Every wrong move

TLDR: I overlooked the importance of founder/market fit and am now paying the price.

My entrepreneurial journey has been a struggle from the start. Upon reflection I understand why this endeavor has been so difficult: I have seemingly made every wrong move.

My largest error (by far) has been my choice of problem to solve. I have spent months focused on weight loss (specifically very overweight/obese people) despite the fact that I personally have never struggled with my weight, nor do I know many people who have struggled with their weight (at least not on the magnitude of obesity). Thus, I have focused on solving a problem in which I had 0 prior knowledge and 0 intimacy with potential customers. MAJOR OBSTACLE TO SUCCESS.

I have toyed around with potential business models that all focus on cheap, widespread, consumer products. The crux of this type of business model is that the customer acquisition cost needs to be quite low because the lifetime value of the customer is also low. Consequently the business needs a preexisting audience, or a strategy to build one quickly (i.e. free website traffic from: google search, social media, very cheap paid ads, etc). I have no audience (at least in the weight loss space) and I had no prior knowledge of how to build one (I have a bit more now).

Finally I am working solo. This is statistically an incorrect decision based on entrepreneurial research (@grandpa), not to mention it makes the entire process far more psychologically challenging (read: miserable).

I’m going to finish my current weight loss audience building experiment (I committed to 20 blog posts). If I’m not seeing much traction when I hit that benchmark, I may reevaluate my chosen path and potentially shift focus to an area/product/market where I haven’t completely stacked the odds against my success.

If I do take make a major pivot, I’ll attempt to follow this criteria:

• Pick a space/problem I experience first hand
• Pick a potential business model that sells a higher value product to fewer entities
• Find a co-founder(s)

Despite the pain and lack of progress, I’m more committed than ever to making this entrepreneurial thing work. Never give up.