I get this question all the time – “How do I start a business?” Or even worse I got this on Quora once: “How do I start a business when I have no skills and no money and no connections?”
The best way to start a business, especially one with low overhead and doesn’t require a lot of skills, is to cheat.
Don’t cheat, but… C.H.E.A.T.
1) Choices
2) House Advantage
3) Experience
4) Attitude
5) Team
1) Choices – This is all about strategy…
Use history, advice, and the experiences that you’ve already had to make the smartest decisions possible. Believe it or not, you ultimately choose which games you’re going to play in life. Pick a game that you can win at or create one where you can’t lose.
- Use history, be educated. Life’s too short to reinvent the wheel. Use the past as a beacon for your future.
- Know the rules, master the game. Sometimes in life you have to play by the rules (let me know when you defy the rules of gravity…), but you better damn well know what games you’re playing and what rules you’re playing by. Wherever possible, break the rules or – better yet – redefine the game with the rules in your favor.
- Only you can make it happen. Persistence pays off and there are a million examples to prove it. Ask until they say “Yes” or “Fuck off” – put the other person in the position to be the asshole. Find your well and go back often to get a drink and get rejuvenated.
- Stop screwing around and devote yourself. Way too many people are half-committed to the thing they are doing. I’m not talking about spreading yourself thin – that’s another issue. You can have 10 projects and be devoted to each one… You can’t be 100% devoted to each one, but you can really be passionate about each one and move each one forward at a reasonable pace.
- Quit your day job (when you’re ready). Your day job is so over-rated. It’s expensive, tears you down, and it’s not even a good investment. You’re not learning anything anymore, you’re not progressing in the world anymore, you’re not having fun, you’re not even making that much money. What a shit deal. Quit, put your feet to the fire, grow, learn, and crush life.
- Fail fast through experiments. I believe in chance. I don’t believe in luck. We all throw around this luck word all the time and yet only idiots truly believe in it. Stop hoping to get lucky and play the odds in your favor. Stop making bad investments of your time and money and start designing smart experiments to separate good and bad experiments.
- Fake it til you make it. Create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Project your future success and you will be a success. Project your failure and you’ll be a failure. You’re not always going to have the resources that you need at your finger tips. Beg, barter and steal what you need to be a success. Put yourself in a position where you have no choice but to succeed.
2) House Advantage – Stack the cards in your favor…
You have resources available to you now – use them. For example, you live in Dallas. Dallas – and much of Texas – has a much stronger economy than the rest of the US right now. How can you leverage that to your benefit? Maybe you can build ties with UTDallas, UTArlington, and other local universities to build a recruiting funnel?
- Money, Time & Energy. Your time and energy are your most scarce resources. When working, have a process in place to first make decisions and then execute on them. Focus on high-leverage, high-ROI and effective activities.
- Maintaining & Gaining Perspective. Get mentors, get peers, get mentees, practice being creative.
- Leverage What You Have To Get More. You’re building something on your existing foundation. Ask for help. Find people who will buy-in to your vision (you need to craft a vision first…) & partner with them. Your time is a great currency to buy other things (not money) with.
3) Experience – Get all you can…
Get out of your comfort zone and try new things that might open new worlds of opportunity for you. Get new experiences while fully leveraging your past ones. You have experience in your field already. What experiences would you need to gain before you felt comfortable leaving your current job and working for yourself?
- Knowledge As An Experience Substitute. Borrow and Steal from everyone else – read the top 2-3 books in each field of interest, network with people who know things you don’t (relative experts).
- Fail Fast Through Aggressive Experimentation. There’s honestly not much more to say here.
- Fake It Until You Make It. Do things you’re not qualified to do.
4) Attitude – Be all that you can be…
Recognize that you are in control and that failure is simply a prerequisite to learning. Stress, fear, anxiety, and many of our emotions are often a choice. Think about it – how can you fail in safe ways while also realizing that failure isn’t usually as bad as we fear it will be?
- Everything Is A Learning Opportunity. Change your attitude – for example try writing your plans and ideas down – when you write, you start processing experiences in new ways and can actually learn from them.
- Persistence And Confidence. Be egoless and learn to make smart decisions. Define go/no-go points for ALL projects so that you don’t over do it. Teach yourself decision analysis.
- Execution Is Everything. practice executing; pick your top three priorities of the week; make tiny goals; divide the tasks ruthlessly into the next actionable step; execute, measure, improve; Create a dread List (ie. change tires, change health insurance, sell some stuff on Craigslist…); 1) write it down, 2) keep it in front of you 3) identify metrics, establish go/no-go points, execute, stick with them.
5) Team – People are the best and worst of life…
The coolest thing about a small business or start-up is that a few bright & hard-working people can come together and literally create value out of thin air. Build the right team around yourself and learn to be an effective lead. If you get the right team behind you then you’ll have both an optimized business where people are reaching their full potential and a fulfilling work-environment that you love to come to every day.
You already have a big team on your side. Think about all of the people who you’ve already interacted with in your career. You have a budding relationship with each of those people and it’s your choice to either nurture those relationships or not!
- Network Building. Its not what you know, its who you know; People, relationships, and networks are everything; You are not squeezing enough out of your network, because you don’t have the right tools or you’re not treating people like human beings.
- Incentives Are Everything. Always remember incentives for yourself and for others… starting with Basic Needs: when someone isn’t acting according to plan, review their incentives; Alter them by making them more time-relevant; Build in the tightest feedback loops possible.
- Learn To Negotiate. Separate people from principles, don’t bargain for positions. Get emotions on the table if you have to, state interests, brainstorm solutions, etc etc; None of this is possible if your attitude sucks, so fix that first. Go take a walk, have a drink, punch a wall, call your mom, dad, mentor, or trusted friend, whatever you need to do to 1) calm down and 2) gain perspective on the issue.