Month: June 2016

  • Own What You Build.

    Working with a lot of people in a lot of different industries, a few years ago my focus was shifted towards the music business while working with Ryan Leslie on a project of his.

    In doing so, talking to him and looking at what he’s doing I came to realise that being independent in business takes longer… But results in owning more of your sh*t.

    What I mean? 

    Owning something could make the difference when your business is on the line. Let’s create a theory here: you start a website, buy a domain and order hosting from a hosting company like GoDaddy. You pay them to deliver a product and you become their customer and you’ll be depending on their services. They own the server, they are the registrar (fancy word for domain registration company ;)).

    You run your business as normal, but one month you’re short in money to pay your hosting bill. 

    Wouldn’t it be better at that moment to have your own your servers and be your own registrar rather then using another company’s resources?

    It would wouldn’t it?

    Am I saying that everyone should go out, start their own hosting company and thus “owning” more of their business? No.

    This works for me and Sharon, and let me remind you: everything works. Not everything works for YOU.

    We’re in the service business. We create tools and softwares that we need to run our own business from our little home near The Hague. No fancy cars, no fancy clothes, no extra rooms. About 75% of our home is dedicated to our business like full-size desks with 27’ iMacs, seating area to receive guests, a (very small) kitchen where we cook and a tiny bedroom that barely fits the bed we sleep in.

    It’s all we need. Can we get a bigger house? Sure. But we don’t want to just yet, it’s sowing season ;).

    Point of my post is, that in the end it’s better to have as much control as possible and if you want control, you’ll have to literally own the process. You’ll succeed where others fail and will make more money along the way…

    The value of this post: How can you do what we do?

    Another theory: you’re looking into sending bulk emails but have no clue who’s good, what works and what doesn’t and you don’t want to find out either: you’d rather manage it yourself.

    Here’s what we did: we started our own email system. Our own opt in forms. Our own lists on our own servers. Our own autoresponder system that does EXACTLY what WE want it to do for our business. We spent hours and hours setting everything up, getting it ready to rumble and making sure we’d achieve the best results possible for our email marketing.

    While working on other projects, we figured out customers needed the same software we needed… So we sold it to them for a monthly fee months ago… AND THEY ARE STILL PAYING EACH MONTH TO RECEIVE OUR EMAIL SERVICE.

    So trust us when we say: It’s worth it owning your sh*t.

  • The Definition of Success

    Back in high school, I always thought of success.

    “I’m 14 now, in just 2 years I’ll get my scooter certificate and in 4 I’ll have a car, live on my own… How am I gonna do all that?”

    People seem to consider success a privilege and something that comes easy while in fact: it’s not… It’s f*cking hard.
    Working from home with Sharon, we get challenged every single day. We run one overseeing the company, under which we’ve divided our projects and products amongst each other to manage, and we have work stacked up to the ceiling.

    I wake up at 7 AM (Sharon 7:30 AM… It’s not fair 🙁 ) and go to bed around 2/3 in the morning, only to wake up at 7 again to start the hustle again. It’s a never-ending story, and I can safely say: that never-ending story is our success.

    But are we privileged to have success? Are we entitled to succeeding? No.

    We came from nothing. Our parents have or have had normal day jobs, don’t come from wealth (they are entrepreneurs though) and we didn’t have any investors in our company: we built it ourselves. From scratch.

    And yes, it’s hard. It’s tiring. It sucks when I work on a project, and can’t get that one pixel to move over just how I’d like it to, or when an audience doesn’t perceive the result as I would have wanted to… That’s what keeps me going. If it’s not perfect, or not working properly: I make it perfect. That’s my motivation!

    But what is success? Is success being “rich”, living the “dream lifestyle on the beaches of the world”? Being able to stop at a certain age because you’ve made it?

    For me, success is the fact that I can do whatever we want, whenever I want to do it. I’m not limited by a day job, I’m not limited by paychecks and I’m not limited by the constraints of everyday life. That is success to me.

    The money is cool and everything, and it opens a lot of doors… But it’s not a success. It’s leverage.

    Fact is: you only realize this over time. If you have an entrepreneurial drop of blood in you, the first thing that should come to mind is: how can I help solve a problem, and how can I then monetize that solution? Now how fast I can get 1000 customers. If your product is good enough to withstand the test of time, those 1000 customers will come on its own.

    Do you need 1000? Nope. You only need 100 people at $1000 to earn a six-figure income. But what do you have to give them, which will solve a problem they have which they are willing to pay for!?

    Not a product you can sell 1000 copies of “How to get rich in 30 days”, scamming people out of their money only for them to realize that it takes time, hard work, and effort to succeed.

    You need something that brings value and helps you customer succeed in whatever your product promises to do.

    In general, I think that’s what success is: creating something that people want. Once you have that, get have the right people around you, hustle your ass off pitching your product to 1000 people in a row and STILL tell your story with the same enthusiasm, making sure that your “thing” is of top quality so people will spread the word FOR YOU but most importantly: something that your consumer has an emotional connection with.

    Success is hard to define, even for me in this very post. I’m writing at 7:15 AM, and I can’t wait for Sharon to wake up in 15 minutes so we can discuss our upcoming day… And to start THE HUSTLE.

    How do you define success!?