Proving a Marketing/Sales Model.

How do you prove anything?  Very,very difficult from an engineering perspective.  Instead, how about "verifying a hypothesis".  In other words... create an H0 hypothesis about your sales & marketing strategy... then; test that hypothesis, and most importantly measure the results closely.

If you can say that your hypothesis works, then do the hard part: try to scale it up!  (wow, that can be tough).

So many companies think: well I'll get X customers, and then I'll be at a critical mass and then my model will be Y.  The problems... how do you get to X customers?  How do you know what will happen when you get there?

Instead, I focus on getting to x customers (note the smaller x), and prove that the model works at x.. (e.g. the business is profitable at x).  Then, I slowly scale up towards X.  If Y happens, great... but my X is still my x and that's good enough for a profitable business.

Go x yourself.

New LOWER Pricing for Karmaback!

Great News for you Social Network Marketing Gurus....

You have a new tool at your disposal... Karmaback!

Karamback is now Free to try for 30-days... and is "all-inclusive!", including fully custom apps!
It's just $49.99/month after that!

Yep, that includes ALL our tools:

• PostOnTime.com which lets you schedule social posts to Twitter and Facebook, and "photo upload posts" to Facebook... for ANY time you want, with fast and deep analytics!  Yep, includes your own branded app!
• Sweepmaker.com which lets you build a FULLY custom Sweepstakes to run in your Facebook or Twitter, Including your own custom app.
• Fanpage Tab Builder, which lets you build full HTML Fanpage tabs, with just a few clicks!
• Referral Contest Builder.
• Track-able Links
• Viral Coupons (Social Coupons with any twist you prefer: like-gated, claim-gated, share-gated, etc.).
• AND MORE!
• ALL INCLUDED, free to try, 30-days, and just $49.99/month after that.

Get Started Now!

The Greatest Start-up Book Ever?

I've read dozens, maybe almost a hundred books on start-ups.  I've loved many of them, but none of them really seemed like 'science' to me, more like opinion.  After reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, I now understand what I've been missing!  I really do feel like The Lean Startup is the greatest start-up book ever.. and here is why you MUST READ THIS BOOK NOW!

1. It teaches entrepreneurs the "Scientific Method" for building a startup.
2. It teaches entrepreneurs the proper ORDER of building a startup.
3. It teaches INVESTORS the propper criteria to evaluate a startup.
4. It explains in detail the right time to 'get funding' and more importantly 'spend funding'.
5. It explains very clearly why so many startups fail.
6. It has dozens of examples of the process being used successfully.
7. It truly teaches you about scale-able business models.
8. It builds a great foundation for managing people and teams in a startup.
9. It even applies to big organizations that want to be more startup-y.

DO NOT WAIT, get this book now.

7 reasons to Fail Early & Cheaply

Since everyone knows 19 out of 20 start-ups will fail... why not fail as soon as you can and as cheaply as you can?  In fact, recent evidence suggests that the #1 reason start-ups fail is trying to scale up too quickly/too soon.  Here are 7 reasons to FAIL as quickly as possible, and as cheaply as possible:

1. Whenever you fail, you almost always learn more than if you succeed... especially if you start out with the goal of learning/deciding if a hypothesis will work.
2. If you can fail quickly, you will likely have time and energy enough to try again!  (not necessarily a 'new' start-up, but instead another "hypothesis"/product variation to test in the current one).
3. If you fail cheaply, you may have money enough to try again!
4. If you fail early, you avoid spending too much time on a bad idea.
5. If you fail cheaply, you haven't invested too much "sunk costs" into the idea, and can let it die more quickly.
6. If you can fail quickly, it means you have wisely set criteria for failure (a rare thing indeed!)!
7. If and when you succeed, you KNOW you have something, because you have defined (wisely) what success is, and your past failures prove that the current situation is "Worth" scaling up!

Final word of warning: Scaling up itself is a difficult challenge, so use the term literally, and slowly increase the rate of growth, rather than step function.