How to make your first $10K
Building a side hustle or business is challenging! I'll share the roadmap to your first customer and then all the way to your first $10K. We'll cover everything from pricing, branding, sales and marketing.
In 60 minutes, this hands-on session will load you up with actionable insights to kickstart and level up your personal brand on social media.
My company Path Unbound, a boutique UI/UX design school, is a challenger brand in a saturated market with many big named schools. We experienced a long slump in revenue in the first couple of years in business because we couldn’t find our product positioning. We offered products similar to our big competitors and tried to beat them with lower price only to have the opposite effect. People start doubting if we are bad because we were so much cheaper.
Last year, we discovered the magic formula to growth for us as a small challenger brand without big budget for advertising. We started to repackage our big product offerings into smaller ones that are ultra flexible serving mini segments of user personas. We started to see results within weeks of launching our new offerings, attracting more customers than we’ve ever have. In this talk, I’ll how we structured our product offerings according to customer personas and how other small businesses that are challenger brands to big competitors can thrive doing the same.
We'll explore how to uncover hidden opportunities through user research, use lean validation techniques to test ideas before scaling, and strategically position your business in a way that differentiates it from competitors. You’ll also learn how to break into niche markets effectively whether through emerging technologies like AI and VR, or cultural intelligence—can be your biggest advantage.
This talk will include real-world case studies, actionable frameworks, and lessons from startups that successfully turned niche ideas into thriving businesses. Whether you're an early-stage founder or looking to pivot your existing venture, this session will equip you with the tools to find your niche, innovate with confidence, and scale strategically.
Utilizing the theme of the conference, we will dive into capturing your idea, refining what problem you plan to solve with your idea, defining your customer base, discovering your niche in the market, and then developing simple pricing structures that are fair to you and your customers. All of this will be done by oversimplifying your ideas to then use as a framework for what will become your detailed business plans for investors, partners, or even just yourself! These principles are meant to be a guiding light for you to stay true to your goals, and how you can help the world be a better place to live.
