June 8, 2016 at 14:54"We do not care about your business cards and stylish sites ..." - Actions that do not affect the money at the box office
Beautiful business cards, branded envelopes, colorful booklets and other actions that take time and do not affect the money at the box office. Typical startup mistakes from idea to first sales. How not to confuse important actions and secondary ones?
Looking at other projects and analyzing my own, I wanted to put together all the typical thoughts and mistakes of people who had a “brilliant” idea for business. No matter in which industry, every startup goes through the same development points. The main problem is to be able to distinguish important actions from secondary ones. You can sit in the office for days, raise dust in the air, solving unnecessary tasks, or you can make a weekly result in 1 day.
So, these are the very thoughts and actions that seem so important, but which mean so little in reality:
Remember the feeling when a million-dollar business idea came to mind? At the start, our eyes always burn, we are full of energy of anticipation, and we are already mentally spending future money. It is unclear how the whole world lives without it. After all, this is just an unrealistic cool idea! Only quietly, you can’t blab, suddenly someone will hear and steal my diamond!
Only then you begin to understand that an idea is only 2% of success, and 98% depends on implementation. How many were social. networks and instagrams that never took place. Most likely, you are not the first and there is already something similar, or this is not yet, because no one needs it.
Tip: Do not keep the idea in yourself, it costs nothing. On the contrary, form a powerful proposal and present your project to friends and acquaintances. Get feedback as quickly as possible, perhaps already at this stage you will change your views and make adjustments.
The first thing we think about is the name and logo, because we do it once and forever! We begin to read books on the psychology of the influence of color: blue - the color of confidence, green - calm, red - attracts attention and is remembered. We make hundreds of options, discard the bad ones and draw options again, consult with friends and think for weeks what to choose!
Most of the projects or business plans that I see at various conferences (including IIDF) or which I send in PM are very raw, but everyone has a LOGO and sometimes a stupid slogan in the style: “Together for a brighter future” or “ The best tools for business. "
It becomes obvious: time and energy were spent in the wrong place.
For example, our project “Perezvoni” worked for the first year without a logo at all and we didn’t take a steam bath because it doesn’t affect the result. Our “logo” was the phrase “perezvoni.com”, written in the Roboto font. Only when the third version of the widget came out, we thought about the design, aesthetics and logo.
Tip: Forget about the logo at the start of your journey, do not waste time. Come up with a simple name that talks about the project and let your logo = name.
Life hack for promotion: For a long time I was promoting billboards in Voronezh and registered in parallel with the main site a Russian-speaking domain in zone.rf, where domain name = key request. Yandex and Google are pushing such sites faster and in bold.
As you can see, Yandex highlights the domain in bold, as it contains a key request.
Before you start selling, we need a cool site! We will find professionals and will coordinate the layout for 1-2 months.
So do desperate guys who have not yet been burned. Instead of making your own short landing page on the constructor in 3-4 hours and testing your idea for adequacy, we take risks and pour money into the air. No, a good, structured site with competent usability and design is needed. In general, quality business packaging is important, but at the stage when your business model is already run-in, or at least there are first payments.
Tip:First, we form a strong UTP (an offer that is foolish to refuse). We create a prototype on a piece of paper, write texts and think about the pictures. Then we make a landing on the designer (programming skills are not required) or we find a freelancer and for 5-10 thousand rubles. get the site. Be sure to make a prototype, a freelancer will not make up a selling structure for you.
Another very dubious occupation. A business plan is drawn up by a person with no experience in a new field, as a rule, it is never implemented as planned, there are always changes and miscalculations. The instruction tells us that a business cannot be without a business plan, how could it be otherwise !?
Yandex shows that about 26 thousand people want to find a “ready-made business plan”, that is, they think that there is a magic leaflet where everything is written, what needs to be done.
Just don’t take it too directly, you need to consider the economy in order to generally understand whether there will be profit under such conditions.
Tip: It is recommended that you draw up a business plan after the first battle, when you have made several sales and began to better understand the client and the market. Then it makes sense, starting from reality, to draw up a plan for further development.
All this is very cool and gives you a certain status, you have a fashionable business card, cool booklets, but you have not sold anything yet, but just get ready for it. At that moment, when you come across your project with reality, you will understand that the client does not care about your business cards and stylish sites. The main thing is your offer, and business cards, as usual, are lying on a shelf. Therefore, do not worry about it, make business cards, booklets, if you really want to, but do not spend a lot of time on it.
Six months ago, I had a cool idea (as it seemed to me then) how to increase customer loyalty and stand out from the rest. We ordered branded A4 envelopes with an individual design, made plastic “cumulative” cards, on which the names of customers were squeezed out, wrote a personal, thank you note for each on a piece of paper.
That's not all.
When I found out that Apple has a department that works on the smell of new products, I immediately decided that our company should also have its own smell, and we ordered a perfume that scented all the envelopes. The envelopes smelled of fresh lawn.
In general, we were very confused and spent a lot of energy, but in the end, so that the client said: “Well, it's cool.”
Tip:Most customers will not appreciate the time you spent on creating business cards, super-duper booklets and other tinsel. Do not attach great importance to them. Of course, if you work in a creative environment, then this is the place to be, but in another case, do it at least somehow. If your idea turns out to be working, then only redo them as you want.
As history shows, an office is an optional entry point. Recall Amazon, which began work in the garage in 1994 and sold its first book there.
Strange, but many want to immediately sit in the equipped office, hire employees and conquer the World. Maybe I think too shallowly, but what prevents me from starting to work at home, even if you two?
For example, our startup has evolved, the first 3 months we each worked in our own house, only after that we decided to rent an office. It was an area of only 8 square meters, without air conditioning and in the summer there was terrible heat. For 1.5 years, we changed 4 offices:
Tip: If you do not have a budget for the office, then start working at home with a laptop and phone. In most online projects, meeting a client is not necessary.
The desire to register a trademark again arises from the fact that we overestimate the value of our project.
We thought about TM at the moment when names that looked very similar to us began to appear on the market: call, call, call back, etc.
Note: Trademark registration lasts 1 year and costs about 60 thousand rubles. There is a big plus in that you can sue domains that violate your rights.
Thousands of startups are waiting for a magical moment when the investor makes them rich and they can make their project a reality. We also looked for investments at the beginning of the journey, I left applications for all funds, but received a refusal. Only six months later, when the project began to gain momentum, we received a letter from Rusbase 2 invitations to meet with investors, but refused all offers. I don’t know how right it is, but they decided to develop on their own.
Conclusion: Never ask for an investor, if your project is worthwhile, then most likely they will call you or write. In general, investment is not an option, try to develop organically.
Finally, a business plan has been drawn up, 2-month work on the site has ended, you have stylish business cards, a spacious office and a masterpiece logo, but there are no customers yet. The project enters the market, everything is beautiful, but it turns out to be useless to anyone. The project closes or completely changes the strategy and format of the product. At this moment, an understanding wakes up that it is necessary to distinguish important actions from secondary ones.
At the first stage, you need to quickly confront the product with reality, look at demand, make the first applications and communicate with a real customer by phone, and not with your friend over a glass of beer to discuss what prospects this project has. For this, you do not need start-up capital and months to prepare. Do not try to immediately bring out the perfect, finished product, even Microsoft is constantly updating bugs and releasing updates. It’s very easy to drown in unnecessary things that seem so important. I would like to do everything right away, but it doesn’t.
I hope these tips were helpful, or at least you enjoyed reading :)
Thank you!
Looking at other projects and analyzing my own, I wanted to put together all the typical thoughts and mistakes of people who had a “brilliant” idea for business. No matter in which industry, every startup goes through the same development points. The main problem is to be able to distinguish important actions from secondary ones. You can sit in the office for days, raise dust in the air, solving unnecessary tasks, or you can make a weekly result in 1 day.
So, these are the very thoughts and actions that seem so important, but which mean so little in reality:
1. I have a "brilliant" idea. The main thing is not to tell anyone about her, so as not to be stolen.
Remember the feeling when a million-dollar business idea came to mind? At the start, our eyes always burn, we are full of energy of anticipation, and we are already mentally spending future money. It is unclear how the whole world lives without it. After all, this is just an unrealistic cool idea! Only quietly, you can’t blab, suddenly someone will hear and steal my diamond!
Only then you begin to understand that an idea is only 2% of success, and 98% depends on implementation. How many were social. networks and instagrams that never took place. Most likely, you are not the first and there is already something similar, or this is not yet, because no one needs it.
Our cool idea is cool only in our head.
When we try to explain it to someone, we ourselves will be surprised what nonsense we carry:Tip: Do not keep the idea in yourself, it costs nothing. On the contrary, form a powerful proposal and present your project to friends and acquaintances. Get feedback as quickly as possible, perhaps already at this stage you will change your views and make adjustments.
2. Logo and name is the basis of success! It takes weeks to select colors, shape and style.
The first thing we think about is the name and logo, because we do it once and forever! We begin to read books on the psychology of the influence of color: blue - the color of confidence, green - calm, red - attracts attention and is remembered. We make hundreds of options, discard the bad ones and draw options again, consult with friends and think for weeks what to choose!
Most of the projects or business plans that I see at various conferences (including IIDF) or which I send in PM are very raw, but everyone has a LOGO and sometimes a stupid slogan in the style: “Together for a brighter future” or “ The best tools for business. "
It becomes obvious: time and energy were spent in the wrong place.
For example, our project “Perezvoni” worked for the first year without a logo at all and we didn’t take a steam bath because it doesn’t affect the result. Our “logo” was the phrase “perezvoni.com”, written in the Roboto font. Only when the third version of the widget came out, we thought about the design, aesthetics and logo.
Tip: Forget about the logo at the start of your journey, do not waste time. Come up with a simple name that talks about the project and let your logo = name.
Life hack for promotion: For a long time I was promoting billboards in Voronezh and registered in parallel with the main site a Russian-speaking domain in zone.rf, where domain name = key request. Yandex and Google are pushing such sites faster and in bold.
As you can see, Yandex highlights the domain in bold, as it contains a key request.
3. "We want a cool site with good design and animation right away."
Before you start selling, we need a cool site! We will find professionals and will coordinate the layout for 1-2 months.
So do desperate guys who have not yet been burned. Instead of making your own short landing page on the constructor in 3-4 hours and testing your idea for adequacy, we take risks and pour money into the air. No, a good, structured site with competent usability and design is needed. In general, quality business packaging is important, but at the stage when your business model is already run-in, or at least there are first payments.
Tip:First, we form a strong UTP (an offer that is foolish to refuse). We create a prototype on a piece of paper, write texts and think about the pictures. Then we make a landing on the designer (programming skills are not required) or we find a freelancer and for 5-10 thousand rubles. get the site. Be sure to make a prototype, a freelancer will not make up a selling structure for you.
4. We will draw up a business plan to understand what will be the profit in the first month of work.
Another very dubious occupation. A business plan is drawn up by a person with no experience in a new field, as a rule, it is never implemented as planned, there are always changes and miscalculations. The instruction tells us that a business cannot be without a business plan, how could it be otherwise !?
Yandex shows that about 26 thousand people want to find a “ready-made business plan”, that is, they think that there is a magic leaflet where everything is written, what needs to be done.
Just don’t take it too directly, you need to consider the economy in order to generally understand whether there will be profit under such conditions.
Tip: It is recommended that you draw up a business plan after the first battle, when you have made several sales and began to better understand the client and the market. Then it makes sense, starting from reality, to draw up a plan for further development.
5. Business cards, booklets, branded items and other tinsel.
All this is very cool and gives you a certain status, you have a fashionable business card, cool booklets, but you have not sold anything yet, but just get ready for it. At that moment, when you come across your project with reality, you will understand that the client does not care about your business cards and stylish sites. The main thing is your offer, and business cards, as usual, are lying on a shelf. Therefore, do not worry about it, make business cards, booklets, if you really want to, but do not spend a lot of time on it.
Six months ago, I had a cool idea (as it seemed to me then) how to increase customer loyalty and stand out from the rest. We ordered branded A4 envelopes with an individual design, made plastic “cumulative” cards, on which the names of customers were squeezed out, wrote a personal, thank you note for each on a piece of paper.
That's not all.
When I found out that Apple has a department that works on the smell of new products, I immediately decided that our company should also have its own smell, and we ordered a perfume that scented all the envelopes. The envelopes smelled of fresh lawn.
In general, we were very confused and spent a lot of energy, but in the end, so that the client said: “Well, it's cool.”
Tip:Most customers will not appreciate the time you spent on creating business cards, super-duper booklets and other tinsel. Do not attach great importance to them. Of course, if you work in a creative environment, then this is the place to be, but in another case, do it at least somehow. If your idea turns out to be working, then only redo them as you want.
6. We need an office to work.
As history shows, an office is an optional entry point. Recall Amazon, which began work in the garage in 1994 and sold its first book there.
Strange, but many want to immediately sit in the equipped office, hire employees and conquer the World. Maybe I think too shallowly, but what prevents me from starting to work at home, even if you two?
For example, our startup has evolved, the first 3 months we each worked in our own house, only after that we decided to rent an office. It was an area of only 8 square meters, without air conditioning and in the summer there was terrible heat. For 1.5 years, we changed 4 offices:
Tip: If you do not have a budget for the office, then start working at home with a laptop and phone. In most online projects, meeting a client is not necessary.
7. Register a trademark.
The desire to register a trademark again arises from the fact that we overestimate the value of our project.
We thought about TM at the moment when names that looked very similar to us began to appear on the market: call, call, call back, etc.
Note: Trademark registration lasts 1 year and costs about 60 thousand rubles. There is a big plus in that you can sue domains that violate your rights.
8. Find an investor who believes in me.
Thousands of startups are waiting for a magical moment when the investor makes them rich and they can make their project a reality. We also looked for investments at the beginning of the journey, I left applications for all funds, but received a refusal. Only six months later, when the project began to gain momentum, we received a letter from Rusbase 2 invitations to meet with investors, but refused all offers. I don’t know how right it is, but they decided to develop on their own.
Conclusion: Never ask for an investor, if your project is worthwhile, then most likely they will call you or write. In general, investment is not an option, try to develop organically.
9. Well, that's it, now I'm ready for sales.
Finally, a business plan has been drawn up, 2-month work on the site has ended, you have stylish business cards, a spacious office and a masterpiece logo, but there are no customers yet. The project enters the market, everything is beautiful, but it turns out to be useless to anyone. The project closes or completely changes the strategy and format of the product. At this moment, an understanding wakes up that it is necessary to distinguish important actions from secondary ones.
First, focus only on the core of the product and if it is viable, then turn it into a pen with a gold rim.
At the first stage, you need to quickly confront the product with reality, look at demand, make the first applications and communicate with a real customer by phone, and not with your friend over a glass of beer to discuss what prospects this project has. For this, you do not need start-up capital and months to prepare. Do not try to immediately bring out the perfect, finished product, even Microsoft is constantly updating bugs and releasing updates. It’s very easy to drown in unnecessary things that seem so important. I would like to do everything right away, but it doesn’t.
I hope these tips were helpful, or at least you enjoyed reading :)
Thank you!