and we fussing carcinogenic artificial
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late here and welcome back to another
episode today we are drinking Hilton
Garden Inn Hotel blend coffee pretty
good pretty watery you may be wondering
where I am today and well I'm somewhere
very successful I am at the Hilton
Garden Inn in Los Angeles and you can
check out my amazing fantastic room
these days for influencers social media
influencers like myself this is a
necessity I thought I could show you
around this amazing place let's check
out this amazing view we have here Wow
yeah it just opens up onto this
beautiful courtyard you can imagine that
you could put a swimming pool out there
if you want maybe in a few years you
could build something out what's great
is I can actually walk out here
oh yeah it's so cool it's so nice it's
amazing let me just quickly show you
this amazing bathroom as well it's
really good you know there's no bathtub
but the rest you know this is success
and what I'm gonna tell you today are
seven tips about how you too can become
successful in your next business venture
oh look at that oh it's so good look at
that I can have coffee on my bed before
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lunch tech lead now one funny thing
about my history is that I've actually
had the string of successful business
ventures at least three have made
considerable amounts of money and then a
few others have actually made these set
money as well maybe I can share some of
my learnings with you about how to come
up with a successful business idea
because I've seen so many other people
are just tossing out completely random
pure garbage ideas and you know people
might say something like well why don't
we make a coffee shop for dogs and it
was pretty clear to me why the idea is
not going to work but may not be so
clear to you and I wanted to share my
top seven tips the first tip and when
that is perhaps a little bit cynical is
to learn to copy people's ideas and not
to focus too much on inventing some
crazy new idea all by yourself back in
the day when I was making a lot of apps
I would try to build my own app idea I
would try to sit down for hours and
think of some crazy innovative idea that
nobody
had done before and then I would try to
push it out and every now and then yeah
maybe I can find something that started
to gain some traction but it was just
extremely difficult and after a while I
realized that well what I could do was
just check out the top leaderboard in
the App Store figure out which acts are
doing well and then spend the week
copying that up and release it and I
found that this strategy worked
extremely well like the app idea was
already proven I knew that as soon as I
launched that I could even put in some
marketing budget on this advertiser
though and there are many other larger
companies and businesses that solely
implemented ideas like this no one
really had a good formula a good idea
for creating an app the only proven idea
was really to just copy other app ideas
and the other thing to realize is that
ideas are cheap a lot of people like to
protect their ideas a lot in reality
much of the innovation that you bring to
the table is going to be in the
execution if you take a look at Amazon
for example the idea of buying and
selling products online it's a very
boring and generic idea they weren't the
first one to invent an idea like that
many people have tried it what they
brought to the table was the execution
you know like very low margins a very
good usable website there's so much more
that you can bring to the table in terms
of the execution of some idea and on top
of that you can add your own spin to it
make the UI a little bit better add
certain features and all of those are
going to go a long way my second tip for
you and this is a tip I would have for
any young person is to learn to ride a
wave you know there are certain
industries that are generally flat and
they don't really change
like for example doctors lawyers
dentists these are great businesses
they're fine but it's just a flat basic
basic sort of lifestyle and that might
be good is very stable but for a
business to really succeed and take off
I think that you want to be writing some
sort of wave and this is like an
opportunity waves come and go in certain
industries certain areas and you need to
be paying attention to things like this
several years ago is all about web 2.0
and getting really cool looking slick
websites
the mobile trend came and everyone
wanted to get their websites onto mobile
phones
after that it was all about apps like
iPhone apps Android apps mobile games
things like that and that was a very big
trend then we've got other trends like
being an Instagram influencer like me
you can check me out that Instagram calm
slash Patrick shoe and then we've also
got other trends like augmented reality
virtual reality cryptocurrency so if
you're a young person that's going to be
really where there's the most
opportunity and the least competition
and these are all going to work heavily
in your favor whenever I see someone
throw a business idea I like to ask them
why now
why is now the right time for this idea
to finally succeed why didn't it succeed
five years ago or ten years ago you know
people must have thought up an idea
similar to this they must have tried it
why is now good what new technology is
it using or enabling what new trend is
it following you know something along
the lines of that you want to ask
yourself if it's a classic timeless age
oh the idea and you just want to do it
like you want to sell air conditioners
you know it's just like well why why is
that such a great idea now my third tip
for you is to give yourself the freedom
to fail and to correct course and a lot
of people are fail their adverts they're
taught to be this way when they're going
through school and classes if they fell
on a test that's the end their life is
over but in reality it's not quite like
that you know in businesses you can fail
a ton of times and it's fine and as long
as you're correcting course you're
learning from your mistakes you want to
be able to see how features perform a
because them quickly pivot if you need
to build up quick MV piece of new ideas
that you may think is interesting and if
you're high there's no good that maybe
create another idea I remember I had met
a few other entrepreneurs back in
college
and they had told me that it would take
at least three failed attempts before I
would probably come up with some
successful idea and I just thought to
myself wow I don't want to fail three
times yeah I want to do it right away
but in reality I made or look back and I
see that I had failed
probably 10 to 20 times when I was
building up ideas
I might make like 10 apps and I would
expect one to succeed these days is very
difficult for me to get really excited
about any one single idea rather it's an
area that I might get excited about a
problem space working within that
problem space how can I come up with
various solutions and ideas to tackle
that problem if I can identify a problem
then that is going to be much more
meaningful to me than just being able to
say well here's one fantastic idea and
for sure there's one fantastic idea is
going to work because I know that this
idea may fail but what will never fail
is the problem the problem is always
going to be there if no one has solved
this problem yet then I know that
there's at least some opportunity there
the fourth bit of advice I have for you
is to consider a marketing plan a vision
for your idea to take it from zero users
to one user to a thousand users and then
to a million users and let me explain to
you why one thing is I found that over
time I had built a lot of products that
nobody wanted to use these were the
ideas that I thought millions of people
would use and yeah I couldn't get a
single person to use it I remember back
in the day I made a job app where you
could submit your resume to my little
app and then people can go look at your
resume and match up with such a job when
I launched the project there were no
resumes and no employers on there and
the project failed within 24 hours
within one day I realized yet this was a
completely ridiculous idea why did I
even build it no one wants it not
assuming you figured out at least one
person who wants your product I would
encourage you to think about how you can
expand that to say a hundred or a
thousand people who might want the same
product now the reason I say that the
first hundred or a thousand people are
the most difficult to get is because
that is where you're still figuring out
what your product market fit is can you
set up a landing page where people
submit their email addresses and you
start collecting at least one hundred
email addresses for people who want this
product that you have in mind of
building a lot of times people can think
up an idea
and this is very easy an idea that
scales well to millions of people
a typical idea is like a dating app in
reality if you imagine your project with
only say 10 people or 100 people and it
doesn't seem like it's going to be
interesting at that level then it's
going to be very difficult to grow it to
anything larger than that
you're going to want a project that
works well at ten people a hundred
people a thousand people and then be
able to scale it up to a million people
and each phase your project may
transform to what it needs to be for
example Amazon started out only selling
books that managed a smaller scale once
it became bigger they were able to
expand a whole bunch of different areas
and do a bunch of different things
whatever idea you have you may want to
be thinking about how you gonna start
small what the projects going to look
like how it's going to serve just a few
people and then how it's going to expand
and mutate itself transform into
something that can serve many different
people we're getting a little short on
time here so I'm going to speed things
up for you a bit the fifth tip I have
for you here is to work alone I love
working alone
and there's a few reasons for this
besides the obvious reason which is that
you don't need to generate as much
revenue right if you have a co-founder
you need to generate twice as much
revenue to get yourself the same amount
of income besides the obvious reason the
main reason I would say is
accountability it keeps you accountable
once you have a second person in the
picture if there's any piece of job or
test that you don't really enjoy doing
you just say like well it's it's that
other prisoners job you don't want to do
it you can say it's their fault when
you're the only person there then you
take full responsibility you become the
owner of the project and you're doing
the hard work that may be necessary once
there's a second person I find I may
begin to just slack off you know I might
say hey if that other person my
co-founders not doing work
why should I do work let you know no one
needs to work less I'll just go to the
beach and we just end up self sabotaging
each other
I think co-founders are great to have
and to bring in once your project starts
to get more traction once you figure out
hey you've actually got something going
here and there's no chance that this
project is just going to be abandoned or
disappear then you bring in the
co-founders and you start scaling up the
business
sixth tip for you is to finish the
project too many people these days are
interested I think in playing with some
new piece of technology just goofing off
playing around they don't have the
determination that the NASA D the
pernicious nough Stewie go through and
finish a complete project wrapping your
project up in a complete package set the
impairment options making it accessible
to as many people as possible putting on
the final polish into a project to be
able to ship it out you know I like to
remind myself that the last 20% of a
project requires 80 percent the work or
you can even say that the last 1% of a
project requires 99% of the work keep
that in mind as you're going through
that this is going to be your secret
weapon something that you know that most
other people will not know last final
tip I have for you is to find a niche
market be a big fish in a small pond you
know you don't necessarily want to be
peddling yura wares to millions of
people it's just such a competitive area
find the area where you have some sort
of competitive edge but if you're
selling hot dogs for example that's
something anybody can do I mentioned
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