 So the topic of business comes up a lot as a business owner I try to be very forthcoming and public that's part of the reason I have this YouTube channel and Facebook I try to share my experiences and help others so I do get a lot of questions and emails and comments from people saying hey, how do I start a business and sometimes, you know, I type out some stuff and I said, you know, I just need to do a video on this because I'm Less willing to type something really long easy to send a video that way I can have an easier response As I like the question. I like helping people out and I want to, you know, make it as easy as possible to do so So first thing is about starting a business. I hate my job is not a business plan I hate the person I work for still not a business plan. That's something I try to get through to people I don't remember where I first heard that that I hate my boss is not a business plan I'm not sure who's first said it. I've repeated it many times and I love it as a phrase It's not the reason you should ever start a business because you just don't like the way you work The idea of starting a business is that you have a different angle a different Idea on how you want to do a process or maybe invent a new process and you know, there's a market and demand for it So it's really interesting being an entrepreneur because you stop and think about that as a vision Going hey, do I have this idea? Is it better than the other person's idea or is there a market for this? And I know I've seen some statistics on this and I'd So many of these business, especially the tech ones they fail because there's no market demand for their idea So that's the first thing is read demand for your idea. The second thing is Are you just going to go? Hey, they charge a hundred dollars and I'm gonna charge 99 and that's a reason to switch As a business owner myself and as someone who has to make decisions on things Prices a piece of the factor quality means a lot more to me Convenience, there's a lot of other things that go into it. It's not just hey They're a dollar less. I'm going over there or they're five dollars less. I'm going over here And I a lot of people look at that they say I'm gonna start a business because they charge too much There's a lot that goes into those charges and maybe they are too high Maybe they're not but if you don't have it if you want to do everything the exact same way as someone else But for less money stop and think about that for a second You're gonna work for less money. That's your business model I'm gonna do work hard for less money than the other guy doing it Not the best way to start off a business one of the things we focused on even with my company is Coming up with more innovative and effective ways to Implement things that makes a bigger difference to the bottom line I can under bid because we're doing things differently So my bid may come in less for a job Because we're doing the process differently. That's that's the better concept So I worked in corporate for a while and I've actually had my business since 2003 And so that makes it just about 14 years now And I've learned a lot over that, you know, the first assumption is I'm really good at tech Therefore people will just use me for my incredible skills and technology Doesn't work their way at all. Uh, it's really hard getting out there and networking people So we'll start with the basics and then I'll kind of roll into some of the details So the first basic is have a plan have it put together and that's Have something get there and don't base it on price better fact I am higher than some of my competitors on price. It's not about the price. Get that out of your head first It's about providing quality of service to a client and providing value to them and making sure they understand that value Which is more of a sales things now setting up the structure That varies from state to state country to country here in the u.s. Here in michigan I'm set up as a standard s-corp. That was the most advantageous to me. How do I know that? I contacted an accountant and we discussed what I'm doing and that's how we come up with that So first step is find a knowledgeable accountant or business attorney to set up your structure Make sure you set it up. Well, there's also plenty of reading you can do to understand how some of this works So go do some reading and so at least have a basic understanding of what is a balance sheet? What is a p&l statement? Some of your basic financial statements and then understand expenses and write-offs and how you track all that also Track all of it really really well. That's important being if you're not organized You're going to find yourself in a lot of problems, especially with that You can also outsource that there's a lot of full service accounting firms and I've meant some it guys who go Hey, I'm bad with some of this detail work So they use a full service accounting, which means they don't do their books at all They literally just bring everything to an accountant on a weekly monthly basis and for a fee You can have an accounting service completely take care of all of it for you I've even seen some people outsource their invoicing to an accountant Which is a little extreme to me But you can where you just focus on the work you have them send the billing and everything That's going to vary do some research ask some friends and kind of get that up So getting your business structure set up getting the accounting right from the beginning will save you a lot at the end Because I've seen some people they start making money doing a thing But they never really did the accounting and they find themselves by time they go man This business seems to be going really well. I've got all these customers and all this stuff I better see what my tax ramifications are and I find out they owe a ton of money Because they didn't file or structure anything right do it ahead of time. There's a little expense attached to it You know, they're they're not going to do it for free, but completely worth it So you start out on an organized base, you know, and when you start looking at business as a concept Whether you're running it yourself or you have employees it's so much Just organizing things and putting processes in place and then implementing that solution to a client So once you got to start with that big overview, then you can start working on the detail So I started out doing solo for a long time because it was easier I just simply hired contractors because contractors you kind of pay them as needed or you work as So to speak as a project management. I mean, this is really focused on IT As that's where my experience lies It does apply to some other businesses as I do know some I know an ad agency Friend of mine owns really really well and he has zero employees But he has a really really good job doing this or business doing this because he just knows all his His secret sauce is all the context So he pitches to get something done and he knows all the players to coordinate to make the thing happen for the Client and I do a lot of that in IT even still even though I have a staff right now And while I plan to keep adding more to them Even when I didn't have a staff it's all about coordinating and having that Rolodex Now, how do you meet all these people? That's important being real friendly in the industry I regret not starting youtube sooner reaching out sooner But I've been going to everything from conferences to meetups to Any event we have a couple local ones here. We have like these IT into d events I've been to plenty of hacker conferences in the area Linux conferences I'm always networking and reaching out to other technicians. I know a lot of people So it makes it really easy for me to say when someone says hey I need someone who does this or this and if it's outside of what I do No problem. I have a guy, you know, I know people that even work directly at the Linux foundation So having all these contexts really important now when you're starting out really hard You're gonna have to go hit all these events and go to all these events and start networking with people If you live in solitude behind the screen and just don't communicate Even if you do, you know, if you're good at online communication Great, but if you don't really network with people whether physically or virtually You're gonna have a really hard time with this. Uh, that's going to be one of your Hangups on there now. What groups you would belong to is going to vary a lot to meet all these people in the tech industry Search Linux users group computers users group. There's all pretty much everywhere in the US You're gonna find something on there. You can go on meetup and just start going to these also Go to some of the entrepreneurial meetups. That's helpful, too Because there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there and a lot of us are like me They want to help you they if you are putting effort into something I'm willing to help you as well. I consulted with several friends. I've helped several friends launch companies You'll find a lot of us one. We like talking about our business ask us questions We're like, hey, you're interested in me. Therefore. I like to talk about myself It sounds vain, but it really is people generally do that if if they're into business They're often willing to share with you how they started their business how they got started how they Did this or came up with this idea and that's an important aspect when it comes to the networking is discussing with them Now hiring staff is difficult. I won't lie. I've made mistakes. I'm going to make more mistakes There is no secret sauce to Uh, oh, yeah, you just hire like this and this is some process read a lot of books on it Um, I can probably link to a book list I've done But it's I don't know that there's one secret sauce type book I remember reading recently disrupt you. I thought was good. I read eon musk book Uh, I've read richard branson's books. I've read several of his and none of them have any Secret sauce a lot of them are just get out there and do it is part of the part of what it takes And the other part is uh, you're gonna make mistakes. Accept them. Uh, the term goes fail fast I like that fail fast move on. I've had employees. I've had to fire That's life. They decided to make some poor choices. I have to stick to my guns and Say, look, this is the rules here at this company. You file these rules or you cannot work here That's happened people didn't follow the rules. They didn't deliver on projects or they created drama for me That's a risk and that's something I had to deal with, you know other time people leave they move on That's something you have to deal with as well Please one of the things I can advise you is don't let any one person hold your company hostage I see a lot of that where people Build up like i'm the most available employee here and I seen that when I worked in corporate Some people thought they were the the key employee to make the entire company work Um, that's mistakes when you let employees kind of do too much then they do kind of own your business So do keep an eye on everything that's going on. I can advise you that Finding the right people one really hard two really really important. It's it's a double-edged sword It's one of the hardest things to do and it's also One of the most risky things so there's a lot of risk in trusting people But you do it if you don't do it someone else will and not everyone wants to run a business Some people like to have a paycheck and that's what they want to do That's great and you find the right people where you can find that balance where they're Motivated to work and willing to work for a paycheck and those are the people you hire There's not like I said at a secret sauce everyone's always looking for what's your secret I hear that all the time and I think when you catch people off the cuff. They just make something up What's your secret so much of it's a little bit of luck and I A lot of people may not want to admit it But there's a series of happenstance and luck now you have to be prepared for luck to happen You have to be going to all these events network with all these people putting all these videos Like I am right now on youtube There's like all these things you go out there and maybe they do or maybe they won't turn into anything You know people said oh, you're lucky with your podcast is doing this I'm like, uh, we Didn't get a call from a big company like microsoft to fly us out to do an interview until after we had spent a couple years Doing the podcast producing hundreds of episodes And then by chance a listener said hey I think you guys would be great to talk to these people at microsoft and connected us and next you know We're flying out to seattle and interviewing executives about stuff with microsoft on a linux podcast very interesting opportunity I didn't start the podcast Tony did And he put work a lot of effort into it and then I joined him and we all put a lot of effort into it but we put effort into it not with Like this goal that someone's going to call us we just put our hearts into it and that's so important about business You don't know if those opportunities are come up now if those opportunities come up You have to be prepared for that luck and I think that's something a lot of people kind of miss Is the luck that is involved or people just want to say i'm a self-made man i'm a self-made business person and Luck didn't it was all hard work. It's not i'm gonna be honest and a little humility here You have to be prepared so when an opportunity comes up That you are take advantage of it. There's no sure way to get these opportunities come up But I knew no if you do nothing there's no chance of you having an opportunity sitting on the couch Probably not gonna happen sitting on a Watch the tv all day going man, you know that person's successful. I wonder what their secret is It's just getting out there and then doing something If you have a deliverable to a client if you if you say i'm going to install this network You know things that we do you have to actually do the work and deliver That's something that maybe these people gloss over a little bit It's not just about out there handshaking making deals You have to deliver on whatever the promises you made for service and create that value for the client Now the other aspect that a lot of people are troubled with is the sales and I still after 14 years in business It's still not easy Literally, I've gone door to door to door. I've sent out just an absolute ton of cold emails to businesses. Hey I'm in the area. I do it services things like that. You have to be able to face rejection You have to be able to send out 200 emails and get maybe one reply that says no Thank you the rest of them. Just don't care and deleted it. That's life. That's business It's knocking on doors. Matter of fact some places because they know knocking on doors works They have banned knocking on doors in our area, which I think is kind of funny But going to these events. Hey, I'm time. I do computer services. How can I help you? Or start out with what is your business? Ask them that question start thinking of ways you can help them provide a solution for them There is no easy way around it. There's no secret sauce Now if you're building a app and the app has value, you know We look at the unicorns like snapchat or facebook and some of those companies And I see unicorns because there is a lot of hard work to it in there But they also took off and they work at scale. Those are different because those are not in person type companies So if you're in that category of company where you're trying to build an app and app catches on You know in games are like that too. You see a game like minecraft and it just does amazingly well It's a well-written game It's like this cool innovative idea and it turns into this massive phenomenon and programmer Did very very well with it. Those are probably exceptions to the knocking end door. I'm specifically referring to Service space companies, which is my category You have to get out there and that's one of the hardest parts now bidding Once you get the jobs you have to think about this before you go out there and do sales call Come up with some type of pricing structure And understand that there's no easy secret sauce for that people ask how much do you charge? I'm like one completely irrelevant because it's determined by the market an area you're in It's just like a housing price My house if you move it from different areas around the united states The price would be substantially more or substantially less depending on location That same thing goes with service industries. There's buildings here right where I am and just south of detroit buildings are expensive So my overhead is less The cost of living is substantially lower here in my city Therefore it we the overall cost of services goes down a little bit When you're in california, for example, when you're talking about just renting a house a small place for $3,000 a month With that level of cost of living plus the expense of everything else around you You have to pay someone a whole lot more and in turn your services costs a lot more So there's not anything I can really guide you with on pricing. It's kind of like learn market pricing for the industry you're in call around There's no easy way But do calculate that you're going to make money on whatever it is you're bidding don't bid just to get the job That just goes downhill fast. Don't underbid clients. I see people don't say i'm going to charge a lot I've been charged very little right now and i'm going to raise rates later. No, you're not that's going to Not do well for you. I see a lot of people doing that They just try to get the company by Underbidding everything and then when you try to raise rates the company's kind of And also you have the perception of you're just doing everything really cheap You're going to get the cheap customers who just expect everything to be cheap all the time And you're doing the service to your clients if you can't provide quality of service to them because you didn't charge them enough You're in a lot of trouble because you're not doing a quality service because you can't because the customer says my budget's like next to nothing So i'm just going to provide you Is little services I can and I see so many technicians get caught up in this and we take over a lot of IT contracts because The previous IT guy very unresponsive was the first problem They couldn't provide the services they said and one of them I met the guy. He's a super nice guy, but he's providing services for less than half of me But people really got and fed up with a lot of it because he said he's just not responsive anymore And they i'm like, hey, he can't be he tried to get everyone as a customer And tried to give them really good rates, which got him really busy But then he can't be responsive to the clients and he can't afford to pay anyone by the way And it's like when you say a rate of 120 or 130 an hour people think oh you're making 130 an hour No, there's a lot of things around me that that 130 hour all that ticks away at it So you have to charge a rate that just doesn't make you money It has to make the business money to pay for all the expenses of the business and pay payroll and pay for Licenses and insurance and all the little things that you need to have a business There's a lot of structure that comes with it Now that being said it's not impossible, but it is a daunting task So you have to have a passion for this you have to be focused and dedicated and those are probably Your biggest things your biggest asset is your focus and dedication You have to be willing to show up early Stay late do whatever it takes to make the things work now some people figured out really quickly I've met some business owners that kind of uh blow me away And uh this one guy I know he he always amazed me because he's able to run so many companies And he only puts a couple hours a day in each one He's just really really good with this is what I figured out after knowing him for almost 10 years Putting all the right people in place to run his company The guy has like a gift for finding people and putting him in place He owns industry across different industries He owns different companies from plumbing to automotive and the guy can't change a tire And he doesn't know exactly the idea where oil goes in the car But a lot of it is his concept of putting all the right people in places And that's such an important aspect of it. So it's not like you know You I say you have to work hard You have to either put the right people in place or be the right person yourself to do there And you have to spend a lot of time thinking about how to innovate the company further So I set up a lot of structure and a lot of things for my employees And that's an important thing. So you have they have a job description Somewhat we keep that loose here and but there's tasks. There's organization There's the things they have to do. There's an order to things There's processes and procedures of how we take care of clients Those as a business owner are really important to have in place So everyone follows those procedures And that is something you need to at least spend part of your time focusing on Now I'm not the external business owner like the other guy had mentioned I really love the hands-on approaches. I'm a complete geek at heart. So I love being hands on the keyboard doing some of this which is also why I outsourced my sales and hired Marvin for that and You know, it's about putting someone in place because he's got to go out there and close the deals and that's the Paperwork is my really weak point. Um, it's not that I don't have papers on my desk because I cleaned them for this I don't ever want papers on my desk because I don't like dealing with paperwork and stuff like that So when we've been a job, there's sometimes insurance coverage We have to have and lots of small logistical things Uh Now that I have grown my business enough. I've outsourced that I delegate that to other people And that's an important aspect of finding some of those things That you can delegate out. So you don't have to do them all yourself. So starting a business, like I said, it's not easy It's not just about hard work. It's so much about getting out there being known just Be at every event for us. It's like a team of commerce and Business associations and meetups and then for people I met for hiring go to tech meetups meet these people meet them in person Find interesting people. There's plenty of you know ways to connect with people Not one of them is better than the other But I say all of them is the approach depends on your industry But if you can be at every event, it's hard That's where a lot of the hard work comes in is doing that But it's where I met so many of the people some of my staff there are random people I went to the college and met some of the Uh people who went through some interns that's another place you can find people So I'm kind of done rambling for now. Uh, I didn't want to get too far off topic I wanted to make this video as a response to the question that comes up a lot about starting a business You know, it's a little different thing you think but it's it's worth it to me I love the freedom it gives me I love the that I can just come up with different ideas and implement them and servicing a client So I really enjoy it, uh, but it's not for everyone So if you're not willing to do this or you say, you know what I'm antisocial I just want to sit behind a keyboard and just do things that people give me to do Probably running a business isn't for you. Uh, you may just not like where you work Go get our job. You know, I'm sorry that maybe the business isn't your thing But if it is your thing, it's rewarding. It's fun. It's exciting I love doing it even though I'm here super early like I am now To do videos before anyone else comes in, but that's my passion and I'm really happy doing it So hopefully this helps if you have more questions. I'm love to answer them I've thought about doing maybe some more q&a videos. Send me stuff tweet me stuff I'm easy to get a hold of tom at launch systems.com. I'm going to start including my email and The description of youtube videos. I don't mind people reaching out to me I'm gonna ask me questions on this. I'm excited when I've helped people when I help my friend go through an entire Launching his company building it and then ultimately selling it. That was his goal He sold his business and went back to working a job, but he's happy He was happy the whole process. He had a lot of fun doing it And he loved what he did and his end game was to sell it So like I said, I'm willing to help people out as much as I can. I try to respond to all the emails I respond to majority of people at least even if it's not the complete answer I have a few people that have sent me some longer ones But I'm going to reply with this video to some of the business question ones and go through them But feel free to reach out to me and hopefully this video was helpful to you I feel like the content here like and subscribe if you want me to join videos like this I maybe have a whole category just for business stuff and maybe do some business q&a things Um, I'm very open about how we do all this. There's not like I said, no, I don't really want holy secrets Uh I like to help people out and it's you know I didn't really find a guide like this because I started my business before youtube started theirs So I'm trying to be very open and transparent how we do a lot of the things we do So hopefully can help you start your business and uh be successful. All right. Thanks for watching like the content here like and subscribe