Modern WisdomHow Not To Start An Online Business | Modern Wisdom Podcast 279
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,014 words- 0:00 – 15:00
You don't need an…
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Feels like we're missing something today.
- JOJonny
I know. I know.
- CWChris Williamson
What is it?
- JOJonny
The, the third square.
- CWChris Williamson
Missing a, a, a scone-shaped-
- JOJonny
That's normally on the call.
- CWChris Williamson
... like the, like raisin and almond scone-shaped hole.
- JOJonny
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
You can't make money anywhere else. There is no money to be made in real person at the moment.
- JOJonny
(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.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- JOJonny
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... how not to, it's you.
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Got you.
- JOJonny
So that's kind of our, our, or, or what gives me any kind of right to talk about this, I guess.
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- JOJonny
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."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JOJonny
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?"
- CWChris Williamson
Why do online business rather than just progressing what you're currently doing in the real world?
- JOJonny
In terms of?
- CWChris Williamson
What's the reasons for it? What are the benefits? Why not just be, start your own accountancy firm?
- JOJonny
I see. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Leave the accountancy firm you're at and start your own as opposed to becoming a, like an online accountant somehow or-
- 15:00 – 30:00
Yeah. …
- CWChris Williamson
been into his office for a year.
- JOJonny
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- JOJonny
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-
- CWChris Williamson
How did that work?
- JOJonny
... and email. Well, and email obviously. (laughs) We weren't just typing-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JOJonny
... typing documents for ourselves. So we, (laughs) we were... yeah, I wrote this really long document and I just kept paying myself-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JOJonny
... 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-
- CWChris Williamson
Payment through PayPal or something probably. Manu-
- JOJonny
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... manually submitted invoices.
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- JOJonny
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?"
- CWChris Williamson
What's, what's an expedited way of doing that? Just posting online?
- JOJonny
... 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."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- JOJonny
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... 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.
- JOJonny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JOJonny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JOJonny
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.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Okay. …
- JOJonny
but I'm aware of like the, the general concept.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- JOJonny
So I think the... It's kind- it's linked back to what I was saying before. So you either view it as, um, I'm gonna... What I was, what I was talking about, like build this product to solve this problem, and the audience will kind of build around that. So as you get customers and you get leads and you get people becoming aware of what you've done, that creates the audience as a result of like the, the economic activity, the buying, the sales, the revenue. And the other way round is the, is the opposite, so you make a channel or some kind of platform where people are...... have this common interest or this common problem, and then you solve that problem for them with a, with a product. And it, I suppose the difficulty is, is that with, with just making and with trying to make content to build an audience, there's a lot of guessing involved, and there's also, you still have to live somehow in the, in the interim. Like, you've still gotta pay yourself from s- from something. A lot of people you see... So Ali, Ali Abdaal's a great example, right? He's recently... He was quite public about it. He released his YouTube... uh, I can't remember the name of it. YouTube Co- Creator something, is, is his course. Seems to have done extremely well from it, right? But when he started his channel, he wasn't doing it to try and earn a living. He was working as a doctor and was working as a doctor for most of the time that he was doing it, which has allowed him to put in two, three years of just regular, high-quality content, almost without even mentioning the financial side of it. So what he's really done there is he's built this audience of people who, a, a lot of the time, probably look at him and think, "Oh, I want to create a YouTube channel. I want to create a YouTube channel. I want to do this too." He's built this audience with a common problem, and then he's swept in with the, with the solution to the problem-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JOJonny
... and been paid very, very well for it.
- CWChris Williamson
Very handsome.
- JOJonny
So, yeah. There are, there are pros and cons to both, and I think the way, the way we do it is we have podcasts to, as you mentioned, we have podcasts to support an existing business, and the podcasts aren't getting anywhere near modern wisdom number downloads. Um, but they do very well in bringing customers into the business. And it's weird. Like, we, we make w- way more from the podcast directly attributed than we'd ever make through, through ad revenue, just by chatting about the subject-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JOJonny
... right? 'Cause people like to listen to it. So it, it does really... I think it really depends on what, as well, on top of, like, what are you going to do and who you're gonna work with. It's ki- it's kind of like what... how do you want to spend your time, right? How do you want to spend a day? Because as you mentioned, the reality of being a YouTuber is probably a little bit different. It's not just going round supermarkets with a trolley and giving it to someone and saying, "I'll buy everything you have." You know, there's a lot of prep, there's a lot of monotony, there's a lot of saying the same sentence ten times and getting it wrong ten times in a row (laughs) , and all that sort of stuff. Um, but that's, so that's... I would k- kind of start with that. Like, how do you want to... if you've got an idea in mind, how do you want to spend a day, an average day? What does that look like? And then which platforms or which, um, business models but most suit that?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JOJonny
Um...
- CWChris Williamson
So if you're, if you're the sort of person who likes to be wordy and likes to talk and has things to say and is kind of outgoing-
- JOJonny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... then a platform where you end up talking face to camera might be a great idea. But if you're-
- JOJonny
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... someone who's more analytical and introverted and wants to tinker with figures, then perhaps creating a course or selling an e-book and then retargeting and using ads may be a little bit more up your street. That's a... b- starting with the end goal of what is the sort of life that you want to live in mind. Because very much, the degrees of freedom you have when starting an online business are much greater than those when you go into a typical job. Like, do you... "What, what do you want to do today?" is not a question that your boss often asks you.
- JOJonny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, you don't get that when you walk in. "Right, mate, how are you feeling today? Do you wanna do a bit of analytical, a little bit more sort of creative?"
- JOJonny
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Like, you don't get that. Um, but when it's you at the beginning of whatever entrepreneurial side hustle, main hustle, online business it is that you start, you are putting yourself onto a particular trajectory. And presumably, as well, the longer that you go down that road, the more difficult it's going to be. It's, it's either wasted time or a, a direction that you're gonna have to turn round and come back from.
- JOJonny
Yeah. Um, and it's, it's interesting actually, 'cause I... hearing you say that, like, your... I remember when a big chunk of your week was spent driving from Manchester at three in the morning to, back to Newcastle, and then getting three hours sleep, and then waking up and having to go and take the blowup T-rex down from the club and m- moving the flower wall down. And now, your day is very, very different.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, massively.
- JOJonny
So I suppose... I know... I realize, obviously, nightclubs are one of the, one of the businesses that can't, can't really be done online. Um, but you've very much... I, I guess that the way that an average day looks like for you now is a lot more... is certainly a lot more enjoyable. There's a lot fewer late nights.
- CWChris Williamson
S- sleeping pattern's a hell of a drug, man. It's, uh-
- JOJonny
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... it's wonderful to wake up and go-
- JOJonny
Helps a lot.
- CWChris Williamson
... to bed at the same time. Yeah. Honestly, crazy. All right, so w- what are the most common mistakes? We've talked about someone not understanding that they have a, um, product-market... well, that there's a market for their product. Also, product/market fit. Is the product that they're creating for the market actually what it wants in terms of that delivery? Don't fuck about getting an expensive website. Don't spend ages building yourself an office. What else? Where else do people... what, what do they think is going to make the difference which completely does not?
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
So for instance, in,…
- JOJonny
I would think of it. Try and match...
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JOJonny
Exactly, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JOJonny
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?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JOJonny
I'm just, I'm literally shopping.
- CWChris Williamson
Best online weight loss program.
- JOJonny
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
Best online PT course. Best...
- JOJonny
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... whatever.
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- JOJonny
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JOJonny
... with a bad bit of press.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- JOJonny
Yeah, they're, they're the same thing really.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JOJonny
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Isn't it interesting that no one, no one's deleted their YouTube account? Like no one has stopped watching YouTube.
- JOJonny
Precisely. Precisely.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JOJonny
So like-
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- 1:00:00 – 1:12:14
Is there an argument…
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- JOJonny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... 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-
- JOJonny
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... 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?
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you see-
- JOJonny
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... did you see Derek Sivers when he talks about what he did at CD Baby with customer inquiries?
- JOJonny
No.
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JOJonny
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
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.
- JOJonny
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
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...
- JOJonny
(laughs) That's very Tim Ferriss.
- CWChris Williamson
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-
- JOJonny
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... 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-
- JOJonny
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... 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.
- JOJonny
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.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JOJonny
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-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JOJonny
... and then just gonna-
- CWChris Williamson
Slowly step out of the room.
- JOJonny
(laughs) ... creep away.
- CWChris Williamson
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
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