The #1 thing I'd do differently if I started a business again:

Try to sell a product before spending any time working on it.

After 3 failed products & 18 months of no revenue, we launched our agency with this Google doc and got our first 2 customers in 2 weeks.

Thread:

2/ I find that way too many people focus on all of the wrong things when starting a business.

Making sure their website looks pretty, that they have business cards so that people know they're legitimate, that they're driving traffic to their site...

None of it matters.

3/ The only thing that matters when you start is that you have a product people want.

We spent 18 months building products that we thought people wanted - only to launch them, and find out no one wanted to buy them.

4/ If we had just done what we did with that landing page and wrote out our idea, put a price tag on it, and see if people would purchase, we would've saved ourselves 18 months of headaches.

5/ Instead, we spent months building each product, making sure they were perfect, and then tried to get people to buy them.

It was only at that last step, that we realized the product was going to fail.

6/ So now, I wouldn't start a new business without trying to sell the product or service that I'm selling first.

If you try selling it and it people don't want it, ask why, and go back to the drawing board.

Repeat until you figure out something that works.

7/ If you want to save yourself from making the same mistakes we did, I'd highly recommend checking out this article I wrote 4 months after launching the agency.

It shares all the mistakes, learnings and what we'd do differently: https://growthlab.com/turned-failed-product-business-34000month-service-business/