Is Your Business Idea Any Good? Here’s How to Know

This is the first episode of our Zero to One series—designed for aspiring entrepreneurs who want to know the very first steps of getting started in business.

In this episode of the Unsexy Entrepreneurship Podcast, Charles Harris (CPA and firm founder) and Dr. Seth Jenson (PhD in business strategy) help you answer the essential question every founder must face: Is your business idea even worth pursuing?

We talk about:

• 🔍 Where good business ideas actually come from
• ⚠️ Why the “thinking stage” is a trap—and how to move beyond it
• 💡 How to identify real problems that people are willing to pay for
• 🧪 The $100 test: How to validate a business idea fast
• 🧱 The “X unlocks Y value for Z customers” framework
• 🚫 Why you don’t need an LLC before you need your first customer
• 📈 Why saturation is not the problem you think it is
• 🤖 How to use ChatGPT as your free business idea coach

If you’re tired of spinning your wheels and want to actually get started on a business that works—this is the episode for you.

everyone, welcome to the Unsexy Entrepreneurship Podcast. I am your host Charles Harris and I am joined as always by Seth Jensen. And today we have a really, really fun podcast for you. We're gonna talk about.

kind of is your idea even worth it? Because so far we've talked a lot about the principles of account, or of not accounting, you don't want to talk about accounting, the principles of entrepreneurship. And are you a personality right fit? But today we're going to start talking about ideas, implementation, we're going to get really into the nitty gritty going forward. And so this is actually the first week of what we're going to deem zero to one.

This is the first week of a zero to one program that we're gonna run for several different weeks and it'll probably be interspersed with other things as well. So if you're looking to start a business and then grow it to that first sale, next few weeks are gonna be really, really helpful for you. All right.

the exciting stuff.

This is where the fun happens.

this is the joys, right? This is where everyone gets excited, where you get that entrepreneurship fever, I think. Is that what Emeth calls it?

Yeah.

Alright, so Seth, where do you even come up with your idea?

Definitely.

So I strongly, strongly, strongly, strongly encourage everybody to look for ideas in their wheelhouse. So the best ideas tend to be ones that you've, you're solving a problem that you yourself have, right? There's a reason that most successful entrepreneurs tend to be in their 40s or that kind of stage of life. It's because they've had enough time to experience problems in their own industry.

and be so fed up that they're ready to go fix them themselves. And that's just a great formula because they know it, they've experienced it. They kind of already understand the context of the problem, all of that. And you'll save yourself so much headache if it's something that you're either very, very passionate about, you have some expertise in this area, or like I say, you've experienced it as you're trying to solve your own problem, so to speak. Because the alternative

Yeah, so last week

I went to a high school to help with an entrepreneurship accelerator program, which is really cool. Really awesome. I know, me too.

Yeah.

fun. That's the coolest thing ever. I wish I'd had that in high school. I mean, I know no high school students

sitting there being like, please give us an accounting, like intensive experience, but like.

No, it wasn't. It wasn't

accounting. was it was entrepreneurship focused. ⁓ And I didn't I didn't talk about accounting too much. I told people to raise their prices, but that's about it. But it was really funny because you're talking about issues that they've experienced that they can solve. And so. It was high schoolers, so you can imagine the ideas high schoolers came up with. But what I thought was really funny is that they were all very.

That's awesome.

Definitely.

focused on other high schoolers, which is awesome, but it's not a very high ticket market, shall we say. So it was really, really fun and I enjoyed it. But it's funny that you kind of have to work in the field. We've talked about expertise several times, but you kind of have to work in a field in order to know what the issues are, how it can be solved, what you can do to remedy them.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's definitely not only high schoolers that experience that. I work with lot of undergraduates and they all have the same ideas. They're all trying to build dating apps because that's something they experience. They're all trying to do parking because they hate parking on campus. And so that kind of, it's important to realize that like you, it needs to be something not just that you're passionate about or experience, but we're going to give you some other reasons or some other questions you should ask yourself before you make a dive.

Hahaha

into a particular direction because you might not be experiencing problems that people are willing to pay for it, right? And if you're a high school student, that's probably true. But the reason it is helpful if you've got that experience or that expertise or that passion is because A, it's going to be hard. And so if you're not passionate about it, you don't want to join this, you know, go on this very long journey and just get more and more miserable doing something that you're not interested in. And B,

because there's no alternative to becoming an expert in this space. Like you've really got to understand deeply this problem, the customers, the different stakeholders that are a part of it. And so if you don't bring that to the table at the offset, you're gonna have to do a lot of work to get there. And to be 100 % clear, you can get there. I like to use the example of Y Combinator founders. They'll often start like, I guess familiar with Y Combinator, do know Charlie about?

I'm

vaguely aware, why don't you give us a brief rundown?

So white comedy is kind like the Super Bowl of entrepreneurship. It's where all the top early stage startups come to receive funding and it's an accelerator experience. It's kind of three months of intensive building followed by a big demo day where they show off their fancy new businesses to investors and know, reek in the venture capital or re let's see, what's the word here? Reek in the venture capital. So.

Break it, yep.

Yeah, so like for example, Airbnb was a Y Combinator company, Stripe I believe, if not my head, is a Y Combinator company. lot of really big successful things that we take for granted today came from that kind of accelerator. So, but what people don't know is a lot of the time people will pivot in the middle of the accelerator. So they'll have signed up for the accelerator, been accepted to the accelerator with a certain idea, they'll realize it's a bad one, and then they've got only three months to pivot to something totally different.

Right.

And so they've got to become an expert in three months and it's a very intense environment. It's filled with go-getters. And so they usually hit the ground running and do a pretty good job kind of up-skilling themselves, teaching themselves the ropes in that particular industry or problem. So it can be done. But it's just a lot harder. It's more convenient and easier if it's something you're already aware of and passionate about. And so start there, you know, go through your experience first before you go try to solve.

orbital launches or some other country's accounting practices.

Yeah, world hunger isn't gonna

be solved in three months, probably. ⁓ A lot of people have been trying. So how do you know when to pivot and when not to?

Yeah, yeah.

Um, so I think we'll, I think we'll get there. That the, if you think about the stages of choosing a direction, um, there's kind of the thinking stage, which should very quickly become the doing stage. Um, but it's usually in that doing stage where you've got an idea and you're trying to have it meet reality and find out what you don't know about the idea that you're going to start finding reasons to pivot pretty quickly. So I think of pivot in that stage of, Hey,

you've kind of chosen a direction and now it's meeting reality and it's not looking as pretty or as lucrative as you thought. That's when you start kind of looking, go back to that thinking stage. But I hope you see that as we talk about these principles and throughout this series we do on zero to one, the thinking stage is not the real entrepreneurship stage. And I think that's really important to bring up. You want to be in that trying and pivoting stage as quickly as possible. So it's not just all in your head.

Thinking is not what entrepreneurs do. Entrepreneurs, they do look before they leap, but they've got to do the leaping or it's not really progress. It's kind of cheating ourselves. So I think that's important.

Yeah, too many people get hung

up on the thinking stage. Um, and I think we've talked about this before too. I'm sure everything we'll talk about from here on out. We've talked about, but what I see often is people get hung up and they'll say, I need insurance. need an LLC. I need this. need that, which is all true and long-term. Yes. Uh, but if you don't just try it, like you don't need an LLC. If you never actually sell anything, uh, you don't need, uh,

Definitely.

You know, like all of these extra steps are great, but I think we have them in reverse and thinking always does this to us. We think worst case scenario, what's gonna happen? What do I need to protect myself? But instead what we need to think is, can I even make a sale?

But we always forget like we have to make a sale before we can even get those things. And so I always kind of get mad at people when they're saying, I need an LLC, I need insurance. say, no, actually, does your business work? Can you make a sale? Start there.

Absolutely.

It's, you know, people hang out in the ideation stage. I hate the term, honestly. I wish it didn't exist, but you know, if you take any entrepreneurship class, they'll talk about ideation and people equate ideation as entrepreneurship and it's not. so yeah, all the programs I build, when I work with entrepreneurs, it's always get to that first sale as quickly as possible because you will learn more about your idea.

going on that journey to that first sale than any other possible route or theoretical exercise you can take. So there's useful tools out there. The business model canvas is helpful for someone to kind of structure their thoughts and things like that. But you've got to get out of the canvas and into the real world as soon as possible. So I'm glad that we started with that concept as we do this discussion because some of the things we're going to talk about sounds like a lot of thinking, but it's only

just giving you the legwork to get into the moving stage as soon as possible. And so kind of let's talk about that. like, how do you know if your idea is valuable? The reality is value is pretty simple. If you're solving somebody's problems or fulfilling somebody's desires, you're providing value to them. And that's all a business does. It fixes people's problems or it fulfills their desires. And so when I...

you know, teach my class at the beginning of the semester, I make people go sell $100 worth of something just so they see how easy it is to go fulfill people's desires or solve people's problems, right? You can literally knock on someone's door and say, hey, what's worth $100 to you today? Like, what can I do for you that will make you delighted to pay me $100? And almost everybody has it. Yes, it's terrifying, but it's awesome. It really shakes off the dust very quickly, kind of helps them realize what entrepreneurship is about.

boy, that's gotta be hard for undergrads. I'm trying to think.

⁓ but it also connects that principle for them of like, people have problems. People want stuff. I can provide it for them and they'll pay me. And as long as I can keep doing that, I've got a business. So it's not complicated. You don't need a crazy complicated idea. You don't have to be a genius. You just have to provide a valuable service that solves someone's problem or fulfills their desires. and so don't make it complicated. and there's a, there's a phrase that I use that, you know, mayor

Yeah.

Yeah.

It helps some people according to the way they think and for others it doesn't fit. So use this if you feel like it's a good fit for you. But I like to have them phrase, if we do X, it will unlock Y value for Z customers. So if I make a hoodie that's really thick material and feels like a warm hug, it will make people feel comfortable and stylish no matter where they go.

for young college-age kids or whatever it is that maybe deal with anxiety. Come up with that statement of like, I'm gonna do this, my product or service, it's gonna do this for these people and try to be as specific as you can because you've gotta know those elements really well. You've gotta know who your customer is. You're not gonna build something that makes everybody happy. There's no product that fills everyone's desires and you've gotta know specifically what it's gonna do.

Yeah, a weighted hoodie

would not work for me. But it is an interesting idea and I bet someone would buy a weighted hoodie.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. In fact, the reason I thought of that was American Giant. Literally, all they do is make hoodies, but they sell them for, you know, over $100. think their hoodies are like 150 on average, and they're only incrementally better than the ones you get at Walmart. But that incremental change is worth it a lot to people. The feel of it, right? And so it doesn't have to be crazy, doesn't have to be complicated, but they really, really understood their target demographic.

Mm-hmm.

Are they really?

Yeah.

and they knew exactly what buttons to push to make them delighted with their hoodies. So I own one of those over expensive hoodies and I'm happy to wear it. Yeah, there you go. So again, doesn't have to be complicated. You just have to provide value, fulfill desires. If I'm doing this, I'm going to unlock this value for these customers. And what that does, the reason I think it's useful writing that statement down,

little judgment from me, but I'm the cheap accountant.

is it forces you to consider your assumptions. Why do you think that's going to be an unlock for these customers? Like, why are you confident in that? What has to be true for this to be true? Like, kind of write down your sub assumptions and make sure you believe them. And then, like I say, we're going to talk about how to take those assumptions and start interacting with the real world and finding out whether it's true. I'm curious for you, Charlie, how much did you do in the thinking stage before?

Yeah, so I've.

launching your accounting firm.

very little. And I had a full-time job and kids and a wife and so there's only so much you can do to think, right? I've mentioned before like my unlock was talking to two different people and getting two referrals. That was pretty much my thinking stage. ⁓ It had the idea of accounting firm isn't novel. There are millions of people that do it. ⁓ Maybe. ⁓

Yeah.

Clear unlock, right? It's not complicated.

Maybe I guess you could argue that are there too many? Is it saturated? Is it not saturated? That was a concern. Boy, I thought about it during work one day when I was bored, listened to a podcast or two, and that was pretty much it. And then I talked to two different people I trusted and got those two referrals. so pretty minimal. Honestly, I probably should have done more thinking about it, but it didn't.

Yeah.

Once I'm an entrepreneur, once I get an idea in my head, it's hard to get me out of it. And so then I make stuff happen, which is I think why I'm a successful entrepreneur, but also, you know, can be a little risky. And so for those out there that understand that, I'm sorry. Sometimes you just have to do it. And so then it's decreasing the risk as much as you can, right? Which is why I kept my job. didn't just quit.

Yeah.

And did you think you have you ended up have your bread and butter clients been the same ones you thought they were going to be at the offset?

No, no. So I went in thinking I wanted business clients or businesses and that has remained the same.

But

the types of businesses is radically different than kind of your initial.

Types

of businesses is radically different. Once I got those two referrals, I started working with music schools and I still work with music schools. I love them dearly. If you're music school, please reach out to me. I'd love to help you, but I definitely.

had a different idea of what it would look like, what it would be, ⁓ different amount of clients that I would need, different softwares, different expenses, know, everything across the board. It was all wrong. It was all wrong.

Thank you.

And that's okay and that's why this is so important. Again, you do want to look before you leap, but if you just stay in that stage forever, you're gonna miss out on all the learnings because there's no business in the history of businesses that nailed their value proposition ex ante, like right out of the gates, right? Like I literally can't think of a single business and I've studied lots of them. They all adapt. They all find that product market fit that I'm sure we'll talk about a lot more later, but that kind of.

sweet spot that's right for their business. So the thinking stage is really just to set you up.

Yeah, so something I just want to,

I want to bring up one thing. I've read the book million dollar weekend. I think it's by Noah Kagan. I'm sure you've read it as well, but I, I loved his examples of very similar to your college students, right? Just sell something for X amount of dollars. and, and you said a hundred, he just said, Hey, just sell something. cause he gives the example in that book specifically around.

tacos I think and would you buy tacos from me and so he just texted 50 friends and they said sure I'll buy a taco from you I guess and no one was really excited but a few people said I'll buy a taco from you but what I really like is your taco shirt

But what I love about that is that Switch happened as he started trying to sell, as he tried to make money, right? And so I think that happens a lot and.

Yeah. You know, I think people have all heard the phrase like creativity loves constraint. And so really your value proposition is doing that for you. It's taking you from a space of the universe is my opportunity to, Hey, I think this is maybe a path that might be valuable. And then as soon as you start going down that path with that specific customer base, you're going to find even better things than you thought originally. Right. And so it's really giving you the ⁓ ramp to start moving and learning from.

from the real world. Now, I do want to say once you start meeting reality, you know, want to be scientific about it. You want to always be questioning your assumptions, not taking things that face value necessarily. Like be cognizant of your assumptions. There's some really great research out there that shows that the people that are most methodical in terms of thinking through, okay, this is what I'm doing for my customers. These are the assumptions that I'm making.

in building this business, they're attuned to the lessons reality is trying to teach them, right? So it's not that they're just being scientific and sitting in their office thinking about it, but as they confront reality, they're being really thoughtful about what they're learning and they're thinking about specific lessons that reality is trying to teach them about their business. So bring that kind of scientific approach to your experience, but that doesn't mean sitting and thinking, that means doing.

and being ⁓ open to the lessons that your customers, that reality, that ⁓ experience wants to teach you. So.

One thing that I think people, there's kind of two principles, especially in that thinking stage that I think are very important for people to understand. And as they bring it into the doing stage, they need to keep an eye out for it. The first is you want to be differentiated. You do not want to do things exactly like everyone's doing it. You don't want to be a competitor in the throng of services that are all doing basically the same stuff and chasing the exact same customers. You want to stand out.

Again, to use American Giant, not a sponsor, but the example that we've started with here, they really leaned heavily into, you don't want those flimsy sweaters that Hanes is giving you. You want something that feels like armor. As you walk through the city, it feels like you're being protected, that you're being hugged, that you're being, you're kind of bringing a castle with you everywhere you go, a safe place. And so they leaned really heavy into that, as well as kind of the ⁓ U.S. manufacturing, which...

I don't know if people care that much about it, but it's another really strong part of their identity that I think, at least for them, works. So you wanna be differentiated, and then you also wanna be solving urgent problems. I've heard it described as like mosquitoes versus shark bites, or vitamins versus vaccines. Actually, that's not vitamins, vaccines. It's not, it's a...

Maybe vitamins versus surgery would maybe be a good way to put it, right? You know, people don't care whether they skip their vitamins a day, but if they're bleeding out, they're really happy that there's an operating table ready to take them. And you know, people can ignore a mosquito bite, but when there's a shark bite, they're looking for solutions, right? So look for something that has a meaningful difference in your people's lives.

You

And you might say, well, Seth, that's different than what you just said with your sweatshirt example. But people care about the way they feel when they walk around and so, and what they wear, right? Like our clothing is a huge part of our identity. Obviously Charlie and I are fashionistas and our own, right? So we're the poster childs for that. But people feel really strongly about that jacket, right? Everyone's got that jacket that they're in love with.

Of course.

and that their like safety comfort jacket or that they wear out to date night or whatever. And so ⁓ if you've got something that's different and powerful and speaks to your customers, even a jacket can feel urgent and important to your customer base, specifically that specific customer base.

Mm-hmm.

Well, it's interesting you bring

this up because I see this all the time. I think accounting is really, really important and we will talk endlessly on on why accounting is important on this. I'm sure because it is. But what is interesting is when you meet business owners who don't care that they don't know their numbers.

or they don't know their revenues, they don't know their expenses, they just say, hey, I have money in my checking account, that's awesome, I don't really worry about anything else. And then you have the other extreme who say, I have to have an accountant because when I understood my numbers, I was able to balloon my business based on my understanding, right? And so you see both sides of it and then it's hard, I think.

Mm-hmm.

And I think there are ways to do this, but personally I would rather take the client that really needs it than the client who isn't convinced.

Yep. absolutely. And you bring up a great point and a good litmus test to know whether you've landed on that idea that's got legs is whether you can make an offer that your customers can't refuse. Like you should be able to articulate. No, this doesn't mean threaten them with with a gun or a cannoli. mean, I mean, being able to walk up to your customer and in one sentence.

Cough cough

You

have the most convincing reason for them to buy your product or service. And for an accountant, that's really easy to do because you're able to walk in knowing full well every business owner is filing their taxes. And so this like the classic accountant line is, hey, like I can save you thousands of dollars by doing your taxes this way, by doing your bookkeeping this way. Like I have a process that by hiring me, you will have X amount of thousands of dollars.

Yeah, my job is easy.

that you didn't have last year because you didn't hire me, right? Like that is compelling. That is urgent. That's a no brainer, right? And that's what you want. For me, have an accounting, sorry, a consulting practice where I work with universities and help them establish entrepreneurship centers. And I'm able to go in there and say, hey, I'm going to increase your alumni engagement. I'm going to increase your sponsorships and donations by 10 or plus million dollars. And I'm going to have student outcomes such that they're able to.

Yeah.

have incredible financial trajectories right out of school. Like, it's, I'm able to touch all the buttons for universities that are like, yeah, we're trying to solve alumni engagement, please do that for us. Yes, we're trying to fundraise, please do that for us. And yes, our students are begging for us to have more market oriented programming, please do that for us. And it's just easy. It's easy for me to say, you give me this much and I give you this much in return.

Yeah.

And we, think we have easy value propositions and I think a lot of businesses have a harder time. Um, like the weighted or a heavy blanket or heavy American giant. There we go. A heavy hoodie would not appeal to me at all. And I'd say that's great, but it's a hundred bucks. I can buy a Costco hoodie for 20. Like, and that's good enough for me.

Uh-huh.

And that's

because we're not their customers. That's the key, right? Because you're not going to be, you're not going to have that urgency with every customer. But if you show up to my sister-in-law who introduced us to American Giant and you tell her, hey, you love that weighted blanket feeling you have when you're at home watching TV. What if you could have that everywhere you go? The grocery store, the mall, everywhere you go.

Hahaha

everywhere you go.

Yes, that urgency's there. That clicks in a way that just is a strong visceral like, yep, that's easy. Here's 150 bucks. In fact, I'm gonna, I guess you guys, don't know who she is, so it's okay. But that family owns multiple American Giant hoodies, okay? Because it's, yeah, again, American Giant, come sponsor us. We've given you a lot of air time here. ⁓

Which is fine. I mean, that's that's. We'd love it. I would love

a weighted hoodie. I take it all back.

So that's the key is your urgency and the way you differentiate yourself isn't going to make sense to the world, but it has to be compelling and ⁓ obsession inducing in your specific customer client base. And that's when you know if you can articulate that very clearly, it means you've got you understand the value providing and to whom it means you've got a clear differentiation and it means that you've got urgency.

has to make sense to someone.

So work on on crafting that offer that they that they'd be stupid not to refuse make it easy for them to say yes And if you've got that all right get out of the thinking stage and now start selling that get that out to people And we'll talk in the future about different ways to go about that kind of validation Process in the real world But I think this is the exciting part and

and landing on these directions that excite you as a founder as well as this customer base is so much fun and what entrepreneurship is all about really. ⁓ Because if you find something that you're excited about, then making it a reality is gonna, it's not gonna feel like work, it's gonna feel like a passion, which is nice.

So another big holdup I see a lot and I think what held me up a long time from starting a business is I thought, there's already someone doing that. Is that a holdup? Because I've seen that a bunch of times where it's like, again, we're going to use the weighted hoodie. That's a really great idea. But American giant's doing that. There's no way that I can create another weighted hoodie that's going to sell.

Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, so it's a fantastic question. And there's a couple of responses that I think are really important to know. One, A, it's a good sign if there's already a market for it, because it means that people want to buy that already. And if there's no market for it, then the reward is higher and the risk is higher because maybe there's a reason. And again, if you can't identify substitutes for what you're doing, then you've got to go find out.

Hahaha

whether there's a market there, which just takes more time. So it's not a bad sign.

Well, and what I think is hard

about that too is if you don't have a market, you have to invent the market. Not only do you have to provide the product, but you have to inform people why they need the product.

Yep.

and how to interact with the product and all of these things. So again, the payoff can be huge, right? But if I love Airbnb as an example of just that, they really invented a way to travel the world and kind of hospitality. And it was a very slow burn. Before they became hugely successful, there were years of struggle because they had to do all of that kind of that lifting that you talked about. So it's definitely not a bad thing if there are competitors out there.

right.

Yeah.

The second thing to understand with that is channels make a business. that company is there. If they had sold a hoodie to everyone in the world already that wanted that hoodie, then yeah, maybe that's a problem, but you're going to differentiate yourself anyway. You can steal some of their business. That's fine. But the reality is for every one person that has found that hoodie that needs it, there's a thousand that don't. And so if you have got strong channels, whether that's your social media,

whether that's your retail, whether that's your selling it, farmers markets or art venues, whatever it might be, if you've got strong channels, they're gonna be in front of your hoodie instead of that competitor's hoodie, and you're gonna build a strong resilient business just fine. So channels make businesses just as much as good products do. And that allows you a lot of opportunity even if there's a lot of competitors in your space. Again,

Right.

There's a lot of people trying to be Google because Google's market is huge. And so if you can just get a slice of that, it's worth billions. So who cares whether, you know, there's already a Google. I want to be the third most successful competitor to Google and be worth a trillion dollars.

Yeah.

You

Right, well, and I always tell people you don't need as much as you think, right? Because we've talked about, we need to make sure we have enough money coming in and what is that magic number for us? And let's say it's $100,000. Let's say, so that would be less than you think. That's what, like 8,333 a month? Let's say you can sell a SaaS product for 10 bucks a month?

then you need 833 clients, which when you put it in that perspective, it shrinks it down to make it seem much more manageable. And then obviously you want to grow beyond that. But I, you know, there are so many successful businesses and sometimes we think, I can't become a successful business because I can't become a Google. can't become an Amazon. And that doesn't well, if it's your goal, then that's one thing. But for most of us, I think we

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

don't even need that to be our goal. would be happy with a piece, a small, small, small piece.

100%.

I love that insight because it's so true. And that's why getting to that doing stage is so important because you'll learn that lesson so fast. You'll be like, oh my, like again, your example, I love, we talk about all the time. You just mentioned that you're starting a firm to referrals, just fall out of the sky for you, right? And so once you do that doing stage, you'll be like, oh, it wasn't that hard to get our first customer. I just do this a hundred times and I've got a business, right? Like this is, you can literally play man to man coverage, so to speak, go knock on doors.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You

whatever it is in those early days and get really far into a productive company. ⁓

Yeah,

Gary Vee always says, if you're on the internet, you know who Gary Vee is. but he always says scale the unscalable to start. And I really liked that idea because yeah, you can't sell, a product to millions and millions of people by knocking doors, but you could sell power washing to 10 people by knocking doors. And if you can make 500 per 10.

or times 10 people, right? Suddenly you're looking at $5,000 and that's probably enough for a week, a two week timeframe. So it's just, it puts a lot more manageable when you think about scaling the unscalable.

Yeah.

And I love that phrase too. When I tell people that don't have ideas, that they've sat down and they're like, look, I've thought about my expertise, I thought about my experience, I honestly can't find anything super valuable that I'm passionate about, that's totally fine. Go find a rich person in your life. Someone that owns a company, right? There's somebody, you know somebody who knows somebody who you've got a warm enough connection with, you can sit down, take them to lunch, be like, okay, you own this company that does a lot of money every year, you're rich.

Yep.

what's a problem I can solve for you that's worth $100,000 to your company, right? Or even $20,000 to your company or 10,000, whatever makes sense for you. And it could be something as simple as, know, our landscaping people, you know, I own four office buildings in downtown and the landscaping people have left it a mess recently. Be like, great, I'm gonna give me a month and I'm gonna do your landscaping for your properties.

Yeah.

And you pay me 75 % of what you're paying them or do the same if they're not happy with them. You have them pay me the same. And literally just using that connection you have, you have a business they're just handing you. And again, that's not necessarily scalable, but that's totally fine. They can give you your first client just like that. And then you can go do it for the people down the street and the people across town and just slowly grow from there. And so it's it's really doesn't need to be complicated.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Value is just fulfilling someone's desires or solving a problem. And you don't even have to be the creative one to think of it. You can literally just have them hand you what they need done. And you can go from there.

you

Well, I always think it's interesting to most businesses we assume because we see the businesses that there is market or the market is saturated and impossible to break into. And I just firmly disagree with that at this point. I have seen too many businesses not deliver enough, not deliver well enough, fast enough.

or however it is that I think if you can come in and say, hey, we're going to be different in this way, that suddenly you'll gain a market. I I firmly believe that that's true. And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there are a few saturated markets that really are saturated.

Yeah.

You could maybe argue like real estate agents or something along those lines. ⁓ but I think nine times out of 10, if you just find a business that you're like, that looks fun. I could try that. Like just do it. Just do it.

Mm-hmm

⁓ And

you'll learn so much by doing it, right? You might find out, yeah, this is a crappy industry to be in. It's hard to get people to switch customers, but you'll only learn that by doing it. And you might find the opposite of like, wow, customers are falling out of the trees here. Like this is amazing. All I have to do is hire a few people and I'm off to the races. you can only find that out by doing.

Again, I feel like this is an example we're gonna give a bunch of times, but I love that there's this, I can't even remember which guru it was, but they were in a big auditorium and they said, hey, we're gonna have a competition. Everyone stand on your foot and close your eyes and whoever stands the longest on that one foot with their eyes closed wins. So they have a thousand people stand up. Finally, people are falling over, tipping over and there's a winner. And the guru's like, hey, how many people raise your hand if you actually thought you could win?

And it wasn't a thousand people, it was like 20 people that raised their hand that were like actually trying to win this silly competition. And so his point is like, your odds weren't one in a thousand, right? Your odds were one in 20. You were competing against the 20 people that were actually out there trying to solve the problems and do it. And that is so true. Again, if you look to your right and your left and you see all these competitors, just realize that there's not as many out there trying to hustle for customers as you think. And if you're willing to go,

differentiate yourself, get in front of customers, express that urgency. You can make things happen in incredibly saturated markets. Now we're not telling you to go chase saturated markets. By all means, go find those, yeah. But like, I think about Liquid Death recently, right? Have built this billion dollar brand selling literally sparkling water when there's already a thousand sparkling water companies out there, right? But they slap a sexy brand on it. They push really hard in the advertising.

No, Find the open ones.

They go hard, they've got a slightly better formula, and they built a billion dollar brand overnight, essentially. At least from the outside. We didn't see the grind, but... ⁓

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and even then I, I argue a lot of markets aren't as saturated as we think. And I would use liquid death as an example as well. When was the last time anything has happened or changed in the water market? Probably not since Dasani came out. Right. And so something had to change. and maybe not quite as too exciting.

Yeah.

nothing that we would consider super exciting, but Liquid Death came up with something new and innovative. And I think generally speaking, small businesses in the US, if you wanted to start one, the markets aren't as saturated as you think.

Yeah. Okay. I want to review kind of the things we've talked about and then talk about the secret weapon that we all have in this kind of early stage process. So we talked about value. We talked about it's simple. It's not complicated. It's providing, it's fulfilling desires or solving a problem for customers. That's all it is. so go find that thing that you're passionate, ideally in your wheelhouse that, that, unlocks that for, for people.

You want it to be differentiated. You want to be solving those problems in a way that's different and better than the other ways people are having them solved. And you also ideally want to look for things that are urgent. You don't want to go after hassles, right? You want to go after, you know, crises in people's lives. You want to go after the things that they're like, please take my money. Please solve this problem. You want them to be obsessed with you, not just lukewarm. So very simple. And then we talked about

Don't sit in this thinking stage long. Once you've got that offer that you think they're not going to be able to refuse, get out there and have reality test those assumptions for you. Learn the lessons and learn the context of that direction you've chosen as soon as possible so that you know whether to double down on it or kind of pivot. That being said, we all have the secret power in our pockets now of an AI business coach.

that would love to think through ideas with you. And I literally have an example from my own experience where I was working with these young entrepreneurs, three incredible women who have built something amazing just in the last year. But it all started with a jam session with ChatGPT. And they were just like, hey, give me a bunch of ideas in this industry that, you know, are able to produce this much revenue in the next five years. And ChatGPT did all the heavy lifting for them. It came up with ideas.

They had them rank them by revenue potential, by complexity, by customer acquisition, and literally they just had this incredible business coach and idea generator do a lot of the thinking for them. And it's magical. It's just so nice. Everyone's got this kind of infinitely patient partner to think through these things for them and go really deep in the minutia of these ideas.

It really is.

Hahaha.

Yeah. Well, what's nice to me too is I've even thrown businesses in there and websites and said, how much do you think that this business is earning? Right? So you can, let's say copy and paste American giant. Let's say they're a private company, so they're not public. So you can't have any records say, how much do you think they're earning a year? And

Boy, the estimates I think are really good. I've been shocked at how close they are compared to reality. And what's really helpful about that is that you can, again, iterate on these ideas. You can say, hey, there's this competitor. I want to be able to do this. Is there even a market for this? And have it break down. What's the difference between them and a Hanes hoodie? ⁓ And then what can you do to differentiate between that as well?

Yeah.

Yep.

Boy, I think AI was one of the best subscriptions I got since I've started my firm. So helpful.

Yeah.

And like in all things, remember, you know, it's not the gospel truth that you're getting out of AI, but it's a great way for you to start thinking through your assumptions with your business. Right. ⁓ And just a couple of different prompts that you can use just to get your mind thinking. Give it, have it generate a bunch of ideas in the industry that you're wanting to pursue. Have it tell you which ideas it thinks are best and why. Have it critique.

you

Right.

strengths and weaknesses of ideas, have it rank them by revenue potential, have it list potential competitors, and then like Charlie says, have it size those competitors, how much revenue or value they have. Ask it what assumptions are, like once you find an idea, have it critique that idea and have it spell out the assumptions that must be true for that idea to play out in the way you're hoping. Like.

Those are just some random ideas. There's so many different ways you can take it, but it's literally this free, super-powered resource you have in these early stages to do so much of the thought lifting for you, which is great.

Yeah, my only caution would be that it's always a cheerleader, as I've found. And so sometimes you have to ask it, tell me the real truth about this. Like, what's the negatives? Because sometimes it'll say, this is a great idea. Why didn't you do this sooner? yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Definitely.

You're such a fabulous entrepreneur. Look at that initiative you're taking. Yeah, no, it's

definitely true. It's only, I'm sure you can already get LLMs that are just like the high school basketball coach you're more comfortable with. They'll just shout at you as it answers your questions and belittle you. If you're into that, I'm sure there's that all ready for you. But yes, you want to use this as a way to sharpen your thinking, not a...

You

not just confirm your biases.

Awesome, I hope everyone's enjoyed the first week of zero to one. And so we're gonna go through the whole process from start to finish. This is really just how to come up with the business idea and if it's even worth pursuing and we're gonna keep going down this path. But thanks for listening to the Unsexy Entrepreneurship Podcast.