Everyone's trying to take a shortcut to get there when they really like when I'm telling you right now you're never going to get there because you're not good enough. Like you're never going to get there because you're not good enough. You have to do the rocky cutscene you have to eat the shit for a bit of time so that you can get the rep since you can put your time into the bar in so that you can actually get good. The wealthiest people in the world see business as a game. This podcast the game is my attempt to documenting the lessons I've learned on my way to build an acquisition.com and to a billion dollar portfolio. My hope is that you use the lessons to grow your business and maybe some
business. I hope you share and enjoy. I'm going to walk you through the best way in my opinion to pick the niche that you're going to focus on to start your business. So picking the niche I think this is something that's like wildly misunderstood and I'll tell you where most people get wrong is that they pick a niche and they have no idea about the niche.
So why combinator which is a venture it's like an incubator type thing in Silicon Valley they have their things that they look for when they're investing businesses and they're accepting them into YC. And one of the ones that was really interesting to me is that they look for past experience within the space. And because I think a big part of that is that a lot of times new businesses are not actually really new.
They're slight iterations on things that are old right and candidly within my own business experience. I don't even do anything now. I just try and do stuff better which people somehow poo poo on it's like you go into dry cleaning and do it better than everybody else and so when like you can go to lawn care and do it better than everyone else and so when I think that's wildly underrated because you were 100% make money if you just try hard and know how to do business.
You don't need anything new right and so like I think that is a wildly underestimated component of having strategy and businesses is just like how do I get the use the value equation the boat like I'm more valued by customers than anyone else can. But like the actual industry itself that you're serving doesn't need to be new or different right. So that being said like servers with the smile while they underrated.
But the piece that I wanted to hit on here is that like I'll tell you this story because I think it really drives this point home. So in Alan our software company that we recently recently sold a majority stake in one of the agency owners you know for nine months was just like never making progress right like was always hopping on was always having issues and it was like his clients were getting results.
He was like how do I get around that I was like you don't you need to fix that. And it got to the point where I just said listen man like you don't know what you're doing which is why your clients are getting results. Period is a one guy who does you make all this money using our you know using the leads that we get them and I was like okay all why she getting making money in the other ones aren't he's like well I don't know.
And I was like right so that's not because of you that's because of him. And so what I told him to do which was wild at the time I said I need you I think that you should close your agency I was like I don't think you know anything about real estate. I said I think that if you know how to get real estate leads then you should go get your real estate license go generate your own leads and go build a real estate business and learn it and then once you have succeeded in doing that.
Then if you want to then go make the agency and show other people to do because you've actually done it.
And so there's a tweet by Layla my wife she said like stop listening to people on the sidelines about like sorry stop listening people about how to play the game who've never been anywhere but the sidelines right and the problem is too many of the people right now y'all are on the sidelines and have always been on the sidelines and are trying to pick a niche to get into to sell how to do the niche.
Well that's dumb you've never done it so a lot of times people are trying to skip to a higher leverage opportunity without having done the requisite work of understanding the niche which is why the white commentator people look for like if you want to make a software in the payment space we'd love to see that you have experience in the payment space because there's so much stuff that you don't know that you know when you actually spend three five you know years doing something in an industry you understand the lingo you understand the avatar you understand the problems and you can see opportunities if you haven't entrepreneurial had a lot of money.
entrepreneurial had on there's always problems in every industry which means there's always opportunity and fundamentally businesses just solving problems that exist with a and making sure the math makes sense like that's literally it is like where's the problem how much did they think this is a problem and is there a way that I can solve it and charge for it that's it like that's really all the businesses right and so.
And really how well you solve the problem is going to dictate how much virality your business says because if you solve it really well people tell people and you will and your business will grow right I think the problem that a lot of people have they didn't know how to make it offer right is the fundamental thing that is the beginning of building a business is you got to know what you're selling right and so that was a problem for a lot of people and then people got that problem solved and then they told their friends and.
And books sold 100,000 copies in six months with no promotion right and so i'm only i'm sharing this because I couldn't write a book on offers without having made a ton of offers and I feel like there's too often people who are trying to focus on a niche who've never actually done the thing in the niche and this is really really rampant in the internet space because everyone's trying to take a shortcut to get there when they real like when i'm telling you right now you're never going to get there because you're not good enough like you're never going to get there because you're not good enough you have to do the rocky cuts and you have to eat the shit for a pit of time.
So that you can get the rep since you can put your time at the bar and so that you can actually get good and before you are good you will suck and you have to accept long period of sucking and you do enough volume that eventually you'll suck so little that you'll actually be good and then at that point then you'll actually have a real decision to make which is I'm actually really good at this thing now that I've learned do I want to teach it other people are just want to do more of the thing that I'm doing right because like a real quick and then just grow team of a hundred real serves and only entire thing which is what I'd recommend this guy do right rather than have an agency.
Real quick wise you guys already know that I don't run any ads on this and I don't sell anything and so the only ask that I can ever have if you guys that you help me spread the words we can out more entrepreneurs make more money feed their families make better products and have better experiences for their employees and customers. And the only way we do that is if you can rate and review and share this podcast.
So the single thing that I have to do is just leave review for 10 seconds or one type of the top of the absolute world to me and more importantly it may change the world to someone else. That doesn't right and so this is kind of where where I think the problem is is that like I had another question that was sent to me on Instagram which is like hey how do I solve turn because a lot of my lot of my clients are getting results and I'm like well duh.
I said he said how do I see up from 10,000 to 100,000 milk when I don't have a lot of testimonials. I was like you're not good at the thing that you're supposed to be good at why I don't have testimonials is why you're not going to 100,000 month like these making the goal 100,000 month rather than being good.
I have no words I have no words I don't get it you know what I mean like everyone's in such a fucking rush that you will never get there it is the slowest path to getting there is to fool yourself and the thing that you're good something that you're not. You have to go and pull the thread and say which and the thing is is like we'll do what you're passionate about whatever you're not going to be passionate about self that you suck it.
What you have to do is like which of these opportunities seem like they have potentially a high leverage right and I'm going to learn from the bottom right it's like one of the best ways to learn stuff is starting the bottom not because you because it's the only option but because if you understand the entire pathway of of a client journey or of an industry journey.
Then you will have more trench knowledge more depth of experience that you will be then able to apply right like people see my you know videos on personal finance people see videos of mine on sale people's videos on mine recruiting people see videos of my of marketing and it's like how did you acquire all these skills
because I just I just I tried to jump to the spot that I'm at and then like you can't skip you can't skip like there's a sequence buildings are built with foundations and your career is a pyramid and the peak of that pyramid is based on the depth of the foundation that you build.
And so like I've said this before and I'll say it again but your work was on you more than you work on it and so even though you might not be getting paid in the period that you're at just because you're struggling doesn't mean you're failing right.
And it means and the thing is as long as you're getting better you're making progress in the progress is the success is that you are getting better and like you will turn the quarter like that's an inevitability if you put enough time period I promise you that if you don't stop doing something for 10 years would be really good
period and if you're really good at you like doing it right and if you like doing it then at that point you won't wonder why your business isn't making money because you actually be good and then you won't have these questions but the questions that I get I'll say a third of them come from a very short time or I said it's like why am I not a millionaire it's been it's been 90 days Alex what the hell it's like well you didn't put the five years in so if you're trying to figure out what
nature you're going to pick the point is to just pick and then accept that you're not going to be overwhelmingly successful for like five years like every entrepreneur like that I know of puts five years in before before anything really happens and you're like fuck five years probably shouldn't tell new entrepreneurs that yes you're going to be very successful very quickly should put your job into it
it takes a long time to learn because there's a lot of stuff you got to know got to know how to generate leads you got to know how to work leads you know got to know how to set appointments you got to learn how to close you got to learn how to set up bank accounts you got to learn how to transact you got to learn how to do billing you got to learn how to do payroll you got to like you got to learn how to actually fulfill a product you ought to learn how to create a customer
journey got to learn how to ascend people you got to learn how to decrease turn you got to like there's a lot of stuff you got to learn how to recruit you got learn how to hire you got to like there's a lot of stuff that you got to learn and so to think that it's somehow going to take 90 days it's like why do you think that you can get a chemistry degree in four years and think you can somehow be able to come a masters and entrepreneurship in 90 days it doesn't it doesn't
give respect to the game like you have to respect the game like a lot of people been playing this for 40 years the ones getting their master's degree for 40 years well some PhDs are right and they're probably pretty good at whatever their thing is right and so it's like to think that you're going to beat guys you've been playing the same game for 40 years
and your first try in 90 days doesn't respect the game and so like I was fortunate that I started young I started when I was 23 that I mean the only thing I could have done before the dude without doing that is just start instead of going to college right but you have to you have to put your time into the bar like your things aren't going to grow until you like you can't do four squat workouts and expect your legs to grow you'll get better at squatting and then getting better at squatting
as a requisite for having bigger legs but you still got up with the volume there's a depth of understanding that happens with volume that people cannot appreciate like Napoleon said quantity has a quality all of its own right got to do the boring work and you got to love the boring
work and if you can do that you won't lose because the only person who's injecting this artificial timeline on you is you and so anyways it was like one of the normal questions that I was getting in my comments is that it's like how do you pick the net how do you know where to start like you don't know where to start you just start and then you start accumulating knowledge and then you will learn it's like reading books on sales
before you've actually had a sales call I'm actually very against it I think you should start selling and then read books on sales because then the books will actually make sense to you right like trying to read a hundred books on entrepreneurship before you've actually had a business is silly start a business how do you start a business
you get a bank account get an LLC and you figure out what you're going to sell like that's what that's what you do right that's how you start a business so it's going to start with promotion and selling because you can't even have the rest of the stuff until you learn how to do that and if you don't know what you're selling it's because you probably are good to think yet so you got to go like get some industry experience right that's why banks by the way
they don't loan to people who don't have industry experience so if you're like hey I want to get a you know loan to this was actually a story heard from Jim owner ended up working with us for a period of time was in Jim lunch was he wanted started Jim and the and get a loan from the bank and they and he went to like 10 banks and they all said no they said and he said the reason was because he did not experience so what he did was he went to
ballies and worked at ballies for like three or four years and worked his way up to become the personal training manager and then at that point started his Jim and he didn't even need the bank loan at that point because he had saved some money and he learned how the business worked and lo and behold he was like now some of the best advice ever
have so sometimes you just got to get the industry experience people just want to skip to the last step when like there are prerequisites to getting there which is probably prerequisites exist so this is hopefully the real answer to how to pick your niche which is like you just need to do something that is at least not you know you know repelled from that you see people making money and and then stick with it for an inordinate amount of time
without convincing yourself that you're smarter than you are which is a a loose paraphrasing of a Twitter quote that I can't remember who wrote it