Money Stage Overview
Welcome to the “Money” stage of the Fizzle small business roadmap. We call this the money stage because you’ll be offering a product or service for sale, and you’ll work to build your income up to meet your basic needs.
The checkpoint for this stage is something referred to as “ramen profitable.” This is the level of income that will prove your business idea is worth continuing to build, and that you could survive on if you decided to or had to. It’s not necessarily a comfortable level of income, but a survival level.
To get to ramen profitable, you’re going to launch your product or service. Then, you’ll evaluate the results.
Some people won’t earn a single dollar from the initial launch. A lucky few will get to ramen profitable right away. Your situation will probably be somewhere in between. You’ll earn a little from your launch, but not enough to survive on and you’ll have some additional work to do.
We’ll help you evaluate your situation and make a plan for growing your revenue. You may need to grow or refine your audience further, or you may need to improve the product. Maybe you’ll need to do both.
In any case, the process for growing your revenue is fairly simple. The revenue equation is well defined:
# of potential customers X conversion rate X price = revenue.
We’ll look into each of these factors in detail to develop your plan.
After a while, you’ll have a decision to make. If you’ve made significant progress toward ramen profitable, you’ll likely keep going. If you’re stuck, you’ll have to reevaluate. Maybe your product needs a complete overhaul, or maybe you should pivot towards solving a different problem.
This process follows our philosophy about your business being a hypothesis. Your job is to test the hypothesis as efficiently as possible. If things don’t work out, you’ll develop a new hypothesis. This stage requires the attitude of a scientist and the patience of a farmer.
OK, let’s jump in. Up next we’ll help you develop a launch plan that will give your product the best shot at succeeding right out of the gate.