NevBlog

Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

How I made AppSumo a lot of money through emails

by

Two quick background stories then I’ll show how some clever writing made AppSumo an ass-ton of money:

———QUICK BACKGROUND STORY 1———

This guy, Noah Kagan is one of my close friends.  He was something like employee number 30 at Facebook and employee number 3 at Mint.com, then started a bunch of other companies.

His new thaang is AppSumo.com which is like “Daily Deals for Geeks”.  It’s like Groupon but for nerds like me.

Well recently Noah moved back to Austin, and he gets bored running his $(he-won’t-let-me-release-his-revenue-but-it’s-really-good) company from home, so he scooters on over to my place to work.

We sit around, work, geek out….and for some reason on Fridays we have a weekly tradition of drinking while we work.  It’s nerd heaven.

Whatever.

On to the next piece of this puzzle:

—————–

——————————

——————————————-

————————————————————

———QUICK BACKGROUND STORY 2———

Roughly 9 or 12 months ago I started taking a deep interest in copy writing.

Copy writing is the “art” of writing…..copy (aka WORDS).

Basically copy writing is used to “sell stuff better”.

Naturally this interests me since I:

1.) Write a lot (hence this blog).

2.) Own an online rave company that persuades people to buy stuff.

It was weird because I was staying up sometimes till 6am reading about this stuff and taking notes.  It somehow just….gelled with me.  I started reading everything I could about copy writing…and essentially bought every book I could about it.

I took notes.

I re-read things.

I re-read my own notes.

All the concepts all the gurus talked about were the EXACT OPPOSITE of what I was doing in my own business…so this angered and intrigued me.

I quickly remembered a sort-of-relatable quote about why so many people fail at losing weight:

“Reading about sit-ups, is not DOING sit-ups”

So with this guilt trip in my head, I decided to implement some of this copy writing junk…even though it was 100% the opposite thing I’d been doing with HouseOfRave.com.

To my utter-shock-surprise the first time I implemented all the copy writing rules I learned….the email blast I sent out pretty much sold out my inventory in two hours.

You can see the exact email I sent out that did this (warning: it’s password protected, so follow the instructions to get the el passwordo).

Fan-freakin-tastic for me eh?

Now let’s move on……

—————–

——————————

——————————————-

————————————————————

———LET’S TIE THOSE TWO STORIES TOGETHER———

So one day Noah’s geeking out at my place, and I get an email from AppSumo for some deal they were running.

It was a Grasshopper.com $100 credit or something like that…and I wanted it.

However I was blatantly disappointed by the email saying simply:

“$100 Credit for GrassHopper.com, the phone system for entrepreneurs!”

AppSumo was still selling a TON of the deals with this format…but after all my intensive copy writing studying, this type of short email seemed like an egregious injustice to AppSumo AND the email reader.

Naturally I yelled at Noah saying, “Dude….I bet a lot of people don’t realize the true value of Grasshopper….why don’t you EXPLAIN what it can DO FOR THE USER, then offer them the $100 off?”

Noah agreed.

I further started showing him the structure of good sales copy, and “How I could TOOOTTALLY do better.”

He put me up to it.

I actually WANTED to do some of the emails in exchange for collecting the performance data.  Where else could I test out several emails a week to 50,000 people?

Anywhozit….I started preparing the emails 2 days before each deal came out, and….

HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED:

The first deal was something of a crappy deal.  Now I don’t mean it was a BAD deal….but it was going to SELL CRAPPY because it was extremely niche based.  It was a deal for a service that sends you 4 sets of matched fonts per month.

Now NO ONE BUT HARDCORE DESIGN NERDS would buy this….in fact, they all know you can get thousands of fonts online for free.  This was a carefully curated collection of fonts, and only hardcore graphics designers would buy something like that….to make it an even harder sell, it was a lifetime membership costing something like $125.

With the old AppSumo email style, this deal had no chance of stellar sales.

But then Enter Copy-Writing-Minded-Neville:

I quickly realized a VERY specific deal would exclude tens of thousands of people in this case…so I tried applying copy writing techniques to neutralize that.  Basically, being open and honest about it.

It started out like this:

If the names “Lucida Sans Unicode” or “Courier New” don’t mean anything to you, go ahead and close this message.

You see my friend, today we’re reaching out only to the community of people known as font whores.

You know who you are!

If your knees go weak when I whisper, “GARAMOND.”
…you might be one of em.

Right off the bat this doesn’t necessarily sound like a typical marketing message.  In fact, it’s mildly offensive and quite sexually suggestive.

But you know what….PEOPLE READ IT.

People emailed us back saying the email had NOTHING to do with their line of work, but they still enjoyed reading the email.

We also got people saying they HATED the email and that it was misogynistic and (insert more whiny-bitch-complainer examples)…..you get the point.

SO THEN WHAT HAPPENED??

To Noah’s surprise, this particular deal TOOK OFF!  It was like one of those movies where the ugly girl puts on some makeup, let’s her hair down and wears a gown and is suddenly hot.

So what did this mean?

It means I just made AppSumo a bunch of MONAAAY!!:

Hooray right?  I just made SOMEONE ELSE a bunch of money!

So that was pretty damn cool.  We turned the ugly girl into the “belle of the ball” with the power of of the pen.

Naturally the Chief Sumo wanted me to do the next email, then the next, then the next etc….

Some funny things happened in the next few email send-outs:

  • Every email did EXCEEDINGLY well compared to past emails. Only difference: Good copy.
  • The emails did piss off a small subsection of people, and the unsubscribe rates went up 1% on certain emails.  1% is actually BELOW industry standards…so we’re all good.
  • We got people saying they LOVED reading the emails and how cool they were.
  • We got some people saying they LOATHED the emails (these for the most part were whiny-bitch-complainers who never bought anything anyway).
  • One of the emails (that I spent a lot of time on) got the HIGHEST CONVERSION RATE EVER for any AppSumo email…..or ANY email I’ve ever heard of in my life.  A normal “good-converting” email is usually at 1% conversion (meaning 1% of the people it goes to actually BUY something directly from that email).  This particular email had over 10% conversion. If you understand what I’m talking about, that’s INCREDIBLE.

So that’s how I made AppSumo a ton of moolah….and learned something in the process.

I should teach a class on this stuff…..

Fringe benefits of owning a blog: Interviews

by

Haha…today I was awoken by a phone call from a reporter in Montreal about Car2Go.   Apparently he was searching for people who had used the cars frequently and could talk about them from experience.

Unfortunately only Hamburg and Ulm Germany are the other places besides Austin that have had Car2Go for over a year…so his only English-speaking and time-zone-similar place to call was Austin.

So he did some basic searching and found…me!

So after a 10 minute interview or so…he said I would be on the radio broadcasting to all of Montreal how cool Car2Go is!  I’ll try to find the clip at some point…

It’s one of those funny side benefits of posting random stuff on a blog :-)

It kind of reminded me about the random call I got to speak to poor people in Sierra Leon (and accidentally pissed one of them off)!

Gary Halbert’s Hamburger

by

There’s no better way to demonstrate this concept than it’s original form, so I won’t change it whatsoever.

But I wanted to further ingrain this concept in my head, so I physically wrote it out.

This is an excerpt from one of the Gary Halbert Letters I’m so very fond of.


Questions from Behind The Scenes

by

I answered a couple of questions in the Behind The Scenes course today.  Here were some of the Q/A’s:

————————————————————————-

Q: Do you write up a contract for the supplier? How exactly do you negotiate or work out the details?
A: Almost every time I’ve started a small business, I’ve NEVER STARTED with a contract.  Later down the line if there’s hundreds of
thousands of dollars in revenue at stake, it might be a good idea to get a contract written up.
BONUS PART OF THIS QUESTION:
Getting a contract written up DOES NOT ALWAYS REQUIRE A LAWYER.  In fact, don’t bother “law’ing it up” with legal jargon bullshit.  Simply write a few sentences down on a sheet of paper that both of you agree to and sign it.  It really can be that simple.
An even more powerful method is to hold the contract up on video, then both verbally agree to it on video and state you understand….but a few-sentenced, simple agreement on a sheet of paper with both your signatures will suffice most of the time.
I’ve known people who have official law-binding contracts written on a napkin.  No kidding.
————————————————————————-
Q: When House of Rave first began, were you stuck with only occasional sales for a long time, or were you able to make a respectable side income from the start?
A: For a short while it was pretty small…I’d just started college when it started making money, and it was maybe $500/month (which honestly is A LOT for a college student).  About a year later it started making $1,000+/month (sometimes 2K or 3K or more depending on the month)….enough money to actually survive on.  However it was quickly a pretty respectable “side-income” for sure.  Relatively little work input to keep it going, and a decent income from it.
Let’s just say I never had money issues in college thanks in part to House Of Rave.
————————————————————————-
Q: How do you keep track of price and stock changes from the supplier? What if the supplier stops distributing a few of your products? Or if they make a dramatic price change?
A: For the most part they don’t change prices that often.  In the past I’ve had them notify me of major price changes, so that solves the problem.  But even if they don’t, I’ll see the price change in the first person that orders that product.  I’ll notice I sold something for $50,  but the supplier is charging $59 for it.  I’ll make the correction with only a very minimal loss (and usually it’s not a loss, it’s just “less profit”).
It’s usually not that big of a deal when something changes in price, as the price difference is often pretty small (or often in my favor because it’s LESS)!
And yes, sometimes best-selling products are discontinued.  Generally this is because the manufacturer stops making them, so even if my supplier WANTS to keep selling them, they can’t….simply because no one makes them anymore.  It’s just part of the business that you deal with.  Sometimes they can get the product from another source, sometimes they can’t.
New products always come along.
————————————————————————-
Q: Hi Neville, Could you give a short explanation/suggestion about the product returns? I’m curious as to
what customers do if things don’t work or they don’t want the product. I’m considering selling internet
radios, which I imagine some customers might complain it’s too complicated, doesn’t work, damaged in
shipping, etc. Thanks, Michael
A: Product returns are handled this way:
If something is damaged upon arrival: I notify the supplier and they immediately send out a new one to the customer.  It’s their responsibility to send out working stuff.  Generally we don’t even request the broken stuff back unless it’s REALLY expensive.
If it’s my fault: Let’s say the customer ordered BLUE and I sent GREEN….I will pay for another shipment to go out.
If someone simply wants to return something for any reason: They send it back to the supplier, and they issue me a refund, I then issue my customer a refund.
It’s usually a very SMALL percentage of people that refund stuff, and it’s also a normal “cost of doing business.”
Imagine if you bought something from a company, you didn’t like it for whatever reason, and you wanted to return it….but they didn’t let you.  You’d be SUPER pissed and probably take it up with your credit card company.
I used to be pissed everytime someone wanted a refund.  Now I simply issue the damn thing and get it over with. It actually:
1.) Makes the customer happy
2.) Is easier for you than endlessly debating WHY the customer is returning something
3.) Doesn’t actually cost that much per month to return something.
————————————————————————-
Q: Hi Neville, I really like the videos but I have a two questions for you about building an e commerce
site. 1) If I am putting a paypal sales button and people start to buy stuff- is it completely legal?
Should I have some sort of company for the receipts or whatever.. and what about taxes ? 2) Lets say
you were not in US, does that model of selling stuff could be managed outside of US? I mean do you
think I can sell stuff with a Us dropshipper to Us customers, although I am not in America-american?
Apparently I asked more than 2 questions sorry about that:) Thanks Arda
A: Hey Arda, you don’t really need to get too worried until you actually start making A LOT of money. As for being outside of America, it shouldn’t be a big problem.
Here’s basically what I’d suggest:  Just DO something to get started…who knows, it might not work at all.  However if it DOES start making a lot of money, then go properly research tax issues in your area.  If you’re making enough money to be worried, then you can probably afford to hire a CPA or lawyer to help you with this.   I started HouseOfRave with no incorporated company or anything, then LATER handled all of it when the money started coming in.
If you don’t start quick, it’s likely you’ll never start at all!
————————————————————————-
To see the videos everyone was asking questions about, you’ll need access to:

“I want to start a business but don’t know where to start”

by

God I’ve heard that question so many times before.

A good deal of people I know see my lifestyle:

  • No boss
  • No set working time
  • Take any day off
  • Don’t have to commute anywhere
  • Can work from any location

….and they think it’s great.  And I got admit…it ain’t bad!

Many of them realize that working 9-5 is not just 9-5, but also the night before, the morning of….so it consumes and dictates nearly your entire day, what you can do, when you go on vacation etc.

If you like your job…this isn’t really a problem, but if you don’t….yeesh.

So back to the question I get from someone who’s never started a business and now wants to after years of working:

“I want to start a business but don’t know where to start”

To burst most bubbles quickly: It’s doubtful it will happen. I’ve seen long-term working people start successful businesses only a few times. Usually the longer someone’s worked, the more likely they will not succeed.  Most people trying this are in the wrong frame of mind almost immediately. They just want to “make some money” without doing much work.

Anyhow, for this question I will try to assume the role of how I’D PERSONALLY go about starting a business with no particular business acumen.

————————–

First and foremost I’d GET MY LEARN ON.  That’s right….prepare to READ A SHIT LOAD OF STUFF.  And TAKE NOTES.  It’s like school.

Then I would try to implement what I’ve learned and make $100 from it.

That’s it.

————————–

I think those three short sentences above can teach you an immense deal about business.

The benefit of this is:
1.) It’s easy to make $100 in just about anything.
2.) Simply DOING something will very quickly show if you like it or not.
3.) Your desire to learn will be way more intense if you’re currently DOING something real….not just thinking about a hypothetical business you might build.

It is ABSOLUTELY GRATIFYING to destroy the dreams of people who say, “I want to start a business but can’t think of anything”.

Me: “What business books have you read?”

Them: “Ummmm, none.”

Me: “Have you ever written down what you like to do, what skills you have etc. on a piece of paper?  Spent a couple of hours on it?”

Them: “Hmmmmm…..not really.”

Me: “Have you sought out business people you admire and asked them to show you how their business works”

Them: “I once saw YouTube video of Bill Gates.”

Me: “So basically you’ve done NOTHING to realize your dream of starting a business?”

Sincerely,
Neville (destroyer of dreams)

P.S. Here’s some motivation to consume if you fall in that camp.
Earl Nightingale’s The Strangest Secret

Playing with BIG Amps!

by

A few months back I started learning how to play blues and jazz scales better to perform at a close friends wedding with my brother.

I picked up basic bass scales quickly thanks to some cool iPhone apps, and now we’re performing at the wedding TOMORROW!

It’s at one of those enormous Houston museums, so our little amplifiers won’t cut it…so we rented some big-boy equipment for the job.

Here’s a random little jam we tried out in our parents house:

Notice the GIGANTIC bass amplifier (we weren’t using it in this video) and the massive guitar amp I’m sitting on.  The amps sound so cool, wish I could steal em!

P.S. You might also notice my brother is just slightly better than me at guitar ;-)

NevBlog on Mint.com’s original marketing plan

by

Hahaha….perusing through some interesting reading material the other day I stumbled upon a post by Noah Kagan who formulated Mint.com’s original marketing plan and recently released it to the public.

Mint.com made a big buzz when after only two years they sold for $170,000,000 dollars…..You can see a cool speech about it here: Aaron Patzer Mint.com Speech.

Anywhozzit, I looked at the very first page of their marketing plan and who do I see?  NevBlog.com!

So what does it mean to be on the first page of a $170,000,000 marketing plan?

Unfortunately, absolutely nothing.

But it did make me smile :-)

P.S. I guess the only result of this is Noah constantly bums on my couch…running his entire AppSumo company from his MacBook Air.  I get to pick his brain, and in return he gets to eat all the bananas and cashews he wants :-)

P.P.S. On a totally random Noah-note, since I’ve been filming all these videos for the Behind The Scenes product and plan on doing more videos, I needed a camera with better video quality (but mainly better sound pickup).  I was riding on the back of Noah’s scooter to a concert he got free tix to.    So this was my first test video when I got my new Canon S95 camera…featuring Noah’s Jew-fro head:

The HoR Product Thaaang

by

Wow….

So remember this blog post where I timidly let everyone know I built that “How HouseOfRave Works Course“?

A friend asked, “How many would you have to sell to be happy with the results from the blog post?”

My answer was: 10

Turns out it sold a “FEW” more than that :-)

The money was a nice side effect.  But what I’m ECSTATIC about is EVERYONE…and I mean EVERYONE that has spoken with me about it (on phone or email) has been thoroughly happy with what they learned!

SO I finally finished the sales page for it.  Keep in mind, I’ve never built a sales page before so this is new to me.  It was also rather time consuming.  All the Photoshopping, re-arranging, copy writing while drinking heavily took a lot more time than I ever imagined.

I used a lot of those “cheesy internet marketing page” priciples (like making the page REALLLLLYYLY DAMMMMMNNNN LOOOOOOOONG), but I put a “Neville” twist on it so:

1.) It conveys at least some of my personality.
2.) It wouldn’t be so damn boring to make.

So without further ado <— (what does that actually mean??)
….here is the

Behind the Scenes at House Of Rave sales page

April 2011 Goals

by

Hmmmpph, I didn’t finish a major part of my March 2011 goals….doing my taxes.

It really doesn’t take that long, it’s just I haven’t done it (I must start having someone do these for me).  So that task has been ported over to April 2011.

I also want to finish those taxes before April 11th because I’ll be going home for a wedding which I’ll be playing guitar at (and I need to practice with my brother beforehand).

So with that, here are the April 2011 goals which sit on my desk:

Not really that big of a work load on the goals end….although this month will DEFINITELY be busy with other stuff.

Will update shortly.

My SXSW 2011 Recap

by

If you don’t know what SXSW (South By South West) is…you’re probably not a nerd, film or music person.

It’s also the reason I didn’t release the HouseOfRave Behind The Scenes product earlier…since I got only 1 day of work done in two weeks.

Onwards…

It’s a gigantic festival/conference here in Austin with an economic impact of over $120 million per year….so it’s pretty damn big.

There is one part of the festival called the “Interactive” portion.  It essentially means “anything technology related.”

Every year I go to SXSW activities for all the free stuff, but have never bought the badge.  This year I bought a $700 badge that’s good for just the Interactive portion

I had such a blast!!  …but I also have a bad memory….so in order to remember this experience I’ll document parts of it here:

——————————————————————————————-

First of all I had to go pickup my badge for the event.  You can always spot a fellow SXSW’er by the large badge around their neck.  This badge cost me $675 at the time I bought it:

Since this is the Interactive event, it’s all internet dorks like me…so all the people you follow on Twitter or read their blogs…are most likely at SXSW also.

To illustrate this point, Adam who has a blog called Magical Penny reads my blog.  He actually emailed me a few days in advance saying he’d like to meetup.  Surely enough, as I’m registering to get my badge (along with THOUSANDS of other people), the guy next to me asks, “Are you Neville?” ….turns out it was Adam!

I randomly get the “Hey-are-you-Neville-I-read-your-blog” thing pretty often, but it was funny that it happened RIGHT as I got there (not gonna lie…it felt a little celebrity-ish) :-)

This was on Thursday before SXSW started.

That same Thursday a good friend of mine who owns Smiley Media was throwing a “little” pre-SXSW party which was part of a long list of “SXSW Pub Crawl” parties.  They named the party “The Smiley Media Penthouse Party” which sounded pretty cool compared to the other parties at small bars.  Theirs was being held in their 28,000 sq. ft. office at the very top of the Omni hotel in the heart of downtown.

Originally they called it the “Penthouse Party at Smiley Media” but figured that might draw the wrong crowd (aka strippers and douchebags) because of the Penthouse Magazine association.

Somehow this little party went viral from a small Facebook invite they sent out to employees.  Soon there were 1,200 RSVP’s and 1,500 people that showed up!

Here’s some of us playing one of those dancing games on the WII at the office:

My friend Michael Cummings took this photo when I was standing by one of the painting at the office….I am:
1.) Wearing glasses  for the first time in months
2.) Looking like an Indian IT professional

This is one of the Smiley Media conference rooms called “The Nest”.  Their office had this cool time-lapse video made of their build out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQnVakCSJRE

In terms of the sheer number off people who showed up, this was possibly one of the largest SXSW parties behind a few of the REALLY big guys like Microsoft.

———————————————————————–

The next day SXSW actually started, including all the sessions.  There were sometime up to 25 talks going on at THE SAME TIME every hour.  It’s sometimes difficult to choose one with that many options.  Fortunately a lot of the small ones suck, so that makes it easier.

One of the cool parts about walking around the SXSW Convention Center is randomly meeting REALLY cool people only tech nerds would know.  For example, I wouldn’t REALLY care if I got to see and meet Angelina Jolie (although I sure as hell would take a picture to prove it!)…but I was very excited to bump into people like Tony Hsieh, the Zappos.com guy:

You are simply walking around with cool people…..and then when the parties start, EVERYONE there is generally cool, interesting and slightly nerdy (all of which I like).

That was one of the BEST parts of SXSW.  Simply turn to the person next to you and introduce yourself….almost every time you’re having a great conversation immediately!

A lot of the sessions were hosted by people who’s blogs I read.  For example, Tynan was speaking about how he travels the world without holding down a job…cool to finally see him in person (even though we’ve always had lots of mutual friends we both know really well).

There was sitting room only in the back (and then they wouldn’t let anymore people in because it was too crowded).

————————————————————————————-

Another thing that goes on at the convention center is the SXSW booths where people can advertise their stuff.  A lot of big players like Google, Microsoft, Monster etc show up to promote.

There was even that Matthew Lesko guy with the question marks suit on those infomercials I so vividly remember as a kid!  I love this picture!

A lot of companies were simply promoting stuff….for example, the new Chevrolet car “The Volt” was being hardcore promoted through the whole convention center.  They BY FAR had the absolute coolest “booth attraction” of them all.

They had this giant round rig setup with 30 cameras positioned around it.  When they press the button, all the cameras click in unison and take a picture.  Here’s mine….but this is only one frame:

Click the image above to see the full 360-degree “Bullet Time” Matrix-style picture!

The rig looked pretty impressive on it’s own…and you stand inside and take a picture.  They have all sorts of props you can use, and even if you stand still, the end result still looks EPIC because of the Bullet-Time effect:

———————————————————————————

Even though there’s parties going on all day, most of the really big parties start happening sometime around or after 6pm.  One of the most elaborately decorated (and I’d say by FAR most expensive) parties was the Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 party.

They rented out the ACL Live venue in the W Hotel which can hold upwards of 3,000 people….they DECKED IT OUT and had all sorts of great bands including Passion Pit playing.  Open bar the whole time, any drink you want, as much as you want….plus all the cool nerds you can talk to!  (actually…pretty much EVERY SXSW party has free open bar…but Microsoft allowed you to get ANYTHING, not just well drinks):

This was the very-surreal setup they had…it was all moving with virtual birds flying around it, it looked INCREDIBLE!  This event was actually at fire-capacity, so they weren’t even letting Microsoft employees in. Fortunately we found a route through the W Hotel to go backstage and pop out the front (with some clever name-dropping peppered in of course) ;-)

That 80 foot column thingy was AWESOME looking….two of us hopped on stage right as the band was finishing to get a picture.  As expected, we got kicked off immediately :-)

——————————————————————–

Another noteworthy event was the Nikon and Vimeo party which was held at an abandoned power plant close to downtown.  When we got there, the line had several hundred people in it….so of course we pretended like our asses BELONGED there and barged through the VIP entrance.

…it worked beautifully ;-)

They gave us earplugs (we soon found out why) and walked in.  We could hear the booming bass from far away.  The whole power plant looked awesome from far!

My buddy got a picture at the front:

Mine didn’t turn out quite as well…I look like an obnoxious drunk guy:

Turns I may have been obnoxious for hopping the line…oh yea…and possibly drunk!

P.S. checkout the camera-shirt I was wearing in honor of Nikon!  It LOOKS like camera around my neck :-)

Inside the lighting looked AWESOME and music was THUMPING:

The music was so loud they handed out earplugs to everyone that walked in!  I don’t know why they just didn’t turn the volume down a little instead…

Anyhow, checkout the sound system, and realize the sound is contained within a giant concrete bunker.  THAT’s how loud it was.

Even though I own a rave company, I’ve never been to a rave….THIS might have been the closest thing so far!

————————————————————-

In typical SXSW fashion we’d go to great parties with great people all night, then wake up early in the morning to hit up the convention center and speeches.

There’s always all sorts of promotions, free food, free drinks, free swag being given out left and right over there.  I even saw my friend Phil Dhingra taking 3D Pictures of people.  This one is a stereoscopic 3d image (meaning it’s a 2D image that wiggles to look 3d):

One of the more memorable talks for me was definitely Tim Sykes and Andrew Warners speech about “Building a Tribe”.  I think they BOTH had much better topics to speak about, but the SXSW people only wanted some certain yadda yadda….

Anyhow, I met Tim up earlier in the week, and he wanted to do his whole speech dressed as a Jewish Indian…or as he called it, a “Jindian”

I think he wanted to be “the cheapest combination of people possible” or a Jew + Programmer….some ridiculous thing like that you’d except out of Tim :-)

He brought some fake Hasidic Jew hair curls and hat, and I brought him a full Indian kurtha to wear:

Credit: I stole this particular picture from Chris Dunn’s Facebook

The Jindian outfit did several things:

  1. Immediately offended or pissed off the more conservative people in the crowd.
  2. Looked pretty ridiculous.
  3. Made the talk a hell of a lot more entertaining!

The speech was great, and Tim’s crazy and brutally honest style played well off Andrew’s more conservative and genuine style.  After the speech Andrew said, “Since Tim keeps bragging about how much money he makes, let’s go to the lobby and get drinks on his tab!”

About 15 or 20 people came and all had drinks on Tim and Andrew (this venue was slightly further than the SXSW convention area…so no free bars here).

I’d already met Tim, but never Andrew.

Andrew Warner runs a pretty big (and growing fast) website called Mixergy.com.  I personally watch all the business interviews he does with successful people….quite often actually.  They’re GREAT inspiration and he’s a kick ass interviewer.

I completely forgot to get a picture with him, so I’ll just post a picture of my friend with him:

actually….screw that!  I want a picture with him, so here’s me and Andrew Warner (well, at least my Facebook profile picture) ;-)

And finally here’s Andrew and Tim with one of their adoring fans lovingly staring at them (both of them actually have really sizable followings):

————————————————————————————————

I forgot to mention that for about 6 full days I didn’t pay for ANYTHING.

There are so many people during SXSW Interactive that want to give you FREE music, FREE drinks, FREE parties, FREE shirts, FREE swag, FREE this, FREE that, FREE samples…it’s insane!  …and I took full advantage of it.

I’d eat breakfast at the convention center because some booths had free food.  I’d have free lunch because sponsors were giving away BBQ and other stuff left and right.  Alcohol?  There’s PLENTY of parties (about 30 each night) that will gladly load you up for free.

Speaking of free…I saw a very clever form of advertising that someone thought of.  Remember that Car2Go Austin service I spoke about a little while ago?  You can just pick up any car and…well…GO!  The maximum they can charge you per day is $65, you can park in any parking spot even if it’s metered.

So some clever person decided to rent a bunch of them, park them in highly-trafficked-by-SXSW’ers areas and slap advertising all over them.  BRILLIANT!

The company was HeyWire…I think it’s an app or something, no idea, but it was a GREAT idea.  Unfortunately I have only one picture of the car, and it’s being blocked by two jackasses John and Tarun pretending to arrest each other or something:

You can see the big sticker over the door and the QR code sticker.  I’ll let them slide because those two also happen to own the largest iPhone app development company in the nation.

—————————————————————————

So now there’s a very big SHIFT that happens.  Towards the end of SXSW Interactive, the MUSIC part starts.  In fact, my friend told me this:

“There’s an iconic scene every March 15th when hoards of sleep-deprived and physically exhausted nerds start leaving the Hilton (closest hotel to the convention center) and a bunch of pimped-out cool-looking people with mohawks, chains and shiny shirts start coming in…READY to party.”

It’s a perfect demonstration of what’s happening!

SXSW is still going on, but all the cool nerds I love hanging out with start leaving, and all these grungy/cooler-than-me musician types start showing up from every country on the planet.

The music part gets Austin into an even crazier state.  Almost all roads anywhere near the center of Downtown get closed, full of traffic and tens of thousands of people who are NOT at SXSW start showing up to enjoy all the free music.

It’s great for the city, and quite a sight to see….although the crowds would suck if you were driving, thankfully I have a scooter and bicycle (and I live 3 blocks away) :-)

6th Street (Austin’s main party area) turns very grungy and hipster-ish…and it’s pretty significant.  The people watching during SXSW Music is incredible!  You see all types of freaks everywhere!  It’s great!

Anyhow, if you can’t beat em, join em….so we started going to a lot of SXSW Music stuff (after a day of recovery from Interactive).  Exactly 30 steps from my door is the French Ligation Museum Grounds which had a constant massive party with free music, so outside my window (where I’m typing this right now) was a constant stream of people walking by.

Then the famous “Fader Fort” started, which is this giant tent city that gets built in a field only 3 blocks from my apartment.  We walked or scootered there nearly everyday.  They have free music, free drinks, free snacks, free arcade games and all sorts of fun little things.

One of my FAVORITE things there was the Guitar Center Booth:

I noticed inside it said, “Guitar Tune Ups” and two guys fixing guitars.  Presuming everything is FREE at SXSW, I inquired who they were fixing guitars for.  Their reply:

“Anyone!”

I thought this was so cool!  You bring in any of your guitars and they’ll re-string, fix-up, polish and tune-up the thing for FREE!

They had a little “lounge” area you can just pickup guitars and jam:

I live just a few blocks away, so I scootered back home, strapped on my bass guitar (which is an old and no-name-brand cheapo guitar) and had them fix it up:

The threw away all my old strings, polished the HELL out of the neck and tune-up the electronics.  He even replaced one of my janky-ass tuning pegs!

They really went to town…and I thought it was such a cool service.  Great job @GuitarCenter !

Funny side story:
As I was waiting for my bass to be finished up, I was playing some bass guitar on a REAL bass amp they had laying down.  It was the first time I’d played bass on such a powerful amp…it felt like a different instrument compared to my baby-amp I use at home.

Another guy next to me strapped on a guitar and started improvising something in an E7 scale (which I happen to know), so I started backing him up.  Then someone else kicked in on the guitar, and before you know it we were playing in our own little “band”.  Then people standing outside started gathering around like we were playing a set!

So technically so far I’ve had two live performances ;-)

————————————————————

Speaking of live performances….

My brother was over during SXSW and me and him were practicing for our upcoming performance together at a friends wedding.  After some drinks and other friends coming over, we decided to have our very own SXSW Music performance and form a little “band” on our balcony.

I remember it being pretty crowded on our balcony with all the instruments, amps and people, so my roommate was hanging out like a cat on the railing:

Then we got the idea to take this awesome color changing light bar from HouseOfRave that I bought and put it outside…to all the people walking by it looked like a real concert (except on a balcony) :-)

That was actually a BLAST!

———————————————————————————–

Then the very next day when I woke up, I thought my roommate was playing music in the morning.  No big deal since I could barely hear it, but then I walked in the living room and noticed out my desk window THIS:

Even though there’s the French Ligation 30 steps away, there was an even CLOSER band playing 5 steps out my window!

Apparently it was a band where all the members live in our apartment complex, so some of hopped outside and started watching them….with drinks in hand of course..it’s not like I had to drive home :-)

It was a great start to the morning hanging out in the road with all our fellow apartment people watching a good band on a beautiful day over an AWESOME backdrop!  Plus people brought their dogs out to play also:

Hahaha, that’s one photogenic Pomeranian!

During the band changes (there were FOUR bands playing outside my door) we would hop on the instruments and play until the bands kicked us off. Here’s a cool shot of my brother playing the drums (yes, his hair is “slightly” longer than mine):

This unexpected band was the PERFECT way to end the absolutely craziness known as SXSW.

——————————————————————————-

So people who aren’t familiar with SXSW have asked me if I’ll buy an Interactive badge again next year.  The answer is:

HELL…..YES!