Edmonton Business Consultant | Launch Your Product Before it’s Perfect

Does your product or service will always change, uh, after lunch. Mm.

Yeah. I can see the whole why with the two? Uh, I can be you ever want to be, cause it’s not. Hi.

Thanks for joining us for another episode of ask. SPERL CPA. Today is EBITDA business coach. We’re talking about launching your product before. It’s perfect. I have Michael here with me. Uh, Michael, what’d you do this again? No, Mike’s Really, no. Yeah, no. What are your hobbies? Come on, Michael. We got it. We’ve got to get something out of you. Yeah. Uh, well I like following trends and social media and stuff. Okay. Yeah. Well, any trends, anything particularly it’s history. Oh, well not this week. Really. Nothing happened this week. So all your social media providers out there, all your content producers, you’ve got to step up your game because Michael is disappointed on what he saw this week. So I think the quote that we have here today is a Gary Vena trick quote, and he says, there’s no such thing as perfect chasing perfect is the shortest road to not achieving it.

And the statistic that we have here, uh, is 50% of all Canadian businesses will go to business in the first five years and 29% of these businesses we’ll list are running out of cash is one of the primary reasons for failure making running out of cash as the second most common reason for business failure. And the story that we have here are business owners that they think that they should wait until their product or service is perfect before they launch. So Micah, what are the questions that these business owners should be asking if you think their product or service should be perfect. Can market research ever replace selling something to a real customer? I don’t think so. I don’t think market research can ever replace actually selling something to a real customer. You can do all the market research that you want and it can be beneficial, but it’s never going to actually replace, you know, asking for contract, delivering the service, receiving the feedback in a paid relationship.

It just changes the dynamics when money’s on the table. Will prospective clients normally back out? Puns? It’s time to pay. Yeah. So I’ve seen this one before where business owners say, I have a commitment, I have a commitment from this customer and that customer and the customer down the street. And they said they’re good, they’re solid, they know they’re entrenched. A, we’ve got pos even. And uh, we’ve got written letters from Ted and then all of a sudden it comes time when they actually have that product or service. They waited too long in order to deliver it. And all of a sudden that client backs out, you know, there, there’s a number of reasons while their backhoe a, because you know, they might not have been as serious as you think. Again, when it comes time to delivering money, they changed their mind when at times to put your money where your mouth this and sometimes the length of time that elapses the circumstances for that potential customer could have changed.

So you know that when it, when it comes time to getting that commitment for the potential customer, if you’re not ready, if you still have to develop this, uh, you know, pie in the sky product or service, you know, just because they gave you a commit, it doesn’t mean it’s for sure going to follow through once you’re ready to deliver. Will the product or service offering, Edmonton Business Consultant, almost always change after launch? Yes. In fact, Edmonton Business Consultant, you know, it’ll, it really always needs, cause you’re just going to get that feedback. You’re going to learn better ways to do it. You know, how can I deliver this product or service to be more efficient and you’re going to change it. You don’t in regards to that. And then you’re gonna listen to customer feedback and you say, how can I deliver this product or service at a higher quality?

And then you’re going to adjust, uh, because of that. Edmonton Business Consultant, so for those reasons, your product or service will always change, uh, after launch. Will your product ever be perfect? It’s really, in my mind is never going to be perfect. It’s just like, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk says, no, perfect is the shortest, right? Chasing perfect is the shortest road to not achieving it. Edmonton Business Consultant, you know, your product or service, it’s just never going to be perfect. You know, you can think about, can I get to, uh, uh, 95% customer satisfaction rate, two or heck, even a 99% customer satisfaction rate, but you’re just never going to get to a hundred. You Never gonna get zero errors in, in, you know, delivering that product to service. It just doesn’t happen in any sort of scale.

Okay.

Should you always have time scheduled to improve your product or service? Yeah, so I think you should always have that time actually scheduled. You should just come to the recognition that if you, you know, it’s, it’s ridiculously hard to perfect a product or service and it’s something that’s always ongoing and the bar is always being raised. Your competitors, they’re always raising the bar. So, rather than say, I, you know, I need, you know, two years to, uh, to launch it, Edmonton Business Consultant, you could just say, hey, I need, you know, two months to launch it and then I need, you know, four hours or eight hours every week to make it better forever. Um, you know, because it comes time to, if you don’t change that product or service, you know, that previous question where if you don’t change it, it’s usually because you’re out of business.

Oh, those are the only people who usually don’t change their product or services. The ones that have gone out of business, you’re always going to need that time. And it should be time that’s schedule a so you shouldn’t even execute a business plan or your own personal schedule without recognizing that I need time in my week to make my product or service better. Will it take longer than you think to improve your product or service? It’s my experience that it takes almost every business owner longer to make changes in their business, though they think that, you know, I’m going to implement this new client intake process or I’m going to have this new feedback from a form or we’re going to implement this new training program. So our employees are our or are trained up and it almost always takes more time. Edmonton Business Consultant, and it probably takes more money than they consider too.

So, you know, all the impro improvements that they’re projecting in their product and service, they’re usually, you know, a lot of times they’re possible, but they just take more time and more money to actually do them. What they thought when they originally set out to do it. Do businesses often unnecessarily deplete cash reserves prior to launch? I think so. They’re, they’re really, a lot of times we’re looking at, they have a launch date and they set that launch date in the future and they have all of this list of things that they want to do before that launch date. Um, and they spend a lot of time and a lot of money before the launch date to get these things up to speed. Um, and I think a lot of those things that you do are unnecessary. And the problem is you’ll never know that they’re unnecessary until you start selling something to real customers.

Um, so a lot of times these business owners, they’re really depleting those, those cash reserves. And remember the 29% of all failed businesses will, this running out of cash is one of the reasons why they run into cash. And I think a lot of it has to do with what they do, you know, prior to launch or right around the time of launch it. And they’re just, you know, spending money and time on these things that aren’t going to matter that much. Uh, you know, it’s like they’re just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping everything, you know, everything will, will stick and see what will stick. But the problem is every pieces of spaghetti you throw at the wall costs more money. Uh, and then, you know, by the end of it they launched and they realize that hey, nine and the 10 things that we did didn’t matter.

This one thing mattered a lot and then we don’t have any more money to do that one thing. Edmonton Business Consultant, so I think business has, a lot of times they do unnecessarily deplete their cash reserves prior to launch chasing perfection. Should initial revenue help fund the development of your product or service? Yeah, so you have to look at it. It’s not that I need startup capital a to perfect the product or services. I need enough margin in selling a product or service that I can always make that product or service a little bit better. That’s what you really have to, um, you know, look at, right. It’s, it’s, you know, a lot of people think that no, you need investments, investment, you know, loan or you an investment. I need to save up money. It’s like if you have any sort of, you know, scalable business for the long term, there has to be enough margin in that product or service to continually make that product or service better.

Um, so, you know, you have to look at that initial revenue and even the ongoing revenue as a way to, uh, to develop the product or service it, selling your minimal viable product normally the best option. Yeah, I think it’s it, you know, selling your minimal viable product is normally the, the best option. I mean, let’s look at even the businesses that think that they need investment capital. You know, first of all, I tell people, if you think you need investment capital, Edmonton Business Consultant, even if you think you need it, you should devise a business plan that you can execute without anybody else coming to your rescue. Uh, because a lot of businesses simply die because they never get that loan or they never get that investment capital. Uh, but what’s your plan B, you know? Yeah. Some of them is that angel investor comes with the right deal.

Great. But that’s the exception, not the norm. So you have to have that, uh, you know, uh, minimal product or you know, viable product or service that you can launch. And I think even launching that minimal viable product and service makes it more likely that you’re going to get that investment of capital not less likely because they, you know, a potential investors already seeing what you can do with nothing. Well, what can you do with their money now? Edmonton Business Consultant, so I think it provides that proof of concept and I think it’s almost always the way to get to that minimal viable product or service because you don’t really know going back to you, you can’t ever replace, you know, selling something to read or real customer and finding those pain points in actually delivering a service and finding the real feedback from real paying customers that I think always getting to your minimal viable product.

You know, it’s the best option. It gets you, lets you keep the most amount of cash in the bank that you can deploy on. What you find out actually works once you deliver the product or service. So I encourage every business owner out there. They usually have this business plan and I need to, uh, you know, uh, Lisa space or bias space, it’s this big and I need equipment, a, B, c, d, and e and I to hire, you know, four staff members, Edmonton Business Consultant, and I need, you know, 12 months of research and development and get the right product. And I think strip it all down, strip it all down, you know, find out what your problem, vision and mission is. You know, what is the problem that the marketplace has been a saw and that you’re trying to solve in the marketplace and what is the smallest, you know, the minimal viable product.

The thing that you can get the market the quickest and with the least amount of money that solves that problem or has the potential to solve that problem. It might not solve it as well as your dream service, but it starts to solve it. That’s the best option. Find out what works, you know, pump the money back into the business that you’re actually making. Use that to develop your product or service, then you’re not. Your Business doesn’t die if you don’t get the right investment capital or if you don’t get the right loan. So I think that’s what we have here today. Thanks so much for joining us. As always, your pieces of the like and subscribe buttons, we continue to deliver your tips on how to beat the odds at business, and you’ll leave us some comments below so we can respond back and use your input for future videos. Thanks very much.