Page 121 - The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch - PDFDrive.com

8. Look for Sources of Momentum

Do more of what is working. I’ve worked on over ten different business ideas
and only one of them has really taken off. The best thing I’ve done is make sure
my attention was focused on the one that had the momentum.

It would be easy for us to gloat in achieving what WP Curve has in the first year
of business and think it’s a result of the team’s great work. The truth is: I have
made big mistakes, just as regularly as I have with other failed businesses.

I completely butchered our ideal client profile, spending months chasing the
wrong kind of customer (most of them would later churn).
The team spent four months selling to agencies for a grand total of a single
$49 job, refuting one of the major assumptions I’d made launching the
business in the first place.
I had changed the pricing model regularly, only to change it back days later.
I launched a bunch of new services, all of which failed and took away
valuable time and attention from the core business.

Once momentum kicked in, these had little impact. In a job, this kind of
incompetence would be grounds for dismissal and would cripple a lot of
companies.

In fact, this past March WP Curve started the month by churning 22 of our
paying customers for one failed product. This put the company at negative 6%
growth on day one. Getting to 0% was going to be a struggle, not to mention
hitting the 10% growth goal. However, by the end of March WP Curve had
grown by 15%. Momentum got us there. People kept signing up.

Being part of a business that fails is tough. You feel like you are doing great
work and you probably are. But no matter what you do, you can’t win. You
improve your product, up-skill yourself, talk to your customers, read books,