Page 98 - The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch - PDFDrive.com

Refine Your Business Model

“Growth is never by mere chance; it is the
result of forces working together.”
James Cash Penney

Great work; you’ve launched! The planning and launch are done. But the real
work happens now. Now you have to hustle up real paying customers; you have
to pay attention to whether they are paying, whether they are staying, and
whether they are referring. And you have to listen to what they say, to work out
if and how you are going to grow this business.

On top of that, you need to build the business into something that is
fundamentally profitable or else it will never grow, so I want to spend a bit of
time on that.

Creating a product and getting customers is great, but businesses will not survive
and thrive without growing profits over time. Having a good idea and paying
customers on launch day doesn’t guarantee that will happen.

For you to achieve ongoing growth, you need a self-sufficient business model.

The reason this chapter comes after launch is because your business model will
mostly be dictated by your customers. For example, we’ve started recurring
businesses before, only to change them later because customers just wouldn’t
accept a recurring fee for that particular product. Once you figure these sorts of
things out, you can work out a way to grow the business.

I don’t want to talk down the importance of getting your first few customers,
because that in itself is hard. You can’t stop there. Some businesses are
fundamentally unscalable and some are built with growth already in their DNA.