Rather than just write every entry myself, it's my goal to pull in some best-of-class industry experts who can bring their unique perspective to the conversation here on ScrappyMarketing.com. Today I want to introduce you to Jesse Lakes, serial entrepreneur, founder of too many websites to mention, one of my best friends and the ultimate scrappy entrepreneur. Unlike the rest of us, Jesse has never worked 9-5 and switches his primary residence a few times per year with Colorado, Montana and Costa Rica being the three mainstays. Ok, enough from the cheap seats. Read on to learn how Jesse started a business in less than a day.
Ironically my most successful business venture to date was a fluke. It was supposed to just be a mock up of what an advertiser would look like for Niftytricks.com, my online resource for extreme sports. Unfortunately, Niftytricks.com had never really made any money using affiliate banner ads so I wanted to up my game and try and sell advertising directly via sponsorships. I needed some way to illustrate this along with building some critical mass to get it rolling.
It was also about this time that I saw an amazing ski movie that left a lasting impression. The skiing was good but it was the soundtrack that made it a great film. After spending the rest of the evening with one of the songs stuck in my head I got home and started searching online for the song but the soundtrack listing for the film was nowhere to be found. Nowhere! That’s odd…
It wasn’t until half an hour later that I connected the dots.
I messaged my old roommate /business partner/best friend who ran a hosting company. I asked him to get me a domain name and set up an account for it. That was the beginning. Approximately twelve hours later I took a nap.
Between sun down and sun up I had managed to build a template, create a handful of pages, fill in those pages with content, hook up an affiliate advertiser and publish the site. And I hadn’t even left my bedroom. I had managed to take the idea into a working proof of concept in one night through some instant messaging and a hard work session…
SkiMovieMusic.com was born Nov 13th 2006. Although it wasn’t the first place online that the soundtracks from ski movies were listed it filled a niche of being easy to use, linking to individual songs and more complete then anywhere else. The concept behind the project was to make ski film soundtracks easy to find and easy to buy/download the individual songs (the iTunes affiliate program offers 5% commission on everything bought by traffic your site sends).
…After my nap I frantically continued adding content to build up my critical mass. I took a quick break from my computer about midday and went and bought the ski movie I had seen the night before as well as every other recent ski movie the store had. The afternoon was spent getting my recent purchases onto the site.
At about 10pm another like minded winter enthusiast showed up on instant messenger. I started the conversation off with a link, a link to my less then 24 hour old website. There was a few minutes pause after I sent him my URL. My mind flooded with dread of all the awful things he would say but I knew deep down that I was onto something. When it finally came, his initial response was a simple one word: “Brilliant.” Funny, that’s what I had been thinking….
I didn’t touch Niftytricks.com for almost two years after that night. SkiMovieMusic.com, on the other hand, became a profitable venture and the payer of my bills within a month.
What I learned about launching a business in a day.
- Let the world help you connect the dots; keep your eyes, ears and mind open.
- Do a little research. But don’t do too much. A few hours should do the trick.
- Then dive right in, head first.
- Don’t get caught up in the details.
- Don’t stop until you have a working proof of concept.
- Work on it until you feel the project can pitch itself, it doesn’t need you tagging along.
- Try it out on one or two like minded friends.
- Trust your gut feeling.
- Build an audience.
- Test your monetization model as soon as you can.
- More on the last two points in Jesse's next entry.
Between random adventures Jesse Lakes spends a lot of time day dreaming about how he will never have to work again.
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