Progress Thread: AcquireCurrency

[AcquireCurrency]

Welcome

My name is 'AcquireCurrency' and I am 17 years old living in the UK

I have created this thread so that I can document the progress of my journey in the fastlane - I have read MJ's book, and plan too read it again once my paperback version gets here.

After many frustrating days of looking for business ideas, I 'accidently' spotted an excellent oppurtunity to start a fastlane business. The idea came to me after saying “I wish there was ...", and after some brief research of the idea I noticed that this market hadn't be exploited to anywhere near it's full potential in the UK - the only TWO competitors I found had done a shit job on both their websites and overall marketing.

My budget is just about $4,500 - I earned this through an ebay business I ran for several months. Click here for some info about that

Within a year I hope to rent a small warehouse, which is only a 3 min bicycle ride from my house.

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Goals for this month
Planning
Research (Legal, Payment systems etc)
Decide on a name
Build pre launch website

LIFE GOALS

Pay off my parents debt and mortgage
Own a house near the beach in either florida, spain or cali
Have a silver Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, an executive type car for feeling like a boss (Merc, BMW, Bentley) and a Shelby GT500
Own an exotic car club with my father and brothers, with annual cruises across USA & Europe
Help others by starting my OWN charities

BUSINESS GOALS
(£1 = $1.63)

December 2011
Revenue of £500 p/month
Achieve atleast 100% growth in revenue every SIX MONTHS
Change from Sole Proprietorship to a Limited Company

June 2012
Revenue of £1,000
Move into warehouse (used for storage of stock)

December 2012
Revenue of £2,000 p/month

June 2013
Revenue of £4,000 p/month
Upgrade size of warehouse (storage room, office and delivery bay)
Employ a worker (Roles: warehouse and deliveries)

December 2013
Revenue of £8,000 p/month
Employ a sales rep

June 2014
Revenue of £16,000 p/month
Upgrade size of warehouse (LARGE storage room, LARGE office, delivery bay and an EXTRA room)
Employ a manager

December 2014
Revenue of £32,000 p/month

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I don't know when I will update this, could be hourly or monthly - whenever good progress is made or problems occur.

Don't hesitate to post some questions for me!

Thanks

[domular]

Very impressed with such marketing wisdom from such a young person. I'm especially impressed with

Goals for this month
Planning
Research (Legal, Payment systems etc)
Decide on a name
Build pre launch website

The biggest mistake most marketers make is a lack of research and testing. Any idea can sound great but until you test and you know people will give you money your idea isn't worth shit. Most marketers get an idea, go build a fancy web site, have logs designed, build a store, etc and never test the market on some small, simple, fast way to see if anyone is interested.

I've run adwords campaigns and sent the click to a competitor's site just so I can see the cost of getting a click. I've built web sites before even starting to develop a product to see if I can get people to click-thru to a payment page. Most marketers could save a ton of time by spending a little money and a little time to test and research before diving head first in.

Good luck and keep us posted.

[AcquireCurrency]

Very impressed with such marketing wisdom from such a young person. I'm especially impressed with

Thank you! I have already built the pre-launch website, basically it will collect peoples name and email address until I launch my service/products - Just need to find a name so that I can throw a logo on there and buy the domain

The biggest mistake most marketers make is a lack of research and testing. Any idea can sound great but until you test and you know people will give you money your idea isn't worth shit. Most marketers get an idea, go build a fancy web site, have logs designed, build a store, etc and never test the market on some small, simple, fast way to see if anyone is interested.

I agree, I plan to test this service with a limited product range (only ONE product). Maybe there is a reason why this industry isn't 'big' in the UK- I will soon find out.


Thanks for posting. I will post a quick update later!

[AcquireCurrency]

UPDATE

I finished coding the pre-launch website, but I have now found some other problems. I would have to spend atleast $2,000 getting a lawyer to write the contracts. I planned on doing a product rental business, but the contracts are very complicated and very long in this industry - as a result I probably won't be doing this as I wouldn't have the money to buy all the stock.

If I don't get the contracts done then people could probably just walk away with the stuff.

I will have to come back to this when I have atleast $10k, probably much, much more

[AcquireCurrency]

UPDATE

So for the last few hours I have been reading MJ's book and taking notes - As I was about to finish reading I read this in the 'Reader Reflections':

Business becomes risky when entrepreneurs start companies based on flawed, selfish motives.

Honestly, the whole reason why I wanted this rental business is because I thought it was possible to just sit back and let the money roll in...... there is no need for such a service, as stated above it was based on my own selfish motives.

Since reading his book again I have given myself a clearer image of what the route I should be looking for

[AcquireCurrency]

UPDATE

I have thought of an excellent idea for a web application - It would require alot of Ruby on Rails skills, so I am starting to learn how to programme using RoR.

I am surprised this idea hasn't been used yet in a web application. While learning RoR I plan to code and develop a template in html and css. Once I finally finish the web app I can just throw it onto the website, which would then be accessible to the user once they have bought a subscription and logged in.

In the meantime I will continue thinking of offline ideas, I also have the chance of starting an engineering job soon - even though I would enjoy the job, I can't bear the thought of living in the slowlane.

[AcquireCurrency]

UPDATE

I have designed the website in Photoshop and it looks very nice and professional. Tommorrow I will start too code the wireframe(?) in HTML and CSS. I also need to decide on a name for my web app.

Right now I'm listing some features and specific things I want this app to have. Once the wireframe is done I will start to learn PHP, MySql and AJAX, which hopefully I will learn enough to start on my web site/app soon