RANT - This Must Be Talked About More

[Andy Black]

In other words, pick a direction aligned with your experience (if you have any), then figure out the next step and what you need to do.

I've said this before... "Pick a direction, get started, keep going."


As @Vigilante once replied in a thread that asked our best piece of business advice:

"Start."

 

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[Andy Black]

If you want to build big things, stop thinking about building big things.

You reminded me of this:

Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

www.paulgraham.com

 

[Andy Black]

I'll link to this video directly this time.

Maybe this will help you @mikecarlooch ... because I see you pop up quite regularly confused or tangled up.

Does any of it resonate, or give an aha moment?

View: https://youtu.be/Hy1shfNiy1k?si=CapzZWKHJDCqtNG2

 

[amp0193]

I get anxious thinking in 2-4 year terms but a 10 year horizon feels like there's much more time for going deep and creating lasting value.

Before you start, you don't know what you don't know.

After 1-4 years, you still don't know much, but you have a pretty good idea of what you don't know and maybe a rough plan to figure those things out.

Year 5+ is about shoring up those knowledge gaps through team, personal development, experience, etc.

Mentors and relationship building can help shortcut the process.



If your goal is just to make a few k a month and have a "lifestyle" business... well, you can maybe get there on a faster timeline. But this thread isn't about that.

 

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[Johnny boy]

Native deodorant keeps being mentioned here and ironically it is the perfect example

Moiz who founded it can tell all the stories about how he wanted to change the deodorant industry and world and make everyone healthy and did all this research and became an expert in deodorant he wants but none of that is true

Moiz went on Etsy and saw what was selling

He was looking for a small product that was cheap to ship so he could make some money

He picked natural deodorant because it was small, had good margins, good repeat purchases, and was one of the most popular products on Etsy

He ordered a bunch, tested them and picked the best

He then set up a Shopify store and posted in on product hunt

He got a few 100 sales in the first day

Then he ran Facebook ads and scaled

Eventually the Etsy lady who was supplying him said this is too much for me to handle I just wanted to sell a few deodorants online not become a deodorant factory, so he bought the recipe from her and started getting it made by a manufacturer

Yes, he started and scaled his business by having a lady from etsy private label her products for him, he didn’t even know what her recipe was, and it sounds like he didn’t think to change to a manufacturer or find out what her recipe was until she said I can’t do this anymore

He didn’t run ads with a huge budget on day 1 and spend 1000s testing until they’re worked, he posted on product hunt, and probably told his friends and posted on reddit etc to get a few sales, plus he picked something that was already validated on Etsy, he didn’t invent something new that wasn’t already selling

When he sold it to proctor and gamble or whoever bought it, he didn’t even have the trademark, he had to pay someone who was squatting on it some stupid amount to get it

The logo and name is the same as a cafe local to him

The guy did not spend 6 months action faking in his room reading about deodorant recipes

He literally picked like the easiest money making idea he could find and the easiest and fastest way to market and just grew it from there

love this.

some of you just need to send it and grow a pair.

 

[Two Dog]

My question here is - how can you possibly, obey the commandment of entry without being DEEP in an industry, without having specific knowledge or domain expertise?

You hire it.

Domain expertise can definitely be an advantage and it's where most people naturally start. The problem is they often spend most of their business life being domain experts instead of working on growing the business and adding new skills. The basic problem with buying domain expertise is it's easy to make a bad hire since you don't know anything about the industry or the problem.

That means you have to learn *something* to hire effectively. The good news is learning enough to make a decent hire takes a fraction of the time needed to match their expertise. You can learn enough in 4-12 hours about pretty much anything and be able to ask enough intelligent questions to make a decent hire. If it's super technical - maybe you need to hire a concert pianist and have no idea what that means - hire someone with deep expertise to advise on the hiring of the actual candidate. Just watching the interaction between the two people will tell you who's an expert or not.

This morning, I pitched an e-commerce website for $15K. That's for the initial launch. They'll probably want to use either Shopify or Square. I've never signed up for either platform, never deployed either and can barely spell Shopify, but by the end of this weekend I'll know enough to hire a competent contractor along with having some great ideas for increasing revenues over the next few months. Two half days to earn that level of domain expertise.

 

[mikecarlooch]

My thoughts on this the past few months have completely changed after 2 things:

1. Actually putting my value into the real world through trial & error
2. Reading Skin In The Game by Nassim Taleb

Wow, information without application is so useless.

It makes me seriously question colleges. What in the world is going on in those?

Stuff a bunch of "domain knowledge" down people's throats, not teach them how to apply it in the real world, and move onto a new subject without ANY real-world application??

Friends of mine are getting a marketing degree. I questioned them..

"What if your marketing strategy doesn't work when you're a "marketer"?"

Real marketers have scar tissue. real marketers are trial & error. real marketers lose money trying things and make money after consistently trying. Not after reading a bunch of documents, and filling in multiple choice answers or watching lectures without application. Real marketers don't look like college graduates with "marketing" in their LinkedIn bio.

I now see we need to do it even when we don't know how, without putting ourselves into financial suicide and only taking bets with small downsides and potential big upsides.. Because that's the only real way to find "how".

 

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[RicardoGrande]

Really glad Mike posted and I saw this thread.
This had been bugging me as well ever since I hit my first full-time job, seeing the bullsh!t, and trying to throw myself right into "entrepreneurship". Had a whole little write-up I've been meaning to post too on the biggest symptom we see, everyone joining the forum and wanting to be a copywriter/freelancer (myself included)- because the vast majority of people that come through are silo'd into just the work experience (if it's any good and not something like hyper-specialized corporate TPS report pusher) or teens/fresh to the workforce people that don't have any insight that could help.

I would suggest listening to podcasts on how Native deodorant started. This is exactly what you’re asking

Just some quotes below from other websites.

“When Native founder Moiz Ali randomly checked out the ingredient label on his antiperspirant, he couldn’t have known that it would be a pivotal moment in his life. What began as a curiosity about aluminum turned into a mission to make clean deodorant that could go head to head—err, pit to pit—with antiperspirants.”

“It isn’t rocket science, but boy did it work. By his own admission, Moiz knew almost nothing about the deodorant space when he founded Native - but he did know a little about business, and a lot about people.

Rather than exhaust time and money on lengthy R&D, he figured the quickest way to find out if there was a market for his product was to try and sell it. To pull this off, speed of execution was key, and Native’s profile as a lean, frugal, early stage business fitted this necessity perfectly. They got into operation mode from day one and put an early version of their natural, toxin free, ethical deodorant in front of the market.”

Gold post, I remember listening to his interviews awhile back but didn't know he had a vision and started with a small bite working with something that's relatively easy to make or having competitors to clone.
I have a semi-active thread where I'm trying to chase down something similar in the food space but I have zero industry knowledge beyond how to blow up my kitchen making concoctions and recipes and trying to google but not knowing how to make inroads with CPG/copackers/food scientists and making actual progress to make a product at scale after that. Even though I know the area well and I feel and others feel the pain, I don't have the domain experience of getting a recipe, production agreement, and packaging in a cost effective way, at least right now- which is more than half of the battle.
Makes me step back often and think about if there's a chance a good vision can get you most of the way there, but the proper networking, connections, and finding the right bits of knowledge can help drive that forward and home. I think Tom Bilyeu of quest had something similar when he got started with quest, but I'm also faintly aware he had some inroads with CPG and was able to flex his connections and get started.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

It makes me seriously question colleges.

One thing you learn in college that you don’t learn on your own is the value of rigor and attention to detail. Every detail matters — those who do well in school and college are generally very attentive to detail.

This then translates into all their work.

The difference is that the person who is attentive to detail doesn’t submit a quote that looks messy and ugly. Whereas the one who isn’t attentive to detail will say “what matters is the costs, not the presentation”, and hence lose out.

Professionalism is something that can’t be learned on your own, it’s learned in a collective setting. I did sales for years without powerpoint presentations. Little did I know this was unprofessional and created the wrong impression because no one tells you these things. When I added a presentation, suddenly closing rates 3x bigger.

If everything around you is well cared for and all the Ts are crossed, that tells people that that’s how you’ll treat their business and money too. And that’s far more important to communicate, indirectly, than anything else.

Going in without a pitch deck for a sales presentation tells them you’re a brokie who doesn’t know what they’re doing and doesn’t have any money. Whereas going in with a slick presentation tells them you’re on the ball and will do a similarly great job for them, as impressive as your presentation.

The freelancers and copywriters @Kak always disses have like 0 attention to detail and are extremely superficial. That’s why they struggle.

So while the content of what you learn in college is useless, the attitudes, structure and process of doing things that you learn isn’t.

 

[DreamLund]

Start smaller

Don’t start trying to build the next big app, make a few small ones, get them working, make them free, get users.

I wouldn’t say it’s passion but curiosity and interest are required for things like this or you just wouldn’t stick at it or be interested enough for long enough to see results.

Build your experience and confidence from there.

There’s a thread on here at the moment where a guy who’s never run a business wants to start selling a $1500 home appliance that will cost 10k to develop.

Sure that’s a fast lane idea and has a barrier to entry and required domain expertise, but it’s not where someone should start with no experience and no money.

He would be better off starting a business reselling existing appliances, or selling small cheap kitchen gadgets, and then grow from there.

I follow a lot of watch flippers on social media now.

Everyone sees them flipping APs and Pateks and making crazy money and wants to do the same.

They probably say oh I need the domain expertise.

How do you think you get that?

By flipping cheaper watch brands, making mistakes, making money, getting better at negotiating, building clients and before you know it you are gaining confidence and skill and working your way up in the price ranges to more and more expensive deals.

I know a few people on the forum who do ecommerce and what I notice is they all started with a cheap easy product and then took that experience and money and used it to build a better more defensible ecommerce business that required more skill and upfront investment.

I did exactly the same. I started dropshipping crap and once I had it figured out I started ordering in bulk, then I started investing in product development and branding. Now the business is quite defensible.

I didn’t take a bunch of money with no skill and expertise and expect to start a business with a high barrier to entry and domain expertise right out the gate. That just comes naturally with time. You have to start smaller and easier.

You just released all the tension that I built up reading this thread. I’ve just began taking action and I got my first company created 3 days ago, contacted the bank for a business account and I’m heading the exact path that you described. It was very relieving to read this reponse.

Thanks Kak!

 

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[mikecarlooch]

Professionalism is something that can’t be learned on your own, it’s learned in a collective setting. I did sales for years without powerpoint presentations. Little did I know this was unprofessional and created the wrong impression because no one tells you these things. When I added a presentation, suddenly closing rates 3x bigger.

Yet, you still ended up successful.

Notice your "skin in the game"

trial and error.

Maybe reading about it can't teach you it. But I know one thing that certainly can...

Making more presentations and realizing how much you suck.. and still persisting.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Yet, you still ended up successful.

Notice your "skin in the game"

trial and error.

Maybe reading about it can't teach you it. But I know one thing that certainly can...

Making more presentations and realizing how much you suck.. and still persisting.

Agreed, there's no doubt that you learn other skills by being entrepreneurial that you don't learn from a job or similar environment (college). The most important one being inventiveness and ability to catch what you eat yourself, and not depend on others for making money. But, there are also things that you don't learn very well. Most importantly, managing other people, professionalism, and general business etiquette.