How to Start a Digital Business | Watch Before You Start!
money is not really the issue it's more people problems right operations processes etc that's why bureaucracy is so rampant I guess for a lot of larger organizations whereas for startups they have challenges but they're different and usually, it's to do with cash flow for a startup hey guys welcome back to my channel now in today's episode you'll meet my good friend George Samuels now he was a freelancer who started an animation business to then going back to a corporate job and learning some more skills and developing himself before going all in back into the entrepreneur world so listen up as he shares his journey in starting his own marketing agency going from a one-man band to building a team as well as starting an app business where he's busy raising funds so it's a different kind of entrepreneurship journey so listen up as he shares some interesting story of his own startup story hey george good to have you on my channel today hi Linh always a pleasure yeah so george we've been friends for like many many many years and you've you've been a nomad traveling everywhere you truly live that kind of time freedom type entrepreneurship and but yeah today i wanted to bring you back to when you because you used to work in a corporate setting and then having to take the leap into starting your own business you went into an agency and they're now even an app so i really want to just take to that journey because people can kind of learn from what could be their path and how could they shortcut it how could they kind of avoid the mistakes that you made so yeah george you want to share a little bit about your background and how you got started in entrepreneurship i guess i stumbled upon it i would say that entrepreneurship found me actually after university at the time i remember i had aspirations to to join disney or pixar to be an animator and i remember in the early days right we were doing explainer videos together that's how that came about but as a part of sort of learning how to promote uh my animated films i then learned about marketing and entrepreneurship as a potential career path growing up at school those options were never really provided to us i remember my career counselor was looking at my grades and all this and say okay well based on your grades these are the sort of careers you should check out but not once did they ever look at sort of like soft skills and other options so i was glad that i stumbled upon entrepreneurship that way because then i realized the sky is the limit when it comes to entrepreneurship itself like literally any idea you have you can turn it into a product commercialize it and and grow it and that's what i really love about entrepreneurship my sort of career path went from the animation side then i i started doing freelancing and trying on an explainer video business and i think that was around the time when we met then i got involved in a few other different jobs which included you know sales marketing community management and then i made my way into the corporate world and there you know i learned more about like communication skills and negotiation and dealing with executives and pitching ideas to people uh in power etc and then eventually i had many colleagues often say like hey i don't know if this is the path for you they kind of saw me doing more than just doing the 905. and so that was always a reminder because i had you know bouts of trying you know for business then going back into a job and trying another thing again and then that i went all in around my 30s early 30s yeah and that's when i moved to singapore right before then i came and stayed in sydney and that was beautiful time always grateful and appreciative since then it's been a wild journey i've just been going all out traveling around set up two businesses now and this is where i'm at yeah that is such an interesting story because i myself kind of took the leap and never came back to corporate again because i every time i felt tempted i just remind myself of the pain of like that kind of feeling like as if i'm in this jail with this box and i never went back but it is really good to see your perspective where you end up going back to the corporate life and then you you know it's never the end all you know like it's not the end of the world because i think sometimes you coming back to the corporate life did you feel like you were able to gain even more knowledge and skills or or connections that you needed to be where you are now 100 so i think my sort of path right involved me going through different stages of business not just with my own but like learning from those who are at those different stages of business so from startups to smes and then into corporate and i think corporate was probably the biggest lessons for me because there you got to see like okay at that stage of a company especially one that's been around 20 30 years you know like how do they operate you know the way that they think is very different money is not really the issue it's more people problems right operations processes etc that's why bureaucracy is so rampant i guess for a lot of larger organizations whereas for startups they have challenges but they're different and usually it's to do with cash flow for a startup and i do kind of equate it to children and lynn you might have a better firsthand experience with this if this truth this is true or not but businesses can be like children in the sense that at the early days you're putting a lot in and there's no like direct return on investment right late nights sleepless nights cleaning up after things and it's not until much later that of course you're hoping that you did the best that you could and then it starts to produce returns so that's kind of been the experience that i've found and having worked in corporate it allowed me to be able to visualize the future and know that okay this is what is possible and because i've gone through that already i know what i need to do in order to get there and just like reverse engineering yeah yeah and it's just a great reminder that everyone's path is so different you can jump into entrepreneurship then you could jump out and learn more things and you can always jump in again it's never like failure the only time you fail is when you give up completely and just never try again so it's really good that you're back into entrepreneurship so then you started an agency fire called right and then tell us more about what was the agency services and then how did you then start into this app business because this is really interesting i wanted you to share about the app as well yeah for sure so for fire when i moved to singapore my intentions with fire was i knew that i wanted to set up the agency the consultancy and i knew i wanted to i wanted it to be at the intersection of sort of the work i was doing with like community management and community building and this emerging blockchain space so at the beginning we were just doing general marketing services right but with sort of the angle of like community now fast forward a few years it's interesting in this crypto space everybody is talking about communities and the power of community right and then now we're going a step further into the web 3.0 metaverse land right all this stuff so my hypothesis was right that the technology that i saw it would sort of overlap with the community stuff to a point where it's it's getting crazy there was a group that recently banded together called constitution dao and they are looking to purchase i think one of six copies of the us constitution that's being sold at an auction and they've already raised i think about 30 to 40 million dollars in like 24-48 hours random internet strangers came together put this together and managed to raise 30 to 40 million dollars it's kind of a slap in the face for many people who are in the startup world right trying to raise money yeah but it goes to show how like the technology and the way that people interact online are taking on new forms and because people feel like they have more ownership using blockchain technology and these decentralized autonomous organizations sorry that's what a dow is this is where things are getting interesting so with fire that's how it started and those are the types of services we were building one of our largest clients was the tuvalu government so last year we started phase one of a project with the tuvalu government a discovery phase to explore how we would go about implementing blockchain technology for the future of the nation for their government services right and so that was sort of like the pinnacle of everything that i had in my mind about like what it would lead up to then also last year during the pandemic that's also when i launched a second company called ana which is where the mobile application comes in and ana is a social accountability platform and the thesis behind this as well is that accountability is going to become even more prevalent in this metaverse web 3.0 space because people now have the ability to prove their ownership of things right and all the data is sort of like web 2.0 was like okay we connect the world we make everything more transparent but now we're learning transparency is not enough because there are people still getting away with things right we look at political leaders and what happens so imagine now if the whole world starts using blockchain technology and all of our interactions data we own it but it's also things that can be used evidence for or against the accountability part is going to be sort of the next phase over the next decade and that's what we're sort of building the building blocks for through ana and it's starting out as very like sort of social fun thing right now but it's going to get a lot more serious yeah this is so interesting i'm just really excited to see your journey kind of basic accountability idea then now i can see it's almost like a social media thing and then and then how you've linked it to crypto it's just you i feel like you just got this foresight into the future like you've got this ability now talking about building up your two businesses you went from freelancer and solo printer b you know knowing how to do animation yourself and everything yeah and you're i know you as a friend and i know you're so good at every kind of design element and everything how did you kind of change your mindset into now having teams having people supporting your businesses how has life been with having a team it's so much better having a team of course there's a lot of lessons right that you learn i know you've learned a lot of lessons dealing with different people and and the same is happening for me right now because there's two companies there's two core teams and there may be contractors here and there depending on projects but for the core teams these folks really believe in you so there's a lot more responsibility to sort of show up for them as well and it's good because i guess that's part of the accountability as well and i take a lot of pride and honor in those sort of things because when you do have others that are kind of looking up to you or depending on you to do your bit right as part of the team that's what helps get me up every day and there's pressures too because there are expectations but i know that i'm probably a lot more harder on myself and probably my team will say this that i take on a lot more responsibility and expectations of myself than they might have of me but that's only because i want to go far and there's that quote i don't know if it was nelson mandela right if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go together yeah i love that so in your company as well i know you travel a lot does it mean that your your philosophy is all around time freedom as well like working from home yeah yeah we've definitely set up our processes and systems in a way where we can work asynchronously so when one person's awake the other person is working and vice versa so your written communication has to be really good now the technology is starting to get better whereby even platforms like slack they are have give the ability to record audio like audio notes and video notes now as well yes so these sort of things is helping and using that it's been really i guess helpful for us to be able to navigate i mean time zones can still be not so fun yes because right now you're in mexico or something and your team members in australia where else are your team members australia we had india the netherlands mexico now and one of our clients was in london so there are times where our meetings are covering like the entire day once in the morning afternoon and then also even in the evening yeah so where did you find your team members i mean on my channel people come to me because i love the concept of outsourcing and i'm always of that advocate of you know outsourcing to the philippines because that's what where i outsource for but originally i have people from all over the world overall we haven't needed to to expand further we just stick into that but i'd love to hear from your own experience how did you build up your team how did you find the different people in different countries yeah that's a good question some i had worked with previously others i found through whether it was twitter or whether it was through slack groups so the cto for anna i found him through a slack group it was a bitcoin related slack group just developers and the timing was like kind of just perfect he has been just amazing he's like a one-man army i can't praise him enough but he's much more senior than i am and i guess this goes back again right when you're working with different people it's amazing when you can surround yourself with people who are better than you are in certain activities and if anything i like surrounding myself with those types because we don't have all the answers but we do have the vision and i guess as leaders or founders you kind of have to be the one to set the the direction right the north star yeah so talk about your cto you are partnered with him right you decided that a big component of a success of your app business requires someone very technical right and so you're like instead of paying find someone and paying them on a salary which the startups can't afford at the moment you decided to partner with someone is that how it worked yep i mean there's also a salary component one of the strategies i've used is that because when hiring right it's hard to determine whether it's going to be a good fit long term or not so i always use like the three month like probationary trial period and so during that time i'll pay pay them like normally and depending on what you agree on and then if it works out then you can provide options of like okay you want to continue on full-time salary you want to continue on like part-time but then also have part equity or do you want to go full equity right and in the startup world especially tech it's a lot easier to determine you know equity and salary so if you're building something that is there's a real possibility to scale it up then you can look at the equity side and so that's what yeah yeah so i always share with people my one of my concept with outsourcing is that i don't just outsource smaller parts admin work whatever you can actually also outsource a a department uh you know another hat that you normally had to wear when i started outsourcing angel i didn't really like the lead generation part so i partnered or outsourced the legion part to partner back then and so that i could focus on the back end so it really allows you to scale more and like you said you you bring in talent that you can because you can't wear all the hats you can't do well at everything and so it's good for people to see that outsourcing there's so many ways not just outsourcing little tasks but even roles different things talking about the app thing it comes with a different kind of world where you're raising capital you're having to it's yeah it's so different can you share a little bit so that we can understand more yeah sure so with the app with the the tech startup so with an agency it's a service-based business model right but for an app or for a tech startup this is product led you know and although of course their products digital product yes yes right and there you're looking at yeah scale again you're looking at like total number of users monthly subscriptions etc and if anything it's it's kind of nice you know having come out of like the agency service based model because not everything is is too customized right you know you just got the one product that's the only thing you need to sell and put out there it's just about driving traffic to that one thing sign up and then upsell maybe when they're inside the product with that the fundraising game vcs you learn a lot about just the jargon in general there's a lot of like vc technical terms you have to be looking at contracts a lot more so it's important to have good lawyers behind you luckily i do have some good lawyers uh friends and so shout out to them and then also your networking skills again right because you have to put the pitch decks together you have to do data rooms you have to know how to negotiate things because there's many different ways to skin the cap when it comes to getting money and then also giving equity away so there's a whole bunch of things that like i had observed throughout my career but really it's not until you put yourself into those like those shoes that you understand the pain of raising capital for a startup like this and i think knowing very simple things like at the beginning as a seed stage startup you you have to understand like what is a convertible note what is a safe equity plan yes yeah all of these things i had heard about but i didn't know in you know reality like how you actually uh deal with it and what you need to do but i'm learning very very quickly it could be a slog though yeah so how is your mindset around it are you just kind of taking one day at a time and just trying to figure it all out or yeah how how are you feeling so far in your journey oh gosh you know it's funny right because i think i had the i guess the previous decade to kind of explore different jobs right and business things like even though every day there is like high highs and low lows i am happy with the choices i've made you know because i know that i'm working towards something that i really believe in and it seems like the people that are with me also believe in it but the entrepreneur journey is very extreme we take high risks and again it's just the high highs and the low lows it's definitely helpful if you have a supportive partner but i've learned that i try to take on as much as i can myself because i know there can be a lot of stressors um on the partner and yeah so you know those are those are things that i guess don't get talked about a lot you know the roles of partners yes in in founder journeys but yeah i would say that yeah so are you able to kind of fund from the first business because service is a little bit different it's probably easier to take on a client just deliver some service and you make money fast building up a digital product yes once it's built and it's there yes it you can reap the rewards just like canva right now right it's like a billion dollar business but i'm sure for many years it was a struggle as well so yeah is it good that in a way you've got a different business to kind of fund that as well or how do you you deal with that yeah you know again i kind of treat everything as just like one like series of lessons right it's like education and all of this is just me learning in a very practical manner so the service-based business model is like i just i wanted to try different business models so i've done like service-based business models it was comfortable i was like okay let's try this one because the opportunity presented itself now that i'm here i'm like okay i like it but also there are these new sort of areas that you have to consider there's more like stakeholder management um you know you got to you know be able to talk like with investors properly you've got to be able to take those rejections when you're you know going out to fundraise and what have you but with each conversation it's a lesson you know what works what doesn't so that's probably working yeah so you're still running the agency right as well uh oh of course yes bringing on that team it was about like okay it's gotten to a certain point i can bring in this team and then kind of groom them to take care of that while i focus on the other and yes the short answer is yes it's helpful to have the two or at least multiple sources to be able to i guess you know keep going yeah yeah yeah i mean when it was just fire as you said with a service-based business model you can come up with stuff very quickly but with the startup with the tech startup it's just a different game yeah it's just a different game yeah yeah yeah because i'm for me now that i have two business one is sustainable and it just pays me an income it allows me to kind of have a different startup my youtube marketing service which is even though in it's in the baby stage i'm not stressed out i'm not like trying to you know earn everything i can in this one because you've got that support so it's just yeah it's helpful for me to have the two business before i let you go i want to touch on the topic of networking because when we met i always knew you were like the best networker you're always all about relationship building yeah i too but i like to turn into that strength because i think a lot of people can learn from that what's your approach on business development and networking over the years yeah i mean i've definitely learned to leverage social media a lot more whether it's getting yourself featured in interviews on other people's platforms learning how to like work smarter as well because i think in the early days when i was networking it was a lot of chasing but i think you know one-on-one catch-up you're talking about like yeah yeah yeah but i think once you start establishing yourself as you know i guess an authority or an expert in a certain area it's much easier for people to find you um bring you onto their platforms and then people hear about you that way so there's been a lot of that taking place over the last couple years where i'll be um invited to miami new york all these other places and that just helps like sort of accelerate or amplify the messages and a lot of time i just try to share like my philosophy on things and that's been sort of my way to attract the the right type of people i still think that there's a lot more for me to do and in terms of the growth and learning my social media presence now compared to previous times it was a lot lower i kind of like as i was like developing the businesses right i kind of like went into the background a bit too but as things have been shifting i'm like hey okay maybe i might re-enter but with like a new perspective yeah so yeah yeah and what i like about both of our approaches that we genuinely care about people and we network because we like people and want to keep that relationship going and that's the point i want to bring home because sometimes in business you'll come across people that are networking and want to be in your world but they are only trying to step you're one of their stepping stone and it just really saddens me and i don't think that's the long game that you should play right like any take on your approach on real relationships versus just networking for the sake of networking exactly yeah there's definitely i think an art to it and you gotta network with your own style i believe you know like and leverage your personality strengths because yeah there are some who just come across it can be very annoying right the way that they network and you know it's not genuine and i'm rather like at this point in my life it's more like quality over quantity um so yeah i try to keep that in mind yeah yeah all right well thank you so much george i know you gotta go you're busy man running around different cities and centuries but i'll have all the details of your businesses on the on the bottom of the description so thank you so much george of course anytime then thank you so much for watching guys love to hear from you if you have any questions for myself or if you like more videos like this check them out here you
2022-02-24 04:52
