Progress thread: Fail and learn.

[Primzi]

Hey there. My name is Primoz and I am a 21-year old computer science student from Slovenia. In the past, I have often started things but never finished them, and I have decided to put a stop to this. I frequently work out, speed read books on my kindle and strive to be productive. I am also going through the second year of a BhD. By the time I've got my degree, I want to be running my own business and living off it, so that I can move to my own apartment. My vision is to be a multi-millionare by 30, and travel the world before that.

In the past few months, I have been trying to put together a business for making web pages together with 3 other people, but it failed because they did not have the fastlane mindset, were lazy and not willing to go the extra mile. The idea itself also was not a fastlane one since it had no scalability. So I decided to teach myself a couple of design related skills and set up a web-based fastlane business until the end of 2012. I do not quite have a clear idea what it will be yet, but as I learn about design and web development, I should stumble upon quite a few problems (needs) that similar people have. Then, I can make a business that will solve other people's problems.

This is a brief plan for 2012:

January: Learn how to create vector graphics in Adobe Illustrator
February: Enter 4 logo/vector graphics contects to push myself and improve my skills
March: Learn how to design in photoshop (with focus on web layouts)
April: Enter 4 web layout design contests and create 2 templates + put them on a marketplace
May: Learn web design (HTML, CSS, XHTML, CSS3, HTML5)
June: Code 4 templates and put them on a marketplace
July: Learn web development (JavaScript, PHP)
Avgust: Make 4 dynamic structures (like sliders, etc.) and put them on a marketplace
September: Brainstorm + test fastlane ideas
October: Select one fastlane idea and get it going
November: Get at least 3 paying customers for the idea
December: Get the idea out, expand it - using networking and word of mouth

There are some problems with my attitude, and some people might probably ask me why I do not go straight to making a fastlane business. I think I am most likely scared to go into a business with fairly little savings. That is why during the next year, I will attend some design contests and put some templates for sale on the www. While with this approach, I will be hoping to get some money, that is not really the purpose of it. The purpose is to push myself and become good at the newly-developed skills, and at least have a chance of making some money on the side instead of just desining some items and never putting them out in the world. I will also take some well-paid oppurtunities to design for family/friends/someone they know when they occur, and try to make some money with buying/selling items.

The main focus will however be on my goals and finishing the college, although keeping it a little versatile should help keep it interesting.

If you should have any suggestions on how to improve my attitude or any other kind of suggestions, please let me know as I am writing here to get other people's perspectives, identify my mistakes/failiures and learn to them.

So let's get to failing, faling and then failing some more!

Primoz

[Brander]

One suggestion "kolega". To brainstorm ideas would be to go everywhere with a pad and pen and write ideas down right away. Train your mind daily to think as much as possible - Every day write down ideas.

Write all ideas you can think of (go crazy and think of even completely unrealistic scenarios) until you cannot think of any more. Then try to write down three to ten more. Have a sleep and the next day there will be at least 10-20 more ideas that will pop into your head processed by your subconscious mind during the night.

If no ideas come to you at all, stop. Go do something else, go for a jog, read a book, go play scrabble or any other word game, think of titles for articles, books or brand names, try to remember everything you did yesterday. All this will train your mind to think, remember and pull stuff from your subconscious.

The “idea muscle” atrophies if you don’t use it regularly.

You are a young guy and have a lot of years ahead of you. Just remember to not concentrate on being the technician so much, be the idea, strategy and concept maker and delegate the rest. Look to find students to work for you.

Remember pre-sell first, then hire and build. I am sure family and friends will be able to spot you some dough when you show that you already have pre-orders! Promise them a rate of return and fulfil the orders. You have credit cards as a last resort as well - you won't need more then a few thousand anyway if you do it right.

This has been my no.1 problem when I started - trying to do everything myself. It is good to be proficient in coding to ensure your coders are not cheating you. Having someone in the office you can oversee on a daily basis is a must - I almost always had bad experiences with hired help if the person was not right in my office.

Cheers!

[Primzi]

I already do carry a notepad + pen (or at least my phone with a notes application) everywhere where I capture my thoughts (this is a part of the Getting things done method). Although I usually try to read books on my kindle while I am waiting for someone or listen to audiobooks while I am driving, I figures that I most often get the ideas while I am doing some everyday things or chores - such as taking a bath or cooking, because that is wehn I have the time to actually THINK. I will take your advice and focus my thoughts on the fastlane ideas.

The brainstorming techniques have also turned out to be very efficient for me in the past, so I should take some time every day to brainstorm fastlane ideas.

This delagating and outsorcing has been hard for me since I've had some bad experience in the past - the lack of control is what annoys me the most. That is why I would like to get some more in-depth experience in the web development field itself - to know when my employees will be doing a good job. It is also an investment as learning now will save me time later on when I will have to do similar stuff in college.

But you are right, I should switch my focus more to the fastlane idea and realization. This pre-sale concept is also new to me, but I really it so I will give it a try when I do have a good idea. If I understand you correctly, I should:

-get some ideas
-test the ideas
-pre-sale
-get funding and launch the project

Thank you very much for your input.

[Brander]

-get some ideas
-test the ideas
-pre-sale
-get funding and launch the project

Exactly. You basically prove the concept in a limited way before you commit any additional time and money. Sometime this can be as easy as googling for any profitable competitors.

This of course doesn't mean that you won't have to change direction or your strategy in some way or even completely once you start getting bigger and you have a lot more data that either show you are on the right track or not.

The data comes from the larger level of customers and the conversion and recommendation metrics - how many visitors buy, how many customers re-order and how many customers or visitors tell others about your service or product.

These two are crucial in determining if your direction has any future or not. If not then re-invent the product in accordance to customer feedback. Many companies turn out to provide something different to a different audience then when they first started.

Good luck.

[Primzi]

Alright, so I have brainstormed some ideas and here is one that I think would be worth pursuing:

Creating an intuitive learning portal with a fair amount of free material and a small amount of premium material.

As a student, I have often struggled with certain concepts - derivatives, integrals, matrices, programming matrices, certain algorithms... andI have seen so many other people struggle with that as well. While there are certain ways of understanding this stuff, it often requires asking people for advice (which many people are too shy for), exploration and research (which many people are too lazy for). While there already are some portals who do have alright explanations of certain concepts, they are usually still very theoretical and non-intuitive.

I believe that there is a need for a portal that has intuitive explanations for the basic concepts, which would be accessible to everyone for free. There already exists a similar site and it is quite popular, but I think I could do better than that.

On my portal, I would present to people intuitive explanations so that they could understand any concept within 5-10 minutes. I would do this via metaphores, illustrations and interactive applets.

There would also be a mailing lists with some additional free content. This is the place where I would test my product ideas as well.

Along with this free explanations, I would also offer some premium courses for the people who wanted to be able to learn better by themselves:

-an online speed reading course which would guide the user through the speed reading learning process
-an intuitive learning course which would enable the readers of my portal to learn how to understand any problem they wished to.

When there would be a bigger amount of content on the site, it would also be possible for me to write a book/an ebook which would include a certain amount of concepts - perhaps a "making calculus intuitive" e-book.

Now these are all just ideas that of course still need to be tested and evaluated by the potential customers.

Since I do not want to waste anymore time with doing nothing and just thinking about stuff, I have planned my next action steps:

-create 3-5 explanations of some basic concepts and ask some students what they think of them - are they helpful, etc.
-ask the students about the idea of such portal itself
-if the feedback is good, build a simple website, put the content on the website, tell as many people as possible about my website and produce more material
-when I would put a certain amount of material on the site, I would switch focus from producing material to creating a course while maintaining a steady rate of producing 1 new concept explanation a month.
-when my product would be ready, I would try to get some guest posts on some blogs, etc. to increase the traffic on my website.

This is my basic plan, I know there will be some changes in the future, but the most important thing is that I take action and start working on it intensively. If it works out, it's great and if not, I will learn from the failiure and do something else.

What I still need to do is set up some deadlines to get myself going and have steady reviews on my progress.

If you should have any feedback/suggestions, please let me know .