Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh Hollowell  As Fred Smith, the founder of Fed-Ex said "Keep the main thing the main thing".
The main thing is not your business plan, the formation of an LLC, or profit projections with 6 different variables on an excel spreadsheet. The main thing is income generation.
It is not comfortable to sell things. It is much more comfortable to redesign the website, to proofread the newsletter, to hang out on forums. All those things are important, but they pale next to bringing in income. Those are all avoidance activities, because you can always justify to yourself that the reason I have not succeeded yet is because the website is not perfect, or I just don't have enough market data, or [insert own excuse here].
The cold hard truth is that to succeed you need to focus on sales. There are very few problems a start up will have that can't be fixed by selling more.
A plan set in motion, even if it is a bad plan, is better than a plan still sitting on the table. It is always easier to correct something in motion than something stagnant. |
I've spent a lot of time building up readers, nosing about for clients, learning things, and making my stuff look professional. I'd rather be a bit broke than put a foot out there with a crappy-looking webpage. That's a wonderful way to NOT sell your product. I'm not saying to kill yourself till things are utter perfection, but they should be presentable, and you should have a solid basis when you go gunning out right away for money. Trust me, your clients will see when your product, site, etc. isn't tight. They'll see, and they'll go somewhere else. Don't promise the moon with lots of sales until it's good to go, and at a point where you can be proud of the entirety of what you're offering.
I'm just getting to monetizing my blogs and setting up my shops and stuff. It's been a month. I could have started to sell, I suppose, but I would have been a mess, and would have been disheartened because I was selling something that I wasn't proud of or ready for.