I accidentally started a new business

Momentum is the best drug in the world.

On Thursday, I accidentally started a new business because I was high on momentum. Let me explain.

I’ve been doing various types of street videos in NYC for the last 4 months and I had an idea a few weeks ago to launch a business playfully titled Man-on-the-Street-as-a-Service where I do interviews for brands to use as content.

But I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea—so I sat on it.

Then on Thursday morning, I got high on momentum.

I met with a publisher to talk about the new book I’m working on, I got reposted by a meme page with 1.4 million followers, and my friend Mark posted a video telling people about my book leading to a spike in book sales. This was all by 1 PM and I was 3 cold brews deep.

So I’m sitting co-working with my friend Shane, and I figure fuck it, I want to ride the momentum. You gotta ride momentum while it’s hot. So I write up a tweet for Man-on-the-Street-as-a-Service and find a pic from a past interview in under 15 minutes and press publish.

My expectations were maybe 10-15 people like it and I get hopefully 1 company who is down to work together.

Well, that wasn’t what happened.

Comments started flooding in. 300+ new followers. 85,000+ views. Most importantly, 50+ inbound DMs asking for pricing and to jump on calls.

23 hours later, I closed my first deal for Man-on-the-Street-as-a-Service.

I’ve closed 2 more deals since then. 😈

BUILD YOUR SILLY IDEAS

I had no clue if my silly idea would work.

By tweeting out the idea, I got feedback. BUT listen very closely—feedback and likes and comments isn’t enough.

“Likes ain’t cash” as JK Molina from TweetHunter says. The only feedback that matters in business is getting paid. Monetize ASAP, create as little friction as possible from my idea to purchase. As my friend Jordan Mix says, “Publish more buy buttons on the internet.”

You’d think a “buy button” means on a Shopify site or whatever, but your buy buttons don’t have to be fancy actual buy buttons. Stop waiting until you have the perfect sexy website or whatever. I negotiated and closed the entire $4,100 deal in the Twitter DMs, no phone calls or website needed, just a Stripe invoice. “The ‘buy’ button can be simple: an Upwork posting, Gumroad “Pay what you want”, Lemon Squeezy Affiliate link. Might as well give traffic the option to buy from you,” explains Jordan. As you can see, I didn’t even have a contract made and I got paid. Stop overthinking, start underthinking.

If you’ve got a crazy silly idea, you should be publishing a buy button ASAP. Your mom and friends and girlfriend will say it’s a good idea, but you don’t actually know until a customer pays you. Money speaks louder than words.

Build your silly ideas then publish a buy button. You never know what’s gonna happen with an idea until you go to market. That’s why I did pre-orders for my book Memes Make Millions BEFORE I even finished the book, why I started my paid newsletter the day I started my newsletter, and why I spent 6 hours responding to DMs on Thursday to make these man-on-the-street deals happen ASAP. Stop waiting, move faster.

MOVE FASTER

I’ve been rapping along with these lyrics since high school way before I knew about Zuck’s “Move fast and break things.”

If you want to move fast, you have to learn how to give a fuck about the right things and not give a fuck about the wrong things. If you give too many fucks about the wrong things, there’s no way you can move fast because you’re constantly living in fear of fucking up. That’s the whole point of Mark Manson’s book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck; you have to choose what to give a fuck about and what not to because at some point you run out of fucks.

I talked about this on Friday’s video. Tbh the best way to overcome fear is to straight-up move so fast you cant feel the fear. Think about when you see a pretty girl at the bar. You feel fear, you say fuck it, and you go to talk to her. If you stop and think for 15 minutes, by the time you work up the courage to talk to the girl, she’s already gone or some other dude went up to her. Fast movers win. The same is true in business and content.

Move so fast you can’t feel the fear.

CYBERPUNK HYPERLINKS

I’ve only got 1 link for you this week because it’s a special one.

Adobe’s Scott Belsky wrote the most interesting, thought-provoking 2024 Predictions blog I’ve seen yet. Here’s some of my favorites:

1. Thanks to AI-based tools, “small brands will gain the operational benefits of big brands without the overhead of a big company.” AI tools let small teams and solopreneurs move FAST with minimal costs.

2. Scott is very bullish on personalized AI agents to help you shop and make decisions. “You’ll start trusting the guidance of your agent more than any other signal.” Unfortunately, I think he’s right for the majority of people. I say keep trusting yourself.

3. “Education is notoriously expensive and inefficient, and AI has the opportunity to fundamentally refactor learning as we know it starting with ‘lifelong tutors.’” This makes me so happy for my future kids. Imagine if you had an AI tutor that since kindergarten that stays with you as you grow up for the rest of your life and knows you more and more every year. I think the tutor needs be like some wise mentor Dumbledore kinda figure to work well.

Read the full article here.

MEMES OF THE WEEK

My fiancée sent me this one lol

I sent her this one

Thanks for reading nerds.

Create some cool shit this week.

Jason Levin