Ep. 030 – Tomas Laurinavicius says his biggest success happened by accident two year ago, with his post, 12 habits that I have stolen from ultra-successful people, Time, New York Observer, and others found and published it. Six months later, he got an offer to write his book.

Tomas Laurinavicius Show Notes

Tomas Laurinavicius is a lifestyle entrepreneur and blogger from Lithuania. He writes about habits, lifestyle design, and entrepreneurship. Right now, he’s traveling the world with a mission to empower 1 million people to change their lifestyle for good.

Most passionate about

Right now, I’m really passionate about Life Style Design and I’m trying to empower one million people to change their life style for good by providing them tools and knowledge.
My definition of Life Style Design is to consciously design every single part of your life, so you don’t have to suffer at work or in your personal life. You have a choice for every single thing in your life, and the idea of life style design is really crafting the journey that you want to have.
I’m finishing my book in a few of months, and next year would be dedicated to promoting the book and empowering people through the Life Style Design tools and knowledge.
At the same time, I’m also trying to activate Lithuania and other countries of Eastern Europe. In Lithuania, my country, entrepreneurship is not very common and people are more reserved and they need a push.

Tomas’ Career

It was quite a journey. I started ten years ago, when I was bored of computer games, and I started teaching myself design and Photoshop and I got my first online clients.
I was really excited about online marketing and blogging, so I started blogging while getting some freelance design clients.
I moved to Denmark and then to London to get formal education and corporate job, but I felt nothing that fit my life style plans, so I switched to focus on life style design during the last two years and I started reading and studying self-improvement, learning more about entrepreneurship, and how to use all that info to serve more people.

Tomas’s customers

I have two audiences and they don’t really mix… I have B2B customers and I have B2C customers. My B2B customers are companies that are suffering from having the wrong message or wrong language, basically misleading communication in their business. I’m helping them with their market fit by doing key-word research, customer journey development, and by trying to create better funnels for them. That includes email marketing, social media etc.
When it comes to my B2C customers, the consumers, I’m trying to empower other creators and inspire entrepreneurs to find the right customers and the right idea. To find the business that they can focus on for the next decade or two; not chase another shining startup idea and try to raise a lot of funds and then burn everything and start all over again.
I’m trying to provide tools and knowledge to help them to start a life style business that they believe in and can spend a lot of time on. They don’t necessarily make millions on millions of dollars, but they need to be aligned with where they are going, what they believe in, and at the same time, serve the people that they care about.

Tomas’ best advice about approaching the customers

This is tricky because for every business, there is a different strategy. But at the same time, you can use the same approach, which is not to go to classical marketing and spend your advertising money on Facebook or Google. First, go where people are actually hanging out, so there are already tribes online; they are on Reddit, on Slack, they are on Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, even asking questions on Quora. These are your potential customers; the people that are asking questions that you can answer and that you can provide solutions to.
I believe you first have to do a lot of underground scouting and try to connect with the people that have problems that you can solve. Once you’ll get in touch with them, you can actually understand what they really need, and make sure the product and service you provide answers that needs. And after you make sure (you know) what your customer needs and where they are, you can plan how to promote your products and services.
That’s the way I make research for my clients and develop content strategies for them, and that’s how I made the research for my own blog and it worked for me.

Biggest failure with a customer

I have a lot of these stories, but probably the most humiliating was the Web Design Freelance course that I developed two years ago. I did all the research I talked about, but I didn’t actually talk with people and built the course trying to solve all the questions that I found online. But when I finished everything and launched the course, I realized that people weren’t in the right mindset for spending money on a premium course. First, because they have never spent money on an online course. Second, because they didn’t see freelance as an opportunity; they didn’t think about it before. Third, because they have never spent money on personal development and seen a positive return on the investment (as a result).
It resulted in very small sales, and after that, I understood that I have to first give free training so they could try it, then I should launch a course with some minimum entry level price and only then can I start pitching premium products that cost a few hundred dollars.

Biggest success due to the right customer approach

It actually happened completely by accident. When I was blogging, I tried to see what is trending and what everybody is writing on, and then decided to write a post or a story of that subject. Basically, I used the Internet to find content that could be recycled. And there was so much recycled content online that no one engaged with.
Two year ago, I wrote a post about 12 habits that I stole from ultra-successful people. So, I wrote about how I engineered my own day by instilling habits from people like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc. And how I designed my life style with these habits, so I can have a perfect morning and a perfect day. And that post went viral so quickly, TIME reached out and wanted to publish it, and New York Observer also reached out and published it.
This post resonated with people so much because it wasn’t recycled and also because I didn’t say these are the habits I came with, but I said that I have stolen these habits from the successful people because I believed in their missions, their visions, and their lives.
And half a year later, an agent reached out and offered to write a book about it; so right now, I’m about to complete this book.

The point when Tomas stopped chasing after customers and started to attract them.

Right now, I’m in a position of choosing customers I want to work with. After ten years of blogging, people are reaching me organically and there is a word of mouth effect, so after many years of very hard work, I can work today with clients that are aligned with my vision and that I believe in. I feel very lucky for that.

Recommendation of tools for customer focus, marketing, or sales

Wow. I think you need different tools in different entrepreneurial stages, so if you are just starting out, don’t look for any tool, don’t check any list like “the ten best tools” or whatever; just reach out to people through email, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, wherever your target customers are and engage in a conversation with them.
So no tools for the very beginning – obviously email and social media are still tools, so you should use them, but later on, you should work by what fits your business best; whether it’s Salesforce or HubSpot, but it can be any tool that fits the challenges and needs your business has.

Recommendation of a person, or a book that impacts Tomas’ “customer focus” and success

Oh yes. My real personal growth started when I read, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. You can make more friends in two months, just from being really interested in people, than you can in two years while trying to convince people that you are interesting. I really believe this is the key.

What is your one key success factor?

Right now, I think it’s delayed gratification, so I have quite a lot of tolerance for missing the party and just stay home and read a book, take a course, write a blog post, or talk with my customers. I believe that the payoff is going to worth it.

Toma’s Mountain

Since we believe that the best or the right way for entrepreneurs to get a fast, big, and sustainable success is by leading your (new) market category, and it always reminds me of mountaineering, or conquering the mountain, so I want to ask you if there is a mountain you dream to climb or a mountain you have climbed already?

Yes. I’m really fascinated by mountains. You know there isn’t a logic reason why people climb mountains; you get nothing, it’s existing, climbing Everest costs a fortune, but people still do it and I couldn’t understand it until I climbed my first mountain volcano in Bali. I was completely exhausted and suffered from the cold when we reached the top and watched the sun rise. But I felt it was completely worth it, and I asked myself why; it’s not that I didn’t want to prove anything to myself, but I think it’s really beautiful to see the capabilities of humans and to see there is much more in life than sitting at home, scrolling your Facebook feed. You feel more connected to the world and you see how beautiful it is. So I’m fascinated by mountains, and I would love to climb Everest one day; maybe not to the top, but to one of the main base camps.