Ask Feras Anything: From Stuck to Strategy

Welcome to Startup with Feras. Love to have you here. We're spending 2 full hours answering your questions about starting or growing a consulting or service business, and that is what's new in the world of entrepreneur— entrepreneurship this week. If you've been thinking about starting and you're not sure what the next steps are, or you feel stuck, you've taken some steps and now you're at a dead end and you're just not sure what to do next, or you're doing things, you're getting some traction, and you want to have a reality check and you want some real, kind, unfiltered advice, this session is for you. And before we get started, I have a lot of questions that we have collected from the community that I'll be answering. But whichever platform you're on— YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X— you can leave me a comment there. Or if it's something a bit personal you don't want to share publicly, uh, you can DM me. I think I can get those on LinkedIn while I'm on this live stream. But if you email me and I don't get to it today, I will make sure that we will answer your questions on these live streams. I do these episodes once every 2 weeks, every other Thursday at 1 PM Pacific, 4 PM Eastern. So send me that question, I will make sure to answer it for you and help you get on, on this journey, have a, have a, have a more exciting journey, a successful journey, uh, that's something that you have been wanting to do for a long time, this entrepreneurship thing, right? And one other thing that, aside from the questions, um, and the struggles and the challenges that entrepreneurship— entrepreneurs face, I'd love to also hear about your wins, even small wins. If you've been pitching and you're getting a lot of rejections and then something just clicked and people are listening, I'd love to hear that. If you are closing larger deals than, than you had in the past? I'd love to hear about it. So reach out to me whether you're watching or listening live or, or later. I'd love to hear from you again about your small wins and big wins, as well as again, if you're stuck, I'm here to share what I've learned over the years from my own experience, experience from my own, from my own mistakes, and also from the mistakes of other founders that I've coached and helped over the years. All right, so let's jump right into it, and starting with the very, very first question. All right, why do most entrepreneurs return to a 9-to-5 job? Well, a bunch of reasons. Failure rate is very high in entrepreneurship. Depending on, on what stat you read, it could be 95%, 90%, 50% after 5 years. People start a company, they do a side hustle, and then they realize they just don't enjoy what they're doing. All of those factors, including if you look at some of the studies, the number one factor is financial. Typically, you don't find demand for the service that you are offering. You thought people would buy, people not buying. And then also companies run out of money. Other things have to do with mindsets and, and, and being ready to put the time, the effort to just deal with learning so many things that you did not know that you had to learn. You might be great at HR consulting or IT consulting, or maybe you're a financial advisor, or maybe you're in home decor, whatever your profession is, whatever the craft is, and you're very good at it. You didn't go to school or you didn't have experience in learning how to market, how to sell, how to hire, how to manage contractors and employees. a lot to learn, and a lot of people just over— you know, underestimate what's involved, and they burn out, and then they leave. So it could be, again, something to do with the business. It could be something to do with the mindset, and, and people elect to go back to their 9-to-5 job, which at one level, it does provide a bit more security, or at least what I call apparent security because there's no 100%— nothing is 100% guaranteed in life. You could get laid off, you could get fired, the company's gonna go out of business. So even, even a full-time job, it does on the surface provide some level of security. You got a salary every other week, you've got the benefits, you've got the personal time off, you've got the 401 plan. All of that is good bonuses, but again, even that is not guaranteed. So, so, so keep that in mind as you're— if you're debating whether you should go back to a 9-to-5 job or keep going at it. I would say if you're getting some traction, although it might be difficult, if you're working hard and trying different things and you're starting to get some traction, don't quit too soon. All right, question— that was number one. Um, The second question is to do with the mindset as well here. What is the mindset trap that causes founders to give up? Sort of related to what I just said earlier, and I would say if there's just one trap, if there's one mindset trap, it is to do with underestimating what's involved in entrepreneurship. Way, way underestimating what's involved. I always say entrepreneurship is 5 times harder than what, than what most people think. First, because you're building something from scratch, and that just naturally, that's hard. And second, it does require a lot of time, a lot of effort, and that's something maybe you're just not prepared to do because you might have some obligations, you might have other things going on in your life, and that phase, that season in your life is just not the season start a business. And then the other thing is, in terms of underestimation, underestimating the effort is also underestimating what's involved in terms of dealing with rejections, in terms of dealing with, you know, burnout, burnouts, until— in terms of just dealing with failure. You might spend a lot of time developing a marketing campaign, and you put a lot of effort into it, and you worked with a graphic designer and a copywriter to make sure your messages are on brand and, and they resonate with the target audience, and you put some money behind a paid ad campaign and you get zero traction. You get zero, zero, zero lead— no leads. So it does, it does hurt, uh, but the idea here is that, uh, in marketing especially, and that's, that's the area of marketing and sales, that's where most of founders struggle with because most of them come into entrepreneurship without any background in those areas. Some of it is science. Yes, if I do this, I get that. A lot of it is also art, and you have to master that art with time. So, so if you're trying different marketing campaigns, or if you— even outside of sales and marketing, if you've hired a contractor and things didn't work out because you've never hired anyone before, you're learning from that. So So don't give up. Again, at one time, at, at a point on your journey, you might want to pivot, or, or you might just, you know what, say, you know, you might want to call it quits. That is understandable at one point, but I want you to give it your best. Give it your best before you give up, because you have already put the time and effort into it. Might as well double down till you get some traction, and then you can, then you can hopefully grow and scale and get to 7 figures and maybe more. But the next one, and again, if for those of you who are joining, uh, late, late today or later, um, we are covering questions, a lot of questions from the community. And then if you have a question about a specific situation, you can just add it in the comment. And if it's something very personal, very private, feel free to direct message me on LinkedIn or email me and I'll answer those. If I, I think I can, I should be able to check those before the end of this episode, or I can get back to you definitely on the next, on the next episode. The next one, how risky is entrepreneurship really? How risky is entrepreneurship and how should you think about the risk? Well, my friend, entrepreneurship is very risky because again, you're building something from scratch. There's no— others might have done it, but you haven't done it. You can learn from others. You can mitigate the risk. You can, I think, get to your destination faster and with less bruises and with less gray hair if you learn from your own mistakes, you learn from the mistakes of others, you read, you explore, you research. So you can mitigate the risk. You can take calculated risks. that is the way to do it. But risk is inherent in doing something new. That's just the nature of it. And, and while there's risk, there's also, there's also reward. So if you want to build something worthwhile, you have to put some, a whole lot of effort into it. You have to take some risks. And then if you follow a specific blueprint or a roadmap by yourself or with the help of an advisor or mentor, or you just learn from your competitors, from your colleagues, from your peers, you will increase the chances of minimizing these risks and then making it and hopefully making it big. So I do not going to— I'm not going to sugarcoat it. There's a whole lot of risk. That is just inherent to entrepreneurship. Um, smart entrepreneurs do their due diligence, they do their planning, they, they research, and then identify financial risks and how they can mitigate it. They identify external factors around them in their industry, or maybe just global factors around maybe regulations or or general economic shifts, you know, understand the environment that we're living in, and then you take these calculated risks, and then you minimize the chances of you failing or, or just getting hit so hard that you can't get back up. So, so the advice I've heard is— I forgot which book the author kept saying— whatever you do, don't die. Do whatever you can, give it all, give it everything you have, but you want to make sure that you can also get back up after you are hit with a mistake that you make or something that's totally outside of your control from some external factors around this. And if you're new, if you really, if you're not the risk-taking type, start small, you know, do maybe a small project outside of your comfort zone, do something even Totally unrelated to business. Again, don't jump. Don't go skydiving without, you know, getting the training and getting the support. And maybe do a tandem jump. That's legal actually here. Illegal to do it on your own. But don't take something— don't go and bet the whole farm and put the whole house on you know, on get a loan on the house without obviously this, the, the approval of, of your significant other. And, and just, I wanted to get to— I wanted to put all your energy and effort and time and a lot of your resources into something that, that is, that you're building, especially if you're seeing some good signs. But don't, don't just bet the whole farm on, on something that hasn't been validated, hasn't been vetted. and you're not seeing it, uh, you're not seeing signs of, of, of, of, of success. So that is on risk, but it is inherent. On to the next question. Uh, why thinking of entrepreneurship like a marathon can be misleading? Interesting. This is interesting. I don't know, is it misleading to think of entrepreneurship As a marathon? I mean, you are definitely in it for the long term. It's a long game. It's not a sprint. And you definitely— so yeah, I don't know if I agree with this assessment. You got to prepare financially, psychologically, emotionally before you get into a business. Same thing, you know, with a marathon. I'm not a runner, but I hike. I do difficult things. that I like. Running is not one of them. I think I can run, but I just— I like to hike. I like to— obviously I'm into martial arts. I like to be out there in the mountains, in the Rockies, with a bow. I do all that kind of stuff that's hard. It requires a lot of preparation. It requires a lot of planning. You have to do the reps. You have to be out there running a few miles a day, and then maybe running a quarter marathon, and then running a half marathon. Whatever, however you train for a marathon. So that is similar to business, a lot similar to business. So I don't think it's misleading. I think maybe the misleading part is that while we're in it for the long game, for the long term, you have to do some sprinting every once in a while. So it's not like I started a business and I'm waiting for this $20,000 deal because that's just the type of client I'm looking for, and I will just not sell anything till I get this $20,000 project because sort of that's my marathon. No, I want you to sprint. I want you to get some small wins. I want you to be out there talking to people, getting some clients. Maybe they're not your ideal client initially, but over time you're learning, you're getting testimonials or getting referrals, you're practicing how you, how you sell and how you deliver and how you can do accounting and all that good stuff. So, so, so there is some sprinting in business that I advise you to do advise you to do. But yeah, I don't think I totally agree that, that thinking of entrepreneurship like a marathon is, is misleading. And then if you have different thoughts or that, that, that from your experience, I'd love to hear from you. Moving on to the next question, what is the danger of underplanning your business? Oh boy, yeah, overplanning and underplanning, just spoke about that at San Jose State last week. Yeah, last week or the week before, spoke with a group of students on this concept of, on this, you know, one of the misconceptions or one of the issues that could break— make or break your business is you either overplan or underplan. But the question is on underplanning. Well, I don't want you to spend time producing a 50-page or a 60-page business plan or a sales plan or a financial plan. That is not what I do. That's not my recommendation. That's not what worked for me. But in the same breath, I want you to do some research. I want you to do some, some level of planning. Have conversations with potential buyers. Research the competition. Start jotting down observations. Speaking with people who you— whom you'll sell to will reveal a lot of a lot of truth about maybe some assumptions you've made. If you thought people would, would be willing to pay a certain price, but then you spoke with every— with 10 people and researched 5 competitors, and, and everybody is at half the price, you know, maybe you need to reconsider the assumptions you have, or maybe differentiate your business so, uh, so well that people will be willing to pay double the going rate. So So under planning, you could end up having a bunch of wrong assumptions and you could fail, or you could just, you know, die of, of a thousand wounds, you know, depending. Uh, but the more, you know, I want you to think of planning as something you do initially and you iterate, you iterate on it, and then from every experience, especially initially, from every interaction with a potential buyer, from every interaction with a contractor, from speaking with your accountant. Like, all you're learning, you're building these different muscles for, for your business. And you can then have monthly planning sessions, even it's just by, by yourself, or, or, or quarterly planning, and assess what happened in the previous quarter, the previous period, and then learn from that and start projecting for the next period. So basically, if you underplan, depending on the level of underplanning, you could fail very quickly. You could lose everything you've built, or you could lose all the money you've invested and all the time and effort, or it could be maybe you've underplanned a marketing campaign, or maybe you went to the wrong networking event. I mean, that is okay. These things happen. But from a big picture macro view, some level of business planning is required, some level of a whole lot of research with potential customers and, and valid to validate the business idea that you have, to vet the idea and also to, to validate the assumptions. That is, that is, that will make, that will, that will help you get to your destination again, uh, with less bruises. Good. Uh, the next one. Where is the next one? All right. How can you choose the right co-founder or business partner? How can you choose the right co-founder or business partner? I can speak on this topic for probably 5 hours. I did, I did, I think I did a series of live streams last, last year on, on, on partners, and I, I can tell you a upfront that choosing your business partner is the most consequential decision you make in business, second to none. And I speak from experience. In the 7 ventures I've had and some other transactions, some other big things I've done in the past, I've always had business partners and it always worked well for me. And I'm still friends with, with the partners. So Not that we didn't have issues, not that we— it was all smooth sailing. No, we've run— we've had our ups and downs. But when it comes to choosing the right co-founder, you want to look for a few things. One is look for complementary skills. So if you're great in sales and marketing and they're an amazing graphic designers, um, then they do the work, they do the actual graphic design, and they do the, the delivery to the customer, and maybe they do all the client-facing, and you do all the, all the, all the sales and marketing. So that would be from a, from a skills perspective. Also look at, I think, really, really important, it's in terms of having common goals. and compatibility in values. So, so goals— I'll give you an example since we have a whole lot of questions. But in terms of goals, let's say you and a business partner started this venture, and in your mind you want to grow this business and you, you want to retire in this business. Now your business partner might want to just go and grow this business and, and, and then sell it in a couple years. So the goals are, are not aligned. Building a business just to be sold in 2 years is different than building a business that you will retire in, right? So that's in terms of compatibility of goals. Like, you might, you might not have immediate needs of financial resources to draw from the business, maybe just a basic salary. Your partners might be thinking of having a ton of money coming in from the profit, all the profit that you both will have. So he wants to draw, um, some of that profit, and, you know, he deserved it, or she deserved it. On your end, you want to invest every penny of that profit in growing the business. So if you're not on the same page on, on these goals, that will cause serious issues. The other one is— and I probably should wrap this up quickly because again I can spend literally hours talking about this subject, and I can, I can share horror stories when, when in partnership. And the divorce rate in business is higher, unfortunately higher, than the already high divorce rate in society. So, so be very careful when it comes to choosing a business partner. The other part I wanted to mention is, yeah, in terms of values. So values is not just some sort of philosophical thing. No, if, if you are that generous type and you like to share a lot with your, with your employees, maybe they're not. Maybe they're tight-fisted and they don't want to do that. So, or maybe, I mean, you're obviously, you want to make sure you have someone whom you trust. They're reliable, they're dependable, their work ethic is similar to yours. Like, those are really important things. Imagine, I, I have this just one horror story. Young Guy from the East Coast just finished their master's degree and they partnered with someone and they're putting, he's putting 70, 80 hours a week because he has this idea and he thinks it's going to take off and a lot of passion, a lot of energy, they're all in. Their business partner who's supposed to be on the sales and marketing side of things, they're putting 25 to 30 hours a week. And this guy, when I spoke with this guy, he was fuming. He said like, how can this person do this to me? I said, did you all have an— do you have an agreement? They said no. So make sure you have a partnership agreement. And that's another, another topic. But I do, I do have actually— there's again a number of live streams on this topic from last year, and I have a couple videos, I believe, on the business planning and— no, legal and partnership. I have a few videos on choosing, uh, business partners. So, so this person did not have Not only did they not have a partnership agreement, a big no-no, but they didn't even verbally, you know, they didn't have an understanding of what's involved and who's doing what, who's, you know, that we're all in. Like, his partner was doing a full-time job and doing this startup on the side, while my friend, the person I spoke with, he was going all in on this startup. So, so make sure again there's compatibility and goals and values. Shared goals, compatibility in values, complementary skills. And make sure this is all documented in a partnership agreement and an operating agreement. And bring a lawyer that you both trust and have he or she walk you through the different areas that you should cover and document and agree on in a partnership agreement. Hope that that's helped. That's helpful if you're stuck, if you have issues with your— with a business partner that you're already that you're already working with, that's even— it gets tougher to deal, you know, to deal with. But let me know. Don't, don't, don't be— don't hesitate to reach out if you're, uh, if you're having issues with a partner that is, um, that, that you, that you're already working with. And I know this could be very sensitive and confidential. I keep everything confidential. But if you're stuck, I'd love to be able to help and share some, some ideas with you. All right. Let's see, uh, the next one. How does, how does life outside your business impact your ability to succeed? So life outside of business impacting your ability to succeed, my friend, life outside of business will make or break your business as well. It's not just about working hard while you are at work. Um, peace at home means peace at work. Well, peace at home will make work, uh, I don't want to say easy, easier. It will give you a good foundation, a good, a good grounding. But if you're at work, you're spending, you're spending your waking hours chasing leads and delivering and trying to, to make, make a living and, and to provide for the family and, and, and and meet your business goals, whatever these are, you want to become a millionaire, you want to create an amazing culture, those are your goals, right? And you're working really hard towards that. If you come home at night and there's tension and there are arguments, I mean, that's just not going to— you're not going to get a good night's sleep and your next morning is going to be miserable, especially if this is happening a lot. So from a relationship perspective, having, I think, a strong stable relationship makes a huge difference. I think I've heard someone say this is the most important business decision you make is the life partner, is the person you marry, your partner. So that is very true. Personally, I never got my amazingly supportive wife involved in business. She's 100% supportive, 150% supportive, So I keep sort of business at business and home at home. But just being there and having someone to hug at the end of the long day, even without sharing a lot of the details and having them for you and give you a word of encouragement, that is really important. So now if you have a family member or a friend or or someone close to you in your business, it sort of complicates things. And again, I believe I have, I have a video on this in terms of having relatives and friends in, in business. So that, that's, that's, that's from a sort of a personal relationship and, and, and maybe your spouse or your life partner. But also, aside from home and family, in terms of the people that you hang out with I'm not saying you're seeing someone once a month, but people you're always sort of, you know, you're messaging, people you follow on social media, people— the close circle that you are part of, that is also very important. If you're hanging, if you're hanging around with a bunch of people who are— who— where achievement is not something on their mind, they're not achievers and they're just coasting on the long run, this will rub off on you and will have an impact on the way you view the world. If you hang around with a lot of negative people, whether it's online or in real time, that will rub off on you. So be very careful with the people you surround yourself with and with the relationships you have. And then, and then the last point here on this question, how does life outside your, your business impact your ability to succeed? So I talked a lot about people and relationships, but also taking care of yourself. That is physically working out, intellectually reading and learning, emotionally, spiritually, whatever that means to you. Spirituality means different things to different people, whether it's being part of a church or a mosque or a synagogue or a temple or or you believe in mindfulness, whatever works for you, committing some time to unplug from the busyness of business is important because we are, at the end of the day, we're humans and we do have, there are different aspects of us or different parts of us that need different attention, so having, working really hard, My motto: work hard, play hard, give back. So working really hard and supporting this startup that you're in and realizing that vision requires a lot of sacrifice and requires a lot of hard work, a lot of efforts, and a strong mindset, and to have the body and you know, the psychology, the emotionally and psychologically and physically and spiritually, you know, being grounded and having a solid foundation in these areas will only help you perform at your best at work. So it's really important. What you do outside of work does impact what happens at work. So keep that in mind. Let's see the next one. What external force— well, let me put it here on the screen. All right, what external forces, uh, can affect your business plan? And the question here talks about market shifts or tariffs. Tariffs obviously still top of mind all over the news, depending, depending on the day, uh, but, but obviously There are internal factors that impact your likelihood, your chances of succeeding, and there are also external factors. So external factors at times could have zero impact, other times could have a whole lot of impact. So think about when COVID hit. If you had just started a business that required foot traffic. I mean, it was just, you know, you've done all the planning, you've done all the research, you found the right location, and then something totally outside of, outside of your control hits you. You might not be able to survive that wave, right? So that hit, that's one factor. It could be also something in the regulations around you in your industry, whether in healthcare there's HIPAA compliance. I know when we were in digital analytics, there were some— this is back in 2015, 2016, 2017— there's a whole lot of new regulations around data privacy and user privacy. And, and different companies, Apple and Facebook and Google, everyone is treating data, data privacy differently. And then if you had a mobile app, for example, Apple had some guidelines on on prompting users if they wanted to be tracked or not. So these major seismic shifts in the industry had a direct impact on our ability in the industry at the time to collect data. And without data, if you're in the data business, you can't really sell consulting services. So pivoting, and we were well into our 7-figure business at that time, and we were very profitable, so we were able to put some resources around studying data privacy regulations and becoming then, I would say, a thought leader in that space and educating companies on what they can do in this new environment. So that's just an example, probably went too deep on it, but it could be also, again, you mentioned here in the question, it could be tariffs, market shifts, it could be sometimes societal, it could be in a specific domain. It could be something to do with political, it could be government related. If you happen to be a supplier that provides services to the government and there's a government shutdown, guess what? You'll get a letter from the government that your contract is on hold or void. And we were the number one provider to the US government in terms of digital analytics for websites and mobile apps. Back back again in the 2017, 2018, 2019 time time frame, and there there was there was a forgot exactly which year, but there were there was a government shutdown, and we had a whole lot of contract, and and we we got those scary letters that our contracts are now on hold, and I didn't know that was the first time I've seen anything like this, and that we had 40 plus people at that time and salaries to pay, and. and things to take care of. So again, fortunately, we had a solid foundation in terms of good revenue, good profits, good cushion in the bank. And also, we were diversified. We had diversified our revenue streams, so we were not 100% just dependent on government revenue, revenue from government contracts. So these things will happen. Sometimes there's small inconveniences, sometimes there are major, major shifts that could hit our business. And my recommendation is sometimes you cannot predict these things. So, so is to focusing— is to focus on establishing a solid business with solid metrics. You have revenue, you've diversified a little bit. This is again hard to do initially if you're just about to start, but think a part of your planning is to have revenue, profitability, some cushion. Don't hire too aggressively. They're just solid business principles. If you apply and you build a solid business, that will help you. That could mean the difference between you surviving and later thriving or having to shut down the business. So these things do happen, and hopefully you've built a business that will survive some of these storms. But good, very, very good question. All right, moving on. I know we have some, some new folks who just joined. Thank you for tuning in to Startup with Feras here. I, I, I'm answering a bunch of questions that we got from the community, and I'd love to also hear from you. If you are joining live, you can leave, leave a comment in the chat, or if you're joining or listening to this later, you can leave a question in the comment. I will definitely answer your questions. I do this personally. I don't delegate this part of the business. And if it's something very personal, something you don't want to share publicly, maybe you're still working for someone else and you're about to start your own business and you don't want to talk about this publicly, you can direct, you know, you can DM me or send me an email at feras@startupwithferas.com. Feras spelled F-E-R-A-S. And I will keep all that information confidential and I will send you a reply and hopefully help you get unstuck. All right, the next one. Uh, what should you— hold on— what should you do when timing is working against your business? So timing working against your business, I don't know, uh, what's meant by this question. Maybe timing is you're running out of funds, for example, or maybe there's an opportunity to sell, there's a window of opportunity, maybe because of whatever reasons, um, a company or industry has. I don't know. But if you are running out of funds, that's a serious issue. It's one of the top reasons why businesses fail. So if you have some funds and you have some runway, I want you to do things as soon as you realize there's some yellow flag. Yellow flags are obviously before you get red flags. So, so if you have enough money to sustain the business for 6 months, you have to pause. And other— after that, there's revenue is going to drop, or maybe a license that you have to, to sell certain services will expire, or maybe you think there are a bunch of competitors coming in, whatever the case might be, I want you to take this very seriously and start to act on a plan, sort of an emergency plan, like how do I extend this runway? If my runway is for 6— financial runway for 6 months, can I extend it to 12 months? And you have— there's only 2 ways to do it. You either increase the revenue or decrease the cost. the cost, the expenses. So examine your expenses. And I do have actually a live stream that I did on— this is more for building your business and going from a side hustle to a full-time entrepreneur. I talked about a 6-month financial runway. These principles apply here as well. So can I reduce the cost? Maybe I can move if my lease is about to expire. Don't renew the lease. Go to work out of your garage. Do things virtually. I don't know. Cut expenses. That's— find ways to cut expenses. If you have— unfortunately, at times as business owners, we have to ask people to leave. They could be the most amazing, top-performing people, but if there's no revenue, what are you going to do? So be open about it, be transparent, give them as much of a notice as you can, take care of them financially to the extent that you can, They took care of your business, take care of them. Those are all important decisions to make, but if you have to let go of people, again, do it with class, do it in a professional manner, do it with kindness, but you have to make a hard business decision. You have to ask someone to leave, but that will reduce your cost if maybe you can find another revenue stream, and I I think last week or the week before, a couple weeks ago, I did the live stream on, on 7 revenue streams beyond just billing hours and, and project and client work. So look at other revenue streams so that you can increase, you can extend, expand that runway, which will give you a whole lot more. Obviously will help you survive and in the future thrive, but you will— will give you, will give you what you need to do with this timing issue that's not working, you know, for your business. So, so look for ways to increase your revenue, some new revenue streams, and potentially immediately come up with a plan to reduce your costs. Then next questions. Next question: what trap keeps most founders from scaling their business? One trap? I don't know. There are a lot of traps. We talked about the mindset. If you just joined us, I talked the first couple of questions about people leaving entrepreneurship and going back to their 9 to 5 and mindset challenges. So feel free to go back and listen to those questions. But I think if there's just one trap that keeps most founders from scaling, I would say it's delegation, and with that, I would say also thinking that what you have today, what you've built today, and the way you operate, the way you work, will help you, will get you to the next milestone. So let's say you've reached, let's say, half a million dollars in sales, and life is good, and you're netting 30% or more. That's, that's amazing. Congratulations. But what got you to half a million dollars in terms of systems, processes, where you put your time and effort and the resources you have, those will not get you to the next big milestone. You have to upgrade processes and systems, and you have to also retool and help your own people also upgrade their skills and potentially complement them with additional talent. So, so, and why I said delegation earlier, because if you are used to do certain things, let's say you're still involved in sales, and I was, I was that person for the longest time. I learned sales from the ground up. It was painful. But then later, I became pretty good at it, I think, building several companies to 7 figures and later to 8 figures. At least one of them went to 8 figures. So at one point, if we wanted to grow our sales and grow our team and focus on a few strategic accounts where they want me in some of those meetings, it just could not— it was not humanly possible to do all of that and grow. Because— and I work hard, I work very hard, I still work very hard. My wife thinks I'm nuts. Why is he working so hard? I like to build, I like to grow, I like to help others. It's not about the money. Money is important, but it's not all about the money. I digress back to this. So, so whatever got you there in terms of where you put your time and effort, that can't sustain, that, that can't just scale. So you have to bring other people who will do the things that you, that you used to do, and those qualified individuals will do certain things, take certain things off, off of your plate so you can focus on the next strategic initiative, on the next revenue stream, on the next significant client relationship that you want to establish. So So you have to think of delegation, and I believe here the way I have those questions organized, we have a few questions on delegation here coming up. If you're doing everything, that's totally okay initially. At one point you start, you have to, if you want to scale, if you want to grow, you have to find specific tasks and package them, document them, and then have someone else do them on your behalf. There's just no other way to scale. Well, the only other way, if you read and follow that methodology, that what the Million Dollar Consultant book I read maybe 20 years ago, you can be sort of people hire you and you provide this amazing consulting and you charge, you know, $50,000. I mean, that's sort of very, very, very, very unlikely for most of us. Very few of us could do that. But I would say for the 99.9999% of us, you get to scale in services and in consulting, you got to hire people, you got to build processes and systems that will scale with you. All right, so another question here around the concept, the topic of delegation. How did I realize, or how do I realize, I guess, I was wasting time on the wrong tasks? I don't know, you tell me. Uh, I mean, if you're— here's how I would think about it. You, even as a very small business, if you should have goals, yearly goals, quarterly goals, you know, monthly goals. So if you are meeting your goals— I want to get 100 leads, I want to finish, I want to complete my new website, I want to write content, share my thoughts on certain things on LinkedIn twice a week, whatever the goals are. If you are making progress and you are meeting 80, 90% of these goals and you're getting, you're getting the expected results, you're getting leads, you're getting awareness, you're getting more followers, you're— people praise your new website, then you're not doing anything wrong. Right? But if you have goals and they're aggressive but at the same time achievable goals, and all the, all the actions you're doing are not leading to results, and you're getting farther away from the goals, or you're not getting nearer to the goals, then yeah, you have to re-examine these tasks. I, I, I can't tell what specific tasks you have to re-examine, but you have to, to, you have to set some targets. We used to do— later we learned about OKRs, objectives and key results. I mean, there are a lot of frameworks out there for you to— for goal settings, uh, for goal, for goal, goal setting. But I, I liked OKRs, still like it. You put objectives and then key results, and we used to break it down at the company level, at the individual level. So it's— and then we would review it at the end of every month and readjust, realign. And it's really easy to track. It could be a Google Sheet. You don't need any fancy software initially. So, so benchmark against a plan, against targets, and see how you're— if you're making progress or not. And if you're not making progress, examine why and maybe put, put effort and time in other tasks that you haven't, you haven't been doing, and avoid the tasks that are not helping you come closer to your goals, get closer to your goals. All right, next one. How much money How much money do founders lose by doing low-value tasks themselves? You lose a lot of money, my friend. It's the potential, the opportunity. So again, if you're just starting out, don't delegate. Learn. I want you to learn every aspect of the business. Learn enough so you can hire, so you can discern whom to hire to help you in these areas. Accounting and legal, they're different. Hire an accountant, a bookkeeper, hire a lawyer from day one, trust me. You don't need a lot of their hours, but don't go cheap on attorneys or on accountants, that's really important, but aside from that, in terms of losing, how much do founders lose in terms of potentially money? you know, potential opportunities, it depends. But I'll give you an example. If you— let's say you sell your hourly rate, let's say at $150 an hour, whether it's content writing, whether it's financial advice, whether it's HR consulting, whether it's— you name it, any consulting business, right? You're a management consultant, leadership consultant, communication consultant. If you— let's say your hourly is at $150 and you're doing everything yourself. And you have some revenue and you have obviously profit now. So if you're still doing, uh, uploading, uh, you're still writing the newsletter and you're still going into Constant Contact or HubSpot or Mailchimp, whatever system you use, and you're still doing this yourself, I mean, weigh that against, against having someone else do it for you. I still want you as, as a As the consultant, as the subject matter expert, I still want you to come with the ideas, with the authentic stories, with your perspective on things to be in your content on your LinkedIn profile or in your newsletter. I want you to do that, but there's a lot of— there's a mechanical part of getting a newsletter out. Can I have someone do that on my behalf and maybe they charge me $25 an hour? So, so the 2 hours you spent to get this newsletter out, and it gets you frustrated because there are issues with the subject line didn't work out and the personalization did not work out— instead of you spending 2 hours, if you have someone do it for you, they charge you $25 an hour, that's $50. That's the cost of them doing this work for you, but you freed up 2 hours that you can either sell, market, grow the business, or deliver and get that $150 an hour back. So that's the cost. Now you can't, again, initially you might not have the cash and maybe there's not a whole lot of things to delegate. I want you to do everything on your own initially, but over time as you start to have some revenue or if you have some, you've set aside a budget for the business, you can start initially by having someone do some of this legwork, some of the mechanical work, But I want to make sure you're spending your time out there talking to people, listening to potential buyers, understanding the competitors and their strategies, assessing what they're doing, how they're getting customers, delivering to customers, looking for candidates that will be your first employee or second employee, you know, your first hire or second hire, publishing content, speaking at conferences, at events, whatever it is that will help you get exposure, get customers, and also, you know, delivering to those customers. So, so that's what you want to focus your time on. I think a lot of the founders get stuck in doing things that they used to do a year ago, and now they have some revenue, they have some profitability, but they're not spending this wisely. Sort of penny-wise, dollar-foolish. I think that would be— that would apply here. Trust me, done all of that. Next question. What is the 3-step founder schedule? Oh, schedule. The 3-step founder schedule or focus optimizer, and how does it work? So this is something you're referring to from a live stream where I introduced the founder focus optimizer. It's actually a spreadsheet. And there's a process behind it, and it's to do with delegation. But the idea here is— and, and I will include the link to this, the Founder Focus Optimizer, in the, in the description, but you can also find it on the channel— it's basically to do with delegation and how most founders, not— they're not sure what to delegate, how to delegate. And I came up with this process where for, for 2-3 weeks, just jot down the 10 things you do every day. And in the spreadsheet, I have categories. It could be in finance, it could be in delivery and sales and marketing, right? So list all these. You might have a list of 30, 40 rows. And then there's a dropdown. I want you, for every task, there are 4 categories: things I'm good at and I should be doing, things I'm, I'm good at I shouldn't be doing, and then things I'm not good at and I still should be doing, and then things I'm not good at and I shouldn't be doing. So hopefully you're still following me here, but on the things that you're not good at and you shouldn't be doing, you gotta outsource this right away. If you have someone in-house who can help you, or you can find a contractor, a freelancer who can help you with that. But if, if you go through this process for a couple of weeks, you'll come up with again things that you should not be doing, and then there's specific plan of action for those. And then things you should be doing, and there's specific plan of action for that. So it's, it's a thing that you don't have to do this every day or every week. I think once, maybe once a quarter, once every 6 months, go through this exercise, and that will help you identify things, especially if you're starting to, you're starting to have some profit, you have some, some, some revenue flowing. Delegating, uh, these things that you're just not good at but you're still doing. Just delegate that. Don't do any bookkeeping work. Trust me, you'll thank me. You'll thank me profusely in the future if you delegate and outsource your accounting to a, a knowledgeable bookkeeper who can help you just manage the accounting where you can focus on delivery and sales and Marketing. Okay, so that's that's the Founder Focus Optimizer. I'll include a link to it in the description after this live stream. All right, the next one related to the topic here: What tasks should a founder actually be doing as CEO? You should do the CEO task. Depends depends on the phase, the phase of the business you're in. If you're a day one week 1, month 1 CEO, you got to do everything. When we were in our very, very first office in Santa Clara, and we actually shared offices, we were cheap. Well, I didn't have money, um, so we, we had, we had a friend, my, my CPA had a small office and had an extra room, so we rented, subleased that, that one room. And at the end of it, you know, on, in the day Friday, I picked up the garbage can and threw it, you know, threw the garbage out. So I was a CEO. On my business card, I was a CEO, principal consultant. So I was going and speaking with clients, and then Friday night, I was throwing out the garbage. That's— and everything in between. And then I had a business partner, and and you know he was doing certain things. I was doing certain things, but we did everything that that was required. Over time, you find people to do certain things for you. So that one, I think the short answer to this is for every phase of your business, there are priorities for you as a CEO. Identifying those priorities. And then focusing the majority of your time on those priorities is what you should be doing as a CEO, as a founder. So if let's say your business is doing well and you've identified a new market or maybe a new service line or some new initiative that requires some funding and you need to raise some money from friends, family, friends, or maybe investors, or maybe just going and getting a loan from SBA, whatever the case might be, one of your priorities in that phase is to raise money, and if you're focused, so that means you should be spending X amount of hours a day on that very, very important priority of raising money for the business. Like once you raise that money, that priority then should not be on your list. The next priority would be, what do I do with the money that I've raised now? I got to deliver, right? So look at it again. These things you don't do every day, every week, but I would say on a monthly basis, definitely on a quarterly basis, do an assessment. Use my Founder Focus Optimizer and just assess where you are. What is it that you have to be focused on? And then prioritize the work accordingly. That is what the CEO role is. Other things can be delegated, right? Again, initially, for those of you who are joining, and I believe we have some new folks who have joined us, thank you for tuning in. We're answering questions from the community. If you have a burning question or something, just you're not sure, you want to validate an idea, you want to have a reality check, you're stuck, you're not sure what to do, put it in the comment. Hopefully it'll come through to me from any of the platforms that we're streaming through, and I will definitely answer that. And if I don't get get to it today, if you're listening later, or if you're just not in the mood of writing the question now, do add a comment or email me, feras@startupwithferas.com, and I will make sure I'll get back to you. So I lost my train of thought. Yeah, yes, so yeah, so what's important for you as a CEO is what the need of the time, like what is the priority for this time? And if you're just starting out, the number one thing is Don't spend weeks developing a business plan and weeks developing your logo and weeks developing your financial projections. Spend some time on it, as we said earlier, but then you have to be— the number one thing, the number one thing, you have to be out there knocking on doors. You have to be hitting the pavement. You have to be listening to the potential buyers. Don't hide, don't hide behind a computer screen. This is not advice for Gen Zers or other generations. It's for all of us founders and entrepreneurs. We have to be out there networking, building relationships, establishing, listening to potential buyers, starting those conversations, and then over time, that's what will lead to business. That's what will lead to sales. Too much planning, doing things that are not a priority for this phase of the business will not help you grow. Great. The next question, still on the topic of entrepreneur— on delegation. All right. What should you do if you can't afford to delegate yet? Work harder to make some money and some profit so you can delegate. And you can do this, I mean, I say this half jokingly, half seriously, like, okay, to delegate, you have to either pay someone, maybe you can get an intern. You can go to a local business school, local college or university, a bunch of these smart kids, they want to get an internship on their resume. They're willing to intern at no, you know, for free. I'm not saying you take advantage of that, but it's free, you know, free labor. Make use of it. As you make more money, pay these people. They helped you, right? But if you don't have money, that's okay. They get— they get that— they get the resume, they get a reference letter from you. That's, that's, that's very valuable. So find ways to get someone to help. If you are thinking of having a business partner, and I covered business partnerships earlier, potentially you can have someone with you where they can do more work for you and, and you're not paying them. They're not— they're part of the business now. They're a business partner. Potentially you can have a family member who could help you a little bit. Again, with a lot of these relationships, make sure the expectations are clear. You know, I can't afford to pay you. I will not pay you. You're helping me out now. I will help you out in the future. So make sure the expectations are clear. But there are, there are ways for you to get help Um, from within the community that you surround yourself with. But what I said earlier, I think, still is still valid. You know, bite the bullet, work a bit harder, make some revenue, make some profit, and then take some of that and invest in the business. Get someone to help you with some of this mechanical work that will free up your time and will give you some mental, uh, the space you need. You need a bit of mental space to think about growing the business. You cannot be in the business 24/7. It's not about burning out, it's about you need time to think. You need to— you need a lot of time to do things, and you need time to think. And you need to have that mental space where you can invest, where you could— you need to have that mental space where you can think of this new initiative, think about potential strategic partnerships, think about a potential employee, think about a potential business partner, a supplier, this big customer that you're going after. How do I creatively get to meet their decision maker at this next event? So you need that mental space, and delegation will give you, will allow you that opportunity. All right. I think we've covered delegation a lot. So Let's see, what's the next question here? Okay, what is the number one reason entrepreneurs don't make money early on? They're not selling. It took me 7 years— uh, 7 weeks, sorry, 7 weeks. It took me 7 weeks to close our first deal. I had no idea how to pitch, how to price, how to present, how to answer and address rejections. This part of it, just, it's part of entrepreneurship. So a lot of entrepreneurs, well, there are a lot of, there is a high failure rate. I think some of it is due to external factors. Some of it is due to unpreparedness, if I want to be 100% honest here. So people lose money because you're not doing the right things. You're not doing what is required. And you're not sticking to it and sticking with it. So, so first day— I've said this story many times— first day we went out to sell websites to small business owners, this is back in 2003, 5 rejections. 5 rejections. It was devastating. I, I thought I'm going to quit. I, I thought I was going to quit and this is just not for me. But then my business partner and I We licked our wounds and collected our energy and said, you know what? Here are the 7 or 8 or 9 rejections we got. Here's how we will address them in our next pitches. So it helped to have a business partner at the time. You need someone's shoulder to cry on. And then we went out there and ironically enough, the first sale was a restaurant, right? So So entrepreneurs struggle with making money because it is not easy. It's hard. When you— for those of you listening, taking notes, hopefully you are a subscriber to our newsletter. You're getting the tips, the strategies. You are learning about entrepreneurship. You are learning from my mistakes and the mistakes of others. And that will help you get to your destination faster and with less bruises, as I always say, and with less gray hair. And if you notice, I didn't say you'll get to your destination without any bruises or without any gray hair. It's still— it's part of entrepreneurship that the graph from where you are today to success, and again, everyone defines success differently, and being financially independent is one of those successes. Getting there is not a straight line. It's never a straight line. There are a lot of ups and downs, detours, dead ends. That's just part of the journey. So my goal here is to help you get there and navigate through this journey, not, not as a guru who will tell you exactly what to do, but more of as a guide, as someone who's done it for a few times, fortunate to be able to have done it a few times, and really sharing with you a blueprint or a map to help you navigate your way to your destination. Imagine just doing— going on a hike in the Rockies and you don't have a map and GPS. This is before the GPS days, right? You might not survive, especially if you're not prepared. I had a whole post on this on LinkedIn about preparedness actually after my recent trip to the Rockies, so that's still fresh on my mind. So yeah, That is about— it's all about going at it, working hard, learning sales, learning marketing, getting back on your feet after you get hit from all directions. It's just part of the journey, part of what will make you stronger, and part of what will help you. All this stuff will become easier after you do the reps. It's just part of the journey. Okay, next question. What should you do? No, sorry. Oops. Here. Am I building a service nobody wants? I don't know. Are you building a service nobody wants? I mean, if that's the question, then you have to examine. Sorry, let me just make sure. Yeah, yeah. Got it here. It's on the screen. Have you talked to people who? Who are the likely buyers. You know, we have this in marketing. We talk about persona, avatar, your target audience. When you sat down to come up with this business idea of yours, let's say you want to provide environmentally friendly something, right? Sustainable something you want to do, or you want to do financial advice, you want to set up a business as a financial advisor for those who are close to retiring, or maybe for the new graduates, whatever that business where you have skills and you have experience and expertise, have you spent the time to understand the pain points of your target audience, of your potential buyers. If you— and I have this 10+5 vetting worksheet, 10+5 rule: talk to 10 potential buyers and, and research 5 competitors. And at the end of this exercise, you'll have a clear picture on what the needs are in the market and then what some of the market conditions— that's from the competitors, right? So, so if, if nobody's buying your service, re-examine why. Reassess. Is it pricing? Is it— I mean, there are things not everyone you speak with will buy from you. That's just, that's just sales. You bring the best salespeople, you can have the best product or the best service solving the, the specific need that the buyer is looking for at the right price point but, and you've done an amazing job in pitching, but timing is not right, or if you're selling to businesses, B2B, in a B2B environment, there could be some internal politics, like everybody loved you except this one, except everyone just loved your pitch, loved your personality, loved your service, but this one person who's close To the decision maker, saying that they're putting doubt in in this assessment of you, of you, of your services, for whatever reason, because they don't like the guy or the gal that brought who brought you into the company. They have grudges. Who knows, right? Sometimes things are outside of your control. So so assuming so so my point is not like the best salespeople. Don't close at 50% close rate. Like, you talk— I don't know, depending on the industry, depending on what you're selling, it could be a 10%, uh, close rate, uh, conversion rate. You talk to 10 qualified leads, you end up selling to 10 or 20 or 30%, depending on a lot of factors. But no one is sending to 100 people, 100% of the people they talk to. No one does that. So part of it is that's the nature of sales, but you're establishing relationships. You're building connections. These people that did not— who did not buy from you, now if you've left a positive impression on them, you were professional, you solved the problem, you presented well, you showed up on time, you followed up, they will remember you when budget opens up. When they move on to another company and they need your service, they'll call you needing your service. So, so you do all these things. All these things I mentioned will help you improve your conversion rate from leads to sales, but still some people will not buy from you, so don't beat yourself over that too much if no one— not everyone is buying from you, that's just the nature of the beast, but if no one is buying, no one is showing interest, you have to re-examine what you're doing. Again, it could be skill, you got to upgrade your skills, you got to learn how to pitch better, how to listen better, How to package better, be professional, be responsive. But if you're doing all of that and still no one is buying, then I— my guess would be, based on the little information I know I have, is that you need to do— go back to the drawing board and do a bit of what fancy word— market research. Basically talk to people, assess the competitors, look at what you— what will make you different, your unique value proposition, UVP. What will make you stand out? Is it pricing? Is it responsiveness? Is it the quality of the deliverable? Is it your charming personality? Whatever the case might be, you have to, you have to re-examine that and make sure people are— it's a viable idea. Because ideas are a dime a dozen, but not every idea people are willing to pay their hard-earned dollars pay you for. So Examine that. Next one. I think we have a comment. Let me let me pause on the other question and see the comment. This is from Fareed. Fareed, thank you for joining. He's on. Fareed's on next. How do you maintain focus instead? Let me put this on the screen here. Yep. How do you maintain focus instead of building twelve startups in twelve months? Well, my friend, I don't know who's building 12 startups in 12 months. On YouTube, a lot of people claim they are. That's not reality. I mean, if you're a venture capitalist and you might be funding a lot of startups, if you're an investor and you're vetting ideas and investing in companies, yeah, you could do 12 startups in 12 months, but it just does not work from What I've seen. What I think, if the question, you might be just exaggerating a little bit. I think the focus here is if you have a lot of opportunities, if you have— I spoke with a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs. They have a lot of competing ideas. One person I spoke with last year, I think, or yeah, forgot exactly when, they had 3 ideas and they love all 3 ideas and they have skills actually to do all these 3 ideas. And my— and I think I did a case study on this— my recommendation to them was focus on one thing. Focus on one thing, the one that where there's larger, larger market for it, where you have more skills for. Get this off the ground. And, and he had— he had potential business partners and all of these ideas. I said, get one off the ground, and potentially you could unplug from that, or maybe only a lot— only spend 10, 20% of your time on that and then build the next one. But trying to do, chasing— the man who's chasing 2 rabbits ends up with none. I think there's that saying. So, so I think pursuing a lot of ideas will not get you anywhere. You gotta, you gotta focus. You gotta put— there's just— it's so hard. It's so easy to set up a company and get your LLC, but to build something and build something big from the ground up is not easy. So it does require resources, financial resources, time, effort, focus, you know, passion, mental space. So doing a lot of things in parallel, I don't think it is— it's a good long-term strategy. You can vet different ideas. You can assess these, you know, if you have different business partners. But I would say focus on one, get it off the ground, then move on to the next thing, then on to the next thing. Hope this helps. All right, back to the question, the other questions. But for those of you who are joining, joining now, if you have a specific question, a comment, leave it in the comments and I will— in the chats— and then I will bring it up here on screen and answer it. So my building service— oh yeah, okay, the next one is right here. Why can guessing Sorry, why can, why can guessing about issues kill a new business? So guessing, yeah, um, I mean, you make assumptions in business. You have data, you can do some research on Google, talk to people, as I said earlier. You can, you can research competitors, you know, we talked about that a few times already. Um, but it shouldn't be like, okay, pull it out of thin air. I think I want to do— I'm good with people, so let me do an HR consulting agency. Or yeah, I'm good with numbers, I want to be a bookkeeper. Like, it doesn't work that way. Or I think, I think people need help with, with AI. Okay, we know that. Like, what are you going to do with AI? Are you going to help people set up a process and a system and a QA mechanism for producing content that is AI-generated, for example. You can, you can have— I'm certain this is a business opportunity now because companies are using AI. Some people, some companies are using AI blindly. I think you can come in as a consultant and, and help in those areas. Not even— you don't even have to be a programmer. But so, so guessing, I think if we mean, um, you're not doing your research, you're not doing any any vetting. You're not out there speaking with potential customers. You know, I guess people would buy this. I guess people would do that. I guess this is my audience. I guess this is how I want to communicate with them. I guess I should be on Instagram and TikTok and on Facebook. You know, all that guessing. You know, I guess the cost of running a Google ad will be $500 a month. You should not be guessing any of the above. You should do some research on the paid ads. You can go and research and see how much it's going to cost you per click and put a formula. I'm going to spend $1,000 a month, I'm going to get 100 clicks, and then of those I'm going to get probably 2 leads. I mean, that is— yes, you're making assumptions, but there's— this is based on data you've found from, from just running things, from asking around and researching on Google or on ChatGPT. So, um, we do make We do have, you know, gut feelings. We do, we have like a gut feel about something. We make assumptions. That's totally okay. That's part of business, but I want you to the extent that you can do some research, not spending weeks researching one thing, but iterate on this, talk to people, research online, try it out, and then build on it. The next question. All right, and we have about 45 minutes more to go on the— on here. So again, for those of you who are listening in live or tuning in later, leave, leave a comment in the chat or, or, um, or message me if it's something very personal you don't want to talk about it publicly. I'll be more than happy to address. How long is waiting too long to launch your business? I love this one. How long is too long? Most people wait too long before they launch. You know, perfection is the enemy of progress. It's good to try to be perfect and want to make the service better, the delivery better, the packaging better. Of course, 100%. But if you have an idea, I'll give you this long equation. If you have an idea, And people you've talked to said yes, they would buy from you, and you're really energized to have your own business, and you've— you just— it's just the pain of not starting a business is higher, is high, because you're just sick and tired of this 9 to 5. You're sick and tired of being— of having a boss. You want to be your own boss. You're sick and tired of maintaining a certain income level and you want to have the potential of, um, uncapped potential? If there's a lot of yeses to these, these questions I'm pos— I'm posing, um, it is you've waited too long. So, so, so you have to really examine your, your preparedness, your readiness. I don't want you to jump Off a plane without a parachute. I jumped off a plane with a parachute, and it was—it was—I didn't enjoy it till till later. So I know the feeling, but I want you to—that's that's when I was young, young and stupid. Nothing against jumping parachuting. Lovely. I wouldn't do it again, but. But if lost my train of thought here, yes, yes. So so so I want you to do some planning. As I said, I've been saying this whole this whole episode, and then go out there. Even if you haven't left your job yet, even if you haven't started a side hustle, just jot down five people. If you don't want to talk to ten, three people. Just go and ask them. I'm thinking of this. Are you buying the service today? How much are you paying for it? What are the issues with these vendors that are selling this business, right? So if you're getting yes, yes, yes, at this point, once you've done this initial phase of vetting the idea and some of that research, it's really, it's all on you at this point. Like if there's a viable business idea, viable mean you're solving problems that people are willing to pay for, If you have a viable idea, then it's all you. And not sugarcoating, I'm, I'm not judging, I'm not being harsh. I, I, at this, at this time and age and this gray hair, I don't sugarcoat. I— it's a disservice to the community and the people who, who I engage with. So if, if there's a viable idea, it's all on you. Now, now you might tell me this is not the right time for me to start a business because I am taking care of my aging parents, or my wife is about to deliver and I have to be there, or my spouse is about to get a promotion, my husband's about to get a promotion, or I'm about to get a promotion and we have 2 kids at home, or whatever, you know, life throws at us, good or bad. We might be just too busy to allocate 50, 60, 70 hours a week for this new company. So yes, if you tell me I only have 20 hours a week and I want to go full-time with this, with this, I only have 20 hours a week because of these other personal obligations, this is not the time to start a business. But if you have a viable idea and you have time and you've done some financial planning, that runway I talked about, then every day you're not taking the leap, you're delaying that potential of this uncapped revenue, uncapped income, of building a company of your own, of hiring the people that you'd enjoy working with, of building an amazing culture, a legacy after years, after maybe you grow that business and sell it, people still sing your praises because you took care of them. If any of these things are important to you and you're not taking the steps, to start that business, you're delaying, you're delaying the outcome. So, so that's a long answer, uh, for this short question. All right, next one. And probably I have, I have still 15, 20 more, so I gotta go faster. Should you turn down clients early on in your business? Short answer is yes, turn down clients early in business if they So there's a yes and there's a no answer. So, um, let me, let me, let me back up, back up, back up. Uh, do not turn down clients early, early on in your business unless it's a type of client that you've decided, you maybe and your business partners, not to do business with. So for example, again, this is a bit subjective. That's okay. You're the business owner. You're the boss. You decide what you want to do. We, my business partner and I decided not to take on any business in a few industries. It was pornography, gambling, and tobacco, uh, and a couple other things. So, so if you got business from these companies or industries that you, for whatever reason— moral, religious, whatever, whatever reason— um, environment, the universe. If you decided not to take business from, from those type of industries, yes, stick to your values, don't do it. Other than that, do not turn down clients early on. I'm saying early on, like the first maybe 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 clients. You need the reps. Profit is not the goal early on. The goal early on is to get traction. To know how to pitch, how to sell, how to send a proposal, how to follow up, how to close that deal, how to deliver on that deal, on that project that you sold, how to get a testimonial from that client, how to get referral from that— a referral from that client, how to get the next client, how to do things more efficiently. So initially, the goal is not to be very, very even profitable. Losing a little bit of money up front on a project, it's okay. Because you're still figuring things out. But after that, I don't know, depending on the industry, depending on your sales cycle, but after a few clients, you can definitely— after you start to generate revenue and you have some profitability, you definitely should switch that mindset completely the opposite. You want to be more picky, you want to be more selective in what leads you go after, what clients you work with. You bring a client that's going to drive— let's say you have a team now of 4 or 5 people where you're out selling and your team has to deliver it and has to deal with these clients. You bring in a jerk as a client and they'll drive your team nuts. That's not good for you, for the company, for your team members. It's going to drive them nuts. It's going to drive them to leave you, and then you're stuck with that jerk of a client. So it happens. So initially, I'm not making this up. So initially, yes, bend over backwards for the clients, even if they're jerks. You got to build thick skin. It's just part of— that's my approach. That's what I had to do. That's what worked for me. But later, as you become more established, you can be more choosy, more selective. So that is— these are my thoughts on this one. The next question. All right. I feel like I'm stuck in my comfort zone and it's limiting my growth. Okay, you're acknowledging certain things. What do you recommend I do to get out of this mode? So you're stuck in your comfort zone and it's limiting your growth. That's, that's an accurate statement. What, what do you do? To get out of this mode. Well, you know, part of part part of entrepreneurship is is doing hard work and doing difficult things. And when we are in our comfort zone, and unfortunately, societally societally today, you know, you pick up pick up the phone and. get whatever you want delivered to your house. Very convenient, right? Um, if you have the means, you can go buy whatever you want. Things are easy for us. Easier, easier. I know some of us are, are going through a lot of challenges. Maybe that you're having to do 2 or 3 jobs to just make ends meet. I get it, trust me. I washed dishes, I struggled. I hear you. Um, but But in— for some of us, things are— and you said, you know, you're in this comfort zone. Maybe you have a salary, maybe, maybe you're, you know, you have a good job and you want to push yourself. So I think it starts with doing difficult things. And you can start, I would say, at the personal level. Doesn't have to be— doesn't have to do anything with business, but build that muscle of doing hard things. Maybe it's a hobby that requires you to excel yourself. Maybe for me in martial arts, taking these hard falls when I started was really hard. It's still hard. Now you get used to it. But early on, stepping on the mat, that first stepping on the mat and be willing to spar with someone and someone throwing you, as my— one of our senseis used to say, they introduce you to the mat. And, and being comfortable, um, with anxiety, with fear, with concern, being okay being tossed around the mat. That's not easy. That's difficult work. But this is again in martial arts. If, if martial arts is not your cup of tea, find something that is difficult to do, that's hard to do, and do it gradually. Build that muscle. It could be reading. You just don't read Make it a goal to finish a book a month, maybe a book every 2 weeks, maybe a book a week later, um, as you build that muscle. Maybe it's hard for you to start a conversation. Learn about it and then put yourself out there in situations where you can start conversations. You go to a networking event or one of those business matching, business dating events, right? So, so find— to get out of your comfort zone, you want to be willing— first you have to recognize that you're in a comfort zone and From the question, it sounds like you have recognized that. Next is, how do I get out of it? It's taking these steps, small steps, and take on harder things. So, and I would say do it outside of work. And then when it comes to the business, can I present to people? Find an opportunity to present to people. If presenting to people and speaking publicly is is hard, and it is the number one fear in the US after death. People don't want to speak publicly. Start doing it at a very small scale. So that exposure, exposure therapy, um, you know, you could do things suddenly, go and speak to 100 people, or you can just do it gradually, right? So, so find things that are difficult for you and do some of them and build those muscles. And any habit, any sort of mindset shift Anything that we build internally, emotionally, psychologically, mindset-wise, all of that translates to life, work. It's all the same because it's us, right? So whatever we do outside of work from a habit-building perspective, from a mindset perspective, is going to help us at work as well. But let me know. I'm hoping that you'll find ways, opportunities for you to get out of that comfort zone, because without getting out of your comfort zone, we're just, you know, it's hard to make progress, it's hard to grow. So, so, so do, um, do that and let me know how it goes. All right, the next question, uh, what is the cost of dismissing advice and data? Depends, depends on the type of advice you're missing, you're dismissing, and the type of data you're dismissing. If you're not getting any sales, zero sales, and you're ignoring that data, you're gonna run out of business. No sales, no revenue, no business. Um, I mean, advice is a bit different, but I think you want to use data, you want to use advice, and I would say, I always say that only listen to people who have been to where you want to go. It's one of our Black Belt Startup principles. Only listen to those who have been to where you want to go, because a lot of people have opinions. Everybody has an opinion, and there's a non-family-friendly way of describing that I'll skip for now, but everybody has opinions. And for entrepreneurs, I tell you, do not take advice about entrepreneurship— for entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs, do not take advice from those who haven't done entrepreneurship. You can take their advice about other things in life, but you have to, you have to, like, if you haven't gone through starting a business and failing and getting rejections and having issues with your partners and with employees and dealing with that, like, there's just no way that you can have a solid, relevant piece of advice to someone who's looking for that advice. So, so be very careful with where you're getting the advice from, whether it's some— whether it's a person or whether it is someone you read online on YouTube or you follow on social media. You're not— again, you're not looking for a guru. You're not looking for someone to tell you exactly what to do. It's your journey. You have to take the steps. You have to go through the process. But you want someone to share with you a blueprint, a roadmap, a map that will help you navigate things. And if they haven't gone through a similar terrain, the same terrain or a similar terrain, then they really can be of help. So, and then if they happen— I think it was Adam Grant in his book Hidden Potential, he said, I think he said that if I'm not mistaken— if they happen to have that subject matter expertise and they know you and they care for you, those would be the best advisors. So, so, so Because not every best practice, not every piece of advice is applicable to you, and you learn that over time. It's very important to get best practices and advice, but sometimes that advice is not applicable to this phase of the business or this situation that you're in, so be careful there. All right, we're 30 minutes away from wrapping up the session, so let me go through the next 18 or so questions. All right. Sometimes I blame too many things instead of taking action. How can I improve on this? Blaming too many things. Well, uh, I mean, blaming, you know, regret, you know, there's, there's— I mean, if you constantly, you know, blaming others Like this guy who's driving around and he's flipping this person off and he's cussing this other person like throughout the day, you know, he's like, he's, he's, he cussed 20 people on his way to work. Well, maybe it's not them, maybe it's you. So I mean, blaming in general is not another good thing, but I think it's important to assess. It's important to To understand like what led to certain things, I think doing in business we talk about doing a postmortem and like an RCA, a root cause assessment of what led to a failure or to a problem or to a to a negative interaction with a client. Like it's important to do the assessment, but the mindset is not let me find who did it and it's on them and and they're a bunch. idiots and jerks and they don't know anything. I mean, that's the goal of this exercise would be, should be to assess what happened, what led to it, we learn from it so we don't do it again. And I used to say that and still say it in our companies, always when issues come up, be hard on the issue itself and soft, hard on issues, soft on people. It's really important. Because someone could have made a huge mistake. Now, assuming this is not like a repeated mistake and they've done it and they're careless, and assuming that's not the case, but people make mistakes. We all make mistakes. So, so understand what happened, what led to it. Was it lack of education, lack of attention? Was it they were multitasking? They, they were overworked, they're burnt out, this stuff at home. Assess what happened, what led to it, and then create an environment so it won't happen again. So, so that's, you know, Jim Collins said When as a leader and as a founder or as an aspiring entrepreneur, you're a leader at home, you're a leader at work, you're a leader. We are leaders in different capacities. When something goes well, look outside, look out the window, meaning assign credit, give credit to others. They helped you along the way. And when something goes bad, look into the mirror, into the mirror. So Did we lose connection? No. When some— I think we're good. Yeah, I thought we lost connection. Oops. Then we're good. When something goes bad, look at— when something goes bad, look in the mirror. Meaning not to blame yourself, but you take responsibility. Did I not pay enough attention? Was I not present? Did I not support enough as a leader? What could have— what could have— what could— what could Have I done better, right? Those are important. So it's a fine line between blaming oneself and assessing what happened, and you definitely don't want to dwell on it. I was laid off back in 2003. It was, it was an awful experience. I don't, I don't wish it on anyone. I was a VP in a tech company, and then one day the CEO came in and said, you're laid off. I mean, till this moment, I get whispers. Could you have? Could you have avoided that? What did you do wrong? Oh, why did they pick on me? So you have to even twenty twenty two years later. But I you have to silence these these these voices in in my mind. In my mind, I I'm not a psychologist. I don't know how people deal with it. That's how I deal with it. It happened. I've learned from it. I've learned a lot from that experience, and it's behind me. And I don't wish these people any ill. You know, God bless them. And a lot of great things happened to me after that layoff. So I'm grateful. So keep that in mind. Again, don't blame yourself too hard. Assess what happened and then learn from that and move on. And I think fight that urge to always go back and kind of let these negative experiences play in our mind. They play with our mind. So, so yeah. Uh, next one. What are some problems entrepreneurs face getting clients? I mean, there are a lot of, a lot of problems. Um, and a lot of problems, I mean, depending on what phase of entrepreneurship. If you're just starting, it's typically the lack of knowledge and experience in selling and pitching. Even if you come from a sales background for a big company, you come to a small business It's a different sales cycle, different type of sales. So typically it's just, I think that sales and, excuse me, that sales and marketing experience. I think also there are different aspects of the business that we just never dealt with. Like when you worked for someone else, Payroll just happened and money is deposited in your bank account. Now let's say you have a contractor or you've hired a person, you have to— or you're paying yourself. Now you have to deal with payroll. So, so, uh, so you're spending time on that. And, and, and, and if we don't know sales and marketing and we're not out there, and, and again, this comfort zone, like we want— we're staying in our comfort zone. Sorry. Yeah. And we're not taking that step to do difficult things and to do hard things and be out there, then we're not getting sales and then we keep ourselves busy with planning and internal tasks and we're not out there, that's just going to exacerbate the problem. So I would say in terms of getting clients, it's learning the science of sales, the science of marketing, And that's something you can do with reading, with practice. And then over time, as you do more of listening to customers, presenting to customers, of sending proposals to customers, doing follow-ups over email, building a CRM or having even just a basic spreadsheet, like these things you're learning. And as you— and that's the science of it. Once you're done, you've done these, you know, 100 times, Now you're start— starting to tap into the art of, of sales, the art of marketing that only comes with experience, or if you hire someone to help you. But initially, I want you to do it yourself. I want you to love to do— I want you to develop enough proficiency so that you can discern to bring on the right person in the future. So, so I think learning all these different things in business is really hard, takes time, takes time to learned, it takes time to be proficient at, and it takes a whole lot of time to master. And those are some of the problems. So again, it's not, you know, they're problems, yes, but it's just the nature of entrepreneurship. And as you go from selling to small businesses, for example, like we went from selling to small and mid-sized businesses to Fortune 500 at one phase in our journey, and I had to learn how to sell to Fortune 500. Luckily, we worked in corporate, my business partner and I, before, and some of our seniors. So we had a bit of a— we were polished generally in terms of our presentation, our follow-up. So that helped us. Like, an experience from 10 years prior to entrepreneurship helped me when we were moving from selling to small and mid-sized businesses to sell to Fortune 500, later to Fortune 100, later to Fortune 50. So you The way we used to sell to Fortune 500 did not work for selling to Fortune 50. It's completely different types of relationship and introductions and sales processes and insurance requirements and contracts and legal terms and all of that, so the challenges you face or the types of issues and and tasks and things you have to learn will, will be different from one, from one, from one, uh, from one level or from one phase in your journey to the next. All right, next one. How can you identify your target audience? So very good question. I do have— I'm going to go quickly through the remaining questions here. We do have a video on, on target audience and identifying the demographics and psychographics, but, but if you have an idea, if you have a business idea To, to ensure its viability or to increase the likelihood of its viability, you basically have to, have to have this avatar, this persona in your mind. Like, I sell IT consulting services to schools and nonprofits. Okay, now you narrow it down from doing everything in IT, or maybe even more specific, I help with cybersecurity, I help— so you go, you sort of, you niche down to something And I said, I work with nonprofits and schools. And then that's at the company level. And maybe you say schools and nonprofits that are small, okay? So you niche down further, which is great initially. And then you have to find people who is going to buy from you in these small nonprofits and small schools. It's probably going to be the owner. the owner who is probably the principal or the head of the nonprofit. So you need to find people where— you need to find people, environments, network events, and places where these owners of small nonprofits and small schools socialize and attend and frequent, and you want to be there and listen to them. Now, if you're selling to mid-sized nonprofits and mid-sized schools, The buyer is typically a manager of IT, a director of IT. You're not speaking with the executive director. Now it's a larger company. So go through that exercise. What is the service that I want to sell? And then who is going to benefit from it? Who has this problem that I'm solving? Who has a need for what I have? It's not what— like the question shouldn't be like, what should I be selling? Like what is the market? What is their demand for, right? Start with your skills, start with the market research we talked about earlier, and then start to frequent these places online or in real life where these people are and listen from them. Listen from them the issues they're having with their existing vendors and see how you can outsmart and then outplay and then outperform these vendors, and then you'll get clients. Good question. Uh, what is the expertise intersection and how do you identify yours? So, so expertise intersection, I've, I've seen it used in different contexts, but basically, I mean, there are hard skills, soft skills, you know, your experience, there's your network, and then I think all of that, these are your assets, and then there's the need the needs in the market. There's that demand in the market. So the more your skills, including soft and hard skills, and also your experience and expertise, the more those can align or can solve problems that the market has, the larger that overlap. If you have like a Venn diagram, the larger these 2 circles overlap, I think that the, the higher likelihood you'll have a viable business and you'll do well. So, so that is, uh, that's how I've heard expertise intersection, uh, in the context I've heard it in. If it means something different, uh, I'm open to be educated, so let me know. Uh, why— oh, this, I love this one. Why is freelancing Not the same as building a business, because freelancing is a business. Not to take anything away from, from freelancers, it's a choice. This is just me, myself, and I. I don't have to worry about employees, contractors, payroll, all that hassle. No, just me. And I have clients, I take care of them, they pay me, I'm happy. That's a lifestyle. That's a business style. That's one mode of operation, but that same model does not scale. Like if you don't have any employees, you're not going to have a business that is going to be scalable and grow and grow significantly and scale to 6, 7 figures and 8 figures. So it's really not which one is better. It's really more of a reality check. Yeah. If you want to have a business that's going to grow and scale to 6, 7, 8 figures, just you by yourself is not going to cut it. Again, there are a few exceptions, like the 0.0001 exception. You become the most highly coveted consultant in a specific area and you charge $50,000 for an appearance, whatever. That's different. But for the rest of us, um, freelancing is great, having your own business is great. What is it that you want to do? And I do have an entire live stream where I compared pros and cons for you, especially if you're about to start a consulting business, a services business, you're not sure. Don't worry about it for now. If you're just about to start, start, get customers, get revenue, be profitable, and then you can decide what lifestyle, what business style you want to maintain and sustain. So keep that in mind. Again, it's not a sort of one is good or is bad. It really depends on what you want to do. And again, my job here is to make sure you understand, give you these maps. There's one map for freelancing and there's one map for building a scalable business, 2 different maps altogether. You'll be very frustrated and annoyed and potentially burnout if you're trying to get to one destination That is not on your map, you know. So I think Stephen Covey talked about this in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, about you could be working really, really busy trying to get to your location, to your destination, and you have the wrong map. So what's the point of working that hard? So keep, keep that in mind. The next one: What is the freelancer's trap and how to avoid it? Well, that's, that's the thing I think in, in, in from From what I've read about the trap, the context is, I'm not sure about the question here, but I think it's, I'm working hard, I'm making a lot of money, but I'm frustrated because I'm not growing beyond this revenue line. Let's say I increase my pricing, great. I go after larger clients, they don't nickel and dime, great. All of that is good, but if you're not You know, if your goal is to double your revenue, double your profit, you really can't do that as a freelancer. You start— you have to start getting people. Now, I know people who are very successful. I know a friend of mine here locally in San Jose. He, for the longest time, for the longest time, he said, hey, Feras, I don't want to deal with employees and contractors. I'm doing all this work. And he had a very, very sustainable, thriving business for 15 years just by himself. He had a couple of contractors for something that's very, very specific, and he was leveraging, um, a third-party vendor for a specific part of his delivery, um, of his service. But he was the happiest guy. He said, I was a manager, I had to fire people, I had to lay off people, I dealt with issues, I'm sick and tired of it. For 15 years, he did not have a single employee, and he was doing financially— he was doing really well. Later had a change of heart and now he wants to build the business and he changed his operating model. He hired a project manager. He's actually— he acquired 2 small companies and now he's scaling and it's a different, again, different roadmap altogether. So the trap is trying to grow to scale. In my mind, this is my understanding of the freelancer's trap, trying to freelance to increase your revenue, to scale while using the map for freelancing, not using the map for scaling a business. Good. All right, uh, what should you do when you lose your job suddenly? That is a tough one. Um, it happens, and I think we have a couple questions here around layoffs. Um, I do have a lot of content actually, a couple live streams and a video on, on layoffs and what to do after that. I think immediately there's a personal aspect of that and that I went through reflection of what happened, what led to it, assess maybe some lessons, you know, learn and maybe identify a couple lessons from what happened. It could be firing. They thought you did something wrong, or maybe you did something wrong and you were fired, or it was just you were an amazing top performer and that whole— your brand's entire department got laid off because they're just killing that product line or that service line. It happens both ways. Not just underperformers get laid off or fired. Sometimes top performers do. So assess anything you can do better next time around. If I got an average on my last performance review, I should learn from that. If I was not responsive, if I didn't have good rapport with my peers and my manager, those things I think people should take note of. And again, don't blame yourself too hard. It happened in the past. What can I do differently? Learn about not doing the same behavior and having the same habits from that last, last time. So that's at the personal level, and it's okay. Let it, let A lot of emotions. It's very hard. It could be embarrassing in front of your family, friends. I know. But you know, 40 million Americans were fired or laid off in their career. So you're not the only one, and you're not the last one, and you're not the first one. So, so, but do that assessment and then decide what you want to do. The one thing that you have after you lose a job is you have a whole lot more time than when you had when you, when you were on the job, right? So So if you're— if you have— if they give you some severance package for, let's say, a month or 2 or 3, can I stretch? Can I cut down on my expenses and use that money for 6 months? And then I have a 6-month runway. I have some financial stability for the next 6 months. I can now have options. I can look for a job, do a side hustle, do it, go, you know, this business idea that I've had in my mind, on my mind for the longest time now, I can put it into action. So So I know it's hard to do all of that like right after you lose a job, your job. But again, take time to mourn and and and let these emotions you know go through for a few days. And some of some of us might need a couple weeks, but don't dwell on it too much. You know life throws a lot of difficult things at us. Those who those who don't have any means, they're struggling. Those who have millions and hundreds of millions of dollars. could be also struggling from many other things, you know. Could be health, it could be issues in the family, it could be issues with, with a partner. So we all have our own challenges. So don't dwell too much on this. Learn from it and then plan your next phase. The next question is similar. How do you survive financially after a layoff? Exactly what I said earlier. Surviving after a layoff requires acknowledging what happened, learning from, learning from that, The mindset of, okay, it happened, it's behind me now, I want to get back up. That's resilience. Resilience is getting back up on your feet after you fall. So then looking, assessing my financial situation, if I don't have to work right away, I think take some time to think of your next phase. When doors are closed, many other doors are open. So Take, take— I mean, if you have to work the next day to, to just make ends meet, do what you have to do. But if you have a bit of bandwidth just, or a cushion where you can just assess and maybe reposition yourself, get some certification, get some certifications, get some education, get something, get into AI and what's happening, and, and, and learn about this in your industry and the changes in your industry. And this way, potentially, you can start your own business because now you have time. You can put 50, 60 hours into it and you'll get to get some traction sooner than if you were doing this on the side on the weekends when you had a full-time job. We are about to wrap up here in the next— oh, I still have, I still have, uh, I still have about 10 more questions. Uh, but if you have— if for those of you who are attending live or if you're listening in later, watching later, do leave me a comment. I will get back to you and answer your question. Um, that's my promise to the community. So, so, and I, I look at those, all the questions we get, all the comments, I look at them personally and I, I provide, I provide the answers in the comments. All right, the next one is, how do you turn your work experience into a business offer? So a business is solving a problem for someone who's willing to pay you, uh, for it, right? So if you have, back to the viable business idea, If you have experience, skills, hard skills, soft skills, experience in a specific industry, in project management, in IT, in finance, in photography, in graphic design and video editing, if you have that experience and people were buying that experience from the company that you worked at, then there's a market for it, right? Then again, you got to go through this process of of vetting the idea and then figure— figuring out how not to hit the mic, figuring out how to package your service, how to price them. All those things you learn as a new business owner. But the number one thing is making sure you have, you have the skills, the experience to solve a problem for someone, and they're willing to pay you for it. And again, I believe the video— there's a video that I just launched on getting your first 3 clients, and I talk about it a little bit about how to make sure that you have someone willing to pay for your service, and then we have our ultimate guide, The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business. It's a 50-minute roadmap, step by step, on exactly answering this question, how you pivot, how to turn your experience, your skills into a business, into a business offer. So check out those videos. Uh, how you can get your first client without a website or sales experience. So without a website, that's okay because you don't have— I mean, so I think it's always a good idea to have a professional website. Doesn't have to be fancy, doesn't have to be 20 pages. A, a just a professional website, 4 or 5 pages with homepage, about us, contact us, and then our products and services. It's a good idea, but you can be very active on LinkedIn or on another social platform. That could be sufficient. But the sales experience, how can you get your first client without any sales experience? Just like someone who's just finishing college and say, how can I get a job without any job experience? I tell them you still can get a job because you have employers who are looking for someone who doesn't have a lot of experience. So you can find, you know, you don't go after maybe your ideal client right away. You go with maybe smaller clients, with someone, maybe the first client could be a nonprofit who's willing to give you a testimonial for doing something for them at no charge, right? So getting, again, go to the video that I have on getting your first 3 clients, I think, but you have to learn sales. At the end of the day, without sales, there are no customers. Without customers, there is no revenue. Without revenue, there's no business. So it is— you have to learn sales. You'll learn it in theory. Watch, follow my YouTube channel, join our newsletter at startupwithferus.com, um, follow me on LinkedIn. I publish on this stuff, on how to build your sales experience, and then You put that, you put what you're learning into action. See, learning is education plus application. So you can, you can consume all the content I have on my YouTube channel. If you don't go out and talk to people and practice, you ain't going to learn sales. That's it. So no matter you get the best coach in the world on whatever thing that you are trying to learn, Whether it's fitness, martial arts, sales, if you don't apply, if you don't step on the mat, you won't learn. So, so yeah, you gotta, you gotta— you don't need a website right away, but you need to learn sales. The next question: should I do things alone or is having an advisor better? You should do a lot of things on your own. You should do a lot of research on your own. You should read on your own. You should read books on business. You should read about your industry. About your competitors, all that on your own. But having an advisor, a mentor, a coach, whatever you want to call them, will help you. The right— oops, wow, I'm hitting the mic and then I'm hitting my computer. This is what happens when I go on a 2-hour session here. Having someone who's been to where you want to go, getting their advice is invaluable, it's priceless, but it has to be the right person. So make sure you vet them, make sure The chemistry is there. Make sure you like their style, their approach, and they've done things you are trying to do. I think it will shorten, it will expedite the time from where you are today to your destination significantly, and you'll get there with less bruises, bruises, and, and you'll get there with less bruises and less gray hair, right? I'm gonna coin this one. Um, all right, uh, what is exactly A side hustle, you have a full-time job, you are an HR manager, and on the side you're selling other things. Or maybe you could be selling HR consulting. So you're just doing something, uh, different than what you're doing, or you're doing something in addition to your full-time job. That's a side hustle. And there's a whole culture on, on making millions of dollars side hustling. I'm not a fan of long-term side hustling. Short-term, sometimes it's needed. You have to have extra cash right away. You have to potentially learn— you want to learn something, you want to learn, you want to start a business and you want to do it on the side initially. These are all good use cases, good, good scenarios when a side hustle is okay, is good actually. But long-term side hustling, I, is not— I think it's not— will not get you to, to where you want to go because you're not fully committed to your full hustle. And you're not— don't have enough time to put on your side hustle, so you end up somewhere in between and it's a struggle. So, uh, what are the first steps I can take to launch a business? Check out the ultimate guide on starting a consulting business on my channel. I go through the whole process step by step. But the first one thing— 2 things. One, you really want it. You really want to start a business. You're willing to sacrifice and commit and to put time and effort and resources. And 2, you have to have a viable idea, something you solve a problem for someone. That is a short and quick, and I think right, the right quick answer here. Okay, moving on quickly. What are some different pricing models I can use for my business? If you are starting out, the pricing model is secondary. I want you to sell. If you're starting out, you can sell hourly, you can sell project-based, You can do different things. I have a video on the ultimate guide to pricing models for consulting companies and services business and service businesses, so you can check it out. But basically, initially, it's, it's selling, learning how to sell, learning how to deliver and make money from what you sold, right? Over time, you can do hourly, you can do project-based, you can do you can give clients tiered pricing. You can do— I'm going blank now on my own content. You can do tiered pricing. You can do also value-based. You can do performance-based. So there are different models. And I have actually, I have a very thorough and I think a very nice matrix where you tell it where you are in your business, starting or you have— you're very established. And then you also Like, am I new in this area? I'm proficient, proficient, or I'm— I have mastery. And then I have recommendations for what pricing models work for you best. I will include a link to that matrix and that video on pricing in, in the, in this, in the description as well. All right, why does it matter which pricing model I choose? Initially, it doesn't matter. Like, until you have some revenue and some experience under your belt, sell, sell, sell. Over time you can have— you can sell more and you can have better margins depending on which pricing model you choose. So you could be leaving a whole lot of money on the table, you could be losing a whole lot of deals if you're not pricing properly. Sometimes if you underprice, you could lose deals because clients expect certain level of performance and, and support and attention. So be careful, be careful of, of which pricing model you use, but not initially. Initially just sell, sell, sell, sell. All right. Am I missing opportunities because I want to be perfectly ready? 100% yes, you are losing opportunities in life in general, not just in business. We cannot be 100% ready. It doesn't work because remember, there are external factors. So not just us ready, not the market ready. Sometimes things outside of our control. So it's never a perfect condition to do something worthwhile. Okay, so, so be ready. Do some due diligence. Do some, some planning, some research. Do an assessment of your skills. Do an assessment of what you're really passionate about. That I really want to be my own boss. I want to get into this entrepreneurship and get to this untapped income potential. I want to have hired these amazing people that I've worked with in the past, and they want to be with me, and we want to create the next most amazing XYZ company. That's— you're missing out on these opportunities if you don't start. So, and you're missing out on these opportunities of waiting to be ready and perfectly ready and 100% ready. So do some planning. Don't jump. You don't jump out of an airplane without a parachute. You don't get into business without some planning and some research and some preparation and ideally with some financial runway. Um, but you cannot be 100% ready. You cannot be 100% ready. It's just life does not work that way. Business does not work that way. Okay, am I struggling to grow my business because of my limited experience or confidence? Wow, yeah, good question. Well, it could be. I mean, I don't know a lot of details, but, but, but if you don't have experience And if you don't have confidence, yes, you'll struggle, but hey, that is, again, that's part of the process. There's no quick fix for this. With limited experience, you can build on that by learning, by applying. That's how you build the reps. So you'll start to have some experience. And then confidence comes from experience in a way. It comes from knowledge. It comes from delivering. If you were, If you're just shaking when you sold that first project and you're even more scared when you had to deliver that first deliverable to your client, that is okay. That's your first time you've sold and first time you've delivered. Now the second time around, it should get easier, and the third time around, and the fifth time around, and then it becomes second nature. Then you start enjoying sales and marketing, and then your confidence— you know, success breeds success. So as you deliver more, as you sell more, as you grow the business, you build more confidence. So I can always be humble in terms of learning and being open-minded about things in business. But yes, you will struggle if you have no experience or limited experience and you don't have any confidence. But that's just how it is. Once you start doing the work, you'll build some confidence and you'll build some experience, and then it only gets better. from that point on. It's not gonna get easy, it's not going to get easier right away, but you're building the muscles to take you places. I think we have a couple more. I think this is the last question unless we have a comment. So, am I struggling to grow my business? Uh, no, we answered that one. Sorry, my bad. Okay, how do I know if my business is falling behind competition? If my business is falling behind the competition? Well, this is, this is a bit tricky because I don't want you to follow competitors blindly. It's not a good thing. That's a story for another time. But you know, you, you, if you're out there, so the competition in a smaller market or bigger, they could be taking more clients, they could be When people, most people compare, they talk to 2, 3 vendors before they buy, you could be losing to the same competitor or the same type of competitor, so assess when you're, you want to learn from, you know, we learn from failure, so when we don't close a deal, ask clients, those who did not buy from you, say, I appreciate it to help us improve our processes, like what led you to that decision. Not everyone will reply, but if you lost 3 bids or 3 proposals, I think 2 of the 5 would answer back and give you some input. Maybe the pricing is too high, maybe, maybe you're not responsive, right? Again, don't beat yourself too much on, on not closing every deal. No one closes every deal. But, uh, you want, you want to do your own research on their website, on their competitors' website, on the reviews, what people are saying. In your industry. If you start to attend industry events, you start to hear about other people who bought from these competitors. So you're, you're in this information gathering business, just like, I guess, the FBI in the information gathering business. So you have to have that information gathering from, from clients, past clients, from reviews, from websites. You can obviously check with ChatGPT, get information, and then see, see how you can differentiate. And don't just think about pricing. It could be, you could be, you could, you could be, you could charge higher, but you deliver premium level, you know, white glove service. You could charge higher and, and be responsive, 24/7 support. You could deliver, or maybe you can compete on price and do things more efficiently. So, so identify things, just gathering data, and then if you're in a specific industry, networking and being out there. You notice I always emphasize being out there. because you just learn a lot and that will give you an edge over your competitors. So that is it for today. We went through, I think, 45 or so, or maybe 40, 45 questions. So thank you so much for listening in. Those of you who've been with us since the very beginning, those who joined later, if you happen to be listening to this later and you have a question that I did not answer, leave it to me. I will be more than happy to answer it. And then you can— If you're finding this content useful, click the subscribe button and subscribe to this channel. It will help me because it will help me help other entrepreneurs because YouTube will share it with other people on YouTube, and if you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to answer. Just reach out to me on any of the social media platforms or email me at feras@startupaffairs.com, and we do have again. subscribe to the channel and go to startupwithferus.com and join my weekly Black Belt Startup newsletter where we send every Saturday, we send tips and strategies to help you start, grow, and scale your business. See you next time. Oh, we have a comment, we have a comment. Thank you so much, Matt. Matt says, love these live streams. Matt, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining. And if we wrap it up here, if you have any questions, you know, feel free to, uh, to reach out. I'll be more than happy to answer. Um, and we'll talk to you all later. Have a good one. Thank you.