Your worst entrepreneurial failure... details please!

[MJ DeMarco]

What is your worst entrepreneurial failure... please, let's hear the details!

If you share, please let us know how you ACTED, ASSESSED, and ADJUSTED, if at all.

I'll start...

I mentioned this story in Unscripted but it is what I'd classify as my worst failure...


More recently, my worst failure would be in dealing with translation licenses for foreign book rights. Early in my publishing business I was open to having regular entrepreneurs who were passionate about the book do translation, marketing, and publishing. In other words, TMF was their first and ONLY book.

Big F*cking mistake.

Most of those deals failed badly in execution. I should have known not to allow a "passionate" entrepreneur take the reigns. In my quest to get the book "out there" in every market, I made some grave mistakes.

Now I refuse any such offers. If you own a publishing company and have published books before in the translation market, then I'll consider your company for a license. I want to see lists of books you've already done. If you have none, sorry, I won't sell you the license.

ACT
ASSESS
ADJUST

ACT: Yes, let's get this book in every country!

ASSESS: Damn, most of those translations by individual entrepreneurs are failing -- while the publishing companies are killing it.

ADJUST: Never sell licenses to newbies, passionate readers, or anyone without an existing pub company with books already on the market.

 

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[Eric Flathers]

What is your worst entrepreneurial failure... please, let's hear the details!

If you share, please let us know how you ACTED, ASSESSED, and ADJUSTED, if at all.

I'll start...

I mentioned this story in Unscripted but it is what I'd classify as my worst failure...
View attachment 23716

More recently, my worst failure would be in dealing with translation licenses for foreign book rights. Early in my publishing business, I was open to having regular entrepreneurs who were passionate about the book do the translation, marketing, and publishing. In other words, TMF was their first and ONLY book.

Big F*cking mistake.

Most of those deals failed badly in execution. I should have known not to allow a "passionate" entrepreneur take the reigns. In my quest to get the book "out there" in every market, I made some grave mistakes.

Now I refuse any such offers. If you own a publishing company and have published books before in the translation market, then I'll consider your company for a license. I want to see lists of books you've already done. If you have none, sorry, I won't sell you the license.

ACT
ASSESS
ADJUST

ACT: Yes, let's get this book in every country!

ASSESS: Damn, most of those translations by individual entrepreneurs are failing -- while the publishing companies are killing it.

ADJUST: Never sell licenses to newbies, passionate readers, or anyone without an existing pub company with books already on the market.

Great Lesson MJ I'll keep that in mind when my book comes out.

My worst failure was a dating site I tried to build back before APPs and swiping was a thing. Hell, it was before social media came on the scene I think MySpace was the only one around,

Anyways I did all my research, I went on like 500 dates to find out what girls didn't like about dating sites. I already knew what I didn't like and what other guys I knew told me.

I build out all the pages in Word, what the layout was, where each link would go, how the user experience should flow. I registered the domain, registered the business name, researched all the photo equipment I would need, bought the equipment, learned how to use it.

I hired a web developer who said all the right things, had a list of websites on his site and had built a dating site before. He even brought us some things about API's and things I didn't know about. All in all, it seemed like the right company to go with.

So I let him do his thing and moved on to the next part of the plan which was to start searching for local photographers and event sites in the cities I would be visiting. Basically, the main thing everyone men and women hated was old or fake photos. My site was going to have verified photos taken at events with date stamps on them.

Then things went south. Every time I asked to see how the site was coming along I got nowhere. He would ask me a bunch of questions like they were working hard at creating my site and they would tell me they were working on the back end and it was all just code so there was nothing to see.

After three months of no progress, they said they couldn't create what they said they could. I threatened to ruin them by reporting them to the BBB and a bunch of other business regulatory bodies and they gave me back my deposit.

ACT
I went to a bunch of other companies and the cost to create the site from a company that could actually do it was 250K (Which I didn't have) this was all before being able to hire coders on the internet, or crowdfunding or VC's everywhere.

I tried to learn to code but only got as far as hello world. That took two weeks of 8 hour days. After getting 20 pages into the Javascript Bible I had to go to the library to get the Idiots guide to Javascript. I never ended up learning to code or getting the site built.

Access
Sadly at the time, I accessed that I would have to raise money which never happened.

Adjust
Now I do more due diligence. After that company couldn't do what they said I sought out one of the clients they had on their website. When I talked with the lady she said, yes they built their site but that they had to have it redone by someone else because they did a poor job. Lesson learned, now I talk to other clients of a company before hiring them.

Hope this isn't too long a reply for this forum, sorry I'm a bit of a talker.

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

Anyways I did all my research, I went on like 500 dates to find out what girls didn't like about dating sites. I already knew what I didn't like and what other guys I knew told me.

Lol.

How did those dates go?

I just find it hilarious that these girls are out looking for love, and meanwhile @Eric Flathers is charming them into telling him all their darkest dislikes of dating sites.

 

[maverick]

I spent months designing and developing an online KYC platform for the banking industry. Hired the best talent I could find from Upwork to do UX, front-end and back-end development.

Even worked agile by using scrum, complete with JIRA backlog and process. I was on top of everything and made sure everything was done to the highest quality.

And then.. on a warm afternoon in July.. we launched.

It was glorious. The website looked great. The UX was really sleek. The product had a great flow.

It took me the next 12 months to come to the following realisations:

• I had no customers or process to attract customers
• I had not gotten feedback from (potential) customers before, during and at the end of the development
• The solution was made to scale from day 1. Complete with microservices, APIs and load balancers. It could handle thousands of users at once. Yet we had no users.
• The solution was overengineered, too expensive and not good enough an alternative to doing stuff manually

It took me the full year to find the courage to pull the plug on this idea. Total waste of money, time and resources.

Still feels embarrassing reading this back...

 

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[Chapas]

My worst failure: All my business ideas in my life

I cannot count how many business ideas I have had in the last 10 years. And all of them failed because of action faking and over thinking. I know this thread is about specific examples, however, I still hope that someone gets something out of this post.

ACT: During the past 10 years I have tried to start so many thing. The best example I can give is when I tried to start a web design company 5 years ago. At the same time one of my good friends was starting a company creating animation videos for the B2B market. Our journeys went completely different. While I was action faking with working months on setting up the correct website, doing free portfolio work and focusing on the wrong clientele while just being lazy, my friend was just taking action and following through from the first moment. Do I need to say that my webdesign company closed down after around 6 months. This day today my friend has one of the biggest animation video companies in our countries. We starter at the same time, yet this is how different our journeys went.

ASSESS: At that time my mindset was completely wrong. Because it had to be the business and the clientele there was something wrong with. It couldn't possibly be me and my lack of action taking. So I spent the next 5 years doing the same thing over and over again. Almost starting a business....

ACT: Now when I have finally realized that the problem this whole time has been ME! A couple of months ago this same friend convinced me to just take action and start my own little agency. I am still far from being where I want to be, but I have learned some many new things in the past 2 months and gained so much discipline and so many new skills. All by not over thinking and taking action. Imagine if I had done that 10 years earlier!

What I want to say is don't be like me. If you feel you can bring value or solve a need then just go for it. Start doing and adjust on the way. Taking action is the best way to learn and to grow.

A huge thanks to @MJ DeMarco, my good friend @Natural and the rest of you forum members for changing my mindset and soon my life for the better. Hopefully more people in my shoes will experience the same aha moment and valuable advice when joining this forum!

 

[amp0193]

I bought a snow-plowing site on Flippa for like $1200 bucks. All 8 of the clients lived in a small city in the Midwest. I live in the south, and have never shoveled snow in my life. Also, none of the subcontractors were interested in working with the business anymore.

I had no traffic plan, no growth plan... just kept those 8 clients on the monthly fee, and managed to convince a subcontractor to work for me, by paying him the $300 that the previous owner had never paid him.

Anyways, the deal was if it snowed more than 2 inches, he would plow driveways. Which worked great, until the days he didn't, and people were calling me saying they couldn't get to work. I had no plan to help them. Eventually the guy would come.

Turns out previous owner was in a lawsuit or two involving customers and contractors he had wronged/not paid/not serviced. And that's why he was selling the business on Flippa in the first place. He wasn't even the original owner. He bought it from the original owner and drove the business to shit.

After one season, I resold the site on Flippa for like $200... to pass it on yet again.

I think I ended up around break-even.

 

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[John F.]

Anyone out there remember "The Internet Treasure Chest"? One of those late night infomercials that promises the world for a small fee. It was back in the early 2000s when I was just getting out of high school and I already hated working for someone else.

You can read about some of their legal issues here...

ACT
So I pay the initial fee. Then get suckered into the add ons and pretty soon I have way more money in this scam than I should have.

I finally get my store up. I'm all excited I'm selling jewelry online and I get to set my prices. Yes jewelry. Markup on that is ridiculous and I was young and greedy. Money is gonna start rolling in any minute...

It doesn't. Shocker...

Assess
Why am I not making money? This is supposed to be turn-key and the easy way out!

At the time, my assessment was that I got ripped off and these business making things are a scam.

It had nothing to do with the fact I had no clue what I was doing, or why. I didn't even know what the work marketing meant at that time.

Adjust
This is where things went downhill... This failure was the beginning of my scripted adulthood. I gave up business adventures completely and decided to into 6 figure debt and put myself through college with loans. Zero assistance from the outside. I was going to get a good education and a great paying job and live the good life. Or so I thought.

I got a good education and I got a very high paying career that I thought I always wanted. This went on for over a decade.. I was a M.O.D.E.L citizen and my creditors loved me for it.

This is my biggest failure not because I failed at making a late night infomercial business work, but it caused me to give up on my entrepreneurial dreams.

Fast forward to today and I am back on the entrepreneurial path and taking the right actions to make the dreams work. I got my mind right, built sustainable health and financial habits, and I'm following the guidance of people that are way smarter and more experienced than I am. It's working and will continue to work. Because I am going to continue to work at it until it does.

 

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[WealthyMarketer]

I spent $7,000 on a “Turn-Key Business”. The vendor was selling pre-built cash-flowing affiliate sites, and I bought 6 of them for a little more than $1,000 each. These 6 sites were pulling in $500-$1,000 a month each in gross revenue. The sites contained GoDaddy banner ads keyed to my affiliate link, and every time someone signed up for hosting through GoDaddy after clicking the banner, I was paid $100. The catch was I had to buy ‘marketing’ and ‘site maintenance’ from the vendor, and the vendor charged $250 a month in marketing per site. But, they were so good at ‘marketing’ that they could guarantee me at least 5 sales per site. Pretty good deal though, right? I mean, $7,000 for a golden goose that lays $1,500 a month with no effort on my part is pretty rad. A few more of these geese, and I won’t have to worry about money, well, ever.


Things were going great for about three months. Then, one lovely afternoon, I received a black slip from the affiliate network the vendor was using. They terminated my account because I was violating their terms of service. Not only that, they also withheld two months’ worth of payments.


Whoops.


It turns out that the vendor wasn’t doing any marketing for me at all. Instead, they used my affiliate link to build sites for their other customers, a clear violation of the affiliate network’s terms of service.


So, I’m out:


$7,000 for the six sites; and

$6,000 for four months of their “marketing”

But I did pull in $3,000 in the first month, so I only lost $10,000 on this particular ‘venture’.


So, using MJ’s template:


ACT

I knew that I can’t just rely on my 9-5 for income for the rest of my life. I finished FLM back in November, and I’m still working through UNSCRIPTED . So, my business forays are all pre-MJ. But, I knew I had to do something. So, I googled “how to make additional money”, stumbled upon Warrior, and “took action”. I knew I didn’t have a lot of extra time (being married and a dad and all), so I “knew” that paying someone to build a business and make money for me would be the best way for me to go. So I blew my wad on WSOs that had “good reviews”.


ASSESS

I’ve blown $40,000 on “Turnkey Businesses” and most of them were complete flops. I’ve bought into Forex and Crypto trading bots and systems, eBay-Amazon arbitraging bots, Amazon Affiliate sites, you name it. Only one system is making money for me right now. It barely makes me enough money to pay for a cup of coffee, and the sites are not even in compliance with the affiliate network’s TOS, so I’m just waiting for the day I get black carded right now.


Verdict: Buying a Turnkey Business does not work. They (most of them) do not attract value vouchers for me, but they do attract value vouchers for the vendors. If I want to attract value vouchers, I need to create or produce and sell the Turnkey Businesses, not buy them from others.


ADJUST


I’m reading, re-reading, and re-reading UNSCIRPTED. I’ve turned UNSCRIPTED into a $20,000 coaching program for myself by:


1 – Buying the physical, pdf, Kobo, and audio book version; and

2 – Spending 1-2 days for the shorter chapters and 1 week for the longer chapters just reading and listening to each chapter over and over again


Once I’m finally done the book, I’ve committed to taking action and starting businesses correctly. I have already and will continue to “do what I hate but what must be done”. I will focus on producing actual value rather than just chasing money. And then, I'll have a better answer for this question because I'll have dialed a ton of white and orange gumballs by that time.


I’ve also done some of the homework in UNSCRIPTED . I’ve done the smile challenge (which was hard for me because I had to use the process and Kaizen principle just to push myself to make eye contact with strangers in the first place), and I’m currently in the process of fixing a broken iPhone I bought off of Kijiji (a skill that I’m in the middle of acquiring that I never had before).


BTW – I don’t know how much of the book I’m allowed to reveal here, but it’s a painful read for me. I violated almost every rule and crashed into every warning signpost MJ discusses. I wish I read it before blowing that much money on “Turnkey Businesses”. But, at the same time, I now know why they didn’t work out, I now understand why the vendors are doing well and making bank but the broke people such as myself are not, and I’m glad I lost that much money and failed that hard.

 

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[minivanman]

What's hard about a web agency?

-Make a website
-Post ads on craigslist in major metro areas
-Post simple youtube videos for businessnes "how to grow your dildo business" and use some SEO hacks to get it ranking quickly.

I did it and made a grand from a 2-hr conversation. No web design work. Just "consulting" lol. Should take you no more time. It's easy bro just stop doing it the inefficient way.

"free portfolio work"? lmao just find a good site and say you built it. 0.1% of people will follow up and check. After your first customer just change it.

It's easy to build a dildo business, just rub it for a few minutes

Well, there is one of my failed attempts at being a comedian. No money made there.

My latest failed business just came to a quick end today. As I stated in another post I had made a deal to go in to the mattress business. I had even seen the mattresses in their plastic that made them look new and I was SOLD because I've been wanting in the mattress business and the price was GREAT for name brands! I was all excited and was there when the shipment came and even helped with a few.... those damn things are HEAVY!! Then I noticed..... wait a damn minute..... are these new? Come to find out, the reason for the great prices was that they were I guess 'technically' new but not really 'new' as one would expect. They were returns within 30 days and floor displays. So I said, "Hell no! Load 'em back up and take them back". The seller understood and 'said' he was sorry for not explaining it better. Uhuh.... riiiight. So, there is my latest venture down the drain. On the bright side, it only cost me $50 for the labor of unloading and then loading them back on the truck.

 

[Johnny boy]

My guitar teaching business is slowly failing over the last two years after I let it die.

I launched an online teaching membership website over the last two weeks. I had a high quality list of 2000 guitar players that liked my online articles and a free eBook they got. They liked the course outlines... but $29/mo was too expensive. One person signed up, and I refunded him and cancelled the launch today.

I launched a heavy metal album two years ago. Got great reviews... and really struggling to make any sales on that. Had a sales funnel running and came close to making it break even but couldn't get to that point.

I know that I can:

• write great music
• play to a very high level
• teach people very well - you can give me the most musically retarded person ever and if they want to learn guitar I will get them playing, writing and improvising.

But I'm struggling to find the right combination that works from a business perspective and also works for me.

ACT: I'm trying new things and trying to figure out something that sticks and that I can stick to long term without feeling like my soul is being destroyed piece by piece. I'm growing a more engaged social media following of people who really like watching me improvise and my music.

ASSESS: In person 1-2-1 lesson and groups lessons don't work for me (although people will pay astonishing amounts). Selling lessons online is incredibly difficult from the sheer competition and amount of free stuff (the free stuff actually holds people back) - at least, from what I've tried.

ADJUST: Trying some B2B ideas with music (writing an album of instrumental music they can use as part of an opt-in campaign), posting classical style compositions with a tab that people can download for $3 (I have successfully sold some tabs for pieces), will try a subscription DVD and book program for guitar method (partner with a comic book that has distribution, give away the first one for free), a fan membership site, putting courses for sale on my website where people pay per course. I'm also looking to see if I can find people who will pay to have a piece of music written for them (I thought it could make a fancy gift maybe)

I think my audience is too small to monetise from a sponsorship perspective but it's also something that I'm going to look into.


Something needs to work and soon, because at this right I'll be bankrupt and moving back in with my parents.

Try this:

Make as many videos as possible of "how to play ___ by ____" and make as many as you can. Use blackhat SEO tricks from blackhatworld about how to get videos ranking quickly on youtube.

Raise your prices and become an expert offering $300 lessons.

If you need some attention just go run the field at a pro baseball game with a big sign that says "guitar lessons $300 call 555-5555", go viral and then sign up some people. You'll pay $1,000 and a night in jail. Get a friend to film it, watermark it heavily and give it to big instagram accounts and as a condition they have to post your phone number to call for lessons. I bet it would work.

Anything is better than quitting and being a loser forever until you die.

 

[handog]

Oh I've got a good one.

About 10 years ago I was huge lurker on the warrior forum (had I known about TMF !). I bought all kinds of ebooks and was learning SEO from Alex Becker's Sourcewave. I was learning about Clickbank and affiliate marketing too. I was enrolled with Niche Profit Classroom and was learning about email marketing. I tried to combine the concept of a niche site blog (I picked golden retrievers) with an online directory. I thought that I could get relevant businesses listed in the directory and as a double whammy I could get visitors to sign up for the email autoresponse series, and sell all kinds of affiliate products. I remember thinking that once I had all these visitors I would incorporate adsense and make money from people clicking ads. With all these angles - what's to lose, right?!

Action

I spent a ton of time and money learning and building a site that was functional (I used phpmydirectory) for a while but never had a chance for any kind of market feedback because I didn't get the ball rolling with SEO or paid traffic, and didn't take any action to cold call on anyone for a directory listing.

I bought and edited all kinds of images from istock. I bought copies of adobe and went down the graphic design rabbit hole. Unfortunately I got burned out looking at the computer screen all day and night and over the weekends. I found out later that my energy levels were down because I wasn't sleeping right.

So I didn't even get to the Assessment and Adjustment steps, because I flat out dropped the whole thing.

Today, it's as if I did a complete turnaround with my energy. I pretty much eat unprocessed foods and workout 4x a week and sleep very well with a CPAP machine in place.

I laughed when I just looked up my old site and thought how my approach would be so different now.

Golden Retriever Puppies Information, And More... - Golden Retriever Puppies Classifieds

 

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[rynor]

Failure: Built an eCommerce company selling makeup (my gf and I were partners, which was a mistake in itself) and tech accessories (wtf?).

ACT: I know plenty about technology and web design, she knows makeup and advertising. Let's collaborate, make something, and iterate as we go along.

ASSESS: We don't know anything about what it takes to find a suitable product/niche. Having two niches simultaneously is a terrible idea. We're spending a bunch of Ad money that we don't have. We work well in business together... to a point.

ADJUST: Never open an eCommerce business unless you have at least a semblance of a plan. Find one niche that isn't too saturated, and stick with it. Figure out the logistics and execute if the numbers make sense. Don't open a business with your significant other unless you're ready for more tension in a relationship OR if you guys actually work well together. Lol.

 

[InfinityStones]

As a lawyer by trade, I started a consulting business where sold mediation sessions to businesses to ease their employee disputes.

I closed the business last week because its not scalable. I was the only cog in the wheel. I learnt that from MJ's book.

do own and control 3 toy stores though - which run independently from me and are based in 3 different cities. So I am focusing on CENTS now.

 

[GuestUser4aMPs1]

What is your worst entrepreneurial failure... please, let's hear the details!

Trying to become a professional musician and record label owner. 6 years.

Good Christ, this was the hugest time sink of my life.

Yeah it was fun, but any other use of my time would've been better. Still cringe at how delusional I was to believe that it was possible to 'make it' by simply existing, irrespective of market realities.

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

Yeah it was fun, but any other use of my time would've been better. Still cringe at how delusional I was to believe that it was possible to 'make it' by simply existing, irrespective of market realities.

Keep aiming for your dreams man - just note that it's easier to go for them if you have the time, and money to afford all the equipment and help that you need to get there.

One of my friends from high school always wanted to be a movie director. He went to college for film. Made one thesis film. Now he's 27 and hasn't made anything since. His biggest limiting factor isn't talent, but having the time and money to afford good equipment and people to work on his desired projects.

With your ambition, consider re-shifting your business a tiny bit to service the clients that can eventually lead back into your originally desired path.

 

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[Charnell]

5 years ago I found self-publishing and started out writing my own books, then outsourcing after stumbling onto a few scumbag gurus. Things were going well, I had a few freelancers working with me and I was making around 10x ROI. Most people would go all in and keep it up.

I thought I cracked the code to passive income and "made it" so I stopped publishing. $4k/month turned to $3.2k turned to $2.8k turned to (nowadays) $200/month. Additionally, this was started around the same time @MTF started his progress thread. If you're an INSIDERS, check out how he's doing.

Quite dumb of me.

 

[Ecom man]

Ok so there have been many small failures along the way but this would be one of the earlier ones that really hurt at the time.

I was browsing Craigslist business and came across what seemed like an amazing deal. Someone was selling their inventory from the business they were closing. I had only been selling online for a year or two and thought this was a great opportunity... it was not lol. I drove an hour and spent a few hours looking over the inventory. My wife and I talked about it and decided to go for it. If I remember correctly the inventory was $3500 which was a huge amount of money to us at the time.

Of the $3,500 worth of items we ended up selling 1 item on eBay... the rest day in our garage for 3 years until we finally donated it all.

Act
We continued selling online.

Assess:
Buying a bunch of one off items that needed listed individually was a huge waste of time.

Adjust:
Don’t buy items that you can’t list in bulk!!!

 

[EPerceptions]

I have more stories than I care to admit, but ~15 years ago I tried to start a book review business.

The idea was to provide book reviews for free, and charge a fee for an expedited review and distribution. The fee was something like $100 or $200, can't remember exactly, but it filled a need in the market at the time. Instead of waiting 6 weeks (sometimes months) for exposure, authors could speed up the process.

I had no clue how many bad books were desperately seeking attention I was inundated with some of the worst stuff I'd never even thought could exist. There were a few gems hidden here and there, but I was so overwhelmed with the junk that I couldn't keep up.

If I'd had a clue, I could have sent these books out to "wannabe" writers/reviewers as a free gift in exchange for them writing the reviews, but I didn't know any better back then.

I think I ended up selling the site. I still got random free books in the mail a good 5 years later.

 

[astr0]

How I erased a year of my life? Ok, here it goes.
Act
I and my friend who owned a 3d art company wanted to do some mobile game startup in 2012. I quit my 9-5, done a lot of fast prototyping and we settled on a game. Build it in less than 2 months, only some polishing left. But then we decided that it was too simple and went back to prototyping for a few more weeks. Finally, an MMO idea was born. I was coding it for more than 9 months, almost done, but there was no art except for some sketches and UI layouts.
Access
My friend was busy selling his company, and (probably?) didn't have enough money to pay for the art. I've estimated that it would take ~120k for the art and another ~250k+ for the ads to have a smooth start which is critical for the MMO. It was more than a lot of money for me back then. We knew some people from the industry that "promised" some future support when we had nothing but the idea, but they wanted at least some part of the game completed (full 20% playable, not 80% coding, 1% art).
Adjust
The project just died. I was left with few megabytes of useless code and a bunch of epic battle-cats sketches.

Lessons learned:

• Don't try to jump too high over your head. Now, I would start a similar project only if I had $2m+ in a bank account and a least $300k FU money pot.
• Don't rely too much on your partner(s), always have a backup plan.
• Getting fast feedback is crucial.
• Fast time to market is always preferable.
• Follow your passion, right? NO!

 

[Deleted50669]

ACT: I tried to build a leadership training app on WordPress... LOL. I spent weeks writing the content, drafting sequences for modules, and writing questions. That was all good fun, until I realized I'd have to pay for an expensive WP plugin that couldn't do half of the features I wanted to implement. Once I got passed that hurdle, I found out most leaders want classroom-based leadership training.

ASSESS: Well, it was evident that I went for a walk down dumbass lane. I didn't do any initial market research, nor did I select suitable technologies for what I assumed would be a profitable opportunity. So two lessons; validate your idea before committing to development & learn the correct tools for the job.

ADJUST: Since late October I have taught myself javascript on a painfully deep level and am about 60% done with an app that has market validation. I am excited to get the first round of user tests in later next month.

- Cheers

 

[Ernman]

My worst failure to date:

I started an eco-friendly car service in NE Florida. I had lived on Cape Cod for several years and used a company called Green Shuttle. All their cars were hybrids or electrics. Their drivers and customer service were fantastic - still are. I had moved to Florida to help start up a small logistics company and the eco-friendly car service seemed like a reasonable expansion. Fortunately for my business partner I kept it separate from the logistics company. I had several meetings with the Green Shuttle owner on Cape Cod and we had a great plan for customer sharing, connected websites, etc. I was concerned about Uber, but was reassured by the county licensing folks they had no intention of allowing Uber to start up there. Within one year Uber was eating everyone's lunch. Established car services had to shut down. My guppy of a startup was swallowed by the Uber shark - and they didn't even know I existed. I also failed miserably at understanding the very strong "conservative" leanings of this region. Let's just say, GREEN is about as far away from RED as one can get around here. Not making excuses - these were all my failings. But damn I learned a lot.
ACT: Provide an environmentally friendly alternative to taxi that provides superior service and up front pricing.
ASSESS: Yes, Uber is coming to this county and no the politicians cannot/will not stop them. Sometimes politics does matter in business.
ADJUST: Learn to make social changes an enabler to success, NOT a potent competitor. That and don't trust politicians

 

[SK1]

I stumbled into an ebay business. Realised that I could make +300% markup buying used clothes from charity stores and selling on ebay. Then started ebuying and selling on ebay to build up more stock. Income was pretty good for a part time second job and I enjoyed the "treasure hunting".
Then about 2 years ago ebay started changing fees and selling expectations and sales completely slowed down. The final nail was when looking at the profits and assessing the hours put in - not good.
My method was to add lots of high quality photos and details to help drive sales - which was good, but when I realised that each item took 30 mins to fully list, plus sorting postage, drop offs, returns and items that did not sell - the hourly rate was so poor.
Im now stuck with about £4000 worth of stock but have not desire or motivation to list it all.
Maybe I will gift it back to the charities...

I used to call this business "bottom feeding", I now call it sidewalk!

 

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[astr0]

Why is the development costing more and more money, leaving me with no usable product all the time?
For example: I kept paying more and more for the GPS-function.
"Yeah, we found trouble with coding, we need more time, and therefor more money"

If you have a rather small project (up to ~600 hours of development) it may be beneficial to negotiate a fixed price for the whole project with the developers.
Pros: you know how much you would pay and what you would get for the money, no surprises.
Cons: specifications should be pretty clear at the beginning and it requires extra estimation step from the developers which you would also pay for (either directly invoiced or hidden somewhere in other tasks).

That way, if they're good, they should not ask for extra money even if they f*cked up the estimate or had some unseen issues along the way. Of course, if you want some significant amount of extra functionality, that is paid extra and negotiated separately (for example not only showing user GPS locations on the map as was discussed during the estimate but also some alerts if users leave an area quicker or stay for too long). Sure, you still have to give them feedback and control the progress. Dedicated developers (paid per time) are great for big projects and support, usually with some tech-savvy people on the client side.

Those estimates are pretty fine for both sides, but surprises do happen. Remembering once we charged for 200+ hours but actually done it in like 60 (realized that we could build a small framework since a lot of stuff on that project was pretty repetitive), another time charged for ~120, but put like 180 (underestimated the complexity of client's legacy system), still delivered on time. Both clients were happy and returned with more work.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

C'mon ya'll, step forward! I know there's a ton of failure on this board!

Remember this poll?

NOTABLE! - How many Business Failures did you have before success?

Hundreds of failures reported!

Let's hear it!

 

[robotunicr0n]

500 dates? I'm wondering how many years you committed to this...
-
My failure was a small dropshipping business I started on Amazon. I started out researching products on Amazon, found a few I liked that met specific ranking criteria, and eventually settled on infuser water bottles. Got a brand designed, and a bunch of other custodial tasks, and then found a factory in China that would make and brand the bottles. Thankfully I only ordered about 8 large boxes worth for the first shipment. Had no where to store them so they stayed outside under the carport for at least a month while I was setting up FBA. I got it all set up, fees paid and product split between Amazon's warehouses and kept a box for myself to do product images among other things. While I was doing all of this though, the category I had selected started filling up with more privately branded options, killing the rankings I had analyzed before I started the whole process. Mixture of that and depression I ended up not doing the images, not posting the description on the product page, or doing any ad time online to get buyers. When Amazon introduced liquidation, I caught them during a special and got a few hundred bucks to take all of the bottle stock off of my hands. I had put in $5000 and got maybe 300 back. I still have the box of bottles, unopened actually even after like... 6 years. I partly keep it to remind me of the failure, but I also didn't want to just throw them away, so trying to figure out if I can donate them at work or to friends or family or something.

 

[Deleted50669]

What is the best plan to validate your ide before executing

There's many approaches to this, and the best plan is one that results in a verbal sale (someone explicitly states "I will buy this product or service." or confirms intent to purchase), or even better, an actual sale (someone purchased this product or service from you). Getting multiple verbal or actual sales allows the identification of customer similarities; demographics like age, gender, location, occupation, motivation, etc etc. This is called customer segmentation.

Now, the process of getting to a point where you can get this soft or hard proof of demand is often difficult. Whether you do a survey campaign, present a group of people with a working prototype, conduct focus groups, or some other method, getting that authentic feedback takes effort. Simply going out and asking "Hey, would you buy this product or service?" is insufficient. Even if someone says "yes", it is not a "yes" that came from a realistic scenario where the individual is exposed to the purchase opportunity or is experiencing the product / service. This is essentially what a survey does, though it usually allows for more targeted questions like "Do you experience this problem?" "How often do you experience this problem?" "How do you usually solve this problem?" "What do you pay to have this problem solved?" etc. etc.

This scratches the surface, and for in-depth insight on this topic I recommend MJ's book "Unscripted " and "Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank.

 

[BaraQueenbee]

HELL YESSS. Good topic:

Biggest failure
Trying to get an app in the air without any experience in app-building industry nor having the right people on my side to inform me (due to me not asking or looking for those).
My app was a female-safety app with 3 modes.

ACT
Wow, women under the target demographic need more safety and others wont hand it to them so we need to "help" our/themselves

Access
Why is the development costing more and more money, leaving me with no usable product all the time?
For example: I kept paying more and more for the GPS-function.
"Yeah, we found trouble with coding, we need more time, and therefor more money"

Adjust
Hire a mediator who understands the programming process and has a clear view of how long things can take realistically.
Therefor can overview the back-end of the process and "manage" it's developing, while I can focus on the other aspects of the company.

 

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[rpeck90]

I tried starting a natural cosmetics store (Gilt Groupe for daily/weekly sales of natural beauty products).

The idea was great -- collate rare natural cosmetics into bundles you could buy at discount prices. The bundles would cycle either daily or weekly, allowing for a constant flow of offers for people to look at.

Act
Knew nothing, and didn't care for, cosmetics. Had an event in a local beauty spa/hotel where no one turned up, the staff ended up coming around and trying out the products we bought.

Assess
The products were good - Suki, Lily Lolo, Dr Bragi and Lavera, Zoya, Fushi oils. The natural angle would have been great (TONS of middle class women will spend more on natural cosmetic products -- it's the same vein as the recent vegan trend), but I wasn't the right person to do it. I felt out of place and was too young to bring in someone else. Made a few sales but nothing serious.

Adjust
After the event, I immediately put all the products on eBay and focused on learning about web software (something I'd been involved with since I was 13). I needed something that I could use to pay the bills; I wasn't a beautician and would need something more substantive before trying that again.

 

[redshift]

Loads of "failures" - all which stemmed from giving up because of a lack of confidence and not having clear goals or direction.

Went to college to study computer science, specialized in video games, built loads of game prototypes in the 3 years, some good, some not so good, but in the end, never shipped or finished a single one. Lacked the courage to go at it myself and got seduced by a shiny slowlane job despite knowing in my heart I wanted to continue working on my own projects.

After getting a few paychecks, got super interested in the stock market, started trading stocks in my free time, made a few thousand in a couple of months, then lost everything I had made within a short time. Freaked out, read a load of books on the topic. Decided to build an algorithmic trading system to make better decisions, spent almost a year on it and enjoyed it so much I wanted to go full time trading stocks. It worked *great* in backtesting, but then tried it with live data and it would always lose money. Got discouraged, figured I had no business trading stocks and should stick to what I studied in college! decided to get realistic, started buying stocks for the long run instead, and eventually read some b.s personal finance books and switched to index funds (LOL). Meanwhile got a promotion at work, felt I needed to step up my game, focused all my time and energy on the job and improving my intrinsic value through self study instead. Never touched the trading system again (though I did plan to return to it *someday*). On the bright side, some tech stocks I had bought back then are now at a 15-20x multiple, if I only I had put some semi-decent money in back then, sigh

Then few years later, had a FTE event at work caused by too much overtime, a lack of promotions and some health issues. Left my job, spent over a year working on a 3d game engine, never really had a clear goal in mind and didn't know what I was planning to do with it, just didn't want to work a job anymore and enjoyed doing this. Only focused on the development aspect, built some nice demos and a lot of cool tech, most of which served no real purpose at the time. I didn't have a clue about the business side at the time. Plan was to eventually make a game with the engine and ship that, but execution was lukewarm and I still lacked the confidence to go through with it. Meanwhile, started running low on funds (was careless with money), moved back with the parents, got depressed, wen't out and found another job again, albeit this time at a much more prestigious company with nearly double my previous salary. Decided to put my project on hold and just "enjoy" life for a bit.

One year in I lost enthusiasm for the job again and got frustrated with work and life and not having the freedom to do what I want. Also found out I was making less than my peers (some less experienced than me). Felt like I was wasting my life. Thought about going back into trading stocks since I was making more money now, stumbled across TMF while browsing through my kindle (think I had bought it a few months back as a daily deal on amazon, best dollar I ever spent haha).

Finished the book. Everything became clear then! It was like neo in the "I know kung fu" scene.

Since then, brainstormed a few ideas and finally created a vision for a mobile app I have long had an idea for and meets the CENTS framework. Re-purposed a lot of the code I had written for the game engine into building this app. Have a focused business strategy now on how to monetize it from day 1 when I launch it. Only focusing on developing the features and backend which will directly have an impact on the user experience, not wasting any time on fluff. Planning to finish most of the development while I'm still working a job (and saving most of my paycheck) then go full time sometime next year on the execution while working on the tech aspects as necessary on the side.

I have full confidence now that I will be able to turn this into a success! If it does turn out to be a failure, I know I will learn a lot in the process (I already am) and at least I would have put something out there and will have all the tools and resources needed to be able to bounce back and act,assess,adjust as needed

 

[bingnanxu]

Hello, So here is one of my many failure you can learn from

just couple month ago, I've decided to jump in to the real estate wholesaling business.

Why? Because making 5k - 20k on a deal by just fliping contract is just too EZ(well, i thought...)

So, watch loads of Youtube video, seeing success video after success video, listening to podcast everywhere, and will work hard getting my first deal, as the guru said, the first deal is the hardest, is like a snowball effect.

I learned everything to out compete my competition, i learned every strategy, brought courses for $1200(refunded already) which the information is already free on YouTube.

I cold called, list after list, hundred after hundred of cold call, direct mail and trying everything (spend loads of cash on RVM and Skiptracing).

Some night i even want to wake up at 5 am to cold call people in the East Coast to find some deals.(I lived in the West Coast)

then i got leads coming in, well, people dont want to sell their house below market value, dont want to do seller financing or lease option, i kept trying to close the deal by saying "what if you can't sell?"

so eventually they give up on me, stoped trusting me, since they think i am trying to low ball them on their house, which i did NOT, sometime i offer the BEST to cash out their house with barely any profit. They still do not want to believe me.

Again and Again i failed, i watch success video after video, trying the EXACT SAME STRATEGY AGAIN AND AGAIN!!!

And busting my head off, kept trying, kept pushing.

I did not know at that time, the people who did it, sharing out their success, and strategy. is BEHIND the scene SELLING Something, and After done my research, THEY MAKE MORE SELLING THE COURSE THEN THEY DO WHOLESALING!!!

A month goes BY... Nothin

Two Month go By... Nothin

Four Month go By... Nothin

In Those Four MONTH. I TRIED Almost anything that is even possible with Real Estate Wholesaling,
Seller Financing, lease option, cash offer, sandwich lease option, down payment arbitrage, ALMOST EVERYTHING From Cold Calling to writing HAND WRITE LETTER. And still NOTING

While on the side my etsy shop, which runs automatically earns more without even TOUCHing it....

Have i thought of giving up?

Yes.. So many time... but i dont want to be a loser, so i tried again and again

In the End,

Just like Albert Eienstain Said:
"
the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results
"

So i picked up a book by MJ DeMarco, the millionaire fastlane , thank god he wrote the book, i really sincerely want to thank him, regarding the CENTS framework, the real estate wholesaling VIOLATED ALL 5 RULES

I Learned so many, which one of them is:::

In the end, you know who wins? Not the people that dig gold, but those who sell shovels and food...

Out of that couple winner that is on youtube, you will never hear that there are thousands that have failed, have been buried under the battle ground and unheard,

So listen to the failures,

As it block out the noise of success,

give you the true essence of what it takes, to become extraordinary.

Thanks @MJ DeMarco And Everyone on the forum

-Peace

 

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