Yesterday, I shared with you that the second biggest mistake I made was going it alone for too long and not joining a mastermind group to support my business journey. You can listen to that episode here.
Today, I’m sharing the third biggest mistake I made, which is not validating my idea and creating a product that my audience wasn’t ready for.
I started with a free 5-Day Website Challenge that teaches how to build a WordPress site from scratch to grow an email list. Then I built a course called WP*OMG – Operation Marketing Genius which teaches how to build an online course or membership site and how to create all the marketing sequences to automate getting people into the course.
Sounds like a logical next step, right? WRONG. I miscalculated. It launched to crickets. People need more help after they build their first site. There was too big of a gap between where my people are RIGHT NOW vs. where they will be when they need to create an online course or membership site or sell something.
They need to hone their services, develop their brand, and grow their list. They weren’t ready for OMG – even though they said they wanted it. I went too far past where they were.
So if you want to make sure that you don’t make the same mistake, I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of Pat Flynn’s book, Will It Fly. Just go to www.shannonmattern.com/willitfly and you can buy it on Amazon.
It will walk you through all the steps of idea validation so that you don’t launch to crickets like I did.
In fact, I’m reading the book right now and walking through the exercises to re-validate a few of my offerings based on where I’m at in my business right now and decide whether to keep them, revise them or let them go.
Tomorrow, I’m going to share the 4th biggest mistake I made on the way to side hustle success, not sleeping enough.
Today’s pep talk is brought to you by Bluehost. Go to www.shannonmattern.com/bluehost and get 36 months of web hosting for just $2.95 a month. That’s less than one trip to Starbucks a month – and if you’re anything like me, you’re at Starbucks more than that!
Then you can sign up for my Free 5 Day Website Challenge at www.shannonmattern.com/5day and I’ll show you step by step how to get started building your new website for your side hustle.
