Here's a mistake that I've noticed a lot of people make when it comes to business, they make big plans and big plans aren't bad, they're just like a sneaky form of procrastination, right? Because a big plan means you're putting off action. Until number one, you finished writing a plan. And number two, the big plan usually takes place it plays out over weeks, or months from now. And it's usually leading up to a big launch. That's a few months from now on.
So, I'll tell you a story about how we almost fell into this trap but got out of it, okay? So there's a few years ago we were making an app for high schoolers and and so the engineers have built, like a simple prototype Ozzy was pretty crappy wasn't even in the app store yet we were playing with in. We kind of liked it but we're a bunch of thirty-year-old, you know, hairy dudes. And so we said we don't know if I schoolers are going to like this the way we like this. So so I told our to growth, guys, I went to Tyler and Jason and
I said, alright, so those guys, the engineers they're building this thing. How are we going to get users? And Tyler? Jason, they're smart guys. They you know so they grabbed a marker that you said. All right we're up for the challenge how we're going to get users and they went to start brainstorming a growth plan and so they thought you know they went to white board and the writing down. We could Facebook ads but you owe these Instagram influencers would get them to shout us that we do influence our program. We could create a referral system or referral program ambassador program inside these high schools.
And any time you hear the word program or committee, you know, just run the other way. It's it's usually that's for things that are mature. And so, if you're working on an early idea, you don't really want to be baking Up full programs just yet. And so these are all good ideas. They weren't bad, but they were things that would take us weeks or even months to set up, right? Even Facebook ads, we couldn't do because the app wasn't even live in the store. It takes a week to get approved, you know, for a new app in the store and so, so we thought. Okay well what are we gonna do? We sit around
And wait or what. So we're at lunch and these guys are telling us the ideas and then we all kind of had this realization. We have a framework or we had a framework, a time I start up, which was called the one month, one week, one hour, one day, one our framework, right? And so any time we have a plan that was like this, this will take us a month to build. This this will take us two months to build this. Somebody's somebody in the room, it's their job to say, dude. That's an awesome idea. Love that idea, I think it's going to be great.
You know, what's the one week version of that? What's the one day version of? That was something we could do today, that we could ship that makes progress towards that end future. And it's basically saying how do I grab the rope and tug the future forward? How do I pull the future into the present? And how do I simplify this great idea so that we can test it out and see what happens because we've learned that most of our great ideas aren't so great when they when they actually touch customers when they actually get get into contact with customers,
And so, so we agreed. We were there. We said, okay, yeah, these programs are good ideas, but let's what's the one day version. If you say, well, I can just call my nieces and nephews, and I could just ask them if they'll try it out with their friends. So we called them and they were in school, so they couldn't pick up their phone. So he said, all right, well, what are we gonna do? It's lunchtime. Now we're going to wait till tonight. Call them. Tell them about it. Get them to tell their friends. That's at least a one day thing.
And so somebody asked the question they go. All right, what's the 1 hour version?
We said the one hour, the one-hour, the one are wondering, what can we do? And that's when we had the idea. We said, well, you know what, the mall that's right. Next to us, our office was in Selma in San Francisco. There's a big mall, Westfield mall. We said, you know, the mall? There's always teens just walking around like maybe we could just go there and maybe we could just like get them to test our app out. It's like wasn't that kind of creepy it's like yeah but like just do it in a non-creepy way. Okay and so Tyler and Jason you know they're like alright we got this don't worry and they went away.
Room for like five minutes and they came back out with a poster that said free burrito. If you try our app and they said they're gonna go stand in front of Chipotle which is like between there was a Chipotle and like a Jamba Juice whatever. We're a bunch of foot traffic went and they're like we're going to hold the sign up. It's a they go and they hold the sign up and they in one hour they had a whole bunch of people basically playing with the app at the table because hey if you use this app and give us feedback you'll get a free will buy you a burrito right? We'll buy you a seven dollar breed.
Up. And so in one hour we went from zero, customers to 20 customers, and 20 is still not like oh my God. Congratulations, you've cracked growth but 20 is a huge leap when you're at zero and we didn't need a program. That was going to give us two thousand twenty thousand or two hundred thousand users, but we didn't even have 20. And so those 20 pointed out a whole bunch of little things that they were like oh yeah, like I was confused about this or like yeah but like this seems like a lot of work so I
Honestly, I wouldn't really do this. I would just want to do this simple thing instead and so we got a bunch of feedback about what to build plus. We got a bunch of email, addresses of kids, who basically are like, yeah, cool. Like, if you guys make a new version of this based on the feedback like I'll try it out. I'll tell my friends about it and this always stuck with me and actually, this became a thing that we did every single day that week. In fact, we would go to a high school would stand outside the high school again, you know, 30 something year old hairy, dude, saying I said the high school is not great, but we had our sign, our
Our burrito sign and in kids were coming out from, it was like, after school, or whatever they're leaving, and we would get hundreds of kids to sign up for this. They thought, oh, I'm going to get a free thing. Yeah, I'll sign up. And as soon as a few people were at the table, signing up everybody else, just wanted to get it to. And, you know, we thought, oh, maybe this. Maybe we'll get in trouble, right? We had all kinds of things. We might talk all kinds of reasons. We might talk ourselves out of this and sure enough, a teacher comes out, an adult comes out there. Like, excuse me, what are you?
And were like, oh man, I'm sorry, you know, not to alarm you. Yeah, we're just were a start-up nearby and we're building an app that we think that high school students will love it, helps them with XYZ and we were just looking for some feedback. And so we were here to basically recruit some beta testers and we were waiting for her to say like, you know, get out of here before I call the cops and instead what she said was that's so cool. My kids love startups here but we have no like
Out of classes or programs. Hey, would you guys be interested in coming in and talking to our class tomorrow? You know, I teach whatever computer science or something, whatever it was in the school and she's like, I teach in the school. And, you know, I could just let you guys guess, teach for a day talking about what it's like to work in a start-up and how do you build an app? And so, all of a sudden we went from creepy dudes, given out burritos, getting maybe 10 or 20 students, at a time to being invited into the school where every hour we would teach first.
Through 6. Or whatever and it would have 25 kids per class and all of a sudden in one day, we would get a hundred and twenty-five students as a captive audience, we're talking them were teaching the class for them. It was fun and we were getting a bunch of users all who all knew each other, which was even better, right? Because there's like, when you use an app that your friends use, you have a better experience. And so that was our story of having, you know, finding a way to pull the future forward to have a high bias for action and not fall into the Trap of making
The quote unquote big plans, right? We do it because we're the right intentions. We just want it to be successful and it seems like a big well, written out. Well, thought out, you know, multistage plan is a better plan, I don't think so. I think a simple plan violently executed today is better than the other complicated multi stage multi, layered nuanced plan that we're going to do over the next six months when it comes to early stage ideas, just remember.
Ideas are ideas and inspiration behind them are perishable, they expire. And so you want to strike. While the idea is hot and not wait around falling into the Trap of making big plans.
All right, if you like these Sunday stories by the way, my name is Sean and I'm one of the co-hosts my first million. I do these quickly kind of, on Friday, or Saturday nights. Whatever topic comes to mind. I just talked about. I also do this for my newsletter, if you're not signed up for it, you should. There's I think about 30,000 people on the newsletter. I'm trying to get it 200k this year, and if you like stories like this, that are like kind of simple business stories. That help you be a better entrepreneur. Help you get better ideas, you should sign up for, it's just good.
Sean poor e.com. Just my name's Sean Puri.com. I'll put the link in the description so you can spell it out sha. A n pu are i.com and join the newsletter to get more stories like this on a weekly basis. All right, I'm out of here.
Hey, my first million listeners, this is stuff from Trends. Now if you've been a die-hard, my first million fan for a while, you probably know what trends is, but if you're new trends, is part of the hustle family, just like my first million and just like my first million. What we do at Trends is we love building businesses. And what our team does is we find ideas, we figure out,
Out non-obvious opportunities. We use tons of different tools to surface ideas from around the web like Google Trends or jungle Scout a panty bankruptcy filings funding announcements and then we tell you exactly how to capitalize. So Trends is a weekly email, it is a community of over 15,000 subscribers that you can work together on building businesses with and you're going to see tons of people like Sam, and Sean in that community and a bunch of other features. But here's why I'm on the Pod today. We have a sick giveaway coming up and I'm not talking about water bottle and stickers were talking about a 3D printer.
And I know you're probably thinking stuff a 3D printer. Weren't those like the overhype things from a decade ago? Well, yes, and no. After the hype died down companies continue to quietly iterate in the market is actually expected to reach 350 billion dollars by 2035. And here's the thing today, you can actually get some pretty decent 3D printers for less than a GoPro, but the one we're giving away is worth $1,900. So, this is a high quality 3D printer that you can actually use to build a real business. Speaking of building businesses at Trends, we've covered several businesses making eighty to ninety percent margins off.
The back of 3D printers other products that are making between 50 to 200 K in Revenue per month and then courses with hundreds of thousands of listeners all around 3D printing. So the space is huge. It's been quietly growing since the hype died down several years ago and if you're listening to this and it's before June 30th, you can sign up for Trends and get entered to win that 3D printer and kick start a business. Now, if you're outside of the window, you can still give Trends a shot if you like my first million. I have a feeling you're going to like Trends, so head over to Trends dotco and we have a one-week trial for one
Dollar, and then when you upgrade use a code M, FM to get $50 off. That's a code. MFM at Trends dotco and we'll see you on the inside.
