EPISODE #553
Diana Goodwin
Bootstrapping to Millions:
Building the ‘Shopify’ of Services
553 Diana Goodwin: Bootstrapping to Millions
How to Get Customer Validation Before Investing in Systems and Technology
What does it take to bootstrap a business into the millions?
Pioneering something completely new is challenging even with investment dollars, so what’s the secret to building a scalable business when you’re starting with only a couple of thousand dollars?
Its all about finding your first customers, testing demand, and validating your ideas with initial paying customers – and using that early revenue to invest in technology and replicable systems only once you’ve got customer validation.
Diana Goodwin is Founder & CEO of MarketBox, a B2B sales and scheduling software designed to solve the unique challenges of businesses with mobile workforces. Diana initially founded AquaMobile, an on-demand swim lesson provider, which is now the largest of its kind in North America and Australia. The AquaMobile software gave her the opportunity to start and spin out MarketBox
Says Diana, “I wanted to make sure I had customers first and foremost. Were people actually interested in this business, in this service that I had to offer? And then once the answer was yes, you start learning from your first set of customers and you say, ‘Okay, well, I now know what their needs are. Let me see if I can build leverage technology somehow to automate certain functions of my business so that I can scale it’.”
- How to bootstrap your business by leverage every dollar you have to get customers before your product is fully completed
- How to build a product or service by learning from your earliest customers what their needs truly are – and how to meet them
- How to build your product manually first to test demand before investing in technology or automated processes
- Why every dollar you bring in should be invested in refining replicable processes and building your team to bring in profitable revenue
- How Diana’s first business gave her the idea for a much bigger second business building on what she learned in the first one
- Why the venture capital model is broken, the mindset women need to raise investment, and why you must qualify your investors to ensure they’re in alignment with your vision
- And much more!
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More about Diana Goodwin at www.gomarketbox.com
More about Diana Goodwin at Go Market Box or Aquamobile Swim
Diana Goodwin is Founder & CEO of MarketBox, a B2B sales and scheduling software designed to solve the unique challenges of businesses with mobile workforces. Diana initially founded AquaMobile, an on-demand swim lesson provider, which is now the largest of its kind in North America and Australia.
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