The think (here) Blog

After reading through all the #FAILweek submissions one thing is crystal clear: There are an impressive number of incredible bloggers and entrepreneurs truly grabbing life by the horns, giving it 100%, eliminating "fear" of failure, and taking action from what they have learned. 

Below you will find a collection of some of the standout posts from bloggers across the web, but you should know upfront that narrowing down the standouts was incredibly difficult. There were truly so many great contributions.  For a complete list of the bloggers who participated check out http://bit.ly/FAILweek, or pick up a free copy of the ebook FAIL(here) which will serve as the complete #FAILweek collection with an estimated release date in March.

Monday on Tt(h)B will wrap up #FAILweek with a special video post. 

Click on the logos to see the #FAILweek posts referenced

@shanemacsays crafted one of the best posts I have come across in quite a while.  His monlogue of reacting to personal failures is (to borrow from @wordposts comment) poetic. Go. Read it... now.

@brucely Posted a truly unique post of attempting to import an African beer.  His tale is gut wrenching, but the lessons he provides are incredibly valuable. 

@BradfordShimp's #FAILweek contribution hit close was very similar to the failure posted here by Tt(h)B. The lessons he learned were insightful and optimistic. 

@caligater approached #FAILweek from a refreshingly different angle.  As a grad student she focused on the process of failing to create her first complete business plan.  Laced with optimism and unique observations this post is well worth the read.

NOTE: This is Part 2 of a 3 part post.  It is strongly recommended that you start at 'Part 1' by clicking here.

3, 2, 1, LAUNCH

The stage was set, the community was pumped, we were ready.  It all boiled down to customizing and re-launching the ad campaign that was so successful for the "Designer" portion of the community over to the "Client" side. 

In all the meetings, discussions, and hypothesizing that lead up to launch day, this seemed like a no brainer.  The clients could use every feature of our site for free.  We assumed we would not have a difficult time getting "Clients" to use the site for free.

Ka-Ching

In our most aggressive Ad Campaign we increased our ad budget nearly ten fold, scrapped our ads catering to "Designers", and put all our resources towards ads to bring in clients.  We decided to go with a big punch up front, and pair it with a low cost, long term follow up.  As the results began pouring in, one thing was certain.  The increase in traffic was nowhere close to the increase in spending.  Even worse, our conversion rate was mind numbingly low.

10 Short days after the ad campaign started we decided to kill it.  Funding running out is a huge problem, especially when it can be directly correlated to 91% of all web traffic.  With funding too low to attempt another sizable campaign we scrambled to come up with a plan to drive clients to the site, but with no "Plan B", relations between partners straining, and a waning community of designers looking for work it was obvious there was no quick fix on the immediate horizon.

The white flag went up, advertising was turned off, our web traffic sputtered to a crawl, and it was back to the drawing board in a big way.  This is the way the world a website ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

In case you did not catch them all, here are the top reasons we failed (including some more that were not mentioned):

We made assumptions about things we had the ability (and time) to test quickly and cheaply.

We did not fully research our competition until 6-9 months into the project.

We targeted a niche market without testing they even existed (more assumptions!)

We built a product before building a community.

We relied on one major traffic source as opposed to a diversified set.

But Wait! This story might have a happy ending after all. Tomorrow's Post: 'Failing Forward' will showcase where we have come since the site fizzled out, and where we are going.

 When Possibilities are Endless

Drunk on the victory of landing a legitimate, substantial, deep pocketed investor my head was spinning.  My business partner and I had been positively working our asses off gearing up for the pitch, and we succeeded. http://the2200.com was going to be a reality. Now it was time for the real work to start. 

The site we set out to design was a freelance job marketplace unlike anything the web had experienced.  Clients would post a request for a project, designers would respond with submissions.  The submissions would be presented to the client based on their Focus Vote ranking.

The Secret Sauce

Focus Vote was our secret weapon.  In theory, to assist a client in picking a winning design, all submissions would pass through the FV section of the website.  Community members would vote on their favorites and we would present the data to the client based on their customized target market. 

For example: Client A located in Denver, CO needs a new sign for his rock climbing store.  Through the Focus Vote the client could assign a higher value to voters within 10 miles of his location, who are into outdoor activities, and make over X dollars per year because those are the people he is trying to attract. No more guesswork.

The Countdown

The next 18 months yielded more consecutive late nights, all-nighters, and more time "crushing it" than I had ever experienced.  To quote @garyvee (again), we were "bleeding out of our eyeballs" we were working so hard (and we had not even "opened" for business yet).

We had a successful "Pre-Launch" campaign. In just 60 days, built a community of over 700 designers ready to work their asses off, and we were growing every single day.

Show Time

With the site sitting close to 95% completion we were ready to flip the switch, go full throttle, begin charging for memberships, capture ad revenue, and skip and sing all the way to the bank.  However, our story does not end here.  This is just the beginning, the top of the roller coaster, and the tip of the iceberg all rolled into one.

Tomorrow: #FAILweek Part 2: Everything Comes Unglued.

Over the next 5 days entrepreneurs and bloggers from across the web will come together for #FAILweek.  This event is designed to showcase and celebrate failure in the form of blog posts designed to inform readers:

1. What was attempted
2. How it failed
3. What was learned from it

There are three ways to follow along:

1. Head over to http://bit.ly/FAILweek and find the collection of links at the bottom of the page
2. On twitter search for the hashtag- #FAILweek
3. Too busy, or miss #FAILweek completely?  No worries, the posts will be gathered and assembled into a FREE ebook called "FAIL (here)" set to drop mid-March. (Link posting soon!)

Here at Tt(h)B we are going to dedicate every post this week to #FAILweek: 

• Today: At the bottom of the post you will see several videos of successful entrepreneurs celebrating failure. 
• Tuesday-Thursday: Tt(h)B will focus on the failure of (my first) web-based start up "the2200". 
• Friday: In true celebratory fashion, Tt(h)B will highlight the best #FAILweek posts from across the web.

Late to the party but still want to contribute?  No problem! Head over to http://bit.ly/FAILweek and follow the instructions.

Without further delay, here are a few videos designed to get you in the mindset that failure, when achieved correctly, is to be celebrated.

t(h)ink on. FAIL on.