NevBlog

Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

Business

Baby steps

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So for the longest time (3 1/2 months now) I’ve been trying to buy a rug for my apartment.  

I can already hear you say: “Ok Neville, I really don’t give a shit about the status of your apartment decoration… ::eye roll::”

Shut up.

So when I got my previous apartment, I had zero furniture, and zero idea how to decorate.  I hate decorating.  It’s not something I’m good at.
And I’m not good at it, because I put no effort into it.  

Since we can trade people our money, to do things for us….. I hired some designer friends, gave them a $5,000 budget (including their fees) and told them to just “do the whole damn thing for me.”

In less than a week I had a fully furnished apartment that looked like someone in semi-adulthood lived there:

A while later I moved from that place for a few reasons

  • I had lived there for 2 years.
  • The apartment got robbed and someone stole all my Apple products (this really jacked with my head and made me resent the location a bit).
  • It was EVER SO SLIGHTLY on the ghetto side of town (just found out the 4 people got mugged outside my door this past weekend….so I made a good decision).

So now that I’ve moved to a new place, I had to move around a lot of the furniture and get rid of certain things that didn’t look right.  But one new thing was hardwood floors.

So APPPAARRENNTTLLYY for your living room, you gotta get a big-ass rug to indicate “this is the living room area.”

Whatever…. how hard could this be??  I decided to try doing this myself in order to learn SOME design skills.

Well I never realized what a hard decision this was.

My previous crowning achievement in the decoration department was this black & white Homer Simpson poster that followed me for years through 2 dorm rooms and 3 apartments (I’m not kidding):

So clearly my interior decorating skills are on the poor side.

But like I said before (and this is important):

I’m not good at it, because I put no effort into it.  

 A few YouTube searches for “How to design a living room” and asking some people about design (aka my mom), and it was pretty clear this whole “decoration” process was kinda of logical and formulaic.  

The people I knew who were “good” at design spent lots of time reading magazines about design, watching tv shows about design, keeping an eye out for cool decor, and practicing it themselves.

But they all started somewhere. 

Basically if you want to learn something….there’s always small baby steps you can take to get started.  Here’s a couple examples:  The reason I suggest baby steps is from experience of watching people “want to do something” ….and then HATE it when they start doing it.  

THING TO LEARN: BABY STEPS TO TAKE:

If you wanna learn to decorate:
–Try re-arranging your own living space.
–Go through decorating magazines or pick up an Ikea catalog for ideas.

If you want to start a blog:
–Start a free blog on Blogger.com and start writing something. ANYTHING. Stories from your life. Advice you’ve learned. Just write.

If you want to start an ecommerce website and sell stuff online:
–1st get familiar with how to sell things online. Signup for BigCommerce or Shopify and build test stores.
–Don’t worry about exactly WHAT to sell first….just get the technical side down and keep writing down ideas.

If you want to learn a specific skill like woodcarving (I couldn’t think of anything better):
–Start by Google’ing “How to woodcarve”
–Grab a piece of wood and your mom’s best knife and start carving.

If you want to become a copywriter:
–Google it.
–Watch copywriting advice for newbies.
–Go to Amazon and buy books about copywriting or get my KopywritingKourse

If you want to start making apps:
–Big surprise: Google “how to design an app”
–Go to Udemy and take a free or paid course on how to make an app.
–Download some app templates and start tinkering with them.

If you want to learn ANYTHING:
–Google “how to (insert thing you wanna do).”
–Go to Amazon buy books about it.
–Start doing a ghetto version of it. Just “tinker”.

I wanted to be a doctor when I was in high school (I mean…I AM Indian), so in high school I joined a program where I got to shadow 10 different doctors.  By the end, I realized I HATTTEDD what the doctors had to do!

I quickly realized the environment and the work of a doctor were not my cup of tea.

Likewise…..taking a baby step towards something will show your true passion for it quickly.  Either you’ll start off and soon your brain will become obsessed with it…..or your interest will quickly fizzle.

Have a happy Monday….and if you’re looking to start something new, try some baby steps for it.  Lemme know what you’re trying to learn in the comments here, and I’ll answer with some baby steps on how you could get started!

Sincerely,
Neville

P.S.  As for the rug decision?  I went to the rug store yesterday with the mindset of walking out with a rug.  By the time I made a purchase, I was still unsure about it…..but at least I dove into it, and within 5 days it’ll be delivered.  At that point I’ll quickly realize if it looks awesome, or sucks….but at least I’ll learn something from the decision!

Sifting for good/bad ideas

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Fresh off a trip from Cabo, I went back to Austin, did laundry, packed the exact same clothes, and headed off to our AppSumo Getaway in Seattle:
https://www.appsumo.com/how-to-make-your-first-dollar-seattle-getaway/

Some of the people who came were already running businesses, some were not.

I noticed something while talking to the people who DID NOT have a business going….

There were lots of ideas floating around in their heads (and even written down), but no apparent framework to make sense of those ideas.  

I realized something I accidentally did back in the day, and still to this day, that has helped me immensely: I would write down tooonnsss of ideas, and rank them.

Read that last part?
The part about “ranking them”?

It’s immensely important.  So lemme take you through the simple process I use to find business ideas, product ideas, ways to make money…..

I first am fully aware of this:

“The best way to get a good idea, is to have a lot of ideas!”

I write down a ton of ideas.  Anything.  The point is to get the brain jogging:

  • Bad ideas.
  • Good ideas.
  • Funny ideas.
  • Stupid ideas.
  • Wacky ideas.
  • Ideas that solve problems.
  • Ideas for stuff I personally want.

Just by it’s nature, this list will contain some gold, and some crap.  Mostly crap. But who cares, it’s just a freakin list!!  (usually mine are written somewhere in a notebook).

Now here’s how to sift your list of ideas for gold (in a semi-scientific way):

You rank each idea on a scale from 1 to 5 in several areas:

  1. Easy-ness – How easy would it be to get this going?
  2. Fun – Is this fun for me?
  3. Profit – What’s the potential profit here?

Total up the numbers, and almost instantly….the piece of paper you wrote these down on will turn from a random list of ideas, to a piece of paper telling you which ideas you should move forward with.  

Here’s a ghetto example I made in 2 minutes:

Obviously some ideas will be easier for some than others based on skill/talent.

So in my particular case, this list has shown a book about Kopywriting will be my best bet.  A yogurt stand however, doesn’t seem very fun (although I love GOING to them and pretending my CakeBatter yogurt with 9 pounds of chocolate toppings is “healthy”)!

So this my friend, is a key difference between a regular-ole list of ideas….and a list of ideas which tells you which one to go with.

Now I’m a big pencil/paper kind of guy, but I thought I’d make a cool “Idea Calculator” for you to use.

Simply click on the Google Doc, and save it for yourself.  It’ll auto-calculate your ideas, and tell you when something is promising (usually anything over a “10” is decent):

Here’s your Idea Calculator (save it for yourself in any format you choose to start entering your own):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuaB65FccS9sdDVZVWU1ZFZYaXdaQVNsMWZPdF8zNmc#gid=0

The point of this is to get you to start ranking your ideas with a number…..so you can spend less time sifting through ideas, and spend more time trying the winners.

Cool huh!?
Neville – Enjoying the awesome Seattle summer weather (and surrounded by 25 nerds in a house)

How the F*#% do I make money?

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Since I’ve never had a real job, people always ask me how I make money.

Here’s the answer on video:

ENJOY!

(people have already said this was a SUPER inspiring video…..so set aside 15 minutes and watch it. Took me 3 days to edit this mofo)!!

 

Click the image to see the video, or here’s the direct YouTube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV2tR_ypmB4

 

Hope this was informative or inspiring to you :)
-Nev

1 story plus 2 lessons = 3 minute video

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This is a business AND kopywriting lesson in one, on how to keep things retardedly-simple (with 4 quick examples).

When you watch this vid, try to think of ideas to hone your own business message (or flat out create a new one):


(YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjbnL0fmflY )

 

So you’ll learn two lessons from this one story:
Lesson 1.) A lotta wantrepreneurs over-complicate the hell out of contracts.
Check out the contract Noah and I made for a project (and yes, it’s real).


Lesson 2.) A lotta people over-complicate the MESSAGE their business sends out….which makes it too damn complicated…and thus useless since stupid people like me can’t understand it. I’ll show you some good examples.
Enjoy the vid!
-Neville


FYI you can go to Kopy.tv to easily see all my vids.

 

 

We got Simpson-ized

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Well this certainly was a cool way to say “Thank You”!

Got this email sent to Noah and I recently from Rohan V:

To the Brothers,

Thank you, sincerely. Let me explain. I’m currently trying to deliver free education to 20 million people in Sri Lanka and I’ve learnt a ton from both of you, as well as acquired a metric shit ton of awesome knowledge via the ongoing @appsumo deals which will hopefully directly translate into both meaningful and lasting change for an entire nation within my lifetime.
I just wanted to reach out and scribble these sentiments down because sometimes it really is the simplest things that matter the most.
To the hustle compadres!
–
Rohan Vimalachandran

P.S – Had the attached done, hope you get a kick out of it!
He then attached this drawing he had made of us….HA!
Simpsonized Neville and Noah
He got the original image from a thumbnail of one of our Sumo Dojo videos:
Before being simpsonized
I thought this was a pretty great way to get someone’s attention. I’m guessing he had that Simpson-ized drawing done for just a few dollars, but it made all the difference (so much so I wanted to share it)!
Thanks Rohan!

How we’re un-sucking AppSumo emails

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When AppSumo first started (around this time), we used to send out these long, hilarious, and foremost…. EDUCATIONAL emails about every product we got a deal for.

Usually it was me writing these emails.

Then there was a point where two full-times sales guys were adding deals at pretty ridiculous rate.

Deals needed to be tested and written…..and we were testing 2 to 3 a day.

Naturally I couldn’t write amazing copy for EVERY DAMN DEAL at that pace.

So we hired a couple of copywriters.

 

After a while, the format of AppSumo emails changed…..and the deal quality was just average.  There were good deals, but our batting ratio was a bit down (although I’m proud that we were still miles ahead of any remote competition).

This left us with:

  • Very “average” quality deals.
  • Very mediocre copy (it was becoming typical SELL SELL SELL bullshit copy).
  • Customers still loved us, but not with even remotely the same fervor they USED to.

 

So recently we’ve been TOSSING OUT SHITTY DEALS.

If we can’t recommend the deal to our friends and family, it shouldn’t make the site.

This is a heartfelt video that explains if we’re not having fun doing this, YOU sure as hell won’t have a fun experience either.

We talk about it here:

 

P.S.  If you ever see a shitty deal on AppSumo….please yell at me.  We’re not saying every deal will be perfect for YOU, but we don’t wanna become the same-old sleazy sales bullshit internet marketing you see everywhere.

How to think of which products to make

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People always ask me, “How do you come up with so many products to make?”

….well the answer is pretty simple.  And it’s NOT always simple as copying something you’ve seen done successfully by someone else.

Here’s the 5 minute video (excuse the sweat….I just came back from the gym)!

 

Basically this video boils down to the phrase:

“To make money, solve a problem.”

The Ones to Watch Out For

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There’s a class of people you shouldn’t make fun of…..because it might bite you in the ass one day.

It’s the people that do stuff.

Here’s what I mean:

EVERY successful person I’ve ever met.
I mean EVERY SINGLE DAMN ONE….

…..has done a bunch of stuff.

This means they’ve created a lot of stupid little businesses.
This means they’ve tried a bunch of stupid money hustles.
This means they’ve repeatedly tried stuff and failed, or had crappy results.
This means they’ve done lots of dumb “side businesses”.
This means they’ve dreamt unrealistic dreams of running their own show.
This means they’ve tried businesses that “you told them so” would fail.

The people that do these things, are the ones I’ve seen become successful over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over over and over and over and over.

When I was a bit younger I’d see people who talked a big game, got amazing grades, joined all the right clubs, and I always thought THEY would become the rich & famous ones.  But it never happened that way.  Haven’t seen it ONCE.  Nothing above average success.

But the people who were CONSTANTLY UP TO SOMETHING…. 
…Even if it was small and stupid.
…Even if they always failed.
…Even if in some sick way, I got some sick-satisfaction out of seeing them fail…..(trust me, when you try stupid businesses, there’s a lot of people who sub-consciously want you to fail).

…those were the people that made it BIG.

Now I call some of these things “stupid” or “dumb” when referring to these small “tryout” businesses…..because that’s exactly what A LOT OF PEOPLE think they are….STUPID.

In most successful people I’ve met, I’ve seen trace amounts of: 
…arrogance
…foolishness
…greed
…curiosity
…ignorance
…need to prove something

 

But ultimately I’ve seen the number one indicator of future success as being:

“ARE THEY TRYING A LOT OF STUFF?”

So next time you see a classmate, family member or colleague who is constantly trying out small businesses or side-hustles……you might wanna watch out.  That fucker might be your boss one day.    ;-)

 

 

SO…..what are YOU working on right now?

 

 

How David Favor validated his business

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I’m a HUGE fan of validating businesses BEFORE going full-time with them.

This is an 18 minute interview with my friend David Favor who now owns a multi-million dollar company selling superfood stuff.  Now his company is a well-oiled machine, but it wasn’t always like that.  At first he was scooping product into little plastic baggies (kinda like a drug dealer):

 

An important lesson to be learned from this:

“When you’re blind-sided by the success of something you’re doing….perhaps there’s a business in it.”

How to validate a taco stand

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What if you wanted to open a Taco stand? 

Like a taco-truck on the side of the road.  
 
How would you do it?
 
A typical “wantrepreneur” would do the following:
  • Start researching licenses and city permits.  
  • Scout out possible lease locations and speak with all the property owners. 
  • Start Googling taco recipes.
  • Take out a loan (or borrow money) to buy a truck or cart.
  • Spend money and time to get the truck food-certified by the city.  
  • Start looking for employees to help with making the tacos.
  • And…… 
  • A……
  • Bunch……..
  • Of……. 
  • Other……
  • Boring……
  • Stuff……. 
 
Soooo after all that work, thousands of dollars, and months of time…. where are we?NO WHERE!
 
NOT ONE FUCKING TACO HAS BEEN SOLD!!
 
So let’s say $10,000 later, and 6 months down the line….we’ve got this magical taco truck ready.  
 
We excitedly go out to our pre-researched location and turn on the “Open for Business” sign!  
 
::CRICKETS CHIRPING::
::CRICKETS CHIRPING::
::CRICKETS CHIRPING::
::CRICKETS CHIRPING::
::CRICKETS CHIRPING::
 
Well shit.  That didn’t work out so well.  We were open all day & night, we spent hundreds of dollars on fresh meat, avocados, tortillas…..and we only sold 10 tacos the whole night.  
 
“But oh well, it was just the first night…..we’ll get more business soon!” 
 
The next night….
And the next night….
Aaaand the next night……
And our taco truck is still bleeding money.  
 
And since we spent all our money and all our time on this…..we still desperately cling onto this shitty business.  
 
All because WE DIDN’T FIRST VALIDATE THE IDEA.  
 
Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. 
 
 
————————————————————————
————————————————————————
Ok, now let’s take a break and re-do this whole taco-truck idea as if we knew how to validate ideas before jumping in:  
————————————————————————
————————————————————————
 
The absolute FIRST THING TO DO is see if people even WANT your tacos.  
 
Now there’s hundreds of things that could make a successful food business……so instead let’s focus on something the late & great Gary Halbert said:
 
Gary Halbert said (I’m paraphrasing here):
 
“If you opened a hot dog stand…..and I opened a hot dog stand……I can beat the PANTS off you.
It doesn’t matter if you have better hot dog buns, or fresher meat, or more condiments….. 
My secret would be setting up my hot dog stand around a STARVING CROWD.”  
 
 

Using this theory, let’s do a taco-stand validation in one day:

 
FIRST STEP.) Let’s make a bunch of tacos at home (maybe 25-50 tacos) and wrap them in foil.  
 
SECOND STEP.) Let’s take those tacos to some location we think there is a starving crowd, and stack them in little pyramid on a cheap plastic table.
THIRD STEP.) Let’s use some markers and poster-board to make a big-ass sign that says:
 
“HOT BEEF TACOS – $2 each”
FOURTH STEP.) See if people actually buy all your tacos. 
That’s it.  Kind of like this:
DO YOU REALIZE WHAT WE’VE DONE HERE ALEADY??
In one day, we’ve understood:
  • How easy or hard it was to make all those tacos.
  • How much time it took to make the tacos.
  • How much money it took.
  • If we even LIKED doing this work.
  • If our tacos were delicious, or shitty.  
  • A rough estimate of how much to charge for each taco.
  • If the location was good or bad.
  • …..and most importantly:
  • If people even WANTED our tacos from that location.
The next day, we can repeat the experiment, but try a different time, or location, or even an entirely different product…..and see if it works.  
 
And don’t give me shit about, “But Nevillleee…..what about city permits and stuff!!”
 
There’s many ways to get around this (such as setting up your stand on private property like a bar stoop or house lawn)……or even doing it WITHOUT permission.  If a cop actually tried to stop you (highly unlikely), you can just shut down the experiment and repeat elsewhere.  
 
(I asked cops in my bottled water experiment what they would do if they saw me selling water without a permit…..they said, “We don’t really care”) 
 
BE SCRAPPY.  
BE CREATIVE.  
USE LOOPHOLES.  
 
The point of this is to SEE IF PEOPLE WANT YOUR DAMN TACOS.  And if you do an experiment like this, you’ll learn SO MUCH.  
 
So if night-after-night your tacos sell out within 20 minutes…..You’ve proved that people love your tacos, love your location, and love your prices.  
 
…..you might actually have a damn good business on your hands!
 
However if no one buys, or the logistics of taco-making are just entirely too difficult (or boring) for you…..it might make sense to just SHOOT THIS IDEA IN THE HEAD AND KILL IT BEFORE IT SUCKS UP ALL YOUR TIME AND MONEY.  
 
………………and there you have it. We validated a taco stand! 
 
 
Sincerely, 
Mexican Neville