In this blog, we’ll go over some of the best answers we have received thus far, so this one is extremely worth the read. Our interviewee today is a man who goes by the name BowTiedOpossum on Twitter. If you look below you can see a screenshot of his Twitter profile and his website. Even though he has over 18,000 followers at this time, don’t be fooled as his number of followers doesn’t define his entrepreneurial experience. He currently runs online businesses in the hundreds of millions with email lists in the millions as well. Just finding the time to give such quality responses to these questions is impressive.
If you’re looking for some entrepreneurial advice directly from him on top of this blog, his Substack is linked in his Twitter bio (here) and it’s a killer resource from a guy who knows his way around online business if you couldn’t tell already.
In his Twitter content, he mainly focuses on e-commerce-related tweets, and some of his tweets are insanely good tips that could easily boost your entrepreneurial knowledge or even your revenue if you already run some form of an e-commerce business. Here is a recent tweet of his that extremely briefly speaks about a huge part (and tactic) of business:
Just this ~100-word tweet has so much value to break down, it could rewrite this entire blog, but we’ll make it short. If you’re starting a business and it’s an entertainment or one-time product, then you’re most likely going to have a low LTV for every customer.
For example, one product stores have a LTV of the exact price of that product. For example, if you only sell a diamond necklace in your store, for $500, your LTV is going to be $500 because that product lasts for life, and it’s a one-time purchase.
This is the same reason why the most boring, everyday businesses are so successful. Think of Trash companies, shipping companies, etc… Just the most boring businesses that are essential to everyday life. These businesses are the biggest in cities and even countries because they are essential to the everyday cycle of their customers. EVERYONE has to throw their trash out or ship things places every single day, and that’s the secret.
We could go through his tweets and take a deep dive into each one, but if we ever want to get to his answers, we can’t. So let’s get into the questions:
What were your original ideas if you didn’t start the company you’re currently running?
“I was going to launch a laundry detergent sheets brand. There’s a lot more to deciding on a niche but a few things made me really like this idea.
- Extremely cheap shipping
- Not a ton of competition compared to most of the niches I’ve been a part of
- Recurring subscription with a product that rarely gets changed”
This is an extremely good example of an idea for a company because of the way he approaches it looking at cost, competition in the market, and everyday use in the customer’s lifecycle.
Going back to his tweet about a product being an everyday use item for your customer, this is a great business model as people have to use dryer sheets every time they do laundry. For a normal household that’s probably somewhere around 10 dryer sheets a week or more.
Another great point he makes the product a subscription, which takes away the problem of losing customers forgetting to reorder and just buying at stores or customers buying a different product next time they go online.
The way he briefly talks about starting a company is a great method you could turn into a fool-proof business idea evaluation strategy:
- Evaluate costs
- Guage competition in the market
- Is there a way to integrate it into customer’s everyday lives?
Why didn’t you go through with it?
“Another one of my businesses took off much faster than anticipated. No sense in trying to juggle multiple businesses when the better risk-reward calculation is to double down on something that’s working and has a ton of runway.”
Exactly put. Spreading out your energy, time, and resources across multiple projects or businesses is a great way to kill them all. Focusing on one thing at a time and “Doubling down” for lack of a better word, is some of the best, and most popular advice you’ll get from any successful entrepreneur.
Think about it this way. If you were to play 3 sports in high school, football in the fall, wrestling in the winter, and baseball in the spring. Over the course of a year, you’d be spreading out your knowledge, energy, and time across all three. Instead of being decent at all three, it would be a much better idea to focus on one, say baseball, and train year-round at that sport in order to be the best.
How would you have launched it if you think it can still work?
“TikTok. That’s the easiest and cheapest place to get eyeballs right now. By far. If you can learn to make videos that get traction and have a good business sense, you’re going to make a lot of money with TikTok.
The problem for most people is that at best they only have 1 of those 2 skills. If you’re like me and you’ve never been able to master short-form video, you then need to move on to either partnering with someone to make your videos or have really juicy affiliate offers for TikTok Shop creators.”
Here is another example of positioning in a market. Since he knows where the market is at (AKA where the money is) he works on how he can actually attack that market from different positions, even if he doesn’t possess the skills necessary to execute his first idea.
If you lack the skills, there is always another way.
What is a trendy business model you think is overrated and overhyped? Why?
“Selling copywriting/email/newsletter/design/etc. services on Twitter. I’m not saying you can’t make money from it. You can. The market is just so much larger outside of social media for any of this stuff. People have been told by social media gurus that being a social media guru is the best way to make money.
It’s not. Not even close. It’s a great way for people to realize that there’s an infinite amount of ways to make money, but there’s much bigger fish outside of Twitter.”
All of his answers are so well explained, they stand for themselves. This piece of advice stands especially alone, as there is nothing else to explain.
Again, if you’re looking for more of his content and advice, his Twitter is linked above for you to check him out and learn more for yourself (Highly recommended). We hope this blog has brought at least one piece of information to you that will help you in your entrepreneurial adventures!
