From Employee to Entrepreneur in 2026: The 3 Must-Haves for a Successful Leap

Thank you for tuning in. What is happening in the world of entrepreneurship? Leaping successfully. The 3 must-haves for a successful leap from employee to entrepreneur this year. Now, you might, you might have been laid off. You might have been wanting to start a business for the longest time, and you're thinking This is the year I'm going to do it. And you, you probably at this moment at work where you, you're, you're staring at the screen and saying, is this really it? Is this what am I, I'm supposed to be and keep doing? Maybe, maybe you have this idea that's been brewing in your mind, or maybe you have 5 ideas, or maybe you've, you've, you've tried a side a side hustle, and now, now you're struggling. But either way, whatever, whatever situation you're in, whether it's a layoff that unfortunately you were, you were part of, or whether it's corporate job that is just not what you have aspired to do, or maybe you're like the 62% of adult Americans who want to be their own bosses, whatever the case might be, The real test is when you decide you want to become an entrepreneur. This transition from corporate to entrepreneurship isn't just a job description, isn't just a change in a job description. It is a test of discipline. And just let me make sure that tech is working with us here today. Yep. All right. We had an issue with the audio when we started. So let me, um, let me paint a, paint a picture for you here. Think of corporate life like a cruise ship. The engine runs whether you're there or not, whether you show up or not. There's structure, there's predictability, and almost no control over where the ship is heading. And then when someone decides to toss you overboard in the next restructuring. That is corporate life. Now entrepreneurship is different. That's a rowboat. You finally have total control in terms of picking the direction, picking the pace, and also the destination. But here's the catch: if you don't build the muscle to row that boat is not going to move. And it doesn't matter how much you know about the ocean, that, that's your subject matter expertise. If you don't decide to learn how to row the boat and how to pick up the oars, that is sales and marketing and mindset, no amount of knowledge about the boat or the ocean will help. So today I'll be covering the 3 must-haves that separate those who talk about starting, starting a consulting business from those who actually build one. And if you are in a state where you've already started, you've, you've left corporate, you save up some money and you started your business, but you feel stuck these same 3 must-haves will get you back on track. All right? And before we jump into those 3 must-haves, a couple of administrative items. One, if you are new, this is— my name is Feras Alhlou, and I've— this is my 7th venture, built a number of companies, including one that we grew to 7 to 8 figures, and then we sold it to Dentsu, the global media giant. And I'm here to help entrepreneurs start their business successfully, grow, scale, and build this amazing company that they've built, they've dreamt, they've dreamt of building. And if you are, if you have any type of struggle, you're trying to network and, and pitch yourself and pitch your services and, and generate revenue, and, and you just— is not working, leave me a comment, send me a question. You can email me at feras@startupwithferas.com. Feras spelled F-E-R-A-S, like my first name. Or if you are having— if you're having wins, I'd love to hear about your wins, small wins and big wins, and share that. I'd love to share these stories with your permission, of course, with the community and And I do this on these live streams that we do every week now, and I cover a business topic and then I answer questions I get from the community. But again, if it's something maybe a bit personal, something you don't want to share with everyone else, and it's maybe a bit private, feel free to email me. I keep all that confidential and I'll answer all the emails, all the emails that I get. All right. So the first must-have, the first must-have is the clarity filter. You have to be clear on a number of things, and the very first thing is about the idea itself, about the niche, about who you want to sell to and what is it that you're offering this audience. This segment of the population. And many, many professionals who have built some skills, when they leap into entrepreneurship, they have a solution in mind. I want to do HR consulting. I want to do IT consulting. I want to do financial advisory. I want to help people, coach people on how to do better in public speaking. Whatever your niche is, you have an idea. And you know it very well because that's what maybe you've been doing for the last 10+ years, but most entrepreneurs, and I speak to anywhere from 2 to 3 entrepreneurs every week, and I've advised and helped over 250 entrepreneurs over the years, many skip the painful part. They validate whether the skills they have and the problem that they want to solve, They fail in validating if this is a real problem and it's urgent enough for people to pay them money to solve. Because if you're not solving something very specific, then you're building a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. And that's a very fast way to burn out and go broke. The one of the books I read last year was by the founder of Waze, the company that ended up getting acquired by Google, Uri Levine. He said he wrote a book called Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution. And it's a great, great quote and it's a great title for the book and he's so spot on. Because many founders, especially those who have numbers of years, a number of years of experience, they convince themselves that they have the greatest product or the great— greatest service, and they understand it very well, but they don't do the validation piece. They, they don't do true validation. They might speak with someone in their family or maybe close friends of them, and this person might be super nice and they don't want to hurt their feelings, so they don't give them honest feedback about, about the solution, the service that they're offering. So when they— these folks that don't do validation, these founders that don't do the true validation, they take the leap and then they don't make it or they struggle a lot, is because of missing this very must— first must-have is validating you're, uh, that, that you're solving a real problem that customers are willing to pay you money for. So, so, so focusing on the problem, on understanding those, understanding the needs, the wants, the desires of, of, of those who have this problem is really important because it's like, it's like telling customers how great the watch, uh, that, that maybe you made, or how the— how, how, how it— how a clock, um, it works. But people don't care. They want to know the time. And you as a consultant, your job is to highlight the benefits to the— your audience, um, the, the what they get out of your service, right? You, the trusted advisor, what is it that you offer them and you help them and you handhold them into, into safety, into, uh, into an air— into, uh, if you're an IT consultant, you make sure their systems won't be hacked, they won't have viruses, everything is backed up, they're using the latest technologies, they're streamlining their processes. That's that's you as a consultant. You come in to help them with that. So, so what I want you to highlight, what the tip and the tool I want to share with you to help you validate your offer is what I call the 10+5 rule. And the idea here is that you talk— I want you to, to validate your idea. I want you to speak with 10 potential buyers and then research 5 competitors. And that exercise of speaking with 10 potential clients and also researching competitors will give you, will give you a whole lot of clarity on what is it that you're offering as it relates to the needs of the market, and also as it relates to how your competitors are offering something similar. So, and I want to, I want to walk you through an example here. And, and this link, I'll have the link to this spreadsheet worksheet in the description so you can download it and make your own copy. It's, it's a Google Sheet. So let me share my screen here with my 10+5. And it is, I have 2 tabs. One are ready for you to fill, fill in and to with sample data. And there you go. All right, so you should be seeing this here. And again, this is, uh, Right here, talk to 10 people. So basically what I want you to think about it is you put the name, the association, their friend, their ex-supplier, ex-vendor, ex-colleague. Do they have a need for what you offer? If not, find maybe someone, let's say again the HR consultant example, if you don't have anyone in HR, Ask your friends if they work in a company, maybe they can make— they can introduce you to someone in HR, and you ask them about what is it that you offer and if they have a need for that. Do they currently do this in-house? Do they hire? Do they contract for that service? What is it that other consultants miss? Maybe other consultants are slow in delivery. Maybe they're not responsive. Maybe they're too expensive. Maybe they don't work in the same time zone. So understand from the potential buyers, what is it that the current providers are missing? That is gold. You have to really— because then you can, you can— if there are gaps in the way other providers are offering the service, then you can fill in those gaps. You can differentiate by being maybe more responsive, higher quality offer, to offer higher quality, to, uh, to, to, uh, to maybe show up in their offices if the client likes to have the consultant meet with them in person and you happen to be local. So again, that research will, and being an active listener when you have those conversations is really important. And then any additional notes that you capture, and again, I won't spend a lot of time on this today, but I have sample data from someone who is launching an IT consulting business and when they spoke with former colleagues and business associates and associates and then someone maybe you met at the gym and they capture all that information as it relates to IT in that example. So that is about the 10 people you speak with. The next thing is research 5 competitors. So you list the competitors, take a look at their website, see how they're packaging their services, how much their pricing, or if they offer pricing on their website, what other supporting material, what sort of content they're producing on LinkedIn, on social media, any, any observations, if there are reviews about them, if you can get your hand on something that may be a case study they've done. So understand 5 competitors. My recommendation is not to— you can take a look if you're about to start out, start— if you're just starting out And then you— here, let me— I think I'm showing this. Yeah, good. If you're just starting out, don't compare to McKinsey. You can learn from McKinsey, look at their frameworks and see how they position themselves and all the fancy language they use. That's great. But I would say, look at someone who's been a little bit ahead of you, someone who's been in the industry maybe 5 years and you're just starting out. Someone who's been around, who's just starting. I mean, you take a look at a different sample, a sample of competitors from, um, maybe someone local, someone not local, but don't compare to the big guys yet because the way they sell, the way they package, they do a lot of— maybe they have a lot of— they have a brand recognition. So, so take a look at someone who's maybe a little bit ahead of you, maybe one who's far ahead of you, just to see sort of where the destination is in terms of how they're maybe offering their services and, and how they've maybe expanded beyond just one service. So, so take a look at that. So the combination of speaking with 10 people who are potential buyers and understanding their needs and wants and the gaps in, in what other providers are, um, have, and then also taking a look at, at the competitors. So that will give you a very good idea of what the market needs are and what is being offered, and then will help you stand out. So, so this is, you know, this is really important because when you look at the competitors and, and look at what others offer, this similar— what, what people offer similar to what you are planning on, on offering. See, other firms, big firms, they sell prestige, they have big logos, we've been around for all these years. You will sell differently. You'll connect at a personal level. You'll sell authority. You're a subject matter expert. You can be very flexible because small company, just you initially. You can be very responsive. You can bend over backward for this client. You can be there in person and offer immediate and direct insight and share their knowledge. So a lot of this, these things that are unique to a small business owner, to a new consultant, are actually advantages because bigger companies, they might offer the same service, but they'll assign a junior account manager that your customer would have to work with. They don't offer a personal connection. They don't typically— bigger companies, they would have processes and systems, and they, they do things in a different way. So you, you as a consultant, as an expert who is just starting out, you have a handful of clients, so you'll, you'll, you'll use those as differentiators— the ability to be, to be present, to be, you know, the client will have direct access to you as, as the expert. You can deliver faster. not a whole lot of overhead, you know, in terms of working with you. So all of those are advantages. So keep that in mind as you are going through this vetting process. And then remember that in business, in life too, change is— the only constant thing is change. So just because maybe you've landed on one idea that you've vetted and you're starting to get some traction, but then things slow down, You might have to pivot a little bit. You might have to tweak the way you present. You might have to actually refine the packaging. If you're working with very, very small businesses, you might have to— and you're not getting good traction and they're nickeling and diming, you want to work with larger businesses, mid-sized businesses, so you have to pivot and change your messaging and to be able to resonate with— instead of working with the business owner now, with mid-sized companies, you're probably working with a director level or a manager level instead of the business owner who makes this, you know, all the decisions in a small business. So, so you might have to pivot or change either the way you present yourself or the service itself, and that is totally okay. Now, don't pivot every other week. You want to get some traction. You want to give the idea everything you have, and then if things are not— if you're not getting any traction, yes, you want to refine things and maybe pivot, but that is part of the process. As the co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, said, think of yourself as not as a finished product, but think of yourself as someone who's in a permanent beta. There's always like Google when they introduced Gmail beta, and then later it was public, right? And a lot of tech companies, They roll out a feature or maybe a new service, but that's— it's not yet ready for, um, for general consumption. So it's, it's beta, right? So, so think of yourself as an entrepreneur as always learning, as always adapting, as always, um, implementing, uh, what you just learned and, and improving, improving your delivery. So, so It was, who was it? He said, Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, he said, the only competitive advantage you have as a company is that you learn and you apply that learning to your processes, to your systems, and benefit your clients. So to summarize here, validate the idea, Talk, talk to potential buyers, research competitors, and then as you start to pitch and reach out and talk to people, if you're getting feedback from the market that you need to refine and change things, it's okay to do that. That's just part of the process. So that is the first must-have, and as you have validated this idea that you have and as you've built, started to build that muscle to talk to people about your idea, you've mustered enough courage to do that, the second must-have is growing that outreach muscle, so it's really, really important to get that right, because remember our analogy between the cruise ship and the rowboat, if you are If you have that rowboat and you've taken the leap from, from the cruise ship to, to have your own business, you have to learn. You have to have the oars and you have to learn how to, how to row. You have to build that muscle so that the journey is not going to be— it's not going to be easy. That's just part of entrepreneurship. I always say entrepreneurship is 5 times harder than most people think. And, and, and the issue with this outreach that a lot of people have good ideas But the one, one of the top bottlenecks for new entrepreneurs is that they're afraid of selling. They're afraid of marketing. And I get it. Most of us are not born salespeople. So, and some of us, maybe most of us, we think sales is a dirty word, or we think sales is sleazy. But you have to reframe this in your mind. 2 things. One is, as an entrepreneur, as a new business owner, you have to sell. There's no escape. There's no escape. You cannot outsource selling early on. Later, yes, once you, you figure it out and you understand what people buy and how they buy, you can hire someone to help you scale. But initially, you have to market and you have to sell. The only exception is that if you have a co-founder who will do the selling while you focus on the backend or on implementation and delivering to the client, but initially sales has to be there. It has to be done by the founder or the founders. So the problem here is that in terms of this building this outreach muscle is that a lot of founders are afraid of this sales and marketing, and if you dig a little bit deeper in it, A lot of it is due to the fear of rejection. So not, not sure what else to tell you, but rejection is also part of entrepreneurship, part of life, and you have to develop some thick skin against rejection. And the interesting thing is that we all deal with rejection differently depending on a number of factors including our temperament or personality types. So, so, and I had a whole video, I have a whole video I'll show it to you here on, I have it on my, yeah, on, I, that I published a couple months ago I believe on, let me, let me show you, um, where is it, right here. Yeah. Oh, I have it. It was on— yes, on, uh, that, the fear to launch. Give me, give me 17 minutes and I'll get you past the fear to launch based on your personality type. So, so check out this video, um, 17 minutes on— I, I, I covered, um, 4 personality types, and that was actually based on Dr. Kiersey, and it's at kiersey.com, K-E-I-R-S-E-Y.com. And there's actually an assessment that you can take. I don't get— I don't have any affiliation with Kiersey or, or any of the tools that I mentioned on these, on, on these calls and on these, on these videos. But if you can go in there and look, there are 4, 4 types: the, the, the Rational, the Guardian, the Idealist, and then also the Artisan. Artisan. And then all— there's an assessment that you can take and figure out your own type, your own personality type. There's a bit of overlap with these things, and this is all built on, on the more elaborate 16 personality types by, um, Myers-Briggs, I believe. Yeah, that's— I think that's Dr. Keirsey consolidated all of those into 4. Uh, so, so there is the way back to, to to what I was referring to is how we deal with rejection. Some of us don't want to have that rejection at all, so we don't go into sales and marketing, and then if you've taken the leap and you decided not to do sales and marketing, guess what? You won't have a business. No revenue, no business. So dealing with the rejection, understanding rejection, how to deal with it is really important. So I won't spend a whole lot of time on it today, but I just want to spend a few minutes to highlight how different personality types deal with rejection. So for example, if you are the rational type, sort of the strategist, the logical, right? You're going to intellectualize rejection. You're going to rationalize it. You're going to dissect it, and then Yeah, you'll move on, but you're not paying attention, if you're that type, to any sort of emotions, the emotional processing, and then you might end up again with some cynicism or just burnout. So what I want you to think about it, and I'll walk you through an example, is that to not, don't just think of the logistical things or take a look at maybe your pricing model or look at your proposal deck or the proposal document. I want you to look at those, but also don't underestimate the emotions that are involved, like the story behind the rejection. So for example, if you submitted a proposal and the client said no, Yes, there could have been issues in the proposal document, and we have a full video on proposals, the ultimate guide to writing successful winning proposals. Check that out. But, but aside from that, you want to understand why is it that the client did not buy. Maybe, maybe, maybe I didn't connect with them as, as a consultant. Maybe they didn't feel that I understood them very well. Maybe they were focused on 3 or 4 things in terms of the issues, and I remember this happened to me in one of the pitches. We had several stakeholders and we unintentionally, we ignored, we actually did not realize there was a stakeholder with a completely different set of needs, And those were not, actually we just, we should have engaged that stakeholder a bit more in the in-person meeting, ask them probing questions and get them involved. And then because when we send the proposal back, everybody said, yes, excellent, but this one specific stakeholder said, hey, they're not addressing my needs, and then we're going with this other vendor. So, So just make sure you don't just examine the proposal document or maybe that your pricing, also take a look at or examine, feel it before you fix it, understand the emotions behind working with people. You want to be able to connect with them, you want to be able to make sure they hear, they know that they're understood. So that is for those of us who are the logical, the sort of the strategist, the rational, as Dr. Kiersey called them. The second type, the guardian, those who believe in like structure, they're the steady builders and they crave stability and they crave order. So when there's a rejection, it feels like a failure in execution. So for example, You send a proposal and then it's rejected. Now the guardians will start examining their SOPs, their standards, their systems and processes, and their checklist and spend a lot of time fixing that. Yes, you could fix, improve your responsiveness. Yes, you can improve your template for the proposal. All of that is good, but instead of overthinking that and spending a lot of time on that instead of actually following up with 2 other prospects would be putting time— we're putting time on the wrong thing. So for those of us who like order and like like systems and structure. If there's a rejection, yes, examine your systems and examine your checklist and your processes, but also don't just be stuck in there. Do be out there, do more reps. That will help you build that muscle, that sales and marketing muscle. The 3rd type, the artisan, and this is— these are the optimist and a bit maybe daring As well, they artisans they they they're very action-oriented. They they're bold, right? So that's that's great. Now when there's a rejection, they might take this rejection personally at first. They'll bounce they'll bounce back fast, which is good as well, but sometimes too fast without. without reflecting on what just happened, and they might just jump into the next shiny idea. So in our proposal example, if they got a rejection, they might instantly drop that service and they say, you know what? Nobody's buying this. We just got a rejection. Let's move to a new service. without, again, any validation, without testing, without seeing and examining what actually went wrong. So think of it, if— well, let me finish that 4th personality type, temperament type, and then I want to highlight something that's really important. The 4th one is the idealist, and they're the visionary, They they have a lot of heart. They're diplomatic. They're the diplomats. They're diplomatic and and they're relational. So when they get rejections, they might just call it quits. But remember that a rejection is not a verdict on you or on your purpose. Rejection, as I mentioned in a recent video, another video is. Rejection is redirection, so it helps us refine what we do. It helps us redirect maybe what we do. It helps us rebuild maybe what we do because that's feedback. Rejection is feedback. So so one harsh no for the idealist, and they might just call it quits. But what I want you to do that is is what I want to do here is. Do this Kiersey assessment. See where you fit. And keep in mind that these things are not set in stone. There's a bit of overlap between all of these types. And you might be under certain circumstances, you might be more of the Idealist. And then under other circumstances, you might be more of the Artisan. So the idea here is to— what I want to highlight is that in business, If you are serious about starting a company, if you are serious about growing that company, and you have some expertise, and you've done the validation, you've done the vetting of this idea based on that must— the first must-have we covered earlier. At this point, if you've done all of that, at this point, it's all about being out there. It's all about networking. It's all about just doing it. And it might be hard. It will be hard, especially if you're not the outgoing type, if you're not the extrovert type, but that's okay. In psychology, they talk about exposure, and there are 2 types. They talk about gradual exposure and this concept of flooding. So if you can, in our context of sales and marketing, If you've never been to a networking event, you might want to go to an online meetup initially. If you go there, if you want to go the gradual approach, go to maybe an online meetup, small group, right? You don't have to do a lot of talking, just listen and see what others are doing. And then go to maybe attend a larger meetup, and then go to a small in-person meeting, and then go to a larger in-person meeting. This way you build that muscle gradually. Or if you're that type likes to do it cold, that flooding approach. Just drop yourself, go to an event, maybe a local event with 100 people all of a sudden, and just practice what you want to say. Okay, here's what I do, here's how I help clients, here's the clients I help, I help, and, and see how it works. So you decide which approach you want to, you want to take, but this is the fix. If you have an idea, you've done some validation, you've done some vetting, the next step is to go out and start conversations with people who need what you have or people who can direct you to the potential clients, right? So the metric in this phase or the KPI, the key performance indicator, is not revenue, is not getting clients yet, it's really about confidence, it's about a number, 2 numbers. One is the number of meetings and networking events, connecting with people, that, that those numbers. And then you can track the number of rejections that you will get. Maybe set a target. I believe it was Noah Kagan in his book The Million Dollar Weekend, I think, I believe he, he said set a number. I think it was like 100, get 100 nos in a week or something like that. I mean, 150, doesn't matter, but rejections are part of entrepreneurship. Rejection, it's part of life. So if you are serious about building and growing that business, getting used to nos is part of it. Now, as you gain more experience, as you become better at what you do, as you have maybe people work on your team who are maybe specialists in different areas of the business, you will start getting better at addressing the nos and navigating the nos and turning the nos into yeses, or turning the nos into, let me get back to you in a month or so. So there are a lot of ways, a lot of ways to deal with that over time. So just like, just like in martial arts, you learn a technique, you learn a technique, you learn it doesn't work, but as you start after, you know, hundreds and hundreds of reps and after maybe some light sparring, then after you get to your maybe brown belt and as you get closer to your black belt and as you continue your journey towards mastery, you won't start, you won't, you'll stop thinking about what technique I should apply in the situation, you'll have enough muscle memory, you'll have enough experience to react very dynamically and properly and with the right amount of force and power and speed because you've done a lot of those reps. But initially, initially, 2 metrics. One is how many— track how many meetings and how many people you'll be meeting, and then also track those rejections. And again, learn from those rejections, but don't— Yeah. Spend a whole lot of time stuck going over, uh, stuck in, in these rejections and rejections and taking it very, very personally. Don't— that's just not, not a healthy, uh, spot to be in. All right, all of that leads us to the 3rd must-have, and this is the 3rd and the last must-have for today's livestream. So It's about mindset, it's about reprogramming, maybe we call it the identity reprogramming from employee to owner, from employee to entrepreneur, and that is really important, we need, because in the first 2 must-haves, we talked about tools and techniques and things you physically do, talking to people, researching competitors, all that, But then mindset, the mindset is really important. And there's several things I want to cover under this must-have, and they all have to do with shifting the way you think about business, about specific aspects of entrepreneurship. And I'll start with this concept of safety, because a lot of us, we believe we have this illusion of stability in a company. And then we think of, in the old days, people started in a company and they retired from that company. These days, nope, it doesn't happen, and there's not a whole lot of loyalty on both ends, unfortunately, and this is just the market dynamics. So, so safety comes from you having more control over your time, your income, and then your upside, and that happens More likely to happen in entrepreneurship. If you're working for big tech and or in a startup and you have options, that's a different different discussion. But for the rest of the folks out there, there's a you cap your income, and there's studies on this, and there's science behind it at at certain age like mid mid-forties. But if you want to have your second mountain, you want to climb your second mountain, you want to go beyond this capped potential, then you have to reinvest in yourself. You have to learn new things, including entrepreneurship, and then provide— and then put the time behind it to be able to, um, to create this, this— to climb the second mountain and to create, build that business that you'll be proud of. So, so when you, from a mindset perspective, this, this reprogramming is that I'm an employee and what worked, uh, for me as an employee is great, but entrepreneurship requires other things. And the shift is, is really important. It's not tactical. There are a lot of tactics to help us with this shift, but also psychologically I am an owner now. Every— the buck stops here. I own everything: sales, marketing, back office, payroll, IT. It's, it's me. It's me, myself, and I. I'm responsible for this. You can get help, and I encourage you to get help in specific areas. I cover this in other videos, but you're the owner and you're responsible for rowing this boat and for building the muscle to be able to row. So as it relates to that, the reprogramming, if you're used to working 40 to 45 hours a week, that got you places in corporate promotions. If you worked 45 to 50 hours a week, you're a potentially top star in most industries. But I can tell you with certainty that working 40 hours a week, it will not get you free. It will not get you to your dream destination in entrepreneurship. There's a season of a whole lot of heavy lifting that you have to go through because you're building something from scratch. With all the helps, the gurus, the, the YouTube channels including mine, all of that is helpful, right? But to get that flying wheel spinning you have to put a whole lot of time and effort. There is— there are no shortcuts. There is no get-rich-quick scheme that works. There's schemes, they won't work. So, so that is really— and that's a mindset that I have. I'm going to a season where I need to put a whole lot of time and effort and focus. And in this season, when I start to get leads and I start to get clients That's also another mindset reprogramming is that initially I have to make these initial leads and those initial clients feel— I want them to get not just satisfied, delighted. And if I have to do unscalable things for these clients, do it. These initial leads and initial clients, always, always take care of your clients. Customer satisfaction is important. Will get you repeat business, will get you referrals, good reputation in the industry. That's great. But initially, you have to go beyond satisfaction, bend over backward for these clients to— even if they're unreasonable, even if they're asking for things outside the scope, even if they're giving you some maybe aggressive, you know, deadlines, that is okay initially. Do whatever, do whatever you can to make those clients delighted because without it, no sales, no revenue. Without it, without revenue, no business. And remember that with these initial clients, you're learning how to deliver, how to set expectations, how to put some parameters around the scope. You'll learn from, from those proposals that you've sent and they were open-ended and they— you ended up losing your shirt on the first 3 clients. That is okay initially. You cannot survive and you cannot have a thriving business if you keep losing your shirt on every deal. You'll run, run out of shirts. You'll just run out of money and then you, you close shop. But initially it's okay. That just should be part of your financial planning that you're not going to make a lot of money on, on the first maybe few clients. Now you might— I want you to make a lot of money and that's great, but but I also want to prepare you for the more likely solution, and we'll learn from those delivery issues and proposal issues so that our next set of proposals and our next set of implementations and projects will be done much more efficiently, will be done within the scope, and will protect my margins and my profits. So keep that in mind as you're thinking of entrepreneurship. And one other, a couple other things here before I wrap it up is that outside of business, there are important things in life that have to be also aligned with what we're trying to do. So for those of us, for those of you who are in a relationship, who have spouses, who have young ones, or maybe aging parents or other responsibilities, you've made a big commitment to a cause or whatever it is that takes, that requires your attention outside of work, you want to make sure that these people who are impacted by your decision of working 50, 60, 70 hours a week, they are on board with this decision because You can't build a business while defending that business at home, so you have to align your partner on the plan. Or I can tell you, the pressure will crack your foundation. I've seen this happen. I'm fortunate, I'm lucky and fortunate that I've been in it, and I've been married for 38 years, and we've had our ups and downs. But it's been an amazing journey. I have an amazingly supportive wife, and I learned early on to make sure that my wife is aware of the big decision I'm about to make, and I tell her that here's what I've done. She wasn't involved. My wife was not involved in the day-to-day aspect of the business, but before major decisions, I updated her, I consulted with her, And I shared the potential outcomes and how that would— those outcomes would have impact on our financials, on our lives, on our— mainly financials, and then also the time commitments. So, and at times you might not be able, after those conversations, you might want to pause for a month or 2 or a quarter before, maybe a year, before you start entrepreneurship, because the worst thing is that you have time. If you're going through— I know a founder was going through a divorce and started to scale their business from half a million to $2 million. They couldn't do it because they could only put 30 hours a week into the business. So that was not the right season for them to plan this, this to quadruple their revenue and hire and do all these amazing things they had in mind. It was better for them to take care of stuff at home and the kids and then free up time in 6 months or so to get back and focus on the business. So this is really important. It's not talked about a lot, but I highly recommend that you make sure that you have the support at home and you keep folks at home updated on your progress and involved in any major decision that potentially could impact them. Okay. So, and related to that, especially on the financials, I do have, and let me share that with you here. I do have a 6-month financial runway and have a full video on this, but I'll just give you a sneak peek here of the financial runway tool worksheet. So basically here, I'll just spend a minute on it before we wrap it up. Um, you, you list your personal expenses, and I have a sample here. Obviously this will be different depending on where you're living. You also list your business expenses, and then you add it all up. Actually, this spreadsheet— again, I'll link all of this in the description— um, it will add it all up for you, and then you get a monthly total. And then here, this, uh, 4th tab, tab number 4, will give you your, your, your runway, and there's some revenue assumptions that you include here. Month 1, you know, so month 1 through 3 here is zero revenue. That's the planning phase and doing all that, all the, all the research, all the validation. And then maybe month 3, month 3, you start going out there and pitching. And then with these revenue assumptions, around 6, in month 6, you'll break even. Uh, so, so again, I have a full video on this. I'll put the link in the description, but this tool is important to help you Get your financials in order. And if your financials are in order, then you have that peace of mind. Things are good at home, and I can focus, put all my dedication on the business. Okay, so that mindset, that reprogramming of the mindset is really key. And it's not about security and stability and, and, uh, getting there to your final financial goal in a month or two. It's, it's managing the fear. It's managing the anxiety. Anxiety. It's, it's, it's like riding the bike and learning how to, how to bike initially. There's some stability, but it's also dynamic, like you're moving. And when you're learning initially, even with the training wheels, you're still sort of not very balanced. That's okay, that's just part of the process. Over time, you don't need the training wheel, and then you can be moving and moving fast and going up and down mountains and doing all sorts of things on a bike, and you're stable. Right? That takes time. That takes effort. That takes practice. Same thing in business. So with that in mind, you have to do this sort of one thing at a time. You're not— things are not going to happen overnight. Winners don't stare at the whole mountain because it could get very, very intimidating. Winners focus on the next evolution, on the next step, the next section of this trail, right? And then the next, and then the next. So with that, if you, if you apply these 3 must-haves— vetting, the validation, building the muscles to, to sell and to, to market, and then the reprogramming— if you have those in order, you'll be in a good position Um, to increase, significantly increase the likelihood of, of having an amazing business and reach your dreams and reach your goals, financial goals and otherwise. And if you want more details on how to start and scale a consulting business, I'll share with you one video that we— I published a few months ago on our channel, on my channel. It's called The Ultimate Guide. Let me scroll down to it right here. It's The Ultimate Guide to starting a consulting business. Um, it has all the tools, all the worksheets, templates, step-by-step tips on how to get from an idea to an actual business and to get your first 3 clients. So check out the video, and then if you're liking this material, click subscribe, click like, and share this with others who would benefit. And that is it for today. And we will see you next time.