SFM Ep 38: 12 Start-ups In 12 Months, With Kate & Paul McCann
In this episode, I bring Kate & Paul McCann on the line to discuss a fascinating project they’re doing. Starting out as 1st-time entrepreneurs, they’ve taken on the challenge of starting 12 NEW businesses in 12 months! On the podcast we go deep into exactly why they’re doing it, what strategies they’re using to make sure each of their businesses is successful, and much more.
There are a ton of applicable strategies here for all businesses, at all stages of growth. Tune in and enjoy!
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[powerpress]Resources Mentioned
* http://innerwanderlust.com/
* http://teawitty.com/
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Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at [email protected] and let’s chat.
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Transcript
Jeremy Reeves: Hey, this is Jeremy Reeves with another episode of the Sales Funnel Mastery podcast and I have some pretty cool guests in the line today. I actually have two guests today and they’re gonna be kind of teaming up as we talk about this. Their names are Kate and Paul McCann and I am pretty sure I got — you just told me and I already kind of forget.
So they are from Innerwanderlust.com and essentially I’m gonna let them say exactly what they’re doing but essentially what they are doing is they made a challenge for themselves to do 12 new start-ups in 12 months and be cash flow positive in all of them and they’re actually doing really well so far.
I was kind of reading up on them and looking at their results they’re having so far and it’s pretty fascinating and I love the challenge, number one because I love challenges because I think they’re fun and number two because it’s just a really cool challenge.
They’re also doing all that while traveling the world. So I will let them give you the details on everything. We’re gonna get in depth not only on what they’re doing, but how they’re doing it and the marketing strategies they’re using to, to be cash flow positive in all their various businesses and that kind of thing.
So we will dive into some good stuff, but for now… Kate and Paul, how you guys doing?
Paul: Yeah, really good. Thanks for having us.
Kate: Great. Thank you.
Jeremy Reeves: Nice, nice. I actually didn’t even know when I called them but they’re actually in Vietnam right now. So maybe they can tell us a little bit about their travels too but — tell everybody — give us kind of a quick summary of exactly what you are doing, just expand a little bit on what I brought up earlier.
Paul: Yeah, cool. So this year, yeah I guess we christened it kind of like a year of learning for so and we haven’t started a business before this year but we always have a lot of ideas and we want to throw ourselves into things, but we also wanted a way of measuring it and so, because of the number of ideas, we thought okay we can do more than just one and then the measuring came in with one a month. So we wanted to get something not bad, test the market, see if there was any sort of traction and pivot measure it and then as it worked launch it and yeah so far it’s been going okay and definitely — so we have been doing all this while traveling as well. So we visited 22 countries so far this year and we found that traveling has really, really helped with the inspiration for coming up with and you know, not only the ideas for certain strategies of how to pitch them at particular demographics that we were looking at as well.
Jeremy Reeves: Nice, nice. So tell us about some of the businesses, you don’t have to go through all of them but maybe some of your favorite ones since you launched a whole bunch already.
What are some of the businesses that you came up with so far?
Kate: Yeah, sure. So there has been a real mix, so I think something we have done which probably wasn’t the smartest thing was to do something in a different industry every time.
Paul: That definitely wasn’t planned.
Kate: It wasn’t planned, but it has been great experience. So one of our favorites is a tea subscription service. It is a lose weight tea, focused on health and we traveled around and we visit tea plantations and we sourced the tea which is amazing to do whilst traveling.
Another one is a TV documentary which we are really excited about. So we soar as we are traveling around but you know there is so much happening with start-up scenes around the world but we didn’t actually hear about a lot of it when were both living in London so we felt we really deserve to have spotlight put on it so we decided that we wanted to film around — so far I think we are on the 11th country and it’s gonna be producing to a six-series episodes to show the emerging markets and what’s happening within the start-up ecosystem of each.
Jeremy Reeves: Wow, nice.
Paul: Also, yes, we just got a meeting with different people from different stages of their journey so everything from literally someone here would have an idea of two weeks previous to people who just got funded by a VC to a multi-million dollar start-ups even to people who have accessed their start-ups and speaking to angel investors and venture capitalists and literally you name it. We are just trying to paint a real picture of the ecosystem, so that’s has been really interesting.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah. I love it. It’s really cool. One of the reason that I want to talk to you guys because to me it’s fascinating and one of the things you mentioned — so you never had a business before starting this challenge?
Kate: Yeah, correct. We have never had any experience to this. We both work corporately, but we felt like it was our time and we always wanted to so.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah and that had to be kind of a scary thing. I think it’s hard enough for people just to leave the corporate world to start one business let alone a new business every single month for a year.
How did you get over that kind of fear, anxiety in the beginning? How did you feel like the first week or when you quit your job or when you first started that first business? How was the mental process going through that?
Paul: Wow. Well for both of us, I can speak for Kate on this one, I don’t often do that. There wasn’t really any fear. As Kate said, it was really our time and I for one practically skipped into work the day I handed them the notice and pure excitement of what was the come and before then I worked really, really hard. We both had to kind to get to the level where we were at and we just find really, really unfulfilling I mean what we have achieved in the last 10 months and we are more proud of and though we spent you know, I don’t know, I have spent over 10 years trying to get to where I got in the corporate world and at that point I was very happy with where I got but yeah the last 10 months completely and blows all out the way to be honest.
Kate: I think you know something also we just, we also soar — you know, if we created this 12 businesses and they all failed it’s not — well it’s not a failure. We would deem it as a learning. We wouldn’t have like a big year of learning whereas you know, obviously the goal for us is to create successful businesses but, you know, that’s the full work.
Paul: Yeah, and one thing what we have noticed is, we have actually gotten more time, the further into the project we got, because we have got a lot slicker with what we were doing and so the more and more we have been learning, the quicker we have been able to do a lot of the tasks that before it took us a lot of time, so it’s — yeah, I mean, then we were wrong, it’s still a lot of work and there’s a lot of learning to be done and it’s a strange paradox as it were because you know, when we first started at the first couple of months we just seemed to be not sleeping and really burning the candle at both ends trying to make things happen, whereas now, we are okay but still probably not sleeping that much but it feels like we have more time.
Jeremy Reeves: Okay, nice. I know you are kind of mixing this with traveling, so how do you — when you wake up like any given day or given week maybe that might even be easier. How does your schedule look as you are building all these different businesses, because I know — I know just as a business owner it’s hard enough running one business and keeping everything and keeping all your — figuring out exactly what you have to do every day and how you are gonna keep growing and everything combined.
I am interested to learn how you, number one I guess, the systems that you kind of figure it out since the beginning of the year and then also how you kind of, how you kind of scheduled your time when you are — because you are starting a new one every month so — for example, you are starting a new one in November, so what happens with some of your older ones like the one you started in February, March. How do you kind of keep up with everything and manage it all?
Kate: It’s a good question. So essentially, the idea is we continue working in all the businesses because there is no point of just launching it — you can tell a lot within a month, but I think you can tell more once you have launched it. So it’s right to give it more time to see how it goes, but we were really highly structured I would say without time so we used an app could Wunderlist and we put everything in.
So we are always prioritizing on time. We are still working — actually we always will work around 12 hours a day because we love what we do and I guess the traveling — a lot of people asked us whether it’s a distraction but for us it really stimulates our creativity. So we just meet some of the amazing people and we get a lot of ideas from that as well. So we — I think around like maybe 6 or 7 of our start-ups have been based around sights we’ve seen whilst traveling.
Jeremy Reeves: Oh wow, okay.
Paul: Yeah, because when we started the challenge we had around 10, 11 ideas for businesses and we were like, this will be fun which we only need to come up with 1 more and then as it happens we got rid of about 8 of them, well 7 sorry and so we’ve only actually launched, I think, it’s 2 or 3 as Kate said, that we actually originally had. So everything else has come from traveling but just to expound on what Kate said as well. With the traveling, it maybe keeps us out of our comfort zone because we’re not really ever getting, we are not in a place really long enough to be comfortable.
You always see an opportunity everywhere and perhaps, well I say opportunity, but what I mean by that is, like problems and then problems that you can solve which ultimately become opportunity so…
Jeremy Reeves: Nice. I love that and that — that always inspires me, traveling. For some reason, it brings out so much creativity in you. Even if you bring it down to just a very kind of minimal scale, I know that I write a lot and I’m kind of like an idea generator for — not for new businesses, but for my client projects, my own projects and things like that.
You know learn and show them how to market better and make more sales and that kind of thing, and I know that when I’m stuck on an idea, the worst possible thing to do is sit in my chair.
The best thing I’ve ever discovered in — with coming up with new ideas and you know being creative and inspired is getting up out of my chair usually out of my house and going for a walk or going outside and spending 5 to 10 minutes playing with the dogs or going upstairs and seeing the kids and it’s just something about — and just getting in that new experience and it’s — when you travel it’s just that magnified like a thousand times.
Do you guys do stuff like that like when you are coming up with new ideas and kind of planning your projects, do you do anything like that like make sure that you have that — that you get refreshed by travel before you come up the ideas or do you do that only when you get stuck, any kind of thoughts on that?
Kate: I think because we are traveling so much and we are seeing so many new things, we haven’t really being that stuck on ideas which is being quite nice but it sounds so more — I guess we’ve kind of train our brains to be more entrepreneurial and look for the problems.
So we’re often like jotting down things that we see every day and see if we noticed any patterns which we have noticed from like country to country and market to market just being quite interesting but yes I don’t think — and I think it slows — I don’t think it slowed down at all so, yeah. We always out and about. So you know even if we — when we’re working, will be working in a different place everyday so sometimes we will go to a coffee store and other times, we will visit a co-working space.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, so you’re constantly being refreshed every day. It’s awesome. Nice.
So let’s move a little bit into more of like the marketing you are doing and how you’re being so successful because like I said, it’s hard enough — when people start businesses. There is such a high failure rate with businesses. So tell me, first I can start with how you guys are doing, you don’t have to give like specific revenue or anything like that if you don’t want to but just in terms of like I guess cash-flow positive or negative, tell us and after that let’s talk a little bit about why you think you’ve done so well because I know you are doing really, really well.
Let’s start getting into more of the actual like marketing and why you are being — you’re so successful when so many other people are failing even within — I know a lot of people who have a business and they launched a new product and it doesn’t work and you already have the momentum and you guys are going into all different markets where you don’t have a name or reputation or anything and your successful and pretty much everyone.
Tell us a little bit about that and start I guess with how successful everything has been so far.
Kate: Yeah, sure. So I mean — I think a lot of the things that come from I guess decisions we have made, so one of them is that we decided to be very lean. So we want everything to be pretty much online.
So our outlay cost has been very minimal so — when we say that — it took us 3 months to get cash positive in all the businesses. It was with a small outlay but it was by about month 5, I believe, that we were earning enough to be able to sustain our travels which we were very excited about because we thought it might have taken, we sort of saved up for the whole year just in case because obviously businesses are very hard to get traction and we do work a lot of marketing as well so we we’ve tried everything so we’re all about trying, failing, trying again but some of the things we do has been traveling around to give talks and we tried to get a lot of press so we have been talked about in various different light so that sometimes with our specific business, other times about our challenge, other times about things that we have tried and potentially failed on or not worked or — we also use a lot of social media.
Paul: Yeah and so — and as we’ve been traveling around and it has been good in terms of — I guess getting feedback from — as we’ve been traveling around we got involved in much of the start-ups it seems we’ve been making a lot of contacts as well and from that — we’ve got recently good network now so we can reach out to people who have been there, done that or are actually working in that industry as well where we can look what they’re doing and see if we can adapt it in any way for ourselves and we also go to a lot of meet-ups as well again so surrounding ourselves with like-minded people and trying to get again going back to the feedback on that one and I guess because now we’ve got a number of businesses, there is a lot of chance of cross promotion as well so, I mean, we have [inaudible 00:20:01] and which is Innerwanderlust and then we write about all, you know, learnings, pivots, how well we are doing and I guess tools we used and how we are doing it but then all the individual businesses will write a little bit about them as well but then that allows us to kind of get a bit of momentum behind it when we launch so people could check it out and also with some businesses, our complimentary to all this and so we can kind of overlap them and then double promote and hope that we, you know, we get some traction back from that as well so.
Jeremy Reeves: So, one of the concepts in there that I kind of heard come out several times actually is a lot of your success actually has do with the relationships would that be — would that be accurate?
Kate: Yeah, I would say so.
Paul: Yeah, definitely.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah and I think that is one thing that a lot of people they underestimate is your relationships because you can leverage relationships in so many different ways whether it’s, you know, you know somebody who knows somebody or they can give you like a new contact for example, if you knew somebody who, you know, you are starting a new business in the UK and they — a reporter in the UK, you can get some press or going out and doing joint ventures with them or having them, you know, telling their own audience about your new business and that kind of thing.
Do you have any with — with that particularly, is there any kind of strategy you guys used or you just kind of like genuine and authentic and it’s kind of like you and you just get in touch with them and that kind of thing or is there anything like really specific that you do to build your relationship and that kind of thing or is it kind of just you go and you just start to meet as many people as you can and then just let some of the important relationships kind of float to the top and the other one is kind of fall away — tell us a little bit about that.
Paul: Yeah, I guess — so before we visit any location as well we tend to do a lot of reading, a lot of research and largely most of our time is taken off by research to be honest. From that, we get a good picture of or we will try to get the best possible picture we can of where we are going and then that helps also with filming and then obviously to the documentary and then from that we reach out to key people who we believe will not only I guess help the documentary but also help the particular market and country where we’re in to give the best possible picture and then in doing so it enables us to form good relationships with these people and as you know, they want to promote what they’re promoting and it’s kind of —
Kate: Win-win.
Paul: Yeah, it’s a win-win basically. So they get good exposure from that and then also we both form a relationship and yeah.
Jeremy Reeves: Okay, nice, nice. I love that. Like I said it is something that a lot of people — they’re so busy like kind of just doing the little minutiae that they forget about some of the bigger leverage points like the relationships and that kind of thing.
So my next question is, in terms of — one of the things that you mentioned before was that you focus and you kind of like trained your brain almost to find problems and then you figure out it’s like, number one, okay, where is the problem and you’ve trained your brain to find — to see problems of people are having and then the second part of that is okay, what’s the solution, how can we bring something different to the market to solve that problem in a different way and when it comes down to a business that’s really all entrepreneurship. It’s just finding problems and giving solutions.
So how about when you guys are — when you’re in that process of your — you find the problem what you seemed to be really good at, you seemed to find the problems everywhere and it’s almost like a thing that is not having new ideas but a problem of figuring out which idea to move forward with, and then you come to the phase where you are figuring out the solution.
Do you have any kind of any specific strategy that you use for that or is it more of just like you find the problem and then you come to that, okay what’s the solution and you start researching how other competitors are already providing their solution or how does that go?
Kate: Yeah, so essentially, I mean we used lots of different methods, it all boils probably back down to lean methodologies which we really love because it’s something that you know, you can get something out there very quickly and the whole build measure learn but I guess a lot of the things we do like — I guess we talk to a lot of people so we’re always going to meet-ups as we mentioned before, we do a lot of surveys with our network. We talk to people online and to anyone we’ve met, basically anyone that would listen, but we also look at our competitors, I think that is a big thing that we need to always do because even if they are an indirect competitors there is someone that is may be looking at — doing — solving the same problem but in a complete different way. They’re competitors and maybe there is even someone you can work with potentially to continue to solve the problem with them.
Yeah, but I think first and foremost let’s say people, like talking to people don’t be like — we are not afraid to share our ideas.
Paul: No, definitely. I mean getting feedback is probably one of the most valuable things you can do because you can come up with what do you think is the greatest idea but then if everybody else is like I don’t really understand what that is or perhaps having to see these other people who were doing it or even you know that idea isn’t very good. You kind of need to feel that as quick as possible so you can neither adapt it, pivot, or shelve it.
Jeremy Reeves: Okay.
Kate: Let’s try and make this quick as possible.
Jeremy Reeves: Okay, yeah, yeah. So how long — when you get an idea, say December 1st then it’s time to launch that new — that new project. How long is it from when you say, okay, it’s time to start working on this until it’s actually live in the marketing place.
Kate: It’s usually within the month but it could honestly be quicker because you can learn a lot free market very quickly like through the surveys. You talk into people if you know you put all your focus into it. We both believe that once you launch something you actually learned a lot more because that is when you know you are actually asking for people to potentially pay for something or you know to be a part of something that’s when you learn the actual truth.
Paul: Yeah, definitely and also I think, not too sure who said this quote but it makes a lot of sense which is and “It is not to be perfect, it just has to be done.†I think you can spend so much time trying to get something to look absolutely pristine and perfect and you know, something that perhaps you want to take out for dinner but it doesn’t need to be that way initially and as long as, you know, everyone can understand what it is that you’re doing and you’re offering something that people want and then you can put all the nice trimmings afterwards.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. So do you guys, you know, when you — you say you have the kind of the process of launching it really quick which I love because I 100% agree on that. Do you then go back, so like it’s November now, are you now going back to some of your projects and starting to make some of those tweaks to improve it and maybe play around with the price or playing around with the offer or that kind of thing?
Kate: Yeah for sure, all the time actually. So we have regular growth hacking sessions on but like just to give an example of one. So, our very first sort of tea, I think we pivoted like quite big pivots about 4 or 5 times now and so you can see the transformation through that and we have learned so much in it and also look back to our second start-up and just what it looked like when we first launch as opposed to how it is now, it’s a huge difference than — it’s great to see it progressed and —
Jeremy Reeves: Okay, nice. I love that because it’s — especially when you have — so many, it’s probably challenging just to go back and look and you know see what needs to be changed and even have the kind of brain space to even think about it.
What project are you working on this month?
Paul: This month we are working on something that solves a problem and within the start-up industry. It is something that I’m quite excited about and it is something — and it has taken a lot of effort and I mean all of us take a lot of effort but this one is kind of have been brewing for — I mean we first came up with the idea and I would say in its first version would probably be and quite a few months to go now and then we have been looking for a way to position that idea and as we have experienced more, we have pivoted away from the original idea and got this will be better and then again we just kind of wiggled through with it I would say, for the lack of a better word, for quite a few months and now we’re really, really close to kind of ad leasing which we’re pretty excited about.
Jeremy Reeves: Okay, nice. Yeah, I love it, I love it. Yeah, nice. So how about — when this is over, do you have any plans for like what’s next for 2016, is there — do you have anything in place now or are you gonna continue to do new business every month or you’re gonna, you know, maybe take your, maybe top couple that are making the most revenue, focus on that, do you have any plans for next year?
Kate: Yes, I guess we won’t be continuing the one per month idea. We’re looking to — we would like to see which one is — I guess are going well. We will probably focus on the ones that actually got growth. I mean it’s hard to — we might look soon as well at cutting or retiring some of the ideas that aren’t working as well or hiring because some it you know just obviously managing 12 businesses is quite a lot of work.
Paul: Yeah, and we want to give them all the best possible chance to succeed and then understand the one or two that we feel could grow a lot faster if they have more focus, but not so much focus, but a dedicated person doing a particular task which is required for that business and to scale it quickly and as Kate said, you know, we are running sort of 9 or 10 businesses now. We just don’t have that sort of time, sadly.
Jeremy Reeves: Okay, nice. So over the past, you know 10, 11 months, is there anything that really stood out? Bringing it back to like specific applicable kind of lessons that the people can implement in their businesses. I know I have gotten actually probably at least 8 or 10 ideas just from talking for at least half hour. Is there anything specifically so, you know, now that you guys are true entrepreneurs and you are going to be building businesses probably the rest of your life I would imagine.
Is there — what are some of like the biggest failures that you guys had, that you’re taking the lessons from them because I know you are huge into failing but failing to learn the lesson. So what are some of the like the big giant flops that you’ve had over the last 11 months or so, and how are you going to — how are you going to use the lessons from them to, you know, number one, not make mistakes again obviously, but to kind of use that to — I’m trying to think how I’m trying to say this like to leverage it into faster growth in the future?
Kate: Yeah, I think one of the biggest ones was with our first start-up it was basically pitching the completely wrong demographic which it was quite funny because with tea, we thought that it was quite of an older demographic and we are getting involved with an old different things and we were wondering why there was no traction. Basically, we found out, I mean a couple months in that — it was essentially the demographic was falling off, also demographic that that was young between 18 to 35 and more like health conscious. It was a complete surprise we merely learned that through the statistics that — I guess one thing is to not be too attached to the idea.
Paul: Yeah, I had to agree with that one.
Jeremy Reeves: That’s a good one. I love that.
Kate: You come and look it like as business and even though, you know, it’s quite different to the idea that we originally thought it’s much better and you got to be able to learn to let go of that, you know, that’s my baby, this is how I was meant to be, but if the market is not there for you, you need to got to move on.
Paul: Yeah, I guess spending time on the things that truly matter as well so and I said earlier it didn’t have to be perfect, it has to be done. I guess you only have a certain amount of time each day and you need to be doing the tasks that matter in the right order whether you know one particular task isn’t something that you really don’t want to do. It doesn’t really matter. It just needs to get done and so yeah, not dodging some tasks until they have to get done and making sure you work for the correct priority and yeah.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, and you know what, I would even take that a step further even and kind of put in a different context and there are — I mean I talk to all kinds of people in all sorts of industries and different phases of the business and all kind of stuff like that and one of the things that I seemed that kind of reflects this whole kind of theme is being too attached and whether it is to the demographic or the product or whatever it is, I find a lot of people who think, even with sales funnels, I build sales funnels for my clients every day of my life that’s what I — that’s what I do and I have, just for one example, I have someone come to me I think it was last week, maybe earlier this week I forgot but it was in the last the 7 days or so, and they came to me and they were under $100,000, I think they only made like $20,000 to that point and so we were talking and then I said “you know that is wouldn’t be really in my [inaudible 00:35:05]†just because of budget constraints and stuff like that and they were really, really, really focused that they had — the first thing they had to do is build this big elaborate sales funnel and I told them and I’m like, “listen, you don’t have to do that right nowâ€. They were adamant about that they have to had a sales funnel and that was gonna solve all their problems and I said, “No, I sell sales funnels all day, but you have to be in the right — it has to be the right time for the business.†When you are under $100,000 or so, it should be — you should basically be in hustle mode, like you should be going out boots to the ground just doing anything you have to, to get sales and usually that’s building relationships like we are talking about before.
Sales funnel — wouldn’t do — a big elaborate one at least wouldn’t do as much for somebody in that kind of income range versus somebody who was already at a couple of $100,000.
I come across that all the time of people who come and they say, “No, I need to do this next†and I have to kind of fight with them a little bit and say, “Yeah, we have to do that soon, but we have to do this and this and this first†and a lot of times it takes a lot of explaining to get them like past that point because they are just — they are kind of like cling on to it.
I see a lot of kind of similarities in what you guys are saying and just moving that into other areas of businesses as well, just don’t be too attached to really anything, whether it’s may be an employee or the next thing that you would think you need to do or like what you guys were talking about. I think that is an important point.
Is there anything, I mean anything else that really has kind of like, hit you on the head?
Paul: I guess to go away just having so slightly from the learning time I would say and one of the biggest things that surprised me is just the kind of pay it forward mentalities of the entrepreneurs and because literally, every single person that we have met pretty much, and is just willing to give you so much good advice, so much support, so much help, and literally what you got to do is ask for it and just something completely different than I’ve ever experienced previously so I would say yeah. There is another quote that I know, “If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.†That will be the learning for that one.
Jeremy Reeves: Nice and that is — you know, it’s true. Yeah, that’s basically just true — period. That is funny. Actually, I was just looking and I know this is completely random, but what’s the URL for your tea website that you have?
Kate: Oh, it’s Teawitty.com.
Jeremy Reeves: Okay, oh my keyboard is actually dying on me, that’s not good. Yeah, I know that was completely random, but I’m actually — I have been drinking tea as you are talking about. Yeah, I was kind of like laughing at it, but yeah, I drink tea all the time, so I’m actually going to look at it personally.
So, I think that kind of about wraps it up. Do you guys have any — like kind of final thoughts, anything that I should have asked that I didn’t asked that you think is really important for people to know whether — regardless of the phase that there in. There is probably a lot of people listening to this that aren’t really in the start-up phase, but like I said, there is a lot of things that you guys talked about that are 100% relevant to anybody in any business stage. Especially, taking your failures and learning from them and not being attached and — I mean there is a whole bunch of others.
Is there anything that I should have asked or I didn’t or any kind of like — any kind of insight that you guys had that you — speaking of giving it back, anything that you, any kind of insight or, you know, just something that you’ve learned that you think would help other entrepreneurs, you know to further their business?
Paul: Yeah, I mean going back to what you said previously, I guess it’s just not being afraid to hustle as well you know Kate and I for the tea business, you know, we took to the streets of London in the rain and London could be a pretty harsh place as it is to be on this than — if you’re trying to hand someone a bit of paper, trying the flyer and to get someone to notice you, to get some feedback and then try doing it in the rain as well. It can be pretty damaging to your ego to be honest but we persevered with that and from that and we credit off our sale because from that [inaudible 00:39:54] idea because people weren’t too keen to take the bit of paper that we were giving them and we are like, what else can we do, what can we do to be in people’s homes, be in people’s workspaces so they will notice us and think of us, so we then came with the idea to put tea in sort of sample packs.
So we were like, we will give the people free tea, everyone would want free tea. So we have a lot more success with that and then from that as well we were at an event and it was — there was a journalist there who loves tea, so we gave him some of the samples and then the next day we woke up and we wrote about in Lifehacker and it just so happened that he was the journalist in Lifehacker and he actually coined the travel packs, sorry, the sample packs as travel packs as well and which we were like okay, we kind of only thought of them as samples. He was like, “Oh loose leaf travel packs, this is amazing†and we were like, “great†and then at the same time, we have been getting tweets back from our people who were took the samples as well, and we were like, “Oh really, love your travel packs and we were like, “amazing†okay and then from that we — yeah, but that was another pivot and we were like okay we give you lose leaf travel packs as well.
Jeremy Reeves: That’s funny. Yeah, a lot of times, a lot of times you’ll learn like — as you come out, you think that your idea is like the idea and then someone says something like that and it just changes the whole dynamic of everything. That’s awesome, I love that.
Paul: Definitely. Yeah, I guess just listening to feedback in what your customers say about you and — if it’s something good or bad to be honest, just make sure you act on it.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate you guys coming on. Why don’t you tell everybody, because you guys — I know you have a blog and you are kind of like journaling this whole year and all your insights that you are having and that kind of thing, I’m actually on it right now.
So tell everybody where they can go to find out more about you and to find out where they can kind of follow your story that you’re doing and find — kind of look at some of the websites that you have been building and that kind of thing.
Kate: Yeah, sure. Everything is pulled altogether under Innerwanderlust.com so we talk about like our journey, traveling our new experiences, the pivots, anything we have tried, so yeah, come over and try [inaudible 00:42:23]. We also have another thing to mention is that we love meeting people so please feel free to get in touch with us.
Jeremy Reeves: Sounds good, sounds good. Innerwanderlust that will be in the show notes for everybody so if you’re on your phone there will be a link there, if you listen to your computer, it will be on the show notes so just go there and it will go right to their website.
Thanks again for coming up. I really enjoyed this conversation, I think it’s, you know, everybody — a lot of the stuff we talked about is so focused on sales funnels and I have been kind of lately, I have been getting a little bit out of that just to kind of bring some fresh insights and perspectives to everything. We talked about different things and you guys talked about stuff that a lot of people don’t really talked about all that much anymore in the marketing world, it’s so much about, you know, tactics and going outwards and do this thing and go on Facebook and here is how you could find new audiences and segmentation all that kind of stuff and it’s just refreshing to hear of someone who — when everybody else is having such a hard time you guys are just completely flourishing and I can see why now. So kudos on that.
Kate and Paul: Thank you so much for having us.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah. Thanks again and I will talk to you soon.
Kate: Great.
Paul: Definitely, thanks.
