- Hey there, Dan Martell here.
A serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
In this video, I'm going to teach you
how to start a business.
Now, I know this is a pretty broad topic.
Normally I talk about software companies and scaling,
et cetera.
But here's the deal.
If you've ever been business curious
and you want to start a company but you were
scared to make the first step.
Or you've tried in the past and it's hurt a little bit,
but you really feel like, in your soul,
you should be an entrepreneur, than this video is for you.
I'm going to teach you how to get
rid of all the mystery, the fears around starting a company
and break it down into the minimal thing.
And be sure to stay to the end because maybe you
have questions around what books you should read.
I've actually distilled, out of the 1,000 plus business
books I've read, a PDF that's free that you can download
that's going to go through all the top books
that you need to read to become a better,
or start being an entrepreneur.
Let's get started.
So the reason I created this video is because I recently was
on a podcast called The Icons.
I'm going to link it up below.
But on that podcast, I offered to do
a call with anybody still listening
and I gave out my email.
Now, I'm just going to let you know
I'm not doing that anymore.
What I had to do, because I got hundreds of emails,
is organize a zoom session live, everybody connected.
And I got asked this question.
Hey, how do I start a business?
k and I was like, I gave my answer.
And they were like, wow that's really insightful.
And that's what I'm going to teach you today.
But it also came up a couple of days ago.
I was meeting with a young entrepreneur
or a young aspiring entrepreneur and the same question came up.
And I gave him the same answer.
So I wanted to shoot the video so you had these strategies
that I would have used when I was first starting off
at 17 to start the business.
What to think about.
How to think about it.
How to design it.
And how to get going.
In this video, you will start a business
by the end of the video.
I guarantee it.
Number one strategy, create it for you.
So regardless of what kind of business you want to start,
what you want to sell, you've got to start it for yourself.
So the where I would look is your passions.
So maybe you're an athlete, maybe you're
part of different groups, or you like
to watch car videos on YouTube.
Whatever it is, you need to start with something you know.
What's called domain expertise.
So start around something you're passionate about
or solve a problem you have.
Right so sometimes I recommend to people
to start developing that muscle.
Creating a frustrations list.
Go through the world or my buddy, James Altucher,
recommends that you create a list of the top 10 ideas
that come to you.
And everyday just try to write down 10 business ideas.
But the frustration list is just going through your day
and looking at things that frustrate you that you feel
could be an opportunity.
But that's no what is you've got to solve a problem that you
have for yourself.
Number two, learn to tell.
At the end of the day, if nobody knows about your business,
nobody knows about your product, then
you're not going to sell anything.
It's that simple.
A lot of you guys are fearful because you're like,
well I'm scared.
What if I tell somebody my idea and they
reject it or I reach out to a business to support me
and they don't want to support me or I try to sell something
to somebody and they say no.
And it sucks but here's the deal.
Is just learn how to get your idea out in the world.
So some ideas that I want to share with you.
Number one, social media there is so many different outlets
from creating events, to publishing on your own news
feed, to letting people know through social media,
Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat.
TikTok, whatever you want to use.
You want to promote it through social media.
Number two, your friends.
I'm assuming you have a handful of friends.
People you know maybe you go to school.
Maybe you go to work and you have people around you.
I want you to get comfortable approaching people on saying--
and you just ask them hey, have you ever considered This hey,
do you have this problem?
Those are the two questions.
If you can get good at starting a conversation by just saying,
hey, have you ever had this problem?
And they say no, say great.
I don't need to talk to you.
But if they say yes, say perfect.
I actually built this thing.
Or have you ever had this interest?
Yes, perfect.
I'm doing this thing.
Whatever it is for you.
You just need to be OK approaching other people
to tell them about your idea.
Number three, ask for money.
So a business never like no business has ever
been started until there is dollar exchange, OK.
And here's why it's so important.
The moment I asked somebody-- my kids go door to door selling
painted rocks.
And they sell them for like five bucks.
Sometimes, I think they say $10.
And my neighbors are literally just kind
enough to buy these painted rocks.
They make no sense.
They're not worth 10 bucks but it doesn't matter,
you ask for money.
Why is that important?
Because the moment that you ask somebody for $1,
the whole conversation changes about what is it?
How does it work?
So, so many people--
I don't know if you've ever experienced this,
but you tell them about your business idea,
they're that's amazing.
They support you.
Maybe you don't have that experience
you have bad friends.
But if you do, they're always like, Yeah that's amazing.
But that's not true validation around your idea.
What you want to do to validate your ideas, ask for money.
Get paid.
Take the dollar.
Sell something, because if you don't do that,
then you don't have a business.
I think a lot of people run around thinking
they have businesses that they don't have
because they give away stuff.
They discount stuff.
I'm saying I understand your value and ask for it, OK.
So you need to ask for money.
Number four, call it a project.
Too often, I'm sitting down with this young entrepreneur
and he's like, I want to start a business.
And I can tell in his mind that he's
like trying to come up with the perfect business idea.
The perfect business model.
The perfect pricing.
Here's what I've discovered.
Having built a ton of companies myself
and have coached and helped so many entrepreneurs.
And listened to so many podcasts interviews
from the origin stories of some of the world's
coolest companies out there, is what
they started is not what they ended up doing.
And many times it's not even that like,
the way they're doing the business is different.
They pivoted 100 percent.
Sometimes restarted.
And they started here and they learned some lessons.
And they moved into another business.
So the way to solve that is just call it a project.
Don't call it a business.
Just start a project.
Start a new side hustle.
Start something where you can communicate value to somebody,
ask for the money, and just don't make it a big thing.
If you make it a big thing, there's
going to be all this pressure on yourself
to want to try to make it succeed
and the truth is, is that it probably won't work,
just so you know.
I'm not saying you'll fail at life.
I'm saying that your first idea may not go on
to huge commercial success.
What does that mean?
Well my first company made about 30 grand
and then I had to shut it down.
So does that mean there's a failure.
Not really, because I took all those lessons learned and put
it into the second company.
I learned how to make a dollar.
I learned how to tell the market.
I learned how to try to build something.
And I took all those lessons and moved it into the next thing
because it didn't stop me.
There was no failure.
So just call it a project and start there.
Number five, organize event.
This is the MVP, the minimum viable product
of entrepreneurship.
So if you're watching this video,
I told you at the beginning you're
going to start a company.
Here's the instructions.
Are you ready for this?
This is how it works.
You want to find somebody or some topic
that people would want to learn from or be
interested in that topic.
Then you pick a date into the future,
ideally in the next 90 days.
So 90 days from now you pick a day.
Do it on a weeknight, maybe 6 to 8 PM.
And I want you to find somebody that you
would want to learn from.
See, this is where it gets back to your passion.
Find somebody that you'd want to learn from
and have them speak at an event.
They could do a talk.
They could do a workshop and call it whatever you want.
But I want you to organize an hour or two hour event,
after hours, that you coordinate with the speaker,
or the person, or whatever it is.
There is an event.
And then you go and you learn to tell
the market about your event using Facebook, using
your friends, using your co-workers,
using other businesses, that communicate.
Like, this is the crazy part.
When I have friends that run local events,
all the local businesses support each other.
And they'll let you put up flyers.
They'll post it on their Facebook page.
They'll tell other people.
You can go to schools and promote
if it's more of a kid's event.
But I want you to promote the event.
But the key is you can't do it for free.
If you do an event, and it's free you did not--
no business.
No entrepreneurship.
Just letting you know.
If you don't get money, if you don't learn how to market,
communicate the value in exchange that for money
so that the person-- even if it's $1, OK.
Even if you charge $1 or $5.
I had friends of mine do this challenge
and they charged $5 for the ticket
but then got so many sponsors that
wanted to be involved that you had $20 worth of value
in the sponsor bag of discounts and credits
towards different services in the local businesses.
You could do that.
So you can make it so it's ROI positive for somebody
buying a $5 ticket.
Or you put your prices up.
But regardless this is my challenge to you.
I want you to pick a date 90 days into the future.
Call it a project.
So you don't have to commit.
It's not like this long term-- you're not
starting an events business.
But you can do it even on the internet.
This is even what's crazier.
It's called a virtual summit.
You can find a speaker, organize an online event,
charge people to attend it, have the speaker do it.
And if you want, you can give the money to the speaker.
It doesn't matter.
And market the event.
Get people to pay to show up.
Have the speaker do all the heavy lifting.
You're the creator.
It's your project and ta da, voila you are now
an entrepreneur, OK.
As I told you, in the beginning of the call,
no resources needed, no capital needed, no infrastructure
needed.
Anybody can do this.
So if you have it in your soul.
If you're excited to be an entrepreneur if you
want to start a business.
This is the lowest possible risk exposure.
The least amount of energy and work, I think.
Trust me, If you like build a physical product you're
trying to market, it's a lot harder
than doing an event with somebody else that has
credibility that already sold.
This is what you do.
Start an event, call it a project
and then go back to those first three Strategies to get paid.
Tell the market and solve a problem for yourself.
So quick recap.
How to start a business, number one, create it for you.
Number two learn to tell.
Number three ask for money.
Number four call it a project and number five
organize an event.
Those are the steps.
That's my challenge to you.
I'd love to hear from you below in the comments.
If you've done this in the past, encourage other people.
If you're committed to doing it, leave a comment.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
I want to share with you my top books
for entrepreneurial success.
You can click the link below to get your copy.
But I have read or listened to 1,000 business books,
biographies, marketing books, et cetera.
It's what I do, 10 pages every morning.
And I've distilled it into about 45
of the top books on different categories
that you might need for personal development,
to sales, marketing, growth, operations, et cetera.
You can click the link download that for yourself.
It is 100 percent free.
And if you like this video, be sure to subscribe
to my channel, smash the notification button
so that you get notified as I upload new videos every week.
And as per usual, I want to challenge
you to live a bigger life, and a bigger business,
and I'll see you next Monday.
It doesn't take anything.
You find somebody that people want to learn from.
You book them, you get a free venue.