2.5 million dollars is a lot of money for anybody, let alone a 21 year old high school drop out. That, however, was the income of millennial entrepreneur Andrew Fashion. Andrew created websites which gave users the tools to personally design their MySpace pages. Upon his creation of these websites, Andrew started taking home checks upwards of $100,000. Unfortunately, he was incredibly irresponsible with his money. A luxurious house in LA, and multiple top-of-the-line sports cars. This was just a start. Newest advances in technology and trips to Hawaii, London and a number of other places around the world were soon tacked on to Andrew’s exhaustive spending. The key to Andrew’s success? Excellent marketing that resulted in his sites topping Google’s search rankings.
Unfortunately for Andrew, all good things came to an abrupt, and unpleasant end. A massive overhaul of his websites in 2007 made Google think they were brand new sites, causing them to plummet to the seventh and eighth pages of Google searches. Andrew’s seemingly endless well of profit instantly dried up leaving him in massive amounts of debt.
Since then, Andrew has been blessed to dig himself out of his financial hole. He has worked through his debt, and is now a successful internet marketer. He has clearly learned from his mistake. “Instead of blowing money on toys and cars, I am going to invest it back into the company or another company. I will do the typical saving, like 401 k’s and rainy day funds. Looking forward, Andrew hopes to move away from the internet business and become a real-estate developer.
Hopefully he can come back from that. Something that huge leaves a pretty nasty mark on someone’s confidence. Perhaps the quick plummet is a hint that he didn’t build the original company as strong as he could have.
This is a great story because it shows a success story followed by a valuable lesson. It’s cool to see an entrepreneur that developed a website like Andrew’s, but sad to see how he handled success. It’s great that he is back on track, and hopefully he can continue to learn to spend his earnings wisely.
It is unfortunate that the company had to take a hit due to unintentional bad marketing position on Google’s page. But the out come from this has allowed for Andrew to use his entrepreneurial talents in different ways!
This is a good cautionary tale for all of us who want to go into commercial enterprise. A common goal is, of course, wealth, but what you do with it once you’ve got it is something people rarely plan for. Knowing how to save, spend, and tithe whether you have a little or you have a lot is a key to success.
This definitely can serve as a valuable lesson to all entrepreneurs that they should consider risks and be cautious with what they do. I hope that this person in particular can comeback from their errors and learn from them.