Three outcomes that I’ll take with me:

• Never base your happiness in someone else’s hands
• Get ready to get stuck
• Why you’ll never succeed

If you missed first week’s progress and what this series is about, then here’s a brief overview: I’m starting a new venture and I’m documenting everything for you guys. Hoping, at some point, it will motivate some of you, like Noah Kagan motivated me to Just Fu**ing Start. (the book is called Million Dollar Weekend).

Whereas last week I read the first few chapters and did a couple of the challenges from the book, this week I had to put in some actual work, as follows: Finding business ideas that I felt comfortable pursuing:

• Hiking Trips Agency: Organising trips can be time-consuming for someone with a hectic job and family. So we’d organise these within the UK. This can include accommodation, van hire, and, of course, the actual trips set out.
• Sustainable Outdoors Equipment: One of the biggest problem with outdoors garment is the excessive use of polyester (plastic). Our brand will use less of that.
• Antiques Trade From Home: People who own antiques and want to sell them can hire us to come, value, pick up and sell their antiques on their behalf.

To the next step, applying the One Minute Business Model. This is a fast way to assess whether or not your business idea is worth pursuing or not. The research is quite simple and employs: Google Trends, Facebook Business/Ad Manager, SpyFu, Google Keyword Planner. You’re looking for steady or upward trend and competition. This means the idea is sought after and people invest and spend money on it.

The idea that I’ll go next with is “Sustainable Outdoors Equipment”. Now, I was a bit biased, because my girlfriend and I have already started a small IG page where we post reels from our hikes. So it was only logical we’d choose a domain we’re comfortable with. We love hiking and, as you can see, the ideas orbit around that.

The takeaway here is, find something you love and I can guarantee you’ll come up with plenty of ideas within that sphere. (Use the book, is really useful).

To find out if it was profitable we went on Alibaba and calculated the potential profit and it was worth it. Now we’re designing a logo and will order the first sample (which will be a sherpa fleece jacket).

The book recommends actually selling some units/service packages before investing anything. I.e: ask friends to buy or put down a deposit. Now this piece of clothing is quite expensive and I don’t want our family and friends buying this just to support us, because they definitely would. Instead, we’re happy loosing £100-£150 on a sample (so we can take photos and put a product website together) and some Facebook ads. If nothing converts, we move onto the next idea. Your loss appetite might differ. You might have something your friends actually want. Use whatever resources you have.

Get ready to get stuck:

Now what? Now we’re putting in the ground-work, until we have a final design, until we get the sample all we’ve got to do now is blog and create content. It drives me nuts that I can’t do anything “productive” with my time while we wait for the design and sample. But we’ve got to practice patience. And also, here’s the perfect time to put in the grunt work.

Never base your happiness in someone else’s hands:

This is just a friendly reminder to always live your happiness now, and don’t place it in some distant “only if” future. I say this because this week I was disappointed on an opportunity that was sold to me quite highly. I cannot discuss the details at this moment, but this taught me (and my girlfriend) a tough lesson: Be thankful for what you have, aspire and work for things that only you can bring.

Why you’ll never succeed (message for myself, ignore at your peril)

“You get the life you fuel”. Unfortunately I don’t remember where I heard this from. But it’s about making efforts towards what you want to become, or creating the life you wish to have. This applies mainly for people that want to escape the 9-5. If all we do is work our jobs and then forget about our side-hustles, they will only become distant dreams, never to be achieved. I found it very insightful and, although slightly corny, it’s true. You cannot carve the life you wish by complaining you don’t have time for making one, talking about ideas with other people or judging other people. You get it by working on it. Put the pen on the paper, open that laptop, open that business book, just 1h, that’s all it takes, but do it consistently, don’t let the energy-draining mundane job take that spark away from you man!

Have a week of greatness! 👋