”Just because nobody complains doesn’t mean all parachutes are perfect.” Benny Hill
Happy New Year!
Previously at the Volcano Base, just before Christmas, having found myself without any form of income, I was furiously trying to figure out how to survive. Over the holiday break, I’ve been focused on turning ideas into reality.
Mission Briefing
Free-fall parachute crochet
Take it from me: you can try to crochet a parachute while you’re in free-fall, but it won’t work. You will eventually hit the ground. Hard. It’ll hurt.
When I prep these newsletters, I ask Tana’s built-in AI to summarise everything that happened since I sent the previous one. The holiday period meant that it was almost impossible to do any meaningful business development, but I did have a few chats, including confirmation of a one-day AI training gig for the leadership of a charity. There was a tiny “whoop” of success! Thank you, Edifai, for bringing me in as the instructor.
But, in terms of foreseeable income, that’s it. Tana summed the business development situation up nicely:
I’m sorry, but there is no specific information in the provided context nodes about what you were most optimistic about during this period
Great, right?
Thump
So I hit the ground hard, then picked myself up, pulled the twigs out of my beard and had a look around to see where I’d landed. It was the middle of nowhere. Even Chumbawumba would have struggled to be positive.
I’m an old hand at getting up again. If anything, I’m sick to the back teeth of being resilient, but I know the drill: step back, take a deep breath, then look up.
As soon as I’d managed to hitch a ride back to the Volcano Base, I knew what I had to do.
Dust yourself off
Over the last 3 weeks, I’ve:
- taken my ideal customer research and created a first product for them that solves a valuable problem
- identified another 6 valuable problems I can solve for them
- automated business operations so I can create, deliver and support systems for my (currently potential) customers without needing any staff
- set the groundwork for AI staff to operate parts of the Volcano Base, with minimal oversight from me
- created an affiliate programme for anyone wanting to offer Volcano Base services (currently just my sister!)
Technically, how am I doing this? It’s a combination of HighLevel for the “hub” database and some automations, integrated with n8n for the serious automation, which is in turn integrated with “everything else” (including AI for agent-like workflow).
The first product is for small businesses that’d lose money if they miss an inbound phone call. It’s a very specific problem, rather than attempting to automate someone’s entire business.
The system catches the missed call and sends the caller an SMS, adding them to an automation workflow designed to activate that potential customer. There’s some more clever stuff like integration with their Google Business profile too. More info here if you want to try it out or tell a relevant friend ;)
I have another 6 products lined up. Each one self-contained, inexpensive, solving a specific small business problem via automation and AI.
AI doesn’t make sense until it’s integrated into your business workflow.
If a tree falls on you in the forest…
The main problem is the perennial one: marketing on a tiny budget. What’s the point of having genuinely useful stuff if nobody knows about it? A couple of days ago I started testing cold database marketing. It gives me “the ick” but, frankly, I’m desperate, and it’s either that or much slower methods that I don’t have the time for (looking at you, social). For that, I’m using Apollo, LeadsRapidly and Instantly, to keep the costs to an absolute minimum while compliant with GDPR. If you want an explanation of how I’ve approached it, please let me know and I’ll do a video or something.
I need some help
I’ve got 2 months left to generate some income before Very Bad Things happen. You might know that my wife, Cathy, was made redundant before Christmas, so we’re in a bad situation with neither of us earning. If you know anyone that might benefit from anything I’m doing, or the experience I have, please let me know.
Classified Intel
Some interesting stuff I discovered on my adventures.
I love a bit of self-hosted, open-source software. Plane is a nice project management system. Very adaptable and effectively free for small teams.
Very handy intro to process mapping for small business. It’s not 100% necessary to do process maps when considering automation and AI, but it really helps to make your life easier as the business becomes more “synthetic”.
Lindy’s positioning itself as a sort of AI-first Zapier. “Build AI agents in minutes” is their claim. I don’t think these are really agents, just sophisticated workflows, but it’s still cool.
