Entrepreneurship is a 24-7 WAY OF THINKING, ACTING and EXECUTING, and NOT something to ‘TRY’

[fastlane_dad]

So it really depends on what your business actually is.

Here are a 3 different progressions I can imagine from the top of my head:

1. You are a great video editor. You provide great results and value. Your goal should be to increase sales until you can no longer handle the workload. You shift focus on hiring another editor that has been vetted or trained by you to meet your standard. Then you shift focus back to increasing sales. Then you do this recursively and in more efficient and sophisticated manners until you are CEO of a company. You do none of the editing yourself but you manage hundreds of editors that meet your companies high standards. Your reputation is of ultimate importance from the first sale to the last. This is a very common route for artisans that transform their small businesses to large powerhouses over decades.

2. You are a great editor, but your immediate vision far exceeds your capability. You invest tens of thousands of dollars of your own money to hire a good team and then continue funding them at a loss. (Or get investors involved). I don't think this is the plan you are talking about.

3. You are a great editor, but want to provide value to more people than you can do alone. You come up with a plan to do so and put together a team of people that meet a decent standard. You deploy your product to see if your sales pitch works. You do your best to meet your customer demands. You may stumble on the way, but you hopefully rise to the occasion. Your reputation will be built on trying to do right by your customer and fixing what you can when you don't live up to expectation. People respect that too. But it sounds like you are trying to go from zero to running an entire team perfectly without some battle hardening first.

#1 is the classic story and progression. #2 is silicone valley. #3 sounds like what your plan is.

Again, I don't know your exact business, your business model, or your desired sales pitch. So I can't speak with authority on your exact situation. But don't lie to clients. Advertise what you earnestly believe you could provide at your best and try your best to pull it off. Don't get into a cycle of prefect-perfect-perfect before releasing your product to the market. It would be better for you to limit the sales artificially at first, than perfecting some team to handle a huge load just to never actually see the load.

What I mean by artificially limiting is: Getting the sale but apologizing and saying your service is actually fully booked right now and you can't accept them as a client RIGHT NOW, but will get back to them when you can.

- I was on the way out when I wrote this, so may have a few errors, but hope it helps!

I like all the points made here.

Make sure to have / be able to get demand AND sales before you go fully optimizing the 'product' or the 'team'.

You can spend 6-12-18 months optimizing the perfect 'team' and then what happens? What's the next step after that? You want to focus all (most) of your efforts on generating revenue and profit and figuring out how to get that -- and the pieces will fall in place of how to deliver decent 'goods' after the fact.

 

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[Andy Black]

What I mean by artificially limiting is: Getting the sale but apologizing and saying your service is actually fully booked right now and you can't accept them as a client RIGHT NOW, but will get back to them when you can.

You can put them on a wait list and let them know when a slot opens up.

 

[NeoDialectic]

You can put them on a wait list and let them know when a slot opens up.

Great options and using words that are very familiar to people. Everyone hates waiting, yet wait lists are utilized across all industries.

 

[Chet Shen]

OK guys here is a bit of mindset THURSDAY for you.

I keep hearing and seeing a recurrent theme, whether it’s in my DM, or here on the forum.

So MANY of you approach entrepreneurship as ‘Something to Try’ or talk of ‘Abandoning Entrepreneurship’ or ‘Giving this Fastlane Thing a Try’ … entrepreneurship is also not a 'TIP' you are going to receive from someone on these forums, on youtube OR yahoo headlines ... I don't hold a shortcut to it, and so does nobody else !!

To me fastlane (entrepreneurship) and the pursuit of such has always been a MINDSET, or a way of DAILY thinking and taking action rather than something I’m ‘TRYING’ at the moment.

Even at a time I’m not actively moving towards building up a business (and there were MANY parts like that throughout my life) – I would constantly analyze the world around me in an entrepreneurial way – and I still DO THAT TO THIS DAY consistently on every day basis.

Here are some EXAMPLES that ran through my mind, in just the last WEEK over things I’ve done and how I think about them

*I met a BMW salesperson (as I’m shopping for a large family SUV). Immediately what goes through my head is what is his commission, how many cars does he sell a week, and how much are the BMW cars marked up to be able to pay him that much. How long was he at the BMW dealership for to be able to earn this much clientele, repeat business, and commission. How long has he been doing SALES for, and is it easy to start. What was his barrier of entry in getting into this field, ETC

*I ordered a face cream on Amazon. Instantly I thought about what is it about this face cream that made me purchase it? What skewed the value HIGH ENOUGH for me to fork over cash for product? Who did I hear about this product from? Who influenced me to buy it? If I WAS to market and sell a face cream – what would I do differently? Is this cream the BEST cream I can buy? Why or WHY NOT? Can I add value to this industry somehow and reach a specific demographic? Is there something about this particular cream that still bothers me and is not the ultimate combination of price/size/results?

*I read several articles on INVESTING. Instantly my mind goes to why did I find value in this article? Why do I choose to follow a certain set of writers? Can I produce equivalent if not BETTER / MORE relevant content? What’s stopping me from writing a finance blog and teaching all that I have learned last several years on this topic (good place to start).

*I watched several YOUTUBE videos on finance / car reviews. What did I like / dislike about their videos? How do these people stand out from the rest? What is it about their personality / content that has them acquire 100Ks subs? What products / affiliate marketing do they market on their channel? Do they monetize outside of what the channel pays them? Can I / would I produce similar content?

GUYS these are just very FEW of the thoughts that go through my mind daily. Obviously I don’t act on 95% of these thoughts. The other 5% is what sticks in my brain, and eventually I commit to, and start moving in that direction.

AGAIN – this way of thinking and mindset has been a part of my life since my late teens. I am way more aware and in tune of these thoughts now.

I’m not giving entrepreneurship ‘ a shot’, ‘seeing if its my gig’ or ‘if this will work out’. I TAUGHT myself and ingrained how to think this way – that’s why I have hundreds of opportunities that I spot and CAN act on throughout the day, but won’t / don’t because my life is already so full.

Even when I’m not actively ‘doing’ or executing business – my mind is circling around a fastlane/entrepreneurship way of thinking. It’s 24-7 for me.

Curious to hear your thoughts.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Let me also add. Many, and I mean MANY of my previous endeavours and businesses started out of something I was already a consumer of. I sold automotive accessories because I had a similar accessory on my car (my mind went to 'why don't I sell something similar with a value skew'). I sold baseball cards for a profit because I loved BASEBALL cards and that was my hobby. I sold versions of personal care products - yes you guessed it - because I used a SIMILAR PRODUCT, and thought of a tweak I could make and market it as such.

I never REINVENTED any wheels. I never went into an industry (mostly) that I have not been a consumer of myself. A few times I tried - and all those ended up flops.

Just something for you to ponder over, and to @NeoDialectic point, if you are stuck for ideas - start doing more hobbies or pay attention more to your daily CONSUMPTION and surroundings. Everything you enjoy , and consume - make it a point to think how you can improve on that particular product or what different angle you can bring. And I mean EVERYTHING. Think about the YOUTUBE channels you watch. Think about the trinkets you buy and play with. Think about the Iphone APPS you downloaded. Think about the bookbag you just bought for school. Look - bottom line is 99% of these thoughts and ideas will just be thinking exercise, but eventually you do have to pick an area / discipline and stick to EXECUTION if you ever dream of making FASTLANE / EXIT possible.

Thanks for sharing your wisdom to us! It's all about the mindset, I see. Thank you!

 

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[DavidePaco00]

Thanks this was exactly when I needed to hear this

I just made a decent size commitment in terms of money (for me atleast) for something related to moving my entrepreneurship journey forward, and I wondered why I went with who I went with.

I've had this need for a while and about a month ago I was on the phone with someone I knew from real life who ended up (apparently) becoming this super-successful millionaire, who now has a coaching program.

I got on the call with him, and it was clear he was asking me questions and didn't give a damn about my answer. He was literally just reading from a script, as a matter of fact I knew the exact book that he got the script from but I didn't say anything (You can't teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar).

Sure, he made me talk a lot about myself which I like (people like talking about themselves obviously), but along with the "Sales-Breath", the thing that made me go "WTF" was when he said.. "You pay me $1000 and I GUARANTEE we'll get your business to $25k a month, I'm so confident that if it doesn't then I'll give your money back"

When I got skeptical and declined, he started making me feel bad about it asking me questions like "IS $1,000 A LOT OF MONEY FOR YOU, MICHAEL??"..

Then I'm like, why is this "millionaire" spending an hour on the phone with me trying to sell the hell out of me? Doesn't he have better things to do?

-

Then today, I got on a call with the person who is now my coach that I followed through with. What I noticed on the call is the following:

1. It was pure genuine value, there was seemingly no script, he just wanted to help me and did.
2. He didn't even ask for the sale at the end. I myself had to bring it up to him because he had already given me so much value. I as the BUYER encouraged him to keep talking to me about working with him.

That was really interesting, and I'm going to take a page out of that experience..

My takeaways : Screw sales scripts, value wins..

I reflected on how productocracy allows you to mae people come to you, not the oppoosite...

When someone tries to sell You something, You immediately become defensive because they aretrying to get something from You... On the other hand when You find a product that You like , you're almost lad to sped that amount of money... product is everything

 

[Stepan]

OK guys here is a bit of mindset THURSDAY for you.

I keep hearing and seeing a recurrent theme, whether it’s in my DM, or here on the forum.

So MANY of you approach entrepreneurship as ‘Something to Try’ or talk of ‘Abandoning Entrepreneurship’ or ‘Giving this Fastlane Thing a Try’ … entrepreneurship is also not a 'TIP' you are going to receive from someone on these forums, on youtube OR yahoo headlines ... I don't hold a shortcut to it, and so does nobody else !!

To me fastlane (entrepreneurship) and the pursuit of such has always been a MINDSET, or a way of DAILY thinking and taking action rather than something I’m ‘TRYING’ at the moment.

Even at a time I’m not actively moving towards building up a business (and there were MANY parts like that throughout my life) – I would constantly analyze the world around me in an entrepreneurial way – and I still DO THAT TO THIS DAY consistently on every day basis.

Here are some EXAMPLES that ran through my mind, in just the last WEEK over things I’ve done and how I think about them

*I met a BMW salesperson (as I’m shopping for a large family SUV). Immediately what goes through my head is what is his commission, how many cars does he sell a week, and how much are the BMW cars marked up to be able to pay him that much. How long was he at the BMW dealership for to be able to earn this much clientele, repeat business, and commission. How long has he been doing SALES for, and is it easy to start. What was his barrier of entry in getting into this field, ETC

*I ordered a face cream on Amazon. Instantly I thought about what is it about this face cream that made me purchase it? What skewed the value HIGH ENOUGH for me to fork over cash for product? Who did I hear about this product from? Who influenced me to buy it? If I WAS to market and sell a face cream – what would I do differently? Is this cream the BEST cream I can buy? Why or WHY NOT? Can I add value to this industry somehow and reach a specific demographic? Is there something about this particular cream that still bothers me and is not the ultimate combination of price/size/results?

*I read several articles on INVESTING. Instantly my mind goes to why did I find value in this article? Why do I choose to follow a certain set of writers? Can I produce equivalent if not BETTER / MORE relevant content? What’s stopping me from writing a finance blog and teaching all that I have learned last several years on this topic (good place to start).

*I watched several YOUTUBE videos on finance / car reviews. What did I like / dislike about their videos? How do these people stand out from the rest? What is it about their personality / content that has them acquire 100Ks subs? What products / affiliate marketing do they market on their channel? Do they monetize outside of what the channel pays them? Can I / would I produce similar content?

GUYS these are just very FEW of the thoughts that go through my mind daily. Obviously I don’t act on 95% of these thoughts. The other 5% is what sticks in my brain, and eventually I commit to, and start moving in that direction.

AGAIN – this way of thinking and mindset has been a part of my life since my late teens. I am way more aware and in tune of these thoughts now.

I’m not giving entrepreneurship ‘ a shot’, ‘seeing if its my gig’ or ‘if this will work out’. I TAUGHT myself and ingrained how to think this way – that’s why I have hundreds of opportunities that I spot and CAN act on throughout the day, but won’t / don’t because my life is already so full.

Even when I’m not actively ‘doing’ or executing business – my mind is circling around a fastlane/entrepreneurship way of thinking. It’s 24-7 for me.

Curious to hear your thoughts.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Let me also add. Many, and I mean MANY of my previous endeavours and businesses started out of something I was already a consumer of. I sold automotive accessories because I had a similar accessory on my car (my mind went to 'why don't I sell something similar with a value skew'). I sold baseball cards for a profit because I loved BASEBALL cards and that was my hobby. I sold versions of personal care products - yes you guessed it - because I used a SIMILAR PRODUCT, and thought of a tweak I could make and market it as such.

I never REINVENTED any wheels. I never went into an industry (mostly) that I have not been a consumer of myself. A few times I tried - and all those ended up flops.

Just something for you to ponder over, and to @NeoDialectic point, if you are stuck for ideas - start doing more hobbies or pay attention more to your daily CONSUMPTION and surroundings. Everything you enjoy , and consume - make it a point to think how you can improve on that particular product or what different angle you can bring. And I mean EVERYTHING. Think about the YOUTUBE channels you watch. Think about the trinkets you buy and play with. Think about the Iphone APPS you downloaded. Think about the bookbag you just bought for school. Look - bottom line is 99% of these thoughts and ideas will just be thinking exercise, but eventually you do have to pick an area / discipline and stick to EXECUTION if you ever dream of making FASTLANE / EXIT possible.

Thank you for the information. Very helpful!

 

[Stepan]

As far as our processes went, you are waaaaaay overthinking it. Remember, we are better deceiving ourselves than anyone else! If there is room to run while having some level of cover, we will. The smarter you are the better the cover you can build. Calling out your own BS takes vigilance. Don't take it as a bad thing that you get the "uneasy pit in your stomach". Use it. There were no google docs, 5 year goals, or complicated business plans. Complicating things doesn't help a starting business and leaves a lot of room for you to sneak in Action Faking.

Luckily, simple things leave very little room. The hidden message in @fastlane_dad 's post is that when you know what your exact overarching goal is, it becomes hard to not know when you are just action faking. Our overarching goal was "Build a business that provided value and made us a lot of money". We always saw money as a byproduct of providing value, which was shown in sales. So it really boiled down to, "how can we create something that will produce a sale as soon as possible". If it's not as soon as possible, then I've been action faking based on my goals.

So here is a sample of a work day when we ran out of to-do''s at the earlier stages of our business where we had a good product up and running but not too much success yet. Our work day would start with us thinking about what we could do to move the business forward and taking notes on a whiteboard. Afterwards, everything would be filtered through "is there a direct line from this idea to more sales in the short or long term". All great ideas that we answered no to got put into an ever growing backburner list and the rest of the no's got tossed. The ideas that we answered yes to were more or less sorted by how direct the line was from idea to sales. Then once we had an idea at the top of the list, we split up what needed to be done to get it implemented ASAP . Usually there could be 3-6 things. We split those tasks up between the two of us based on well established preferences and started moving on it that day.

Once that task gets done within the next day/week, we just move onto the next one on the list. That's it.

Dont forget. Before having a "massive financial success", you need to have a "financial success". Before that you need to have a "I could live like this - success". Before that you need "this is a nice supplement to my income - success". And finally before that you need "Holy crap someone actually gave me a dollar for my product/service - success".

Outside of being choosy with your initial idea to not limit possibility (CENTS), don't worry about requirements to be a "massive financial success" until you've reached the previous ones first. That's why at first you have to be ruthless with how simple your goal and action plan is. You need to act act act. Notice how in my Idea Generation Thread I put so much stress on testing the idea as soon as possible. It's as much of a thread on how to get to your first dollar as it is on generating your idea. So at that stage, anything that doesn't contribute directly to generating an idea, researching the idea, and then testing the idea is just action faking. At the next step if it isn't contributing to making your final product and increasing sales, it's action faking. Then the larger your business gets the more long term and nebulous your plans become. By the end we were doing many things that we had no clue if it was exactly paying off but thought it was good for the customer, business, and brand long term. At the beginning we did absolutely nothing that wasn't required to see a market signal.

Thank you a lot for breaking down the process and for the tip. Appreciate it!

 

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[Stepan]

Excellent overall overview of how things went the last 15+ years or so. The key takeaway is highlighted above, and it is what I advocate to many on their 'just starting out journey'.

Taking out a sheet of paper (or a whiteboard in our case), and writing down 5-10 low-level actions you can move on TODAY.

Many times this is the ONLY thing that would move our business forward, and we would see progress. Otherwise time / busy tasks would just get away from us, and weeks would pass without any significant momentum or progress (and back to the whiteboard it went).

It's fine to have a high-level overview/thinking/goals - but then you need to break it down to VERY small bite size pieces that you can work on immediately.

It's one thing to write down 'MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS / START A FASTLANE BUSINESS / BUY LAMBOS' - but then what does it mean? You can't act on any of that...instead what that can be broken down to IS ...

Use @NeoDialectic idea generation machine to come up with 5-10 products you can improve on if you are absolutely stuck on which route to move ...

After that tasks can include ...

1 - Call 1-3 vendors to see if they can add my 'magic sauce/extra ingredient' into the mixture. Can I ask them for a sample made? How much is the minimum order? What is the price per item?

2 - Research and figure out what will my profit margin have to be, in order for this to be a realistic goal. If my goal is to sell on Amazon or any other platform (and offer free shipping, etc) - THINK and account for ALL the costs that can be incurred to sell this. Run the math (the numbers NEED to work for this to be fastlane) - and figure out if you are leaving enough room for an advertising budget. What does that mean ? It means you should be looking to sell a $3-5 product for $60-100. You need enough ROOM in the profit to pay employees (and pay them well as we did). To rent / buy equipment. To rent office space. To pay for a/c, internet and water bills. And most importantly, to get your product off the ground with advertising (which is getting more expensive then ever all around).

3 - Or let's say you already have the product in your hand your tasks can include - brainstorming 1-3 ways to spread awareness of the product (publications? news outlets? influencers? marketplaces to list on ?). Can't get a hold of the publication? Find out whos in charge. Find their linkedin profiles. Introduce yourself, let them know what you are doing, and find other ways around to contacting the person who can potentially help move you forward.

4 - Contact legal / lawyers to find on trademarks for XYZ ... Oh that trademark is taken? Brainstorm a list of 3-5 names to sleep on and commit to for the product / brand / etc

5 - And on and on ...

We hit MANY dead ends with MANY of the things we started, and you will too. And that's absolutely OK!

We made and acted on DOZENS of 'tasks' that hit a dead end, and went nowhere as well. Business ideas, and partial execution that went nowhere. Advertising and money spent that yielded ZERO on the investment.

All in all - this is one of the best *TIPS* I can give that literally will put you on the correct side of the track.

Truth of the matter, many of us inherently KNOW some of the actions we need to be taking, AND can undoubtedly come up with the most important 5-10 tasks to do to move you forward - but instead put them off, look to find shortcuts, watch some more 'inspirational youtube guru' videos, or just plain self-talk our way out of doing anything (meh what's the point, this is never gonna work).

As some of Jordan Petersons story goes 'A Bad Plan is better then No Plan' ... and I sincerely stand by that. You can course correct on a bad plan. If you have NO plan, you will just stand still for ages to come, and that's not a good place to end up.

And look. Many (or some) of these things - weren't exactly 'fun business action faking' activities. Sometimes it wasn't exactly what we were 'in the mood' to do that particular day. But as long as we kept our 'high level goals/overview' in mind - this made ALL of the actions severely more palatable day to day.

Opened my eyes, Appreciate the help. I was wondering if reading the forum is Action-Faking and the answer for now is YES. I should be reading it for solving the problem that is in front of me right now, and not just to pretend I'm doing something useful. I love reading your and @NeoDialectic 's journey stories and tips. Much love, man!

 

[NeoDialectic]

Opened my eyes, Appreciate the help. I was wondering if reading the forum is Action-Faking and the answer for now is YES. I should be reading it for solving the problem that is in front of me right now, and not just to pretend I'm doing something useful. I love reading your and @NeoDialectic 's journey stories and tips. Much love, man!

Kind of.

It is unlikely that you can sustain 100% focus on Action all day. My post on hunkering down and having a sole focus of progressing in business even acknowledges this. You probably have downtime that you want to fill with some kind of relaxation. Fill that time in with things that help foster your entrepreneurial mindset instead of hindering it. That's where the forum, reading books on business, reading blogs, listening to educational youtubes, etc comes in.

The key takeaway should be that you shouldn't let those things leave you feeling like you've done something productive that day. You acknowledge they are entertainment and at the end of the day if you've done nothing else you have failed and only action faked.

 

[Stepan]

Kind of.

It is unlikely that you can sustain 100% focus on Action all day. My post on hunkering down and having a sole focus of progressing in business even acknowledges this. You probably have downtime that you want to fill with some kind of relaxation. Fill that time in with things that help foster your entrepreneurial mindset instead of hindering it. That's where the forum, reading books on business, reading blogs, listening to educational youtubes, etc comes in.

The key takeaway should be that you shouldn't let those things leave you feeling like you've done something productive that day. You acknowledge they are entertainment and at the end of the day if you've done nothing else you have failed and only action faked.

Got it, thank you!

 

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[Akpama Boris]

thank you so much for the value you provide

 

[James Klymus]

*I met a BMW salesperson (as I’m shopping for a large family SUV). Immediately what goes through my head is what is his commission, how many cars does he sell a week, and how much are the BMW cars marked up to be able to pay him that much. How long was he at the BMW dealership for to be able to earn this much clientele, repeat business, and commission. How long has he been doing SALES for, and is it easy to start. What was his barrier of entry in getting into this field, ETC

*I ordered a face cream on Amazon. Instantly I thought about what is it about this face cream that made me purchase it? What skewed the value HIGH ENOUGH for me to fork over cash for product? Who did I hear about this product from? Who influenced me to buy it? If I WAS to market and sell a face cream – what would I do differently? Is this cream the BEST cream I can buy? Why or WHY NOT? Can I add value to this industry somehow and reach a specific demographic? Is there something about this particular cream that still bothers me and is not the ultimate combination of price/size/results?

*I read several articles on INVESTING. Instantly my mind goes to why did I find value in this article? Why do I choose to follow a certain set of writers? Can I produce equivalent if not BETTER / MORE relevant content? What’s stopping me from writing a finance blog and teaching all that I have learned last several years on this topic (good place to start).

*I watched several YOUTUBE videos on finance / car reviews. What did I like / dislike about their videos? How do these people stand out from the rest? What is it about their personality / content that has them acquire 100Ks subs? What products / affiliate marketing do they market on their channel? Do they monetize outside of what the channel pays them? Can I / would I produce similar content?

GUYS these are just very FEW of the thoughts that go through my mind daily. Obviously I don’t act on 95% of these thoughts. The other 5% is what sticks in my brain, and eventually I commit to, and start moving in that direction.

Man, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks like this! If i could, I would have about 20 different careers, 10 Youtube channels, 14 products on amazon, and probably about 50 other businesses.

The only problem seems to be TIME and mental bandwith.

If you're at a loss for business ideas (problems to solve) then look back at your amazon order history, and your YouTube watch history. Whats stopping you from doing something better than one of those companies/channels?