RANT - This Must Be Talked About More

[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.

 

[mikecarlooch]

I disagree with the order here. It makes sense that ChatGPT regurgitated that since it's the way school and college taught us. Solid foundation? Why not just start and figure it out as you go?

Just my opinion - from my world - but it feels like if you know a thing or two about something before jumping into it, especially a technical venture, like.. learning to code or natural language processing or machine learning..

I tried jumping into those things months ago without having a solid foundation for understanding the basics of programming - when I did this - my confidence levels of what I could do with the technology in application to my industry of choice or even the pursuit of learning, was out of my reach.

So what I believe, is that having the basics down REALLY WELL creates somewhat of a feedback loop that gives you the mental confidence to say.. Ok.. This is possible.. Other people aren't just extremely gifted. This can be done by me.

To give another analogy, it's almost like.. How I noticed the amount of confidence I gained when I pursued a technical co-founder for an AI product I wanted to create. Before having him, I was thinking.. How in the world can I do this..? I need other people.

It feels like the same way with improving your education before just jumping in. The confidence, the feeling like it is possible and not out of reach for you.

And this brings me back to my belief on why some people pursue low entry barrier businesses. Because it's within the scope of what they believe they can do within their skillset. They don't pursue higher entry opportunities because they haven't exposed themselves to that world.

Again , just an opinion from a 20 year old trying to figure all this confusing stuff out.. lol!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[mikecarlooch]

While I agree with your assessment to a large degree, there is too much emphasis on the difficulty of learning. I disagree with that. With enough hard work and effort, anyone who isn't learning challenged can build whatever necessary knowledge.

Be careful not to make this an excuse.

13 years ago I was 20 too. I knew nothing about capitalization, chemicals, leadership, sales, finance, whatever. Everything I put to work daily was learned in the last 13 years. I wasn't born with it, I didn't shy away from it.

Great response thanks..

Don't get me wrong - I also believe that anything can be learned, I learned that in the last few months. My real curiosity leads me to this however -

how do you define learning personally? You said that domain expertise is SOUGHT, but what does that mean?

Andy bought up just jumping in and figuring it out on the way. Others emphasize the importance of getting education through study and then applying the knowledge, etc.

You say you learned capitalization, chemicals, leadership, sales, finance.. What does that mean in your world, what was your process of learning those things?

I'm sure things like leadership, sales, and things like that.. They can be learned by DOING.. As soon as you figure out you need to hire another person.. You're naturally getting that expertise on leadership for example.. but what about your domain, your industry - chemicals? I'm sure for a subject like that it required intense study and focus to understand what they are and what they do. How would you learn by DOING for something like that?

It also makes me curious about the government contract business you had - didn't you have to spend hours and hours and days figuring out how the world of gov works and studying all of that?

I feel like learning can mean so many things.

 

[Xeon]

Good post lol, and one that should have been talked about long ago. On the forums are several '100 unsexy business ideas' threads.

All of those ideas, with the exception of lawn-mowing, require real domain expertise. In other words, for John, an admin clerk in the media industry, to quit his job and "take massive action" to start a business in the "cement furbication industry", he needs to first quit his job and take up a job in said industry, work for 10 years minimum (and another 1-4 years for relevant education if needed), go balls deep into it, another 2 - 5 years to discover a NEED (seriously fark this thing) with the expertise that he now has, before he can even get going.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Robdavis]

Ok.. This makes a lot of sense too.

I do have small software apps that I built to analyze real estate deals/comps and find new motivated leads. I haven't thought of productizing them however because they are minimal applications made with Python that don't seem highly worthy of publicizing. But what you're saying here is basically saturate the world with your creations, even small ones, and adjust based on feedback. Makes sense. Thanks.

On another note though, it seems like having some insight and knowledge before creating things is still very underrated. If you don't know the foundations, or have any insight, how can you even create something that's differentiated or understand why the differentiating factor in your product is valuable?

Mike, if you know Python, you can sell that skill directly as a freelancer, you could create a Python agency employing other freelancers / staff to sell python programming and / or you could directly try to sell the utilities that you have already created.

So you probably already know enough to get started.


EDIT: With respect to having some insight and knowledge before creating things, I reckon that the amount of "tech" that is involved probably makes a difference.

If the job is "low tech" then you can probably pick up what you want to know very quickly. If the job is high tech. then you will probably need to learn some background before even starting because you might not understand what the product is or does otherwise.

 

[Kevin88660]

Establishing entry is not just learning or having experience.

There are a lot of dentists with 20 years experience. That doesn’t make it a defensible moat.

It is about doing what others can’t do. It can be a single variable feat. It can be a multi-variables skew. It must be hard so that very few in the same industry could replicate.

In singapore there is a top bullion dealer who monopolise the business for most serious buyers. They offer the cheapest retail price. The open secret is because they purchase in bulk of 1000 bars instead of the competitors who do in 100. Key word is scale. That’s a single variable feat. It kind of sounds easy but there must be something that is hard to replicate since so many could not do it.

There are cheap food. There are healthy food. There are tasty food. Very very few can be all 3. There is a sandwich chain that always got sold out of stocks. They sell 450 calories sandwich that is quite tasty, priced between 7-8 dollar. I would say they score 8 in taste, 8 in nutrition and 7 in pricing, out of 10. That is already an impossible trinity to hit.

Experience and domain experience does not necessarily ensure you escaping out of the rat race, if you are doing and training like everyone else, and there are thousands of providers indistinguishable from one another.

 

[mikecarlooch]

Moiz Ali knew nothing about deodorant (supposedly). Then created one of the largest deodorant brands: Moiz Ali's story of starting a natural deodorant company. | Codie A. Sanchez posted on the topic | LinkedIn).


Not quitting. Odds of success are greater if you don't quit when you hit roadblocks and it gets hard. Plan to invest 10 years or more. Unless you are already starting with the 5 skills @Antifragile listed in bullet points above. Then maybe faster, but there's still going to be a lot of unknowns to tackle once you start digging in.

It's very clarifying the way you think on a long term perspective. 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.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[mikecarlooch]

Your post reminds me of Peter Thiel's Zero to One. If you're trying to copy how other companies became massive you'll fail because each situation is unique. You don't have the same strengths/weaknesses as the other founder, not the same industry, not the same customers, not the same period in history, etc... Make your own decisions

Nailed it.

"All happy companies are different."
"If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them."

As for the starting small, you're goal is to achieve a productocracy (MJ)/monopoly(Thiel). You can't achieve that in a massive market if you have no knowledge or resources, but you can achieve that in a small market the big boys don't bother with. So the goal is to dominate small then scale.

I always forget that even Peter Thiel says to start small...

Thanks for bringing this up

 

[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.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[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.

 

[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!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.