How to Start an Initiative Without a Grand Plan (The Value-First Method)

All right, let me tell you one of the most misunderstood things about starting a business. Most people think it is so much more difficult than it is, but it's not. You don't need a business plan or a website. You don't need a product in advance. You don't even need that good of an idea. All that you need to do is go into the world and find somebody, anybody, that is willing to pay you a couple of bucks to bring some value to their life, and you've got a business. That's it. That's what we're going to talk about today. I'm going to help you understand that you can take the ideas you have right now, even if they're really big, if they feel out of reach, and turn them into something that you can get started on immediately. And stick around to the end of this video because I'm going to share a link that'll take your ideas, your interests, your skills, and help you create new business ideas or refine the ones you have. Here's what I see over and over again, especially from people that are smart, people that are thoughtful. People that are probably just like you. They have the right mindset. They want a business. They want freedom. They want autonomy. They want to make more money But instead of starting with what they already have or what they already know, they start by creating this imaginary version of what they need to become in order to start their business. For example, people come to me all the time with an idea for a new app or SAS product. And the first thing I ask them every single time is, have you ever built software before or even worked at a software company? And their answer is usually no, but I'll figure it out. I'll find a technical cofounder, but do you see the problem in that? They're starting at a place where they've already wrapped the chance of success in six or seven degrees of doubt and delay. Now they've got to go out and teach themselves how to program. They need to go find money to hire someone or they're going to find a technical cofounder who they're going to have to give half the company to before they've even started. That's such a wrong way of thinking about it. The truth is, the best business, particularly your first business, it's probably not going to be overly exciting. The best business for you right now is the one that you can start. Something using your existing skills, the things you care about, the people you know, Maybe it's something that you learned in your nine-f job. Maybe it's something that you're just passionate about or maybe it's just the thing that you'll finally get up the nerve to ask someone if they'd pay you to do. Seriously, I could start a business right now if I wanted to. I could walk out of my house. I could go to one of my neighbors. The one next door just had a kid, and I could say, "Listen, I know you're busy. Can I take care of something for you? Maybe cut your lawn or clean up your deck.? If they said yes, if they handed me 20 bucks, I'd have a business. It's not the most exciting business right now. It's not scalable, but it's something that I can start with. I can do whatever I want with it because it's real. You can't say. scale something that is just imaginary. And the same is true for any idea you currently have. You don't need to go out and build a website, get a logo, figure out all the brand identity. All you need to do is break down the ideas you have or just the skills that you have. and figure out a way to start offering that to people and getting them to say yes. If you're not someone with tangible skills, well, then use what you know. You're really good at working out. Maybe you can help someone put together their own workout routines or put together a better meal plan for themselves. And if you do have a skill, put it out there. Go to Fiver, just make a social media post where you offer to build logos for someone. Now, once you get those yeses, once you see the problems they have, the value you can bring, then you can do all the other things that are true to building a business. You can scale it. You can put in systems and processes. You can automate everything. Whatever you want to build the type of business that you're thinking about, is all possible once you have that little bit of momentum. But until then, you don't really have anything. You have an idea or a hunch, but that's not going to get you anywhere. The person who starts today, who learns those initial lessons is going to be so far ahead because not only do they have some momentum and maybe some capital to grow the rest of their business, they actually understand their customers.ers. And no business exists without customers. The number one thing I want you to take away from this video is that Starting a business is not about building a company. It's about proving value That's it. That's the entire job. Can you go out, do something for someone that makes them realize that they would rather pay you to do it than to do it themselves? If you can do that. You've got what it takes to get going. Everything else you can learn after the fact. You can build a logo later. You can figure out how to be incorporated, how to do your taxes, or even better, once you have some momentum, you can pay somebody else to do those things for you, because that's someone else's business. They'll be your CFO. They'll be your accountant. All of those things are businesses that someone else will do because they don't really make your business special. They're just things that have to be done. That's the mindset you need to have. You need to stay laser focused on the value you're going to bring and recognize that everything else is just transactional or operational, and you can learn it over time. So here's where it gets exciting. If you're someone that is struggling with coming up with an idea or refining a big idea you have and is something that you could start with today, I took all the ideas, all the lessons, all the experience that I have, and things that I wish I had 20 years ago. And I built an app that will help you do just that. I'm doing this for free. It's one of the things that really gets me excited about this channel is that I can take the lessons and the things that we talk about here, and I can turn them into free products that everybody can use. I'm not asking you to sign up. up. I'm not asking for any money. One thing you can do for me if you want to support me is just to like this video, to subscribe to the channel And I'm going to keep doing this. This one is a little idea Explorer. You can use it to come up with your first idea, and then once you have it, you can refine it. You can use it as a gut check on the ideas you already have. it's just going to help you break it down to understand what really is powering that idea. And I really hope and believe it's going to help some of you understand that even though your idea right now is maybe out of reach, even though it's huge, it's some massive platform that you want to build over the next four or five years there's probably a way that you could start today to make sure that it's actually a viable idea and to have some money and some momentum along the way. So check it out. The link is in the description right now. And if there's other app ideas, other tools that you'd love me to make for you, I'll do it. I'm going to pay out of pocket to power them, so it's got to be within reason, but I am absolutely game for building an entire suite of things that helps people like you build the business of your dreams. And if you're wondering what happens after people say yes, well, yeah, things get a little bit more difficult. You have to deliver on the promises you made. You have to figure out whether the idea you had was good in the first place and you have to fight through all kinds of fears and death.oubts that arise for every single entrepreneur. But don't worry, that's what I break down in this next video. So if you're ready, if you want to understand the pitfalls where most people quit, check it out now. You'll be ahead of the game and I'll keep making new videos to help you along your journey.