Deep Singh Start Ups, Online Marketing, Management

Sounds awesome, to be quite honest. I'd love to know where you are based. Local knowledge is your super power and as such should be leveraged to the hilt!

When you dream about how your business looks like in a year from now, or even months from now, what do you see yourself doing? Who do you have working with you, or for you?

Are you still close to home, or are there local chapters of your business all over the country, or world, for that matter?

Tell me about your dream, no matter how small, or big, and we can reverse engineer it. Small steps first of course, but consistently and 'on the side; if need be,

In general, a website is good, with your local knowledge, yes. I think we can do more on your site, from videos and testimonials to posting on other site and forums. Writing for the local press as well as guest posting on travel blogs.

The list is endless and if you'd like, we can connect on the phone and make a plan. Write to me with more information, including the site address so I can brainstorm ahead of a conversation. Exciting times ahead, for sure.

Thanks for your question.

I've spent years initially testing new businesses using Google Adwords and have a good understanding of what we should be looking for, and what happens next.

I think its awesome that you're only spending $4 a day with your test, and actually learning, so tell me more about what we are tracking.

So we have acquired 200 leads, and of those 7 have paid up. What do we know about the others? What information have they given us. Do we know if they come back to the site to look around? Are we engaging them in any other ways?

For $4 a day we can do lots and lots of things to figure out if this channel works, or indeed if our MVP is the right one to go with.

What I love about Adwords more than any other channel is the speed at which we can learn about our users. Are we talking to those 7 paying users yet?

Your question has inspired me to ask many more questions, but I'm hopeful answering all of this, and more, should allow you to squeeze out every last drop of value from this test, before doing anything else. And there is lots of other things we can start testing too, but first up, lets go really deep in to our Adwords test.

I can help you understand your data if you need, and get down all of the other items I mentioned in to a logical actionable work plan so you can make progress really quickly. Give me a shout if you need to. Best of luck.

My first thought was to ask what your product or service was so that I could provide a useful answer, but for now we can stick to the basics and then go deeper a little later.

A big part of my 10 plus years of experience has involved launching new products and services to existing businesses so I hope some of this advice is helpful. A big theme has been the speed of launch, learning and understanding our customers, and pivoting as and where required.

First up, and before asking your questions, take the position of not being completely in love with your offering, as this could hamper your ability to get the most out of your research with your early adopters.

We're very creative in justifying something we're completely attached to even in the face of customers pleading with us that we're wrong. Just be aware of this tendency, as it will save you tons of time.

'Why?' is a good starting point, and is also a really important follow up question. Why do you feel that way? This will lead us to all kinds of places, some of which you may never thought about. The more we learn the better off we'll be in deciding what to do next.

- Why are you using this?
- What problem does it solve? I'll help you rephrase all important question that so that its even more human, and thereby easier to answer.
- If this product or service stopped existing, what would you do?
- What could be better, etc?

Let's try thinking about the fundamentals of your offering rather than the details for now, given that I think this is the first time you're connecting with your 7 odd early adopters?

We're thinking about moving very quickly on the feedback we receive and being flexible enough and open enough to drop big parts of our offering if necessary, because what they want is more important to us that what we'd like our offering to be.

If you want to go a lot deeper in to this feel free to connect. I'd love to hear about it, and help you further.

Thanks for your question.
If things go well the boss will find out anyway, so you may as well assume you will do well and have a conversation with him now. Now we don't know enough about your idea to really advise well enough, but in general I'd try and position it as a 'weekend hobby', and as something he/she shouldn't be worried about.

Also, I really wouldn't worry about the boss doing what you do just because they can. I'm guessing anyone connected with you on social media or networking events could do so too. People are way too busy with their own stuff to allocate enough time and resources to do what you do, nor are they as advanced in the business as you have been, given you've spent valuable time gaining key insights that they couldn't never gain from hacking a version of your business.
Hope this helps. Good luck!