How I Would Start a Business From Scratch (If I lost Everything)

Hi, I'm Sam Ovens, and this is Nick Fisher. And what we wanted to do with these next few videos is go to our audience, you know, the people that follow us on social media, receive our emails and watch these videos. We wanted to go to the audience and ask, you know what? What do you guys want to learn? So we sent out some surveys and everything, and we collected the responses. And what we've done is we have found the most popular questions that people want answered. And what we're going to do is we've got a list of them and Nick Fisher's going to go through them and we're going to answer those questions for you guys so that we can help you out. So the first question we've got is a lot of people wanted to know what I would do if I was starting over from scratch. Like, if I just lost all of my money, all. All of my connections, all of my followers, subscribers, everything. Like, we're talking a true blank slate, like a fresh start. What would I do? And so in this video today, we're going to answer that.

So if you had to start from scratch, let's say no money, no connections, no nothing, and you only had 30 days to make enough money to pay rent, let's say rent is $5,000 before you got evicted from your place. What do you do starting today, right now?

Well, for me, I'd probably just default to what I used to do back when that was always the case, like every 30 days. And that was, I would just look for local businesses that had bad websites or who I thought were making mistakes with their websites. And so to do that, I'd just go into Google and I just search for different companies, like plumbers, electricians, dentists, your traditional source of businesses. I just search in Google and find them. And then I'd go to their websites and think, is this website really good or is it bad? Or do I really think that this business could benefit if they made some changes to the website and updated it? So I was basically looking for people who I thought I could help. And I'd go through Google, nothing fancy. I just build a Google Doc or Excel file with all the companies and the links to their sites and their phone numbers. And then what I'd do is, once I pulled together a list, I would just shoot them an email and I'd say, hey, I took a look at your website and I think you're making some mistakes with it that is costing you business. And I think if you fix these things, you could, you could really make more money and your business would benefit from it. And then I'd just use screen recording software to record me just talking while going through the website, explaining the mistakes. And I'd link that video in the email. So real simple email, like 5 minute screen recording video. And I'd say, if you want my help with fixing any of these things, just let me know. So real simple.

Got it. So that's the ask at the end. Everything else is just value then at that point.

Well, you just want to be a few things. One is you want to just be different. So, you know, I see a lot of people, they think, you know, Facebook ads and things like this, they're not things to use in emergency situations. Same with like social media. And you know, these aren't, these aren't emergency, like emergency situation things. They take a long time to build up and to grow into something. So when you're in an emergency situation, you need something that's going to just be like, you aim for it and it's a direct hit. So when you just find websites through Google that's instant, it's free. And then when you send them an email that's instant and it's free, and you're not relying on building up an audience, building up a community and an authority and all of these things, it's just a direct hit. And then you want to be different too. You want to look a little bit different than all the other people that are out there shouting, like, hey, I can help you with stuff. So that's where the really, the personal email comes in. Because personal emails are rare. Most emails people get are from automated blasts. Like it's very rare to get just a genuine person sending you a genuine email. That isn't just a copy paste thing.

I would agree.

And then if you put the video in there too, which is actually you critiquing their site, and now you're really rare. Now this person probably hasn't received one of those emails at all ever. So you're gonna stand out, you're gonna get noticed. You know that your message is gonna reach the person. And if you're honest with it and you only really email people who you believe you can help, someone should bite on that. So, you know, we're just removing all the variables and we're trying to make it as simple and as fast as possible. Because, you know, 30 days is like.

Emergency, 30 days is an emergency. So the first day, would that just be all research then or would you start doing, let's say, how many do you need.

If you've got 30 days, you're not wasting one day on research. So what I would do is, I'd think, how many of these emails do I need to send out to get one of these jobs? And you want to, you know, you want to be really prudent with. With guesses, because if you're in an emergency, you want to, you know, if you go too big, the worst thing that can happen is you get, like, too many clients. But if you go too small, the worst thing that can happen is you get none and you're. You're stuck. So I would, you know, I think you could easily get a client within 50 to 100, but I wouldn't bank on that. In an emergency situation, I would go for 300, because, you know, you. Surely you're going to get one in 300, you know, if you're doing the emails properly, if you're making these things, like, I don't see how you could do that and not get a client out of 300. It's near impossible to me. So if we do that, then we shouldn't be in trouble at the end of 30 days. And then if you just take 300 divided by 30, you get 10 a day. So all you need to do each day, starting day one, is send out 10 of these things. So I wouldn't try and build the list of 300 people first. That's going to be so boring and tedious and, you know, you'll want to kill yourself doing that. So I just do 10 every day. So I just do it first thing in the morning to get it off my mind so I can just relax for the rest of the day. I'd wake up, open up my laptop and I would just jump into Google, find 10 companies that are a good fit, put them into my Google Doc, record all of their videos, send out those 10 emails, and then I know, like, I've just ticked off that one thing I need to do today to try and get myself out of the situation. Mm.

How about the rest of the day, then? Let's say you have time left over.

Well, hopefully these people are gonna reply back and things like that.

So you're having some time allocated for having conversations.

Yeah, but the main thing is you get it off your mind that you've done a step towards fixing it. The last thing you want to do is procrastinate it because every day it's going to get worse. And so you don't want to, you know, you don't want to put it off any days at all. And you just want to make a dent in it every single day. And I think after you do that morning action, it's just gonna, it's gonna put you in a way better state for the rest of the day.

Got it. So, yeah, that kind of covers. I think that's a situation a lot of people that we see, they come and they're looking at consulting or a side hustle as something that can get them an immediate result for like a short term pinch that they're in. But then on the flip side, there's other people that were writing into community that said, you know, I do have the, you know, I have the money. Like 30 days isn't necessarily a hard gap. I have to make this. They're more interested in like, how do I make a believable plan for the next three years? Like, what's the formula for, for goal planning further out? Like, I have time to figure out my niche, I have time, I just don't have to make money. What do I do in this situation?

So they're not in an emergency.

Correct. They have more time to figure it out and they just want it sounds like a believable plan for the next three years. Maybe something, you know, because maybe like something like that, they're like, oh, that's something I would burn out. You know, it's a short term solution. I don't even really want to sell websites, but I would for 30 days because I got to pay rent. These people are trying to find more believable plan, something they want to grow like a business they can be proud of.

Essentially the believable plan comes from a test that's gotten results. If you've done something in a small sample and it's worked, then it could be a believable plan to really scale that thing up. So I'll give you an example. Like when I first started doing, you know, selling these websites and everything, I would be able to do like one to four a month. That was pretty much how many I could do. So then a believable plan for me for the next two years was, okay, well to scale this thing up, all I need to do is hire more people. So I decided to start like an agency type business and hire people, get them in, teach them what I was doing, then they could do it too, right. So a believable plan comes from really just doing more of what's already proven to work. And I think plans aren't believable when there's no pilot test or no Base test to prove like the proof of concept. That's really what it is. You can't build a three year plan off a concept that's never been proven. You know, you have to see it with your own eyes, happen at a small scale before you know that this thing can scale. And then with another example, like you know, being able to have a long term vision and having the confidence to like bet big on what I've done with like consulting.com and stuff, I've invested a lot of money into it and I would never have the confidence to pour all of that money into it and work really hard towards it if I didn't think that it was a believable plan. But the plan's only believable because it had been proven, the concept had been proven. So I started out selling the training program to people and it was really scrappy back then. The program was just built in Dropbox and I didn't have a website, I didn't have anything. And what would happen is people would email me and I'd reply back and say, hey, I've got this thing, are you interested in it? They'd say yes or no, we might jump on Skype and talk. And then they would sign up and they'd just send me the money through PayPal or something. And then they would sign up and I'd send them a link to Dropbox. That's all it was, no website, nothing fancy at all. The program was just recorded things in Dropbox. But once I had sold 12 people into that, I think we did 12 or 15 people, I was like, oh, well, this thing is proven. Now the next plan, you know, for the next year is to build this into a proper program, like put it into a content portal, make the videos better, give it an actual name, give it a brand and a logo and you know, all of these niceties which people often do first when they really should do those later. It's every time I've done the logo and everything first, the business has pretty much failed. And every time I've just forgotten about that and just built the scrappiest, most ghetto thing ever. The business has really done well. And then the polish comes over time. So I think most people, there's no such thing as a believable plan. You can't make a plan that's believable. The thing that makes it believable is having a proof of concept that's being proven.

Got it? And then as far as time frames on a plan, for you personally, when is too far and when is too short? Like if you're making a business plan, do you do it by a yearly basis? Is a five year plan kind of just insane because it changes too much? Is it good to have a five year plan because it keeps you on a big vision? How do you feel about plans and the time lengths? You should actually take action on those plans.

So in the earlier days I could only ever see like one year out. And even then the plan changed a lot. So I think when you're first getting started, you should think one year and then focus most of your attention all the time on the month and the weeks and the days. Months, weeks, days is where you're going to be operating when you're getting started because you're just fooling yourself thinking out further than that. And your most important goal is just to survive and build up your resources. But as soon as you start getting enough resources that you're not, you're not in the emergency zone, you can start thinking out one year. And then as soon as you've really built up resources and things, you can start thinking out like two, three. And in terms of plans, you know, when I do my like year plan, I'll just list like five main goals, like five main things I need to achieve and then I'll kind of just chunk out different like months of the year where I'm working on different things. And that's about as, that's about as detailed as it is because things change all the time. You start working on something and then it pings over here and then there and you know, it moves all over the place. So it's silly to plan things out too much. And then in terms of two year, three year, four year, five year, those are just visions. So like, like an idea or a picture in my mind, like a mental picture of where the company and myself and the financials and everything might be. There is no plan out there because you know, the plans change in the month. To make one out five years is just stupid. It's going to be a. Well, it is a lie because I don't think anyone would ever plan out their fifth year and have things happen like that in their fifth year. So. So to me it's pointless.

Has your goal, did you ever have like a five year plan when you were getting started? And if you did, what was like one crazy vision or goal that you had then that like completely doesn't matter to you now at all? Is there anything you were thinking about when you first started out? You're like, I Definitely want to do this. This is my vision. And now you're like, that was naive. Or I was thinking too, too small. Maybe I was thinking too big.

Like, whoa. Well, yeah, like when I started my first businesses, like my very first one, Promote Yourself, which is like an online job board, I thought that would be all I was doing for the rest of my life. And I was thinking about how that might change and develop and all of these things, but then the business turned out to fail and not work. So then obviously that got completely moved out of my vision and then I moved on to the next thing and then that became my vision. And so, yeah, it's changed a lot. I mean, when I was a kid at school, I thought I wanted to be a dentist. So, like. And I thought on the future I might be being a dentist or whatever. Then when I wanted a job, I thought, I'll just be working in a corporate. You know, like, it changes all the time and it, like, it's kind of hard to explain because you, you only want to really commit and focus on one thing and just block everything else out once it's like, proven to work, really. And it might just be proven at a very small scale, but you just want it to be proven so that you know that you're putting all of this effort and focus and attention into something that's actually going to do something. It's just hard to believe that when you haven't seen any sort of feedback from the market. Right. Like, a good example might be like, Michael Jackson. If you watch like, documentaries on his story, which is really interesting. You know, early on, when he was a kid, like five, six years old, he was winning, like school talent shows and stuff, right? So this is good feedback for him that he's pretty good at this and that if he keeps putting in more effort, if he keeps doing what he's doing just in larger and larger quantities and scale over time, then he's gonna be good at it, it's gonna be a success. So until you really find that thing that's given you that feedback, you don't want to be too just focused on one thing. You've got to be open to other ideas and experiment and things like that.

Got it.

Cool.