Spend your money on diesel and coffee

[Andy Black]

"Spend your money on diesel and coffee"
(Blaise Brosnan of The Management Resource Institute Wexford)


Just getting started?

Wondering what to spend your time and money on?



Hustle.

Build relationships.

Make stuff happen.

You'll be amazed what happens when you get out of the building.



EDIT: Added the source. I'm not smart enough to have come up with that, just smart enough to recognise its brilliance.


EDIT2: Added a video version (2 mins long):

EDIT3: TRANSCRIPTION

I was on a course a couple of days ago, 20 business owners in a room and Blaise Brosnan.

Blaise was instilling his wisdom from the center of the room telling little stories and anecdotes, and it was brilliant.

This was the first of ten courses on a Tuesday morning 8:00 to 11:00, and Blaise had a power point presentation that he was going to go through with us, and he just gave [us] his presentation at the end - he hadn't done it.

What he'd done instead was round-robin through each of the attendees and get us to introduce ourselves and our business and one piece of advice to everyone else.

To be on this course you have to have attended the initial ten-week course with Blaise previously, and Mandy's piece of advice to everybody in the room, was something that Blaise had said in the previous course, that she'd picked up on and lived by, which was to "spend your money on diesel and coffee".

At the start when you're trying to grow your business get out there - meet people for coffees, chat to people, create relationships, try to help people, let them know what you're doing as well, that's how you get going.

Apparently when AirBnB was getting started they were talking to the guys in Y-Combinator, people like Paul Graham from paulgraham.com (his stuff is excellent) and there's a story about how they got going. They'd realized that a lot of their initial BnB hosts were in New York, and they literally went to stay at the hosts. And meet them, go out for dinner and talk to them.

And by doing that they found out that some of the properties, the houses, were amazing but the photos didn't do them justice. They asked some of the hosts, "Would you be happy if we send a photographer around to take pictures of your property?" The hosts were delighted, and then the next day a photographer came round, took pictures and made much better job than the actual hosts could do of taking pictures.

A lesson there is to "do things that don't scale", you're not going to do that later on in your business, but when you're small you can afford to do things that don't scale.

And another lesson is something Gary Vaynerchuk says, that, "One is greater than zero." Getting one extra customer is better than having zero.

Grow your business one customer at a time, which brings me back to my favorite quote from Mother Theresa, "Never worry about numbers, help one person at a time and start with the person closest to you."

 

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[Jake]

"I wonder where this quote comes from?"

oh..

It's from Andy Black of The Fastlane Forum.

 

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[Scot]

Andy, you're becoming the Confuious of Fastlane Forum. Great advice, as always. And the best part, is people listen!

 

[amp0193]

Diesel and coffee works guys.

I've kept this post in the back of my mind the past couple of weeks. Taking more time to do calls with other entrepreneurs and friends in my network. Each time I come out learning something new. I've "worked" less, but networked more... but I feel like these meetings have had great effects on my current and future business.

A couple of meetings have helped put together the pieces for my next business idea. Pieces that I likely wouldn't have discovered or ever thought of on my own, which were obvious to the people I was meeting with.

Someone gave me an idea to easily expand my current business by 10%, with almost no extra work. It was an idea I hadn't even considered.

A few meetings where I was mentoring others, helped to clarify my thought process and revisit the fundamentals of my current business.


Plus, it's fun to hang out with like-minded people. Sitting on the computer in isolation gets old after a while.

 

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[Andy Black]

It's not just your money that you should spend on diesel and coffee, you should also spend your *time* on diesel and coffee.

I only work during office hours Mon-Thu 9-2. (I also put in some hours in the evening in case you think I'm a slacker.)

I really only have 20 daytime working hours per week.

Each of those hours is very precious to me, and I'm very conscious of wasting time and "not working".

Yet I devoted three full days last week to travelling to other people's businesses and chatting to them for a few hours. I found out what their goals were, and what stood between them and their goals. I got to know them. I then freely showed them the things they could do to improve their sales, revenues, and profits.

This week I'm on-boarding 3 new clients.


Diesel and coffee works guys.

 

[Andy Black]

I'll just drop this here:

 

[Primeperiwinkle]

Tom Hopkins quotes a sales dude in his book “How To Master The Art of Selling” with the simplest advice ever.

“Get face-to-face with 20 ppl a day and you’ll become a top seller.”

I said wtf and tried it one week. I talked to nine ppl on the first day, three ppl on the next and thirteen on the third. No joke, my tiny business tripled that month. Of course, I haven’t done it again because I got sucked down a rabbit hole but this post reminded me of just how simple it is to bring in revenue when you take the time to actually talk to people. Thank you for the post.

 

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[Nicoknowsbest]

Just came back from my first of a series of "Diesel and Coffee" meetings.

I got the concept all wrong in the beginning though.

I thought it was about introducing yourself to strangers.

Yet again, the key was to start with something that is right under your nose - your own, existing network.

People you already know.

I am "warming up" already established relationships and see where I can help people with my skills.

If I cannot help, I might be able to refer someone I know could help.

It went really well: I got to know 5 new faces (I went to an office) and got 1 referral which might lead to a new project.

Good stuff!

The powerful thing? 1 + 1 +1 can quickly become 30. Combining networks to help people works incredibly well.

P.S.: Please don't limit yourself by thinking you don't have a network that is good enough already. Get creative and come up with ways how you can help your existing contacts and how you can tap into their networks.

 

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[Scot]

So, I had read this thread a while ago. But it never really sank in until Andy and I had a conversation over private message. He sent me another article, which is very similar to what was said here.

And it's something that I haven't really thought about. In the beginning we are so worried about how to scale our business, we don't think about the little things that we could do. When you are a new business, getting out there hitting the pavement and talking to customers and getting customers is huge for your business.

For me, I've been so worried about getting this website and application done, that I haven't really been going and talking to the professionals that my business is aimed at helping. Recently, @SinisterLex asked me if I had customers ready to buy when my Indiegogo campaign went live. I don't. Why? Because I'm not spending my money on diesel and coffee.

What I really should be doing is interacting with my email list and going to random businesses and talking to owners. And while I don't have a hard product to sell them, I can build relationships that, once we go live, I have interested companies.

I had misinterpreted what "spend your money on diesel and coffee" meant. To me, it meant, work hard, work long hours, keep pushing.

But what it really means is: Get in your car and go meet potential customers. Buy them coffee and talk to them about business.

 

[Torobaro]

Yep, this is one of the best thing I've ever read about how to build a business,

Do things that don't scale

http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

This is my favourite part: "Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off"

 

[Andy Black]

"I wonder where this quote comes from?"

oh..

It's from Andy Black of The Fastlane Forum.

Holy smoke. I only just posted that.

Credit goes to Blaise Brosnan of The Wexford Management Institute. I was on a course this morning and I wrote down pages of little nuggets.

It was actually one of the other attendees who said it today, but she credited it to a course she was on with Blaise a few years ago.

Oops. In future I will tell the story of where I heard the phrase. Maybe I'll just drop them into this thread too instead of cluttering up the place.

Any thoughts or preferences on dropping my favourite lines into one big messy thread, or cluttering up the forum with lots of little threads (like I did with the AdWords stuff)?

 

[MTEE1985]

Bump.

We’ve seen some threads lately asking where to start, how to find business, if the sales pitch is enticing enough etc. Here’s the thing: every business receives multiple, maybe even dozens of emails and phone calls a day trying to be sold something. They are constantly sent to websites and landing pages with enticing copy and promises to increase their profit.

You know what doesn’t happen? They don’t have somebody walk in, shake their hand and say “My name is XYZ, it’s nice to meet you. I love X, Y and Z about your business.” and then stop talking. Look at Andy’s post below. I guarantee if he spends 2 hours with a business owner he probably talks no more than 30 of the 120 minutes. He asks questions and then he listens. He hears their pain points, he hears what they want to improve and once he knows these things it is easy for him to steer the conversation into how he can help them.

Yet I devoted three full days last week to travelling to other people's businesses and chatting to them for a few hours. I found out what their goals were, and what stood between them and their goals. I got to know them. I then freely showed them the things they could do to improve their sales, revenues, and profits.

Please please please try this. You will be absolutely amazed at what you can learn and accomplish from in person conversations.

 

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[Andy Black]

"Spend your money on diesel and coffee."

Damn, I love that.

So much that I took I made it into one of those quote things you see for inspiration.

I went with a sort of classy look, reminds me of one of those minimalistic ads you see for really high end products and yes, I used my own photo.

(yeah, I know it says coffee and diesel. I think for the sake of the quote, it looks better that way.)

For me, the image should be of two people in a cafe or restaurant having a chat over a coffee. Informal, on neutral ground, non-salesy. No projectors. No laptops. No note-taking. No “salesman vs prospect”. Just two peers having a chat to see how they can help each other.

The quote is not about doing a lot of mileage and staying up late. It’s about making the effort to go to where your prospects are (in person or online), and having a non-salesy chat with them for about an hour.

My version of diesel and coffee is an hour long Skype call.

 

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[Andy Black]

I had misinterpreted what "spend your money on diesel and coffee" meant. To me, meant, work hard, work long hours, keep pushing.

But what it really means is: Get in your car and go meet potential customers. Buy them coffee and talk to them about business.

Bingo. Go meet them. Then get personal. Hand-to-hand stylee.

 

[Scot]

Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman by WaitWhat on Apple Podcasts

I instantly thought of this thread when I listen to this podcast today. This episode is about Airbnb's founders talking about how they nurture the relationship with their first customers.

It's pretty big when you look at a company with a $31bn valuation and see that their founders stayed at the homes of all of their early adopters.

They also offered to take professional photos of all of their customers listings as well.

Not only were they able to foster great relationships, which led to referrals, they were able to develop their business around the real-time feedback from their customers. I think that is the most important part. If we design our products in isolation, will never truly know what our customers need or want.

One of the lessons from the Airbnb founders that I took to heart is this. Ask your customer what their ideal experience would be. Take that feedback and build THAT.

 

[Andy Black]

Andy, you're becoming the Confuious of Fastlane Forum. Great advice, as always. And the best part, is people listen!

Haha. Thanks.

It's a line I heard today. I love quotes and lines that sum things up. I'll keep dropping them in as I hear them. Maybe one big thread, or lots of little ones so I can point to the most appropriate one at the most appropriate moment.

 

[BlackMagician]

After starting my web business and doing networking and building relationship, i will say, Spend money on diesel/coffee and time on meeting people. It beats every other mode of helping others and gaining clients. It build trust, it builds relationship. Really.

Today i can say, with proof and live example that this post and @Andy Black quote resound with truth.

 

[Andy Black]

I've been thinking so much about this diesel and coffee lately lol. For me, going and socialising/talking to business owners where they are is just so much more enjoyable and effective than pipelines and funnels and what have you. Maybe it's a case of each to his own. But I've noticed some people near a similar level to me (1 to 3 years in) spend unbelievable amounts of time chasing new jobs that it feels like.. that's their actual job lol. Oh wait, that's right, you are actually a web designer, I forgot!

I know I sound a bit naive and my situation is different to someone that has a lot more responsibilities and urgency than me though. But that's my take.

I’m loving diesel and coffee more and more.

I was on a call with an agency client last night. We’re only one month in, and they already like the way we work and communicate and what we’re doing. They’re thinking of white labeling us for *their* clients. They have about 25 clients I believe, with goals to grow (hence hiring us in the first place).

We’ve had more calls than I usually have with a client at this stage, but I don’t charge for them. I consider this “diesel and coffee” still. I’m chatting to them, trying to understand their business, and figure out how to help them while still growing the kind of business I want to grow.

I had another “chat” with an agency owner a few weeks ago and they brought 5 of their clients in one fell swoop. I’ve “chatted” to his PM for an hour, and he now knows better what I can do for their clients. They’ve put me in front of a client to explain what we’re doing. I chatted to him for an hour too and he’s excited (and more trusting of the process).


“The most important formula in business is R+R = Profit”. (Blaise Brosnan)

I like having a subscription based business where I (can) speak to the business owners. I don’t charge for those additional calls... I welcome them. It allows me to build relationships, and learn better how to help them. Having a subscription business means I have had clients for *years*. That’s a long time to build a relationship over. This is the beauty of Repeat business (the first R).


The second R is Referrals.

All those free diesel and coffee chats help the people I speak to understand what I do better, and they Refer me onto their other business owner friends or clients. (I consider being whitelabeled as the ultimate in Referring because they’re trusting me with their clients).


Note that I rarely travel to people anymore. My version of diesel and coffee is a free Zoom call.

 

[jpanarra]

I'll just drop this here:

Hah thats awesome, actually reminds me of my father and how he treated his business. He would meet people left and right that recognized him from his business ventures. It could be anywhere from a coffee shop to a grocery store. Whenever someone came up to him, he would talk to them like he knew them for years and chatted them up and sometimes even exchanged information or cards. Yet I would ask how do you know that guy, he would almost always respond no idea, but he knew me...

 

[ChrisV]

I think this is a perfect format for what we talked about. I opened the thread and skimmed the transcript to see if it’s something I’d be interested in... then when I realized it was, I put on the video, to listen to it and do something else while listening.

All of the benefits of a normal thread, all of the benefits of Audio.

@MJ DeMarco - this may be a hit format.

"Spend your money on diesel and coffee"
(Blaise Brosnan of The Management Resource Institute Wexford)


Just getting started?

Wondering what to spend your time and money on?



Hustle.

Build relationships.

Make stuff happen.

You'll be amazed what happens when you get out of the building.



EDIT: Added the source. I'm not smart enough to have come up with that, just smart enough to recognise its brilliance.


EDIT2: Added a video version:

EDIT3: TRANSCRIPTION

I was on a course a couple of days ago, 20 business owners in a room and Blaise Brosnan.

Blaise was instilling his wisdom from the center of the room telling little stories and anecdotes, and it was brilliant.

This was the first of ten courses on a Tuesday morning 8:00 to 11:00, and Blaise had a power point presentation that he was going to go through with us, and he just gave his presentation at the end - he hadn't done it.

What he'd done instead was round-robin through each of the attendees and get us to introduce ourselves and our business and one piece of advice to everyone else.

To be on this course you have to have attended the initial ten-week course with Blase previously, and Mandy's piece of advice to everybody in the room, was something that Blaise had said in the previous course, that she'd picked up on and lived by, which was to "spend your money on diesel and coffee".

At the start when you're trying to grow your business get out there - meet people for coffees, chat to people, create relationships, try to help people, let them know what you're doing as well, that's how you get going.

Apparently when AirBnB was getting started they were talking to the guys in Y-Combinator, people like Paul Graham from paulgraham.com (his stuff is excellent) and there's a story about how they got going. They'd realized that a lot of their initial BnB hosts were in New York, and they literally went to stay at the hosts. And meet them, go out for dinner and talk to them.

And by doing that they found out that some of the properties, the houses, were amazing but the photos didn't do them justice. They asked some of the hosts, "Would you be happy if we send a photographer around to take pictures of your property?" The hosts were delighted, and then the next day a photographer came round, took pictures and made much better job than the actual hosts could do of taking pictures.

A lesson there is to "do things that don't scale", you're not going to do that later on in your business, but when you're small you can afford to do things that don't scale.

And another lesson is something Gary Vaynerchuk says, that, "One is greater than zero." Getting one extra customer is better than having zero.

Grow your business one customer at a time, which brings me back to my favorite quote from Mother Theresa, "Never worry about numbers, help one person at a time and start with the person closest to you."

 

[delacroix]

^^^ This is what it's about. : )

I was thinking about this earlier and I think one of the problems, that "guru" entrepreneurship has created is people have forgot that as a business man, you're there to solve problems and to figure out others problems. By default, you should be having relationships with your customers, you should be talking to prospects without the idea of hard-selling them. Business is based on relationships and I think many, many, many people miss this.

We're all focusing too much on hustling, making millions, getting nice cars and big mansions when we should be focusing on our customers and learning about them, creating and maintaining relationships.

That's why this quote is so powerful, it flips what people commonly think as entrepreneurship on it's head.

 

[Primeperiwinkle]

I see! Online there's a lot of opportunities to connect with people, I just wonder if your method could translate into offline conversations, as I've read from your posts regarding the coffee and diesel approach, It might be good to start with friends and friends-of-friends, and see who can be helped.

If someone (or a friend) came up to you and said “I feel like an idiot but I’m trying this new challenge. For sixty days I have to try and talk to someone every day and ask them two questions.” You’d be curious.

So try it. Go say that and then just wait.

The person will say “well??”

You take a deep breath in and relax your shoulders and breathe out. Then you say “What’s the one thing about your day/business/job that really drives you crazy?”

They’ll be so overjoyed to vent! Just keep nodding. Thankfully in American culture talking to strangers is not frowned upon but looked more like street entertainment, a good distraction from their day.

Then you say “Is there any way I can help or find someone who could?”

And then do it. Even if it has nothing to do with your business.

One of my biggest pet peeves is small business owners who don’t realize that referrals OFTEN come from ppl who never use their product. Those ppl are called “Connectors”. I am one. Most talkative charismatic ppl are. You can bet I’ve paid attention to people who respond well to me and who respond professionally in general. I refer others to those people.

I might never use the upholstery business down the street but I damn well remember the guy who helped me pick up my kids bottle when he dropped it and I hadn’t slept in three days. He was wearing his business shirt. I sent ppl to that upholstery business with one word of caution “I don’t know if they’re any good at upholstery but I know they cared enough to help me. Check them out!”

That’s what kindness does. The ppl you talk to might never utilize your services but you can bet that some of them will pass on your info.

 

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[#nowhere]

Holy smoke. I only just posted that.

Credit goes to Blaise Brosnan of The Wexford Management Institute. I was on a course this morning and I wrote down pages of little nuggets.

It was actually one of the other attendees who said it today, but she credited it to a course she was on with Blaise a few years ago.

Oops. In future I will tell the story of where I heard the phrase. Maybe I'll just drop them into this thread too instead of cluttering up the place.

Any thoughts or preferences on dropping my favourite lines into one big messy thread, or cluttering up the forum with lots of little threads (like I did with the AdWords stuff)?

"Andy's Golden Nuggets, collected"

And then you post your short, but depth thoughts like:

On starting:

"Spend your money on diesel and coffee"


Just my thoughts for not getting it too messed up in one thread. Other threads primarily deal with the way to the top, if they are named "golden nugget"-threads, as your's is also a philosphy-thread. Maybe you can approach a bit different then..

 

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[ChrisV]

Did it need the transcript, or could the “show-notes” introducing the video have done the same job?

I liked the transcript. There should be an easy to export transcripts since YouTube automatically generates subtitles for all videos. Yep, just checked and there is an easy way of exporting.





Summary would be helpful too. Maybe just a quick summary then paste in the Transcript.

This format is really great. Last night I was just skimmed the transcript, realized I was interested, then listened to the video. And I agree with the people in the Engagement thread. If I wasn’t able to skim the transcript, it may not have hooked me and I might not have watched.

The added summary might make it even easier for people to see if they’re interested, because a summary is basically you skimming and extracting out the most interesting/important points, so it’s not up to chance. But I think this format is a home run.

 

[mikecarlooch]

It took so long to understand this, one of the best threads I've seen.

Love what @Primeperiwinkle said

Tom Hopkins quotes a sales dude in his book “How To Master The Art of Selling” with the simplest advice ever.

“Get face-to-face with 20 ppl a day and you’ll become a top seller.”

I said wtf and tried it one week. I talked to nine ppl on the first day, three ppl on the next and thirteen on the third. No joke, my tiny business tripled that month. Of course, I haven’t done it again because I got sucked down a rabbit hole but this post reminded me of just how simple it is to bring in revenue when you take the time to actually talk to people. Thank you for the post.

 

[Scot]

Clutter up and then make a master thread

 

[Jake]

Holy smoke. I only just posted that.

Credit goes to Blaise Brosnan of The Wexford Management Institute. I was on a course this morning and I wrote down pages of little nuggets.

It was actually one of the other attendees who said it today, but she credited it to a course she was on with Blaise a few years ago.

Oops. In future I will tell the story of where I heard the phrase. Maybe I'll just drop them into this thread too instead of cluttering up the place.

Any thoughts or preferences on dropping my favourite lines into one big messy thread, or cluttering up the forum with lots of little threads (like I did with the AdWords stuff)?

Lots of little threads. I was simply impressed by the way this forums ranks so well. Post some words and you're sitting on top of google within hours (minutes?)

 

[Andy Black]

Created a short video post when I was on the way to meet a potential client.

Added to the original post.

 

[Andy Black]

Transcription added.

 

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[jpanarra]

EDIT3: TRANSCRIPTION

I was on a course a couple of days ago, 20 business owners in a room and Blaise Brosnan.

Blaise was instilling his wisdom from the center of the room telling little stories and anecdotes, and it was brilliant.

This was the first of ten courses on a Tuesday morning 8:00 to 11:00, and Blaise had a power point presentation that he was going to go through with us, and he just gave his presentation at the end - he hadn't done it.

What he'd done instead was round-robin through each of the attendees and get us to introduce ourselves and our business and one piece of advice to everyone else.

To be on this course you have to have attended the initial ten-week course with Blase previously, and Mandy's piece of advice to everybody in the room, was something that Blaise had said in the previous course, that she'd picked up on and lived by, which was to "spend your money on diesel and coffee".

At the start when you're trying to grow your business get out there - meet people for coffees, chat to people, create relationships, try to help people, let them know what you're doing as well, that's how you get going.

Apparently when AirBnB was getting started they were talking to the guys in Y-Combinator, people like Paul Graham from paulgraham.com (his stuff is excellent) and there's a story about how they got going. They'd realized that a lot of their initial BnB hosts were in New York, and they literally went to stay at the hosts. And meet them, go out for dinner and talk to them.

And by doing that they found out that some of the properties, the houses, were amazing but the photos didn't do them justice. They asked some of the hosts, "Would you be happy if we send a photographer around to take pictures of your property?" The hosts were delighted, and then the next day a photographer came round, took pictures and made much better job than the actual hosts could do of taking pictures.

A lesson there is to "do things that don't scale", you're not going to do that later on in your business, but when you're small you can afford to do things that don't scale.

And another lesson is something Gary Vaynerchuk says, that, "One is greater than zero." Getting one extra customer is better than having zero.

Grow your business one customer at a time, which brings me back to my favorite quote from mother Theresa, "Never worry about numbers, help one person at a time and start with the person closest to you."

Love this bit