Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
Today's interview is with Dan Norris.
Dan is the co founder of WP Curve, one of the world's fastest growing WordPress support companies.
He's an entrepreneur with an obsession for content marketing and was voted Australia's top small business blogger by Smarter Business Ideas, Australia's largest business magazine.
He's also the author of the Seven Day Startup, you Don't Learn until youl Launch.
Dan, welcome to the show.
Dan Norris (00:53.130)
Thank you.
Thanks for your intro.
Very good.
Omer (00:55.050)
Good.
Now, before we talk about business, tell the audience a little bit about yourself.
Who is Dan when he's not working?
Dan Norris (01:02.890)
Well, I've got two kids, so they kept me pretty busy.
I live pretty close to the beach, so I surf a little bit.
I like coffee and beer sometimes at the same time.
That's about it, I think.
Omer (01:17.290)
All right, now, before kicking things off, we like to start off with a success quote to better understand what drives and motivates our guests.
What one of your favorite quotes,
Dan Norris (01:28.470)
it's probably not so much a success quote, but the one I thought of is that I'm reading 0 to 1 at the moment and one of the things he said in there was that every entrepreneur is first and foremost a designer.
And I like that quote.
And I think that's.
I think that if I think about what motivates me, it's creating things and that's what a designer does.
So that kind of gets to my motivation.
Omer (01:51.120)
So let's start by giving the listeners a better understanding of WP Curve.
I explained a little bit about the business and I think it's really interesting how you've basically productized a service there.
Just tell the listeners who are your target customers and what are the top pain points you're trying to solve for them.
Dan Norris (02:10.560)
Yeah, so we do monthly unlimited small jobs for WordPress.
So we've got a team of 31 developers now and pain points.
Anything that a developer can fix is painful if you're not a developer.
And a lot of that happens with WordPress.
A lot of it is tweaking themes or fixing plugins that have clashed with a theme or clash with each other, fixing up the alignment on the mobile version of a site or stuff like that.
It could be really bad bugs like sites being hacked, or it could be small configuration things like installing analytics, or it could Be just advice, really.
Anything that you would previously have relied on a web agency for.
You can pay us $69 a month and get unlimited access to that.
Omer (02:58.300)
What were you doing before you started WP Curve?
Dan Norris (03:01.580)
I was looking up jobs.
I worked for a year on.
I worked for seven years on a freelance type agency business.
I sold it because it wouldn't really work.
And then I worked for 12 months or two weeks short of 12 months on a software business that failed.
And I just was in a kind of desperate situation where I really needed to start something within a couple of weeks or else I was going to have to get a job.
So I was literally looking up jobs.
Omer (03:30.750)
So where did the idea for WP Curve come from?
Dan Norris (03:37.640)
I'm not exactly sure.
I knew it had to be some sort of a service, but I didn't want to go back to doing projects because I absolutely hated it.
And I didn't want to do an agency because I just sold one and spent all the money.
So that would have been a disaster.
Plus I couldn't because I couldn't talk to any of my old clients because I'd sold them.
So, yeah, I just kind of had to find something in between.
And this was just an idea that I thought I'd test.
I didn't really think too much about it.
I just wanted to test it and see what happened.
And then after the first week we had 10 customers and then we just continued to grow and have not stopped growing since then.
So we've just been full steam ahead with that.
Omer (04:14.210)
So you, you basically, from what I understand you within, sort of, you launched this thing in what, seven days, which probably was the reason you wrote the book the Seven Day Startup.
And how did you get the word out about the business?
Dan Norris (04:30.040)
Well, while I was working on the software business, I started doing a lot of content marketing.
And that's sort of what I really wanted, to start a business where I could market it with content marketing.
And that was my main motivation because it was the only thing I really enjoyed doing in my old business.
I started doing a lot of content.
I built an email list and I had a bit of an audience I was building up and we had a fair bit of traffic to the site, to the old software site.
And I just emailed that list.
That was a starting point.
I put a thread up in a forum and I emailed that list and asked them if they wanted to sign up.
I didn't ask me if they wanted.
They liked the idea or I didn't give them any warning.
I just Kind of emailed them one day and said, this is what I'm working on now.
Let me know if you want to sign up.
Omer (05:12.050)
Wow.
So, okay.
And is it true that you wrote 13 blog posts once in one day?
Dan Norris (05:19.250)
Yeah.
Omer (05:20.690)
Did I read that in the book?
Maybe.
Dan Norris (05:23.610)
Not sure.
I'm not sure how to put that in the book actually.
Since then I was on a flight recently and I was on there for six and a half hours and I wrote 12,000 words for a book I'm going to write next year.
So I can usually write stuff pretty quickly if I've got enough ideas.
But yeah, I find that stuff kind of enjoyable to work on.
So that's why I want to start a business where I could generate leads from content and, and kind of not feel guilty about spending my time writing blog posts.
Omer (05:53.640)
Okay, so you, you put this landing page up website, you got the word out about the business and you had Your, your first 10 customers in the first week.
But what did you do then because you didn't have any employees or anything behind there?
Dan Norris (06:14.760)
I had Andrew, our lead developer, who's still with us, still our lead developer, had worked with me through all of my businesses and I still had him, and that was actually a big motivation for doing it because he's an awesome developer and I didn't want to lose him and I had to, I had to lose one of my developers, which sucked and I definitely didn't want to lose him.
So, yeah, so I had him and then I had myself and I had a. I said we were 247 live, and I had a live chat app on my phone and I'd put it next to me when I went to bed, so if it went off, I'd be there to respond.
And that lasted for the first couple of months before I met Alex, who ended up becoming my co founder.
Omer (06:53.840)
Okay, so let's, let's talk a little bit about the book, the seven Day Startup.
Why did you decide to write the book?
Dan Norris (07:04.160)
Well, it just came out of the content, really.
I was writing a lot of this stuff as I was going, as I was kind of learning what we're doing and what was working, what wasn't working, and putting that on our blog.
And then Alex sort of encouraged me.
We were going to write it together originally and then I just kind of went out and wrote it like really quickly.
But yeah, it started out as blog posts and then we thought, oh, I might as well write a book.
And then I started thinking about what book I'd write and I put more content out on the blog and the content that got traction ended up going into some of the ideas for the book.
And then before I knew it, I'd written this book and I had an editor sign up and a format to sign up and a guy to help me with marketing, and it just escalated.
Omer (07:44.170)
So in the book you write about how you got your first business idea in a library, I believe, and then you went on to explain how you did extensive research about that business but never launched it.
Why?
Dan Norris (07:57.610)
Yeah, well, I don't know why I never launched it.
I don't really know.
I guess I was young.
I didn't really.
I mean, at university you only do what the boss, whatever he's called the teacher expects you to do.
So I did everything I needed to do to get a good mark.
I didn't have to launch it.
Omer (08:17.940)
So you were just kind of.
You were doing an assignment for a potential business?
Dan Norris (08:21.940)
Yeah, it was like an entrepreneurship course and.
Yeah, and I sort of look back on that because I think around that time it was probably a really good idea and I probably should have launched it, but I didn't and I ended up.
It ended up taking me, you know, like 13 years or something after that before I actually had a good idea and I launched it and it worked.
So I think that's a. I guess the whole point of the book is to get people to launch their business.
And I can't guarantee that it's going to be a good outcome if they do, because I've launched more things that haven't worked that have.
But I mean, if you do get to that, at least get to launch, then things change and you start making better decisions and you got much more chance of actually creating a business.
Omer (09:01.540)
Now, at what point did you decide that you wanted to run your own business?
Dan Norris (09:07.860)
The first time I remember thinking about it was at uni when my mate told me that he was supremely confident that he was going to be a successful business person one day.
And up until that point, I hadn't thought anything about that.
But I thought, well, if you can do it, then I can, because I'm smarter than you.
He's better looking.
But still.
And then I didn't really think about it too much.
And then I think I worked for about four years after uni and I was just quite bored at work and I had it in my head that I would become a millionaire if I started my own business.
So eventually I did.
Omer (09:45.890)
So then a few years later when
Dan Norris (09:47.690)
I say I did, I did start my own business, I didn't become a millionaire.
I just.
I earned a lot less than I did in my job for the first seven years of my business, but at least I started it.
Omer (09:57.890)
So I think it was really interesting, you know, reading the book and, you know, you being so open and candid about so many of the struggles and the failures along the way.
What kept you going to still want to try again and again?
Dan Norris (10:15.650)
I think I just knew that I'd tried working for someone else and it really didn't work.
And I'm also.
I'm also probably pretty determined and I didn't want to.
I didn't want to leave it there.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's probably the best answer I can give.
Omer (10:35.910)
Okay, so then a few years later, you launched your first business, the web agency.
And in the book, I think you said, I've got a quote here.
Before I knew it, I had an office, local employees, a server, a phone system, hundreds of clients, and an influx of leads.
I'd built a real business.
I was on the path to becoming a millionaire, or so I thought.
But there was a problem, right?
Dan Norris (10:59.920)
Yeah.
No profit.
No profit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it was just a combination of things.
I mean, I think actually a big part of it was not really understanding what was possible.
I think a lot of people start businesses and they just.
I don't know why I wanted to start a local agency type business, but I think I probably just didn't know any better.
And now, like, when I think about businesses, like, you're so exposed to the whole world and you just know everything that's happening around the world.
All these companies that are getting this funding and like these companies that are growing at these crazy rates and these type of services, like for anything you can think of, that are doing amazingly well.
And I think when I start a business now, I really realize how big the opportunity is.
And I don't just think, you know, I'll go build a website for someone.
I think about how I can create a service that serves millions of people, not a few hundred.
And so I think it's probably a mindset thing, but there was more to it than that.
There was just a fundamental.
There's a fundamental problem with that agency model where there's just too much competition and there's too much skill, too many different skills required to get the job done and therefore making it impossible to profitably acquire the skills and put the processes in place to do the work.
Demanding clients, I mean, it's just got everything going against it.
So I wanted to Figure out a way to solve the same problem, but do it in a way that was profitable and high growth, which is effectively what a product has version of the services.
Omer (12:34.730)
Have you read a book called Built to Sell?
Dan Norris (12:40.090)
No.
I've heard.
I've heard it's good.
I don't read books really at all, but I'm trying to change that.
So I've started.
I just bought a Kindle and I started reading the Peter Thiel book, and I've read a couple of books.
I've read the Four Hour Workweek and the Steve Jobs book, but I haven't read that many business books at all.
Omer (12:57.130)
Yeah, the story in that book reminds me a lot of the.
What you're talking about here, where it's sort of a.
Sort of a fictional story of a guy who runs a.
An ad agency.
And they're basically trying to do everything.
They're doing some print work, some.
Some web design work, some SEO work, and, you know, they're spinning a lot of cycles.
They're having to deal with a bunch of different demanding clients and really spread so thin because they're trying to cover so many bases and have so many skills in house.
And eventually this guy, through his mentor, decides to focus the business just on one thing which they feel like they're good at, which is creating logos for companies.
Right.
And it's a fictional thing.
But I think there was a great lesson there about how you can actually build a more successful business if you take one small problem and do something that you're really good at, rather than trying to do 100 different things.
Dan Norris (14:06.480)
Yeah, I think that's.
I mean, that's a good way to do it.
And I always used to hear people say that it was kind of frustrating because I knew if I did that that I would just lose 90% of my revenue.
So it's a kind of a hard decision to make.
And that's why in my case, I was more comfortable actually getting rid of that business entirely and starting a new one from scratch.
Because your expectations are just totally different.
Like, I never really would have had the courage to strip out 90% of my revenue.
But when you got no revenue to start with, it's very, very easy just to say no.
Well, it's not very, very easy, but it's a lot easier to say no than to actually give money back.
So I wrote a post on my blog called how to build you'd business by saying no.
And that talks about all the stuff that we said no to early on, and, and most of it we continue to say no to in order to just get this service right and keep it as like a high, high growth service with a reasonable amount of profit that we can actually keep, keep scaling.
What?
Omer (15:01.460)
Give me one example of something that you said no to.
Dan Norris (15:05.620)
White label.
Omer (15:08.580)
So basically allowing other people to resell your service.
Dan Norris (15:14.180)
Yep.
Omer (15:16.190)
Why did you guys decide not to do that?
Dan Norris (15:19.550)
Well, that's another post in itself.
It's kind of ironic because we get a lot of traffic to that post of people looking for a white label service like ours and we actually get inquiries, people looking for white label.
And the post is about how we don't do white label.
But I think it's just about when you do the white label stuff, your customer changes and the whole purpose of the business kind of changes.
And we just wanted to really focus on dealing direct with the customer.
Multisite is another one.
We said no to date.
That will probably change, White label probably won't change.
But the multi site is probably one that eventually will get stable enough, get the decent service, get the systems ready and then offer something to support multi site.
But until we have that, we can't do it profitably, we can't deliver a great service.
So we just have to say no.
Omer (16:09.980)
Okay.
Dan Norris (16:10.300)
So going back, I mean there are so many examples.
The other stuff is like any type of project, any type of fixed price work, any type of consulting, any type of info, product, affiliate links, anything like we haven't made money from anything other than the core service and the book, which was a bit of a fluke.
I wasn't planning on making money from the book, but Amazon forced you to put a price on it and then all of a sudden started making money.
But we didn't do anything else with WP Curve.
We just did the service and everything else.
We get inquiries all the time, hosting, SEO logos, you name it, we get inquiries for it.
Anything outside of WordPress.
We still get inquiries for stuff outside of WordPress even though we specifically say we don't do anything outside of WordPress.
Omer (16:55.270)
Yeah, I interviewed Jim Belosick, the founder of Shortstack a while back and he went through a similar situation where he was running a service business and then sort of transitioned into building a SaaS product where they were basically providing tools for their clients to be able to run these social media campaigns.
Dan Norris (17:23.280)
Yeah, I've heard an interview with him before, I think on Mixergy or something.
Omer (17:26.740)
Yeah, and they were, they were actually getting sucked back in because those clients, especially the bigger clients, were coming back and saying, well, can you still do this for us, right?
Yeah, it's great.
You have a tool.
And it was ironical that, that they try to move out from a service business to come into a product, and then they were kind of, you know, there was so many opportunities and so much money trying to suck them back into that services business.
Dan Norris (17:54.280)
Yeah.
And it's very hard to.
It's very hard to say no to that.
But at the same time, I was lucky because I'd done it for seven years and I'd given it absolutely everything to make it work, and I knew I couldn't make it work, so there was just no chance I was going to say yes to that stuff ever again.
So I think, I think in a way that was good for me to have that all that time of battling away at that business model.
And just.
So I was really, really confident about just sticking to the one thing and doing it, doing it my way this time.
Omer (18:22.590)
Okay, so you took the agency business and then you eventually sold that and you had enough money to survive for what, about a year?
Dan Norris (18:30.510)
Yeah.
Omer (18:32.830)
And so during that year, you built your first product or your first, but that business failed as well.
Dan Norris (18:43.550)
Miserably.
Right.
Omer (18:44.910)
So from what I recall, you were doing what, about $500 a month in revenue?
Dan Norris (18:49.030)
Yep.
476.
And I was spending about 2 grand a month just on the developer and email marketing tools and accounting systems and hosting and everything else you have to have when you run an online business.
Omer (19:03.510)
I think it was really fascinating how you gave these very real examples in the book of people telling you it was a great idea and never logging into the product or telling you they'd be a customer and never actually becoming a customer.
It's, you know, we hear that so often, but, you know, of, of not, not to sort of fall for that when you're sort of going out and, and trying to do some kind of validation.
Right.
That, that unless people are actually opening their wallets, you know, take everything they say with a.
With a grain of salt.
But it's.
So you want to believe it, right.
When everybody tells you it's a great idea, it's like you don't want to say no.
And I think that's what becomes really difficult for a lot of entrepreneurs is how do you make that distinction between people giving you valuable feedback or people just telling you what they think you want to hear?
Dan Norris (20:10.240)
Well, I don't know if feedback is ever really that valuable.
I mean, if it's.
I think I like.
I like to look at whether or not people are paying Me.
And if they are, then their feedback is valuable.
But if it's just from other entrepreneurs, I kind of question whether any of it is all that valuable.
I don't know.
I mean, maybe there is a way to provide advice to new entrepreneurs that is useful, but a lot of the advice I see given, like around the co working space and in online forums and stuff like that, it just.
It doesn't seem to me to be what entrepreneurs really need to hear.
So I think the really, you should be paying attention to your customers.
And if there's other things that are motivating your decisions, you really should analyze that and work out what they are and whether or not they are the sort of things that should be motivating your decisions.
Because whoever's giving advice has never been you.
They've never been in your position.
And even if they've run a similar business, they've never done it from your perspective.
So I think advice is often not very good.
Omer (21:10.940)
Okay, so with, you know, so you.
With two weeks left to go before you ran out of money, you started building what became WP Curve.
And you did things very differently this time.
You seem to be a lot more focused, presumably because you had.
You had very little time.
Dan Norris (21:30.070)
Right.
Omer (21:30.550)
So that almost forced you to just.
To really focus on the things that really mattered.
And from what I understand, within the first month, you were already covering your costs, right?
Dan Norris (21:45.030)
Yeah, Yep.
We.
So within the first week, we got exactly $476 in recurring revenue, which was a nice little thing.
And within 23 days, we were covering costs.
And I think by the end of the year, we were, you know, making a reasonable amount to pay ourselves a wage.
I can't actually remember if we were paying ourselves a wage this time last year, but, yeah, I mean, it grew very, very consistently and very quickly to the point now where it's.
I think it's 17 months ago when we launched, and we're now, we've now got over 700 customers and 31, 31 of us working.
Omer (22:22.850)
Okay, so there's a.
There's another quote I took from the book, which is, after one year, WP Curve was far ahead of where my agency was.
After 7, we had twice as many customers, twice the revenue, more staff, a stronger team, lower costs, a simpler business model, happier customers, and four times more profit.
Now, you say that three things that determine the difference between a successful startup and a failing one, the idea, execution and hustle.
Can you talk a little bit about those?
Dan Norris (23:02.100)
Yeah, well, I think the idea.
I think there's a Bunch of popular kind of maxims that people subscribe to that I'm not sure I agree with.
And one of them is that ideas don't matter.
And I think the idea does matter because, I mean, I know the idea matters because if you think of just about every single successful business you can think of, it was always something about the idea that appealed to people.
And if I think of my own history, I know that WP Curve is only slightly different to what my old business was.
But there is a slight aspect to the idea of WP Curve that people really like, and that's the fact that it's unlimited.
The fact that it's really 24, 7 and we're really responsive, it's affordable, fixed price, no surprises.
Those little tweaks on the idea make all the difference.
And they make the difference between very average freelance agency type business and a really high growth, scalable, profitable service that people love.
So I think the idea matters a lot.
I think the way you execute the idea matters a huge amount as well.
And we've had a lot of press and things since we launched because I think we've executed it pretty well.
We've paid attention to design and we've paid attention to branding and who talks about the service and who we aim it at and that kind of thing.
And Hustle matters as well.
By Hustle I mean it's not necessarily getting on the phone and cold calling people, but it's just doing, doing whatever you need to do at the time.
And for me, it's always been, I do things like this podcast, interviews, a lot of them, lots of content, try to get press.
They're the sort of things that I've become okay at doing.
And I do a lot of it and I do it pretty productively.
For someone else, it might be something totally different, but there's that kind of important element of having something that works where even if it is a good idea and you've executed it well, very rarely is it going to actually be a success without you having to bust your ass at the same time.
Omer (25:07.160)
When you talk about Hustle, what's a common mistake that people make?
Dan Norris (25:12.600)
Well, I think Hustle is about doing the right things, not necessarily doing a lot of things.
Well, I suppose it's about both.
It's about doing a lot of the right things.
So I think, you know, it's.
It's depending on what stage you're at, it's difficult to know what the right things are.
But as an early entrepreneur, the thing I can probably almost guarantee is that what you need to be doing is getting customers.
And a lot of entrepreneurs spend their time doing everything other than getting customers when they first start out.
So I'd say that's probably the biggest mistake.
Omer (25:46.210)
Yeah, I've often heard founders talk about, you know, being so focused on the product and you know, when you ask them about marketing, it's often like, well, we're going to worry about that later.
Right now we're just focused on building the product.
And it's surprising that.
I mean, I think it's understandable in the sense that a lot of people get into a startup because they're excited about a product, but unless you're doing the marketing piece of that and thinking about that early on, I think it's going to lead to some heartache at some point.
Dan Norris (26:25.880)
I think it depends on the company too.
Like, I've written this for bootstrapped self funded people, generally people who haven't had a successful startup already, and probably a lot of the people who read this book are working by themselves as well, like solo founders.
And I think for those people to ignore marketing and just focus on product is a huge mistake.
Whereas for a funded company that's got some of the world's best designers and the world's best product people, it may not be a huge mistake for those people to solely focus on product.
But I think I use the word startup in the book because I want people like myself to build companies that compare with the high growth startups.
But at the same time, you can't really compare your situation with, you know, something like an Uber or Spotify or something like that, because what you need and what, what, what they're trying to do are two totally different things.
So I guess I'm sort of trying to bridge the gap a little bit with the book.
Omer (27:29.370)
Let's talk a little bit about validation.
In the book you say that the concept of validation is too simplistic.
Why?
Dan Norris (27:40.090)
Yeah, so there's probably a few reasons.
I mean, again, from like a bootstrap founder's point of view, very rarely do they have enough data to really make valid decisions.
Validation doesn't really cater for a lot of the things that really matter when you're running a business by yourself.
Things like how good you are at what you're doing, how good a fit there is between you and the idea.
Who is listening to you?
Who is your audience or your customers?
What are your skills in marketing?
They're all the things that have a really big impact on whether an individual or even just a Small team of self funded entrepreneurs are going to have a successful outcome.
And that stuff isn't really considered in validation.
Validation is more about is the idea valid.
But for pretty much any idea you work on, the idea is normally already validated.
If I think about my analytics dashboard, which is the software app I worked on, there was plenty of companies already successfully running businesses doing exactly what I was doing.
So why I would even bother trying to in inverted commas validate the idea, I don't know, because it's already valid.
But at the same time that doesn't mean that I can make it work.
So the factors that go into deciding whether I can make it work are not the things that are considered invalidation.
So that's why I prefer the idea of launching quickly, getting customers, listening to those customers, looking at what they do and how they use the product, and skipping the validation step.
Omer (29:15.050)
Okay, let's talk about the seven days and launching a startup in seven days.
Now, some people listening to this would say, I can't possibly build a startup in seven days.
What would you say?
Dan Norris (29:27.810)
They wouldn't be listening to it if they didn't think that they would have seen the title and just ignored it.
Omer (29:36.350)
But let's walk through the seven days a little bit.
So tell me what's sort of involved from day one to day seven.
So in the first day I understand it's about coming up with an idea, right?
Dan Norris (29:48.510)
Yeah, Well, I think going through every day is probably going to take us all day.
But I think the philosophy behind the book is there are a bunch of things that need to be done before you launch a business, and there's not that many of them.
You need to have an idea.
You can't launch a business without an idea.
You need to have a name, you probably need to have a website, you need to have a product, you need to have a button that people can click on to pay.
Other than that, all the other stuff you're probably working on, you probably don't need until after you launch the book.
I outlined like a specific step by step, this is what you do each day.
And some people have interpreted that as I will actually follow this and launch a business in seven days.
Other people have interpreted it as, I'm going to launch a business as quickly as possible.
And they might be at different stages, they might already have a website, they might already have an idea and they read the book and it fires them up to launch as quickly as possible.
But I tried to make it easy for people to do all the things that definitely do need to be done and give the appropriate amount of attention to those beforehand.
And yeah, things like choosing an idea, for example.
I've got a list of different, different criteria that make a good business idea.
So people can look at that and decide like is, can this be a high growth business or is there something fundamentally wrong with it?
And they can, you know, they have three or four ideas, they can use that to evaluate and score to work out which one is the best and they can do that in one day rather than fluffing around for months and months to work out if and asking all their friends if it's a good idea.
So it's about making that process quicker and getting to the launch day so they can start getting some real data from customers.
Omer (31:35.470)
Is there an example you can share with me of someone other than how you used it with WP Curve?
You know how they went through and sort of applied the principles to, to launch a business?
Dan Norris (31:49.490)
Yeah, I'm getting emails all the time.
I've actually set up a Facebook group which you can, if you search for 7 Day Startup on Facebook, they've got just past a thousand members and people in there are launching their businesses.
There's one guy emailed the other day, helpflow.net I think is the name of his business and it's like live customer support as a service.
And yeah, there's lots of examples like that where people have been sort of lingering around with these ideas and they haven't really gone and executed them for whatever reason and they've read the book and they've gone out and followed and done it.
Some of them don't have customers.
There was a Facebook ads one that someone released recently that she did in seven days as well.
There's examples like that some of them work, some of them didn't.
I mean I've done it myself with other businesses and sometimes it's worked and sometimes it hasn't, but every time I've known very quickly if it was going to work.
And so I think if you're looking for your first big idea, then just getting to launch even if it doesn't work out is a much better outcome than not getting to launch at all.
Omer (32:56.000)
Tell me again how to find that Facebook page.
Dan Norris (32:59.200)
I assume you can just search for it on Facebook.
Search for seven day startup.
I haven't actually tried.
Omer (33:04.640)
Okay, I'll find it and add a link in the show notes.
Dan Norris (33:08.770)
Yeah, it was the.
I put together a group of people to help market the book and then once the book was out I sort of Asked if we wanted to keep the group open and everyone did, and then just had a bunch more people sign up and add themselves.
So, yeah, I'll paste the link in here for you.
Omer (33:26.290)
That'd be great.
Okay, Dan, it's time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I'd like you to answer them as quickly as you can.
Dan Norris (33:34.400)
You ready?
I'm ready.
Omer (33:36.240)
All right.
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Dan Norris (33:43.200)
Oh, God, I should have read these questions beforehand.
I'm not very good at picking out the best advice.
I'm only good at picking out the worst advice.
But I think the best advice I can give is that you don't learn until you launch.
So I'm going to choose that even though it's my own quote.
Omer (34:00.800)
Okay.
What book, apart from your own, would you recommend to our audience and why?
Dan Norris (34:07.660)
Well, I think it really depends what stage they're at.
I think if they need inspiration and motivation, the Steve Jobs biography is one I really enjoyed.
If they want to learn about systemizing things, then the Four Hour Workweek is a really good one.
And just opening their eyes to what's possible.
If they want to get philosophical, then zero to one is the book I'm reading at the moment by Peter Thiel.
That's a good one as well.
Omer (34:27.660)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Dan Norris (34:34.400)
Hard working.
I'm sure everyone says that.
Omer (34:39.920)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Dan Norris (34:44.640)
Oh, that's a tough one.
I'm probably just boring.
Probably just say Google Docs.
I just use Google Docs all the time for everything.
Google Drive, Google Docs.
I probably just still pick that.
Omer (34:58.330)
Now the next question I'm going to skip because I ask all my guests this.
If you had to start over tomorrow, how would you go about finding that next business opportunity?
And I think we've pretty much spent most of this discussion talking about exactly how to do that.
Dan Norris (35:12.970)
Yeah, I've answered that question before and I'm going, well, I was in that position a year ago and that's exactly what I did.
So I did the same thing.
Omer (35:19.210)
So let's move on.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Dan Norris (35:27.510)
I've just started a brewing company.
If you knew that, then that's not interesting.
But if you didn't, then maybe that is.
Omer (35:34.950)
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Dan Norris (35:41.030)
Beer.
Omer (35:45.270)
All right, great answers,
Dan Norris (35:48.870)
Dan.
Omer (35:49.350)
It's been an absolute pleasure talking with you.
I really love your no brief BS attitude and your transparency.
You know, I think a lot of people don't like talking about their failures, but you've been very open about that in your book and in your writing in general, and I think people will really appreciate that.
I certainly did.
Now, in fact, I noticed that the book is the Kindle version is available on Amazon at the moment for 399.
So if, if people don't already have a copy of the book, it's a no brainer.
Go and get it.
The book's called the seven Day startup you don't learn until you launch by Dan Norris so thanks again for for joining me and sharing so much useful information and advice.
If people want to find out about WP Curve, presumably wpcurve.com is the best place to go and what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Dan Norris (36:49.400)
Yeah, so just wpcurve.com and then wpcurve.com blog is where we put all the content and then I've got Dan Norris me is where I've just writing.
I do a weekly email.
It goes out to about 14, 15,000 people and you can sign up for it there.
Dan Norris Me and I just talk about entrepreneurship and all this kind of stuff and email just danpcurve.com if anyone's got questions or Facebook you can see me in that group and friend me on there.
I'm pretty active on there, a little bit too active, but yeah, I'm pretty contactable.
Omer (37:22.200)
Awesome.
Thanks again Dan and I wish you continued success.
Dan Norris (37:25.320)
Cool.
Thanks for having me.
Omer (37:26.440)
Cheers.
