How To Not Start An Online Business — everyonelovescartoons.com

These are some illustrated podnotes to go with the Modern Wisdom Podcast - How To Not Start an Online Business.

In this episode, host Chris Williamson talks with Jonny from Propane Fitness. Here are Chris’s notes introducing the podcast:

Jonny joins me to discuss the wild west of creating money on the internet.
Given the living hell that real businesses have been through with Covid, many budding entrepreneurs are trying to get some of that sweet, sweet internet money.
Expect to learn, the biggest tips Jonny has learned over 10 years of working on the internet, the fundamentals of creating an online business, why traffic & conversions are life, the most common problems everyone makes and much more...

Below I’ve listed the notes I made while listening to the episode. I then chose some of my favourite ones to illustrate.

Everyone is an expert at something.

Going from taking something that you’re doing for someone else in the confines of a business and that are paying you what they think that’s worth, but the market may think it’s worth more.

If you have something valuable you have a service, some knowledge, some expertise that is valuable to someone else, shorten the gap from a to b.

You can have all of that right (all the stuff you think you need to set up a business) but not have a customer.

If you’re solving a problem, then someone, somewhere will pay you for it.

If you get that bit right, then you can make a lot of mistakes and still succeed

If one person has got the problem and they’re willing to pay you for it, that tells you something important that if there’s one person there probably going to be more than one.

Principle #1: Make sure that there’s an actual market for what you’re going to create.

Principle #2: Don’t get into a one-to-one based business. You are very constrained long-term if you want to grow you are limited by hours in the day.

What is it like to not have the expertise?

How does it feel to completely not understand all the stuff that I understand now.

How can I help someone acquire the same information?

I’m going to work with someone who doesn’t have the information, I’m going to figure what the best way of doing that is. What you end up with is a really good offering for the customer, not just what you think is interesting or you think is the right thing

The metric of success that you have chosen to judge your project by is the final thing that is going to arrive in your project way, way later.

How do you want to spend your time?

What does an average day look like?

Which platforms or business models most suit that.

Start with the end goal of what is the life you want to live.

What are the most common mistakes?

You don’t need to convince the client that they need their problem solving, they kind of already know that, it’s just that there’s ten reasons why I don’t want it to be you.

Unless you overcome those they’ll never pay attention to what you do.

There has to be something online as part of your process, the sales funnel, the customer journey, that starts to help somebody else see why you might be able to help them.

Dating analogy:

You don’t ask for marriage on the dance floor, there are steps I between and you’ve got to create that experience. There’s a lot of work involved, is quite difficult but that’s the reality. It’s a nice way to live, it’s a very rewarding outcome to have a high profit margin business. But it isn’t as easy as many people imply it to be

Just because it’s a lower price doesn’t mean it’s a lower percentage of what someone’s willing to spend

At every price point you’ve got someone who thinks it’s too expensive, at every price point you’ve got someone who’ll complain.

Lower price point sales tend to generate a higher percentage of complaints

Start at a higher price point first and figure out the selling part, because if you can’t sell something to your customers there’s probably something going on at a deeper level.

You get what you pay for.

Customers look at everything on your website. Images, layout, copy etc all of these different things tell me about the person/business that is trying to take the money from me

What are the markers of a good/bad sales funnel? What are the principles around making it good/bad.

The most important thing, especially if you’re thinking I’m going to try and live off this is repeatability.

Every month I get this many customers, I get this many sales, that’s a foundation to build on. Repeatability does it consistently work?

Who’s the person I’m trying to sell to, how do they normally make decisions.

How do you give them a walk-through of what it might be like, you’re mimicking a customers decision.

You should be able to rely on your funnel. 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 to make everyone make their decision in a day, it’s not going to work.

You need a shorter window, people looking to buy immediately, but also a way to keep in touch with people YouTube, podcast is handy

What does my customer need from me to make a decision about this, whether that’s now or in six months time and how to I create that experience in my business.

There’s no magic 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

Search based content is going to be the dominant thing

Instagram, Twitter, Facebook are feed based social media you don’t search on them for something

A podcast, blog post, article, YouTube video you can make something once and then a year later people are still finding it.

It’ll be a long time before people stop searching for things on google, YouTube whereas people can leave social media platforms very quickly, due to bad press.

Race to ever increasing quality

Almost 90% of the content you consume today will have been created within the last 24hrs - David Perel

It’s come, easy go - you won’t remember you consumed it whereas if somethings been around for a while it’s most likely to be of worthwhile content if it’s popped up. On your radar having been in the Internet for three years it’s proved its value

Podcast and YouTube is a step down from being on tv.

Traffic is getting people to see the thing, conversion is getting people who see the thing to buy the thing.

What would happen if It started succeeding and I’m had double my customers next week would I be able to fulfil that? Because if your systems aren’t scalable then it’ll break and you’ll hate it.

Work closely with customers to get feedback and ideas if a customer says I don’t understand, can you explain this more clearly, can you explain this a bit better, what do you think about this, see it as an opportunity to create a resource for that question, 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 or it’s the best walkthrough explanation ever.

Most of the problems you come up against are consistent challenges.

The job of a owner or managing director is to be a complex decision engine that can never be matched by anyone else

That is the only place you add value

There will be someone half your age in a decades time who can compete on the grunt work.

It’s so hard to come to terms with the fact that what you think you’re good at is actually just a recipe you can write down and give to someone else and they might be better than you. The trick is picking a better person.

In setting up a business it’s not just the core things, it’s everything else, support stuff

Tiago Forte - A paradoxical thing about people who consistently choose the most high leverage activity. Is that their efforts have a rough-edged half-arsed quality because polishing things to perfection. Is a low-leverage activity perfectionism is. A nice way to hide from shipping at a pace necessary to find what works.

If you’ve got an idea sell it then build it with your customers you’ll end up building a better product.

Anyone sit and procrastinate, anyone can sit and perfect something - just launch it

You run out of motivation usually at getting something from 90% perfect to 100% perfect far more than doing another 90% perfect thing.

Just keep getting yourself to good enough and ship it - over time good enough will continue to increase.

Idea is the constant, delivery is the multiplier.

It’s all about the execution you can have the best in the world, but if your execution is awful no ones going to listen.

It’s the person walking around the Tate gallery:

‘I could have done that’ well, yes...but someone did and now look where they are...you could have done. It....but they didn’t

It removes the ability to criticise

Only you know what 100% might have looked like, no one else knows that that your 80% was actually the 100% and if you’ve. Got any criticisms great. It was only 80% perfect so I’ve got room to improve

It is only you that ever feels the lack of potential you fulfilled in a project because to everyone else outside looking in that’s the product/service/course.

Want To Learn How To Draw Cartoon Dogs?

Coming Soon - The Cartooning Canines - How To Draw Cartoon Dogs Course. to find out more, click below to send me a mail and type ‘woof!’ in the subject line.

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These are some illustrated podnotes to go with the Modern Wisdom Podcast - How To Not Start an Online Business.

In this episode, host Chris Williamson talks with Jonny from Propane Fitness. Here are Chris’s notes introducing the podcast:

Jonny joins me to discuss the wild west of creating money on the internet.

Given the living hell that real businesses have been through with Covid, many budding entrepreneurs are trying to get some of that sweet, sweet internet money.

Expect to learn, the biggest tips Jonny has learned over 10 years of working on the internet, the fundamentals of creating an online business, why traffic & conversions are life, the most common problems everyone makes and much more...

Below I’ve listed the notes I made while listening to the episode. I then chose some of my favourite ones to illustrate.

Everyone is an expert at something.

Going from taking something that you’re doing for someone else in the confines of a business and that are paying you what they think that’s worth, but the market may think it’s worth more.

If you have something valuable you have a service, some knowledge, some expertise that is valuable to someone else, shorten the gap from a to b.

You can have all of that right (all the stuff you think you need to set up a business) but not have a customer.

If you’re solving a problem, then someone, somewhere will pay you for it.

If you get that bit right, then you can make a lot of mistakes and still succeed

If one person has got the problem and they’re willing to pay you for it, that tells you something important that if there’s one person there probably going to be more than one.

Principle #1: Make sure that there’s an actual market for what you’re going to create.

Principle #2: Don’t get into a one-to-one based business. You are very constrained long-term if you want to grow you are limited by hours in the day.

What is it like to not have the expertise?

How does it feel to completely not understand all the stuff that I understand now.

How can I help someone acquire the same information?

I’m going to work with someone who doesn’t have the information, I’m going to figure what the best way of doing that is. What you end up with is a really good offering for the customer, not just what you think is interesting or you think is the right thing

The metric of success that you have chosen to judge your project by is the final thing that is going to arrive in your project way, way later.

How do you want to spend your time?

What does an average day look like?

Which platforms or business models most suit that.

Start with the end goal of what is the life you want to live.

What are the most common mistakes?

You don’t need to convince the client that they need their problem solving, they kind of already know that, it’s just that there’s ten reasons why I don’t want it to be you.

Unless you overcome those they’ll never pay attention to what you do.

There has to be something online as part of your process, the sales funnel, the customer journey, that starts to help somebody else see why you might be able to help them.

Dating analogy:

Just because it’s a lower price doesn’t mean it’s a lower percentage of what someone’s willing to spend

At every price point you’ve got someone who thinks it’s too expensive, at every price point you’ve got someone who’ll complain.

Lower price point sales tend to generate a higher percentage of complaints

Start at a higher price point first and figure out the selling part, because if you can’t sell something to your customers there’s probably something going on at a deeper level.

You get what you pay for.

Customers look at everything on your website. Images, layout, copy etc all of these different things tell me about the person/business that is trying to take the money from me

What are the markers of a good/bad sales funnel? What are the principles around making it good/bad.

The most important thing, especially if you’re thinking I’m going to try and live off this is repeatability.

Every month I get this many customers, I get this many sales, that’s a foundation to build on. Repeatability does it consistently work?

Who’s the person I’m trying to sell to, how do they normally make decisions.

How do you give them a walk-through of what it might be like, you’re mimicking a customers decision.

You should be able to rely on your funnel. 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 to make everyone make their decision in a day, it’s not going to work.

You need a shorter window, people looking to buy immediately, but also a way to keep in touch with people YouTube, podcast is handy

What does my customer need from me to make a decision about this, whether that’s now or in six months time and how to I create that experience in my business.

There’s no magic 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

Search based content is going to be the dominant thing

Instagram, Twitter, Facebook are feed based social media you don’t search on them for something

A podcast, blog post, article, YouTube video you can make something once and then a year later people are still finding it.

It’ll be a long time before people stop searching for things on google, YouTube whereas people can leave social media platforms very quickly, due to bad press.

Race to ever increasing quality

Almost 90% of the content you consume today will have been created within the last 24hrs - David Perel

It’s come, easy go - you won’t remember you consumed it whereas if somethings been around for a while it’s most likely to be of worthwhile content if it’s popped up. On your radar having been in the Internet for three years it’s proved its value

Podcast and YouTube is a step down from being on tv.

Traffic is getting people to see the thing, conversion is getting people who see the thing to buy the thing.

What would happen if It started succeeding and I’m had double my customers next week would I be able to fulfil that? Because if your systems aren’t scalable then it’ll break and you’ll hate it.

Most of the problems you come up against are consistent challenges.

The job of a owner or managing director is to be a complex decision engine that can never be matched by anyone else

That is the only place you add value

There will be someone half your age in a decades time who can compete on the grunt work.

It’s so hard to come to terms with the fact that what you think you’re good at is actually just a recipe you can write down and give to someone else and they might be better than you. The trick is picking a better person.

In setting up a business it’s not just the core things, it’s everything else, support stuff

If you’ve got an idea sell it then build it with your customers you’ll end up building a better product.

Anyone sit and procrastinate, anyone can sit and perfect something - just launch it

You run out of motivation usually at getting something from 90% perfect to 100% perfect far more than doing another 90% perfect thing.

Just keep getting yourself to good enough and ship it - over time good enough will continue to increase.

Idea is the constant, delivery is the multiplier.

It’s all about the execution you can have the best in the world, but if your execution is awful no ones going to listen.

It’s the person walking around the Tate gallery:

‘I could have done that’ well, yes...but someone did and now look where they are...you could have done. It....but they didn’t

It removes the ability to criticise

Only you know what 100% might have looked like, no one else knows that that your 80% was actually the 100% and if you’ve. Got any criticisms great. It was only 80% perfect so I’ve got room to improve

It is only you that ever feels the lack of potential you fulfilled in a project because to everyone else outside looking in that’s the product/service/course.

Want To Learn How To Draw Cartoon Dogs?

Coming Soon - The Cartooning Canines - How To Draw Cartoon Dogs Course. to find out more, click below to send me a mail and type ‘woof!’ in the subject line.

Rob Middleton