Starting out, we planned to spend and ultimately spent $$ on advertising/marketing and resources to call/email advisors.

It didn& #39;t work, we realized we needed to reassess, we pulled back.

We& #39;ve since spent close to $0 on both with pretty solid results.

I& #39;m sure we& #39;ll be forced to reassess again and again over time, but that& #39;s not why this is interesting to me.

What& #39;s interesting is that we never would have known that we *could* make the business model work without high $$ spend on these channels.

What I realized today is that the $$ spent in those early months may have actually been one of the most valuable investments we& #39;ve made, even though it didn& #39;t work.

It wasn& #39;t a "waste".

If we hadn& #39;t spent the money, we wouldn& #39;t have learned that we could "do it" without.

This realization may save us a ton of $$ over the long-term as we build out our organic channels.

TL:DR - Look for a silver lining.