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At the beginning of the road

jonahsr

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
125%
Mar 28, 2019
64
80
Lisbon, Portugal
Hello from sunny Portugal! I'm Jonah, 18 years old & joined the forum to get some more practical insights into entrepreneurship & learn from all of you.

I've started/tried many different businesses in the past since I was 12 or so, but nothing ever took off. Began developing an app until I found out by chance that there was the same app with pretty much the same USP already out there & backed by large companies (bad research). Tried dropshipping, also Google AdSense which made me some money until my account got banned. Also tried 100 other things, all of which didn't work out.

When I met my partner (a serial entrepreneur who built multiple successful businesses) a year and a half ago, something shifted in my way of thinking. He made me realise that I was always just copying what others were doing & not making my unique products/service, not even crafting a unique USP. Another big thing was that I never focused on making the product itself great, so people actually want it & so it brings them value. Instead, I always thought about how to get the most amount of traffic to a (shitty) product that people weren't interested in. Also, I consumed too much content from too many different people, leaving me confused about what is right & what works. Last big thing, I was wasting a lot of time on social media, falling prey to the infinite scroll feature.

Fast forward to today, I have a different strategy:
1. Focus on providing a great product with a unique USP that actually brings people value
2. Listen to fewer people, not overloading myself with information
3. Focusing on execution
4. All notifications turned off & not checking phone any more than 2-3x during the day. Everything that's going to get me forward is on my computer anyway.

Right now, I am searching for a custom digital service to sell, since it has a low barrier of entry (not much capital upfront) & you don't need to deal with the pains of having a physical product like stock, shipping, returns etc.

I am looking forward to learning from all of you guys, thanks for reading!
 
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NMdad

Gold Contributor
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Aug 6, 2017
612
1,370
New Mexico
Fast forward to today, I have a different strategy:
1. Focus on providing a great product with a unique USP that actually brings people value
2. Listen to fewer people, not overloading myself with information
3. Focusing on execution
4. All notifications turned off & not checking phone any more than 2-3x during the day. Everything that's going to get me forward is on my computer anyway.

Right now, I am searching for a custom digital service to sell
Sounds like you're making a good switch. For the digital service, do you have a niche targeted yet? What are your next action steps?
 

jonahsr

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
125%
Mar 28, 2019
64
80
Lisbon, Portugal
Sounds like you're making a good switch. For the digital service, do you have a niche targeted yet? What are your next action steps?
Thanks! I was looking at the e-commerce niche since I am pretty familiar with it. Tried validating the idea of making e-commerce sellers snap a pic of their products & we place it on a custom, fitting background (keeping shooting angle, colours etc. in mind). Essentially it would replace the need for a photo shoot to get great product images. The problem that I encountered though was that images were often either low quality, bad light or out of focus, making it hard to give them a professional end product. So now I'm thinking that the product idea didn't validate itself... Let me know what you think about the whole thing! Here is the website I made for it.

Now looking into 3D rendering services, I feel like the market is not that saturated & there is lots of opportunities. Doing my research...
 

NMdad

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
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User Power
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Aug 6, 2017
612
1,370
New Mexico
Ecommerce is not a niche--it's more like a channel through which you sell.

For 3D rendering services, that's a skillset, not a niche.

A niche is more of a market of customers/clients. If you target a specific customer niche, you'll be able to create/discover a much more specific picture/profile of who has the problems you're helping solve, what channels to reach them, etc.

So, for 3D rendering services, who--specifically--are the people who want/need this?
 
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jonahsr

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
125%
Mar 28, 2019
64
80
Lisbon, Portugal
Ecommerce is not a niche--it's more like a channel through which you sell.

For 3D rendering services, that's a skillset, not a niche.

A niche is more of a market of customers/clients. If you target a specific customer niche, you'll be able to create/discover a much more specific picture/profile of who has the problems you're helping solve, what channels to reach them, etc.

So, for 3D rendering services, who--specifically--are the people who want/need this?
Ah okay! So you could say that e-commerce business owners are a niche? I thought that either e-commerce business owners or online entrepreneurs need 3D rendering. Two scenarios are coming to my mind:

1. The entrepreneur has a vision for a product & wants a realistic 3D render so he can raise money for it or validate the idea first before going into production. The issue here is that the individual projects could take a long time since I can imagine there would be many revisions necessary to get the render exactly how to entrepreneur envisions it. What I'm trying to do is find a custom digital product that has a very streamlined process with low amounts of creativity involved, so that way it is easier to supply doesn't take as long & has higher scalability. That's precisely the way my partner is always telling me what to focus on: "Fewer moving parts".

2. The e-commerce business owner wants to showcase their product in different settings (photo shoot). The alternative to a traditional photo shoot would be to create an exact 3D render of the product and put it into different types of backgrounds. With this one, I am not sure if it would be easier to do a photo shoot only, since a detailed 3D render & then the composition of the render & background could take a lot of time compared...

What do you think?
 

Tanu1234

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
96%
Aug 4, 2018
76
73
Hello from sunny Portugal! I'm Jonah, 18 years old & joined the forum to get some more practical insights into entrepreneurship & learn from all of you.

I've started/tried many different businesses in the past since I was 12 or so, but nothing ever took off. Began developing an app until I found out by chance that there was the same app with pretty much the same USP already out there & backed by large companies (bad research). Tried dropshipping, also Google AdSense which made me some money until my account got banned. Also tried 100 other things, all of which didn't work out.

When I met my partner (a serial entrepreneur who built multiple successful businesses) a year and a half ago, something shifted in my way of thinking. He made me realise that I was always just copying what others were doing & not making my unique products/service, not even crafting a unique USP. Another big thing was that I never focused on making the product itself great, so people actually want it & so it brings them value. Instead, I always thought about how to get the most amount of traffic to a (shitty) product that people weren't interested in. Also, I consumed too much content from too many different people, leaving me confused about what is right & what works. Last big thing, I was wasting a lot of time on social media, falling prey to the infinite scroll feature.

Fast forward to today, I have a different strategy:
1. Focus on providing a great product with a unique USP that actually brings people value
2. Listen to fewer people, not overloading myself with information
3. Focusing on execution
4. All notifications turned off & not checking phone any more than 2-3x during the day. Everything that's going to get me forward is on my computer anyway.

Right now, I am searching for a custom digital service to sell, since it has a low barrier of entry (not much capital upfront) & you don't need to deal with the pains of having a physical product like stock, shipping, returns etc.

I am looking forward to learning from all of you guys, thanks for reading!

Good luck for your journey[emoji3]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

NMdad

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
224%
Aug 6, 2017
612
1,370
New Mexico
Ah okay! So you could say that e-commerce business owners are a niche? I thought that either e-commerce business owners or online entrepreneurs need 3D rendering. Two scenarios are coming to my mind:

1. The entrepreneur has a vision for a product & wants a realistic 3D render so he can raise money for it or validate the idea first before going into production. The issue here is that the individual projects could take a long time since I can imagine there would be many revisions necessary to get the render exactly how to entrepreneur envisions it. What I'm trying to do is find a custom digital product that has a very streamlined process with low amounts of creativity involved, so that way it is easier to supply doesn't take as long & has higher scalability. That's precisely the way my partner is always telling me what to focus on: "Fewer moving parts".

2. The e-commerce business owner wants to showcase their product in different settings (photo shoot). The alternative to a traditional photo shoot would be to create an exact 3D render of the product and put it into different types of backgrounds. With this one, I am not sure if it would be easier to do a photo shoot only, since a detailed 3D render & then the composition of the render & background could take a lot of time compared...

What do you think?
As long as you have a very specific profile for your target customer, that'll point you in the right direction. Then you can figure out how to best reach them so you can get soft & hard validation. (Soft validation = "Yeah, I'd pay for that", hard validation = "Here's my credit card").
 
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jonahsr

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
125%
Mar 28, 2019
64
80
Lisbon, Portugal
As long as you have a very specific profile for your target customer, that'll point you in the right direction. Then you can figure out how to best reach them so you can get soft & hard validation. (Soft validation = "Yeah, I'd pay for that", hard validation = "Here's my credit card").
Thanks for the advice! :)
 

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