đ§ 3 Ideas on Sunday - Jan. 23rd
Facebook wouldnât hire them, so they built an App and sold it to Facebook for $19 billion
1. Facebook wouldnât hire them, so they built an App and sold it to them for $19 billion
Brian Acton and Jan Koum are the founders of WhatsApp, a massively popular messaging app that Facebook acquired for $19 billion in 2014. My favorite part of this story? Brian and Jan both applied for jobs at Facebook before they started WhatsApp, and they were both rejected.
Brian and Jan were both engineers at Yahoo where they met, and both left the company around 2007 to take a year off and travel. After their time off, they both applied for jobs at Facebook, but neither of them were hired.
In 2009 Jan bought his first iPhone and saw a massive opportunity in the brand new Apple App Store.
Jan was annoyed that he was missing a bunch of calls when he went to the gym, and thought there was a need for a messaging app that let your friends know when youâre available. (This is now the âstatusâ feature. Active, Away, Offline, etc.)
Jan discussed this idea for a messaging app with Brian, and WhatsApp was born. Jan chose the name WhatsApp because it sounded like âwhatâs upâ. đ
Fast forward to 2014, Jan and Brian grew WhatsApp to 450 million users and sold it to Facebook for $19 billion. Facebook made this purchase with a mix of cash and stock, which made Jan and Brian Billionaires.
Today more than 2 billion people in over 180 countries use WhatsApp.
Moral of the story? If a company wonât hire you, build a business and sell it to them for billions of dollarsâŠâŠitâs that simple. đ
2. âMillionaires have 7 streams of incomeâ is a misleading statement.
The IRS has reported that on average, millionaires have 7 streams of income. Although this statement may be true, I believe it is very misleading.
The income types reported are:
1. Dividend income from stocks owned.
2. Earned income from a paychecks.
3. Rents from rental real estate.
4. Royalties from selling rights to use something theyâve written or invented.
5. Capital gains from selling appreciated assets.
6. Profits from businesses they own.
7. Interest from savings, CDs, bonds, or other lending activities.
I believe this statement is misleading because most Millionaires did not become Millionaires from 7 streams of income, they become millionaires from one. Once millionaires make over $1,000,0000, it is much easier to diversify their money and develop other sources of income.
Tom Corley conducted the âRich Habitsâ study in 2004-2007, where he studied 233 millionaires. From this study he found there were 4 common paths to becoming a millionaire.
The Saver-Investors (less than 22%): The easiest way, but involves earning a good salary and living frugally. Average net worth: $3.3 million
The Dreamers (approx. 28%): The hardest way, involves building a business or becoming a singer, actor, etc. Average net worth: $7.4 million
The Company Climbers (approx. 31%): The 2nd hardest way, involves climbing the corporate ladder. Average net worth: $3.4 million
The Virtuosos (approx. 19%): The longest path, involves becoming the best in a specific industry, and getting paid a high premium for you knowledge. Average net worth: $4 million
In all of these groups, it wasnât 7 different sources of income that made them their first million. It was one source or one method.
My advice: Focus on one source or method of making $1 million, and go all in on it. Once you have $1 million you can worry about building up other streams of income.
Sources: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/27/4-main-paths-to-becoming-millionaire-here-is-the-easiest-way-says-money-expert.html
https://richhabits.net/rich-habits-study-background-and-methodology/
https://dividendrealestate.com/7incomestreams/
3. Business Idea of the Week: Podcast Clips Agency
It is estimated that there are more than 850,000 active podcasts in 2022. The goal for most podcasts are to provide great content and grow the number of listeners. A common way to grow a podcast is to cut the best clips from an episode and post them to Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, etc.
Many popular podcasts use podcast clips to grow their audience. Hereâs a few examples:
ImPaulsive Podcast Clips - Logan Paulâs Podcast
Full Send Podcast Clips - The NELK Podcast
Joe Rogan Experience Clips - Joe Roganâs Podcast
Business Idea: Offer a podcast clips creation service to podcasters that do not have a team to create clips for them. The podcasts listed above are great examples of how to use clips to grow a podcast, but they also have millions of listeners and entire production teams. The average podcaster does not have an entire team behind them, and most likely does not have the time to cut, edit and post clips consistently.
How to get started: Start clipping, editing and posting short 30 sec - 1 min clips of your favorite podcast on TikTok. You can download the full length videos from Youtube, and use a video editing software like iMovie or Final Cut. Stay consistent with posting new clips on TikTok, and you should start generating views and followers. You can then use this account as a used case or example when reaching out to podcasters.
I created a TikTok called ThinkJuice and started editing and posting clips of my favorite favorite podcast (My First Million Podcast). The 6th video I posted received over 85,000 views, and got the account to 300 followers within a few days. This really works!
The Pitch: Once you have some videos with >50k views to show potential clients, you can start pitching your service. You will want to pitch all of the benefits of the service, and the potential growth it will bring to their podcast when clips go viral. The ideal prospect for this will be a podcaster with good traction, but not enough popularity to have a team that would do this for them. They will also need to have some sort of income from the podcast to justify paying for your service.
Build & Scale your offer: I believe this business has an opportunity to scale quick. You can build your offer to look something like: $2,000/month = 5 clips posted to TikTok, Youtube and Instagram every week. Once you have a few customers, you can hire video editors to really start scaling and building systems.
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