Growing My First Business
I’ve always had great ideas that I’ve never taken action on, but this month I did! It’s no fortune 500 company…yet, but the experience was a step in the right direction.
The Problem
So you want to go on vacation. Myrtle Beach sounds nice, haven’t been there yet. So you hop on Google to search for a rental and you go to one of the big-name websites you see in commercials. But when you’re searching you see something like this…
Thousands of results. They all look nice, the problem is they all look nice… and there are thousands of them.
How can you possibly know which one’s for you? Too many options can paralyze a person this is the paradox of choice. Click here to watch a quick explanation of what that is.
Yea there are ways to narrow down your choices. Websites provide filters like these.
The problem is how black and white they are. It’s not that fun or engaging to go through them.
The bigger problem is these don’t describe the intangibles of the vacation. Some would describe the intangible’s like the vibe. And on vacation, the vibes should be immaculate.
Some want quiet, others want the noise. Some want activities, others want to sit in a chair and not move a muscle for a week straight. And there’s a lot in between that can be difficult to figure out.
On the flip side, those who rent out also have preferences.
My grandma has 5 condos she rents out. She doesn’t rent to middle-aged men who are going on vacation without their wives. Maybe it’s not nice to discriminate because maybe they aren’t cheating on their wives, maybe they aren’t drinking too much. Who knows? She just doesn’t want to deal with it. Other’s may be fine with those shenanigans. So we’re gonna be the matchmakers between the two parties.
My Idea
People want to be told what they want. So my website will do exactly that. Instead of thousands of options, 5 or 10.
It will open to a quiz. A user-friendly quiz. It will be filled with painless questions, as little reading as possible and the aesthetic will be immaculate.
Then we will show you where you want to stay.
This is going to be the anti-VRBO. We will live in the pain points of the big names. We’re not trying to take over the market, we just want elbow room at the North Myrtle Beach rental table.
Weekly Updates
To follow the journey and see the highlights of the month click through my week reviews.
What I Learned
I got to do a little bit of everything this month. But the most important thing I gained was experience. There wasn’t one skill I hunkered down on. But I learned tons in the general field of launching a business.
How to build something successful
When I had this project idea I immediately gave myself the goal of making a real sale by the end of the month. But I quickly learn that’s the wrong mindset to have.
I know you want to make money but take a step back. Don’t try and create something for the sake of money, think bigger, create something that’s gonna make a difference in people’s lives.
Don’t focus on growing, focus on making an amazingly useful product, then the customers and everything else will come.
Instead of rushing to create the whole thing, we meticulously built half of it and built it well.
I’m not ashamed because I didn’t make my sale. I’m over the moon because I’m well on my way to making a legitimately useful service.
Working with a partner
It’s a good idea but it’s not about the idea, it's the execution. What would bring this project to the next level would be a top-tier website, I needed some bigger guns. So I brought in a 3rd party programmer to build this website.
We weren’t working together on the same thing, we were working on separate things, parallel to each other.
As we discussed the project idea he explained the realities of what he could do, what his steps were, and where there would be difficulties. So part of my responsibility was laying out timelines based on what he said. And with that, I had to follow up.
We had called no more than 3 days apart throughout the month to touch base and discuss the next steps, and we adjusted as we needed. Overall it was a really great opportunity to test and practice my project management.
Alpha Launch
We are open for testing!
It may not look like much but it works. Click on that start button and the quiz begins. Taking you through different Paths depending on your answers.
Click here to take the quiz!
Thanks for making it down here and reading along my journey. If you want to help after the quiz there is a feedback Box. Any tips and critiques would be greatly appreciated.