A new game plan.

John Reagan Moore
Aug 28, 2017 · 5 min read

In the last couple of posts I’ve explained why I am starting a soccer-related business and shared some of my failed attempts at starting a business so far and some theories about why I have failed. This post will explain how I am changing my approach.


Focus and Patience

I am going to narrow my focus dramatically. I need to limit my attention to one audience and one product. I want to create a business that is indispensable and adored by its customers. But, I’m only one man and I can’t become familiar enough with multiple markets to become indispensable to them. So I’m going to pick one market and find one thing that they need that I can deliver better than anyone else.

The work I have already done is targeted at 3–4 different markets: recreational sports players, recreational adult sports league commissioners, youth sports club administrators and coaches, and college coaches. Starting now I’m going to pick one market and focus on becoming intimate with that audience and understanding their needs, wants, goals and challenges. I will have patience, so that when it is difficult to find how I fit in to the market or a product isn’t selling, I won’t just move on to another market in search of another problem.

I have been juggling two brands and multiple products. I’m going to move to one brand for one product. The brand is Onside, and the product is recruiting software.


Which market?

So what am I going to focus on? Small Christian college soccer teams. I’m going to start here because this is a set of a few hundred potential customers with some unique needs that differentiate them from the majority of college athletic programs and I already have a small network in Christian college soccer. While they do have relatively small budgets, most of them already have a line-item in their budget for SaaS. After I’ve established a small customer base and operational flow in that narrow market of Christian college soccer teams, I’ll expand outward to similar programs.

I’m planning to pursue recruiting software because I think it fits fairly well with this model of an ideal bootstrapped company according to Jason Cohen, which I think makes sense for my personal goals.


Learn from people

I really haven’t spoken with many potential customers in the past year. Only about 7–8 people and they weren’t all in the same category or facing similar problems. So I have really only spoken with 1 or 2 people in any given market. As discussed in the last post that was a big mistake.

I’m planning to make talking with people my primary function for the next couple of months. I need to learn the about the industry, understand my audience’s goals and start building relationships. My goals in these conversations is to figure out:

  1. What are the problems these programs are facing?
  2. How do they deal with these problems now?
  3. How do they decide what to buy?
  4. What is their purchasing process like?
  5. What would make their life significantly better?
  6. Can I help these people?

Start Marketing

I need to give myself a chance to succeed by getting in front of more potential customers. I have developed several products in the past year and then just moved on the next thing without doing any marketing or sales whatsoever. I’m going to spend much more of my time on marketing. At this point I plan to try a few different tactics:

  1. Content — Obviously I’m starting to write, and I plan to develop content that would be helpful to my audience and to share that content.
  2. Adwords — I’ve no idea how this will work, but I will at least see if I can set up an audience targeted narrowly enough that I think it might be worth a shot. I’ll try some very specific keywords and probably some direct competitor keywords.
  3. Facebook Ads — Similar to AdWords I’m going to try to focus on a very narrow audience and try a few different ads to see if anything works.
  4. Direct Mail — I’m also going to try direct mail. I think this is a channel that might connect really well with my audience, and I can get creative and hopefully deliver a memorable experience that helps me build some brand recognition with potential customers.
  5. Partnerships — I’m going test out the possibility of developing partnerships with influencers in the industry to help me develop trust and gain access to potential customers.

Sales

I’m going to make direct sales calls. I’ll start with my existing network and work outward via introductions. Initially I will just start by having some calls with people to better understand their needs so I can decide whether or not I am the right person to help them. If I am the right person to help them I’m going to try to move the conversation to specifically what I can do for them, and persuade them that they should work with me because I am going to personally take care of them and work extremely hard to make sure they are happy with the service. I know that this sales method and pitch won’t be scalable for the type of business I want to build, but I think it will be an effective approach for me to win my first customers.


Get paid

I have spent many many hours developing tools for people and never getting paid for that work. I think this is a part of the early stages of learning about building products, and learning about a market, but it’s painful, and I wish I had avoided it.

So starting now I’m going to avoid it. I’m sure this policy won’t always be well received, but I really want to avoid the pain of spending months building something no one will pay for. So here it is: I’m not going to write any more code, unless I have already been paid to to write it. I know that this is going to be a hard policy for me to stick to personally, but I think I have to in order to avoid going another year without bringing in any side-project revenue.

So below is what I’ve got live right now. I won’t be changing anything until I find someone who will pay for those changes.


I would love to hear your feedback on this plan. I know it’s not perfect, and I am sure to fail at points in the implementation and change my mind about things. But I would love to hear any thoughts you have about how I can improve this plan and avoid missteps on my path to building a profitable business. From here on out the posts will probably shorter updates, with the occasional longer piece as well. Thanks for reading, and please subscribe if you want to keep up with my progress.

Stuck In

Building careers in the beautiful game.

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John Reagan Moore

Written by

Software Developer. Soccer Player, Coach, Supporter, and Entrepreneur.

Stuck In

Stuck In

Building careers in the beautiful game.

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