Comfort Is Killing Your Entrepreneurial Drive

We are live. Welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. So what is happening in the world of entrepreneurship? Let's step on the mat. You didn't click on this because you lack skills. You clicked on this. Because you feel the rust setting in. You're confident in your work, confident in the code or whatever you do, and confident when the paycheck hits on the 15th and the 30th. But when you stare at a blank page to start your own business, you freeze. Now, this is not a talent gap. It is a resistance gap. That is the comfort trap I want to talk about today. I'm going to break it down and break down why comfort is quietly killing your entrepreneurial drive and what you can do about it. I'll share real stories from real founders and also from those who want to be entrepreneurs. Now let's get uncomfortable on purpose. And before I keep going, I want to pause for a second and thank those of you who are sharing. Sorry, thank, thank, many thanks to those of you who are joining us live today. And I have these live streams where I answer questions that I get from the community, and then I answer questions live, of course. And if your question— you join late, you're joining late, or you join you listen to— you're listening to this or you're watching this later, um, I always make sure I address your comments. I want to hear from you. I want to hear from, uh, from those who are starting and struggling, those who want to start and not sure what to do, what the first step is, how to put together a business plan, how to vet an idea, how to do— how to get your first client. How to market, how to sell, how to hire your first contractor or your first employee. I'm here to support your mission and help you stop struggling from turning your skills into sales. Okay, so don't hesitate to send your questions, your comments here. I will address them during this livestream or I will address them later if you happen to be watching or listening later. And you can email if it's something— I always want to say this— if you are still working corporate and you're not sure if this entrepreneurial thing is yours, and you want to— maybe you don't want to announce to the world that you're about to leave and start your own business, feel free to email me directly if it's something personal, something private about business, of course. Feel free to email me at feras@ startupwithferus.com. I read all the emails I get and I'll reply back to you and I'll keep it all— I keep it all confidential. All right, so let's jump right into it and making sure I have a good technology check here. We're all good. So I've been hearing this a lot, more and more people say these are established professionals, people who've been in the workforce for 5, 10, 15, 20 years. They say, on paper, I'm doing fine, but I haven't built anything meaningful. My confidence is slipping. I have time and I waste it. And over the years, I learned something simple. Confidence doesn't grow from comfort. It grows from from exposure to difficulty. Whether you're doing this in business, in your own challenging hobby, if you're in martial arts, when you step on the mat, confidence is built not when you repeat and keep repeating the things that are comfortable to you. Confidence is built when you expose yourself to difficulty. And science supports this. It's not, not just me saying it. In a book I read recently called Rewire Your Anxious Brain by Katherine Pittman and a co-author, they discussed how this concept— in psychological terms, they call it exposure therapy or systematic desensitization, which basically involves a gradual, steady process of increasing exposure to something that you fear, to a feared situation, so the brain can make new safe connections. So, so that's important— gradual, steady process of increasing, increasing exposure to feared situation. So, and this whole concept of keeping on learning and keeping on exposing ourselves to new ideas will help create these strong or new connections in our brain. It's important because in business, you know your domain really well. If you want to be a consultant, you want to start your own business, my assumption is you know your domain really well. It could be IT, it could be HR, it could be workflow automation, it could be something in manufacturing, you name it. It could be you're a medical doctor now and you want to do something on the side, you want to build a business that you want to retire into, not just your medical field. Whatever your knowledge is, your domain knowledge, you know this very well, but there's so many other things in entrepreneurship you have to get right to build and grow a sustainable and a profitable business. So learning is part of it. And what I was saying earlier, and what science also confirms, is that by exposing ourselves to things that are difficult, things that we fear, our brain can make these new, new safe connections. Also, in a book I read last year, or even more than maybe a year and a half ago, I love that book by Adam Grant called Hidden Potential. He highlights how expert, expert language learners, polyglots, they overcame their lack of confidence by aiming to make 200 mistakes a day. So they understood that you have to step into the ring, you have to step on the mat before you're ready making— and, and be ready to make more mistakes than others make, uh, this is how you learn faster than others. Now, I'm not, I'm not saying that I want you to go and celebrate making mistakes and intentionally make mistakes. I want you to prepare. I want you to do your due diligence. I want you to read about it. I want you— and we have a lot of free content on my YouTube channel at startupwithferus.com, at Startup with Feras on YouTube, and, and other, other, other educators and people who have been to where you want to go. I want you to learn and, and spend time understanding what you're getting yourself into. But there's a fine line between— there's a fine line between resilience and recklessness. So preparation is required. That's part of building your resilience. But at one point, after you've prepared You have to take that step. You have to start knocking on doors if, if you've already started your business and you know what your offer is. If you haven't vetted your idea, vet your idea. If you haven't spoken to potential buyers, do that. If you haven't put together a financial runway or a spending plan for your business, for your personal expenses, and for your livelihood, do that. The important thing is to move from thought to action, and those could be different. Those could be difficult actions, but that's how you build resistance, and that's how that's how you build resilience, and that's how you build confidence in whatever area you want to get into. Now, I remember in my own career back in when I was working in a in corporate. And I was new to corporate, and I thought you go and you work 9 to 5 and everything will be fine, and you'll get promoted, and you get stuff done on time and you get promoted, and life will be good. Um, and then there was a massive layoff. Almost— no, more than 50% of the company was let go. I, I made it. I, I made— I barely made it. Um, I think it was a tiny hair, but, you know, I probably was the last one on the list that they didn't let go. Um, I was working on a project that, that was a bit critical for the company. So, but I wasn't really excelling at what I was doing, and I thought if there was— if there were to be another layoff, I will definitely be on it. So, so I, I mustered every ounce of courage I had. That's the next day after the layoff. And I went to the CEO office and said, hey, Russ, I'm doing okay in, in my current role, but I can commit to you that I will do a whole lot more if I work in something different, in account management. I was doing okay in engineering. I was an engineer working in hardware design, but I, I really didn't enjoy it. I didn't spend a lot of time learning about it. And I was more leaning toward something that is people-oriented. So I told that to the CEO and he paused for a second. And in the back of my mind at that moment, I said, oh my goodness, he's probably saying we should have fired— he probably was saying in his mind, we should have fired this fool yesterday with the layoff. And I had a young family at the time, my wife and 3 children. So this was pretty difficult. me to do, but I took a chance. Um, I, I, I told the CEO what I'm prepared to do. I can put more time, more effort. I can travel for work. And he took a bet on me, and that bet turned out well for everybody involved— the company, myself. I worked really hard. I started to learn more about account management. I learned about this new domain that I was, I was working in. and promotions followed, moved with the company to Silicon Valley, and a lot of great things happened after that. So at times, even when you have something difficult, as difficult as a layoff, and I know layoffs are difficult, and I know every other day I go on LinkedIn News, I hear of companies laying people off. So I know that's difficult. So even if you're going through a very difficult professional moment or phase, and you're ready now to start that business that you've been wanting to start for a long time. It still might be difficult because you haven't done marketing and sales and all that good stuff that a business, a new business requires, but it is okay. Some of you might be tempted to go back and look to work in corporate. If that's what you want to do, That's fine. It's a tough job market out there. But what I want you to do is, which is the first point of my session today, is on this illusion of safety. Because we think, we associate safety or working for a company in some sort of structure, in a 9-to-5 structure or where there are benefits and 401 and PTO and the salary comes in week in, week out, or twice a month. We associate that with safety, but that's what layoffs show us, that things are not safe. Or sometimes even if you are a top performer, A company might decide to just shut down an entire branch or entire department or entire line of service or line of product. So, and you could be great at your job. You could, you could do things with your eyes closed. You know the internal politics of the company. You know the systems, the processes. You know exactly what could happen tomorrow. You've been there for a long time. But that predictability, with or without a layoff, that predictability, if you are working in a company and you're doing well, that is actually what's rotting your ambition. Because of course, if you're a high achiever and you love what you're doing and the company's doing well and you want to focus on that, there are a lot of amazing amazing opportunities to grow and build a career. I'm not saying you, you jump ship if things are going really well for you, but a lot of you out there, actually 60% of you out there, 60% of Americans want to be their own bosses according to Gallup. So if you have that thought in your mind and if you want to start a business, I don't want you to confuse safety with stagnation. And I want to give you examples, like throughout this session today, I want to give you examples from founders I speak with, and I speak with 2 to 3 founders every week, and I hear a lot of, some good stories, some horror stories, I hear some hesitation, some doubt, some lack of confidence, and I also see and hear resilience, and people really committed to do something, with the little that they have, resources and time and effort. So, but I don't want you to confuse safety with stagnation. And this founder I recently spoke with, let's call him Terry, he's a top 1% in sales in his area. He knows how to nurture a lead. He knows how to close a deal. He knows how to generate revenue for his business, but when we talked about starting his own shop, he froze because he's not used to, or he's used to the shared resources or what a big company offers. There's a CRM in place, there is a marketing department where they generate leads and they provide And they generate assets and case studies and plan to attend conferences. He's also used to the paycheck is guaranteed with a nice commission in his case, but the issue of being confident in this shared resources area in the company is that you're building that confidence inside the system, but then You're terrified outside of it, and that is the comfort trap, which is what I called this session today. Because this is the this is the comfort equation: you have stability, you have yeah, you have stability, which leads to predictability, which leads to reduced resistance, which leads to reduced growth. So if you're not growing. If you're not learning new skills, actually even in your career, not just for a new business, if you're not raising your hand, if you're not taking on more challenging projects, then things will be predictable, things will stagnate, and then there's no resistance, and then there's little or no growth. So my question to you, if you're listening live and you'd like to comment, where are you Or what, where are you comfortable right now? What are you comfortable with right now? If you'd like to share, I'd love to see, I'd love to hear your comment. And we do have a comment, so let me check. All right, Ima, thank you so much for, uh, for joining here. And the question is, let's see, what is the smallest uncomfortable action you recommend doing every day for 14 days to break the comfort loop? And what measurable signal should I track to know it is working? So, so thank you for the question, um, Imad. And, and interesting, I have something actually second at the end of the session on things you can do. But for now, since you asked, I think it's, it's about exactly what you said— the smallest uncomfortable action. So if you're very comfortable in putting together plans, if you're very comfortable, if you're a big picture type person and you develop financial plans or business plans and you can put a strategy for the next 24 months for your business or for your existing employer. So if you're very good in specific areas but say you have no experience or you fear marketing or sales or you think sales is sleazy or sales is not— is just like when you go out to buy a car and you have this pushy salesperson trying to get us to buy a car that we don't need, and we have all this negative thinking of sales. So if these are areas where you're not comfortable with or you haven't done in the past, I would say take a step in that direction. So for example, I'll use a very, very practical example that I always recommend to founders, especially in the age of AI and with tech and, and the virtual nature of things. For founders, it's a must. It's a must to go out and meet with people. You have to build that muscle of meeting and interacting with people. So find a meeting, a meetup in your city. Find a Chamber of Commerce or the like, or like a BNI group or if there's a conference happening or there's an event where your potential buyers or people in your space are attending, and go out and meet with them and tell the story. Tell them what is it, what problem you solve. So this is an example. So I would say do a quick audit on things that you're, you're good at and you're comfortable with. That's great. Now we have to address the things that we are not very good at. So, so that's Everyone has to make their own assessment and see what is it that they're not comfortable with and take small steps. It could be— in that book, Rewire Your Anxious Brain, some people have a lot of fear of being in public, in a crowd. So what the author recommended, he said, if you want to do this gradual approach, there's another approach called flooding, like sudden exposure. Let's not talk about that for now. So he said if you have fear of crowd, you can maybe take 5 steps between you and being in a crowd. So for example, you can go and drive to the parking lot, and then next time you can go and drive to the parking lot and then walk to the door and come back. And next time you go to a small store where there's not a lot of people. So, so you take gradual steps. So the same thing in business, uh, same thing actually in martial arts. So before you can take a high fall, especially in Aikido, there's a lot of rolling, a lot of falling. We roll safely. We do a sit fall. We roll backward slowly and try to get smooth, do it smoothly. Then you roll forward and then you do this high fall, very, very impactful fall. So I think identify areas where you don't have experience in or things that you fear and just decide what the next step is. So hopefully this is helpful. I think everyone has to make their own assessment to identify what works for them and what they need to work on. I'd love to hear from you on things you've done as well. So that is on building that confidence, is doing uncomfortable things, doing difficult things. Now in terms of the confidence, there are 2 types of confidence. One, what I alluded to earlier, this execution confidence, the ability to complete a task someone else assigned to us. And then there's the builder confidence, the ability to define the task. And as we say in hunting, eat what you kill. All right. So you have to basically be— if you want to have your own business, you are going to be a builder. So you do, you have to define the area that has to, that, that, that needs, needs to be addressed, and then you have to go and do it. No one else will do that for you. When we started our very first business and cash was really tight and we rented this small office, actually we, we co-rented with a friend of mine who was a CPA. He had one office, one room, and we had the other room. And we were picking up the trash at the end of the day, at the end of the week. So I was the janitor. And then when I, I was going out and knocking on doors to sell, I was the CEO of this, this company that was selling digital marketing. So you wear all the hats. So you have to, you have to, to, to build every aspect of the business. And when, when I was saying earlier that comfort doesn't help you with confidence. Comfort doesn't kill all confidence. It kills the builder confidence because it tricks you into thinking that because you haven't built a business yet, you can't. So let me walk you through some scenarios. And before I walk into these scenarios, it looks like I have another comment from Iman. Thank you again for the follow-up. Let me address that. So So Imad says, so sales is my game. Great. You are actually— 68% to 70% of founders have no sales or marketing background. So you are in the few that are strong in sales. So that's great. Not afraid of sales. I would say the uncomfortable thing is exactly what you have mentioned in your last example. When I worked in B2B, B2B business. I was a sales achiever. Now I'm alone starting my own business and I don't have the resources. Yeah. So that's a very good example. So I can relate to that. When I was laid off, so I was the VP of sales in a startup, in a tech startup here in Silicon Valley. So in a startup, and before that, I was in corporate. I was in a smaller company that was owned by Home Shopping Network. So you get exposed to sales in corporate, in the corporate sense. You hear updates from the salesperson and then they have deals, but I never, I never, and I was actually doing account management. So in a way I was close to sales and I understood the big picture sales that you have a salesperson, they go talk to clients, they have material prepared by marketing, they bring the clients to visit our corporate offices, they travel. they had proposals, they closed the proposals, and once they closed those deals, I was in charge of implementing, right? So I understand that. I mean, that's common sales knowledge, but I never had to go and get my own leads. So I think understanding sales and understanding how sales works, I think that's great. That's— you're ahead of many other founders already, I can tell you. Now, the trick is when you take that corporate experience, And how do you apply it to a small business that you're just starting? So in sales, as you probably know, and speaking, you know, if others here also have a sales background, basically you have hunters and you have gatherers, right? So in a sales capacity, if you zoom in a little bit, maybe you were never in charge of getting leads for the business. You were taking a qualified lead that came through your website, or through maybe a conference, an exhibit hall, a booth that your company, your marketing department planned, you're getting those qualified leads and then you're following up with them, or maybe you might have had a junior, like an SDR who was doing some of the vetting, some of the qualification, a sales rep giving you a qualified lead, so you're very comfortable in that environment, so now the uncomfortable thing would be to get leads because that's something that you did not— I'm making that assumption now— that, that's something that you did not do before. And in my case, I, I took some sales training for small businesses, for founders. I, I listened to CDs. I, I, I just wanted to figure out how to, how to get leads. That was the number one thing because once I had a warm lead and I started to speak with them, I was very comfortable in that situation, but just cold calling, cold emailing, going to an event. So, so what I focused on was through a tip that I heard from a sales coach. 2 things actually. He said, said print business cards. Business cards were a thing at the time, that thing at the time. And I printed 1,000 business cards and he said get rid of them, give them to everyone that you meet. And then he said go and So I signed up for networking breakfast at 7 AM. I'm an early person person, but I'm an early morning person, but I don't eat that early, but I went and I was very nervous, like just sitting in this room. I remember till now, and there were about 15 of us, and they said, just say a couple things about yourself, what you do, and how you can help the rest of the team here. And I was like, okay, I'm nervous. And I was literally, I was panicking. I was new to business. I didn't have any examples, any customers, any logos, any testimonials. So, but I did it. And then the next 2 weeks from then, the next meeting, it got easier. I got to know a few of these people. And then I went to BNI, Chamber of Commerce, all these small events that were happening around here. And after, you know, you do it for 20, 30 times, actually it becomes more like second nature. Now it's more cool. Let me see if I can now engage in a conversation. Let me see if I can follow up. So that's what worked for me is going into these events, into these meetings, in-person meetings, and get to tell the world about what I do. And what I tell other founders is you really have to be a, um, a walking billboard. You have to make sure everyone knows that you're starting this business. Everyone in your network, friends, ex-colleagues, suppliers, vendors. Do, do a, a, a very like a sustained campaign in a way of reaching out to people in your network. And obviously set up some meetings, attend some meetings where, um, you meet also strangers. And obviously, if for some of the folks who are watching now or later, if you happen to be living in a very small town, you don't have a lot of these meetings, then the next best thing is doing something virtual. But there's no escape you have if you're in the— especially if you're in consulting, if you're in services, meeting and working with people is essential. Without it, I don't know. I don't know if you can be— you can, you can do services. You can, you can do things potentially. You can sell things online. Um, there are a few, few things in servicing, servicing consulting where, where you don't have to meet people in person, but the vast majority of it, people buy from people. People, people want to buy from you as the expert, and they want to know who you are and what you do and what you've done. So, um, took a bit of a tangent there, but, um, But back to what we were saying, I was talking about the 2 types of confidence, the execution confidence and the builder confidence. And the example here is when someone, let's call him Mo, he's just sick and tired of corporate. So he reached out and we spoke and I learned that he has 20 years of experience. So pretty solid in what he knows and what he does. They can do— they're technical. They can do backend development, databases, APIs, security, DevOps, you name it. They're undeniably an expert. But what he said, he said to Feras, I cannot focus on what to do, what to find. I don't know where to start. So here's where they have high execution confidence, but very low builder confidence. So they're waiting for the assignment. They're waiting for someone to tell them what to do. In entrepreneurship, if you want to start a business, in entrepreneurship, you are the assignment, right? So in the case of Mo, undeniably expert, no issue whatsoever. So now how do I package what I do into an offer that can— then other companies will value and will be willing to pay for. In his case, after some conversations and some support, he's in B2B. There are a lot of companies in his niche, in this vertical that he was very experienced in. They're not ready to hire someone. They're looking for small contracts to work on specific projects. So that was his first step into consulting, is to find companies. And it was through his network, through his friends who work in companies or are founders of companies, he identified a few opportunities where he can come in as a contractor to work on a specific project. And then once the contract is done, they pay him, he's done. And then as he was working on this first contract, he signed up for another contract. He was able to get another contract. he started to build that business. So where to start depending on where you are today, and if you're, by the way, if you are new to this whole consulting space and want to learn more about how to start a consulting business, I have this video that has been very, very well received in the community. It's called The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business. So I go through the entire step-by-step process to get you started. So I'll show it to you at the end of the, of the session. I'll show you the link to it on the channel, but go on the channel and search The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business This Year. All right, so, so that's an example on the difference between an execution, you know, the, the execution confidence and then the builder confidence. Another example I would call the The tiny thing trap. And this came up in a conversation with another founder, Mark. He works in a Fortune 500, very established. He's been around for 10+ years. He said he works on these massive $10 million projects, but he told me that's how he's— he said, I'm working on this very tiny thing and I feel like it's useless. Others can do this, and he's obviously not feeling that sense of ownership that you as a business owner will feel once you have your offer and once you deliver a service to a client and you bring smiles to their faces, right? So he said, "I feel like what I'm doing is useless, and I don't see the whole big picture." Because this is the problem with corporate: is that corporate comfort or problem with corporate comfort, corporate comfort. Allows you to really hide in this tiny thing, but the builder confidence, it requires you to own the whole outcome, even if it's messy. And I remember when we— and I've said this before on one of, on one of the live streams— when, when we, um, sold our very first project, it was building a 4-page website for a small restaurant here in Santa Clara called Athena Grill, still, still here 20-plus years later, still thriving. So they're doing well, great food. So, so it was a 4-page website, and remember, this was in 2003. WordPress wasn't around. You couldn't— you had to build pages from, from the ground up. So it took us literally 3 months to finish a 4-page website, a simple 4-page website, no e-commerce, no cutting-edge technology, it was basically a simple website with text and images, so it was very messy, but we owned the whole outcome and we were able to build and deliver that site. I mean, some of the delays were because we didn't know what to ask the client, like we needed images and text and the menu, And we should have told them that from day one. We could have probably shaved off a month and a half, but we were done with building the website, but we were waiting on images and text from the client. So that delayed the project, and obviously it delayed us collecting the 50% that was due on completion. So another story for another time. But the idea here is that it was really messy to build this 4-page website, but the next client, we did that in half the time in, in double the speed, and we charged more. So the idea is to go out and tell strangers, ask strangers for money, as I joke about it, but it's really to go out to your target audience, to the people who are likely to buy from you, and share how you solve problems they have. If you get feedback on your pitch, you improve it the next time around. If you get rejection, that is okay. Rejection is part of sales. I mean, we later grew to 7 figures and later to 8 figures, and I can tell you, even then, our top performers or our performance as a company, we were closing 1 out of 3 deals. So even when you are a coveted consultant with amazing certifications and top logos, we had We had the top logos. We had Salesforce, Google. We had Fortune 50 as clients, Fortune 500 in e-commerce, in healthcare, in insurance, Blue Shield, Blue Cross. We had the brands and we had published a book and we had senior talent, amazing consultants. Even with all of that, we did not close every deal. It was 1 out of 3. So if you are fearing rejections, if you're fearing people will not buy from you, that's natural. You conquer that fear by taking steps, gradual steps in those areas that you are concerned about. And we have another comment here. Okay. I help B2B SMEs drive qualified conversations on LinkedIn. Question: What is the one daily action that turns effort into a repeatable system we can scale? What is the one daily action that turns effort into a repeatable system? I mean, in terms of LinkedIn, and I publish on LinkedIn, the effort here is that you want to provide useful content to your audience, to your network. So for me, once a week I sit down and I brainstorm topics that I think are relevant, and a lot of those topics come from conversations I have with founders and the struggles that they have and the wins that they have, and then I figure out a way, okay, what is it that I want to talk about, my perspective, my POV, and then I prepare it. So I think for me, and I think that applies to others as well, is if this is important for— if this task is important for the business, then I have to plan it and then I have to execute on it and it's a top priority. So 30 days— 30 minutes every day is for me to prepare that post, my own thoughts, my own POVs, my own experiences, my own examples. Of course, I use AI. Of course, I use AI. But I come up with my own content, my own ideas, and then I polish it. Instead of sending this to my business partner or someone else to check my grammar, I have AI do that for me, okay? So I think in terms of, I think for SMEs, for small and medium-sized enterprises, small companies, whatever, I mean, there's so many things you can do in marketing. So being active on LinkedIn is something, that I do and, and I recommend others to do, but it's, it's only one way. Going and meeting people is another way. You can run paid ads on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Google. Obviously learn about paid ads, learn about, learn about landing pages, learn about targeting before you spend money on ads. You can go and have a booth at a conference. So there are gazillion ways to do marketing, and I have a video on on marketing, the earned media, the owned media, the paid media, all that good, the shared media, all of that, so I would say, as a new business owner, you're not going to be certain which one will work better for you. A lot of it comes with the things that you're comfortable with, the things that you are good at, and then how you— the things that you put time into, and and then that would lead to leads. So you can potentially, some people, you can hire an agency to do things for you. My POV, my, I don't wanna say rule, strong guideline here is that initially as a founder, do not hire for sales and marketing. You have to do it yourself because if you don't know how to sell, you can't really— discern how the right person to come and do sales for you. So you have to experience it yourself. And then once you experience it, once you experience it yourself and you have a track record, you can either hire your first salesperson or your first marketing person, or you can, you know, contract to others. So, so I, I say there's no escape. You gotta do, you gotta do the, the work in sales and marketing. No, no, no way to, um, not, not— I don't recommend that you, you outsource that. The third, the third thing I want to cover today is in terms of discomfort, it weakens, it weakens initiative. So, so, so when we are in a, in a routine, comfort sustains routine but weakens initiative. So, so I'll give you an example and maybe call the rust factor here. So I have, I have a name for each example. So if you're not, as I said earlier, if you're not exposing yourself to resistance, um, just like, just like it's simple biology, if you don't lift heavy weights, you're not going to build muscles. Your muscles shrink. So if you don't face rejection, your courage is going to shrink. And, um, I was— it's hard even after all these years And even after building the companies and, and all that good stuff, uh, it— sometimes you still have to force yourself to do certain things. I can tell you, this is a real story, happened a couple months ago. I was at an event here for a nonprofit called Biz World. They do great work where they work with young children to teach them about entrepreneurship. So I was attending that, their annual gala, And they had Sal Khan from the Khan Academy as the keynote speaker. He spoke actually brilliantly. He talked about rejection is a redirection. That was the theme of the conference. So it was great. And I figured part of— I always tell entrepreneurs, go out and network and meet people, and only great things come out of networking. So I just— a thought came to my mind. This is a true story, I swear. I said I should go and reach out to Sal Khan, just like I tell entrepreneurs, and, and see if there's an opportunity to do things together. They produce content, I produce content. So, so, and I wasn't sure exactly like how would I approach him, and, and I knew he was gonna leave after he's done with his speech. So I actually messaged my partner Eric. I said, hey Eric, here's what's going on. I'm He knew I was at this event. I said, "What do you think? What's what's an approach? What's a what's a smart idea to go and talk to Sal Khan about?" So he said, "Well, we have content on entrepreneurship. They have Khan Academy. There might be some areas of cooperation." So so I that was my my introduction to Sal Khan is to go and tell him exactly what I just told you. So I waited for him to come off stage, and then I I. Slowly approach where he was headed. And I said, hey, thank you so much. Uh, thank you for what you've done to the, to the world, you know, with Khan Academy and the great content you produce and help, help young, you know, young people learn about math. I said, that's great, thank you. And by the way, here's what I do. I'd love to connect with you and/or someone on your team to see if there's potential for, um, for cooperation. and collaboration. So he said, here's the email, email me, we'll talk about it. So I, I did email him the next day, and I'm doing my follow-ups now. So, so hopefully something will come out of it. But that is— I mean, so, so long story here, it was— it took me, it took me some thinking, and I had to muster some courage to get out of my seat, walk away, and go and say hi to a stranger. I mean, he's a famous guy, amazing guy, but to me, I've never met him before. So, but that builds muscle. Like, every time you do this, it doesn't have to be easy. It does get easier, but it's not easy. But you still have to do it. You have to, in a way, discipline yourself to do things that are hard and that most people don't do. And that's what differentiates— that, that's what will differentiate you as a successful entrepreneur. When you're doing— when you're getting more rejections than others and you're learning from those, and when you're doing things that are difficult that many other people are not willing to make. All right, so, um, so we have someone who came in and said hi. Hi, I'm here. So if you have a question or a comment, leave it. I'll be more than happy to answer it. We have another question here. What's your rule of thumb for someone building a side business while employed? What signals tells you— sorry, what signals tell you It is time to switch full-time. Great question. Actually, I have an entire livestream on on building a six-month financial runway. And actually, I tell people the best time to start a business is not when you don't have money in the bank. It's not when you're struggling financially. It's not when you're laid off and the severance is about. To evaporate. The best time to start a business is when you are working and you have the benefits and the salary and the PTO, and you start taking time not from work. You have to meet your obligations and excel and do above and beyond for your employers. I think that's your reputation there, and that's your obligation to them. But from evenings and weekends, so this is the difficult part, You have to take time and dedicate to this side hustle that you want to start. So if you don't have the bandwidth to do it, then don't do it. If you have aging parents, if you have young ones, if you have— you're going through some rough patch with your life partner, maybe that's not the best time to do this thing on the side. But if you're serious about starting a business I think the most ideal time— there are 2 more. One, if you're laid off and you have a very nice severance package, let's say you have a 3-month runway or a 6-month runway, then the financials are taken care of. Still reduce your expenses, reduce your— the things that— the hobbies, the trips, all of that. Really bring it down to a bare minimum so you can extend your financial runway. And then if you're laid off, you have a lot of time on your hand and you can spend into vetting the idea, talking to potential partners, learning about sales, all that good stuff. Now, if you're not laid off and you are working full-time, then something has to give and that's typically time in the evenings and time on the weekend. But that is, that's what I would do. I would actually do a lot of the work, all the business planning, vetting the idea, market research, competitive research, putting together maybe the website without maybe launching yet, preparing my messages that I will do on LinkedIn, doing all that in the background and potentially work on a project or two, learn how to sell and deliver And I think at that time, you should be able to send your resignation letter with some confidence because now you've done a lot of the prep work and you closed one deal or you're about to. And now once you've submitted your resignation letter and you're no longer associated with this company, then you have 50, 60 hours a day to work on this, a week, sorry, not a day. 50, 60 hours a week to work on this, where in the past you were working maybe a couple hours a day and maybe a Saturday or a Sunday. So, so again, everybody's circumstances are different, but if you're serious about having your own consulting business, something has to give. And in a lot of cases, if you have the resources and you're busy with work, then that time in the evening or that time on the weekend And you don't have to do it forever. I'm not a fan of lifelong side hustling. I think you end up not doing very well in your day job and you end up not doing really well in your side hustle, but if you do it for a short period of time to basically give you that launchpad, I'm all for it. So that is another example here. Thank you for the question. These are really good questions. Uh, and we have another question here from Eric. Uh, Eric, that— yeah, so I'm a high— I'm a student at a high school and I'm thinking of where specifically should I invest in real estate. So if you're a student in high school and you want to invest in real estate, I'm assuming you have access to capital. I'm not a specialist in real estate investing. But I would, I can tell you that if you want to invest in real estate, this is a commitment where there are 2 types of assets. There are liquid assets and then illiquid assets. So real estate is illiquid assets, meaning if you invest in an apartment, in a condo, let's say in, I don't know, Santa Clara here in California, have the capital or you borrow, whatever way you get to own a property and rent it, just keep in mind that that type of investment, you can't get that money quickly if you ever needed that money because you might want to get that capital back in 2 years from now. And then the economy is awful. The real estate market is down. So I would definitely look into Depending, depending on your financial goals, I think before you say I want to, I want to decide, I want to, I want to invest in, in this or that, in the stock market or in real estate or in Bitcoin, there I think learn a bit more about the different investment vehicles, the pros and cons. And also you want to make sure your financial goals are clear. If you need cash in the short term or the midterm, Putting money in something that is more of a long-term type investment is not recommended. So, so yeah, but I would say learn before you invest into anything. Learn a lot about about what you're investing in, and don't don't watch, don't fall. I mean, there's just so much content on on YouTube and also on on social media in general. On getting and becoming rich very quickly. Like these rich— get-rich-quick schemes, they're schemes. There's no getting-rich-quick way. Look and speak and follow all those who have built something meaningful and built 7 and 8 and 9-figure businesses. They work their butts off. They failed. They tapped into their savings. They gave it everything they had. To make it and make it big. So there's no overnight success. There's no investment that is guaranteed. Success is not guaranteed. Returns on investments is not guaranteed. So you have, you have to look at your financial goals, and you have to look at the capital that you have, and then you might want to diversify your investments so you have, you have a balanced portfolio. That's my— that's as much of an advice you'll get from me on investment. I'm, I'm not a Not a— I don't specialize in that area. So, but thank you. Thank you for being here. Happy to answer any other questions you have about consulting or starting your own business. So, so we've talked a lot about, about the confidence, the comfort trap, the different types of confidences, confidence. Now, how to break that trap. So there's 3 tactical shifts. Okay, so, so it's not about just research— researching more or reading another book or watching another video. I want to do something very, very tactical. I want you, if you're about to start a business or you started the business, think of the first tactic here. The first tactical shift is you have to do unscalable things, meaning I'll give you an example. If you have a client and you offer financial services, consulting on financial services. And let's say they're not tech savvy and they don't have access to systems and they don't have access to— they have everything maybe on paper. So if you're waiting for them to email you or give you access to systems, you will never be able to make progress. So you might have to go and visit them and get stuff, get, get the material, the content you need, you know, from paper, make copies, whatever the case might be. So if sometimes if you're waiting on customers, they just won't give you what you need, and that will just slow down the sale and also slow down the project if you're in charge of delivery. So doing unscalable things is important. So for example, Brian Chesky, one of the co-founders of Airbnb, he said when they launched their app early on, this is like early days of the internet and mobile and all that good stuff, they noticed that people who listed their properties, they were not uploading images. And from their own data, Airbnb, they knew that people who uploaded images, they had a higher success rate of landing guests to their condos and houses. So actually, Brian and his co-founders, they went to New York City And they went to these places where people listed their properties, and they they helped them. They brought in a photographer to take pictures of of of these hosts' homes, and then they were able to post these pictures online. And then that that led to more traction and and more rentals, and everybody benefited. It's not Airbnb's job. To take pictures of your house and put it in your Airbnb profile. But what the founders of Airbnb did was to solve that bottleneck, that initial bottleneck, because again, phones, mobile phones and all that, that was just really new at the time. So as a founder, a lot of times you have to do unscalable things. You have to do things that are way up, that are above and beyond what you should be doing as, as a consultant, but that will help you close the deal. That will help you remove any friction between you and closing the deal. And also, once you close the deal, it will remove friction between you and delivering what you sold the client. So that's one thing. The second shift here— and again, for those of you who are joining us now, thank you for being here— I'm going over that confidence that we have, the comfort trap, the confidence we have when we are executing in a company, and then the builder, how to establish that builder confidence where we can own the outcome and we can do the things that are difficult for us. And that's how we build muscle in entrepreneurship, and that's how we grow our businesses. So The tactical— I have a couple of tactical shifts and then I think we have another question here, but let me finish this section. So tactical shift number 2, I would call the 10+5 challenge. So if you want to kill comfort, and I know I talked about this earlier, but it's really important. If you want to kill comfort, especially in sales and marketing, you have to have a rejection target. I think Noah Kagan talked about it in his book, A Million Dollar Weekend. So I think he put a goal of 100, if I don't— If I remember correctly. But my recommendation for you is to— I have the 10+5. So 5 is you research 5 competitors really thoroughly, understand everything about, about that space. And then the 10 in the 10+5, reach out to 10 people and set a date. Today is Tuesday. By next Tuesday, or by this weekend, by the end of the weekend, I will be— I will have talked to 10 people Those are potential buyers. Just do it and prepare. And again, if you go to that video I mentioned, The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business, I have examples of what to say and what to do and how to follow up. So the idea is you want to think of this, the, the problems you are solving for this individual, and go and pitch. The pitch will not be perfect. You will be Nervous. People will sense it, but that's okay. You'll be less nervous the second time around, and you'll be much less nervous the third time around. So, but the idea here is to build that muscle of being out there, because if you're not getting rejected, if you're not getting rejected, you are not building and you're just planning. And the third shift here, and then I'll go to the question, um, tactical shift number 3 is Which we, Imad, you mentioned this earlier about the financial reality. This is what I said. I said, I have a point on it later. So you'll have voices, whispers in your head that I can't afford to leave my company. I can't afford, I have a family, I have obligations. Yes, I want you, I don't want you to be reckless. I want you to make sure you have a financial runway, as I said earlier. But this founder I spoke with, Tom, he said, if I had 6 to 8 months of coverage, of runway, it would be a no-brainer. So the discipline gap for him here, for this founder Tom, is financial. So if you keep looking at your bank account, and I don't have this 6 to 8 month runway, then you'll never make that— take that step. You'll never take that leap. So I want you to— and I cover this in the 6-month runway video— I talk about having— doing an inventory of your expenses for your work, for personal expenses, work expenses if you have something on the side already, and see what can I cut. Cut Netflix, okay? If you have 3 hobbies, bring it down to 1 hobby. I want you to be active. I want you to be outside. I want you to be physically fit. Yes, eat healthy, but you have, you have to cut down on certain things. There's a trade-off. Life— yep, there's, there's no— it's— I won't go, uh, I won't go into a preaching, preaching mode here, but something has to give. And typically, if, if the financial financials are, are limited, we have to cut down on expenses. Now later, once you make it and you make it big, then you can go and have all the hobbies you want. You can go and spend and buy the car that you want to buy or buy the house that you want to buy. That's fine. Initially, that gratification, you have to control that instant gratification, and it's hard, I know. We're bombarded daily by marketing messages to buy this, to go on this other vacation, to try this new thing, I get it, I get it. But if financials— if, if the issue, if the blocker in your mind, and it's for many people, it's the financial reality, then you have to work toward building this financial runway so the financials are in order so you can focus on the business. Okay, so, uh, I have one more, one more section to cover, and these are exact steps you can take to get to where you want to go in terms of building the business. But before I go that, let me answer the question we have here. For a business built around LinkedIn, would you count running pilots, doing one-on-one audits, as doing unscalable things? And what is the right unscalable phase before you systemize it? So yes, I mean, anything— if you have— if you don't have any clients now And you know your offer, you know your program, you know how much you want to sell it for, and you know how to do outreach. Like, what else are you going to do? So reach out and doing unscalable things, audits, helping people benefit from your service. We used to include mini audits. We used to do, if a client is something, is like like a Fortune 1000, Fortune 100, we would go above and beyond and do like this amazing audit at no charge to show them the depth of our knowledge in this domain when we were doing marketing analytics, and a lot of people, most people would be very appreciative, everybody would be very appreciative, most people would buy from us, a few would not, but that was a huge investment of time on our end, But it made the life of the salesperson so much easier because the clients were just so impressed with what they were getting for free before they even signed up with us. So in their mind, in the client's mind, oh my goodness, if I'm getting this kind of value before I sign up with them, oh my goodness, what can I, you know, what is it that I'll be getting once I sign up with them and there are the consultants taking care of my business? So I'm all, especially initially, you bend over backward for the client. Make sure they're succeeding, they're successful. They will be your best referral engine. They will send clients your way. They will, most everybody, this is, some people are just, some people are just not the type who reciprocate, but the majority of people are. Will help, will help you. They'll appreciate what you've done. They'll tell their friends. They'll tell their network. So 100%, I mean, find whatever is, is difficult for the clients to do, because a lot of times you have a solution, you have an idea, you offer the solution, the client doesn't know how to implement it. So if you go and help them, hold their hands, let them implement and see the value, they, they will buy your service, and they might actually ask you to do some some extra consulting because they don't have the bandwidth to do it for themselves. So I'm a big fan of going above and beyond, especially early on. If you make the most difficult client delighted, I mean, if you make the most difficult client happy, the rest of them, the rest of the clients will be super delighted. All right, so in terms of the 5 Uh, the things that I want you to do, that you can do, the things that, um, are more important than optimizing, optimizing your profile on social media, you know, tweaking the logo, updating the website. Those are important. Once, once you've done them, that's it. No, you don't need to keep focusing on that. You need to do 5 things. Step 1 is Controlled discomfort. So take on a project that scares you slightly. Now, this could be in business, in the realm of business, or something personal. Also, if you have the bandwidth, long-term discipline practice. Pick something, a hobby or something where it has a long-term type of goal. In martial arts, Pick Aikido, for example, or another art and say, I want to get to black belt. That commitment, that discipline, the knowledge, the showing up every day, stepping on the mat literally in this case, even when you're not feeling well, even when you're really like your shoulder's aching a little bit, do your stretching, right? So take something that has a long-term nature. And commit to it. I think that, that builds commitment, that builds muscle. The other thing is, step number 3 is you got to do an audit of your environment. So an environmental upgrade. You have to surround yourself with builders. If you— I, I heard this, I heard this from, from someone many years ago. He said, look at the 5 people you surround yourself with and the 5 books that you read today, and that will tell you where you will be in 5 years. So, so this tricky— now we might be comfortable and we have fun with the people we hang out with, but if these folks are not builders and they're not serious about life, about, about growing personally and also in business, then they will hold you back knowingly or unknowingly because it's— you're on a different You want to be on a different wavelength. You want to be successful. You want to work hard. You want to build. If those around you are not, trust me, it will be a big distraction. Step number 4 is habit audit, and that is you have to prioritize certain things. So where is it that I'm spending my time? Am I spending an hour a day scrolling? Yeah. Okay, I know scrolling could be addictive. We all have this issue. Cut it down to 10 minutes. Have a timer. 10 minutes, right? If it is watch a lot of TV, if you are very involved within the family, of course, do take care of your family obligations, but maybe social life, you can cut down on some of the commitments. So do your own audit and see where time is spent and then reprioritize. Whatever you want to achieve, whether it's that black belt in Aikido or whether it's the business that you want to kick off, you have to prioritize it. And then last but not least is public commitment. So you can, you can build something and then announce it to the world. And in the case that you're still working, maybe you don't want to make that announcement, but you have to ship. You have to be out there, uh, reaching out to people about what you are building. Even if you're not making a public announcement yet, you can reach out to your friends, to your family, to your ex-coworkers, to your classmates, ex-classmates, whatever the case might be, and let them know about what you are building and that you are shipping something that is solving problems. And once your network is aware of what you're doing, trust me, they'll also think of people to send your way. So those are the things I want you to focus on. And really, at the end of this session today, the question isn't, am I capable? The question is, am I willing to get uncomfortable and do things that are difficult? I think if you answer that question honestly and take some small steps, then you're on the right way to build and grow a sustainable and profitable All right, so that is it for today. And for those of you— thank you for those of you who are still with me here. I want to show you, actually, you can, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, but, um, here's the channel and the video I mentioned earlier. I'm— hold on, let me make sure you are seeing my screen before I go up. Yeah, here you go. Yep, right here. So this is the video, The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business in 2026. It has all the templates, the worksheet, the step-by-step guide to start and grow the business. And then we have actually, if you're also, if you've already started and you're sending proposals and the proposals are not landing, I did this, the longest video I've ever recorded is an hour and 4 minutes on proposals, on writing proposals that close, uh, and then, and then I, I go over every aspect of proposal writing and preparing you to improve your close rate. All right, so that is it for today. Again, thank you for— hold on, where is my— yeah, thank you for, um, for being here. If you have any questions, uh, don't hesitate to leave a comment on whichever platform you're on, or you can email me at feras@ startupaffairs.com, and obviously you can connect with me on LinkedIn. And Ima, thank you so much for being here, probably late on your end, and let me know, let me know, feel free to reach out if you have any other questions. Thank you so much. Thank you.