#89 - My 2025 Advice to All Entrepreneurs or Future Business Owners - An Advisement Session

Welcome to the Talk to People Podcast.

This is your host, Chris Miller.

This is episode 89, 11 shy of one century, 100 podcast episodes.

Today, I'm gonna start with some vocal warmups.

I slit a sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit.

That's a tough one.

Don't say it too quickly, or else there may be a sensor bar.

Today, we are going to talk about something that I haven't talked about, and that is what to do if you want to start a business.

Now, the reason why I'm sharing this podcast is for the past six months, I have been in a full-time job as a business advisor.

I have been advising new and existing business owners in their entrepreneurial journey.

Before that, I started a company of my own, and this company was in the podcast world.

And this company fell into my lap.

It wasn't something I intentionally sought out to start, but a client approached me, and I made a service after he approached me.

We agreed on a rate, and then boom, I was in business.

I've had that business for a little over two years now.

I wouldn't say that it has been a grand slam, but I would say that it has generated close to about $2,000 a month each month it's been alive.

So I take that as a success.

I could certainly make more money, but right now, I am content with what we've been able to do with that business.

So I want to talk to you.

If you've ever considered wanting to create a business, maybe you just newly started a business, maybe you have a business, and you want to take a little bit of time to work on the business instead of working in the business.

Maybe you're listening to this with no goal at all to ever start a business.

You don't want to take the entrepreneurial journey, but someone close to you does, or you simply like to help people when you get the chance.

You want to be able to add value if someone asks you a question.

So if anybody were to ever ask you a question about starting a business, if you listen to this podcast, you are going to know just a little bit more.

I'm going to start with a few questions that I want to ask you, and I want to take you on the journey of startup steps.

So if you do have a business idea, please put that business cap on right now, because we are going to work together to flesh out that idea.

The more we can do this, the better off you're going to be, because one of the things I've learned is that as you get started on a business, you may not stick to your plan.

Really, you may completely deviate from your plan, but it's better to get started thinking about it than just to sit there.

So let me read my notes.

First off, I want to say one thing real quickly, and that is business is very personal.

You cannot separate business from the personal life.

This is something I've learned from advising my clients.

If someone has an upcoming surgery, it's gonna affect their ability to be in business.

If they are getting their wisdom teeth removed, then they may be out for a day, and they won't be able to meet with their clients.

If they're going through a divorce, that emotion is going to weigh on them, and they may not show up to the business as fully as they'd like.

If they're incredibly lonely, in this podcast, we talk a lot about loneliness, and not having social connection.

If you don't feel socially fulfilled, you're not going to be as good at running a business as if you had social fulfillment and community.

So everything in your life is going to have an impact on your business.

That's another reason why I care about business and why I'm recording this podcast, is because business is deeply personal, and I want all of my listeners to have the best life they can have.

So let's talk a little bit more about business.

Second, in addition to business being extremely personal, the consequence of that is that it's extremely unique, and a lot of business owners run their businesses completely different than other business owners.

The way I run my business and some of the insights I have may not land with what you're working on.

You may be working in a completely different industry than me.

With that being said, there are truths and realities that exist across the board.

They are industry agnostic, personality agnostic.

These are things that will help you.

They will benefit you if you spend time with them, and if you neglect them, it will hurt you.

The first thing I want to ask you whenever you're starting a business, if you're thinking about starting a business, is what's your timeline?

When would you like to start this business?

When do you need to start this business?

Many times, have you heard this phrase?

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Many times we are put in a position to where we have to start something because we have no other way to provide for ourselves.

So we find ourselves bringing out the ideas of spray painting, bringing address numbers on curbs outside of people's houses and getting 20 bucks, or doing social media marketing for people that we don't really know, but we know they have a business with a little dispensable income, or going on and creating an Upwork profile or a Fiverr profile and just trying to make money.

Maybe you need to create a business quick, or maybe you're wanting to create it a little further down the road.

Maybe you have a full-time job and you have an aspiration to work on a business full-time and work for yourself.

Having knowledge of the timeline, when I'm advising someone is very important to me, because that's going to help me understand how much we need to be on the gas, how much of a runway we have, how much we can plan.

Sometimes we can't plan, and sometimes I'm just there and I'm going to take the jump with you, and I am just going to try my best to steer you to avoid tree branches, to avoid jagged rocks, and more than likely, we're going to incur many bruises, but hopefully no fatal bruises, none that are lethal.

So when would you like to start?

When do you need to start?

If we can figure out a timeline, if you're working on a business, and you can write down a timeline, I'd like to start at this certain date, I want to be full time at this certain date, that's going to be very helpful for us.

So first, I'd like you to do that.

And the second thing is, I want to know why you want to start a business.

Why are you wanting a change in your life?

I talked a little bit about necessity being the mother of invention.

So maybe it's something to where you absolutely need to, to provide for yourself.

Or maybe there are needs that aren't being met in your current life that you want to build a company to meet those needs in your future life.

Or maybe you are seeing pain, and you want to meet that pain and alleviate it with some type of solution.

Maybe you have a idea, and this idea has been gnawing on you, and you can't get hired in this industry where this idea is being actualized.

So you've decided the only way that you're going to be able to address it is if you do something on your own.

There's so many different reasons why people are building businesses.

But if we can get behind the why, it's very important.

Of course, I'm not the first one to say this.

Simon Sinek so eloquently talks about the importance of why.

I'd encourage you to look into his stuff if that fascinates you.

I also want to know why you, why are you the person who should be doing this?

Don't say I deserve it or don't say I just feel like I should.

Give me a little more than that.

In the business plan, we call this a management summary.

Tell me about the person who's going to be managing this.

Tell me about the person who's going to be operating this business.

What makes you uniquely qualified to do it?

You may not have something in mind, but I would encourage you to write why you're doing the business and why you.

My name is Chris.

I graduated with a few communication degrees.

I'm deeply passionate about social connection.

I've found myself constantly getting involved in people-facing jobs.

I even created a podcast that explores the ability to talk to people.

This podcast has been featured on Apple Podcast's homepage.

It's got thousands of listeners.

It's even done pretty well on YouTube.

Therefore, I think it's important for me to create another episode.

That's why I'm doing it.

Okay, I want to know why you're wanting to build your business.

And then the third thing, I have four questions here.

Just let me ask two more.

And I'm going to talk to you about something really important before you build a business that I hope will help you.

But the third thing is the what.

And this is being very specific about the product and service you're offering.

I could not tell you how many people I'm meeting with, I meet with on a daily basis, where they talk to me about their business.

But as soon as we uncover, we pull off the comforter, the first initial layer, that's all puffy and got floral designs and has that really nice sweatshirt texture.

And we pull that off and we realize that they're, it's opaque, you can't see through it, you have no idea what they're actually selling.

We have to be incredibly clear about our product and service.

And we have to be very clear on what it is not.

Because the world is way too big, and people are way too picky about what they invest in, about what they spend money on.

I'll give you a quick example with the podcast production business I have.

I started this business because a nonprofit leader approached me and said, hey, we have a podcast studio, but we don't know how to use it.

Do you think you could come out, take a tour and maybe check it out?

I had no idea what I was doing.

I had just used my podcast equipment, but I went out there and I looked around and I was like, yeah, sure, I could definitely show you what to do.

And they said, what if you teach the kids, the kids who are in the program?

You put on a little, what, an hour class for a couple of weeks in the month.

I did not have that service in mind until they mentioned it.

And I said, sure.

So then I had that service.

I did not have a rate set for that service.

So I had to go home and just pull out a number.

And I put that number down and I basically wrote out this little curriculum for the kids of four week, one hour session each week on how to podcast, how to use this equipment.

And I remember sitting down with the person who was leading the project and giving them my idea.

And they asked me how much, and I told them how much, and they said, that's it.

And in that moment, I'm thinking, not only did I not know the service, but now I'm wishing I had priced it higher as if I did know the service.

So it takes a while to figure out what specific product or service you have.

In that moment, my service, my product, was a month-long, four-hour, one-hour-a-week class.

I have never done that again.

I only did that for them.

And then I realized that if I wanted to make more money, I would actually need to produce podcasts for them rather than just teach them how to do it.

So, my next service was a two-month-long podcast production.

You're going to get eight episodes out of it, and I'm going to teach the kids how to do an internship.

And I was able to charge five times the amounts that I charged for the class.

And then the next nonprofit I came to, I decided I'm going to drop the whole internship thing, and I'm just going to approach their leadership and tell them, hey, I'll work with you.

I'll come up with a podcast idea for you.

We can come up with it together.

So we'll do a leadership session.

And then I'm going to create a roadmap for you of eight episodes, and then I'm going to show up and record them for you.

I'm going to edit them for you, and I'm going to publish them for you.

So my service has evolved just in those, that's just two clients, but three different services over two clients.

And since then it's changed even more.

My business model has gone away from doing the production for them and now just advising them.

So in the space of podcast production, those are three different things I could do.

I could teach kids how to produce podcasts.

I could show up and shoot, edit, publish, advise them on podcasts.

I could just be a podcast production consultant.

So those are three very different services under the podcast production company umbrella.

With all that being said, it's really important to be clear about what your specific product or service is, and what it's going to offer your client, and what it isn't.

So nowadays, I don't have the time to do the end-to-end podcast production.

I can't show up with cameras.

I can't tell you how to do it.

I can't do 50 takes with you.

I can't go back and edit and put music on and publish it everywhere and come up with all of the copy.

But I can't advise you on how to do all of that.

So I've changed my business model to be less end-to-end and more advising.

And that tells the client, okay, I can't do all this for you, but I can do this.

So if you want that, come to me.

So having that specificity and having that clarity is not only going to help you as you build your business, but it's gonna help all of your clients because they're gonna know who to come to.

And if they come to you and that's not something you do, hopefully you can direct them somewhere else that does do that.

And that's gonna give them a good impression of you, even though they weren't your direct client.

So be very specific about what your product or service is.

This typically takes some time.

I would encourage you to look at existing competitors to see what they're doing.

For instance, if you want to start a house cleaning company, look up house cleaning and look up your city.

And then look at their website, go to their services page, see how they talk about it.

Are they going to vacuum as well as clean off the baseboards as well as lift up furniture or organize for you, or do they not do any organizing and they just do service level cleaning?

Or there's so many different things within house cleaning, right, that you could figure out.

So look at your competitors, figure out what you don't want to do and what you do want to do, and compile that to make your services and your product.

Also in this, you can get very clever about having a valuable offer.

For instance, I could tell you, hey, I'm going to create a podcast for you.

Or I could be like, I'm going to give you the best practices for putting together an episode structure that's going to retain your audience's attention.

I'm going to advise you on how to do a content roadmap so that your content stays consistent with your mission.

I'm going to use professional audio and video equipment to capture high-quality digital assets that we can then edit into industry standard audio and 4K video.

There, I'm going to put and distribute your podcast on all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts.

All I'm just saying is I'm going to make a podcast for you.

But as we dwell on the specific product and service, and we think about what we're actually offering, then we can make it sound so much more valuable.

If I tell you, hey, I'm going to produce a podcast for you, you may be hard-pressed to spend a couple grand on it.

But if I give you that long, big, chunked-up description, that's like $10,000 for all of that for my company, that's a steal, right?

So specificity helps so much.

And then lastly, how?

How do you want to go about this?

This is the operations and the business plan.

Do you want to be a podcast production company that just services local companies?

Do you care a lot about that in-person aspect?

Do you want to join the Chamber of Commerce and get involved with nonprofit boards so you can brush elbows with other business leaders and get referrals?

Or do you want to be virtual?

Do you want to market on Instagram ads, create LinkedIn ads?

Do you want to have a client in San Diego and a client in Spokane, Washington, and a client in Rhode Island?

What do you want to do?

How do you want to do it?

Because that's typically the question that comes after.

It's like, here's what I do.

I make grilled cheeses, and here's how I do it.

I use a blowtorch.

Oh, wow.

That's unique.

So when we look at your business idea, whenever you're approaching becoming an entrepreneur and starting something new, I want you to be thinking about your timeline, when you want to do it or when you need to do it.

Write that down, and then let's reverse engineer.

If it's eight months from now, let's reverse engineer what you need to do in eight months to get there, and let's start with this next month.

Tell me why you want to do it, and tell me why you should be the one doing it.

Then I want you to tell me what specifically you're doing, what product or service you're offering, and what you're not offering.

If you're a personal trainer, are you offering open gym?

Can I come to your gym even if you're not training me?

Or is it just like a concierge service, you'll be side by side, elbow to elbow, training me, but there's no free play for me, right?

That's two different things, but it's both in personal training.

And then tell me how.

If you are a personal trainer, are you going to be training me virtually?

Are you going to create a workout plan for me?

And then let me go to the gym.

Are you going to be right there counting my reps?

How are you going to do it?

Those are four questions that are going to help you as you build your business.

Now I want to quickly share with you a tool that I've learned, I've been taught, with the advisement center that I'm working with, and it's been incredibly helpful.

So shout out to my team.

They're awesome.

But they like to look at businesses with three M's.

These three M's we're going to look at are money, management, and market.

These three M's are so valuable, and we need to reflect on them before we pull the trigger.

The first one is money.

Money, it takes money to start a business.

Even the leanest business is going to take a little bit of money.

And you may say, Chris, I'm just going to tell people how to live about our life.

I'm going to be meeting up with them, sit with them at a picnic table, just ask them about their marriage, help them not get a divorce, and they're going to give me $100.

What do I have to pay for?

Well, ultimately, you're going to have to pay for something, right?

It may be your time.

It may be the gas.

It may be the car to get there.

It may be the book to figure out that information.

It may be the processing fee whenever they Venmo you and you do a direct deposit to your account.

There's something there.

But as we get more into business, you're going to need to invest in your infrastructure and your bookkeeping and your ability to invoice.

Maybe you want to hire somebody.

Maybe you want to invest in equipment.

Maybe you want to build that business website.

You need to have the money.

So the M is very important.

The money is how can we get the money to not only create what we want to do, but give ourselves some working capital.

On the lean side, this is three months of operational costs.

And then on the more planning conservative side, this is six months of operational costs.

Whenever you start a business, it's not going to be booming immediately.

More than likely, you're going to have increased costs, such as increased advertising, a rental deposit, startup costs.

Whenever you start your website, whenever you invest in equipment, it's going to take some money.

So we want to figure out that money figure, how much money you need to get started.

There's this idea of the MVP, the minimal viable product.

This is the leanest thing you can do to be operational in your business.

So if you're doing a lawn care business, it may be getting a push mower, getting a really cheap weed eater, and getting a broom, right?

Like that's all you need, and you can start cutting yards.

Now, once you start cutting more yards, you can get the riding mower, then you can get the blower.

You don't need the broom.

You can get other things.

But how much money do you need?

And you can bootstrap your business.

You can do it all yourself.

You can save up this money.

Like my friend Zach, he has a law firm.

He bootstrapped it.

He worked for a long time.

He had this business in mind.

Every month, he put money away.

And then finally, he broke the golden handcuffs, ripped the parachute, jumped, and now his firm is doing well.

He took that risk.

He bootstrapped.

He invested.

He paid for it himself.

Sometimes you're going to get a bank loan.

It's not bad to get a bank loan.

Some people don't want to do it.

Some people are cool with it.

If you're able to pay off the bank loan and if the money is going to help you get more equipment or going to help you earn more money, then it can be a smart money move.

But in order to get a bank loan, you're going to need a business plan and you're going to need cash flow projections, typically for about three years, month by month.

So you're saying in the next three years, here's all the money I'm going to make and here's all my expenses.

And ideally, it'd be great for you to have existing financials.

So to be able to say, here's all the money I've made, here's all the expenses I've had to pay.

The most important thing in getting a bank loan is establishing a relationship with the banker, the commercial loan officer.

If you could just show up to the bank that you already have an account at, tell them about your business idea before even going for the loan, talk to them because if they know you, then they're going to be more likely to give you a loan.

If you don't want to get a loan, then save up some money.

Investors can be tricky.

Investors are like your wife or your husband.

It's who you marry for the most part because they're going to be with you and the company for a pretty long time, especially depending on how you set up that deal.

So you need to be very picky about investors unless you get like a super good deal and you really don't care about the business and you're just trying to get money.

And if that was the case, I'd probably advise you not to do it at all.

Okay, so money matters.

So let's think about the money.

The second thing we want to look at is management.

Can you get the person in charge?

Or can we get management to lead the thing?

It can be you or it can be other people.

But are we able to get people behind the wheel, driving the car to get it where it needs to be?

This is so important because oftentimes we'll have visions or dreams, but we're not able to get the people in the right seat.

We're not able to do it on our own.

We're scared to branch out.

Maybe it's something we could do, but we can't educate ourselves.

Management is so important.

It's crucial.

It's a people question, and it's something we need to reflect on.

Honestly, it's something I need to educate myself on more because I feel like it is the M that I am the weakest in in explaining.

But I imagine you understand why it's important for us to say, Who's going to run this thing?

And are they qualified to do it?

And then the last is market.

So the first M we have is money.

Money matters.

The second M we have is management.

Who's going to run this thing?

And the third M we have is market.

And market is, are we able to find the people out there to buy the product or service we have at the desired rate we want?

There's a lot of nuances there, right?

First, we have to go out there and find the people.

Are the people there?

Is there demand for your product?

The second thing is, are they willing to buy this product or service?

Are they willing to invest in it?

Is there enough pain there that they're willing to separate or give away some of their money to alleviate this certain pain?

And are they willing to do it at your desired rate?

Is it going to be enough money for you to not only break even but make a little profit?

This is a really big question.

What's the market?

Within market, you have the industry, and the industry is the big thing overall, the big players, it's the big competitors, it's whenever big things happen, like the tariffs, and it changes the cost of goods, and supply chain constricts, and all of a sudden, you're having to figure out fulfillment.

But then there's the market, the actual people who are buying the product, the psychographics, what drives people to the purchase decision.

Why are people making podcasts now?

Is it because they see the Haak Tua girl on TikTok, and they want to be like her and have all of the fame and get paid $50,000 to show up to the bar?

Or is there a resurgence of young people going to church, and they feel a conviction on their hearts to get a microphone and preach the gospel?

Two very different things, two very different behaviors that would draw someone to pay for someone to produce a podcast.

But that's the market.

So we need to take some time to reflect, are there people out there who are willing to pay the price for your product or service?

Market.

Is there someone who can run it?

Can you run it?

Management.

Can you get the money to pay for all you need to start it up and to cover yourself from when times are lean?

Because they will be.

I've been there.

It's really hard.

And then real quick, before we go, I want to talk to you about a business plan.

A business plan is a tool that I recommend close to every business owner have, and it's going to be an outline of how to get your business up and running, why you're getting your business up and running.

It's going to have a few main sections.

It'll have an executive summary, and it's going to be a high level view of what the business is, what it specifically offers, why you're starting it, who you are, how much money you need, and your projections for like the first three years.

And then it's going to have a description of the company, how the company is structured, what the company does, where it's based.

It's going to have a description of your specific products and services.

It's going to have a market analysis.

So looking at the data, are there people there who are your target customers?

For instance, if we are selling test prep, then we could be selling to parents of high schoolers who want to take the ACT or the SAT, or we could be selling to graduate students who want to take the MCAT, or undergrad students who want to take the MCAT, or we could be selling it to working professionals who want to have a career change.

So they want to go from their data entry job to become an accountant.

So in order for them to take that test, they need test prep.

Those are three different target segments, and with that in mind, we're going to advertise to them differently.

We are going to advertise to the parents of the high school seniors who need to have test prep for the SAT.

The way we're going to advertise to them is through the PTA.

It's through high school athletics.

It's through being on Facebook and being in neighborhood groups.

The way we're going to advertise to the college student who wants to take the MCAT, or wants to take the bar exam, wants to take the GRE.

We're going to advertise to them by partnering with school counselors, by partnering with advisors, by showing up to industry-specific trade fairs at the school, by showing up to YouTube.

Like I'm thinking about Ali Abdaal.

He created this test prep for the MCAT.

YouTube videos, that would be a perfect sponsorship for us.

And then how do we market to the professional who wants to have a career transition?

Well, we're going to have to figure out who's searching up dissatisfied with their job, who's searching up Learn Accounting for free, who's searching up all of these things, right?

Like three different target segments, target markets, target customers, three different ways to get to them.

So that's market analysis.

The next section is going to be our marketing strategy or our marketing plan.

This is how we're actually going to get to those people.

Are we going to be using TikTok?

We're going to be doing in-person business development.

We're going to be using billboards, you name it.

Then we're going to have operations, how we're going to do it, what the workflow looks like, what's our method of delivery?

Do we have factories?

Are we going to be doing it virtually in person?

You name it.

Then there's going to be human resources.

Who you need to hire.

Whenever this grows, how are you going to hire?

What's the manager need to have?

And then we're going to have our financials.

The financials is all of the money that we need.

What's the costs look like?

How much money is looking like?

So it starts off with your executive summary.

It goes to the description of your company and the description of your product.

It goes to a market analysis, the data about the existing market.

It goes to marketing strategy, how you're going to target and market to your customers.

It goes to operations.

How you're going to fulfill your service or your business.

It goes to human resources.

Who are you going to get in the right shares to make this possible?

And then it goes to financials.

So money, money, money, money matters.

After that, you could have a table, like an appendix of other things in there.

You could include your financials, but that's a business plan.

So it's going to be very helpful for you.

It's going to help you get a bank loan if you ever want one.

It's going to help you get investors if you ever want them.

It's going to help you have people join your company if you ever want, and it's going to help you come up with job postings if you ever want to hire somebody.

It'll help remind you while you're in this race.

It's a very important thing.

So if you ever want help on that, reach out to me.

But I hope this was helpful to you.

I know this was much different, but I just need to get rolling in the podcast world.

And one of the best ways to do that is to start talking and hit record.

So I'm doing that now.

I've hit record.

I'm on the microphone.

I'm in front of the camera.

Thank you for listening.

Feel free to reach out to me at any time at Talk to People Podcast at gmail.com.

Remember, life is better when you talk to people, and I'll see you next time, folks.