Advice on Entrepreneurship

Today I had a young entrepreneur reach out and ask me for a meeting to discuss his personal brand. In the spirit of mentorship, I suggested he send me some questions which I would answer and then post the answers for everyone to see (in case you were interested). This is my unedited response...

Sergey,

You sound like a hustler. I dig that. Keep going and BE CONSISTENT. Pick one thing and stick with it. My friends have made a lot of money focusing only on YouTube. But... they did one video EVERY week for 4 years and never missed one. Over the past 90 days, I have not missed one day of posting something on LinkedIn. I have struggled thinking of things to say at times, but I am forced to do it not to break my streak.

Here are the answers you asked:

1. If you were starting out to build your brand today from scratch, how would you approach it on a high-level? 

Your brand, whether personal or corporate is how the world sees you. For example, when we started Emulator, we had very little money, only one (barely) working prototype, but we put together a really sick video that set the standards for our brand. I never really thought much of my own personal brand, choosing to focus on the company brand instead. The brand dictates how much you can charge, who your clients will likely be and now with social media, your brand extends to everything you do; From your offices to your website, to social channels, everything has to be completely on brand, all the time. We take this very seriously at MetaVRse. We spent 3 months doing a complete rebrand after only 9 months in business because we pivoted from events and activations to business solutions and the types of clientele are looking for a different message, a different look and feel. Here is an article our Creative Director, Jesse wrote about our rebranding. 

2. If we look at LinkedIn as a key platform, what tactics makes sense in your opinion? 

LinkedIn is a strange beast. It has unlimited potential to be useful for marketing, sales, networking, education, but it is literally a confused social platform. On one hand they tell you that 'LinkedIn is a platform for your most trusted network only' and then they say 'Here add everyone on your email list and here are suggestions on complete strangers to add'. LinkedIn penalizes you for using tags, rich media or links (even to their own article publishing platform). This is literally the EXACT OPPOSITE of every other social site. For example, I did a post with a link and without (link in comment) and one got 455 views, the other 5423. More than 10X more engagement. 

Consistency on LinkedIn is key. I post every day and it seems to be working. We have not landed any direct business from it yet, but many interesting conversations. I will keep you posted.

3. Obviously you have a very comprehensive experience in running your own companies, what was the process like in coming up with a value proposition and a business case? I mean, have you always started with the customer and how can this idea make their experience in specific activity better or it came from the product to the customer or something else? 

I personally start with an idea, product, solution and ask "who would pay the most for this?" and that gives you an immediate answer if it is useful. If the answer is Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon or Apple (or any other Fortune 100 company), then we explore further. Some ideas die along the path to discovery. We had plans for a Walk Across Niagara Falls on a tight rope VR experience, we lined up everything, but we just could not get anyone to want to pay for is. That is why our business model is the best for VR. We invent solutions to problems we see in the market and sell them to clients giving them the chance to be first to market with almost everything we do.

Once you identify an idea and you know someone might pay for it, then I ask the following: What is the market size? Resources Required? Timeline to Monetization. I find it best to create an investor deck after I write the business plan. I use BizPlan for writing these. Once you have a plan, financial model, investor deck, you will know whether this is a good idea, but if you want to be really certain, ask someone to pay for it. Once you have a paying client, you know you have at least one! Start sales the second you decide to go for it. Create a VR model, mock ups, video, just start selling! 

I hope this helps, keep up the great work.

Alan Smithson

ALAN'S BIO

Alan Smithson is an entrepreneur and investor who has always been on the cutting edge of emerging technology. Alan invented and brought to market the SmithsonMartin Emulator DJ System featured in WIRED and used by Linkin Park and Infected Mushroom. His latest endeavour as CEO of MetaVRse has entered him into the world of virtual and augmented reality experiences, becoming an leader in business applications for VR/AR and providing insight into this exploding field of technologies. Alan has been recognized as an industry pioneer, and was recently mentioned in an article on “10 Virtual Reality Leaders you should follow in 2016”. Equally comfortable behind a turntable or a group of Fortune 500 executives, Alan continues to evolve MetaVRse and its innovations such as the World’s First Virtual Reality Photo Booth?

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