Hello my friends!

Here's a recap of what’s been happening. [See last section of the newsletter for where it’s headed].

I'm excited to have you along.

If you're one of the 128 new subscribers that joined in the last 2 weeks - welcome!

If you’re one of the 10k+ subscribers that haven’t seen an edition of this newsletter for a few months, hi again 👋. Sorry I left!

Straight into it then, shall we?

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Here's what's inside:

Side note: Need to come up with some better catchy names for the above 👆🏼

Weekly Wrap

The best content from around the web

🐥 Best Tweet

Is every day a chore? How can you design your life better to prioritize play?

Side: Goes nicely with James' note on how to pick what you work on, below:

📚 Best Read

Guess whose content I've been binging!

Heard this on James' Podcast episode with Tim Ferriss, then saw it in his newsletter:

Look for situations where the energy is already flowing downhill. Invest in relationships where there is already mutual respect. Create products that tap into a desire people already have. Work on projects that play to your strengths.

And then, once the potential of the situation is already working for you, add fuel to the fire. Pour yourself into the craft. Act as if you have to outwork everyone else—even though the wind is at your back.

The idea is to sprint downhill, not grind uphill."

Business Ideas

Business ideas I like, explored

The biggest question I hear and get asked - hands down - is "What can I start that makes money... right now?"

That's the question I'm going to try to answer with today's biz idea section.

First, some basics.

Alright, with housekeeping out the way, here they are in summary and then I'll dive deeper into each:

And now in more detail:

Idea 1: SEO Subscription

With GPT-3 and natural language processing becoming so powerful, everyone can produce SEO content at the drop of a hat.

So… isn’t this a dumb idea?

For two reasons, I don't think so.

1: Google has a vested interest in keeping Google Search alive. Its Ads engine is what fuels Alphabet. It's wildly profitable for them.

2: Most content published on the internet going forward is likely going to be generated by an AI of some kind.

What that means is that most content on the internet is going to be average.

It also then follows that excellent content will do extremely well, and capture a large portion of the available attention.

And excellent content is excellent because it involves original thought intertwined with human experience. It’s got personality. It’s real. It’s someone’s experience.

No bot can write about their experiences — they have none.

So what’s the idea?

Create an SEO subscription that creates excellent content (You’ll have to work on a better word than excellent in your copy — it’s a bit shit), that’s written by real humans, and better than anything else on the topic.

How would it work?

Important:

Idea 2: Local Media Newsletter

I love this playbook. It's:

What's the idea?

Build a hyper-local newsletter for your local community.

How To Do It:

[1] Choose your area.

Find a city or community that you can serve. The more niche the better. Find a balance between being small enough that you can create content that is super relevant to a large portion of the audience, but is also big enough that you can build a decent enough audience.

[2] Start writing a weekly newsletter wrap.

Write about events, businesses, individuals etc. in your community.

To start, you can literally just curate information from other sites, and serve it with a small comment to your audience.

As you get a better feel for what is resonating, start producing more original content.

You'll likely be able to do that just by engaging with your followers and asking for inspiration.

You can do this yourself (better) or outsource, if you don't have the time. A savvy high-school student could to it as a side income.

[3] Promote.

This will be 80% of the effort. The writing will be 20%.

Some ideas:

[4] Monetize.

Get local businesses to run ads.

Once you have a few thousand readers, you’ll be able to start charging local businesses to advertise.

Start small. Give them great ROI. Target industries/businesses with high-price purchases (they will have lots more $$$ to spend than restaurants, for example).

[5] Give Back.

Create a feeling that the newsletter is the glue of the community. Get involved in local events. Give back to local organizations.

Become integral to their lives.

[6] Outsource.

With ad revenue coming in, start outsourcing the writing and ad management/booking.

It might be tempting for you to pocket the profit and keep doing it yourself. Don’t (unless you love it, and you want to stick with a small business).

Spend the money you make on making the newsletter insanely good. Make it so that you want to read it every single morning.

[7] Duplicate.

The best part about this model is that it duplicates so well.

Find a new market. Repeat the process with a local operator who knows the community well.

Very quickly, you can franchise this out.

Idea 3: Cleaning Company

Though the most boring on this list, it's the most exciting for me.

"Cleaning services near me" gets 124k searches per month in the US alone:

In the last 6 months, I've gone in on service-based businesses. Why? Well, I really believe software is going to eat the world.

Why This Idea?

I think 80% of Software Engineers will be replaced by AI in the next 10 years. We will be able to say "Build me an app like Twitter" and an AI bot will do it for you in 10 minutes.

What's that got to do with anything?

Well, what's the one thing that's never going to go away? People need services. They need things like cleaners, laundry, garden services, plumbers, and electricians.

Real-world problems that need real humans to solve. And those problems aren't going to be fully solved by robots during my lifetime (I don't think).

Okay... so why a cleaning company?

How to do it:

[1] Website

Not normally where I'd start, but you need an online presence for this to work.

Build a simple website with Carrd or Webflow (if you fancy). Make sure it has booking functionality, or use BookingKoala to manage that.

In your messaging and branding, position yourself as the premium offering. Offer way more value and service guarantees than all your local competitors.

Go out of the way to show that you're the best there is.

Things people value:

To charge premium prices, you can't be average.

In every single piece of copy or element you put on your website, consider whether it says "Premium".

If it were me, I'd focus on personal (household) cleaning, with a speciality of deep carpet cleans.

Why?

The commercial space will likely be difficult to break into as a beginner. You'll have to compete with established companies who likely lock their clients into long-term contracts.

The household space will be a better learning ground + allow you to make more mistakes.

[2] Find Demand

Use an SEO tool like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Ubersuggest or Mangools to find long-tail keywords for your area.

Examples:

Our goal here is to find keywords that:

So that we can...

[3] Focus on Local SEO

Local SEO is a largely untapped traffic resource that most business owners are sleeping on.

By focusing on a few things like:

you can get thousands of visits per month without needing a super high domain reputation that SEO relies on.

Get all of this setup ASAP, and watch the traffic start flowing in.

Until then...

[4] Find Contractors

The easy part.

Two key differentiators here:

You can pay more because you charge your customers a premium.

Aligning their pay with the desired service level is key as well.

[5] Kickstart

Your first few weeks might be very quiet. That's fine. You still have your full-time job.

Here are a few ways to kickstart your growth:

[5] Build Momentum

Once you're on the horse and its starting to trot along, keep an eye on:

And that's it... how to start a $10k/month cleaning business in 6 weeks.

Idea 4: Romance Novels [Next Week]

Sex sells. This is a massive industry.

Look at this search volume for "erotic short stories":

21k monthly searches in the US alone.

We'll explore this idea next week with a playbook on how to get started!

Idea 5: SMB Business Directory Consultancy [Next Week]

Apple has just launched Apple Business Connect (ABC).

It's their competitor to Google Business, but for Apple Maps and the wider Apple ecosystem.

Basically - a way for people to list and find other businesses offering services (Read as: A potential traffic & client source).

Most businesses don't know anything about local SEO. There's a big opportunity here to productize a service that helps businesses capture local traffic using local SEO.

Check in next week for the update!

🚀 Growth Hack

 A growth hack I came across this week

Dangle a QR code off the back of the headrest of an Uber for riders to see.

Pay the Uber driver a once-off tip + commission for any referred sales.

Works great for businesses relying on local traffic.

👋 Check In

// This section is a broad product update to give you the inside scoop on how things are going in my businesses.

Day 39. 6th week of the year already. We're almost a 10th of the way through! Wild how time flies.

How would you rate your progress over the last few weeks?

What I'm Working On:

Last Week's Wins:

Plans for This Week:

🎯 Vision for The Signal [Where We're Going]

I just popped this section in as a quick aside to give you some idea of where this newsletter is headed and why I ultimately started it up again.

I want this to be your ultimate community, guide, partner, resource, and tool to help you start and build your next company.

How am I doing this?

As I said, ain't no ordinary newsletter.

Yes, the newsletter is going to always be around. But it's just one part of the bigger picture. I want you to become successful business owners and I'm on a mission to give you the tools and support community to get there.

I loved writing this. It's good to be back!

I hope to see you next week.

— Simon 🙂

PS: Give me some feedback, please? Just hit the reply button and let me know your honest thoughts on anything. If you think I'm missing something - let me know!