My Fastlane Journey Documented

[mercenariez]

Hi all,

I currently am running a business in the video game accessories industry, generally speaking.

Started about 2 years ago, and finally am seeing the light out of this “desert of desertion” as I announced pre-orders for my main product will be available soon.

Did tons of Beta development, and spent thousands of $$$, as well as invested hundreds of hours. It was very taxing both mentally and physically, words can’t describe it. A lot of anger and frustration. It’s hard to solve problems no one has ever solved to this extent.

In school there’s usually a right answer and someone to help me get there. In my business it feels more like I was dropped in the Hunger Games and I’m just trying my best to figure things out on the fly. I try my best to plan, but no amount of planning would have been able to predict the problems that I’ve encountered.

Of course, I confirmed a lot of interest beforehand, but I hope the interest actually ends up translating to the amount of sales anticipated. Note that I’ve sold a ton of the Beta version already, so I’m not doing a blind gamble or anything.

Well anyway this thread will document my business’ progress. I have no idea if I’ll be able to take this to the millions, but that is the financial goal (tbh my goal is moreso non-financial, but without sales that won’t mean much haha).

All I have is my daily process. I check off these little to-do items one after another, like little steps up Mount Everest, aiming for the summit. I’ve already checked off hundreds of steps, and no doubt there’s many more hundred to go.

I believe in The Fastlane and Unscripted method. The real question is, can I execute? A bad idea executed well >>> a genius idea executed like garbage.

5-10 years from now I hope I can one day look back on this first post with fondness. I’ll update this post whenever significant progress has been made — it won’t be too often (once every few weeks to months). I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

 

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[mercenariez]

So opening up my pre-orders today I got about 1/3 of my target. Though it’s only been a few minutes, I’ve noticed the majority of my sales come with the hype of the initial product launch (i.e. first few minutes) and then gradually decreases. Business has made me a bit more pessimistic in terms of sales (not in a negative way, just being more realistic I guess), so I’m not at all surprised I’m off my target. Could hit it as the days go by, we’ll see.

For those curious, my sales are roughly in the 4 digits mark, with my goal it would just barely hit 5. It’s a small business (for now?), but MJ recommends getting your foot in the door >>> trying to get a million sales instantly, so my goal is to gradually become better and better and grow my loyal customer base slowly, and hopefully, in the long run, that will translate into the coveted Productocracy.

If it doesn’t, it’s back to job searching I guess, which would be no different than had I not tried at all right..?

 

[mercenariez]

God, I hate process. I know MJ says you gotta learn to love what others hate, because to have what most don’t, you have to be willing to do what most won’t. But it’s a lot easier said than done.

I’m in my late 20s and the clock keeps ticking. Friends are becoming successful lawyers, doctors, renting condos, buying houses and cars, and here I am living with my parents, still not positive on my business venture, and thousands in debt as a result.

It’s nearly the 2 year mark since I started this and I have so many doubts — what if I just pursued the slowlane? I could’ve easily saved up several thousand and been up 5 figures, but at the same time it likely would never lead to lifetime passive income, whereas this business COULD one day, but it would take godly execution and effort and time and sacrifices to get there...my health has been so bad because I have to do a lot of the work myself at this stage. I feel lonely because most of my friends aren’t entrepreneurs and the ones that are, aren’t solo like me. My parents don’t understand, my friends don’t understand, and now even I’m not understanding what the hell I’m even doing.

The business has consistently been going in the UP direction, but too slowly...and I have no one else to blame but myself. I have only X amount of energy and Y amount of time per day — and I can’t push myself too hard cuz last time I did I had panic attacks and couldn’t work for over a year due to constant 911 calls...I’m so damn lost...

I keep doing tiny little step after tiny little step on my Daily Fastlane, and yet I have no idea if this shit is just gonna flop in the end and reveal itself as a big waste of time. It’s all fine and good to say I’m depositing gumballs, but the CLOCK IS TICKING. I want to be rich quicker, faster, but I don’t know exactly how, and whether that shifts me to event-focused as opposed to the right way which is process-focused.

Sure you can say if I fail I still LEARNED something in the end, but at what cost? There’s so many millionaires and billionaires younger than me. How come they get to get there so quickly while I continue to struggle for years? What am I even doing with my life? Why am I such a loser?

/rant

Sorry if this came off as depressing...

 

[A_Random_Guy]

I want you to know that everyone who is reading this thread believes in you. We want you to be successful. That's why please believe in yourself. Get well soon.
I am sure you can make it. All the best!

 

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[mercenariez]

Broke $10K USD in sales today. Took 2 years lmao, but it’s continually been on an upward trend so I guess that’s ok. I truly believe you can’t hit $1M in sales if you can’t first hit $100, $1,000, etc.

It’s like getting better times in sports: unless you’re really talented, you don’t just drop from your base time to Olympic status. For most humans it’ll be a long painful grind. Millisecond and single digit second drops (depending on the event), and only when you look back after years will you hopefully see that you’ve actually made a ton of progress.

Product price was increased which meant profit margins increased as well. I added tons more value to justify the price increase. This meant short term losses because of investing more heavily into the product, but I literally want this product to explode out of the ballpark in perceived value.

As I gain more happy customers, I’m seeing a lot more positive recommendations being given to their friends, which so far is causing a mini explosion in conversion rate (25%, highest I’ve ever experienced). I was really skeptical about the whole “customers will spread the word if they love your product and more people will buy in an exponential fashion”, but so far it seems like this is indeed true. Like a spreading infection (a good infection), people simply can’t avoid buying it, as everyone around them keeps sharing stuff about how they love it on social media.

It’s funny because that’s what happened to me when smartphones first caught wind back in 2010. Simply seeing everyone have one and looking happy and showing off all the cool features made me feel like I had to have one as well.

...

It’s very hard to make my customers super happy, but I go the extra mile even if I lose a bit of profit short term. The reason I do this is because one human positively recommending my product can potentially influence 5-10+ more to buy.

If you make your customer just go “ehh, it’s an ok product” in order to save pennies here and there, I personally believe your odds of a productocracy decline tremendously. Doing stuff like this means, yes, you save your $5
or $10 on that one sale. However, you sometimes can also LOSE OUT on $100+ in future sales as a result, because that customer might’ve referred 5-10 additional friends to buy it if you went the extra mile!

It is unlikely that someone will share and tell others about your product/service if they’re neutral about it. Citing Jordan Belfort’s book on straight-line selling, to increase your odds of making the sale as high as possible, one of the keys is to make sure the customer LOVES your product. The higher the rating in their mind, the higher your odds of closing become.

...

Act, assess, adjust.

The hardest part for me has been the assess and adjust part. A really good book that I recently read which expands on these three A’s in much more detail, and might I add very effectively, is The Lean Startup. I discovered this book here in TFF under book recommendations and it’ll really help you understand how you should be thinking about product development in relation to sales improvement. As a side note, this forum is seriously a goldmine, and I highly recommend people take advantage of these FREE resources being provided to you right at your fingertips.

...

Overall I still feel very tired and overworked, my heart especially has been feeling fatigued, and I still have DOZENS of problems that still need to be solved (and QUICKLY might I add). But at least I can see this tiny light in the distance symbolizing Freedom. The odds of me getting there are small, but at least I can CONCEIVE of its possibility.

The worst feeling in the world is when it feels like there is NOTHING you can do to change your situation. “I’m going to slave away until I’m 65 then rot slowly away in a retirement home” — is this earth or hell? No F*cking way I’m doing that shit. I will PAY THE PRICE of short term sacrifices like reading boring a$$ books on mech engineering when my friends are partying every other day, eating healthy when my friends are binging on alcohol and drugs, and working on my business which hasn’t broke even after expenses in 2 years while my friends spend it up acting like $50K millionaires.

Reason is I’d MUCH rather do this than turn 65 one day and go WTF, where’d my life go?

The Fastlane and Unscripted have given me this tiny sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe, all of my dreams can come true.

 

[foodiepersecond]

Hi all,

I currently am running a business in the video game accessories industry, generally speaking.

Started about 2 years ago, and finally am seeing the light out of this “desert of desertion” as I announced pre-orders for my main product will be available soon.

Did tons of Beta development, and spent thousands of $$$, as well as invested hundreds of hours. It was very taxing both mentally and physically, words can’t describe it. A lot of anger and frustration. It’s hard to solve problems no one has ever solved to this extent.

In school there’s usually a right answer and someone to help me get there. In my business it feels more like I was dropped in the Hunger Games and I’m just trying my best to figure things out on the fly. I try my best to plan, but no amount of planning would have been able to predict the problems that I’ve encountered.

Of course, I confirmed a lot of interest beforehand, but I hope the interest actually ends up translating to the amount of sales anticipated. Note that I’ve sold a ton of the Beta version already, so I’m not doing a blind gamble or anything.

Well anyway this thread will document my business’ progress. I have no idea if I’ll be able to take this to the millions, but that is the financial goal (tbh my goal is moreso non-financial, but without sales that won’t mean much haha).

All I have is my daily process. I check off these little to-do items one after another, like little steps up Mount Everest, aiming for the summit. I’ve already checked off hundreds of steps, and no doubt there’s many more hundred to go.

I believe in The Fastlane and Unscripted method. The real question is, can I execute? A bad idea executed well >>> a genius idea executed like garbage.

5-10 years from now I hope I can one day look back on this first post with fondness. I’ll update this post whenever significant progress has been made — it won’t be too often (once every few weeks to months). I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

I'm curious to what game this is. Anyway you can link it or DM it?

 

[Pink Sheep]

Congrats on breaking 10k! Thats huge!
Feel free to share a link if you want some constructive feedback.

 

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