Concept to business

Matt Henderson (00:00):
Hey everyone, welcome back to The Business Mind podcast. This is Matt. Today I want to talk about just getting to the next step. …

Matt Henderson (00:11):
[Inaudible 00:00:11] Matt from The Business Mind podcast. I just wanted to let you know a quick little tip. So the way that I’ve been doing all these podcasts is this cool app or you can get it on your desktop, as well. It’s called anchor.fm. It’s got to be the easiest way to make a podcast because they give you everything you need in one place and they do it for free. So it’s pretty awesome because I’m currently doing all this right from my phone, but when I’m at home and I have a few minutes, I pop on the computer and it’s got so many awesome tools and everything to edit. And you can do sound effects and all sorts of other really cool things that I haven’t been taking advantage of. But I suggest that you do.

Matt Henderson (00:50):
They even distribute the podcast for me. I don’t have to figure out where to put it. They popped it on Spotify for me. You can get it on the Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, and a whole bunch of others. But the nicest part is, while you’re getting your podcast out there, you can also monetize and you can easily make a little bit of money from doing the podcast with minimal listenership. So get online, download the Anchor app on your phone. Or you can go to anchor.fm and you can get started on today. All right, so check it out. Once again, Matt, from The Business Mind podcast. So excited that you guys decided to take the time and listen. And when you’re ready to get your podcast going, check out the anchor.fm. Again, Matt from The Business Mind podcast, have a great day.

Matt Henderson (01:38):
Okay, so today what I want to talk to you about is how you actually get going. So we’ve been going through the whole process, how I got to learning, how you start to understand the process, how you start to take in all the information that you want so that you can turn and use it to grow yourself, grow your business, grow your new idea, whatever it is for you. So how do you take it from the knowledge base to bringing things to fruition? Like how do you actually get to those steps and get to the point that you’re creating something?

Matt Henderson (02:14):
Well, I would say at the start of this, I had an idea. I had done it a certain way in the past and then I’m going to tell you how I did it this time. So in the past, I’m an entrepreneur. I got excited about ideas and I tend to hit the ground running and go after them, basically driving at about 150 miles an hour, all the time. And if you’re an entrepreneur, you probably understand what I mean. You get this idea in your head of something that is fantastic, something that’s going to be your new thing, your new job, your new business, whatever you want to call it. And then you get to the point where you say, “All right, I’m doing this. Let’s go.” And for me, that’s usually in a couple of weeks or so that it gets that excited and I’m ready to just build the next thing.

Matt Henderson (03:03):
Well, this time I did it a little differently. And I’m going to tell you what I thought about this, how it worked out, and why I think it’s a better method. So this time with digital marketing, I knew it was a different size business than anything I’ve been currently creating. So in the past, I had an idea for something that was neat, maybe a product or … and it has been a business in the past. And then I decided to try and grow them from there. And what I would do is I’d get an LLC opened up or whatever type of business I was forming. And I would just, boom, this thing was right out there and going and you get business cards and you put up a website or whatever your method is.

Matt Henderson (03:44):
Well, this time what I did was the exact opposite. So this time I decided to continue learning, continue growing myself, figure out every single step that I need to figure out here. And I’m not saying overdo it or over figure things out. But I’m definitely saying, taking all of the steps prior to opening the business. Meaning I actually locked in my first client prior to even having my LLC and business open yet.

Matt Henderson (04:16):
Now a little bit risky in the sense that you do have to collect payments from people at some point. So if you want to collect payments, you’re going to need a bank account and something to cash your checks in. So, I was lucky that the people were willing to work with me on a personal level and just write a check to me personally to get started. And I thought that was fine with me to just get it going. And I wanted to prove the concept first. And that’s exactly what I did here, I proved the concept. And now what I did last week was I got my LLC started and then I’m ready to take on larger, bigger clients, start processing checks and do the whole bank thing.

Matt Henderson (04:57):
Now, what was the difference between the first method and this method? Well, obviously both I aggressively went at. One, I maybe put the cart a little bit before the horse. But the big thing that I learned from this was I actually proved the whole concept first. I didn’t say, “Sell a flashlight to somebody because I opened the flashlight business.” And then decide, “Okay, well one is sold and I’m good to go.” This is a service business that I’m doing. So I actually have to service customers and figure out like, do they like what I’m doing? Do they like my offerings? Is it enough? Is it too much? Are there margins there for all of that?

Matt Henderson (05:36):
But I was able to figure that out now prior to getting everything going. And then I just went for it. But how did I take this all from learning and making decisions like, “Oh, okay. Digital marketing’s my thing. Making decisions about what it is and how I want to attack a business with all the things that I have learned.” To actually go after that first client. Well, this is how I did it. This is a huge secret, so get out of pen and paper. You’re going to have to write this down. I’m going to give you a second. Okay. Are you all set?

Matt Henderson (06:15):
I just took one step. That was it. One step. And as I talked about in previous podcasts, a lot of the stuff was uncomfortable. A lot of the time that I spent doing this entire thing so far was uncomfortable. There were a lot of moments I felt, “I don’t know if I can do this.” And you know what those moments were? They were the moments I was right on the cusp of figuring out the next thing that would get me over the hump. And most people, what they do is, they say, “This is difficult, I don’t understand.” And you walk away from it all. But I didn’t. I didn’t do that, I took the exact opposite approach. I felt that uncomfortable in this and you know what I did? I doubled down on it. I said, “Okay, great. Now I know like this is definitely the right way to go because I wouldn’t feel this uncomfortable if it wasn’t. If I wasn’t growing up, I wouldn’t feel this uncomfortable.”

Matt Henderson (06:15):
So I just went for it and I take the next step. Just one little step at a time. And it’s every single day I’m taking a step. It’s not, I’ll sprint for a quarter of a mile and then walk the rest. Nope. I’m sprinting for the whole mile. And then I keep taking another step after that. That’s how this is going. I’m not trying to tell you, this is the only way to get things done. I’m not saying this is the be all and end all. I’m saying this is 100% a fool proof plan that works for everyone. You just keep taking the next step. One more step forward. That’s all you have to do. Take one step.

Matt Henderson (07:53):
So today, if you’ve been doing your learning and you’ve been following everything that I’ve been talking about on this podcast, you know what you could do today? Is just take the next step towards starting your business. Or if you already know what you want to do, maybe take the next step on reaching out to that first client. Or wherever you’re at today, if you see someone and you’re going into an appointment with somebody and you’re having somebody come over to take a tree down in your yard. And you want to talk to them about their tree service and how it works and do they have everything they need, maybe you’re … I don’t know, maybe you do payroll. And you want to start a payroll company and you’ve got these people on your property, you’ve called them to do a tree service for you. Ask them if they’ve got a payroll company. Take the step, take that first step. That’s what we’re doing.

Matt Henderson (08:46):
Literally, that is how I’m getting through this. That’s how I’m growing. That’s how I’m getting not just my first client, but hopefully my second client and third client this week. And I went from just education to concept, to proving a concept, to now grabbing multiple clients along the way. And that’s the key. It isn’t some huge thing, it isn’t … I’ll be honest, I’m a business person. I went to school for business, I believe in all of this. But I’m going to be honest with you, you don’t necessarily need to put out this huge long business plan that spells out the next 10 years of your life and how your business is going to grow. Because I’ll be honest with you, I’ve seen and written business plans and you know what they are? They’re bullshit. Sorry, everybody. Don’t mean to use language, but that’s what it is.

Matt Henderson (09:48):
They are a concept of where you think this idea of yours can go. And if you want a business plan that shows that you’ll make millions of dollars, you can easily throw one together. It’s not very difficult. Just keep exponentially saying that things will continue growing. I mean, I watch Shark Tank and all the shows about entrepreneurs growing businesses. And there’s times that I’m listening to things and I’m saying, “That is not even a remote possibility to achieve that.” But these people are saying, “Oh yeah, we’re going to be worth $150 million in the next three years.” “Great. Where are you at now? How are your sales?” “Oh, well, we haven’t even started yet. It’s just a concept. But within five years, we’ll be worth like a billion dollars easily.” There are companies that happen to. There are definitely companies that pull that off. They’re not the ones that like a concept and then never actually following through on anything.

Matt Henderson (10:45):
So there is my rant for today. There’s my thoughts on what you can expect in business on how to get yourself from concept to step one, two, three, four, and five. And how you’re going to get yourself to a point of having your own business or succeeding in your goals and taking things to the next level. I hope I was able to help a few of you out there today. If this is helping you even a little bit, if you could take a picture of this podcast, post it up to your social media. Or if you have time and you can go and leave me a review or follow the podcast on Spotify. So every time I release a new one, you get a notification, that’d be terrific. All right, everyone. This is Matt from The Business Mind podcast. I hope you have an amazing week and I will talk to you again soon.

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