MBA1446 The Best Time To Start A Business

Hey Fidelity, how can I remember to invest every month?

With the Fidelity app you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs.

Huh, that sounds easier than I thought.

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Yeah, I do. Now where did I put my keys?

You will find them where you left them.

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Ready to Save on New Tech it's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals foreign. Hey, welcome to the $100 MBA show, the podcast that knows how much your business means to you. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar is at home. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's episode you will learn when is the Best Time to start a Business? This is a question I get asked a lot. I have a business idea, I'm thinking about starting it. When is the best time for me to actually take the plunge and begin to build my business? Many people believe that timing is everything when starting a business, and that's somewhat true, but not in the way that you expect. Many of us delay starting a business because we're not sure if it's going to fit in with our life if we have the time commitment for it, if exposing our business idea will cause somebody to grab it and run. All these concerns are very common and it often has people questioning, when should I start this business? When should I know when the circumstances are right for me to be able to succeed with this business? This is what we get into in today's episode. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Have you ever seen a product on TV or on the shelves of a store that you're visiting and said to yourself, wow, I had the same exact idea for this product. And you feel kind of bad because you're like, man, this was my idea. And you see it in stores and you start to realize, wow, it could have been a success. So what's the difference between the person that created the product you see in the store or on TV and you? The only real difference is that person took Action. You, you had an idea, you sat on it, you thought about it, and you probably are trying to figure out when is a good time to start implementing it. So let me begin by saying for most businesses, I would say 99% of all businesses, the best time to start a business is yesterday, right? The second best time is today. Now, why do I say 99%? Because there is a rare number of businesses we're starting. It ahead of its time is going to be a bit of a struggle. But most of us are not starting businesses like this. Businesses that are in that 1% are businesses that have ideas where the implementation and the technology are just not there. This is like Elon Musk trying to start Tesla in the 1960s. You can't create a battery at that time that's going to give you enough range. So the timing for that business, starting that business would be a little bit off. But for most of us, we're not starting an electric car company. Most of us, the resources, the technology, everything we need is available to us. The market is ready for whatever we have to offer. So what else holds us back from starting that business today is often resources. And for most of us, the biggest lack of resource is time and not really money. Because starting a business doesn't actually cost a lot of money to start one. Running one and maintaining one and growing one is a different story. But starting a business actually requires more time than money in most cases. Regardless if you have a physical business or a online business, starting a business actually means making your first sale. Let's say I had a business, an idea where I want to create the absolute thinnest, razor thin iPhone cases. I want them to be strong but super thin. Many people think, to get started, I need a factory, I need materials, I need suppliers, I need to be able to make this all happen. And we get overwhelmed. That's not starting a business. Starting a business is making your first sale. You need one prototype and you need to sell it to one person first. You need to see if people are willing to buy your product. You need the idea of validation. This is the beginning of your business. You don't need any business cards yet. You don't need even a website or domain you have. Don't you need to first start by selling your first product, making your first sale, and then your second, and then your third and your fourth. So creating a prototype iPhone case, what is it going to cost you? With sites like Alibaba, you can create one for 20, $30 for a price of a meal. Get it Shipped to your house and try to sell it to one person that you know. If you can't sell something to somebody, you know you're going to have a harder time selling something to strangers. Okay, can you sell this case to at a price that's reasonable for you to make a profit at large? So you could just sell the case for $20, $30. That's starting a business. You got to find out the economics of the business and if it's viable before you start planning out everything else. But for most of us, we don't actually take this step because we may like the idea of the business more than the actual business itself, or we're scared to take that leap and put ourselves out there. This is a great exercise for you to start understanding. This is what entrepreneurship is, is putting yourself out there and asking people, hey, would you like to buy what I created? And if you can't do that for one unit, then you're going to really struggle ever starting a business. So this is a good first step. So once you validate the idea and you say, okay, wow, somebody bought my iPhone case for 40 bucks. All right, let's scale. Can I sell 20 iPhone cases? I could sell it at the meetup of my local town, the next tech meetup or something that's free to enter or $5 to enter, and I can set up a booth, ask the organizers if I could do that. Maybe you have to spend $100 to get a table. Can I sell 20? This is getting a little exciting now, right? Can I sell 20 cases now? Many people always say, well, I can't show up there without, you know, a logo and a banner and a website to send to. Yeah, you can. I've done that. Where you just go there, and if they ask you, hey, I'm still just validating this idea. This is a very early stages. We haven't even come up with a name yet. But do you like the product? Take down notes, get feedback from customers, see how they touch and feel and use your product. What's the next step? Okay, I have 20 sales. Now. Can I sell a hundred or five hundred online with a website with maybe a shopify store? All this is not costing me too much money. It's really pocket change we're talking about here. Even starting your website is going to cost you like, $100 in comparison to what people had to pay to start a business just like 15, 20 years ago. This is chump change. So to get back on topic, the best time for you to start your business is Right now. But you need to make time for that business. You need to actually allot time, even if it's just a few hours during the weekend, two or three hours during the weekend, maybe a few nights a week, you could dedicate to your business a couple hours. So maybe you can dedicate a total of 10 hours a week to get this thing going. But the point here is that you want to move forward. You want to take steps forward to flesh out this business, to do the idea validation I mentioned, to make these sales, to find these meetups, to build that website, all that stuff. There are things you are not going to learn until you try. You have to go through trial and error. Business is just like that because your business is unique to you. The product, the services, all that kind of stuff. So you need to make sure that you take steps forward so you can learn about your customers, about your marketplace, about how you can offer unique value. But none of this is going to happen if you just sit around with your idea in your head. If you've been thinking about starting a business idea, I encourage you to stop thinking and start doing. What's stopping you from doing that? A lot of us are worried about embarrassment. We're worried about failure. Well, the one thing I know about successful entrepreneurs is that they fail. They fail over and over and they learn through failure. It's a rite of passage. You have to get over that. You have to understand that you will fail. There's no if you will fail. That's just part of being an entrepreneur. You'll learn from it and you'll move on, but you'll never create that business. If you don't put yourself out there. If you don't try and allow yourself the opportunity to learn and to be vulnerable to failure, it's okay. Every day that goes by without you starting your business is a day wasted. It's a day you could have launched earlier. It's a day earlier that you could have launched your new life. And for most of us who live in the Western world or in a first world country, we really have no excuse. We have the disposable time. We have a few dollars in our pocket to spend on that, you know, that minimal viable product. We just got to get over ourselves and stop thinking that there's the best time to start a business and realize, I should have started it already. Let's get going. Hey, Fidelity.

What's it cost to invest with the Fidelity app? Start with as little as $1. With no account fees or trade commissions on US stocks and ETFs hmm, that's music to my ears. I can only talk.

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Customers only one year contract required for guaranteed rate. Five year pricing applies to monthly service charge excluding taxes and fees. Best WiFi based on Open Signal Awards USA Fixed Broadband Experience Report May 2025 My only regret in business is not starting earlier in anything I did. Whether it's building an email list, whether it's starting my personal brand, whether it's getting on stages to speak at conferences, whether it's starting the actual businesses themselves, the products and services. It's important for you, especially in the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey, to try your ideas out and you have to do them in the real world. And that's when you get started, when you actually try to see if this business is worth pursuing, if people are willing to buy this product. And word to the wise, when you're doing a minimal viable product, you gotta have some money exchanging hands. You can't ask, hey, would you buy this? Anybody could say yes to something that they're not actually paying for. Money talks in this instance and you need to have real proof that people are willing to part with their money for the product or service that you're offering. If you want more information on how to create a minimal viable product, how to validate your idea, we have a free idea validation course over@100mba.net, it's right there on the homepage. It's absolutely free. Just pop in your email and you'll get our videos that go along with that course, along with a cool little workbook to go with it. Absolutely free. Go ahead and check that out right now. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe right now. Whatever you use to listen to podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Apple Podcast, Stitcher Radio, we're on them all. Make sure that you hit subscribe right now so you don't miss a beat. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I say this almost every week. But time is your biggest asset, okay? We can't get time back. You can't go back in time. You only can utilize the time you have in front of you. So don't let time pass without you moving forward with your ideas, with your business. Take a step, even if it's just one small step every day. That means you're moving forward. That means you're doing something and you're building upon what you did yesterday. Thank you so much for listening. And I'll check you in. Tomorrow's episode Freeride Friday. I'll see you then. Take care. Hey, Fidelity. How can I remember to invest every month?

With the Fidelity app, you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs.

Oh, that sounds easier than I thought.

You got this?

Yeah, I do. Now, where did I put my keys?

You will find them where you left them.

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC Member nysesipc.