Mikes Intro to the Fastlane

[Mike8822]

Hello All,

My story so far

I have always known i wanted to be a business owner, even from a young age but never took action. Being supported by my lack of action, family and friends I cruised into the standard uni, professional job trajectory.

My jolt to action came a couple of years ago after saving for 10 years at my 9-5 job and realising i still could barely afford a modest house in the UK without a substantial debt and the knowledge that the cost of living is increasing faster than my wages.

Initially, I thought that I was not working hard enough on my career so I tried to be the best employee, in all the years worked i have maintained excellent performance which has resulted in promises that never showed up. In addition to this, I have not had a great time attempting to make the advertised 10% ROI in the markets pushed by many influential sources. So both traditional employee and investment/saving strategies have failed me.

Over the last few years i have been playing with online marketplaces and selling the odd thing here or there for some extra money but realised this is not getting me where I need to be, selling low volume / random things. I knew I had to start my own scalable business and have been looking for my next big idea for some time.

I had been reading/listening to all the business startup-related books and finally got to MJ’s books. These books put my understanding into words, presented with truth and humility. MJ's books and others gave me the push to start selling products and services and release my fear of failure / bad reviews / dissatisfied customers.

The latest business I started last year is now doing $13K profit pcm on my own e-commerce brand website and selling through market places. My current business has a limited market, good margins, some control and offers good value to customers in comparison to the competition but the moat around my business is low at this stage.

Despite my initial concern about not being good enough and receiving bad reviews, I have a 100% feedback reputation on various selling platforms and my business trust pilot reviews! Customers appreciate my products and great customer service, which i use to make improvements in my products.

I hope to grow my market share in my niche and brand to build my moat and improve the value provided to my customers. I am still in full-time employment but don’t know how long I will last, my family are pushing me to keep my job. The growth in my business has been quick in the last few months and I think I can double my profit this year all being well.

Reading your book a couple of points stood out that I had not seen before which are really valuable.

• How to select a good business idea. I see you are now referring to it as CENTS this is good! And puts together all the things I was thinking when I have a new business idea.
• I like how you say that is ok to have a similar idea to an existing business you just need to outcompete them
• Automation, I like how you place so much importance on this. this needs to be leveraged in all businesses now and is a massive benefit to startups and large businesses alike.
• Taking action. I was scared to take action this is what held me back.

Why did I join the forum?

I wanted to look for software programming help in the UK or meet people who had experience of hiring software developers to implement my new idea “goalbreakdown.com”.

My Idea was for an online goal-tracking app! I found it hard to find a good goal-tracking app and it is a lot easier when I have all my many thoughts recorded and organised in one place. Google tasks is not great….

Anyway, Now after joining your website, I see you have had the same idea as me and have already implemented a beta “GoalSumo.com” which is a bit of a bummer lol. I even registered my own domain a couple of days ago as I knew this was a great idea that matched your CENTS criteria!.

How am I meant to compete with the great MJ DeMarco lol.

I have checked out your goal sumo beta and it is not exactly what I envisioned for my app which I think would be better / have improved growth potential.

Also, I am not sure if your enforced monetisation at beta strategy is best for the growth of this type of app has the potential to achieve. Thinking about it i still want to implement the app/interface I envisioned so may have to compete with you MJ! Lol, the only problem is I don’t have the technical knowledge to implement but I can learn .
I need to keep going to make some good money / war chest / build my software skills to allow me to leverage ideas like this in future!

Thanks for your books!

Mike

 

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[Marketeri]

Huuf madl!
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