How to start an online business in 2023

In this unscripted, conversational video Nick Corvessis (founder of Scale Lab Group) shares the principles and tactics that enabled him to build a million‑dollar business by age 22. He begins by emphasizing patience and the danger of comparison, urging entrepreneurs to run their own race. He then argues that the most valuable early‑stage investment is in oneself—spending money and time on personal skill development. He outlines the high‑income fundamentals every founder should master: copywriting, sales, marketing, product/offer creation, customer service, and basic tech. Using a mask‑company anecdote, he illustrates why diversifying skills protects against fleeting luck. Corvessis advocates relentless, Black‑Friday‑style marketing, encouraging founders to be unapologetically visible. He stresses the necessity of systematizing every repeatable process through SOPs before scaling, as systems free the founder to focus on growth. Hiring is presented as a strategic lever: recruit “tens” (high‑performers) even if they are initially costly, build a lean team, and grow them incrementally. Finally, he warns entrepreneurs to triple‑check their CPA to ensure financial alignment and avoid costly mistakes. The video concludes with a brief founder bio, a call to action for feedback, and an invitation to explore more of his content.
Chapters
If you're watching this, you probably want to build a really successful company. Maybe you want to make a million dollars, maybe you want to make multi-millions, and maybe you even want to make billions. And if that's the case, I've grown my company to a million-dollar company, and I want to share the experiences, kind of a general overview of what got me there in hindsight, what I've learned. And hopefully you guys can take this and apply it to your own company, to your own vision and your mission, and you guys can be growing your own company, have your freedom, and have all those benefits from growing your own company yourself. So let's get right into it and Let me tell you how I grew a million-dollar company by just 22 years old. So I've just got a couple notes here on my phone. I don't really have anything crazy. This isn't super scripted. This is more of an overview video, and if I get some good reactions and good engagement on certain points, I may go deeper on those. So the first thing is really just having patience. It takes a lot of time, energy, and effort, and you'll maybe see a ton of people online saying, oh, I grew a million-dollar company in 6 months. Right. I made $1 billion in 20 months, right? Or in just a year or something, right? You'll hear all these crazy claims, but the thing is, you may not have seen what came before. You don't know their whole story. You don't know, you know, what they've done, how they've done it, and what struggles, pains, or maybe no struggles or no pains that they went through. So have patience. You're only running your own race. Your only competition is yourself. So make sure you kind of keep that in mind. It's really easy to have comparison syndrome, but you're just going to end up beating yourself up and not having a good time growing your business. Don't compare yourself. It really just is not fun. The next one is where do you invest your money when you're starting your business? Should you go get a business loan? Should you get a mentor? Should you just read a ton of books? Should you watch YouTube videos? Should you just try stuff? It's a question that I hear a lot of people doing, and I hear a lot of people doing a lot of different stuff with their money when they're starting or growing a business. And I think when you're starting, like when you're in the $0 to $1 million range, all of your money should be poured into investing yourself. You are your greatest asset in your company when you're starting, and the more resources and the more stuff and the more skills that you can learn in the beginning is gonna really catapult your growth into your business. So spend your money and spend your time investing into yourself because it's gonna pay dividends and you're really the only person that cares as much about your business as you do. No one else genuinely will care as much as you do. It's like your baby, right? So having that in place and making sure you invest in yourself is the best thing that you can do. The next one kind of piggybacks right off of the previous point and it's just all about learning the basics and really focusing on the basics. and high-income skills. So things like copywriting, marketing, product development, and how to build a really, really good offer. I think that's a really big one. Customer service and maybe some tech skills. Really focus on the basics and learn those. You'll figure out what your expertise is as time grows, and you'll figure out what your perfect offer is and your perfect customer avatar. You'll figure that out. But in business, and especially if you're looking to run an online business, and even if you're running a brick-and-mortar company, There's so much stuff you need to do online that really learning those kinds of skills are gonna help you. I think the biggest fundamentals that any business owner can learn, I mean, even if you're not running a business, these are so useful. I think the biggest ones are copywriting, sales, and marketing. If you learn those 3 things, especially the copywriting and marketing side, 'cause copywriting is just salesmanship in print, if you can do that, then you're really gonna crush it and you're gonna go far because those are the basics that a lot of people ignore. And they'll attach onto a fad or something. I actually had a friend that started a mask company right when COVID started, right? So he got lucky, he got a mask company, he started doing that right when COVID came out and he crushed it. Then the problem is, as masks were no longer needed and the supply wasn't up, or sorry, the demand wasn't as up, he had to move away from it. But he made all this money, but he was just losing it because he didn't have anything else coming in. So what he ended up doing is he really needed to double down and learn those skills. If he didn't, He probably wouldn't have had another business, right? So sometimes you can get that initial spurt of luck and, you know, it's not just luck. You did something to get there, right? You have some kind of skills, but if you don't latch on to whatever skills you have, sometimes you can really just not have anything else going for you. You'll just have that one victory and then kind of fizzle out. Okay, now to get into some more specifics. First one is marketing always like it's Black Friday. You'll see a ton of companies just come out of the woodworks and market like crazy on Black Friday, and they'll be really happy with the results and the sales and everything. And then they'll really, really complain at other times during the year. Well, if they marketed like it was Black Friday all the time, their business would be crushing it. Don't be afraid to market yourself. I know friends, I know family, I know tons of people that just— I feel like they're really afraid to market and put themselves out there. You know, maybe it's because they're nervous about their brand or image reputation, but the biggest and the best thing you can do is marketing for your business. You should believe in your company and your vision and your mission so much that you should almost be talking to everyone about your business. If anything, you can even seem obnoxious when you do it, but it's probably one of the best things you can do is just talk about your business, talk about who you help, how you help them, and market like it's Black Friday every single day. And I guarantee you, your business will grow. Don't be afraid of marketing yourself. I forget who said it, and don't butcher me in the comments, but there's a famous marketer that said, if you haven't pissed someone off by noon, you're not a good marketer, you're not marketing yourself enough. So that's that one. Okay, so the next 2 kind of tie together, and I'm going to cover the first one, which is building systems. Before you can get a team, which is the next thing I'm going to cover, you really need to systemize everything that you possibly can and really carefully document everything that you do, especially if you're doing it more than once. So for example, say when you onboard a client, you always send them a very specific set of instructions. You want to systematize that as fast and as best as you can. So next time you onboard a client, and especially if you've done it more than twice, or if you know you're going to do it more than twice, Check and see what that process is that you did, map it out on a Google Doc, record a video, and then just stash it away somewhere. Because when you have a team, it's super easy to hand that doc off and that system to someone and let them go to town. Build systems around everything because systems will truly set you free, right? You can, you know, try to record the same video 50 times, you can do a ton of marketing, but once all those clients are coming into you and your business is growing, if you don't have systems, it's really going to be a struggle to scale and to keep those clients around and retain those clients. So I wish looking back on it that I built systems sooner because then I'd be in even more better shape than I am now with my business. I'm only just now really starting to refine the systems like in the past year. But I'm sure I'd be a year ahead if I started those systems when I started, right? And I think I tried to, but I never really stayed consistent. And now that I actually need it, I'm realizing it. So build systems, they're really going to set you free. And I've found a ton of use in them, like build SOPs, standard operating procedures. You're not necessarily gonna use them all the time when you have a team, right? You don't just wanna— like, I'm thinking right now of Leila Hormozi, um, Hugues Hormozi's wife, when she's like, if I got a stack of SOPs when I joined, like, I'd probably just kill myself, right? Like, that's what she said in one of her videos. And I totally agree. Like, when you get a team, you never just wanna shove 'em a ton of SOPs and systematized docs and just hope that they do good. Having those systems and process will help you be able to figure out what did I do, how did I do it, and then how can I teach this and transfer this knowledge to my team? In the future. And this brings me now to my next point, which is having a team. Building a team and starting to build the team early is one of the biggest things you can do to grow your business, and it's extremely valuable. Now, in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, I believe he talks about making sure that you have the right people on the bus and then make sure you know where the bus is going, right? I totally agree with this. I think having the right person is the best thing that you can do. Actually, with someone else I spoke with— I spoke with Jason Capital, huge social media influencer, um, really awesome business owner, copywriter. He's Amazing. He was explaining how you should only hire tens on your team, right? Don't hire an eight. Don't hire a nine. Because if you really, really want to grow, hire that ten on your team because they're going to lift everyone up and they're going to be able to self-sustain. But if you hire that eight or even that nine, although they're great, they're just going to bring down the team in some areas, and it's just going to be a real big pain. At first, you're not going to get those tens, right? You won't necessarily be able to pay for those tens. But looking for those tens and being able to identify them is going to help you a ton because just like systems will set you free, your team. Will be able to implement the systems that you give them the vision for, and they'll be able to execute even further. It's essentially like cloning yourself, and it doesn't happen instantaneously because each team member is going to have a different asset that they bring to the table. But you can essentially clone your systems that you came up with, and it'll really help catapult your business to the next level. I love my team. They crush it, and it's been the best thing in the world seeing my team grow and going from, you know, how I structure the process is I hire someone on part-time. I see if they're a good fit for a couple of months, and then once we need someone full-time, and if they've been crushing it, I'll upgrade them to full-time, right? Definitely want to have a small, like, lean team. I'm probably close to maxing out my team right now. I don't want to have 50+ employees or even 10+, but I still want to have a really lean killer company making, you know, billions. So we'll get there, and it all starts with the team. You can't get there without a team. So big thing there. Okay, and the last one, which is kind of out there but I've definitely had a ton of experience with it, is just triple-check your CPA and whoever you work with, right? At first when you're starting, you may not need a CPA and it may not be necessary But eventually down the line you definitely will. So triple-check that CPA, check that process that they're running you through, and just make sure you're getting in with the right person. I've had issues with CPAs in the past and everything's been fine, but not having the right one can really set you back. It's just more of an annoyance than anything else. So just keep that in the back of your head if you're starting off, right? Pocket that somewhere that check your CPAs. And if you're doing it right now, check your CPA, make sure they're doing what you're doing, make sure they're aligned with your vision because they can really help, A, save you a lot of money, And B, save a lot of sanity and time. So make sure you're partnering with the right person. Make sure they're aligned with your visions. Make sure that they're open to questions, feedback, suggestions, and you'll really crush it with them. So that's really everything that I got for this video. This was a pretty broad overview, but those are some of the initial things when I just thought of this that I feel would help a lot of people, and that in hindsight I wish I focused maybe a little bit more on. Or in hindsight, I know that if I didn't do those things, I maybe wouldn't be as successful as I am today. So if you enjoyed this video, please comment below, like. Let me know if there's a topic you want me to cover more specifically. And if you don't know about me, my name is Nick Corvessis. I'm the founder of Scale Lab Group. We are marketing and consulting. I guess you can call it agency. I hate referring to ourselves as an agent, ourselves as an agency. We're not. We're more of a strategic business growth partner, and we partner with different online and in-person businesses and help them attract, nurture, and close customers on a really predictable basis. So I love what I do. I love who I help. And if this video was helpful to you, let me know because it'll make me feel happy. If not, let me know because then I can improve it. And that's really all I got for this video today. So if you want to check out more stuff, check it out. And if you have an idea for the next video that you want me to cover, let me know. I'm glad to cover it. I'll see you in the next one. See ya.










