Life before Profitability

The phrase money doesn’t grow on trees comes to mind. It’s important to understand no matter how easy it seems some people come across amazing results you’re not likely to achieve runaway success right out of the gate. Its hard work to go from a concept to a finished product and this stage will be the most trying and present the biggest challenges you will see in releasing a new product.

How do you navigate the murky waters of being a start-up? How do you launch a new product that has no market to build off of?

The key is accountability. You need to have clearly defined goals, metrics, and an action plan.

Goals

• Do you have a revenue target, or an Income expectation?
• Do you have a market share expectation?
• Is the product just geared towards gaining exposure?

Metrics

• What is success on your goal? What is the top line metric to track to?
• Are there any other metrics that feed into the success metric that also need to be tracked
• When will you achieve the goal?

Action Plan

• How are you marketing the product?
• Who are you targeting?
• What is your messaging?
• What start-up capital do you need?

These are all straight forward easy questions; you would be surprised how often entrepreneurs and Product Managers miss these questions though.

Takeaway: The time before you’re making money is the most difficult period in business; only through preparation does one equip themselves for success.