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A challenge for people with no idea (noobz only)

Aurelius

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This guy here got it all wrong guys

Just buy a MEGA 10k$ course from your favourite guru ( especially from "Here in my garage.." ones) and then watch the cash flowing like indian men flow in your ex gf's DMs.

The next thing you know, you get Dan Bilzerian beard and body, emanating gargatuan d*ck energy and lots of naked virgin women in your 50M$ pool.
 
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sparechange

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cyber is like one of those people that think rich people got lucky :shit: stick with the job...
 

Cyberthal

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Ad hominem is a good sign that the side resorting to it has lost the argument, especially when they give up any attempt to refute the main argument. I'll take the win.

> I'm not even going to bother to respond to any of it because it makes zero sense.

It's a perfectly logical argument. Lying about it only convinces me to stop reading you.

Anyhow, I have something substantive to add, unlike the respondents so far:

Fox's web dev thread is a good example of gradual transition from employment to entrepreneurship. Web design freelancing isn't really entrepreneurship because there's no business; one just sells one's time. Or one could see it as a transitional form between employment and entrepreneurship.

Josh Nelson, author of The Seven Figure Digital Marketing Agency, whose big banner ad I've seen on this forum, is a great example of this. His initial entrepreneurial efforts failed because he was just an undifferentiated digital marketing freelancer. Eventually he had to admit defeat and get a job doing sales at a big digital marketing company. Very quickly, he saw inefficiencies that he could improve. When he left to found his own company, he succeeded tremendously, because his attempt was backed by real market insight.

His successful attempt was an actual business because it focused on a niche, creating a salable company that had value independent of himself as an individual contributor.

Had he followed my prescription that beginners should validate an entrepreneurial idea with a gradual transition from employment to entrepreneurship, he would've saved himself years and acute shame at failure to provide as a man in front of his family. It's positively evil to advise noobs otherwise, but it doesn't sound like that troubles ya'lls self-righteousness.

Without examining his bio, I suspect Bill Gates is a good example of someone who could take the entrepreneurial leap thanks to a strong family financial fallback option and familial business experience. But lacking those resources, one should carefully consider before leaving the trail to go cliff-diving.

Edit: fixed spot where I flipped "employment to entrepreneurship"
 
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sparechange

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@Cyberthal

Can you please enlighten us with your entrepreneurial experience? Just curious if your opinions are backed by anything substantial.
 
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J.Galt

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Ok fine, rocks, pencils....boring stuff. What about socks?


Is anyone noticing a trend? Geez, socks are boring to, I want to create electric cars, if only I could contact Elon Musk and Warren Buffet for an investment.

How about razor blades?

Michael Dubin Net Worth: $200 Million. Imagine growing and selling a billion-dollar business within just five years. For Michael Dubin, this was a reality. He’s the founder of Dollar Shave Club, a popular subscription-based shaving club. Dubin built one of the most successful e-commerce brands for men in the span of just five years. We recently spoke with Michael to get insight into his business tactics and learn more about his story.

Once again, the idea doesn't matter, it's the execution.
Welcome to the forum! ah... you could be onto something here. Maybe people don't want to buy a pencil online and that's a great point.

How could we sell these pencils then? Is it possible we could have customized pencils decorated in super hero themes? Maybe you could even do a fund raising activity by selling pencils at a local school and donate money from the proceeds to some type of charity? What about expanding into artist niches? Oohhh now that's tickling my brain, how many pencils do artists go through on a yearly basis?

As you can see, the above poster said pencils are a bad business. Ok, maybe I'm wrong, or am I?


It goes to show, it's not about the idea, but the execution. How many people will think, meh pencils what a stupid idea, like the posters above? Tons of people! Or give up after spending hundreds of dollars on crappy Facebook ADS and getting 0 sales?

As for the selling rocks idea, I'll answer my own question. Yes, selling rocks is an awesome idea.


How many people can become a millionaire selling rocks? What actions will they take? PPC? Amazon? Shopify & FB ads? oOooOOoOOo


Thank you sir and sorry for the late reply, 4th of July is hectic around here!
Anyways I love the idea of selling Rocks and Pencils... just merely stating that selling pencils online might not carry as much EV as other avenues due to the convenience factor. You remind me of my first sales job in college. At the interview the legendary Mr. Deighton reached across the table at a local starbucks and put a Pen on the table... followed with a stone faced expression and the words.."sell me this Pen" (good times) lmao and the rest is history. To make a long story short now I could sell the F*** out of those pencils lol and as much as I would like to indulge in your challenge I cannot at this time due to my present commitments but it is compelling. My advice to anyone who is thinking about trying (if anyone cares to hear it) would be to go after the federal prison system as one major channel. For the most part they are all run under an umbrella system so if you get one you will prob. get many as long as logistics don't become an issue. Also I would leverage the current political climate (risky/only helps in rare cases) sense your dealing with FEDs and do a percantage donation to BLM for every volume purchase. Remember, every one of those prisoners are writing letters bi-daily/ weekly and many cant spell (again no offense) so pencils are required over pens due to the eraser.
 

Panda__

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Alot of new people in the world of entrepreneurship struggle with coming up with an idea, so I will give you a free idea I'd love to see someone execute on. I'm pretty sure the majority of people struggling to come up with an idea and stumble upon this thread will not execute on it and opt to go for something cooler, like finding $10,000,000 for their startup to compete with Tesla, or partner up with their buddy to create another crappy website.

Ok, let's begin. I'll start off by saying that because you are new to this, you will totally suck at doing business, not to discourage you, but to just open up your eyes and face reality. I'm talking from my own personal experience.

#1 You don't know what you are doing
#2 You have no idea how to sell
#3 You have no idea how to market

Along with a million other things, you will quickly discover problems constantly pop up.. Even when you do think you have it ''figured out'' The point of all this is you need to learn all these process's. Take any successful entrepreneur and have them race against someone that has never started a business to create $1,000 in revenue. Who wins? Get the point? Great. Let's start learning.


Industry Insights

The global writing instruments market size was valued at USD 13.9 billion in 2018.


Hmm, writing instruments..you mean like pens and pencils? Yep! How much does a pencil cost to produce? And what cost do you think you could buy it at?

View attachment 33883

So about 10 cents a pencil you could sell at retail, is it possible you could buy tens of thousands of pencils from a factory and sell them somewhere online or in retail? Absolutely!

But wait, this idea sucks and I want to make huge profits to buy Lambos and Mansions! Oh? Do I hear a heckler in the crowd? Check this out below.

Faber-Castell is one of the world's largest and oldest manufacturers of pens, pencils, other office supplies (e.g., staplers, slide rules, erasers, rulers)[1] and art supplies,[2] as well as high-end writing instruments and luxury leather goods. Headquartered in Stein, Germany, it operates 14 factories and 20 sales units throughout the globe. The Faber-Castell Group employs a staff of approximately 7,000 and does business in more than 100 countries.[3] The House of Faber-Castell is the family which founded and continues to exercise leadership within the corporation. They manufacture about 2 billion pencils in more than 120 different colors every year.

Revenue887 million (2005)
Number of employees6,500 (2006)
Websitewww.faber-castell.com


Oh? A simple set of products generates nearly a Billion dollars yearly? The point I'm trying to make here is that it's not about the product idea, it's mostly about the execution. How many people would start dropshipping pencils from alixpress on Shopify driving traffic with just facebook ads then giveup after they make $0 in sales? I'd say quite alot. Now ok, before you start ordering thousands and thousands of pencils, another point I'd like to get across is the execution part.

The way the company above executed followed a different way of conducting business and during that process I'm sure they had to learn the ropes. So I challenge you kind reader, can you buy a set of pencils, and successfully sell them for a profit? That is a small (but massive step) you can take in your entrepreneurial journey, maybe you won't actually create a multi billion dollar company just selling pencils..........

But you will learn the process of how to build a multi billion dollar company

Then perhaps in your next venture after you fail the first which is extremely likely, you can have some success, it's all about building up your skill set and experience points, just like in a video game you ''level up business skills''

Have a great day.



Thank you for this post and perspective. As someone who is new and haven't taken action in years this resonated with me. I've struggled with "the idea" and like you said, the idea doesn't matter, it is all about execution. My question to you is, how to know what is the right execution? There is a lot of noise about Facebook ads, PPC, etc...and yes, those things cost money. But how does one know what is the best execution strategy? Also, how do I know if a competitor's current execution is not working and go about thinking of ways to make it better so I can succeed?

I hope that makes sense. I really want to get out of this rut of "doing nothing and not taking action" and do it. I want to mention that I spent 10yrs doing business development for a company while in college. The company was still fairly small but doing well for themselves (privately owned). I got to see first hand what it takes to run a successful business and how to. I learned a lot about business from the owners directly and I was able to work in a lot of areas in the company to gain experience on how they ran their successful business (multi million dollar company).

Any advice/suggestions I really appreciate it.
 

sparechange

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Thank you for this post and perspective. As someone who is new and haven't taken action in years this resonated with me. I've struggled with "the idea" and like you said, the idea doesn't matter, it is all about execution. My question to you is, how to know what is the right execution? There is a lot of noise about Facebook ads, PPC, etc...and yes, those things cost money. But how does one know what is the best execution strategy? Also, how do I know if a competitor's current execution is not working and go about thinking of ways to make it better so I can succeed?

I hope that makes sense. I really want to get out of this rut of "doing nothing and not taking action" and do it. I want to mention that I spent 10yrs doing business development for a company while in college. The company was still fairly small but doing well for themselves (privately owned). I got to see first hand what it takes to run a successful business and how to. I learned a lot about business from the owners directly and I was able to work in a lot of areas in the company to gain experience on how they ran their successful business (multi million dollar company).

Any advice/suggestions I really appreciate it.

There's 2 good chapters on executing in Unscripted #38/#39.

You won't know what the right execution is until you start doing what is needed in regards to running your business, that with addition to following MJ's rules of Act, Assess & Adjust are good guidelines to follow.

There is a ton of people on the forum that have social media agencies which is a reason for all the glory and tributes to FB ads and whatever (sneaky self promotion) So I'd wary of some posters :cool:

Online ads while they can be great are NOT the only way to market a service/product. I feel as if it's not talked about enough on the forum the old traditional methods like street advertising, handing out flyers, mailing out flyers or good old cold calling and door knocking (iffy with the Covid thing possibly) there is almost a hidden magical gem with the old methods. There have been several companies that grew to 7+ figures without using online ads.

Here's one that almost everyone knows.


(if you look at the Instagram page its quite low engagement)

John Paul started the company in 1980, he is a multi billionaire that used to be homeless, was he posting FB ads and IG stuff back then? Nope! It didn't even EXIST back then. I just wanted to drive the point that these are just tools to use but shouldn't be a main focus.

Define your ideal customer, get the product/service out infront of them and make the sale. Rinse and repeat, learn to love rejection (you will get tons of it) Get your hands dirty , I guess that's the ''right'' execution method. Experience is the best teacher. Follow MJs rules of Act Asses Adjust.

There is no shortage of consumers out in the world, being from New York you have over 8 million potential customers in the immediate area, to have a strong healthy business you realistically only need a few thousand customers on a recurring revenue stream to change your life drastically. Rather than focusing on one off sales I like John Pauls thinking... great read below, really short to

 
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Isaac Oh

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Thank you for this post and perspective. As someone who is new and haven't taken action in years this resonated with me. I've struggled with "the idea" and like you said, the idea doesn't matter, it is all about execution. My question to you is, how to know what is the right execution? There is a lot of noise about Facebook ads, PPC, etc...and yes, those things cost money. But how does one know what is the best execution strategy? Also, how do I know if a competitor's current execution is not working and go about thinking of ways to make it better so I can succeed?

I hope that makes sense. I really want to get out of this rut of "doing nothing and not taking action" and do it. I want to mention that I spent 10yrs doing business development for a company while in college. The company was still fairly small but doing well for themselves (privately owned). I got to see first hand what it takes to run a successful business and how to. I learned a lot about business from the owners directly and I was able to work in a lot of areas in the company to gain experience on how they ran their successful business (multi million dollar company).

Any advice/suggestions I really appreciate it.
Dive in! I had no idea what went into the process of making a board game. I'm still figuring it out. If you check out my thread on it, you can see that the original execution I had in mind was completely off target. Just keep your goal in mind, and keep adjusting.
 

Panda__

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There's 2 good chapters on executing in Unscripted #38/#39.

You won't know what the right execution is until you start doing what is needed in regards to running your business, that with addition to following MJ's rules of Act, Assess & Adjust are good guidelines to follow.

There is a ton of people on the forum that have social media agencies which is a reason for all the glory and tributes to FB ads and whatever (sneaky self promotion) So I'd wary of some posters :cool:

Online ads while they can be great are NOT the only way to market a service/product. I feel as if it's not talked about enough on the forum the old traditional methods like street advertising, handing out flyers, mailing out flyers or good old cold calling and door knocking (iffy with the Covid thing possibly) there is almost a hidden magical gem with the old methods. There have been several companies that grew to 7+ figures without using online ads.

Here's one that almost everyone knows.


(if you look at the Instagram page its quite low engagement)

John Paul started the company in 1980, he is a multi billionaire that used to be homeless, was he posting FB ads and IG stuff back then? Nope! It didn't even EXIST back then. I just wanted to drive the point that these are just tools to use but shouldn't be a main focus.

Define your ideal customer, get the product/service out infront of them and make the sale. Rinse and repeat, learn to love rejection (you will get tons of it) Get your hands dirty , I guess that's the ''right'' execution method. Experience is the best teacher. Follow MJs rules of Act Asses Adjust.

There is no shortage of consumers out in the world, being from New York you have over 8 million potential customers in the immediate area, to have a strong healthy business you realistically only need a few thousand customers on a recurring revenue stream to change your life drastically. Rather than focusing on one off sales I like John Pauls thinking... great read below, really short to



Thank you so much for this. I'm starting to read Unscripted tonight and will pay special attention to chapters 38,39. And you're right, the old school ways of advertising are still effective if done right.
 

Panda__

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Dive in! I had no idea what went into the process of making a board game. I'm still figuring it out. If you check out my thread on it, you can see that the original execution I had in mind was completely off target. Just keep your goal in mind, and keep adjusting.


I will keep my ultimate goal in mind and "DIVE IN"! :) When I find out what product/service I will sell I will post on the forum to document my journey/progress.
 
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BellaPippin

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If the pencil idea is bad to start with, what do you think about rocks? Would rocks be a good product to sell? Or is that a bad idea?

Both diamonds AND rock painting kits do very well, so I'd say yes :p
 

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