- What would be your advice to those trying
to start their business amidst the ongoing crisis.
What I'm about to share with you,
literally cost me tens of millions of Dollars to learn.
And here's the lesson,
that you want to be optimistic when it comes to your vision,
but you want to be pessimistic,
when it comes to your business model.
What I mean by that, when it comes to your vision,
where you want to be, where you want to go,
where you see yourself.
You want to be optimistic that knowing
that you're going to get there,
that you're going to be okay,
that you have the confidence within yourself,
that you're going to accomplish those goals.
That is good.
But when it comes to your business model,
you want to be pessimistic.
You want to challenge your own assumptions.
You want to figure out the ways that this thing won't work.
You don't want to be overly optimistic.
When it comes to your business model.
There is a saying that a smart person learns
from his own mistakes,
but a truly wise person learns from the mistakes of others.
Most business owners, entrepreneurs,
they get into business like yourself.
You want to start a business, maybe during COVID-19,
but without proper skills and proper training.
Example, let's say you share an idea with me, right?
You have an idea.
You want to do something.
The first question I have for you is
what qualifies you to execute this idea?
Why you?
Why now?
What could you bring to the marketplace
that it's not there right now?
Why should people buy from you?
What is your unique selling proposition?
What could you bring to the marketplace
that is different from everybody else?
Where is the blue ocean in this?
Why should your prospects buy from you
versus buying from your competitors?
Who are your competitors?
Do you know What do they sell?
Do you know how they sell it?
Do you know their business models?
Do you know what makes them competitive?
Do you know anything about them?
Have you done your due diligence?
Assuming you've done all of them and I know you haven't.
But assuming you have.
Going out there to the marketplace.
So then how are you going to put your offer in front
of the right audience?
How are you going to do your marketing?
How are you going to find money to do your marketing?
How could you afford the marketing?
What is going to be your offer?
What is your front end offer?
What's a backend offer?
What is your recurrent offer?
Oh, I'm just going to do some advertising.
How weird I'm going to do Facebook advertising.
How much do you know about Facebook advertising?
Right?
Do you know how to run ads?
Do you know how to target the audience?
Do you know how to do we targeting?
Do You know how to build a funnel?
Do you know how to write a copy?
Do you know how to write email sequence?
Do you How any of those things work?
Oh, I'm just going to hire some people.
Okay, Do you know how to hire people?
How to hire fire and interview them?
How do you know that they are doing a good job?
Do you know how to put systems in place?
How do you measure their performance?
How do you measure their KPIs?
How do raise capital?
How do you structure your share structure?
Right?
How much capital you should raise?
Where do you go find that funding and that capital?
How could you afford these people in the first place?
How do you build your team?
And if you cannot answer these questions,
details like this, you're not ready to start your business.
It's that simple.
And I'm not telling you this to make you feel bad,
to crush your dreams.
I'm telling you this so that you don't make the mistake.
I'm telling you this because you need to be prepared.
If you are going to start a business,
because most entrepreneurs,
they get into business without properly equipping themselves
with the necessary skill sets.
They don't even know what skill sets they need inorder
to make a business work.
Do you know how to start?
How to run, how to grow a business?
What skill sets do you need?
Do you know how to close?
Do you know how to market?
Do you know how to negotiate?
Do you know how to manage your own time?
Do you know how to read financial statements?
Right?
Are you financially literate?
Can you work long hours?
I mean, long hours.
Can you give up your vacations and holidays for years
to focus on your business?
Are you willing to pay the price?
Can you manage your emotions well?
The ups and downs of entrepreneurship.
Do you deal with rejections Well?
I mean, with rejection after rejection after rejection.
Are you okay working alone
without anyone believing in you around you?
Can you handle the stress, the anxiety,
the uncertainty of owning a business?
Are you okay working for years without getting paid?
And even if you do your very best and you grind
and you work for years, are you okay
Knowing that even you give your very best,
your very, very best that your chances
of success is less than 10%?
And more than that, even though if you manage to survive,
you manage to stay in business.
There is a 94% chance.
You'll never get past $1 million in revenue.
And after it's all said and done, after you did that,
all the overhead and all the expenses you might actually
make less than your employee.
Are you okay with that?
Well, guess what?
My friend that is entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship is not what you see on Instagram.
Entrepreneurship is hard,
is harder than you could ever imagine,
is not glamorous, is not pretty, it's not sexy.
It is just tough, tough, hard work.
It's Is very taxing on you and your family.
Financially, emotionally, physically, spiritually.
Most people don't know
what they are getting themselves into.
And I know it's not pleasant, but I'm not here
to tell you what you want to hear.
I'm here to tell you what you need
to hear as a mentor coming from me to you.
Now, if you do want to start your business during
this global crisis, here's one of the most important lesson
I could share with you.
And this is how I look at trend as well.
You have to understand the concept of the domino effect.
Meaning doesn't matter what you want to start.
It doesn't matter what need
in the marketplace you want to fulfill.
You have to look at okay, with the Corona virus,
it is affecting a lot of industries directly.
It may not affect the business that you want to get into,
but you have to look at,
does it affect the business that you want to serve?
Let me give an example.
Let's say hotels obviously are being affected
by the Corona virus.
So if the hotel industry is being affected,
if you are selling meat to the restaurants,
well, if that this is being affected,
who are they doing business with?
Who are they buying from?
That would also be effected.
Think about that, around them.
Okay. Maybe restaurants will get affected
and they will buy less meat.
Okay.
You might think, well, I don't serve really.
I don't really sell to the hotels,
but you do because this, this domino effect,
when you understand this, you would kind
of look for this breadcrumbs, right?
How this would lead to another lead to another lead
to another so directly, it may not affect you,
but indirectly it will affect
whatever business you want to start.
Now, when you look at it this way, across all kinds
of industries, retail, manufacturing, right?
I could go on and on and on you look at that.
There are a whole lot of business,
you don't want to get into
because those business are going down.
Those business are on a decline.
You don't want to serve those businesses
and you don't want to serve the businesses,
around those businesses.
It's very, very difficult to fight that trend.
So if you're dead selective, if you're very careful,
then you will know there are only maybe a few industries
that you want to get into.
So be very honest and very critical with yourself.
Be optimistic when it comes to your vision,
but be very pessimistic be very critical.
When it comes to your business model,
ask those tough questions upfront.
It will save you years of headaches and just years
of mistakes that you don't have to make
those mistakes think very, very carefully, right?
Most of the problems
in our lives started off as a good idea.
We thought, Hey, that's a good idea.
I could do that five years into it.
You're like, that is the worst idea I've ever had
because he didn't ask those questions upfront.