We’re going to start a community for like-minded individuals interested in doing something creative to protect themselves from the post-pandemic slowdown. There are three levels of information. One is on the startup frat page, the business page, which is a public page. So you go to facebook.com/startupfratcom.
If you’re in the group and would like to join the public page, you can do that. That’s optional because most of the information on the public page is already posted inside the group. If you’re reading this on the public page or somewhere else and want to be a part of the group, go to facebook.com/groups/Startupfrat. That’s the group.
Levels of Information
The public page is level one. If you get all the information in the group, you’ll realize that even that free information is worth more than any education you will get outside despite paying money to management people. Then you have information that is a little more focused because I’m trying to get an idea of the people who are a little more serious. I want to provide this information only for them. That’s the second level.
There is a level three information provided in the webinars, which is highly focused on actionable information. So if you want information, you need to be there on time. You need to check the announcement page. The group has grown pretty big, so I don’t know if you are able to see some of the posts or not. You need to do this every day at least once or twice because if you miss the announcements, you won’t be able to attend the webinars. The information from the webinar will not be sent to you on WhatsApp.
All of these levels of information is free. If you are in the group, and you’ve gone through some of this information, if you think this is the industry’s best possible information not available anywhere, I would like you to interact with me and put a comment.
All of this stuff that I’m giving you, just to show you to focus your attention, is coming from hundreds of crores rupees worth of business building in the last 15 years. This is real stuff that works in all the markets; it works in the US, India, Southeast Asia, and all the markets that I’ve ever worked in. This is real stuff. You want to follow it. You need to pay attention to it. What you need to do is be very active in the group. Because the organic reach is not there, I cannot reach my message to you by force because Facebook is not probably showing all the posts to everybody. Organic reach is dead, so you need to check for the announcements and attend the webinars if you’re in the group.
How to attend the webinars on Demio
If you want to attend the webinars on Demio, you need to clean out your cache because the webinars are heavy on the browser. So what you need to do is clean your cache and preferably attend the webinar on an incognito window. Open an incognito window and paste the webinar link. The experience will be smoother for you. You will be able not to be thrown out of the room because if your internet connection is heavy, Demio disconnects you.
Niches and Sub-Niches
We are going to talk in detail about the niches and sub-niches. Once you hone down on where you want to work, where you want to strike, and what will be a message, which is your arsenal, the rest is all easy. The rest is a game of just assembling tools and technologies and getting your message out.
If I can do it, you can do it because I’m technically challenged, but I’m learning how to do this myself. Now what you want to do is have that PDF with the hundred-plus sub-niches whenever you’re selecting or just thinking about owning down on the industry, or sub-industry type. I’ve given branching into the very depths if you go down into the vent. The deeper you go, the easier it is to do business because the more specialized you are, the easier it will be. You may not have all the skills right now, you may not know everything like I wanted for the last ten years, I wanted to do some kind of internet marketing, but I was not good at it. I was not good at the technical stuff, but I’ve trained myself up to do that in the last two or three months, and I am 80% good at it now. You may not have all the skills or the specialty, to begin with, but you need to read a few books or take a few courses. To get your knowledge up, you don’t need to be a specialist if you have better knowledge than the average person, which is good enough.
H-shaped Strategy
So what we are going to do is we’re going to use an H-shaped strategy. The first thing is you need to have a wide enough knowledge about a range of topics in that sub-industry. Then you need to have profound knowledge in one area in that industry. In my case, I have a huge amount of all this variable knowledge for marketing. Then I have a very high level of knowledge in high ticket sales where if you sit in front of a customer how do you get them to sign a cheque of 5 lacs or ten lacs of 15 lacs. It has been my speciality in my career. So I know a lot about this, and I know a little bit about other areas like marketing and how to get your message.
Then what you do is you have to go wide in the market to get your message to enough people who may not even know that you exist. If you get your message in front of enough number of people, you will be able to get your market. You will be able to build your presence. All the specialization will be built inside the market with paying customers. So, no need to worry about that. You don’t need to be an expert, but you need to select your niche based on your passion or area of expertise.
Do you think you’ll be able to work in that area for another 5-10 years? Because at the end of the day, business is a long-shot game. I give you all the 60-day and the 90-day plan, but unless you have a long vision, the 60 days will not work.
Discover your Area of Passion
Michael Jordan was the number one player in basketball, or maybe Kobe Bryant was the number one player in basketball not because they were the smartest and they were born with the right skills because they loved the game so much that they were willing to spend 20 hours a day practicing, even in the offseason. So if there is an area of passion for you like this is an area of passion for me, I’m not getting paid for this, but I want to make sure I built out at least one video every day. You need to pursue that.
We are going to use an H-shaped approach. If you’re, right now, thinking and doubtful and wondering, I’m getting a lot of messages. I have doubts but don’t worry about it. Just select anything that you believe is an area of liking for you. I’ll just give you a quick trick on finding out what’s an area of liking for you.
You go into your YouTube, internet, and bank credit card history and observe what have you spent your time and money on when you were not working but relaxing. What content do you prefer to watch on YouTube? What content do you prefer to watch on the internet? What is the stuff that you buy with your credit cards?
Example
A friend of mine is a very well-established dentist in Chandigarh, and he’s like, tell me something more creative to do. We went into his credit card history. The only thing he buys is golf magazines. He plays a little bit of golf, not very much. He can’t hit the ball very well, but he still buys many golf magazines on the internet. I’m like maybe, golf is your passion, and he’s like, well, I’m 40 years of age. I cannot become a golf player at this stage. I said you don’t need to have that kind of mentality to be a player. Think about the ecosystem. Think about it at an ecosystem level. If you have golf, you have golf apparel; then you have golf coaching. Then you have online golf videos on how to perfect your swing. Then you have golf magazines and golf sponsors. All of this forms the ecosystem.
So there is one point of entry where you’re going to get in like for example, this guy reads a lot of magazines, so he knows what kind of magazine content makes a good magazine and if he realizes that there are only one or two golf magazines in India and maybe 100 golf magazines in the US. Then there is space to enter at the magazines’ side, you enter there, and then you go wide, and then you use your one big skill, and you get it to in front of enough number of people, that’s an H-shaped strategy.
Build an Ecosystem
So think about it from an ecosystem perspective, as somebody had said about agriculture. That’s good. But agriculture does not mean that you’re going to do all the farming. Do you want to think about where all the best seeds are coming from? What are all the bio-friendly ways of pest control in the fields? How can you maximize? So there’s technology-based farming that’s there in the US. How can you maximize the yield per hectare? Fifty-plus years of advancements in farming in other countries. We (Indians) are still doing manual labor, manual farming, chemical pesticides, and fertilizer. Our yield per hectare is pretty low in most areas as compared to the world standard.
Just think about the whole ecosystem. Do you have clout in the supply chain? Can you get products that are fruits and vegetables over to the end retailer faster? Do you know more retailers than most people know? Do more they have clout in more cities to get your stuff out faster and get it sold faster. Do you have some expertise to get organic at a cheaper rate because it’s organic and you don’t use pesticides and fertilizers? 3/4 of your crop or 3/5 of your crop may be destroyed because you’re not using chemical fertilizer or pesticide. So that means whatever crop is left, it’s 100% organic. If you’re doing 100% organic farming, it is two and a half times more expensive than any other selling brand.
So how to bring that cost down? Can you create some videos or material around that? So what you do is you build your influence using that information. Then you pull in the interest, and then you go ahead with whatever your offerings may be. We always recommend you go in with at least three offerings because the way the market is changing, any one offering may fail. That’s how you position yourself in the ecosystem.
It’s making me seem that
- You’re more myopic in your view that you’re thinking only linearly, only in one area
- You are a little bit scared. You have a little bit of fear. Hey, what if I choose my niche wrong? Can you help me choose my niche? Don’t worry about it.
You cannot go wrong. As far as building a business is concerned, most principles are the same. The same principles were used in dealing in real estate in 2007, or the same principles are used working with startups or the same principles are used today. So the principles of collecting information, making it packaged and building products around it and making it consumable by a large number of people, the principles are the same. Even if you go wrong in the niche, you can always change that. It will take you another 30 days or so to change your approach.