OKDork - He runs 9 businesses (with 0 employees)

Happy THURSDAY! Summer is finally here…here’s what’s been going on…

✅ What happened:

• YouTube. Filmed 3 videos, including a FIRE interview with Bill Perkins from Die with Zero. Can’t wait for you to see it. 
• AppSumo. Announced the Tesla Cybertruck giveaway! 8 days left to enter. 
• 48 Challenge Winner. Eli Moraru won my challenge from Tim Ferriss’s podcast. He visited Austin and I helped him with his startup. 
• Mystery Hecto-Millionaire. Aka anonymous super wealthy person shared tons of wisdom with me recently, which I’ll share on my podcast soon. 

📋 What’s coming up:

• Baby Prep. Getting the house ready for my little one. Excited and nervous! 👶
• Sumo Day. Huge sale event for software tools June 9-13. Great for anyone needing tools to grow their business. 
• $10K Hiring. I’ll pay you $10k to refer AppSumo a VP of marketing or VP of finance.
• Content batching. Aiming to get ahead so no work for all July.

Hope you have a great Summer🌶️

On to this week’s email…

~~

In 2021, Marc Louvion was depressed, living with his parents, and had 0 income.

Last month, he made $143k as a solopreneur working from Bali. He runs 9 micro-startups (with 0 employees).

His story is nothing short of amazing:

How it all started

Marc grew up in Nogent-sur-Marne, a little town outside of Paris. He spent most of his childhood building huts in the woods near his home and playing with LEGOs.

“I’ve always enjoyed the process of building things,” Marc said. “I would spend hours building legos just to look at the finished model, and then I’d demolish it and move on to the next one, getting better each time.”

That curious attitude led Marc to be miserable in school. He knew he didn’t want to go down the conventional path - but he also didn’t know where to start.

Then he went on a trip to Hong Kong. “It opened my eyes to new possibilities,” Marc said. “I saw different people, lifestyles, and jobs – I left feeling inspired to start my own thing.”

So he started his first startup: Tinder for sports lovers.

“Say you want to play soccer or tennis,” Marc said, “you could search for other players who live nearby.”

He invested all his time in building the app, making business cards, and designing logos. “I really thought I was going to be the next Mark Zuckerberg,” Marc said with a grin. 

The only problem?

As he was building his startup, he didn’t tell anyone about it.

“I didn’t know anything about marketing,” Marc said. “I didn’t know how I was going to make money.”

When he launched, he got 0 users.

A mountain of failures

This pattern repeated for the next 3 years.

He’d have an idea. Create a startup. Struggle to get customers.

Disgruntled, in 2021, he decided to call it quits. “I went through a dark depression,” Marc said. “I was living with my parents, I started to question everything I had done.”

He applied for a job as a software engineer and ended up working for one of Tai Lopez’s companies.

“Having someone tell you what to do and acknowledge your work was a relief,” Marc said. “But I also knew it wouldn’t be a forever thing.”

That’s when he discovered the Indie Hacker community on Twitter.

He saw people like Danny Postma building startups with a laptop and living their dream lives. They had no desire to raise money and build a unicorn. They wanted the freedom to work on what they wanted, where they wanted, without having to answer to anyone.

So he took the plunge, moved to Bali, and shipped like a madman.

He tested marketing strategies like affiliate marketing (worked well) and paid advertisement (did okay).

But the real difference was building an audience online. As he built his startups, he documented his journey on Twitter and YouTube. That’s when he finally started to gain traction.

The more money he made, the more people followed his journey – creating a flywheel effect.

Marc repeated this strategy building 24 startups in the last 2 years. His most recent startup, ShipFast, made $142k in the past 30 days (!!)

5 Keys to Marc’s Success:

Most people talk about the ONE key to their success.

Talk to Marc, and you’ll realize there are no magic pills.

Entrepreneurship is a grind. It takes a lot of effort to get things off the ground. But the work is well worth the reward.

Here are Marc’s 5 keys to solopreneur success:

1. Just F*cking Start

“Show me an experimenter, and over the long run, I’ll show you a future winner.” – Shaan Puri

Marc tried SO many experiments: 

• A movie recommendation app. 

• Several different habit trackers. 

• He even created an ebook to help men stop dribbling when they pee 😂

While most of his experiments failed, each failure led to a lesson that helped him with his next experiment.

Too often, people are paralyzed with a Wantrepreneur’s Mindset. They think they need more planning, more research, and more thinking. But the truth is... You just need to START (!!)

2. Build selfishly, share selflessly

“Problems are a great way to get business ideas,” Marc said. “Each project is the answer to the problem I encountered in the previous project.”

For example, he started ByeDispute which monitors fraudulent activity to prevent your Stripe account from being banned after he himself got banned from a random chargeback.

Then later, he started Zenvoice after spending over $2,000 on Stripe PDF invoices.

I started AppSumo because I couldn’t find great discounts on the best business tools.

When in doubt, solve your own problems. If you’re willing to pay for a solution, it’s likely others are too.

3. Study the art of marketing

Marc is a genius at attracting attention when he launches his startups.

He creates parody videos of celebrities reacting to his startups - and people LOVE them. In fact, people loved them so much that Marc created a course (LaunchViral) on how you can create your own.

The days of “build it and they will come” are over. It’s never been easier to start a business – but it’s also never been harder to stand out.

4. Bring the restaurant into the kitchen

A marketing strategy that many solopreneurs use is “Building In Public”.

Put simply, they’ll share the behind-the-scenes of building their startup.

• Wins

• Failures

• Big decisions

• Personal stories

Why does this work? Because people want to follow real people doing real things.

When you involve your customers in your journey, they’re more likely to support and buy from you.

Marc is SUPER transparent – sharing monthly breakdowns of all his income sources.

5. Persistence beats resistance

One of the biggest things that stood out about Marc was his persistence.

He failed for YEARS before he started gaining traction. Yet most people give up after a few weeks.

• YouTube started as a dating site.

• Twitter started as a podcast finder.

• Figma started as a drone company.

I failed at 20+ startups before AppSumo.

Sometimes failure is a redirection to get to your destination.

Rooting for you,

Noah 🌮

Ps. If you’re looking for awesome tools for your business, our team recently launched FiveTaco - a curated directory to find the best software for entrepreneurs. Marc’s tools are featured too! 💚

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