Hello, everyone. And welcome to your monthly episode of Troublemakers, a podcast by maker Mag where we share the authentic stories are in the intra printers. This is an orange founder of making Meg. And today I'll have a check with Harry Dry serial entrepreneur and thunder of marketing examples. But before we jump into it, let me first thank our friends at Block Stack who are making this podcast possible block stack that I was makers to build applications where users really owned their data, their identity, their content and their connections to give her a spin, Go to block Stack that borg slash maker mag That's block stack that Borg slash make a mag. And now on to our guest today Super excited to have Harry Dre with us. Hey, Harry, how you doing today?

It's great to be here. I'm really looking forward to it. Just being outside. Dis impress upset and I'm ready to go

have Perfect. So you're a serial entrepreneur. You worked on many different projects and you're currently focused on marketing examples which we can talk a little bit more about later. But first I want to ask you a question. I love asking Founders What was your first ever experienced with entrepreneurship?

All right, So, um, I think I must have been about maybe 11 years old or something like that. And off my house, there's a big field of the back of May, like back of my house with my parents house where I used to live and they filled hellos, a sweet corn in and the farmer sort of harvested it. Whatever time of the year I have three brothers, so we sort of realised that, Well, that's slightly. I don't know if it was illegal or not, but we kind of always would cut to this field with, Well, Barris on. We used to pick this week on.

And then if if the If the the detractor drove up, we'd kind of, like scurry away. And what happened was we? We then sell it and there's like a little housing estate near where we lived. We'd knock on doors and try. And so this And so this weekend, I think, because we were so young, people just always would pay for it like we had about 90% success, success rate of hands, I think ended with, like I think My brother, I think my brother tried to buy because we sort of co owned. It is like 25% each. And it was just a bit of fun,

but I think my brother tried to buy out by him half of rubbers. I can't really ended. But in a bit of term, when I think of my dad at this step in and like, separate out the money and stuff, that was the first everything I sold in the first ever money I had in my in my hands.

And, uh, did you always want to be an entrepreneur when you were a kid? Or is that something that happened a bit later?

So actually, no. Like I went thio I was really into comedy. So, honey, I always feel that whatever they like, I end up really disliking. So when I was younger, I wanted to be like the person I wanted to be a professional footballer. That was what I wanted to be. And then when that kind of dream way the winds away like a realized I wasn't gonna make the cut, Um, I Then I wanted to be like someone who writes jokes for talk show hosts. So I used to be a big James Corden fan from Gavin and Stacey, the England English sick woman. I wanted to do his job, right, sir. Which now I really disliked James Cordon. But that was what I wanted to be when I was younger. Were to be someone who writes sketches and stuff for for torture's

amazing. Okay, let's move on to some of your more recent projects. I think this is actually how I met you for the first time you were sharing the story in the hackers meet up in London. Basically, how you went from sitting in a room doing nothing to being on the phone with the CFO of easy chatting about your Kanye dating up. So can you get us a bit more about this? And also why you're not working on it anymore?

Of course. I mean, I think it starts. Um, it starts really high, and then it kind of goes into more of a reality. But basically I was living with my parents at the time. I think I was maybe two years out of university would want one year out of university, and I put up this landing page for a dating site for for Kanye fans, and I didn't really think anything would come of it, but I started just tweeted. It's not tweeting. I started e mailing it to journalists, and, um, you know, it's suddenly just snowballed into something much,

much bigger. And I ended up having to what I end up happy. Unfortunate enough, I guess, to do the whole the whole dating website, and it went really well. And then I felt like, wanna be my bracket and you know, So I took out billboards asking for him to get in touch with me and thinking we could, um, we should have this dating site together. I It was a good period, but I think in order to the latter part of the question, why I'm not working on any more. I think the reality was that although I have so much great momentum, I wasn't particularly good at marketing at that stage.

Like, I think that there's often a little curse when something goes so viral or what? Not that you don't really have any follow up ideas, so I didn't really have a strategy, and I think there was so many, so much momentum on that stage. I could have, like, got a good podcast go in or it could have, um, started writing articles. I could've ran ads, even who tried to get some kind of investment. But I didn't really have any of the that this sort of knowledge, I think so ended up kind of just dying off slowly. And I think it was a good lesson to learn. I think just you need kind of like an action plan. I didn't really have an action plan when I was doing

that project. Yeah, that makes sense. And is that is that what inspired marketing examples? Your current

project? I think that whatever I've done, I've kind of learned from the mistake of it. So with this with the kind of thing that was like, there's no way of sustainably getting users, So it marked in its on board. I think I want to do something far less ambitious was what I kind of learned. I think that if you try and take over the world like what I was trying to in a way, like with this huge dating site, you probably gonna fall flat on your face, and it's just go step by step. I think so, Yeah. I think that it was a much humbler project, a much simpler projecting, Like it kind of. Ah,

I have stripped away all this stuff which kind of didn't work. Maybe the superfluous nous off easy thing on. And it did. Yeah, I definitely influenced this one. Yeah,

and so can you tell us a little bit more about it? About marketing

examples? Sure, it's It's the place to go if you want to learn about Marks. And I think that the ID idea came from just being very frustrated with what was currently out there in terms of Marx and knowledge like I get it with the other day. How do you like a good cold email example to the other day just to try and see if there's any inspiration for writing Accord email on the top five searches on Google? All the emails they write like email templates out. Honestly, they're like, in my opinion, expanding notes. If you're sending them, I would think it was the worst team he's on form is the same everywhere. Like if you're looking at If you go. How'd you grow Instagram following You'll be told stuff which is just, um, you know, or Twitter one I know a bit more about.

It would be like tweet, tweet every day and schedule schedule tweets and tweet about other people's blog's and stuff it. It's just not particularly authentic. I think that you're the marks in a resource is ah, not great. I saw a little gap, and I am. It's basically a gallery, I suppose, of real world market in its own prince, with the focus Definitely been on real world. So I think that every example is not just my opinion, because I hadn't really know all that much. It's been kind of based on real companies and strategies they employed and the idea being that, you know, you kind of just copy them, copy them step for step will tweak them to your It's your liking.

And, uh, you've been kind of eating your own doc food by applying some of these strategies to grow marketing examples itself. And I think you went from zero to about 6000 subscribers in the very short period of time. How did you go about it? What strategies used to achieve this.

You have also went from 6000 describes in a very short amount of time. So you have your own opinions on this. I think that the one thing which moves the needle more than anything else is very, very good articles. So I think that normally 95% off entrepreneurs, um, work on their product too much, and they don't work when marketed enough. But in my situation, it's a unique case where the best type of marketing I can do is to write an amazing article, because then you get you get shed. So I think, um, firstly, like I saved it for yourself, let yourself as well, you really need to like a myth,

really high quality, and you need to put a lot into the work on it has to yes, the sound quite. I don't know what we're searched offense sick, so that's the starting point. But in and around that, it's quite funny. I think every one of the how many subscribers I've got has come from a little different place. So maybe some of them come from when I share my stories on the indie Akers for him. Some of them come from me sharing them on Reddit. Some of them come from me reply into people's e mails who then kind of become more of a fan. So then they'll share them with their friends. Some of them come from your podcasts like this. It's out of everyone who's describe. There's no like bullet where they all suddenly flocked from. Um,

part time was a big deal, but they all kind of found it through. Um, I literally just for me commenting, You know, I have a lot of comments on different forums, and I feel like that makes a big difference. But I do feel like once you get to us seven size, um, it's important to really focus on quality and not quantity. So I'd rather less subscribers or who were more kind of into it. And I think the mistake I made a start was I didn't I was really bad at replying to emails Bond. Then I realized that that was probably, um, probably like the people who like the project the most and is the people I must be replying to more than anything else, because they're like the real fans So I think more recently it's been a little bit more focus on,

um like making sure that the people who on the list of people who is the website, you know, they really like it, Yeah, they come from everywhere. I mean, how about you? Where do you feel? Like, you

know, it's very similar to you in a 100% agree that it all starts with Ricky. Great content. There's no way you're going to convert people if you're content is not good. So that's the first one thing to work on. And then same as you, just like trying different channels. And so far I think Twitter has been working really well for me. But I also get lots of subscribers from different places, people re sharing the article's being on podcast. So yeah, we both have a very similar model in different verticals. But I think let's of the techniques you use I've used and I also have used marketing examples myself, too. Um, fine techniques to increase my conversion rate on my website. So thank you for putting this together.

It is very nicely, I think I think at that point, I think that It's a really good point because I saw, uh, have you heard of Matthew Side or not? The light he writes about? He writes about purposeful practice. Or like you should be a table tennis blood

now I haven't

So he used, like, kind of a big deal. I suppose we used to be, anyway. And one of my friends, hey, must have a lot of people come to his website like he's got a lot of followers on Twitter with that kind of thing on. One of my friends started doing a little bit of work for him, and he said that he has got a surprisingly few amounts of subscribers. And what the kind of conclusion was that, although so much traffic is flooding in that the site is just so awful that's turning people into subscribers. So I think in addition to what I said, like you having a site which converts well, is really is probably more important is the lever, which you can even turn on and off easier than having people flood to your site. The easiest way to times by five, the number of describes you have is probably t make your sight go from 1% conversion to 5% conversion instead of just flooding more people for from it by running ads or by writing more articles or whatever.

Holy. And I think your conversion rate is really high, right? It was it 12% or something like that? I

think. I think at one point when I read the article, it was haven't really checked what it was, since I think it's a little bit skewed because I think at the time I just done, Um, I've done the indie hackers podcast, I think. And I think at that point I might have also had an article go very well on Reddit and I'm ready. What I often do is I don't really send them to the sight of such. I just send them straight to this subscribed for because they've kind of already read the article on Guy kind of say to get the case. Studies just just described, you know, no need to check out with sight because this describes really the main thing on. I think I think those kind of things perhaps mean that you get your subscriber. It goes up a lot. I think if I had much more organic traffic, which I don't have much off.

Um, it would definitely be pulled down a lot. So it's not. Yeah, it's high. But there's a bit of new ones, I suppose, to

it. Yeah, that makes sense. And you mentioned earlier that you've been trying to become much better at replying to your true friends, the one that take the time to write to you. Have you identified the kind of profound that this these people have? Like what kind of people are are the founders? Do they work for companies? Do they do marketing there? What kind of people tend Thio sign up and really engage with marketing examples?

I think it's a mix. I think that a lot of them, um, a little, um, founders. I think that being interested in Marx didn't doesn't necessarily mean you're a marketer. It can often mean that, you know, you're a startup founder. Where you gonna sing business? Andi had over 50%. Maybe are more involved in marketing. It's a little bit of a double edged sword. The reply him because a lot of the time it's people saying How would you market this? How would you market that? I get quite confused whether I'm doing a lot of unpaid work,

you know, just just replaced it with these things. Um, but at the same time, there's such a correlation between me. Send in good email replies and then that person, you know, right in the blow for featuring me in their newsletter or or sharing the link on Twitter. Um, what do you Would you How did you deal with with your replace like, Do you really enjoy it, or is it a bit of a drag? Sometimes

a manager of it in the same way it just might make females In general. I just usually block half an hour and relate you everyone in one go. Just do not be interrupted every time I get him. No. And some of them are just, you know, I love what you're doing. He going and that takes two seconds. But some other people suddenly very, very long nails and I want to make sure also take the time to replay properly. So that's what I do. Once a week, I block half an hour and I reply to everyone in

one go, Yeah, that's it. that's smart. I think that just having the constant notification, this is not great. I think one thing I read was someone shed a line from program on Twitter, which is slightly tension, too. But I just think so Smart. The line is, it's easier to expand user wise and satisfaction ways. If you have, people are not satisfied with your product from the word go, that's not really going to change. You're never going to turn that up or down. So if you have,

like a 9 10 out of 10 satisfaction, you don't think that's the most important thing. And that's kind of what I've been telling myself more. Um, I don't know. I don't want I want a list to be everyone's favorite email. I don't really, which means that we have to be more punctual with him. Hey, my section of it. But I just read that last week. It did change my thinking a little bit like that's really the most important thing. A hardcore fans, a supposed to lots of them.

Yeah, I told you. Agree. I also wanted Thio ask you about how you build the platform, how you build marketing examples. I think yourself taught

coder, right? You

indeed I am. So how did you go about learning how to code? And why did you decide to learn how to code versus maybe using no coke tools are partnering with someone else who's a bit more technical?

When I was learning how to coat, I had no idea that no code to was existed. I had no idea it was going was my second year of university. And I was not in the space off entrepreneurship a tour of that at that point. So I think I I think I think my friend that told me that, you know, it's a make a website. You've gotta learn HTML or something like that. So it was just purely like a lack of information on Maybe I wish I had been tossed is someone who seems to be doing incredibly well with no code. And maybe if I knew Ben, I would never have learned in the first place. But just pillion terms of learning. I think, um, I think I was Let me remember, I I went on Thio. I think I started where everyone starts,

which was free code camper or one of those on. I just wasn't learning very quickly, getting a little bit frustrated. It was space. I had this idea for this book I wanted to write, and that was the only reason why I got into recording in the first place. And I kind of, like, led me down this road. And I think I wanted to put the book on line because I just felt like if I brought a book, no one would read it. And at least if I had online for free, then someone might read It s so that's where I got into it from Andi. It was a really simple Hey, Jim. Oh,

Paige. And from there I kind of really enjoyed the code and probably more than the writing. So I end up, um, I think I posted on Reddit like, how do you learn to code one of them? And then I think a few people mentioned West Boss, So I started doing a lot of his courses on dhe. I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed the code in sight, and I made a few projects before the Kanye Thing, which was purely, really just develop my coding skills I can meet a site where I sold Canvas Prince and that it wasn't too great, but I think it was just good to make a coded project. But, you know,

having said with this, I do think that it doesn't really matter in the end of the day, like the code is think Peter Level said once on the hackers podcast. Actually, that the code or no code is just the paintbrushes, and, you know, they allow you to do some things about what really matters is the painting. So if the painting looks good, you know, it doesn't matter how you made it, and more people probably should be using loco tools. But I know I know you do. And I think it's means you're probably a bit quicker. Perhaps,

yeah, it's Ah, I finally really good way to kind of like Chae up things very quickly. And, uh, you know, I'm a big proponent of just testing ideas rather than spending months building something that some like nobody wants. So that's how I find it useful on, and it's it's been really interesting, and I find it quite impressive to see everything that is possible to build with no code. Now I've also been following what Ben Tussle is doing, and sometimes he posts tutorials where I'm like, Wow, that's pretty crazy, like a clone up uber or Airbnb. The only one thing that makes me a bit skeptical about no code at the moment is that you are kind of locked into 1/3 party platform. So I that's why you know,

ice Ice Person. You see work press as, ah, no cook cool. But itself was posted. It's open source, and it means that I can move it to any other platform whenever I want to say I'm planning on moving to ghost, for example, and that's going to be very easy. So that's the only worry I have with no coat pulls vs. Quoting your own stuff or using open source software is that you may end up being locked in a platform and having a hard time. You think, if you want

to Yeah, I think that's that's a really good point. And it kind of extends to why I think email subscribers are underrated because, let's say I mean, I think of the people who's invested loads of money in building Facebook groups like five years ago. Now Facebook groups or just completely dead, there's no real. There's no real value to that. So on. I guess the emails describing is the closest you could get over them like a phone number. Or I guess, actually a use it when you're on platform like someone with an account of your own website. I do feel like control is a big deal. And sometimes even with twits it like I ran, I've run a few ads on Twitter. It is a massive deal, but you know,

who knows what happens to it? Maybe it becomes un cool or the CEO does something bad and people boycott. You know, it is a little bit, Yeah, it's in the back of my mind and not having the full ownership thing. And I guess that's why coding the site myself does make me slightly more anti fragile, against against running this.

Yeah, I told you, agree with you regarding owning your onions? That was also part of the reason why I decided to start my own newsletter because I have quite a few followers on Twitter. But as you said, I don't really own this audience So I feel much more comfortable now that I also have new. There's spiders that I can directly connect with and where no algorithm can. You know, I have access to one of the most derek ways of communicating, but basically, which is sending an email to their inbox.

Yeah, I think you don't. You don't believe it until it happens. Even so right now, people like art. But you know, Twitter is never gonna know what's gonna happen. But you just don't know. Like until the event happens, no one sees it coming.

That's I mean, that's what happened with Medium. For example, lots of people had huge audiences there, and then the content was behind the table. Yeah, it's pretty terrible. And this is also why there's been a big wave of writers and content creators who decided to move back. Thio

someone one of those, I guess. Like I don't know. I feel like I never liked medium. I just I'm not sure it always always irritated me, right? Useful Be.

So now don't you own this audience? You have now 6000 subscribers. What are you planning to do with it? Besides providing them was free content. What's the plan for marketing examples?

Yeah, that's the age old question, isn't it? Like when you have the audience? What do you do on I think is I'm quite a short, too short term finger. So my goal words to make that to 10,000 in most drivers and Twitter photos and then make up more of my mind that you're born Answer. But I think, huh? You end up like I don't know. Okay, I'm kind of I'm kind of like a bit of a laser focused versus I think that, for example, this week, I didn't write a single article on it's because I tried to write about four articles, so it didn't go too well. And I think that if I started right now,

like thinking in the future too much, I'd probably take my eye off the ball. And but in terms of specifically, it's tricky, Like I fought a lot about YouTube. I think that, uh, I think that I'd like to turn all these into into YouTube videos. I think that I want people to really be able to finish this stuff, and I think that people don't like reading too much so if they could just play a playlist on YouTube, that would be great. I was I think I'd like Thio. I like the challenge of trying to create a forum which is very difficult or more of a community. I feel like the amount I write on Indy hackers right now. You know, if I just wrote without my own sight of the great Yeah,

in terms of pay payment, it's a bit of a copper answer. And I think that people are gonna think I'm very naive, but I'm actually not too stressed about this because in the grand scheme of things over, like the money at the moment just comes from sponsorship. I'm more into into driving down that the highway out of at a faster pace, like a 70 miles an hour pace after that analogy just makes him listen well. Basically, I think long unsure of my babble in is that I'm not sure how how I want to turn this into more of like a money making machine. Uh, I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not too sure what you're in for. It's for your own project.

Think it's completely trying to not be completely sure at first, and, uh, there there are lots of very smart people who think the same way that first build your audience and then figure out the product rather than the other way around. I think building an audience is also a great way to Explorer test and validate ideas. So I don't think it's naive your your approach and I've had a similar approach. I basically decided to get to 5000 subscribers before I would even think about meditating that audience and the similar to you. I feel comfortable because I have sponsors right now. So it is a profitable project, which is great and in terms of ways I'm on monetize it in the future. I'm thinking of creating more high view content that people would be willing to pay for. So I have the free articles on the block. But I'm working on creating a course that's the bitch more in depth and reviewing some of these concepts. Why not offering no oneto one coaching or workshop? So I'm thinking about all these, and I'm not set on any of these options for now. But the good thing about having this audience is that and the news that I can just tell them. Hey, that's what I'm working on. What do you think? Just hit replay

and let me No, no, I mean, I like I like you approach. I think the money is no at the forefront of my mind. I think that if I could say instead of like trying to grab things here and there, if I could just become the best marks and writer in the world hands down, no questions answered. It's the thing off everyone's lips when I like, How do you go? Wedge, Brutal and Jill and marketing not to university. You go to this Web site that I don't really have to worry too much about about the bigger things. So about about about money. I think that that, yeah, if I could if I could do that,

then I think my problems were solved themselves. But who has made we doing a podcast in six months? And I had done You're like How you making money and I'm on. I'm like, Yeah, well, it turns out that that wasn't such a good idea. Who knows what happens? It's tricky. I know that Adam Waving and Steve Sugar just did an amazing job of war in an audience and making make it, of course. And that's what where's Boss kind of does is well, like I think he's Hey, he balances sort of free content and course is incredibly well. I think the best thing he ever did was his most legendary course of all time was JavaScript, 30 and it was all free. So he just got so much kind of a pension from that that whenever he does like a paid one, now it's like it's your default

by Yeah, typical way to build a family. What I like about this is that there's something for everyone. And even if you don't convert that many customers to your paper courses, you're putting so much free content out there in the world. So you're doing something good. And if some people can benefit from it, that's already in that positive. In my book,

it is I mean, their lives very young and like, uh, you don't have your cause too soon, I guess. Like if you have ah, you have ah, good hand in poker. You can just keep checking, checkin, maybe check raisin and then Suddenly the pot gets really big and like you don't even know about it. And then I know at the same time I do think that I do think there's a certain naivety to me. But I learned that my own way, like I learned it the hard way. And that's cool.

Amazing. Well, that's the end of the episode. If people want to learn more about you work, where can they go? And do you have any final tip or advise to share with listeners?

What? Thanks very much. Having you on it was a very fun. Um, I'm on Twister on dhe. Yeah, I guess. Probably there. Or maybe the website, but as well. I don't think that you have for me. I think Just do your own thing on and on and work it out yourself. I think that all the things I ever learned about in life you sort of have to figure him out yourself. So keep, keep, keep action actions. The action is the word of the day, and you'll be great.

I love it. Thanks so much, Harry.