Building a business full time (again)
So a couple of days ago marked the third month, or a full quarter, that I have been running a business full time again. So as I am wrapping up the quarter and preparing for Q3 I thought it was a good time to step back and share some thoughts on the journey so far.
For those who don’t know this is my second time going full time on building a business. My first one was this I shut down my startup. Here is my journey. I truly believe the success I am having with Decade Journey is 90% due to the failure at Meshin.
Looking back and comparing it to my first business, this time has been a bit different.
The most significant changes are not exactly in the business itself, but how I approach it.
Here is a short list of what has changed:
Don’t reinvent the wheel, do something I am good at and go from there
Don’t build in a vacuum. Share.
Revenue first, everything else second
Have a mission and work at it everyday. A blue collar work ethic married to an indomitable will.
Be patient.
Doing something you are good at is already a huge head start, you already know the steps and what to do. One thing that has helped me is that sales, more particularly, lead generation, is exactly where I excel at so that is what I am selling.
Everything that I do for my business I sell for my clients. Walk the talk.
I remember when I was trying to sell Meshin and things simply didn’t work. Cold emails, cold calls, door-to-door, referrals, nothing. It was extremely hard to even get a conversation going.
Truth is, business is a competitive game, you are going to run into a lot of very intelligent, hard working fellows, the only way to gain an edge is through doing what you are good at and love to do.
That way you will naturally do it, and will think about it all the time even if you are relaxing. This game was a process of discovering for me: who I am, what I am interested in, what I am good at, and then magnifying that until I gained a sizeable edge over other people.
At Meshin, I never got to revenue, Decade Journey is profitable from Month 1.
Success = Working hard*Luck
I am now 32 and I think I have grown more resilient to the hustle culture grinders and Steve Jobs cosplayers. I am even more convinced that hard work is not a definite criteria for success attainment. Meaning: if you work hard, it is not guaranteed that you will succeed. Proved that at Meshin.
It is multiplicative. It is a combination of working hard multiplied by luck. And luck can simply mean working on the right thing.
Success = Working hard*Luck.
Meaning, you can work super hard, but if you are not lucky you will fail. You can also be super lucky, but if you don’t work hard you will fail. Either way, you can never achieve success without hard work AND luck.
Thankfully, we might be in the luckiest age of our lives. If you are building or providing services in the AI space, it is a great head start. That's your luck.
If you are in a third-world country (like myself) or have come from extreme poverty, you are already playing the game on hard mode, so there really is no need to make your life harder. Try to improve your chances of success by choosing something that has decades of successful examples to back it up. What I did and changed the game for me:
Do something you are good at.
Do something you know there is demand for.
Show up everyday, do the work, and go home.
People don’t like the idea of a business that is not aiming at the billions. But they have been here for ages, and most likely will continue to do so: Landscaping, plumbing, consulting, legal services, real estate, agencies. These are the businesses that can change your life. They are not fancy, but they work.
“Fish where the fishes are”
Where the business is at
Speaking of fishing. I met Clay back when I was at Tractian and honestly, wasn’t very impressed. The UI was a nightmare, the onboarding experience was not ideal. The one use-case where I found minimal success was sourcing data / leads from Google maps.
Fast forward to March, I had a customer that asked me “Hey Gui, I need to find clothing retailers that have more than 100 reviews in Google Maps”. I knew this was something Clay could do, so I jumped back in, this time completely focused on making that use case work. And boy, did that work.
After that client, more came. Clay has been tremendously generous and productive for me, so I will continue that partnership as long as that works for my clients. Speaking of partnership...
I just got accepted into their creator program. This helps my clients with free credits, as well as affiliate revenue for me. If you are looking at implementing Clay, let me know! Or use this link to get 3k credits.
Getting myself and my business noticed has been the most difficult part, as expected. I think it is also particularly harder right now as there is a new AI tool, maybe every hour or so, and code has been democratized to the level of literally anyone can start a new business.
So, what is left?
I like to imagine people’s attention as a big chunk of meat. If your business is well-rounded, or if your content is balanced, you have a problem. You need to be sharply defined, like a knife. The problem of being balanced, or well-rounded is that you can’t cut through anything.
The baseline is now algorithmic mediocrity. AI can now create products, content, services that check all the conventional boxes. Especially on Linkedin, I see so many of these bots, it is a sea of mediocrity. "Comment X and I will send the file to you”; “Check out this automation that makes content on auto-pilot.”.
When AI can execute the “balanced approach”, your edge can’t come from being average or good at everything. It must come from an extreme bet in one direction that AI can’t replicate.
This is my bet:
create content that is honest, transparent and human
be the best at finding and sourcing leads
Where I go from here
The business is now on track to match my previous salary as an employee in this month of July, but it is very volatile. Either way, I will just double down on the things that have been working so far, which are my two bets above.
It is honestly really good to dictate the pace and what needs to be done. I guess this is the freedom of entrepreneurship? It feels like once you make a decision, lots of doors start to open up.
If the commitment is to a long-term goal (“Decade” journey lol) then only one decision needs to be made and adhered to. Clear, simple, straightforward.
A lot easier to maintain than having to make small decisions after small decisions to stay the course when dealing with each step along the way. The single decision is one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.
Throw out a timeline. It will take what it takes. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home.