3 Steps To Starting (Or Fixing) Any Business

What's going on everyone? I want to share a one on one conversation I had with a buddy of mine from high school who just started his own business. And so he was texting me and he was saying, hey, you know, I've got this offer in my value ladder and I want to get your feedback on it. And before I looked at it, I said, you haven't made a sale, right? And he was like, yeah. He said, I'm worried about being stuck with providing fulfillment because I'm just doing too much and I'm offering too much. And I was like, right, so you haven't made a sale yet? And he was like, yeah. I was like, okay, you need to get over that. And I said, what's the price? And he said, 4800 for 10 weeks. And I said, listen man, just give so much that you feel like the person would feel stupid saying no, don't try and fix your non existent overwhelmed fulfillment issue when you haven't even made a sale yet. Alright? Close a deal, then another, and then another. And then once you are overwhelmed, you, you then have the, then you can start dealing with it. And the benefit is that once you've made sales, you will have the money from the sales to have resources to deal with the problem. And so this is something that I see all the time, right? People will, they'll try and solve issues that don't even exist. I have somebody like this example, right? He's like, I don't want to be overwhelmed with all this fulfillment. I'm like, dude, you haven't even made a sale yet, right? Sell the world, right? Sell everything you possibly can to get them to say yes. And then what happens is you're going to start making money and then at that point you can start peeling back the things that take the most time that are not as valuable. But in the beginning you just have to create flow. So one of the rules that I always have is create flow, monetize flow, then add friction in that order. So once you have demand, it means you're making a good offer of some kind, then you are getting people to say yes. Which means you make an offer that's so crazy that someone would be stupid to say no. And if that means selling your time, selling one on one stuff, flying out to their house, or driving over every day, whatever it is, even if it's unreasonable. Stop thinking about scale before you've even had the ability to have a single sale, right? It drives me nuts cause I'm like, dude, you're trying to Solve a problem that doesn't even exist. It's like when I would have guys who come into the gym and they'd be like, hey, well, you know, I want to get bigger, but I don't want to get as big as you. And I was like, you're not going to sneeze and fucking get jacked, all right? I was like, there's a million steps between where you're at and where I'm at. And believe me, it won't happen on accident, right? And so they're like, well, I don't want to get too, like they're trying to solve problems that don't even exist yet. I was like, why don't we start with making you look like you even work out? Why don't we start there? Fair enough, right? And the thing is, why don't we start with you actually just getting a sale before we even talk about what your fulfillment and optimizing for profit even looks like, right? And so anyways, he sent me the big graph of like what he's looking at and I was like, it's fine, dude, just sell the world, deliver, right? None of it's going to even matter because they're not going to remember any of it. They'll just remember how they feel and how well you understood their problems, right? And if the solution felt unique, easy to understand and easy to believe that it would work for them, right? And so he was like, yeah, it makes sense. It's crazy how much of this has been like just removing my own self limiting belief. And I was like, yeah, money's made in your mind first, right? Poor people have poor beliefs. You can't. If you're walking towards a door right before you go and turn the knob, you envision yourself turning the knob. Everything happens in your mind before it happens in reality. And if you can't envision yourself actually making money doing it, then there's no way it's going to happen. Poor people expect poor outcomes, right? Rich people expect rich outcomes and they don't accept outcomes beyond that, they don't make decisions unless they feel like that outcome is possible, right? And, and so what happens is those poor beliefs keep people poor. All right? And so anyways, I was like, listen man, stop obsessing over whether what you're going to include or what the little offer stack is. I say just give away the farm, make some sales, and then when you have money and a business, then you can worry about optimizing. But for now, you're solving around a made up problem. That doesn't even exist. You have no fulfillment issues because you have no clients. Alright? Sell first, over deliver, and then optimize for profit. All right? And so this was just a process that I just see is a mistake that I see happen so many times. And if you were starting out, sell everything, sell the most insane offer you can possibly think of. Get someone to say yes first and then get another person to say yes. And if you're like, man, I'm so overwhelmed, that's okay. You're supposed to be overwhelmed, it's normal. Especially if you're starting out, alright? But you're going to start learning how even to sell and you're going to start learning, okay, well, this is something that I'm offering that might have been really valuable in the sale, but is actually really easy to fulfill on. And something else that I promised I would fulfill on. They actually didn't care that much about it, but now it's taking all my time. And over time, you can start peeling those pieces back and making it into an offer that's both profitable and attractive to the prospect. But when you're starting out, you don't know. And so the best thing, in my opinion is to just stack as much valuable as possible to get them to say yes. And so what that means is you don't have to be exceptional at sales in the beginning because what you do is you give an offer so good that someone feels stupid saying no. And so what I'll do is I'll wrap up with a story of how I learned this. And so when I was 23, I went to a conference and I paid $3,000 for a weekend conference. And it was $3,000 of money I didn't have. And it was run by a guy named Travis Jones, he went by TJ and he was a business coach. And I remember when I was there, he'd offhandedly mentioned he made a million dollars that year. And I was like, man, I just want to be this guy, right? I was like, I'll do anything to be this guy. And everyone there was a business owner except for me, and I was way over my head. They were Talking about like CTRs and conversion rates and, you know, cost per leads. And I was like, I don't know what's going on. And so anyways, during one of the breaks, he came up to me, he saw that I was like, way over my head. And he was like, hey man, do you want to know the secret to sales? And at this point I was learning what the term Sales meant. I didn't even know what it meant, really, honestly. And I was like, yeah, yeah, tell me the secret to sales. And so I pulled my notebook out, and I was like, I just didn't want to miss anything. And he said, make people an offer so good they would feel stupid saying no. And for me, it was this huge moment, and I underlined it, I wrote it down, I circled it. And it was at that point that I realized that I could still make money even if I wasn't good at sales. I just had to make an offer that was good enough that they would feel stupid saying no. And so that means if someone said no, I. I could keep adding things until eventually they said yes. And that was one of the biggest epiphanies that I had in my life, was realizing that if I could just keep going and keep adding value, eventually they would say yes. And so instead of cutting prices, I would keep my price and just add more than anyone else could even imagine. So much so that it would be ridiculous. And I was willing to scale the unscalable in the beginning because I just needed people to say yes and start the flow, right? Get the flow, monetize the flow, then add friction. And so it was one of the most important lessons in my life. It's one that stuck with me through my entire career. And in remembering this, as I'm now getting. I'm helping my friend from high school. I've got my neighbor who's starting their entrepreneurial journey. It's really reminding me of some of these lessons earlier on. And I just hope you don't mind me just sharing them with you as we go. So, anyways, keep being awesome. Lots of love. I'll catch you guys soon. Bye.