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Free registration at the forum removes this block.Finding this advice pretty late, but this just gave me a kick in the a**. Thank youSo true. This happens a lot to people that come to me wanting to start their business. Best advice, actually find a need and test it on a dummy site. Do your own market research & proof of concepts. Literally, you can make $10,000 by spending a couple hundred dollars in Adwords, and a week of your time.
Great post, hope it motivates others to think like a real business and not pretend to act like one!
I did the same exact shit a few years ago. I thought I was hot shit, I had a business, a business bank account, a business debit card, a LinkedIn profile that said I ran a business...
...no paying customers, and when I tried to sell what I had, nobody wanted it. No market need.
Waste of time, waste of a couple grand. But it was a good lesson to learn for only a couple grand.
Hopefully other people won't have to learn this the hard way.
This weekend I couldn't help but smile at the residual income hitting my Stripe account and email from these efforts.
Very exciting. Congratulations.
Here I am, two years in "playing" entrepreneur and frankly failing. I want to share exactly how to waste money/time so you can avoid the pitfalls that I succumbed to:
Here's what you should do to guarantee wasting two years and money. I've quantified both elements for you
Total time wasted: Over 6 months
- Form an Llc before you have paying customers $500 + 4 hours
- Hire someone on elance to conduct industry research: $450 + 2 hours
- Build a killer website: $2,000 + 2 weeks of tuning
- Design and order business cards: $50 + 2 hours
- Order checks $100 + 1 hour
- Order envelopes $75 + 1 hour
- Buy (and laboriously research) tax accounting app $200 + 8 hours
- Open a bank account $0 + 2 hours
- Get an EIN $25 + 1 hour
- Hire an accountant to do taxes $250 + 4 hours
- Get a merchant account $0 + 1 hour
- Get a really cool stamp for depositing checks
- Buy some BS courses $500 + 2 weeks
- Download tons of free content and consume it in the car, at night and any other downtime $0 + 6 months
Total money wasted: $4,150
What if I would have invested all of this time and money in doing just one simple thing that actually moved the needle vs. made me feel like I was running a business?
Game over...I just killed the inner wanna be. Time to take action. I hope I saved someone else some time and/or money.
K
I'm your doppleganger x 10.
You can change that.
I did.
Don't give up. It's worth it. Life is too short to do anything else.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Quick update:
This thread is three years old.
I've grown a lot since starting it. Here's a quick breakdown of wins and losses:
Wins
1) My company is a little over two years old and it is now starting to create residual income from multiple sources.
These sources were some of the most laborious to build and were far from passive.
The best one generated $4200 last month and required a few hours of nurturing. I've applied my experience in franchising to structure 7-10 year royalty deals with a few businesses.
2) The company is still lean in terms of headcount (3 FTE including myself and two dedicated contractors). We've somewhat smoothed out the lumpy revenues while keeping fixed costs manageable.
3) I've personally grown a lot. If I were to average out my hourly pay over the past two years it would be disappointing. The fact is, I don't care. Building a system requires delayed gratification.
Losses
1) Our son starts kindergarten on Wednesday and when I started this journey I envisioned my wife being able to quit her job (if she wanted to) by his first day of school. That's not happening and I feel a sense of failure and guilt.
I'm a blessed guy whose wife is supportive and also knows that building something remarkable takes time.
I'm now process driven vs. goal driven. That mindset shift has helped me get our of my own way and keep moving the chains.
Without this forum I'd probably still be a prisoner at my job. Now I'm utterly unemployable and have burned the ships.
Quick update:
This thread is three years old.
I've grown a lot since starting it. Here's a quick breakdown of wins and losses:
Wins
1) My company is a little over two years old and it is now starting to create residual income from multiple sources.
These sources were some of the most laborious to build and were far from passive.
The best one generated $4200 last month and required a few hours of nurturing. I've applied my experience in franchising to structure 7-10 year royalty deals with a few businesses.
2) The company is still lean in terms of headcount (3 FTE including myself and two dedicated contractors). We've somewhat smoothed out the lumpy revenues while keeping fixed costs manageable.
3) I've personally grown a lot. If I were to average out my hourly pay over the past two years it would be disappointing. The fact is, I don't care. Building a system requires delayed gratification.
Losses
1) Our son starts kindergarten on Wednesday and when I started this journey I envisioned my wife being able to quit her job (if she wanted to) by his first day of school. That's not happening and I feel a sense of failure and guilt.
I'm a blessed guy whose wife is supportive and also knows that building something remarkable takes time.
I'm now process driven vs. goal driven. That mindset shift has helped me get our of my own way and keep moving the chains.
Without this forum I'd probably still be a prisoner at my job. Now I'm utterly unemployable and have burned the ships.
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