15 Steps for Starting a Business in the Best Possible Way with Alex Sanfilippo

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Since launching this podcast and creating two software businesses, I’ve had the opportunity to learn a lot about entrepreneurship and starting successful businesses from some of the most brilliant minds: and I’m beyond thankful for the opportunity. Today, I am excited to bring you another solo episode of the podcast, which contains what I’ve learned about the best way to start a business. We’ll cover 15 steps that I’ve identified as the process for building a bootstrapped business in the best possible way!

MORE FROM THIS EPISODE: HTTPS://PODMATCH.COM/EP/154

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

You're listening to the Creating a Brand podcast, where we deliver weekly interviews on topics to help entrepreneurs make their first or next step in business the right one. I am your host, Alex Sanfilippo. Since launching this podcast and creating two software businesses, I've had the opportunity to learn a lot about entrepreneurship and starting successful businesses from some of the most brilliant minds, and I am beyond thankful for the opportunity. Today, I'm excited to bring you another solo episode of the podcast. We'll cover 15 steps I've identified as the process for building a bootstrapped business in the best way possible. For links to resources that will be mentioned during this episode, please visit creatingabrand.com. And now let's not wait any longer. Let's walk through the 15 steps for starting a business in the best way possible. There are a lot of books, podcasts, YouTube videos, and other resources out there to help you start a business. And I've been through many of them myself, as I'm sure you have as well. And they contain some great insights, but they all seem to lack something. And it's an overview of how it all really comes together. So it's like you're getting pieces of a puzzle from each of these things, but you have to continuously be looking for more to actually find that holistic approach and see the entire puzzle all finished and together for what it takes to start a business specifically. And that's what I want to share with you today. is not only how to start a business, but how to start a business in what I consider to be the best way possible. It's how I've actually bootstrapped now three businesses with only$5,000 total and with almost no stress involved. And keyword there, almost no stress, right? But I just find that this is not what people talk about when it comes to business. Again, we look at the small elements, the small pieces, and there's a lot of stress involved, a lot of money needing to be raised. We're going to have to put our whole life savings into this thing. That's usually what I'm hearing. But what I'm talking about today is more what I consider to be the natural flow that I've identified for starting a business. And before I go into these steps, I'm actually going to share a story because I think it helps to paint a picture a little bit. As many of you are aware, I live in Jacksonville, Florida, and I spend a lot of time on the beach. That's not a secret. Anytime I'm on a podcast, I share that. I shared a lot on my show as well. But something you should know about Florida if you don't live here is that there are many very interesting people here. Example, Florida man is not simply one man. I mean, anytime I go to the beach, I see another Florida man. One example that comes to mind is recently I was out at the beach with my wife, Alicia, and our friend Casey and there was a guy right in front of us we were sitting down and he picked up an umbrella rod and he started acting like he was up to bat like he was playing baseball and he had some drinks and it was fun to watch him attempt to show off to his lady like she was actually kind of digging it like she was she was psyched about him trying to play baseball and right when I thought that he was going to strike out because he he had a few bad hits there he hit an invisible in park home run and yes rod our boy we named him yes he started running the bases and even slid into home plate and base We saw him in the celebration that he put on right after hitting the home plate. I believe that he was safe. And obviously, his lady was super impressed, and so were we. Anyway, so that's what I see at the beach all the time. But back on track here, another story at the beach. I was watching some surfers, and I'm not a surfer myself, so I put them in two categories. And forgive me for those of you that surf and know differently, but I see people on short boards. I see people on long boards. Now, when I watch the short boarders, because there's way more of them out here, I see that they work pretty hard to catch a wave. It's not too difficult for them, but as soon as they stand up, it is a fight to keep themselves up. I mean, they are trying to do tricks. They're just trying to keep themselves up at times, and it's clearly a lot of work and skill that goes into it, and my favorite part is actually watching them crash because it's always super extreme. It's never just like, oh, they slid off the board. It's like they go flying backwards. Their hands are up in the air and stuff like that. Anyway, and it's pretty short-lived. They never go for very far, and then on the flip side, you've got what I consider to be the longboarders, and these guys are totally different. It's a little bit more work to catch the wave, but when they do, they're able to ride that thing all the way to the shore. It looks like a lot of fun because I can tell when I'm looking at these surfers on these boards that they are having the time of their life. They are smiling, they're having a great time, and they feel good when they get to the end of it. So I share that story because I think that these are the two ways to start a business. You've got the short board side of things and the long board side of things. If you follow conventional wisdom, it tells you that starting a business is a lot of work. It's going to have a lot of tension, a lot of friction along the way. You're probably going to fall. You're probably going to fail. It's just almost impossible to do. And that's really the numbers even show that that is true. But the thing is, we don't have to start a business using that method. And that's where the example of a longboard comes in. You can ride that wave all the way into shore. If you do it right, it might be a little bit more work up front or take a little bit more time. But the thing is, you can ride that all the way to the finish line without ever falling and having to even worry about that. It can just be a really joyful ride along the way. So again, conventional wisdom says starting a business and then keeping a business is really hard work. And the numbers do reflect that. But I agree with that less and less because I don't think it's the way we have to actually start a business. So what I'm going to with you today is 15 steps I've found to be the best way to start a business. And I'll go ahead and jump into these now because I got a lot of ground to cover here. So step one is to find an area of passion or curiosity. That is your first step is to find something that you are passionate or curious about. If you don't have passion or curiosity in a space, don't waste your time because here's the thing. By the time you get the business up and running, you're already going to want to sell it because you're gonna be tired of it. If you can even get it running because if your passion doesn't sustain your curiosity doesn't sustain you, then you're along with this, you want to make sure that your area of passion or curiosity is very narrow focused. Now, what I mean by that is many people just go too broad. They're like, well, Alex, I'm passionate about people. That is not a narrow focus. You just described 7.7 billion things that you're interested in, right? Like that is too many. So some people like, I'll give an example here. If you say I'm passionate about pets, I'll tell you that's not narrow enough. If you say, well, Alex, I'm passionate about pet dogs. That's still not narrow enough. Okay, Alex, I'm passionate about hyperallergenic dogs. Still not enough. Now, if you tell me I'm passionate and curious about teaching hyperallergenic dog owners how to keep their dog from smelling bad without having to give them a bath every day, that right there is a narrow focus. That is an area of passion or curiosity. And I encourage you to jump into that. You really want to explore that. Now, I just mentioned there's 7.7 billion people on the earth. Over 5 billion of those people actually have access to the internet and social media. So if you're already thinking, well, Alex, what I'm into is just too narrow there's not enough people you're going to tell me that the five billion people on earth out of that group of people there is not someone else who's curious about what you have going on if you can find a group of a hundred or a thousand you're doing great here's the thing the reason I like the narrow niche when you're thinking about your passion curiosity is because the more narrow it is the less big businesses have tried it they're not necessarily interested in that which means you might be able to put a community of people together that no one else ever has so think about that really make sure that your area of passion curiosity is narrow focus that you're really honing on exactly what it is that you are passionate about. And again, if you think it's narrow enough, it probably isn't. You need to consistently be making it more and more narrow focused. All right, number two is to get yourself into the ecosystem. This means to be part of the community. So if I use that dog example, I continue with that. This means going to dog parks and finding the other dog owners that have hyperallergenic dogs or going to these new school dog parks that have bars connected to them, right? That's probably your best bet. Go in there. Get into the actual ecosystem that makes this up. Don't sit behind a computer. Go behind meetup groups. Join online events if you have to, right? Or even join Facebook groups. Whatever you need to do, find a way to be able to get into that ecosystem and get around the people that are in it and that actually make it up. And this will help you. you really understand if, oh, I am really passionate about this, or I am really curious about this. You'll be able to answer those questions for yourself if you do this well. So again, number one is to find that area of passion and curiosity. Step two is to get yourself into that ecosystem. And number three is to have conversations and build relationships with others in that ecosystem that you've entered. Now, this is something that a lot of people that own businesses are going to steer you the wrong way in. When I say have conversations and build relationships, I don't mean schedule meetings or say, hey, can I pick your brain for a little bit? When you do that, you automatically turn somebody's brain into a different mode, which is this isn't a friend. This isn't a relationship. This is a business meeting. And you do not want that. Here's the thing. I've been in thousands and led thousands of meetings throughout my time. I can tell you that I can get more done with people in a bar than I can behind a conference room table or when it's more formal. The less formal So when I tell you to actually have conversation and build relationships, I mean make friends. Be curious about the ecosystem. Ask questions. Take notes along the way. Say, hey, I'm new to this. I'm really trying to figure it out. I think I'm passionate about it. I'm really curious about it. I want to be able to try out. Don't ever pitch in this moment. Don't make it formal. Just build relationships and be interested in other people. And that'll lead you right into number four, which is to identify trends of problems and learn more about them. So as you're listening to people, building these relationships, start taking some notes. Start figuring out like, hey, is this really a problem? Because I'm noticing the last 10 people I talked to all said the same thing. They don't want to bathe their dog every day, right? But they want their dog to smell good. Can't Febreze a dog, I don't think at least. I don't actually own a dog. I should have mentioned that up front. But I don't think I can do that. So you might realize, okay, all these people are saying the same thing. So now when you're having conversations, again, you don't want to go into pitch mode. What you want to go into is, again, curiosity. So you want to identify those trends of problems and learn more about them. Here's something that will save you tens of thousands of dollars. I could have saved one company. It was a unicorn company. It got over a billion dollar evaluation. I could have saved people billions of dollars in just three minutes of an explanation. Don't build a company off the first problem you hear. You need to validate that problem. And you can only do that by identifying the trends and getting to know them a little bit better. Now, I mean, getting to know them, getting to know that problem a little better. An example of this I've actually shared before. My wife often complains about her phone being on silent when a certain app vibrates like her phone because she likes to hear that sound. She's like, oh, I wish I could know when it's going to make that sound because I would turn it off. I would put it on, I don't know, off silent so I could actually hear it. She was bringing that up every couple weeks because the alarm only went off every now and then. She's like, oh, it's really cool. I always miss it, though. And I decided to try something. I was like, well, okay. Hey, Alicia, I think you can go to your settings and you can change something in those settings to make it so that that app makes a sound and the rest won't. If you go to Google, you can probably figure it out in just a few minutes. And you want to know what she said? She said, nah, I don't really care that much. So here's the thing, and here's where people make a mistake. And again, people have made billions of dollars worth of mistakes on this one thing. They hear that problem. They immediately assume, ooh, I should write a tutorial on it. I should make a video on this. I should train people on how to turn the one app off silent they don't want. I should do all this. Here's the thing. You need to validate the problem exists, and you can only do that by learning more about that problem. When I got into it, I'm like, well, why not? She's like, oh, I don't really care that much. It's not a big deal. And here is human nature. It is to complain about things. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a complainer myself. I probably complain more than I'm letting off. But you have to make sure that you actually validate that problem and find out why people haven't already used a solution that's out there. Because chances are, there's probably already a solution. Figure it out to make sure it's actually something that is valid. So again, step four is to identify trends of problems and learn more about them to make sure that they're truly valid. And this leads you straight into step five, which is to find a way to solve the simplest problem that you've identified in the simplest, most unscalable way. First off, notice that I said the simplest problem. This is a really important point. Never, ever solve difficult problems. I am telling you, you are setting yourself up for failure, for stress, for everything bad that could happen to you in the world if you go out to solve a difficult problem. Leave that up to somebody else. You solve the simple, most simple problem you possibly can. Notice I also said the most unscalable way. Many of us as entrepreneurs, we start dreaming big. As soon as we feel like we've got an idea, I mean, sparks start going off in our head, and we think, oh, we're going to have a building with 3,000 employees We're going to build these giant automation tools. It's going to change the whole world. You've got to stop that thinking from the second it starts. I'm not telling you to kill it. You've got to put it aside for now. When you are first trying to solve a problem for somebody, again, it's the easiest problem you can solve, not one of the difficult ones, leave that to somebody else, but also you want to do it in the most unscalable way possible. So here's an example. I'll use my real example I'm actually thinking through right now. My head already went giant with this whole idea here, but now I'm like, bring it back down. I've noticed in my city, Jacksonville, Florida, that there are a lot of tech founders that have moved here, and they don't have a way to connect. There's no real meetup group form or anything like that. There's no Facebook group. There's nothing. It seems like anytime I talk to them, I'm like, oh, I wish I could find ways to meet with people like you, Alex. My immediate thought is like, oh, I'm going to build a Facebook group. I'm going to set up a meetup.com group. We're going to meet monthly. We're going to have an agenda, all these things, right? And that's not even the biggest way I could think about it. I could also be thinking build our own social network and things. But bring it back down to the simplest form. What I need to do is next time I talk to one of these guys, I need to say, hey, how about we meet Thursday at 6 p.m. at this restaurant? And you know what? If you know any other tech founders, reach out to them and just tell them to meet us there as well. That is the simplest way possible to see if I even have anything. And here's why. Because if I go and let's say I spread the word to 30 different tech founders in my city and three people show up, Guess what? I didn't find a real problem. They don't really want to meet up. They just wanted to complain about it, right? So you have to be, once again, thinking, what is the easiest way I can validate this problem? And again, what's that simple issue that I can find, not a complex one, simple, and how can I do it in the most unscalable way? Inviting people to dinner at 6 p.m. next Thursday at a certain restaurant without even making a reservation, just seeing who shows up, is the simplest thing you can do. I almost spent no time doing that, and I even asked them to be the one that spreads the word. By doing that, you are actually identifying if you have a real problem that needs to be solved. This brings us right into step six, which is to get the community involved. Now, what I'm sharing with you is a small example, but it's something that so many of us don't do. And here's why. We think that someone else is going to steal that idea now. Like, oh, man, what if someone else starts leading the group? Or what if they create the agenda? Or like, what if I mentioned the wrong person? They decide they're going to be the new leader of it. Here's the thing. The first thing I say to you is you've watched way too many movies and TV. Because here's the thing. That almost never happens. Someone's stealing your idea. is, I mean, the chances of that happening are one in a million, if that, maybe one in 10 million. It doesn't really happen in real life. If you think it does, it's because you've seen too many movies or TV. Now, with that said, if someone does decide to steal it, then great, because remember, you got into this because you're passionate about it. You care about the people, not about the profit involved. And if that is the truth and you have the right heart in this, someone else starting it just took the pressure off you. Now you just get to be part of the community that you're passionate and care about. And guess what? You'll identify other problems along the way. But the they're trash anyway. I'm not trying to be mean, but the people who steal people's ideas, they never bring people along. They never succeed. They're going to fail at some point or another and always comes back around. But at the end of the day, you don't want to worry about that. So when I say get the community involved, you want to share every little detail of what you're thinking, not in a way to pitch, but instead of a way of like, hey, I've got this idea. What do you think? That way you can learn if you're on the right track or not. Skipping this step would be detrimental to what you're trying to build. So you have to make sure that you just get open and honest. I encourage you, have an abundance mindset with this. Don't think scarcity. Share everything you're doing and see what you can learn from the people Now, I want you to send it to them, but also include an encouraging note explaining why you share this episode with them specifically. By doing this, you're helping me grow this podcast and you're also adding value to the people you care about. With that said, thank you for your continued support. It means the world to me. And now let's get back to today's episode. Number seven is to develop an MVP, which stands for minimum viable product. Then what you want to do right away is start getting feedback from the community as you become more part of it. So as I just kind of mentioned that last point, like the whole idea here now is like, okay, I have a minimum viable product. Like, hey, everybody, we're going to meet monthly and we're going to rotate restaurants around the city and we're going to see how that works for everybody. And I call this starting ugly. Like actually I got that from my friend, Chris Cremensos. He has a book that's literally called Start Ugly. And the best thing you can do here is just put it all out there. Say, here it is. I built a Facebook group. I didn't add any graphics or anything like that. I'm just starting. So you're thinking minimal viable product to the minimal viable audience, just the people that you've already met. You're not trying to grow big right now. You're just trying to, again, prove this concept. Does it work? Now at this point, there's something I want to mention and I have this as its own step because of one really important reason. You might realize at this point that what you're doing is not working. People are not actually interested. And if you notice that, don't continue. Don't decide I'm going to press on because that's what entrepreneurs do. No, if it's not working at this point, stop. It's time for you to go back to step five. So you're going to jump back up to step five, which once again is to find the simplest problem and to... Try to solve it in the most unscalable way. You want to just start over because here's the thing. You might do this process three or four times and it not work. You don't want to start building the wrong thing. I am telling you there have been so many companies that have just tried because they thought they found something but they didn't. But you have to validate it. And this whole develop an MVP and start ugly when you launch it is the best way to do that. So make sure that you're really thinking about how... Is this actually going to work? Is it actually going to serve people? And you want to stop if it's not going to. So don't be afraid to do that. You have no skin in the game at this point if you've done this right. So it's okay to drop back to step five and try something else. If anything, the community is going to really respect you for the fact that, you know what, this person is trying to help us all out. People are going to see that. They're going to know it. So really, really focus on that. Now, if step seven worked and you're like, man, there's something here, people are really interested, the immediate next step you want to do is number eight, and it's to start collecting pre-order payments, then deliver ASAP. So as soon as possible, you want to have a delivery. But first, you want to start collecting pre-order payments. Because here's something I've learned the hard way, unfortunately. Everyone who's nice is going to love your idea, especially if you accidentally fall into pitch mode. No one wants to see the passion. No one wants to break your heart. It's like, oh, it's amazing. It's incredible. But here's the thing. When you put something in front of them and say, hey, put your credit card information here if you really like it, 90% of people will be like, oh, man. You know, it's just not the right time. Or it's cool for other people, but it's not really something I'm interested in. If you don't do this step up front and you build out a whole company before you start collecting pre-orders or payments, then you might crash and burn when nobody wants your product. I have had this happen and nothing hurts worse. So you want to make sure this step is up front. Now, don't feel bad about... taking people's money up front. Because here's the thing, if something doesn't work and you're like, oh, I just can't do this. It's too big of a problem. I didn't find the simplest problem. I found it was more complex than I thought. Give people their money back and make sure you do that. Be that person of integrity and just own it and be like, hey, listen, I took your money and I was going to try to build this. It just didn't work. Here it is back. But if you can say, you know, this is still a simple problem, I can deliver this ASAP, then you just keep that money, keep on moving. Now, a side note here, many of us entrepreneurs assume we need to reinvent the wheel because you're like, oh, how am I going to take payments? I got to build some sort of payment gateway, need a website, need all these things. Don't do any of that. You can use GoFundMe.com, Indiegogo.com, Kickstarter.com, and about 100 other websites where you can actually do some crowdfunding up front to take pre-orders so you don't actually have to build anything. And again, I'm going to share this a lot throughout this. I'm at step eight of 15, and I still have almost no skin in the game. I've not done much work at all. This has been very simple, very organic, and that's the way this whole thing is going to go. Moving on to step nine is to hone in and improve what you're offering. I consider this to be the alpha phase of the product. So now that you actually have something for the people that you're interested in serving, you can now make sure that, hey, is this working? What's going on here? And you always want to remember, do what's easiest and helps the majority of the niche. You're always going to have that one person who joins in who's also really passionate and excited, and they're going to have these giant ideas. Do not follow those ideas. You have to make sure that you're listening to the majority and only following what's simple. If I would have followed some early feedback I got about my product and some of it was just huge, I would still be developing my product. My company wouldn't exist yet because it would take me four or five years to build what some people were telling me. But instead, I focused only on what was the most easy. This takes a lot of discernment from you to be able to get right because you cannot be led astray at this point. You have to, again, make sure that your offer is in the right direction for the majority of the small, narrow niches you have, not the difficult things that some people recommending. You have to be really focused on this. And I'll tell you, this takes some learning. It takes some self-reflection. It even takes some guidance. So make sure you have somebody in your corner that you can talk to and be like, hey, people are saying this. I don't know though. Can you help me? What are your thoughts from an outsider perspective? There's no shame in doing that. Make sure that you get help along the way through the entire journey, as a matter of fact. Step 10 is to keep the community involved. Talk to your people regularly about what you're doing. Share everything with them. As I mentioned early on, you want to keep people involved. No one's going to steal your idea especially at this point if you've already developed it this far the chances are even more slim at this point you want to continuously create a community around what you're doing you want to keep these people involved and be like hey you remember like six months ago we talked or four months ago we talked and you said you're having this problem with your dog and like this is kind of where we're at with this like what do you think how's that going and again don't reinvent the wheel here make a text group if it's like a really small group so have like a text thread going on I hate group text so maybe not but make a Facebook group or get a scheduled zoom call in place anything you can do to keep the community involved with what you you have going on is going to help. So again, at this point, you've probably taken some of their money. So you want to make sure that you're not just radio silence behind living in a cave trying to build out the product at this point. You want to keep people involved, keep them excited. This helps you stay on track as well when you have that open line of communication, and it helps the community grow even stronger together. Step 11 is to spend time forecasting and learning the market. This is a step that most of us skip because at this point, we're really excited. We've got a community behind us now. We've done a lot of the work at this point, still very little actual work at this point, but you're feeling really good about it. And this is where, again, we have seen giant companies skip this. They don't actually look at the entire market, the entire industry of what's out there. Now, again, you're in a narrow niche, but think about it. Okay, if I was to charge for this product and I've taken some pre-orders, how many max amount of customers could I ever get? And am I going to get reorders? Is this a one-time buy? And what you're going to learn is, is this actually something that can sustain me? Could I do this long term? Or is this kind of like I'm going to make$1,000 and it's done type of thing? That's anyone who's going to be interested in it. You have to start thinking that way because you want to be able to take a calculated risk at this point. You want to know, is this work that I'm going to do going to pay off? Am I eventually going to be able to quit my full-time job to pursue this? Or am I going to be able to pay off the bills that are involved with it? You want to make sure that you really look at this. And while you're doing that, also look at the timing. Is the market ready for this? Am I too early? Am I too late? Is it becoming saturated There's a man named Bill Gross, and he's considered to be the unicorn entrepreneur. He has started seven companies that have IPO-ed at over a billion dollars. And he said that timing determines over 40% of the likelihood of a business's success. So again, you want to make sure that you understand the market really well. And some people skip this. Do not skip this point. Number 12, this is when you might actually drop some money in at this point. This is when you're going to develop a beta. So you're actually going to finally get some skin in the game. At this point, if I was doing this, I would have not have spent any money yet. I would have barely spent any time. I would have been just enjoying myself in an area that I'm passionate or curious about. It's a fun practice up till now. I'm not saying this isn't fun anymore, but now you actually have to drop some cash. And at this point, if you've really done your market research, you know this is a calculated risk. You're sacrificing something good, which might be your savings, for the sake of the great, which might be your earnings from this company. No guarantees at this point, but you want to make sure that you are willing to put the money in at this time. And if you've done everything right, this should be pretty natural. You should know that, hey, it's just time for me to do this. So as you're developing a beta, you want to make sure that you are doing everything as minimal as you can. Again, don't spend time trying to build out a website or logo, trying to come up with the perfect words or build these massive webinars. Keep it really simple. Make sure the beta, though, is the delivery of what you already took people's pre-order on. They're actually going to get something for And then at this point, you want to make sure that it's really going to be working. And if it is, then you want to continue to move forward, which brings us straight into step number 13, which is when you're ready to celebrate a launch with the community that you formed. So if this beta is working out and you're like, you know what? You 30 people have helped me with this. Those hyperallergenic dogs are smelling fantastic. You're not having to bathe them every day. And at this point, you can say, you know what? Let's actually celebrate a launch together. And you can do this if it's people in your local community there. Run out of space. Spend a little bit of money. Have fun. Do a virtual event. Whatever is going to get some excitement built around it and that other people can see is going to be huge. And when you do this, you celebrate this launch. These people are going to invite other people they know. They're going to tell their family. They're going to tell their friends. This creates buzz and you really want to do this. So now that you've developed that beta, which is step 12 and step 13, you're celebrating the launch of it, making it more public so other people can come into the ecosystem that now that you are taking charge of and creating, you want to make sure that it's a lot of fun. Get that buzz around it. And this brings us straight into step 14. This is a really important one that I think many people get wrong. You cannot sit back. You have to become more and more active in the community and start building fans. What many of us do is when we hit that launch phase, which I just mentioned, which is step 13. So you spent the money in 12, step 13, now you're celebrating, you're getting the word out there. Maybe it's got some buzz and growing organically. What many entrepreneurs want to do is they want to sit back because they've made it or they've arrived. And now you start hiring teams to do like the quote unquote dirty work. They're going to get out there and communicate with the people so I can sit back and build the business. You have to maintain a day one perspective and mindset of what it is that you're building, which means day one, I'm always going to be on the ground talking to the people. The day you arrive at your destination is the day your company starts dying. And now this sounds super extreme, and a lot of people will not agree with this, but I promise you that I am right. And you have to be involved in the community. So never allow yourself to arrive thinking you've made it as a successful entrepreneur. You want to be involved in the community because this builds fans first and foremost, which those are your marketing team. I mean, if you have fans, you don't need a sales and marketing team. They can go out there and do it for you I don't have a sales staff with what I'm doing but every day hundreds of people join my companies because I've built fans and I don't build a community build fans I build a community because I care about those people I want to be involved in their lives I want to know what it is they're struggling with my continuously having that mindset and remind myself that it's day one never day two I will continuously be involved in those people's lives and our company will thrive because of it so again don't sit back stay active in the community and build fans remember why you're passionate remember why you're curious by doing this you're going to set yourself up for long-term success and And finally, the last point, step 15, focus on continuous improvement. At no point is what you're building going to be perfect. At no point will it be complete. You're always going to be working on this. And because of that, you need to just continuously release things as they are happening. Don't hold things back for years. This whole process can get stopped simply by deciding, oh, I need a logo first, or I need good copy for a website. I need a website. I need all my social channels. I need a bunch of social media content first. Don't do that stuff first. What you do is you focus on continuous improvement. We'll see you next time. Notice throughout this whole thing, I didn't talk about building a website. I didn't talk about building your social media pages or your logo or having a fancy company name. All that stuff can come later. When I launched Podmatch, which is my first SaaS business, software as a service, I didn't have a logo. The first six months, we had no logo with it. And it was a software, right? Like it was just plain text. And sure, some people are like, what the heck? There's no logo here. But it didn't stop anybody who needed it from using it. We focused on continuous improvement. I'm happy to report now we do have a nice logo. But at the end of the day, you want to make sure that you are just doing what you can to continuously improve over time and never lose this mindset because it helps you, once again, as I mentioned in step 14, it helps you keep that day one perspective of, you know what, we're always just getting better for the people that we care about and serve. Those are the 15 points I have for you today. I know it's a lot. I'm going to quickly give you a recap of them. Start collecting pre-order payments and then deliver ASAP. Then you're in the alpha phase. Hone in and improve on what you're offering. Only do what's the easiest and helps the majority of the niche that you've identified. Then you keep the community involved. You talk to the people regularly about what you're doing and what they have going on. And then you're going to spend a little bit of time before you drop money forecasting and learning the market really well to make sure you have something that can sustain you and your family. Then you hit the beta phase. This is when you develop what you're doing into an actual business product or service that's going to serve the people that you set out to serve. Once you've done this, you're going to celebrate the launch with the community that you formed, and then you're not going to sit back as the money comes in. You are going to be active in the community and continuously build those fans to grow the business organically. And then the last thing that you're going to do is focus on continuous improvement. Build a logo, build a website, build out your social media, do all that, but never at the sake of your core, that community, that people that you care about. When you follow these 15 steps, you're setting yourself up for success as an entrepreneur. It takes a lot of pressure off you to deliver something in the market that you know little about. This makes it fun, and it captures the essence of what it means to be an entrepreneur, and that is to solve problems for people that you care about. So my challenge to you today is this. Start this process. Find a hobby. Get more into the ecosystem that you care about. Start thinking about how We'll see you next time. I know I shared a lot

UNKNOWN 30:45

Thank you.