Hey everyone,
If you're new here, welcome to Never Enough, where I brain dump interesting stuff that has been on my mind over the last week.
- Never tell, always storytell.
A few weeks ago, I invited 80 exceptional people to Victoria for my second annual Interesting People conference. This year, we focused on storytelling. We had Matt Dicks, who has won The Moth an absurd number of times and has the ability to make even the most innocuous story bring tears to any audience’s eyes.
Storytelling is a superpower I've honed over the last decade. Too many people screw up by just dumping facts:
“Here’s what my startup does. This is the market it’s tackling. Here’s the customer persona.”
BORING. I’m asleep already.
What you should be doing is telling your story. Sharing your hero’s journey. Talking about your fuck ups and the chip on your shoulder. Helping others see themselves in you, feeling bought in.
Matt was incredible, and in just under 48 hours we had multiple people get up onstage and tell incredible stories with a bit of coaching from Matt.
It’s not rocket science, and he breaks it all down in his new book on using stories in a business context. It’s called Stories Sell, and you should go check it out.
- My friend Nick Gray MC’d the Interesting People conference. I think he’s one of the most interesting people I know, because instead of fixating on getting rich (which he has quietly become), he is focused on building a huge network of friends. He does this in an incredibly nerdy way, where he basically builds a funnel:
Social Media -> Events -> Smaller Dinners -> Close Friendships.
I just interviewed him for my podcast and he walks through it all.
If you’re feeling like you want more friends, then you need to check out this interview.
Billionaire < Friend Billionaire. Check out the interview here.
- I often snap back to reality after 30 minutes of scrolling YouTube and wonder what happened. It’s my #1 time suck, and yet I don’t want to block it. It’s too useful.
So, the other day I discovered UnTrap for YouTube. It’s really simple: when you go to YouTube.com, it redirects you to your history or watch later page. The idea being that you can’t go down the rabbit hole and instead either have to search for what you specifically want, or just view stuff you’ve previously saved to watch later.
I’ve found it’s really helped me cut down on YouTube time. Highly recommended.
- This year, a few simple negotiations made Tiny shareholders enough extra profit to buy six Porsche 911s.
If you own your business, every dollar of savings is a dollar in your pocket.
Accordingly, you're insane not to negotiate all your expenses.
Often all it takes is asking: "Is that the best you can do?" or sharing a quote from a competitor.
Back in the day, Chris and I used to negotiate everything.
Office leases. Furniture. Software. Food for the office.
You name it, we haggled and saved millions.
But now Tiny is huge.
Now we only have time to negotiate the big stuff: incentive packages and M&A deals—high level capital allocation.
But the little stuff still matters. Our companies collectively spend tens of millions a year with companies like Google, Zoom, Amazon, Microsoft, and all the usual suspects.
We have over 40 companies and it's hard to incentivize employees to negotiate.
Because let's be real: negotiating is stressful.
So, this year, we started a new company to solve that problem. It's called TechSource and they do "Negotiation As A Service".
Sound familiar? It is. We started a similar business called Buyer with our friend Kimia a few years ago and he ended up selling it to Ramp.
But as soon as we sold it, we regretted it. We needed this service and our tech spend started creeping up again.
Now, we're back with TechSource.
They're 100% focused on negotiating one of tech companies' and startups' biggest P&L expense items:
Software.
Here's an example of what they did for Metalab:
They completely outsourced their software procurement process to TechSource and saved $72,000 in the first month and $264,000 annually in addition to saving employees over 40 hours of work that can now be allocated to billable projects.
Google: 27% savings
JamF: 40% savings
Drata: 85% savings
Zoom: 38% savings
That's pure profit to the bottom line. And they aren't even finished yet.
I freaking love this business. It's such a no brainer for any founder that spends a lot of money on infrastructure and software.
You literally just send them a breakdown of all your expenses and they get to work.
They're currently making their way through all of our companies and they've saved us over $600,000 so far.
Chat with Will Putnam if you're interested, you can email him here.
- I had a lot of fun doing these two longform interviews:
That’s all for this week…
-Andrew
Check out my podcast: YouTube / Spotify / Apple Podcast
Want to sell your business or know someone who does? www.tiny.com
Follow me on Twitter/X: @awilkinson
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