What tips do you have for early entrepreneurs?
You know, I'm asked this question actually more often than I thought I would be, but
I always say this, if I could go back to when I started my business and give myself two
pieces of advice, two pieces of advice, that's it, just two.
And I knew I would listen to myself because that's the other key.
Like I knew everything when I first started.
So I didn't, I wasn't open to these ideas.
But there are two ideas that have really transformed my business.
And we actually use it in the work that we do to help other entrepreneurs transform their
business.
The first one is, first one is develop systems, develop processes more than you think you
need to, and then teach good employees.
Notice I didn't say great, good employees, how to run great systems.
That's the first thing.
I would rather have a hundred good employees and all great systems than have a hundred
great employees and really bad systems.
Because the systems are what make it work.
The processes are make it work.
And I know a lot of entrepreneurs, they leave corporate environments because they didn't
like the processes.
They didn't like the systems.
I was one of them, but that was something that I learned probably 10 years too late
and then I wish I would have known day one.
That's the first thing.
The second thing I would say is niche.
Find a market that you can serve better than anybody else.
I don't care how big the market is, go find a market that you can serve better anyway
else.
In fact, we teach this in our recruiting is go find a market that you can recruit from
better than anybody else, that you can deliver for anybody else.
And even if it's a small group, I mean, how many people do you really need to hire?
How many customers do you really need?
And so it's that idea.
I've had so many people say, oh, there's no one in my market of 7 million people.
Like they live in a city with 7 million people.
I was like, you telling me there aren't three people out of 7 million that exactly match
what you want?
And they're like, well, there probably are.
There's just probably hundreds.
But if you're not speaking directly to them, if you are not targeting them specifically,
you're going to get lost in the noise.
And the same thing happens with customers.
Find a group of customers that you want to serve and serve them better than anybody else.
Maybe a big fish in a small pond, way better than competing with everybody else.