My first online business failed - here are my reflections as to why, and how those failures helped me build a multi-six figure profit business now
This year, my business will probably end up at $400,000 net profit.
It's a far cry from my first online business 5 years ago, where I went through a year of grinding without ever achieving product-market fit. I quit before even generating $1,000 in revenue. Yikes.
In this post, I wanted to share the major things which I now know led to that failure. But on the flipside, I also want to share what changes I’ve made in my approach (both mental AND tactical) which has helped me scale to $50k profit months in my current business.
So, thinking back to the first 6 months of my old business, here's what I did.
I built a website.
I built a ton of spreadsheets and documents on what I thought my offering would look like, my audience, my "business plan"...
I went to networking events to share my "vision"
I researched how to do SEO and all these other growth hacks.
You know the one thing I didn't do?
I didn't talk to clients or get sales.
Total bummer.
Ultimately, I ended up being on this crazy hamster wheel, wasting time, and not actually moving the needle. I avoided doing the hard, scary work that actually mattered - getting sales calls booked and closing clients.
You know what I learned?
In the beginning, all those tasks are pointless.
There's only TWO things that matter. It should take precedence over everything.
Number #1: Problem & Product Validation
I wasn't sure who my audience was.
I wasn't sure if my audience actually had the problem I wanted to solve, or if they would want to pay to solve it.
And I didn't know if the solution I built would actually solve that problem effectively.
If you don't know the answers to these things, you have no business.
Number #2: Customer Acquisition
The things that I did never lead to actual prospects evaluating my services.
I was pretty much hoping and praying people would find me.
Thinking back, it's pretty stupid. How are they supposed to find me?
I had no actual marketing or sales strategy pushing my message.
Of course, noone knew I existed. To think people would just come to me just because my solution was good was a stupid thing to assume.
Cool thing is, solving BOTH these obstacles requires simply ONE task.
Booking customer calls.
Booking customer calls allows you to actually have conversations with your future clients.
These conversations enable you to validate your audience, ensure the problems you want to solve are legit and have market value, and enable you to show your solution to users for feedback.
But if the feedback is bad, then perfect, and can make changes before spending too much time or money in product development.
But if the feedback is GOOD, then perfect. Those are your first customers.
You know they have the problems you can solve for. You know they are desperate to fix it. They are the easiest people to sell to.
So with that out of the way, how do we book calls then?
If I was to give advice to give my younger self, it would say these things to him:
- When it comes to generating leads and clients, don’t improvise. If you try a whole bunch of sh*t that you heard on some random podcast with no overarching strategy, you can’t be surprised when it doesn’t pan out. You want to be super methodical about what growth tactics you use. Choose a growth tactic that aligns with where your clients spend their time, is realistic within your capital constraints, is consistent with the type of offering you are selling, and is something you can actually execute with the skillset that you have.
- Test your growth tactics in small batches. If you have 4 different ideas on how to drive clients, treat it like you’re a scientist running different tests. Try tactic #1 over the course of 2-3 weeks, and calculate how much money/time/energy it took you. Then see the results as far as sales opportunities generated, deals won, and profit made. Then, rinse and repeat with tactic #2. Then tactic #3. So on so forth. After a few months, you can look back at all the “test tubes” you tried out, and you can double down on what worked best. That way, you aren’t putting all your eggs into a basket and risking all your time and energy on one thing. You roll things out in a small scale, and whatever works best, you truly commit to doing it in a larger scale. Let the evidence and data guide your decision making. Gut feel is not how great entrepreneurs win.
- Once you figure out your growth strategy, you gotta be CONSISTENT, DISCIPLINED, and ORGANIZED in your execution. For example, if you’re doing cold outreach, you need to be emailing or calling at least a minimum amount of people every single day, no ifs ands or buts. You have to be tracking your activity level with a spreadsheet or CRM and holding yourself accountable. You need to be measuring your conversion rates at each stage of your sales funnel. Or if you’re doing content, you have to make sure you’re posting at least a certain number of times per week, and following an organized schedule. You have to be measuring how many people consume your content, and the conversion rates on how many of those people turn into a sales meeting, and so on.
- Don’t automate immediately. It’s tempting to try to save time by using tech, but automating too early is only going to lead to crappy conversion rates and angry prospects. Before you try to offfload with tech, make sure you know how to get great conversion rates by first executing your biz dev strategies manually. Once you know the right copy to use, lists to build, methods of personalization, and format of the campaign, you can automate. Then, technology will truly become a powerful tool to leverage.
- Don’t try too many things at the same time. More often than not, if you try to simultaneously podcast, write blogposts, do SEO, run ads, do outbound reachouts, and run 17 other channels, you’ll do none of these things well. Truth is, most of your results will come from just a small set of actions (it’s the 80/20 rule). Once you find the BEST channels, just focus on those things, and do them well. Don’t try to get too fancy, especially in the beginning when you’re super limited in terms of bandwidth.
- Lastly, be patient. Once you decide that a certain route is the right route, you have to fully commit to doing it properly over a long enough time. Even if you’re doing everything right, results won’t magically appear after a week. You have to grind at it a bit and let things slowly materialize. Quitting on a strategy because it didn’t land you a client in the first 7 days is insane. Give it a chance to deliver the results.
Those lessons have served me well in my newest venture, and is definitely a big part of why I've been able to scale so quickly this time around.
So this was my rant. Hopefully you found this helpful.
If anyone has any thoughts please comment, or even just wants to stay connected on Reddit, send me a message. Cheers!
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