30 Years of Business Knowledge Flashcards
How to Start A Business With No Money
- Start with what you like, following your passions
Spend more time on the thing you like and get really good at it - Ideas. It is not about coming up with original ideas. Instead, come up with something you love, and find a partner to fill the gap in your abilities.
- Execution, what is the first thing I can do to get the business started? Do not make it too hard
- Consider where the revenue would come from. Experimenting with the revenue model
- Make sure your purpose is strong. How make sure people want to work with you? You won’t be managing people anymore, you will be managing the purposes.
- Even to start the business, it needs money, we could start with a service or revenue-based model, and then you will get there eventually.
How To Win
- Delayed Gratification.
- Culture needs to be customer-centric. Bring value to the customers not just take their money.
- Luck. Luck is hackable.
3.1 Be persistent
3.2 Know your destination. What is success for you?
3.3 Learn to take risks.
How To Lose
Success is accepting failures, learning back from failures, embrace failures. 80% of A students end up working for D Students
1. Don’t let things own you!
2. Let your short-term ego go. Enjoy letting others underestimate you.
3. Take your time. Internal ego, tell yourself, you are not a loser.
How To Do A Mind Map
- Start in the middle of your hobby
- Second around that is a business
2.1 Look at different ways of making this business work
2.2 Foresee what steps we need to do
Once you know what you would likely need to do in the future you will pay extra attention to existing things that can help you do that.
Productivity is like doing something that can be reused in the future.
How To Find Purpose
- Think about it
- What problem matters to you
- Start breaking down how to make your life and that purpose match
Know yourself, never directly give the answer.
4 Team up. 1+1=11
How To Find A Co-Founder
It is like a gym buddy.
- Identify what you love and hate to do. Someone has the opposite skills
- Same moral code. It is a lifetime partnership. What is in this day to your 70, you have the most amazing life, except after 70 everyone finds out you are a financial fraud. Everyone treats you differently, would you take that deal?
- Write down in detail what this person would look like. e.g. how tall they are. The red car theory.
- Post it. Telling people you are looking for this person
How To Sell
- Sell the sizzle, not the steak
- Understand the process of selling.
2.1 The first step should be understanding your client. Do they need you?
2.2 Understand the person, do you like them? It is worse even if the sale goes ahead, it means you are working with someone you dislike.
2.3 The deal would naturally happen. - Think long-term. Normally people try to reach a maximum of 5 times before they consider the lead dead. The top 1% does this consistently to create a long-term relationship.
How To Market
50% of what you spend would probably be wasted
Marketing is about experimenting
Connecting with people over time. Branding!
1. Understanding how your customer is
2. Staircase philosophy
3. Need to partner
If you have a sales team, that is also related to marketing, it is your brand marketing.
4. Systems, use systems to do them well. Do them well is more important than do them all.
5. Marketing is meant to be fun
How To PR Your Business
- Getting PR has to be targeted
- Journalists are lazy
2.1 Good for the reader
2.2 Follow their style
2.3 Do it yourself. Twitter is good at getting hold of Journalists, reacting to their posts, engaged with them. - BO is the number one PR engine. Be disciplined
How To Get An Investor
If you get the wrong investor, your life will be a nightmare especially when things get hard.
Investors should not invest in a business if they can not add value.
VC world only takes recommendations.
In the early days of your business, the more traction you have, the more likely you will get an investor.
- Family and friends. Be transparent and honest.
- Look at the team as an investor.
- Angel investor. The best way of getting an angel investor is to ask for help. Create FOMO (Fear of missing out). They are most likely will be part of the business, so make sure they add value.
- VC.
4.1 First identify if they have money. Lots of them are in the phase of raising funds. Google it.
4.2 Who they invested before. If they invested similar area before, they might want to cast net wide. or just one company, then you can go to their competitor.
4.3 Connect to the company they have invested in before and get references. Also, we can get feedback about that VC.
5 Work with your partner and client to fund your growth. - Make sure you really need an investor. Somethings you just need to improve your sales system
- Crowdfunding
How To Get A Sponsor
- Value return, ideally trackable value.
- Emotional sale. People who run the brand.
- Need to understand the brand value
- Working with agents. e.g. Media buyers. They normally have the funds anyway
- We can invest in that brand first. E.g. use their brand first.
They can work together.
How To Build a Brand
A statement about what you are doing. The purpose of the business.
- Start with your personal brand. What do you care about? What are your non-negotiables?
- Personal brand helps you define the company’s persona and name.
- Ways of building a brand
3.1 Reference model. E.g. Nike uses athlete
3.2 Leadership Model
3.3 Risks of each model, For reference, if the athlete has a bad reputation, it hurts your brand. For the Leadership model, if the label person left the magic left. - Learn to say no. Your brand is your most valuable asset.
How To Hire, Grow, and Build
Have a purpose, and hire people with the same purpose.
Better to have a purpose at the beginning.
Check the person’s social media.
Give employee equity, they are more likely to align with your success.
You can not grow your business with people.
So you need to grow its culture. Looking after your employee
What is your destination?
Build MVP
Transit from generalist people to specialist people.
How To Fire
The most important part is when to do it.
7 and 8 rule. Always keep 9 and 10 stars. 1 and 2 would mostly already left. Keep 7 and 8 having a risk of causing 9 and 10 left.
Often, firing 7-8 people is actually helping them.
Signals to identify 7&8 people
1. How many times are you talking about them?
2. Fearful of not finding a replacement
How To Go Global
- Research where your product can work in other markets.
- Franchising could be an option
Running a big business is easier than a small business
