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Deciding On a Concept and Executing my First Business!

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

Eevo

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Hello all,

The time has come for me to break free from the Slowlane.

I’ll be leaving my current remote job when they’ll require me to work from the office starting in several months. While this position has provided some good domain experience, my financial growth is limited because my earnings are tied to time and intrinsic value. So, it’s time to move on and accelerate the process of achieving my dreams through entrepreneurship. Progress in this area between now and when I leave my job is critical.

So, I will now be devoting myself to creating a value-providing, scalable business which will begin to lay the bricks for financial autonomy.

However, I have not yet decided which direction I’m going to pursue yet, and accordingly, my next posts will consist of:
  1. Analyzing my domain experience and how this can be leveraged
  2. Identifying opportunities through MJ’s 13 Ways to Find Fastlane Ideas (pages 266-278 of Unscripted )
After one week of evaluating potential opportunities through the CENTS framework, I will then select an opportunity to pursue for my business.

Excited to begin a new chapter of my life and learn from the many valuable resources on this forum!
 
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Toyotomi

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Hello all,

The time has come for me to break free from the Slowlane.

I’ll be leaving my current remote job when they’ll require me to work from the office starting in several months. While this position has provided some good domain experience, my financial growth is limited because my earnings are tied to time and intrinsic value. So, it’s time to move on and accelerate the process of achieving my dreams through entrepreneurship. Progress in this area between now and when I leave my job is critical.

So, I will now be devoting myself to creating a value-providing, scalable business which will begin to lay the bricks for financial autonomy.

However, I have not yet decided which direction I’m going to pursue yet, and accordingly, my next posts will consist of:
  1. Analyzing my domain experience and how this can be leveraged
  2. Identifying opportunities through MJ’s 13 Ways to Find Fastlane Ideas (pages 266-278 of Unscripted )
After one week of evaluating potential opportunities through the CENTS framework, I will then select an opportunity to pursue for my business.

Excited to begin a new chapter of my life and learn from the many valuable resources on this forum!
I look forward to hearing more, I am watching this :D
 

akinwumi009

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Hello all,

The time has come for me to break free from the Slowlane.

I’ll be leaving my current remote job when they’ll require me to work from the office starting in several months. While this position has provided some good domain experience, my financial growth is limited because my earnings are tied to time and intrinsic value. So, it’s time to move on and accelerate the process of achieving my dreams through entrepreneurship. Progress in this area between now and when I leave my job is critical.

So, I will now be devoting myself to creating a value-providing, scalable business which will begin to lay the bricks for financial autonomy.

However, I have not yet decided which direction I’m going to pursue yet, and accordingly, my next posts will consist of:
  1. Analyzing my domain experience and how this can be leveraged
  2. Identifying opportunities through MJ’s 13 Ways to Find Fastlane Ideas (pages 266-278 of Unscripted )
After one week of evaluating potential opportunities through the CENTS framework, I will then select an opportunity to pursue for my business.

Excited to begin a new chapter of my life and learn from the many valuable resources on this forum!
I'm equally watching keenly.a nice
Move. I wish u success
 

Eevo

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Thanks @Toyotomi and @akinwumi009 – really appreciate the support! Wishing you the best in your efforts as well.

Today’s entry will be covering my domain experience and giving a first-look to any potential doors they may open.

Areas of Domain Experience

Domain Experience - Industry
  • Advertising:
    My current remote position is in advertising – specifically on the research/entry side of it. What I do is help find entry points for campaigns and organic content based on overarching social trends or conversations happening in real-time. Then, I formulate a way-in for the brand that matches the brand’s POV and intended tone.
    • What this has taught me: Working in this area has helped me develop a good sense for social listening, to craft a brand tone through content, and to uncover emerging themes across different demographics that affect thought patterns and ways of living. Furthermore, I now better understand the processes associated with working with big brands and their internal employees.
    • Specific skills I’ve gained/developed: Writing Boolean queries, operating various software, formulating insights, writing better copy, better grasp of social platforms and content territories, decent grasp of Photoshop/Canva, working knowledge of Final Cut Pro
    • Potential business opportunities in this area:
      • Start my own advertising agency
      • Freelance social media and content strategies
      • Apply what I learned with this to other ventures
Domain Experience – Personal
  • Skincare/Haircare Products:
    After years of battling in these areas and finding it difficult to identify good learning resources, I have a solid grasp in the men’s haircare and skincare space through my own first-person experiences.
    • Potential business opportunities in this area:
      • Start a men’s personal care business with male, all-natural, and Made in the USA value skews.
      • Also, I could try going the authority website route and to spread information while incorporating AdSense and potentially my own products at a point. There are a few players in this space but not many. Might be something here with larger trends pointing more towards personal health with good quality products.
  • Playing/Understanding Various Sides of Sports:
    I’ve been engulfing large amounts of information across many different sports for a long time. I have a good base of knowledge that I could potentially leverage outside of the industry that I was involved in.
    • Potential business opportunities in this area:
      • Creating sports products with a quality/ethical value skew, creating a media network that focuses on authentic reporting/analysis in contrast to the industry learn towards sensationalism (Bleacher Report/Barstool Sports) and/or neglect towards die-heard fans (ESPN, also The Athletic because they say one thing and do another).
      • In terms of the product idea, I can also think of how the Lizard Skin bat grips completely disrupted the industry a few years back. That solved a massive need for players of all ages and skill levels. What unsolved/nonoptimal situations are there right now for players from Little League to the MLB?
  • College Admissions Process (namely focusing on obtaining scholarships) + optimizing college courses to save money/graduate early:
    Starting back in my high school years, I set out to graduate college with zero debt from obtaining big-value scholarships. In addition, once reaching that goal, I dedicated myself to maximizing the value of the scholarships/time at the university by being very particular with my course scheduling in order to graduate early and save money from thing sbesides tuition as well, including rent, living costs, etc, in order to accelerate the path through college. This included strategies with online courses from other universities, approaches to various standardized tests, summer/interim courses, and more.
    • Potential business opportunities in this area:
      • Create a course that explains how I was able to earn a big scholarship and graduate early through unorthodox methods. I could walk people through each phase step-by-step while also offering consulting services. Leads could be generated from a YouTube channel that teases these strategies as well. One downside is that I would like to retain my anonymity for personal reasons, and that loses me credibility because I’d have to operate from another persona for the business.
        • Of course, there are many entrants in this college counseling market. Yet, I think that I could create something to be an unsolved need with a student-first perspective of optimizing students' opportunities that not many know about but that the system allows for.
        • I haven't seen many approach a college education through the "tilting the scale in your favor" lens that I dedicated myself to. Most of what I've seen are just same old blase, traditional offerings from people who just regurgitate garbage as a small pawn in a big game.
  • Fashion:
    I have occasionally find myself in that “first adopter” niche where I start adopting certain styles before they really get going. While I don’t pay much attention to current trends, I enjoy piecing together what future trends may be.
    • Potential business opportunities in this area:
      • Create a fashion brand that brands itself with a trailblazer, ethical (in contrast to the thriving “fast fashion"?), and exclusive value skews. Note here that the fashion market as a whole is very, very, saturated, but there are always brands that emerge from time-to-time who offer something valuable for a particular consumer base. Also some potential to build in a subscription model to add a certain kind of value for demographics which quickly evolve to match the industry shifts.
      • Or perhaps a brand that gives people the agency to be their own designer or maybe even give certain kinds of people an ability like that - hmm. People dream of that kind of stuff, so that's a value skew.
Overall, I found this to be a good exercise and it got some ideas flowing.

Next, I will practice identifying opportunities through MJ’s 13 Ways to Find Fastlane Ideas (pages 266-278 of Unscripted) for posts during each of the next few days. Then on Thursday, I will narrow down and agglomerate my top opportunities and begin evaluating each of them for a business in greater detail using CENTS.
 
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Odysseus M Jones

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Also watching this thread.
Hopefully it'll descend into plain English. ;)
 

MJ DeMarco

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I usually don't recommend people quit their jobs unless they have something viable in the works, or validated. If you are in idea mode, you have no idea if an idea will take 4 weeks to get going, or 4 months. Having bills weigh on you can be a big negative.

Welcome to the forum.
 

Eevo

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Also watching this thread.
Hopefully it'll descend into plain English. ;)
Appreciate the support!

I'm not sure exactly sure what you mean about plain English, but I think you mean writing in a simpler style? Okay, will keep it in mind to make this thread accessible for anyone who jumps in here.
I usually don't recommend people quit their jobs unless they have something viable in the works, or validated. If you are in idea mode, you have no idea if an idea will take 4 weeks to get going, or 4 months. Having bills weigh on you can be a big negative.

Welcome to the forum.
Thanks for the insight MJ! That makes total sense as yep, I'm very much in idea mode.

I do intend on keeping this remote job until they require me to move to their office in an expensive city/state. They're pushing me to be there by Februaryish... but I will try to stay remote as long as I can.

As of now, I have minimal living costs because I'm living at home. Moving to an expensive city will obviously balloon that waaaaaaay up. So Ideally, I hope to start generating income by that time so I can feel safe about not making the move. Though that's very true - I have no idea how long it will take to earn my first income.

Also, I'm seeing that it would make sense to provide more context to my situation for the sake of the thread:
  • Early 20's
  • Earned a scholarship to college, so I have no debt or loans.
  • Staying at my parent's place for now. Living costs are <$100/month.
  • Current remote job nets me ~$4k/month. I'm typically able to complete my daily work in about 3 hours, and as long as I get my stuff done, they're pretty relaxed with monitoring me.
  • Been working jobs (sometimes two at once, even three at a point - which was not a good idea during school...) since I was 16 and was a MAJOR penny pincher. On the positive side of that, I was able to take care of all my own expenses through college and have some money saved up + invested.
With this, I know that my situation isn't all that bad right now.

And if I do end up making the move for when the company wants me in the office, I'm estimating that living costs would be ~$2,500+/month based on it being a very expensive city. So I don't really want to do that, although I would also like to get out of my parent's place soon, too.

As another note, I know that I could be using my earnings to create better growth and need to keep fighting my frugal past about this while learning better money management. Part of why I'm on here!

Like I said, I'm trying to hold onto this remote gig as long as it makes sense. But they keep saying that they want me in-person when the rest of the company returns to office (by Jan/Feb). It's a decent position, but if worst comes to worst, I feel like I can also try to replace it with a different fully-remote position as I get my own business up and running.

Thanks again for what you do MJ - it does mean a lot that you chime in. As you say in your books, your personal involvement on this forum does make it such a wholesome place to everyone's benefit.

Will be back again with another ideation post later today.
 
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Eevo

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As noted, today I will be continuing the ideation phase of my business through MJ’s 13 Ways to Find Fastlane Ideas (pages 266-78 of Unscripted ).

It is also worthwhile to recount the two ways that MJ explains value is sourced from:
  1. Innovation: You blaze your own path and do something never done before
  2. Improvement: You tread an existing path and do something being done already, but do it better by skewing value attributes
In the way he words the Improvement source, it strikes me that, of course, improvement necessitates its own forms of innovation. How can it be done better? What is it missing? Is there an audience that it’s not reaching, polarizing, or excluding altogether?

This time a paraphrase of MJ because I can't remember the exact words: brand is making the consumer think that utility is not enough. Things to think about.

To begin this exercise, I will start with the first way to find Fastlane Ideas: Language. Who knows if any of these ideas will lead to what my business will become, but it is certain that these will be valuable experience to begin connecting issues to solutions.

Ways to Find Fastlane Ideas #1: Language

Using Tweetdeck, I entered some search terms and recorded a few interesting tweets. I’ll include the tweet, then ideate about how to solve the problem or add value.

Concept #1:
Edit: removed this for privacy reasons

Concept #2:
Edit: removed this for privacy reasons

Concept #3:
Edit: removed this for privacy reasons


Wrap-Up

So that was another good exercise! I feel like I learned a lot and had ideas flowing again. I can see why training my brain muscles to link these connections of value together is such an important entrepreneurial practice.

And as I was re-reading the rest of the chapter in Unscripted , I realized that I was working in many of the Ways to Find Fastlane Ideas into these concepts! For instance, I had already begun to consider how an “I wish” statement could be resolving by adding value skews of convenience, wants, service gaps, improvement/removement, and so forth.

Will do more thinking as the night goes on. I’ll write a post tomorrow on any reflections in addition to considering further solutions. I had originally wrote that I aimed to pick a concept to pursue by the end of the week, yet there’s no reason why I can’t start sooner if I find something that works well.

I can do this!
 
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Eevo

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Today was a long day, but I have to keep up the progress up in order to achieve what I want to achieve! A side note would be to remember to get my day started in the right way so I don’t fall behind.

Last night, I had more ideas run through my head. A few of these were value-cheating ideas. I think there were actually viable options to make some money, but I quickly snapped myself out of that and remembered that I’d only be hurting myself in the long run, too. If you want to make millions, you have to affect millions – positively. If it isn’t positive, then things will catch up somehow. It’s been proven time and time again.

To replace those thoughts, I spent time building out a further idea related to Concept #2 from my previous post. I like the thought of working within that space, and it’s worth exploring further. As I expanded the idea, things became exciting – it’s definitely going to be a top possibility, although I also must not be hasty. Sometimes decision-making has that fine line.

Another fine-line is between with the ideation and action-taking. I see how taking too long in the ideation process without moving forward with one idea can easily slip into action-faking. I’m only a couple days into the ideation process so I’m certainly not there yet, but it’s something to stay aware of.

Back to the build-out of Concept #2. I considered a way to differentiate a platform like this from other available platforms, while also thinking about how to attract content. That content could be attracted by offering an upfront payment for certain creators, while anyone would be able to upload other kinds of content while I’d take a portion of the sales. This content would also be very turnkey for the big social platforms.

Something to address with this idea is the cost of hosting a site with large amounts of video content. The prices I was seeing for maintain servers for this was around $0.12/GB. I could also use a service such as AWS where as they say, I only pay for what I need – how convenient sounding! That’s a value skew.

It felt good to work on this idea today. While I’m not entirely convinced that it’s what I’ll pursue, I think it’s a good option.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back with idea concepting/evaluating and more problem-solving practice for my brain.
 

Eevo

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Decided on a concept!

The first step with this business is designing a course, selling it, and building from there.

My intention is to have the course ready to go by Monday, January 24. To meet this date, I’ll set the following checkpoints:

Checkpoint #1: Branding – Monday, December 6
  • Decide on a name
  • Secure domain name and social accounts (Twitter, Instagram, TikTok – potentially SnapChat, Pinterest?)
  • Form LLC
Checkpoint #2: Course Design – Monday, December 27
  • Design course
  • Decide pricing (consider position based on competitors)
Checkpoint #3: Website – Monday, January 10
  • Website structure (will be simple – maybe WordPress?)
  • Write copy
Checkpoint #4: YouTube Ads – Monday, January 17

Checkpoint #5: Launch Course – Monday January 24
  • Review everything, make sure all is good to go
Ongoing: YouTube Videos and Social Posts
  • Starting on 12/13, I will create 5 Twitter posts, 3 Instagram posts, and 3 TikTok posts per week to build a following in anticipation of the course launching.
  • Starting on 1/17, I will post one informational YouTube video per week to build a following and help promote the course.
Let’s do it.
 
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Toyotomi

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The first step with this business is designing a course, selling it, and building from there.
Good job for deciding your first course of action!

Go all the way. Can't wait to read about the launch on the 24th of Jan.
 

Eevo

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Good job for deciding your first course of action!

Go all the way. Can't wait to read about the launch on the 24th of Jan.
Thanks!

Really excited to put everything together and create something of value for the world!
 

watchopt

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Create a course that explains how I was able to earn a big scholarship and graduate early through unorthodox methods.
Interesting. This seems to be quite a leverage. Who sees things like this everyday? May be I live in a closet, though.

The 3A strategy and triangular strategy come to mind. Also, the one that talks about the failed message pertaining to cancer.

But,. I am still learning how to hone into the profit locus.
 
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Eevo

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Things are looking good! I met my first checkpoint.

I selected all the necessary names, secured the domain/social media accounts, and started to build the course. The course design is going well, too. Due to the recent thread on here about LLCs, I've decided to form one once I begin making sales. Gotta remember to put the cart before the horse.

I’m super excited about the future!
 
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