Want to Succeed? Don’t Waste Your Time Doing This…

[The-J]

Inspired by a recent series of posts (as well as recent personal experience).

The market has spoken. They don’t want what you have to offer.

You’ve tried something and you’ve failed. It hurts. I get it.

You’re out some money, time, and you’ve embarrassed yourself in front of friends and potential customers. You told people about your great idea, showed them your prototype, and got to trying to sell the thing and…

…nothing. Nada. $0 in sales.

Not only have you lost confidence, but you’re confident that what you’ve got is just not going to work.

“What do I do now?” you ask. “I clearly don’t know what I’m doing. Am I really cut out for this?”

I’ll address this backwards.

Are you cut out for this? I don’t know, but you’ll know by the end of this post.

And it’s true. You don’t know what you’re doing. But that’s okay.

What do you do now? I’ll tell you what you DON’T do…

Don’t mope.

Don’t drift into self-pity. Don’t feel sorry for yourself because what you tried didn’t work.

People smarter and more experienced than you have failed in more spectacular and embarrassing ways. You’re not a loser because you failed. But you will be a loser if you sit there and mope. Why?

Because you won’t want to try again. You’ll remember the pain of failure and not the exhilaration of providing value. Your friends will say “remember last time? It won’t work.” Your parents will say “Oh, honey, not again.”

So what do you do?

Be a goldfish. Forget about it. Move on.

Back to the drawing board. You came in trying to solve a problem, and it turns out people either (1) didn’t care about that problem nearly enough to pay for it or (2) had objections to your solution to the problem that you didn’t know about.

Now go back.

Who were you trying to help? (Market definition)

What do they really want? (Dream outcome)

What gets in the way of getting what they want? (Problems, pain points, “bleeding necks”)

What already exists to solve those problems? (Competition)

What do they love and hate about those solutions? (Value skews)

Do this quick. The more time you waste moping, the longer it’ll take for you to succeed.

I wasted years moping. Don't do that.

 

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[Aidan04]

Inspired by a recent series of posts (as well as recent personal experience).

The market has spoken. They don’t want what you have to offer.

You’ve tried something and you’ve failed. It hurts. I get it.

You’re out some money, time, and you’ve embarrassed yourself in front of friends and potential customers. You told people about your great idea, showed them your prototype, and got to trying to sell the thing and…

…nothing. Nada. $0 in sales.

Not only have you lost confidence, but you’re confident that what you’ve got is just not going to work.

“What do I do now?” you ask. “I clearly don’t know what I’m doing. Am I really cut out for this?”

I’ll address this backwards.

Are you cut out for this? I don’t know, but you’ll know by the end of this post.

And it’s true. You don’t know what you’re doing. But that’s okay.

What do you do now? I’ll tell you what you DON’T do…

Don’t mope.

Don’t drift into self-pity. Don’t feel sorry for yourself because what you tried didn’t work.

People smarter and more experienced than you have failed in more spectacular and embarrassing ways. You’re not a loser because you failed. But you will be a loser if you sit there and mope. Why?

Because you won’t want to try again. You’ll remember the pain of failure and not the exhilaration of providing value. Your friends will say “remember last time? It won’t work.” Your parents will say “Oh, honey, not again.”

So what do you do?

Be a goldfish. Forget about it. Move on.

Back to the drawing board. You came in trying to solve a problem, and it turns out people either (1) didn’t care about that problem nearly enough to pay for it or (2) had objections to your solution to the problem that you didn’t know about.

Now go back.

Who were you trying to help? (Market definition)

What do they really want? (Dream outcome)

What gets in the way of getting what they want? (Problems, pain points, “bleeding necks”)

What already exists to solve those problems? (Competition)

What do they love and hate about those solutions? (Value skews)

Do this quick. The more time you waste moping, the longer it’ll take for you to succeed.

I wasted years moping. Don't do that.

Guess I had to learn the hard way haha.

No time to waste. It's time to get back to research and develop something better.

 

[YouCanDoThis]

Guess I had to learn the hard way haha.

No time to waste. It's time to get back to research and develop something better.

For what it’s worth (and I have no idea whether you should continue or quit), but just wanted to say it’s been educational watching your thread and your openness is laudable.

So at the very least you got that going for you

 

[The-J]

Guess I had to learn the hard way haha.

No time to waste. It's time to get back to research and develop something better.

You are far from the only one. Giant companies have spent millions on R&D to come out with products that absolutely bombed.

My favorite from recent years is HoloLens by Microsoft. HoloLens is an augmented reality/hologram tool. Super impressive technology with a ton of potential use cases. Had the best and the brightest people working on it.

Got into hot water for selling the tech to the US military... then the US military turned around and said that they couldn't even use it!

It's still being worked on after billions of $ sunk into it. The prognosis isn't good. It's been over 10 years. The consumer side was completely shelved. It's still got interesting use cases but it's unlikely that the business case will make sense in the end.

Even big corps make these kinds of mistakes.

 

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[Aidan04]

You are far from the only one. Giant companies have spent millions on R&D to come out with products that absolutely bombed.

My favorite from recent years is HoloLens by Microsoft. HoloLens is an augmented reality/hologram tool. Super impressive technology with a ton of potential use cases. Had the best and the brightest people working on it.

Got into hot water for selling the tech to the US military... then the US military turned around and said that they couldn't even use it!

It's still being worked on after billions of $ sunk into it. The prognosis isn't good. It's been over 10 years. The consumer side was completely shelved. It's still got interesting use cases but it's unlikely that the business case will make sense in the end.

Even big corps make these kinds of mistakes.

I remember this! I wondered what ever happened to the hololens, now it seems Apple picked up the tech and is probably going to make bank using it.

Better for me to learn this now than later on. A lot of people always said I had trouble seeing the middle, that I always just saw the end. Maybe they were right and this is what I needed to realize that.

 

[Johnny boy]

I always look at it like playing Jenga. You see a block that you think might be a good one to take out. You push a little, nothing. You take a new angle and find one that works. None of them are easy? Well shit, you'll just have to pick the least bad one to try and pull out. You don't give up, just take a new angle.