How to Start a Business? Don’t Wait for Permission.

Every now and then, I like to speak to high schoolers about entrepreneurship. And the other day I was asked to come to a homeschool class of about 20 high schoolers and tell my story and answer any questions they had about entrepreneurship, how to start a business, what would I have done differently, etc. I thought I might as well go ahead and film it so you guys can learn something from it. So if you know a high schooler or a student or a young person or anyone that's interested in entrepreneurship, please share it with them and they might end up doing something incredible with their lives. I have been an entrepreneur my whole life, and my dad wasn't an entrepreneur, my mom wasn't. It doesn't really run in my family, which happens a lot of time. I spent the first 11 years of my life in Logan, Utah, and we were kind of poor, like, not really poor, but not middle class, somewhere in between. And that was just kind of frustrating to me. Like, I just wanted to buy candy and I really love fruit. I wanted to buy plums and peaches, and I wanted a bike because my friends had a bike. But I couldn't buy any of those things. And so I started selling golf balls out of necessity because I just wanted some side money. And as luck would have it, I lived across the street from a golf course. It was called the Logan River Golf Course. It's still there today. And it's kind of funny, because I never would have thought to do this if I didn't live across the street from a golf course. I don't even like golfing. I didn't then and I don't today, which is a good lesson, because, like, a lot of times, the best opportunities are the ones around us, because it's the ones that we notice, the ones that are convenient to us. And so I lived on this busy road, and these golf balls would fly into my yard. And I don't remember what gave me the idea to do it, but I just started washing them. I put them in a wagon, and I got this big piece of plywood and some paint, and I put golf balls, three for a dollar. And I leaned this sign up against my mailbox. It was a really busy road. And then all summer, these random golfers in polo shirts would walk up to my house and knock on the door and buy golf balls from me. And I made hundreds of dollars a summer, a week or a month, I don't even remember. But it seemed like I was a billionaire at the time. And I would take that money and I Used it to buy a bike. I'd get on my bike and I'd ride to the Macy's grocery store, and I'd load up with candy and fruit. And then I'd ride the bus to school, and I'd go to the back of the bus and I'd share all my candy and fruit with everyone. And I just felt like a baller. It was amazing. That, like, switched a flip in my brain. And I always like to say that because when you earn your first, say, hundred dollars yourself not having a job, it switches a flip in your brain, and it gets you to look at the world a little differently, and you can't really turn that off. And it's a good thing because it's kind of like food storage, right? Like, in our church, our leaders encourage us to have food storage in case something happens. Well, having a skill where you don't have to depend on an employer is kind of like food storage for your bank account. I recommend everyone develop the skill, learn a skill, even if you never end up being an entrepreneur. I don't recommend everyone become an entrepreneur because it can be very stressful, and I'll get into that. But I do recommend everyone tries to flip that switch in their brain so they can learn those skills for themselves. So that was at age 10, 11. Then I moved to Florida, from Utah to Florida. And that skill kind of went dormant for a while. We were still kind of poor, but I waited tables, I delivered pizzas, I cut lawns. But mostly I just had jobs, and I was chasing girls and surfing, and I was on the wrestling team, and I was just distracted. So then at age 19, I served a mission for my church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I went to Hungary, which is in Eastern Europe. And in Hungary, it's not a third world country, but it was under communist rule until about the year I was born, late 80s. So the people in Hungary just don't have much opportunity. They don't know what opportunity looks like. I would meet these amazing people that had two college degrees that were smarter than I was, and they made $4 an hour. And that's. They didn't really have a pathway to make more than that. They didn't. It wasn't even an option for them. And that just blew my mind. I thought, you go to college and you get a good job. These guys went to college twice, and they can't even feed their families. What? And so it was that contrast between America and Eastern Europe that really got me to appreciate America. Growing up My, you know, fourth of July. My dad would always cry during the Star Spangled Banner. I never saw him cry. And I remember being embarrassed as a kid. I was like, dad, what are you doing? Get yourself together. Come on. And then I went to Hungary and I came home and. And I get it now. It's a special place. We live in a very special place and we take it for granted because that's human nature. We take everything for granted that we get used to, right? It's not that we're bad people, we just don't know any different. And so I came home from Hungary and like that switch that was flipped in my brain at age 11 was like, like an overpowered mode. And I just came home ready to take on the world. I didn't realize it at the time, this is me looking back, but looking back, I just had so much confidence because in Hungary, all I did every day was knock doors in a language called Hungarian, which is not a romantic language, it's not a Slavic language, it's not Germanic. They call it an alien language because there's nothing really like it. It's hard to learn and it's hard to speak. And so all day, every day, I got rejected to. From strangers that were pretty grumpy. My friend just went to Hungary on a cruise and he was like, they're really grumpy there, Chris. You didn't tell me how grumpy they were. I was like, I don't know, they're great. That's all I knew, right? Kind of like that's all we know is living in America. But of course they're grumpy. Like they lived under communist rule forever. And, you know, 40, 35 years ago is not that long in the grand scheme of things. And so I counted roughly and I got rejected like 40 to 50,000 times in two years. Rejected to my face, either on the street or at a doorstep. We didn't really have many members that would give us referrals. We just had to go talk to strangers. That was the best thing I ever could have done. It was hard. It was life. It was all I knew and it was amazing. And it was the best two years ever. And so I came home just like ready to conquer everything. And I got a job working in for this random company. But I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I like, I went back to where I was as an 11 year old and I didn't know what I wanted to do. I just knew it should be international business. I didn't know what that meant. I Just thought, that sounds really cool. And so I married my high school sweetheart five months after coming home, and she was a student at University of Alabama. And so I moved to Alabama with her. We went to college together. We waited tables. And while I had that internship right before we got married, I would take Fridays off and I'd go to Barnes and Noble. And I was too cheap to buy books, so I would spend all day at Barnes and Noble and just read. I would never buy. I didn't buy any book from Barnes and Noble, but I read dozens of them about business and real estate and investing. And I was just learning. And it was like that summer was more valuable than the two college degrees I got. And that's not to say don't go to college. I'm not saying that. I went to college, graduated, and then I went to college again and graduated. So I do think that's important. But I learned more reading those books than I learned from college. And so I moved to Alabama. I didn't know anyone. I had about $1,000 to my name. Started waiting tables, full time student. And then at the time, President Obama had an $8,000 tax credit. And if you bought your first home, the government would give you $8,000, no questions asked. And so I thought, that's cool. So we bought a home. It was a $90,000 home, which you can't even find those anymore. And we paid for the down payment with our student loans, which you really shouldn't do. And we got $8,000 back, and we took the $8,000 and we bought a second home for. For $60,000. That was the down payment for the second home. And that became our first rental home. So then we were. Then we were landlords at age 22, and we really never had any money. We used student loans. We had tips from waiting tables. And then I just started experimenting with all these side hustles. I started this business called Textbook Crook. And our slogan was, we steal the competition. Because I'd go to the bookstore and buy a $200 textbook. And then four months later, when the class was over, they'd only pay me $20 for it. And it was. I didn't even crack it. I mean, I didn't open the textbook. I'm like, what are you doing? This is brand new. I thought there needs to be a way for students to buy and sell textbooks to each other. And so that's why I started that website. And I just started all these random businesses. And then I learned about these guys in Louisiana that opened an iPhone repair store. And this was 2010. IPhone had come out three years before, but it was still brand new. They were breaking. People drop them, the screens break. And these guys are making a lot of money. And I don't know why, but I just thought, I can do that. I'm going to do that. And it was probably just that confidence from getting rejected on my mission. For two years, I didn't know how to fix iPhones. I didn't like, I didn't have an iPhone. I barely knew what they were. But I went back to a guy I met on my mission, and I knew that he had money. And I said, Andrash, I need $20,000. I was, I want to start the store. I really think it's going to go well. And he said, okay, send me your bank information. I'll send it. But before I went to him, I went to my boss and my old boss and everyone I knew that I thought had money, and they all said no, but this guy believed in me. And so I opened this store and I started an iPhone repair store. And that was like my first real business. And people would come in with broken iPhones and I would say, okay, that's $80. And then they leave. And then I learn how to fix the iPhone on YouTube while I fixed it. Not smart, but also, it is smart. It's not smart because I didn't know what I was doing, but it is smart because I didn't let that lack of knowledge prevent me from starting a business. Because a lot of times we have what's called analysis paralysis, where we're like, okay, I got a business idea. I'm going to go do some research and make a business plan. I'm going to go talk to my friends about it. I'm going to go buy a domain name, going to file an llc. I'm going to do this. And that's what I call friction or like an advanced form of procrastination, right? And really we're afraid to do the thing. We like the idea of starting a business, but we're afraid of it. And so we do these things that give us the illusion of productivity without actually doing the thing. And the thing is selling something right? And you don't need a website, an llc, a. A business plan. You don't need any of that to sell something. But as soon as you've sold something, you're in business, right? And so what I did wrong was not learning more. But what I did right was not letting that prevent me from starting a business. And so that business did well. Didn't do well at first, but we grew and we did some marketing and I could get into all that, but it'd be a three hour talk. So I ended up opening four of those stores over the next two years and then sold them to a competitor. And. And then I sold. I started another business the very next day called LCD Cycle, where we would take broken iPhone screens and ship them to China. And then in China, they would remanufacture them. They'd scrape off the broken glass and put on new glass and then ship them back. And so we would get our foot in the door with iPhone repair shops like the one I just had by saying, hey, we'll pay you $3 for every broken iPhone screen. And they were like, why do you want my broken screens? And they said, well, we can get them remanufactured. And I didn't remanufacture them, but I. I got a cold call one day from a Chinese company that wanted to buy mine. And so I basically just copied their idea. I thought, that makes sense. I could do that. Coincidentally, this other company wanted to buy me around the same time. So I thought, okay, if I sell this business, I'm going to start that one, because I think that one is even better. And it was. So we started selling iPhone parts to repair shops and then getting their old broken screens recycled in China, and that grew pretty fast. We had that business for nine years, and it grew like a rocket ship, just super fast. And that's the business that brought me from Alabama to Texas because I wanted to be more centrally located so we could ship our products out faster. So after that, I started buying mobile home and RV parks, and that ended terribly. I had two partners that I didn't get to know well enough, and it went south and lost everything. And throughout all this time, I was starting different little side hustles and businesses. I started over 75 in the last 15 years. Businesses, most of them never even getting revenue, some of them failing, some of them being abandoned, some of them very successful, some of them just moderately successful. But about three years ago, I started talking about everything I'd ever done in business on the Internet. And it grew really fast. And I grew a Twitter account, and then I started posting videos a year ago, and that grew even faster. So today I have some level of ownership from like 1% to 100% in like 12 different businesses. Some of them profitable, some of them not, some of them struggling, some of them doing amazing. And then I also publish content On Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, all the places about everything I'm doing and everything I've done and everything I've learned. And that's how I spend my time today. Any questions? What's the greatest advice you'd give to an Sell it before you have it. Don't kind of like what I was saying. The first thing you should do is to sell a product or service, get an idea, and then see if anyone will pay for it, even if it's your mom, honestly. And then see if you can get someone that you're not already friends or family with to pay for it. Maybe it's washing windows, maybe it's a custom T shirt that you make. But if you can like attempt to receive even $1 of revenue before you do all those fancy procrastination things, you will be way ahead of the game. Yeah, That's a good question. Oh. So door to door sales, I really recommend. I've never done door to door sales. I just did my mission. But it worked great because you can test at every door. If you knock on 100 doors, that's a hundred different tests. All right, I'm going to test if I smile like this when they open. All right, now I'm going to test if I don't smile at all. Now I'm going to say, how are you? Now this time I'm going to say, I am Chris. Like, you can just test, test, test. So after hundreds or thousands of doors, you have it dial in and you know exactly how to talk to the person at the door. And. Which means you know exactly how to sell. And if you know how to sell, you will never go broke ever. Right? So door to door sales, you don't need to have a job to do that. You can just go do that in your neighborhood with your cookies, right? Or with your window washing skills. Or like, waiting tables is really good. Mowing lawns is really good because it's hard work. Waiting tables teaches you how to interact with people or like working in and out or chick fil A. Those are amazing jobs for saving good money and learning valuable skills. So what degrees did you get out of college? So at Alabama I got a business management degree with a minor in entrepreneurship, which makes sense. And then tcu, Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, eight years ago I got my master's in business administration degree. And I got that because I'm very like, shoot from the hip and unorganized and I have terrible attention to detail and I wanted to fix that. So I thought that If I paid a lot of money for a higher education, I could fix that. And it was good and I met great people and I don't regret it. But I've since learned that, like, it's better for me to take those weaknesses I have and find people that have those as strengths and to take my strengths and just do a lot more of that. It's not bad to try to fix your weaknesses, but if you can find people that complement you, then that's a lot more efficient, in my opinion. Should we get to the pre submitted ones? Thank you. All right. The hardest part of being an entrepreneur. Oh, there's a lot. It's not all roses. So I have the most patient wife in the world. Like, seriously, I have a lot of friends that are entrepreneurs and some of them have wives that are less patient. And it's understandable because this is not an easy thing. But my wife is just very like, I trust you. Yeah, it'll work out. It's fine. And so I couldn't do it without her. That's a fact. The hardest part is the volatility, right? I've had, I've been doing this for 17 years now, and I've had years at a time where I didn't make any money, like multiple years in a row where my taxes said zero and I lived on good investments I had made in prior years. And then I've had one year, you know, spotty years here and there where I made more than I made in multiple years combined. It's just a roller coaster, feast or famine. And that's really hard, right? You feel like a billionaire one day and you feel broke the next day. And that can last a long time. It can be a grind. So it's unpredictable and it's exciting. It's never boring, ever. But it's really hard to. To experience consistency in entrepreneurship. That's the hardest part for me, how to think of business ideas. So once you flip that switch in your brain, you're going to start seeing them, right? Or like, if you consume content, that kind of shows you how to look at things in that way, which is one of the things that I do in my content. You can kind of train your brain or just read books. Someone just as a way of an example, someone point out something in this room and I'll try to come up with a business idea about it. Red cups. All right, so these are nostalgic. This is a solo cup. These are nostalgic. I know. I went to a lot of people in college that drank A lot of alcohol out of these. I never have. And so nostalgia sells. People will pay a lot of money for nostalgia. And so you could make candles where this is like the vessel that holds the wax and it's just kind of like a nostalgic thing. Or you could make artwork with these and sell them on Etsy. Or you could make like T shirt designs with the solo cup at the center. You can make a tumbler that looks like a solo cup that people carry around that's like insulated and it just looks like they're walking around with a solo cup, but it has a lid and it's like a proper tumbler Tumblr. So that's how I see the world. And that's a muscle. And those ideas might not be good. I'm not saying they're good, but there's just like anything can be monetized, right? And it, like any muscle, you just have to. You have to work it out. And you usually don't work out unless you enjoy it or else it's not sustainable. I genuinely enjoy it. I like seeing the world like that. I like seeing opportunity and everything. And so you have to hang out in circles with people or content that sees the world in that way and you'll naturally learn from that. Why did you do it? Why did I become an entrepreneur? I became an entrepreneur out of necessity. I just didn't want to not have money as a kid. Honestly, like, I wish I could give you some flowery answer of just like, I want to make this big impact on the world. And I do. I do. That's one reason why I put out content to encourage people to start businesses. But that's not why I started. I started because I just wanted to have a more comfortable life. My secret to success. What is my secret to success? I don't know if I've ever been asked that. Here's the thing. Secrets to success. People have written a lot of books about this and they've spent hundreds of pages describing that. It's answers that we hear all the time. And it's persistence. Just not quitting. You just can't quit. And quitting looks differently to different people. Quitting could look like pivoting. I've started a lot of businesses that started as a T shirt business and ended as a power washing business. I'm exaggerating. But you never finish where you start. So never be afraid to pivot and to adapt as you see things change in the market. You just have to be persistent whether you have a job or whether you own a business, you just can't. It's just not an option. That's the big secret. Other things I could attribute to my success, or, you know, having a spouse or friends that are supportive, there's people that you'll find along the way that give you bad advice. A lot of times those people are giving you advice based on their insecurities or how they feel about themselves. Or maybe they don't want you to succeed more than them. They want you to stay at their same level, which is a natural feeling, right? And so don't take advice from just anyone. Take advice from people that either have more experience in that industry that you're thinking of than you, or. Or take advice from people that you know have nothing to lose if you gain, like your parent. Either of your parents want you to do better. They want you to do better in life than they did, and so you should take their advice. But some random person or a friend at school, just kind of run it through a filter first. How do you recommend getting money to start a business? Believe it or not, you don't need money to start a business. You don't. You need money to start a lot of businesses, certain types of businesses, a restaurant. But anyone in this room could go to the house next door and knock on the door and say, I'd love to wash all of your windows. You clearly have a lot of windows. I charge per window. I'll go do a free quote. You can pay me and I'll be done by this afternoon. You go do a free quote, you say, that's going to be 250 bucks. Okay, here you go. You take that 250 bucks, you go to Home Depot, use 50 of it to buy supplies. You come back, wash the windows, you have $200 profit. And then every job from then on out is profitable. Right? That's not abnormal. Like, you could do that in multiple businesses. You can collect money up front. You could do a service business that requires no hardware or materials at all. You could pull weeds. You don't need money to start that. And so one of my favorite sayings, if I were a tattoo guy, I would get this tattooed on my forehead, is constraints equal creativity. Constraints are good. They're very good. So if you, you know, in Silicon Valley, the mindset is to raise a bunch of money to start a business. Those businesses that have tens of millions of dollars are more likely to fail than a business you start door to door or you start from home because they don't need to be creative. You raise $100 million. Companies are raising tens of billions of dollars now. When you raise that, you don't have to be creative. I don't know what to do. You hire this guy, that guy, this guy. You hire all these people and then it gets out of hand and you don't know where all the money's going, and then it's gone. So it's very, very good to have constraints. I was just telling a story. I went to a concert a month ago, and this band, it was their first time playing in seven years. And I go to the concert and I really wanted a shirt. And the line was so long that the people at the end of the line were missing the actual concert just to buy the shirt. I was like, I really want a shirt. Because it was like their one tour ever. They had three shows. It was a limited edition shirt. It's my favorite band of all time, but I'm not going to miss the show to buy a shirt. And so I thought, okay, I go to the front of the line and I tap a guy on the shoulder and say, these shirts are 35 bucks. Can I Venmo you 50 bucks right now to buy me a large? No problem. So I Venmoed him, he bought it and I went and watched the show. That was a constraint, right? That was a. I had a problem. No one got mad, didn't take him any extra time. He just said two instead of one. I got my shirt and no one else did that. No one else did that. So sometimes we just take things at face value. We see it and like, that's just how it is. That's just the way the world is. But not all the time. Don't take things at face value and you'll be surprised what you come up with. Are you happy with your job? I have the best job ever. Genuinely. I love what I do. I will be talking about business ideas and building businesses for the rest of my life because it feels like retirement. I'll do it different ways for sure. I've gotten a lot smarter about what businesses to not start. A lot of times we think of an idea, we think that will work. So I'm going to do that idea. And that's probably good for the first five years of being an entrepreneur. But after a while, you have to say, that will work. Should I do that? Is that the best use of my time? Or is this business a lot more headache than this other business idea that I have? Because after a while, your problem will be too many ideas. That is a real Problem. And you'll have to pick the one that you think is best. What tips do you have to get a business out of your head and into the real world? Same thing. Sell it before you have it. That's a great question. You have to find demand for it first. It drives me crazy. A lot of times people are like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to build this, I'm going to launch this. If I build it, they will come. Most of the time they don't come. Right. Because strategy is wrong, your marketing's wrong, something's wrong. But there's so many things we can do to test the market, test the demand before ever spending a dollar. I like to go to Facebook Marketplace. Like, if you guys learn Facebook Marketplace, you will be so much better off. That's my big tip. Okay, forget everything I said. Go to your parents and say, I want you to bring me everything that we need to sell. Because everyone has things around the house that they need to sell. Selling is a pain. No one likes to do it. I pay my kids 40% to sell anything that I allow them to sell, but they have to do the whole thing. They take the pictures, they learn how to list it. They can use AI to generate the description I taught them about. You know, put a video first. It will get more traction. Do the market research on pricing, looked at the sold items, be very responsive. And then they have to do the worst thing in the world, which is meet the person at the door and accept money. That's the awkward part. My kids, half of them are introverted, half of them are extroverted. They don't like that part, but they do it. And so if you can learn to sell things on Facebook Marketplace, then you can learn to make money and you can learn how to gauge demand before you. You ever launch a business. Like, we launched a tree trimming business and I posted an ad on Facebook Marketplace for tree trimming services. Before we did anything like we didn't do, I just like, oh, we lost a tree trimming business five minutes later. Hey, can you come to my house and quilt the shop? Hey, can you come? Okay. Yep, we're in business. Let's actually do this. Whereas I could have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying all this equipment, hoping that the demand was there. Do you have employees? Yep. I have like 20 give or take combined across everything I'm working on. And that adds another layer of complexity to business that will be a fun challenge when you get there. These are all the pre submitted questions. Do we have any other fresh questions? Yeah. What is a good way you can kind of make people work with you? Work with you in what way? For you? Or make a business partnership? Like to find a business partner? Okay. That's a whole nother thing. So when it comes to business partners, I could talk for hours about that. I recommend you be an entrepreneur by yourself first and then kind of approach that on your next business or later on. In my opinion, it should be a 5050 partnership only if both people are working in the business side by side, physically, not remote every day. It's their only thing. They don't have jobs, they don't have side hustles. They're both all in. I think 5050 is perfect for that. In any other circumstance, 5050 is a disaster waiting to happen. It should be 90, 10, 80, 20, an investor at an operator, something that's heavily weighted in one direction or the other. But find someone that thinks like you do, but has their weaknesses or your strengths and vice versa, and you're both equally excited about the idea. Maybe you're really good at sales, maybe they're really good at operations. That's going to be your partner. But only 5050 if you're all in it together, side by side, in person. So what is the common factor in all of your businesses, regardless of whether or not they're successful? That's a good question. My businesses, personally, my businesses are marketing heavy operations, light. I am terrible at attention to detail. Like, there could be six of you in here wearing dunce caps and I wouldn't even have noticed. I don't see things right. I don't. Terrible attention to detail. Literally diagnosed adhd. I like. I don't do well in the weeds with operations. So 0 to 1 is like the startup phase. That's what I'm really good at. 1 to 10 is like the running the business phase. I'm really bad at that. So my businesses, I try to get out of the business as soon as I can once it's launched and it shows traction. So that's one commonality. And then.