I'm going to interrupt the Silicon Valley circlejerk for a moment and tell you how to actually start and run a profitable business in less than a month.
You read a lot of nonsense out there about "creating value" and "finding your tribe..." give me a break.
That's all bullshit. I mean, maybe it works if you're Apple or something. But I'm pretty sure people use Apple products because they're awesome, not because they like to rep the Apple logo.
It's like anyone who's successfully raised a seed funding round these days thinks they're qualified to give business advice. I'll tell you the truth, most of them couldn't business their way out of a wet paper bag. That's because the only business experience they have was the 6th grade bake sale they did to raise money for their class trip to Disneyland.
Why do you think most startups fail? It's because the people running them have never run a business before and have no idea what they're doing.
I've run a few in my day and just built a low 5-figure consulting business in less than two months, so I think I'm qualified to speak on this. I've also eaten shit for many years and failed miserably a few times as well.
Let's get down to it.
What's the secret to starting a business?
Two words: do it.
Yeah, it's that simple. Nobody cares about your idea, your business plan or your executive summary. In order to have a successful business, you need to first have a business.
There's a lot of procrastinators out there. A lot of dreamers. Wantrapreneurs.
I was once one of them. I couldn't decide what I wanted to do. I read too many Warrior Forum threads and suffered badly from Shiny Object Syndrome.
But eventually I figured it out. Fuck I'm so tired right now. I really don't want to write this post. I really just want to take an ambien and go to sleep.
Okay okay, focus.
See? That's what you have to do when you have a business. You can't just take an ambien and go to sleep when you don't feel like writing an article. You have to keep doing that shit. And doing it and doing it and doing it.
And guess what? Writing articles is part of my business. When I'm speaking to a new client, I refer them to my Steemit blog and say, "Hey check this out, I write articles on Steemit. Mostly about crypto."
Honestly, most of them don't even read the articles. I could write BDSM erotica in here and they wouldn't know it. They're business owners, they don't have time to read blogs.
But those who do will read these and be like, "Wow, if this guy can write this much about absolute nonsense, imagine what he can do if we actually give him a topic!"
Who knows what they think. The fact is that when you have a massive body of work to show potential clients, they're going to take a cursory glance just to make sure the pages aren't blank.
That's all that matters.
You're an Arab, I'm an Arab. We're all Arabs
Ever been to the Middle East? You know those outdoor markets where dudes sell fish and spices and sunglasses?
Guess what. That's a business. And those guys make money EVERY day. They never go home with 0 dollars in their cash register.
You need to have that mentality when you're running your shop. Even if it's not an actual physical shop.
Selling a service? Great. Go where a lot of potential customers are and be like, "Hi, I am a professional ______. I offer a service that does _______. Do you need that?"
You're basically just asking people if they want to buy some fish. It sounds simple and you probably think I'm joking, but that's actually how it's done. None of this "build a tribe" garbage that people talk about.
Nobody cares about your tribe if you don't have any customers. Get some customers first, then you can worry about your mission statement.
Get some skin in the game
I don't spend a lot of money on clothes, but one thing I love are sunglasses. I've bought uncountable pairs of shades. I am with sunglasses like a girl is with shoes - if I walk by a store and see some, I have to look.
I used to buy cheap ones. I would never pay more than $25. Obviously they would break all the time. I'd be careless with them, sit on them, leave them somewhere etc.
Didn't matter much because I loved buying them. But it was annoying.
One day I decided to buy a pair of Emporio Armani shades for $200.
Let me tell you, I took SUCH good care of those sunglasses. I knew exactly where they were at all times and cleaned them often.
Not only did I have them for years, but I derived vastly more pleasure from them than I did the dozens of pairs of cheapos that I bought before it.
What's the point? You need to spend some money on your business. I don't care what you spend it on, just spend it. And spend so much that it hurts.
Spend so much that you feel like if you don't do anything to recoup it, you'll feel terrible. I'm not talking buy a $12 domain and $40 hosting for the year.
I'm talking buy a $8000 food truck. Buy a professionally grown Instagram account for $12000. If you drop that kind of money on something, you better believe you're going to pay damn close attention on what happens.
Suck it up and ask people to buy your shit
Hi. We haven't met before. Is your name Jeff Bezos? No? Oh I'm sorry, you must be Kim Kardashian. What's that, you're not?
Oh, are you saying that nobody's ever heard of you or your company before? That you're basically just a normal person with no audience, reach or existing exposure?
Well guess what buckaroo, you need to get out there and tell people about whatever it is you're selling, because they sure as hell aren't going to come knocking on your door asking to buy.
Yes, sales is intimidating at first. Nobody likes salespeople, right? They're pushy, annoying, always fake smiling.. ugh.
Ok fine. But you know what else they are?
- Wealthier than you.
- Secure in a recession.
- Attractive to literally every company in the world.
Go ahead, check Craigslist. Take some notes on the different job categories and tell me which job ads have the highest potential payouts. I'll wait.
What's that? Salespeople are the highest paid? Shocking.
All sarcasm aside, the fact is that entrepreneurs are just salespeople with enough initiative to handle all aspects of the business.
Not only do you have to market yourself and tell literally every person on planet Earth that you've opened for business, but when you actually get an INTERESTED CUSTOMER talking to you, you need to talk them into buying something.
It sucks at first to hear no. But as long as you're selling a legit service and not some Herbalife scam bullshit, then just take solace in the fact that there are plenty of other people out there who you can "help" with whatever it is you do.
Email 50 business owners per day
Want to know the fastest way to make a lot of money next month? Send 50 cold emails per day to other businesses asking them if they're interested in your offering.
People are broke - businesses have money. People hem and haw over a $100 meal. Business drop $5k/month on a single employee. Who would you rather sell to?
Businesses will buy everything that an individual will. I don't care if you're selling high end argan oil shampoo, sell it to a business instead of a customer and you'll make more money.
If you scrounge up 50 email addresses and send them a half decent email every day, I guarantee that by the end of the month you'll be making bank. That's 1500 people in a single month that you've made contact with.
Some of them will tell you yes right away. They'll be like, "Oh wow, we've actually been looking for someone like you! When can we talk?" They'll be so excited to talk to you that all you have to do is not screw it up. Boom, instant customer.
And even if they don't sign up right away, some of them will come around a week, two weeks, a month... even six months later.
I can't count how many times I've gotten a reply from someone and been like who tf is this, only to check my original cold email date and see that it was over a month ago.
Sales (and thus business) is a numbers game. No matter how garbage of a salesman you are, there are going to be customers out there who are literally so easy to sell to that all you have to do is talk about the product and tell them the price and they'll be like, "Okay, let's do it."
How many of them do you think you'll find in that group of 1500 per month?
Do you think getting customers is easy?
Let me know in a comment!
Can't get enough of me? Follow me on Instagram!
Check out some of my other posts here:
- Telegram ICO Raises $850,000,000 From 81 Separate Investors And At Least One Russian Billionaire
- Six Low Market Cap Altcoins That Could Maybe Possibly Potentially Rise 10x In Value But I Dunno Though
- Lisk (LSK) Founder Max Kordek Pledges $50,000,000 To Fund High Quality Sidechains Built On The Lisk Platform
- Russian Nuclear Scientist Caught Trying To Mine Bitcoin From Top Secret Supercomputer
- How To Grow Your Personal Instagram Page To 5 Billion Followers
- Watching This Video Will Make You Want To Move To Thailand (And Not For The Hot Estonian Chick, Either)
- Bitgrail Cryptocurrency Exchange Hacked For 17,000,000 Nano (XRB), Claims Insolvency
- After Rejecting Cryptocurrency Entrepreneurs For Fear Of Money Laundering, Rabobank Fined $400 Million For Money Laundering
- In Only 3 Days After Pre-ICO Launch, Crypto Investment Fund Pecunio Has Already Raised Almost $2m
- Shill Of The Day: Why You Should Put Your Daughter's College Fund Into Lucyd's New ICO
- All I Want Is A Billion Dollars, A Rock-Solid Six Pack, And To Smash A Different Hard-Bodied Fitness Model Every Night - Is That Too Much To Ask?
- How To Be Successful In Just 100 Hours A Week
- Discipline, Fearlessness, And Other Lies Sold To You By Clever Marketers
- The Problem With PentaCore And Cryptocurrency Mutual Funds In General (And What To Do About It)
- Stock Trading Platform Robinhood Latest Company To Cash In On Crypto Craze With New Cryptocurrency Exchange
- Japan's Largest Bank Set To Open Cryptocurrency Exchange In April 2018
- There Is Now A Japanese Cryptocurrency-Themed Pop Group
- WaltonChain (WTC) Voted #1 At SE Asia Blockchain Summit... but who cares?
- Basic Attention Token (BAT) - another token that unsuccessfully answers the question, "Why not just use an ad blocker?"
- Request Network (REQ) setting up a $30 million dollar fund for startups
- If Warren Buffett Invested In Crypto, He Would Stock Up Now While The Market Is Collapsing
- VeChain (VEN) Being Shilled HARD In r/Cryptocurrency - 50 Posts In The Last Week
- Switzerland Sees Crypto As Their Chance To Woo Drug Dealers, Saudi Princes And Shady Billionaires
- NVIDIA Blasts Retailers For Selling GPUs To Cryptominers Instead Of Gamers
- The No BullShit Guide To Being Successful (Read This To Die Instantly)
- Schizophrenic South Korea Can't Decide If They Want To Ban Crypto Or Not
- Why Creative Work Is Its Own Reward And How To Get Better At The Things You Hate
Follow, resteem and smash dat mf like button...
Very realistic article. Becomes a fan of your blog. BTW I am trying to build a business. Get some motivation from you
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This post has been upvoted and resteemed. I started following you to see more of your work.
I would love to try to become a freelance writer. I have been doing it part time for almost 2 years, and have never actually tried to sell a writing, or to write something specific for someone. I guess I am being a wantreprenuer. This post gave me a good kick in the ass this morning. Thanks!
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Thank you for the compliment. Honestly man there’s no secret. Just start. It takes a massive amount of work to establish yourself. All the big names that you recognize got there from putting in time and effort to creating a body of work and letting the world know about it. Sounds like you’ve done the first part already.
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Resteemed to over 13500 followers and 100% upvoted. Thank you for using my service!
Send 0.200 Steem or 0.200 Steem Dollars and the URL in the memo to use the bot.
Read here how the bot from Berlin works.
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eso es la realidad, muy cierto lo que dices
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Hm, okay, I'll try your strat. Couldn't harm me.
Great post! Keep up your writing/work!
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Your post was resteem by Whale ResteemService @booster007 & @boostupvote
Resteem Over 9800+ Followers
Keep it up!
All the best!
Send 0.100 SBD/steem For resteem over 4100+ followers / send 0.200 SBD/steem resteem over 9800+ Follwers Send your link in memo ! @boostupvote Attached !
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If u want money quick just sell one kidney :D With one u will be just fine :X Little humor from me....by the way i like ur post.
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Hey guy
I will read your writing later~
I resteemed your writing.
Thank you.
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Resteemed by @resteembot! Good Luck!
Curious? Read @resteembot's introduction post
Check out the great posts I already resteemed.
ResteemBot's Maker is Looking for Work.
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i'm good at the spend it part
the problem is i spent so much im in debt now
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Spending money to make money
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straight to the point. I like that.
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Congratulations for this great work
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You got a 13.92% upvote from @postpromoter courtesy of @yallapapi!
Want to promote your posts too? Check out the Steem Bot Tracker website for more info. If you would like to support the development of @postpromoter and the bot tracker please vote for @yabapmatt for witness!
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Those were some key suggestion you just put forward to keep the business rolling.
As a entrepreneur I don't like the part of calling my product shit.i know you don't literally mean it but still just read my side of story.
Well sometimes back I used to sell cashew nuts,it's like I used to purchase raw cashews process it and have to sell in market.there I learned a lesson and that is
whatever thing you are coming with you must have to be damn confident about it,doesn't matter what quality product you comes with ,it's only the confidence of yours that let you reap big.
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Not sure where you’re from my friend but in America, we use the word « shit » interchangeably with « stuff »
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I know my friend you didn't mean like that way,I think already mentioned in my prior comment.
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Congratulations @yallapapi, this post is the eighth most rewarded post (based on pending payouts) in the last 12 hours written by a User account holder (accounts that hold between 0.1 and 1.0 Mega Vests). The total number of posts by User account holders during this period was 3453 and the total pending payments to posts in this category was $9977.24. To see the full list of highest paid posts across all accounts categories, click here.
If you do not wish to receive these messages in future, please reply stop to this comment.
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Wowww TIL that I’m the eighth coolest person with less than 1 mega vest in the last 12 blues
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Great post, i like, good work and congratulations to you, i will follow you
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Great freakin post---I needed a good kick in the rear....
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@yallapapi Ohhh man just blowed my mind. Fucing great piece of heaven. People don't really see what it is like to be an entrepreneur it fucs your mind day and night there are plenty of sleepless nights. There are days when you just feel oh why me god? I am a good guy just trying to build my dream... But then you just dust off the excuses and get back to work and after many such experiences you can see where you wanna be.
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preach
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ㆍIt is sad but money is important for our lives.
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This was an awesome read. I liked how bluntly you speak. You don't beat around the bush, and you don't give that lame and vague self help advice. You're right there in my face saying "Go for it!". Keep at it.
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Yup. Ain't nobody got time for sugarcoating
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I like your no bs attitude, followed. Just on a side note, do you think using vote bots actually pays off? I tried it but I pay more than I get, so I don't see the point.
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Wow man, the way you write really intriguing. It flows well, and its Real at the same time not just blowing sunshine and rainbows you know where. I followed, and will definitely go through some of your older work for inspiration!
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Gee boy you are brutal with this post.
I'm trying to build a business myself and I know the talk about building a tribe and what-not and making sure you add value..I've read some stuff about this and I know the intimidation of asking someone to buy from you you.
But what hit the hardest is the talk about spending money on the business...more than just the domain name and the hosting fee...I tell you guts it takes to do this because I don't want look like a fool...
...u yourself probably not even reading this huh?
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Not sure why I started to read your articles, but you have me hooked, great stuff, and things real people can actually use... I've been trying to break into my own business for awhile now, I fall into that dreaded procrastenator trap, also the lack of funds trap, BUT... I'm learning everyday!
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"People are broke - businesses have money. People hem and haw over a $100 meal. Business drop $5k/month on a single employee. Who would you rather sell to?"
Right on the money! Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
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Gave you an upvote buddy, keep it up your content rocks
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Hmmm interesting. Imma do that 50 emails to businesses in a few. Thanks!
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Great article!! I really find this very encouraging and insightful for business start ups. A key to survival in the economic world.
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I love your style of writing @ yallapapi :)
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I upvote you please back me
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Yeah, about that E-Mail thing. I would love to do that, but I could get fucked for that. Anti Spam Law (germany) is like:"If your mail is a Business Mail, then GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FACE!" (real actual quote) [Source: Dude, trust me]
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