The 4 Forces That Make or Break Businesses

Welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. What's new in the world of entrepreneurship? Most founders focus on tactics— marketing, sales, pricing, pitching, tools, how to deliver a service. These are all important, but underneath all of that, there are 4 major factors or what I call forces that determine whether your business grows or struggles. So today I'm going to walk you through those 4 forces and work with you on them and apply them to your situation and identify where you might be stuck. I got a lot of input from the community, so this is going to be very interactive. And for those of you who are joining live or listening in later, I want you to think of your own business as we go. These 4 forces are real from the trenches after 20-plus years of entrepreneurship through my own journey and through the journeys of other entrepreneurs that I've advised and peers and competitors and people that I read about and discuss business matters with. So if— and if you're new to this channel, thank you for being here. My name is Feras Alhlou. I got into this thing called entrepreneurship about 22 years ago or so. I was laid off from a VP position at a tech startup here in Silicon Valley. And I had zero background in sales. I had to figure it out. We struggled. My business partner and I struggled a whole lot for, for the first year, for the first couple years. It was a really tough journey, but eventually we figured it out with a lot of support, a lot of advice from others. That's why I, I set up this channel, is to share my own experience, share how we've made it, and also Part of it is also paying it, paying it forward because a lot of people helped me along the way. No one, no one makes it on their own, no matter what you hear on social media. There's, there's a whole lot of support system around us. Some of us work harder than others, and, and that could translate into better, larger success. But a lot of people helped me along the way, and this is why I want to share with you everything I've learned and I want you to avoid the mistakes I've done so that you get to your destination, to your dreams, your goals, whether it's financial independence, whether it's establishing an amazing reputation for yourself, making a whole lot of money for your family, buying the things you want to buy, helping a charity you want to help, building an amazing company with an amazing culture, with friends that will help you, get to success and they'll be lifelong friends. All of those are amazing goals to have when we get on this thing called entrepreneurship. So that's, that's a bit about, about myself. And then eventually, for, for, um, back to the businesses, we've— this is my 7th venture now, and we've built a couple of 7-figure businesses and one 8-figure business that we sold. I sold to Dentsu global media giant back in 2019. So enough on the background, but I'm so glad that you're here. I'm so glad that you're watching. I do want to hear from you. I have these live streams every Tuesday at noon Pacific, 3 PM Eastern. So if you have any questions, any comments about, about the material, the content that I share, or things, questions you have from your business, challenges that you're facing, or wins you're having, I'd love to hear from you. And it looks like we already have some comments, so let me see. Yes, so yeah, we have actually what one thing you're going to fix in your business this week. I do want— I pinned this comment. I do want you to let me know what is it, that one thing that you are going to fix, because, because it's— we can plan forever, we can plan for weeks, for months, we can do all the risk assessment that we want, we can write a 20-page business plan, we can do a financial plan, we can do a 5-year strategy. But if we don't take that one step this week, the hard step, whatever it is in your case— you might be working 50 hours a week, 50 hours a week in your day job, and you need to take the first step in sitting down and documenting the ideas you have. It might be really, really early in this journey, or you might already have an idea in your mind and you want to vet it, so this would be the step for you, or maybe you've already vetted the idea and you know how much you want to charge for it, you know who your ideal client is, and now the next step is the hardest. You have to start knocking on doors. You have to start asking people to buy from you, which is really hard for those of us who don't have a sales and a marketing background. So whatever the next big thing is for you, the hard thing for you, you gotta do if you're serious about entrepreneurship, if you're serious about making progress towards your goals, the ones, the ones I mentioned and other goals you might have. You might be just sick and tired of corporate. You're hearing about the layoffs. You're hearing about you're not getting supported. You have a jerk as a manager. You don't have a supportive team environment, a lot of backbiting, a lot of politics. You're sick and tired of that. Plan for taking the leap. Don't just take the jump yet. I want you to focus on getting ready while you have a job, if you're fortunate to have a job, while you have benefits, while you have— salary and a 401 and PTO, while you have all of that, this is the most optimal time to think and start putting energy into building your business. Now, if you happen to be laid off recently, like in my case, when I was laid off back in 2003, then the one thing you have, it's horrible, it's awful. I still I still get the chills when I remember that moment when the CEO walked into the office and asked me, he said, hey, Feras, tomorrow we have a layoff and you are impacted. I feel you. I hear you if you've been laid off. It's not an experience I wish on anyone. And unfortunately, in my career, I was on the receiving end that one time. And then also as a manager, as a leader, as a VP, as a CEO, at times you have to also ask some people to leave. It's hard. It's hard on everyone. On everyone involved. But if you're in that, in that, in that situation where you have been laid off or you think you're about to be laid off, then this is also the time to put into starting your own business. Because people who are laid off, it's okay to mourn. It's okay to, to go through that grief cycle. It's natural. But then you don't want to be stuck in that, in that situation. You want to be able to— okay, it happened, I'll learn from it. I could have done this, I could have done that. Okay, that's all behind us. Spend a day or 2 or 3 and then write down what you've learned from that experience, and then it's behind you. And then move into the future. What is it that I want to do now in this AI revolution era we're living in, in these economic shifts that are happening, and a lot of disruptions is happening around us. How do I package my skills so that I can turn them into sales, into profits, into revenues? So this is— if you are laid off, the one thing you have that none of us have, you have time. You have a lot of time. And if you have a financial runway, if you have a bit of a severance or you've been saving for a while and you have a runway, this is the time to put all your efforts and energy into starting a business. Okay, so that was a bit of a side note, uh, but I do want you to leave me a comment on what is it, what is this next step that you are going to take this week to move forward towards your goal. If you don't take those steps, if you don't go forward, if you don't overcome the next hurdle, you will not get to your destiny— to your destination. So, so with that in mind, let's jump right into, uh, these 4 forces, the 4 forces that will make or break your business, hidden forces at times. So, and I have actually, for those of you watching, I do have, uh, believe it or not, I have some slides today. So let me share those with you. One second. Here you go. All right, so force number one: entrepreneurship. What a surprise! So when I talk about entrepreneurship, one definition I like is the one from Harvard Business School . They define entrepreneurship as pursuing novel opportunity while. Lacking resources, pursuing novel opportunity while lacking resources. So think about it for a second. Whatever you're planning on doing, it could be IT consulting, it could be HR consulting, it could be automation, it could be AI workflow training implementation, whatever it is, it's not maybe very novel. It's not something that no one else is doing, but for you, it's something new because you're learning about sales, about marketing, about back office, about accounting, about payroll, about hiring contractors, about pitching, presenting, proposing. You're learning all these other things that are part of having your own business. So there is the new things that you haven't done before. So you're pursuing that opportunity, that dream that you have. While— this is in the definition— while lacking resources. So it is normal. It is normal that you'll be lacking resources when you start a business, just like when you start anything new. When you first rode the bike, when you first learned how to swim, when you first got into running for a marathon or stepping on the mat in a martial arts context, right? You didn't know in Aikido there's rolling, there are wrist locks, elbow locks, there are a lot of rolling, back rolling, forward rolling, high falls. When you step on the mat, you don't know any of this stuff, so you don't have— maybe you're not as fit, maybe you haven't done a whole lot of stretching before, so in whichever— whether it's fun, whether it's a hobby, whether it's sport, whether it's painting, anything new that you pursue, you don't have the resources, you don't have the skills, You might have some raw talent, which is great, but you want to then work hard to fine-tune that talent and upskill and learn new skills so that you become effective in what you're learning. Same thing in entrepreneurship. So if you are in this, if you want to start your own business, just like 62% of Americans according to Gallup, They want to be their own bosses. Only 9% or so take that leap, make that decision to step forward and start their own business. So, so the first thing about the force, this, this mindset, this entrepreneurial mindset that you want to work on acquiring. It looks like we have a comment, so let me see, uh, from Anisha. All right, okay, 8842, thank you. Let me just put this on the screen. So Folks can see it. I've started an institute where I teach students from class 6 to 10. What is the best way to— what's the best way for me to grow and attract more students to join my coaching? So if it's tutoring or coaching, I mean, in terms of the best way, there are 177 ways to market a business, any business, right? So you can do, if you look at the 4 quadrants, there's paid marketing, there's earned paid media, earned media, you just name it. There's so many ways. So what I am a big proponent of entrepreneurs leveraging their network before you pay money for ads. I'm not saying ads are bad. But before you pay ads, before you do a billboard, before you do other things, I want you to find opportunities for you to connect in person, ideally in person, with those who will be buying services from you. In your case, if you're teaching students, coaching, tutoring, um, or it could be, it could be, I guess, education, it could be sports, it's probably their parents. You might attract the student with an ad. I remember I had a client, they were selling trampolines, and the kids want to see pictures and videos of people jumping up and down. Parents' safety was— for parents, safety was the number one concern. So you had kind of 2 audiences. So in your case, I would say, don't discount ads or earned media or other things. I would say first leverage your network. If you know parents of, of, of students in that age bracket, connect with them. If there are local events, if there may be a parent-teacher association event, go there. If there is a community, there's maybe an exhibition where your potential buyers are there, I want— I recommend you go out there and network with them and meet with them, listen to their needs. What is it that they are looking for? What is it that they're— what are the students in that age bracket? What is it that they're doing, uh, in after, after school? Are they— are they— are you targeting people in a specific socioeconomic class? Are you, um, are you focused on a specific, uh, population, boys or girls? I mean, so, so there, there are many things you want to define as your ideal client profile, your avatar, ICP, all these fancy names. basically the people you want to serve and who owns the budget, the parents in most cases here, or maybe there might be some governmental programs. So, so find— or maybe it could be a community center looking for someone like you. So find people who will be authorizing that budget and who have, have pain points or, or aspirations that you will fulfill for them, and then interact with them in person. If all possible, because you'll learn a lot listening to them. You'll learn a lot about— you can start that conversation or that pitch about how you offer, and you can hear their feedback real time. You can see if they're very interested, if they're not. So there's a lot of benefits of being out there. So I'm a big proponent of being out there in person, in networking events, go to exhibits, to conferences, Local events, local Chamber of Commerce events, local networking events, be out there and see if you can do 2, 3 events every week if possible. The more you do it earlier, the more momentum you build, and then you practice. Every time you're meeting someone, you're practicing how you position your business, how you pitch your business. So that's my recommendation. I have, there are a few playlists on the YouTube channel on sales. So if you're new to sales, I talk about pitches and conversation starters, about how to approach folks in networking events and how to build that muscle. So check out those playlists that are sales-related. Yeah, thank you for the question. So back to the forces. So mindset, and this ties to the question actually, if your mindset here is I'm good at what I do, I'm a good coach, I'm a good IT consultant, and you stay there and you don't have this learning mindset, this mindset that I have to learn about sales and marketing, I have to— it'll be uncomfortable, I will be okay being uncomfortable, even if I'm an introvert and I am someone who fears being in a huge gathering, In psychology, they talk about gradual exposure to desensitize yourself from this fear. There's also another approach called flooding where you just go cold turkey, just go in there, and if you're afraid of crowds, you just go put yourself in the middle of 500 people. So there are different approaches, but for most of us, I think the gradual approach works best, I think, for me at least, So, so start that mindset of, I want to act on this thought, this dream that I've had all these years to be my own boss. It will continue to be a dream unless you start changing that mindset. And you have a couple of things here I want you— when it comes to mindset, let me share, let me share my slides again. I have a couple of slides on that point. Is that Risk is inherent when it comes to entrepreneurship. There are 3 things I want to cover here. Risk is inherent, no shortcuts, and then falling in love with your idea. Those are 3 things in terms of entrepreneurship and the mindset. So in terms of risk, you hear all these stats about businesses, small businesses failing. Depending on what stats you look at, the failure rate is as high as 95%. Down to 50%, depending on on the industry and depending on on like what span of time. But the failure rate is high. So a lot of people say, you know what? This is very risky. I don't want to start a business because look at the failure rate, my friend. Look at the layoff rates. Look every other day. There's something on LinkedIn in the news about a company, this company or this other company laying people off. So risk is inherent. You can mitigate some of those risks. You can increase the likelihood of succeeding, of success. You can increase the chances of you winning in business by following the steps that I'm describing today, and then the material I, I cover on in my channel, and also things you read from those who have done this before. So risk is there no matter what you do. Risk is there, but you can minimize those risks. You You can— I'm not saying you leave your, your 6-figure job today and start a business tomorrow without any planning. No, we'll talk about planning actually next. But I want you to be aware that just because 14,000 new companies start every day in the US, that's over 4 million a year, and because most of them fail, it doesn't mean that you will fail. That narrative Most people just don't do the required steps. They don't work hard. They don't study about entrepreneurship. They don't study. They're not open to learning new skills. But if you want to get a black belt, you cannot do it without stepping on the mat. So, so this is from a mindset perspective, is changing from I can deal with the risk, I can mitigate the risk, I can minimize the risk, and then the second point here is falling in love, and a lot of founders, they love this idea, they think their idea is the best thing since sliced bread, since butter and sliced bread, so now you are very defensive when someone is giving you feedback, if you're in love with this idea, You're not looking for ways to improve it. As I always say, think of your business idea as a hypothesis that you want to validate, that you want to verify, that you want to prove, and not as your baby. Your idea is a hypothesis. It's not your baby. You want to poke holes in your idea. You have— of course you have passion for it. You love it. You put a lot of time and energy into your idea, But it's still an idea until people are paying you for it. Unless you have— until you have willing wallets, that's what I, you know, people willing to pay you, then it is an idea. And the number one reason why businesses fail, 35% according to HBR, Harvard Business Review, is that there's lack of demand. People don't validate their idea and they go out there and they build a product or in your case, if you're a consultant and want to build a business, a services business, there's just people are not willing to buy from you. Maybe they're not willing to buy at a certain price point, or maybe the way you package the service, or the way you're communicating about the service. So a lot of reasons why people won't buy from you, but if the market is not there for you, then that's not just— it's not going to work. So what I want you to do from a mindset perspective is that be open. You want to poke holes in the idea so that, and you do that by speaking with people, back to my point about being out there, speaking with potential clients and also researching competitors. And I have this rule called 10 plus 5, speak with 10 potential buyers, you can speak with more, and then research 5 competitors. That will give you a whole lot more visibility, a lot of more, You'll be educated about the idea, about the market, about the challenges, about the pricing, about what vendors, incumbent vendors are not providing to your clients, and you can then stand out. You can, if someone, if every person you spoke with said, yeah, I'm paying this much money for this kind of service, but these vendors are slow, that is, that's gold. You know the issue. Clients are complaining about a slow delivery cycle, they're complaining about other vendors who are slow, then your advantage— you can stand out by delivering this on time or faster than your competition. You might not then compete on price. You can charge more because you're solving this pain point for the clients who are looking for a service to be delivered on time, to be delivered in an expedited way. So that is, that's the mindset, is, is being willing to learn, not falling in love with your idea. And then the last one here on, on mindset, this is the first force, is, is no shortcuts. In entrepreneurship, there are no shortcuts. There are so many get-rich-quick schemes, I call them, um, especially on social media, where you can make $20,000 a month by by following my methodology. Use these 25 AI hacks and you'll become a millionaire. I'm not making this stuff up. Go on YouTube and you'll see some of those, some of those titles and some of those thumbnails. Well, let me tell you, I haven't met a successful person in business. I have not met in all these years I've been in business with all this gray hair, I haven't met one person who made it, who was successful in business without working really hard, at least in, in some seasons of their life. I'm not saying you work 80 hours a week for the rest of your life. Some people do, and some people have goals beyond, beyond just financial goals. They want to work really hard because they're— they have— I can talk about this maybe on another, on another stream, but, um, but you have to work really hard. You have to Learn, as I said earlier, there's so many new things you have to learn as an entrepreneur. You don't have the resources. Remember that definition, while lacking resources. So you have to compensate for that lack of resources. You have to potentially learn a whole lot of new things. You have to have some money, some savings to tap into. You might have maybe an investor. You might have the business partner who will bring in some cash, but no shortcuts. You can learn and do things faster. You can do things more efficiently. You can leverage AI to do things, whether it's generative AI to develop your proposal faster, and I have an assistant. I have an AI assistant that you can leverage if you're struggling with proposals. Just message me. I can send you the link. You can use now getting into agentic AI and have an agent running with you to help you, prompt you for things to do for clients, whatever the case might be. That's all that— Yeah. That is all great. I want you to leverage the latest cutting-edge technology, but still no shortcuts. You have to build the marketing muscle, the sales muscle, the delivery muscle, the backend office, the accounting, payroll, taxes, all of that. You have to learn how to manage all that. You don't have to do all that yourself. You can hire an accountant and a CPA for taxes, But you have to learn how to set up your records properly, how to file your documents so you can give it to the CPA, so doing your taxes is not a thing that will bring your business down for a week because you don't have anything organized. So there are a lot of things to learn, and there are no shortcuts. Again, use technology, learn from others, be more efficient, work smarter, all of that, but there are no shortcuts. Some things require time. You cannot, no matter how talented you are, no matter how great of a coach you have, no matter how hard you work, you cannot get a black belt in a month. It doesn't work. Well, you might get an honorary black belt, but that doesn't— that really doesn't count. Same thing in any other art. So, and same thing in business. So that is number one. This is the number one force, the number one factor here. that's really important is the mindset, and I have a playlist on the YouTube channel at Startup with Feras on mindset and things that— on resilience and on dealing with ambiguity and all that good stuff, so if the mindset is a major issue for you, check out that playlist as well. Okay, the second force, the second big factor here, Let me go back to my lovely slides. All right, planning. So planning, why is this on this slide? Why is this a force? Why is this a big factor? Well, 2 reasons. One, because a lot of founders overplan, and then some founders underplan. So planning by itself is great. I want you to plan, but I also want you to know that the minute you finish documenting the plan, the plan will have to change. I think it was Mike Tyson who said he comes into a fight with a fight plan. He said after the first punch, all that goes out of the window. Same thing. I think it was Eisenhower who said planning is everything, the plan— planning is everything and the plan is nothing. So the process of planning is really important, but those plans change the minute you finish writing them. You might want to have a longer, a long-term strategy, and that doesn't have to change every quarter, but, or your objective, that long-term objective is that I want to build a 7-figure business that will deliver X service to Y clients, and I want to have an amazing culture and take care of my employees, that sort of like values plus mission, all of that vision that you have, all that good stuff, the tactics to get there will change for sure, but from a planning perspective, a lot of want-to-be entrepreneurs overplan. They're more rational, if you know the Kiersey, quadrants from a personality type. You have those guardians and those rationals. They, they, they want everything to be perfect. They want to follow all the structure, all the systems. They want to get all the certifications they want. They want to put a 5-year plan and then a 10-year plan and a vision, and, and they keep doing this without taking the this very hard next step. And I know that because I did that myself when my business partner and I, when we first, when we started that very first business, we sat down for weeks. Here's the strategy. Here are the services we want to offer. Here's, here are the top clients we want to go after initially. Small businesses, then mid-sized business, then Fortune 500, then And then we want to do this and that and the other, and then we want to expand to other markets. I mean, we spent so much time. And then how much do we price our service? We were building websites at the time. That was, that was cutting edge in 2003. Like, we want to do later in e-commerce, we want to get into complex projects. We, we kept planning and planning and planning, and we were subconsciously, we were delaying that step to go out and actually physically knock on doors, go into small businesses here in Santa Clara, California, and ask these business owners, do you like to have a website? That's how I used to start. Awful, awful pitch, but I didn't know any better. So we were delaying that very hard decision. And later in other businesses as well, when we were pivoting, big strategic— you see an opportunity and you kept postponing. You're not sure. You're not certain. You're delaying that potential pain, and then you lose, you lose out on that opportunity. It happened to me. Or we want to expand into a market. I said, no, I don't want to. I delayed that decision by a year. But then after more nudging from my business partner, from our team, we expanded into, into another market, and that ended up doing really well. 7-figure business by itself. So, so sometimes delaying, over-planning is more of a symptom of something else, deeper concern about risk, about the unknowns, about things that maybe bandwidth, you know, you don't have the bandwidth to do this next hard thing. So look at it from your perspective. If you're delaying action, by faking, but by just planning, then there's an issue there. I want you to do some planning. I have a whole playlist on the YouTube channel on planning, business planning, and I have templates for that. All that, that good stuff is there. So I do want you to plan, but I don't want you to develop a 40-page business plan or a 60-page business plan. No, for a services business, for a consulting business, you need a little bit of planning, especially around vetting the idea Knowing your audience, learning how to price it, how to position it, who the market, you know, which market you're going after. And then, you know, then the next immediate step is asking people if they're interested in what you offer, selling, building that muscle, getting the rejections. So, so if you feel, if you're working full-time and you've been wanting to to work towards your dream and you're not taking those steps and you're just doing a couple hours on the weekend working on this business idea, I can tell you, don't waste your time. If you're only putting an hour or 2 on the weekend, you're not gonna get anywhere. You're kidding yourself. I don't want to sound harsh, but I'm— this is, this is reality. I'm too old now to sugarcoat things. If you're only spending an hour or 2 a week on an idea, you're really not serious about it. Now, you might be working 2 jobs to provide for your family. That's different. You might be taking care of aging parents or young ones, or you have other obligations, and those are very, very important personal relationships. Take care of those, no issue whatsoever. I did that in certain seasons in my life. Business was second. I'm, I'm obsessed with the growth and, and doing well in business, not, not just for the financial part. The financial part is important and is fulfilling, but there's a real fulfillment and also in helping others and making financial contributions, in helping your team make more money and establish themselves. All of that, those are all important things to me. So I work really hard still, even after all those years. I still work very hard because I believe in these values. But at times I had to put all that aside to take care of aging parents, mine and my wife's. We had, we had to do certain things that just did not, did not allow me the time to work 70, 80 hours a week. So, so if that's the situation, then yes, take care of that and then plan on when you'll have the mental capacity, the mental space, the time to put into the idea. So If you're putting an hour or 2 a week, you're really not ready to start a business because starting a business requires commitment, requires time, requires some planning and then action. So that's on overplanning. If again, the whole delaying this, if you have an issue, a circumstance in your life, that's understandable, but don't just spend time Putting things on paper and talking to a friend and talking to another friend and finding another business idea. I spoke with someone that had five business ideas. They're all amazing ideas. Said yes. I said ideas are a dime a dozen. Pick one, the one that you have more resources for, you have more skills for, there's a market opportunity for, and then pursue. Drop everything else. A person who's chasing two rabbits will end up with none. This guy was. chasing 5 rabbits. So I spoke with him a year later, nothing happened yet, still chasing ideas. So that's on overplanning. The second part of, of this force, of the planning force, is underplanning. And this is those of us who are adventurous, they want to experience things. Maybe the— according to Kiersey, maybe the artisans You know, just, just want to go and see how things feel, and, and, and you jump in without any planning. So I quit my job. I'm sick and tired of whatever in corporate, and then I'm going to start my own business. And I built a website, updated my LinkedIn profile on social media, announced to the world that now I am this amazing HR consultant. I can optimize your hiring, onboarding, retention programs with the latest AI, and I'll save you 50% on what you're spending today. That's your amazing pitch. As they say, build it and they will come does not work anymore. Just because you made that announcement to the world, it doesn't mean that business will, will be knocking on your door. So, so there has to be some level of planning, again, not a 50-page business plan, but the basic components of identifying the idea, of vetting the idea, of potentially selling before you quit your job, at least have maybe one client or some leads in the pipeline. All of those are things you can do. You can do a lot of the prep work before you send your resignation letter. That is what I recommend. Like, do a lot of that planning ahead of time before you resign. Now, where is the time going to come from? It's going to come from weeknights and weekends. But if you're serious about that, if you're serious about starting a business, let your family, let those who are impacted by the decision know that you are serious about this and you're doing it for your own good and their own good. also for their— they'll be with you, they'll benefit from whatever happens with that business, right? So let them know, share your vision with them, and let them see you serious about it. You cannot be hanging out with the guys every other night and then having 3 hobbies and traveling every other weekend and then expect your, your wife, your spouse to support you on this venture because you're not serious about it. So if you want the support of those around you, those who are impacted by your, your decisions, make sure they're updated, they're consulted. They don't have to— they don't have to have the, the, the, the yay or the nay call on, on, on your decision to start a business, but the more support you have at home, the more peace of mind you have at home, the stronger and the more effective you will be at work. Trust me, I've been married for 38 years and I can, I know a little bit of, I know a thing or two about relationships. So it's important to make sure that you get people impacted by your decision on board and then go out and commit to it. And you will get their support. So to summarize here, don't overplan, just spend weeks and months not taking action, and then also don't jump into this thing called entrepreneurship headfirst without vetting your idea and identifying your market, your audiences, your pricing, understanding what's involved, understanding how long the sales cycle is depending on what you're selling. A sales cycle could be anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months if you're selling to small businesses, and if you're selling large to large B2B clients, the sales cycle could be anywhere from 3 months to 9 months to 12 months. I used to sell to the government and Fortune 500. These sales cycles take forever. So depending on what you're selling, put all of that into your plan so you understand when revenue will come in and you can then adjust your financial runway accordingly. All right, so that is force number 2. Force number 3, let's go back to my lovely slides. All right, and again, for those of you who are just joining, we're going over, I'm going over the 4 factors or the 4 forces that make or break your business. I always have a lot of content, on, on YouTube, on LinkedIn about, about learning about tactics, marketing, sales, delivery, back office, all that good stuff. I want you to learn this stuff, but there are some, some hidden factors that could make, literally make or break your business, and we've covered 2 so far. We talked about the mindset, the entrepreneurial mindset, and also about planning, over-planning and under-planning. So those are the two. Now let me cover the third one. There you go. For those of you watching, you have my lovely slides, and I love these icons. I think we use— forgot the name of the AI tool we used. I think called React. React, maybe. Forgot the name. Pre— recreate. Ah man, the name is escaping. That's pretty cool tool. All right, so the third force here is Business partners. Yes, that is a huge factor. Huge factor. Roughly 40% of U.S. businesses have more than one owner. Some have two, some have three, some have four. So about 60% have have one owner according to census.gov. So so a lot of you out there have business partners, and then if you watch. some of the Y Combinator leaders, they talk about the success rate with startups. This is more like tech startups, not consulting, but I think that this theme applies to both. They talk about they always favor a startup with co-founders because of a lot of reasons I'll talk about in a bit. So if you're going solo, You might think that this section is not related to you, but hear me out, stay with me, because a lot of what I cover here are applicable to your first employees, like the first employee, the first hire, the second hire, although they might not be business partners, they're not, they don't have equity, but a lot of times you want to treat them like business partners, and I'll tell you, especially if they're senior, I'll tell you why in a second, but for those of you who are going with business partners, this is 100% applicable. And unfortunately, the divorce rate in business partnership is higher than that in our society between spouses. So it's important to understand what's involved when you decide to bring a partner into your business or someone invites you to be a partner with their business. It is the number one, the most consequential decision you make in business. Finding— well, there are 2 consequential decisions since we're talking about relationships. One is the spouse, the partner, the lifelong partner you have at home. That's really important for success in business. And 2, your actual business partner or partners. So So I don't want you to take this lightly at all. And I've seen, I've heard, I've witnessed horror stories when it comes to partnerships. A lot of people, best friends, college roommates, classmates, buddies, best friends, family members, they start all excited about this partnership. They want to accomplish, they want to conquer the world. And then after the honeymoon period is over, after this first hurdle that they face, or, or the challenge that is— that they're confronted with, issues and tensions and problems surface. And then a month or two later, they're not talking to each other. And then a month or two later, they are in court. I'm not making this stuff up. So, so I want you to take this business partnership factor or force really, really, really seriously. It's the most consequential decision that you ever take in business. Don't take it lightly. So, so how do, how do I help you choose the right partner? One is look for— and I have some slides on this. Let me share the slides. I think they're helpful here. Yeah, so I want you to look at evaluate the partner or the partners on their skills and experience. Do they complement what you have? Let's say you're amazing at sales, but you hate and have no idea how to deliver a project, and then a good A potential great fit is someone who can— who's the opposite. They are amazing at delivery and they just hate sales, so you complement each other. So that's one thing. So there's founder fit, you know, funder fit, also if you— especially if you bring investors in, there could be equity partners, maybe they could be silent partners, but make sure the goals are aligned. I'll talk about goals in a second. So the number one thing is look for complementary skills. The second thing here is— let me just share this on the slide and then I'll cover it. So complementary skills, then the mindset, back to, you know, complementary personalities, and then the paperwork behind partnerships. So let me unpack this one thing at a time. Was I sharing? I don't think I was sharing. Oh my goodness. I was bragging about my amazing slides and then I wasn't sharing here. Let me share it for a sec. So yeah. So tech and business, complementary skills, mindset, complementary personalities, and then the legal and operations aspect of it. So let me go over this one at a time. So when I talk about tech and business, I give an example. So I remember, well, in all of my ventures, I'm on my 7th venture now, I've always had business partners. I was fortunate. to always had business partners, amazing business partners. One of them passed away, may he rest in peace. Amazing, amazing friend, and still friends with his family. Um, in other cases, these, these founders, ex-founders, still friends. So, so, so you end up spending most of your waking hours at work. We like it or not, that's reality. So, so make sure that this business partner you're going to be joining hands with, make sure that you'll enjoy working with them 8, 10, 12 hours a day, right? So that's one thing. And it looks like we have a comment. Love from— let me put it— who do we have with us here? We have Binod Galan. Love from Nepal. Oh my goodness, we have someone from Nepal. Thank you for joining. It's probably late on your end, so thank you for being with us live here. Um, so I appreciate you being on, on, on with us. If you have any questions about, about a business idea, uh, let me know. You'll get, you'll get, you get more time because you're calling from Nepal. I love it. All right, so, um, so yeah, so, so Make sure that person you partner with is someone that you'll enjoy working with, someone you enjoy talking with, going out to dinner with, right? So that's really important in terms of— so the business complementary skills, that's important. Next is personality traits. So you might be the gung-ho type person, the one with the go-getterness, and they might be the very skeptical or deliberate people. That's actually not a negative. That's a plus because— and that happens with me a lot of times in my case. I want to get stuff done. I'm sometimes impatient. I just want to get it done. And then my business partners say, Feras, let's slow down. Let's evaluate. I'm more of a, let me get stuff done. Let me execute. Let me just wrap it up. So a business partner who would highlight things that you might have overlooked is a huge, huge asset to the business. So that is important. Find not just complementary skills, also complementary personalities. Now that creates challenges because if you're the only— because if you're the sole owner, you just make a decision and you proceed very efficiently. But you might, while you might've made that decision very efficiently, The decision might not have been effective. You might have made the wrong decision. So 2 sets of eyes are better than one. 2 brains are better than one. So that's why complementary personalities, complementary skills are going to— are helpful, are crucial, I would say, in a relationship. The other part here is that look for shared values. So work ethic, for example, dependability, reliability, the way you want to take care of your team. So, so if you have, if you are working, if you're ready to take the leap and you are ready to, to work 60, 70, 80 hours a week for the first few months just to get this thing off the ground, and then you love this other business partner, But they're only putting 30, 40 hours a week. That's that's what they thought it's required. I can tell you that in a couple months you will have a major fight, and if that's not addressed, you will you will part ways. So so you want to be explicit about your commitment, about your shared values, about what you expect from each other. You want to make sure that they're reliable. If they say something, they'll do that. If they say they'll do something, they'll do it. The way you treat your team, imagine a business partner who is amazing with the customers and great with sales, and then every time they have a meeting with your team members, when you grow the company, someone wants to leave. This partner just gets on everybody's— under everybody's skin. So you have to look for these things, and you have to leverage, the strength that you have and the partner has, and then work around each other's weaknesses, right? So that's something to keep in mind when it comes to partnership. And the last thing is— 2 things. One is the last thing is compatibility in goals. So you want to grow that business, you want to put every penny you make, all the profit you make once you're profitable into growth. Your business partner is cash hungry. They want every penny of profit you have, they want to split it and take it home because they have needs or they just like to take that money and invest it elsewhere. So if you're not aligned on these aspects, on these goals, you'll have a lot of hard decisions and hard time and difficult time. So that is something to keep in mind. And last but not least is the legal aspect. Just because they're your best friend, whether your brother, your sister, your spouse, your son, your daughter, just because there's someone you trust with your life, it doesn't mean you don't have a partnership agreement. And I always use this example. My co-founder and friend, Eric, he and I are close friends. We've been working together for over 12 years now, 13 years, and we work together really well, and he trusts me with his life. I trust him with my life and with my family. No issue whatsoever. Even with that, we went to our attorney Jeff, said, Jeff, we're forming this partnership, help us put something together in writing. And Jeff came back with 37 pages. That's our partnership agreement. So Jeff is a good friend, our lawyer. I said, Jeff, 37 pages. He said, Feras, tell me which section you want, you want to remove, and I'll remove it. So every section deals with a scenario that potentially could cause a problem in the future, in the future. So, so do put things in, in writing. Go on ChatGPT, on Claude, ask, I want to have a partnership with this person, and here, this is a scope of work, and this is what we're trying to build. Give me the various areas, the various areas, legal areas that we should discuss from a legal perspective. and give it to me in a— no legal jargon, just give it to me in plain English and read about it. And you'll see the things about people wanting to leave the business. One partner wants to leave next year, what happens? Someone passes away, you cannot stand their spouse, you don't want their spouse to come in and be part of the business. Someone wants to sell shares, someone wants to bring investors, someone wants to make all the calls. So all of those things will come up in a relationship, in a business relationship. If you don't have that documented in a thorough partnership document or operational agreement, then operating agreement, then you will have issues. So avoid these issues early on by having them documented. And there's no legal document that will cover every use case and every exception and every nuance, But you'll get 85-90% of all the major things covered and probably 85%, 90-95% of things addressed in that agreement, and then a way to deal with things that were not discussed at the time of forming that partnership. So that is on partnership. Long story short, look for someone who complements you, Someone who you enjoy spending time with. And, you know, look, make sure they're, they're not, they're not, they don't have a whole lot of ego. And don't partner with someone you don't know. That's a formula for disaster. You can start, start off with a small project, work together for a month or two, go out to them to a restaurant and see how they treat the waiter. These are signs. People, you know, behavior is sometimes hard to change, so you can tell. Maybe deal with some finances and see how they deal with finances. So my recommendation, do not start a business with someone that you don't know. Bad, bad idea, bad formula. But if you think there's a potential, because there's a lot of these things I mentioned today, the complementary skills and personalities and the resources, And then I would say start like a beta project or do a pilot, work on something together, and just get to know each other really well, and then proceed into the full partnership. Good. And we have something from Ahmed. I can't see. Thank you for the comment and thank you for being here. And he says also, great tips on partnerships right at the perfect time. So it looks like, Ahmed, you are about to get into a partnership. So yes, I said earlier, I don't know if you were with us when I said that earlier, but it is the most consequential decision you make in business. Actually, the second. The first one is the partner at home. That is really important because peace at home helps you perform at a different level. At work. But assuming that's in a good, in good order, then yeah, really, really finding the right partners with complementary skills and personalities and, and there's chemistry, that is really important. Otherwise, I've seen, I've seen horror stories. So good, good, good. Now the last force, the last factor that could make or break your business. And let me go to my lovely slides and make sure I'm sharing those here. Here you go. Life, life, life circumstances. Most people think they're falling in love with their idea and they think they're in a bubble and that's it. No, my friend, there are internal factors, seasons of life, which I'll talk about, and there are external factors. And these things are real and they happen. So And let's see, Ahmed had something else. What did he say? He said, he said, 100% happy wife, happy life. My friend, you got it spot on. Especially today. Today my wife is off and she can hear me what I'm saying. Just kidding. 100% with you. 200%. All right. Um, good stuff, good stuff. So, so, so the 4th factor here, the 4th, the 4th Force is life circumstances. So I want you to think about this from 2 perspectives, internal, and I alluded to this earlier, but basically when you start on this entrepreneurial journey, you have to learn a lot of things. You're getting into things you're not aware of. You don't understand how to package your service, how to price your service, how to Speak with clients, you send proposals, nobody's buying. In my case, when I started, my win rate, number of wins to the number of proposals I was sending, was abysmal. I was getting 1 out of 20. If I sent 20 proposals, I was closing 1 deal. I mean, imagine the amount of work. I mean, to send a proposal, I had to have meetings and follow-ups and then send a proposal and then follow-ups. So it was really hard. The first couple of years were really hard for us. And then later, fast forward to 10 years into it, 12 years into it, we were closing at 33%. 1 out of every 3 qualified leads, we would close them. So if you're struggling with sales and proposals, that's just normal. So don't worry about it too much. But back to this here is that life at times From a, from a, uh, seasons perspective, like at times you're just not ready because, because not just of the mindset, because of life circumstances. You have aging parents you have to take care of. You have, you have a loan that you have to pay for, and you have to maybe tap into your savings to pay for that loan so that you can be done with it in, in a year. You might have some, some commitments to other people. Maybe your spouse, you're about to have a baby, or maybe this is your second baby, and this is definitely not the time to be putting 70 hours a week, you know, for, for your, your idea. So, so it's really important to understand that there's seasons in life, and they say, I— this one, one spiritual guide, he said, he said, there are 3 things in life you can have 2 of which you can't have all 3 of them at the same time. So health, money, and time. So when you're young, you have time and you have health in general, right? When you're in midlife, you have— you're still healthy and now you have some money, But you're very busy working. And then later when you're older, you have money, you've saved some money, and you have time, but you don't have your health. So that's sort of more of a macro way of looking at it. At a micro level, as I said, there could be certain circumstances that prevent you from putting the time you need to start and grow that business. And also have the focus, the clarity, the mental space, the mental capacity to think of the business, breathe, live, think about it 24/7 early on, early. I'm not saying you do this throughout your life. No, there are more important things than work. Early on, just like when you're preparing for a marathon or when I was preparing for my first black belt, like 3 months leading up to it, I had to prioritize getting fit cardio-wise, knowing the techniques, knowing the entire curriculum. Like it took a lot of extra effort from, from, from me to be ready for that, for that test. Still was very nervous when I took the test. Same thing here. So there are seasons where In that early season of starting a business, you have to put a lot of time and effort into it, and if for whatever reason, aside from leisure, aside from hobbies, aside from scrolling and watching a lot of TV, those are not good reasons for you not to start a business. I'm just being upfront here. I'm talking about real important relationships in your life. Those are— Yeah. number one thing, your parents, your spouse, your children. Um, maybe you have a commitment to a nonprofit. Maybe there's a cause you believe in, and the timing for you to dedicate some time to this cause is really important for you. Those are really important things. More— they are more valuable than money. And, and if you're still thinking about growing that business, having a business and growing the business, then put a plan there. In 3 months, in 6 months, I'll be done with my obligations, or I can minimize my obligations for these important things, and then I can focus on the business. So, so it's, it's, it's a hard balance, you know, um, but you can't have it all. You cannot do all these things and then have hobbies and leisure time and spending time with the guys or the gals and, and, and traveling every other weekend, going up to Tahoe to ski and then going surfing and then You can't do all of that and then be serious about starting that business, because starting a business and growing a business and scaling a business requires a lot of time, especially upfront. So that's on, on the internal factors here from, from a life circumstances perspective. The second part here is external factors, external circumstances. And as you can see, every other day There's something going on. It could be crypto crashing, the stock market crashing. Markets are shifting. Markets are shifting. War is happening in more than one place. We have a business in Dubai, in Mina, and, and on the phone with my business partners every other day, making sure we are taking care of our customers, our employees. We have a viable business going forward because you never know. A war could last for weeks or hopefully it'll wrap up soon. It will end very soon, but things happen without you knowing. You might have predicted certain things, but there are unknowns. When COVID hit, right? Regulations, let's say you're in the supply chain, Vertical and tariffs hit. What do you do? That's going to impact you. So, so there are a lot of— I shouldn't say a lot. There are certain external factors that hit us without us even knowing about it. There's the known knowns and then the known unknowns and there are the unknown unknowns. That, that whole quadrant way of looking at things that could affect us, right? So What is it that you can do when these things hit? You can't control these things. So the best thing is, in my experience, and we went through the dot-com when it burst, we went through the housing market crash, we went through the mobile revolution, we went through the whole data privacy revolution. We were in the marketing and the analytics space. So the best thing you can do is if you already established a business, like your business is solid, you have a good handle on cash flow, you have a good handle on collection, you have good— you've negotiated good terms, you're not overexpending, you don't have a lot of expenses like a nice office that you really don't need, you're getting the last phone, the last car, on your— on the personal side of things. So, so, so, so the more financially stable and solid you are, the better prepared you are for weathering the storm. And I had a, I had a live stream, I think a couple, 2 or 3 weeks ago, on, on bending or breaking. So, so how to start a business during uncertain times. So, so when these things happen to us, at times we have to pause, we have to look look back and say, okay, what is it that we can do? If you started a restaurant that requires foot traffic right before COVID started, or any business, I knew someone who started a massage business, a therapy business actually, that required foot traffic right before COVID hit. I mean, there's very little that you can do. You might have to take a hit. Success is never guaranteed in business. Sometimes it's just terrible timing. But you learn from that experience. If you're just about to start out, maybe you just put everything on pause, find a way to generate some revenue, and then go back and tackle it once that circumstance has moved on. So, or sometimes these things are permanent, like regulations, data privacy regulations that hit us, hit the industry almost now 10 years ago, so these things could be actually, could have a lasting effect, and you have to pivot. You have to be flexible, and the stronger financially you are, the— and that means you have a nice runway, and also you're controlling your expenses, personal and business expenses. The more discipline you have there, the better you'll be able to weather the storm, and of course, pivoting is going to be part of your life as an entrepreneur. Sometimes you give it your best, and then you end up hitting a dead end and you have to pivot and do something different. It just— that's just the nature of business. So be ready to pivot, be ready. And then again, the more— not just financial resources are going to be important during these external facts, when these external circumstances hit us, but also your network, people around you, people who have access to markets, to buyers, to who can give you good advice, people who have pivoted before, people in that new market or that new industry or that new service that you're pivoting to. So always having a good network, nurture that network, reciprocate, be proactive in helping others and sharing what you know. And that whatever belief system you believe in, God or the universe or whatever it is, there's always something positive that happens. to us when we are positive and helping others. Other things happen, fall in our laps without a whole lot of effort on our part. It's just, I've seen it firsthand. I believe in it. It happens. But that's up to you from a, from a belief system. But I know that it's just good for the soul to help others. So, so establish, you know, help others, be out there, and other people will be there for you when you need help. So that is it for today. We covered these 4 forces, the entrepreneurial mindset, the planning part, do not overplan, do not underplan, we covered the 3rd one which was about business partners, and then last but not least about life circumstances, internal factors, and then external factors. So with that, I do want to remind you of one thing before you all leave is that I do have if you go to the YouTube channel at youtube.com/@StartupWithFeras, we have a fair amount of content on, a whole lot of content on all things you need to start and grow your consulting business. So I have a couple of recent videos, one on vetting the idea, a 10-point system. I have a recent video on the 26 profitable business ideas for 2026, and then if you're, I have this video right here on the Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business. That's been very, very well received by the community, and I have all the steps, the framework, the tools, the worksheets that you need to start the business, a consulting business, on solid ground. So check it out and let me know if you have any comment, any question. I'd love to hear from you. And if you also, you can go to my website, www.startupwithferus.com and join the newsletter. I send a newsletter every Saturday with tips and strategies to help you grow that business, scale and grow the business. So that is it for today, and thank you for being here, and I appreciate your input and your interaction, and then the comments and the questions you have, and we'll see you next time.