Plan Before You Start

Plan Before You Start

Tristan Pelloux
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
5/17/2021

The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.

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yeah i would say you know it might be borrowing but planning before you you start is uh is i think a big key to success and and then obviously execute you know on your business plan but first you need to write it down [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devin miller the serial entrepreneur entrepreneur that's grown several startups and the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com now today we have another great guest on the podcast tristan or blue if i can say the last name right or kind of get that accent there um but to introduce you a bit to tristan so after high school um did uh prep prep school for a couple years and then went into business school did a couple internships during that period of time and then graduated moved off to london worked for a company did mergers and acquisitions or m a for a period of time and then worked at a bigger bank i think it was in finance um part of that job was to work with fintech companies and then he kind of decided that when as his time was up and uh with that bang moved to barcelona spain wanted to build something for himself and is it is launched in his growing uh fintech review which is a blog that he's doing on is his own job um that uh it provides a lot of information about fintech and also doing some consulting and strategy for other companies so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast tristan thank you thank you for having me so i did kind of just a quick high level run through of your whole journey but maybe now take us back in time to kind of after high school going to prep school doing a business school and kind of tell us how your journey went from there yeah sure sure so yeah as you said i went to business school in france and during that time kind of they forced you to move around so i i did i did several internships i went to jordan in middle east um i uh i went south of france um an exchange program in the netherlands in in rotterdam studying economics and yeah in my last last internship i was i was in in mna in london and i actually never left i after my internship i've done a job um at virgin money uk um so worked on a few projects in the corporate strategy team their mergers and acquisitions restructuring innovation projects a lot of stuff and yeah my last job there was focused on developing partnerships with fintech startups and big technology companies um and yeah and last year i decided you know uh london was great my job was great but it was time to move on so diving into just that just part of it just for a second so when you say you know deciding it's time to move on you know was there something that hey i'm just worn out or i'm working too many hours or i don't find this in interesting more or is more of hey i want to do my own thing or kind of when you get kind of decide to make that transition or you know move on from it so to speak what was the motivation or the the trigger so to speak of what uh what caused you to move on yeah i guess um i guess i i was thinking for a couple of years already that i wanted to build something you know to to see something grow and and get you know if it's going well it's all on you if it's not going well it's it's not it's it's also all new um right because this thing is when you work in a big company you're part of a collective which is which is great but at the same time it's the collective so it's less so on how well you're doing and more so on how well you know your team the the company is doing so i wanted to lead the chart to charge on something and and develop and develop something and then look back and say you look i've done this it's great now and you know it's um i always thought about this so um i decided it was the right time for me to uh you know to jump in no definitely makes sense so so now you decide to make that jump and what made you because i or did you stay you moved to barcelona spain as well right so what was the motivation saying okay i want to do my own thing i want to build something and kind of have it as my own what what necessitated the move with that was just hey i want a new location or it's nearby family want new surroundings or kind of as you're making that transition what also kind of prompted you to move yeah actually it was more associates the way around is i decided to move as you say to be closer to my family that is in south of france and my partner or family is in spain because she's spanish and so i decided to move and then once i had moved i was like so now i need to do something else so maybe it's the right time to actually you know go on and and be an entrepreneur um so it was the other way around but because it was a move and already a lot of changes i thought instead of looking for a job and actually wasn't the best period to look for a job so i was like you know what actually right now is uh is the right time for me to start my company so no and i think that definitely makes sense and you know hey if i'm going to start my company let's go by family let's go buy you know people that are going to support and otherwise be there for me as i'm endeavoring on now taking on a whole new animal starting my own thing now as you're doing that did you know hey i worked with fintech i know i want to go into kind of fintech review and do that as my passion or kind of was it unknown or kind of how did you land on or decide what you wanted to pursue or how you wanted to pursue it yeah exactly it's it's more it's more passion that i decided you know i need to make it into into business um i'd been following innovation in financial services for as long as i had worked in banking uh from my internship days in 2011 to um to right now so um i really liked the sector i liked innovation following that and then in my job i was working with fintech so um i i started you know blogging as i just want to to write about it and and look at the market and and just get my thoughts out and and actually when when you know i i i decided to scale it so i was like okay i'm going to spend more time on it see if i can turn it into into a real business and so yeah it started from a passion and i was like you know what if i do something i really like then i won't feel i'm working um and it's it's actually the case because i really like what what i'm doing what i'm working on so i don't feel like it's it's actually work um so that's that's that's what i wanted to do so so now you kind of land on that decide okay i've kind of found where my passion's at what i'm gonna do now how did you was there a business plan behind that how you're going to go about making money or you're saying hey i'll follow the passion the money will you know i'll follow my passion then the money will follow behind that or saying hey i'll do these other side gigs things on the side do consulting working with our business to support this as up and going you're kind of bad you're saying okay made the leap want to do my own thing figure out what i want to do now i had to put a business around that how did you go about starting to kind of build that business around it yeah so because my previous job was a lot of business planning um i kind of had to do a business plan so i did plot out how it was going to be like as a business uh but because i knew that it would take a bit of time to scale it to size that makes it a sustainable business that's why i continued and i continued to this day being a bit of side gigs as a consultant because i knew that the economics wouldn't work out for for a certain period of time and and because i didn't want to i wanted to bootstrap i was like my way of bootstrapping would be to use my my savings and at the same time continue to do side gigs so that i can continue developing my business and take my time because i didn't want to rush into aggressive monetization strategies so and to scare away my my little group of fans so so i'm taking my time to to develop my business but there is an actual an actual plan behind this hmm so that makes sense so now so now that kind of brings us a bit up to where you're at today but now you're saying you know so maybe one question before i was gonna ask a different question but one other additional follow-up question though so as you've done that as you've kind of built things up as you've you know figured out the business plan as you started to do that and also you know do the site hustle so speaker ways to have an income and to support yourself how have things gone is it you know as you've kind of dived into your passion project started to build it hasn't been a success has it taken off has it been you know slower than anticipated has it too early to tell or kind of how are things going so far as things have been i've been going great um i think that i've put lots of effort into it obviously and it's been it's been only only about six months now so it's still early days um but i guess after christmas i i found that you know the gross wasn't there because i guess i i hit like not a wall but around christmas people were not because so so much into into it but then really after february march and and now i'm seeing like good growth in terms of readership it's like you know over a hundred percent in months and months so it's it's going it's going really great um so so no i mean so far it's been good and now that i've started introducing more so more products so premium premium offering and i'm starting to develop a bit the content strategy we'll see we'll see how it goes from there but i think the feedback so far has been really good i've developed a good base of people that are are quite um interested in what i'm writing and the people i'm interviewing in in the the content that i'm producing and i find i i feel that i found a niche and that i'm continuing to go into that niche and it's going well so far no that's awesome so and that kind of hits on so you're developing the niche kind of and you're developing new products offering doing some you know premium uh or premium offerings and you know some subscription base so is that kind of where you see kind of the next six to 12 months continuing to head for you as you continue to increase the offering continue to offer different levels of you know service or access so to speak and you know for different costing or kind of where do you see the next six is that you know see the six next to six twelve six to twelve months going for you yeah exactly that's that's uh that's what i've introduced i've introduced um three levels of uh membership and within this membership i will continue to build content for each of these levels so my my plan for the next six to 12 months is getting more content out for all these people so to kind of get them to talk about it because i i know that like the best marketing strategy at the end of the day is people recommending you like you should have a look at that so that's what i want to do i want to continue invest my time into building this whilst i continue to develop also the free and of the free bits because this is how people come uh come to my come to fintech review so i will continue to do that and and yeah i think i'm quite clear about the path the next six to 12 months and i know that i will continue i mean as as it gets bigger and i i need less so spend time you know doing consulting gigs i will also have more time to dedicate to create content and that's why i thought it was the right time to do it now and i know that i mean if the gross is good and continues that way i know that by the end of the year i'll be able to almost you know put to the side to side gigs and then focus much more much more on that so so we'll see no definitely makes sense and sounds like some interesting exciting opportunities as you continue to move forward well as we are as we get towards the end of your journey and i always ask two questions at the end and so we'll jump to those now so the and as a reminder for listeners we're also going to be chatting a bit about intellectual property is a bonus questions after the after the normal episode wraps up so if you want to hear the uh that discussion in bed make sure to stay tuned but as we hit the normal two questions the first question i always ask is along your journey what's the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it i think that um it might sound silly but i think the worst decision was not to start earlier in the sense that this could have been a side gig for for much longer and actually i didn't put enough time and efforts as it was a side gig because i i technically started it in january last year but for six nine months i was just writing very periodically and i wasn't putting enough thoughts and looking back i feel that if i had started much more to write much more to develop my social media accounts where most of my traffic is coming from this is saying that i could have done you know i could have started a year ago and i waited i waited way too long i waited to be like free to do it whereas i could have started much more before so i think this was the biggest mistake i've made which was um i mean because now now the thing is it takes time anyway so there's it's not something that i it's not something i can i can get back is that it's going to take me probably you know three months to get where i should have been or six months and the thing is i could have i could have got this um you know i could have could have started earlier so yeah this is the worst worst thing i've i felt i felt i've done no and i think that uh definitely makes sense as far as kind of the mistake but the lesson that's also learned there and getting started earlier and then focusing on it and be able to build it and be able to put more time into it and all those things always play into and always one where it's uh you know if you'd only started earlier if you'd only done a few things it would have you'd be so far so much farther the head today so to speak now as we jump to the second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting to a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them i think i would tell them to plan um so i'm as a side gig what i do is that i do strategic consulting so i'm helping entrepreneurs build business plans and i always tell them is that you know even if it's just for you you should have a plan because you know it's business plans are not only to get you know bank loan or to get funding from an investor it's also for you to know where you're going and it might take a bit a bit of time it doesn't need to be very complicated it can be just a few play pages but just lay out exactly what's the idea you know what's your market how you what's your product where you're going with it and it's really good because as you do that you will realize that some assumptions you have are not you know are not working out because the market is not the ones you wanted to because the the worst thing that can happen is that you just jump in and then you realize you lose a bit of you lose a bit of time a lot of time because you realize that you're not going in the right direction so yeah i would say you know it might be borrowing but planning before you start is is i think a big key to success and and then obviously execute you know on your business plan but first you need to write it down no i think that's definitely good advice for people to take to heart well as we wrap up the normal or the normal portion episode and reminder we'll also talk in the in a couple minutes just about intellectual property but if people want to reach out to they want to find out more about fintech they want to be a subscriber they want to be a you know a listener and a consumer they want to be an investor they want to be an employee they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what's the best way to reach out connect up and find out more um so on any social media accounts that are out there so twitter facebook linkedin instagram and otherwise um hello at fintechreview.net um we'll uh i'll answer everything but yeah various ways to reach out or directly to me on on linkedin i i'm also also happy to have a chat have a digital coffee or a real one if you're somewhere not so far all right well that sounds like some great options to reach out connect up and find out more so appreciate you coming on tristan to the podcast now for all of you that are listeners if you have your own journey to tell or you want and you want to be a guest on the podcast we'd love to share your journey feel free to go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast two more things as listeners one make sure to click subscribe in your podcast players so you know when all of our awesome episodes come out and two leave us a review so new people can find out about us last but not least if you ever need help with patents trademarks or anything else just let our let us know and go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat well now as we we've wrapped up the normal episode it's always fun when we do the bonus question to flip the tables a bit and talk about a topic that i always certainly find interesting whether or not everybody else does which is intellectual property so it's fun to hear a few of the questions that other people have always had and discuss that a bit so with that i'll turn it over to you for a bit and let you ask what is the top intellectual property question you have yeah so what's um what's your take about you know online content when it comes to intellectual property so my business is to create content some of them is free and uh i just wondered because you know my my viewership is very much international i mean my company is incorporated in the uk i'm in spain most of my viewership the almost 40 is in the us so i'm just wondering in terms of you know someone comes in copy everything put it on his blog and what's what's happening even if he's not a paid so i guess there are two things if it's a free article what what happens if it does that if it's a paid article like it should be a member actually someone comes in is a member copies the content send it to his friend how does this actually work yeah so i think that there's a couple ways to there's divvy that up in the sense of what are your legal rights and then what are some of the practical implications of it so if you're to look at you know somebody comes in and whether or not it's paid content you still have the same rights the only difference may be that you can show a bit more damages that hey i normally charge 100 for this content you're sharing to other people therefore you can see i lost out on 100 so to speak on that or whatever that number is but as far as you know when you when you have a copyright when you create something whether or not you charge for it you still have copyrights to it so particularly like on blog and content and figure pictures and you know all the that information falls under copyrights and so you have inherent by creating it you have rights to that which are called copyrights and so from a perspective whether or not you're selling it or not you still have those rights and unless you give those you know give somebody a license or otherwise allow them to um have those rights or you know allow or give them permission to copy that you still own those rights and they're not able to come and simply rip it off or copy it so in that sense now you can say okay i can go and enforce my rights i can go and you know everything from reaching out to them letting them know to a cease and desist letter to something more aggressive with the lawsuit or whatnot but you can certainly defend those rights and if there is an example you know they're harming your business or they're reducing your income or anything else you can go after them now the practical app or implications are a bit different in the sense of yes they are technically infringing your copyrights now you have to decide how you want to pursue them or what makes sense in the sense that hey if there is subscriber and you know they go and share with a friend or two and you're saying okay one it may help my business in the sense that if the friend or two likes it they may go get a subscription themselves now if they're sharing it repeatedly or they're you know doing it all the time such that you're not never going to realize that income then you're starting to have the opposite implication and then you have to balance okay is it better to potentially alienate the one individual that or whoever it is a subscriber that is paying in order to try and get the money from the other individuals well it kind of depends on you know hey is this somebody that's post you know taking the content copy and pasting putting it on their own site and now they're using you know they're getting thousands of subscribers well it's probably gonna hurt you in a sense and now they're not they're going to your competitor as opposed to you first if it's an individual that's sharing it with a friend or two so it's almost a balance of how much how much harm are they doing what is what is the reward that they you know if i go after them or otherwise get them to stop and then is it a worthwhile investment of time money and effort in order to get them to stop and that's going to be kind of your balance so that's kind of the legal rights are you have legal rights to protect with copyrights on the point of should you go in and enforce it or otherwise or enforce those rights and a bit depends on who's doing it and how they're doing it does that make sense yeah yeah i know it does make sense it doesn't make sense all right yeah no i think it's so clear awesome well it was a fun to chat a little about intellectual property and if you or anybody else ever has any other questions you want to chat with us or ask your top intellectual property feel free to go to strategymeeting.com grab some time with us to chat we're always here to help and with that we'll go ahead and wrap up the podcast and thank you again tristan for coming on it's been fun it's been a pleasure and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you very much thank you for having [Music] me you