CEO Stories 082: What to Do When Your Offer Falls Flat

Crickets is among the online entrepreneur’s worst fears when bringing a new offer into the world … and unfortunately, Samantha of Lemon and the Sea met that fear head-on when she tried creating a new service. After it fell flat, she went back to the drawing board and now approaches bringing ideas into the world in a whole new way. Samantha tried to launch a service that was a huge undertaking, and it never worked! She wanted to have all customers come to one place for all the website needs.  It included photography, branding, design, and launching. She could not find anything like it, and she found people to help with every niche area. Samantha worked on the questionnaire for clients and contracts for her workers. After all of the time and energy, not a single person actually had interest. Samantha realized that she was all in about this.  She did all of this research. She forgot to have dream client interviews or actually talk to people that would be customers.  The team was not super cohesive and excited about the launch either. Samantha realized that if anyone did actually buy it, then it would be the first time to run through all of this with an actual client.  They would be basically beta testing on the first client. This gave her a lot of nerves. Looking back, she would have talked more to people who would have been interested in the service.  She should have talked to them before getting attorneys and partners. This would have given her more leverage to know it would work.   She realized that this entire idea was just not supposed to work.  It has helped her to be more cautious in taking leaps. You need to do your due diligence to make sure something will work before just throwing things at the wall.   In general, people just see the ideas that work.  Remember that you are missing all of the ideas that people had that didn’t work that they are not talking about.   Don’t be afraid to do things differently or innovatively.  The online space is looking for that. Don’t throw out all of the ideas from the corporate world.  Remember that they are big for a reason. They have people that are researching, testing, and giving perspective. Corporate businesses have a lot that we can gain from. She went back and figured out what went wrong and what she really wanted to do.  The biggest problem was that she did not have a large audience. She now uses the audience that she does have for her research and to further her ideas.   You have to set the stage for your success. The idea is not dead; it is just on pause.  There is a chance that one day it could be the right time for it. Before you invest time and money, do some research.  Figure out who would hire you, find your dream clients, and talk to them.  Ask them if they would really be willing to invest and what they would want out of it. Listen!  To yourself and to your feedback.  Even if the feedback is negative, you still have the final decision.   Build relationships with your dream clients so they will be honest, but kind, in their responses.