It's better to fail quickly
If you love sports almost as much as I do, you'd understand how big the betting industry is.
I know some people choose not to indulge because of self-control problems and financial stress.
It's fun for me, so some weekends I throw a couple coins on some of my favourite teams hoping for the best (maybe the little win will fund my pizza order for the weekend lol)
People love to equate starting a business to placing a bet on something and hoping it succeeds.
It's a lot more than that. And this is how I see them differently.
Whenever I decide to build a parlay on any given game, my odds will always reset on each hand.
Every time you roll a die, your odds reset after every single play.
Your past failures mean nothing.
What I love about business is, every failure improves your odds.
Every single time something goes wrong, you have the chance to rectify and do better on the next try.
But things will only get better the second time around when you know what mistake you're looking out for.
Most businesses fail the first time, but so many of them succeed after trying again.
The statistics show that you are more likely to succeed on the second try than on the first. That's insane, however you look at it.
Why ideas flop
There is a unique kind of pain I like to call the curse of creativity.
This specific kind of pain only resides in the hearts of people who dream of launching their own ideas to the world.
I spoke with my friend Seli a couple of months ago, and I remember how we lamented about the fact that, as creative people.
We have this special kind of fear that comes from the uncertainty that anyone will want our stuff.
Our ideas, our projects, our work.
We all have this underlying fear that it might not be received by anyone, let alone be paid for.
And so instead of having the fearless and ruthless attitude that most analytical people have, we do one of two things.
We hoard our ideas and our thinking for months, sometimes years! We paralyze ourselves and let the ideas die over time. After all, nobody even knows it was in my head.
We get some courage and launch it straight. We do all the creative work. Come up with a fancy name and beautiful logo for this thing, and just launch it. After all, you only live once. Right?
Sharing your work can be a beautiful thing and I highly encourage it.
But when it's an idea for a product or service, you need more than courage.
You need demand.
Only make products people want
There are two main reasons brand launches fail.
Nobody wants it
Nobody gets what they want
The first one is my priority today.
Daniel Priestley drilled this into my head early last year.
Never launch anything till you have validated the demand for it.
And no this has nothing to do with your own willingness to build it.
You need to have spoken to a substantial amount of people who have all shown an interest in buying this thing from you.
I call this The Truth!
That's how you know for sure that the launch will be a success - people want what you have.
And the beautiful part about this is you can test ideas out every single day without spending too much money and even without having the finished product!
In fact, it's recommended you do this first to prevent wasting time on projects that nobody wants or knows about.
Last year, I launched Grow Your Business with Content during the summer and had an initial cap of 50 digital copies.
It was a huge success for me at the time and even still trickles in some sales till this day.
And I sold my first 10 copies without even making the thing yet.
It wasn't unethical or sneaky, either.
People are willing to pay to have their problems taken away.
You just have to show that you've got what it takes to solve that problem.
I don't even want to talk about the tactic of pre-sales. I want to introduce the concept of waitlists.
As soon as you have an idea for anything - make a waitlist.
Something that people can look at and sign up to that will register their interest in this product.
It sounds easy on paper, but you'll be shocked to see how many people actually use this before launching their products.
You use waitlists to gauge the interest in your product or service before you even give it much thought.
I have used waitlist ever since Daniel mentioned this, and it has changed the way I view product and business launches.
What if nobody joins
If nobody signs up, you've got your answer.
If nobody signs up on your waitlist after weeks of campaigning and outreach, you've got your answer.
Rather than spending all your time to build the product, investing your time, money and effort into this. Now you know that you need to work on the idea to come up with a much better one.
You know this idea is not there yet.
If you have unlimited funds and don't mind burning your cash to find success, be my guest. But for those who don't want to spend energy on things that don't matter and won't move you forward. Start testing and getting The Truth long before launch day.
I like to think of myself as an ever flowing stream of ideas.
No one idea is special. I'm the special one. You're the special one.
Your ideas are just different ways you show that.
Every idea shared is one closer to the idea that will solve a ton of problems.
And the only way to cycle through all the bad ones to get the good ones is to share way before you build.
Next week, I'll share another mistake people make leading up to launches.
Till next time.
PS: If you liked this, share it on your IG stories or hit "reply" and send me a question or follow up. I love our little email conversations.