Finally broke $2k MRR... lessons learned

For the last few years, I’ve been building a mastermind network for entrepreneurs. Kind of like Indie Hackers, but based on live interaction between small groups to help us get through professional and personal roadblocks faster, and provide structure & accountability for creatives.

This has been a side hustle but I recently quit my job to give it my full attention. After continually bumping my head on a $2k MRR ceiling, we finally broke through after a few small tweaks and are on track to hit our $10k MRR goal before the EOY.

Here’s the highlights of lessons learned:

If you’re running a marketing funnel that is targeting a sales call make sure you:

Give your sales call a catchy title and let the prospect know how they’ll benefit. Ours is a “mentorship call” that promises (and delivers) on understanding and identifying the biggest mental roadblocks an entrepreneur is struggling with and strategies for addressing them.
Data, data, data. Make sure you’re tracking the results from every stage of your sales funnel so you know where to improve.
Be OK with failure. Most marketing funnels simply won’t work well enough. Embrace being wrong as a learning moment.

User research

Talk to your early users constantly and systematically so you can understand what’s working and what’s not
This sounds obvious, but it’s an incredibly valuable source of inspiration and product feedback. It also keep your users engaged and passionate because they are contributing to building the product / service.
If your members aren’t stoked on the product, make it better before spending time marketing
When they are stoked, enlist their help with marketing (eg., short testimonials, case studies)

Focus on building a product so good that it generates referrals, and have a referral program in place.

If you have a referral program, your users will have to be reminded of it at least every quarter

I’ve been in the startup world for the last 6 years, and without a doubt I’ve realized that mindset is everything.

Make sure you want what you’re doing SO bad, that you’d “run through walls” to make it happen
Check in with yourself (and / or your business partners) and make sure everyone maintains an unstoppable mindset as much as possible

Hope that helps some of you. Happy creating.