I’ve decided to create a email newsletter so that I can discuss startups, entrepreneurship, tech and life as an extension to this blog. I added the newsletter signup button a few months ago and started gathering email addresses. I have 16 people so far on my mailing list. It was probably about time that I sent out my first newsletter!

I’ve copy & pasted this month’s newsletter in its entirety. If you think it will be useful for you, please subscribe using the orange button which says “newsletter” on the left hand side of the blog.

—

Edition 1

Hi,

Thanks for subscribing to my personal newsletter via my blog. This is my first newsletter so its a startup as well! I’m going to write about my thoughts on startups, entrepreneurship, technology and life. Please let me know if you find this useful, information, or if its not good at all. I’m open to feedback. If you do one thing today, just hit reply and let me know. Its that simple.

Recently, I’ve realised that you have to be pro-active when it comes to opportunities. Good things do NOT come to those who wait, particularly in the startup world. You have to grab life with both hands and go for it.

To give you an example, there was a startup event called Sydney Walkabout Tour which my friend Zach Kitschke was organising. The tour involved visiting various startup office spaces and co-working spaces around Sydney. I was working out of Fishburners and sitting near my good friend Brett Fox, who was scheduled to speak on a panel about Startups. He said to the organiser that he could no longer do the panel discussion. So I turned around and said out aloud, I’d be happy to fill in and do it. The organiser looked at me and agreed on the spot as they needed someone at the last minute!

That’s how I ended up on this expert discussion panel about Startups:

I got to share my knowledge with the audience of 40 people about life in a startup. The same thing happened a week later, when I was attending the Sydney SEO meetup. I was attending for the first time. About an hour from the event start time, there was a message from the organiser saying that one of the presenters had dropped out. So I volunteered to present on “App Store Optimisation” and posted a link on Meetup to my slideshare presentation. It was a presentation I had done at Product camp 6 months earlier.

I then received a call from the organiser and BOOM! I was presenting at my first SEO meetup in a room full of SEO professionals. I had an awesome time, and its one of the most engaged and savvy audiences I’ve presented to.

By presenting and sharing my knowledge, I’ve been able to position myself as an expert in the mobile / startups space. I’ll also be presenting again on 5 December on “Growth Hacking & SEO”. You can find the meetup here.

Similar opportunities have come up with teaching at General Assembly when they needed an instructor for their growth hacking course. I grabbed that opportunity because I got to further learn & research about the area and to also teach others about it.

I’m now teaching a second course at General Assembly on “Making Effective Prototypes“. I’m going to show how I create prototypes, why we prototype and some of the tools that I use. This was an idea that I pitched to General Assembly. The course is $70 for 3 hours. As a blog follower, you can use my promo code GA_fam for 20% off to get the course for $56. (Tip: the newsletter subscribers got higher discounts, so sign up using the orange button on the left hand side of the blog for exclusive deals.) You can enrol for the course here.

Thanks for reading to the end of this newsletter. If you want to be successful in life, I believe you need to grab these opportunities that present themselves. You need to be ready, willing, able and prepared. I’ve decided to be open about the experience and knowledge that I have, to present and to teach and to help others. I believe it will come back to you. We need to be doing more of it in the startup industry. I have a YouTube Channel with regular episodes of videos of myself speaking and interviews with other entrepreneurs. I believe that there is much that we can share with others that can be captured via courses, articles, videos and newsletters.

Cheers,
Matthew Ho

p.s. Just hit reply and let me know what you think of my newsletter.