This week marked the first week of the 2 month/8 week programme as part of Dorm.
So much has happened this week:
- I attended a briefing session on this week’s mission: Create an MVP for my turnkey business.
- I attended an interview with one of Dorm’s co-founders who talked about his other business.
- I attended a mindset masterclass on how to deal with uncertainty around entrepreneurship.
I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this week: whether it was going to be a huge waste of time or whether I would be getting some value out of the online content and virtual sessions.
To my pleasant surprise, I have quite enjoyed myself this week: I have learnt a lot of new things that I haven’t come across before, and been exposed to new tools and techniques.
There is so much that I would like to share from this week, however I thought I would write a quick summary on my key actions, lessons, and takeaways from my first week at Dorm.
Building an MVP
The mission/challenge for this week was to build an ‘MVP’ for my chosen turnkey business.
As a reminder, ‘MVP’ stands for ‘Minimum Viable Product’.
What this means is to build a super simple version of your product (like a prototype) that doesn’t require too much time or money.
As I mentioned in my previous post, my chosen turnkey business is ecommerce.
So the MVP that I had to create was a basic website/landing page for my ecommerce brand without spending too much time or money on it, yet making it look professional.
Note: this website was to be both started and launched by the end of the week!
After about 5 hours working on it during the week, here is what I have so far:
The niche I have chosen for my brand is ‘home fitness’. I chose this niche for two reasons:
- It is one of the turnkey niches recommended by Dorm.
- It is a niche that I know quite well: I have been working out at home for many years.
Therefore I am part of the target audience for this business and would be able to relate to them. They say it’s important to work on a business that you are actually interested in.
Having completed my first draft of the website, the last step was to post the link to my brand to my Dorm slack group and ask for feedback on my website from my peers.
The feedback has been very useful, suggesting improvements that I had not considered.
$1 million from Crowd Funding
Our second session of the week was a Founder AMA/Fireside Chat.
AMA stands for ‘Ask Me Anything’.
Apparently, every week they invite an experienced entrepreneur to share their entrepreneurial journey as well as answer any questions that we have.
This week’s session was with Taras Polischuk, one of the co-founders of Dorm.
He talked about this experience co-founding the oral hygiene brand Pomabrush, which is now a multi-million pound company.
During the 1 hour session, he talked about why he chose this niche, his experience working with an industrial designer, talking to potential factories in china, creating his MVP and getting signups, getting funding from angel investors, and then getting $1million from crowd funding.
By the end of the session, I was completely blown away.
Until that point, I wasn’t sure what made Dorm qualified to teach us about entrepreneurship.
After that session, I felt much more comfortable knowing that I was being taught by experts.
It’s safe to say that after that session, I was pumped to get back to working on my business!
Dealing with Extreme Uncertainty
Saturdays are usually my days for having a lie-in.
However, it looks like my sleep-ins are going to be interrupted for the next few weeks.
That’s because the last session of the week was a mindset masterclass on Saturday morning.
These sessions are more to do with mindset and the mental areas around entrepreneurship.
This week’s session was with Ranbir Arora, the other cofounder of Dorm.
In this session he talked about how to deal with the uncertainty around entrepreneurship.
He broke this up into two parts: Making the Entrepreneurial Jump and Lasting the Journey.
Some of my key takeaways were that you shouldn’t feel that you need to quit your job to start a business; keep your job and start small – 2 hours a day x 5 days = 10 hours per week.
He also said to pace yourself; the journey should be an enjoyable one, one that you should be looking forward to, and if you’re not enjoying it then you’re doing something wrong.
He also says that you should ‘pivot’ your business as you get more data. The more data you get over time, you will know what changes you need to make based on customer feedback.
Overall, I really enjoyed this session. It set my expectations for the weeks/months ahead.
Although, it means I’ll have to keep waking up early on Saturdays, it is time well spent!
Conclusion
I really enjoyed week one of Dorm:
- I launched a website for my ecommerce brand within a week.
- I felt inspired and motivated having heard how Pomabrush became a successful brand.
- I know what to expect over the coming weeks and how to react to them when it happens.
All I can say is that I am now looking forward to week two!
As far as I know, next week’s mission will be to drive traffic to our MVPs and see if we get any interest, purchases, or signups.
This will be to determine whether is a demand for my business or whether I need to pivot.
I have no idea who the speaker will be for the fireside chat or what the mindset masterclass will be about next week.
However, if its anything like this week, all I know is that I am looking forward to it!
One thing that I was surprised by is the lack of action from the rest of the cohort.
Out of a cohort of say 50 people, only a handful of people have actually posted links to their MVPS for the rest of us to review.
This is quite disappointing as there needs to be more action from the group however I am hoping that this picks up over time.
Over the next 7 weeks I hope to keep you updated and share my progress and journey with you guys every week, so keep a look out for next week’s blog!
Have you guys enjoyed reading about my journey this week? Let me know what you think!
Are you on your own entrepreneurial journey? If so let me know, would love to hear about it!
