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Big day.
My product business just passed an important symbolic milestone.
To honor this, one like = one real-life business take. No sales pitch nonsense. I’ll keep going until I get bored or accidentally reveal something too juicy.
My product business just passed an important symbolic milestone.
To honor this, one like = one real-life business take. No sales pitch nonsense. I’ll keep going until I get bored or accidentally reveal something too juicy.
1. There’s no such thing as a solo founder. If you want to run a real business (aka not an Etsy lifestyle business) you’re going to have partners, even if they take the form of investors.
2. You don’t have anything until you have customers. But immediately after that you have to get your infrastructure right. At scale, things like email deliverability and payment processing are non-trivial.
3. No one invents a business from scratch. Whatever you want to do, you’d be better served by working a few years for someone already doing it. There is so much little inside knowledge that can only be picked up that way.
4. Being an “intrepreneur” i.e. an employee with financial upside is often better than being an entrepreneur. It also offers a smoother transition when you do want to make the leap.
5. Upside is everything. If you niche down too much, or your margins suck, your business will suck.
6. Unless you’re specifically doing something capital-intensive, bootstrap as much as humanly possible. Not only does this allow you to retain equity, it forces you to create profitable products from the jump.
7. But here’s the thing: similar to point one, 100% equity is stupid. Wine moms stringing beads on Etsy have 100% equity. Multi-millionaires and beyond frequently only have 10-20% equity.
8. The best demographic is baby boomers. Unless you’re doing some rent-seeking government contract nonsense, figure out a way to sell your products to boomers.
9. Unfortunate truth: great marketing can make up for a bad product. The opposite is not true,
10. Don’t say a single thing about what you’re doing until you’ve already done it. The ratio of “barstool dreamers” to actual executors is 10:1. Don’t be in that first group.
11. It’s not easy to be an entrepreneur, and it may not even represent your highest financial upside... but it is the only way to be a literal alpha male.
Make a lot of money? Well if your boss has a boss who has a boss... you’re not an alpha male.
Make a lot of money? Well if your boss has a boss who has a boss... you’re not an alpha male.
12. The tax advantages of being a business owner are real and significant, even when you’re starting out. I have a 1:1 comparison of doing a similar role as an employee and as a business owner, and the tax difference is much bigger than I thought.
13. Once you start making some money, KEEPING that money becomes a big part of the game. You start becoming a target for more and more sophisticated ways to separate you from your hard-earned cash.
Gamblers who have moved up in stakes will know this phenomenon well.
Gamblers who have moved up in stakes will know this phenomenon well.
14. Millions or bust. If you don’t have a clear path to 7 figure in revenue (for a product business) in your first few years, it’s not going to be worth it. The expense, time and energy is simply too high.
15. Never put anything in a business communication (including slack, email etc) that you wouldn’t want read by a hostile lawyer.
16. If you hate doing something, pay someone else to do it or quit. Forcing yourself to do it over the long run will wreck your business.
17. Don’t quit your day job. Seriously. Until you’re making reliable, profitable sales, keep your day job. I’ve seen extremely promising ventures blow up through no fault of the owners. Acts of God happen.
18. Once you’ve “taken the green pill,” it’s extremely hard to go back to the normal, employee life...
You might nod along to this - but it is so much realer than you realize.
You might nod along to this - but it is so much realer than you realize.
