Progress Thread: Jack's Last Chance

[Jack]

Where am I now?

I'm 34. In 2010 I left a corporate job I hated, threw away job security and took the leap into the unknown. I started my own business. Currently the gross profit of $50k a year.

I have a wife, kid and another baby on the way to support. I work from a home office and love the lifestyle my business has afforded me in terms of flexibility and time to spend with my kid. But money is tight and so far I have been using savings to live. The company cant afford to cover a salary for me at the moment.

Deep, below all my fear, I know I can do this. Why I havent frustrates me no end. My confidence reached an all time low about a month ago, but for some reason I seem to have recovered it, perhaps because Im no longer in denial about how bad things have got.


What are my immediate goals?

I need to make an additional $25k before the end of this year. The price of failure is that I will have exhausted my savings and have to call it a day and find another corporate job.


How do I get there?

I have built a good brand with my company, it appears reasonably well respected by target customers. Customers are large corporates and product price ranges are $8k - $20k. As yet not one of these had bought, mainly because I have targetted a few and when they failed this went to the back burner.

Small businesses by a different product which goes for between $500 - $1000.

What am I currently working on?

Determining a set plan of how I re-engage customers. Over coming my fear.

Getting back into shape, over the last year I let myself go. Im now going to the gym several times a week and have already seen the pounds coming off... Im starting to feel good about myself and it feels great to get to the end of the day and feel like I have lots of energy left.



Roadblocks

Me. I am my greatest enemy.

I have an immense fear of failure, which limits the risk I take, and leads to a massive amounts of procastination. For the last year and a half I have been putting off taking risks, fearing that clients would reject what I was offering and so me. I try to wait for things to be perfect before moving.

Because of the size of companies I am dealing with the buying cycle tends to be long, so it can be devasting to motivation when they decide they dont want it.


My new matra is : "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week."

What I need from you guys:

I will aim to update this thread every few days as a way to keep track of what Im doing. I will be brutally honest, and in return I expect you guys to kick my ass when I fail to do stuff, and cheer me on when I do.



Jack's Big Idea

[911Carrera]

Welcome to the boards. Good luck and I will be following.

[Illusion]

Good thread, will be following!

[Kak]

May I suggest trying to cheapen your lifestyle. I would ditch any car payment for an older quality used car. I would maybe attempt to rent your house and get an apartment. I would try absolutely everything to keep from going back to a job. One more thing. Your business is profitable this is good, why just give it up when you could supplement working part time as a waiter or something all while you are still working on your business.

I hate to see you give up as you are already turning a profit. Maybe just a small lifestyle change or an income supplement is in order. A real corporate job is going to kill your dreams buddy, don't go back. Make this work.

[andviv]

Cool, thanks for the nice intro.

I need to make an additional $25k before the end of this year. The price of failure is that I will have exhausted my savings and have to call it a day and find another corporate job.

Is that is? That is the price for failure? That does not sound that scary. Keep moving forward, you already have identified a backup plan and, to tell you the truth, does not sound scary at all.

I have built a good brand with my company, it appears reasonably well respected by target customers. Customers are large corporates and product price ranges are $8k - $20k. As yet not one of these had bought, mainly because I have targetted a few and when they failed this went to the back burner.

Small businesses by a different product which goes for between $500 - $1000.

Well, sorry, but it is NOT well respected by target customers. If it were, they would have bought its products.

It seems like you are getting more success with the small business audience. Maybe it would be worth keeping selling those as the market has been tested and the product works for that segment at the current price.

If you want to re-focus on the big fish, what if you offer to 1 customer the product at a 50% discount, and in exchange you get from them constant feedback so you can keep improving it? Prove to yourself and your large corporate customers that there is a market for it at that price.

Keep moving forward, it is exciting seeing people working on their own businesses.

[Jack]

Hi Kak,
Thanks for the reply.

We have very little debt (own cars outright, credit cards cleared each month etc), the only debt is the mortgage, which I recently renegotiated and had reduced slightly. We've cut down pretty much as far as we can at the moment, no luxuries or holidays.

I have thought about getting a part time job, but to be honest it would be very hard to balance two jobs and family, when I tried it before it didnt go well.

May I suggest trying to cheapen your lifestyle. I would ditch any car payment for an older quality used car. I would maybe attempt to rent your house and get an apartment. I would try absolutely everything to keep from going back to a job. One more thing. Your business is profitable this is good, why just give it up when you could supplement working part time as a waiter or something all while you are still working on your business.

I hate to see you give up as you are already turning a profit. Maybe just a small lifestyle change or an income supplement is in order. A real corporate job is going to kill your dreams buddy, don't go back. Make this work.

[Jack]

Hi Andviv,

Youre right, if they respected me they would have bought. Didn't think of it like that until now.

The small business service is under threat, a competitor sued us for trademark infringement a few months and we settled but had to agree to change our name in the near future. I think our name is fantastic, and so i anticipate that we will loose some customers when we change, and then see a decline in uptake going forward. Which is a damn shame since we offer a much better service than the competitor, but they are more well known.

Currently because of the high value potential of a big corporate sale thats where Im focussing. Even selling two or three would allow me to keep working on it for a year or more.

I like the idea of a discount for feedback. Originally I offered a lite version of the service free to a number of corporates, because it didn't need to go through a procurement process uptake was brilliant, the list of "customers" reads like the fortune 100..... converting them to paying customers has proved difficult and is what I'm working on at the moment.

Cool, thanks for the nice intro.


Is that is? That is the price for failure? That does not sound that scary. Keep moving forward, you already have identified a backup plan and, to tell you the truth, does not sound scary at all.


Well, sorry, but it is NOT well respected by target customers. If it were, they would have bought its products.

It seems like you are getting more success with the small business audience. Maybe it would be worth keeping selling those as the market has been tested and the product works for that segment at the current price.

If you want to re-focus on the big fish, what if you offer to 1 customer the product at a 50% discount, and in exchange you get from them constant feedback so you can keep improving it? Prove to yourself and your large corporate customers that there is a market for it at that price.

Keep moving forward, it is exciting seeing people working on their own businesses.

[Jack]

Fear
I mentioned earlier that one of the things holding me back was fear.

The area my business is has a lot of professionals, people with an opinion, and quite often Im intimidated by them. I figure "shit, they really know their stuff", when they waffle on about something or release a report or press release, in reality the area is an area where its opinion rather than knowledge.

The outcome of this is that I've actively been avoiding sticking my neck out. I even go so far as to avoid reading news on my industry because it scares me how fast things are going, and the fact I didnt know anything about a certain aspect.

GOAL
So for the next week I am going to read everything I can about whats going on there, Im going to get back to speed on whats happening and Im going to realize that these so called professionals may know more than me, but thats not necessarily a bad thing, after all when this business gets big they'll be working for me. :-)

[Brander]

If you are still at it remember that intimidation in a corporate environment is the name of the game. And you should treat it as such - a game, a show - more often then not it has nothing to do with someone's actual knowledge, they are just better then you at forcing their frame on you, even if they are completely wrong or full of it - you might benefit from reading "Pitch Anything" by Oren Klaff.

Remember: "Someone is going to control the frame, always, so it might as well be me."

[KhayShenz]

I hope you didn't go back to your corporate- dream killer of a job and made the extra $25K to support your family.

What are you doing in terms of marketing?