Author: markevans

Categories
30 Day Business

Preparation for The 30 Day Business

Tomorrow is the beginning of “The 30 Day Business: Building a Business and Achieving Profitability in 30 Days”. There are a lot of balls in the air right now, so forgive me if something is missing from this list. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

To make sure I get the most out of the next 30 days, I’ve created an outline for the month – a rough outline is included in my previous post here. Come prepared tomorrow with your best ideas. The primary purpose of tomorrow is to narrow down your best ideas to your top 5. These 5 ideas will then be run through another filtering process that will yield your golden opportunity.

Below I’ve included some instructions on what you should have prepared if you would like to follow along for the ride!

1. Have a Place to Document Your Progress

Write this stuff down! Document every thought, question, and inspiring idea that comes to your head during this time!

Make sure you have a reliable place to capture your writings. A digital writing tool is best. Even better is one that works on your desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile phone. You’ll need a reliable and easy-to-access writing tool because it’s how you’ll be keeping track of your progress as you make your way through the 30 Days.

I’ll be using this website as I make my way through. I’ll also be recording with audio/video (YouTube and Podcasts). Those two additional outlets aren’t required, and a website isn’t necessarily required either. But you definitely will want to have a designated place that you can record and store all the thoughts, activities, action items, and content that you’ll produce during the 30 Days.

Some good places to document and keep things available wherever you might include: iCloud Drive (for iPhone/Mac/iPad/Web), Dropbox, Google Drive, Box. And if you want to publish what you’re writing out on the internet like I’m doing, some good options there include WordPress, Wix, Medium, or you can use social media sites like LinkedIn or Facebook. For smaller pieces of content, you can leverage Instagram or twitter. But you shouldn’t have Instagram or twitter be the primary place where you do your publishing.

2. Block off Time Every Day

We aren’t jumping headfirst into something that you can set-and-forget… just like you wouldn’t consider yourself ‘done’ after diving headfirst into a body of water. We’re diving head-first and then we’re going to swim as hard as we can! So, hold on to your hats and plan to stay focused for the full 30 days.

You’ll need anywhere between 1 – 5 hours a day to complete the action items for the day. Sometimes it might be less, and somedays it might be more. But, keep in mind that the work to be done isn’t busywork. You aren’t trying to fill the time. If you can complete a section of work quickly, you should absolutely complete it quickly! These 30 Days are all about accomplishing each step of the process and understanding the reasoning behind it (at whatever speed), and then taking the next step to get closer to your goal!

3. Plan on Messing up – Often, and A Lot!

If you are building a business for the first time or if you are adding a new product line to a business that you already have, you are going to mess up in the next 30 days – big time! Before you take the first step, tell yourself that you are going to fall somewhere along the path. How hard you fall, or how long you stay down, is totally up to you!

Many of the concepts will be new, some of them you may have heard before – but the order of each princpple and action item was intentional. The 30 Day Business plan isn’t 30 random ideas or business concepts that I want to write about over the course of a month. They re actually the exact steps anyone needs to take to discover, validate, build, sell, and profit from a business idea or product.

4. Lean on Your Support Structure

Making sure you have support as you embark one something new is crucial if you expect to have the endurance necessary to make it to the end. Notice I didn’t say support system. The reason I didn’t use the word system is because systems need input to continue to work – and typically the systems around you expect input from YOU to continue to work. Which means if you stop working because of discouragement, fatigue, or some other external force, your system no longer has input to continue to work.

A support structure is a framework that you create around yourself to hold you up when you are too weak. Something that give shape and reliable form to your efforts when you feel like you’ve lost your drive or motivation. A structure looks more like a steal-framed building than a soft, warm, and comfortable bead.

You want Support Structures that will get you to the end of the 30 days (and beyond).

Depending on what works best for you, a support structure has the following attributes: as reliable as death and taxes, doesn’t yield to your whining or complaining, is irritatingly optimistic, and is eager to solve problems instead of identify them.

This your support structure could be a person, a set of daily habits, a series of quotes, a playlist of songs, a motivational YouTube video, or a book. Whatever structure you lean on to give you confidence to stand and move forward – bring that with you for the next 30 days!

The Next Level

If you want to do more than document your 30-day journey with text, here are a few additional tools. These can be used to publish video and audio each day, along with your text-based content. I’ll share with you what software and hardware I’m going to be using, but you can use whatever you’re comfortable with. This section was called “The Next Level” for a reason.

Video

Inspired by gamers who stream on Twitch, Youtube, and Mixer (RIP Mixer), I use a software called OBS Studio – which stands for Open Broadcast Software.

OBS Studio is “a free and open-source video recording and live streaming software.” OBS helps you organize content streams so you can capture them together for a single output. So, in practice this allows you to capture your computer screen, FaceTime camera, your web browser, and even cameras that you connect to your computer, including an iPhone or iPad.

I don’t recommend going out and spending a ton of money on recording equipment. I’ve gone down that road and purchased some of the best video and audio equipment only to default back to using what is easiest, which is my iPhone, MacBook, and iPad. The iPhone camera is crazy good. If you have an iPhone that was released in the last ~3 years, you’re able to record at 4k 60fps. And for reference, virtually nobody watches internet video at 4k 60fps. Most video is played back 720p 30fps on mobile devices, or 1080p for people viewing on a desktop computer with high bandwidth internet. So, unless you’re trying to get into cinematography… well, even then the iPhone camera on the latest model proves to be a good option… The point is, your iPhone camera is more than ok. If anything, it’s over-qualified for the job.

There are only 2 items that you might need to spend money on. One of the items you will want to invest in is some kind of tripod/iPhone mount that can hold your iPhone at eye level while you record. While it is popular to record yourself while holding your phone in your hand – selfie-style – people can only take so much of that type of content before they switch off the video. A rule of thumb for hand-held selfie video is to restrict the clip so a single thought. If you feel like you are going to make several points and the video needs to be longer; drop your iPhone on the tripod and speak into it like you’re talking to a friend.

Video Editing Software

The amount of free video software out there is staggering. The amount of paid video software out there is equally staggering. For now, stick with the free options. And stick with the ones that you know. On a Mac, that’s iMove. If you’re on iPhone or iPad, there are free versions of iMove there as well. You really don’t need sophisticated video editing software.

Audio Hardware

You’ve probably seen popular podcasters wearing big over-ear headphones talking into microphones that extend from a metal arm. Unless you have a soundproof place to record, that kind of setup will actually give you worse results than if you used something cheaper and simpler.

To make things easy, you only need your iPhone, iPad, or Mac to record audio. Specifically in that order. The iPhone and iPad don’t have fans, so there isn’t any noise introduced to the recording. The MacBook gets very warm when recording audio, so the fans turn on and create noise that might be bad enough to warrant post-production filters to remove the fan noise. On a larger computer like the iMac or Mac Pro (🤤) the heat is handled by the design before the fans kick in really loud. I personally find the iPad to be a perfect tool for audio recording. And the software I like to use for Podcasting works fantastic on iPad and iPhone.

If you do end up using your iPhone or iPad, I would recommend removing any cases or coverings that you might have on them, and then resting the device on a flat surface. Record a few different audio clips to see how far away you should be from the device when recording.

If you are using your iPhone for video and Audio, you’ll still have great audio results. The goal is to avoid creating longer audio content when holding the device in your hands. We all know how awful it sounds when someone rubs their cheek or finger over a microphone. Let’s avoid that! So, hands-off the device when you’re recording!

Audio Software

Start simple with an all-in-one recording solution that lets you record, edit, and publish to 8+ podcasting platforms.

Sound too good to be true? Well, did I mention that this solution is 100% free, forever, no in-app-purchase, no monthly fee, nothing!

Anchor is a Web and Mobile App that does all of this. It’s quite amazing.

Plus, inviting people to be on your podcast is made super simple as well! You can add people to your podcast recordings by simply texting them an invite. They open the invite and they are added to your podcast as a guest that you can interview! It really is a fantastic all-in-one solution that I don’t think I’ll be growing out of any time soon!

If you feel you must record with higher-end gear, and really feel like using fancy software, you can always upload whatever masterpiece you’ve created to your Anchor account and you’ll still get the benefits of automatic publishing to all podcast networks.

Marketing Software

We are going to be diving deep into this area very soon. There are some entry-level tools out there that are free, and we’ll stick with those as long as we can.

SEO Software

Arguably SEO software could fall under the marketing software heading, but I want to separate the two because marketing involves much more than just optimizing your website. SEO on the other hand specifically is about optimizing your website to help you get notice by the search engines and drive traffic.

We are going to be diving deep into SEO software as well during the 30 days, do I’ll leave the deep dive for another day.

Conclusion

Categories
30 Day Business

The 30 Day Business Plan

Over the last few weeks I’ve been cooking up something quite interesting — motivated by a series of conversations and brainstorming sessions.

The question that has been on my mind for the last few weeks – honestly its been on my mind for years, decades even – is: “how to you build a business? “.

Now, that question cannot be answered in one blog post – or even 30 blog posts. That question has countless answers from countless sources. As a result, when I started thinking about the answer to that question, my mind immediately started to look for the answer that hasn’t been given. Or at least hasn’t been directly given.

So, the original question that was posted to me a few weeks back (and has been posed to me by just about anyone that I’m close to – including a few people after only knowing me for a few hours) was, “Do you want to start a business?”

Here is my answer to that question: yes.

Yes, I do want to build a business. I want to build several businesses. I want to build them to server specific and general purposes. I want to build them to make a difference and to make money. I to build businesses that are large and support countless people who are employed by them, and I want to build small ones that are intimate and manned by only a few.

I started organizing my thoughts, reading and re-reading books to gear up for this exciting sprint that I’ll be doing during the month of July. I’ve put my thoughts down in slides, in writing, and now on this site.

During the month of July, I’m going to build a profitable business in 30 days.

Now, anything that is worth something is measurable. Therefore, I’ve created 4 criteria that must be minimally met to determine if i have succeeded in building a profitable business in 30 days:

  • The business must be Profitable:
    • All costs are covered
    • A living wage is provided by the business after costs are covered. A living wage is $5,000/mo or $60k/yr
  • The business must be Sustainable
    • Cannot be a 1-time event
    • Cannot be seasonal (rare exceptions)
  • The business must be Repeatable:
    • Cannot be the result of exclusive access
    • Must be a market opportunity – available to anyone
  • The business must be Legal:
    • All applicable taxes are paid
    • All required licenses are obtained
    • Does not break any laws

In order to achieve these 4 objectives, a massive amount of preparation and work needs to be done. The 30 day time limit is arbitrary, yes. However, making something time-bound always seems to light a fire. Knowing this principle to be true, I’ve broken the 30 day period into 7 milestones that must be hit on or before the specified day.

30 Day Business – 7 milestones – 30 checkpoints – 5-10 daily activities

The 7 milestones that must be hit during the 30 day period are as follows:

  • Day 1: Business Brainstorm – Narrow to 5 Testable Ideas
  • Day 5: Market Research is Complete – Narrow to 1 testable Idea
  • Day 10: Market Validation of Idea is complete (real market data from engagement/outreach)
  • Day 15: Product Development Complete – (sellable MVP ready to be offered)
  • Day 20: First Sales Made – (Pricing and value-ladder dialed in)
  • Day 25: Break Even – Sales cover costs
  • Day 30: Profitability Target Achieved – ($5k Net Profits)
    • Day 31: Sustainability plan in place – Prepare for Next 30 days

Ok. You can admit that your first thought was that I’m crazy. And that creating a profitable business in 30 days simply isn’t possible. Well, maybe you’re right. But, maybe I’m right. And for the sake of all of us, I hope I am right. Because, once this is dialed in, refined, and optimized. I want to help others accomplish the exact same thing.

So, lets get pumped for a wild and crazy sprint to build a profitable business in 30 days!!

Categories
Ideas

Is This a Good Idea Part 2

In the first part of this series on Ideas, we talked about your best ideas, the ones that you are completely convinced will change the world. We walked through the mental steps that you experience when a break-through idea pops into your head. We also talked about why those ideas shouldn’t have come to you – but why they do anyway! We introduced the concept of chronic Lazy Brain Syndrome – and diagnosed you and everyone else with this debilitating condition. If you missed Part One, go back and give it a look so you’re up to speed on what Part two is about.

So, how do we fill the gap between the impossible ideas that your brain gravitates toward and start feeding it ideas that you can actually take action on? After all, the only ideas that you should be spending any of your precious time on are the ones that you can actually carry out. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lifetime filled with dreams of what‘s possible, instead of one that is filled with actions and outcomes!

Let’s start with a definition of what a good idea is. Because good and bad have their own definitions, and when they are coupled with the word ‘idea’ they both take on a new meaning, we are going to take some literary liberty here and draft a new definition of what a ‘Good Idea’ is. And this definition will be purpose-built. The goal of this definition is to accurately capture the definition of Good Idea in a way that paints a clear target for us to work toward.

Good Idea: a thought or plan that originates intangible in the mind of an individual who is capable of expressing it in a tangible form that others can experience.

For thoroughness, lets give the a Bad Idea a definition too. Which should look like the opposite of a Good Idea.

Bad Idea: a thought or plan that originates intangibly in the mind of an individual who is incapable of expressing it in a tangible form that others can experience.

Before we get into a framework about how to decrease the frequency of impossible ideas and increase the frequency of actionalble ones, lets dispel a few myths about what “good ideas” actually are. Here are 5 common myths that we start to lean on and believe about the value and place ideas have in our decision of where to spend our time and energy.

MYTH #1: I CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GOOD IDEA AND A BAD IDEA

Now, don’t feel bad that I just challenged your abilities to successfully filter out the bad from the good ideas that you have. Keep in mind that my goal is to help you confidently know the difference between a good and bad idea.

MYTH #2: MY UNCLE CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GOOD IDEA AND A BAD IDEA

MYTH #3: MY LEVEL OF PASSION FOR AN IDEA IS A THE MOST IMPORTANT INDICATOR OF HOW WELL I CAN EXECUTE THE IDEA

MYTH #4: IF SOMEBODY ELSE HAS SUCCESSFULLY IMPLEMENTED MY IDEA, MY OPPORTUNITY IS PAST

MYTH #5: IDEAS ARE EXTREMELY VALUABLE – THE MOST VALUABLE CONTRIBUTION ANYONE CAN MAKE TO A BUSINESS VENTURE

Let’s create a framework around this problem that we can refer to as we work through the process of reducing the frequency of impossible ideas and increasing the frequency of ideas that are actionable.

For this framework to be useful, it needs to have at least the following components:

Categories
Ideas

Is This a Good Idea?

The spark, the inspiration, the rush of mental energy that keeps you awake at night thinking about what’s possible and how the world would be different if your idea can find it’s expression…

The power of an idea cannot be overstated. And the potential for the right idea in the right hands can change the world. And it has millions of times.

Now, you might ask yourself why, when inspiration strikes – and it has struck not once, but thousands of times in your life – you end up passionately obsessed for weeks, months, and sometimes years! Yet, these ideas, these inspiring thoughts that give you the type of excitement that gets you up in the morning and puts a jump in your step… These same ideas that used to fill you with excitement, often – if not always – end up filling you with regret. Regret for the missed opportunity. Regret for the procrastination you said you would address ‘tomorrow’. Regret for your circumstances not being just right. Regret for the investor that didn’t pull through. Or, regret for choosing a partner who failed to do their part to make your vision a reality.

Ultimately, the biggest regret – if you’re honest with yourself – is the regret that you didn’t have what takes to execute on your big idea. The regret that you weren’t enough. And the paralyzing realization that you were not properly equipped to solve the problems and overcome the challenges that lay in front of every innovator, entrepreneur, business owner, or visionary.

Now, I don’t want to drudge up too many of those old negative feelings. After all, I’m of the firm belief that anything is learnable, and any skill is obtainable. Not only do I believe that – I know it, and live it! And I’m convinced that living a life dedicated to pursuing what’s possible is the only life that’s worth living.

In the next series of posts, I’d like to transfer a portion of this mentality from me to you. If I’m not successful in fully persuading you, at the very least I’ll give you a clear picture of what it means to live a life of confidence in your ability to learn anything and do anything. Specifically to learn those things and do those things that will set you up to execute on your next big idea!

So, lets answer the question that got you reading this post in the first place.

Is this a good idea? Specifically, is THIS a good idea? I’m talking about the one in your head right now. The one that wont leave you alone. The idea that fills you with excitement and fear all at the same time. Yes THAT idea!

The quick answer – as any good lawyer will tell you – is, well, it depends on what THIS is. And I will add — it depends on WHO had THIS idea!

Let me explain.

Ideas come and go every day. You’ll have an idea strike in line at McDonalds to change the way the breakfast smoothies are made. You’ll be waiting at the DMV and the most innovative idea of all time hits you, what if everything here happened online? You’ll even have ideas that are so good that you wonder why nobody else has though of it before – including ideas that are kind, generous, and would solve big problems for people who have physical or social limitations and can’t help themselves.

All these ideas – and most of the ideas we have every day – have something in common. The common thread between all these amazing ideas is… we aren’t the right people to be having them. Those ideas aren’t supposed to be ours. And we really aren’t the ones that should be pursuing the expression of those ideas. I’m sure your mind is screaming at you right now. “I can’t help what ideas pop into my head! … That’s just how my brilliant mind works! Plus, how can you say these ideas aren’t mine when they are in MY head?!” But, before you write me off as someone who ‘just doesn’t get it’, lets dig a little deeper.

While I wont pretend to be a psychiatrist and diagnose you with some sort of condition, I will say that brain has a serious problem, or rather, your brain presents you with a serious problem. Your wonderfully creative brain has gotten in the habit of loving the ideas that require the least amount of effort from you. Your brain is what we in the non-medical community call lazy. A more actuate diagnosis would be Lazy Brain Syndrome, or LBS for-short.

Ok, that might sting a little, so let me put some perspective around that statement real quick. Your brain isn’t the only lazy brain out there. You should find comfort in the fact that EVERY brain is lazy by default and picks the path of least resistance every time without variation. At least that’s what the untamed and untrained brain does. That’s your brain in its natural state. Your powerful, creative, limitless brain… it’s lazy.

This should come as good new to you. Good news because NOW you know something about your current situation. You now know that your brain is going to pick the path of least resistance unless you intervene. Score! You just learned something new! Now, lets see what this has to do with those pesky ideas that pop into your head that you are powerless to execute on.

You might have connected the dots already, but let me lay it out in a few bullet points:

  • Your powerful mind is capable of performing billions of operations a second
  • This processing power is always on, when you’re awake or asleep
  • When you observe a gap in what is happening and what is possible, your brain kicks into gear
  • Your brain is lazy, but is willing to work extremely hard for the future reward of uninterrupted laziness
  • Your brain extends a great amount of energy – a mental sprint – to take all the known universe and cobble together a solution that will fill the gap between what it’s observing and what is possible. Success!
  • Your brain convinces the rest of your body that once the hard thought-work is done, there’s nothing left to do.

And this is at the center of your idea problems. Your brain loves ideas that don’t require any follow up or work. Even worse, your brain loves even more those ideas that are virtually impossible for you to execute on. Because it can confidently say it’s laziness wasn’t the cause of your failure to execute on your brilliant idea.

Here is another harsh reality. You are never going to fix a lazy brain. Yours or anyone else’s. The more powerful it gets, the lazier it gets – and justifiably so. You’d feel justified in taking a 20 hour siesta if you executed 23 trillion processes every 2 hours… Well deserved R&R, right?!

But, just because you’re cursed with a permanently and perpetually lazy brain, doesn’t mean you’re situation is as dire as you might think.

There is reason for hope!

Remember earlier when I said that your brains favorite ideas are those that are virtually impossible to execute on — The ideas that allow your brain to flex its muscles then sit back and do nothing? Well, there’s a solution to this situation. The solution is hidden in the problem. And the problem is that your brain gravitates to the things it knows you don’t have the capacity to act on. So there is a gap. And the gap is the problem.

The gap between your brilliant idea and your abilities to execute on those ideas is exactly what you need to focus on. And the smaller you make that gap, the more your brain will work for you. The more your brain will be forced to focus on problems that your skills are able to execute on.

So, how do we fill that gap? How do we decrease the impossible ideas, and increase the frequency of the ideas we are actually capable of executing on?

Well, that’s what my next post is about.

Categories
Books

12 Rules for Life

I recently started reading 12 Rules for Life again – for the third time. Jordan Peterson has spent a lifetime developing a gift for the rest of us. And that gift can be summed in two words: Objective Correctness.

Here are the 12 Rules – incase you aren’t interested in googling them for yourself.

  • Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back
  • Rule 2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
  • Rule 3: Make friends with people who want the best for you
  • Rule 4: Compaire yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
  • Rule 5: Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
  • Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
  • Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
  • Rule 8: Tell the truth—or, at least, don’t lie
  • Rule 9: Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t
  • Rule 10: Be precise in your speech
  • Rule 11: Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
  • Rule 12: pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

Categories
App Projects

Projects

I’m currently working on some fun projects.

VRGear

The VRGear.com mobile app has been approved for public beta testing. Open this link from your iPhone and you’ll be taken to the TestFlight app to download the latest build.

https://testflight.apple.com/join/lO782vhj

Along with being a place to see the latest news posts from the VRGear.com tech blog, I’ll be implementing an Augmented realty experience that will feature different 3D models as wells simple ARKit experiences that users can try out. There are so many cool small projects that would be a lot of fun for people to try out. Awareness of what is possible is 90% of the problem there. Hopefully I can bring some awareness, if not entertain a small crowd of people.

An example of a cool AR Experience I created over Christmas break was a photo-identifier App that would anchor 3D Words to an image as soon as the iPhone camera detected the image. I focused the project on pictures of family members, showing their name age, and birthday. This type of simple AR App was built entirely without code inside of the Reality Composer app that was released last fall 2019. The projects can be authored and shared right from the App to anyone with an iPhone capable of running iOS 12+.

Photonify

I’ve been tinkering with different photography technologies the can be leveraged inside of iOS. The grand plan for the Photonify App is to provide the entire Photonify.com photo filter catalogue to our subscribers. I think we only a few short months away from that becoming a reality.

For now, the Photonify App will be central in helping mobile users learn more about the brand and the product offerings on our website.

I’ve learned a great deal about the WordPress API and RESTful APIs in general. I’ve had tons of help from the iOS Developer community. There are some wicked smart people that are part of the slack group! Thanks, guys!

The Little Bread Boy (final name pending)

The final App project that I’ve been spending some time on is a Bread Delivery App. It’s been a fun project that has taught me some new skills – and I still have more to learn before the project is done.

By the end of that effort, I’ll have built an e-commerce website, a mobile iOS App, a server-hosted backend with user accounts and payment processing, and a push notification server that sends reminders of upcoming deliveries, recurring order confirmation, and notifications to serve up some advertisement (new feature that iOS apps can leverage if the user opts-in).

Learning New Skills

I the mean time, I’m blitzing through all the Hacking With Swift tutorials created by Paul Hudson. That guy is amazing! I finished all 800 pages of his Hacking with Swift (SwiftUI version) and now I’m about 300 pages into his Hacking with Swift (UIKit version).

I’ve basically gone in reverse order. UIKit is a much older technology and has a long history of refinement and a massive user-base. Essentially every iOS developer in the world uses UIKit for user interface design. Well, I started really digging deep into iOS Development with SwiftUI, and I have been initially indoctrinated that swift development on iOS is a reactive-type programing paradigm.

After being indoctrinated by Paul Hudson in the ways of SwiftUI, I’ve had to contort my brain to grasp everything that I going on with UIKit as different menues, buttons, and navigation screens are cobbled together with a strange combination of Xcode menus tweets and check boxes and code. With SwiftUI, every element of every interface I’ve built has been 100% code. So, Interface Builder in Xcode is simply confusing – and adding constraints every time I want a new visual element on the screen seems so backward and archaic.

But, that’s just me. I’m all-in with SwiftUI. I Love the feature set. I love the development process, and I’m too new to know any different. and I REALLY like it that way!!

I’m still going to complete all the UIKit learning that will help me develop with either technology – but, for the speed and ease of SwiftUI had me at “Hello, World!”