This is the First Business You Should Start
The Amplified Impact Podcast
December 15th, 2023
Ever wondered if your business idea…is a good idea?
Here’s the thing: when you’re starting out, the idea itself isn’t the real star. What matters more is taking action, hustling to get customers, and making your idea work.
At Invictus, we swear by this: it’s execution that turns an average idea into a successful one.
Remember, your first business might not make you a millionaire, but it’s a fab way to learn the ropes.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Because the truth is, in the beginning, the idea doesn’t really matter at all. At all.”
– Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
So probably the question I get the most is, what do you think about this business idea? It’s usually coming from, like, new entrepreneurs, people who are, they’ve been bit by the bug and they want to dive in. You’ve maybe listened to the podcast and you’re like, yes, entrepreneurship. Build a business. That’s my, that’s my jam. I want to do that. I want to get out my w two, screw my boss now what? And I think this is a really funny part of the journey, and so we got to appreciate it for what it is. Because the truth is, in the beginning, the idea doesn’t really matter at all. At all.
Anthony Vicino:
One of the things that we say at Invictus is that a million dollar idea is worthless without a million dollars of execution. So you got a great idea, but you don’t have the ability to execute on it, then it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how great the idea was. I cannot execute on Facebook in 2006 or whenever it was that Zuck took off, great idea, I wouldn’t have had the ability to execute on it. Whereas a mediocre idea executed with excellence. Now that can be made into a million dollar venture, which I did for my first business, which was a window washing company. And that would not cross most people’s mind as a business to get into initially, because I think a lot of times when people are listening to content like this about entrepreneurs who are further down in the journey and they’re like sharing what they learned along the way, it can be really easy to think, oh, I should start where that person is now. And a lot of times the advice that I give and others like me give is inadvertently through the lens of, well, here’s where I am now, and here’s what I would do if I was starting over.
Anthony Vicino:
So we talk about big concepts about building media empires and coding and building SaaS products, all these things, right? We talk about that from the lens of our current skill and capacity and resources now. But the truth is, when you’re just starting out, it really doesn’t matter what you do because you’re probably going to suck at it. You’re probably going to suck a lot. And if anything, it’s better to suck at a bad idea than suck at a good idea. Because if you suck at the good idea, it’s going to turn you off to the idea, and then you might be not going to want to do it later when you actually don’t suck as much. So really, the most important thing in the beginning is to get in the game, take action and start building something. All business at the end of the day is, is creating a product that you can get somebody to give you money for. That hopefully, ideally brings them some value to their life.
Anthony Vicino:
But that’s really what it is. And so the most important thing isn’t the idea, it’s just how are you going to get customers to pay for the thing? And that’s really where your focus should be in the beginning. So when I get this question, what do you think about this business idea? I’m like, yeah, that sounds great. Go do it. Just go do it. The sooner that you get running towards it, the sooner you’ll learn where your deficiencies lie. You can start improving, you can start adapting and pivoting and maybe realize that was the wrong idea for you. Or maybe you figure out that it was a good idea.
Anthony Vicino:
Maybe it was a good idea, but you still execute it poorly and you’re only going to find that out by actually doing the thing. Now, with all that said, that was actually a long preamble to pretty much make a disclaimer. If I was to start over and I was not where I am currently with the skills, resources and knowledge and any of that stuff, I was truly just starting it back and I was like 24 years old and I’m like, okay, what am I going to do to start a business? Well, there’s a couple of different types of businesses you can start. And I don’t care so much about the idea as I do about the vertical. What I mean by the vertical is when it comes to a business, you could have, say, a service business. You take a skill that you have and you go and you do a thing for somebody else in exchange for money. That was what my window washing business was. It was a service.
Anthony Vicino:
You could also have a product, right? And that’s what one of my other businesses escape climbing as a manufacturing company. That’s what that was. We created widgets, physical products. That’s much harder, it’s much different, but not necessarily better or worse, just very, very different. And then you could have digital products. So escape is the physical product. A digital product would be something like beyond the apex, which is our community that we’re going to be launching next month. That’s all around teaching what we’ve learned about the four spheres of influence.
Anthony Vicino:
How to build businesses, how to build bulletproof health, how to build killer mindsets, how to not like you’re going to go kill people, but like, bulletproof mindsets should probably work on the wording there, but that’s an example of a digital product. You create it once and then it has infinite replicatability and you can disperse it broadly and then you have other things like real estate. Right? Real estate is a sort of product, but really the product there is the financial engineering that you’re using, the leverage, the debt, the equity that you’re using to get this cash flowing asset. And it’s in that arbitrage between the debt and the equity that you’re making your money. So it’s a form of product, but it’s a more advanced form. So there’s a bunch of different ways, different verticals that you could go into when it comes to building a business. And initially, real estate is going to be the hardest. I’m not just saying real estate, but anything that requires any kind of capital leverage is going to be hard in the beginning if you don’t have any kind of track record, and it’s the one I would stay away from, because capital leverage can burn both ways.
Anthony Vicino:
It if you don’t have the skills to execute against the idea, you can find yourself not just losing everything, but losing more than everything. And that’s problematic. So maybe not the place that you want to start when you’re brand new. Digital products are great in theory, but the difficulty with digital products is you have to have a way of distributing it to people, or you have to have people to distribute it to, rather. And when you’re starting off and you don’t have that, that can be difficult, but that can be very, very lucrative. If you have a skill that you have developed over years in a w two environment, you might be able to take that and adapt it to some kind of digital product that you then figure out how to go build an audience, how to get in front of customers, and that can be awesome. That is a much better option in my book than starting with real estate or any kind of capital leverage or starting with product. I think product is the hardest place to start and I would be very wary of it.
Anthony Vicino:
That’s at least been my experience. Unless you’re doing some form of drop shipping on Amazon where you’re not carrying inventory, having to manage cash flows and working cash, it can be very complicated. And that’s playing business on hard mode. It’s something I learned when we started escape climbing is it was like, oh, wow, I thought I knew business and this is now business on hard mode. I was really fortunate that my first business was a service business, doing window washing. And that is what I recommend for most people, depending on where you are in your life, you probably have some skill that you could exchange for money if you could find the people that are willing to pay for it. Now that could be all sorts of stuff. I’ve talked through the lens of copywriting before because all businesses need good copywriting, talked about design, and I think design is a really big one right now.
Anthony Vicino:
I don’t even think you have to be a great designer and you could make some pretty good money. And I think about this because I’m looking for a new thumbnail designer for the YouTube channel. And I have dmed 15 of the best thumbnail creators in the world, and I have really good connections with them from other big youtubers. And getting these guys to respond and hit deadlines and send invoices, it is like pulling teeth. The barrier to entry here is very, very low. And so there’s lots of ways that you could take a skill and adapt it and then go find people. And what I like about it is that there’s no overhead. You’re not taking on debt.
Anthony Vicino:
You’re not having to go buy or get a lease for a brick and mortar store. If you want to start offering bookkeeping services and design services, you could start that right now. The only thing you would need to do is pick up the phone and start cold calling people to get customers. So I like that. Because if you’re in a place where you need to make money and you are psyched on the idea of entrepreneurship, your first goal is just to go and make money, figure out how to take, create a product and convert that into money. That should be your only goal. Not building a website or getting the bank accounts or giving your business plan, any of that stuff. Your only goal should be figure out a product and figure out how to get in front of customers and then get them to pay for it.
Anthony Vicino:
Get that proof, and then once you have that, you can run harder at it and understand that the first business you build is probably not going to be the one that makes you wealthy. Like my window washing company did very, very well, but it did not make me wealthy. I took that money, I poured into real estate, and that did very, very well. But like your first business, you’re learning more than you’re earning. That’s the important thing. You’re learning how to execute against an idea. It doesn’t even have to be a good idea. You’re just learning how to execute.
Anthony Vicino:
And that’s going to be valuable because in the future you will have skill that you can then apply towards the really good ideas. And when you have a million dollar idea plus the ability to execute at that level, that’s when you suddenly have massive wealth building opportunities. And so if you’re thinking about how do I make my first dollar in this game of life, business life, I would say go start a service business. Figure out what it is that you’ve done in the past that you maybe have some kind of passing competency in. Because, again, you don’t have to be a master at what you’re doing. You just have to be willing to do the thing that somebody else isn’t willing to do. And that’s really all service businesses are, is like, I wasn’t a master window washer, but I was willing to get on a ladder and wash a window that the other guy wasn’t willing to do. And so he paid me to do it for him.
Anthony Vicino:
Easy peasy lemon squeezing that. I think it should be your focus. If you’re just starting off, get in the game, make your first buck. Hopefully this gives you some thoughts to chew on and some perspective, and hopefully brings you even a little bit of value. If it did, awesome. Hazah. If not, then I will try again tomorrow. But until then, my friend, stay hyper focused.
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