Started then...Stuck

What an early business failure taught me about execution, timing, and the cost of inexperience.

Photo by Mak on Unsplash

I’ve always had ideas. Some big, some kind of ridiculous. But my first real attempt at building a business, something my brother and I actually tried to get off the ground, never really went anywhere.

Not because the idea was bad. In fact, I still think it has potential.

It just died under the weight of inexperience, bad timing, and the brutal reality of what it actually takes to make a business work.

The Idea: Broposals

Back in 2016, I was a broke college student, recently engaged, and wanted to do something special for my guys to ask them to be in the wedding party.

We had seen some creative ideas floating around online, so my fiancée and I got to work. It took a ton of time and effort to get everything together, but in the end, it came out great. Our friends loved it.

My older brother Parker, one of my groomsmen, looked at everything we had pulled off and said, “That seems like a lot of work. This should be a business.”

My wife, who is infinitely more clever than me, immediately shot back, “You should call it Broposals.”

And that was it. The wheels started turning.

We mocked up some early concepts, talked about product lines, and even landed our first customer: my personal trainer Mike. He was recently engaged, heard about the idea during a workout, and was hooked. He wanted something with a fitness theme, so we got to work.

We built a custom set for his groomsmen. He gave feedback. We made six more. He loved the final product.

Momentum was building. Kind of.

What Went Wrong

Looking back, it’s easy to see why Broposals never really got off the ground. There were two big problems and a dozen smaller ones.

First: money.
I was still in school. My bank account was floating in the decimals. We had big ideas for creating themed groomsmen gift sets, not just shot glasses and flasks thrown into a box, but fully customized collections based on each groom’s personality or hobbies.

One client got a fitness-themed set with a monogrammed gym towel, protein sample packs, and a personalized shaker bottle. Another was into hiking and got a rugged outdoors set with a multitool, a firestarter, and a stainless steel flask engraved with “Take a hike (but in a suit).”

We wanted every set to feel intentional. Curated. Like it came from someone who actually cared.

But to offer real customization at a price point people could afford, we would have to buy a lot of inventory in bulk. And we just couldn’t.

Second: product quality.
Everything affordable online was absolute garbage. Broken flasks, scratched-up glassware, knives that wouldn’t close properly. The higher-quality stuff pushed us into a price point that didn’t make sense for our target market. And sourcing was a nightmare.

Then came packaging, which turned into our biggest logistical headache.
We needed each set to be secure enough to ship, but also nice enough to feel like a gift. We explored custom foam padding and box inserts, but they were expensive and inflexible. And again, they required bulk orders we couldn’t afford.

We were stuck.

What We Didn’t Even Get To

We never made it to the more complex parts of launching a real business.
We didn’t touch marketing or customer acquisition.
We didn’t build out inventory management or fulfillment processes.
We didn’t launch a website or figure out how to take payments.
We never dealt with legal, tax, or compliance.
We had no plan for returns, customer support, or storage.

We were just two broke guys with a clever name and a cool idea, trying to duct tape it into existence.

It was one of the most exciting and frustrating times in my life. I still think that if I had just been a little further along — out of school, with a job and some savings — we might have pulled it off. Or at least taken a better swing.

Sometimes I wonder what Broposals could have become. Around that time, Man Crates was blowing up. That market was real. Maybe we could have tapped into it.

And yeah, the name was awesome 😎

What It Taught Me

That early failure didn’t feel like a crash. It felt like a slow fade. But it stuck with me.

I learned that product-based businesses are hard. Really hard.
I learned that having an idea is nothing without execution.
I learned that creativity and hustle might get you started, but they won't get you to the finish line without systems, capital, and structure.

Most of all, I learned that starting is easy. Building something real takes more.

What’s Next

That first attempt gave me a glimpse of what building something could look like, even if I didn’t get far.

Next week, I want to talk about the trap I kept falling into after Broposals; the addiction to ideas. Always thinking, always planning, but rarely following through.

If you've ever found yourself stuck in that cycle, next week’s post is for you.

Thanks for reading. And if you’ve got a dusty idea like Broposals buried in your past, I’d love to hear about it. We all start somewhere!

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