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10 Comments

Where do you struggle most in your business?

Curious to see what you'd think is your main struggle in building your startup/ side-hustle/ business.
What are you worrying about the most? What causes the most headaches?

I always viewed marketing and promotion as my major weaknesses. Getting something out there is always a huge hassle. I have no problem building it but many things that are attractive in my head don't end up being picked up as I'd imagined they would.

Would love to hear your stories 😸

  1. 3

    With me it is loneliness. It takes time (for me) to build something which may be worth bringing to the world; meanwhile, I wish I have a partner to bounce off ideas.

    1. 1

      that's a struggle I got from many of my dev friends. I'm lucky that I have a partner at my studio and I realize how important that is.

      I think everyone on this thread including myself would be very happy to offer feedback on an idea. what might be difficult to obtain tho is someone building on that idea with you. I haven't yet found a formula for that, other than trying to partner up with someone long term (which is difficult as well, but worth it imo). also, friends and family can also be valuable resource from my xp, even if they don't have proffesh feedback sometimes they spill out incredible insight

      thanks for answering, really good stuff

  2. 2

    For me it's finding the first clients and achieving the stable cashflow — since I run a Digital Product Incubator, building the product is easy as pie, but from what I also see with my clients, finding enough users to sustain it can be tricky in the first months.

  3. 2

    You are not alone! I have my MVP and some ideas on where to find likely customers. But I’m stuck in neutral. I haven’t yet found a “flagship project” from a customer that would provide the buzz that In turn would generate traction. In my mind I need that flagship project in order to launch, but seems I need to launch before I can get customers. Maybe it really comes down to what I need to do and how those marketing / PR tasks need to be staged in order to optimize the take-up. What steps for “soft launch” vs a later “hard launch”?

  4. 1

    thanks for the answers everyone. glad I'm not alone. I'm more of the build-in-silence type, guess we always dream of someone or something that can get our product out there or that it magically generates WOM.

    frankly, I find most marketing approaches just tiring. or lame. but it's mandatory work I guess.

    keep the stories coming, they're really insightful 👀

  5. 1

    I’ve started a number of small side hustles and the most difficult thing for me would be marketing and growth.

    I’ve spent a couple of the last weeks curating growth strategies that I’ve found and will continue to do so. For those who are interested you can find the data here: www.growthunt.com

    Appreciate any feedbacks that could make the site better. Thank you

  6. 1

    How do I measure validation?

    I started something and it's turned out to be a lot more difficult to build than expected. We can reasonable estimate the cost to get it to work pretty well, and it's not something I can fund myself.

    I need to look at our users, look at what they tell me, see how hard it is to get new users and then try and estimate what the effect of making our product 3-4x better will be. I don't know how to do that with any degree of certainty whatsoever. :P

  7. 1

    Definitely echoing what a lot of others have commented, Marketing. I can often get the product built and acquire some initial users easily, but when it comes to maintaining traffic post-launch, I tend to struggle a bit. This is definitely something I'm actively working on now, rather than just dropping the project after traffic dies down and picking up something new.

  8. 1

    Marketing is hard. I find balancing the constant pressure to start something trendy (make a course, community, or whatever) vs having confidence in what I’ve already built and doubling down on that quite distracting also. Seeing other people make money quickly makes me want to bail on my long term goal which is working, just slower than others’ businesses. That’s a bit demotivating at times.

  9. 1

    Marketing/distribution, this is why I'm doing my research (with Zero to Users), hoping to help myself & other founders by choosing the right distribution channel. The thing that sucks is that marketing is getting harder each year, with new competition coming & going, but if you succeed the payoff seems to be bigger.

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    This comment was deleted a year ago.

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    This comment was deleted 7 months ago.

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