Marc Lou
Appearances
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Getting started with something simple is the best way to get more ideas, to build a tiny audience, to get feedback, to learn. There's just so many things that just roll after that. Having a course, a book, I think it's the easiest way to get started. And so, yeah, that's the entire point is to start with something simple.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Um, you don't want to price too cheap because obviously when it's cheap, people will undervalue the product. And as you're getting started, if you sell 10 PDF and each PDF is like $1, then at the end of the month, you're not even paying the bills. So you want to have the motivation and for that you need to price a little higher than expected. You look at competitors' prices for that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
If you don't know how to price, it's just really a bunch of... But yeah, I would go for one-time payment for sure at the very beginning, especially if you're selling a course.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Man, thank you so much. Big fan of the pod. I've watched a lot of episodes and I'm happy to be finally in here.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I've been playing a lot with that. I started with very cheap and cheap subscriptions with a long free trial. And then I ended up removing the free trial, pricing higher, and sometimes removing the subscription. I think it really depends on the product.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I think there is a rush towards subscriptions because there's this sense as a business owner that if you charge a subscription, then you will get monthly recurring revenue. So you get 10 months in January, you're going to get $10 in January, you're going to get $10 in December, and it's going to keep going like this.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
But I think as a customer, it's kind of a pain to have subscriptions because you have Netflix, Spotify, et cetera. And so in the customer's mind, When you see a subscription, you're already thinking what happens if I have to cancel and I forget. And when you create objections in the mind of the customer at the moment they purchase, that is usually impacting your conversion rate.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And what I do is I tend to remove any subscription and I really ask myself, do I need that subscriptions? A friend of mine is telling me, if you have a recurring payment, you should provide recurring value. which usually falls in the category of software for businesses.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Like if you're using, I don't know, like a scheduling tool because you have calls every week, then it makes sense to have a recurring subscription.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
If you look at, there's a lot of product that can actually remove the entire subscription model and have a one-time payment or a system, like a credit system that works really well too, that doesn't push the customer to make a big commitment and it's easier to sell.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Nobody really likes paying. So there's nothing that comes in mind. I think I remember seeing the Meta subscription, the Meta usage, where I was like, oh, that's cool. But I don't have any company in mind. One company that comes in mind when it comes to pricing, it's a smart move on their side, but as a customer, I don't like it, is Stripe with the fees.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
If you actually look at your monthly fee, that's a lot of money. I think that's where I spend the most money in my business, like probably $5,000 a month. They got 3% for the cards plus an extra 1% if the card is not from Europe. plus an extra 1% if you're charging another currency, and plus 0.4% if you want to make an invoice. In the end, you pay like 5% to 6%. So it's smart for the business.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And as a customer, I'm not a big fan of it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
You just remind me of a pricing I saw that was really smart. But it was years ago. They were charging higher. It was a subscription. They were charging higher on the first month. Or they were charging you on the first month for a baseline that they show on their site. And then it decreases after like two to three months.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And so as a customer, you don't want to cancel because otherwise you lose what you already gained by being a customer for the past three months. I cannot remember the company, but I thought it was a really smart pricing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Just before we get started, I got lots of ideas. Lots of them are terrible, but I try all of them and eventually some of them ended up working. So whatever I prepared, some of them might not be the best, but it crossed my mind and I think it's worth exploring.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
If we step, um, all right, maybe we can move from that. Whatever course you're trying to sell, there's something I love and it's maybe speaking to only gamers out there, but I'm a big fan of all the Farcraft. I've played games for so many years and I try to gamify things that have a purpose in real life.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
So for instance, you could gamify your sleep, you could score points, you can compete with friends, you can lose money if you don't get good sleep or if you don't track your habits or something like that. I think there's a lot to do in the gamification system because Everybody wants better sleep. Everybody wants to eat better. Everybody wants to work out.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And I think there is a gamification things that could help people achieve their goals. And that could be a software by itself.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah, I think in this case, it's, I think it's a mattress company that sells the app on top of that. So that's eventually on a call on a podcast, you would end up talking about the mattress because it's interesting. Normally you don't talk about a mattress. I think that makes a lot of sense, but that would require you to already have a business.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
If you're setting a course about how to sleep better, you could bring a little board of all the people who purchased and make them compete. For sleep, there is Pokemon Sleep, an app that was released, I think, a year ago or something, which makes $100 million a year. And basically, the better you sleep, the more your Pokemons will grow and evolve.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I don't know what is the license fee they pay for the Pokemon license.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
That's $10 per download?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah, that's pretty crazy. I think the nostalgia of Pokemon combined with a real-life goal, that's something big.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Man, that is absolutely crazy. That reminds you that even with years of experience, you'll still not really know what you're doing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
There's this sense as a business owner that if you charge a subscription, then you will get monthly recurring revenue. So you get $10 in January, you're going to get $10 in December, and it's going to keep going like this. But What I do is I tend to remove any subscription and I really ask myself, do I need that subscriptions?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I mean, yeah, man, I would love to grow my Jedi as soon as I ship a startup. My lightsabers becomes, I don't know, double or something. Just so many. And we're talking about general stuff like sleep, or workouts, but you could go deep into niche, like, developers who commit, this is an app I have in mind for a long time. I'll probably build it in years from now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
It's like every time you make a commit as a developer, it's pushed to GitHub. And there is like this super addictive GitHub things where you have like a grid of all your commits across the last 365 days. Every developer is wherever your software engineer is using TypeScript or your Peter Lovell is using PHP and don't care about anything. Everybody knows about that and everybody loves this grid.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And man, I kind of, I want to bring that in and make a massive leaderboard of commits or whatever grids, something that makes people want to push some code online. This is one of the millions of niche where you can gamify gamify habits goals. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes the opposite happens when you think you have an amazing idea. You spend two months building it and then nothing happens. I guess that's the open zones. I think... I think one good part to get started is there is this gold rush for SaaS products. Because we hear amazing stories of a kid who used no code and made a million dollars using a SaaS product.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Okay. I'll build that with you.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
The track record you have, because if that ended up working two years from now, it's like, this idea was born on the Startup Ideas podcast. Exactly. We documented it. I'm really taking note of that one. I'll CC you, I'll DM you if I ended up building it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Oh man, I dropped it here because this is the number one question I receive on every YouTube videos I make. Where did you set up your company? How does it work? How did you set up your strap account with that company? The same question every single time. And the thing is, I think there is an opportunity for an info product for sure. So people understand a little bit better about what is going on.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
How does the thing work? Because it's mostly, it starts with that. And eventually for a service where you have, you marketplace where you match people and their needs and the legal entity that they need. I am terrible at legal stuff. Like this is something that it pulls my hair. So I spend as least time as I can on it. But I think there's a real need because people ask all the time.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Okay, I think in your case it's probably an advanced version maybe to optimize your taxes or something like this?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
All right. I think, yeah. Maybe because in New York... I think you're from Canada, right? I'm originally from Canada, yes. I think there's... What I see is from people who are usually not from the US. Because for you guys, there is this easy option of Stripe at last.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
So you paid taxes in, in the U S now?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Okay. So yeah, you've, you've been, cause I look, I look at my situation. I am a French person who is married to a Korean woman in living, living fiscal, like take my tax. I pay my taxes in Bali. There was an infinite ocean of options. Where would I pay my taxes? Where would I pay my company? Where would I open a company?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
But I think there are tons of products before that that are much simpler to start with. And I think one of them is teaching what you actually know. you probably have a background, whether you've been studying something, you've been, I don't know, it could be a sport background, could be employee backgrounds, having a course, a book, I think it's the easiest way to get started.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Because I don't need to open a company necessarily in Indonesia or in France. I can open it in Singapore. And so you have like so many options. And sometimes like, yeah, but you have Cyberclass in the US where you pay 0% taxes. Why not opening there? And then you realize if you do that, then you're not, you own a company like there and you live in Indonesia, it's maybe illegal.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
There's this like entire system where it's like completely fucked up. And I think that's why people are asking. It's more like not trying to optimize taxes, but to understand the system, where should they set up their company in first place so that it's working? Because now that you work with a computer, you could work from anywhere in the world. You can live anywhere in the world.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
So there's this ocean of options, which creates as well an ocean of thoughts.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah. And I think for you, it also makes sense where you are because you might have employees, et cetera. So it's the more things engage. For me, the company is one person. It's me. There is no employee. There is no one else. There is eventually a contractor to edit my videos, but that's it. And so that gives me an enormous amount of flexibility to where I go. But on the downside, where do I go?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And that was the tricky part where I was not really sure where to open first. Interesting. Yeah. And people really ask a lot.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
When I looked at Stripe Atlas at the beginning, I was living in France and And I hired someone, a lawyer, and he told me if you own a Stripe Atlas business in France, like you're going to get flagged. They won't like it because it's like zero percent tax heaven. And so either you would get double tax as if it was a French company. So in that case, that makes zero sense.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Or if one day you get an audit, then you're fucked. And I was like, that's the moment where I started to realize, like, wait, so what, you know? And then there's this entire process of like, okay, I can have a company abroad, but then I need to move abroad as well. And then, yeah. And then that's when the troubles somehow started.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Then you have the regulation that changes in every country because at some point everybody was talking about Dubai. That's the place to go. And then they changed the regulation and it became more expensive. And I was lost. I was like, okay, fuck. I'm not going to optimize anything. I'm going to do something simple.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Marclu.com, M-A-R-C-L-O-U.com. This is where all my websites are. My revenue is public and there is my Twitter and YouTube link as well.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I think that's my case. I like the creation process. And I wouldn't think too much about the customer. I would still create it. And I would think about something that changed my life. And building a SaaS is one of them. But sometimes there are little things that are, I'm talking about very simple things, but like how to sleep better. Like for instance, I see the impact on my sleep on my day.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
If I have a good night, eight hours of sleep, I wake up, I'm pumped. My entire day is like a blessing. But now if you're talking about getting the perfect night of sleep on repeat, It's much harder than just being lucky once. You need to go to bed at the same time all the time. You need a specific temperature. You need earplugs. You need all these kind of things and it becomes complicated.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
A friend of mine is telling me, if you have a recurring payment, you should provide recurring value.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And this is something that you could sell to anyone. Everybody needs a good night of sleep. And I remember in 2021, that's one of the things that changed my life. That could literally something you could build in like you could make a PDF in a day and you can sell that to start.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
No, I haven't. I was Googling it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah. Yeah, because design matters a lot here. And even if just ideas is very simple, having a good... landing page, like the one you, you talk about, like, this is one of, um, one of your favorite, I think it was a newsletter or tweet of yours that says the tweets size or tweet bites landing page. I think, man, that's such a great way to get started without overthinking.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
You can have a call to action by a little course here or there. And. If you do the work to launching a little bit everywhere, you know, then you learn a lot about what's happening and what's not happening. You learn about creating headlines. You learn about putting your ideas out there and stop overthinking.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I think that's the first step when you're starting in this journey, even if it seems simple. That's the point. That's the point of like, you're just getting started. Then you can, you know.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
There we go. Yeah, that's the point. That's the starting, that's the ignition of the business. I think there's like, sometimes you get this idea and you think that's going to change everything in this world. You know, this is like full throttle, all into it. But I think it's a journey and an idea is just a part of the journey. And there will be so many ideas in that longer journey.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And getting started with something simple is the best way to get more ideas, to build a tiny audience, to get feedback, to learn. There's just so many things that just roll after that. And so, yeah, that's the entire point is to start with something simple.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I would definitely use a medium to share what I'm working on. So if I'm comfortable on the camera, I'll definitely go on YouTube or TikTok, Instagram. If I am better with writing because I'm a little bit introvert, then I will go on Twitter. And I would learn how to share my ideas, learn how to share what I'm currently working on so I can create content out of my daily life.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And that would create, it wouldn't make a buzz at the beginning, but I would create an initial traction. You would get five to like, I don't know, 10 people who just look at what you're doing and they'll be here when you're launching. That would be the first step.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Yeah, man, I can relate so much to that. And if you go back to my Twitter accounts in the very beginning of the journey, like 2021, 2022, you would see tweets of me when now with cringe, because I'm trying to tell people what to do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
I think the mistake we do, and I think it's kind of natural because you open YouTube and you see videos with million views of, I don't know, Alex Hormozy, who is telling you five mistakes you're making as an entrepreneur. Like there is this teacher mindset and you're like, I'm going to copy that. I'm going to imitate. I'm going to teach them what I know.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
But at the beginning, you don't know anything. So you want to start by using I and not you. So I did that. I learned that. And then maybe later in the journey, when you start to have a bigger following, you've learned a lot. Then maybe you can start teaching and telling you should be doing this or stuff like that. I think it's a good idea. finding the right medium.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
So Twitter, like YouTube, Instagram, whatever this is, and finding the formats on how you tell your ideas. I think this is, this is very important here. Took me. Yeah.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Those are good questions because I can really retrace the beginning of the journey. I'm like, hey, I was actually thinking about that. I think it comes to... finding, consuming content, and picking the little things you like from each creator. For instance, I like the mindset of Peter Lavelle to say, I did that, and having lots of little projects.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
And I copied that, and I put it in my head, and now it's part of me. Maybe some of your audience know Justin Welsh, a really good writer on Twitter. I like the way he writes. Like it's very clear, concise, super simple to understand. I was like, okay, I love that. I took the way he writes and I put it in my head. I'm like, now that's part of my identity. And I mix those ideas
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
creators in my head and it becomes my identity so my identity is not really my identity actually it's like a mix of lots of things I found everywhere plus what I've discovered along the way but at the beginning there's literally nothing and if you go back to my Twitter you really see that things have changed a lot from the very beginning yeah so it's interesting we were talking about Mount Rushmore earlier
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to become a solopreneur (3 $1M+ startup ideas)
Oh man, pricing could be a, could be an entire YouTube video of one hour for, for that. I think you want to start with a paywall. You don't want, you want to avoid launching free things. Unless you're passionate about, unless you have a really good idea and you think it could work, otherwise you want to have a paywall because that teaches you a lot of things.