 What if you're starting a new business? What are some of the first steps that I recommend? I think this is a good question for everyone to think about whether you're starting out or later on, I think what I'll share will be useful. And of course, if you have any thoughts for those who are on the path of starting their own business, comment below. What do you think should be the first few steps? I'm very curious now. So here's what I think. Here's what I would do if I were starting now. Number one, I would ask myself, do I have any existing contacts who are potential clients of my new business? Do I have any friends, colleagues, supporters, fans, people that I can reach out to who would know who I am, who are potential clients of my new business? Or they definitely know people who are potential clients? Okay, that's my first question. And I'll write down their names, start a list of names. And these are the people I would reach out to right away to do what I call market research conversations, not what I call it's what's called out there, market research conversations. I have actually several courses about market research because it's such an important thing. One of them is called the CORE program, clear offer, resonant engagements. If you're curious to deep dive into my market research techniques, you can check that one out. But essentially what we're asking them in the market research conversations is, what have they already purchased similar to the thing we want to offer? Or if they haven't purchased it, have they considered, were they on the verge of buying something or hiring someone regarding the kind of service or program or product that we offer? And if not, why not? What kept them from it? Or what alternative are they using to solve the problem or to fulfill that yearning that they have that your product or service fulfills? Essentially, that's the market research conversation. There's a lot more obviously to it, but essentially those are the questions that you ask in your own way because now the question is not, typical market research when it's poorly done goes like this. Hey, I've got this product. I've got the service that I've created. What do you think about it? It's a terrible question. Why? Because who's gonna say, oh yeah, that's terrible. I mean, yeah, you might have a few friends who have like no social skills and go, oh, I think that's a terrible idea. Or the terrible encouragers, but most people are gonna be really polite to you. Go, oh, of course it's gonna do really well. I believe in you. Yay. And then you go try to sell it and nobody wants it because everyone's gonna be polite in the market research. You have to ask them what they spend money on because what they actually do is the actual reality that you're facing. And they say, you know, I've never bought anything like this before. Like, oh, I should be careful about what I'm selling here. What have you bought related to this? You know, what have you bought or what have you almost bought related to this? We don't care how nice people are gonna be to us now in market research because it's gonna give us bad information. We care about what they actually do, right? Or what they've actually done, which informs us because the fact is, okay, when you start your business, you have infinite optimism about the thing you're going to sell. And the problem is you're probably not you, but many, many entrepreneurs are so passionate about their product or their service that they're so myopic. They're so fixated on it that they have lost touch with reality. How many of you can relate to that? Not that they've lost, they don't even know reality. They don't even know what people are spending money on out there and what people spend money on is literally their market. Your income comes from other people spending. Did you know that? It doesn't come from law of attraction, some envelope falling from the sky. Law of attraction helps us to become attractive to others, but your market is the spending of your audience, the people you are able to reach. That's literally your market. And so what they're spending money on is you're literally competing with the dollars that you're spending elsewhere. Competing is maybe not the best word, but you're certainly providing an alternative. You're providing a very good option for what they would love to spend money on. And so you as a multifaceted, multi-talented person, you can literally offer so many different products and services don't get fixated on the one that you've already thought of because you're completely limiting your potential when you think you're just gonna offer this one thing. Now you can offer a hundred things. Open your mind, be open, and then you open your mind by talking with others you have access to, leaning into your natural human compassion for what they're spending money on and what they wish they could spend money on, not having them tell you your baby is beautiful because everyone's gonna tell you your baby is beautiful. Even if your baby is, I don't wanna say what your baby looks like, your entrepreneurial idea looks like. Maybe it is beautiful objectively in the market, but maybe it's not. So that's why it's very important. So that's market research conversations start that right away. I still do it to this day because I still know as an entrepreneur, I am constantly deluded by my own optimism and by my own fixation on my ideas constantly. We have myopia, we have blindsidedness all the time as human beings. And you can, if you're doing your hobby, you could be within yourself all day long and be very happy. But if it's not gonna be a hobby, if it's gonna touch the world by definition that other people are gonna spend money, so you have money, well, they're gonna have to decide to spend money. And so it's gonna be all about, much about them. Really, in the beginning, you think it's 100% about you. Hopefully it's more like 80% about them. And so this is where compassion comes in, empathy. It's not just your passion. Your passion is great. It's compassion that actually makes the money. Not your passion. Oftentimes now, unless you're super charismatic and you have a huge, warm audience of people, then you could just whisper and though everyone won't buy, you're the audience whisper. I've gotten to this point, but it's not because I'm lucky. It's because I've worked damn hard for 14 years to build an audience of you all watching this. If I say something, you're gonna buy it probably because well, a couple of things is I have your trust, but number two is I've done so much market research that my intuition, my compassion and my passion are very pretty well aligned at this point. But in the beginning, I was not an entrepreneur. No, you're overly focused on your passion and you have forgotten about your compassion. You have compassion. Of course, I know, I mean, you're my audience. I know you're more compassionate than most people, but you just forgot to apply it to marketing. So anyway, so that's market research. And the other thing I would say right away, I have two step ones, step one market research and the other step one is start creating content right away, start creating stage one content right away. You've never heard of my three stages of content creation. How many of you haven't heard of it? Raise your hand. If you haven't, that's okay. You can simply go to Google and search the three stages of content creation and you'll find my article and you'll learn all about the three stages and you read about it, but start doing stage one content right away. Do not delay. It's probably gonna be about your passion because that's all you know right now. But eventually, as you do more market research conversations, you'll also do stage one content that leans into your compassion for their wants as well as their needs. But people spend money on their wants, not what you want them to want. What you call their needs. Oh, they need this. They need that is what you think they should want. They don't want that. They want something else. Oftentimes, right? So market research helps us to uncover their wants, not just what you think their needs are. I always say wants because it's about them, but what they want, you got to respect what they spend money on, what they want to spend money. I got to respect that, you know, have compassion for it. So anyway, stage one content is probably starting with your passion, with what your journey is, what you really care about. And then as you have more market research conversation, you will naturally care more about them as well. Your stage one content will start to reflect that as well. So I hope this is helpful. That's how I would start a business, you know, the first couple of steps.