Afford Anything - The Smart Way to Start a Side Hustle, with Alan Donegan

Episode Date: October 30, 2020

#282: Alan Donegan is the cofounder of PopUp Business School. His mission is to change the way entrepreneurship is taught and to make it more accessible. If you’ve daydreamed of starting a side hustle, Alan’s simple advice and actions will give you the knowledge you need to get started now. You’ll know if your idea is viable within a month. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode282 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else, and that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to your time, your energy, your focus, your attention. It applies to anything in your life that's a resource that you need to manage. And that opens up two questions. First, what matters most to you? What impacts you the most and what do you want to impact you the most? Second, how do you align your decisions, both granular like your daily decisions, as well as your big picture,

life decisions in a way that reflects those priorities. Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice, and that is what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pant. I am the host of the Afford Anything podcast, and today, Alan Donagan, the founder of Popup Business School, joins us to talk about how entrepreneurship can be accessible to anyone. If you're looking to start a side hustle during the pandemic, he explains how to do it right,

how to test your ideas, how to not waste too much time or money pursuing the wrong idea. How to Fail Fast and How to Find Your Nitch and a Crowded Market. Alan is well known within the fire community, the financial independence retire early community. He has spoken at many Chautauqua events, which are week-long financial independence retreats, which are held overseas. He has taught pop-up business school at the Mr. Money Mustache headquarters many times. And he has launched a podcast called Rebel Entrepreneur that is part of the ChooseFI Network, so very well known inside of the fire community. As well as outside of it, he estimates that he. He has helped over 7,000 people start their own businesses.

Before we get into today's interview, I just quickly want to say, I am sorry that this podcast has not aired for the last week and a half, almost two weeks. I know many of you have reached out wondering what is going on. I am dealing with a few things right now, so my apologies for unexpectedly going off air for a little while. But I'm back now and full force, and we've got some great content ahead. So thank you so much for reaching out. Thank you for all of your kind words. And let's get on with this interview with Alan Donagin of Pop Up Business School. Hi, Alan. Hi, Paula. How are you? I'm excellent. How are you doing? I am very well, thank you. I've been looking forward to this. Oh, I have as well. I've heard so many people talk about Pop Up Business School. And I've heard about you for so many years that I'm amazed that this is our first time chatting. Eventually it had to happen.

No, right? It was inevitable. Could you introduce yourself to the Afford Anything community and talk about how you got involved in the world of entrepreneurship. How did you end up becoming a person who teaches pop-up business schools? Yeah, of course. So hello, Afford Anything Community. My name's Alan Donegan. I created this thing called Pop Up Business School. And it actually came out of my frustration starting a business. I went to the British government for help. to start my own business. And they gave me three workshops, how to write a business plan, funding, which is a code word for where do you get debt to start up, and marketing.

And they basically did more to put me off starting a business than they did to help me. So I spent the next few years trying to build my own business with traditional advice and having successes and failures and all of that sort of stuff. And eventually thought, there is a better way to do this.

and that was the birth of pop-up business school was business plans and debt don't really help people start businesses. It's something else. After you went to the British government and got no help from them at all, what type of business did you end up starting? So my very first business this time round in entrepreneurship was a training company. I originally wanted to start an NLP training company and I went on these courses called NLP and they'd changed my life, me loads of confidence. That's neurolinguistic programming. Exactly. And then I went out to start a business training other people in it and very quickly realized that everyone else who's ever been on a course like that also wants to start a training company doing that. And it was an overcrowded

marketplace with lots of people doing the same thing. And then I kind of changed and started teaching presenting skills and time management and different things like that. But my first business was a corporate training business. And that actually leads perfectly to what I wanted to ask you about, which is part of the reason that I invited you to come on the show is a lot of people in this community have been asking, there's been more interest in 2020 than I've seen in previous years, they've been asking about how they can start some type of a side hustle or some type of a business. There's a renewed interest in it this year, it seems. And so you tell the story of starting an NLP training business without first realizing that it was an overcrowded market.

If a person wants to start a business and let's say they have a handful of ideas, how do they narrow down those ideas? How do they evaluate markets and go from, say, their shortlist of five ideas down to one? There's many ways to choose an idea. You need to pick one to start with. The way my business partner and I pick the idea to start with is we normally do. We normally choose two scales to evaluate it on, and we draw out a little grid and lay out the ideas on them. And we normally pick two different scales. So one of them might be how excited are you about the idea? And the other one might be how quickly can you make a profit doing it? And then you kind of evaluate the different ideas across those two scales to work out which one you're going to

test first. What we like to do is we couch it as a mini experiment. So you pick one of the ideas you've had and you run a mini experiment to see whether that idea works or not. And the language is very important because if it's an experiment, you're okay to fail because that's just feedback and then we'll do another experiment. And it makes it easier and takes away some of the paranoia around a business being perfect before you launch it because you're just doing an experiment and we'll see if it works. there's some specific ways you can do it but there's only one real way to know if a business is going to be successful or not how do you know if this business is going to be successful or not paula

you give it a try and you see if anyone will buy it that's the key piece is will anyone give you money for it because i think lots of times people like to go out and do surveys or they go and see their friends and they say I've got this idea. What do you think? And friends are quite often nice to them.

So they go, oh yeah, it's a lovely idea. Is that useful feedback? No, not at all. They're just being nice to you. And what you need to do at that stage

is if they tell you they like it, well, ask them to buy it. And you kind of look at them and let's imagine I was trying to sell you my new product, Paula. And I said to you,

Paula, I've got this lovely new product. They're like Post-it notes, but they're, gray and I'm calling them gray notes and they stick on the wall and you can write things on them. They're 20 bucks. Would you like to buy them? Not particularly, no. I don't think I did a good job of selling it there. But that's the real answer. And you only get the real answer when you ask someone to take their money out of their pocket and give it to you. Up until that point,

they'll be nice to you. And that feedback doesn't help. So the only way to know, is to pick one of your ideas and do a mini experiment and try and sell it. Actually ask people for money, real people, and see if they'll buy it. And you don't have to have it perfect. You don't have to have it done. You can even sell from the idea. But that's the key first step is to sell. It's the only way you know if your idea will work.

How can a person do this? How can they test that idea if that product or service has not yet been developed? if the grey notes don't exist. If the grey notes don't exist. Let's hope they don't because Post-it notes are wonderful colours. Well, I think it's this thing of people think you need to have the complete thing ready before you sell it. And that's just not true.

The pop-up business school courses, Paul, are two weeks long. And we run two weeks of workshops on how to build a business with no money, social media, building websites, all of that sort of stuff. How much of the two-week course do you think I had written before I sold the first one? I'm going to guess somewhere between 0% to 5%. It was indeed zero. I had the idea, and I knew the idea. The idea was to help people get going with nothing.

But I also didn't want to waste my time creating the course if no one was actually going to buy it. I think this is the bit. So many entrepreneurs build the thing, build the item without actually knowing if anyone will buy it or if they can even sell it. So I went out. I asked a load of people and said, here's my idea. What do you think? One of the people I'd worked with previously was a housing association, a housing authority in England. And the guy liked the idea.

He said, this sounds great. We want to help our residents earn money so that they can pay our. rent, tell me more. And once he was bought into the idea, then I asked him, what's the best way you think we could do this for your residence? And he actually gave me ideas and he helped me co-create what the first one was. And then I wrote up a proposal, sent it back to him. We agreed it. We agreed the date. I actually asked him for the money up front, which he was a bit shocked by, but he paid up front, and I sold it before I had created it. I actually don't really care whether it's a product, a podcast, a service, a course.

It doesn't really matter what it is. There is a way to sell it before you build it. And if you do that, you know you have a customer. You mentioned, or it doesn't matter if it's a product, a podcast, an item, a course. Let's take the example of a podcast. I'm thinking of a good friend of mine who wants to start a podcast. She hopes to one day be able to monetize it by offering one-on-one coaching. Hers is in the world of health and fitness.

She does not have any type of an audience yet. She does not have any social media following. She does not have any starting platform whatsoever. In that example, how could she sell it before she builds it, given that she doesn't, have an audience. I'm just checking, but she does have friends. She does have friends, yes. You never know.

I want to be careful with these things. The sell before you create it thing, if I were her, what I would do is my first step is I would build a website, a one page, very simple, and you can use something like Weebly or Wix or any of those services to put up a free one-page website with a sign-up where people can put in their first name and their email address. And I would lay out the idea, have some pictures, and then put this is my plan. If you would like to know when the podcast is launched, put your email address in here. And then I would start to share it to friends, to different Facebook groups. I would find the people I think would be the listeners on Twitter. There's so many

ways to share it for free. And I would put it out there. When you're building something like a podcast or a blog, the closest proxy you have got to asking for the cash is asking for someone's email address. Nowadays, people are more reluctant to give out their email addresses because they've been spammed so much. So it's actually a jump for someone to put their email address and name in there and say, yes, this sounds good. And that's the way you all know whether you've got the pitch right or not, whether you're on the right subject. So I would. run a mini experiment, create a one-page website, share it in front of an audience and engage it, and do that through different social media platforms or Facebook groups or friends,

and see if anyone actually visits the website and signs up. If you've got people signing up and saying they want it, you're pretty sure you've got a starting audience to go to. If no one signs up, then we'll pretend it didn't happen and run another mini experiment. All right. What about a product or service that would have more of a B-to-B audience? So let's say that a person wants to start a side hustle as a consultant or a graphic designer or doing freelance programming projects. I love those.

So they would probably all be different routes to market. So the key services are one of the easiest ones to start. So if it's a freelance programmer, a consultant, I don't know, a cleaner, it doesn't really matter what it is. Services tend to be one of the easiest ones to start. Where you would promote it and advertise is purely based on the question, who's your customer? So the answer to every question in marketing, and I don't care what it is, if you were to say, should I use or which social media platform should I use, the question is who's your customer? And if you're selling, telling B2B, it's probably LinkedIn. If you're asking, should I phone my customer? You know,

should I make phone calls? Should I make cold calls? The answer is, who's your customer? Are they going to answer? Do they like that thing? And actually, if you're a consultant, the phone in a business to business term, is one of your most powerful tools. People send hundreds and hundreds of emails, but very few people get on the phone in the same way nowadays. Phone is a phone. Phone business to consumer is a bit spammy and no one likes the people that call up whilst you're having dinner trying to sell you something, that's not good and it's probably not going to get you very far. But in terms of business to business, there still isn't a much better marketing tool than the telephone. So if you're selling freelance coding, maybe you're ringing up

the company and asking them what projects they're working on. Or maybe you're going to a site like people per hour or up work where you're advertising your skills there by the hour. But there's so many ways to put those ideas out there and there's very little risk or cost to do it. So I would be saying to your audience, if it's a service-based business, I'd just get out there and see if people would buy it. If no one buys, you haven't really lost anything apart for some time and energy. If someone buys, you've got some business. And you will learn more from a one-hour conversation with a customer than you will from weeks and weeks and weeks of Google research. So I always err on, let's ask, let's go talk to people. If you do start

having those conversations with customers, how do you know if what a customer is saying to you is representative of the broader market? I mean, do you just have to have dozens of conversations over time? If you do have the dozens of conversations, you will hear themes. And it's interesting, if you are selling to a particular type of business, let's say you're selling to real estate agents, if you speak to 10 of them, you will hear the themes that come out through those conversations, and that will actually start to inform what you say to the next realtor and the next one. In every single industry, there are the themes that you will pick up. The only way to do that is by talking to them. You can get some of it by reading their websites, but it's talking to them where you will get it.

And I think sometimes this sounds like a daunting prospect to people when they're starting out. What do you mean I've got to ring lots of people? What do you mean? It's like, well, you will learn the industry by doing that. And you will also learn how to sell to them. You will learn what their problems are, you will learn how much they're willing to pay. All of the learning is in those conversations. To have 10 to 12 good conversations, you could do that in a morning. If you really put your energy into it, you could ring 10, 20 people, you could have some good conversations, and what you will learn about the marketplace you're selling to will be unbelievable. You mentioned that service-based businesses, such as consulting, freelancing, are some of the easier ones to start.

Would you recommend that if a person were getting started, they would start by offering a service and then later pivot into selling a product? One of the things that's talked about in entrepreneurship is selling your time. And if you're doing a service-based business, you are selling your time. and when I was running the training business, to start with, it was just me running the training courses, and I would sell the training course, and I would run the training course, and I would be paid for my day to run that course. And at the time, it was about $1,200 for the day, which is a pretty good rate, but you're selling your time, and there's a finite amount of time. The difference to a product is you can sell multiple products at the same time, and there's not a scale piece

with time in the same way as there is selling a service. So there are benefits of selling a product, but the downsides of selling a product is the design, the development, the manufacture, the warehousing, the shipping, and all of those different elements. There's actually a lot that goes into product-based businesses, which things have changed. And you can use services like fulfilled by Amazon, FBA, to have your product housed and shipped by them. And there's different services to make it easier. But it's a lot more complex than ringing someone up and saying, would you like to buy a training course? They say yes, and then you turn up and deliver it. There's a lot less moving parts. So I think there's pros and cons depending on what you choose.

the biggest change in the product world, it's not really a new thing. It's been around a long time, but Kickstarter and other services like that have allowed you to sell products before you've actually created them. So if you can create a good marketing video and you're good at getting people to visit that page,

you can sell the product before you've built it, which is very similar to the stuff on the other side with the service base. businesses. There are pros and cons to both. The question I would be asking your audience is if you're going to start a business, pick something you actually enjoy doing. Depending on you are on your career, there will be a need to make money quickly or not. And it depends, I guess, Paula, how far down the financial independence route are your audience? Because let's say they're just starting out. will they have a need to earn money to be able to fill up the financial independence war chest

and to be able to live? Whereas if they're further down the path and they're 75% of the way there to FI, you would be making a completely different decision because you have far more time to be able to make that idea work and develop it over a period. So I think that's really important for the people listening to consider is where are they? Are they trying as a side hustle? Are they already getting towards FI or not? And how quickly do they need to earn money? Because that will influence the decision of which business to go for first. I noticed when you described the graph that you talked about, the line of how interested are you or how excited are you in this, and then the line of how quickly can it become profitable. I thought it was interesting that the question that you use is how quickly can it become profitable rather than, how profitable could it ultimately be or how scalable is it? Why is that? I guess because at the pop-up

business school, primarily we help people who are not doing very well financially. So they tend to be unemployed or struggling or they need to make money faster. So I think I'm just trained to ask that question, how quickly do you need to make money or not? See, if you were starting a YouTube channel, a YouTube channel is actually a slow burn thing to make money at. It's not something you're going to make a fortune at in the first year. It's something you're going to spend a year building. If you're doing it as a side hustle, that might be fine. But if you're doing it as your main project and you need to pay rent next month, that's not a good idea. That's not a quick way to make money to be able to pay your rent. So I think that question of how quickly

can you earn money comes back to what's your situation and how quickly do you have to earn money. The second part is in terms of the volume of profit that you can actually make, a YouTube channel can make a ridiculous amount of money if you want it to. And actually nearly every business out there, you can make large amounts of money if you want to. So it's not actually that bigger differentiator between ideas. Because if you were to build a cleaning business, you could build a multi-million dollar cleaning business. You could build a multi-million dollar product business.

You could build a multi-million dollar YouTube channel. All of these things are possible. So if your question is how much profit could you potentially make, well, it's not really a differentiator between the ideas. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. The holidays are right around the corner, and if you're hosting, you're going to need to get prepared. Maybe you need bedding, sheets, linens. Maybe you need serveware and cookware. And of course, holiday decor, all the stuff to make your home a great place to host during the holidays.

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It's about not being just one thing, but many things for our customers. Big Bank Muscle, FinTech Hustle. That's your commercial payments, a fifth-third better. If a person tests an idea, but nobody buys it, does that mean the idea is wrong or does that mean they're marketing it to the wrong people? It could actually be a whole host of different things. You're exactly right. It could be that they're marketing to the wrong audience.

It could be that they've got the pricing wrong and they're asking for too little or too much. It could be that they got the marketing message completely wrong and they've decided to market something about the product or the service that the audience doesn't actually want. But that doesn't mean they don't actually want the product or service. It just means they've marketed the wrong aspect of it. one of the ways to do this you need to review the mini experiment to work out what went wrong if it didn't work

and we have a saying at pop up business school which is every no is a learning opportunity so if you've gone and pitched your product or service and someone said no that's the time to learn that's exactly the point to go okay cool i understand you don't want it this is brilliant thank you for telling me straight answer i'm a new business can you help me to learn i'd love to know what was it about my pitch that put you off what was it about the product of service that didn't connect please can you help me to learn and grow and that that there will be gold in that conversation if you can get the other person to open up to you. That was one of my most painful learning moments pitching to a big company. I did exactly that and it was fascinating what I learned.

What happened? Tell me about it. I decided that I wanted Twitter to sponsor pop up business school. So I did what any sane person would do and I went on Facebook and asked if any of my friends worked at Twitter. And I got introduced to someone at Twitter. It was really quite fortuitous. We had a conversation. He said he'd find the right person to speak to. He found me the right person to speak to. I approached him. I heard nothing back. I approached him again. I heard nothing back. I kept going. I'm quite persistent when I want to be paula. Eventually, he said, okay, send me some stuff. So I sent him some stuff when we arranged a phone call. I got on the phone with him and it was one of the best phone calls

I've ever had. He was buzzing. I was buzzing. It felt like it was a match made in heaven. I was just, this is perfect. And I came off the call thinking, we have got this.

This is amazing. Two days later, he sends an email saying, thanks for your information and your stuff. It's a pass for Twitter. And my heart, sank. I felt, I just, I didn't know what to do. I thought it was a surefire thing. My heart sank. And I think most people see that know as that's it. But I saw it as a learning opportunity. And the

only reason I did is because I've been on so many business courses that I've run. So I ought to take my own advice. And I send him an email saying, we're a fairly new business. I really need to learn. you cannot hurt my feelings. Please tell me. What was it about my pitch that put you off? What did you not like? He wrote an email back and boy, did he tell me very bluntly exactly what I had got wrong in the pitch. And there was one specific bit of the video that I'd sent through that showed people selling products with handwritten signs and his feedback was Twitter is a high-tech company and that's not the image we want associated with our brand. That makes sense. Now I understand. But if I hadn't have chased up, I never would have known that. And that learning, that information allowed me when I went out and

pitched to Microsoft at a second occasion, I did not use the same materials. I changed everything. and I used the knowledge. I never actually landed Twitter. I never managed to do it. But I used the learning from that to help me land Microsoft who sponsored two pop-up business schools the next year. And I think every no is the learning point. And if you treat a mini experiment as a way to get information,

a way to learn, it is a stepping stone to your next success. You mentioned that the first business that you started, You discovered that the marketplace was oversaturated. There was too much competition. And so you pivoted. How does a person know when it's time to pivot versus when they should stick with it and be persistent? Now, this is the question, Paula. This is absolutely the question.

There is this line that if you're not persistent and you don't keep going, then you might miss out on the opportunity that is coming. equally you can what's the expression flog a dead horse I hate that expression it's the expression you keep going even though there's no signs of anything coming to life and I think for me it's

in your mini experiment were there green shoots did you see anything coming from it so you might not have got any sales but did the customers at least say that's a good idea or I could see how that would work or what is it about the mini experiment? You know, were there some green shoots? And I was actually speaking to an entrepreneur who did a mini experiment with a restaurant.

He managed to find an empty restaurant that he was able to do a deal on a month-to-month rent. So he just paid for the month's rent. And he did a month-long experiment to see if he could run a restaurant. He didn't make profit. He did sell lots of. of things, but he also spent lots on the staff, so he didn't make profit at the headline. He actually just about broke even. However, when he shut down his mini experiment, the customers in the town almost through a mini rebellion, they didn't want him to go. They were like, when are you coming back? And some of them were saying, can you make some extra so I can put it in the freezer? I don't want you to leave. So whilst at the headline with profitability, he hadn't got it quite

right, there were green shoots with the customers who loved it. And I think I would say, are there green shoots? Is there something growing? And you get a sense of that. If you've been out there and you've got your product or service and you're trying to sell it and you've run every business that you think could buy it, you've run a thousand businesses, they've all said no. And actually they've said no completely full stop. And the learning is, everyone you said, tell me what I can learn from this and they say, well, we just don't need it. There's no green shoots there. There's nothing. And I would be saying, well, switch quickly to another thing and try another mini experiment. So the test is, is there actually some green shoots or not?

How much time would a person have to devote to starting a side hustle in order to take it from idea to your first $10 or your first sale? I think that depends, Paula, on the complexity of the products or service you're bringing to market. Do you have any ideas, Paula? Can you give me a specific idea? Is there a side hustle you want to try whilst running afford anything? For me, personally no, but I guess I can probably break this question down into a couple of different elements because there is, as we talked about, the distinction between service businesses and product businesses. So let's talk through two examples. Let's talk through an example of a programmer who wants to earn freelance money on the side.

And then let's also talk through an example of somebody who wants to sell, say, maybe socks or candles or face masks on Etsy or online. One service, one product. Let's talk through each. I love that. So let's start with candles because there's a It's a clear product. Let's say you've designed a new scented candle. You've come up with a new scent. You've come up with a new design. You've got your candle.

There is an easy way to do a mini experiment. And that will be to produce one of the candles. So to buy the wax, to produce one, to take some nice photos, to put it on a website, and then to share it with the world and see if anyone buys it. depending on where your skill levels are, that's not going to take very much time to do. Because you can build a free website, a one-page website in an afternoon. You could produce the candle in a couple of days. You can do this in your spare time and you can launch it quickly and then start promoting it.

And I'm a big fan of the expression, fail fast and fail cheap. So if something's going to go wrong, let's get it done quickly and inexpensively. So for our candle example, we've spent a few dollars on wax. We've spent a few dollars on the different bits. We've built a free website. We put it online and we promote it to use social media. We've actually not put that much money or that much time into it. And then we share it with the marketplace and see if we get any feedback or green shoots.

And you can actually put a time limit of a month on that. or maybe even it's two weeks on that and share it as quickly as possible and get it out there. And if it goes wrong and you get no green shoots, it's not cost us much in time, money or energy. But if we do have some green shoots, we can throw into it and go further. In terms of our programmer, the first question is, who do you want to do programming for and what type of programming? because that's going to lead to the marketplace we want to approach. And then we're either going to do that through an online platform

or through some form of personal marketing to find people. We know there's a market for coders. We know there is a market for that type of thing. It exists. So in that instance, I would be very confident that there is a marketplace and it's just a matter of finding them right to marketplace. and I would be saying keep going, we just need to find the right marketplace.

With the candle, we know there's a marketplace for it, but depending on the flavour, depending on your area, depending on how much you're selling it for, it's probably more difficult to know for certain where that is and whether or not you're going to make profit in the long run. But in terms of time, I would say set a time limit for your first mini experiment of two weeks, maybe a month at the end. outside and do that test in your spare time and see how far you get. And then at the end of the

month, we can review, did you sell anything? Did you enjoy it? Did you learn anything? And we can work out whether we want to continue or exit and try something else. So I think having it timeboxed with a two week or a month timeline will allow you to make those decisions and get that learning at a quicker pace. We'll return to the show in just a moment. How do you stand out in a crowded marketplace? As we were talking through the candle example, it struck me that there are probably millions of independent candle makers out there. How do you stand out when there is so much competition? That is the tough thing. It is a crowded marketplace and there are lots of people doing this. there's several ways to do it my favorite and actually what i've built near enough every business

as i've ever run on is i like to deem it do the opposite so if i was the candle maker i'd go out and look at what is every other candle maker doing and then what is the opposite of that so for my pop-up business school nearly every other service out there teaches you you to write business plans and go into debt with loans. So what's the opposite that? Well, you don't need a business plan and don't go into debt, start with sales and make a profit at the start. Right. When I was running a presentation training school business, how does everyone start presentations? They start with their name, what company they work for, and what they're here to talk to you about. And it's really boring. What's the opposite of that? Well, put your name at the end, like stand-up

comedians do and start with your most punchy line. Every business I've run has been what is the opposite of what everyone else is doing out there and how might that actually be a success. So I'd be looking around with the candles going, what's everyone else doing? And then what's the opposite of that that might actually make sense? As we were talking, I was thinking, well, different sizes, different shapes, could we try different flavors, one that came to my was banana and bacon. I'm not sure what that would be like, but we could do a banana and bacon candle. I'm actually tempted to try that. But it's what's the opposite and what's different because you are right. Everyone does the same. And I think this really struck me. My wife and I were

looking for an accountant to do our taxes. We went and we spoke to four or five accountants. And what was interesting, after speaking to four or five of them, every single one said the same thing to us, Paula. They all said, we take care of the numbers so you don't have to. We're proactive, so we won't just wait for you to bring us the stuff, we'll come to you with it, and we'll help you to pay the least tax possible. And it was really easy to spot after a while. every accountant says exactly the same thing. And if I was going to set up an accountancy, I would just speak to five other accountants, work out what they all say, and then do the opposite, because that's going to start to resonate and make you stand out. So what would be an example of the

opposite of that? A marketable opposite, not a, I'm going to make sure you pay the most in taxes. Yeah, that doesn't sound like a great idea, doesn't it? The marketable opposite, this is a good one, Paul. I've never had to sell an accountancy firm before. I think if I was selling an accountancy firm, I would start to think what's the opposite? Because the opposite actually is the accountant takes control of all the numbers so you don't have to.

What I would be probably saying to clients, and we'd have to test this, the only way to know if this would work because I've never sold an accountancy is to try it. I would be saying what we actually do is we help you take control of your own numbers. Because most entrepreneurs don't have a clue about their finances if they're making profit, how they're doing it.

They don't understand the numbers well enough. And they actually just want to ship it out to an accountant. But what I would be talking to people about is how we can help them understand their own numbers, understand and take control of their own finances so that they can make better decisions for their businesses and what they're doing. So we don't want you just to palm it off on us. We want you to become good with your numbers so that you can run your business successfully

in the future and we'll help you do that by working with you to put the systems in place so you can be in control of your finances. So yours would have more of an educational or a coaching component to it. That would be the opposite of the marketing that you've heard. Yeah, the general marketing is we'll take it all off your hands so you can focus on the business, which I actually think does have a negative impact on a lot of businesses because they stop focusing on the numbers and really knowing what's going on with their business. We'd have to test to see if it works. People might reject my idea, but that's the whole purpose of a mini experiment. The idea that popped into my head, as we were talking about the example of being an accountant trying to differentiate yourself, was niching down.

I would imagine being an accountant that specializes in some very narrow subtopic, or being an accountant that is fluent in a foreign language, or being an accountant that specializes in households in a particular geographic area. Those were some of the ideas that popped into my head in terms of that specialization. I love that idea. I think that's brilliant, Paul. And we've even seen it within the FI community where a couple of the accountants, have specialized and gone, I am the accountant for the FI world. And that is absolutely a great way to stand out because there's only a handful of accountants that I could name that are in the FI world and actually get what we're doing. Right. Let's walk through another example.

Let's say you wanted to start a landscaping company. Awesome. So you want to start a landscape company. You enjoy doing landscaping. You enjoy doing the gardening. you want to do that. There's so many different ways. There's so many different customers. The first customer is the consumer, the households that live around you. Depending on where you live, you probably have a ready-made marketplace just on your doorstep if you start to go out and talk to

your neighbours. The second, and I actually used to work for a landscape company that built an entire business out of this. They, in their early days, were doing all sorts of landscaping jobs until they were asked to do a show home for a construction company. And they discovered that doing the show home, the construction company wanted to spend more money on it because it was their sales tool and very important for them. And they actually enjoyed doing it more because they could do it to a higher level. And then they built an entire business. And then they built an entire business. from doing show homes for construction companies. And they went out and found every construction company out there,

told them that they specialized in show homes, that would help them increase the sales of their homes. And that was how they built their business. So if I was going to start a landscape company, and this does assume that you have some skills at doing landscaping, and if you don't, then we need to do some YouTube research and actually learn this stuff. but I would start selling those projects and finding a customer to sell it to.

You do need some materials for landscaping and one of the most important parts of this is you're going to take a deposit from any new customers that say yes to you because they need to pay a deposit to have some skin in the game so that you can buy the materials that you need to be able to actually do that first project. But I think it all comes back to sales, Paula. And I think I'd end up being a bit of a broken record if we continued with the like, what about this industry? What about this industry? Because I'd always come back to who am I going to sell it to and go out there and sell it?

And I think like any business you're starting, the sales is the key bit. And I think it's also the bit that people find the scariest. If I say the word salesman to you, Paula, what's the first thing that? comes to mind? I think of a door-to-door traveling salesman. It's the first thing that comes to mind. Is that a good image of sales? No, and it's also kind of an outdated one. Like in my mind, that image is immediately in the 1980s. Yes, and I think it's actually the image that most people have. I've asked that question around the world in different places, different courses, and people say things like door-to-door salesman, car salesman, window salesman,

sleazy, shiny suits. They have a bad image of what sales is. And I think it's quite interesting. I'm here saying to your audience, if you're going to launch a side hustle, you need to start with sales. But a lot of people have a bad image and think that sales is pushing a product or service

on someone that they don't want. And I think if you feel sales is a bit scuzzy, a bit fuzzy, a bit dodgy, not a nice thing, then it's going to be really tough for you to build a business. And that's one of the first things we need to overcome is the vision of what sales is. How do you overcome that? Let's say that you have deeply internalized limiting beliefs around sales, around making money. What are some of the ways that you can get through those internal barriers? I love your questions, Paula. You ask some great questions. Thank you. This was actually one of the hardest things for me was this exact piece,

the sales bit. I found it paralyzing and tough. I would literally be paralyzed to call people because I didn't want to do the pushy sales bit and I found it so tough, so tough. I had these negative images of what sales was because of some experiences in my past. I used to work for a large photocopy of sales company. And you know on your first day when you join a business, they tell you here, here's the senior salesperson. You can shadow the senior salesperson for the day and learn what they're doing. So they gave me the senior salesperson and I followed him around. and I followed into one of his sales meetings, and we go in and we're meeting the company secretary,

and she is doing a deal for a new photocopier. And we sit down, and the salesman is telling the lady the numbers whilst he fills out the form. And he says, this photocopier is £1,000 a month, and it's a three-year deal. And I'm watching him write this as he says the words. And he wrote £1,000 a month, but he wrote five years instead of three.

And I've seen him do that, and I'm thinking he's made a mistake, do I speak up? But it's my first day. I don't want to embarrass him in front of the customers. So I stayed quiet. The company secretary trusted what he had said and took the paperwork to be signed by the company director. The company director,

she trusted the company secretary, so she just signed it and bought it back. So they signed the deal for five years, not three. And we left the building. Everyone shook hands and we left the building. And as soon as we got outside, I said to the salesman, you know you've filled that form in wrong. And do you know what his response was, Paula? I have a guess, but I'll like you say it. He smiled and he just said, no, I didn't. He just ripped that company off for two years, 24 months, times a thousand pounds. It's 24,000 pounds, which is about $30,000. And this was a few years ago when I was younger, so there was a lot of money back then. But he'd ripped that company off. And I was shocked. So we got back to the office. After I'd separated from him, I went to the

sales manager and told him exactly what had happened and said like this is wrong we can't do this and the sales manager just smiled at me and said he did a good job oh i spent six months there trying to sell photocopiers but i just couldn't do it yeah and i had such a scuzzy horrible feeling about the word sales and what it was and it was so deeply ingrained. And actually, it wasn't until a lot later, I was on another training course. And the concept that stuck with me and the way I look about sales now is sales for me is finding someone with a problem that I can fix. So I go out there and I say, I've got this thing. Do you have the problem that this thing fixes? If they don't, I move on quickly,

or I ask them if anyone else they know does, if they do have the problem, then I'm genuinely excited to help them fix the problem. I'm not selling to them. I'm trying to uncover if they have a problem, and I'm trying to work out if I can fix it. And if I can't, I move on quickly. And I think that for me has helped me feel a lot more comfortable about selling

because I know every time I go and sell I'm fixing someone's problem and I'm making the world a little bit better and sales for me is just about uncovering problems to fix and make the world a better place

it's not about forcing products on to other people but it took me a long time to work out that and I think it was because I was trying to sell to everyone I met whereas I shouldn't be selling to anyone,

I should be asking them questions to find out if they have a problem. And if they don't have the problem, then I should be moving on to the next person. Well, we're coming to the end of our time. Are there any final takeaways that you would like to leave this community with? It has gone so quickly, Paula. I know. It has.

I think in terms of final takeaways, what I would love to say to your afford anything community is, starting a business doesn't have to be such a daunting task if you start by doing a mini experiment. And if you've had an idea for years, why don't we do a test in your spare time and see if it works? And you will learn a huge amount from running that test and you will soon learn, did you make money? Did the customers respond well? And did you enjoy doing it? if you can answer yes to those three things, then you might have the inkling and the start of a business. If it didn't go well, if you didn't make any money, the customers didn't like it and you didn't even enjoy doing it,

well then chalk it up to a mini experiment and learning and move on to the next thing. Starting a business doesn't have to be a huge daunting project if you break it down and do some experiments to test to start with. And that's what I'd love to challenge your community to do, Paula. is to try some mini experiments and start. It's the only real way to learn is to get in the game. Well, thank you. Where can people find you if they would like to know more about you? If they'd like to know more about me,

I've launched a podcast with Brad and Jonathan over at ChooseFI and it's called Rebel Entrepreneur. Or they can find out about the pop-up business school at popup business school.co.uk. And there's lots of information we've written on there that will help people start businesses and get going. Excellent.

Well, thank you so much for spending this time with us. It's a pleasure. I love the podcast, Paula. Please keep doing the good work. Thank you, Alan. What are some of the key takeaways that we got from today's conversation? Here are seven.

Number one, conduct mini experiments. If you're on the fence about what side hustle to venture into, try thinking of any attempt not as some big daunting task that you need to get right from the get-go, but rather as a mini-experiment.

You run a mini experiment to see whether that idea works or not. The language is very important because if it's an experiment, you're okay to fail because that's just feedback and then we'll do another experiment. And it makes it easier and takes away some of the paranoia around a business being perfect before you launch it because you're just doing an experiment. The word experiment inherently gives you permission to quote unquote fail. It's okay if it doesn't work out because it's an experiment. You're in the research phase.

You don't need to be successful. The sooner you run this experiment, the sooner you can dive in wholeheartedly with confidence and data to back it up. Or pivot to something else. And speaking of pivoting, when should you do that? Alan recommends running your experiment for two to three weeks and seeing if any green shoots come from it. So even if there weren't sales, were there any promising signs? Was there positive feedback? Was there something to indicate that you may have slightly missed the mark, but with some

tweaking, it could work. If so, make those tweaks, iterate, try again, run another experiment. If not, if all you heard was silence and there was no progress, you could consider making a bigger pivot. And remember, there's a difference between your friends telling you that they think your idea is interesting versus your friends actually buying whatever it is that you're selling. If they are unwilling to buy, you might want to take that as more honest feedback. And if you're not selling anything yet, you can test this in other ways. Are they willing to read your blog posts, subscribe to your newsletter? Do they actually enjoy the content?

Will they sign up? Will they give you your email address? Will they, in some way, show engagement? Those are all factors that you would be looking for as you run these mini experiments, and that is key takeaway number one, run mini experiments. Key takeaway number two. Sell before you're ready. Alan wanted to know whether or not creating curriculum

to teach business would be worth his time. So he sold the idea before he created any of the material. In doing so, he was able to validate the idea before investing a ton of resources into it. People think you need to have the complete thing ready before you sell it. And that's just not true. There is a way to sell it before you build it. And if you do that, you know you have a customer. You don't need to have the entire solution figured out before you start pitching it. You can sell an idea or a prototype. Going back to the example from the interview, if you have the idea of a podcast that you want to start like my friend does,

but she has no audience, make a one-page website, describe what the show will be about, and place a contact form on there for anyone who wants an update when the show launches. Then see if people are willing to give you their email address. That's a way that you can sell before it's created, or in this case, get some type of buy-in. some type of engagement before it's created. Remember, products and services are all iterative,

and your first go at this won't be your final one. But by putting it out there before you're ready, you'll be able to learn a lot more about what it is that there's a market for you to create. And so that is key takeaway number two. Key takeaway number three, do more, research less. Doing more yields better results than continuously running Google searches. you don't want to get stuck in analysis paralysis,

and you will oftentimes learn the most by doing. Now, of course, this doesn't mean go in with no knowledge. You need a certain basic level, but beware of getting stuck in the analysis paralysis loop. By getting out there, by trying something, by testing something, that will give you an amazing boots-on-the-ground education, and you can do this whether you're B-to-B or B-to-C. For B-to-B, Allen recommends picking up the phone and calling businesses,

are they interested in what you're offering or not? As you talk to several people, you may notice a theme arise. What are these individuals saying? What are they not saying? Listen and adjust your offering to the next person based on what you learn. If it's a service-based business, I'd just get out there and see if people would buy it. If no one buys, you haven't really lost anything apart for some time and energy. If someone buys, you've got some business.

you will learn more from a one-hour conversation with a customer than you will from weeks and weeks and weeks of Google research. If you're interested in offering B2C and you followed Alan's advice on the mini experiment, then you might have the email addresses of, let's say, 30 people who are interested in what you're offering. So connect with them. You could ask them if they're willing to talk to you on Zoom or on the phone for 15 minutes about why they're interested in what you're offering and what they're hoping to gain from it. what problem they hope it will address. It's important to reach out to your potential clients or audience to really gauge what you're doing right and where you're going wrong. You won't know until you put your idea out there and get started. Getting stuck in research mode, analysis paralysis, isn't going to help.

There's a certain amount of research that is helpful, but after that, it plateaus or even starts to work against you. And so actually getting out there and doing something, that is, key takeaway number three. Key takeaway number four. Think of every no as a learning opportunity. If your mini experiment didn't go well, how can you figure out why it didn't go well?

Alan recommends reaching out and asking for more information. So if you're at the end of your mini experiment, ask for feedback from anyone that engaged with your product or service, regardless of whether they wanted that or not. If you're on a phone call, for example, with someone who isn't interested, ask them what would make them interested? approach it from a different angle, ask them what their biggest struggles are. Every no is a learning opportunity.

So if you've gone and pitched your product or service and someone said no, that's the time to learn. That's exactly the point to go, okay, cool, I understand you don't want it. This is brilliant. Thank you for telling me straight answer. I'm a new business. Can you help me to learn? I'd love to know what was it about my pitch that put you off? Rejection can be hard to deal with, but remember the word experiment.

It's not a failure. It's an experiment. You're trying different things and you're seeing what sticks. You're also learning a ton in the process. It's an education. And even if you pivot into a completely new direction, there will probably be lessons that you're learning that apply regardless of what it is that you ultimately end up doing. There's nothing to be lost by learning.

So stay in that constant mode of curiosity, that constant mode of learning. That is key takeaway number four. Key takeaway number five. Overcome your fear of sales. A lot of us have a negative reaction to the word sales or salesperson. It seems sleazy or scuzzy. And we picture somebody like the former coworker that Alan described or the person who ripped a customer off. That's money negativity.

The idea that sales are a zero-sum game, that if one person benefits, that benefit must come at the expense of the other person, that's zero-sum-limited thinking. The best type of sales are offering something that the recipient gets amazing value from, offering something that makes the recipient feel like, wow, I'm so glad I got this. And I'm using the word recipient broadly to refer to any client, customer, audience member, any person whom your product or service reaches, how can you create value in that person's life? How can you help them overcome their obstacles? How can you help them solve their problems? That is what it is to sell. Sales for me is finding someone with a problem that I can fix. So I go out there and I say, I've got this thing. Do you have the problem that this thing fixes? If they don't, I move on quickly or I ask them if anyone else they know does.

If they do have the problem, then I'm genuinely excited to help them fix the problem. It's about actually wanting to help someone, wanting to improve their life in some way, to give value. It is absolutely not about forcing a product or service down their throat. You don't want to force a product or service that they don't need or want onto them. but if there's somebody out there who could improve whose life would be better if they encountered this thing that you have to offer, then don't hold back the gifts that you have. Don't hold back what it is that you have to offer because that could be of massive benefit to many people.

So if you want to help people, if you want to create lasting changes in the lives of others, and you create a product or a service that could do that, well, hold on to that conviction and always come from an authentic place. And as long as you do that, as long as you're constantly thinking about giving value and being authentic, then you're not going to be like Alan's former co-worker. You're going to be real,

and that means that you'll enjoy what you do, you'll believe in what you sell, and the more value that you give to others, the more value you receive in return. And so that is key takeaway number five. Key takeaway number six, differentiate to stand out. One of the obstacles that you might face is an oversaturated or overcrowded marketplace.

So in some way, you will need to differentiate yourself from everybody else out there who's trying to do or is doing a similar thing to what you are. You'll need to find what makes you unique. My favorite, and actually what I've built near enough every business as I've ever run on, is I like to do. deem it do the opposite. Alan suggested offering a twist in your products or services, something that you haven't ever seen done before. And there might be reasons that you've never seen it done. Maybe other people have tried it and that twist wasn't successful.

But you're not going to know unless you try. That's what the mini experiments are for. As I mentioned during the interview, another way to differentiate is to niche down, get very, very clear on who you want to help and why. You're not going to resonate with everyone, but that's not your goal, nor should it be. resonating with everyone likely means that you're diluting your message. If your message resonates 100% with 100 people, rather than 30% with 1,000 people, that's way better because you will be a great fit

for those whom you do serve. So, differentiate yourself. That is key takeaway number six. Key takeaway number seven, consider what type of business fits your lifestyle. A lot of people fail to consider how a side hustle will fit into their existence. lifestyle. Do you have the time to dedicate to this? How much time? Where is it going to come from? What will you not do in order to start this side hustle? Do you have money to invest in it? Where is that money going to come from? Is there a cap on either, either time or money or both, that you want to

set? And what is that cap? Let's say they're just starting out. Well, they have a need to earn money to be able to fill up the financial independence war chest and to be able to live. Whereas if they're Further down the path and there's 75% of the way there to FI, you would be making a completely different decision because you have far more time to be able to make that idea work and develop it over a period. Sure. Some people go all in immediately and they start working 100 hours a week between their day job and their side hustle combined. But you don't have to do that. Figure out your boundaries first. Think about your time right now. Realistically, where can you fit this new project in? What's one thing that you can do differently within the way that you

organized your week that would allow you to get started? Remember, to begin, you don't need to dedicate a ton of time. Just try a mini experiment, a few hours here and there over the course of a week and see how it shakes out. You can also reach out to others who are already doing what you want to do and ask them for a realistic take on the business, particularly on the getting started aspect. Just as there's a way to climb the wrong career ladder, there's also a way to climb the wrong entrepreneurial ladder. But the good news is there's also a way to climb the right one. And it comes with being very intentional about how you manage your limited resources, including

your money, your time, your focus, your energy, and your attention. Those are seven key takeaways from this interview with Alan Donagan of Popup Business School. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for being part of the Afford Anything podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a friend or family member. Ask them to subscribe to the show notes. We offer our show notes at Afford Anything.com slash show notes, where you can get a synopsies of every episode as they come out delivered directly to your inbox.

And so that way, if you ever want to read an overview, read some of the highlights, have an archive of what some of our past episodes are, have timestamps for the Q&A from the AskPala episodes. If you want that information, those resources sent directly to you for free, you can get that by signing up for our show notes at afford anything.com slash show notes. Share this episode and share that with a friend or a family member. Make sure that you're subscribed to this podcast in whatever app you're using to listen to this show. Just hit the subscribe button or the follow button in your favorite podcast playing app. And please leave us a review. If you want to discuss today's episode, you can chat about it with other awesome people who are in our community.

at afford anything.com slash community. It's a great place to be in community with people while also simultaneously taking a breather from social media. You don't have all of the noise of social media clanging at your brain. You can just hang out with people, talk about FI, talk about debt payoff, talk about early retirement, talk about side hustles, talk about whatever you want to talk about. We have Zoom happy hours.

We have a book club going. We've got great camaraderie and companionship. It's all at the Afford Anything community, which you can access. It's all free at affordanything.com slash community. Thank you so much for being part of this. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast. I will catch you in the next episode.