In this solo‑presenter video, Shanli Liu (CPA, CTP) explains why many aspiring entrepreneurs remain stuck as "wantrepreneurs" – people who endlessly consume business content but never ship a product. She describes the state of unconscious incompetence, where individuals are unaware of the skill gaps that prevent them from launching. Liu argues that over‑consumption and fear of failure keep them in a loop, and that real progress requires imperfect, action‑oriented steps. Drawing from her own experience of building an unfinished fitness course called "Queen Transformation," she outlines four mental frameworks that helped her move from wanting to doing: (1) visualizing the worst‑case scenario to desensitize fear, (2) reframing the goal from winning to learning, (3) setting low expectations so any positive outcome feels like a win, and (4) adopting an experimental mindset that treats entrepreneurial moves as temporary trials rather than permanent commitments. Throughout, she uses personal anecdotes and practical examples, urging viewers to stop consuming and start acting, and points them to a related video on “4 steps to get from 0 to 1 million.”
Chapters
What is a wantrepreneur? A wantrepreneur is someone who's dabbling yet unaware of their skill deficits that are needed to start a business. So in this video today, what I want to talk to you about is how to stop being a wantrepreneur. The phase of being a wantrepreneur is like you're literally wading through the swamp of unconscious incompetence. What is unconscious incompetence? That is essentially when you are unaware of how incompetent you are in terms of your ability to start the business. This feeling of being very lost, very unaware, and very unassuming. And so what does this look like? You consistently have an idea and then you work on that idea. Maybe you build a product, you build some kind of marketing campaign, you get something built. And then when it comes down to actually shipping that thing out and selling it to customers, that never happens. If I could have one word that I could associate with it that I see very commonly amongst most people that are in this stage is like over-consuming and overthinking. So you spend all your time consuming all this stuff. Like right now you're consuming my content, which I'm literally putting out there so that hopefully you can break the cycle of consuming. But like, You don't need more content. The secret that entrepreneurs know is that it's all about action. It's not about over-consuming. You don't need any more information to win. You have to be willing to fail and willing to take imperfect action in order to get what you want. What I did is I spent so much time completely looping in my mind. I wanna launch this thing. I could do a little bit of this. Oh, it's not perfect yet. Go back to square one. Not perfect yet. I can't do anything with it 'cause it's not perfect. Basically the fear of failure. One time I built out this course, I called it Queen Transformation. It was gonna be my online fitness course. 5, 6 months building out this huge course with all these training videos, all this time. I spent every weekend working on it. And I never did anything with it. That is what I consider to be a wantrepreneur. It's somebody who really wants to be an entrepreneur, but they don't have the discipline to break through those mental habits to get to the other side. I've really broken down 4 mental frameworks that have helped me break through from being a wantrepreneur to an entrepreneur. Visualizing worst-case scenario. People often talk about visualizing positive scenarios. It's almost like people think that if you visualize the worst-case scenario that you're going to end up there, but that's actually not the truth at all. What you're doing is you're creating almost like exposure therapy in your mind to that worst-case scenario so you're becoming familiar enough with it that you're comfortable with that scenario. For me, that scenario was quit my job, I get rid of all my clients, and then I start this business. What if it fails? What happens next? I don't have too much money left. I don't have my job anymore. My clients have probably all gone to new people. I'm still 23. I have to rebuild a client roster so I can get some cash flow so that then eventually I can restart a business and try again. Okay, well maybe I can't pay rent, so maybe I have to go live with my dad. Living with my dad's actually not all that bad. They do the laundry, they cook food. I get to spend more time with my family. What am I so scared of? What actually will happen for most people is not going to be that bad. You're not going to be homeless and starving on the streets. The worst case scenario is that you harshly judge yourself for the fact that you failed. You realize that it's not so bad after all. The thing that feels bad is when you judge yourself for it. And so every time I would like feel that pang of anxiety in my stomach when I was leaping forward and making these decisions and I would like want to retreat back to my safe place, I'd be like, wait, let's just play out worst case scenario. What is it again? And I was like, oh, that's not even that bad. No, I'm fine. Keep going. The second mental framework that I used was I switched my goal. So a lot of people are afraid of going from having a business idea to starting a business because they're afraid of losing. Instead of the goal being to win, whatever that means, I said, okay, my goal is just to learn. Trying to become an entrepreneur will accelerate my learning faster than keeping this job will. And so if my goal is to learn, then this will take me there faster. Does that mean I will probably fail more? Yes, but that doesn't matter because I'm learning. A lot of people are so afraid. They're like, they have these huge audacious goals they set for themselves. You can set those later when you've actually made the leap. For right now, if you need to trick yourself, which is essentially what I did, I tricked myself into taking the leap by making my goal something that if I failed, I still won. Make sure you're playing a game that sets you up for success. You can change the game later on. You can change it in 3 months, 6 months, 12 months once you get in the game. But right now you're on the sidelines. And so you have to do whatever you need to do in your mind to get yourself from the sidelines into the game. Robert Kiyosaki talked about this. He's like, you want to work to learn, not earn. Me failing at something is more information, which is more learnings. And so if you can make that mental switch, it'll make it a lot easier for you. Setting low expectations. If you set your expectations low, then any condition that is above low in your mind is going to feel good to you. It's going to feel like a win. In my mind, I wasn't going to be married or have much money at all until I was 30 to 32. And ironically, what it did was it relieved so much pressure from me that I was actually able to make better decisions and also feel more delighted and excited about the things that were happening sooner than expected. I talked to a woman when I was on a live the other day. She was 6 months into learning how to do wholesaling. She said, I'm just having a really hard time. And I said, are you making money? And she said, yes, $7,000 a month. And I was like, I don't understand what the problem is. I thought I'd be making maybe $20,000 a month by now. The problem is not the number of how much money you're making. The problem is that you set an expectation in your mind because she was comparing herself to people with all this real estate experience and all the sales experience, all this marketing experience. She'd been a waitress in a small town. The lower you set your expectations, the more likely it is that you will be elated, excited, happy about your progress because anytime real life conditions exceed expectations, you'll be happy. The experimental mindset. Anytime I wanna make a big change in life, it feels almost like really tough to make that decision because you feel like all this weight on your shoulders. Where do I wanna live? Do I wanna move cities? And you see so many people get stuck. What if you said, this is an experiment? I'm gonna try living somewhere for 6 to 12 months and I'm just gonna experiment, see if I like it. I don't move somewhere and think I'm living here forever. I mean, that would be horrible. And who wants to live somewhere forever? And what that does is it gets me to take the first step. You're just experimenting. You're just gaining feedback. For some reason in our minds, it's so black and white. It's either all or nothing. It's like we're going all in on this path. It's like the worst case scenario is you just go back to what you were doing before. If you can adopt that within your entrepreneurial journey, then you can say, I'm just going to experiment with wholesaling, an online training business, online finance, whatever it may be. We're going to change our minds and we're going to change our paths in life so many times, but it is an experiment. If you can actually believe that, which I truly do, then you'll be much more likely to take that jump than you are if you tell yourself this is a huge life commitment and if you fail, you have nothing to go back to because it's not reality. If you like this video and you feel like you are ready to take action, I have a video, the 4 steps to get from 0 to 1 million. So if you enjoyed this one, check that one out and also let me know what you think in the comments.
