My failure to build a school for entrepreneurs

Over the past two years I've been trying to build a school for solopreneurs.

More the equivalent of a Boxing/MMA gym in the sense that you've got weekly sessions where you learn something and then go implement/train during that session.

I've been experimenting a lot with students to remove as much risk as possible for them before settling on helping them productize their expertise and find customers for it.

It's mostly been a failure.

Here's that story & what I've learned so far from the experience.

I got lucky with my first company.

It wasn't that I got lucky in the sense that you're sitting on the couch, someone rings the doorbell, and hands you a check for millions of dollars.

But, I was one of those survivorship bias kids.

I was at the right time at the right place and everything just worked out.

I always stressed how lucky I was but it's not possible to understand just how lucky you are until you see the other side.

One example is Google Ads. I was extremely early with Google Ads (luck). Just heard someone talking about it and decided to hire an agency to handle it for me (more luck). The fact that I made that decision was great for two reasons:

i. I had enough money by then to be able to take advantage of that opportunity.

ii. Because I outsourced it, I had people working on it full-time. Had I tried to do it myself, I wouldn't have been consistent.

Cool... why is this relevant?

Because after my first company, I had a string of failures despite knowing 10x more.

Eventually, I did hit it big again (advising firms based on evidence-based entrepreneurial science aka translating scientific literature into ELI-5) which allowed me to fund my real passion.

You see, for years, during my string of failures, I wished there was the equivalent of an MMA gym for solopreneurs. A place you can go to: to learn techniques, implement them during each session, and train with others.

I couldn't find it so I decided to build it.

After investing substantial resources, it's largely been a failure.

I've put about 90 students through the program, 11 of which are in the latest version.

The service is profitable if I don't factor in my time. If I do, it's a joke.

Here's everything I've learned thus far:

Prospecting

When it comes to prospecting there are a few buckets people fall into:

- Cynics

One type of person believes all forms of entrepreneurial education is a scam. That might be a good heuristic (debatable) but it's a heuristic nonetheless.

Meaning, it's a mental shortcut that gives a reasonable result while spending very little cognitive effort. Heuristics are not designed to absolve you from thinking. This group of people has a "guilty until proven innocent" attitude or a "guilty full stop". In the latter case, nothing you say/do will change their mind.

Fortunately, it's rarer than you'd think. In my experience, maybe 1 out of every 1000 people is like this.

It does seem like, in the entrepreneurship space, people tend to be more cynical. In comedy, everyone who has the balls to get on stage gets respect. But in entrepreneurship communities, there's a lot of hating going on by armchair entrepreneurs as well as delighting in others' failure.

I think this has more to do with the cultural norms & incentives of the environment (Reddit, Twitter, etc.) than the actual community cuz when you look at places like Indiehackers that have better moderation, there's much more of a culture of support and lifting each other up.

- Choosing beggars

Another type of person claims they really struggle with solopreneurship but then balks at having to pay for help. This is probably the most common. For some reason, paying for help carries a huge stigma in entrepreneurship. I don't why because we do it with mathematics, medicine, fighting, learning how to play the guitar, and so on.

It is sad though because these people don't factor in the opportunity cost of fucking around for a few more years / giving up altogether.

Also, if you buy a chair that's $500 as a consumer, that's expensive. But if you buy it as a business, it can be a bargain. If you sit on your ass all day and that chair allows you to work longer, comfortably, and without your usual back pain, you'll earn that thing back in 7 seconds.

Many folks in this category don't understand ROI. They're fixated on cost.

- Formula seekers

Lastly, there's a group that wants a formula. They want someone to tell them EXACTLY what to do as if they're in school. You'd wonder why such people want to be solopreneurs in the first place if they're that uncomfortable with uncertainty.

But a formula, of course, can never work. If everyone does the same thing, the customer has no reason to pick you. That means the only way to differentiate yourself is to be cheaper. But everyone else also comes to that conclusion which means the price settles to the lowest possible point where companies have razor-thin margins and the slightest unforeseen setback means they go out of business.

In technical terms: You get a Game Theoretical payoff matrix that pushes the players into a Nash equilibrium (the optimal point for each player provided the others don't change their strategy). When everyone does that, the Nash equilibrium is lower than the Pareto Efficient point (the optimal strategy for everyone). You're already familiar with this in terms of the Prisoners' Dilemma. This results in a consumer surplus (consumers would pay more for the product but they don't have to). That's good for consumers but bad for entrepreneurs. Lastly, the smaller your margins are, the more fragile your company is. A small perturbation/stressor collapses it. But, since there are many other 'players' waiting to take your place, it doesn't make a difference to the consumer for whom you were fungible to begin with.

Customers

Out of the set of people that become customers, unfortunately, most just aren't that serious.

That really surprised me because at one point the program was $4K so I expected people would take it incredibly seriously having made a serious investment. I only now realize how naive/dumb that was. Most of us paid tens if not hundreds of thousands for our education and we all know that the majority of our classmates weren't that serious either.

I think my program is one the best ones on the market, simply because I care so much. There's not much I won't do for my students. But I've learned that in many cases I care significantly more about my student's success than they do.

During the qualification process, everyone talks a good game about how hard they're going to work.

Then when their cohort starts, they skip training sessions, they don't implement the homework, they don't take advantage of their lifetime membership, and about half don't book their complimentary 1-1 with me which regular clients pay $300 for.

People are quick to demonize gyms because their business model relies on people paying and not showing up.

But I've seen the other side. I've tried very hard to get people to take advantage of everything they've paid for but it seems that many people don't really want to do the work. They want to pay, which makes them feel good, and that then \feels\ like progress.

Scammers

My value proposition is quite unattractive. It's essentially "do the hard work and you'll get a 6-pack." Scammers' proposition is: "Do zero work and get a 6-pack overnight with this one simple trick."

I used to hate scammers and I still do.

But I've also learned that there's a certain type of person that seeks it out. It's why Tim Ferris called his book "The Four Hour Work Week: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich".

Some of my students (who weren't willing to do the work) went on to buy products from people like that. I got limited sympathy for those that got scammed because they were looking for too good to be true shortcuts out of laziness.

Successful students

The ones who were willing to do the work pretty much all found success although not always on their timeline because of the messiness of solopreneurship.

The common theme I'd say was:

Picking an audience to serve instead of a product they wanna launch onto the market.

Letting the problems they solve emerge from that marketplace.

Picking wealthy customers instead of brokies. (Another downside of this product for me is that I'm working with people who're typically broke vs. my consulting work where I'm working with firms with deep pockets.)

Showing up consistently to do the work. Creating helpful content for their audience, pitching warm and cold leads, refining and testing their positioning and pricing, etc.

Basically just having their shit together and not giving up.

Plans for the future

I make around 100-200K/yr doing consulting so I don't need this to be financially successful. The students that did the work have benefited tremendously and knowing that my program has helped make their journey easier is something I wouldn't have traded for anything.
I don't plan on killing the program but I do think I'll dial back the time investment.

If you liked this, I write a Monday to Friday Newsletter where I give tips and examples about marketing for solopreneurs.