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- Oct 2, 2018
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Welcome to my execution thread. I have been a wantrepreneur for 4 years and had 4 'businesses' in the past. My latest business is 6 months in the making and is currently on track to make worthwhile profit this year with a lot more to come if my plans come to fruition.
I've wanted to write on this forum a bit more to give back and help show others that it's possible. I believe that I now have something worth sharing as I take a 6-month journey to quit my job and live the rest of my life working on scalable projects divorced from time.
I can't give away too many details yet, but I am in the wholesale food business. It is a really tough business depending on the product you pick and I have thought the business would fail a number of times in the past for a multitude of reasons. Thankfully through COVID/the lowest sales months of the year in my industry, I am finally confident the product works and it's just a matter of getting it into every place I'm targeting across the country.
I'll update this thread with big updates, quitting my job and major lessons learnt along the way in my path. I hope you find this thread useful in your journey to becoming 'Unscripted '.
Failure is still possible, but whatever happens, its Win or Learn for me as an entrepreneur.
Cut the Fat
I had a friend who also wanted to be an entrepreneur for about 4 years. He worked and quit his job, 'failed' his first venture and learnt coding to try things in that sector. He had not many interests outside of work, which I thought was a bit weird at the time so worked everyday. Meanwhile, I had many 'addictions' (Netflix, Xbox, Poker, Sports betting etc.) that my scripted life had me dosed up on for years to keep heavily distracted that I couldn't give up. I had some really good ideas but these never came to fruition because even though my why was there, I never really gave them enough time.
My friend recently raised $21 million for a $250 million dollar valuation for his latest idea (true story!)
I have cut pretty much all the fat out and things are finally starting to work.
This is my no.1 tip and first step for you young people aspring to be free out there.
Sales, Sales, Sales
Another reason my other businesses failed, was simply because I got too cute with marketing, logos and spending 'investing' money on BS things (aka action faking).
Literally make a minimum viable product in the quickest time, don't get a LLC, make a temporary logo in 5 mins, just get damn sales asap. Once you have about 10k, then you can get a little fancy imo.
This is an age old piece of advice from MJ DeMarco, Mark Cuban and any good entrepreneur. But boy, did I have to experience this myself to actually grasp what it really means.
Sales/the market will tell you if your idea is shit, what its worth, what people actually think and it will give you experience in your sector (I actually found out the idea for my current product by listening to the market that my first genius vegan product was infact a waste of time and my new one is what they actually want).
You have to listen very hard, but the direction and pivots are there if you listen to your sales.
Do the Hard Thing
Again, another quite repeated piece of advice, doing the hard thing has many benefits. For my business, the hard thing means creating a barrier to entry, which will reduce competition, increase your marketshare and enable you to leverage a higher price for your product.
A large chain once asked for a range of products, I chose the easy thing and gave them what we always make, we didn't up making the cut because there were 5 other companies involved squeezing the price down as it came down to price (aka became commodity). What I missed were the 3 other more abstract products, which nobody else did, because it was the hard thing, a 250k contract was probably missed.
I've wanted to write on this forum a bit more to give back and help show others that it's possible. I believe that I now have something worth sharing as I take a 6-month journey to quit my job and live the rest of my life working on scalable projects divorced from time.
I can't give away too many details yet, but I am in the wholesale food business. It is a really tough business depending on the product you pick and I have thought the business would fail a number of times in the past for a multitude of reasons. Thankfully through COVID/the lowest sales months of the year in my industry, I am finally confident the product works and it's just a matter of getting it into every place I'm targeting across the country.
I'll update this thread with big updates, quitting my job and major lessons learnt along the way in my path. I hope you find this thread useful in your journey to becoming 'Unscripted '.
Failure is still possible, but whatever happens, its Win or Learn for me as an entrepreneur.
Cut the Fat
I had a friend who also wanted to be an entrepreneur for about 4 years. He worked and quit his job, 'failed' his first venture and learnt coding to try things in that sector. He had not many interests outside of work, which I thought was a bit weird at the time so worked everyday. Meanwhile, I had many 'addictions' (Netflix, Xbox, Poker, Sports betting etc.) that my scripted life had me dosed up on for years to keep heavily distracted that I couldn't give up. I had some really good ideas but these never came to fruition because even though my why was there, I never really gave them enough time.
My friend recently raised $21 million for a $250 million dollar valuation for his latest idea (true story!)
I have cut pretty much all the fat out and things are finally starting to work.
This is my no.1 tip and first step for you young people aspring to be free out there.
Sales, Sales, Sales
Another reason my other businesses failed, was simply because I got too cute with marketing, logos and spending 'investing' money on BS things (aka action faking).
Literally make a minimum viable product in the quickest time, don't get a LLC, make a temporary logo in 5 mins, just get damn sales asap. Once you have about 10k, then you can get a little fancy imo.
This is an age old piece of advice from MJ DeMarco, Mark Cuban and any good entrepreneur. But boy, did I have to experience this myself to actually grasp what it really means.
Sales/the market will tell you if your idea is shit, what its worth, what people actually think and it will give you experience in your sector (I actually found out the idea for my current product by listening to the market that my first genius vegan product was infact a waste of time and my new one is what they actually want).
You have to listen very hard, but the direction and pivots are there if you listen to your sales.
Do the Hard Thing
Again, another quite repeated piece of advice, doing the hard thing has many benefits. For my business, the hard thing means creating a barrier to entry, which will reduce competition, increase your marketshare and enable you to leverage a higher price for your product.
A large chain once asked for a range of products, I chose the easy thing and gave them what we always make, we didn't up making the cut because there were 5 other companies involved squeezing the price down as it came down to price (aka became commodity). What I missed were the 3 other more abstract products, which nobody else did, because it was the hard thing, a 250k contract was probably missed.
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