Page 122 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

theater. Their clientele changed, the atmosphere was evolving, and the owner of
the business did his best to accommodate us. Unfortunately, your best isn’t
always good enough, and our new customers let us know it. We worked tirelessly
with their team to get them up to speed on how to handle large groups and even
provided our own on-site hostess and manager for the majority of the shows with
the hopes of improving the experience. Due to things out of our control, the
quality didn’t meet expectations at first—service became sloppy, and the overall
experience was diluted. The first few shows were challenging, but over time the
experience got better. Forty-seven shows later, we finally wrapped things up.

Our company had done its research and what we thought was adequate due
diligence for the deal, but our efforts fell short. We should have been more
proactive and done a better job communicating expectations to our customers.
Thankfully, our team made it through the experience and can live to tell the
story. The question people ask me all the time is, “Would you do another
Groupon?” The honest answer is that I would. Along with the challenges the
Groupon presented, it provided exposure that traditional marketing never would
have achieved.

As with everything else in life, it’s important to keep your word with
launches. If your offer ended at a set time and you had a big response, you’ll
invariably be contacted with requests for exceptions after it’s over. It’s tempting
to take more money, but if you said it would end at a set time, you need to stick
to your decision. In the long run, this works in your favor, because people will
realize that you mean what you say. Karol and Adam received numerous
requests for their bundled package after the seventy-two-hour period had ended,
but they politely declined each one.

One more thing: If you admit to a flaw, weakness, or limitation in your
product, this will probably help instead of harm you. This is because when we
are evaluating a purchasing decision, we like to consider both the strengths and
the weaknesses. If a product developer personally tells us it’s not perfect—“and
here’s why”—we tend to trust him or her more.

You can see this style of messaging in President Obama’s 2012 reelection
campaign. An early ad in favor of reelection contained the following statement
from a supporter: “I don’t agree with Obama on everything, but I respect and
trust him.” Meanwhile, an ad that launched the same week against reelection
contained the following statement from someone who was opposed: “I like
Obama, but I just don’t understand his policies.”

These are essentially the same statements, flipped around to place the