Going Fastlane Like My Life Depends On It.. (continued)

[mikecarlooch]

For those unfamiliar, I have a thread in the INSIDERS section of the fastlane forum detailing my journey of execution and basically giving my all to the pursuit of entrepreneurship. Why a new thread? Because I'm too cheap to pay for INSIDERS and I want to continue documenting publicly.

If you read the thread, it's basically a sh*t show - I think I tried 5 or 6 different business ideas in the life of that thread that failed and probably 8 since I joined this forum, and probably 20 in the past 5 years. Everything from dropshipping to ebay to cryptocurrency to amazon to Minecraft servers to famous tiktoker to basketball cards to video editing agency to MLMs to liquidation business to social media guru to god knows what else LOL. Yes, tekkel syndrome indeed, for those of you who read TMF .

To pick up from where I left off, I (very recently) after years of trying things out, dedicated myself to an industry, and I will not leave it. I unexpectedly fell into the world of programming, and unexpectedly fell into the world of real estate where I need to generate massive amounts of leads, do calls, make offers, the whole shabang, which was a pretty foreign (and terrifying) thing to me 3 months ago.

So.. I quickly realized that I was curious enough about these two things to become obsessed and that I'm good at them, and I could just combine them.. And there's my industry.

As someone who's conditioned myself to seek out entrepreneurial opportunities, I went in looking for needs. What does this company I'm working for need? What can I create? What do I need to learn? What skillsets do I need to learn and who do I need to partner with..?

So.. I did. I spotted a need - very quickly..

But I didn't mention it to ANYONE until two months in.

Why?

Because I KNEW that my first client.. Was the company I'm working for.

And as a new guy in the company, I wasn't just about to pitch some idea to them.. No.

I had to first gain their trust by overdelivering in what I was there to do.

I realized that the amount of leads they were getting was minuscule - a few people sitting in a room waiting for a lead to come through on a facebook ad, I noticed some days there would only be 2 leads that came through or even NONE, and it felt like a massive waste of f*cking time..

I had enough of it - so I said - hey - here's what I'm gonna do - I'm gonna generate my own leads.

So they looked at me like.. "Ok...." a little shocked but really - not believing me.

I figured that if I could deliver on my promise to get them leads, they would trust me on my other things and maybe even take me up on my idea. and be a client.

Within 5 days I had generated them more leads than.. seemingly.. They've ever gotten by utilizing some creative strategies that I had a feeling were going to work, because I've used them before in other industries. All of a sudden we had no one to call, to having hundreds of people to call. And I can't go here without referencing @Johnny boy .

So I delivered on my promise to generate leads and got a solid amount of contracts signed within my first month in the company.

At this point I felt great about myself because I actually felt valuable - like all these years of inaction and doing stupid bullshit that wasn't going to work was finally getting somewhere.

So I continued overdelivering and about 2 weeks ago I decided to ask the big question - "My programmer friend and I are looking to create something for people like you - so I gotta ask - what do you wish existed for your business that you don't currently have?"

To my surprise - remember how I said I had an idea? He mentioned the SAME EXACT idea I had in my head.

Let's back up though - I also said I was scared to ask that question because I had no idea how to build it.

How did I solve that problem? 2 ways. I have dedicated my whole life to becoming an expert in what I want to become an expert in, and I intentionally made friends with a programmer who was also entrepreneurial-minded in college.

You know what I realized? College is one of those places where a bunch of super-talented people have nothing to do all day.

So - I partnered with him. We got a software product built for one thing that was pretty cool..

After building that project - which was kind of just a thing we did for fun but didn't really have the kind of utility we wanted..

I sent a text to the company I work for and said - "Hey - we can build you this thing - do you want it?"

Not only did they tell me they wanted it - but they told me HOW and even provided things to help me out to make it as good as possible.

So.. I took that information - drew up exactly what we wanted - sent it over to my programming friend - and now we have a functional product built that is not currently public.. It's only available for the specific company that we MADE IT FOR.

The way I'm going about it is this - I figured if we can take Paul Graham's saying "do things that don't scale" and once again overdeliver for just ONE company and make it a total godsend for the company - another will want it, then another, and then 1000.

Now - I don't want to get too optimistic - I have no f*cking idea what's going to happen. The story is to be continued...

The biggest thing I've learned the past 2 months?

When you find your thing, invest deeply. The reason I now see that I've felt anxious about the future and scatterbrained and not knowing what to do with my life was because I wasn't investing deeply in anything education-wise or execution-wise.

Even though we're just a little startup, I've never felt more meaning and purpose and passion in my life than I do right now - and failures may happen - but I do know that one of the most important things in business according to many people is that if failures are not scaling, you're doing something wrong.

To be continued.....

 

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[MTF]

Love it. That's how I started a SaaS for real estate agencies as well (by first working with just one real estate agency).

In the end I couldn't scale it beyond a handful of clients (this was for my country where the real estate agency industry is very poorly developed and few people use them). I sold the business for a very small amount. But the experience was eye-opening nonetheless.

Wishing you dynamic growth and a lot of scale.

 

[mikecarlooch]

Love it. That's how I started a SaaS for real estate agencies as well (by first working with just one real estate agency).

In the end I couldn't scale it beyond a handful of clients (this was for my country where the real estate agency industry is very poorly developed and few people use them). I sold the business for a very small amount. But the experience was eye-opening nonetheless.

Wishing you dynamic growth and a lot of scale.

Thanks @MTF ! Hope all is well!

 

[mikecarlooch]

Okay.. I have a somewhat BIG update that is quite exciting.

The FOUNDER of the company I work with had a one hour conversation with me today (the person I was originally going to sell the product to, because they're the target market)..

And pitched ME on partnering with me and my co-founders product.. Offering guidance.. AND offered to invest.

Whoa. Ok. Now I feel like I just cannot let myself f**k this up.

This occurrence also got my programmer on board with the vision way more. As a matter of fact, I am taking my programmer co-founder to work tomorrow so that he can meet the company owner that wants to partner, invest, and guide us.

The founder of the company has 15 years of experience in the industry we're going into. Wow.

I cannot.. fk this up. I'm basically the glue holding both sides together.. And built trust with both parties to get them onboard and to see the value in the idea.. (which again, we already have a beta version created)

The company founder just completely enhanced the vision for me, and really got me thinking how this could work.

To be continued..

 

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[mikecarlooch]

Through the process of this startup, I have recently (officially) began understanding the concept of not knowing what you need, until you know..

My team and I realized something.

A part of our product requires a niche branch of Artificial Intelligence, and my programmer didn't know how to do it, or even what it was, even though it's a derivative of Python, his strongest programming language.

Because my programmer is focused on other parts of the product, I had to step up to the plate on something I knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about 2 weeks ago, because the problem in front of me required learning it.

I have obsessed over it, and now, with the help of some software, understand it enough to implement it and solve the problem for the product, allowing for a major piece of the puzzle to be put in place.

I also noticed something important, that I was able to understand partly from @Kak -

When you understand something, you understand better how to communicate with the world's resources, and therefore they become more available to you.

That's my learnings today. Talk to you all soon!

 

[LightHouse]

Let's go dude. As always I am bullish on your success.

You may think about your past as ridiculous, but I see it all as effort. I have done plenty of things that didn't work out in my career as well. The thing is, you just never stop going after it. You only need to be right once in a big way to change everything.

None of us are pre-disposed to know what that win will be. Some get lucky and hit it out of the gate(rare) but most have to keep pursuing. Each time something fails, we are that much smarter and more focused on what works.

Keep the focus dude, you will get there!!

 

[mikecarlooch]

Let's go dude. As always I am bullish on your success.

You may think about your past as ridiculous, but I see it all as effort. I have done plenty of things that didn't work out in my career as well. The thing is, you just never stop going after it. You only need to be right once in a big way to change everything.

Thank you Chris, since you know my past and problems better than probably anyone on this forum, I will take your word for it!

None of us are pre-disposed to know what that win will be. Some get lucky and hit it out of the gate(rare) but most have to keep pursuing. Each time something fails, we are that much smarter and more focused on what works.

Keep the focus dude, you will get there!!

As always, your encouragement from our time working together stuck this in my mind forever.

 

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[mikecarlooch]

Why Was I Being So STUPID..?

I realized something lately as I've been trying to piece together every part of this product I am trying to create so that just me and my programmer are putting the product together, technically speaking.

A couple of days ago, I was listening to a talk that an author and speaker named Douglas Kruger was giving to a group of college students.

He was talking about the concept of authority, and how the rich teach their kids to USE authority, and the poor tell their kids to fear authority.

I had a one of those "Ah-HA!" moments when I heard this.

Why am I sitting here trying to figure out how to build this product myself? SURE, knowing the technicals helps a lot.. Because I can go out and USE the worlds RESOURCES.

Sure, I can go and figure out how to build this thing. But there are already resources (people) that have the skills already to build what I want to build. It would take me 100X longer to get on their level in order to build the product to the point we want it.

So if someone can build exactly what we want, and do it in 1/10th the time, AND i personally know enough technical logic in order to be able to iterate (with a little bit of chatgpt), I would basically be STUPID not to put up the money for it.

My investor and I are both putting skin in the game and going to hire to get this thing built so we can get selling and acting, assessing, and adjusting.

I make money, I'm not going to starve, why the hell not put skin in the game?

@Kak @Antifragile are absolutely right. The ability to influence and lead people is THE skill of entrepreneurs. Being able to communicate with those people and understand their worlds is also important, but you don't need to know EVERYTHING they know to USE THEM.

Immerse yourself in their world, but only to the point that you gain the skills to communicate and use those people...

Wow. What a breakthrough..

 

[mikecarlooch]

I made the investment..

I'd like to start by saying - the thing that made me say F it is a book called Who Not How, by Dan Sullivan. If you focus on "How" you're going to do it, you're going to procrastinate and destroy your ability to think creatively as an entrepreneur. If you focus on "WHO" instead, and gathering necessary resources in the form of skills, knowledge, and people, you can play the orchestra. Your personal productivity is near irrelevant under that mindset, because it's bigger than just you.

If I had to create all of this myself, I'd procrastinate and it would never get done.

I rasied a few thousand dollars and put some of my own money in to get the investment on this crucial feature done.

It's going to take about 30 days for it to be finished. We already have the other portion of our product finished, we just need to implement this feature.

In the mean time while it's being built, I will be digging my well before I'm thirsty (selling).

I do have the unfair advantage of a partner who already has customers and large influence in my space, but what I have done is made a massive list of influencers, websites, blogs, podcasts, software that they use, etc.. Just a big list of these people.

My goal now is to build win-win relationships with these people by not asking them for anything and finding ways to provide value, even though they are "bigger than me" and gatekeepers to my potential clients.

The goal is to have some of these joint ventures lined up by launch date so that we can get access to a large pool of customers..

Launch will be after testing on one person and making sure it works for them of course..

We're going to be giving our JV partners free access to the product so they can see the value in it.

 

[mikecarlooch]

Getting closer and closer to launch..

And I secured my first JV partner!

There are a few things going on..

1. The product is being tested and built still by the developer, and it is turning out way better than we expected it to.

2. I have completely handed off the building portion of the product (besides my own judgment and judgments from potential customers and experts) to programmers. My job is right now is STRICTLY to build the list, test an offer, and then when the offer works on a small scale, create joint ventures with influencers and pay them commission.

Basically, make them an offer to promote me that they can't refuse.

As a matter of fact, I already secured a JV partner already for when we launch, so we should have a good amount of traffic come in from that.

How? By looking at WHO in my market I already have provided value to, who already KNOWS ME that has a large audience. Relationships compound.

As suggested by @Antifragile @Black_Dragon43 @BizyDad and more, I have jumped into Jeff Walker's product launch formula work, and I am glad I did.

I kept it simple so far, I created an incredibly valuable resource that people in my market will download, put it on a squeeze page, and have a small backend funnel that leads with value and then eventually sends an email linking to a survey. (this is my pre-pre-launch)

My goal with this small list I build on my own will just be to get some people to get on the waitlist, or pre-order.

The way I'm going to build the list is using facebook, since that's where most of my target audience is congregating.

 

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[Black_Dragon43]

And I secured my first JV partner!

Wow that’s amazing brother, congrats! Looking forward to see you crush it

 

[mikecarlooch]

Wow that’s amazing brother, congrats! Looking forward to see you crush it

Thank you.

I have a question for you since I know you're very good with content and things of that nature.

In order to generate some initial traction on this list I want to build, facebook will be the go-to.

How do you post helpful content, without feeling like an imposter?

I don't want to go out there again like I have before, giving advice on stuff.

With what I'll be talking about that relates to my product, however, I've had real experience in terms of thousands of dollars in my pocket, and even more in other people's pockets.

But I don't want to give "advice"

My question is, how do I create content that gets the right people onto my list without coming off as a guru?

Is it documenting, not creating?

I understand this market, and the person i'm selling to very well, but I don't want to come off as some kid giving advice again. I just want to drive traffic so that I can get them in front of this valuable product I am creating.

And how do I make friends in groups of those people without necessarily giving advice? Is time really wisely spent talking to people in facebook groups?

Maybe you can help me see a new perspective.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Thank you.

I have a question for you since I know you're very good with content and things of that nature.

In order to generate some initial traction on this list I want to build, facebook will be the go-to.

How do you post helpful content, without feeling like an imposter?

I don't want to go out there again like I have before, giving advice on stuff.

With what I'll be talking about that relates to my product, however, I've had real experience in terms of thousands of dollars in my pocket, and even more in other people's pockets.

But I don't want to give "advice"

My question is, how do I create content that gets the right people onto my list without coming off as a guru?

Is it documenting, not creating?

I understand this market, and the person i'm selling to very well, but I don't want to come off as some kid giving advice again. I just want to drive traffic so that I can get them in front of this valuable product I am creating.

And how do I make friends in groups of those people without necessarily giving advice? Is time really wisely spent talking to people in facebook groups?

Maybe you can help me see a new perspective.

I'm a fan of letting your service / product be your marketing.

This means that your content is basically a demonstration of your service or product and the processes behind them.

Ideally you want to start by brainstorming what problems the segment of the market you want to attract has based on their level of sophistication. For example, in my case, broke agencies search for things like "how do I get clients?" or "how do I make a LinkedIn Carousel?" while 7-figure agencies search for things like "how do I attract the whale clients in my industry?" or "how do I build an agency that's sellable 5 years down the road?".

Then you'd build your marketing around answering those questions while demonstrating your product/service AND knowledge of the industry you're targeting.

It's very detailed, I have around 3-4 hours of content dedicated to how you go about producing authority content – it's called Authority Content Part I and Part II. If you're interested, you can grab a seat in my Agency Ascendancy Group (it's just $99/mo), you'll get full access to all our 40+ hours worth of video training materials that $1K+/mo paying members also get, and you'll also have access to work through things directly with me via group coaching once every 2 weeks (will be more frequent as demand increases). Just no done-for-you services. I'm not allowed to share links here, but I'm sure if you Google "Agency Ascendancy Group" (with the quotes) you'll find how to join.

 

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[mikecarlooch]

I'm a fan of letting your service / product be your marketing.

This means that your content is basically a demonstration of your service or product and the processes behind them.

Ideally you want to start by brainstorming what problems the segment of the market you want to attract has based on their level of sophistication. For example, in my case, broke agencies search for things like "how do I get clients?" or "how do I make a LinkedIn Carousel?" while 7-figure agencies search for things like "how do I attract the whale clients in my industry?" or "how do I build an agency that's sellable 5 years down the road?".

Then you'd build your marketing around answering those questions while demonstrating your product/service AND knowledge of the industry you're targeting.

It's very detailed, I have around 3-4 hours of content dedicated to how you go about producing authority content – it's called Authority Content Part I and Part II. If you're interested, you can grab a seat in my Agency Ascendancy Group (it's just $99/mo), you'll get full access to all our 40+ hours worth of video training materials that $1K+/mo paying members also get, and you'll also have access to work through things directly with me via group coaching once every 2 weeks (will be more frequent as demand increases). Just no done-for-you services. I'm not allowed to share links here, but I'm sure if you Google "Agency Ascendancy Group" (with the quotes) you'll find how to join.

Thanks , and I’m considering giving your group a shot.

But what about if the product is being developed still?

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Thanks , and I’m considering giving your group a shot.

But what about if the product is being developed still?

You don’t actually need the product (though obviously that helps) — you can talk about the process required to solve the problem(s) your product will solve. Your product needs to got thru a certain sequence of steps to deliver the result. That’s your process.

Agencies (who are the type of companies I focus on helping) usually don’t even have products — it’s all intangible services. But, every agency has a process to solve their customer’s problems. So they show that process in action in their marketing. Then the marketing effectively becomes service demonstration — either theoretical (say explaining the importance of negative keyword sculpting for Google Ads), or practical (say showing how to create 200 ads targeting 200 keywords at once).

 

[mikecarlooch]

You don’t actually need the product (though obviously that helps) — you can talk about the process required to solve the problem(s) your product will solve. Your product needs to got thru a certain sequence of steps to deliver the result. That’s your process.

Agencies (who are the type of companies I focus on helping) usually don’t even have products — it’s all intangible services. But, every agency has a process to solve their customer’s problems. So they show that process in action in their marketing. Then the marketing effectively becomes service demonstration — either theoretical (say explaining the importance of negative keyword sculpting for Google Ads), or practical (say showing how to create 200 ads targeting 200 keywords at once).

Ok. I just made my first video using what you said here.

 

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[mikecarlooch]

The JV Hustle

This is something I hope I get good enough at to make a thread on one day, lol.

I just did an interview with my JV partner, asking him tons of questions and created an interview that will help HIM sell HIS product. He has a quite large audience in my space, and is congregating a lot of my target customers on facebook.

I am not sure how to target a specific facebook group with ads yet, but here's my strategy for generating some traffic:

I actually came up with this while I was trying to fall asleep last night, and got so excited by the thought of executing it that I ended up NOT sleeping last night haha!

1. Find Joint Venture Partners and Work Out a Deal With Them, Where They Promote Me
2. On Top Of That, Create An Interview That Helps Them Sell To Their Audience As Well
3. Post My Own Content On Facebook
3. Run Facebook Ads To Get In Front Of Their Audience Using The Interview I Made, So That Their Audience Follows Me
4. They Come To My Page, Get Some Value, Then Download My Free Resource
5. As Soon As They Download My Free Resource, They Are In My Pre-Pre Launch
6. When It Is Time To Launch, I Have JV Partners Ready To Promote My Product For a Commission, AND I Have My Own List Built.

I don't want to toot my own horn here...

But this sounds to me like something most people would find out in a $1997 course

Think about it, you build a relationship with someone, and automatically become a warm lead. You help them sell their product by asking the right questions, and create reciprocity. Now there's a much better chance they promote you.

Anyways, I executed. I have my first interview done. And now it's time to promote.

This strategy is my 20%. Everything else is secondary (80%).

 

[mikecarlooch]

My Facebook Success Philosophy: Good Content + Pay To Win = Targeted Audience Seeing Your Posts and Following You.

Here's what I did - I made 6 videos this morning, and posted three of them on my business facebook page.

They all have a different messaging inside them.

My philosophy is that, one of them is going to perform better than the others, and therefore I will know better what people like to engage with more, to make more of that same messaging.

But I'm not gonna just sit here and hope I get views. Screw that.

I'm boosting, and paying for people to see my posts.

Nothing crazy right now, I put $10 ad spend on 3 posts over 5 days each, so a total of $30 on those 3 posts, and we'll see what the results are of this small experiment.

I also found out how to target specific facebook group members for ads.

What I'm going to do is take the relevant interview I just did with my JV partner, post it on my profile, and then share it into the group that he owns.

Since he doesn't usually appear on podcasts much, a lot of people in the group will likely watch it.

For anyone who watches 3+ seconds of the video, we will just retarget those people with a call to action. Boom, targeting a specific group.

By the way, I am utilizing who not how here. I inspired my brother and girlfriend to edit the videos for me. All of my time is spent on more important stuff than that.. This will allow me to have a consistent stream of content to post on the page.

 

[mikecarlooch]

Ok after all of this talk about getting the product built, it's time to make a freaking commitment on here and start promoting.

“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise”
― Ted Turner

I am the sales guy right now.
I am the marketer of this product.
I am the attractive character, the face of the brand and I gotta get out there and spread the damn word.

What will I be doing? What are the specific goals I have? What will I do to build the list we need to grow?

Firstly, I had to figure out exactly who I'm talking to. I read Seth Godin's book This Is Marketing recently and decided to narrow in on a "minimum viable audience" with all of my marketing messaging.

What's the strategy..??

Build. The. Freaking. List. Baby

1. 2 days a week, I will create 10-20 of the best content I possibly can for social media. I'll be using Facebook Reels and TikTok because I know these two types of posts can generate lots of initial attention.

Truth is, I noticed that if you're gonna just start a new Facebook account and start posting videos and images, it ain't gonna work. Those posts don't get pushed and you're not gonna get initial traction to your page unless you do something else to promote them.

By the way, don't think I'm gonna be posting these things every day opening up tiktok to post again and again. It's all going to be scheduled out for the week, no opening up social media for no reason, it's a damn waste of time. I don't wanna see the numbers or views on the videos, I just wanna see that list growing.

What am I going to post..?

I'm not giving advice. I'm just talking about stuff that I do on a daily basis, things that are happening, strategies I realized that worked for me that could work for other people, no wishy washy motivation stuff. I'm on there to help people and build relationships.

Luckily, my product is in real estate. I also get houses under contract that I need to sell and the same people I will sell the houses to, are the same people who are the target market for my product.

Therefore, I'm going to document, not create. I'm going to talk about my learnings, strategies, value, stuff that's worked in the industry, and be interesting. I've done it once in fitness and in general entertainment, and ya better believe I can do it again in real estate.

2. On those same days each week, I'll be on a show in a Facebook group that has 55,000 people in it with a partner of mine who owns it. Every Monday and Wednesday we're going to do these shows and people are going to watch them, and it's gonna drive traffic to my page and start getting me attention in my industry.

I built enough trust and knowledge to earn being part of this show, I saw an opportunity to strike and help this person, and I got to be the co-host of the show.

3. Good Old Fashion Cold Calls & Cold Emails

Yup. we're going old-fashioned. I have two days on my calendar where I strictly go out there and personally message people I think would be good fits for my product. And I'm not going out there pitching people. All I'm doing is telling them I made this thing I like, and I think they would like it too, and then ask them if they want to buy it.

And I'm going 10X in these reachouts. On these 2 days, it's 100+ or nothing. 100 reachouts or nothing baby.

4. Collaborating with smaller influencers in my market on podcasts

I don't care how small, if someone is knowledgeable on real estate and has some kind of following on social media, I'll interview them on my personal podcast. I'm going to reach out to a bunch of these people 1 day a week and setup these interviews that will become legacy value systems like @MJ DeMarco talks about. They'll be there in perpetuity.

The more loyal followers get on that damn list, and the better I nurture relationships with those people, the better this gets.

After the offer's been tested on the product..

I will start going hard on JV partners and getting others to promote my product for me (i already have one).

But I do not want to test my offer on other people's lists. I want to sell my own product first before I get anyone else involved and I'll put in whatever effort is necessary to do so.

I'm going hard. It's DAY 1 as Jeff Bezos would say. It's time to make the dream real, put in the work, and then delegate to make things simpler, act, assess, adjust!!!

 

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[mikecarlooch]

Update - I made and scheduled 20 videos this morning, posted 4 on each platform im using

 

[mikecarlooch]

Great freaking news..

We just did a test batch on real live people for our beta product.

It's doing EXACTLY what we wanted it to do and it's solving the exact problem that my target audience has (I know because 1. I am the target audience and 2. Someone else used it and it worked for them)

Ok.. Really exciting.

I'll keep you guys updated

PS: if anyone here is a real estate investor and you want to hear more about the product and if it'll be valuable to you, please do DM me. I'd love your advice on it. We are currently only accepting a few clients.

 

[mikecarlooch]

Update - We are still in the testing phase. Currently, it consists of the following:

We test the product on 1000+ real live individuals at once per day in order to refine the product and make it better. We are finding the errors and things like that which need to be fixed before a public launch.

Every time we send out a new batch of 1000+, we learn something new about it.

We are sending out demos to potential customers so they can give feedback (the goal is at least 20 demos sent per day). They are pointing out things they'd like done better. Admittedly, I have been a little reluctant to ask for the sale!! I gotta get over that.. If you don't ask, and you just assume that they'll ask you to buy it, that's your fault!

All of Grant Cardone's books have been immensely helpful in starting to market this product. There is nothing more important than getting in front of a potential customer. promote promote promote. You don't need a complex sales funnel to go out and give someone a demo. Show, don't tell.

 

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[mikecarlooch]

WOW! Testing on live audiences teaches you a lot...

I'm proud to say that (I THINK) we've finally got a product that works very well.

We had to go through error after error testing on live audiences to make it work, and it's still not perfect, but it's working so much better.

Months of time has been spent on this, and yesterday was the first time we looked at it and said "that's the exact vision we had in mind.."

It's not 10,000 reps, but 10,000 iterations - Naval Ravikant

 

[mikecarlooch]

PS: one learning I had recently..

If you're going to raise money.. always raise more than you think you need

 

[mikecarlooch]

Progress Update:

I'm incredibly energized. The idea of being the founder of a tech startup in my mind last year felt as distant as landing a man on Pluto.

It's incredible what happens when you're intentional about designing your life. I 1 year ago would kill to be me now.

The transformation in meaning & purpose through the journey of this has been absolutely life-changing and has me knowing that any distant vision can some day be a reality.

NOW, philosophical stuff aside.

I am officially at the stage where we are onboarding early adopters

I put together a simple modern landing page with one video that explains what the product does, and another showing a demo of the product, and we got a very catchy domain name for the company.

While my job now is onboarding early adopters, the product is being coded and improved by my developer daily in order to get it to do exactly what we want.

The reason I'm so confident in what the product does is because I'm the audience. I use it on a daily basis and it works like gangbusters for a V1.0.

As a matter of fact, if no one bought this product and it totally failed, I'd be fine with it because it gives me an unfair advantage in real estate (obviously, I'm not going to let that happen)

Marketing

I'm in real estate wholesaling.

I just had to think, where to people like me hang out?

Recently in my wholesale business, I've had to do a lot of acquiring of cash buyers.

The contact information is so easy to find for these cash buyers at scale, and they're also the audience I'm trying to reach.

I could basically just go and build a massive email list, but I am reluctant to do that right now because I want to hand-pick early adopters.

I want the RIGHT people to pay for and use this V1.0, so the way to acquire customers is to go out there and start calling, emailing, dming the right people, and then when the product has a full foundation to stand on, we will start ramping up the traffic to the product.

I am also posting 4+ videos on social media DAILY to start building an audience (for almost a month now). This is going to take a while, and I'm aware of that, but I'm consistent and not looking for immediate results.

Not only that, I'm part of a real estate show with partner & investor that we do every thursday in a large group of investors talking about wholesaling.

The definition of a brand as I know it is showing up in one area consistently doing something for a long time, and that's what I plan to do. My strategy may change, and my vision will get bigger, but my consistency will show, and my audience will too.

 

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[mikecarlooch]

I need some advice..

We need a critical feature built, but our constraint is cash.

What options do you have? Anyone know some good books on the subject? Thx

 

[Bounce Back]

I need some advice..

We need a critical feature built, but our constraint is cash.

What options do you have? Anyone know some good books on the subject? Thx

First off kudos on your action. Great thread so far.

~18 years in full stack development here - I can give pointers if you want to private message me. I don't know everything in the world so no gurantees.

Basically though on a non-coding level and from my experience at this point in start ups they either get some more investment from the original investors or someone works for free (one of the people with equity usually).

 

[mikecarlooch]

First off kudos on your action. Great thread so far.

~18 years in full stack development here - I can give pointers if you want to private message me. I don't know everything in the world so no gurantees.

Basically though on a non-coding level and from my experience at this point in start ups they either get some more investment from the original investors or someone works for free (one of the people with equity usually).

Hey yes I really need some help here lol. I'll dm you. I have some developers telling me the feature will cost $2000 and some telling me it will cost $20,000

 

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[mikecarlooch]

We're READY FOR BUSINESS!

So we made a decision to do something innovative INSTEAD of getting a feature built that we thought was critical.

What we innovated, is our business model.

We were just going to sell the tool that does the thing that helps the people we want to help.

But then, we got smarter.

What is the actual end result that our clients are looking for? It is not to use a tool. It is to get what they want, through using the tool.

What if they didn't have to use the tool?

@MJ DeMarco made a brilliant post today about how things like AI are just tools for getting outcomes.

Our market has a constraint (a thing they need more of). Our tool provides that, and does it very well.

As technology changes, so will our approach towards filling that constraint for our customers.

So.. How about instead, we just sell the constraint. Say hey, you have to do nothing. We'll supply you, sit back and outsource it to us.

With this way of thinking, we essentially set up an entire business model and funnel in 5 hours for the product that we've been building for months.

And this small change in way of thinking, actually created our OWN constraint. the better we can get at filling that constraint for others, the more clients we get. that's our hypothesis.

And that means that all of the money we were going to spend on turning this thing into a full on tool for people to use, can be put into making the ultimate CONSTRAINT.. Stronger.

What is also very good about our product is that it's antifragile. The more we use it, the better it gets, the better we can serve our clients.

If we hadn't made this critical distinction, we'd likely have been waiting in development for months. But with this, we're able to launch.. literally tomorrow.

We just made our first ad today, and it's going to be going live tomorrow.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

We're READY FOR BUSINESS!

So we made a decision to do something innovative INSTEAD of getting a feature built that we thought was critical.

What we innovated, is our business model.

We were just going to sell the tool that does the thing that helps the people we want to help.

But then, we got smarter.

What is the actual end result that our clients are looking for? It is not to use a tool. It is to get what they want, through using the tool.

What if they didn't have to use the tool?

@MJ DeMarco made a brilliant post today about how things like AI are just tools for getting outcomes.

Our market has a constraint (a thing they need more of). Our tool provides that, and does it very well.

As technology changes, so will our approach towards filling that constraint for our customers.

So.. How about instead, we just sell the constraint. Say hey, you have to do nothing. We'll supply you, sit back and outsource it to us.

With this way of thinking, we essentially set up an entire business model and funnel in 5 hours for the product that we've been building for months.

And this small change in way of thinking, actually created our OWN constraint. the better we can get at filling that constraint for others, the more clients we get. that's our hypothesis.

And that means that all of the money we were going to spend on turning this thing into a full on tool for people to use, can be put into making the ultimate CONSTRAINT.. Stronger.

What is also very good about our product is that it's antifragile. The more we use it, the better it gets, the better we can serve our clients.

If we hadn't made this critical distinction, we'd likely have been waiting in development for months. But with this, we're able to launch.. literally tomorrow.

We just made our first ad today, and it's going to be going live tomorrow.

Awesome love to hear how it goes, that (paid adverts) in itself is a whole other game!!