"Nobody Wants To Work", Divorce Database & Digital Apprenticeships

Seasons Greetings from the U S of A.

Finally back from this 2 month extravaganza in Europe.

Moving to NYC this week so if you're around and wanna meet up, give me a shout.

My goal: Build profitable companies & buy real estate with the profits. Without compromising health & epic adventures along the way.

Newsletter goal: You leave with one idea to make more $$$ or have a better life. 

📚 1 Business Lessons:

If part of your job is hiring, you've probably heard someone complain in the last 30 days:

"Nobody Wants To Work Anymore"

This is an incredibly lazy excuse.

And one that has been manifested for the last 100+ years (check out this epic twitter thread)

He pulls examples from 1894 to 2022 with newspaper clips & news outlets saying "Nobody Wants To Work Anymore"

An example from 1922:

Meanwhile unemployment is at 3.5% as of July 2022... so like... I think 96.5% of people do want to work?

The issue (in my opinion) is companies don't want to recruit.

And, employees have way more options in a remote first setting.

The copywriter in Wichita Kansas can now get paid big 💰💰💰 working for a boujee NYC ad agency instead of one of the 7 marketing agencies in Wichita (no disrespect, Wichita). 

As an employer, I'm at fault of wanting to blame the candidates too.

Just this year we were hiring a Customer Service Manager for our e-commerce brand.

No exaggeration, we had 2 candidates commit to us (one in February one in April).

• Candidate 1: Quit on day 2

• Candidate 2: Verbally committed then ghosted when we sent the paperwork

I was pissed. But, I'll be the first to admit, we were lazy with how we recruited here.

Indeed Job Posting → 4-5 Interviews (one round only) → Offer

After having 2 failed hiring attempts we said f*ck it and went on a 3 week sprint.

We re-wrote all of our job descriptions, did manual outreach to candidates, had 50 screening calls, 20 first-round interviews, 5 second round interviews, and called references for 2 of the candidates.

Now we have an All-Star ⭐️ (shoutout Jina) who has been crushing it for us.

Treat recruiting like you treat sales and see how things change.

Lesson: Beware of False Narratives

💰 2 Business Ideas:

1. Feedback As A Service –

I recently saw this tweet from my buddy Ben (king of audio)

As someone who's recorded 100+ podcast episodes, it wasn't until around episode 70 my co-host turns to me and goes "Dude, you've got to stop saying 'That's Awesome' as a response to everything"

I think someone who has a background in either:

• Copywriting

• Linguistics

• Video Production

Can do this as a service for email marketers, podcasters, or Youtubers.

Rather than being a Copy Writer, be a Copy Coach (thecopycoach.com is available)

2. The Divorce Database –

Ok you might have to put your moral compass away for this one.

But if the goal is to make 💰💰💰... well in the real estate world there's a lot of 💰 in "Trigger Event Data"

Think Inheritance (death), Bankruptcy, Divorce, etc.

These events often lead to a sale of real estate (usually for less than it's worth)

3 of the last 4 properties I bought fell in this category.

There's a company I heard about called Ideal Target and the way it works is they send a Daily CSV on any bankruptcies files by county of bankruptcy, divorces, etc. 

Disclaimer: I've never used them, but I believe the pricing is $250/county/mo

If you're in real estate (specifically residential) these are the Glengarry Glen Ross leads.

Most of these Trigger Events are public records. I don't know the most efficient way to find them, but I do know other people have figured it out and if you're smart & good at data scraping, there's a lot of 💰 to be made here.

😎 3 Cool Internet Things:

1. Digital Apprenticeships – Recently found this post from Jason Levin and it describes (in my opinion) the best way to go from W-2 employee to building your own thing.

The answer: Find the person who's already doing what you want to be doing and work for them for free. Sounds obvious but no one does this. And Twitter has supercharged access to these apprenticeships.

2. Read Something Great  – A killer web app that curates timeless thoughtful pieces ranging from 5-30 minute reads. Good break from social media.

3. Projects Of One's Own – I found this Paul Graham from the link above.

This essay shows how most people spend their entire life working on things other people assigned to them. Homework, projects at work, etc. 

When in reality people need more solo projects to boost their creativity & confidence.

- Connor 

PS – I was just at La Tomatina yesterday – the biggest tomato food fight on the planet.

This has been on my bucket list for years and it was legendary. Here's what it looks like below:

Now Get Off The Internet & Go Do Some Epic Sh*t

PS – I'm going to spend ~$1,000/month growing this newsletter. If you want to sponsor it so I don't have to tell my Mom I'm spending $12,000 on emails, reply here. First few slots will be very affordable 👍