Pod Insights The $100 MBA Show MBA2575 The 3 Lies Everyone Believes About Starting a Business About this episode Ever feel like you’re drowning in advice about starting a business? Does it seem like everyone’s got their own list of do’s and don’ts that just leaves you even more confused? If you’re nodding your head, then you’re in the right place. In this episode, Omar is here to cut through the noise and bust […] The post MBA2575 The 3 Lies Everyone Believes About Starting a Business appeared first on The $100 MBA.
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0:45 Speaker 00 Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Bitcoin services provided by Block Incorporated brand. For additional information, see the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? For example, I really wanted to love the show Mad Men. I really tried to watch it and love it, but it just didn't do anything for me. As a marketer and business person, the show was a little bit of a disappointment. Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great like impressions. But then we don't see revenue. LinkedIn has a word for that: Bullspend. Instead, you can get the highest ROAS of major ad networks with LinkedIn Ads. Cut the bullspend, advertise on LinkedIn.
1:30 Speaker 00 Spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/MBAShow. Terms apply. Lies, lies, lies. Most people that start a business have beliefs about starting a business that are actually lies. There are three I want to talk about in today's lesson that are going to set you up for failure and frustration if you don't train them out right now. Today, I'm going to expose the three biggest lies most people believe about starting a business. And I'm going to show you the truth that can set you up for real success. By the way, these are three lies that I believed were true when I got started, and it really set me back.
2:12 Speaker 00 It didn't allow me to succeed as fast as I should have because I fell into these traps. I fell into these lies that people told me.
2:24 Speaker 00 Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I help you start, grow, and scale a business with our practical, no-fluff lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. In today's lesson, we're going to be debunking the three biggest lies about starting a business. These are the same lies I fell into, like I mentioned, when I was starting out my business and my entrepreneurial career, really derailed me. I don't want this to happen to you. This is why I created today's episode. So if you're about to take the leap into entrepreneurship, or even just thinking about starting a business, understanding what's real and what's not, in today's episode can save you years of frustration. Let's dive in. Let's start
3:04 Speaker 00 with lie number one, follow your passion, and the money will follow. Listen, passion has its place. It's not worthless. It's a good thing to have, but I'm going to share with you how to use it, because just following your passion is not going to make a successful business. Just because you're passionate about something, it doesn't mean people will pay for it. This is what I learned the hard way. Passion alone doesn't solve a problem, and people pay for solutions, not your enthusiasm. When I started my ecommerce business in 2009 called Zenhome Design, I was passionate about custom men's clothing, because I'm six foot five. I am long. I can't buy clothing
3:45 Speaker 00 in a department store. But passion didn't make my margins any better, or solve any of my logistical headaches, or fix my business model. The truth is, passion is just not enough. That's just the reality of the marketplace. You need to focus on where you can add value, where your skills, your experience, your talents, really meet a real market need. Now, I want to stop for a moment, and talk about passion. Talk about, if you're excited about something, if you love something, right? That's great, but you got to infuse that passion in something that is validated, and people are happy to pay for, right? Use your passion in your product, once you've validated
4:28 Speaker 00 that product actually solves a problem. For example, I'm passionate- About teaching, I'm passionate about helping people have an easier path to success in business than I did. But that passion alone, without solving a real problem with my product or service, is not going to get me anywhere. Once I have a product that actually addresses a real pain or a need, I can then infuse that passion for teaching and helping people into that product. So as an action step for this first one, ask yourself, what problems can I solve for people? If your passion aligns with those problems, great. If not, focus on the value you can provide first. Focus on actually giving people something they want.
5:10 Speaker 00 And then, once you do that, it's going to make your life so much easier. Business will be a lot easier when you're selling a product that people are actually asking for and knocking down your door for, rather than you trying to convince people the value. There's nothing worse than trying to coerce people into buying your product or service. It looks desperate and it's just a failed model. You just can't do this for the long term. The best businesses, the best products are businesses and products that when people discover them, when they understand what they are, they're like, wow, this is amazing. Where has this been all my life? Take my money now. That's the type of business you want. Lie number two, you need a perfect plan before you start.
5:52 Speaker 00 This one drove me up the wall when I got started. It really was a problem for me. The idea that you need everything figured out before starting is really paralyzing. It's really stopping you from succeeding before you even start, because you think that everything has to be figured out. And this is a lie, because it's impossible to know how everything's going to pan out. That's why there's risk in business, because risk is what you don't see. And that's just the nature of being an entrepreneur. No business plan survives, you know, first contact with reality. Markets change, customer behavior changes, the world changes.
6:35 Speaker 00 You need to be able to adapt to that constantly. You need a product that allows you to just test the waters, put it out there in the world. So that you can then see the reaction and the feedback you get from your customers and build a business around that. My first business plan was about 60 pages long. I'm actually embarrassed to share this because it means I was that arrogant that I thought I can cover all my bases, that I can have a plan for every contingency. That's just not how business works. The best businesses I've had that have made me millions of dollars have changed my life forever, started with a one-page business plan. And actually, I have a template that you can use. You could use the one-page business plan canvas that I created. It's one of our worksheets.
7:17 Speaker 00 If you just go to 100mba.net/worksheets, you can just download it there. And it's just a one-pager that just gets you started so you know exactly which direction to move in. When I launched Webinar Ninja, my software company that got acquired by ProProfs, I started with a very basic, minimal viable product. This is back in 2014. It wasn't a perfect product, but it got me into the market quickly. It allowed me to get real user feedback and shape the product into what it became today with feedback, with real words, with real opinions, with real information that I could use. The truth is, progress beats perfection. Get started, test your idea with real customers, and iterate based on that feedback.
8:02 Speaker 00 That's the best plan you can have. So as an extra step, I want you to focus on creating a simple MVP, Minimal Viable Product, that delivers the core value of the idea of your business or product, right? What it actually delivers, what it actually solves. Launch it, get feedback, and improve as you go. This is the best way to get started with very minimal investment of planning, because you can plan all you want. You know, it's like what Mike Tyson says, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face." And the market will punch you in the face. And I've been punched in the face so many times, and I learned this lesson the hard way. I don't want you to get punched in your face. So just use our one-page canvas, you know, business plan canvas over at 100mba.net/worksheets,
8:46 Speaker 00 download it, you can find it, it's very easy, it's absolutely free. I don't charge anything for my templates because I just feel like if I've created it and it's helped me, I might as well share with you guys. Use that as a starting point. Launch your MVP, get some feedback, improve the product, get some feedback, launch another iteration of that product, get some feedback. That's what great products and businesses do. The holidays are the season business owners get pulled in six directions. More calls, more requests, more chances for things to slip through the cracks. Hoping you catch it all isn't a plan. That's why today's episode is brought to you by QUO, spelt Q-U-O. The business phone built so you never miss a call or a customer. Ever have a lead call or text at 10:00 PM?
9:29 Speaker 00 QUO's AI agent handles both 24/7. It answers questions, gets to the details, and can text them a link to book an appointment. By morning, you've got the summary and can jump right in. And nobody should have to ask customers to repeat themselves. In QUO, every call, text, and voicemail lives in one thread. So anyone on the team can jump in already knowing the whole story. If you have a business where your customers call or text you, this is a no-brainer. You must have QUO. Money is on the line. Always say hello with QUO. Try QUO for free, plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com/mba. That's Q-U-O.com/mba.
10:11 Speaker 00 Small business owners, listen up. You started your business, but you can't do it alone. And that means you have to hire people to help. That's where Justworks comes in. Justworks is the payroll, benefits, and global hiring platform to unburden your brain from all the complicated small business stuff. They handle the things you can't afford to get wrong, so you don't have to worry. So you can focus on the parts of running a business that you enjoy, knowing everything else is running smoothly. You don't have to worry when it just works.
10:42 Speaker 00 Lie number three: You need a lot of money to start. This lie cost me millions of dollars. Because it delayed my journey of starting a business. It delayed my journey on entrepreneurship by years. And now that I'm making millions of dollars a year, it's cost me that much every year because I started a few years late. Now, I just want to take a timeout. I don't really feel super comfortable just even saying that. Like, I make millions of dollars a year. Like, I'm not here to brag. I'm telling you the truth of the matter, that you will get to this point where you're making millions, maybe even more, tens of millions. You know, maybe even hundreds of millions every single year, right? And you're gonna really regret that you delayed the start of that journey because
11:27 Speaker 00 the later you start, the more it costs you down the line when you start making serious dough. And we're not even talking about the compound interest you could have made on investing that money or all that kind of stuff. We're just talking about purely the money that you could make in those years that you wasted. Too many people think that they need a massive budget or investors to launch their business. This is not true. I am very much involved in the startup culture. And a lot of people in the tech world think that, you know, investors are gonna save the day. They're gonna come and swoop them up and give them millions of dollars and they're gonna be rich. No, no, no, no. There's so many successful businesses that I know personally, the founders,
12:10 Speaker 00 that have done it bootstrapped, have done it on their own. They don't need investors and they, and guess what? They own the whole company so that when they do get acquired one day, they get all of the money from that acquisition. So this is something you have to think about long term. Okay, this is one of the reasons why I didn't get investors for Webinar Ninja. Nicole and I decided to start Webinar Ninja, keep 100% of the ownership so that when we did sell, we can take the whole pie. And that's exactly what we did. So why is this a lie? One of the things I wish somebody told me early on was that some of the most successful businesses started with very little money. Creativity and resourcefulness is often more important than capital. Have you heard of Spanx?
12:54 Speaker 00 Sarah Blakely is the founder of Spanx, which is a great clothing and undergarment clothing brand for women, and it's a billion dollar company, 100% bootstrapped. Private company, self-funded. Mailchimp, you know, the email marketing software? Well, the founder Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius, those guys bootstrapped Mailchimp. They didn't take any funding. They grew their company solely over 20 years and then they sold their company to Intuit for $12 billion. This is not uncommon. I bootstrapped. Our software company that I got acquired, Webinar Ninja, I bootstrapped this company, the $100 MBA, this podcast and our program that's a seven-figure business.
13:37 Speaker 00 So instead of thinking about how do I save all this money, I just got started. Okay, I made some money to make some money, right? That's a good way to think of it. So instead of thinking about hiring a big team or spending on fantasy tools or office or anything like that, just start delivering value and reinvest your profits. That's how it's done. The truth is if you start small, you can sort of scale pretty quickly and you can often launch a business with just a few hundred dollars if you focus on the essentials. Here's the truth, 100% honesty. When I started Webinar Ninja, my software company and this company, the $100 MBA, I was struggling to pay my rent. I didn't have a lot of money laying around. I could barely make ends meet. The business funded my life.
14:21 Speaker 00 The business was able to make money, grow, scale and change my life. Because here's the truth, it's going to be very hard for you to get the kind of money you think you need through savings or your job. You need to just to get started with your minimal viable product, launch and make it happen. Let the business make the money you need. And I love bootstrap businesses because it forces your business to be strong from the start, to have a product that people want and you have strong sales. And by doing that, you make your life a whole lot easier in the long run. So as an action step, what you write down, the minimum you need to launch. And this is basically a simple website, a domain name, a basic product or service,
15:05 Speaker 00 if it's a service, you don't even need any money to get started here, a way to reach your audience, right? Some sort of marketing, which could be free content marketing and ignore all these extras you think you need until you make some sales, until you make some profits. And then, once you make some profits, go ahead and then invest in your business. But I started the $100 MBA with less than $1,000. So before we wrap up today's episode, I want to give you a bonus takeaway, something I learned throughout the years, 20 years of doing this business thing. Why these lies are so common? Why do people believe these things? Why are these so prevalent? Well, it's pretty easy to understand because these lies keep persisting because they're simple and they're comforting.
15:47 Speaker 00 The promise of quick results make starting a business sound easy, but the reality is actually quite different. Success, I've found, comes from solving real problems, not chasing passions or thinking you have to have the perfect strategy. It's about taking action, not overthinking, starting now and then adapting as you go along. And then lastly, it's about resourcefulness, right? Understand that's really what matters. That's your number one resource is being resourceful and you don't need a fortune to get started. So, starting a business is one of the most rewarding journeys you'll ever take, but only if you approach it with the right mindset. So, let's agree, don't fall for these lies. Passion alone won't pay the bills. You don't need a perfect plan.
16:32 Speaker 00 Just get started with a one-page plan that you can download with our worksheets, 100mba.net/worksheets. And number three, you don't need a ton of money. You just need to be resourceful. Focus on adding value to other people's lives. The more valuable you can become to the marketplace, the easier it will be for your business to grow. Take action, stay adaptable. That's the real recipe for success. Thanks for tuning into the $100 MBA Show. If today's lesson resonated with you, why don't you share with somebody you think would really benefit from it? Somebody who's thinking about starting on this journey of entrepreneurship? Maybe somebody you shared your ambitions with and they're like, "Yeah, me too. I'm thinking about doing that as well." Right? Just send them a text message, send them a link to this episode that you're listening
17:16 Speaker 00 to now on whatever podcast app you're using. Just hit that share button and share it away in a text message or on WhatsApp or whatever you feel like doing. While you're at it, make sure you're following or subscribing to the show on the podcast app you're using or on YouTube. If you're watching this on YouTube, hit that subscribe button so you get our next episodes automatically and you support the show. Thanks again. I'm Omar Zenon and I'll see you in the next episode.
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