Airbnb real estate experiences, talking logistics, raisting testosterone, failing indie hackers, ...

Hey,

this is Jakob Greenfeld, author of the Business Brainstorms newsletter - every week I write this email to share the most interesting trends, frameworks, opportunities, and ideas with you.

Let's dive in!

💡 Opportunity

• Airbnb real estate experiences. I recently visited Porto with my girlfriend. We were kind of shocked by how many buildings in prime locations were either completely run down or abandoned. We both also love watching shows like Selling Sunset or Million Dollar Listing New York. This sparked the following idea.

  • Tours by real estate agents on Airbnb experiences.

  • Airbnb experiences are a great way to find cool things to do when traveling.

  • Real estate agents know a ton about cities and have access to all kinds of buildings.

  • So on the one hand, there are tons of people (like me) who would love to get a city tour from a real estate agent. On the other hand, this could be a great way for agents to generate new business. If the pitch is done right, I can totally see some people ending up saying “You know what? Buying a condo in Porto actually sounds like a great idea.”

🛠 Things Worth Checking Out

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(*all things above are sponsored ads, get yours here)

👨‍🎓 Framework

• “Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.”

  • Omar Bradley (attributed, but who knows who really said it)

• It’s interesting that my co-founder and I both read every single commonly recommended business book out there and we still have to basically figure out everything ourselves right now.

• The problem is that these books never really get down into the nitty-gritty details. It all sounds great and you feel like you’re learning something. But once you try implementing any of it, you notice that you really can’t because all the details are missing.

• All the fluffy big-picture strategy stuff is pretty much worthless. What you really need is a detailed breakdown of how to make things work in your specific situation. And there is simply no market for a book on something so specific.

• The only option besides figuring things out yourself seems to be to talk to people who just recently were in a similar situation. They still remember exactly what it was like, what they tried, and what eventually worked.

🧪Founder Story

“OK this is hard to share, but vulnerability time:

Was doing taxes, and realised my indie products' revenue in 2022 is just.. ~$6200

Not per month, but total for the year!

After 3 years being indie, can't help but feel my progress is too slow

Damn this is hard af”

- Jason Leow

• Was Jason describes above is the norm, not the exception.

• What we typically see on social media are the guys seemingly effortlessly growing business after business to $50k+/month.

• But the reality is that very, very few indie founders ever get to that level.

• Most who fail simply become quiet or vanish altogether while the few founders who got lucky keep posting.

• One big factor is that too many indie founders get stuck with projects that simply do not have a lot of potential from the start.

• It’s very hard to shut down a project, especially if it does generate some revenue and you have no first-hand experience yet of what working on a truly promising idea really looks like.

• Seasoned founders are much better at shutting down projects since they already know what working on a great project feels like. You feel a pull from the market instead.

• A useful exercise that has really helped me:

  • Start with a specific goal, say, $10k monthly profit.

  • Make a list of all projects you're working on and all ideas you have.

  • Break down what it would take to reach your goal with each idea/project.

  • Assess how realistic each option is.

  • E.g. What about a weekly newsletter that is monetized primarily through ads? ($10,000/month) / (4 newsletters/month) = $2500 newsletter. You need 50k+ subscribers to charge $2500/newsletter to sponsors. How realistic is it that you reach that number anytime soon? (Very hard imo)

🧙 Founder Reads

Jeff Tan wrote a great post on raising your testosterone.

Why care? 👇

Got my testosterone levels checked and they were really low. Got on medication (enclomophine) and I feel like a different person. Biggest health change of my life I think.

190 → 350 ng/dL

It’s hard to overstate how big of an impact it’s has already, just feeling great, more ambitious, more energy, etc.

Convinced every male founder should get tested.

End Note

As always, if you’re enjoying this report, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend or two. You can send them here to sign up.

Have a great week,

Jakob