My other roommate's failed business

My other roommate just graduated from college. Now real life is hitting him in the face like a ton of bricks.

Because he's struggling to find a job, he decided to try starting a business. After living in Istanbul for the past 4 years, he knows the city pretty well. He wants to sell his knowledge to tourists.

"What do tourists in Istanbul usually buy?" I asked.

"They usually buy guided tours."

"Okay," I said. "You should offer guided tours."

He didn't listen. Instead he's trying to charge $50 for a customized itinerary of places to visit in Istanbul.

This doesn't strike me as something anyone would want to buy. I could put together an itinerary after 20 minutes of searching Google. Or after 5 minutes of prompting GPT.

Needless to say, my roommate still doesn't have any customers.

My roommate is making the #1 mistake new entrepreneurs make. He's getting creative with his offer.

You don't have to have something "new" to sell. In fact, when you're just starting out, you should usually just copy your competitor's offer, and maybe add one or two wrinkles to it.

If people are already selling something, then you know there's demand for it. If you have something "new", you have no idea whether there's demand for it. Most things that people want to buy are already being sold.

The best way to guarantee success is to just copy what your competitors are doing.

I'm not saying you should never be creative. But you should treat every creative thing you do as an experiment. Most of those experiments will fail. If a few of them succeed, they will more than pay for the failures.

But wait to get creative until you have a flagship offer that's selling well — ideally swiped from your competitors!

-Theo

(P.S. If swiping your competitor's offer sounds weird to you — I know how you feel. A few years ago, it sounded weird to me, too. But since then, I've grown to appreciate the wisdom in it. You don't need to offer something "new", you need to offer your customers something they actually want. If you're struggling to get your business off the ground, give it a try!)

My roommate's bad date

My roommate went on a date. She came back disappointed.

"I just don't think he liked me that much," she told me.

"Why not?"

"Because I wanted him to take me home, but he never asked."

But apparently he liked her enough to ask her on a second date. The two of them went out again. Again he didn't invite her back to his place — and again my roommate interpreted this as "he doesn't like me".

I didn't meet the guy — but I'm guessing he liked her. He was probably just too shy to ask.

I say that because I've been in his shoes before — I've gotten in my own head about a girl I liked, wondered what the best way to escalate things was, and then just ended the evening without even trying... even when she clearly wanted me to make a move.

I had the same problem with sales. I would get on sales calls and fumble around with my offer.

Or I would pitch them something small because pitching something big was too scary to me.

A lot of them would wonder where the call was going, exactly. Others would judge me as unprofessional because I was too afraid to ask for the sale. They wanted me to just ask.

I've gotten over that, thankfully — but a lot of beginner coaches haven't. (And even some intermediate level coaches, too.)

If you think selling is "icky", or you're too afraid to ask for what you want, you're not just costing yourself sales. You're actively disappointing potential customers who want to buy from you.

They don't want to take the lead — they expect you to take the lead. Most people won't interrupt you on the sales call to say, "hey, I'm ready to buy this, let's do it." You have to make the ask.

I'm not saying to use high-pressure sales tactics or to scream at people until they buy — nobody wants that. But you can go too far in the other direction, too. If you want to help people, you need to (respectfully yet confidently) make them an offer!

-Theo

Do you hate making content?

Last week I sent you an email about how when you make more content, you make more money.

"But Theo," you might say, "I hate making content!"

Making content feels like a never-ending hamster wheel. It feels like working on your business, not in your business.

I get that.

It feels like you're not making any progress... you're just doing the same thing over and over again.

I get that.

It feels like a chore.

I get that.

It feels boring.

I get that.

On the other hand... your content probably got you to where you are today.

The whole "run your business on your terms and live the life you want" thing is a lie invented by marketers. 

In real life, business is never on your terms. If you want to make money, you have to do stuff you'd rather not do.

(This is a universal law of nature: every job has boring, unfun parts — even jobs you enjoy. Stand-up comedians spend hours writing jokes and rehearsing. Baseball players spend 5+ hours per day working out and taking batting practice. Teachers spend 2-3 hours per day grading assignments. Compared to that, 1 hour a day making content isn't so bad!)

Look at it this way: spending 1 hour per day making content is the price you pay to not have to spend 8 hours a day at a real job.

So you have 3 options:

1) Deny that you have to make good content, and look for "shortcuts".

The problem is, these shortcuts can kill your business. A YouTuber I liked in 2022 hired a bunch of people to make his videos for him. The quality of his channel went down and he lost half his viewers, including me.

Some people are trying to make their content with AI. That can work for some businesses — but as I've said before, if you do it wrong, it kills your brand. Once your content stops feeling genuine and authentic, you're toast.

2) Accept it, and grudgingly make content by hand. This is better than option 1, but still not fun.

3) Accept it, and learn to love making content. MrBeast has dedicated his whole life to making the best YouTube videos possible. He LOVES making YouTube videos. So do a lot of other people. 

Why can't you?

This is one of the mindset shifts that's helped me the most this year. I have to do a lot of things I "didn't like" to grow my business, like submitting UpWork proposals and sending cold emails. I've always looked for a way not to do that stuff. This year I chose to just accept that I do have to do that stuff, and taught myself to look at them as fun challenges, not chores or threats.

If you can make that mindset shift — that making content is part of your business adventure, not a chore you have to do before you get to the "fun stuff" — you'll be happier, you'll be more productive, and your business will grow.

-Theo