Entrepreneur Mindset

Being an entrepreneur is not easy. You sacrifice a lot by choosing this lifestyle. You often don’t know how much money you will have at the end of the week, month or year. You don’t know half the time if the decisions that you decide to make are working in the intended ways and you forgo a lot of social norms like being able to get a mortgage or advance in your profession as those in a salaried position take for granted. Getting a bank loan as an entrepreneur is pretty much impossible.

But what if I told you that money was not the motivation for a lot of entrepreneurs? Obviously, it is important as no money means no time to play on these random projects, limiting the chance of making something big. This is often not the thing that drives an entrepreneur to make these sacrifices and work on interesting things nor is it the driver to stop when money has been achieved. Most entrepreneurs I know are driven to solve a problem and often work on multiple projects at the same time as they see multiple problems worthy of their time to solve.

Try and Try Again

If I take my own situation, when I look back at what I have spent time on and which projects I have tried over the years - the list is a long one. To outline a few of these below, you will see that there is a common theme amongst all of these projects; not all of them have worked or even are existence. Likewise, not all of these are problems that I worked on solo but most are interlinked in some sort of way.

• Shark Digest - a way for early-stage startups to send out updates to investors super easily.
• Villa Hero - holiday rentals focusing on the luxury market
• VR Lister - a platform to help owners list their properties on multiple websites
• Roomfilla - Short term rental promotion and management
• Siam Ferry - Ferry ticket agency focusing on selling tickets in the South of Thailand
• Social Stanley - Automate Social Media from Slack
• Dota Skills - Aggregator of the best dota content creators in one place.
• FlightProof - Flight itineraries for visa purposes
• Explore Phi Phi - Tours and adventures around the Phi Phi area.
• Adventure Paradise Nepal - Tour agency with a digital mindset focusing on Nepal
• Kathmandu Bus - Bus ticketing for Kathmandu, Nepal
• Pokhara Bus - Bus ticketing for Pokhara, Nepal
• BnBChatbot - Automate guest communications via chatbots
• MeatandPies - Online e-commerce for expat food in Thailand
• LazyTasks - Consulting & Agency for automation
• KeyBistro - Airbnb key pickups in urban areas
• Sabai Stock - US stock trading for the Thai market
• Content Villain - AI Writing assistant
• Riku - AI aggregator

At some point in time, I thought all of the above problems were worth my time trying to solve. Some of them I still work on, some of them I don’t, and are no longer in existence. Some of these projects never even got to a launch. There are various reasons why a project might no longer be viable and no longer be worked on and it can be anything really from the following;

1. The problem is too difficult and complicated to attack. This was very much what was found with Sabai Stock.
2. The market doesn’t seem to be ready for it just yet. Found this with a lot of the Nepal projects. The system for bus and ticketing is so fragmented that trying to bring it online with any reliability wouldn’t work. Prices change on the fly and unfortunately I shut it down.
3. The problem is solved in another way. I found partners for my own Airbnb needs so KeyBistro was not something I needed to pursue further. Similarly, the ideas of VR Lister were wrapped up into what Roomfilla became so that got the chop.

One thing that is often not noted when working from project to project or idea to idea is the continual evolution of skills, mindsets, and experience. Not everything will work. I accept that and that is life but every single step along the road will improve my skills, make me better at building businesses and give me what I need to succeed in the future. This is why I do not feel like it is a lack of focus for experimenting with new things and will continue to build new projects. I’d encourage everyone else to do the same.

Double Down on What Works

What is important is to look deep into the areas you are trying to solve and see what comes up, take the feedback and build on top of that. Through that process of iterating and listening, you will find even more problems to solve and may even end up creating a business that becomes a large part of the overall machine.

Roomfilla is a great example of this, I wanted to create something to fill the empty gaps on commercial properties and do this via the vacation rental space. It is successful and we are seeing thousands of nights booked a month and a concentration of bookings in the tourist destinations of Thailand where there are a lot of islands. One of the most common questions I get is how do we get to the property, can you recommend transport?

How can I save the Roomfilla team time here? Well, we can answer that question before it is asked by providing guests with a website where they can book their transport and a coupon code to get a great deal. Similarly, we can do the same with tours and activities. Siam Ferry and Explore Phi Phi became two massive parts of the pie and increase customer spending significantly.

All Eggs in One Basket

If there is anything that I have learned from the events of the past two years is that anything can happen at any time. You think things are going great and the business is starting to show you the fruits of your labor but then something completely unexpected can happen and turn that revenue source to zero. Roomfilla is something I have been working on since 2015. Five whole years of hard work got wiped out overnight by a pandemic. Fortunately, I was sensible with it and had the means to ride the storm and prepare for the bounce back and by gosh the bounce back will be glorious.

Those were some really dark months though. I was on a strict budget I hooked up with Excel and had to keep to that budget. That budget had a date on it when I would hit zero. I was terrified of that point and put it out of my mind. With an event like that happening, I vowed to then never put all my eggs in one basket again.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Just like a lot of the projects outlined above are linked in some way or another. I initially applied for access to OpenAI's GPT-3 to help me with Roomfilla. I thought I could inject AI in a lot of the areas of the business to make it run more efficiently and perhaps revisit the BnBChatbot concept I had launched unsuccessfully in the past. By the time I actually got access to GPT-3 however, we were 9 months into a pandemic with no end in sight. I had access to this wonderful technology but no way to apply it as I initially planned.

My spreadsheet at this point was also starting to look pretty grim. I was fortunate to have quite a cushion and emergency fund through my careful planning but 9 months without income started to make me feel uneasy. I had to get my mojo back and had to start working on something. Anything. I looked at ways that people were applying this AI technology, I looked at what was getting a buzz, and saw a lot of writing assistant tools. I looked at these a bit closer and figured I could put my own unique spin on this area with a focus on integrations with webhooks, and a unique chatbot interface (which turned out to be a not-so-great thing!) and launch with more prompts than anyone else on the market. I set to work on building this in January 2021 and launched Content Villain, 2 months later in March.

Listening to Feedback

The launch was somewhat a success. Users seemed to enjoy playing around with the technology but I also got a lot of feedback saying the design sucked and that a web app was needed. Users were also wanting features that simply weren't possible at the time so it was a balancing act trying to keep the product improving and users happy.

I'm not a technical person and don't claim to be. I always advocate for no-code solutions and building fast and iterating. Users wanted a web app, I'd never built a web app before but there was no time like the present to learn so I set out to do that and over the course of a weekend had an MVP together which I shared. The feedback was solid so I worked super hard on getting that out releasing it just a few days later.

Content Villain was eye-opening to see how users were creating content and how we could speed up that process for them. One of the initial things I clocked with the AI technology available was that if I am creating prompts for everyone to use, they are going to behave in the way that I train them and not specific to an individual's business. This means that on some topics they will only give a generic surface-level amount of information so something else was needed to go deeper. Custom models and custom solutions for users were something I figured users would want.

Using some of my background in automation and consulting, I saw this as a premium type product and more of a tailored service where we could work with a few customers in a specialized manner to fulfill their needs. This totally set Content Villain apart from any other tool on the market as the focus was not on mass user adoption of the tool, it was about how we could get these high ticket customers and show them our expertise in these areas.

Problems Evolve

With that approach to Content Villain, the game had changed. The type of customer we were looking to attract was a customer who had a specific problem they wanted to solve and no idea of how to solve it. I feel no need to do mass marketing for Content Villain as we still receive a steady flow of leads and potential customers. We're still adding to the product and will continue to do that. The Content Villain app is our shop window for potential customers to see what we have created and how we can further create solutions directly for them but the problem and market evolve.

There will always be a market for those who do not want to learn how to manipulate the raw technology themselves. There will always be a market for getting someone else to do something you don't want to do yourself but again from feedback from potential customers, some were not willing to pay the premium price we had set for our custom models. That is fine but it leads to another area of opportunity and a problem worth solving.

This is where a new project gets sparked in my mind and starts to take shape. Of course, at the start, everything is super raw and nothing is ever written down. Over time, the idea chips away at the inside of my head and I see it develop and progress into something that could be viable. How will I know if it is viable or not? I won't unless I build it - Riku came into the world.

Every Project Drives Improvement

Riku solved a problem that was uncovered by Content Villain. Siam Ferry solved a problem that was uncovered by Roomfilla. Content Villain taught me how to make web apps which I can now apply to all my projects. Riku has increased my design and proficiency with some of the web app-building software that will improve Content Villain. AI learnings can be applied everywhere and every project improves.

You may call it a lack of focus on working on so many different things, I call it working on what I find interesting and driving myself to constantly level up my skills; so what's the future?

Riku is still in the midst of a launch so is pretty full-on and there are a lot of advancements in new models coming out and a lot of different areas I'd still like to explore so a fair amount of my time is going into this currently.

Content Villain continues to get new models and prompts added to it. We continue working on our lead pipelines and attracting those larger customers for which we can build out the custom solutions they require.

Roomfilla is back in business now that the pandemic is finally in the dust. We're seeing hundreds of inquiries a month currently and a sizeable number of those convert into bookings. The numbers are currently still too small to spend much energy on Siam Ferry or Explore Phi Phi relaunching but I expect to get that done by end of June this year with a view of a backpacker gold rush happening from July.

Is my approach to building projects and being an entrepreneur the right one? Likely no. Do I wake up every day with a smile on my face and excited to work on the problems I see as important? Yes so I'll continue to do that and who knows what exciting problems will show their face in the future... I don't doubt there will be some.