Starting a new business is terrifying.
It's also one of the most rewarding ways to get your ideas out of
your head and into the world where they can make an impact.
Hey everybody, my name is Dan Demsky.
I'm a co founder of Unbound Merino, an e-commerce apparel
brand built right here on Shopify.
In this video, I'm going to share nine of the biggest lessons
I've learned over the past 10 plus years as an entrepreneur.
Here's how I launched multiple seven figure businesses,
including one that I started in my mom's basement.
Hopefully I could save you some time as you roll up your
sleeves and embark on your own entrepreneurial journey.
So let's do it right into it.
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Tip number one, don't procrastinate.
One of the hardest parts of starting a business is actually
starting it because there are a million ways to procrastinate
with essential tasks that are nothing more than busywork.
For example, you may think you need to build the perfect website
or get flashy business cards.
You might've been told that you need to write a lengthy
business plan succeed.
And while each of these things are nice to have, none of them are
essential, at least not right away.
The planning phase is exciting and important, but it's all too
easy to get stuck in this phase.
But remember, while it's nice to be prepared, it's equally,
if not more important to get your idea out into the wild, so
you can start making progress.
We're five years into starting our business.
And there are still things about our website and our business as a
whole, that feel incomplete to me.
But if we tried to make everything perfect right out the gate,
we'd never have gotten anywhere.
A quick story about our first sale will help illustrate this point.
When we were building our website, we picked the Shopify theme we
liked and began uploading some product photography and writing
some product descriptions.
As we arranged our very first version of our Shopify
store, it was exciting.
We had big plans for our big store launch that was coming
up in just a few weeks.
But I'll never forget sitting in a coffee shop with my partners,
looking at our Shopify dashboard of our soon to launch website
and discovering that there were almost a dozen orders already
there waiting for us to fulfill.
Our site was far from perfect, but it was live.
And more importantly, we were making sales.
I use this story to illustrate an important point.
We often create artificial barriers in our minds that stop us from
getting started a checklist of tasks that you have to complete
before you take the next step.
If I can just get the website to look a little better.
If I can just Polish the logo a little more.
If I can just map out our 90 day plan, if I can just find the
perfect font for that newsletter.
Here's a secret.
You'll never be completely ready to launch your business.
Do it anyway.
As the old proverb goes done is better than perfect.
The best thing you can do is just get started.
And once your site goes live, all those things that bug
you; you're unprofessional photography or less than perfect
sales copy, can still be fixed.
But the difference will be you'll have that live
site with real customers, testing your idea for you.
And that real world feedback is worth a heck of a lot more
than weeks or even months of meticulous planning.
Tip number two, save some money, starting a business costs money.
The good news is you don't need a ton to get started.
I've heard stories of people starting businesses with
just a few hundred dollars.
But if you can save at least $10,000 or $20,000 by waiting
tables or delivering Uber eats, and you'll be in a much better
place to start your own business.
Again, you could start a business with less, it's
just a steeper hill to climb.
The best part is while you're saving, you can still
tinker with getting started.
Tip number three, improve your weaknesses.
My first business was a video production agency.
My business partner and I, we were pretty good at shooting and
editing video and as a result, we kept getting more and more
clients by way of word of mouth.
The challenge we had to solve was how could we get bigger
clients with bigger budgets.
In order to expand our client base from small companies to
medium-sized clients and eventually the large corporations, we had
to learn to get better at sales.
Some of them had nothing to do with video production.
So I studied every sales book I could get my hands on, and
over time our client base grew.
In just three years we moved from our humble beginnings and my
mom's basement to a seven figure business with almost 20 employees.
And we got there not by focusing on new video editing
software or lighting hacks, but on getting better at the
things we were the weakest at.
Capitalizing on your strengths is important, but you'll grow more
quickly if you learn to identify and improve on your weaknesses.
If you struggle with marketing, subscribe to the leading
marketing blogs and newsletters and study the latest trends.
If you have a great product, but you struggle to make it
look good on your website, make it a priority to improve your
design skills or more likely find someone who can elevate the
quality of your design for you.
Finding your weaknesses can be your best opportunity for growth.
Tip number four, join professional organizations.
You've heard the old saying you're the average of the
five people closest to you?
Well, it's absolutely true.
When I first started in business, I spent years in
Toastmasters learning to be a better public speaker.
After that I joined my local board of trade.
And then I joined EO entrepreneurs organization where I was
a member for six years.
Now I'm a part of an entrepreneurial mastermind
peer group called catalyst.
I've been a member of, or heavily involved in some kind of
organization, every single year of my journey as an entrepreneur.
Clubs and professional organizations are a great
way to meet people who are growth oriented, and
want to see you succeed.
The people you meet in these organizations are also the types
of friends you want close to you.
It may take you a while to find an organization that
you get a ton of value from, but it's worth the effort.
Put in the time and contribute.
The more you give, the more you can take out when you need it.
Being on the board and regional council of EO has been one of
the most rewarding experiences of my life and it's helped me
through all the biggest challenges I faced as an entrepreneur.
I don't know where I'd be without the support of the brilliant people
I've met over the years in the various groups and masterminds
that I've been a part of.
And on top of that, it's a ton of fun to be involved in something.
Tip number five, use personal experience to
find a gap in the market.
From what I've experienced, the best businesses to get
into are the ones where you feel like the current solutions
just aren't that great.
We've all had those moments where a business ideas
popped into our heads.
Usually because it's an idea of something that solves a
problem you're experiencing in that very moment.
When you have those aha moments, do a little digging.
You'll be surprised at how many ideas that may seem obvious to
you or not being capitalized on.
When we started Unbound Merino, we got the idea from a Reddit post.
I was looking for a way to travel overseas without
packing more than a carry on.
And I came across an article where someone mentioned that
they like to travel with Merino wool t-shirts, cause they're
antibacterial and odor resistant.
And because of this, they could pack two to three t-shirts for a
multi-week trip and not have to worry if they couldn't wash their
shirt after one, two or more days.
Merino wool meant that their clothing would never smell.
I thought it was brilliant.
So I bought a few Merino wool t-shirts.
The material performed as promised, but I didn't really
like the way they looked.
I wanted to find a simple classic and nicely fitting Merino wool
shirt, but everything I found, looked and fit like active wear.
I loved the fabric, but I didn't love the finished product
that I could find anywhere.
And that's when I asked myself, can I be the person
to take this to market?
I figured if I wanted my Merino wool shirts to be done differently,
why don't I just go and make them?
And so began our journey to learn to manufacture clothing.
It was born out of our own need for something different.
As you go through life, pay attention to those moments.
When you wish something could be done better, differently,
or smarter, you could be onto something bigger than you think.
Tip number six, expose yourself to relentless feedback.
This is a lesson that I really, we learned on a trip I once took
with my EO peer groups in New York.
We met up with a business owner that recently sold his
business for $800 million.
He was kind enough to show us around his facility,
tell us all about his rise in business and his exit.
And then he took us all out for lunch to one of his favorite
restaurants near his office.
While there he showed us some early prototypes of a new
product he was developing.
My group were all business owners with various degrees of success,
but none of us were even in the same stratosphere as he was.
Compared to him our businesses were quite small, but he was so
keenly interested in our opinions on what he was developing, that
had struck a chord with me.
I realized that that lunch, that he was just an obsessive tester.
He wasn't afraid of getting his feelings hurt and his idea cut up.
In fact, he welcomed it.
He didn't have to agree with everything we said or thought,
but he had a group of people who had a different lens than he did,
and he listened attentively as each of us shared what we liked
and what we didn't like about what he had in front of us.
After this lunch, I decided to be more aggressive in my own
hunt for feedback from my peers.
I sometimes don't agree with what I'm told, but a different set of
eyes on something can only help.
Just take in all the information in front of you and use that
to expand your own thinking about what you're embarking on.
Tip number seven, set quarterly goals and dream big.
This tip will apply to those of you who already have a company
or the early seed of a company.
Have a Beehag a big, hairy, audacious, goal.
A term from Jim Collins' book.
Good to great.
A Beehag is a vision of where you can take your business
if things go beyond well, and you're incredibly lucky and
everything just goes amazing.
15 to 25 years from now, for example, let's say you're in the
business of selling active wear.
For a Beehag you may say you want to create a brand.
That's the main apparel sponsor of an NBA finals MVP.
The next LeBron James.
This is setting a goal that is so big, that it's completely
unreasonable based on where you are today, but you don't have
to achieve that goal right now.
In fact, the only reason you need to set a Beehag is because
it sets a direction for you.
No other reason.
From the Beehag figure out where you could be in three to five
years, if things go extremely well, the three to five year
goals need to be leading you towards this vision of the Beehag.
For example, let's say that in five years, you want your business to 10
to $15 million in yearly revenue.
And to have a YouTube channel featuring sports-related content
with over a million subscribers.
This is where you're going to need to go to establish
yourself as a sports lifestyle brand, as you move towards your
uncomfortably ambitious Beehag.
And from these three to five-year goals, you can
find your one-year goals.
And this is where things get really real.
What is realistic within one year that moves you in the direction
of your three to five-year goals?
Maybe you sell a hundred thousand dollars worth
of your core products.
Maybe have a YouTube channel with new uploads every week,
by the end of the year.
Establish a clear vision of where you want to take the business and
start to picture what actually needs to happen to make these
goals start to materialize.
And this is where the best part comes in.
The quarterly goals.
Nothing is more real than a quarterly goal.
Three months is the perfect amount of time to conquer
one meaningful and sizeable project that moves you in the
direction of your one-year goal.
Maybe it's to have your Shopify store up if it's not already,
or to get a content partnership with one influencer on YouTube.
Whatever goal you set your three months to do it and should always
take you closer to your one-year goal, which is a step towards your
three to five-year goals, which are all aimed at your Beehag.
This is all about direction.
You could always tweak the longterm goals as you go, but
the quarterly goals must be set in stone and executed against.
We break our quarterly goals into weekly and even daily action plans.
Take the whole project and map it out over three months.
It stay on time.
Trust the plan, get in the trenches, get to work.
Tip number eight, get a good account.
This tip is really straightforward.
Get a good account right away in my early years of business,
I didn't spend a lot of time staying on top of the finances.
I didn't get it.
I didn't love it.
And things of course got really messy.
Cleaning up financial mistakes is challenging and time consuming.
So when we started Unbound Merino, we made the choice
to find an accountant we like to hang out with, even go
for a couple of drinks with.
Someone that felt like he could be a real buddy.
This was one of the best decisions that we've ever made.
It made getting our finances in good order, a whole lot easier
and a whole more enjoyable.
Our accountant is relatable, fun to hang around with and like
a real friend he has our back.
If you're not naturally strong in the finance department,
find someone who could help you get on the right foot early.
Make sure you're organized with your taxes and the understand your
P and L and your balance sheet like the back of your hand, and that
you meet regularly to understand the financial health of your
business clearly and thoroughly.
This stuff is a lot easier to stay on top of than it is to fix
when you let the problems arise.
So find a good friend who also happens to be an accountant and
do this as early as possible.
If you're looking for an area to focus on that will have
a dramatic impact on your business, then hiring a great
accountant is a no brainer.
One of the biggest reasons that businesses fail is
poor cash management.
So we've put together a cashflow forecast template to
help streamline the process and save you time and stress.
With this template, you'll be able to easily forecast
expenses and revenue so that you could predict shortfalls and
know when to invest in growth.
Tip number nine.
Believe in yourself.
Yes, I saved the cheesiest tip for last, but also the most
important tip on this list.
Entrepreneurship is rewarding and it can be full of glorious
moments and singular triumphs.
Some entrepreneurs today, they're treated like rock stars, but the
reality is that it's challenging.
Things always go wrong.
And they're going to be plenty of times when you feel like giving up.
So while entrepreneurship is not for everyone, the very least
you need to truly believe in your heart that you can, and you
will accomplish great things.
If you just keep at it and don't let doubts and naysayers stop you.
I don't mean for this to sound like fluff because it really matters.
If you don't believe you can do whatever you're setting out to
do, you won't have the strength to get through the challenging
times ahead that will test you.
If you really believe in yourself and that's a choice you can
make, you'll have the right momentum, you'll be able to
inspire people around you to help you on your journey, and
you can really do great things.
I've been through a lot more downs than I've had ups through
each of my four businesses.
But I stayed on course because I knew I was doing
work that inspired me.
I've always believed that great things will come if I keep growing,
keep trying and keep believing.
And that belief is the heartbeat of it all when it
comes to entrepreneurship.
And it's the reason I'm still here today.
If you're serious about starting an online business, Shopify
has everything you need.
Shopify makes selling online easy, fast, and scalable.
You can get started with a free 14 day trial, no credit card required.
Set up your store in days and bring your brand to life.
Building an online store shouldn't be this easier, this much fun.
Plus the powerful marketing features and free apps will make
marketing simple and allow you to make more sales more often.
So click this link right here to get started on
your business journey.
So those are my nine biggest tips for new entrepreneurs.
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I'm Dan Demsky.
Thanks so much for watching.