25/7 Fixes - A failure that opened the window of opportunities

I was fairly active in IH earlier this year, while trying to get https://257fixes.com/ off the ground. Have learned a lot from you guys, met some amazing people. An experience that I’m very grateful for.

Why do I see 25/7 Fixes as a failure? I failed to come up with something that’s scalable and could be automated. Please, don’t get me wrong. It netted me well over 20k USD just in the last 4 months, in one way or another. Mostly by ignoring its initial business model. Among other things, it secured me a 3 month contract in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

A few valuable lessons the entire endeavour taught me.

Know your market and how to communicate
Unless you target that particular market and your proposition is clear while benefits are obvious, please don’t pitch within the community. Also, if you’re for instance targeting local bakeries, don’t ask them directly how they take orders online or how do they promote their offerings. You are the one who has to figure out pain points your target market struggles with

Not everything is scalable, or at least not by you
Books, articles, blog posts were written about scalability. One thing that somehow gotten overlooked. While a business itself is scalable, there’s a high probability that you’re not the right person for the job

Embrace failure
Even if you seemingly fail, it’s not the end. Neither for you nor for your business. Reinvent, recycle, repurpose

What’s next for 25/7 Fixes? Reinventing, recycling and repurposing. Am going to pivot and make it a specialised consultancy that tackles software issues with urgency. It’s not going to be automated, while some processes obviously are automated. It’s definitely not going to scale. Unless I figure out how to clone myself.

For as long as you tackle real world problems faced by real world people and businesses, even a failure is a success. It’s just that you need to try it again, with some changes.