If you are wondering how to start a business and succeed, or you actually want to start a business but haven’t gotten to it, this post is for you. 

All of this is based on my notes from a podcast where Noah Kagan, author of MILLION DOLLAR WEEKEND, was interviewed.

🎙️You can watch the Full Podcast on How to Start a Business Here

Why People Don’t Get Started:

Fears holding people back from starting a business. To start, Kagan says there are two main fears holding people back from getting started and succeeding: the Fear of Starting and the Fear of Asking.

People are afraid of starting because they, and probably you do too, feel they need more money, courses, videos, or whatever it is to feel ready. When in fact, the best time to get started is now. If you spend all your time trying to get yourself prepared, chances are you may never start. When will you feel prepared enough? So, the right time is now. 

Maybe you don’t feel ready or confident to start. What you should do is get started. You will gain confidence through action and practice, not through thinking about it. 

Here are some key points if you want to start a business.

• View it as an experiment 🧪. It is an experiment. If you view it this way, you can take away so much pressure from yourself to succeed. 

• Test and enjoy it 👩🏻‍🎨. Testing and experimenting may take years. So, make sure you are doing something you enjoy and that is fun for you. Otherwise, it will be really hard to sustain the journey. 

• Maybe it’s not as fun now as it will be later because right now, you probably have to start from scratch and get going. So, figure out what you can do to make it fun today. Ask yourself: 
  • How do you make it so that no one has to ask you or make you do it?
  • How do you make it fun so you don’t have to convince yourself?
  • Do you need accountability partners?

• 📚 Learn. Once you get started, you can learn. You can learn and try again and again. Through this process, you can get to success. You won’t get to success by just thinking about your idea. So, test as soon as you can and start learning. After you test, you can start deciding what to stick with and what to iterate on. Some guiding points after testing:
  • Identify what works and what doesn’t 
  • Does your idea actually work? Is there a need for it?
  • See what skills you need or who you need to hire
  • Cheat code: pay the person with 10,000 hours of experience on it. Maybe you’re thinking you don’t have the budget, so be very wise about how you spend it. Hiring the person with 10,000 hours of experience can save you years of trial and error and make your mistakes cost you less, it can also get you to your goal faster.
  • Find people to help you. You don’t have 10,000 hours in a day.

• Identify why you haven’t started or why you don’t want to start 💭. Sometimes, you don’t want to try something because you are afraid of what you can become. Most people struggle to start or quit too early.

• Law of 💯. Apply yourself for the first 100. For whichever their reason is, most people quit too soon. Maybe you’ve been working on your project for six weeks or six months and you haven’t seen any considerable progress or results, or maybe it got too hard and you want to quit. To avoid quitting before you should, set a 100-mark goal, that is, apply yourself to 100 days, emails, calls, posts, or whatever you need to apply yourself to. Keep that commitment with yourself. Find a framework that works for you and stick with.  

• Set your freedom number ✅. Your freedom number may be what you want to achieve to be able to quit your job. Maybe when you get there, you are no longer interested in quitting your job. The point is to set a goal, a clear goal. Do something you enjoy to get you to that freedom number. Set goals so that you can grow smaller for longer. Goals you can sustain. 

It’s a marathon, not a sprint. 

• 🚀 Think about your future self. Ask yourself: What can I do today that my future self will be grateful for? This applies to everything, maybe going for a run, eating healthier, ending a relationship, changing careers, setting goals, being consistent, or starting a business. 

“Every rejection is just a test if you want something.”

Noah Kagan

If you want to start a business, the best time to get started is now. In conclusion, it’s not about learning more it’s about getting going.

I’m sure that at this moment you have something that you want to ask of someone. Maybe it’s a specific question, help with something, a call, an internship, a referral, a change, whatever it is, it will be very hard to get that if you don’t ask. 

I had an ask in mind, which took me weeks because I was afraid. The reality was that when I asked so much good came out of it. So, don’t fill your mind with all of the possible things that could go wrong, or that could happen if they say no. 

“Once they say no, life goes forward, and you can learn.”

Noah Kagan

This is so true, just ask. It’s better to get a no and move on than to be anxious about asking.

Learning to ask and getting comfortable asking is a skill.

People don’t get comfortable asking. It’s not a bad thing to ask. Switch the mentality. 

Fear of Selling 💻: change your mentality. Instead of thinking you are selling something, think about the benefit your customer can get from it. Focus on that. Kagan has a framework for this, LOT.

If you want to start a business, chances are you will need to get over the fear of selling. Noah discusses the LOT framework, which is very useful.

🎢 LOT framework: Listen, Options, and Transition.

• 👥Listen to your customers.
  • Identify what the real problem and what it’s worth to that person
  • Identify what is the number / metric that person needs
  • Understand the pain and value 
  • Identify what holds people back 
  • What do you want to get out of the product or service
  • What is the successful outcome of your buying the product or service
• 🔠Options:
  • Does this [your service, product, or idea] solve it
• ➡️ Transition
  • Sell because to solve a problem 
  • You have a problem, and I can offer this solution
  • Reframe the way you sell 
  • It’s not an ask or an offer. It provides an option to solve someone else’s pain point.
  • Is what you are trying to offer exciting to the other person?

1️⃣ Get started. You will gain confidence through action and practice.

• Question why you haven’t started. What’s stopping you?

2️⃣ Ask yourself: 

• How do you make it so that no one has to ask you or make you do it?
• How do you make it fun, so you don’t have to convince yourself?
• Do you need accountability partners?

3️⃣ Start testing your idea:

• Identify what works and what doesn’t Does your idea actually work?
• Is there a need for it? See what skills you need or who you need to hire,
• Find people to help you.

4️⃣ Law of 100. Commit yourself to the first 100. 

5️⃣ Set your freedom number.

6️⃣ Think about your future self. Ask yourself: What can I do today that my future self will be grateful for? 

7️⃣ Learn to ask and get comfortable asking. Switch the mentality. 

8️⃣ Apply the LOT framework. Go back to the guiding questions.