When it comes to naming and branding your business, I have zero emotional connection to the brand name to what it looks [music] like. I just want it to make sense like signing up. What's up, guys?
It's Saturday right now and I've been wanting to make this video for a while now, but I simply couldn't find the time or head space because, you know, can be quite busy. But today I was like, you know, I woke up and uh it's currently about 9 in the morning. I'm making myself some breakfast, just making myself some oats.
And uh I was thinking uh I'm going to spend the entire day um launching this new offer. And uh it's uh it's kind of a new business. I'm bringing in some partners as well and some agreements.
Um and I wanted to take you through the entire 0ero to one, which is something that I really enjoy. Um, it's something that I've done so many times. Um, and I wanted to take you guys through my day and show you exactly how I do this.
Um, how this works and yeah, kind of, you know, everything from start to end and everything in between. So, I'm not going to spend too much time talking about the idea. Uh, I could make a separate video on like how to come up with a good idea.
So pretty much like every video that you see on YouTube, Instagram or any other social media platform, could even be LinkedIn, whatever, there's always a funnel behind whatever marketing action someone's taking. It could be a video like this, it could be, you know, running ads, whatever. It always points to somewhere to sell someone on something, you know.
So, that's what I want to talk about today and show you kind of like how I do that and how I wouldn't really want to spend more than like one to two days maximum putting something together, especially when just starting out. Um, and I'm going to take you guys through exactly what tools I use, how I use them, the thoughts behind it. Um, and uh also take you take you out on a, you know, relaxable Sunday.
Some oats now. There we go. Very basic.
some oatmeal, banana to get the day started. All right. Well, I don't want to spend too much time talking about the idea stage, but I do want to share with you the three things that I always look at when investing in companies, when making this the decision to start something new myself.
And it really comes down to these three things. So, we've got leverage. leverage that's one thing that I look at which basically comes down what do I have to leverage you know so for me personally that would be my skills my audience you know the the existing infrastructure those are all things that I have you know like strategically position in China you know um those are all things that give me an edge within the market so that I can leverage that throughout what it is that I do then um the second one is recurrence recurrence um which would be is there some element of repeated cash flow in there um and I would always prefer the consistent repeated cash flow to you know expand the team and you know invest money back into the business um or you would want to have something that is really high ticket to make it worth the one-time effort of getting someone through the door and giving you money.
Um, but yeah, I would always look at what's the recurrence, you know, what does this look like? Is there some sort of a subscription? Is there some sort of, you know, an element that allows me to, you know, have performance upside?
Um, that's something that I really, really look at. And then the final one is market timing, which I think is one that is incredibly underestimated. Um because when you look at the last couple of years and especially the era that we in now, the best example is AI, right?
Like the timing of this is just so incredibly good. Like everyone is talking about it. It it really is.
Um I'm in this I in this video. I'm also going to use a lot of AI. So it's just like one of those examples where probably one or two years ago when you were already doing this, the market timing was perfect.
So when you combine the market timing with your leverage and you have some sort of a recurring element that is just you know allowing you to to generate a lot of cash. Um that's how I myself have seen exponential growth. This really is what I look at and what I think about when starting something new.
Like do I have all of these three elements? All right enough on the idea side. Let me um change this one.
[music] [music] Okay. So, as someone who considers himself a designer, um, I feel like I've got a good eye for aesthetic. I [music] find them important within everything that I do.
What I'm about to say may be really strange, but when it comes to naming and branding your business, I have zero emotional connection to the brand name, to what it looks like. I just want it to make sense [snorts] because in my opinion, you give a name meaning. Whatever name you end up choosing, you are the one to give it meaning by using it in your content, by creating content around it, by running, you know, uh, strategies with the name and word of mouth, people are going to say it.
And for me, when I was thinking about, oh, you know, like I'm going to roll out this new company. It's going to be, you know, a subsidiary, an extend of what I'm doing. Um, what name do I want to give it?
And my wife's sister, her daughter always calls me orange blob because I picked her up in my orange car and uh she was just, you know, like, "Hey, orange blob. Orange blob. " So I was like, "Ah, you know, whatever.
I'm just going to roll with that name, Orange Blob. " Um, so again, like you you just want to spend maximum 30 minutes, you know, like write down things that are personal to you. Write down what the business does.
For me, it's, you know, all about China, whatever. I'm Dutch, so I'm kind of just, you know, whatever, like justifying using the word orange or whatever. So, you really just like find a little bit of a story because in the end of the day, any name is meaningless without you giving it meaning.
So, all of those elements like, oh yeah, it's Dutch. This is the story. Like, it has meaning.
And that's how you kind of start, you know, and you don't overthink it. you don't spend too much time because one of the things that I want to make extremely clear in this video that is everything that I'm doing here I move so incredibly fast I don't want to spend more than two days on this I said this before and I'll say it again speed is everything successful person that I know the faster they move the faster they know if it's worth their time the faster they are able to move on to something that is worth their time So that's why, you know, um, speed is of the essence and you don't want to spend too much time on the name. So that said, when we do have the name, obviously we're going to have to give it a little bit of a visual identity.
Um, so we're going to play around with the logo. I'm going to start doing this. The tools that I'll be using are Higsfield and Figma.
Those are the two tools that I'll be using to make this logo and come up with this brand identity. So um, yeah, going to get uh going to get straight to it. [music] Please help me get.
All right. [music] So, what I did, I went to Pinterest and I just found a bunch of examples of logos that I really liked. So, I didn't want to just do something like really standard.
um I wanted to you know incorporate those elements. So for me you know again like I looked at what the business does, what it is and what we do um which is you know it's got a lot to do with China. It's got a lot to do with um like like management kind of like a kind of like an agency offer kind of that's it like a service-based business.
Um, so like taking all of those elements and then going to Pinterest and then just simply just like taking all these photos as you can see here, like taking all these photos here of examples that I liked, that I think made a lot of sense for what I wanted. So then one thing that I did as well was within Figma, I just made a very simple logo and color. So, I just took this this color here, you know, and and just made like a like the first version here.
Um, and I just started just prompting. So, I dragged all of these examples to a new image generation section. So, for those that want to know, this is within Hicksfield, the canvas thing that they released.
It's it's pretty new. Um, I've been really enjoying it. Um, as you can tell by this.
So, as you can see here, um you know, it just came out with all of these different um different iterations and as you can see here. So, the reference to attach I really love this style, vintage kind of uh style. So, I've linked a bunch of examples, my actual logo, what I have now, blah blah blah, you know, just like an entire prompt.
And then it just gave me all of these examples. I was like, okay, what do I what do I like here? So what I did then was just drag this to some other versions which then eventually led me to, you know, get to the point where here I was like, "Okay, like I really like this version.
I love this horse. I like this idea. Um, you know, this color, this kind of like grainy texture feel.
" Um, which then eventually ended up, you know, leading me to the final version, which is this one. And again, as you can see, like I just want you to know like this is just one and a half to two hours of playing around with this to get to all of these different versions, different outcomes of just creating like a an identity for the company. So, what I did then was I went into Figma.
I dropped all of these in here so I have a bit of a final version. Um, while I was doing this, I also was doing some um, inspiration for, you know, some some of the marketing or whatever, like some of the messaging that later down the line I would use. Um, and then here again, like I've got all these like final versions.
Here I have the orange one on the white background. Uh, here we've got like a square version, but again, it was the year of the horse, it's the company name, and it's 2026. So, I thought, you know, it's a funny element.
Every year the Chinese uh you know have a different animal for what year and what it means. This year is the year of the horse. So again, I just try and incorporate and bring those elements into what it is that I do.
So we're like 2 hours in now. Um and you know, we've got uh we've got a name, we've got a we've got a logo. Um you know, so the next thing that I really want to do is I want to start building out the website.
So, for those that don't know, Framer is a great tool. It's where I build most of my landing pages, funnels, lead captures, even the link and buyer that you guys have seen, uh, on my main website, daniel dalen. com.
Um, one of my other companies, EcomFlow, uh, Postflows, uh, and right now this new one. Um, I had the domain name already for quite a bit of time. Um, I bought the domain name on GoDaddy.
Um, but you can buy your domain name really anywhere. Um, and um, you then go to framer u, which is what we just did. And as you can see, I am staring at a complete blank page right now.
So, what I would usually do within framer is I would go to marketplace and I would just buy some of these nice themes. So, I would whatever like go to this one and, you know, look at what this looks like and I would just buy this. Um, and what I'll do then is I'll, you know, I've got a few here.
So, take this one as an example. I just copy them and then I paste them in here. And then here I would be, you know, just changing it to to what I like.
So, it would or not to what I like but like what what I am selling which is you know the company and you know you come up with your with your headlines and you do a little bit of copyrightiting. So in this case it would be CODC cogs um improve improve quality and get better payment terms you know so that would be again you know and then I'm just going to play around. I'll add a max width.
We'll do say 800 pixels. So a little bit less actually 800 is fine. And then here we would just you know whack up the font size.
There we go. Here as well. Change this to 16.
Give it a little bit more width. Maybe max width to say 400. And that's kind of like how I'm just going to start powering through the website.
So even if I then would want to say even if I would want to then say add some images, right? So we go back to Figma [snorts] and I export the logo that we created. Uh here we go.
And I just drag that in there. There we go. Size it up a little bit.
And that's how you kind of just like go through, you know, just literally building the design. And this is again like it'll it'll take a little bit of time. But then here we go.
You know, we go and copy the nav page. We go back. We paste it in here.
There we go. Now it's at the top. We unlink the instance.
And again, like you're just literally going to power your way through uh making the uh the website here. We remove this actually. There we go.
We'll make this Let's see. We'll make the background white. So, as you can see again, like it's just me doing it, you know.
And then here we go. Okay. I don't like that.
I want it I want it to be bigger, you know. So, here we move this up. Set the full size.
There we go. [snorts] Um, so as you can see now, you know, like we're slowly bit by bit just going to get the website ready. Um, this will probably take me a little bit longer because there's some copyrightiting involved and um, you know, some some um, yeah, just just quite a lot.
You know, I would have to come up with some case studies and whatever. But to really explain you what I'm going to do here now is again I think of okay what's the main value and the main kind of like core value proposition. I'll also shoot a marketing video for this.
So I already know that I want to have um this video section in here. So say media [snorts] video right here. There we go.
this can have a little bit less padding. Uh then in in actual Hicksfield, I also generated some of these backgrounds. So as you can see here, you know, like this was a pretty cool one.
Um really liked this one. I think it's this one. So I'll download that one.
There we go. Then this is actually something that's pretty cool that I want to show you is Framer just released this thing called agents. Uh, and you can just explain what you want and they'll do it for you.
Another tool that I'm using here is Whisper Flow. So you can just hit a key on your keyboard and you can actually talk and speak um, and it'll it'll just write out the sentence for you. So doing this right now, it'd be I just added a new image.
I want this image to be a background image that is just floating behind the text with a gradient from bottom to the middle. Uh fading the image from 100% white into transparent. So the bottom fades.
Um yeah, there we go. Don't uh don't judge me on my prompting, guys. There we go.
Gonna give it a little bit of time and then it's just going to do it for you. So, again, like there's barely any reason to wait or not do something like this because we're kind of say like 3 4 hours in now and I pretty much already have the landing page. Like if you have a good, you know, like video or header example, you add some case studies.
Here we go. Look. And I can change it a little bit up here.
Like this. We'll remove the background image from here. Boom.
There we go. you know, and um like I was saying just now, like there's there's very little excuse to not get going, you know, because it's become so easy to just build stuff and do something. And all you have to do here is just capture those leads.
Um that's like really the main thing that you would want to do here. So, it has to talk about what it is that you do, how you can help, who you've already helped, and then a way for people to sign up. So, that's it.
I'm going to just lock in um put on some um some techno or whatever and uh just get this landing page done. [music] All right, guys. Well, [singing] it is almost 8:00 p.
m. I just [music] finished up dinner and it actually did take me a little longer than I hoped. Turns out I'm a little bit rusty after not doing this for a long time and having usually a big team to do this for me.
Um, but yeah, as you can see, like we really put the lantern together. Um, we made like different responsive versions. And again, like I had this idea in mind.
So here I have the header as we had. We had the background, the logo. Um, this is the call to action.
I also included like a separate page for case studies. And here I'm going to shoot a simple VSSL. It's probably just going to be a Loom video.
And then here like a case study. Um and then here what I really like these are actual reviews. I asked some of these people a while ago already to like send them or I still had them.
And this came from the idea that I had um which is another thing that I just want to share with you. So what I personally really like to do in any of the UI or designs like even if for example you go to one of the you know tools and the websites that we designed is like we really like to use elements that are familiar. So here for example this is a great example we just use the Apple notification icon.
Why do I like to do that is because it feels familiar. People know and use and see that on a daily daily basis. So when using elements and that's why I went the uh slack image.
So I just go to framer and go to marketplace and search these items and um as you can see here uh I you can just find the uh the yeah the the component and then you again you just copy paste them in here. So that's what I did. So here we have um kind of yeah the the page again it's it's not much.
It's simple. It's clean, which is good for getting it off the ground because the the idea would be to just, you know, start getting leads to convert through this page. Um, as in like signing up and capturing details and then from there on obviously we we start uh you know close and and deliver the work to them.
Um, sorry guys, it's a bit late. I had a long day. I haven't seen any daylight.
Um, anyway, the the the page is done. Um I added in here um a case study page as well where I'm talking about the page. I can actually show you guys.
So here this is like the page and then here they have like an onboard. This is taking them to like an onboard page. Um [snorts] and then here I have the main page here which is there we go which is this one.
There we go. again like pretty simple, pretty straightforward. And then the next thing that I want to talk about, which is a pretty important one, is the CRM.
But um yeah, let me just clean this up and get all of that ready. Okay, so before I'm going to dive into the lead capture or you know way to to to to convert these leads into actual clients and how we do that. I want to talk about that.
You know, I I started with the idea. So, I gave the idea, leverage, and market timing. Um, and then what you're going to do is you're going to have the funnel, which is what we just did.
So, you you have the funnel here. The funnel funnel, which is, you know, like this this page, we've got iPad, we've got mobile, and what we're going to do then is we're going to send content to those funnels. So, what I call this is is these activations, right?
So, we've got activations, which is just sending traffic to these pages. And these activations are just things that, you know, can be anything. Can be paid.
It can be uh organic traffic. Um, you know, it can really be anything to just like send people to a page where it's clear what you do. Um, you know, and and and and they sign up and you capture their details.
Um, now in the beginning stages, I don't worry about this too much. I don't focus on this too much because I just want to, you know, get the funnel ready, but as you go, what's going to happen is while sending traffic, and this is something that I'll cover later in this video as well, potentially tomorrow because it's getting late, um, is when you send that traffic, you want to know exactly what happens with that traffic because what this does, it allows you to improve the funnel. So, you're going to improve the website that we just made.
You're going to change things. You're going to test things which then ultimately, you know, would drive more conversion or at least like say in this case, not yet conversion because that's sales, but it would be um actual leads to sign up. So, it would be leads signing up.
That's kind of like what we want to do um here um because we're not really doing um direct conversion here. So then what is going to happen? It's going to end up in you know I wouldn't really like say a CRM but kind of like the sales the salesunnel salesunnel.
So what does the salesunnel look like? Um I'm going to take you through a new tool that I've been trying out. I personally know the founder um and I've been really enjoying and liking what they've built and I've given them a bit of feedback um and I'm using them.
So I'm going to show you how for this new company I've integrated them. what this looks like and how we're going to speak to everyone who wants to work with us. Okay, so there we go.
So, this tool is called Eye Closed. Um, it's it's pretty simple. It's kind of like a, you know, a calendaruler.
Um, where you capture information, you know, and you do it in an efficient way. Uh, one of the cool things they do is they help with recovering a lot of, uh, revenue as well. But um yeah, just been like playing around with it, seeing how we can use it and seeing how we can integrate it.
[snorts] But anyway, I created a new event here. Um I'm just, you know, asking them questions. So what you want to do in like one of these lead captures when anyone lands on your site and they're interested, you know, just just capture important information for you to qualify them because I mean I must admit this is kind of like a problem.
Um, when you do have a lot of leads, which I have, you want to make sure that you speak to the right leads because you can end up wasting so much time speaking to the wrong people. So, what you want to do, actually, that's one reason. What you want to do is you want to qualify for that reason.
But you also want to qualify because you want to get the right people in front of you. You want to be able to find out and see which people you can help best. And you can only understand who you can help best by knowing their situation.
So that's why you just want to qualify in there. And I chuck this on the website. Here we go.
And then here whatever like you know leads can fill in their first name, last name. And then even before they fill out the final form as you can see here, then this pops open and then we get like more questions on like what they want and everything. But this is already captured right now, which is something that I really like.
Um, so yeah, that said, what that looks like in here is basically, so I connected my Instagram as well. I'm probably going to connect another WhatsApp number. Um, let me see if I can see the integrations.
Yeah, here we go. I already connected my Instagram. I'm going to connect email.
I'm probably going to set up um a different WhatsApp number as well uh just so that we can speak to all of these clients. But what is going to happen is all of these clients are going to end up in this inbox. And when they're in the inbox and we have the information, we can chat.
So, we're going to plan meetings. We're going to ask them more questions. We're going to ask them to send more details.
We're going to explain them stuff. Um and that's kind of like how you work towards the sale. Now, for me, I've got an offer um you know, that practically has no risk because it's kind of like a a share on the discount that we achieve and we've saved brands, you know, tens of millions of dollars collectively, which we then take a cut off.
Um so, it's kind of, you know, a no-brainer. But for other businesses, whatever you're selling, you know, um yeah, you you you just nurture and you you automate and you have the calls and whatever. Um for us, it's just really figuring out and cherrypicking which brands we want to work with.
But still fundamentally, you want to capture them somewhere and then you kind of, you know, speak to them, nurture them and and turn them into a customer. So again, pretty straightforward. This is just going to start coming in here and then um for now I'm going to manage this myself, but then slowly you're going to bring the team in to to do that.
And this may sound like something very simple, but you'd be surprised with like how few people have a good solution in place to capture these leads and whatever. Now, one thing that is really important as well here, um, and again, you know, I'm not going to go into too much details here, um, because again, like also in this stage, you want to keep it as lean and as simple as possible. Just get the ball rolling.
Like all the bells and whistles are going to come later. But one thing that is really good to add is animations. So, say, you know, someone fills in the form, they're going to get an automated email.
They're going to be sent to um a page after they signed up to explain the service even better, prepare them for what to expect, especially if this were to be, you know, a a proper investment. Um, so you can really just improve this flow. But for this time, when you want to get things off the ground, when you want to get the ball rolling, you just keep it simple.
Even if you're adding on an extra additional funnel, just keep it simple and test it and use the numbers to justify to spend more time on it. All right, people. We're uh back in the office Monday morning.
Okay. So, the only thing that is left for me now is to shoot the kind of like explainer video, uh, the VSSL, which is called a visual sales letter, where I'm basically just going to take people through what it is that I do, what I have to offer, um, and getting them to reach out to us. And again, like, this is something that I'm going to script and do, and probably take a little bit more time just because I really want to make sure that I do that right.
Um, it's going to be like a really ugly, dirty, scruffy loom version to begin with, but in the future I may actually turn that into a nice production. Um anyway guys, you've kind of set in on me spending about two days from having nothing to a full landing page that you can visit right now where you can reach out, understand what the business does, you know, speak to me/ the team um to understand how we can help. And again, like I just want to stress how important it is to always have speed in mind because again like observing people around me and people that I've worked with, people that I've advised, companies I've invested in, I always challenge on speed while maintaining quality because people are usually like ah, you know, you can't get speed or quality.
I don't care. I want speed and quality. And when someone tells me no, I have this really toxic trait of just showing them that I can do it in that time frame.
And I'm not doing that to like prove a point or whatever. I'm just showing getting it done with 80% of the quality in one to two days versus 100% of quality within 2 weeks. I would always prefer the faster option because in the end of the day, you just want to make sure that it's worth your time.
And now we can test it. Now we can drive traffic to it. See if people sign up.
And again, you know, for me, I know that this is going to work because I've already done this. I've got the results. I've got the case studies and whatnot.
Um, but if you don't know that, you want to know as quickly as possible, hey, is this making me money? And the reality is is just focus on that. As soon as you find something that is starting to generate cash, cash becomes one of the main things you can leverage because that means that you can start hiring people to do that and focus on what only you can do, which in most cases is actually selling, driving traffic to those pages in whatever way, form or shape you could think of.
So, um, hope you guys enjoyed this one. obviously a little bit different than uh the videos u and the vlogs and everything. Um I'll start taking you through a lot more of this stuff and again uh just show you, you know, talk about what we do, decisions that I make, what's going on in my head, and how we're going to grow this business.
I expect this business to probably grow to probably seven figures plus in the coming 6 to 12 months of free cash flow which then you know like really would create a foundation for me to invest back into the team and potentially move on to something else because again this is not some crazy invention. This is really just leveraging the expertise and knowledge that I've had for over a decade. the existing team and the existing network connections um that I have in place, right?
So, it's not like my next grand big play, but it is a really, really good business that drives immense value to someone where I then also can capture some of that value and it's a great asset to have, you know, and it's going to free up cash to do more things and reinvest it back into myself, personal business, whatever. um while most importantly continuing to having a lot of fun and taking you guys with me while doing all of that. So, it's currently Monday.
Um as I showed you just now, back at the office and another week ahead. So, that said, I wish you a great day to wherever in the world you are. Um good luck.
You got this. Um, one thing that I realized over the last couple of years is if you don't quit, you can't lose. So, keep your head up, keep going, and uh, thank you for watching.
