Tapping the desires of people to become detectives idea → $85k/month

🏖️ Creative Entrepreneur fun one-liner:

Why do entrepreneurs always write with pencils? Because they know it’s important to always 'erase' their mistakes.

Onto Today’s story….

Jimmy Cowe is the founder of Crimibox,a unique business that creates and sells fictional murder mystery cases,

for people to solve as an interactive game.

He turns ordinary people into detectives.

His business brings in $85k/month.

Let us see how he did it.

Jimmy was working for 12 years in the criminal investigations unit of the Belgian Federal Police.

Jimmy had long harbored entrepreneurial dreams.

He wanted to be his own boss and share something, with the world that he could be proud of.

During this time, he saw many fascinating case files come across his desk.

He began to realize that more cases were being solved by detectives,sitting at their desks than going out in the field.

This sparked the idea of creating fictional murder cases for people, to solve by sifting through evidence, and police files,

while sitting in their home.

Soon the concept for Crimibox was born; to sell interactive murder mystery games to customers,

containing all the files and evidence needed to solve the fictional crime.

To validate his idea before sinking major time and money into it,Jimmy created a simple Facebook ad explaining the concept of Crimibox.

He asked people who liked the idea to leave their email address.

With only a $200 ad spend, he generated over 1,000 email signups - a strong validation of interest in the concept.

He called his customers as detectives.

Customers received a box at home containing a police file, crime scene photos, and evidence bags.

They must read the file, research potential suspects online, and closely investigate the supsects social media profiles.

He created real social media profiles for the game.

They also included an app with the game.

On that app, they can also search in a fictional police database.

That database contains 1000’s of fake people and license plates.

All of the police files that they sent to their detectives, were based on the layout of real police files.

With their murder cases, customers discovered the thrill of being a real-life detective.

Jimmy bootstrapped the business himself with $5k of his own savings.

He also taught himself how to build a website through YouTube tutorials.

One month before shipping the first Crimibox cases, he opened pre-orders to finance production.

The pre-order campaign was a huge success, validating demand and bringing in immediate revenue.

For the first version of Crimibox, Jimmy and his wife put together all the physical boxes and evidence by hand in their garage.

This allowed them to get started affordably, before investing in a warehouse and more staff.

He started doing Facebook ads and got lots of customers.

They also began using Instagram ads, which also proved very effective at driving traffic.

Once he realized his biz was slowly growing, he quit his job.

When COVID first hit, lockdowns actually benefitted Crimibox greatly.

With people stuck at home looking for activities, sales skyrocketed in 2020.

However, when lockdowns lifted in 2021,

interest began fading as people returned to normal life outside their homes.

At this time, revenues dropped significantly.

He then increased his marketing efforts.

Up to that point, Facebook had dominated their marketing.

Now he started to explore Google and TikTok ads.

Sales started to spike again.

He also learnt that existing clients are so much more important than acquiring new clients.

He decided to keep his existing clients engaged, make them happy, so they could do word of mouth marketing too.

So, he started email marketing and send helpful information about the games, to his existing customers.

This worked and sales started to pick up.

It continued to grow and now he makes $85k/month.

Jimmy says… “There is no right time. Take the leap.”

9 reasons why they succeeded

1. Realized that a lot of people wanted to be detectives from their home.

• Customers received boxes with police files, crime scene photos as "detectives"

• They had to read the file, research suspects online, investigate social profiles

• This made them feel like real detectives solving a fictional crime case

2. Validate his business idea cheaply

• Jimmy used a simple Facebook ad for only $200 to explain his idea

• He asked interested people to leave their emails, garnering 1,000 signups

• This indicated strong interest before he invested further in the business

3. Made the game feel more real

• He created fake social media profiles of suspects for the game

• There was also a fictional police database app with 1000s of profiles

• The interactive elements made the murder mystery more immersive

4. Bootstrapped his business with own money

• Jimmy started Crimibox with just $5,000 of his own savings

• He built the website himself using YouTube tutorial videos

• This allowed him to bootstrap the business very affordably.

5. Learnt as he went

• He did not know many things, but he was willing to learn.

• He used YouTube tutorials to teach himself website building and branding.

• This allowed him to succeed, even though he didn’t knew lot of things.

6. Validated if people would really buy

• One month before shipping, Jimmy opened Crimibox pre-orders

• The successful pre-order campaign validated interest

• It also generated revenue to finance his first production run

7. Kept initial cost super-low

• Jimmy and his wife assembled the first Crimibox orders by hand in their garage

• This saved on costs of a warehouse and staff initially

• He also did the packing and shipping by himself.

8. Helped customers with game related tips

• Jimmy used email marketing and sent helpful game-related content

• This further engaged existing happy customers

• It drove increased repeat sales and word-of-mouth referrals.

9. Got the idea from an insight in his real life job experience

• From working in criminal investigations, Jimmy saw cases increasingly solved via files,

  in the detective’s desk rather than going out into the filed.

• This sparked his idea for customers solving murder cases sitting at their home.

• That is when he got this idea.

Hope you liked the story and the tactics which made them successful.

Let the good times roll for you!.

Yours “Anti-hustle” Vijay Peduru