(unless you read this post)
Five common business-ending mistakes entrepreneurs make when launching their digital product venture
Here’s a quick rundown of these mistakes, and how you can prevent them.
1. Lack of Self-Management
Self-management is very different from time management, so don’t confuse the two (though they are related).
If you’ve had a job, any job, someone else has managed you. To a certain degree, you were told what the job requirements were, what to do, when to do it, etc… There were systems in place for you to follow, and someone who held you accountable for sticking to those systems.
As an entrepreneur, you have to create the systems AND hold yourself accountable to those systems. If you decide to sleep in tomorrow, there’s no boss to hold you accountable, there are no immediate negative consequences. YOU have to be your own boss, and hold yourself accountable to those systems you have created to make your business successful.
The Solution: Practice Split Personalities
Deliberately adopt two distinct personas, a CEO persona and a worker persona. Create time for your CEO self to make policy and steer the business. And create time for you to go into worker mode to implement the policies your CEO has created.
2. Lack of an MVP
No, not a most valuable player, but a Minimal Viable Product.
This is probably one of the most common mistakes digital entrepreneurs make. You need to start with the absolute minimum product that produces value for your users.
Your vision probably includes lots of bells, whistles, and magic. But magic takes time, and as a digital entrepreneur, you need to get a product to market as soon as possible. Go ahead and create your magic vision, but then identify which features are absolutely crucial to providing value and develop your initial product around those features.
Having an MVP gives you the advantages of “failing fast.” If you create the perfect digital product with all the bells and whistles, you’ll drop a lot of time and money into the process. And if that product isn’t a hit, you’ll eat all that investment.
An MVP gives you the ability to test what your users need and want, and allows you to quickly pivot and iterate (or even get out) as needed. Having an MVP gives you agility, and that’s crucial!
You can (and should) enhance and grow your digital product later, if the concept is successful.
3. Delaying the launch of the business
There are a lot of reasons digital entrepreneurs fail to launch.
- Lack of MVP (I shall not launch until my product is complete and perfect). See #2.
- Fear of failure. Launching a digital product is a risky venture. YOU think it’s a great idea, but will customers agree with you? Somewhere, deep inside, a tiny voice will be telling you that if you never launch, you’ll never fail.
Of course, the opposite is true. If you don’t launch, if you delay launch, you’ve already failed. So launch as soon as possible. Better to launch six businesses in six months and find the right business than to try to launch a home run and fail.
Creating a successful digital product is a process. Start the process, and then practice agility!
4. Overspending
It’s easy to try to appear successful from the start. To go get that office, the company car, the expense account, etc. This is extremely common in the tech world, where we may feel certain things are expected.
Run all your expense through the following filter:
“Will this directly increase sales?”
It’s easy to deceive yourself, so you need to be brutally honest as you apply the filter. Would a flashy company car impact my sales? Sure…I’ll look successful, and people are more likely to do business with a successful guy, so yes, yes I do need that 718 Cayman. Yes, I do.
But will having that flashy ride directly impact sales. No. So it’s a poor investment. Think minimal viable budget when start out.
5. Not focusing on sales
To be successful, your digital product must be sustainable.
To be sustainable, it must make money. It must make enough money to cover expenses, to pay you, to have the resources to grow.
To make money, it must sell. And for it to sell, you have to sell it.
Many digital product entrepreneurs feel like their product is so good it will sell itself. And it might be that good. But nobody can pay for it if they cannot find it. So you need to be constantly thinking of ways to get the product in front of the right people so they can enjoy your amazing product.
Put sales at the forefront of your priorities — without it, your product, and your business is dead.
