The Entrepreneur Experiment #91 - Idea Lab

It's 91. Okay, I can never remember so I have to go online for every single episode and check the number. We're going for 91. I don't actually even need to say that. I don't know why I looked it up. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Entrepreneur Experiment Idea Lab with me, Gary Fox. Last week's episode got really strong feedback so thank you to everyone who enjoyed the book recommendations and a load of you bought them as well. So enjoy them, let me know how you get on. I'm also looking for some book recommendations so let me know what books you've read in 2020 and what books you recommend I should read in 2021. I always buy four or five books over Christmas to just to start the year with so let me know what books I should read. So the Momentum Challenge, we're nearly there. If you're listening to this on Monday, it's day 40 of 42 for the Momentum Challenge and we've done it. We're almost there, just two days to go. We're almost out of lockdown as well which just feels pretty damn good. It's been a long lockdown so getting close to Christmas, we're getting close to a lot of good things. So it's been a rough year so enjoy it, celebrate it and we will plan again in January for another challenge. I'm going to do a challenge in January so if you want to get involved. I don't know what it'll be yet. It'll be similar enough to the Momentum Challenge I think but if you want to do it with me, let me know. Let's come up with some sort of challenge we can all do together, be similar enough theme, do something every day for 30 days, nothing too crazy about it but let me know. Let me know what you think. The Momentum Challenge, why I did it, just to explain really quickly is why I did it was I found the last lockdown was quite hard to focus on things. It's quite hard like 42 days is a long time. I just found by focusing on something daily that by anchoring in one thing that it helped me start each day with just something positive. You've already achieved something positive so by anchoring in that thing it helped me and I find if I do exercise every day it helps clear the mental process and here it helps give me clarity for the day, gets the endorphins going, you feel bloody good. So I was like right that's what I'm going to do. I did it, I feel good, it helped me. There's definitely days I didn't want to do it and having the accountability is great. I shared it online not to brag about it or anything but just more so that I would feel obliged every day to put up a photo going you know day 39, day 38, day 37. No one cares like you know no one's going to be like oh my god that's amazing but I care as in like I feel obliged to people who are like somehow watching and somehow going okay that's cool he's doing a challenge then might inspire someone else to do something similar but I enjoyed it and that's the main thing. I had my fun, that's all that matters. So if you are planning on doing something in January I'm also thinking about doing a special planning session like a special like 2021 here's how I plan my week, my day, my month. The episode of Jamie Heast has got a lot of good feedback in terms of how he plans and his tenure plans and people are really inspired by the detail he goes into and how he sets up his day and it kind of stimulated a good debate about well that doesn't suit me that does suit me blah blah blah. So if you want to do a special planning episode let me know and I'll put that together it might be handy to have that coming up towards the end of the year. I think New Year's Resolutions are a waste of time because they focus on the wrong things but I do think there's something special about January 1st there's something special about a new year it's a great time to look ahead and plan new things your adventures for 2021. 2020 has been a long hard year for a lot of people I think looking forward to stuff in 2021 will be important the one thing I found weird about lockdown was you've nothing specific to break up your week or to look forward to you know so there's nothing like a holiday or something like you know a birth celebration or even just going for a pint or watching a match a lot of that was taken away so I think it will be very important to set stuff up for 2021 that you can look ahead and go yes I can't wait until May until I'm going to do that trip or you know I can't wait until I launch this business in February or whatever that so if you want to do that let me know I'm kind of planning out the rest of my episodes for the rest of the year I kind of want to squeeze in as much value as I can this is 91 so obviously we've only just got eight to go nine to go Matt's Gary Matt's so let me know what you want to hear and the last kind of couple episodes I'll be going right up until New Year's Eve with the episodes and then I'll be taking a slight break for a couple of weeks and then we'll start again so let me know what you want to hear and we've churned out a lot of episodes this year so let me know what you've enjoyed what you didn't enjoy so you can help me build a better plan for season five so I can come back with more value I just want to thank one person well this team of people really Parallel Nutrition who helped me with my challenge guys sorted out all my food so breakfast lunch dinner for the entire challenge so I didn't have to worry about you know prepping meals or you know staying within my calories and just help me fuel for me I'm not really tracking calories I do track calories but it's not so much to overeat or whatever it's more just to fuel myself properly because I find I often if I'm working really hard if I'm on the road a lot I definitely find it hard to get enough calories in first world problems good calories you can get bad calories in pretty easy but I find it hard to get good calories in so working with someone like them was great for the whole month because it just I didn't have to think about it I didn't have to just like go to the fridge to get a great meal microwave done on we go so I want to thank the lads here in this crew food is absolute class go to parallelnutrition.ie if you want to try them out and especially coming up to January it could be a very good start of the year so you can just start a clean slate you don't have to worry about food or keeping under calories and stuff like that on with the show today today's a little bit different I've just got one great idea to share with you but first we're doing a giveaway kind of how I've made this far without mentioning the giveaway we're doing a giveaway so if you listen to this on Monday or Tuesday so it's Monday November 30th or Tuesday December 1st I'm doing a giveaway for two tickets to the web summit which is taking place this week it's online obviously because you know the thing so if you want to actually go to the web summit virtually go to my Instagram page I'll link it if you're in the newsletter go to my newsletter it'll be in your inbox as soon as you're watching this click on the tab go to my Instagram page like post like my account like the entrepreneur experiment post like the account that's it you can also share in your story for a bonus entry and that's it that's how you win but that's how you get a chance to win you know guaranteed win but I will pick someone tomorrow after lunch and I'll pick two people to get one ticket each to go to the web summit virtually this year so I think that's a pretty good prize you might get your idea for 2021 out of it that's pretty cool to be able to see those crowd speakers from the comfort of your own home today's idea popped up on Twitter to me a few weeks ago and it kind of it's in the space that I've worked in for a lot of years it's in the Airbnb space property space and it was a girl I mentioned her I think last week on the pod I'm not sure if I mentioned her on the pod but she was definitely in the newsletter version Cody Sanchez she runs a great blog Contrarian Thinking on Substack and she basically just analyzes business deals analyzes different kind of business deals you know how she finances them really good quite similar to this in terms of very detailed very kind of straightforward stuff nothing too complex about it but she comes up with kind of unusual ideas hence the name Contrarian Thinking and this one was really interesting and it was I'm just pulling up the now so she talks about an entrepreneur in the states who bought a piece of land in the famous Joshua Tree Park in states and she bought the entrepreneur bought the land for 10 grand which is unbelievably good and she was making 1500 euro a month yeah that's a deliberate pause that's crazy return so 10 grand the land cost she's making 1500 euro a month how that's what you're here for I'll link the full article on my newsletter so if you're not in the newsletter go to mrgarryfox.com I'll link Cody's full article there it's well worth a read she goes into the full specifics the breaks down the taxes the management fees etc but the gist of it here is simple Katie Hancock was the entrepreneur she wanted a low cost low maintenance investment she wanted to do something that was just very simple very low cost and she saw these three acres land like literally Joshua Tree is just a desert it's just three acres of desert essentially so there's nothing spectacular about it but it was cheap her idea was simple she just rents out the land for camping I love simple ideas so she uses platforms like Airbnb and hip camp I'm not sure hip camp is that big here in Ireland but it's definitely big in the states it's like Airbnb for camping essentially and she just rents it out on Airbnb and hip camp so these facilities for camping are zero slash minimal so that's a great part of it there she didn't have to invest much in it just the land she uses a platform like Airbnb the big bonus there is Airbnb's unbelievably powerful platform I've worked on for the last six years now you don't need to spend money to advertise an Airbnb it's very unique it's not like any other platform that I've ever used it's not like Amazon it's not like Google it's not like anything you don't need to spend money on Airbnb to actually rank high in the results so it's for that reason alone it's an unbelievable people are sleeping on Airbnb Airbnb is going to come back stronger than ever it's part of my new business model that I'm working on and which I think we're going to launch on my birthday on February 3rd I think I'll be the ultimate narcissist and launch business on my birthday so I was working in Tipperary on that this weekend we've got they're in the workshop they're actually physically live now I can actually touch the units now so it's it's getting exciting anyway back on track here she's there and if you use Airbnb you also get insurance that's a big thing to remember because you don't have to then go off and get expensive insurance Airbnb insures your guests while they're on the property and if you have a live booking with them that's why it's always essential never to go off platform and it got me thinking could this be done in Ireland a slight spoiler I kept kind of looking at dissimilarity is for the last kind of two or three years because that was my job but I actually didn't think it could I was like there's no way this land that cheap here and there's a property website that I use all the time it's like my guilty pleasure bid x1 and they essentially auction off land and properties every I think it's every two months they run it it seems to be about every two to three months so if you're in a property go to bed x1 check that out but I did a quick daft search and I was like okay let's see I put in sub 25k commercial sites so commercial site is obviously anything that's not residential so like you know fields development sites old b&b's you know old offices anything like that and a daft search I put in the parameters daft search commercial sites anywhere in Ireland under 25k and it result resulted in how many results I guess quickly there's no price but just play along 117 so there's 117 sites for sale in Ireland at the minute for under 25k that's pretty cool like that is a good a good entry point for having your first property business you don't have to do camping you could do other sorts of stuff on it but I think that's a cool it's a good idea I love ideas it just makes me think on oh that's actually didn't ever think of that before that's what idea labs all about so I hope you enjoyed that one I think that's something different that we can all kind of think about as we get into the 2021 and if you're not on the newsletter go to mrgarryfox.com I share this and I also share other stuff like I do the week in numbers I pull out all cool stats I pull out what I'm listening to watching reading and I share it all with you on the newsletters go to mrgarryfox.com join the newsletter it's growing week on week growing by about 20-30 people week on week over 350 people on the newsletter now so thank you very much we also are just about to shoot past 9 000 listeners on the podcast so thank you very much that's huge I'm just looking back I got a reminder on Instagram yesterday you know this day last year this day last year yesterday so not to this day last year so yesterday last year I was celebrating 20 000 listeners so as of yesterday I had a quick check and we're at I think it's 89 000 listeners so we're just shy of 90 000 listeners so maybe we can make it to 100 000 this year which would be absolutely unbelievable don't forget about the giveaway go to my Instagram mrgarryfox go to the entrepreneur experiment on Instagram like the post tag friend and you'll be in a chance of winning two tickets sorry you mean chance of winning one ticket ticket for each person that wins because I think shares it's fairest to give it out to two different peoples two different people get a chance to go you've been a chance to win a ticket to go to the web summit which is happening this Wednesday Thursday and Friday so enter if you're listening Monday Tuesday go enter now before two o'clock that's the idea lab for today I hope you enjoyed it let me know what you think about this kind of idea I think it's a great idea I think I'm going back to daft now to look at more sites I will see you on Thursday for the Thursday big interview with the founder of spark crowdfunding it's a good one I'll see you then