How things are

I spent half of my day on it, and as I didn’t talk about business stuff for a while.. hello, let’s go!

When I moved to this villa in Bali, I didn’t really intend to have guests during the first month. It was in the beginning of February.

There is 4 bedrooms, and the concept is to live with other entrepreneurs who stay there from 1 week to 1 month.

Then Greta and Naza came, and instead of having the first entrepreneurs in the house after 1 month, I got the entire house full before 1 month.

Great.

Now, it’s April 6th, and I spent the past two months building the project with the guests already inside the house. Which is actually the greatest way possible to do, because I get instant feedback for everything.

10 people already stayed in the house so far, and because it was constantly full since the beginning, I didn’t really focused on the online part of the project.

Until recently, the only thing that was online was a (1h built) typeform that people have to fill, and I contact them later to setup a call and talk about their project to join us in Bali.

It’s 100% non scalable, but well, there is only 4 rooms anyway.

I didn’t list the place on any listing, and I didn’t promote anything about it. The first 10 guests came either from my personal network (1st & 2nd degree), either from word of mouth.

The typeform is now approaching 50 applications without any promotion.

Because the house is currently full, I think it’s the best time to focus on building an actual funnel/strategy in order to ensure it remains full for the next year.

It seems better to refuse people and make sure only those who fit the best in the house will participate.

Step by step, I started to take more pictures/videos from the Hustlers Villa, and I also started to gather some reviews on the facebook page (which was pretty much inactive) and on Google Maps.

I started to shoot simple interviews of the guests so actual people from the villa can share to others on video how was the experience, what they liked, etc. (I released 1 video out of 3 interviews I shot so far).

Today, I spent half of the day putting together a “proper” landing page so the whole project looks a bit more legit and people can actually get informations before filling the form.

I kept it very simple, as I only have one villa so far and there is only 4 rooms, so there is no need to complicate things.

People might basically hear about the villa through: Instagram, Facebook, word of mouth, etc.

So here is the very simple funnel:
1) People hear about it, whether it’s from pictures other housemates posted, word of mouth or social media

3) On the website, there is only one page and one button (spread out 3x on the page), forwarding people to the application typeform.

4) People fill the typeform and choose when they would like to join

5) I call them to talk about the dates, details of the project, their goals, and if they seem to be a good fit in here

Some of you probably noticed than creating a website is actually an additional step in between 1 and 3. You’re right.

But even though it worked so far, this step might be necessary to:

The website is far from being perfect after only half a day working on it, but at least it exists now, and I can make it a central place to share everything related to the Hustlers Villa in the future.

I know that most of the people would probably have started with creating a website as soon as they thought about the project.

In this case, creating a simple typeform and sharing some pictures and articles about the project on Medium was enough to have the house full for months, so I am glad I didn’t create the website first thing.

It’s important to keep our mind focused on what will actually bring the result we want instead of doing what everyone does because it seems right.

We need first to validate the idea by proving what we want to do, our concept.

Creating the typeform took me 1h and shooting the first video 30min. And it gave me more time and focus to build the actual thing in here, hiring the staff, training them, the administrative stuff, creating a company, etc.

Make results happen first, then focus on building the structure to keep it rolling, and scaling.

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