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He Makes $3M/Year From Tiny AI Tools (Here’s How You Can Too) | The Koerner Office Podcast - Full Episodes | YouTubeToText
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Video Transcript
What is the combined revenue of all of
your projects?
>> It's around 3 million.
>> That's incredible.
>> It runs on autopilot. SEO bot is doing 1
million AR. It has been doubling month
over month, 110k a month. Little tools
are easy to build in the age of vibe
coding. You can build them in one
evening. Pretty cool hack. I will show
you. It's not a billion dollar idea, but
if you're a regular person and you want
to build a million-doll business, we
have so many lowhanging fruits. A
>> this is so good. It's just right in
front of our nose. So, if people say, "I
don't have an audience." Doesn't matter.
That's not an excuse. What is your go-to
tech stack for building all of these tools?
If you're like me and find yourself
bouncing around from idea to idea and
testing all kinds of different concepts,
this episode is for you. I found this
guy on Twitter named John. He has 24
different projects, mostly websites, and
they make him $3 million a year of
annual recurring revenue. And you know
what? Almost all of the things that he's
built or talks about can be vibecoded
with common AI tools that I talk about
on this podcast all the time. So, we get
super nitty-gritty. He gets very
specific on how to find good business
ideas, how to validate good business
ideas, how to launch them, and how to
grow them. What are his favorite AI
tools to use? How does he build agents?
How does he build agents for himself and
then sell those agents to other people?
You don't need employees. You don't need
to be a software engineer. You just need
to listen to this episode. Please enjoy.
You have 24 different products slash
projects running right now and you're
trying to automate as much of it as possible.
possible.
>> Yeah. Yeah. when I saw AI happening in
2021 actually pretty early before most
of the people I started automating some
of the things already with GPT2 and GPT3
and then in 2022 when they launched 3.5
I think I kind of felt that you know the
the traction they have on model
improvements is so great that I should
bet everything on AI becoming really
really strong. So, and then I thought
like if that's the case, if that becomes
the future, then I should bootstrap and
I should run smaller companies and I
should create suffering for myself by
not having people to delegate to so that
I have to do everything by myself from
accounting to paperwork to design,
development, growth, marketing,
everything I had to do by myself because
in the past I would just hire people for
that and now I did by myself and I
learned all those crafts and I saw the
paints and I had this ideas for 2080
rule like what can I do like 20% of the
work that gives 80% of the result and I
automated that with AI starting with
operations then with growth then with
development and with with everything. So
that was kind of my my story and now I'm
I'm here with a lot of agents and I use
agents to grow my other agents. So it's
kind of the loop happening. So these 24
things, are they some of them agents
that work for you and then it's also
agents that you're reselling to others
as well?
>> Well, they all start as my internal
agent and I run them for a long while so
that I'm happy with them myself and also
it's easier to run a project if you're
the only customer because you can risk
you can you know move fast and you don't
have all the users who complain. That's
why I run for a year or two or sometimes
three years internally and then once I
kind of like the the whole thing and
it's stable and I don't iterate that
much then I bring all my friends because
I have a lot of friends who are building
startups and then I launch uh publicly
for everybody to use. So eventually
everything I use internally will become
public. That's the end goal here.
>> Oh, I love it. You become, you find a
problem, you solve it for yourself, you
solve it for your friends. If it's still
surviving, then because surely some
don't make it, then you launch it to the
general public.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It sounds easy, but
you know, it's uh the way I create
suffering for myself. It's really hard
to replicate because nobody really wants
to suffer that much. Like I have so many
transactions for example like a lot of
product and transactions and I still do
accounting myself. I hate those days
when I have to do that, but I have to do
that because then I understand whether
the product I'm building, the agent I'm
building is good enough and and I can
evaluate it and I I think whenever
somebody else comes into the game trying
to build the same thing, like they have
too much time like I don't have time at
all. So I'm I'm kind of a typical user
of the tool while the other people who
would build that thing, they would
understand accounting really well and
they would kind of uh you know have a
lot of time to click the buttons and to
use the interface and I don't have that
time. So that's why all my agents are so
simple on the surface and so complicated
under the hood because you know my
vision is that the end goal for every
agent is that I turn it on and I live it
and it just works as great employee that
self-managed agentic and it asks me
whenever it has questions and then goes
back to do the work.
>> What's an example of one of your agents
that just works perfectly but it's very
complicated under the hood? Yeah, it's
like SEO bot for example. I think that's
one of the best agents I have. So, it
runs on autopilot. Like I I even forget
sometimes that it runs for some of my
products, but then I get emails from it
where it says, you know, this week I've
done this. So, I built this articles, I
built this how-to guides, I built these
tools like mini tool. It can even build
little products that will drive SEO
traffic. Then it can also collect all
the news and then build some news
letters and things like that. So it does
a lot of the work that SEO department
would do. It can also ask me whenever
it's not confident about things. It
would ask me like I have you know list
of these things and can you help me to
pick what's the best from this list like
I have 10 items pick five and then I
pick five and then it does the rest of
the work. So it it's able to involve me
whenever it's necessary. But then when
it it learns me and it understands what
I want it eventually over time I'm not
involved at all. Like first you're
involved every day and then week and
then month and and now like know once
every quarter.
>> Well it's like training an employee
right like
>> Yeah. Exactly. Like a good employee.
>> Yeah. Are you willing to share revenue
numbers or anything like that?
>> Yeah. SEO bot is doing 1 million AR. I
think I shared that before. And
And >> crazy
>> crazy
>> it has been growing. It has been
doubling month over month before summer
and in summer uh the growth stopped. I
think it's kind of been 110k
a month during the summer and now I
think it will start growing again as September.
September.
>> Good for I think it was one of the first
agent that kind of went into being a
real agent because all the other agents,
they say they're agents, but if you go
in there, it's kind of a tool that has a
lot of AI in it and you have to sit
inside of that tool and use it. So, it's
just more convenient UX where with my
agent from the start, I went the other
way around. So, it had no buttons at
all. It was just turn on. It was a
checkbox. You put it on and it starts.
And that was the only button I had in
the first month. And then I was just
adding more because some people ask for
certain control and I don't want to lose
out on agencies and pro users and they
want more control. But I'm kind of not
really into it. I think I in long term I
believe that people don't want that much
control. And the reason they want that
much control now is that they have too
much time. Like if you're an employee in
a company and you have eight hours a day
to do SEO only, you have a lot of time
and you don't want to have a tool that
just has one button you turn it on and
what do you do then? Right.
>> It doesn't appear like you're adding
enough value.
>> Exactly. Exactly. But in fact, you're
adding value because you have an
experience and you can help the tool
once in a while and know those little
moderations will be crucial because it's
uh like the quality of the ideas wins
over the quantity in this case but but
people are not ready for that yet and uh
I I took a risk and I went into that
early and a lot of people didn't believe
that such interface will work but it
worked really well and I think it's one
of the well-known agents. That's
amazing. What What is the combined
revenue of all of your projects?
>> It's around three million.
>> That's incredible. I mean, the 8020 rule
is alive and well even. And you can't
get rid of the 8020 rule, right? It's everywhere.
everywhere.
>> Yeah. Like three products do most of the
revenue and then everything else brings
the rest. But I I think it's it's
possible to grow the rest too. But, you
know, I'm I'm not doing these things in
a typical way where I want to just
maximize the revenue or I want to find
the winner and put all my effort into
the winner because that's what a lot of
people do who run a lot of startups,
>> right? That's not my game.
>> Fun fact, 80% of the people that watch
my YouTube videos are not subscribed to
me. And most of them think they are.
They see them in the feed, but they're
not subscribed to me. So, please, it'll
take half a second, just click
subscribe, and it would mean a ton to
me. My game is to build all these agents
that play together and then since I have
them all I can connect them and that's
also cool right because now suddenly
agents one agent like I have SEO bot and
I have another agent that's called
Rapify and Rapify builds little tools
it's like vibe coding tool and SEO bot
can call Rapify and ask it to build a
tool and send it back. So now I have one
agent you know asking the other like
imagine in your office you have SEO
marketer and then you have developer and
it come one comes to the other and asks
for the for help and I have that across
all my agents and that's why I'm not
hurrying up in growing them. I rather
want to have them all running like at
100 maybe a thousand customers so that I
have enough people to test to ask
questions and to AB test things but not
more because when it's more it's a
hustle it's a lot of support a lot of
legacy to support so that's my game now
>> and you're able to cross-ell across all
of your projects right like do you do a
lot of that
>> yeah yeah I think that's sometimes
that's half of my sales every month >> wow
>> wow
>> for new users For the new users, half of
them come from one tool to the other.
That's why when I land one user in any
of my tool, like I have some tools that
are making like 1K a month, like very
small tools, but at the same time they
are so cheap and they have trial and
people enter those tools and they might
even cancel that tool but you know move
over to the other tools and it's very
rare when people leave my universe. So
if they enter they once you use one tool
the other tool the third tool it's
really hard to leave because it's uh
it's not locking you but it's convenient.
convenient. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> And if you're busy it's really convenient.
convenient.
>> The 1K a month Mr. you get from one of
your small projects that could be
contributing another 3K a month MR in
another project because or across seven
other projects. Right.
>> Yeah. Yeah. That that's why I have so
many directories and a lot of people
think like why do I build directories?
It's not that much money there. Like
most of my directories are making 1K a
month. Some make 10K, but most of make
just 1K. I think like directories are so
good at driving traffic from people who
would otherwise not land on your website.
website.
>> Now, with your SEO business, you know,
one of the hard parts about SEO, either
doing it for yourself or selling an SEO
SAS product, is how long it can often
take to work. How do you manage churn in
that business when people have, you
know, they they want immediate results
and that's just not common in SEO? Have
you been able to overcome that? And if
so, how?
>> Well, it's hard, of course, because a
lot of people have expectations and then
they see somebody on the internet with a
story that they started yesterday and
now they have traffic and they expect
the same. But I think in my case I'm
trying to build my products in a way
that they also educate people on what to
expect and what is this because most
people who use my products are not
professionals like professionals usually
go for more complicated products because
they want to spend their time by using
them and my products are for busy
founders. Most of my customers are
founders who are good at everything a
little bit, right? And and I have this
system of emails where I take some
little KPIs, little like for example for
SEO articles, I send the data every week
on what has been done and maybe there's
some views because you don't get clicks
right away, but you get views right
away, right? Or not right away, but
within a week usually you get views and
I send the views and then I send the
clicks. there's stuff to send to the
user to show that things are happening
and that usually works because also it's
about the price. If you go for the
agency, you pay like 5K or something
like that and and it's two months after
and you don't see the traffic and you
you feel like you've been scammed and in
this case it costs like $20 a month and
it's not like you you're expecting an
instant result for that money.
>> Oh man, that's so good. How long are
your customers taking to see SEO results
with your product? It's from weeks to
month like I think Google has been
changing a lot in their algorithm. So
like three years ago you would never see
any traffic on your article until like
two months maybe sometimes three months
and now I think the same goes for weeks.
So now in weeks you can see views and
some clicks like two three weeks.
>> What is your go-to tech stack for
building all of these tools?
>> I use a lot of the tools. So my main
tool that I use for prototyping is
lovable or other like bolt or cursor or
pinser but lovable is my favorite I
think for vibe coding and I use lovable
for prototyping and often I use it to
experiment with different ways of
building the UI for this product for
example once I move past the prototype I
use my own AI coding tool called Morse X
because that's where I go for serious
stuff where the product becomes more
complicated. So it's like two tools. So
first one for MVPs, the other one is for
full products.
>> What about for automations and other
stuff? You like make
>> I use make, I use Zapier and I use Lindy
AI. So I use all three.
>> All right. We're like getting I'm like
so intrigued by what you're doing. We
had talked John about you showing us how
you find ideas, how you build ideas, and
how you grow ideas, right?
>> Yeah. Why don't we get into that? All
right, I will just share my screen for
that. Yeah. So, for the ideas, I have
this framework that I kind of made for
myself and it was pretty popular in the
internet because I think it's very
simple. I think the best ideas are the
ideas that scratch your own itch. So,
basically, you're doing a job and then
you have a problem at the job and you
want to solve that and you come up with
ideas for that for solution for that
problem. That's what I usually do. 99%
of my ideas are born that way. And then
you have some other options for finding
ideas. And usually my second option is
to see that people are asking for
something and then see whether a lot of
people ask for it and then build that.
So I will just show how I do both. And
for example,
>> oh this is so good.
>> Like if I want to figure out what what
people are asking, I do pretty cool
hack. I will show you. So I go to Google
and I do this. So website builder that
so you do this and you see like you code
that doesn't use AI that accept payments
that export HTML like that's interesting
like some people want that and I
actually know a guy who built a website
builder that can do that it became big.
So, and you can do further like website
builder for and now we see the audience.
It can be small business, photographers,
artists. That's interesting.
>> And we're assuming this is ranked by
like search volume, right?
>> Oh, yeah. Exactly. And and if you see it
here, it means a lot of people search
for it. But, you know, you have the next
step here where you can take this into
the uh keyword research and validate.
For example, website builder for
artists. And now we can go into the
keyword research and and we can see how
much traffic is going there. Yeah. So
here we see it's around 10k visitors a
month which is not a lot. But if you
look further you have this one, you have
this one. So you have a lot of requests
which are also kind of for the same
thing and they're also at each 10k 10k
10k. So in total it's probably 100k now.
So it's pretty good traffic. Yeah.
>> And also you can see where exactly
people search for and you can sort them
based on the monthly searches and now
you see how people frame it because
that's also important and you can see
that they that they frame it in basic
way. So website builder for artists. So
now you can probably come with a domain
idea which could be in this case it's
probably too long like website builders
for artist. But in in often cases
>> you could just find a keyword that turns
into the idea like I have this
I've been playing with the other keyword
now and it's tux heaven. So I just
tested it now before this call and it's
a it's like 100k searches. It's a lot of
searches. It's low competition. It means
that people don't really place ads for
these keywords
>> and that's a that's a very high value
keyword, right? Yeah. Wealthy people are
are searching that keyword.
>> Yeah. Like people are willing to save
money. It means that you can earn money
where others are trying to save money,
right? And then you can uh go and test
this all the ideas here. So you first
find them on Google and then you see
you make a list. So I usually play with
it for an hour. I make a list in the
Excel for like 50 or 60 ideas and then I
bring them back into the keyword
research tool and then I see their
traffic and at the end you have a
picture what you should work on because
if you don't do that
>> then you're kind of in the dark and you
have no idea.
>> Yeah, you're guessing. And the problem
with guessing is that it's like in in
stock market world whenever you guess
usually you're doing something wrong
because that's how our mind works. like
the intuition never helps. In this case,
I would take this a step further, John.
I would like So, what if you're only
listening to this, what we're looking at
is just the autocomplete on google.com
website builder for and from the top to
bottom, it goes small business, free,
photographers, portfolio, artist,
nonprofits. So, you can go to the
keyword tool. In the artist example,
there were 92 keywords that had over
100,000 searches per month. Cool. I
would do that for like the top 10, small
business, artist, whatever. And then I
would go to Perplexity and I would have
a prompt that says all I want to know I
want a grid. I want to know how many
website builders are there that
specialize in being for artists. Like
not a Squarespace, not a Wix. It needs
to be a niche website builder that is
for artists. I need to know how many
there are. And then on the second
column, I need to see like what's their
estimated monthly traffic using similar
web or something else. Right? run a deep
research prompt on all 10 of those
website builder four X Y or Z. You get a
table, you put it in Google Sheets and
then you take the search volume and how
competitive it is and put it in columns
C and D and then you can clearly see not
only where is the search volume but how
much demand is there for each and then
you can easily sort and say oh
>> yeah this one has the most demand and
the least supply. I'm going to build here.
here.
>> Yeah. And the thing here is that it's
very often
such ideas are not really heavily
targeted by anyone because it's a small
niche and if you're a VC back company
it's it's too little for you like it's
not a billion dollar idea right but if
you're regular person and you want to
build a million dollar business that's
on of the market right and that's why
like we are now living in a world where
where we have so many lowhanging fruits
like that because the VC back world
surprisingly is all going after the same
ideas because they have to measure the
market and and that's super important
and all all these other ideas are just
unserved and there are a lot of them and
and I see now a huge movement where you
know solarreneurs and indie makers and
and a lot of the people are just you
know targeting this
>> this is so good it's like it's just
right in front of our nose it's just
google.com but it's
>> it's like a prompt. It's like a Google
prompt, right? And looking at it the
right way.
>> Yeah. And so I do that and uh my next
step is usually to validate again. So
basically when I build something I'm
trying to convince myself that I
shouldn't build it like you should, you
know, behave that way because if you try to
to
>> like a negative bias just to be
>> Exactly. Yeah. If you're in love with
your idea, then you will do the
opposite. Whenever you see the data, you
will, you know, interpret the data in a
in a wrong way. You will think that,
well, it's not that bad. It's not that bad.
bad. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. So, but you should try to kill
your idea because there are so many
ideas. You rather kill, you know, 20 of
them and 21 works out and then you don't
waste time building it, right? Because
building an idea takes a lot of time. So
then my next step is usually I go to my
unicorn platform and you can go into any
other vibe coding tool but I recommend
to use like website builders for
websites rather than vibe coding tools
because the website builders are made
for landing pages and they have good SEO
optimization and things like that. So go
for framer, unicorn,
web flow. Don't go for lovable or bald
or others for this because they are made
for apps, right? For where you have the
user login and things like that because
people have mixed those things and I
think this is really important like you
have landing pages and you have your web
app and for landing pages use landing
page builder, >> right?
>> right?
>> So I usually go here and then I kind of
pick a weight list. So because I haven't
built a product yet, so I just pick a
weight simple weight list. For example,
this one and then I go for create and
then I say website builder for
this. Yeah. And it will just build a
little landing page with a weight list
now. Yeah. It has to be super simple.
Like your goal here is to just see
whether anyone is willing to put their
name or like here put phone number. I
don't need that. So I just remove it.
Yeah, name and email is an off for me.
So that's it. So now I have my landing
page. Show it to potential customers and
see normally don't want to join weight
lists because it's silly, right? But
still if you show it to 20 people at
least one person would join because some
people are curious and they want to get
to know about this once you launch. So
it's it still works like you're going to
lose a lot of the people who otherwise
would sign up if you had the product.
But right now your goal is to understand
whether people are willing to put any
effort into consuming your product and
this is good enough. Okay. So, you're
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on social media, on Reddit, on replies.
So I search on social media for people
asking about this question.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Or sometimes not even asking
about the question. Like sometimes you
you can be a bit more spummy if you
can't find the the actual questions. You
can find the right people. So like in
this case, these are musicians and you
you can just search for anything around
musicians and software. Doesn't have to
be the website builder. Can be something
else, right? You can search for that and
then you can replay the year and it's
not exactly on point, but it's not that
far. It works pretty well if you do like
20 or 30 replies like that and then you
do DMs to the same people and then you
maybe find their emails and send cold
emails. So eventually if you do 100
actions towards a cold outreach and cold
replies, you will see either zero
signups for your weight list and if it's
zero it's a good sign. It means that you
know it's it's not that important of a
problem for people. So they they don't
care that much.
>> That's good. Yeah. If you get zero or if
you get 100, it's good because you're
learning and you don't want to waste
time on a project that nobody wants.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But if there's one
or 10 or five, then you have an answer.
Like if it's 10, then it means people
really want it. And sometimes you
actually uh hit the right spot and a lot
of people sign up because that doesn't
exist and people all wanted it
>> and then they sign up. I had that.
>> I was going to ask you, do you have any
examples of that happening to you?
>> Yeah. Uh so I had a case with when I
built dev hunt so dev hunt isn't similar
to product hunt but for dev tools and I
just shared a tweet where I said that I
want to build this new launchpad only
for developers because product hunt
doesn't serve developers as it serves
the marketers and if 100 people signed
up for this I will build it.
>> Mhm. And I had 100 people signing up and
people were actually sharing the link to
their friends telling them, "Hey, come
help me for this.
>> They wanted to help you because they
wanted to use it."
>> They want to reach the 100 mark so that
I build it. Right. So they wanted to
help themselves actually, not me. Yeah. >> And
>> And >> right
>> right
>> the best thing here, right? So and I do
that every time. So basically all my
products even before I build them for
myself, I still kind of test them on
public using know this meth methods
because I know I'm not building
something that I will never be able to
launch to the public
>> and it works really well. So I do it
through social media and I'm I kind of
found a way to do it through social
media even before I had followers. Now I
have a lot of followers but in the past
I had almost none and I still found a
way because the the interesting stuff
about social media is that right now
they don't really respect the follower
count count as it did in the past.
>> So if your content is interesting they
will show it to a few people and if they
find it interesting they will show it to
more people and eventually it can blow
up even without followers. So you should
try that. You should always try that and
and you should test you should test it
for messages on your kind of launch
tweet. But if if that doesn't work, you
can also do ads. You can you know send
paid traffic to your tool and paid
traffic works too sometimes. So I in the
past I was using Google and Meta for
that but you know as with everything
else I end up building my own tool for
that that kind of does it for me. Has
there ever been a time when all of your
indicators were shouting, "Yes, yes,
launch this and then you did this
research stage or you actually launched
it and it just did not hit and if so,
why do you think that happened?"
>> No, that never happened really.
>> I had the opposite. I had the opposite
where everything said that the idea is
bad. Like there were no signups and all
my friends were saying that this is a
bad idea. But when I launched it worked
out. So I had the opposite. But if I get
the validation through this methods I
just shown, I go for the last step.
Actually there's one one more step
that's just to make sure 100% is going
to work. I ask for pre bookings. So I
give people 70% or 90% discount if they
buy now. And surprisingly I had cases
where a lot of people signed up for a
tool. A lot of people but nobody wanted
to pay because you know why it happens?
It happens because sometimes you hit
certain audience
for example students. They would be
signing up for a thing and you would
think, "Wow, a lot of people, thousands
of them." But then you ask them for a
dollar and they don't want want to pay
because they're used to finding things
for free, right? And you never know
because you have no idea. You have some
emails in your list and you have no idea
who are those people, right? That's why
if you ask for a payment and you don't
get at least 10% of your weight list to,
you know, execute it, it means that it
won't be easier after, right? And I had
cases like that.
>> If I put up a a landing page for a $20 a
month tool that people are signing up
for and they show demand for and then
you launch it and less than 10% of
people actually pay for the thing, it's
not a good sign.
>> It's not a good sign. It It's a very bad
sign because it it means that you're
missing the whole thing. Like you're not
selling to the right audience. And
that's a big problem because it's not
something you can just change because if
you go and after another audience,
>> it's a new game. You you have to like
maybe all these traffic you saw on
keyword research was from the wrong
audience, right? >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> And you don't know that because it's
just numbers and that's kind of the
problem. like you get excited about
something because there's an interest
but it's wrong people and you can't like
now you have to kill the idea because
most likely the the right people don't
search for it. What if you're just
priced too high like it is the right
audience 7% of people buy it and it
would be higher if you were priced at $9
a month instead of 19. How do you know
when that's the case or do you
>> Yeah, you offer them a discount. Let's
say even with the discount like it's
normally at 49 and you're offering it
for 19 or nine, right? Like let's say
that is the case. They will tell you. So
you offer them a discount and they tell
well you know that price would work if
that was one time but I won't pay every
month because this tool doesn't look
like a tool I should pay every month for
example. I had cases like that. For
example, I have a listing bot where it
lists you on directories and first I
want to launch it as monthly
subscription but people said that why
should I pay every month? You just kind
of do the work once for me and that's
it. You can talk to people and usually
if they walk through your process where
they they join your weight list and you
pitch them the discount and pre-booking
they would usually not all of them but
some of them will tell you back that
it's too expensive or it's wrong pricing
it should be once or the opposite. So it
should be once it should be every month
because I had the opposite too. I had
this tool called count visits. is for
analytics and I went for a lifetime deal
there and people said that I don't want
to pay $100 at once because maybe I
don't like the tool after all so I
rather start with $9 but they told me so
and I changed things like if you do this
like like imagine if I purchase my
payment link like everybody else does
then if people don't want it they just
leave you have no idea why they don't
want it but if you get them into your weight
weight
And then after a while you send them the
payment then you're sending it through
the email. So you have the the thread on
the email with them and they will
answer. There's okay so much I want to
ask. All right. So you you can validate
with paid ads. So if people say I don't
have an audience doesn't matter. That's
not an excuse. A the algorithm rewards
good content whether you have zero
followers or a million. B you can use
paid ads to skip the line. What other
tools do you use to validate demand? And
has there ever been a time where the
opposite's happened and you never
launched something because your tools
just told you it wasn't there and you
think that you you avoided a a failure
by doing so. I haven't had cases where I
completely gave up on an idea because
usually my first test for the idea is
whether I want it myself or not and I
never go on if I don't want it. And if I
want it, then I still want it even if
others don't want it, right? But now I
have to figure out why I want it and
others don't. And it takes time for me
sometimes. Like I could put the project
on hold for for a year just because I
want to slip on it and eventually I ask
people and ask people and ask people and
my intuition tells me. Also, I do one
thing that's not common like people
usually go for SEO traffic pretty late.
So, because it's a long playing game and
you shouldn't start with it because it
will play back on entry month, right?
And you should start with something else
at first. But in my case, since I have
so many products and they're all not
pressing me on on time like I have all
all the time in the world, I usually
start SEO work on a day one. In that
case, I can just post the product and
wait for a few months and then come back
and see whether there's traffic from
SEO. And that's interesting. So SEO
traffic is a new source of validation
because you know one thing that you have
to also validate with a product is not
just if people want it but also if
you're able to drive traffic there like
you may build something that everybody
wants but then it doesn't mean that you
will find you will win the attention of
the people that so that they know about
the product and and a lot of people
don't understand that that that's even
more important because I rarely seen
people who didn't manage to build the
product that people wanted.
>> It's funny. I've made the same mistake
of spending months and years saying,
"Yeah, just I don't do SEO because it
takes so long to pay off one year
later." Yeah, I just don't really do SEO
because it takes so long to pay off one
year later.
>> One year later,
>> dude, if you would have just done it any
of those times, it would be paying off
by now. When it comes to converting a
percentage of your weight list, how much
does time play a role? Because if you
collect a weight list on August 1 and
then you don't launch the thing until
April 1, you're going to convert a lot
lower percentage, right? Because it's
less relevant, less top of mind. How
quickly do you like to launch things
after you start getting emails from a
weight list?
>> It's not important at all. So I felt
that's important when I was running my
first products and I felt like the time
was pressing and people are waiting and
all the things. But basically in a start
world, if you can do something once, you
can repeat it, right? Like if you're
able to drive 100 people into your
weight list this week, you can repeat
that next year, too. Unless you're
building something that's about
Christmas and it only works on
Christmas, right? But if there is no
stuff like that, you can repeat that
again. And that's why like you shouldn't
really think about your first weight
listers as real users. Like I hope it
doesn't sound lame but you're kind of
using those people validate. Yeah,
exactly. And they don't put that much
effort into helping you to validate too,
right? And once you validate it, you
can, you know, come back in a year and
maybe all these 100 people are not
interested anymore because they were
founders and now they went back for
full-time jobs, for example. But it
doesn't matter. You just do the same
thing again and then you have hot Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
>> And then you go on with them. That's why
like I I would rather be worried about
me doing things on the right time. But
then like for example like you said
about SEO like if you don't do it early
then you know after a year you think you
should have done a year ago and so it's
compounding and you should do it as
early as possible but for some things
you can do it at any time and then redo
it and all fine. Yeah. So here how it
work. So basically I give it my URL. So
it does the analysis and then it learns
the audience the keywords and here it
found all the keywords that will drive
traffic and they have low competition
and it made a plan for the next
articles. So now if I click proceed and
I pay it will just you know start
working and every day will pass one
article and I come back in two months.
Is this web based or is it an app?
>> Yeah. Yeah, it's web. It just looks like
an app, but it's a it's web.
>> Yeah, I think SEO was probably my chit
cut in the beginning. Like now a lot of
people use it. Uh but in the past only
rich startups use it and I was the only
poor founder who who was doing SEO
because I had the tool that I built
myself. But but I I think it's like for
people who want to test a lot of ideas
like three, four, five, six. This is one
of the best way to test it. You just
kind of invest a little time into SEO
for all those ideas and you'll
>> leave them hanging for few months and
you come back and you see and you will
clearly see the difference. Maybe you
won't have huge traffic but you will see
that some URLs get zero traffic. It
means that no way you can compete like
with some keywords, you know, they're
like rich people paying a lot of money
and you can never win that. And with
with other keywords
>> surprisingly you win easily and you get
a lot of traffic and you can grow on
that and it's
>> sometimes easier to just test whether by
building the articles than actually
doing this you know long keyword
research stuff and because the keyword
research as I told earlier you never
know who is clicking that which is also
dangerous like you might see some
numbers but maybe those are wrong people
but if you drive traffic into your blog
you can have little banners within your
articles with the weight list. So that's
kind of another way to test your weight
list. You just put a banner and it says
by the way if you want to try this
website builder for artists leave your
email and we will not notify you and
that's another way because uh you will
see some data out of it. Now with this
is does it integrate with like web flow
and other web builders so you can
publish these articles without having to
touch it?
>> Yeah. Yeah. It just syncs with frameware
web flow WordPress everything. So you
basically never have to come back if you
don't want it. It will try to nag you
and bring you back to to help. But if
you ignore it, it will just like like an
employee who will ask you questions and
if you don't answer it, they will just
go and and do as they think they should
do it, right?
>> Oh man, that is so cool.
>> Quick question. What if there were a
private community out there of people
that were building businesses based on
this podcast? Well, I just made it and
it's only for business starters and
business builders. It's called TK owners
and it's basically like having me and a
hundred other business geniuses as your
business partner. Also, there's going to
be exclusive new trends, growth hacks,
business ideas, and a database of
everything I've ever talked about.
You'll find thousands of startup case
studies. You'll have weekly ask me
anythings with me while I'll answer your
questions directly. You can join now at
tkowners.com, link in the show notes.
Okay, so we've talked about validating.
Well, we've talked about ideating,
validating. What about growing?
>> Yeah. So the growth part in my world
comes from a social media. Social media
is the best way to grow for small
products. Right now the best part about
social media is that it's not just the
people you bring directly from social
media but also the people who learn
about you through social media and start
talking about you start including you
into their blog posts, their
newsletters, their directories. So
basically if you become popular on
social media you get so much attention
from everywhere and all the other people
become your marketers for free like
influencers start talking about your
tool and and you don't have to pay them.
So I I think like whenever uh you start
working on growth you should try social
media and see whether you have talent
for it. If you have talent maybe that's
the only thing you should do because the
upside of social media is bigger than
everything else. I think you will get
SEO traffic by doing social media
because your product will will become
popular. People will put it on their
lists and directories and you'll get
back links and that's why you'll get the
traffic back. So kind of universal and
the other thing is SEO as I just talked.
So you should make sure that you have
enough backlinks. You should grow your
domain rating by having backlinks and
you should generate articles or write
them yourself or use any of the tools
available for that. And a lot of people
think that that's complicated. They
should outsource that to agencies and
stuff like that. I I think uh if you
have money you should uh because that
will they will do good job but it
doesn't take that much time. I think
spending one hour a day in one month you
can have decent output from your SEO efforts.
efforts. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> And then number three is uh partners
affiliate partners. So you should sign
up for something like
or first promoter where you're able to
create this portal so that your partners
could sign up there get unique links and
a code and they could promote your
product and earn money. And you should
be really really generous on the
commission. Like a lot of people have
this like 10% or 15%. You should be
crazy generous.
>> Like go 50%. Like if you don't have
costs on your product,
>> go for 50%. If you have underlying
costs, maybe go for 25 30 and then
you'll see people actually, you know,
promoting your your product. I have a
lot of people promoting it and it's one
of the best investments I made. So
that's the number three. the partners
who promote your product for for the
commission. Number four is you should
place your product in front of the
people wherever you want wherever you
can. There has to be everywhere on
directories, launchpads, forums, Reddits
and social media. You should find all
possible conversations on Quora and
other places where people talk about it
and place it there. So that's really
important. Two reasons. So number one
reason people may just stumble upon your
product there and become your customer.
But number two which is even more
important LLMs crawl those websites and
they crawl those comments and those
articles and those listicles and then
they may actually add that into their
training data data and then they will
reply with your product when people ask
and that's really big. Like I have some
of my products that suddenly just blew
up because they were in a training set
for the latest LLMs and now I have like
almost all traffic coming from Chad GPT
and and all the others because I think
they all use the same training set like
it was surprisingly you know
simultaneously when I got the traffic
from Chad GPT and Claude and Grock on
the same week. So I think they're buying
the training that data from somebody. >> Interesting.
>> Interesting.
>> From the same person, same company.
>> Yeah. So, and then number five, you can
build little tools that are free to
drive traffic to those tools and then
you channel the same people into your
paid tool. Like if you're running
website builder for artists, maybe you
should build a little tool which is like
a cover generator for your album. That's
kind of probably good keyword, right?
Because they like
>> just a lead magnet.
>> Yeah, exactly. And they would go there,
they would generate their album, they
would enter their email to receive the
PNG in a good quality. And in the email
in the bottom you would say like by the
way here's also my other product. Check
it out if you want. And the chance that
people will click is really high because
they were satisfied with your first
product because that's the difference
like when you're cold presenting when
people see your banner for first time
they they don't trust you because they
see things all the time but now they
trust you because they like your
product. So kind of these five are my my
favorite ways to grow at the start and
then you can add a lot more but I think
these five bring like 80% of the growth.
>> What do you think about directories in
the age of AI? Is it still a great
opportunity there?
>> Yeah. Yeah. I think so because like
directories that are made by people who
have influence will be really big. It's
just like if you go to Instagram and an
influencer has a list of anything, car
influencer has a list of, you know, car
shops or tires or things like that,
you're going to trust that and you will
be willing to follow those links and buy
that and share to your friends, right?
And I think the same going to happen
with AI. Like AI is now in a place where
it has so much information, it doesn't
know how to pick the right one. Like
Google in the old world tried to use the
number of incoming links as a way to uh
rank the websites, right? But it's so
easy to gain that. And now AI systems
don't know how to rank the websites.
They're just using the same system
Google is using. And that's easy to
gain. And over time, I think AI will
like we already see that they start
using Reddit now. And when they use
Reddit, they also pick the articles with
certain amount of up votes, right? So
they want to filter out trash. And I
think the directories are going to help
humans to filter out trash. And yeah,
like in every category, there will be so
many items that how do you choose the
right one? And directories can help with
that. and especially directories made by
people who have social media influence.
I think that's kind of the mix here.
>> And so there's an opportunity to partner
with people that have influence, right?
Because most people listening or
watching are not influencers, right?
>> That we can all slide into their DMs and
and plant that idea in them because
they're certainly not thinking along
these lines like, "Hey, you like plant
like they say uh invent the disease and
sell the cure, right? Hey, I see that
you have this list of all these things.
Like, do you realize that directories
are going to become more relevant than
ever in the age of AI? Just so happens I
can help you with that. Let's talk about
splitting up this business somehow.
>> Yeah. I mean, that's exactly my model,
right? But I do it the other way around.
You know, partnering up with people who
own attention to build a product around
that attent attention is is great. And
you can do not only directories but you
can also do little products, little
tools. You know little tools are easy to
build in the age of vibe coding. You can
build them in one evening. So now how do
we compete? Like we can all build that
same little cover generator for an
artist. But if that cover generator is
built by 50 Cent or Eminem or there's
some connection there, then it's
different thing. it stands out from all
the others right and if we make a wild
guess that AI will make it easy to do
everything if that's the guess or most
of the things then there will be
difficult to compete because everything
is the same as good as the other things
right and now you can compete through
reputation and the reputation can be
either built by yourself which is also
not a bad idea because like we're not
influencers all right When you say
influencer, you think about somebody
huge with millions of followers. But if
you pick something really small like
like something where only, you know,
10,000 people are interested in this in
the whole world, probably there's nobody
talking about that.
>> And if you just start talking about
that, that will be enough to go viral
within that little group, right? That's
one way, but the other way is of course
to find the influencer. I I think both
are possible. I wouldn't say that if
you're not influencer, you shouldn't
even try. I think you should just
redefine what's influencer and it can be
something very small.
>> Oh, that's so good. John, thank you.
This was awesome. Where can people find
you and your products and whatever you make?
make?
>> I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn and
Substack. I love to be helpful with my
products. I love to be helpful with my
content that I share on X is John Rush
X. I love to be helpful with advice. So,
I think I'm probably the only person
with so many followers who answered
every single DM I ever received and
every single reply if there was a
question, of course, because there's a
lot of spam. And I think I will stop
doing that by the end of this year
because it's overwhelming. But I will
still do that for the next three months.
So, if you need help, I'm open. My DMs
are open.
>> Okay. Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> All right. What you think? Please share
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