I talk a lot about how we are often wrong, no matter how thorough we are trying to be, and how that means we just have to throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. In other words, have a Plan A, a Plan B, a Plan C, etc, and try them out simultaneously.

Here’s a personal experience with that:

When I came to Turkey in 2003, I had no idea how I was going to make a living. I had never been here before. All I knew was I had some money in my pocket, a house in Seattle I could sell if I really needed some more cash, and that was it.

I tried a bunch of things, but none of them worked. Here’s what ended up working:

One day I took my backpack and a wad of cash down to Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, where all the tourists go to buy jewelry and rugs, and I bought a bunch of jewelry. Nothing fancy, just silver earrings and glass bracelets, stuff like that. I took the jewelry home, photographed it, and put it up on a website to see what would sell.

I figured the silver earrings would sell best, but not one of them sold. Not even one.

You know what did sell? Some weird glass thing that looked like an eye. Those things practically walked out the door — they sold pretty much as fast as I could restock them.

I did a little research to find out what these funny little glass eye things were. Turns out they were called “evil eyes” (nazar boncuğu in Turkish).

I ended up building a business out of them, setting up a toll-free customer service number that rang through to me here in Turkey, outsourcing fulfillment to a warehouse in the US, etc.

The things I thought were going to work, they didn’t, and the things I didn’t even know existed, they ended up turning into a business.

My point is that no matter how rational and well-thought-out your GTM strategy is, it’s highly likely that you are wrong. No matter how thorough you think you’ve been, try some other things too, they just might surprise you.