Intro to my journey: Slowlane side hustle to Fastlane success.

[Fudsonn]

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to introduce myself after being a member for a few weeks now. I’ve read TMF and am halfway through Unscripted and it has changed everything for me. I want to join this community to turn that mindset change into action and reach my goals.

A bit about my journey so far and where I want to be next:

• In education I was massively addicted to good grades as some sort of comfort blanket/form of control. I didn’t study anything useful at all before you ask…
• After uni, I ended up working in marketing. First for a UK food brand and then in a small marketing agency where I am now. Have done well and moved up the ranks.
• It was at this point I realised the route to success I’d be sold was a total lie. How can I work so hard and still be so trapped in terms of time and finance?!
• Alongside my full time job I took on some extra “side hustles”, before reading TMF :
  • I set up as a wedding singer and pianist which so far is going well and growing around my full time job. Currently it is unscalable and slow to grow at the moment as it relies on my time for both performances and marketing/admin etc. I see that this business has a massive ceiling now and is not fastlane by any means.
  • I do some extra accounting work for my dad’s psychology practice. Interestingly this is a fastlane business. He found a need within insurance companies and has scaled nationally by working with other psychologists on an associate basis to meet that need. He now does what he wants when he wants (travel the world) and makes money whilst he sleeps! He attained this by age sixty, I want to attain this so much earlier.
• I plan to start a family in the next few years and my place of work only offer 6 weeks of paid maternity and I'm then down to statutory which I can't live off.

I’m now trying to put myself in the Fastlane.

What’s holding me back:

• I think I have some mindset issues around fear/laziness of starting, perfectionism, etc that are stopping me from taking action. I’d like to use this thread to hold me accountable to take action. Have read some useful threads this week about the importance of just taking action, particularly from @Andy Black and @Spenny - thank you.

What I’ve got going for me:

• My partner is onboard and skilled in graphic design and product design (furniture and non electrical gadgets).
• I have inherited around 50k capital from my late mother. The plan was to purchase a second property with this but now I have no idea what to do.
• I have good marketing knowledge and practical skills/experience. Also very much a people person and good at building relationships.

My thoughts so far are:

• Idea 1: Alternative wedding stationery business. When you look at wedding stationery on Google ads and Etsy it is all very bland - neutral colours, florals, script text etc. what about edgier couples? I’ve also seen people on wedding planning FB groups asking where to get more unique and colourful wedding invites. The business would be to create these designs as templates for digital download (and/or offer a bespoke design and print service) and run Google ads targeting those niche keywords. This scored well on grade my business idea (GMBI) but is limited by scale (niche audience) and one-off purchase.

• Idea 2: Subscription service for supplements and natural treatments to heal hormonal acne. Business models like skin and me and dermatica treat acne topically but don’t get to the root cause of the problem. Reddit forums around acne also ban comments about natural treatments which blows my mind.This service would partner with naturopaths, hormonal therapists or holistic nutritionists to offer personalised monthly supplements and other natural treatments. The model aims to make this natural approach more accessible to everyone (breaks the barrier of a series of sessions with a hormone therapist/nutritionist being very expensive and supplements being so confusing). I have personally healed my acne through natural treatments so feel I owe this to the world!

• Idea 3: Acne/skincare journal that allows you to monitor lifestyle habits, supplement treatments and topical treatments and how they improve/worsen your skin. This is based on the fact that it’s hard to track what causes good skin and what causes bad skin as there is a delay in when acne forms and eventually surfaces. People end up trying so many things and never knowing what truly works. This journal would solve that problem by allowing you to see correlations. This could be a digital download, notion template and printed journal. Since coming up with this idea I have discovered an app that already exists that has a very similar approach but I personally prefer an offline approach to these things so still think this is worth exploring.

• Idea 4: Flattering bikinis for women with small chests. When you try to find these online, the women modelling don’t actually have small chests and so they never fit in reality.

I have created a list of next step actions for each idea and will see where that takes me and update here.

• Wedding Stationery Actions:
  • Brief partner to design 4-5 x templates
  • Reach out to people on Facebook group that have mentioned this to see if they would be interested in purchasing directly
  • Get that first transaction
  • Scale by building small shopify site and then building targeted google ads campaign, targeted social ads, social outreach, partnering with other quirky suppliers in the industry
• Acne Supplement Subscription Actions:
  
  • Reach out to acne influencers on Instagram and ask them the things they wished they’d known/done at the start of their acne healing journey to gather data and create a lead magnet of best possible advice for acne.
  • Review data to see if responses resonate with this offer. Create this info as a lead magnet/resource regardless and launch it as a small paid campaign.
  • Gather more leads and then create a focus group to test the idea
  • OR create a landing page that is a sort of waiting list for the service and then market this to the relevant audience to see what the feedback is.
• Acne Journal Actions
  
  • Design the journal with partner and test it out myself.
  • Go through the research process above.
  • Reach out on Instagram to other influencers to share and get feedback.
  • Launch targeted paid ads to small shopify site for digital downloads. Launch on Etsy.
  • Create waiting list campaign for printed version.
• Small Chest Bikinis Actions
  
  • Buy some cheap bikinis from temu and adjust to fit myself (I can sew).
  • Create a new sewing pattern based on this and produce a few protoypes.
  • Develop marketing strategy and launch.

Any feedback or guidance are welcomed and appreciated.

 

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[FreakyThomas]

Hi !
First, welcome, of course!
I think it's great that you're already having ideas and that you're motivated to take immediate actions.
I'm a beginner too so take my advice with caution, but I think you should validate your ideas , if possible, before building the product. It can be a trap when you have some cash to spend it to build a great product, but if you didn't validate it, there's the risk that you miscalculated the need and have wasted your precious money. There's a great book about it that's called "the right it", you might wanna take a look at it, it's a fast read.

I love the wedding idea, the acne supplement idea, and the chest bikini idea. Definitely great potential!

Keep us posted !

 

[Fudsonn]

Hey @FreakyThomas thank you for the welcome and advice.

You're totally right, there's definitely ways I can validate my ideas before moving to product creation. Do you have any tips of the best way to do this?

My initial thoughts are:
- Google keywords/google trends/answerthepublic research to see high volume search terms or search terms in growth
- Reaching out to people directly through DMs on social media/reddit
- Creating polls in community groups/reddit

 

[FreakyThomas]

That's a way to get some feedback, but to get real validation, you need actual $$$.
For instance a landing page with an ordering from, and when people have checked out, you don't proceed to the transaction and say that there is no stock anymore but that they can subscribe with their email to know when the stock will be available. Then you try some ads or talk about it around you to see if you get some sales. That's one way to do it but you get the idea. For this phase, it's best to use a mockup product that's really easy and cheap to come up with or just pretend you have the product and see how people react. The more cost needed to build the actual product, the stronger validation you want to have before building and commiting your real money.

 

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[FreakyThomas]

That's a way to get some feedback, but to get real validation, you need actual $$$.
For instance a landing page with an ordering from, and when people have checked out, you don't proceed to the transaction and say that there is no stock anymore but that they can subscribe with their email to know when the stock will be available. Then you try some ads or talk about it around you to see if you get some sales. That's one way to do it but you get the idea. For this phase, it's best to use a mockup product that's really easy and cheap to come up with or just pretend you have the product and see how people react. The more cost needed to build the actual product, the stronger validation you want to have before building and commiting your real money.

In my case before building a small SaaS for doctors I messaged 10 of my friends who were also doctors and asked if they would be interested by the service I intended to build. When they said yes (it doesn't mean anything at this stage, just politeness) I asked them to send me 20€ if they wanted me to build it, for beta access. 6 of them sent me the money so to me that was enough to start since I could build it myself without having to invest cash.
You could do the same with female friends and your bikini idea

 

[Fudsonn]

@FreakyThomas The above is all super helpful - thanks for taking the time to share your recommendations.

I'm changing all my next step actions for each project to be focused on validating the idea. I'll update here in a week or so!

 

[YSINEHERO]

Great I hope you will have a big win in your journey, but what I would say as advice is to choose one business model, you provided 4, well choose one with a huge potential to make money and with an intention to help solve a certain niche problem that has a high demand, try to validate your idea, create a fully detailed plan for the business you want to start, make better a mind map, do this fast, and start fast, to get to your goal fast.

Don't look at people who couldn't make it or people who tell you this is this will work and this is not, follow your own journey and opinions.

GOOD LUCK.

 

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[Fudsonn]

@YSINEHERO Thank you for your advice! I'm aware that having 4 potential routes now is a challenge but my aim is to get 'soft' proof of whether each idea would work without too much time or monetary investment. I'm hoping this validation stage will whittle things down to 1-to ideas.

 

[Fudsonn]

Weekly update and business and life!

Acne supplement subscription:
- Completed landing page of offer and set live
- Outreached to 50 x acne influencers/spokespeople via social. No response so far. Might try Apollo instead to reach out via email.
- Following more reading and research, I'm thinking the supplement subscription might be too much of a "slow" solution to acne sufferers - they want a magic pill that can help them now, not 4-5 months of maybes...
- Based on this and following my experience with supplementation I'm going to explore a one-off product instead. A dragon's den contestant has seen good success with this and my approach is superior as it gets even more to the root cause. This is easier to launch and scale too.

Bikini/Bra business:
- Had a breakthrough in terms of prototyping and found a really unique way of constructing the garment that's not yet on the market.
- Further defined company mission/vision and messaging which gives a really clear angle for all marketing and comms in the future
- Gathered 'soft' proof from forums, product reviews, community groups and friends & family.

Wedding stationery:
- Gathered 'soft' proof in forums and community groups.
- First round of designs briefed to my partner
- Keyword research reveals that Google Ads is not the strongest route for this product and Meta ads will be needed alongside to grow.

Also had a new random idea that I don't know if feasible but have briefed my product designer boyfriend on it. Based on a need/pain point I found whilst browsing Reddit.

Personal:
- Finished 2 x books
- 3 x runs (my last week of marathon training!)
- Daily yoga and meditation
- 2 x strength training sessions

Won't be able to make as much progress this week due to the marathon but I have micro-habits set up everyday to ensure things are moving along in some way!