My other roommate's failed business

My other roommate just graduated from college. Now real life is hitting him in the face like a ton of bricks.

Because he's struggling to find a job, he decided to try starting a business. After living in Istanbul for the past 4 years, he knows the city pretty well. He wants to sell his knowledge to tourists.

"What do tourists in Istanbul usually buy?" I asked.

"They usually buy guided tours."

"Okay," I said. "You should offer guided tours."

He didn't listen. Instead he's trying to charge $50 for a customized itinerary of places to visit in Istanbul.

This doesn't strike me as something anyone would want to buy. I could put together an itinerary after 20 minutes of searching Google. Or after 5 minutes of prompting GPT.

Needless to say, my roommate still doesn't have any customers.

My roommate is making the #1 mistake new entrepreneurs make. He's getting creative with his offer.

You don't have to have something "new" to sell. In fact, when you're just starting out, you should usually just copy your competitor's offer, and maybe add one or two wrinkles to it.

If people are already selling something, then you know there's demand for it. If you have something "new", you have no idea whether there's demand for it. Most things that people want to buy are already being sold.

The best way to guarantee success is to just copy what your competitors are doing.

I'm not saying you should never be creative. But you should treat every creative thing you do as an experiment. Most of those experiments will fail. If a few of them succeed, they will more than pay for the failures.

But wait to get creative until you have a flagship offer that's selling well — ideally swiped from your competitors!

-Theo

(P.S. If swiping your competitor's offer sounds weird to you — I know how you feel. A few years ago, it sounded weird to me, too. But since then, I've grown to appreciate the wisdom in it. You don't need to offer something "new", you need to offer your customers something they actually want. If you're struggling to get your business off the ground, give it a try!)