In this short episode of “Do This, Not That”, host Jay Schwedelson and producer Kristen Nagle answer one work-related question and one ridiculous question submitted by listeners. They discuss when you should give up on a business idea or product, and Jay shares the last thing he searched on YouTube.
Main Discussion Points:
– Don’t set a strict timeline for when you’ll give up on a new business idea or product – be flexible based on traction and progress
– Consider offering your product or service for free initially to test demand – if no one wants it free, they likely won’t buy it
– Be careful searching random things online – algorithms will continue showing related content for a long time after
And MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!
Marigold is a relationship marketing platform designed to help you acquire new customers and turn them into superfans with their best-in-class loyalty solutions. Don’t take my word for it though, American Airlines, Honeybaked Ham, Title Boxing, and Notre Dame University are also customers!
Regardless of your size, check out Marigold today to get the solution you need to grow your business!
Transcript
Foreign. We are here for another short episode of do this, not that. So we do a short episode and then we do a longer episode at the end of the week.
And the short episodes we get in these questions. This is an ask us anything episode that we do. We get these questions in all week and we get two kinds of questions.
We get work questions that we try to tackle and then we get ridiculous questions that mean nothing about anything. We try to answer one work and one ridiculous question, which is what we're going to do now in this super, super short episode.
And here with me today is Kristen Nagel who is a rock star producer of do this, not that. And she gets the questions in. She's the one who decides what we're going to ask. And I'm ready for it. I have no idea where we're going with this.
But Kristen, what do we got this week? Let's first do the work question.
Kristin Nagel:Okay, Jay, the work question is from Mason, from Indiana. And here's the question. When should you give up on a business idea or product?
Jay Schwedelson:Wow, that's a tough one. You know, when should you give up on an idea that you have for a business or something or a business that you've started or a product?
When should you bail? I'll tell you two things I think about related this. Number one, what you should never do, in my opinion is give yourself a time period.
It frustrates me when I see somebody like start something, a business or put out a new product or idea and they said, listen, I'm going to do this for six months and if it doesn't work then I'm going to bail. I'm not going to do that.
You're basically saying out of the gate, listen, this probably won't work and I'm going to at least be able to check the box that I tried. And what happens when you're in month five, okay, and all of a sudden you're starting to get a little bit of traction and.
And you've said, I'm bailing after six months. What are you going to do? Say, no, I gave myself a six month window and I'm out. I don't like that at all.
I don't think that you could start out with something saying, I'm going to end this in this period of time. I think that setting yourself up for total failure.
The other thing that I would think about is whatever it is that you're selling or promoting or doing, I would think about initially offering it for free, which I know sounds ridiculous.
And the reason I say that, even in some sort of super limited way, whatever your business or service or product is in some sort of super limited way, and promoting it and letting it be free. And why would you want to do that?
What I've learned from my experiences with different businesses I've had is if you promote it as free and you get no traction, nobody's interested, nobody's downloading, nobody's buying, nobody's subscribing, nobody's doing anything right, then the likelihood of you being able to charge for that same thing, get people to pay for it, is basically zero. Because by allowing it to be free as a test, you're removing the ultimate barrier from anybody being able to try it.
So if you have something and you're struggling to get traction on it, and then you offer it as a test for free, and you still get no traction on it, then you need to go back to the drawing board because you have nothing. If people don't want it for free, then they're never going to want it if it costs a boatload of money.
That's kind of what I would think about as it relates to thinking about when you should bail on something. All right, before we get into the ridiculous question, this podcast, this really short, random, crazy podcast is brought to you by Marigold.
Yes, Marigold is a platform I used to send out my emails. We send out a lot of emails, billions of emails. They're an awesome email sending platform.
They're an awesome loyalty marketing platform, and they do the work for people like American Airlines and Notre Dame University, every industry.
If you're not thinking about Marigold for your sending platform, your loyalty platform, your relationship marketing platform, you are missing the boat. Check them out@meetmarold.com that is meet marigold.com. great platform, strongly recommend. Okay, Kristen, what is the ridiculous question this week?
Kristin Nagel:Okay, the ridiculous question is from Kylie from Fort Lauderdale, and she asks, what is the last thing you Googled? This should be interesting.
Jay Schwedelson:Oh, no. Well, let me tell you.
Okay, now that you asked me that, I don't know the last night of Google, but I'm gonna tell you something that happened that really is bothersome to me. So I was on YouTube the other day, and I look and I searched up. I searched up shrimp boating. This is true. I searched up shrimp boating. Okay?
Because I don't know why I was watching, like, one of these fishing shows. I'm like, wow, shrimp boaters are crazy. So I looked up shrimp boating. I'm like Forrest Gump with bubblegum, you know, like, hello, whatever. Right.
And. And it was great. And I learned all about shrimp boating and I loved it. I loved everything about it. But here was the problem.
Then I go back on YouTube, like on my TV and whatever and everything there is now about shrimp boating, as if this is the only thing I am interested in. The universe is shrimp boating. And then maybe a little bit they'll get into like some other, like trout fishing, something like little.
But there's no other information in the universe anymore. I can't access any other information. That's the only thing it shows me.
So my problem is that when you look up one thing, the algorithm is like, these are like, dial it down a notch. I don't know. Do you have that problem?
Kristin Nagel:Yes. You have to be careful on if you look something up, you have to be prepared to see it for the next week straight everywhere.
So hope you really a lot about it.
Jay Schwedelson:Yeah. So if you want to know about trim boating, I'm your guy. All right. I appreciate you all being here. Check out the long episode. Give us a five star.
You all rock. Peace out. You did it. You made it to the end now. Nice. But the party's not over.
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