Caught in a vicious cycle fear-dread-excitement
I just launched my startup, a platform that helps personal trainers create customized workouts for their clients trainermade.com and its been a tough journey so far to get it built out, get the apps built out, legal, graphics, testing, copy, etc. It's a stripped-down version of some major competitor's products that I am offering it out for free right now.
The market is wide-open, but would require marketing $'s to get my brand out, at the same time there are new features that I want to add so I would need to work on development, and I also want to work on social media marketing etc. I feel like startup life has been draining me as I get pulled in every direction. It's stable and live now, but there is much more I want to do.
I am not sure why I am posting this, just venting the frustration and questioning if this is all worth it, I guess. I'm starting to realize that there is only so much that can be done on a bootstrapped budget.
I feel ya and have been there. During my first year, I rode the emotional roller coaster. Getting something off the ground is really hard. But if your gut is telling you to keep going and you are seeing some positive reaction from the market, just focus on slow & consistent daily progress.
Unsolicited advice: Think about a co-founder that complements what you aren't good at or don't like doing. It's a challenge in itself to find the person(s) but it can make the difference. I bet you could find a great business-minded personal trainer type that really knows marketing & social.
Your unsolicited advice is very much appreciated and is something that I have battled for a long time. I do love the idea of having a co-founder for sure, but finding someone has been a challenge. Within my friend's circle, there aren't very many folks who are entrepreneurial-minded or want to take a chance at the pot of gold, they are too cushy with their 9-5.
Prior to trainermade, I was at GE for 15 years spanning roles as a Software Engineer, Financial Analyst, and Sales and Marketing...so my breadth of knowledge is extremely broad. This is also a problem lol, I find that I can pretty much do most of what anyone that I come across can, I end up helping them more than they can me. The know-how has never been a problem, it's mostly the bandwidth. I really do wish that I can meet someone complimentary, but its a marriage, and I want to make sure its till death do us part :-)
As far as building up steam for trainermade, I'm actually seeing a lot of interest with a couple of simple growth hacks, and I have a ton of ideas that I want to implement, again its just a bandwidth problem. I have also considered raising some money and especially right now its been a forethought.
I think it's nice knowing there are other people feeling this way. I've been in a wild depression -> mania cycle. Mostly because of similar reasons you stated. It's hard to reach my target market without money or 6 months to grow a following. When all you really need right now is people to test it out. It sucks.
How are you currently getting the word out? Are you active in communities that it's relevant in?
I am working on some organic channels like my own facebook friends, reddit, creating some webinars and some funnels. Again, this is stuff that was hard for me to do in parallel while the product was getting developed because the dev part was pretty time consuming. My target market was great to do initial research and validate the product, but without an actual product it was hard to get real feedback. Since I now have the product, its been easier to say hey go here and start using it.
I do think ad spend is the way to go for me, so I am trying to learn some of that now. What about you? what are you working on?
Sure, I get that, feels exactly like my situation.
I'm building wangll.co it's a tool that helps teams with goal setting and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). I also had to focus on building to the point that I could get people looking at it. Actually, today, I finally got some people poking around. But I don't know how to reach my target market without ad spend. I looked at forums, sub Reddits and facebook groups and couldn't find a group of OKR fanatics to pitch to.
I'd try getting into fitness forums and help people out there, and suggest checking out what you built. Could get some validation there. Or just cold approaching via social media (I feel there will be a lot of personal trainers there)
yes, the fitness forums and subreddits are where I want to be at, I just haven't had the bandwidth. I'm going through some ad courses right now to make sure I understand everything that it takes to creating and launching social ad campaigns.
regd Wangll ...firstly, why wangll? it doesn't pass the radio test, and not sure what the relevance is with what you are doing. secondly, I have over 15 years of corporate experience at GE in different verticals engineering/finance/sales and marketing...and I still have no idea what OKR means. Don't assume that acronyms are meaningful to everyone. I also don't remember a time where someone in any of my org's was actually searching for an OKR tool. Can you dumb it down a little more on your landing page? It may also help with google keywords.
Yeah, only people that practice OKRs knows what they are 😓 so my strategy was laser focussing on them. So the messaging was very specific to them. Only to realise there might not be much of a market. So I would be doing a positioning revamp soon.
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Thanks Patrick! Appreciate that! I would love to talk too, if nothing else to meet someone from IH. Not sure why I took on such a complex project instead of just a TODO app ha.
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I keep saying it and I'll say again; the world glosses over the mental rollercoaster ride founders endure to get the product to market. It's hard, its a lot of balls to jungle, and there's there's no certainty of success. But all the world sees is the Zuckerberg's, the Beso's, etc and think if you have a good idea you must have a licence to print money. That's false.
My email is also in my profile and I'm happy to support wherever I can.