I got a really dope episode on the way for you. Be First, let's get this started with some afro Tech news. Rick Ross says he's one year away from becoming the next hip hop billionaire.
We just walking up.
Just what that's audio? Friend Ricky Rose. Last week in Austin at afro Tech, he performed Tortoise Stays Down. He's got investments in real estate, cannabis, rest arounds, healthcare, and more, and nearly thirty Wingstop locations. Each location reportedly earns him an estimated two hundred thousand dollars annually. That's what to give him, and it allows him to provide jobs. And he says with Wingstop, we're bringing in the food I like and adding jobs to the community. It's a double win.
Shout out to Ricky Rose and hope you touch a billy TikTok announ See. It's pulling the plug on this one billion dollar creative fund. Now this is important the outlet know that before shutting down the creative fund, TikTok influencers and content creators voiced earning low payouts, sometimes just a few dollars, for millions of views, making it impossible to earn a living through the Creator Fund alone a lot of discontent there, it's previously reported by Afrotech in
March twenty twenty three. Earlier this year, Sean Kim, former head of product for TikTok's US operations, said the quiet thing out loud, claiming that TikTok didn't create the fund to help creators monetize their content, but rather to help with user retention for their metrics. For TikTok's metrics, he says, when we launched the creator the TikTok Creator Fund, we didn't launch it to help creators monetize. To south by Southwest, I mean, that's what we said everywhere publicly. We're doing
this to help create us monetize. That's not why we launched it. We launched it as a reactive measure against other platforms launching their creator funds. We thought to ourselves, what happens if these creators then go monetize or create content on these other platforms. It hurts our metrics, our dau, our retention. That's the reason why the Creative Fund was launched. I appreciate the honesty dau of stately active users, by
the way, but I appreciate that kind of honesty. But I hit up Isaac Hayes, who's founder at the growing fan Base app, and asked what he thought about this.
I think TikTok canceling their creator fund further proves that you can't pay creators and run advertising at the same time. It's impossible to serve an audience of advertisers but also try to make it possible for creators to earn millions of dollars when you suppress their content and having to
do that by running advertising. And the future of this is really subscrib and that rev share and subscription models are the ways that creators are going to earn the most money in the future, which is what we've been doing at fan Base from day one. So it's unfortunate and I feel for the creator community, but I think they have to start thinking differently about ways to monetize other than revenue from creator funds or small pieces of pennies per thousands of views that really can lead to
a sustainable, thriving and growing business. So it's unfortunate, but I think it points to the future that subscriptions are coming.
Afrotech report last week the fan base just hit another milestone and Isaac an important one becoming the first black person to raise ten million dollars in crowdfunding, which means a whole lot of people, people who look like you and I who otherwise wouldn't be able to get a piece of equity in owing startup. Now hold stocking one
that's your AFRO technos. I'm with Lucas is black, tach, Green Money, and I appreciate all the feedback and comments I've been getting on these solo episodes, and I was thinking about this one. I'm gonna talk to you about today. As always, if you get something out of this, I hope you will share it with somebody. You can even comment sign me a DM. I just want to know
what you're thinking about this type of content. I've been getting asked for a long time to do these solo episodes, and I'm doing them, but to keep doing them, I just want to hear from you, so at Will Lucas on IG I'm on fan base too. By the way, at Will Lucas on fan Base, it is not uncommon or irregular for someone to stop me at some point during my day at least once a week with the request for advice on a business concept or even a
business move. Now I've made it clear to me and a few folks who have shown interest, like my twenty year plan. I have a plan that I wrote at the beginning of twenty nineteen. It is detailing a twenty year run and everything I wanted to do, everything I wanted to work on, why I was working on it, the people I needed to connect with to be able to find success with it. Now it's my personal mission,
and it's a very detailed mission. I might even do an episode on that one of these days if you're interested. But my mission is to create both content and opportunities that help black people realize entrepreneurial success beyond their wildest streams. So everything I do has to be aligned with that. Now, there are some things on the periphery that I know how they tie in, but everything that I'm actively involved with in some way helps me to, you know, achieve
that particular mission. So I suppose that wavelength of intention attracts people who have ideas and need information, and I'm okay with that. What I've learned to do is scale that kind of support for people, because what happens is when you're in a position to help the questions you get the questions you get asked a lot are a lot of the same questions, or even if they're not, to say, they're very similar and may only vary with you know, a little bit of nuance that makes the
questions specific to that person. But by and large, what I get asked about mostly is how to take a business from idea to a tangible thing. That's what I get asked about the most from budding entrepreneurs or would be entrepreneurs, or would or early founders. People come to me with their ideas a lot or very early concepts of their products. That could be for variety of different reasons.
But being somebody like who is constantly trying to feed on resources like me, like and like I imagine you are, I'm looking for things that help me get from point A to a different point. And I'm sure you're trying to always look for things that help you get from point A to point B. Now, whether the point A is the id and point B is making money from that idea, there's a lot of resources out there that are, in my view, insufficient to helping small business owners, startup founders,
early ambitious entrepreneurs get the motor running. You know because too often the episode. Now, this episode is not about how to make your first million. There's a lot of episodes of the why, variety of podcasts, why, variety of books, a lot of wide variety of resources that help you find success in that area. This episode isn't about how to scale or how to sell your thing to people all over the world, and it's not about how to
raise money. This episode is about how to start, and how to start in such a way that you improve your chances of success. Now we're going to talk about scale and we're going to talk about raising money, but in a way that helps you think about them properly at the stage at because too many of us aren't clear on those topics as they relate to ideas that we've ideated, because we tend to be more beholden to ideas when there ares and we don't think about them
as clearly. Often not everybody, but we don't always think about them as clearly as we should. And so this episode is about just that, how to start, And in order to start, you got to write it down. It needs to be clear in your mind what you are trying to do, and you won't even know how many questions that will need to be answered until you start to write it down. When your idea only exists in your head, you can't get specific or gain an actionable view on the steps you're going to need to take
to make that idea exist in the world. So I highly recommend there's some really good journals out there I use. I used to use this Full Focused Journal by Michael Hyatt. I no longer use that one because I didn't need necessarily the prompts that it gave me anymore. I'd kind of just like to take notes in a different way. But if you need prompts to help you start to structure your idea, the Full Focus Journal by Michael Hyatt
is a really, really good one. I've moved on personally to like just regular mold skins, so I carry one of those in my bag. I just need some place to just jot down ideas. Often I'm just jotting down ideas in my notes app on my iPhone because it's always readily available, and I also very often I will carry a small little It's kind of like, what do you call those things? Little tiny journals? Somebody knows what I'm talking about. One of the field notes, so I
will just have one like in my back pocket. Very often I will have those with me because I like to just write down, like it'll be like one word, you know, reminders of things that I'm going to need to transfer to a larger effort later. So I will often do that because it's just helpful for me. So I recommend you do whatever works for you, but definitely start to write down not just the idea, but what are the steps that are required to actually making that
idea happen. Now, in the previous episode, I want to say it was two three weeks ago. It's an episode I put out the best Apps and Tech for Small business Owners. That is a really good episode if you want some more resources and things like that, things that I recommend you do to help structure yourself and structure yourself with success. So I'm going to reference that episode a couple of times, but that is a really, really great episode if you want more depth about actual tools
that you can use in your how to start a journey. Now, I would also recommend you start getting really good at AI applications, and I shouldn't even say really good, just to get proficient at using an AI like a chat gpt it is not too late. As a matter of fact, most people in the world are still unaware of what's even happening in the conversation of GTPs GPTs, and even before we discuss how to use them. Just get familiar with how you could apply that sort of a resource.
And so whether you want to spend time. I could spend a whole episode on my love hate relationship with business plans like writing out thirty forty page business plans, which a lot of places if you go to support, you know, like kind of like local supports like chambers of commerce and et cetera, they'll have you, you know, start to work on these long business plans. We can talk a whole episode about that. I'm not gonna do that, but forget about putting your questions in like the Google
search bar. You know, AI is supercharging your ability to get these things done quickly and well, and so you can simply ask questions to the intelligence, you know, even super specific ones based on your demographical information. If you're trying to figure out what your demographics should be. Should you manufacture you know, in house or should you outsource
your manufacturing? What country should you have your manufacturing in like all of these superspecif if it questions that it is harder to get answered on the traditional search and navigation, you can do that with something like a chat GPT. So I highly encourage you to start learning about writing prompts for GPTs. And what I mean by that is structuring your questions in such a way to get the
responses that you need that will believe. I believe that that will be one of the most valuable skills inside the next five years is how to write prompts. And this is not a technical thing. It is a way of thinking, a way of thinking about how to write questions such that you get responses that are actually helpful to you getting what you need done. And so what I did I went to chad GPT, I said, all right, what I write? I wrote, how can I best write
prompts to get the best answers from chat GPT? And so it gave me a couple prompts I could use to get the best answers from it. This is something you can do with an AI like chat GPT. So number one it said, be clear and specific, Clearly articulate your question or request, ambiguous or vague prompts may lead to unclear off topic responses. Provide as much detail as
necessary for the context you're seeking. That is something you can't do with like a traditional navigation a search bar, being super specific, giving a bunch of detail it can't find. It's harder to find the answers you need when you're that specific and so. But with the chat GPT or another GPT, it's saying be specific because it can handle that much information. Actually, it works best if you give it more information. The next thing you said was ask one thing at a time, and it says, break down
complex queries into simpler, more focused questions. This helps the model understand your intent better and provides more precise answers. This is what's so important about writing things down, because we don't always necessarily have enough clarity and what it takes to get to the next level. If the ideas are in our head, but if we need to write it down and provide instructions, then you get to You get an idea of what is unclear to you as
the entrepreneur, as the founder. But if you don't take the time, if clearly think through point A to the next point, you're not gonna know what you don't have clarity about, all right, So that's a couple of things that there's like four or five more. I won't go into those, so I don't want to spend this whole episode on writing prompts. But these are the types of things that if you get at least reasonably good at AI,
you will be so much further than most people. So I have a few more at These are just a couple of points, and loogain, I want to start shit. I should have started here, but I'm gonna say midway through this episode, these are not These are not everything that you're gonna need to know about how to start. These are I'm speaking to the specific things that stop the people who come to speak to me, the things
that they find challenging. So I'm using those people as a focused group because I believe they represent more entrepreneurs, and so most people get stuck on certain things. So the things I'm gonna speak to in this episode are the things that I believe will help you get past those specific hurdles. The next one is I would stop spending money on stupid stuff, and so it is super important even I do it. So I will go to my credit card statement every month, my bank statements every month,
and just look through them. I would just look through them and just see what is on here that I didn't even know I was being charged for anymore, Things on here that I'm not even using anymore. And So, because you're gonna need to be your first investor, it is your job to invest in yourself before you start to even think about asking somebody else to invest in you. You should have the belief that I am willing to put my own money up if you believe in the idea.
If you're not willing to put your own money up in the beginning, come on, I would be hanging around the right people. And I'm not gonna get into a munch like very rudimentary stuff. But what we miscalculate about finding success in entrepreneurship, business, startups, and etc. Is this not like these there's these rocket science level challenges. These are doing basic things over and over well, doing well, doing well again today and well again the next day.
Do the stuff well, the simple stuff, really well, and you will find outsized success because most people don't do the simple stuff well. One of those things is the people to hang around you cannot grow with the people you're hanging around with aren't growing. I'm gona leave that there. I'm not gonna go further than that one. This is one. This next one, I'm gonna just tell you what it is, then I'll talk about it. I would get as unromantic
as possible about my ideas. And there will be things that you want to do that do not mean you should do them. I'm gonna say it again a different way. Just because you want to do something doesn't mean the world wants that from you. As much as you love the thing, as much as your passion about the thing, as much as you believe. Man, if I could just do this, you know I would love to do this every day for the rest of my life. That does
not mean people will pay you for it. And so you've got to be taking an honest assessment of yourself. A lot of people cannot do this. This is entrepreneurial success requires a very strong ability to look at yourself, see where you're deficient, see where you excel, and then match yourself with something that the world will pay you for. That is not an easy thing to do for most people.
Because we are passionate about specific things, and your passionate about specific things is helpful in determining what you should be spending your energy on. But it does not mean that other people are as passionate to pay you to do it. And so that takes some honest self reflection that most people are not prepared for. So I would ask myself a few questions. What is the market need at such a level that people are willing to pay
you for your solution? What does the market need so much that people are willing to pay you to do the thing to solve their problem? What pains do people have that they're willing to pay you an appropriate amount, an amount that works for you to have that pain alleviated.
Just because people have a pain, and just because people have a need doesn't mean that they're willing to pay to pull out their wallet to scan their card, to you know, touch their Apple watch to the pay you know device at such a rate that it makes sense for you to do it. There's a lot of people who are willing to pay for things, but they're not willing to pay enough to make it a valuable business proposition. It's not worth it. Can your service or your product
provide a solution? At a price consumers are willing to pay that still leaves enough money for you to grow and reinvest into the business. Here's the thing that I found most people will not do. And I've done this a gazillion times to my own pain, because I love to do things that I've done. If nobody cares that you stopped doing it, if you were to start a business and you stopped doing it, would anybody say ouch? Would anybody say where's the thing that you were doing yesterday?
I need more? Why are you not? Why would you not give me more? Why are you Why are you depriving me of your product? Why are you not letting me have your service? If nobody does that. If your website has been down for three weeks and nobody's emailing you saying, yo, I need your website. I came here every day for you know, my information, and it's been down for three weeks. What's going on if nobody's doing that.
If you are, you know, the fashion designer of your community and you don't release a new fall line and nobody says, hey, when's the new drop coming, that you got to think about whether you really got a thing. If nobody cares that you stopped, you probably shouldn't have been doing it in the first place. That is hard to swallow. If nobody cares, nobody raised the flag and said foul because Gene over here, stop doing donuts. I the men Gene keeps doing donuts. I need those donuts.
If nobody's doing that at some level, obviously I'm exaggerating, But if nobody's asking where is the product? Where is the service that you used to provide? You really got to think whether you've been force feeding and trying to trying to get people who just love you and just want to support you, versus actually building a market. Because people will support you, and you get confused about whether it's just support because they's cute and they want to see me, you know, do my thing, or are you
actually building a business. That is a hard thing to swallow. You got to define who's your target audience, who's your consumer? Your product. I don't care what it is. It is not for everybody, It is for a specific group people. Number One, you don't have enough money to reach everybody with your marketing and your branding efforts and your communication efforts. So you've got to define who is best suited for who is the low hanging fruit? Who is this thing
designed for? And then there may be other people later who you know, come and join the bandwagon who see themselves in your thing too. But if you're building a brand, who are you building it for and super serve that audience? Nothing is for everybody. There may be specific vertical, specific things inside of a vertical that's this one's for that group, this one's for that group, and they self select, but nothing is for everybody. Some people like this version of
a thing, whether it's white bread. Some people like this version of the white bread, the one that uses this type of flower. Other people love the one that look that's in brown packaging. So you've got to determine who is it for? Who are you talking to when you present your offering to the world. This is about all I'm gonna get into. I told you I will get into scale and raising money, and I'm gonna just touch on it because I'm gonna get out of here, and
because I've been laboring these points. It is while so often many of us are not ready for capital or to even scale, but behave you should always be behaving like you will be And how do you do that? Your systems will be important. How can How good are you are you at documenting your operation? You cannot do this as a hustle. This has to be a business. How can you I can't invest in your hustle, but I can invest in your business. So your business is
made up of operations. I need to see some documentation. I want to see, you know, metrics over time. How are you tracking your things? How are you working to get your costs down? How are you how are you working to you know, widen the gap between your costs and your reverge? Like all these things, document your business accounts. Those things have to be in order. Stop doing this stuff on your personal credit card. I'm not going to get into that today, but we'll talk about that at
another time. You know, use the use the systems that are designed to help you grow your business. Are you using quick books? Is it integrated with your bank account? Is it integrated with your credit card? Are those things tied together so you don't even have to go in and you know, connect every manual, you know transaction. It happens automatically. But at the end of the day, this is what's important about this entire episode. I can encapsulate
it in one statement. The whole concept of how to start implies that you are serious about going, that you are serious about finding success. And I'm going to encapsulate how to start with this one statement. You can fool a lot of people, but please don't fool yourself. You can fool me into thinking he's serious, she's serious. But only you know how early you got up and how hard you went after it. Only you know how late you stayed up, and how much dedication and sleepless nights
you put into doing the thing. Only you know the sacrifices you were going through to get better, not to just do the thing, but to get better at doing the thing. Only you know the stuff that nobody else is going to see. That's where you fool yourself versus
fooling everybody else. Because you're not on stage. You can fool a lot of people by what you show them and what you wave in their face, but don't fool yourself by thinking the stuff that you're waving in our face is actually moving the ball forward.