Noah Kagan
People often say they want to start a business, but they don’t have an idea.
I think ideas are bullshit.
That’s a hot take.
Ideas are bullshit! There’s so many articles out there with business ideas, so how come more people haven’t become millionaires? The reality is, the idea isn’t the problem. The person is afraid—that’s the problem. They’re not prepared to ask people to be their customer, or to be their employee, or to give them feedback. Instead of thinking about ideas, think about problems. Get excited about problems you can solve for people.
You can do this in a weekend?
Entrepreneurship is a skill that’s developed. The more you practice it, the better it gets. If you’re thinking about a business, what are the things you can do right now? Let’s say you’re good at email marketing. Is there one person you can contact right now and say, “I went through your emails. Here’s three things you could change. Want to be one of my first customers?”
You just need to be comfortable doing it.
That’s the fundamentals of business. All the billionaires I’ve interviewed or worked for—a lot of them say the best skill is sales. And what is sales? It’s an ask.
What if you’re comfortable pitching, but worried about pitching the same people over and over?
Number one, I call it the “survey-to-sale” method. Communicate with people through a survey, ask them about themselves, and learn the problems they have. If you can help solve their problem, aren’t they excited to give you money for helping?
If you’re concerned about annoying people, don’t bother all of them. Just talk to some. If you have a 100-person email list, get on the phone or send a sale to 10 of them. If all 10 buy, great. Roll it out to more. If they don’t, try something else.
It seems like your message is: Don’t get caught up in what you need later, because there’s a lot to do now.
The reality is, there’s a lot of really dumb people making a lot of money. Very, very dumb. These people are no better than you. The only difference is that they just started, and eventually they got there. You should realize that, “Huh, I can do this, too.” You don’t need any investor, you don’t need any cofounder, you just need a weekend and the willingness to face yourself.
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