#33 - Shane Melaugh of ikario.com
[#33] - Building on what already exists with Shane Melaugh
Are you ready to ignite an idea, fire up your business and transform your life!? If so, you will love soaking up today's episode with entrepreneur expert Shane Melaugh. Shane Melaugh has founded multiple seven-figure companies, including Thrive Themes, and is currently building his cultivating personal development community, ikario.
Shane's personal story is fascinating. His mission via ikario is to share his life experiences with as many people as possible to help them break free and transform their lives into beautiful success stories. In this episode, Shane openly shares how his life transitioned from constraints, struggles, and an overwhelming sense of failure to finding freedom, wonderful success, and ultimately, unlocking a better life. Throughout the discussion, Shane explores the importance of building on what already exists, reveals a brilliant tool for filtering through business ideas, and highlights why we shouldn't overlook self-care and personal development. Key points within this episode include:
An introduction to Shane Melaugh.
How to organically grow a loyal customer base.
Understanding marketing techniques to reach new audiences.
The power of personal interaction when building a business.
How to identify and meet your customer’s needs.
Sell before you make it! The benefits of testing your existing audience.
A brilliant tool for filtering new business ideas.
Napkin Maths – how to determine the feasibility of a business plan.
Becoming comfortable with saying no.
The ikario story: unlocking potential through self-development.
Why self-care should never be overlooked.
A book recommendation for becoming a better entrepreneur.
Shane's advice on obtaining your first 10 customers.
"Hustle and grind 24/7 till you make it is the worst way to try and make it. If you don't have rest in your life and you're not strategic about having high-intensity focus and then deep rest, you're just basically cutting yourself off at the knees because you're hampering your own ability to learn and make progress." – Shane Melaugh.
Connect with Shane Melaugh:
https://activegrowth.com/about/
https://activegrowth.com/podcast/
https://www.youtube.com/user/imimpact
https://www.linkedin.com/shane-melaugh
Connect with First 10 Podcast host Conor McCarthy:
https://www.first10podcast.com
https://twitter.com/TheFirst10Pod
https://www.linkedin.com/in/comccart/
Resources:
Book: So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport.
https://www.calnewport.com/books/so-good/
Check out my podcast partners!
Buzzsprout:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1389931
Otter:
https://otter.ai/referrals/ETRNKY16
Calendly:
https://calendly.grsm.io/ilev18qxpn1e
This podcast was produced in partnership with podlad.com
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, thrive themes, customers, business, market, building, money, product, life, podcast, talking, idea, personal development, offer, create, entrepreneur, shane, niche, writing, sell
SPEAKERS
Conor McCarthy, Shane Melaugh
Shane Melaugh 00:01
I just live a better life now than I could have ever wished for. And, and one of the most important factors from here is freedom. I just have total freedom. I'm financially free, I can live wherever I want, I can basically do whatever I want with my time. And that is something that I wouldn't have dared dream of when I was younger.
Conor McCarthy 00:18
Hello, and welcome to season four of the first 10 podcast. I'm your host, Conor McCarthy, and I help people start to grow their businesses. I do that through joint ventures, collaborations, coaching, and online workshops. In each episode of this podcast, I interview business builders about the early days of starting a business, about how they found their first 10 customers and got off the ground so that you can learn what works and what didn't. Please do check out my website at ConorMcCarthy.me for more details. My guest today is Shane Melaugh. Shane is a really great example of a true entrepreneur. He has founded multiple seven figure businesses including Thrive Themes, and is currently building the Personal Development website, Ikario. In this episode, Shane tells it all about startup businesses, we cover how existing customers can help direct your next business, marketing through connecting and having great conversations, understanding needs, and creating great offers how to quickly and cheaply test for a signal when you're pursuing a new idea, and selling an idea before you create it. We talked about the fallacy of credit markets. And for those listeners who have a ton of ideas or opportunities coming up, Shane has a great and simple way of assessing those. We end this podcast talking about Shane's experience with personal development and the effect it has had on him throughout his life. It led him to create a carrier as a way to spread the value of what he's learned more widely. I'm actually in the Ikario community myself. And I can say that it's really fantastic. They cover everything from productivity to finance to fitness. And Shane's style means that it's really actionable and really clear. So please do enjoy this episode with Shane Melaugh. And thanks for listening. So first of all, Shane, thank you very, very much for taking the time to be here with us today.
Shane Melaugh 01:56
Yes, my pleasure. My pleasure. Looking forward to this.
Conor McCarthy 01:58
Could you just give us a quick 60 or 90 second overview of what you're doing right now?
Shane Melaugh 02:02
Well, I am currently working mainly on Ikario, which is a personal development business. So where we aim to teach people the kinds of skills that I think are most crucial for people to basically break free and live, a self determined life. And this is the project that I started after essentially retiring from my last business. So I was in the in the marketing and software business for many years. And yeah, I got to the point where essentially, my previous business Thrive Themes basically outgrew me, was very successful and very pleased with that. But I also, you know, realize that it kind of grew to a size and two type of company that I wasn't really very suited to run anymore. And I basically successfully retired from that, and then started something new, something smaller, that's more suited to to my strengths again.
Conor McCarthy 03:04
Okay, very cool. And we'll come back to Ikario because I'm a huge fan of Ikario. Since I discovered it, I think it's brilliant. But maybe if you don't mind, can we go back to that, that time in your life when you built multiple companies and thrive teams, etc? Because this, this podcast is about the first 10 customers and starting things. Is there a story in there of one of the projects or the businesses you started? Where you can kind of get into some of the stories about how you found your first customers?
Shane Melaugh 03:30
Yeah, you know, in preparing for this podcast, I was thinking about this. And the interesting, I was wondering like your well, which first 10 customers because I've built many businesses, and so there's the first 10 over and over again. But at the same time often for a new business, t he first 10 customers were customers from the previous one, because and so you kind of have to trace that back quite far. Because, yeah, one of the first things I did as an entrepreneur or let's say that was like semi entrepreneurial that I had some success with was that I was selling computer hardware. And they're, you know, my first my very first customers, I think I got on eBay, you know, I listed offers on eBay. And that got me some customers. But after that, and this is really this was probably around 2007 or so. And I was on very wobbly feet there as an entrepreneur really didn't know what I was doing. And basically what happened is I realized I had had many or several failed attempts where I thought, Okay, I want to build this kind of business or I want to try to create some, some business and it would always be just a non starter and I realized that my problem was that I just didn't know how to reach people. I didn't know how to even if I have a good idea and I never knew whether my idea was actually good or not, but because I didn't know how to get it in front of people, and that led me to learning about marketing. So I started reading books about marketing. And what I did. And this was, I think this was maybe 2008, or 2009, I started a blog, where I started writing about what I was learning about marketing. And it was kind of just an attempt of, I thought, well, I want to do some active learning here. And probably if I explain some of these things, I'll be better at remembering them and implementing them. And so I started writing this, this blog on the topic of marketing. And I started building various websites, I got into all kinds of stuff. But basically, what happened is that on this blog, I started growing a small audience. And I was also using it as a way to test things, you know, testing, SEO strategies, and, and one of the things and various things, you know, posting on forums and leaving comments and other people's blogs and all kinds of stuff to try and reach people, right. And what happened is that, on this little blog, I grew a small audience. And those, you know, basically from that, so that, from that organic, like content creation and starting discussions with people in different places, that is where my first 10 customers in the world of marketing came from. And, and I think this is a key point, because I think that often the first customers, or at least that the, the most important customers have always come to me through some kind of an interaction, where there's some kind of a personal touch to them. Because I think the reason, you know, the reason that people resonated with with my marketing blog was that I was not trying to pretend like, again, the marketing space, right? What you usually see is people basically flashing money saying, I have the secret to making money, you know, buy my course. And I'll tell you, right, and I wasn't, I wasn't doing that. I was just saying, Hey, I built a few websites, I tried this stuff, here's what happened. And I was, I guess, just more honest about here's some stuff that worked your stuff that didn't work. And and people resonated with that. And I also really got into conversations with people through at the time blog, comments, blog comments, not really a thing anymore. But nowadays, people have these exchanges on maybe Twitter or on Discord or whatever, right? Where you have actual interactions with people where again, someone might ask a question, and I answer and they see all this real person, and they take, they've taken the time to send me an answer here. And that is what leads them then to buy my first course that I made, and, and once again, it's like, it's almost like this continued relationship, I put a lot of work into that very first product that I ever made, which was an SEO course, put a lot of work into that. And really undercharged for it, quite frankly. And so people were getting loads and loads of value for very little money. And that made them basically loyal fans for the next thing that I was doing. And so by the time I started Thrive Themes that was from that same seed, the first 10 customers for Thrive Themes, and in fact, the first few 100 customers, for Thrive Themes came from that same seed that I had planted a few years earlier. And from that same idea out of those exchanges, and, and out of those positive interactions essentially, with, with my audience, right. And so I think that has always been the key is that I also think of this as you know, there's a difference between someone who's just like on your mailing list, or who's a customer or traffic, you know, you can get traffic to your website, there's difference between traffic, that kind of abstract or whatever number of people versus someone who's actually in your audience, someone who's in your audience, the way I think about it is someone who actually wants to see and hear and learn more from you, right? So you can you can pay for an ad and get some traffic and traffic lands on your landing page. And maybe you can get them to sign up for something, but do they actually want to hear from you? Are they happy when they see an email from you? Or most of them not? Right? Something else has to happen. First, you have to have some kind of a positive exchange, you have to give them some kind of a positive experience for them to switch from that kind of like oh why is this person emailing me to oh, I want more of this. And I think that has always been the key for me to that. Yeah, to the first 10 Customers essentially right is to create that kind of almost like a personal interaction. So it's it is like personal branding, but I also think that it's obviously it's not the only way to do it, but that is what worked for me right is to is to have a real like relationship with these people in a way to the extent that it's possible online. And that also means that you know, it is it is a very mutual thing right. I have Like, I know these people, I know their names, I know their faces. I've been on Zoom calls with them, right? And I care about them. And that means that also means that I have like a very rich source of information of who I'm talking to, and what they need and how I can serve them, right. So that is basically, yeah, I think that's it. That's, that's what gave me the start.
Conor McCarthy 10:23
That's fascinating, though, that there's so much so much richness to that about the What's that famous saying to almost doing things that don't scale? I think that was a great thing. But you're right there. And I think a really key part of what you said in there was about understanding needs, of course, people will talk to you more naturally and more openly about what they really want and really need, which is, which is really what most people are looking for when they're starting a business. What is it the customer needs? The what's the problem that I'm solving?
Shane Melaugh 10:51
Absolutely. I mean, that's such a key point. You know, I also see this with, and this is something with Thrive Themes, which is a suite of tools for for building websites, essentially. And through Thrive Themes. I got a lot of exposure to websites that other people build, right, I've basically seen 1000s of websites, the various people have built in all kinds of niches and whatnot. And that is one of the most common issues is that this very, there's this very fundamental disconnect, or is it the thing you're talking about is not actually what people want? But it's like you're answering a question that nobody's asking. You're, you're, and you're making a product that nobody actually really wants? And, and yeah, for a while I did these website reviews, you know, or basically look at websites that people had sent in and tried to give feedback. And very often, it basically comes down to that is that yes, there's some technical stuff wherever you could choose a better font or whatever, right? None of that really matters that much. Because the there's this fundamental disconnect, where it's like you haven't, you're not speaking the audience members language, and I'm not speaking their language, and you're not giving them something they truly want. And I think that's often what it comes down to a really good offer is one, that is just exactly what you want to need right now. And and it's very difficult to get there. And I think that having this interaction with people is one of the best ways to get there.
Conor McCarthy 12:27
Yeah, yeah. Reminds me of that famous saying that people people love to buy, but they don't want to be sold. And, and I think often what I see and maybe what you see as well, while you're speaking to is that idea of almost know, assuming you know what the customer wants, and then going ahead and building your landing pages and your offer, etc. But there's a disconnect. And that's, it's important, but is there anything that you would say to people who who think they have this great idea, they think there's a need, what's the next step they should take?
Shane Melaugh 12:57
Yeah, you want to, you want to try to test that against the market as efficiently as possible. So the worst thing you can do is spend a lot of resource and that is mainly time and money on creating something before you get some kind of an answer or some kind of a signal. So in you know, in in, let's say in more traditional business that is often comes down to waste of money, or you've spent unbelievable amounts of money to to make your first product or something that the nobody wants to buy. And in in a more in this kind of more bootstrap solopreneur type field, which is most of the entrepreneurs I work with are, you know, kind of solo operations very small. And so they're, usually not not spending too much money is the problem, the problem is spending too much time, you know, so you you spent a year fretting over all kinds of details about your online course. But you don't actually know if anyone wants to buy this thing yet right. Now, if you already have some kind of an audience, then always test your offer against the audience, and what I've also done is to sell something before I make it. So to really make sure that people want this and there's basically two ways there's there's in there's two benefits to this right? You can you can sell something before you create the actual so course or whatever it is. And that allows you to verify that people actually want to buy it because if you make that offer and virtually nobody buys it, you just refund the people who give you my and say sorry and you move on. But also when you do get that signal and people buy it from you, you can also then create the product together with your customers. You can make sure that you stay on track. Now, I want to be clear about this right this takes skill. You have to be good at creating product right But if you have that skill, then you can calibrate the product and change it and update it as you're going through it based on the feedback that your customers give you, right? So that's something I've done. But that requires that you have an audience to start with, which most people don't. So if you don't have an audience to start with, you need to find a way to verify that your idea has legs in some other way. And you can do that, in many ways, right? I mean, one thing is, one of the first things you have to do is you have to be very clear about who is my audience? And where are they, you have to have a sense of where these people hang out, right? The way I like to think of it is basically you have to be able to point me at the group of people who represent your ideal customers. And, and that could be, you know, that could be okay, there's this conference, you know, there's this whatever industry conference and the people who go to that conference, they they're my customer, right? It could be well, there's this online forum, there's this whatever this discord community where people are, usually there's more than one, right? Here's a group of 1000 discord communities where people talk about, I don't know how to become a better a game streamer or something like that. That's my target audience. So but you have to be able to point to it, you have to be able to see this is where they are. And then you go there, and you start talking to people. And again, you know, like you said, people don't want to be sold to but everybody loves buying stuff. And that's one of the things you can test. Like, if if you start talking about what you're building, or what your product is, if it immediately, it's immediately like, I don't want to be sold to go away. And also, you know, some moderator steps and says, Stop doing this, you're not allowed to that's a sign that there's some mismatch, right? That your product is perceived as this external thing that asked this person just wants money to get rid of them, right. Whereas if you have an offer that really hits the nail on the head, the reaction should be Thank God. Thank God, someone has come here with this thing that we desperately need, right? Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's one way to test it right? Or, can you go to your target audience and tell them what you do? And are you received with open arms? Or are they trying to get rid of you. And other way, and this is something I've done, like many of the products that I've created, were basically just variations of something that already exists. So I think this is also important to consider, right? If you want to build like a billion dollar business, you probably have to invent something new, you probably have to do something hasn't been done before. And this is something that I've never done, I've never attempted to do. Because I think the way I think about it, the the chances of that succeeding are extremely low, right? So it's very high reward but extremely high risk to try and invent an entire new category of product or something like that, right? Instead, what I've always attempted to do is essentially go into an active market and just take a little bit of market share. So, again, if we use Thrive Themes as an example, you know, there was already there were already other businesses built around selling WordPress themes and plugins that were making millions a year. And it was obvious that was a highly active market, it was also obvious that it was a growth market, right? That's, you know, the trajectory of how many WordPress websites exists, just going straight up. And you could easily look at this and say, well, in five years from now, is this going to be higher or lower than now? And the answer was obvious, it's going to be more. So my thinking was simply like, if I can create a business, like these businesses that already exist, and either, if I can see an opportunity to make it better, then that's what I do, right, make the same thing but better, or make the same thing but targeted at a slightly different user. So in my case, what I identified was that, you know, people who, like the web designer user was very highly served, but the marketing user was underserved. So if you wanted to make a website that looks really pretty unlimited options. If you wanted to build a sales page, that was not, you know, the solutions were not great. That's changed since then. But but that's basically what you know, Thrive Themes is basically, I think, the first WordPress company step into there, start taking that market share and then because it worked, now, we have a lot of other people as well doing it, but that was the basic idea. So we were reinventing the wheel. We weren't trying to create an entirely new market, we were simply identifying like a gap in an already active market and stepping in there. And that the reason I'm saying this is because that's also one of the ways in which you can verify that an idea is good is like, look, people are already spending money on this. This is already a thing, right? Yeah, that That's one way to, you know, basically the further away your ideas from something that already exists and people are already spending money on the more other verification, you need to make sure that you're not just making a mistake.
Conor McCarthy 20:15
I hope you're enjoying this episode, and that there's some actionable and insightful advice that you can take out to your business. Helping you identify and create those first 10 customers is what I do. So if you like what you hear on this podcast and want more information, including a bunch of free resources on how to find your first 10 customers and grow your business, check out first10podcast.com, that's 10 one zero, or find me on Twitter @thefirst10pod. Now, you probably hear what I'm about to say on every podcast you listen to. And it makes a really big difference to the show. If you find this podcast in any way useful or enjoyable, I'd be so grateful if you left me a review on iTunes, it really does make a big difference in terms of other people discovering the podcast. Also, if you leave a review, you will get to see your name on the review in lights. What I'll do is I'll design your words and post them online taking you on your project along with it. I know it's a pretty sweet deal. Okay, let's get on with the show. That's very interesting, because I think a lot of people get scared away by credit markets. Yeah, but but to your point, it's a it's a pool of interest. And, and there are so many more people than will ever fit into one market. So can you develop something along a different vector almost.
Shane Melaugh 21:32
I would also encourage anyone, anyone doing entrepreneurial and creative stuff, I would highly encourage that you start looking at your space, and, and other creative spaces and entrepreneurial spaces from like an observer perspective. And notice how because even like, I think anyone can can think of examples of this, where the market looks like it's completely crowded and oversaturated until the new thing comes along. And then in retrospect, it seems inevitable, right? It happens all the time. And you know, it's just like, yeah, if we, if we think about, like, if I think about the personal development space, right. Ever since I've been interested in the personal development space, which is for most of my life, the market has been crowded, which is to say there's a bunch of people are like best selling authors, you know, writing their self development books, and there are the bloggers and the YouTubers and whatnot. But also what happens all the time is that someone new comes along, you know, and often you have like the meteoric rise, and all of a sudden, someone like Matt D. Avella is like a mainstay, you know, the face of productivity and minimalism on YouTube. Were over five years ago, he basically didn't exist on YouTube prime. So, if you go back in time, and someone asks you well, what do you think about the self help or the productivity or whatever space on YouTube? It's like, well, it's overcrowded. Look at look at all these people with millions of subscribers, how could you possibly compete. And a few years later, here's these three or four new faces that have appeared, now this happens all the time. This happens all the time. So I think paying attention to this, and and like, learning to almost mentally rewind the clock, you know, when you see the inevitable you see it again, like just like a great offer does not feel like someone's trying to sell me it just feels like Oh, thank god someone has finally has this thing. And all they want is money or it's almost ridiculous. A really good offer feels like you're getting away with it. Right? It's like all I have to give it as money for this. Wow. Amazing. Whenever that feels like a good offer has this effect where it doesn't feel like you're being sold to and it almost feels like this is this the sense of inevitable inevitability to it, right? You feel like this has to exist, it's so important and so good. Of course, this exists. But if you rewind the clock a little bit, it didn't exist. And it's the same with any kind of business, any kind of creator anything like that. The once you see the success of a new brand, or of a new creator, it feels inevitable. But if you like learn to practice, like rewinding the clock, what did this look like before this person started this business before they made their first video or whatever it is, right? And try to think of like, how do you find that gap? That seems inevitable afterwards?
Conor McCarthy 24:33
Hmm. That is, I love that way of thinking because you're right, every every category looks absolutely stuffed. And then someone always emerges and then someone emerges after that and and on and on we go. So yeah, I love and it's almost like an exercise you could do if you're thinking of getting into a category who to top three people and find out as much as you can about their first year or two when it was probably really difficult for them. You know, like Matt D'Avella, I follow him as well. And it's like, you know, crickets like putting out videos, putting out content and no one's getting on, but then something happens, then something else happens. And then you found your audience, and then they they help you spread the word, etc. So they, that that's, I love that that's a great way to think about entering any market. How do you filter new ideas that come along? You must have lots of ideas, or you must have a lot of opportunities pitched at you. Do you have a quick kind of shorthand way of deciding yes, no to new new projects,
Shane Melaugh 25:27
The easiest shorthand way is to just always say no. Because, because listen, it's like there's, there's a real limit to to the use of more projects. So the best thing is to always say no, but I actually like a really good framework for this is one that I originally came across from. What's his name? Mark Manson. Mark Manson wrote this years ago, I hope you don't mind swearing on this podcast, because the framework is fuck yes or no. All right. So those are the two options like you you see an opportunity comes your way? If the answer is not, fuck, yes, it's no. Because there's a horrible, they're horrible consequences to saying yes to things that we feel like lukewarm about. And I think that's, that's good, especially when you are in the situation where you basically have more opportunity than than time, right? You say only Yes, the things that you're very, very excited about. I think that's a good framework to use. If you are in a, this is of course, like, usually people start out with more time, then opportunity. And then as you become successful, you get more opportunities, then you have time. So if you're in the situation where you have more time than opportunity, and you like looking for ideas and things like that, I think the most important thing is to, to practice, essentially, right, like coming up with in evaluating and testing ideas, and to apply mental models to this. So to have us have a way to think about how do I make this decision strategically? And so that it's not just a gut feeling, you know, oh, this sounds like a really good idea. I should do that. That's, that's a terrible way to decide what to do with your next five years, you know? So have a framework for how you make these decisions. And this is something that I mean, it's also something that I teach, right, like, how do you to strategically think about this? Yeah. Because basically, I can't, I can't like nutshell this, this whole process, but it is something that, you know, we teach on Ikario as well. But a very simple idea for businesses is to do napkin math, right? Where you kind of do the very rough math of what would this look like that you can kind of scribble on the back of the napkin, right? Where you, you're not trying to get the exact numbers, but you just think of, okay, I have this idea for this product I want to create for this market, right? And then you go, Well, alright, how much? What would they sell this product for? What's the price? And then, and what does it cost to produce? Especially if it's a physical product, you know, what's the cost of production shipping and so on? Okay, and then you have a profit margin. And then you think about all roughly, what is the total addressable market here? How many people can I sell this to? Realistically, right? And what does that look like? And simply, like, run the numbers to see like, Okay, if I, if I managed to get 100 customers a month, what does that look like? If I managed to get 1000 customers a month? What, what does that look like? And what's the likelihood that I can do this, because if you just do the rough math, and you see like, Okay, I need 10,000 customers a month to break even. That's not good. So, so, and on the other hand, if you have a model where you can see, okay, I could start small here, you know, if I get, and I get a few customers a month, I can do this maybe as a side gig next to my job. And then if I get to the point where I have like 10 sales a month, I can quit my job and start focusing on this full time. That's a completely different scenario that we're looking at, right? And your numbers don't have to be precise. And you can just guess, right? Because I don't know if I can get 10 customers or 100 or 1000. But I can tell usually, they're getting a 1000s probably way harder than getting 10. Yeah, yeah. So so just running these kinds of numbers and having a sense of what would have to look like for this to work. I think many ideas can be dismissed just based on that. You just run the numbers and you realize I have to actually get so many customers for this to be worth it. that I can't even I don't even know how this is ever going to happen, right. And then you either have to change something about the offer, you have to change something about the pricing of the offer, or you have to figure out how to, you know, obviously, you can make things that are basically mass appeal, right. But what's the worst thing is if you have something that requires mass appeal, that requires like, mass adoption for you to make good money, but it's like a niche product and, and just like running through a couple of scenarios, yet with like rough calculations can help you figure that kind of thing out
Conor McCarthy 30:38
I like that. Yeah, a tiny amount of time invested upfront, will help you not waste weeks and months, potentially years. There's also I reread the story the other day, I think was Charlie Munger, who a colleague of his approached him and with this question of, you know, I want to do lots of things with my life. And he said, Okay, write down the 25 things you want to do with your life. And this guy wrote down the 25 things. And then Charlie Munger said, I'm going to circle the top five. And he did that. He said, Okay, now, that's it. That's really all you have time for in your life. Like the other things have to say away. I remember when I first heard that I went, Oh, that's brilliant. Like, let's have your five an arbitrary number of, of opportunities. But recently, I read it again and went, Oh, no, it's actually about the 20. It's actually about the things that he said, You just, you can't even look at those. And he had a similar example in, he said, once about trading, he said, if you only had 10 opportunities to make a big investment in your life, that was it. You think very carefully about the things you invest your time and money in. So these are just really useful, mental thought thought experiments.
Shane Melaugh 31:46
And also going back to the previous thing about you know, opportunities like that is why saying no is so important. It's very important to be able to say no to stuff that's just that's not in your top five basically.
Conor McCarthy 32:01
Yeah. Ikario, I think, so we were talking a little bit beforehand, I'm a recent convert to a carrier. And I think it's great. You've always been into personal development. So why now? Why did you start Ikario when you did?
Shane Melaugh 32:17
Yeah, I felt like, I think that, for me, you know, personal development was really a necessity for me, because of my personal history. Like, I really struggled when I was younger, and I was kind of a failure at life, basically, until my mid 20s, or so, there was really no indication that, that I make anything about myself, you know. And so it was really a necessity for me, where I just had to figure out, okay, basically, I'm not good at anything I had, I didn't have a good social life, I, I was broke, I was unhappy. And I was just like, this is I was on a life trajectory, where I was just like, This is not good. I don't want this to just go on, you know. So, personal development was was a necessity for me. And I think my experience with it was that for for many years, I was just like, reading lots of books about it, and trying lots of things. I was just doing all this work on myself. And a lot of it, I was unsure of, like, does this work? You know, is this doing anything? Here I am, you know, doing my journaling every day and doing these exercises doing this stuff? The other? But is this going anywhere? I don't know. Right? But there is this, this, like, it is the long game, right? You're playing the long game. And it is. What I've noticed is that it's really like this exponential growth, where, you know, at some point, after a few years of doing this, I realized, okay, and now I'm making decent money with a business of my own. And I have a better social life, and I feel better about myself and lots of things are clearly better. But then, you know, another five years later, I'm like, way beyond anything I could have dreamt off. So the payoff for me of doing the self development stuff has just been undescribable I honestly, I just live a better life now than I could have ever wished for. And, and one of the most important factors from here is freedom. I just have total freedom, I'm financially free, I can live wherever I want, I can basically do whatever I want with my time. And that is something that I wouldn't have dared dream of when I was younger. And so for me, you know, after retiring from Thrive Themes, the question was like, what's the what's the best thing I can do? Basically, what I want to do is I want to, I want to give the experience that I had to as many other people as possible like this is the most valuable thing I've ever discovered in my lifetime and I'm just very motivated to try and bring that to as many other people as possible. And that's why I started Ikario. So Ikario was not a business that I started because of any of the stuff we talked about. Now, it wasn't that I thought, Oh, here's this great market opportunity. Here's a product I can make for this niche, and so on. It's not like that. The primary purpose of Ikario is I want other people to experience what I experienced, which I, in the most simple terms, I think of it as breaking free, right? It is breaking free from your constraints that you know, might keep you locked into a job you don't like and this kind of stuff, but it's also breaking free from other sources of suffering, external and internal, right? Maybe you're like in a toxic social situation, maybe you just have really low self esteem as I did, and things like that, right. And for me, it's just like, I discovered ways to break free from this, and I can't think of anything better to do with my time than then try and pass this on to other people.
Conor McCarthy 36:05
It is, it's a pretty amazing resource. And obviously, I'll include links in the show notes. Who do you find coming along to Ikario? Like who are the people that seems to be attracting, that may be surprising to you?
Shane Melaugh 36:19
Well, it's there is definitely carry over again, like I mentioned earlier, right, from my previous ventures, where a lot of the people Ikario right now are entrepreneurs, and are like these solopreneur type people. And it also makes sense, of course, right? There's overlap, because why do people start a business is because they want financial freedom, right, and they're seeking for a way to break free. And I also, you know, a lot of the material that we have covered in Ikario content has been about how to become more productive, and, and how to manage your money. And that's the reason I talk about these things is because those are some of the key tools that you need in order to break free, you know, yeah, we live in a world where you need, you need money to break free, right, as long as you as long as you're in financial, financially dire straits, you're always going to be dependent on, you're always going to be less free, you have less choice about what to do with your time. And you're also just going to be suffering from more stress, and worry, and so on and so forth. Right. And so, the key tools that I think you need in order to overcome this is you need to learn how to be productive, which is you need to learn how to undistract yourself and use your time effectively. So that you can effectively like marshal your resources towards a goal such as building your business or advancing your career or doing something else like that. And then, as you make more money, you have to know some basics about how to play the money game, so that you don't just constantly, essentially piss out all the money that comes in immediately, right. And you don't make you don't make the kinds of, so the money game is an adversarial game. So there's many players who are invested in getting you to make bad decisions financially, so that they can get more of your money over a longer time, right. And so, that's why we talk about these things. To me, these are like some of the basic building blocks so you become a more capable, more effective person. You start playing the money game a bit better. But then there's all kinds of other stuff because you know, when I talk about productivity, I'm not just talking about how to make it to do this, I'm talking about how to manage your time and how to how to design your your life in such a way that there's like periods of intensity followed by periods of rest, that you have this balance, right, one of the things we often talk about is like the it's like the opposite of hustle culture, right? The opposite of just hustle and grind 24/7 till you make it is this the worst way to try and make it because that if you don't have rest in your life, and you're not strategic about like having high intensity focus, and then deep rest, you're just high you're just basically cutting yourself off at the knees, because you're you're hampering your own ability to learn and make progress and so on. Right. And, and then there's also this basically all fits into into a bigger picture again, where you know, ultimately there's no one dimensional way to live a good to live a good life. And so that's why yeah, like productivity and work and high capability high performance are important. But also things like taking care of your physical body and and doing like internal work, but I'm a huge believer in like writing and introspective writing. So we cover like this, this broad range of topics essentially. Because again, for me, the only thing that matters is what is most valuable. I'm not that concerned with you know what matches a specific niche Just like listen, if you're if you're this kind of person, you want to break free, I think you should know this about money. And you should know this about how to deal with your emotions and do writing and you should know this about how to how to eat healthy food, right? I'm just trying to teach everything that I that has made the biggest difference for me, you know?
Conor McCarthy 40:16
And and you do it so well, I have to say it's, it's so actionable. Like what you teach I've been I've been lots of course, I've read lots of books on personal development, etc. But yours is really kind of nitty gritty, the nuts and bolts. It's almost like, oh, yeah, that's obvious. But you present the way you package it presented, and it's like it. Yeah, it becomes a really useful system. Just two more questions. One is about books. Is there any books that you recommend to people who are starting to get their first 10 customers?
Shane Melaugh 40:47
Oh, there's too many great books, honestly, I think that so one book that I have to say that's not directly related to, to getting your first 10 customers, but it is, I think, a very important book for entrepreneurs to read. And it's one that I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from people who have recommended it too. And it's so good, they can't ignore you by Cal Newport. This is something that, yeah, this it also describes something that is also key to what we do in Ikario about like growing your skills in the right kind of way, but it seems like and the reason I'm making this recommendation, specifically, more than many other books have recommended seems to really strike a nerve with people write something about how this book presents this idea, just really strikes a nerve with people. So I think so good they can't ignore you is a very, very useful book to read. It's not directly related to getting your first customers, but it is related to becoming a better entrepreneur.
Conor McCarthy 41:47
Okay. Okay. That's a good one. It's time for me to reread it. And then the last question, and you kind of answered this earlier, but but it might be worth saying, again, what would you say to someone who was starting out to find their first 10 customers?
Shane Melaugh 42:00
Yeah, I would, I would say, the most important thing is to make sure you get into conversations with people who are in your target market in any way that you can, in any way that you can. Because, you know, like I said, back in the day, one of my venues was like blog comments. And nowadays, and even in you know, forums back when you had, basically forums being a thing. And nowadays, that's different. And it depends on what niche you're in, right? You might be in a niche where the action that the conversation is happening in Facebook groups, you might be in a niche where people are on Twitter, where or where people are on Discord servers, or whatever it is, but become part of that conversation. For me, that has always been the key to being able to get that initial traction and to being able to make sure that my ideas are not delusional, basically, is nowhere the conversation is happening and start having conversations.
Conor McCarthy 43:00
That's fantastic. Shane, thank you for all the wisdom and smarts you've dropped in this episode. Yeah, you're very kind with your time and I'll post this online for everyone to hear.
Shane Melaugh 43:10
Nice. Well, it's my pleasure is great to chat. Thanks.
