Some Dumb Ideas

Some ideas. Most are dumb. I think them anyway.
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Hi! I’m Beau. This is where I put ideas that have no home.

What you’ll find here, in order! 

  1. A couple of recent Dumb Ideas.
  2. What I’ve been doing for the last ~10 years (starting/failing/growing a handful of companies in China).
  3. Things that have helped me along the way (tools, books, software, podcasts, people).
- Beau, bad at filtering ideas (and photos).

Recent Dumbs

*just taking out the brain trash*

Building Companies and Such, 2014-

Soufudao, 2014-2016

In 2014 we started a teaching marketplace *in China*. We had a founding team of 3 and worked out of my apartment in Shanghai until we found a free co-working space to lurk at –> Soufudao 搜辅导, [extinct].

—> We flyered on the streets of Shanghai. People were mostly confused why a foreigner was giving them something.

—> We grew it to 5 figures in users, and had some success. 

—> That success was a clear 80-20 rule… but more like 95-5. 5% of our clients accounted for 95% of the revenue. It was the B2B schools segment.

—> After ~1.5 years in, we could only figure out how to healthily monetize this one segment, b2b lessons with schools. So we pivoted.

Cool things learned:

  • Setting up a holding company in Hong Kong.
  • Setting up a consulting company in China.
  • Ruby on Rails (and an appreciation for the framework creators at 37 signals)
  • SEO (the amateur hour kind).
  • Wechat company accounts, marketing, content [that publishing interface is still torture in 2024].
  • What software/email/CRM/Accounting Software/etc. to use in China instead (when the thing you want to use is blocked).
  • Hiring contractors online (back in ye ‘ol Elance era!).
  • Flyering.
  • The Shanghai Metro system (from the flyering commutes).
  • How to run an online platform for less than ~$5k/mo spend. China is affordable, staff came to my place, and I still get too excited about free software tools.

Takeaways:

  • Marketplaces are tough. There are so many moving pieces, and so many types of users to please. I think I’d like to sell a service/product directly (full control) to one group (focused segment). 
  • There is a reason that marketplace businesses, from Airbnb, to Amazon, to Uber had to raise a lot of money. I don’t think I want that [huge, VC-fueled startup on a high-speed runway]. 
  • Cash was still big in China. Our users would often try to get out of our online billing system. It’s not fun working on how to make your business more ‘tight -bhole’ so people stop ripping you off. *Provide something people really want to pay for, again and again.* 

SFD Education, 2016-2022

*first base hit*

In ~2016 we pivoted from a marketplace to a direct service provider for schools —> SFD Education [extinct].

—> We built up old-school relationships with schools. The contracts were bigger, and we were able to grow a team and get a real office. And super comfy desk chairs! 

—> Clients would actually visit our office regularly. We would require in-person interviews for most of our contractors. It was a different time.

—> We passed 7 figures in annual revenue. Everyone was finally getting paid well, and getting steady raises. Maybe I’d finally hit that number I got from an offer out of grad school.

—> Ooooof, the ‘ol *business-ending Government policy change*. In late 2021, The Education Bureau of China declared that most of our client schools could no longer continue operations. Our clients told us it’d be fine. It’s China… They announce this kind of stuff all the time. . . It was not. By mid-2022 the same clients had either shut their doors or pivoted into a new business and cut costs anywhere they could (oh my, that was us). By the end of 2022, we had lost about 80% of our revenue. Our sales team had nothing to sell, and we needed to take this old dog behind the barn.

Cool things learned:

  • Setting up ‘staffing’ (劳务派遣) and ‘technology’ (科技) companies in China (there are so many categories!)
  • Running it ‘old school’ – sales staff and client references. We didn’t even have a website for a long time with this business.

Takeaways:

  • Sometimes there are abrupt Government policies that change your life.
  • Don’t tie too much of your personal value to your business. Shit happens, you level up skills and get back to it with more tools.
  • You can run a nice business without a website if you have strong demand and something like very strong referrals. I think that’s still true today.
  • I was bored, and wasn’t really ‘proud’ of this business. I like building stuff on the internet. With Soufudao, I set out to build a software platform… that somehow slogged into a traditional agency. Running it ‘old-school’ is not for me in the long run. Silver linings yea? 

SFD for Business, 2016-2018

At the same time that we moved to SFD Education, we set up a business training arm, SFD for Business [extinct].

—> This worked alright, we took on some big clients like Yum! China, Weiden Kennedy, and even the space program! (seriously, we taught Chinese rocket scientists technical English).

—> We were building custom courses that took up so much time. The demand from our network was all for in-person courses. It was hard to find great in-person foreign instructors in China. This created a very stubborn supply issue for us, and we eventually stopped offering the service.

Cool things learned:

  • Curriculum creation for B2B. 
  • Business Chinese (we made a bunch of lessons!).
  • Actually teaching Business English (I subbed sometimes).

Takeaways:

  • Don’t build custom products for clients. It doesn’t scale, and it doesn’t usually add up.
  • Read “Built to Sell” by John Warrillow to let this sink in.
  • Don’t put myself in a position to substitute teach or be somewhere on demand. Freedom of schedule is *very* important to me.
  • Don’t offer something that is too scarce and/or time-consuming to provide (I Dumb).

SFD for SEN, 2017-

the 'feel good' one

*This service is now at TeamedUp Edu.

It is still going strong! And came about from a chance encounter:

—> I have an awesome special needs brother (here’s our collab turning him into one of the X-men).

—> A teacher friend-of-a-friend in Shanghai has a special needs son.

—>  She wondered if we could use our staffing team to help her school find SEN (Special Education Needs) support staff/teachers.

—> How couldn’t I?! We are now supporting all kinds of great schools in China with their SEN departments.

—> We have spent $0 on marketing, didn’t have a website for this service for years, and have grown solely through referrals.

Cool things learned:

  • Referrals are so powerful that they can start and grow a business for years.
  • The most unlikely human connections can lead to great things.

Takeaways:

  • You can both do a good thing and run a business simultaneously, why not try to do that (at least) most of the time?
  • Be the service that gets referrals without asking for them. Great service grows a business in itself. 

ExpatInvest, 2021-

A COVID babe – I was sitting around trying to figure out what to do with the (finally) savings I had in China.

—> I asked some friends. They didn’t know.

—> I talked to a good friend who worked in Finance. We decided to figure it out.

—>  Imagine two foreigners wandering the streets of the ‘Chinese Wall Street’ in Pudong Shanghai, knocking on investment bank doors to see if they’d let us invest. 

—> Many, many ‘Doors and ‘Nos later we found one that said ‘Yes. 

—> Many, many meetings later we met a good accountant. And then a compliance person. And then a lawyer.

—> We focus on putting out good information on China, and (you guessed it!) referrals. We don’t have a sales team and run minimal ads. It’s a lean operation and I am personally able to work on it part-time (always the plan).

Cool things learned:

  • How brokerage and fund platforms work, in China!
  • Chinese companies, markets, tech – I’ve written about them A LOT, here’s somewhere to start if interested. 
  • SEO & content creation (upgrades).
  • Plugins, glorious plugins.
  • PHP (baby steps) & Javascript (upgrade).
  • Patience (upgrade – bank meetings setting everything up were intense/tedious/Chinese). 
  • Being a ‘clueless foreigner’ again (hefty upgrade).

Takeaways:

  • It’s fun to work with people you like. I heard somewhere when I was young that you shouldn’t do business with friends. For me, the businesses are also just fun projects to work with smart friends that you’d like to spend time with anyway. It can be that simple.
  • Being a ‘clueless foreigner’ can come in handy. 
  • A lot of people gave us flat ‘Nos’ on this. At every step of the way. If you have a clear picture of an idea growing into something clear and helpful, stay on it. They just can’t see it yet.

Here she is: ExpatInvest

TeamedUp China, 2023-

A good one (so far, we think)! And only 9 years in: TeamedUp China.

—> As our Edu business was collapsing in 2022, lifeline brainstorming began.

—> First, we spun off ‘SFD for SEN’ (two companies up the list). That was a healthy business and it had not been affected by the policy update.

—> Next I focused on:

——> What I didn’t like doing during the above stuff. What I liked doing. What I thought I could be great at in a Phoenix rebirth situation.

——> What could I use my skillsets and network for, that wouldn’t become illegal?

… people are always going to need to hire Chinese people in China, right? Let’s help out with THAT 😁

Cool things learned:

  • WordPress. It’s an onion, and only grows stronger with time via open source and (you guessed it), *plugins* 🧩.
    • I love plugins so much that I even started making my own! Here’s one that looks up salaries in China.
  • SEO & content creation (really grinded on this one – have a look!). 
  • Web development/design/conversion optimization.
  • Productized Services.
  • B2B Social Media (long way to go).

Takeaways:

  • Keep going. 
  • Work on things you like to work on – it’ll come out A LOT better. There are others who like to work on what you don’t.
  • I think I could be a pretty good entrepreneur one day.

More to come, 2024-3024

Stuff that has Helped Me:

Books / Pods / Peoples / Tech / Business Tools

Books!

I’m a big fan of quitting books that don’t make you come back to them. Do you keep watching a tv show that you don’t like after the first episode? Do you finish a meal that tastes bad to you?

I used to force myself to finish books that I heard were supposed to be great… but weren’t really doing it for me. This just resulted in me putting off reading… sometimes for months or more.

If I’m not excited to keep returning to a book for more, I drop it fast. Sometimes it’s just not what I’m curious about at that specific time in my life. 

For now, these are in no particular order. They all found me at the right time, and I’ve either read them more than once or will be doing so. There’s also a big recency bias here – I’m starting off with my kindle collection, so these are likely read/revisited within the last ~2-3 years. Looks as though I’ve been leaning business and philosophy recently…

Built to Sell  – by John Warrillow

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant – Eric Jorgenson

How to Get Rich – Felix Dennis (lame title, great read)

The Puzzler (or anything by) – A.J. Jacobs

Meditations – Marcu Aurelius

Getting Things Done – David Allen

Eat That Frog! – Brian Tracy

Tao Teh Ching – Lao Tzu

Getting More – Stuart Diamond

Million Dollar Weekend – Noah Kagan

God Is Not Great – Christopher Hitchens

Tool of Titans / Tribe of Mentors – Tim Ferris

Creativity, Inc. – Ed Catmull

Grit – Angela Duckworth

Is This Anything? – Jerry Seinfeld

Bossypants – Tina Fey

The Imperial Cruise – James Bradley

Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman

The Black Swan – Nassim Taleb

Pods!

Peoples!

WordPress! Tools/Design/Plugins

These are all part of my completely free e-commerce/business services site stack on WordPress. That’s right, build a great e-commerce site for free (well, you’ll still need to buy the hosting and domain). I’ll keep adding to this one.

  • Astra Template. It’s flexible, has good-looking formats, and it is easy to edit most stuff in the free version. It’s also well-updated and supported because it’s so popular. 
  • Elementor plugin. Its drag-and-drop design is easy, it is super customizable, and (most importantly for the free part) a lot of other (free) design plugins are built on top of it. 
  • Independent Analytics. Sure, set up Google and Bing analytics too – but this one is so simple and enjoyable to check in on. Plus its a nice, independent, check on your analytics. If your SEO focused, especially, it’s nice to confirm from someone else that Google is sending you the traffic they say they are. 
  • For hosting and domains [not free part], I find Namecheap is easy to use. The hosting packages seem to come with more random goodies than other hosts I’ve tried. For example, I randomly discovered I had a few extra subdomains on a standard hosting package – so now I host 3 separate websites (including this one!) on this package. They also have a lot of written/visual resources that walk you through stuff succinctly, which is my preferred way of IT troubleshooting. 

Biz Software!

  • Maker. This automation software blew my mind out on the possibilities of what is possible. From Social Media flows to AI integrations I never dreamed of, you can do whatever your automaton heart desires here. And the free tier is enough for most..!
  • MailerLite. My favorite free-tier email campaign and flow software. I have yet to hit a paid tier for any business (but when we do, I’m sure it’ll be worth it). The email drag-and-drop builder is great.

  • Trello. Try it out for workflows, you can get quite far with the free version.

  • Wecom for team communications in China. It’s Slack by Tencent, integrates very well with Wechat (also Tencent), and is free or like $50 a year for the pro version. For your entire team of people. Plus it has free shared cloud space (we haven’t hit the limit after years of use), free company email integration, custom QR codes, and all kinds of other free neat tricks. And most importantly, Chinese people will actually use it as a work alternative to Wechat – hurray for (mostly) separating personal and professional Apps in China 🙂
  • Zoho‘s tools work pretty well for teams in China, as none of their services are blocked (Google) and they have a Chinese version. We have used them for shared docs (free) and invoicing (paid).

👨🏻‍🚀 More human updates to come, last here 2024/9/9