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People always say failure, in some form or another, is unavoidable in entrepreneurship. After launching our first digital product in June 2024, we can confirm this is true.
Our first product, the Travel Hub.
After the first 8 months of our digital nomad adventures, we realized we had a lot of learnings to share with other nomads and avid travellers through a comprehensive Travel Hub Notion template.
We poured months of effort and countless hours into its development, believing we were creating something revolutionary (we’re still holding onto a bit of this belief). It was a one-stop platform that would transform how people plan and experience their travels.
We improved it, revised it, gathered feedback from friends, tweaked it again, developed marketing collateral, and were excited to get it out into the world for others to use.
The launch that didn’t travel far.
We had tons of marketing collateral prepared. We’d estimate we had over 100 different pieces of collateral for the Travel Hub. Instagram stories, posts, reels, long-form videos, website imagery, icons, graphs, tutorials, guides, you name it. Each one with different iterations, tweaked to refine the messaging and communicate the value add of this product. We whole-heartedly believed we were ready.
Come the big day, we had high hopes things would go well and the product would be a hit. Well… minutes went by, hours went by, days went by, weeks went by. Not a single product was sold. Ouch.
Launches are unpredictable.
Despite our meticulous planning, we encountered a few different challenges when launching. Whether it was missing a key piece of collateral that fit into the general story of the product we wanted to share, being unaware of certain Instagram limitations, not being prepared to answer questions coming in, we had to scramble a bit.
This taught us a crucial lesson: it's impossible to be 100% prepared, despite feeling 110% prepared. There will always be unexpected variables and scenarios that you simply cannot anticipate.
If someone tells you your product is worth less, it doesn’t mean it’s worth less.
Before we launched, we sent the product around to friends who travelled often to see how they perceived the tool. We wanted to gauge how valuable they all thought the tool was in order to inform our pricing strategy.
Almost all our reviewers valued our product far below what we thought it was worth. Reality set in that we had spent months developing a dud. It was a tough pill to swallow but inspired one of the biggest learnings of our business so far… the value perception gap.
If it were not for the perspective of 1 reviewer who saw the real potential of our product, and actually suggested that the product was undervalued, we would have likely believed the majority and underpriced our product.
This made us realize that it was not the fault of the reviewers or the fault of the product, but the fault of how the value of the product was communicated. We had failed to sufficiently show the value of the product.
We realized we had a communication conundrum
…and to be honest, we will always have one (if you were able to perfectly communicate the value of your product to everyone, you would likely sell your product to everyone who saw it).
We learned that building a great product is only half the battle. The other half - and perhaps the more crucial one - is effectively communicating its value to potential customers. We had focused so intently on creating features and functionalities that we had neglected to craft a compelling narrative about why the Travel Hub was essential for our target audience.
We had assumed that the value of the Travel Hub would be self-evident, but in reality, we needed to work harder to articulate its benefits and unique selling points.
Our David vs. Goliath.
Interestingly, our experience with the Travel Hub stands in stark contrast to another product we launched. If the Travel Hub is our Goliath, a tool we poured our blood, sweat, and tears into. Then our P&L Tracker Notion template is our David, a tool we created on a whim, that selfishly helped us as entrepreneurs track our businesses income and expenses.
To our surprise, our P&L Tracker has become our most successful product, generating a substantial portion of our revenue. This unexpected outcome taught us a valuable lesson about market needs and product-market fit.
What the P&L Tracker taught us.
- You can't force market acceptance: No matter how much you believe in your product, you can't make the market embrace it. The market decides what it needs and values.
- Focus on solving real problems: Our successful product addressed a genuine need for us and that translated to a need in the market. It's crucial to create solutions to real, pressing problems rather than perceived ones.
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Effective communication is key: It's not enough to build a great product; you must also effectively communicate its value. Your customers need to understand why your product is essential for them.
- We haven’t given up hope on the Travel Hub and continue to explore ways to appropriately communicate the massive amounts of value hidden within.
- Be prepared for the unexpected: No matter how much you plan, unforeseen challenges will arise. Flexibility and adaptability are crucial.
- Don't underestimate the small projects: Sometimes, the most successful ideas come from addressing immediate, practical needs rather than grand visions.
Moving forward…
Our experience with the Travel Hub, while disappointing in some respects, was invaluable in shaping our approach to future product development and product marketing. We've learned to balance our passion for developing with a more strategic approach to communicating product value.
We've definitely learned to embrace failure not as an outcome, but as an essential part of the entrepreneurial journey. And for some odd reason, we're eager to fail again.