How Not To Start An Online Business | Modern Wisdom Podcast 279

1. 0:00 – 2:50

   Why online businesses are attractive: low overhead, high leverage

   1. JOJonny0:00

      You don't need an office. You don't need a 25 grand startup loan. You don't need loads of stock. You don't need a factory or production line or any, any of that stuff. Uh, it can literally be you and a laptop, and, uh, the information that you have or some kind of service that you're looking to provide.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:15

      Feels like we're missing something today.

   3. JOJonny0:17

      I know. I know.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:18

      What is it?

   5. JOJonny0:18

      The, the third square.

   6. CWChris Williamson0:20

      Missing a, a, a scone-shaped-

   7. JOJonny0:23

      That's normally on the call.

   8. CWChris Williamson0:23

      ... like the, like raisin and almond scone-shaped hole.

   9. JOJonny0:27

      (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson0:27

       Uh, Yusuf is saving lives, uh, whereas me and you just spend all our time on the internet. So I thought I'd get a hold of you today and just record a, a rogue podcast. What are we gonna be talking about?

   11. JOJonny0:38

       Well, the internet, basically, or how, how people make money using the internet. So, I guess the, the broad subject would be online business, building an online business, starting an online business.

   12. CWChris Williamson0:50

       You can't make money anywhere else. There is no money to be made in real person at the moment.

   13. JOJonny0:55

       (laughs) Yeah. Yeah. Well, I suppose, like, e- even people who go to offices or have worked in an office their entire life are now basically living the same life as someone who's been a, like a digital entrepreneur their entire life, so everyone's working from home, there's a lot of remote working. Um, but yeah, so I suppose, uh, this is something that I've been doing with Yusuf for quite a while, um, since 2010-ish, officially. Um, I think we actually incorporated the business, I don't know whether you know this, Chris, but I think we actually incorporated Propain in your flat in Jesmond.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:32

       Yeah. I seem to remember that. So you've been running an online business for over a decade, and now the main source of your business is teaching other people to run an online business. So if there is anybody on the internet that can tell us what ... how to start an online business-

   15. JOJonny1:47

       (laughs)

   16. CWChris Williamson1:47

       ... how not to, it's you.

   17. JOJonny1:50

       W- well, I mean, that's very kind of you. (laughs) I can, I can certainly talk about the, the, the pros and cons and the kind of the common mistakes. So we do, uh, fitness coaching, and then the other side of what we do is, I guess, teaching people who do fitness coaching to use the internet to teach fitness coaching.

   18. CWChris Williamson2:08

       (laughs)

   19. JOJonny2:08

       Um, and that's (laughs) that's kind of the ... so, you know, helping, helping PTs. A lot of personal trainers at the moment are, um, obviously they can't train clients, so a lot of them are using the internet, u- using an online-based service to coach clients. And that, I think a lot of them have run into this problem of like, "Oh, I'll just do a Zoom thing. I'll just get people on a Z-" and then, you're like, "Ah, actually, there's quite a lot to this. It's quite complicated." Um, and then we step in to help.

   20. CWChris Williamson2:34

       Got you.

   21. JOJonny2:35

       So that's kind of our, our, or, or what gives me any kind of right to talk about this, I guess.

   22. CWChris Williamson2:39

       You've got, you've got license to talk about it, man. So where do we, where do we begin? Like, w- what are the ... why would someone even want to start a business on the internet?

2. 2:50 – 5:12

   From 9-to-5 constraints to “working on your terms” (4-Hour Workweek influence)

   1. JOJonny2:50

      It's a good question. I think why did I want to start a business on the internet is probably the best place to explain that from. So, um, I started out of university. I went into a, like a typical nine-to-five gr- well, it's not nine-to-five. Supposed to be nine-to-five, but you have to sign that bit of paper that means that you're o- that, that can basically make you work as many hours as you want. Um, and I was driving to work listening to I think the book that every, anyone with a hint of entrepreneurial desire has read, which is The 4-Hour Workweek. Um, and in that book, if you've not read it, by a guy called Tim Ferriss, he talks about basically starting a business as this kind of way to, um, live the, live the life, live life on your terms, so you have more command over your, uh, when you work, where you work, how much money you make, et cetera, um, the multiple currencies. And, uh, he refers that, to that as a muse. So you build a business that's kind of small. You're not trying to build the next Facebook. You're not trying to conquer the world. You're trying to earn a living selling something, um, typically through, like, uh, maybe through, like, a dropshipping process, which I guess we'll talk about s- shortly, um, or selling information. Getting it to the point where you can actually leave the constraints of the typical employed life and work for yourself. And, uh, I guess a lot of people, even as they progress through a career, um, realize that they're basically in this cycle of, "Um, I am working for a salary. I have to go to a certain place, um, and I get paid a certain amount. And I have to work for this amount of time, otherwise I, I don't get a paycheck at the end of the month." And I think you only need to know one person who doesn't fit that mold. And I, to be honest, I think it was you for me, Chris, who was like the, the one friend who's like, "Yeah, but he, he earns more than, than my friends. And he doesn't have to go, he doesn't have to put a tie on. He doesn't have to wear a shirt, and he doesn't have to travel to Stockton every morning to go and, uh, audit a manufacturing plant."

   2. CWChris Williamson4:52

      (laughs)

   3. JOJonny4:52

      Um, so like (laughs) you know, everyone's ... you just have to know one person that you start to question these things when you read these books. And I think now, um, a lot of people are, are having similar questions when, you know, they're been forced to work from home or perhaps even lost their job for various reasons. It's like, "Well, what else could I do that's maybe less reliant on somebody else or, or another company?"

3. 5:12 – 8:10

   Online vs offline entrepreneurship: start with the skill you already have

   1. CWChris Williamson5:12

      Why do online business rather than just progressing what you're currently doing in the real world?

   2. JOJonny5:18

      In terms of?

   3. CWChris Williamson5:20

      What's the reasons for it? What are the benefits? Why not just be, start your own accountancy firm?

   4. JOJonny5:25

      I see. Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson5:25

      Leave the accountancy firm you're at and start your own as opposed to becoming a, like an online accountant somehow or-

   6. JOJonny5:30

      I see.

   7. CWChris Williamson5:31

      ... selling online accountancy, how to be an accountant courses?

   8. JOJonny5:34

      (laughs) Or how to be a coach to coach accountants, of course, yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson5:37

      Coach accountants to move online.

   10. JOJonny5:39

       Yeah. Well, uh, to be honest, I think one of the easiest ways to do something like this is actually to take a skill you already have and just do it for yourself o- online. Um, so I suppose the, what I immediately think of when I think of online business and why someone would want to start it is, it's usually some kind of informational, in- information transaction, right? So it's a service or it's selling advice or it's selling information. Um, there are others, but that's a very common type. And the reason for that is it doesn't really involve...... the traditional, uh, structure that you'd think a, a normal business would, would require. So, you don't need an office, you don't need a 25 grand startup loan, you don't need loads of stock, you don't need a factory or production line or any of that stuff. Uh, it can literally be you and a laptop, um, and the, the information that you have or, or some kind of service that you're looking to provide. And the missing piece of that puzzle is clients, I guess, um, and a way to help them. But if you get yourself into the pos- position where you have clients and a business like that, it can be extremely profitable because the costs are nothing basically. All the costs are you, your time, and the software, and the technology that you, that you need.

   11. CWChris Williamson6:48

       So, the low barriers to entry in terms of not needing massive amounts of investment financially, and the low skill barrier to entry I suppose as well, that you are, for a lot of people with their online business, repurposing existing knowledge that you already have, and then just putting it out into the universe to see... I think it's... Was it you that told me everyone is an expert in something?

   12. JOJonny7:13

       Yeah. So, that... (sighs) There's a, there's a few people online that really promote that, that message. That like, if you... The more you think about it, if you had to... So, I think we spoke about this on maybe a life hacks episode, where one of the bits of advice I gave was try, in some way, to think like, "How would I monetize myself?" And I don't mean, like, set up an OnlyFans account. (laughs) I mean, how... although that, you know, arguably that's likely to be as well-

   13. CWChris Williamson7:37

       They're making, they're making more money than all of us so yeah, who are we to complain?

   14. JOJonny7:40

       (laughs) They're the ones winning. Um, but yeah, like, I, I know some people personally who, who worked as, like, an engineer, or something that you wouldn't necessarily think, um, could be translated online, but they were receiving a salary and then they left that, set up on their own, and now they're kind of consulting, uh, in the same capacity, earning three, four times the amount. Um, so I suppose it's going from taking something that you're maybe doing for somebody else in the con- the confines

4. 8:10 – 12:17

   Avoid the “course/webinar” fantasy: value, supply/demand, and real expertise

   1. JOJonny8:10

      of a business, and they're paying you kind of what they think that's worth. But the market may think that's worth more, right? Someone else, or multiple, five, six, 10 customers may think, "Well, I'll pay a monthly fee for that advice, or I'll pay, uh, a fee for access to help and, and consulting on that specific thing." So, yeah, there's... The, there is still a barrier to entry, I think, that... just to quickly cover the, the misconception here, and I think the... Mike Winnet who you've had on twice now?

   2. CWChris Williamson8:40

      Yeah.

   3. JOJonny8:40

      Once or twice. So his, his YouTube channel and the idea behind the Contrapreneur is there is a big movement in the online world that if you buy some course and set up a webinar or something like that, you can suddenly have an online business. And I, I, I get the idea of it, and obviously the people selling the course I'm sure make a lot of money out of it, but I think just because a business is online, it doesn't mean that demand and supply and, like, the basic principles of why someone purchases something don't apply. They definitely do. So, if you have something valuable or you have a service or some knowledge or some expertise that is valuable to someone else, in the sense that you can shorten the gap from A to B. Like, I'm trying to learn to slackline, right? How do I slackline? I've got no idea. Well, I could just work with someone who's an expert in slacklining, and they'll make me slackline in 12 weeks, for example. Right? So that... I mean, that's a service that you could be... turn into a course or a service. And I don't think anybody could say that, like, if that's your goal, you want to learn to slackline and you learn to slackline, that you've done anything wrong by selling somebody that information or that help. Right? You've, you've delivered a valuable service. And you can use the internet to do that in a very highly, like, profitable way that doesn't... You don't have to sell to people on your street or in your town. You can sell to people anywhere in the world.

   4. CWChris Williamson10:03

      So, the scale and the ability to leverage are two of the main points, I think. Uh, people entering the online world won't necessarily be familiar with those words, but the Naval Almanac has certainly helped, and people like Jack Butcher talk about it an awful lot on the internet. Um, you can only do one PT session at a time, but if you make a course that people can follow passively, you can have a million people do it. It's not like you need to say that word a million times to every single person that's watching. Uh-

   5. JOJonny10:33

      Yep.

   6. CWChris Williamson10:33

      ... you, you don't get a call in the middle of the night at 3:00 AM like, "Right, Johnny, such and such is doing some chest press over in Adelaide. You're gonna have to get up at night-"

   7. JOJonny10:40

      (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson10:40

      ... "and Skype him so that he understands what he's doing." So, that's certainly one of them. And y- y- you touched on kind of the dark secret of the classic nine-to-five world, which is that the amount of security that you get from your job is offset by you not capturing the upside of whatever the transaction is with the person that's paying for you. And that really is, like, for so many businesses, especially looking at COVID this year, the people who w- should have been the most worried were the totally use- useless, fluff filler, middle management, like the, like the-

   9. JOJonny11:16

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson11:16

       ... r- the regional manager of HR. Like, why do you need... You've got a guy in each town and you've got a director of HR. The guy that's in between is basically there to make the guy at the top's life easier and the guy at the bottom's life harder. But the person that actually delivers the value is the person who is cranking the widgets, and the person who coordinates everything is the guy that does strategy up at the director's office. So, very often there is, within a business, the person at the bottom can't be afford- they can't afford really to pay that person much more because they have all of these different layers of bureaucracy to make sure that that person at the bottom's actually doing their job. So, if you as the person at the bottom who can do the job and knows that you're reliable and maybe has the business acumen to think, "Right, I, I can go to the market, maybe I understand branding, maybe I'm quite good at copyright, and maybe I've got a bit of an eye or I've got some existing contacts within the industry, I can perhaps try and pivot this online." So, what are the, what are the common types of online business? What are the most common ones that people use?

5. 12:17 – 15:27

   What online business models actually work (and which often fail)

   1. JOJonny12:17

      ... so I think there's a lot. There's, there's common types that a lot of people try that don't necessarily last very long and that might be-

   2. CWChris Williamson12:22

      What like... What are those?

   3. JOJonny12:23

      So I think, eh, like, everyone's seen an ad for, like, forex trading, for example, or dropshipping is a very common one. Um, you know, like making money through dropshipping stuff on Amazon. And you hear that and you're like, "I don't know what any of those words mean-

   4. CWChris Williamson12:37

      (laughs)

   5. JOJonny12:37

      ... but it sounds great." Um, (laughs) so you know the... stuff that, um, I suppose is easier to, to conceptualize, so you think, "Okay, I'm gonna buy something from overseas and ship it and then sell it, and I can run it all from my laptop." And obviously there are businesses that run like that and they're immensely successful, but m- I'd say most people who try that don't succeed because there's, there's like operational risk with that. You've got to actually... you're moving physical things around and you can get that wrong. Forex markets, um, we've just released a, a podcast of Yousef having a bad experience with stuff like that. I think it was, uh, on Life Fails, Life Hack Fails, Yousef spoke about that. So that has its downsides as well. Um, so I think the most common type of online business that I see consistently succeed is basically exactly what we, what we spoke about where, um, copywriting or, uh, consulting, uh, larger businesses or obviously personal training. Right? Things that can, can quite easily, to be honest, be taken from an offline, here I am in the flesh speaking to you, telling you what to do in a one-to-one or maybe a one-to-three or four if you're doing group based stuff. Now I'm gonna package the, the knowledge that I would typically deliver in that session, I'm gonna put it into videos, text, like stuff that appears on a screen that anyone can access whenever they want, or I'm gonna do the same coaching but, but virtually. That's a very, um, especially if you've already got the knowledge and the expertise, it's a very low cost, very like, despite what a lot of people think, there's a lot of technical know-how there. At this point there really isn't. Um, so that, I'd say that was the, the most common. So, and that, I would even argue that people who... you don't have to have a course, right, or an e-book or something like that for it to be an online business. I think if you are using the internet to deliver the service, and you are doing it remotely, and you are working with a client or multiple clients, I'd say that's an online business, right?

   6. CWChris Williamson14:30

      Okay.

   7. JOJonny14:30

      You don't have to have a members area or an e-book to sell. Um, so I know people who are accountants who do this or, as, as I say, engineers who do this, who, who do consulting based work, but they work for themselves and their businesses are all remote, all online.

   8. CWChris Williamson14:45

      Yeah. So I guess that kind of changes the dynamic of an online business a little bit. You're not necessarily delivering... I mean, my accountant delivers his product to me via email.

   9. JOJonny14:54

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson14:54

       I wouldn't consider him to be an online businessman, despite the fact that Chris probably hasn't been into his office for a year.

   11. JOJonny15:02

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson15:02

       He doesn't need to. Um, so yeah, that- that's an interesting way to look at it. What about principles? Say there's someone that's listening that thinks, "I have some expertise or maybe I'm a PT who's consider..." I mean, go to propanefitness.com/modernwisdom if you're a PT that wants to pivot online. But if you're just someone who's thinking, "Right, I want to get started in the online world," what are the principles, what should they focus on getting right first?

6. 15:27 – 17:29

   Principle #1: validate demand before building (stop polishing websites)

   1. JOJonny15:27

      Yeah. So that's, I suppose, when people... it... this is the most common failure point is the starting point, and it's the, the rabbit hole. The one of 10 rabbit holes that you can go down and spend months down without actually gaining any kind of traction. And that's the common stuff like online business needs. That means I need, um, a, an expensive website, worried about whether it should be purple or green, um, or maybe even building out a program or building materials, doing cashflow forecasts and all this sort of stuff. And I think e- basically you can have all of that right, but ultimately not have a customer and not have any revenue. You, you technically don't really still have a business to speak of. Um, so the example I always give our students is like, Yousef and I ran, uh, Propane Fitness for quite a while from Microsoft Word. Like that, that was it. Um-

   2. CWChris Williamson16:14

      How did that work?

   3. JOJonny16:15

      ... and email. Well, and email obviously. (laughs) We weren't just typing-

   4. CWChris Williamson16:18

      (laughs)

   5. JOJonny16:18

      ... typing documents for ourselves. So we, (laughs) we were... yeah, I wrote this really long document and I just kept paying myself-

   6. CWChris Williamson16:23

      (laughs)

   7. JOJonny16:23

      ... and it was, it was great. No, we, uh, we would email clients from our personal email and it would all be done through Word. There was not really a website in place. Everything was terrible but-

   8. CWChris Williamson16:31

      Payment through PayPal or something probably. Manu-

   9. JOJonny16:33

      Exactly.

   10. CWChris Williamson16:33

       ... manually submitted invoices.

   11. JOJonny16:35

       A nightmare. Nightmare. Um, it's the sort of thing Yousef has recurrent nightmares about now. But, um, the point is, is that like the... why did it work? I have this thing that I'm trying to do and I'm struggling, or I have this thing in my life that I'm trying to get rid of or solve and I don't really know how to do it myself. So I'm looking for a solution. And that's everything down from a consumer, like a you and I looking to solve a, a problem, or a, a business or an organization looking to solve a problem and want to get someone in remotely. If you're solving something like that, then someone somewhere will pay to have that problem solved or that goal process accelerated for them. And that's basically where you step in as a, as a, as a business, as an offering. And if you get that bit right, you can make a lot of mistakes and still kind of succeed. Like you can, you can get a lot of the technicals wrong and still have happy clients basically.

7. 17:29 – 21:24

   How to test your idea fast: your network, real conversations, and ‘scratch your own itch’

   1. CWChris Williamson17:29

      What's the question that you're asking yourself to try and work out whether you've got that right? Is it, is there a market for the thing that I'm trying to give?

   2. JOJonny17:38

      You have this hypothesis, which is like, I think this kind of person wants this kind of thing, right? I want... I think this sort of person wants this pro- wants this problem solved or wants to reach this goal. And oftentimes, and again this is four hour workweek advice, scratching your own itch is a pretty easy way to start, right? Like I like... so Yousef and I started Propane Fitness because we were really into fitness and we'd had a really elongated struggle figuring it all out, and we knew we could compress five years into five months for someone else. So that's a quite an easy one- easy way to start. So we knew there was already a demand there 'cause people were asking us for it. Um, or it's like, how can I test that assumption? So asking friends and family, asking your- on your social media, you know, "I'm thinking about doing this for this sort of person. Do you think anyone would be interested? Do you know anyone who would be interested?"

   3. CWChris Williamson18:22

      What's, what's an expedited way of doing that? Just posting online?

   4. JOJonny18:26

      ... I think going to your social circle, yeah, like your personal Facebook, your personal social media and saying, you know, "I'm going to start this new thing, this new venture. It's going to be doing this sort of service for this kind of person or this kind of business. Do you know anyone that might be interested?" Just have a conversation with them and see if it's right, because if one person's got the problem and they're like, "You know what? I'm happy to just pay you for that."

   5. CWChris Williamson18:47

      Mm.

   6. JOJonny18:47

      That tells you something pretty important, that, you know, if there's one person, there's, there's probably going to be more than one.

   7. CWChris Williamson18:52

      Chris Sparks has an interesting heuristic he uses for this where he says, "What do people often ask you for advice on?" So a lot of the time, you might be the, the tech-

   8. JOJonny19:03

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson19:03

      ... techie guy, the guy that understands what the new gadgets are that are coming out, or how to set up your iPhone properly. Or you might be the guy that's in good shape, or the guy that can cook interesting meals, or the guy that raised his kids to not be complete brats.

   10. JOJonny19:16

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson19:16

       All of those things that people come to you and say, "Man," like, you know, "I, I love how Charlie and David are just so well-behaved. Like, what did you do with them?" And then you look at someone like Sevan Matoss- Matossian, who I had on the show a couple of months ago, he was raising children, then decided, "I quite enjoy raising children and people like my methods. I'm going to document it on Patreon." And now him and his wife have a business. That's a business.

   12. JOJonny19:39

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson19:40

       Like, I know it's run through Patreon, which is, again, you're- it's not the most flash of websites. You've involved a third party, they're taking a commission, they're doing all the right... There's no fancy landing page or retargeting. But it's making money on the internet selling expert knowledge.

   14. JOJonny19:56

       Exactly. We- we've been in programs where, you know, you'll kind of interact with other people who are also running a business online. And I think a lot of people assume like, "Oh, everybody doing this is selling how to make money online," right? "And that's the only business that can work." There was a guy on this, on this call who was- he had the biggest business by anybody, by quite a margin. And he was teaching guitar teaching. Like, he was just teaching people how to play the guitar on the internet and doing like multiple hundreds of thousands per month doing that.

   15. CWChris Williamson20:25

       (laughs)

   16. JOJonny20:27

       And you're just like, "How?" You know, but, but at, at the core of it, it's like, well, why is he successful? Well, a lot of people want to learn to play the guitar. Probably in 2020, this kind of time, maybe more than ever, it's like it's ............................ home, I've got a guitar, I never played it. I'm going to take a gi- guitar playing course and he's doing really well. So, it doesn't even have to be the thing that you do professionally. It doesn't have to be, "Well, if I'm an accountant, I'm going to..." Loads of the examples you mentioned there, um, it's often like the passion or the thing that you have that you're, you're like obsessed with.

   17. CWChris Williamson20:56

       Mm.

   18. JOJonny20:56

       That a lot of friends would ask you for help about. And if you were to turn that into a product or an offering, because you know so much about it and because it's the thing that you're always reading and learning more about, it ends up being pretty good-

   19. CWChris Williamson21:08

       Okay.

   20. JOJonny21:08

       ... the thing that you produce.

   21. CWChris Williamson21:09

       So, that's the first principle, make sure that there's an actual market for what you're going to create and don't-

   22. JOJonny21:14

       Absolutely.

   23. CWChris Williamson21:15

       ... obsess over fancy website, fancy branding, getting an office, getting a backdrop, getting a flower wall, none of that. What's next?

8. 21:24 – 23:25

   Principle #2: build the product with customers (avoid ‘too basic/too advanced’)

   1. JOJonny21:24

      I think the next thing would be... So ideally, you, you don't want to get into a, a one-to-one based business if you can, um, just... But it's a great way to start, but y- you are very constrained long term if you want to try and grow that, you're limited by hours in the day. It's kind of the same problem. However, if you're going to produce something, you're going to make a course or make anything that you're going to sell, I think the best way to do that is to do it with customers. So try and ac- try to get into conversations with a few people through research, through figuring out is does this problem actually exist, even if it's for free, um, and they're not paying you initially. But build the thing that you're going to offer to the market with the e- the help and input of people who are actually that market, because I think if we assume it's a s- a s- a standard kind of information-based business, so the, the area we know the, the most is, is fitness, right? So if someone- if, if Yousef and I had just made a lot of our fitness programs from what we found interesting, it would have been way over the heads of a lot of our customers. And the example I use a lot is like we do get people join the program and say, "Which foods have protein in? Like, which food should I eat that have protein?" And you're like, "Surely, like, surely no one's ans- asking that question," right? But if we don't cover that in the program, it's a bad experience for the customer. So, I think making the service, if you've got the expertise, the challenge is what is it like to not have the expertise? Like, what was that like again? How, how does it feel to completely not understand all the stuff that I ex- uh, understand now and how can I help someone acquire the same information? Well, I'm going to work with someone who doesn't have the information. I'm going to try and figure out what the best way to do that is. And what you end up with is a really good offering for the customer, not just what you think is interesting or what you think's the right thing for you.

   2. CWChris Williamson23:13

      That's-

   3. JOJonny23:13

      If that makes sense.

   4. CWChris Williamson23:13

      ... that's a common error that people make, right? Making a product that they think that they want themselves.

   5. JOJonny23:19

      Yeah.

   6. CWChris Williamson23:20

      That doesn't fit the market at all.

   7. JOJonny23:22

      Exactly. And it's either too basic or too advanced a lot of the time.

9. 23:25 – 35:25

   Creator trap: podcasts/YouTube are slow to monetize—use them strategically

   1. CWChris Williamson23:25

      Mm. Yeah. I, I guess another online business that we haven't touched on yet is becoming some sort of creator, whether that be Instagram influencer, starting a podcast, starting a YouTube. Um, and I can say from personal experience that if you're starting a podcast with the hopes that it's going to be the thing that you make money from, like, just do something else. Because-

   2. JOJonny23:48

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson23:48

      ... (laughs) it's-

   4. JOJonny23:49

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson23:49

      ... it's such a slow, long burner to get yourself to the stage where you can even begin to monetize, where you can even get advertisers to take one look at you, and then to move from that stage to the stage where the amount of money starts to remotely be worth your time on an hourly wage. Again, that's not a thing. And if you're doing it for the money, you're going to run out of gas pretty quickly. Whereas if you're just doing a thing that you enjoy, it doesn't really matter. The money comes, the money comes, it doesn't, it doesn't. And that's kind of what I found. But I think we made, on YouTube in the first year, the ad revenue that we made in total was somewhere in the region of about 75 pounds and we'd done-

   6. JOJonny24:30

      Wow.

   7. CWChris Williamson24:30

      ... we'd done-... 50 episodes, maybe more than 50 episodes by then. Um, and there's this sort of rule, uh, urban myth rule that's floating around on the internet that it takes 150 episodes of a podcast before you can monetize it. Now, you can actually hasten that. Obviously, you could do that in a year if you were doing three a week, which is where I'm at now, then you could, you could do that in a year. But most people are doing one a week, which means you're going to be doing a podcast for three years before you can even start to sell ads. So, again, Joe Rogan getting a many, many million pound deal from Spotify is amazing, and Logan Paul and Russell Brand getting taken off, off normal podcasts and put behind a paywall, and Sam Harris monetizing in another way, all of that stuff's great. But the typical way that people make money from podcasts and from YouTube is with a combination of baked in, i.e. the, "Hey guys, this episode is brought to you by..." and the ad revenue, uh, adverts that you have to skip on YouTube on the way past. You need to be doing an awful lot of plays before you can get to that stage, which means you're going to be very, very disappointed and unfulfilled for a long time before you get there. But, again, as I said, the beauty is if what you're doing is something you enjoy, it kind of doesn't matter. You're just going to be on the treadmill, ticking over, ticking over, and if and when the money comes, then fantastic. But yeah, it can be, it'll be a miserable, miserable process if you weren't, if you were doing it for a cash return.

   8. JOJonny25:56

      S- so the, I think there's two... In like the online business world, there's two camps really. There's, there's like the direct response world which is, have a product or an offering, get someone to click a link and, and to enter their email address and then buy it. And that's the way that you build your business. And then the other side is more the branding side, which is pretty much what you've spoken about where, you know, you spend five years building this audience, this interested audience, and then you sell something to that audience and it does incredibly well. And I think where we sit is, is somewhere between the two. I think there's value in, in both of those and I think both of them done to their extreme have a lot of downsides. Um, but I think, isn't YouTuber is still like the most desired career, right? When they survey-

   9. CWChris Williamson26:40

      Number one, num- number one career that children between the age of five and eight want to be is a YouTuber. It used to be like doctor, policeman, firefighter, um...

   10. JOJonny26:48

       Astronaut.

   11. CWChris Williamson26:49

       As- yeah. Like none of that. It's like YouTuber's number one. Uh, and, and little do they know that what they're going to spend almost all of their time doing is looking at a camera and forgetting the line that they just wrote below it on a, on a laptop-

   12. JOJonny27:02

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson27:02

       ... and going, "Ah, fuck, Dean." Like, and that's it. That's what you do. You spend your time thinking of ideas. I'm currently, the big push for this year is to do what I can with the Modern Wisdom YouTube, start trickling some of those proper monologue videos out. And, um, it's only when you get really, really deep into the weeds of the video creators, Tim Schmoyer who's this YouTube affiliated coach. Uh, Seth's done his course, I'm going through it at the moment. Um, or, the, uh, uh, any one of a million... Ali Abdaal, even him and his course. When you get really deep into the weeds you realize just how sophisticated YouTube is. Like, MrBeast-

   14. JOJonny27:38

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson27:39

       ... if you've seen his videos-

   16. JOJonny27:40

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson27:40

       ... very, very successful YouTuber. I know it might appear like most of the videos just like, "Hey guys, we're going to see what happens if we put one million footballs in this park." But that has taken months of planning. MrBeast has two people that work for him, and all that they do is give him 300 video titles every week, and then he goes through and goes like, "No, no, no, no, no, no. Maybe. No, no, no, no. Maybe, maybe." Like, that's it.

   18. JOJonny28:10

       Wow.

   19. CWChris Williamson28:11

       300 video titles every single week, and then from there they just iterate down, iterate down, iterate down.

   20. JOJonny28:17

       That is... Oh my god. I mean... So that, I've se- I have seen those videos where it's like, "Everything you can fit in this circle, I'll pay for." And my first question is like, how is he funding that? But... (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson28:27

       I mean, ad- o- uh, the, the ad revenue he'll be doing-

   22. JOJonny28:30

       Ad- ad revenue-

   23. CWChris Williamson28:30

       ... will be, uh, fairly insane. But yeah, it's not just the sort of thing that you tumble into. But that being said, if you have the passion to talk about politics or football or philosophy or cooking or whatever, like, happily start a YouTube channel or a podcast about it. Personally, if it's a business, if that's the goal, I just think that you are starting off on such a back foot.

   24. JOJonny28:56

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson28:56

       Because the metric of success that you have chosen to judge your project by is the final thing which is going to arrive into your project way, way, way after late nights and awkward conversations and your partner saying, "What the fuck are you spending time on your laptop for again?" And all of those different things, all of those are going to occur first. And while I think that in four years' time I might be able to start charging like 10 pound CPM for adverts on my channel isn't going to cut it, and it's also not going to motivate you. So yeah.

   26. JOJonny29:28

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson29:28

       It's, it's a fantastic thing to do as a hobby. It's also a fantastic thing to do to, um, further enhance an existing platform. Here's an interesting thing. I, I can't remember the podcast, but George put it in our Modern Wisdom chat, talking about the reverse direction now of people who begin with audiences and then create a product for the audience. Did you see that?

   28. JOJonny29:51

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson29:52

       Can you...

   30. JOJonny29:52

       It's... So this is kind-
10. 35:25 – 42:43

    Trust and sales: why “just post on Instagram” rarely works

    1. JOJonny35:25

       I think, um, there's a... there's definitely an assumption that "I'm just gonna post on Instagram and it'll work." Like, I, I've even heard that sentence, or variations from that sentence, from people who... um, it's pretty common if someone's, like, outside of the fitness industry. So they're... maybe a, a personal trainer. They worked in a gym for a bit and decided the 5:00 AM start wasn't for them. They now a- are working somewhere else in s-... a different industry, and they think, "I wanna make online a go. I'm gonna build an online business." And we have a chat with them, they go, "I'm gonna... I'm just gonna post on my Instagram and I'll get, I'll get five or ten clients, and then, then, uh, we'll work together." And you try and convey how it's really not that simple. But if you don't... if you've never tried that before, why would that not work, right? 'Cause in- influencers do that. You see people doing swipe-ups and link in bios and all this sorts of stuff, and it seems to work for them. Why would it not work for me? So I suppose thinking that it's, um, thinking that this, this... just because you start talking about it, that people are gonna care, thinking that you have a link or you have something, that you've made something, that people are gonna care, um, is probably the next stumbling block. And I think that this is the point where people start giving up, when they've been posting on social media-... for 30 days, set themself a 30-day challenge in January 2021. "I'm gonna post every day, on my in- my bu- my business Instagram." And they don't make a sale, and they think that they're doing something wrong. Um, so th- that sort of thing, um, lots of busy work, lots of, uh, copying someone who's famous, doing similar things to them, thinking that that's all there is to it. That's common.

    2. CWChris Williamson36:59

       What's the assumption there? Is it people, people being mistaken around how hard it is to get others to part with their cash on the internet?

    3. JOJonny37:07

       T- y- yeah, I think so or more that, like not maybe appreciating the gap between, you know that what you've got is good. You know that your service is good and that you can really help someone, but no one else knows that. And actually, someone's less likely to trust you on the internet than really any, any other part of your life. So, you know, if you, uh, the, the advice we give our clients is, you don't need to in ... If you're, if you're solving a problem, you don't often need to convince the, the customer that they need the problem-solving. They kinda know that. Like I kinda know that I wanna lose weight or whatever it is. It's just that I, there's 10 reasons why I don't want it to be you.

    4. CWChris Williamson37:44

       (laughs)

    5. JOJonny37:45

       Like there's 10 reasons. (laughs) Like, "I don't tr- I don't trust you. Who the hell are you? What's this? Why should I ... You know, this is a scam." So, unless you're going to overcome those somehow, I'm just never gonna pay any attention to what you're doing. So, there has to be something online, uh, as part of your process, and this is what's often referred to as the sales funnel in a business or the like, the sales sequence, the customer journey that starts to help somebody else see why you might be able to help them. Um, 'cause the, like the build it and they will come strategy of, "I've got a website with a product on and a, and a link to buy, so I'm gonna post about it on Instagram and hope that people kinda find their own way through." It works for some people, if they, something they do goes viral for some reason, so they've got huge audiences, and they get 1% of that audience to purchase. But most people don't achieve that, and most people will always fall short. So, I think just thinking basically what you're doing in online business if you're reaching someone who doesn't know who you, who you are, you're walking up to someone in the street and saying, "Here's a link, can I, like can you just give me a-"

    6. CWChris Williamson38:44

       Give me your money. (laughs)

    7. JOJonny38:45

       "... card?" Yeah. It's not gonna work. So you have to treat them like a, it's the, the dating analogy is used a lot, right? You don't ask for marriage on the dance floor. So, there's steps in between, and you've gotta create that experience online. And that's where it starts getting like, "Oh, there's quite a lot of work involved in this, and this is actually quite difficult," but that's the reality. There is quite a lot of work involved. It's a very nice way to live. It's a very, um, rewarding outcome to have, like a high profit margin business. But it, it isn't as easy as a lot of people imply it to be.

    8. CWChris Williamson39:17

       What about if it's a lower ticket product? I'm selling an e-book on Gumroad about how to save money or something like that. I know Yusuf has some very strong opinions around this. Do I need a big fancy sales funnel for that, or can I just post on my Instagram?

    9. JOJonny39:31

       So Gumroad's got a bit of a, got a bit of traction on Twitter. Uh, I don't think anyone really knows why. There's like a trust issue, I think, (laughs) on, on Twitter in some places. Um, it's certainly easier. Uh, but the other side of that is, just because it's a lower price doesn't mean that it's a lower percentage of what someone's willing to spend, if that makes sense. Like if I, if I want to achie- like I'll, back to the weight loss example, if I want to lose weight and I really want to lose weight and I'm serious about it and I've got some money to invest, I'm gonna look at the 7.99 pound e-book as like, "Well, the answer's not gonna be in there," right? (laughs) Otherwise, I would have found it already. So, but the person who might be considering that might have 10 pounds to spend. So you've still kind of got the same, at every price point, you've got someone who thinks it's too expensive.

    10. CWChris Williamson40:16

        (laughs)

    11. JOJonny40:17

        At every price point, you've got, you've got someone who will complain. Um, so, and there's a, there is a, a lot of research behind, like lower price point sales tend to generate a higher percentage of complaints and problems and, and all that sort of stuff, which we've seen ourselves as well. Not to say that you can't have a 7 pound, not a, a, an 8 pound, 10 pound e-book, but I'd start at a higher price thing first, personally, and figure out the selling part. Fi- 'cause if you can't sell something to your customer, there's, there's probably something going on deeper level rather than it's more than 10 pounds.

    12. CWChris Williamson40:50

        One of the things that's interesting there that most people don't realize is, price isn't just the transaction of how much the customer pays. It's also a massive signaler to that customer of what they're paying for. That price is an indicator of quality. That's why a pair of Nikes cost 100 pounds, but a pair of like Hi-Tecs costs less. I don't know how much a pair of Hi-Tecs cost.

    13. JOJonny41:12

        (laughs)

    14. CWChris Williamson41:12

        Done. So I was truly like going back to like what, what are the shit shoes I remember from 20 years ago. Done. Um, yeah. You, you get what you pay for. And that is another piece of information. You have to think that the way that customers look at your website, they're looking at everything. They're looking at the sales copy. They're looking at the imagery. What does it look like? What are the colors like? Has someone put a ridiculous soundtrack over the top of this? Is the video well shot? And then the price is also another ... Okay, so all of these different things tell me something about the business and person that is trying to take my money from me. The price is also another indicator of that. And I think that you're right. The presumption on the internet, even if people like your mum and my mum aren't explicitly aware, I think everyone knows that the costs on the internet generally are lower, which means that if the amount of money that's being charged is still super, super low, you've just got this, this sort of ick factor, this level of, of mistrust. And I get it as well, even having seen, taken the red pill and sort of seen through the, the, the other side of the curtain about this stuff, I still see something. I'm like, "That's 15 pounds. That can't be worth any value." You go, "Hang on a second. Like may- maybe, maybe it is." But that compulsion, that, that sort of sense that you get, the response as a customer should tell you everything that you need to know. So yeah, I would, I would agree on that. Um, what are the markers of a good and a bad sales funnel? Let's say that someone

11. 42:43 – 47:57

    Funnels that work: repeatability, matching decision cycles, and nurturing buyers

    1. CWChris Williamson42:43

       who's now been convinced, they say, "Right-o.... understand the product, I understand the entire product market fit. Worked with a few people, so I started to build something up. And now, I'm going to maybe start converting some slightly less hot leads, some warm leads that I've got that I know of some friends or maybe even starting to post up to the wider internet. I need to build a sales funnel. What are the principles around making it good and making it bad?

    2. JOJonny43:05

       It's a big question. Um, so I suppose the, like the most important thing about anything like that, especially if you're thinking, "I'm going to try and live off this," is just repeatability. Um, like if, if a sales process works because like you're, like a guy who you met once, his mate went through it and bought from you. And you're like, "Oh, my sales funnel worked." Like, there needs to be some aspect of, you know, once a, every month I get about this many customers or I make about this many sales when I do these things. And then you get, that's like a foundation to build on. So, repeatability, does it consistently work? Um, it's quite hard to say, like, this is the best sales approach or this is the best way to do it, because that, that's very different market to market. Some things might just require a page that explains what it is, with a video that explains how it works. Other things are a bit more of a commitment, might ex- might require a bit more contact with the person. It might involve a phone call, it might involve a, a group call or something like that. So, I think I would, to, to start of where should I, where should I begin? I would think about who's the person that I'm trying to sell to, and how do they normally make decisions? Right, so if it's a personal trainer in a gym, like how does this person normally make a decision? Well, they might go to the gym for a trial session. It's like, well, okay, I can't do that on the internet. So, how am I gonna create this same feeling of like, I'm always getting a, a walkthrough of what it might be like, or an experience of what it might be like? So you're mimicking a customer's decision, right? So, that's, uh, probably the best way of giving a general answer is it should be, you should be able to rely on it, really. And if you can't, it's not really doing the job that it needs to in, in running the business. And it should, as closely as possible, match what the customer needs to make a decision. If someone needs longer than a day to make a decision, but you try and make everyone to make it, you try and make everyone make their decision in a day, it's not gonna work. So, uh, uh, that's how I would think of it. Try and match...

    3. CWChris Williamson45:00

       So for instance, in, in that situation where someone takes longer than a day to make the decision, you could perhaps have an email sequence over seven days or over 14 days that would slowly explain to them the different benefits or perhaps even provide some free advice around whatever it is that you're talking about.

    4. JOJonny45:18

       Exactly, yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson45:18

       Uh, and that might convince someone. Whereas creating a 14-day, uh, set of email sequences for a 10 pound ebook on something that's very transactional and someone can learn in half an hour kind of makes a lot less sense.

    6. JOJonny45:32

       Yeah, that's spot on, and I think like you and I have both bought courses, books, programs online before, right? So, we are probably both of us on the side of the spectrum which is skeptical, need quite a lot of convincing, or, like, I need you to come up to me and say, "You should buy this thing." Right? I'm not the sort of person who's gonna make a decision very quickly, but some people do. And I think generally the way that we operate is, there's usually 3%, 5% of any round of people who are just looking for someone to help them, right? They're not, they're not in the browsing phase, they're in the, "I'm going to buy one of these, I'm just picking which one." Right?

    7. CWChris Williamson46:13

       Yeah.

    8. JOJonny46:13

       I'm just, I'm literally shopping.

    9. CWChris Williamson46:14

       Best online weight loss program.

    10. JOJonny46:15

        Exactly.

    11. CWChris Williamson46:16

        Best online PT course. Best...

    12. JOJonny46:19

        Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson46:19

        ... whatever.

    14. JOJonny46:20

        Just literally looking to buy something, right? So, those people probably don't need six months, right, because actually if you wait six months, they'll have bought from somebody else. If someone's looking for a consultant, a program, a product, anything, and you are there and you speak to that person in a way that kind of makes them feel like you're a good, you're a good choice, you can make some sales pretty quickly. But there are also people who will just click on something 'cause it's the internet and people do it passively while Netflix is on in the background, right? They'll click on something and opt in, but not really make a decision for a year. So you need the, the shorter window, but also a way of kind of keeping in touch with people. So as you mentioned, email sequences or that would be when a podcast or a YouTube channel or something like that comes in handy. So, there's a lot to this, but basically it comes down to what does my customer need from me to make a decision about this? Whether that's now or in six months time and how do I create that experience in my business so that if someone is just browsing, if you imagine a, a sh- a shop r- situation, if every person came in the shop, the shop assistant went up to them and pushed them against the wall and went, "You've got to buy this now, otherwise the timer's gonna run out." They'd probably go to jail, right? I imagine eventually they'd go to jail. Um, whereas if it's like, "Hey, can I help you? Do you want a free sample? Like, have you seen this, have this brochure? Can I get your email address? Do you want to be on our email list?" Like, oh, what a nice experience. When I am ready to buy, I'm going to go back to that shop. It's just, it's thinking about it like that. There's not, there's no magical three-step script that makes this all work. It's just people buying from people. So you've got to mimic that as closely as possible.

12. 47:57 – 59:23

    Traffic strategies and platform bets: paid ads vs organic, and why search-based wins

    1. CWChris Williamson47:57

       What we've talked about a lot so far has been, I would guess, mostly conversions, product market fit, making sure that people come in at the right, that they, they understand what you're trying to sell them, that they don't get too put off. What about traffic? I need people to actually see the thing that I'm trying to sell them. How can I drive traffic?

    2. JOJonny48:15

       So this is something that Chris and I have like discussed on and off for, since I've known you. So I'm, I'm Mr. Ads and Chris is Mr. Organic, basically (laughs) . So for people who don't know what those terms mean, like ads, paying for, I pay Facebook, Instagram, Google, whatever, for something to appear. And everyone's seen the words "sponsored" underneath an Instagram post, right? Organic would just be using a following that you have. Um, and I guess they require different approaches and different, um...... different strategies and tactics. So, you can basically do one of those two things. You can run ads to something. You can pay to target a specific type of person who has a, has a specific interest to come and visit your customer journey. Right? Or, you can take a, a, a less, uh, direct approach and try and build things organically by getting, getting traction. So, you can have platforms and channels online. Instagram is, I guess, maybe slightly, slightly on the downhill. It's hard to say. Um, a lot of people are building platforms on Twitter these days. YouTube channels, podcasts. And you send that traffic, those people, those clicks, to where you know if I send a hundred people here, one of them will buy, generally speaking. Or, you're so confident in the sales sequence that you've built that you know for sure from the last thousand people that one in ten people buy. Right? And if one in ten people buy, and I know if I spend a hundred pounds I make a hundred and fifty, then there's a pretty strong argument to then use advertising to just get people to come in through the door. 'Cause you know you can very closely control who comes and sees you, right, who comes and finds the sales sequence, 'cause you can basically select interests and demographics and, and all that sort of stuff. So that, that's the traffic side of things and, and all of these, uh, words like conversions and traffic and the optimization of them are worlds in, in and of themselves. There's lots, there's lots to them. Um, we opt more for paid because it's a bit easier to control and I guess Yusuf and I, quite introverted, don't necessarily want to post our, pose our tops off all the time. I'm, like, suited to being behind a, a spreadsheet and a graph. Um, whereas I guess Chris has been very successful with the opposite. So those are kind of two examples of, of how you might go and get attention to your business once it's built, once it's functioning.

    3. CWChris Williamson50:38

       What's your current opinion on the online platforms for organic? And six years ago everyone wanted a Facebook page, and three years ago everyone wanted an Instagram, and now TikTok's taking off. Sort of where are we at at the moment? What do you think is useful to use now and then what's your predictions for the next sort of five to ten years in terms of where the, the power for organic's going to be?

    4. JOJonny51:02

       I think we probably agree on this, I think, in that I think search-based content is gonna be the, the dominant thing. And by search-based, if you imagine Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, they're feed-based social media. So like, you don't necessarily search on Instagram for something or search on Facebook for something. A podcast, YouTube video, an article, blog posts, that sort of stuff, um, is, like someone types something into YouTube 'cause they follow someone on YouTube or they follow a podcast or maybe they read a blog regularly, for example. Um, you can make something once on those platforms, and it, I mean, I'm sure you got some crazy stats of your, some of your videos, the higher performing ones, where it's, it's been made a year ago and still every day a thousand people are finding it, a thousand people are finding it, and those are new people every single day. Um, I think there'll always be a feed-based social media. I think there'll always be, like, something that's in vogue. I know, like, Clubhouse is the, is something that's gradually gaining traction. TikTok's obviously replaced, always going head-to-head with Instagram Reels and stuff like that. That, I think it's a dangerous game to get involved with because those platforms can, can die overnight. Like, we saw Facebook pages, Facebook business pages were the thing, like six, seven years ago, and now you can barely get anybody to see a post if you post it on Facebook. So, I, I think it'll be a long time before people stop searching for things on Google, people stop searching for things on YouTube. Whereas I think people can leave social media platforms very, very quickly-

    5. CWChris Williamson52:37

       Mm.

    6. JOJonny52:38

       ... with a bad bit of press.

    7. CWChris Williamson52:39

       I've never, I've never thought about it like that but that's a s- such a good i- um, way to put it. So do you see almost the search-based stuff which would be articles hosted on blogs, um, going through Google, YouTube, which is also owned by Google and also the second most popular search engine in the world, and also appears within Google results, so YouTube's also kind of somehow a, a Google, um use-

    8. JOJonny53:03

       Yeah, they're, they're the same thing really.

    9. CWChris Williamson53:04

       Yeah, essentially. Um, podcasts aren't wonderful on SEO but they're not bad and they sometimes appear in there. You would put that stuff into one particular side of the internet and then that, that's moving at a slightly slower place. The, the turnover, the attrition rate, the churn rate of that is moving slower than Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Clubhouse, Twitter, et cetera, et cetera.

    10. JOJonny53:25

        I'd say so, yeah. So like it depends on sort of the age, the age of people listening but, um, I can remember when all anybody spoke about was Facebook, and then I can remember when all anybody spoke about was Instagram. And then things gradually die. And now actually most of my friends have deleted their Facebook account 'cause they saw some like woke Netflix documentary that makes them think they're being manipulated.

    11. CWChris Williamson53:47

        (laughs)

    12. JOJonny53:47

        Right? So (laughs) you know what I mean? But, but it's amazing, isn't it, how that can happen, how there's just a little bit of bad press about something and people are like, "Right, I'm o- I'm off Facebook." But they don't-

    13. CWChris Williamson53:55

        Isn't it interesting that no one, no one's deleted their YouTube account? Like no one has stopped watching YouTube.

    14. JOJonny54:01

        Precisely. Precisely.

    15. CWChris Williamson54:03

        Yeah.

    16. JOJonny54:03

        So like-

    17. CWChris Williamson54:04

        I just tho- thought this the other day. It wouldn't surprise me if Elon Musk doesn't have a, a Facebook account. Um, and he deleted Tesla's Facebook page on a whim.

    18. JOJonny54:17

        Yep.

    19. CWChris Williamson54:17

        And yet him and Jeff Bezos when they're sat somewhere at 3:00 in the morning 'cause they've got jet lag because they've just traveled halfway across the world on their private jet will 100% watch videos on YouTube.

    20. JOJonny54:30

        (laughs)

    21. CWChris Williamson54:30

        There isn't, there isn't a chance in hell, but there is a pretty big chance in hell that they wouldn't watch TikTok. So yeah, it seems more ubiquitous, the-

    22. JOJonny54:39

        Th- platforms...

    23. CWChris Williamson54:41

        ... search-based platforms.

    24. JOJonny54:41

        And you've got to consider, like, uh, you know, people have bad things to say about Google but they also have Gmail and Chrome. So, for like those behaviors to stop-... it's gonna take real shifts 'cause, 'cause what's interesting is when someone deletes their Facebook account, they don't then spend no time on their phone. They just replace that habit with Instagram or TikTok or something else, right? Whereas if you're searching for something or you follow a YouTuber, you just follow their content, right? 'Cause it's interesting. And you don't, you don't go on YouTube with this, like, "Oh, this is..." I mean, yeah, it's easy to spend five hours on YouTube, but it kinda feels better than spending five hours on Instagram. Like, it's so hard to explain why, isn't it? Like, it feels like time better spent.

    25. CWChris Williamson55:24

        So here's my, here's one potential proposal for that. The number of people who have accounts versus the number of people who create content for the platform on YouTube is more, uh, there's more inequality in that than probably on anything else.

    26. JOJonny55:41

        Great point.

    27. CWChris Williamson55:41

        Almost, almost no one that's listening has ever uploaded a video to YouTube, and yet no one-

    28. JOJonny55:48

        Wow.

    29. CWChris Williamson55:49

        ... no, no one that's listening hasn't ever watched something on YouTube. The same can't be said for Facebook or Instagram. Like, you know, sometimes you wish that your dad would stop posting on Facebook. You're like, "Dad, not again." Like, but the-

    30. JOJonny56:01

        (laughs)
13. 59:23 – 1:12:14

    Delivery and scale: systems, SOPs, and building a business you won’t hate

    1. JOJonny59:23

       So I suppose the, the part that we've not covered is, is actually providing the pro- the product or the service. Um, which is harder to, to speak generally about 'cause that, it's gonna depend, right? Um, I, the, the, the traps that I would avoid are, um, view it as, yes, this is great when I've got three customers. I'm gonna put everything into these three customers. They're gonna get the most bespoke experience. I'm gonna call them every morning. I'm gonna make sure, you know... But that, at 30 customers, starts actually becoming a worse service, a worse way of living your life. The 31st customer's got to wait for the 31st email reply. And if you're answering the same questions over and over again or delivering the same service that gets watered down all the time, you just start to resent it. Um, and I think where, where we nearly got to with Propain was at the point where it was like, we just don't enjoy doing this. Which circles back to my point of like, what do you want your day to look like? If you build your business and how you work with your customers around that assumption and the platforms you pick and... You end up enjoying it, and you end up doing it for a long time. So I can't really say this is how you run an online business 'cause the, the specifics of the delivery will vary a lot. But I would always consider what would happen if I, for some reason this did really start succeeding and I had double my customers by this time next week. Would I be able to actually fulfill that? 'Cause if your, if your systems aren't scalable, then it'll just break and you'll hate it basically.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:00:48

       Is there an argument to be made that at the beginning being a little bit closer to the customer is a good idea to get more of that quick iterative feedback?So, I know that you guys did this when you first started out. Although I- you look back on it now and cringe at the amount of time that you'd spent/wasted, I also think there is value in that because it gives you such a, uh, close up, highly magnified look at the inner workings of a client customer- a, a, a client/coach relationship. Or this could be for anybody. This could be someone who is helping someone to start up their own small or medium-sized business in the real world. Like-

    3. JOJonny1:01:27

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:01:28

       ... understanding the pains that that person goes through as they begin to do it helps you to see down the line. So perhaps, do you think that might be a, a, a way to not-

    5. JOJonny1:01:39

       Yeah.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:01:39

       ... not necessarily look to future-proof yourself to the 10-year goal, but to maybe just have a trajectory of how you could start dropping things away?

    7. JOJonny1:01:48

       D- Definitely, yeah. So, I think there's, there's absolutely n- there's nothing wrong with working closely with your customers to get feedback and ideas and, and all that sort of stuff. Gen- generally, like what we advise now is if you're working with someone closely initially and they say, like, "I don't understand how this works," or, "Can you explain this a bit better?" Or, um, "What do you think about this?" see that as an opportunity to create a resource for that question or something that is a, "I'm going to answer this question once to the best of my ability and then it's the best answer to that question ever." Um, or, "It's the, the best explanation walkthrough of this ever." Rather than, "Oh yeah, good question, mate. Uh, let me just write a long email for you and press send and it's just going to disappear forever." Um, so yeah, absolutely. Like the more you can know your customers, the better your service is going to be, the more- the happier everyone will be.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:02:34

       Did you see-

    9. JOJonny1:02:35

       (laughs)

    10. CWChris Williamson1:02:36

        ... did you see Derek Sivers when he talks about what he did at CD Baby with customer inquiries?

    11. JOJonny1:02:42

        No.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:02:43

        So, CD Baby was the- one of the biggest online stores selling music CDs. Derek Sivers, who has been on the show, multi-multi-multi-millionaire, also friend of Tim Ferriss and just generally interesting human. Every time that a customer rang, this is after he understood this particular problem he was coming up against, that he was constantly spinning his wheels doing the same things over and over, he made a decision that he was going to create a, um, operating procedure for the whole business, for everything that he did.

    13. JOJonny1:03:13

        (laughs)

    14. CWChris Williamson1:03:13

        Um, and every single time that a customer rang, "Excuse me, my CD's arrived and it's cracked. Excuse me, my CD's being delivered to my neighbor. Excuse me..." Whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever the issues are. "I can't play it, I've put it in upside down, I don't know," whatever. Every time that that happened, he stopped the whole office and said, "Right, everybody, this is how it's going to happen. This is what this- the answer is. These are the particular routes that you go down." And he had someone write it as well. And over the course of some months, I can't remember how many months, he'd created this How to Be Derek.doc booklet.

    15. JOJonny1:03:48

        Mm-hmm.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:03:48

        Which was all of the things that he ended up encountering. And then he left the business. He left the business for six months and, and nothing, nothing went wrong. And he was ringing them and they were like, "What are you ringing for? We're fine. Like leave us alone, we've got work to do." Um...

    17. JOJonny1:04:01

        (laughs) That's very Tim Ferriss.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:04:03

        Yes. So, that, that's such an interesting insight and it's one that me and Darren learned later than we would have liked, but still earlier than we could have done, that most of the problems that you're going to come up against in any business actually, forget just online, most of the problems you're going to come up against are consistent challenges that you're going to face not just once, but probably monthly or every couple of months for the rest of the time that you run this business. And the person who will inevitably end up sitting below you or to the side of you, it is easier for you to write the perfect way in the s- in the fewest number of words and the most precise language possible how you deal with this thing and then you can just give it to a person. And it's basically like taking your knowledge out of your brain and giving it to them. I can't remember who it was that I was reading that said, "The job of a owner or managing director is basically to be a complex decision engine that can never be matched by anybody else." So, if you actually think about what your role as a business owner is, you're taking in st- a million different inputs, like the, the, the way that that customer looked when he walked into the nightclub and how the DJ played his last half hour and the, the amount of mess on the floor of plastic glass waste and whether the- this many people went home with the inflatables or without. And none of these things, using my industry as an example, I'm not noting any of those down. I don't have them quantified anywhere, but they do appear in consciousness and they will aggregate together to give me a sense of what is going on. And then when we sit down and we talk about the event the next day, I can say things that stayed in consciousness. "Um, I actually did notice quite a big wait at the bar sort of between 12:00 and 12:30." "Oh, yeah. Actually, what had happened, we'd run out of ice." So, it's, "Okay, can we fix the ice machine f- ready for next week? Is there a way that we can get bags of ice in already?" Utilizing all of those different things is your job, but what you find is that more and more, that is the only place that you add value, especially as you move up through the echelons of a business. That's the only place you can add value, because there will be someone half your age in a decade's time that can come and do the thing that you used to take pride on, to do with-

    19. JOJonny1:06:17

        (laughs)

    20. CWChris Williamson1:06:17

        ... optimizing Facebook ads or writing copy or doing whatever. That thing you used to think that you were the best at, you're now going to be not even halfway up the company at. The thing that you-

    21. JOJonny1:06:27

        Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:06:27

        ... the thing that you can't be competed out with is your experience and your ability to take those multiple things in. And by writing the document, it permits you to get other people to do what they can do and leaves you to do what only you can in the business.

    23. JOJonny1:06:42

        It's the, the thing that like every time you go through a McDonald's drive-through, you get given a Big Mac that's largely the same as the last Big Mac and the next Big Mac, and that's the same in London, Manchester, New York and like... But it's not Ray Kroc...... making the Big Mac, right? And that's really, like when you really think about that, that's incredible that like there is such a process. Like even the way McDonald's is laid out and the way the drive-through works, and the window that you pay out and all that sort of stuff. So that- that's someone taking this is how to run a McDonald's out of their head and making a document that can literally be copied and pasted around the world. Um, but it- it's so, I mean there's a book called The E-Myth Revisited that- that goes into this, and it's so hard to do. It's so hard to- to come to terms with the fact that what you think you're good at is actually just a recipe that you can write down and give to someone else, and they might even be better than you.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:07:34

        (laughs)

    25. JOJonny1:07:35

        And- and- and all you have to do is like, actually, my, the challenge for me is just picking a better person than me to do the thing that I thought of-

    26. CWChris Williamson1:07:41

        Mm-hmm.

    27. JOJonny1:07:41

        ... and then just gonna-

    28. CWChris Williamson1:07:43

        Slowly step out of the room.

    29. JOJonny1:07:45

        (laughs) ... creep away.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:07:45

        That's a, that's a good point. If there's someone listening that thinks, "This sounds all right, I might give the online business stuff a crack," other than going to propanefitness.com/modernwisdom, what are the books that you think would have the best impact on someone's insight?

Episode duration: 1:18:14