INTRO Meet Siddhartha

[Siddhartha]

Howdy,

Texan, early 20-something who's been focusing on re-gaining control of his life for about a year now. Post-college employment pushed me back to book reading. Ran across TMF in the sea of entrepreneur books this last week, was thrilled to find out it was one of the most common sense, helpful books I've read in years and thusly killed it in about 2 days.

I came to this forum because the people here seem to be less focused on the entrepreneurship "Lifestyle" sold by instagram personalities (like Nathan Latka and his new book); and more into combining Seth Godin-like virtue in finding and serving people, and using effection to create magnitude and touch millions.

I've been going "at" but not into an entrepreneurial lifestyle for about a year, starting with 4HWW, but all I ended up with was a dime a dozen niche instagram account with 120 followers after MONTHS of work and a barren amazon store page . "Long tail" products as described by Seth Godin are failures and in the end require much more effort just to scrape by. I fully intend to give it my all to create at least something that I can kick down doors with.

At the very moment I'm reading unscripted; literally whiteboarding my first 3 semi-actionable ideas, and teaching myself coding so I can bootstrap a semi-functioning website as a first venture. I look forwarding to growing and ultimately succeeding, with you all.

 

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[jesseissorude]

Welcome to the forum! I do think there's a lot of value in long tail products (I'm in the middle of reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson) but a lot of the long tail equation involves having 1-3 really strong products that bring in first-time-buyers. Then the long tail products bring in the repeat orders (increasing the LTV of the customer)

One brand that does that really well is Aero Garden. You know those things that grow herbs automatically from pods in your kitchen?
You buy an Aero Garden, then you are familiar with their brand. Once you know/love/trust their brand... they also have their branded cutting boards, pot-holders, pruning tools, a dang salad dressing mixer, etc

Lodge does this really well too! They have one main product that gets you in the door (a 12" cast-iron skillet), then they have a million other products with their brand on it that increase customer lifetime value. I mean, they have "cast iron skillet seasoning oil" at $19 for 3 ounces, and it's literally 100% canola oil you can get from any grocery store.

Anyway, I'm no expert for sure. I'm still figuring all this out. I'm just now finishing up Unscripted too.

Best of luck to you! I'll be very interested to see what your brand is.

 

[Siddhartha]

State of Siddhartha, 1st week of april:

Running some self-reports as a form of non-repudiation and as a way to get feedback and document my journey. Grab some coffee and take a gander, because it'll be a ride.

Intro: After a FTE moment I quit my first job out of college after only 9 months; I knew where everything was heading at month 8, so I started a "business" after binging 4HWW and Reddit's /r/entrepreneur sub-reddit. It ended up not being enough, and currently I'm in an interesting spot; having mostly given up on my PoD Amazon niche t-shirt/printer service. I love that niche to death but it's 1) too small and 2) has 3-4 other competitors that I can't leverage against enough to compete with. It was a fantastic start that got my feet wet with business incorporation and representation; and introducing me to a lot of marketing concepts (thank you seth godin) and self-development.

To keep the fires up, I've spent a lot of time whiteboarding (10 new ideas a day theory) and reading/listening to everything I can all the time, even through over half of my daily workday. I currently have 3 avenues that I can start today, but have yet to pull the trigger on. I need to go through and tear them down with CENTS, but they're the best I have that I feel I can attack at the moment.


Web platform:
I've been working on coding to let me wireframe a few ideas I've had. I'm well familiar with virtual server set up and configuration; but building tasty web platforms that I can either template and sell or lightly customize and sell may interesting. Because I read Nathan Latka's new book, I'm mentally toying with the concept of building everything out, then paying for contractor help off of toptal or upwork to flesh out my platform; and then selling the business immediately.

Web sites:
I have a few things in mind from glaring gaps I've seen in the online education market. My only issue is initial growth of our community and attracting the experts we need to deliver the content and building the frameworks people will need to execute their plans.
For this model I'm leaning more towards just running affiliate ads, hoping I get the notice of big wigs in that industry; but if it develops far enough, a paywall could be another option.

Amazon FBA product:
Basique, yet proven if one can find something that they can safely extract from alibaba or a manufacturer; scale Can be can issue but I'm acutely aware of a man that scaled from 2k-40k a month selling hand-cranked coffee grinders on amazon, which means potential still exists, especially with rock-star customer service. I have a plan that does involve using myself for customer service at the start, which then scales to arbitrated e-mail templates with contractors in india, but then back to the u.s. after certain revenue goals.

I'm still acclimating to the Unscripted mindset and everything from TMF, both of which I've been introduced to in the past week; but the fire it lit is unholy and will take me forward. I look forward to studying more posts on this forum and learning more about the process.
(p.s. surprised to see @Damian Pros on this forum, having loosely followed him on his twitter for about 2 years)