I have realized that the service I have offered—social media management—was commoditized enough and had a tiny leverage for the time and effort I was putting in but most importantly it wasn’t making me any fun, which is why I’ve never attended to master it. So, instead of choosing the easier option with the initial motivation of money, I’ve decided to pick a more entertaining and also trending concept that was also more appealing to my creative inclinations. My next business was going to be a B2B Short-Form Content Creation Agency, that had a “Producing, Editing and Publishing—All in One” offer.
I had listened to a podcast of Alex Hormozi where he was emphasizing the fact that a possible partner in business either has to posses the money, the skills or the idea that you don’t have. In our case I had the idea, the distribution assets and skills and the capital (just for the initial expenses) but I was lacking the operational skills, the actual part.
Despite having some experience with Premiere Pro and video editing, I wasn’t still a master at filmmaking. So I’ve partnered up with a friend of mine, who is a passionate photography-hobbyist and had the biggest potential in my network for a partnership in my consideration.
I had seen my mistake in my first attempt—in SMMA—which was “not giving any free value first”, so we walked around our town and offered local businesses to shoot free videos and photos, which went pretty well. It was much easier to find leads, since there are more than enough businesses that want to present themselves online, but still, my second business attempt failed too.
We sure made common mistakes that were already made at the first attempt (SMMA) which sure affected the outcome too, like: not niching down but trying to be generalist, not creating an exceptional offer where our lead would feel stupid to say “No” to or creating a proper website to build up social proof.
Nevertheless, it was these three major mistakes that caused our second business journey to end without any success:
1. The Quality of Your Work Matters, Really
We sure was on a journey of improvement as individuals but also as a business. I was not the most satisfied one with the results we have been delivering. Even though I truly hate my feature of me being an obsessed perfectionist—which absolutely is anything else but a praise or a good feature—that usually holds me back from taking action, and that I have been working on to overcome, the result we were delivering had to be at least satisfying and convincing enough for a traditional business owner for a possible pitch.
But not that I desire everything to be perfect, it was just not convincing enough due to several reasons, which reminded me once again that I actually skipped the part of Apprenticeship.
My lesson for future:
First master the skill you want to provide value with and exchange money for.
2. Financial Planning and Investing in Business
This one partially lies under the first problem.
The primary reason why our results were not good enough was mainly the lack of equipment. We just had a camera and a tripod but nothing else. Our scenes were shaking, we always had to wish for good natural lighting wherever we were filming and wasn’t able to record any audio.
Despite having some capital at the beginning, we weren’t able to invest it in our business because of a wrong to none financial plan. I had impulsively spent all the capital on an irrelevant, not up to date online-course with unfulfilling content.
So from the day one, you have to make a well-structured financial plan to avoid such challenges and have a clear path to follow.
My lesson for future:
First of all, create a discrete financial plan, so you know your each next step.
3. Don’t Rely Completely on Someone Else
As we kept our business going—doing free video shootings, I’ve realized overtime that depending on somebody, especially if you don’t pay them, might cause some challenges.
Don’t get me wrong, building a hard working and passionate team is the foundation of growing and scaling a business. But as you just start out, not being capable of operations and getting it done by somebody else voluntarily will make you dependent on them. And it makes it even harder for you to grow if they don’t share the same passion and ambition as you. In this sense, as my friend was in vacation, or not capable of working for a reason, I had nothing to do but sit on my ass.
So I truly believe, you either have to be capable of each department of your business like sales, marketing, operations, so that you can scale your business as a solopreneur to a certain point and then build a team to grow even further.
Or you really make sure that your potential partner—at the very beginning—possesses the skills or money you don’t, but also the true desire, passion, ambition and goal of making it, just like you do, or even more.
My lesson for future:
Be capable of each department of your business at the very beginning to build a strong foundation, or find (a) partner(s) who has various skills but the same Mindset as you.
All in all, in my next business ventures, I will focus on being confident in the quality of my service or product, creating a financial plan to guide me and the business throughout the journey, and ensuring that I am capable in my work, even if not 100%, accumulate a solid understanding or seek potential partnerships where I am certain that my partner brings complementary assets and skills, while sharing the same mindset and motivation.
