S5E21
· 44:51
Hey. It's Matt. Welcome to Money Lab. I'm gonna try something different today. I saw a tweet.
Matt Giovansici:I see a tweet. I'm looking at a tweet. A tweet, an x, a post, whatever it is, from Justin Welch at the Justin Welch. And I met Justin before, only briefly. I like his stuff.
Matt Giovansici:I like his content, like what he talks about. He talks about being a solopreneur, which I am definitely not, but I sometimes like to consider my business very solopreneur esque because the face of the company is me, and there's only 2 other people that help me just make me more content. Just make me content. So it's, like, kind of a solopreneur job. But, he has a list here, and I'm just gonna go through it and give you my take on it and see if this is something.
Matt Giovansici:We'll see. So he has 9 things that will kill a one person business. And I am certainly aware of all these things and perhaps have some of them. So number 1, at the very, very top, a big ego. Yeah.
Matt Giovansici:Yes. Yes. You think you know it all? You think you're smarter than everybody else? You think that everyone's out to get you, that's a big one.
Matt Giovansici:That's a big one. That's ego. I'm sorry. To me, I've just never really been a competitive person. I think some I've heard people go, fuse.
Matt Giovansici:Competitive. I'm like, no. Really don't care. Like, I I don't like confrontation. I don't like hating other people.
Matt Giovansici:I don't like thinking someone's I grew up in a society in an area where there's this weird mindset that I've I've had to get over. So and it's similar to ego. But it's you that it's this mindset that everyone's out to fuck you over. And the truth is, or at least from my truth, I guess, is that no one gives a fuck about you. That's that's the honest truth.
Matt Giovansici:So chances are they're not even paying attention to you. Chances are that you think you revolve around you think everyone revolves around you. You think you're the center of the earth. You think you're the sun, but it's probably, like, 99% of the time, no one is paying attention. No one gives a shit.
Matt Giovansici:So that's ego, if you think that. Self centeredness. And to think that, like, people are out to get you is just, like, really egotistical. And that will kill your business for sure, because you're gonna make stupid decisions based on the fact that you think that someone is out to destroy your business, when in fact, again, no one cares. In fact, if if anything, they're trying to do their business, so they're not even thinking about you.
Matt Giovansici:Thinking you're the smartest means you'll never learn. And this next one is part of it too, and I'm guilty of this one for sure. Number 2 is not networking. I, you know, I I think I don't network. I actually don't like the term networking, but maybe that's just my hang up with the word and not necessarily the the thing.
Matt Giovansici:When I was younger, I used to go to the actually, meetups. So I've I've been to this thing called FinCon, which is a financial bloggers conference and not a tuna fish conference or a shark convention. That's stupid. That's a stupid joke. I've been to World Domination Summit.
Matt Giovansici:I've never gone to it, but I've unconferenced it, meaning I went to the city where it was at during the time it was at. I've gone to podcast movement. I went to podcast movement once and then, wasn't invited back the second time, and, that's a long story. But I eventually went back when it was in Philadelphia just for fun. I just unconferenced again.
Matt Giovansici:And, yeah, I feel like I've networked. In fact, when any when if someone reaches out to me into the pool space or in the MoneyLabs space or the brew cabin space, I'm willing to have a conversation maybe to a fault because I feel like number 8 contradicts the thing about networking. Now I don't know what the true value of networking is except the way that I think of it is like friend making. So I 100% am all about the idea of friend making. The word networking, it's like for but what's the what's the gain?
Matt Giovansici:I don't know what the gain is. And I think that's where the problem lies. So, yes, friend making for sure because I've had I just had a conversation with my buddy, Sean, the other day, Sean Ogle. Super helpful. We talked things out.
Matt Giovansici:Buddy Nathaniel, we talked a lot about business. I've had friends where we talked about business and has derailed me, not to anyone's fault. Just it is just is what it is. So yeah. I don't know.
Matt Giovansici:I I I don't know if I necessarily agree with this one. I think if you I think networking contradicts number 8 and also number 6. So I'll let's get to those, and then we'll circle back. Number 3 is not having a VA, which stands for virtual assistant. And, yeah, depending on what you hire your VA to do, for sure.
Matt Giovansici:I I had I had a VA recently, and she basically helped answer emails because that can be time consuming and didn't really add to my bottom line. So having somebody there to help me get processed emails was really, really helpful. So, yes. I would say, will it kill your business? No.
Matt Giovansici:If you automate those that task properly. But, yeah, having a VA is helpful, but then my argument is then you're no longer a one person business, are you? Now you're a 2 person business. And maybe that, again, the the the acronym VA, which stands for virtual assistant, doesn't feel like an employee, but it certainly is an employee. It's somebody helping you out.
Matt Giovansici:So again, really hard to have to call to say it's gonna kill your one person business not to have 2 people. So yeah. Number 4 is no experimenting. You know, if you're if you're familiar with me at all and you're you're listening to this podcast, it's called Money Lab. And what do you do in a lab?
Matt Giovansici:You experiment. And one of my tenants of online business is everything is an experiment. And, yeah, whenever you have an idea for something and you wanna execute and put it into play, instead of going, oh, let's, you know, let's let's do this. Let's change our whole business around. It's like, no.
Matt Giovansici:Experiment for a month. See what happens, measure the results. And if it works, great, then move forward. If it doesn't, you know, table it, maybe try it again. Try a different hypothesis.
Matt Giovansici:But, yeah, constantly experimenting. I experiment every week, new headlines, new new images, new titles for for blog posts. I change the titles on this podcast. So it's constantly experimenting, constantly trying new things, for sure. Can't let it derail you if you're constantly trying and never doing.
Matt Giovansici:But yeah. So, yeah, I agree with that one. Number 5, ignoring feedback 100%. Hey. YouTube comments are very, hurtful sometimes, but maybe there's a nugget of truth in there, and it's worth looking at, asking your customers, asking your audience, having a conversation with them, getting feedback, changing things, yes.
Matt Giovansici:It is important. Does that does that mean you have to and and I I think this is also important to to to think about, which is there there is feedback, there is quantitative data and feedback, and then there are there are anecdotes or there's, you know, a feeling. And I this is something I see plague a lot of entrepreneurs, including myself. You get one email from someone who says something that you don't like or is critical of your business practice, what you know, whatever it is. You think that one data point, you have to change everything and go, oh my god.
Matt Giovansici:They caught me. They found this thing, and I gotta stop what I'm doing and fix everything. But the way that you phrase it to yourself is you go you say this thing, and I hear people say this to to fit their own agenda. They use the phrase, everyone's saying. So if you've ever said that, check yourself.
Matt Giovansici:Everyone's saying we need to do this. Is is everyone saying, or did one person say? Did did 2 people say it? Is that really everyone? Is that a good is that a good measurement?
Matt Giovansici:Does that mean I making sense? So you you tend to tell these stories when you get this piece of feedback. Maybe you get a bad comment on a YouTube video, and you spiral. You go, oh my god. Everyone's complaining about this thing.
Matt Giovansici:And it's like, no. One person complained about this thing, or 2 out of 50 people complained about this thing. To me, that's not a big enough data set to make a decision on or to change your entire business model around. It doesn't make sense. So just when you just be careful about feedback.
Matt Giovansici:When you get when you ask for feedback, tally it. If you get if you ask a 100 people for their opinion and you get a 100 different opinions, then no one knows what the fuck they're talking about. And it's invaluable feedback to in my opinion. But if, like, 10 or let's say even say 5 of those people have the same thought or maybe, you know, 5 to 10 people have the same thoughts, like, there's some validity to that. That's good feedback.
Matt Giovansici:And sometimes, yes, you could just you might already know the answer, and then someone tells you, and then you go, right. Okay. I'm not the only one who thinks this, then I feel like that is someone giving you permission to change. So the thing about feedback is I'll give you an example of a really stupid piece of feedback. That's that's irrelevant, but it's feedback.
Matt Giovansici:So going back to the the last one, we did an experiment at Swim University where I thought it would be I thought, why not for a month, let's change the way we do our short form, you know, vertical videos? And instead of doing a voice over and just showing b roll, I'm gonna record myself. I'm gonna be on camera, and I'm gonna read the script. And my hypothesis was that the videos would get more engagement, and we would have more views because there's a human being delivering the message. And there's a little and we one of the things we couldn't measure was, you know, are more people buying or are more people, you know, clicking the thing?
Matt Giovansici:Whatever it was. So that was like, hey. We're gonna do this experiment and we're gonna measure I don't know. Just we're gonna we're just gonna see. So we did it for a month, and we didn't really see a huge we saw a change in views, yes, but it wasn't, like, significant.
Matt Giovansici:And, again, since we're a seasonal business, you know, it could have been anything. But my dad said to me, hey. I'm seeing these new videos you're doing. I like them. I like them better than your old videos.
Matt Giovansici:Because I think you on camera, it just feels better. And I said, you know what? I agree. Something about it makes it feel more professional, makes it feel like someone's out there. It doesn't you would if you think about the the what we used to do, we're just you know, again, I would do the voice over so you'd hear my voice, but it would just be all b roll.
Matt Giovansici:And now you see my face delivering the voice over, and then we cut in some b roll. So there's more going on on screen because I'm talking. And I, you know, I set up a nice professional camera, and the feedback that I got from one person was that this is better, and I just happen to agree. And so for me, that's not a, you know, we just sent out a data point and everyone and everyone agrees. It's I already thought that, and I just needed one other person to go, yes.
Matt Giovansici:And I needed 0 other people to go, no, which is what happened. No one said, you look like a fucking idiot. You shouldn't be doing this, or this is stupid. I hate go back to the way you did it before. Blah blah blah.
Matt Giovansici:I got none of that and only one positive. So to me, that's good feedback. Again, because I'm just really wanting permission. Number 6, and this is, again, going back to networking, too many meetings, and I, a 100% agree with this. I used to be I when you start networking, this is where I get a little hung up on this idea, And you start meeting people, and maybe this is just me.
Matt Giovansici:I don't know. So I just have this problem where I start meeting people, I start becoming friends with people, especially in the business space. And the first thing that everybody wants to do and, again, does this everybody, Matt? No. It's some people.
Matt Giovansici:But I get asked a lot to partner to do stuff. I get asked a lot, could you do this for me? Could you do that for me? And I am somebody who is who considers myself very generous, and I would say to a fault, because it's certainly, I I spend too much time helping people for sure, but that is that really a fault? You know what I mean?
Matt Giovansici:I don't like to think that that's a fault, but I guess if we're talking about time, then, yeah, I'm if I looked at my schedule or I looked at my journal entries from 2023, and there were so many days that were spent working on other people's businesses that made me $0 just out of the kindness of my heart. Because, again, I meet a lot of people. I guess I network, and I meet a lot of people, but they tend to always take from me. Now, maybe that's because I don't ask in return. And there's there's very few things I need from someone.
Matt Giovansici:Mostly, I just want feedback. Like, if there's somebody I trust about something, I would say, hey. What do you think about this idea? And then I'll get that feedback. But very rarely do I ask my friends or the people I've networked with to do anything for me.
Matt Giovansici:But a lot of it in I get it I get the reverse. So that is why I have a lot of meetings, because a lot of people want something from me. And that's, I guess, the the the thing the thing here, which is I'm gonna skip to number 8, not saying no enough. So this is where those three things contradict for me because not networking if I didn't do any networking, I would just be by myself with my with my team. We we don't have any meetings in house because we all know independently what we have to do every single week, and we just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.
Matt Giovansici:That's what we do. So we don't have internal meetings. It's people constantly wanting to have meetings with me externally. Hey. We saw your TikTok.
Matt Giovansici:Would you be would can we jump on a call real quick? I wanna maybe we can advertise with you. Maybe we can, you know, do a partnership. Maybe we can do this collaboration, blah blah blah. And it's like, yeah.
Matt Giovansici:See, everybody wants something from me. So that's a good problem. Right? But that's why I don't really network anymore, because I don't really have I don't really have a need to network. And and, again, maybe I'm not following exactly what Justin means by networking because maybe he has a different interpretation of it.
Matt Giovansici:But for me, it's friend making and friend make I mean, friend making outside of business, sure. But friend making in business, I get a lot of people that ask me for shit. Again, always willing to help out, which then leads to my problem. I have trouble saying no. I really have trouble saying no.
Matt Giovansici:That is an absolute business killer for me. Okay. So too many meetings, not networking, not saying no enough. Yeah. Why is the meeting thing, an interesting one?
Matt Giovansici:Because to me, I've always felt this, and I might get some pushback on this. But I think strategy and meetings to talk about ideas is not work. What I'm if I'm in this brew if I'm in this brewery and I'm doing a podcast and I'm trying to figure out something, a a business problem, trying to solve a business problem. It might be considered work to some people, but it's not work. It's planning.
Matt Giovansici:And it's like, well, you can't work if you if you don't plan. I'm like, yes, you can. But, yeah, maybe maybe there's a chicken before the egg scenario. What comes first? So for me, if I if I'm constantly working in air quotes, meaning I'm constantly planning and strategizing and coming up with ideas, then when do I have time to actually execute on those ideas?
Matt Giovansici:Really, there needs to be a a filter, and I think that's what Justin's saying here is too many meetings is too much strategizing. Just fucking do the like, strategize once, lay it down, and just blindly execute for a year and measure later. And measure the whole time and then come back a year later and be like, how did we do, folks? Easier it's real easier said than done, my friends. It is.
Matt Giovansici:Because especially if you're starting out, like I was, I was checking metrics all the time. Huge distraction. Right? Checking my website traffic, checking my follower accounts, checking my you know, how many people watch this video? How many people watch that video?
Matt Giovansici:How many sales did we get today? I mean, it's like it's like a me it's meetings with myself. And then people are like, you know, what is an email? What is an email from an outsider? It's a possible opportunity.
Matt Giovansici:Am I right? It's like they're knocking. Hey. You wanna partner with us? We can help spread the word about your business.
Matt Giovansici:You know, I know that feeling. And it feels good. You're like, oh, yeah. Hell, yeah. Let's do that.
Matt Giovansici:What does that take? We gotta jump on a call. So that's a meeting. Then maybe you don't figure it out, maybe you're just spitballing ideas. Right?
Matt Giovansici:Then you get on another call later, spitball even more ideas, and it's a fucking 3rd call, spitballing. Maybe you say, okay, this now we're gonna do this. But how many calls did it take for that, and then the you do the thing and it doesn't even you that whole time you would've been better spent just doing the thing that you know you should have been doing the whole time. So, yes, not saying no enough is a problem of mine, and I'd I'd a 100% agree about the meeting thing. One meeting, what are we all doing?
Matt Giovansici:Alright. Go fucking do it. And number 9 oh, there's, number 7. There's 2 more. Number 7 is very little marketing.
Matt Giovansici:Now this is a tweet, so, obviously, there's brevity here. Marketing is one of those really interest there's a there's a there's a good analogy. You don't have to look it up. I don't know it off top of my head. But there's analogy of a circus and what marketing is.
Matt Giovansici:And if you look it up, it gives you all the different parts of the circus and tells you, you know, what there's there's so many arms under the blanket term marketing. So, you know, is creating a logo marketing? Yes. Is website design marketing? Yes.
Matt Giovansici:Is creating content marketing? Yep. Is repackaging your course? Is is creating a new sales page? Is designing a new offer marketing.
Matt Giovansici:Yep. Is posting on social media marketing. Uh-huh. It's like so many things. In fact, most of what I do in my business is marketing.
Matt Giovansici:It's mostly marketing, Content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, you know, there's, PPC, paid advertising, advertising's marketing. What is the difference between advertising and promotion? I I to be honest with you, I don't really know. To promote, to to advertise sounds like the same thing. Advertising sounds like something you pay for, and promoting sounds like something you do for free, but that's also not true.
Matt Giovansici:So, yeah, marketing is a very, very big term. And what does that actually mean for your business? I think it's important to figure out which arms are the most important to you. For me, the most important marketing arms is content marketing, which is a which is an umbrella term for a lot of other things. I believe email sending emails, call that email marketing, is a form of content marketing.
Matt Giovansici:What is an email but not content? It is content. Posting on social media, that's content marketing. It's I'm posting on social media for free. Right?
Matt Giovansici:Yeah. So there's, you know, paid advertising. That's content marketing. You gotta have it. What's in the ad?
Matt Giovansici:It's content, isn't it? I don't know. You know? So for me, it's like content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, paid ads. Those are all really important pieces of marketing.
Matt Giovansici:Branding is really important to me. So, yeah, not doing that enough? I guess. Yeah. It's it's kinda everything.
Matt Giovansici:You know? Especially for what we do, for the kind of work that we do. So yeah. And finally is a lack of business systems. Now this is one that I know a lot of people have trouble with.
Matt Giovansici:I know I mean, I know this because I've networked and I've made friends, and they all tell me that this is a weakness of theirs. And it happens to not be a weakness of mine. I love systems. I love process. Process is so cool to me.
Matt Giovansici:It's it's why I'm a homebrewer. Homebrewing is a combination of art and science And the art, I get to design an idea for a beer. Like, I get I get to invent a recipe. And what is a recipe? It is 2 things.
Matt Giovansici:It's a list of ingredients, and it is a process. So it's 2 so it's, or a recipe is 2 things. Right? And so there are the ingredients and then the order at which you process those ingredients and then create the thing that you're creating. So, yeah, I love both.
Matt Giovansici:I think it's really fascinating to go, hey. Some you could have the same list of ingredients and create a 1000000000 different things from it just from process alone. It's music, technically. We all have the same notes. We're all working with the same 52 cards, but there's a different process.
Matt Giovansici:And in the end, it something comes out differently. But what I what I personally like is, like, okay. Yeah. That makes sense, obviously. We we get the analogy.
Matt Giovansici:Sure. But the thing that people have trouble with is writing it down and sticking to it. And having, I think this is even more crazy, is having a place to store that process. Okay? The way I look at processes is SOPs.
Matt Giovansici:Now ours come in a bunch of different areas, but I like to think of everything as a checklist. There's a there's a step by step instruction for how to do something in our business, and I enjoy creating those. Those are fun. So I have, like and this I'll just keep talking about recipes for a second because I'm currently doing this, is I have a recipe for a New England IPA that I've been brewing for a very long time. And the the list of ingredients has really not changed all that much, but the way in which to combine those ingredients has gotten incredibly complex.
Matt Giovansici:And I constantly update that process. I have a step by step by minute process. You know you know, once you mix these ingredients, test the pH, test the you know, make sure this the water chemistry is 200 parts per million of calcium chlor you know, whatever it is. You know, make sure you hit your target, you know, specific gravity numbers. And if you don't, here's what you do.
Matt Giovansici:So, like, there is an entire standard operating procedure for how I make this specific type of beer, And it's written down. And I follow it. And when I find a better way to do something or I forgot something or I'm like, oh, this would be cool to add here, I constantly go back to that one file and I change it. And I update it. And then the next time I do it, I have an updated process, and then I follow that.
Matt Giovansici:So not helpful in beer, but let's talk about how I create blog posts. I've done an episode here where I talked about my process for my checklist, I called it, on how I create blog content. So I have a sear a list of things that I do every single time I create a blog post. Now every single time I do it, something changes, or I might you know, sometimes it doesn't, but sometimes I'm like, oh, I found a better way to do this step, or, oh, we should add this step in because we need to do this from now on. And so the process is constantly being, updated.
Matt Giovansici:But what's great about processes is that if you just control that, all you have to do is hire, in in, Justin's case, a VA, to follow your script, to follow your process, and then you have to monitor it. And then if you find something better or maybe that other person finds something better, you don't chain you don't just tell the person, okay. We'll do it this way. No. No.
Matt Giovansici:No. No. You go in and you change the process. You go in and you update the scripts. You chain you have one master document that you update.
Matt Giovansici:And then you send that to the person, and then that's from there on it's their job from there on out to fix what they've done in the past on previous stuff and future stuff. And if you run your business through a series of these master documents, that's how you that's how you develop a well oiled machine. And, yes, you might think, well, okay. Where is the this is art we're doing. We're we're creating content.
Matt Giovansici:Like, it can't just be this rigid. And it's like, no. But there are things within the process that always need to be done. When you create a YouTube video, there's a process to upload that. Everyone follows the same one.
Matt Giovansici:The individual pieces might have art to them, but there's still a process. So, yes, I think process is the most important thing. And that's how I we had a VA, but now it's my brother who's a employee, but we have a process for answering emails. We have scripts. We have, if this doesn't work, then do this or that this type of email comes in, say that.
Matt Giovansici:Fill in the blanks when it's when it's necessary. And then if and then sometimes he'll send me an email and say, I don't know what to do here. I go, okay. That's a new problem. We need to update the master document, restudy the master document, and now that's how we do that from now on until it changes.
Matt Giovansici:But that's how we do it. We have a process for creating our short form videos. There's literally a checklist, and we we keep this all in Asana. So sometimes the checklist themselves, the process, is baked into every task so that you check off the things that you need to check off. Sometimes, it's a document that's we link to, like, a Google Doc.
Matt Giovansici:Like, in the case of the customer service docu document, that is a master document that we keep as a Google Doc, and it's for reference. It is not something that requires a checklist because it's one email at a time. But if you run it but once you learn it, once you understand the steps, then you could probably do it without the guide. But then if you forget something, always refer back to the guide. Always refer back.
Matt Giovansici:Now same thing with my when I make beer, I know the steps. But every once in a while, I gotta look because if I'm just I don't know. Maybe I'm drinking that day and I forget something, and I'm like, what am I supposed to be doing now? Got it. So yeah.
Matt Giovansici:Anyway, that's I like that list. Yeah. And and I'll I'll say this too. When it comes like, what I would add to that list, personally, is you have, you know, not saying no enough, which is which is focus, Too many meetings, also lack of focus. So those 2 to me are related.
Matt Giovansici:But another thing that draws your focus away, there's a few things. 1 is having too many things to do. So that means that your priorities are all screwed up. You have too many thing you have too many priorities. They can't all be priorities.
Matt Giovansici:They can't all you can't do everything. They just can't. Right? So again, if we're thinking about a one man show, a solopreneur, a one person business, you I I I I think it's impossible for you to have a blog, a YouTube channel, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, x. Like, it's it's impossible.
Matt Giovansici:Unless you and and there is a way to do it, and a podcast, by the way. There is a way to do it, but it would be incredibly difficult. And what would happen is you would favor one thing over another, and then either you're gonna be shitty at all of them or one thing's gonna take off and, hopefully, you just focus all in on one thing. And that's, I think, that's one thing I would I would add to this list is is there's a there is such thing as too much marketing. You have too much marketing.
Matt Giovansici:You're doing too many things. You should have one channel that you focus on that you're really good at. And then once you get really good at that and you make enough money, then at that point, you're no longer of a one person business. Let's be honest. Now if I again, thinking back in my business and what I should have done as a one person business, I should've just been all in on SEO, on make on writing content.
Matt Giovansici:But I wanted to try YouTube, and I got into that. And that worked a little bit, but I couldn't do both. I couldn't it was, like, so much work, especially when I was working full time. It was so much work to create blog posts and to also create videos, because I had to you know, it's like, okay. You could you could, you know, do the repurpose thing.
Matt Giovansici:And I've I do have a process for this, which is and this is off the top of my head. I've I've thought of this before, so it's not off the top of my head. But the idea is that everything starts with a video script, so you write a video script first. That video script, you turn into a video. Now if you have to film everything, that's a lot of work, and editing is a lot of work.
Matt Giovansici:If you can find a way to streamline that so it's not it it's not that. It's not that much work. Well, then good for you. You figured it out. That script then becomes an article.
Matt Giovansici:You read that script, and it becomes a bug or it becomes a podcast episode. And if you design your script well enough and if you had a process for writing scripts, then you could take that script and chunk it out into individual pieces of short form content for social media. And then, obviously, you can promote all of those different pieces on the social media. So it it is possible to do. And what's nice is that, recently, the TikTokification of all the social media platforms allow us to create one type of content, which is short form vertical, and publish it everywhere.
Matt Giovansici:So the democrat I guess the, yeah, the democratization of that medium has all kind of made it a lot easier for social media. But, again, would it be it'd be it'd be better off focusing on 1 until you could afford to hire somebody to take that content and make it on another channel. And or you've saturated that channel so much that it's like, I can't make any more money off this, which I think is impossible. So, yeah, the other thing I would add is I would add courses. I would add education.
Matt Giovansici:I've called it there's something called inspiration porn, mental masturbation. I've heard the term. The idea that learning feels like work, the same way that having a meeting and strategizing feels like work. Those things are not work. They are separate from work.
Matt Giovansici:They aid work, but they are not actual work. Now you can argue with me about the term work. I I get it. I'm just using it as a but you understand what I'm saying. It's like, there is deciding and ideation of blog post, and then there are then there is the act of writing a blog post.
Matt Giovansici:Writing to me is the work. The ideation is the planning and the strategy. And so what a lot of I know this happened to me as well. It's like, well, before I start anything, let me read the 4 hour work week because I'm not trying to work 40 hours. What am I, an idiot?
Matt Giovansici:There's a book that says I could do 4. So before I do anything, let me do 4. And it's like, well, no. You should've been already doing your thing, and then you read a book to aid you on that thing. So for example, if I'm the if I'm like, okay.
Matt Giovansici:I've decided that I'm gonna, you know, write a sales page for this for my course. I wanna update my sales page. Okay. Well, I'm gonna go read a a book on copywriting because and not during work hours. I'm gonna read it at night so that when I get when when when it comes time to work, I'll have a little bit education, and I can execute on that thing.
Matt Giovansici:If I was actively there's a there's an idea that I have that I'm not that I'm not executing on, so I'll just tell you what it is. But we sell this book, and we would love to be able to sell this book in bulk to pool companies so that they could sell it to their, customers or give it away to their customers, either way. So it would require someone to do sales, like, you know, cold email, cold call to get these people to buy cases of books at, you know, wholesale pricing. And so if if I were gonna tackle that problem, well, 1, I know exactly what I have to do. It's it's pretty obvious.
Matt Giovansici:I need to contact pool companies, plain and simple. And I need to I need to have my offer in hand, which is like, hey. We're selling you know, you can get a 100 books for $25100 or whatever it is. And then, you know, the books, whatever it is, and this is the pitch. So I know that I would, again, not not have not really done sales in this way before.
Matt Giovansici:I mean, I did a little bit, but not good. But, again, knowing really nothing about sales, I know how to put together that process, a crude version of that process. Once I put together that crude version, I need to start doing it. And 2 things will happen. 1 is I will start to get feedback and go, okay.
Matt Giovansici:That didn't you know, like, let's let's look at let's do let's do a 100 calls and see what happens. And after a 100 calls, I can be like, alright. We sold one. Well, that's a pretty crappy conversion rate. Let's try something else.
Matt Giovansici:Let's try another 100, but let's let's change a variable. And then we do another 100, change something, make it a little bit better, see what happens, you know, and keep iterating. But meantime, the second thing is that I'm gonna start to read books, because what the books will do is help me to come up with better hypothesis and ways to test that hypothesis. And I think that's where books, come in handy or YouTube videos or courses. They come in handy when you're already doing something and you wanna do it better, but you don't have any ideas on how to make it better.
Matt Giovansici:You've you've hit a wall. And so, hey, let's use courses or books to help us formulate hypothesis and tasks that we can do to improve this process. Because maybe there's something that I have not I don't even know yet that could help us, but what I do know is how to get started. And I think that's the real crux of it. It's, like, everyone really knows how to get started.
Matt Giovansici:So, yeah, books and all those things can be a deterrent. It can it can be porn, and it feels like progress, but, really, it's just an ideation machine. It's the planning step. So I would avoid that too. So that's what I would add to this list.
Matt Giovansici:It's a good tweet, Justin, at the Justin Welsh. Thank you very much. I think it's a pretty good episode, so we'll publish it. But, yeah, if you have any tweets like this you want me to take a look at, I wanna get my take on it, I would be happy to do so. So that's it, and I'll see you later.
Matt Giovansici:Bye.
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