3rd day in: my startup marketing plan: Eating my own dog food

I am gonna eat my own dog food, even it may taste funny. But I created it. I am going to eat it, and see how other dogs like it too.

This obviously is a metaphor.

You don’t have to be expert on your startup subject, as proven by many super successful entrepreneurs, such as Daniel Ek (spotify founder) and his early startup called “stardoll”.

My irony is that my startup is about helping people improve fitness, but I am not really into gym. I prefer to exercise outdoor and play sports, instead of lifting. So, why do I do fitness startup? With my language skills I can do a rosetta stone school easily, or simply find a job as a programmer while learning it.

Oh well…

A couple years ago I took a job at TRX as web marketing/product guy, over another web startup because I thought it would be fun to grow with a new sports brand. And it was.

I chose startup in the fitness field because the market is huge, and I have good connections and understanding of it. And my cofounder is a solid tech guy, and we both play sports regularly (basketball for him, soccer, running, surfing for me).

But neither of us lift weights, does yoga, run marathon etc.

I recall airbnb founders did everything to get close to their users, they give up apartments, live on airbnb hosts’ places for years. How can I get to know our potential users? It’s not enough to send a few email invites, post exercise videos.

By eating my own dog food, I am talking about doing what I don’t usually do: going to gym, starting rigorous training to understand fundamental movements, ask others to shoot videos of me doing all possible exercises I know; uses fitness apps to record what I do. In the process of doing it, other people will come to know there is cool site that I’ve built.

So, part of my marketing plan is: set aside
1. Find a gym membership/package on groupon that I can afford to go for three months.
2. Start using two (free) self tracking apps: runkeeper, fitbit etc.
3. Start learning nutrition and use myfitnessPal to track nutrition
4. Learn all major exercise and be able to do them correctly.
5. Try to get to know Tim Ferries and his 4 hour body framework.
6. Set up a goal for a major race such as tough mudder and place top 10.
7. Put my exercise on fitwow.com for others to critique, and hire a trainer through trainerPlz.com

I will do it for 6 months, which should be a decent time to bootstrap my startup and see decent userbase growth, as the meantime, reach my fitness goals.