Looking For A Get Rich Quick Business Idea? Here’s What You Should Be Doing Instead
I was listening to a podcast the other day, On Purpose, by Jay Shetty.
His guest for the episode, Will Smith, shared a question he had asked his dad: “how do you build a brick wall?” The response? A brick a day.
If you expect to build a unicorn overnight, and by overnight, I am referring to within a year or two, I would recommend you adjust your expectations. While it is easier to start a business now more than ever with the help of the Internet, template websites, and a Shopify plugin, that’s not the end of it.
A friend and I were chatting the other day. After much debate about entrepreneurship qualities, we realized that entrepreneurs require some level of delusion to stay optimistic about the goal they are pursuing for the future while also being realistic about what’s achievable given the resources they have in the present. So you have to figure out how to get from Point A (the present) to Point B (your dream goal).
Aspiring to build a business with your team? There will be many steps and inflection points along the way, you will need grit to get there.
Entrepreneurs have to be realistic about what is and delusional about what can be.
Delusion has a negative connotation, but it’s the mind’s effort in keeping the dream alive.
Another conversation I had this week helped me realize that where I am now is the culmination of all the years I’ve invested into different businesses and roles; I took all of the learnings from those experiences and applied them to the present, which are skills used to “build my future.”
Even for my business today, a marketing agency I run, it took close to 9 years for me to grow it from a solo consultancy into a 10-person company. It wasn’t easy, and I had many sleepless nights, finger-biting moments, full-on stress-induced cry sessions. Ask any entrepreneur who has endured years in their business, and they would have similar stories to share. The good news is, it gets better, but you have to stick with it. The sticking with it part is what most people don’t have the endurance for. If you’ve read the book “Grit” by Angela Duckworth, you would know.
Entrepreneurs need to root their dreams in a reality.
A QUICK STORY ON GRIT
Let me share a quick story from my first business, which apparently was the world’s first online peer-to-peer currency exchange we launched in 2007.
I knew nothing. That’s actually a great starting point for an entrepreneur because you also don’t know the rules when you know nothing. We had rolled out the service initially targeting the student audience, proposing that we save them 80% in service fees instead of exchanging their money at a bank. 80%! That sounds like a big number. But when you are a student, you don’t have much money to exchange, so on a $500 exchange transaction, their fees may be about 4% or $20 (back then, the spreads were higher, and rates were less competitive). Online financial services and online banking were new services for early adopters at the time, and saving $16 wasn’t enough to make students risk exposing their online information online. (“My money on the internet?! What if it gets lost?!”)
It was a big blow to us when our key audience didn’t seem excited about our value proposition. So, what did I do? We pivoted. Not the type where you’re selling sushi and suddenly selling tacos type of totally irrelevant pivot, but we realized it was the target audience that needed to change.
Our value proposition to students didn’t address a big enough consumer pain, but for another group, our technology could save them thousands on every transaction. Our primary target audience, and eventual customers, shifted to focus on Small Business owners. Why? Because a lot of them earned revenue in USD and had expenses in CAD to pay for staff. This unique arrangement with our “neighbouring” businesses in the United States became the differentiator for our currency exchange business. Let’s do the math about why this consumer pain is big enough to make business owners take action. We defined our small business owners as those with less than $5M in revenue each year but with a significant portion of that coming in the form of USD. Each transaction was roughly USD 100K to CAD. On this amount, if they were paying 3%, we would save them 80% of this fee, which is $2400 per transaction. Now that is a much bigger pain.
The point is, I had to make a change like this to address a business issue, and over the years, I had to make more pivots like this one, but still intending to improve currency exchange rates for the consumer.
Every day is a chance to hone your skills
A BRICK A DAY — You’ve got to put in the work
Yes, this is an “old school” way of thinking about how one goes about building a career, but that is the story for most people. Most people don’t build a unicorn, and even for some that do, it’s built upon their foundation of many years of expertise. Years spent in the trenches, learning, doing the legwork — you know, before they were rich and famous.
Let’s bring this back to the “brick a day” concept. We’ve established that building a career (or a business) takes work. Many years of work. What you do each day leading up to you attaining your goal, whether becoming an actor, artist, business owner, writer, or whatever you choose, must set aside time every day to build on your foundation for that goal.
Your first, second, even twentieth recording may not be your first hit, but it’s the collective experience of all the years of practicing that will eventually get you there.
Want to become a great writer? Maybe start by reading literary works of other renowned authors each day. Learn from the best, and then create your own style.
Want to become a great artist? Paint, sketch, and create every day. Visit galleries to get inspired by the works of others.
Want to be a great cook? They say never trust a skinny chef, so you know what you should be doing — cooking and eating every day!
You can get started now, but you can’t get from here to there without putting in the work.
A brick a day.
