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Adir Barak

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Hi guys and gals

Wasn't on the forum for quite some time. I've been working on a business with a good friend of mine and we just decided to "close shop" and move on.

a bit of background: (long story short)
the business required cooperation from a certain industry's people. neither me nor my friend are from this industry but we managed to see a gap which could be filled with our business and take this industry a few steps forward. anyway those people would be the "service", bringing them leads of people who need them and thus they are the main income source for the business (they pay for subscription on our site and we present them and advertise the site). we initially thought the main problem we will face will be getting the contacts of these people, because they are scattered all over and don't belong in a unified community. we actually managed to get over 100 people' contacts from a friend of mine and a friend of my partner who were both former industry people. unfortunately their cooperation was way harder to get and we got like 7 people signing up for the early membership plan we offered (free for the first month)...
We are still not sure why they are so reluctant to change, even when all the work is done for them, probably why this industry stagnating so much and has much room to improve.

Anyway I thought I'd share this because that is what we are here for. learn from others, successes or failures. and so here is what I learned:
1. When approaching people in a field or group you are not part of and thus do not fully understand their motives, go really hard on a few of them to get them on board. once they are in, they will help you spread the word more efficiently rather than blowing all of your leads/chances at the whole group.
2. relying on cooperation from other people in general - especially when you are not familiar with them as a group might be a very risky choice. if your whole business is built around their cooperation and there is no other thing around to make them comfortable trying you out - its probably gonna be more complicated than you assume.
3. when going for small/small-ish business ideas, go rapid. fail (or preferably succeed) before you put too much work and time into it, if it is good it might be just O.K at first but you can work it out from there. if it is bad, it will be worse and thus save you a lot of time and perhaps resources that could all be invested in a different venture.
 
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EternalStudent

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Hi guys and gals

Wasn't on the forum for quite some time. I've been working on a business with a good friend of mine and we just decided to "close shop" and move on.

a bit of background: (long story short)
the business required cooperation from a certain industry's people. neither me nor my friend are from this industry but we managed to see a gap which could be filled with our business and take this industry a few steps forward. anyway those people would be the "service", bringing them leads of people who need them and thus they are the main income source for the business (they pay for subscription on our site and we present them and advertise the site). we initially thought the main problem we will face will be getting the contacts of these people, because they are scattered all over and don't belong in a unified community. we actually managed to get over 100 people' contacts from a friend of mine and a friend of my partner who were both former industry people. unfortunately their cooperation was way harder to get and we got like 7 people signing up for the early membership plan we offered (free for the first month)...
We are still not sure why they are so reluctant to change, even when all the work is done for them, probably why this industry stagnating so much and has much room to improve.

Anyway I thought I'd share this because that is what we are here for. learn from others, successes or failures. and so here is what I learned:
1. When approaching people in a field or group you are not part of and thus do not fully understand their motives, go really hard on a few of them to get them on board. once they are in, they will help you spread the word more efficiently rather than blowing all of your leads/chances at the whole group.
2. relying on cooperation from other people in general - especially when you are not familiar with them as a group might be a very risky choice. if your whole business is built around their cooperation and there is no other thing around to make them comfortable trying you out - its probably gonna be more complicated than you assume.
3. when going for small/small-ish business ideas, go rapid. fail (or preferably succeed) before you put too much work and time into it, if it is good it might be just O.K at first but you can work it out from there. if it is bad, it will be worse and thus save you a lot of time and perhaps resources that could all be invested in a different venture.
Why did you call it quits? 7 customers is not a failure, nor is a 7% conversion rate!
If you are offering leads for a certain industry, is there any real difference in how many customers you have since you would just be dividing the leads over a larger group anyway?
 

Adir Barak

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Dec 20, 2020
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Why did you call it quits? 7 customers is not a failure, nor is a 7% conversion rate!
If you are offering leads for a certain industry, is there any real difference in how many customers you have since you would just be dividing the leads over a larger group anyway?
It seems like much but the 100 or so prospects we "started" with are most of the total prospects available for this business idea, as I said we burned through them too quickly. on top of that, those 7 people were simply not viable to start with, so even if the rest could join later when we would start to get traction, we would start at too big of a disadvantage and we concluded we better call it quits and move on.
 

Itizn

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1. When approaching people in a field or group you are not part of and thus do not fully understand their motives, go really hard on a few of them to get them on board. once they are in, they will help you spread the word more efficiently rather than blowing all of your leads/chances at the whole group.
2. relying on cooperation from other people in general - especially when you are not familiar with them as a group might be a very risky choice. if your whole business is built around their cooperation and there is no other thing around to make them comfortable trying you out - its probably gonna be more complicated than you assume.
Our tales are similar, and I can agree 100% with these.

Thanks for sharing.
 
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sparechange

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Out of the 7 signups how many pitches/leads/offers did you make?

Rejection means very little, in fact it should be embraced. I think 10,000 impressions was mentioned as a good start here on the forum. Even with 10k impressions/offers a 10% conversion is still 1,000 customers which can be alot of business for you.

Aim high
 

Adir Barak

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Read Fastlane!
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Dec 20, 2020
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Our tales are similar, and I can agree 100% with these.

Thanks for sharing.
:) good luck from now on

Out of the 7 signups how many pitches/leads/offers did you make?

Rejection means very little, in fact it should be embraced. I think 10,000 impressions was mentioned as a good start here on the forum. Even with 10k impressions/offers a 10% conversion is still 1,000 customers which can be alot of business for you.

Aim high
We contacted each of the 7 and they were all willing to try us out (the signup itself was pretty much saying yes, it was not a "learn more" signup as it was a "join early" one, if it makes sense.

I agree but as I explained there are no 10K impressions to be made, we have made 90-100% of them and we just did it wrong (assuming it had a chance to succeed anyway).
Thank you.
 

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