the way of living I want. In the video, I pick up the camera and show where I live. We have not tidied up because showing it was not the plan, but there are palm trees and coconuts and the things I had dreamed of.

When I was sitting there with the debt, palm trees were not what I was thinking about. It was about showing that I could climb out of the hole again. When you fall, you need to get up and keep going.

Use that fire. Direct your energy forwards. When you keep thinking about failure, you are spending energy looking backwards. Instead, ask yourself how to reach your goals and work forwards towards them.

You also need to be someone others want to help

You need to stay true to yourself in the process and treat other people properly. They are also the ones who will help you onto the podium in the end.

If you think success is about elbowing your way forward, pushing everyone else aside and trampling them down, you have forgotten something. For me, success is about helping as many people as possible and also daring to say: I need your help.

Of course, you then need to be ready to help others yourself. People need to feel that you have energy to spare and keep giving and giving. That is part of how I believe you build success.

Success does not happen overnight. In the video, I talk about three to five years. You need to stay in it for the long haul and work for it. That is my encouragement to you if you have bought E-pusher: Use it, put in the effort, and go out and give it everything.