An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

I believe that in today’s online world, you should be able to directly communicate with your market without a middleman. If you have the capital, it may be beneficial — however, you should be the one who has the most drive and passion to overcome obstacles throughout your business venture.

As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Daniel Galea

From making his first $10,000 online by the age of 18, Daniel has since gone on to create multiple successful businesses — the first being a real estate marketing agency founded in 2020, when he was just 23 years old. He grew this into a six-figure company within 30 days, pushing it to over a half-million/year business within the first six months. Amongst his online projects, Daniel is an example of the Gen Z’s making their mark in the business world. He can be found at: www.danielgalea.com.au

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

I was born and raised in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and I’m a first-generation Australian. As the son of a business owner, I grew up with a constant desire to also make a name for myself. This pushed me to start experimenting with ways of making an income whilst in high school — ranging from reselling, graphic design and freelancing to creating a clothing brand.

I continued down the path of becoming an RMIT Bachelor (Honours) graduate as I continued to find my way into the business world, amongst short-term sales/construction jobs.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”

In business, learning from failure is the only way to overcome perceived roadblocks. This quote had been heavily applicable — especially when I had been creating solutions that had yet to exist in the Australian marketplace.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

The Slight Edge written by Jeff Olson.

It describes that what you do matters — every day, every moment, your life path is either curving upward, or curving downward.
This book had a major impact on my life during my full-time employment in the corporate world. I knew I wasn’t fulfilling my potential, I felt stuck for months on-end and simply thought that “an idea would eventually come to me”.

Reading this book ultimately led to the realisation that I needed to take control of my situation and start by directly going to market — testing various niches and finding pain-points that I may be able to solve.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?

When you don’t have experience or knowledge in a particular niche/market, you might convince yourself that an idea seems good. Thinking of an idea is not difficult. The challenging part is finding one that the market finds valuable enough to pay for.

To have success in translating your idea into an actual business; you will need to directly ask, interview and question your future clients/customers. Find out what they currently do to solve the problem your “idea” fills. Discover how much they would pay for such a product/service. You should never rely on an “idea” without any market validation first — you can save yourself a great amount of time, money and inventory by directly asking them what their problems are. Chances are, this will change your “idea” to something which may better solve their pain-points.

When I started my first business of producing home buyer/seller leads for real estate agents, I found the biggest pain point for clients had been cold calling these leads and translating them into sales. My clients were on the road doing business and did not have time to call leads until after-hours.
I therefore built out a lead qualification sales team to solve this issue. Meaning, we generated and qualified leads before transferring those that were suitable to the client. This gave us a higher value to our business and resulted greater client satisfaction.

Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?

1. Start by searching online using keywords, topics, questions, etc.
   Pose yourself as the customer/client when doing your research. You’ll have a greater likelihood of your search returning more accurate results.
2. When you find a similar competitor: use their language to revise your next online search. Since you may not be directly involved in their niche, you may not know the lingo of the industry. Revising your search to include the lingo/phrasing that competitors use will help produce more specific results — as most businesses rely on keyword targeting and specific phrases to rank higher via SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
3. Utilise the ‘Similar Pages’ dropdown on a competitor’s Instagram, Facebook, etc. to see how the rest of the market is attempting to stand out with their unique value proposition.
4. Go directly to experienced professionals in your niche and ask them.
   This will differ for goods and services.
5. If your “idea” is a service: most of the professionals in your target market will be open to discussing how they’re currently solving a problem with an existing competitor. Example: real estate agents are open to discussing what software platform they’re using to manage leads.
   If your request is more private, you may need to rely on friends or connections to obtain more detailed information.

If your “idea” is a physical product: there is more difficulty, however it’s not impossible. An approach may be to research websites that host reviews such as Trust Pilot, Product Hunt, etc. These websites have a “Related Products” sidebar to further research your niche/product.
A paid approach is to utilise tools such as Pollfish — which can shortcut the route of market research.

For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.

1. Using what we’ve mentioned, you’ll need to first get market validation for your idea. You do not want to go to market with an idea that you will only ‘hope’ to sell. Your idea should be simple enough to convey with an elevator pitch.
2. For physical products that are not yet available online, you can obtain a provisional patent giving you some time to develop a proof of concept / minimum viable product.
   Keep the main pain-points in mind when designing. You should not stray from what the end-customer confirmed throughout your market research.
3. Quality manufacturers typically require some form of MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity). Most entrepreneurs that create brand-new products rely on public crowdfunding campaigns to raise capital — such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo. This can also help spread your brand if you’ve undertaken correct market research, and will assist with selling your product before it has been created — i.e. through pre-sales / pre-orders.
4. A good quality manufacturer will have experience producing similar products over an amount of time. Sourcing locally can mean higher manufacturing fees, however sourcing overseas can mean greater delays. This will depend on what product you are hoping to create.
5. Instead of local retailers distributing your product, use your rapport and audience from pre-sales / pre-orders to drive traffic to your website via Ecommerce. Spread the word through further incentives, run online advertising campaigns and sell direct to the consumer. You have an audience list of people who want to buy, and therefore can use lookalike audiences and further research to put your product in front of more people who are similar to your customers.

Overall: if you’re looking to create a product, I would highly suggest a private labelling route to first get experience before diving into a capital-intensive venture (such as creating a product yourself from scratch).
In my experience, it’s usually always best to first create a business with higher profit margins that allow you to undertake these more expensive ventures.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. ‘Business’ is simply an exchange of value. It isn’t about ‘the next fad / product’; it’s about providing some form of value to someone, where you both receive a win-win return.
2. Every market/niche has numerous pain-points. Those in your niche want to remove obstructions and achieve a desired ‘Transformation’ — whether it be through a solution that’s quicker, cheaper, more efficient, etc.
   As an entrepreneur, it’s your problem-solving ability that creates the ‘Mechanism’ to deliver that ‘Transformation’ to the said market.
   When starting out, I felt like I had no monetisable skills or anything I was even remotely passionate about. In most cases, you can find your mastery/passion in delivering results that can change peoples’ lives.
3. Finding the right mentor. This can take time (and potentially numerous attempts), but it will yield a great amount in return. The right mentor will help you learn from their mistakes and shortcut learnings. The internet is, again, the best avenue — however I highly recommend undertaking detailed research before reaching out to those who make themselves known for the wrong reasons.
4. You can find ways to start with very little capital. Most people inject a great amount of funding to start their business — through purchasing inventory, products, equipment, hiring, graphic design, 5-year business plans, etc. — and then waiting for the market to come to them.
   With the online world at our fingertips, you should always test the market before you officially launch. This can be through investing in a landing page (i.e. website design), putting it in front of your market and seeing if viewers turn into purchasers. If so, you’ve found a great business angle and have not outlaid a great amount of capital.
5. Scaling requires delegation — you eventually have to let go of your business. Hire those who specialise in certain areas of your business, instead of spreading yourself thin and attempting to do everything.
   Once you have product-market fit, business becomes an internal matter of how you can replicate the ‘Mechanism’ for your market without losing quality.

Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

Obtain market validation for your idea; you do not want to go to market with an idea that you will only ‘hope’ to sell.
Research competitors in your target niche to get a detailed understanding of how your problem is being currently solved and what could potentially be improved. Those who you come across through your market research may even turn into pre-sales and testimonials — meaning you have clients and social proof ready to go upon launch.

There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?

I believe that in today’s online world, you should be able to directly communicate with your market without a middleman. If you have the capital, it may be beneficial — however, you should be the one who has the most drive and passion to overcome obstacles throughout your business venture.

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

I have yet to rely on venture capital. It will heavily depend on what you’re providing. Both have their benefits, though. Bootstrapping will always be the best method for validating an idea and first obtaining proof of concept. If you’re requiring venture capital, it can assist with driving the business forward at a faster rate — however, be prepared to give up equity (and therefore control) of the business.

Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

I share everything with aspiring entrepreneurs at my website listed above.
I believe I made the world a better place through providing real estate agents with more sales, more time with their family and peace-of-mind. I’ve also assisted many entrepreneurs to start their own business and unlock their potential. The last thing I would want to do is gatekeep what I’ve learnt from those who want to follow a similar entrepreneurial path.

You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Many people fail to understand that life isn’t about looking for the next online fad or the next way to make a quick income. The only way to achieve success is by helping enough people get what they want with no expectation in return. We all have our own unique set of skills and expertise, all of which can be utilised to help a market to result in a win-win outcome.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Naval Ravikant — an entrepreneur and investor who had been crucial in shaping my day-to-day mindset and outlook.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.

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Making Something From Nothing: Daniel Galea On How To Go From Idea To Launch was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.